A kung fu fighter in a disco

Before the inevitable "why do we care?" post from Lex - PLEASE PLEASE post other places' end of decade lists as they show up, if you find them interesting!

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hoshuteki.livejournal.com

If P4K are trying to influence our own voting, then it won't work. What is a Rapture, though? I might have to look that up when I'm feeling up to it.

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BOB always makes me think of Ethan P, heh

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

ha, i was so confused that they had picked the Knife version of Heartbeats (which is the worst of the four), that i completely missed what they'd picked as number 1!!!

but yeah, i reckon it's a fair representation of what one would expect from p4k, i think this is going to be less annoying than the alBUM list...

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martinv.livejournal.com

I think this is a pretty solid list, to be honest. Although much as I do like All My Friends, #2 of the decade is a bit much.

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SIGH. There was a reason I was deliberately avoiding this. (Am glad you posted your own blurbs though, had been hoping you would!)

Each of the acceptable acts in the top 10 has made at least 10 better songs than the dull ::::CANON:::: choices representing them there.

I've probably said it before but the reason this annoys me so much is precisely b/c of the history aspect that Tom posted about on Tumblr...it just feels like a skewed, shallow history to me.

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Love: 19, 17, 7, 5, 4, 1
Love but not my favourite mix: 15, 3
Like, whether a little or a lot: 18, 16, 14, 11, 9, 2
Perfectly OK but I don't get why This Track: 10, 6
Amusing enough in its day but its survival amazes me: 13
Dreadful: 8
Never heard: 20
"Hey Ya": 12

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statisticians will know the answer to this: is the overlap between "it's canon" and "it tops retrospective best of lists" not 100%?

The only way I can think it would be different is when people vote against the idea of canon, which they only do if they know what's canon, which means they need to determine canon, wich they only do if there's a poll like this one!

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to clarify: individuals can vote against what they consider canon, but unless there is a publicly recognised canon that's known to be known, these votes against will get lost in the noise (for example, will cancel one another out)

occasionally something will bubble up as a "mass vote against canon": but this is only unexpected if its goodness has never been discussed or otherwise manifested socially -- and of course if it has been manifested socially, then there's a chance it's already considered canon!

(short the above: the value of lists like this is to get us to try harder! we need to see shelley clear etc...)

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katstevens.livejournal.com

I wonder how well Hey Ya will do in the poptimist polls? I don't think I know anyone who isn't sick of it.

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By the end of the decade everyone knows what's canon! Every year they do lists that determine canon. I mean, I didn't expect it to be anything other than this, hence avoidance. But this just reiterates everything we already know.

IDK I think a list is a really bad way of rounding up a decade: you can do so many more interesting things, esp with web format. Sections on key artists which make an effort to delve into their discography beyond eg "Crazy In Love". Sections on one-hit wonders and lost gems and everything else which might fall down the cracks of history. Competition to pelt Animal Collective with rotten fruit. Whatever. Gonna stop thinking about this now.

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

i think i might be not sick of it again now, having not listened to/played it out for three years or so...

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It is beyond good and evil.

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= mediocre then (but listenable), mediocre now (def not listenable)

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But there's a time-lag between everyone knowing stuff, and everyone KNOWING that everyone knows it: that's what our responses to these lists reveal. (That's what they're useful for, in fact.)

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Everyone knowing that everyone knows stuff is a step too far in unnecessariness! Hmm I wonder if that is a word.

Also blah blah blah re: whose canon and whose values determine this, eg the top Jay-Z song is the rock one, the strong impression that "stepping (self-)consciously outside genre" is to be rewarded &c &c.

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awesomewells.livejournal.com

Love - 18, 17, 16, 15, 7, 6, 5, 4
Like - 20, 19, 14, 8, 3, 2, 1
Bored Now - 13, 12, 10
Rub - 11, 9

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awesomewells.livejournal.com

What's weird about the Pitchfork list is how little the guitar canon that they've built corresponds to what I think of as being the touchstones of 00s guitar music - 7 Nation Army and Take Me Out came in pretty low.

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Yep, this is the thing - one of the big subtexts on the albums list is "will anything beat Kid A?" and it's not so much because KA is unbeatably amazing, but it hit escape velocity and became canon-and-we-know-it (to the P4K crowd and readership) long long ago. So a vote for or against it becomes a statement on all sorts of things quite beyond the value of KA as an album. (It's kind of the Sgt Peppers effect)

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braisedbywolves.livejournal.com

I'd be surprised if it didn't make it into the last round (assuming there's more than say 20 songs in the last round). I think the lurker-heavy nature of poptimists is only going to become more apparent as the polls continue.

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I think that's exactly the kind of thing that needs to be pointed out, and quite dispassionately. I obviously am in no position to do it though!

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Everyone knowing that everyone knows stuff is a step too far in unnecessariness! : no, it's basic games theory. Your judgment how to vote to counter the flow depends on a knowledge of how others will vote.

"Whose canon": it's only ever going to be the canon of who gets to vote in a given poll -- but the identification of this can only be determined after the fact, if people are voting "truthfully" as opposed to consciously tribally (or with a view to determining the state of the consensus; rather than a snapshot of quality). It *is* shallow history (Mr I-hate-history!) but the journalist's role is the first draft of same; not the final draft. Juornalism provides the tipsheet for dissent and counterargument.

Rival lists would be interesting: we need to see some... but what are the Other Tribes? The moment a Lexist School emerges as a list-making organisation (boycotted by you obv: I mean tastewise), all the things you're worrying about will instantly re-emerge within Lexism. They're an artefact of how we fence with the opinions of others -- the aggregate of all the individual dialectics of affirmation and refusal

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