pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

The NME of the early and mid 80s spent quite a lot of energy on self-reflection (so did the Sinker-era Wire in a v different way) but whether you’d consider them similar is another matter. I loved both.

Tim is offtm. It's quite correct to say that they've moved past the limitations of the 2002 list, even though other limitations remain. And it's wrong to overlook how different this new canon is! This list manages to both be objectively quite radically new and different, while still seeming as boring and obvious as ever. And if that sounds like a backhanded compliment, I don't mean it like that! The FACT list is great, but it also looks lie an attempt to make a counter-list. Pitchfork looks like an attempt at a new consensus, and it really is quite something that we begin to include Janet Jackson, Sade, Madonna, Sinead O'Connor, Kate Bush, etc, in the center of the canon, rather than at the periphery where basically every woman has been before.

I said it was true that they've moved past the old limitations and I didn't overlook how different the list is? Truthfully I can't see what in my posts you're disagreeing with, unless you think that there's no value in thinking what the new limitations are or what that might mean?

I'm not saying limitations are wrong, or that having them is bad, I'm saying that in my dream world there would be some reflection on what those new limitations are - that reflection would include saying it's good that the artists you name are included.

I think that ranking all these albums against each other cuts against the grain of elevating new/different artists in a certain way (even in cases where they sit comparatively high on the chart), because it creates this weird arena in which ESG dukes it out with Bruce Springsteen (and wins handily!), and the resulting hierarchy relies on the conceit that albums from different genres -- and artists with totally different goals and approaches -- can even really be ranked comparatively at all. I do acknowledge that fewer readers would look at the list if it weren't ranked, tho.

Tim, I just think it's wrong to complain Pitchfork isn't self-critical enough after they've this time managed to do a really good thing.

Mate I wasn't complaining. I said (repeatedly) that *in my dream world* this kind of list (which is more interesting than the previous) would be accompanied by a reflection on what that says about the people who made the list.

I mean, any act of canon-building should include a reflection on the results - it's interesting! And valuable!

I think that ranking all these albums against each other cuts against the grain of elevating new/different artists in a certain way (even in cases where they sit comparatively high on the chart), because it creates this weird arena in which ESG dukes it out with Bruce Springsteen (and wins handily!), and the resulting hierarchy relies on the conceit that albums from different genres -- and artists with totally different goals and approaches -- can even really be ranked comparatively at all. I do acknowledge that fewer readers would look at the list if it weren't ranked, tho.

― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 5:20 PM

Morris OTM. This really articulates what feels weird about these lists to me. It's less true in cases where they focus on a genre ("50 Best Shoegaze Albums"), but when you're saying that this here private-press synthesizer improv album is quantitatively better than "Appetite for Destruction", well that just starts to feel kind of meaningless.

Still, I can't resist these list, so I'll patiently await the 2034 re-working where they decide that they forgot to include country, yacht rock, and east asian pop.

yeah, no YMO seems like an oversight

My guess is by necessity the list has been massaged

no need to guess imo. the likelihood of pitchfork (or any of these other publications) putting out as many ranked lists as it has and never having two releases by the same artist rank next to each other (or have anything tie, regardless of artist) is near zero if rankings were actually based on un-massaged poll numbers. we've all seen ilm and p&j poll results.

given the prevalence of such massaging, i don't see why these publications shouldn't stop slavishly adhering to the ranked-list format. like, okay, if you want to communicate some degree of appreciation, agreement or consensus among your contributors, i suppose you could establish a tier system or something, but why continue to pretend that each and every ranked position actually represents something different from all those above or below it? it is fundamentally silly imo

Fuxake... lists have been a reliable marketing scam while also being the scourge of decent music journalism for so long that we could have a thread about who did it first. Take it or leave it. (Most people here could leave it because you already have good taste.)

I really wish Pitchfork would just finally give this stuff up. They don't know what the best albums of the '80s are, nobody knows what the best albums of the '80s are. I just want to read writers that feel passionately about something and have something to say. Not a blurb where you have to provide a little historical context, give a little description, and then you're just about done.

In that list they did manage to publish writers who feel passionately about their albums and had something to say.

I don't mean to be combative and don't doubt that there are some good insights throughout, but I don't like the conceit of "best albums" and I hate hate hate the blurb context and the apparent need to explain historical context and provide description within such a limited space.

Especially for albums that have been blurbed to death over the past 20 years.

I think the self-critical point above is interesting. I think it could have been a fascinating history of criticism to read about the Tom Waits that dropped out entirely, or Sister, or the re-appraisal of Janet, or how in many ways Arthur Russell wasn't really even around in 2002.

I mean maybe that's only of interest to me and the 11 other people that own Stranded, but still.

Generally speaking I think the songs list did a better job with this because it's usually easier with a song to provide context/description and say something passionate in the same breath.

But I don't think these ranked lists are useless. Someone reading this list with the happy expectation of having their belief in the greatness of Purple Rain or Daydream Nation confirmed is much more likely to then read, say, the blurb for Meredith Monk's Dolmen Music and be intrigued enough to check it out than they likely would be otherwise. In many ways the primary reason to re-blurb the former two is to create a context where readers are more likely to read the latter.

That it's technically meaningless to say which of those three albums is "better" than the other doesn't really seem to me to be that important - the ranking is really just a device in my view, and I don't think anyone involved is seriously suggesting that there is a meaningful difference between being ranked 42 and being ranked 43.

I should qualify by saying that I think sometimes providing description is important in criticism when the critic is saying something, but sometimes I'm just given adjectives and I don't know what the critic is saying about these characteristics of the music. So, I sometimes come to the conclusion that the critic is not, in fact, saying anything and is just providing description.

xp
The flipside to that is: if you (say) don’t think Daydream Nation is a particularly tremendous album, seeing it ranked near the top yet again will reaffirm your belief that “these jokers don’t know what they’re talking about,” and maybe you’ll be less likely to take the list seriously as a whole, etc.

(Or feeling that your favorite band has been slighted in some way... “What good is this list!”)

My favorite band had a string of flawless albums in the 80s, and they don't appear anywhere in the list. I did enjoy the brief period about 10 years ago where they suddenly gained a slight amount of cred after being pariahs in the cool world for several decades.

name names!

Rush. For me, every single song from Permanent Waves through Power Windows is excellent. They could easily throw Grace Under Pressure in this list and it would be both correct and not at all a cliche.

If any reader really does approach a list of this sort thinking they will or should agree with each assessment, or that the list is fatally flawed if their favourite album is not on there, then I worry for their mental health tbh.

check out this Rush video directed by Zbigniew Rybczyński

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMSFqXGZ5TQ

Yep, that video is terrible, and is also for a song that was not on one if the albums I mentioned, but cool point. Rush is obviously not a particularly hip band.

And just to be clear, I'm not at all surprised they didn't show up on this list, and I don't believe that makes it fatally flawed. I do think it shows a very obvious blindspot though.

"Time Stand Still" is great!

(the song, not the video. I don't even love that period of Rush as much as some ilxors do but I do think it's a great song.)

Tim — point taken; but keep in mind these are rock ‘n roll fans we’re talking about... ;)

It's a good song, goofy video (not their only one), I don't love Hold Your Fire. Don't really know what Whiney was aiming for, it's a bit too late to shame me out of being a Rush superfan.

xxp

I like that song... gotta say, I’m legit affected by the sentiment (“Kids growing up, old friends growing older”)

Musically, it’s not too far away from something like French Frith Kaiser Thompson

Oh, I like Rush, I'm just saying that video has aged very poorly

I would not vote for that video in a top 200 videos of the 80s poll. Now the Subdivisions video on the other hand...

Aimee Mann is cool af in it

morrisp, they seem to have had a similar visual aesthetic as well.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/30/FrenchFrithKaiserThompson_AlbumCover_Live.jpg/220px-FrenchFrithKaiserThompson_AlbumCover_Live.jpg

Well goddamn. I don't read this thread often, but that old net advice about how on a long enough time scale every internet conversation will eventually become a discussion about Rush.

It certainly will if I'm around for it

I just want to read writers that feel passionately about something and have something to say

this is the first time i’ve felt bad reading a criticism of this list bc this is exactly what i’m trying to do

Fascinated by Geddy Lee's eyes being scaled to 80% and pasted in the middle of his face. Also that video is astonishing for the fact that someone signed off on it.

"time stand still" is such a good song

xp The original list results must have been far more heavily based on adding up tallies since once list has two Pixies albums in the top 10 and the other has two Bjork albums placed beside each other.

"the other" = another

Also, someone earlier mentioned Midnight Oil and it reminded me that the 80s was a great era for Australian rock, and that normally gets ignored in these US-centric lists; I think INXS, Nick Cave and AC/DC are the only ones who made it, and they all crossed over in the States. For starters Midnight Oil, The Go-Betweens, Hoodoo Gurus, The Triffids, Paul Kelly, The Birthday Party, Sunnyboys, Mental As Anything, The Church and Crowded House all have records that I still listen to and love from the 80s. Go-Betweens omission is maybe the most surprising; I would've expected to see 16 Lovers Lane at least.

australia certainly was ignored, even more than it was in the rolling stone list from the time. even as an australian in my 20s i'm unfortunately not too familiar with my country's output from then but The Church & The Go-Betweens are certainly deserving of more attention. there's probably something to be said about the lack of much of a music press here, leaving no one to strongly advocate for any sort of Australia-inclusive canon and leaving all the acts you mentioned much more forgotten to time than they should be.

this is imo a rad list - the lower end in particular is pleasingly eclectic, ppl are writing about what they care about & it's prompting me to listen to a lot of stuff I wouldn't otherwise be considering listening to rn. almost all the suggestions itt would make it worse, although the lack of latin american stuff is surprising.

I love this sort of enterprise; attempting to remake the canon into something more interesting and useful, the slightly giddy feeling you get from surveying so much different stuff, & trying to get ppl interested in an album in a paragraph is a noble format.

^ yeah this, well written and with lots of great new-to-me stuff to check out.

Somehow, I had always thought Crowded House were 100% Kiwi but I see now that they were based in Melbourne and the non-Finn members were all Australian or American. Huh.