Pitchfork's Best Songs Of The Decade

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to bother listing all 500 - here's the link: http://pitchfork.com/p2k/ and here's the Top 20:

20. The Walkmen - The Rat
19. R. Kelly - Ignition (Remix)
18. Hercules and Love Affair - Blind
17. Annie - Heartbeat
16. The Rapture - House of Jealous Lovers
15. The Knife - Heartbeats
14. Jay-Z - 99 Problems
13. LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge
12. OutKast - Hey Ya!
11. Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
10. Arcade Fire - Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)
9. Animal Collective - My Girls
8. Radiohead - Idioteque
7. Missy Elliott - Get Ur Freak On
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
5. Daft Punk - One More Time
4. Beyonce ft Jay-Z - Crazy in Love
3. M.I.A. ft Bun B and Rich Boy - Paper Planes (Diplo Remix)
2. LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
1. OutKast - B.O.B

(I voted in this and did a few blurbs, by the way. The top 200 have blurbs and IMHO they are an excellent way of whiling a few hours away)

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I am a bit miffed that Paper Planes was rated over Galang (ie I know which one I'd rather listen to right now).

Apart from that, the list (all of it, not just the top 20) is about what I'd expect from Pitchfork but with a few pleasant surprises - e.g. there are four women in the top 10 which I doubt will be the case for the albums list.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

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!

[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.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

BOB always makes me think of Ethan P, heh

[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...

[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.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

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.

FWIW

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

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

[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

[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.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Love: 4, 7, 11, 12, 19
Like: 1, 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, 15, 17
Meh: 2
Fuck off: 8-10, 16, 18, 20

13 positives out of 20 isn't at all bad.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Likely in own top 100: 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 15, 16, 19
Like to some extent: 3, 11, 13, 14, 17
Meh: 2, 18
Not heard: 10, 20
Hate: 8, 9, 12

The only things that really baffle me about the list are the continuing popularity of Idioteque and LCD Soundsystem and the high ranking of Hercules and Love Affair. Pretty much everything else is either predictable P4Kery and/or actually good.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

By the way I thought Douglas Wolk's blurb for "Hey Ya" was tremendous.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Never heard / cannot remember how it goes: 20, 8, 7, 2, 1

Like okay but annoying due to indie ubiquity: 16, 9, 6

Enjoy but not on my top songs of decade list: 19, 18, 14, 13, 12, 11, 5, 4

Love and in my personal top songs of decade list: 17, 15, 10, 3

Although I might move a few of these up depending on how long this imaginary personal top songs of decade list is (any heterogenous list longer than 20 items is basically meaningless to me as I lose the ability to form a sense of its totality).

Canon Fired

[koganbot]

Is the overlap between "it's canon" and "it tops retrospective best of lists" not 100%?

Quick answer is "No, not remotely." So, to take issue with both dubdobdee and alexmacpherson:

Although I have nothing in principle against canons, and in fact have something in principle in favor of them - I don't think you can study the past without them, even or especially if they fundamentally serve as a list around which one organizes one's opposition to it - I think it's wrong to believe that this list, or recent P&J's, for that matter, come remotely close to identifying a canon, even the canon that serves a particular variant of a social subgroup. That's because even the subgroup, this decade's critics and quasi-intelligentsia, haven't come within light years of consensus or canon-forming. Never since 1968 has there been such confusion or indecision as to what belongs in a canon as in the current decade, except maybe for in the previous decade. Or the one before that... Anyway, I doubt that the people who created and blurbed the Pitchfork list think that they've got a better sense of the form and direction of the last 50 years of music than the American Idol theme weeks have, and an individual Idol contestant can accidentally reshuffle the canon in a minute and a half. ("Results 1 - 10 of about 88,800 for carrie underwood heart alone. (0.17 seconds).") I mean, among critics in 1979 there was a rock canon competing with a glam-punk-revisionary-futuristic countercanon, with funk and disco and reggae destabilizing both, but I couldn't write an equivalent summary for 2009. "Indie versus pop" hardly illustrates what's going on. (The problem not just being what the hell is indie, but what the hell is pop, and what the fuck!)

I'm told that when my dad was shown the list of pallbearers for his younger brother's funeral in 1955, he paused, nodded his head, and said, "a balanced ticket." In any event, a balanced ticket isn't a canon, and the Pitchfork 20 isn't even a balanced ticket. "B.O.B." is a placeholder, not a consensus choice or even a representative of a tendency (despite what the blurb tries to assert). That the twenty doesn't include Britney, Eminem, 50 Cent, Rihanna, Taylor, and Lil Jon isn't just a quirk of the voting, it's the systematic exclusion of what a lot of critics near the Pitchfork orbit like that a lot of readers and other critics can't hack. But even that sentence is too clear. What about Amy, Tashbed? Miranda Lambert (the country gal that postpunkers actually latch onto)? And no one seriously thinks "99 Problems" is canon. It's just crossover.

I don't think we could pool our intelligence to make a list of what's in the canon, even what's in the canon for a particular sensibility. At the moment, a canon isn't to be had. We can predict what will top P&J in any particular year, but we can't arrive at anything close to a consensus that what's on top is particularly good.

(Btw, and this takes us beyond the canon question, and I know that such lists are supposed to choose quality, not influence, but I'd be hard pressed to say that any track in the Top 20 is more important than Fat Joe's "What's Luv?" which got maybe four votes at the most in Pazz & Jop, and probably won't even make it out of its poptimists heat. I didn't vote for it in P&J either; had it penciled in at eleven behind Brandy, but ahead of Missy and the Dixie Chicks. Not even in contention for my list were R. Kelly, House Of Jealous Lovers, The Knife, or LCD Soundsystem.)

[koganbot]

Huh? = 20*
I surely heard this at some point, or perhaps not = 15
I heard it last week but don't remember it, though I remember going "Um" = 8
I've definitely heard this but don't remember it = 16
Was this on Fever To Tell? Yeah, I think so = 6**
Hate = 0
Indifferent = 9
I never quite got these guys = 19, 18, 5
Like = 14, 13, 12, 10, 2
OK, it's great, but... = 11, 4, 1
Love = 17, 7

*But I am on their publicist's email list
**I like Jess's write-up, which ignores that this is on a best-of-the-decade list

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

What I can observe from this is PITCHFORK LOVES COMFORT POP.

From beyond the grave...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I can agree: Annie, the Knife, "Hey Ya!", Gnarls B., Arcade Fire, Missy, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Daft Punk, Beyonce, "All My Friends"

Top 20 only in the Pitchfork miniverse: Walkmen, The Rapture, Radiohead, Animal Collective

Good but WTF - Hercules and Love Affair

Need to download to see what I missed - "B.O.B."

Is this really her best song? - M.I.A., Jay-Z

Make room for someone else (Kelly C?) - "Losing My Edge," R. Kelly