pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i've warmed up to his dumb arm swinging

lmao what the fuck is this

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/ranking-every-guest-appearance-on-kanye-west-donda-from-worst-to-best/

gotta keep the grift going, no such things as bad press, etc. etc.

i liked that article, or list, actually. it was irreverent in a way that pitchfork hasn't done since the days when everyone started saying pitchfork was dumb

mystified by everyone getting mad at that. its 'not for me' as a reader but when rap writing was all serious all the time ppl complained there wasnt enough irreverent fun shit like that and now that there is ppl are all mad about it. (lets ignore that the "outrage" around the article was basically ginned up by teenage kanye stans saying stuff like 'this is what journalism is like now')

oh shit, was their people getting mad about that beyond this thread? jeez!

i thought that was fun

lets ignore that the "outrage" around the article was basically ginned up by teenage kanye stans saying stuff like 'this is what journalism is like now')

gamergate never ended

I'm all for irreverent journalism but that doesn't change my baseline desire to put every article about Kanye post-2013 on a pile and light a match

But as “Ode to Billie Joe” became a global phenomenon, the song that will inevitably appear in every headline of Gentry’s eventual obituaries, that image hid more than it revealed.

Gentry is alive today, though it seems relevant to say that few people know where.

The Search for Bobbie Gentry

I know where Syd Barrett lives

Olivia Rodrigo ran through a punk-rock-prom performance of “Good 4 U,” a song we’ve all heard roughly three billion times by now. It was fun enough, but wouldn’t it have been a lot more exciting if, in the middle of the song, Paramore’s Hayley Williams—who was recently awarded a credit on the song because of its resemblance to her band’s hit “Misery Business”—came out of nowhere, and they did a one-time-only duet, uniting generations of pop-punk angst?!

no.

“wouldn’t it have been a lot more exciting if, in the middle of the song, Paramore’s Hayley Williams”

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fe/B.o.B_-_Airplanes.jpg/220px-B.o.B_-_Airplanes.jpg

If you're Brad Nelson maybe.

wouldn’t it have been a lot more exciting if, in the middle of the song, ILX's Brad Nelson came out of nowhere, and they did a one-time-only duet, uniting generations of pop-punk angst?!

Alfred, yes!

Weirdly exhaustive piece on some marginal producer dude suing three different ppl: https://pitchfork.com/news/phoebe-bridgers-sued-for-defamation/

Even though one of them is Phoebe Bridgers, why publish this?

there must be 5-15 articles every day

that's the amount of news that happens every day

and our job is to report out 2-4 of those per day. and if you keep doing 6 per day, well. well. you might just get to scale back to 3 per day after that, but longer and better articles

i like to pretend you're the real Karl Malone posting to ILM

me too

god, me too

it's being pretty widely covered elsewhere too, solely because phoebe bridgers is involved. it's definitely weird it's gotten so much attention but i guess everywhere just wants some of the clicks as always

"here's a list of 200 artist we've given good reviews!"

i like Rosalia as much as the next person but i'm a bit surprised at her inclusion - she put out one album a few years ago (that got BNM, i know) and a few singles since to diminishing returns (imo) and that warrants inclusion? idk

It's so fucking funny that they're basically memory-holing the Stosuy/285 Kent era (Perfect Pussy, SunnO))), Swans, Iceage, Grouper, etc) to assert "No, we're more about Ariana Grande these days"

Like if your big mission statement is a list of respectable '00s indie rock ofays + the world's biggest pop and rap stars, idk what to tell you.

Like in 2021 Pitchfork wants to be Rolling Stone and Rolling Stone wants to be Pitchfork

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxPsXPCR5MU

grouper is on the list

swans probably too controversial a pick after the rape allegations, i think they'd very likely be there if it weren't for that

To kick off our 25th anniversary retrospective

Oh man

but yes this is about as uninteresting as a list can be

i like Rosalia as much as the next person but i'm a bit surprised at her inclusion - she put out one album a few years ago (that got BNM, i know) and a few singles since to diminishing returns (imo) and that warrants inclusion? idk

I haven't clicked over to the Pfork thing, but (fwiw) she's put out two albums, and (yes) various singles/collabs, some of which were a pretty big deal... I get why they would include her in a list of 200 acts, she's very Zeitgeist-y and feels like a major current artist.

sorry shoulda mentioned one album that they reviewed, i'm aware of the album before that

but lol yes apparently major current artist = one of the most important artists of Pitchfork's last 25 years

which goes back to what Whiney said

Well they can't all be The Strokes

i feel like the late 90s are relatively underrepresented? & 00s indie obviously way overrepresented, like i like the new pornographers and all but were they ever really an 'important' or 'influential' band?

important to pitchfork

And here's to the next 25! Or maybe 5 more years tops?

It's also funny that Ryan S. built this entire empire from nothing, led it from basement to office to New York to Conde Nast over like 20 years, sold it, and the new staff is just dedicated to doing backboard breaking dunks on how he ran it

In the past few years, we’ve purposefully expanded the range of music we cover, reexamined how we listen to music as a staff to allow more voices to be heard, and widened our contributor pool.

We canceled Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago due to the coronavirus in 2020, and then saw it sell out upon its return last month—a sign that a genre-spanning, inclusive lineup (including three female headliners for the first time in our history) is what music fans actually want.

important to pitchfork

this makes it especially boring but also very revisionist at times, worst of both worlds, like they never loved an erykah badu album on release lol so how important is she really to pitchfork's history?

modest mouse also a particularly notable absence by that standard

For years, Vijay Iyer was Pitchfork's stand-in for jazz as a whole: They reviewed NINE of his albums between 2004 and this year, and he doesn't make their top 200 artists list? Harsh.

It's also funny that Ryan S. built this entire empire from nothing, led it from basement to office to New York to Conde Nast over like 20 years, sold it,

i didn't read the rest, but as rare and difficult as this is for people who start with no money to do, it's also so shitty. the trajectory is shitty, i mean. just reading that alone, it's like yeah, he took something that was real and small and blew it up into a conde nast thing - dunk on him for that

& i don't think you can make a case at all that taylor swift has much to do with their history when they ignored her for most of her career

is anyone happy that the first starbucks ended up growing into what it is today? if i were a starbucks barista writing a 25th anniversary rememberance, i'd write (on the coffee cup in sharpie) "i bet that early time when it was just jimmy starbucks working the counter at the only starbucks in the country, spreading by word of mouth, was a pretty cool time"

the american dream is always to take something small, then expand and capitalize on the initial perception of "real, not a corporation) to the logical limit until it no longer resembles what it was, then sell it to a corporation

We canceled Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago due to the coronavirus in 2020, and then saw it sell out upon its return last month—a sign that a genre-spanning, inclusive lineup (including three female headliners for the first time in our history) is what music fans actually want.

So music fans prefer an inclusive line-up to catching coronavirus? Seems odd, but okay!

xxxxxxps, i prob play that shaggs song in my head four times a day

Congrats to brad for the Taylor Swift review excerpt in this feature...

(now that I've skimmed thru the list, I think it's v weirdly hierarchical the way they separated it into true kult Top 50 plus 150 "nearly-as-important acts")

I just find it odd that title of the article is "200 Most Important Artists of Pitchfork’s First 25 Years" while the browser heading says "200 Most Influential". I feel like those are two different things.

while we're at it, can i throw this in here?

should the MVP go toward musicians who are in very successful acts that make "the playoffs"? or can you be a MVP as the leader of a relatively unknown act?