pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Walmart

This made me crack up.

On February 1st, Minsker also revealed that former Pitchfork staff are no longer allowed to freelance for the site. "I've heard this from at least four people who were told pretty directly from someone at Pitchfork," Minsker said. As an active union member, he said he feels protective of his colleagues: "It feels unnecessary and vindictive. We all deserve better."

WTF

I agree that a Pitchfork list that says Pavement’s “Gold Soundz” is the best song of the ’90s is a much more interesting version than one that puts Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy (Remix)” featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard at No. 1, and I say this even though I think “Fantasy (Remix)” is a better tune.

I will never understand this way of thinking. Pitchfork -- specifically -- ranking "Fantasy" as their number 1 is far more surprising and transgressive (and therefore interesting to me) than "Gold Soundz." And if it's a "better tune," what are we even arguing about?

I think the "poptimism failed them" crowd assumes Pitchfork was trying to pull in a new and more diverse readership, while I always interpreted it as their writers and editors trying to challenge their existing readership. The people I know that read Pitchfork are much better off having "Fantasy" be "validated" than being told Pavement is the most important band in the world for the millionth time.

Either way its just inflicting one view over another. Validation of music is stupid and is a complete waste of time.

Unless you're 12.

anything that's "the best of the 90s" is just some fun tunes we remember and like to hear, or think people born after the 90s might like to hear

Mostly agree with you, Indexed, about Pitchfork's intent with respect to its readership -- except the list also gets perceived within the broader ecosystem of music criticism on the internet, at a time when it wouldn't be unusual to see "Fantasy" atop a '90s list put out by Billboard or Rolling Stone or Vulture, either because those publications have historically been more sympathetic to pop music or have become more recently influenced by poptimism or both. So I also understand how "Gold Soundz" might be seen as a more interesting choice, because it's not one that you'd have seen a lot of other publications make.

It's a good thing we now have a media landscape every week some outlet is pubbing the exact same lists of songs as all the other other outlets but with the order changed

Any answer besides "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is basically trolling so both Pavement and Mariah are both "see what we did here" picks

what about "juicy"

Weird that a song mostly made in 1981 ("Genius of Love") would be the number one song of the 1990s.

the man said to get back to those gold sounds

if someone held a gun to your head and said "Name Pitchfork's Best Song of the 1990s" could you do it?

If You Don't Read This Website, We'll Kill This Dog

if someone held a gun to your head and said "Name Pitchfork's Best Song of the 1990s" could you do it?

― tylerw, Friday, February 2, 2024 4:49 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i would do a flip and karate kick the gun out of their hand and run off yelling "crime scene part one by afghan whigs!!!!!!"

if someone held a gun to your head and said "Name Pitchfork's Best Song of the 1990s" could you do it?

― tylerw, Friday, February 2, 2024 4:49 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Vanessa Williams - "Save the Best For Last."

Detachable Penis

If You Don't Read This Website, We'll Kill This Dog

Interesting that the masthead hasn’t been updated.

"Validation of music is stupid and is a complete waste of time."

so what you're trying to say is that Pavement rule, right?

"Vanessa Williams - "Save the Best For Last."

would so vote for this to be best of 90s. best song ever. "this kiss" could be number two. "baby baby" and "every heartbeat" for #3 and #4. "vision of love" or "hold on" for #5. i'd be good with those. and then a bunch of my bloody valentine, pavement, and east coast rap with a special shout-out to Lord Finesse's "Underground Operations".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAqfftTSU1k

no one needs a music review site to do a “best of” list. they just need to read scott’s posts

"Save the Best for Last" is one of my all-time jams.

"Every Heartbeat" is only, like, the greatest song ever.

I feel like pop from the early 90s, particularly "Save the Best for Last", is my last lingering connection with my pre-teen self

(i Jan that song all the time, also loved "This Used to Be My Playground" as a kid)

Today's retrospective Jeff Mills review by Gabriel Szatan is excellent and provides a great argument in defense of music criticism in 2024

Fantastic piece

"Every Heartbeat" is only, like, the greatest song ever.

sometimes we disagree and other times we are a single voice existing in two bodies

The synth bass is a poem.

I dont think the pavement, mariah, or nirvana songs are particularly interesting #1s

ppl should adjust their #1s based on changing critical values and none of those feel 'right' for 2024

the problem is debating those votes on their own terms, as if they indicate some kind of new or interesting value system instead of calcified ones of past arguments remembered

to this day I've still never heard all of Crooked Rain all the way through, in the Pavement-Is-King years I was into 2nd golden age of rap & weirder indie & metal, but when I listen to Gold Soundz now it really feels very text-productive -- I mean that's Pavement's deal, right, all the impulses of the moment they inhabit, of the moment in the pocket they personify, are present in their work -- if you only hear one of the bands from this general moment, it's them you should hear, you can get the whole story from what they do, and that's nowhere truer than on "Gold Soundz" imo, a song I'm 100% certain I didn't hear until sometime this century. I've become a big fan of Malkmus become I'm bookish and his whole approach to making records is bookish as fuck but adjusting Gold Soundz for 2024 would feel like a deeply ahistorical move -- history and its reading shifts, but events of history are still events, and Gold Soundz, within a broad moment, is one worth establishing as a touchstone

also it's just a sick jam

although i agree w/ Whiney that *if* some sort of objective "songs of the '90s" list was possible, anything other than Smells Like Teen Spirit is kind of silly. obviously there are a handful of others that have an argument, but it sure ain't "Gold Soundz" which is one of my favorite songs by my favorite band ever!

although i agree w/ Whiney that *if* some sort of objective "songs of the '90s" list was possible, anything other than Smells Like Teen Spirit is kind of silly.

The entirety of 90s black music would like a word

Boyz II Men and TLC alone should be in the conversation, let alone Mariah, Michael Jackson, and Janet Jackson

I think Pavement and "Gold Soundz" are fine, but in the fall of '96, during their imperial phase - or as close as they would have to one - there was always something about their catalogue that just didn't hit me in the way it seemed to hit so many of my friends. I used to ask "What am I missing here? Maybe I'm the one whose wrong, and I just need to give them a few more listens." But when I wasn't playing Yes or Rush (old prog habits die hard), I found myself far more interested in this R&B station called "The Beat" (1530 AM!) because of the ridic wave of awesome that regularly appeared (I remember one God-Tier sequence featuring Aaliyah's "One in a Million"; Rome's "I Belong To You"; Toni Braxton's "You're Making Me High"; and 112's "Cupid"). How the hell are Stephen, Spiral Stairs, and Bob supposed to compete with that!?

They can't.

I mean that's a sort of a flattening of the field -- how can Aaliyah or Braxton compete with None So Vile or Brave Murder Day, absolute titans of '96? well, there really isn't any competition going on, they're making different kinds of music, it's a bit silly to say "the one that's more popular is better" or to cower behind "relevance." Genre fiction is good and literary fiction is good and popular fiction is good and experimental fiction is good, but pitting them against one another is adolescent shit

would enjoy Toni Braxton's rendition of "Slit Yer Guts" tbh

cosign

or Aaliyah's take on "Gold Soundz" for that matter

I just played “Gold Sounds” for my partner, who knew of Pavement but had never heard them, and he looked at with a level of incredulous disgust I would normally associate with someone who has had a stranger fart directly in their soup in a mid-tier restaurant

so the line "we need secrets" contains more mysteries than we knew in 1994

"minestrone tastes a little off today"

soup farts ahead of their time for '96 grindcore tbrr

I prefer only Michelin star farts in my soup. Fuck the mid-tier.

This is why I love this entire convo about the Top Spng of the '90s - in the '80s, any #1 contender on the alternative side would be far-too obscure, and for the 2000s, music got too splintered after "Hey Ya" (no more monoculture/mono-counterculture dichotomy). This leaves the '90s as the one recent decade where we can actually argue whether a alt-goes-mainstream song like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Alive"; a big-but-still-indie song like "Paranoid Android" or "Windowlicker"; a hip-hop Pangaea like "Juicy" or "Supa Dupa Fly"; or the "how in the fuck does something this weird and askew become mainstream, guess I'm just gonna be thankful we live in that world" R&B like "One in a Million", "Tyrone", or "Brown Sugar" should be #1. And yes, the metal! While my knowledge is very tertiary - the Big 4 and Pantera; prog like Rush/Queensryche; and wherever the fuck you place Tool - I'm not well-versed enough to know what would qualify for a 'best of' list ("I'm Broken" or "Cut To The Chase" maybe).