singles for 2003 vs Pitchfork

I have to admit I'm a bit lost with Brent's Hey Ya blurb myself - "erupt"??

Also, mark's writing kills here - I like the VW/clowns line.

it still amazes me that people who have been writing for so long can construct sentences that make no sense, in any language, as a matter of course.

That's silly. Did you enjoy "Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?" enough to include it in your list? Well, put it in there!

I especially mad at Pitchfork about this. I can barely find anything to hate about the list, and that's one of my life's little joys.

Just for the record, on the "Rock Your Body" blurb I didn't actually write JT was an "embarrassment". What I turned in lamented the fact he only had 2 singles in the list!

Call me a homer, but I like the way the list turned out.

Seriously, I think it's a pretty good list, and is representative of both the staff and site. (I wish Ryan would print the bleedin' individual lists for these things, though!)

01: Outkast
"Hey Ya!"
02: Beyonce [ft. Jay-Z]
"Crazy in Love"
03: Justin Timberlake
"Cry Me a River"
04: The Rapture
"House of Jealous Lovers"
05: Junior Senior
"Move Your Feet"
06: !!!
"Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)"
07: Dizzee Rascal
"I Luv U"
08: Kelis
"Milkshake"
09: 50 Cent
"In Da Club"
10: The Roots [ft. Cody Chesnutt]
"The Seed 2.0"
11: The Flaming Lips
"Fight Test"
12: Spoon
"The Way We Get By"
13: Radiohead
"There There"
14: Mu
"Chair Girl / Let's Get Sick"
15: R. Kelly
"Ignition (Remix)"
16: Electric Six
"Danger! High Voltage!"
17: Missy Elliott
"Pass That Dutch"
18: Ted Leo/Pharmacists
"Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?"
19: The White Stripes
"Seven Nation Army"
20: Manitoba
"Hendrix with Ko"
21: Basement Jaxx [ft. Dizzee Rascal]
"Lucky Star"
22: The Strokes
"12:51"
23: Justin Timberlake
"Rock Your Body"
24: The Darkness
"I Believe in a Thing Called Love"
25: Jay-Z
"La La La (Excuse Me Miss Again)"
26: Black Dice
"Cone Toaster"
27: Outkast
"GhettoMusick"
28: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Maps"
29: M83
"Run into Flowers"
30: Sean Paul
"Like Glue"
31: Panjabi MC [ft. Jay-Z]
"Mundian to Bach Ké (Beware of the Boys)"
32: Lil' Kim [ft. Mr. Cheeks]
"The Jump-Off"
33: Tatu
"Not Gonna Get Us"
34: The Postal Service
"The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"
35: Madvillain
"America's Most Blunted"
36: Missy Elliott [ft. Ludacris]
"Gossip Folks"
37: Blur
"Out of Time"
38: Dizzee Rascal
"Fix Up Look Sharp"
39: Killer Mike [ft. Big Boi]
"A.D.I.D.A.S."
40: Delgados
"All You Need Is Hate"
41: Johnny Cash
"Hurt"
42: The Rapture
"Sister Saviour"
43: The Libertines
"Time for Heroes"
44: Manitoba
"Jacknuggeted"
45: Snoop Dogg [ft. Pharrell Williams & Uncle Charlie Watson]
"Beautiful"
46: Freeway [ft. Jay-Z & Beanie Sigel]
"What We Do"
47: Nas
"Made You Look"
48: Nas
"I Can"
49: The Postal Service
"Such Great Heights"
50: Ellen Allien
"Trash Scapes"

ok, same time tomorrow

yeah, it's a dramatic shift from last year's singles list...anyway, !!! and Rapture are indie.

I don't think singles should be allowed on a list like this unless they've been bona fide hits

Why, exactly?

I don't think singles should be allowed on a list like this unless they've been bona fide hits (ie millions of people have been exposed to them and they've entered the cultural bloodstream), or they are unavailable on an album.

Oh go fiddle around on Popjustice or something.

There was a singles list last year? I can't find it. I'd be very curious.

BTW, that Spoon song is actually pretty great, though I've relegated it in my mind to 2002.

yeah, this being the first year pfm did this, the rules were a little loose - reissued singles like HoJL and Danger!, plus late 2002 U.S. releases that either peaked or were UK singles in 2003 (hurt, made you look, cry me a river) were fair game.

no, that's why his complaint is so groundless!

"I Luv U"

Ah, see, but "Cry Me a River" is the closest JT comes to earning his Michael Jackson crown. Not only is it a good pop song, it's kinda creepy. Kinda mean. Not as mean as, say, "Dirty Diana," but getting there.

sucker!

But I guess that's what this thread is about. We're admitting to being suckers lately. Right?

(dlp9001 - I agree about the Unicorns and Menomena...and most of the other Best New Music choices.)

Darkness, Strokes, Spoon, Ted Leo, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Libertines, Delgados, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, White Stripes...I count 10.

Where's the "subtle ILM reference in the #1 spot"? I don't see it.

I thought it was obvious Brent D. was referring to the Korn forum at the Sony site.

If you believe this list should only be made up of mainstream hits, then should "Ghettomusick" be included?

oh, and I have to mention my favorite Brent D.-ism of the whole thing, from the Blur blurb: "Producer Ben Hillier, who's quickly becoming the best, builds the.." etc etc. from now on I shall frame all my compliments in the form of "[x] is quickly becoming the best."

this line put a big smile on my face:

"Ignition" was so dense with pop genius he could've farmed it out for four or five separate songs-- I'd happily get down to a track called "I'm Like 'So What, I'm Drunk!'"

Who's claiming that? I want names.

2003 may be parallel with the early 90s, but certainly not the 60s. I wasn't alive then or anything, but I always imagined 60s radio to be virtally non-stop greatness, with maybe one not-so-great song roughly every 30 minutes, whereas today's pop stations usually play one good song, then one bad song, and if they play two good songs in a row, it's likely they'll play two bad songs right after it. So it's like 50/50 today.

and those lists are truly garbage

Show, don't tell Rollie!

Also huge gaffe by Stousy on the "gossip folks" blurb building it all around missy's "innovation" in what's really a sampled chorus from double dutch bus.

despite brent d's weird sentences (maybe just victims of editing like with scott?) his read pretty well, and mark richardson's are pretty killer.

which is why "boundary-pushing" is usually a bad criteria for "goodness".

(haha meltzer on bangs-as-beat to thread)

if i wanted fucking transgressive rockwrite i'd read MRR!

But I'm not ashamed of this, and Pitchfork needn't be either.

(PopMatters album list was great, as is Pitchfork's singles list, and probably vice versa.)

I think this "popist vs rockist" conceit (if such a thing even exists outside of our collective unconscious -- i.e/ ILM World) is a pendulum swing, and we're currently at the pop end of that swing. That's fine. But just like there were very few actual corny indie fux0rs back in the '90s, there are probably very few people who only listen to Chart Pop now as a matter of principle. I think most of us -- I make this sweeping judgment after reading ILM for a year now -- listen to a variety of indie/chart/hip hop with whatever niche stuff we tack on due to individual personal tastes (with an acknowledgement that "indie" is itself currently a niche -- perhaps I oughta just say "rock"). (The other acknowledgement is that what I just said is very much North America-centric, and the UK is very different in its relation to chart vs "underground", a whole 'nother tangent here.)

So, anyway, good for both Pitchfork and (shameless plug for the webzine I write for) PopMatters. To use a 90s phrase -- it's all good, right? ;-)

uh.

so there was this confluence where the idea of "changing in order to say new and different things relevant to a changing and always new and different world and because saying the same things over and over is different than saying those same things the first time *anyway*" became linked to the idea of future-noise.

which opened up a space for avant-indie future-noise crossover with ppl. who want music that *speaks to them* and this crossover is now sorting itself out, but pfork's (okay just rollie's) lateness to the game is finding future-noise in frikin In Da Club and rendering the whole thing super-absurd.

?

http://www.clubbang.net/9-29-01/BANG-28.JPG

(I'm only being partly facetious -- i.e./ it's all good.)

(And why am I trying to continue this discussion in the face of a real life Waldo, anyway?)

Where did I say that "In Da Club" is somehow ultra-progressive? I said it's one of the most popular singles of the year, especially for a guy who came out of nowhere. I also described the song. I don't understand what your criteria is for a good blurb, but I don't quite see what's so wrong with my writing.

Your whole assumption of my take on 'future noise' is short-sighted, especially based on just a few short blurbs.

I'm not well-liked, am I?

i'm not in the mood to pick them out and comment on each, but here are a few words off the top of my head: the darkness and 50 cent, what the fuck , SUCKERS
pitchfork, your tubes are clogged.

?

more to the point i don't get the "blaxploitation vigilante" bit at all.

and "in da club" was, as far as i know, a single AFTER 50 jacked lots of hype -- for the em signing, for wanksta, for "how to rob an industry" and the story behind *that* and etc. but the "progressive" part was the "densely packed synthetic slabs and mechanical handclaps" not to mention the "questionably dark in tone" thing where i'm just like "wait!? does this guy have any *idea* what gets played in clubs".

anyway though it grates beyond my disagreements with yr ideas (coz i'll disagree with plenty of ideas) coz of the tongue twister alliteration style that hurts my brane, like yr. words are just backing up onto one another.

Producer Ben Hillier, who's quickly becoming the best, builds the rich, misopolemic ballad over a field recording of a Moroccan string orchestra.

What could it mean? A hatred of argument? A turbulent Japanese soup?

Merriam Webster told me the word didn't exist, and provided the following suggestions for what Brent might have wanted to call this Blur song:

1. mesopelagic
2. Mesopotamia
3. misspelling
4. mesophyllic
5. misapplication
6. mesotheliomas
7. miasmically
8. misspellings
9. misapplications
10. mesothelioma

1. refers to the depth of oceans, 4. to the layers of leaves, 6. is a tumor, and 7. a vaporous disease-forming exhalation.

Misopolemic- a hater of war.

Still doesn't justify the usage of the word though. Is obfuscation an ingredient in indie cred these days?

CRAP BEAT ME TO THE PUNCH

I would also like to praise Brent for his neat summation, in the Outkast 'Hey Ya' review, of the Contract v. Status models of aesthetic value, which he rather confusingly calls Side A and Side B. Rather un-misopolemic here, he declares Side A the likely winner because 'Hey Ya' has awarded them the A bomb.

There's been debate on some music boards frequented by the readers of this site over the intended purpose of music, singles, and the collecting of such. Side A holds true to the idea that music is a unifying cultural force that holds meaning only in context of who it reaches and brings together. These people erect mashups of Kraftwerk and Whitney Houston. Side B believes music exists for music's sake and a idealized, context-less listening experience-- an artistic outpouring meaningful only in its outpouring. "Hey Ya" gives the A Bomb to Side A.

That's exactly why I called his use of A and B 'confusing'.

like saying Side A was the bomb diggity, you know?

(word)