I think the 2010's will be dominated musically by...

?

Even more fragmentation is a boring, but probably correct, answer.

a 90's revival somewhere around 2015 (if the world wont end in 2012)

The Beatles and Michael Jackson. Taylor Swift. Miley Cyrus. Some other teenaged girl with a not-bad voice from the South (currently aged 11). Also, bebop finally breaks, especially when it melds with contemporary country. The Disney factory further perfects its pop making machine, and by 2014, the oldest person on the Billboard top 20 will be 15. The crunk revival hits in 2019, to the glee of everyone. And Billy Joel makes a comeback and becomes the new Old Dylan, or at least the new Old Johnny Cash.

First big worldwide Asian superstar pop stars.

No matter what happens musically in the rest of the world, critical Canon continues to be dominated by white, college-educated males.

Also New York does what punk did to The South's prog and brings back 'the proper way' with like 5 great albums, a bunch of great singles and then it fragments into weird shit as the NY stars don't really know what to do after ripping off Mobb Deep or Tribe.

critical Canon continues to be dominated by white, college-educated males

This is probably true, or kind of true, but it would be interesting to think about why on another thread? It's not like there aren't lots of critics attempting to subvert or abolish the Canon over the last 20 years. So why so little change?

(Possible germ of an answer: we're talking about one specific Canon amongst many in one specific sphere of discourse amongst many.)

Some American or Brit is hailed as a genius for using beats from a third world dance scene in their songs.

This is probably true, or kind of true, but it would be interesting to think about why on another thread?

Are you being ironic, or did you genuinely not catch any of that on the P4k poll thread?

I steered clear of the Pitchfork thread. I'm interested in the idea of why canons stay pretty stable even if the trends in critical theory veer wildly. It's really not like saying "hey maybe guitar rock is not the only fruit" has been a radical proposition for a long time now.

Honestly, at least 900 of the 1000 posts on the poll thread are asking exactly that.

Did somebody say "Hootie & The Blowfish Reunion Tour"?

yeah i think there are probably ~500 posts on the pfork thread about this. some good some not so good, no one seems interested in actually doing anything about it.

xp

lol I just assumed it was people whining about Animal Collective's median review score over the last 5 years or something.

a 90's 00's revival somewhere around 2015 (if the world wont end in 2012)

well since most musical decades start a few years before the actual beginning of the decade, the 10s as they will be remembered must have started already.
So what are the genres/"innovative artists" that have blossomed lately ?
Also,I'm pretty sure we have discussed this somewhere, already.

Will New Jack Swing (music, dresscode, haircut...) have a revival anytime soon ?

Soft-serve space age rap?

Brokencyde.

I was going to pose a similar question myself - in times past, which artist set the tone for the following decade? e.g. much of the 70s was spent chasing The Stones' tails.

Which 00s artist might leave such a legacy?

might as well: animal collective?

If the next decade's going to sound like Animal Collective, that's me out.

By the 70s, the Stones themselves were tail-chasing. Most of the music I associate with the 70s had little or nothing to do with the Stones, except for a few band-wagon jumping exercises on their part.

when did the 00s start already ?

The 00's were late and started in February 2001.

My reckoning is the next decade will def see a nineties revival, but hopefully not so much the cheesy/ironic kind that we've seen with the '80s revival. I think guitar-wise we might look forward to a revival of the Beavis & Butthead alt-rock phenom that ran parallel with grunge. Bands that sound like Daisy Chainsaw, Dinosaur Jr, Lawnmower Death, Senseless Things, Senser, early Cypress Hill, Bleach-era Nirvana. I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing in the Dead Weathers' recent album.

Pop-wise I can already see a mainstream assimilation of dubstep and grime aesthetics into pop and rock. We've already had those hugely popular remixes of La Roux and Nneka, and I can only see this continuing, but unfortunately in a watered down way. I can imagine the Trent Reznors and Ash's of the '10s really trying to crowbar dubstep into their sound.

Black-eyed Peas and Nickelback clones on the Billboard charts in America, not sure about anywhere else. Ugh.

Nickelback clones, heh. That would make them, what, fifth-generation Pearl Jam clones then?

arcade fire dominates p4k 20/20, claims each top 10 slot with albums replete with tuneless yet literate and sincere upper middle class folk music

Pop-wise I can already see a mainstream assimilation of dubstep and grime aesthetics into pop and rock

Hope this is true, so long as it's not of the horrid screamo "rap/metal" variety.

There was a Dizzee Rascal song in 90210 a couple weeks ago, so, uh, is the grime crossover under way?

MIA, who will reach global superstar status.

Is Dizzee Rascal still a "grime artist"? I haven't kept up since the first album, but I thought he moved into other sounds/genres.

I was being mostly sarcastic, as the song they used was one of his very recent big "pop" hits over in the UK.

First big worldwide Asian superstar pop stars.

― Samuel (a hoy hoy), Wednesday, 21 October 2009 12:48 (2 hours ago) Bookmark

that will be the day

Didn't Pink Lady already accomplish the "Asian superstar pop stars" thing in the 70s?

first time I ever heard of them

They were popular enough to become co-hosts of a short lived variety show "Pink Lady with Jeff" on NBC in 1980. According to Wikipedia, they were big enough to chart a single ("Kiss in the Dark"), although admittedly it might be a bit of stretch to call them "superstar pop stars" seeing as they were merely "star pop stars" in the States.

critical canon continues to be dominated by white, college-educated males

One reason the critical canon seems dominated by white, college-educated males is because what you feel like considering a "critical canon" is precisely the one shaped by white, college-educated males (a group most of you are part of)

Well quite. It's the idea of the Canon that's doing most of the work.

I'm guessing there will be some kind of real crossover success of "noise rock" (for want of a better term) - I think what started happening in this decade is that cult, "difficult", or non-melodic bands found larger/more significant audiences than they would have done at any other time (Stars of the Lid, Sunn 0))) for example... [wow Sunn 0))) are a difficult band to pathenthesise]). I mean in the 90s bands like that would have been seen as cultish and "obscure" but in this decade the word "obscure" isn't really applicable to music any more - every song is only a click away after all. So 2015 will see the world's first drone number one. Probably. Sort of.

Dopesmoker (Armand Van Helden remix)

^^^^ first genuine LOL of the thread

Nabisco OTM about teh canon. It should come as no surprise that when describing what is good and worthwhile in the world, any given cultural group will paint a collective portrait that, by and large, resembles itself. This is neither good nor bad, it is instead simply natural -- though it can, of course, have negative consequences if a single cultural voice consistently dominates the discourse.

IMO, the wrong approach to dealing with these negative consequences is to suggest that the canon-forging group should actively subvert this subconscious tendency, that they should intentionally paint a portrait that does not resemble themselves. This merely introduces guilt and self-awareness/doubt into the system, factors which distort the image generated without addressing the underlying problem: the cultural narrowness of the canon-defining body.

This is what I was getting at in the Pfork thread. If you want a canon that seems less to celebrate the middle-class white male and his culture/values, then you have to pay more attention to other voices. Simply pestering the middle-class white males into paying lip service to other cultures & groups seems like a lousy, lazy solution.

or other voices have to start making more dumb-ass long lists.

Then we can poll the competing dumb-ass long lists.

I think the 2010's will be dominated musically by...

cartoon bands from video games and television shows with high-profile competitions to "play" the cartoon characters live on stage

no one seems interested in actually doing anything about it

I was interested in talking about how Pitchfork could have acted differently to create a better list (e.g., taken a more active editorial hand, or polled a different set of people.) We could pick up that discussion on the P4k thread?

MIA, who will reach global superstar status.

this is my single greatest wish for the future of (pop) music <3

whatever replaces YouTube.

I was interested in talking about how Pitchfork could have acted differently to create a better list (e.g., taken a more active editorial hand, or polled a different set of people.)

surely the only satisfying answer you are looking for with this question is "they could have asked me to do it, and then the list would have been perfect"

lol @ "better list"

critical Canon continues to be dominated by white, college-educated males

That is, unless more black college-educated males with the same background start to make the same kind of music. Which, you know, may well happen before or since.

One reason the critical canon seems dominated by white, college-educated males is because what you feel like considering a "critical canon" is precisely the one shaped by white, college-educated males (a group most of you are part of)

Actually, critical canons in all other (non-pop) musical forms and art forms are mostly dominated by white, college-educated males too. Well, except for jazz, maybe. Which is instead dominated by black people with largely the same college-based background.

musicology scholar

at least he's helped expose a possible misunderstanding here between "critical canon dominated by" meaning the music in the canon dominated by or the actual canon-shapers themselves being dominated by etc.

in 2010 people will still talk about canons.

contenderizer u always seem super defensive about the idea of anyone criticizing taste, like its some sacrosanct thing instead of something mediated thru social channels. its pretty corny & paranoid imho

i think encouraging ppl to be self-critical about why they like things is perfectly reasonable

i think he's pretty aware that taste is mediated through social channels, influenced by education, class, etc. maybe he thinks it's somewhat pre-determined and not malleable?

...the writing of sasha frere-jones

...the writing of dom passantino

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0674212770/ref=dp_otherviews_0?ie=UTF8&s=books&img=0

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ZP6GKY6RL.jpg

"In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance of the tastes of others ... which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural and therefore vicious. Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes" (p.56).

...guitar heavy classic rock. (honest answer)

call it the generational fallout of the success of guitar hero/rock band.

i've been thinking there could be a real metal breakthrough of some kind. i could see a band like torche or somebody popping up with a commercially-viable million-seller.

Not unless they get signed to a major.

Dopesmoker (Armand Van Helden remix)

this would be so awesome

Not unless they get signed to a major.

i dunno. wouldn't be surprised to see someone ride an indie release to a big distribution deal etc. who knows anymore, really?

Also New York does what punk did to The South's prog and brings back 'the proper way' with like 5 great albums, a bunch of great singles and then it fragments into weird shit as the NY stars don't really know what to do after ripping off Mobb Deep or Tribe.

― Samuel (a hoy hoy), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 11:50 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

is everyone ignoring this because they understand it cause i have no idea what any of this means

btw i figure dino jr::10s as joy div::00s

The Avalanches.

Ugh

muse

Hoos I would imagine it is either claiming that (a) New York City hip-hop will steal attention away from Southern hip-hop with a burst of "back to basics" / "golden age" simplicity and vigor, then fragment in different directions after those basics are exhausted, or (b) VH1 reality-television star Tiffany Pollard will spend $75 on iTunes, decide she doesn't care for Lynyrd Skynyrd's use of guitar solos, steal money from various aging rappers, and then get confused.

If I know New York, it'd probably be Molly Hatchet, but otherwise nabisco OTM.

Seriously, by the end of the 2010s, things are probably so fragmented that you can hardly talk of any kind of trends at all. All kinds of musical genres will exist, all of them enjoying an underground audience that uses the net to find whatever they want to listen to. And hardly anything will be able to surface and cross over to anyone but the cult already into that genre.

This means the hitlists will be owned by the underground cult which at any time contains the largest number of fans. In the 00s this was hip-hop in the US, pop electro in Europe. In the 10s it may be something else. But it will never ever be able to capture the entire masses the same way the most popular music in the 60s did.

90s grunge nostalgia begets yet another legion of hugely popular, mid-tempo bar bands fronted by mules.

MIA, who will reach global superstar status

Stop trying to make fetch MIA happen! It's not going to happen!

indian death metal, chinese noise, maybe polka funk

polka funk - Mr. Bungle could be the Gang of Four of the 10s

Dopesmoker (Armand Van Helden remix)

this would be so awesome

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, October 21, 2009 5:13 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

such a great idea - would happily pay several dollars for a dopesmoker remix album

MIA, who will reach global superstar status

Stop trying to make fetch MIA happen! It's not going to happen!

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 10:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i think it could. why not?

definitely NOT 90's grunge nostalgia, unless this is intended to refer to bullshit like seether or hinder or shinedown.

Hoos I would imagine it is either claiming that (a) New York City hip-hop will steal attention away from Southern hip-hop with a burst of "back to basics" / "golden age" simplicity and vigor, then fragment in different directions after those basics are exhausted,

^^^umm, yeah, this is what i meant.

Some American or Brit is hailed as a genius for using beats from a third world dance scene in their songs.

http://rapidshare.com/files/296305499/KulitAing_Soulflip.mp3

well i can hope can't i!

Nabisco OTM about teh canon. It should come as no surprise that when describing what is good and worthwhile in the world, any given cultural group will paint a collective portrait that, by and large, resembles itself. This is neither good nor bad, it is instead simply natural -- though it can, of course, have negative consequences if a single cultural voice consistently dominates the discourse.

IMO, the wrong approach to dealing with these negative consequences is to suggest that the canon-forging group should actively subvert this subconscious tendency, that they should intentionally paint a portrait that does not resemble themselves. This merely introduces guilt and self-awareness/doubt into the system, factors which distort the image generated without addressing the underlying problem: the cultural narrowness of the canon-defining body.

This is what I was getting at in the Pfork thread. If you want a canon that seems less to celebrate the middle-class white male and his culture/values, then you have to pay more attention to other voices. Simply pestering the middle-class white males into paying lip service to other cultures & groups seems like a lousy, lazy solution.

This kind of Jim Crow approach to music criticism makes me so angry I could actually spit.

Because it plays right back into that "only blacks can write about black music, only females can write about female music - in order to make white males feel smug again about only paying attention to white male music."

Again and again, it comes down to the idea that everyone else should have to change - except for white males, who should never ever have to change or be challenged in any way. Because the way they are is "natural" and everyone else should change to accomodate their idea of nature.

It's this whole idea of mirroring - that because white college-educated males have been so successful in fabricating and enforcing (in a self-reinforcing way) a cultural world that looks JUST LIKE THEM - they have somehow formed the idea that this is "natural" and just The Way Things Are.

Because it's really astonishing how, for instance - Dan and Nabisco seem perfectly able to listen to, appreciate, discuss, even rate white artists without doing so because of "GUILT" or "self awareness/doubt" (as if self awareness and doubt are BAD things when it comes to critical discussion of culture and what makes it?)

Myself, and the other female music fans that I know - we seem perfectly able to listen to, appreciate, discuss, even rate MALE artists without that sense of GUILT perverting it.

Yet somehow the idea that white males should pay the same attention to others is met with howls of contention?

Do you think Dan so rates, for example, The Cure because of GUILT? Do you think that I rate Erkin Koray or Lindstrom on account of SELF AWARENESS AND DOUBT?

Or is it because the music that these artists produce, regardless of race or gender - makes me roll over and waggle my arms and legs in the air with sheer delight?

Yes, I concentrate on the political aspects of the inclusion of women, specifically, in Canon, because I'm a woman and this shit affects me every single day in my life as an artist and as a fan.

But do I think that those poor little white males, retreating into their shells of unaccountable TASTE, should listen to, appreciate, discuss and RATE females simply for political reasons?

No, I think they should do so because THERE IS SO MUCH GOOD AND AMAZING AND BRILLIANT AND GENIUS AND FANTASTIC MUSIC OUT THERE that happens to be made by women that they are just IGNORING because they're clinging to their solipsistic mirror-worlds.

I know I become semi-incoherent when I'm angry, and this anger distorts my message (and also enables others to write me off as "just another angry feminist bitch") but god damn it.

White males, you deliberately and exclusively create the world in your own image - then with utter solipsistic arrogance insist that this process is somehow "natural". ANYTHING that injects self awareness or doubt into the dismantling of this process can only be a good thing.

This thread is already a bit tl;dr, but God you lot are a dreary bunch, banging on about canons etc. Who says the canon IS still dominated by WASPs anyway? "Proper" (i.e. non-undie) hip-hop, grime, dubstep, r'n'b etc are just as popular with the average music critic/fan these days anyway. Black artists like Dizzee and Jay-Z are appearing on the covers of indie mags and headlining festivals all the time. 2009 has seen a massive explosion in critically acclaimed (and panned) female artists smashing the top regions of the charts. Even indie rock, the last bastion of the middle class white male is being dominated by bands like TVOTR and Bloc Party who feature black lead members.

Even the NME, who I'd basically given up on as a mag, have really reigned things in and started exposing a much more varied range of artists since that new editor got in.

So I'm calling bullshit on this one.

Love how DL comes wandering into this thread, having clearly not read any of the P4k thread it's referencing and is all...

http://www.tattoosymbol.com/tarot/large/rw_00.jpg

Bless.

http://www.insidedigitalphoto.com/wp-content/images/Canon_logo.png

Kate, what has Pitchfork got to do with this thread?

Seriously, it's been said before and I respect your views, but your posts of late have been very very:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_j4BAix7ZCvo/SImYeTXNrrI/AAAAAAAABT0/75LfqDGwaZk/s200/Millie+Tant.jpg

Maybe if you actually read the thread, you might have a clue of what I'm talking about instead of throwing stereotypes like that around.

Maybe you didn't need to call him a fool for not being familiar with the P2K thread and so not realizing that the conversation had jumped over here.

The symbology of the image was appropriate if you're at all familiar with tarot.

I mean, for those of you not following along at home:

the P4k poll was basically 900 out of 1000 posts of an argument going approximately thusly:

Kate, The Lex, Tim F, et al: Wow, why do all these "canonical lists of the 00s" consist almost exclusively of white males. Surely that's not even representative of indie, let alone Music In The 00s. (Also, why the hell do other non-indie genres, especially ones that often consist of persons who are not male or not white get so ignored in these lists?)

Scads of white, indie males: we don't see anything wrong with this. Our (unchangeable, unaccountable) personal tastes are sacrosanct!

Can you understand why, after about 500 posts of this, one might start to get a bit frustrated and angry?

Just might have been dealt with already, but why should anyone care so much what white, indie males' canon is? It's not like it has any more status than anyone else's. It might be a big thing if we were talking about, I dunno, control of selection procedures for parliamentary candidacies or something - but we're not, we're talking about control of a few websites. Make your own canon! Or don't, if canons are such a bad idea.

So where are these alternate canons that are not full of white men, then? Please point me to the publications where they are published, and the messageboards where they are discussed, because I'd like to go there.

xpost

Wow? really? I read that thread as essentially 3 conversations talking over each other

1. The canon as defined by white males on the internet for fuck sake is white & male. This is bad.
2. The canon as defined by white males etc is white and male, I wonder why?
3. Taste : is it nurture or nature?

I don't recall anyone saying "I'm a white indie man, my taste is sacrosanct now fuck off"

i made u all a canon, but i eated it :(

(Another point which has already been discussed to death on that thread so, erm, I don't know why I'm repeating it here. It's really not *that* boring at work today.)

x-post

The NPR "ALL music considered" website features streamed concerts that consist of 99% white male indie rockers, Pitchfork dropped their reggae column and their POV has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, here in the Washington DC area weekly music concert previews consist mainly of indie-rock (as someone who pitches African, Latin, blues, soul, caribbean and often gets turned down I know what I am talking about). This is controlling how music from the 00's will get discussed years down the road, and it is unfair to non-indie artists who are just trying to make a living. If a site is going to hold itself out as a general interest entity, then they should reach out. No one who is suggesting more inclusion here is demanding that metal magazines cover bluegrass.

xposts

Kate, to be fair, you started throwing round the insults first... This thread is about the future of music, not Pitchfork's supposed misguided views.

And come on, Pitchfork can say what they like but they only represent a small part of the musical hivemind anyway, and it's not as if they never cover (and give good reviews to) female artists on their site. There was no board meeting where the editors decided to memo everyone saying "no smelly girls allowed on our nice clean male chauvinist brow-beating race-hating site"...

I really don't agree with your points. There is more representation of women in music and the music media than ever before, and getting militant about a Top 200 list and foisting that into this thread is largely redundant in my view.

Just might have been dealt with already, but why should anyone care so much what white, indie males' canon is? It's not like it has any more status than anyone else's

You're kidding, aren't you?

DL, I really cannot be bothered to have this whole argument again. I was just recapping to explain why I said what I did to Contenderizer.

hey, anyone want to talk about what music the 2010's will be dominated by?

i think whatever it is that takes over the world, shit's gonna get way more polyrhythmic, and people are gonna start being sloppy on purpose as a reaction to all the protools-edited-and-autotuned-to-sterility that's been so de rigueur lately.

There was no board meeting where the editors decided to memo everyone saying "no smelly girls allowed on our nice clean male chauvinist brow-beating race-hating site"...

A former editor of mine does the weekly music concert/club show recommendations for a weekly publication's e-mail. This week is Howard University homecoming and there are numerous rap, r'n'b, and reggae shows occurring. The On**n weekly list this week contains none of these Howard U associated shows. Now, did their editor hold a meeting and decide, "No, we do not want to cover those things, we only want to cover indie-rock." No, of course not. But did they seek out websites that cover non-indie, did they look at flyers and posters around town, did they listen to radio stations that feature non-indie stuff. No. That's how it works. If called on this they will say that it was the job of the reggae, rap, and r'n'b concert promoters to spoon-feed them the information. But can you blame the reggae, rap, and r'n'b folks for not trying when week after week it's indie-rock all the time.

people are gonna start being sloppy on purpose as a reaction to all the protools-edited-and-autotuned-to-sterility that's been so de rigueur lately.

Wonky, lo-fi, have you heard of these things?

i like to think the '10s are going to be dominated by on the corner rip-offs

all thoughts disconnected - sorry...

while I am ultimately way more sympathetic to Kate's perspective, I can sort of see where contenderizer is coming from, though not in terms of race, gender etc...

rock critics obviously prioritize rock music when composing their canon, and indie rock critics prioritize indie rock. indie rock is still, i guess, mostly white dudes. i tend to find the tokenism of P2K, etc. worse than if pfork had just made a list of indie records and called it "best indie rock of the decade".

the reason i find tokenism so frustrating is because its "inclusivity" is actually a formal and subconsciously vehement rejection of the value of the music it is "respecting". take jazz. i remember some rolling stone list that had the typical "kind of blue" and "a love supreme" entrys on an otherwise (surprise!) rock-oriented list. i think it is absolutely true that the music of miles davis or john coltrane is just as possible of completely galvanizing the human soul to love and action as the beatles or the velvet underground. so if those rolling stone writers had really heard coltrane in the same way as the beatles, there is no reason why there should not be many, many more jazz albums on the list ("crescent" and/or "live at birdland" is/are just as good and if "a love supreme" didn't get you to that conclusion, you weren't really listening in the first place), unless a certain viewpoint is being prioritized a priori to the actual listening, in which case, the power of coltrane is being completley ignored, boxed in, not being allowed to truly be; denied. in this decade, popism didnt break down rockism, just expanded its tastes, with similar results.

i dont believe in indie rock so i have to try and reconcile the fact that it is not diverse with the fact that i dont really care if it is made at all. i am only half-kidding when i say maybe all of the non-participating women, blacks, latinos, etc., are just smart! not to pick on Dan but since his tastes have already been mentioned, I think he is objectively correct in liking the Cure and probably not Grizzly Bear or the Decemberists. objectively! to put it another way, as much as i think that it can be enjoyable sometimes to watch it on a sunday with a few beers at a fun bar, i dont really care about (american) football. when i think about the totality of "football", not just the sport, but the "industrial" and social aspects of it, i tend to question why it needs to exist at all outside of something for kids to do on the weekends. so its hard for me to think of more women playing football as something as positive for women as, say, legislation ensuring equal pay for equal work. so i guess, ultimately, what i am honestly curious about is why, on the one hand, people think, in 2k9, or even SINCE 1995, that indie deserves, in any way, to be an organizing force or major narrative of music or music criticism? My other question is - when will indie rock critics, like die-hard racists be marginalized enough to no longer a determining factor in how the rest of us think about and discuss music? what responsibility do we have in bringing this about?

nu-lo-fi

Let me be plain about one thing: I do NOT advocate that kind of tokenism that you're saying Contenderizer is affeared of.

That's a misunderstanding of my position.

sorry didnt mean to insinuate that.
i think my perspective is more like:
tokenism seems to be the end result of any critique of rockism and indie rock. so fuck rocksim and indie rock.
house music is better than animal collective trying to figure it out.

oh hi this thread.

If every genre was made by a different set of ppl who had a hard time understanding each other maybe tokenism would be an issue. There are plenty of rock fans who love loads of jazz, and, not shockingly, most of the ppl who have boring taste in jazz have boring taste in rock too. On collective lists with voting the whole thing goes lowest common denominator across the board anyway but the good thing about having diverse groups of critics is they expose each other to lots of music&ideas. Genres aren't incommensurable, anyone who's paying attention is going to be making connections between a variety of stuff, noticing ppl copping moves and sounds from sources outside their genre. This is one of the best things about popular music. On this note I think chart pop is going to get broader and better and there will be more ppl moving from wherever they started to more generalist stuff e.g. black eyed peas (this is not nec. the better part). That they can crib from boys noize and coldplay style dreary brit indie on consecutive hits seems like a portent.

Moaning that Pitchfork cover too much indie rock is a bit like moaning that Vibe don't cover enough Beethoven. Saying on one hand that they're too white male indie rock heavy, and then moaning that their attempts to widen certain horizon reek of tokenism, is just having your cake and eating it.

Anyway, let's forget about this and keep on mystic megging.

I think that was my point... instead of trying to have them broaden their scope they should just narrow it and be a lot more honest about what it is.

I'm saying nearly all good critics have broad scope. Ppl complain the most about tokenism when it crosses demographic lines, staying within them as an expression of critical honesty is some steamy bullshit indeed.

xp eh that's dumb--there are non-indie rock records i found and enjoyed thru pitchfork.

if these critics had such broad scope why does this conversation exist in the first place?

and I am not saying pfork should stop reviewing non-indie releases.

sorry my above above post is referring to canons, lists, etc., not the entire scope of the website and what they review and what all of its critics listen to!

Shh!

shh i actually don't think i agree with anything yr saying but whatever i'm not going to get into it

Dog Latin, if Pitchfork chooses to have a Martin Clark column on dubstep and they had a reggae/dancehall column which they dropped, and they have had some reviews of pop, african, reggae, rap and more then they do open themselves to criticism. Vibe has not made any pretense towards covering classical music.

I think tokenism is better than no coverage at all

people are gonna start being sloppy on purpose as a reaction to all the protools-edited-and-autotuned-to-sterility that's been so de rigueur lately.

Wonky, lo-fi, have you heard of these things?

yup, it might surprise you but actually yes i have heard of those things. however:

a) i don't really feel either of those styles particularly dominated this past decade, or any decade in particular, and
b) even if they did, other styles, besides lo-fi and wonky, could also be sloppy on purpose, and perhaps become The Next Big Thing. or, the sloppy-on-purpose aesthetic that influences those styles might come to inform a wide spectrum of genres, rather than just those two in particular.

SERIOUSLY EVERYONE, WALK AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER NOW, YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THIS AGAIN.

xpost haha i cant leave my computer i am at work i need to learn how to grow carrots and move out to the country

c.a.d. i am not here to troll so if you feel like honestly explaining why i am 100% wrong i would appreciate it but obv you dont have to.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT OTM

Sorry, realised that my post sounded more dismissive than it intended to. I did think it was an interesting idea - but the thing is, this aesthetic has been going on for a long, long time - that one might even say that the "deliberately a bit shit" indie aesthetic that developped in the late 80s was a reaction against pristine synthpop perfection as heralded by the ascent of sequencers and synths into mainstream pop music in the early 80s. Which I guess boils down to "good guess, actually, especially going by historical evidence."

and to the other thing - argh, hate to bring up points I've already brought up on the other thread, but... one of my complaints is that EVEN WITHIN the genre aesthetic of Pitchfork style indierock, there are still swathes of female artists that get ignored when it comes to Canon-making time. Even by their own limited, narrow standards, their Canon is sexist. But I guess that comes down to the lowest common denominator mediocracy of having a voted-on canon.

maybe they dont get ignored. maybe they dont like them.

sorry, that was an x-post the public service announcement. But I left it, as I was genuinely discussing the topic of the thread in the first paragraph!

(as an aside to Justen - isn't not liking someone based on their gender kind of a - no actually an incredibly reductive ad absurdam - definition of sexism?)

them = the music they make rmde

Best of 00s albums lists consist of white males because we invite Lex to vote in them but he's so tardy he never gets round to it despite seeming keen.

Love you, Lex. Wish you'd got a ballot in to me.

I did think it was an interesting idea - but the thing is, this aesthetic has been going on for a long, long time - that one might even say that the "deliberately a bit shit" indie aesthetic that developped in the late 80s was a reaction against pristine synthpop perfection as heralded by the ascent of sequencers and synths into mainstream pop music in the early 80s. Which I guess boils down to "good guess, actually, especially going by historical evidence."

yeah, it's true that concept has been around for a while (the stones as sloppy-antibeatles springs to mind for instance) but i think it's might take a different form this time around. i mean, yeah, punk and indie tend to favor a stripped down, get-rid-of all-the-dross-and-play it-like-you-mean-it-and-also,-you're-drunk-on-cheap-beer-and just-formed-the-band-a-week-ago aesthetic. but i'm picturing something more like big, multi-instrumented groups of players with chops, doing complex, well thought out arrangements into high quality microphones picking up every nuance of a well played, even virtuoso performance... but with all the idiosyncatic, not-quite-exactly-on-the-upbeat, not-necessarily-perfectly-in-tune parts of the best take being purposefully left in on the recording (or even raised in the mix, just so you know it's actually music played live, by real people in the same room with each other and stuff)

again many xposts

I think tokenism is better than no coverage at all

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 22 October 2009 16:45 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

100% agree with this. Moaning about tokenism is ridiculous, but also moaning that such-and-such not getting enough coverage and making Pitchfork racist/sexist is also stupid.

there are still swathes of female artists that get ignored when it comes to Canon-making time

By this argument you could replace [female artists] with prety much anything - bugle players, Indonesian bands, I dunno. I mean, what exactly are your demands here? That every woman in music gets a bit of the Pitchfork/"canon" pie? Pitchfork and the NME and Drowned In Sound and Clash and whatever indie-based publication covers Bat For Lashes, School Of Seven Bells, the Dead Weather, La Roux, Little Boots, VV Brown etc etc... So where is the issue?

As for wonky, I think there's more to this than "making things deliberately a bit shit" - wonky subverts music in a slightly different way with a ketaminist "this time signature/melody line doesn't fit but it almost makes sense". it's not lo-fi in an incompetent way but very deliberate in its execution. i'd like to see more of this kind of thing creeping into other genres.

i tend to find the tokenism of P2K, etc. worse than if pfork had just made a list of indie records and called it "best indie rock of the decade".

thing is p2k coverage is subtitled "the decade in music" which can be assumed to be "the decade in music as seen thru the editorial lens of this particular publication" which is strong on indie rock but also strong on a couple other things and inclusive of many other things. assigning all this privilege to pitchfork's voice and then criticizing that voice is one of the weirdest things that keeps happening in this discussion.

i dont believe in indie rock

i don't know what this is supposed to mean--what would believing in indie rock entail?

objectively correct in liking the Cure and probably not Grizzly Bear or the Decemberists. objectively!

huh? i mean no one really cares if you like indie rock or not but what is this?

when i think about the totality of "football", not just the sport, but the "industrial" and social aspects of it, i tend to question why it needs to exist at all outside of something for kids to do on the weekends

no shit, very few things really "need" to exist at all and music isn't really one of them.

My other question is - when will indie rock critics, like die-hard racists be marginalized enough to no longer a determining factor in how the rest of us think about and discuss music? what responsibility do we have in bringing this about?

i mean aside from the gratuitous use of "racists" which you can honestly fuck off for the answer is easy--too many people in this conversation come off as boring scolds who can only talk about something in reference/relation to this hegemony in which critics they don't like write for a readership they don't like or care about. like, start your own discourse about things you're interested in among ppl you like talking with. no one is under obligation to read/respond or not read/respond to anything!

thing about "tokenism" is that it's actually incredibly useful in giving ppl inroads to things they might not be familiar with. but (and this is no shock considering who has been in this conversation) at some point it's on the listener to decide to investigate further or to decide not to. i mean if you want to argue that listmaking itself is a dumb exercise then hell yeah carry on but fact is lists are not created for people like you or me.

Pitchfork and the NME and Drowned In Sound and Clash and whatever indie-based publication covers Bat For Lashes, School Of Seven Bells, the Dead Weather, La Roux, Little Boots, VV Brown etc etc... So where is the issue?

To repeat what I said IN THAT THREAD, the problem is, why were none of these artists (and a load more that I listed in the thread that were more US-centric) - despite the coverage - included in The Canon?

Its way, way, way too soon for any of those specific artists to be in any kind of canon though.

ok thanks. I will digest.

1 quick thing... use of term racist is not to characterize or compare indie writers. more about what you said in:re perception of dominance in discourse all out of whack with reality.

And yet it's not too soon for Merriweather Post Pavilion (released last year) to be number one on their Canon?

But that's right, I'm turning into a "scold" for raising these issues in the first place - what a lovely, gender neutral term to have chosen to describe a woman. Nuff said.

What are you referring to? Kid A is their record of the decade...

Sorry, got the ILX vote and the actual result mixed up, but still. In the Top 20, regardless.

If it's "too soon" for Bat For Lashes then surely it's "too soon" for Sufjan, right?

Sufjan and Animal Collective have both been making music for a lot longer than Bat For Lashes though!

But are we talking "albums" or "artists", you aren't being consistent.

kate you can think whatever you want and i really don't care but i am INCREDIBLY SYMPATHETIC to the issues you are raising, and you have successfully "raised" them. that being said, you and everyone else who can't seem to get past PITCHFORKPITCHFORKPITCHFORK have done nothing to "advance" a "conversation" about the "issues" that have been "raised."

If it were *just* Pitchfork, I'd just roll my eyes and go "corny indie fuX0rs, I don't even read P4k" - but it was about 3 or 4 "canonical lists of the 00s" in a row - Uncut, Pitchfork, RateYourMusic and something else - might have been that All Songs Considered but I don't think it was.

I reached saturation point, OK?

When it gets to the point where Uncut - UNCUT freaking magazine - ends up having the most women on a list, you start to get frustrated with lists and who makes them.

This was all stuff brought up on the other thread, FWIW. But I'm gonna actually put myself on a temp leech ban from ILX for the rest of the day because I'm becoming compulsive about these threads, and that's not good for me, or for debate.

or if you're me you start to stop caring about lists and who makes them xpost

as i said above it's completely unsurprising that we do this over and over because lists are not written for ILM users--they are written for college freshmen with large external hds

also, i think the pop scene will move away from repetitious electronic-beats-based jams in one key and get all complex and chord-changey again. maybe even with harmonies. and rap will go through this thing where it SOUNDS almost indistinguishable from samples-based 90's jams, with the same drum sounds and swing settings, but actually the music will be performed by hired musicians.

who sound like they're on a record from the 60's, but arent.

big, multi-instrumented groups of players with chops, doing complex, well thought out arrangements into high quality microphones picking up every nuance of a well played, even virtuoso performance... but with all the idiosyncatic, not-quite-exactly-on-the-upbeat, not-necessarily-perfectly-in-tune parts of the best take being purposefully left in on the recording (or even raised in the mix, just so you know it's actually music played live, by real people in the same room with each other and stuff)

not gonna happen since home recording technology is going to get even cheaper and more ubiquitous, and it makes more and more sense to piece together stuff at home rather than pay for a bunch of studio time in a big, nice room.

really i think music is going to get even more cross-pollinated and omnivorous, ie it'll be more expected and less novel to mix genres, recording techniques, and cultures.

one word. Hongrotronica. Highly melodic and catchy Beatles-esque electronic dance music. lots of mellotron samples.

Music needs more mellotron samples.

The Beatles bit not so much. It'd sound like that horrible "remix" album thing from the other year.

I hope A-Frames turn out to be influential.

what's the best prog disco album of the year? i'd buy it. as long as it doesn't sound anything like Justice. something new and electronic that might have a psychic affinity with an old ELO or Necktar album.

you want the Mungolian Jet Set collection

not gonna happen since home recording technology is going to get even cheaper and more ubiquitous, and it makes more and more sense to piece together stuff at home rather than pay for a bunch of studio time in a big, nice room.

i dunno, maybe there's one guy in the band with a big, nice sounding living room in an a-frame in the woods, one guy with a couple of really nice akg microphones, and one guy with a laptop and a avalon vt737 converter or something? granted that stuff costs money, but not beyond the bounds of reason/possibility.

anyway i agree about very decent home multitrack digital recording being a HUGE influence on the genres of the teens though (teens as in '13, '14 '15 etc)

too many people in this conversation come off as boring scolds who can only talk about something in reference/relation to this hegemony in which critics they don't like write for a readership they don't like or care about. like, start your own discourse about things you're interested in among ppl you like talking with. no one is under obligation to read/respond or not read/respond to anything!

You and Contenderizer and this please only think happy thoughts pov. Is that what you want, everyone agreeing with every indie-rock dominating list that comes out? Kate and others have demonstrated problems with numerous sources, its not just a few critics. And yes, I post on threads (Latin, African, Chitlin Circuit soul) and write for publications about stuff that interests me.

no! i don't "agree" with the pitchfork list, in that it's not a reflection of my taste to any great degree. my point is that time spent railing against pitchfork's habits in list-making (or pitchfork and a couple other publications, whatever), would be better spent doing other things.

the reason for this is that "agreeing" with a list is more or less a false concept. lists are rough guides for people who don't know that much about music. people like kate, or really anyone on ilm, have prob moved beyond the point of needing them for anything.

i agree that the lack of certain voices in the list-making process is symptomatic of a larger issue that has been effectively raised. but the content of the list? really?

btw don't lump me in with contenderizer who i like fine but i don't agree with his "taste" argument at all.

I have problems with the fact that music criticism is a boy's club, and that critics seem to respect male artists more than their female peers. This is true not just of Pitchfork indie, but of many other genres as well -- it's perhaps true in a pervasive sense that transcends genre, and it fucking sucks.

On a completely unrelated note, I get annoyed when people bitch about other people liking the wrong shit, or liking it the wrong way. So, the Pitchfork list is indie-dominated. So fucking what? If you don't like the source, read something else. And if think other musics deserve more attention, write about them. Cough up the funding for a magazine. Run a label, organize a club night. Whatever. Do anything but bitch about it.

And in spite of his protestations against the association, CAD OTMx1000.

;)

oh man this discussion is going on 2 threads at the same time now!!

the reason for this is that "agreeing" with a list is more or less a false concept. lists are rough guides for people who don't know that much about music. people like kate, or really anyone on ilm, have prob moved beyond the point of needing them for anything

I do not agree. There is so much music out there and people have such busy lives that lists can serve as filters that help reduce the amount of individual research one has to do(for example, I know a Gucci Mane song or 2, but do not have the time to sample each and every mixtape he and every other rapper put out, so a Deej list of his fave mixtapes could be valuable) and they can demonstrate aesthetic consensus(look--all these people who like such and such seem to agree that this Arthur Russell reissue is special).

And dude, I do read stuff other than Pitchfork and I do write about stuff I am interested in. And you, are you on their payroll?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/essex/content/images/2005/09/05/warm_up_470_470x352.jpg

xp so uh it seems to me that per the criteria you laid out the pitchfork list comes as advertised.

and endless lols @ "am i on their payroll"

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200901/r330719_1490839.jpg

So you don't look at Pazz & Jop or other year-end polls?

http://www.rockbrookcamp.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/girl-campfire.jpg

i skim p&j and pitchfork year end for stuff i missed but if something makes one of those things i probably didn't miss it.

ilm's rolling metal thread was about a million times more useful at the end of last year in terms of highlighting areas that aren't well-covered.

guys i know it's hilarious that ppl actually sit around and talk about music criticism but could u stop?

Disregard everything I said upthread for a moment (shouldn't be too hard).

"i agree that the lack of certain voices in the list-making process is symptomatic of a larger issue that has been effectively raised. but the content of the list? really?"

CAD what you are saying makes sense but I think the reason people are frustrated with the content as much or more than the makers of it is that those makers DO listen to a lot of different things. As soon as it is time for them to write the list, that is when the catholicism of their tastes seems to go away and in a seemingly predictable manner.

I promise this is it.

(the funny thing is is that I actually do need a good list - most of this decade i listened to Japan)

Bands that sound like Daisy Chainsaw, Dinosaur Jr, Lawnmower Death, Senseless Things, Senser, early Cypress Hill, Bleach-era Nirvana. I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing in the Dead Weathers' recent album.

umm this reminds me. why are the racks of my local Fopp full of new albums, and old re-released cds by Senser !?

anyone else wanna actually make stupid statements of what might happen MUSICALLY, not critically?

Tinchy Stryder has a #1 US album.

Ariel Pink will be the Kurt Cobain of the 10's.

yeah i mean i guess, list-making is such a reductive surprise that it should be no surprise that this happens, esp. when there is the matter of an editorial voice that is kind of unifying things. this is probably why we always say "writer's individual lists are so much more interesting."

the list needs to not be treated as some sanctified object but as an occasionally useful and occasionally entertaining exercise. for any publication, it's regular reviews, articles, whatever taken as a whole are that publications real work.

Yeah, I have to mention here that you kinda do get the canon you want. If you believe the numbers in VIBE's press kit, their issues topped out at a paid circulation of around 875k. That's putting down money for something in print. Now I don't know how many people read Pitchfork every month. Pitchfork has the advantage of being online and free. But I am willing to bet that the number of regular readers across this decade did not dwarf VIBE's to such a massive extent that what Pitchfork said assumed a totalitarian grip on the canon against which the VIBEs of the world were just whispering into the storm.

But across the decade people on ILM have loved to interrogate the taste of things like Pitchfork as some kind of important canonical arbiter. Pitchfork, the New Yorker, NPR, the Times Magazine, whatever. "They like indie-rock too much." "They don't pay attention to pop or r&b." "They DOMINATE THE CANON." "They have a responsibility to consider X and Y and Z." This board has seen so, so much more of that than it's seen "check out this great article in VIBE" or "let's talk about this list in The Source" or god forbid "why doesn't Murder Dog cover any punk bands." (I know, I know, it was hard to break into online discussion when you're a print mag -- but still!) If you esteem the people who talk about indie-rock as canon-setters, you will get an indie canon. If you esteem middlebrow publications as generalist arbiters of taste, you will read about middlebrow tastes. Etc.

I don't say that as some huge criticism of anyone. It's perfectly reasonable to be inclined enough toward the style or presentation or level of discourse of a publication that you care about what they cover and want it to be better. It's perfectly reasonable to locate the canon in THIS place and want that canon to be the best you think it can be. I just don't think anyone can pretend they're not at all complicit in that, that a "canon" is being unfairly imposed on them by some all-powerful arbiter. To some extent you get the canon you choose to pay attention to.

I think possibly part of what I'm trying to say there is that if you care passionately about (e.g.) Pitchfork's canon being "correct," on some level you are saying that Pitchfork's background/canon are generally enough in line with your own that it's the one you want to perfect. It's the suit you've bought and want to tailor. That is completely sensible and natural. But don't act too much like it's not your suit, and if it's that bad then don't pretend like there aren't others.

me tbh

I'll get me suit

They should bring back Benzino to do the source decade list, just for the wtf lols.

I think Anthony Burgess got it right. All tomorrow's droogs will be listening to classical music and Heaven 17.

what nabisco said

On a completely unrelated note, I get annoyed when people bitch about other people liking the wrong shit, or liking it the wrong way. So, the Pitchfork list is indie-dominated. So fucking what? If you don't like the source, read something else. And if think other musics deserve more attention, write about them. Cough up the funding for a magazine. Run a label, organize a club night. Whatever. Do anything but bitch about it.

Do you think I HAVEN'T?!?!?

FWIW, I've spent the past 25 years - yeah, longer than most P4k readers have been alive - doing all these things and more.

I've not just played in bands and done session work as a musician. I've promoted gigs, run club nights, planned tours and festivals highlighting female artists. I've written for everything from fanzines to national magazines to international websites.

I am nearly 40 fucking years old at this point - I have a mortgage and a dayjob, and I no longer have the energy or the time to do all of the above, yet I still try to stay engaged - I DJ, I participate in forums because those are the things that I'm able to fit around the life I have now.

I am frustrated as fucking hell that after 25 years of doing this, it actually seems to me like gender mixed and female artists got MORE respect in the early 90s than they do now. Like things, especially in the indie world, have actually gone *backwards* in the past 15 years.

I'm tired, so forgive me, if, after 25 years of trying to change things from inside and outside, I occasionally resort to a bout of "bitching" when it all gets too fucking much.

you get the canon you choose to pay attention to

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, October 22, 2009 1:11 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

for emphasis

RIGHT. From here on in, the Canon is as follows:

1) The Ronettes
2) The Supremes
3) The Crystals
4) Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
5) Electrik Red
6) The Chiffons
7) The Shirelles
8) Destiny's Child
9) The Shangri-Las
10) oh shit, wait, this list is 100% female so far and 90% black so I'll throw in as a token... erm, Robbie Williams. Yeah, that'll keep you lads from feeling left out, right?

So glad we've sorted all that out.

And you need to step back, Kate. Cuz I'm with you on the gender imbalance thing, okay? I'm in yr fucking corner, and I've said so a thousand times, a thousand ways. God, said so in the post you teed off on, and the fact that you failed to notice suggests to me either that A) you're drunk & irritable, or B) you don't care to think about what you read and just wanna fight. Neither of which exactly invites further discussion...

I don't understand. AFAIK, all (or virtually all) of those acts are in the Canon. Maybe more the "pop" Canon, but the Canon nonetheless.

Well, 5 of 10, at least.

I'm not drunk or anything else like that. I'm frustrated in a way I don't think you can even begin to imagine.

Anyway, I'm giving myself a yellow card over this.

Boyd Rice St. Clair

Kate is like 100% OTM wrt the underlying concern of her whole argument, but she seems ready to take all of us on as if we are the ones writing these canons.

I had a thought about the gender issue, but before I say it I feel like I should check what page everyone is on by asking this: if you were to accept for a second the kind of music that Pitchfork tends to like and the kinds of stuff it prizes, within that, what female artists would you say are given short shrift? (One way to start thinking about this might be to look at female artists who were on the lists but maybe lower than you'd think.) I ask this because I'm assuming Kate's list upthread was intended slightly more as "artists Kate personally cares about" than "artists Kate thinks Pitchfork would otherwise care about."

Think there are a ton of female (or female-fronted, or largely-female) artists who might reasonably have been granted greater prominence on that Pitchfork decade list: The Gossip, CocoRosie, Fever Ray, Joanna Newsome, Ellen Allien, PJ Harvey, Grouper, Erykah Badu, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, M.I.A., etc.

i think the 10s will likely not be musically dominated by anything. further, i think the subordinate position of music relative to other kinds of mass media will only get "worse." i think we're at the end of a long boom in pop-music where it really did have an overlarge presence in what people thought of as the zeitgeist (or whatever), relative to history. music isn't always the thing people care about or form their identities around or see the world through. my hunch is that the declining sales and atrophied sense of importance have a simple cause: people, in the aggregate, are not giving a shit.

people give a shit, just about different stuff. again i point you to:

youtube wedding dance video:

29,732,560 views

People are also acquiring or listening to a lot of music for free, nowadays. So I'm not sure that declining sales are strong evidence of music's slipping cultural significance.

Nah, music is a tiny part of the cultural arena now compared to video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

people got their nice ipod k-holes to disappear into. don't care no more about yer lists. every man (and woman) is a virtual island.

Nah, music is a tiny part of the cultural arena now compared to video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

I am old.

don't worry daniel, nv is wrong.

http://thewoolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/sigh.jpg

contenderizer -- could you give me a few more who weren't featured on the albums list? (I'm trying to feel out certain aspects of this before I say much.) also: can you say anything about how important you think placements and rankings are? (since, you know, one of those artists had a top-10 showing; one released two albums and had both in the top 50; one released two albums and had both in the top 100 -- is part of the complaint that certain acts will be recognized but not considered really central in the way male counterparts might be? do you think it's a better showing to be the Arcade Fire and get one of two albums in the top 10, or Joanna Newsom and get both of two albums in the top 100?)

(Arcade Fire have ladies in the group.)

I think possibly part of what I'm trying to say there is that if you care passionately about (e.g.) Pitchfork's canon being "correct," on some level you are saying that Pitchfork's background/canon are generally enough in line with your own that it's the one you want to perfect. It's the suit you've bought and want to tailor. That is completely sensible and natural. But don't act too much like it's not your suit, and if it's that bad then don't pretend like there aren't others.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, October 22, 2009 3:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i kind of disagree. vibe & the source & murder dog are all publications that do push varying styles of music, but they dont have criticism. I mean, sure, theyve got a guy being like "nas needs to pick better beats" in the reviews section before giving his album 3.5 mics, & vibe in particular has had some great long form pieces of journalism (loved pieces by them on debarge for ex), murder dog does straight-up transcriptions of interivews w/ rappers who dont get to speak anywhere else ... but the kind of long form crit provided by pitchfork simply doesnt exist.

there's also a level of cachet to pitchfork's perspectives that isnt just getting picked up by highbrown sources like believer & NPR, but pretty much the 'tasteful' media spectrum across the world - GQ's & Time Magazine etc ... of course i recognize / follow the (largely unformed, amorphous) canon suggested by mags like vibe etc .... but no one else pays attention to those canons in the broader society.

i dont have a problem w/ an 'indie aesthetic' existing, on any level ... its a way of viewing art for an audience & it makes for an interesting perspective; i do worry (& think its worth thinking about) that there's a level of privilege going on, broadly, in my generation, where indie is seen as a primary expression of 'worthiness' in music, that its the ONLY filter thru which to view records ... i dont think all (most?) pitchfork writers themselves are even guilty of looking at music this way, on an individual basis, but the overall effect of canon building, of ppl who dont have time to explore music the way lots of us do, are just skimming around for the 'best of the best'. i mean, i feel guilty about rating maxwell as low as i did in my review because it really does feel like momentum is needed for a record to break through that way -- not that he needs the numbers, the album went to #1, but i think he deserves the respect of listeners like NPR! i want to see GQ pushing Maxwell to its audience! Because i know ppl who lread pitchfork, isten to NPR & read GQ & i know ppl who are paying attention to this stuff. i dont think its really a matter of me giving it power, its canon already has noticeable power in my world

So "indie-ism" is the new "rockism"?

"but no one else pays attention to those canons in the broader society."

^^^my point here is actually a little incorrect -- this amorphous canon is usually more an expression at some level of ground level conventional wisdom ... but a lot of the values of that kind of stuff are impacted by a trickle-down impact of national media that does value the 'discernment' of music critics...

If you're talking about my "top ten" up there, it wasn't actually intended as a representation even of *my* taste in music (just a small part of it - albeit a very important part of it.)

It was mainly an attempt to put up a "canon" which was 90% female and 80% black - i.e. along the same kind of percentages as the P4k/All songs considered/etc. but reversed - in a genre I happen to know a lot about and particularly rate.

You wanna talk about why women don't proportionally get as many record releases as men? That, if we're talking about rock-indie-hard dance then it tends to run about a third at most, or less? Please go back and reference that post I made on the p4k thread about how, at every level progressing from music lessons -> bedroom/garage bands -> local band -> indie darling -> major level, women get fewer and fewer. And wondering who, exactly, is making the filtering process, and why.

Because that is a question I have been thinking about A LOT over the past two weeks - and I think that I have an answer on it, but I'm trying to write it up and pitch it as an article rather than just shout my head off on ILX.

i just think indie should be a 'choice among many' instead of a predominant critical voice

That should really specify, why women in rock-indie-hard dance - because certain in lots of other genres (just not critically rated) they do certainly get much more equal proportion.

What genres?

Coz, you know, my background is very much in indie, I was an unrepentant indie kid for many many years (mainly before it became codified into a genre) and one of the reasons that I became so disillusioned with it was the disproportionate canonisation of music made/beloved by white, college educated males over everyone else - and realising how much of the disdain directed towards pop, R&B, dance, pop-country etc. was fuelled by sexism, racism, classism, etc. rather than there being anything unworthy about the music

I am disillusioned by indie, and how female voices in particular get represented less and less as indie becomes more and more codified into something I don't even particularly like. As it becomes a Genre, and rather than just a way of thinking.

I mean, when Indie had a canon that was mainly based around, like, Sonic Youth and the Pixies - hell, those were two bands with very prominent female members in them. But I guess as technology advances to the point where everyone with a computer is "a band" then indie bands don't have to rope in a female bassist (that ends up being the coolest member of the band) any more.

I was an unrepentant indie kid for many many years (mainly before it became codified into a genre)

Ahh, the cred card's finally been pulled. Lock thread.

you know they used to call it college rock. cuz the only people who listened to it were dorky dorkmeisters with big glasses.

I mean, that might serve pretty well as a "canon of girl group" up there, but I would never ever turn that list in as a representation of What Is Canon - because I would feel really uncomfortable and dishonest and untrue and non-representational turning in a list that was all one gender or all one race or all one genre - unless that was the specific genre asked for.

Maybe that means that my choices are riddled with self awareness and doubt and perhaps even guilt - but it makes me THINK about my choices, and not just what they are, but what they mean - do they represent me, do they represent the world I see around me, what do they represent?

I physically wouldn't be able to turn in an all-male, all-white, all-one-genre list. I would just think that was dishonest on every level.

I was kidding, btw.

but it makes me THINK about my choices, and not just what they are, but what they mean - do they represent me, do they represent the world I see around me, what do they represent?

I would really hope ALL critics were doing this though, but I'm certain they aren't. More like "do they make my personal brand look hip?".

What cred card? I'm not trying to set up any kind of cred, just why I'm more critical of Indie than of genres I don't have as much knowledge of experience of. Because I know, from experience, that there's more to this specific genre than what is getting represented. ::shrugs::

ok i washed my hands of this in the hopes that it would stop, but since that isnt going to happen, the fact that you rephrased my "maybe they dont like them" into the assumptive position that leads to "not liking them because of their gender is blatant sexism" seems to strike at the root of the problematic argument you are making here

Relax, it was just a riff on the "I've liked indie since way back when..." thing.

I would really hope ALL critics were doing this though, but I'm certain they aren't. More like "do they make my personal brand look hip?".

The great thing about nearing 40 is that I no longer *have* a personal brand to worry about looking hip. ha ha.

for what it's worth, most music critics have HORRIBLE taste in music. so, you know, take all these lists and everything with a grain of salt. in five years, most of them won't even remember what they were listening to in 2009.

oh wait, M.I.A. had three records in there -- forgot Piracy Funds Terrorism

xpost - oh, Kate, I was talking about before, when you mentioned Bat for Lashes and Seven Bells and stuff

deej I don't really disagree with that; I think you're kinda getting at the same thing I'm shooting for, in a way, which is that part of what makes certain things the "critical canon" is about who talks about stuff in a way we consider sufficiently "critical." right? i.e., there is a discourse about music that is considered sophisticated and discerning and critical and there are other discourses about music that aren't, generally. so sure, on one hand it makes sense to look at certain publications and ask that they expand their discerning critical discourse to encompass as much stuff as possible. but that's also a pretty narrow and strange reaction, isn't it? especially if the stuff you don't like about their focus correlates pretty directly with the traits that make their discourse seem sophisticated and discerning. (e.g. obviously your canon will seem collegiate if the discourse you deem important is exactly the kind that's all educated and collegiate in the first place.) I mean, I don't disagree with you about a certain discourse having a bigger pull, but I think it's important to look at why that is and what it serves -- and whether the answer to it is that a given music publication should talk differently, or whether it's that the people reading and passing those tastes on should be less beholden to it. I dunno.

-- btw just out of statistical interest I am coming up with a count of 56 for top-200 albums where the act substantively includes a woman. I'm not saying that's meaningful in any direction, and I know part of what we're talking about isn't like numerical inclusion but some sense of prominence or centrality, maybe. But it was fun counting. I think Kate's totally right that something like list inclusion is really just a tip-of-the-iceberg issue on a whole bigger thing that traces way farther back -- why there aren't more records in the first place involving women, and then before that why there aren't more bands, and before that why not more musicians, etc. etc. By the time you get to listing records I think a lot of this stuff is already stacked up...

xpost - ha, Kate, I was totally just writing about that the other day, but about VOICES -- the whole indie "anyone can sing" ethos used to be about people with WEIRD voices, and college-rock type bands seemed to specifically go out and find a real, interesting singer -- very often a woman. but now the "anyone can sing" thing has just meant that any guitar player will croak out the melodies like it doesn't matter, like he's really more of a guitar player, and in addition to making a ton of singing god-awful it cuts out one role that brought tons and tons of women into bands

my confusion at the cred thing was an x-post with yr explanation that it was a joke - sorry, jon.

x-posts

It's okay, I just didn't want you to think I was piling on you.

Nabisco - that wasn't my list, I was quoting Dog Latin. There's a lot more I would add to that list. Many of whom have been mentioned on the other thread.

what we're talking about isn't like numerical inclusion but some sense of prominence or centrality

YES.

I hate to say it, but Nabisco OTM. This is what I keep trying to say, but not as articulately, as I keep getting angry. It's the tip of the iceberg, but we keep shouting back and forth about the tip, because it's the most visible end of the problem.

It's funny, because back in the late 80s/early 90s, myself and many of the female musicians I knew (of the instrument playing variety) used to get rather wound up about Token Female Singer in bands. Like, that was the only role that every got assigned to you. You could turn up lugging a drumkit, and the sound engineer would still say "oh, are you the singer?"

But if we'd known how even that role was gonna get written out of the story in the future, maybe we would have had a different perspective on it.

Well, the top list is 200 albums long, and I don't know it by heart. And my point isn't really "OMG, they should have included this and this and this!". More that the upper reaches of the list (top 50) are oppressively male-dominated, and that there are plenty of other ways they might have gone. Are you asking me to suggest female artists that don't appear anywhere on the Pitchfork list? Umm, I don't know the list that well. I assume Neko Case is on there, right? And Le Tigre? (Ooops, I guess they aren't, WTF?) And, like, Marnie Stern? Electrelane? (The Power Out's one of my very favorite records of the decade.) Peaches? Blevin Blectum? Plus pop artists that fall outside Pitchfork's usual purview, like Britney & Xtina. I mean, if they can expand enough to treat Justin Timberlake with respect. Along with the Gossip, Ellen A, Grouper and CocoRosie that should be enough to go on, right? I mean, it's kind of amazing to me that Standing In the Way of Control didn't make the cut, now that I think about it...

I don't think that relative rankings are all that important, but I do think that the top 50 is pretty decidedly male-dominated.

That in response to a nabisco request that got buried in a flood of meanwhile posts...

you get into some weird stuff about list-making dynamics, obviously -- like you'd look at that list and see Arcade Fire at #2 and figure Arcade Fire were more "central" to the list than M.I.A., but then M.I.A. placed three records in there, two in the top 50, which means voting-for-M.I.A. was actually a way more central activity for people than voting for anyone apart from like Radiohead and Animal Collective and Wayne

I do think what you get with individual male rock fans is this small slip where the thing that's most prized is going to come from male artists -- like women may be at #2, even all through the top ten, but the sworn-by favorite thing is going to be male and accrue some sense of "importance" in some way that usually accrues to men. (And that tendency may echo all the way down an individual list.)

xpost - haha I just got distracted trying to imagine how Pitchfork would receive a "male Peaches." Sorry, contenderizer, I'm not trying to grill you too much, just trying to get a sense of what people feel is slighted or omitted, because if you just look at individual cases in isolation it's easy to say "well the reason that's not higher is X" -- if I'm trying to think about how gender affects it I sorta need to look at a broad sample, you know?

I don't know if this is going to add anything to the discussion. However, it may be of interest that a handful of radio stations in Canada (including the one I do some programming for) introduced a "female content" provision so that we aim for 50% female content. Unlike the other programming requirements (for us 40% Canadian, 65% released within the last 6 months, 65% independent) this one is voluntary so there are no government definitions of what "femcon" actually is. So any CD with a woman performer or producer counts. When it was introduced there were a few raised eyebrows and a certain amount of moaning but after a couple of years I think it has been a big success - it's so natural that it's barely mentioned anymore, cetainly not in a critical way. It's actually really easy to program like this, I don't think anything credible gets sidelined because of it and it means that at our level in the music biz stepladder, women in/women out=men in/men out as efficiently as is reasonably possible.

And if you were reading carefully, yes, the government of Canada DOES have an official definition of "independent".

And Scott Seward OTM about most music writers having terrible taste. That's not a reactionary viewpoint, just the absolute, obvious truth.

although contenderizer, I can definitely tell you why Le Tigre aren't on there, and it's that the album of their that everybody actually likes came out in the 90s

Also, I'm getting a weird discontinuity vibe from reading about how things were so much better and more inclusive back in the college rock 80s. Cuz I don't think they were, at all. I suspect that a list of the most critically prominent American college and independent rock bands of the late 80s and early 90s would skew just as male as the Pitchfork list, if not more so.

Nabisco raises a really good point about the types of voices do the work of attaching critical voices to things, and the culture(s) the represent. The Western academic/critical thing (both a functioning system and a historical conception, a bunch of people at work and a bunch of ideas held by those people) that frames the "canonizing process" we're talking about is by and large the invention of centuries of privileged white dudes bouncing ideas off one another. And though lots of smart, dedicated and well-intentioned people have been struggling against that inbuilt cultural narrowness for decades now, it's still there. It's built into the figurative DNA of what we, in the West, imagine constitutes "artistic value".

Therefore, it shouldn't surprise us that a critical culture largely composed of relatively well-to-do white guys -- speaking to a largely white & middle-class audience (in Pitchfork & NPR's case this is almost certainly true) that grew up in a culture controlled for centuries by a bunch of even more well-to-do white guys -- should favor the works and values of well-to-do white guys. Nor should it surprise us that such voices assume a position of cultural centrality -- though this is much less true now than it was, say, 150 years ago. Progress! I think the best we can reasonably hope for is a continuation of this trend, so that by the end of the 21st century, the prominence of such voices isn't so automatic.

And yr right about Le Tigre. Debut came out in late 99, but you have to draw a line somewhere.

that is really far from where I was driving, but this thread could probably afford to get back to the question. basically I think it really obscures the issue to act like this stuff is purely a matter of tribal affiliation, like white middle-class people just naturally praise other white middle-class people. (also the "white" here just needs to go away for god's sake.) it's about lenses and perspectives and sets of values. those things hang around with backgrounds but they are not the same as backgrounds.

"...the types of voices that do the work of attaching critical voices IMPORTANCE to things, and the culture(s) theY represent."

goddam it

Agree, nabisco, and I know I should approach some ideas with more care. But though tribalism is a difficult issue to deal with, I think it's at the heart of this issue. It isn't the whole thing, but it's part of it, and race is part of it, too. I would like to be able to talk about this stuff without destabilizing the conversation, but I don't know that that's possible...

really want to second deej on these two points -

i do worry (& think its worth thinking about) that there's a level of privilege going on, broadly, in my generation, where indie is seen as a primary expression of 'worthiness' in music, that its the ONLY filter thru which to view records ... i dont think all (most?) pitchfork writers themselves are even guilty of looking at music this way, on an individual basis, but the overall effect of canon building, of ppl who dont have time to explore music the way lots of us do, are just skimming around for the 'best of the best

and

i just think indie should be a 'choice among many' instead of a predominant critical voice

so should the rest of us just restart this thread and leave this to more pitchfork critical wrangling then or...

send these to thread dump for a mercy killing

thread dump is too good for them

contenderizer its kind of annoying how u say something no one agrees with, they disagree w/ you, you say you agree with what they just said & then move back a level to restate basically the same argument

Music sounds best when being melody/harmony oriented rather than rhythm oriented and performed by male voices.

Now, it's easy for black people to make the former, and they probably well before or since to a larger extent than today. But no hope for female voices, sorry.

....

Kate are you describing the stuff you make/like now as "hard dance" btw? Or was that just a randomly chosen genre term?

i think she meant limbo music. that's the hardest dance i can think of.

Guys, there's no way Geir's not kidding. Seriously. That post is definitive proof.

I know, I know, "it's just Geir." But seriously, this—"But no hope for female voices, sorry"—is more than o_O.

It is you guys who are trying to make music into something else than just music. Music is all about how it sounds and nothing else. There is no quota for certain genders or skin colours, just sound and nothing but sound. Music is strictly music, and shouldn't be judged from any other criteria than strictly (head) musical ones. The world neeeds to get back to the values of German classical music in the 18th and 19th century.

And, yes, that criteria works perfectly on pop music too. As long as you judge it from chord changes, modulation and clever musical moves, not from sound or groove or whatever.

ffs surely you should be close to 51 now geir

Geir, so you would claim that "female voices" are somehow inherently less, what, melodic than male voices?

Yes, another attempt to reason with Geir is surely the way to make this thread more scintillating.

They just don't fit as well into the entire sound, but really, that's not the most important part. There is good music with female voices, but "rock" music has been male dominated from the start, and probably always will.
Whenever there are females, there is more reason to respect female singer/songwriters like Suzanne Vega or Joni Mitchell than female hot "babes" who are only around for 15 year-old fans to get a boner though.

I'm definitely not trying to reason with Geir, because the dude's not going to change his mind, but I am curious why he made that statement.

Well, I still think male sounds better, and it seems the entire rock history agrees with me.

However, I think also part of the problem for girls is that they aren't taken seriously by the music biz, they are just being seen as poster girls to sell records rather than creative musicians who create music in their own right. Since the late 80s, there have been a lot of female vocals in pop music, but most of the most popular ones have always been just borrowing their voices - and looks. Why aren't record companies more on the lookout for female songwriters? I mean, sure there are some, but there are much fewer than male songwriters.

Obviously, the entire indie/rock tradition will always respect singer/songwriters much more than just singers, and females would probably have been more represented had they been writing their songs to a larger extent rather than just performing songs written by males.

There is no quota for certain genders or skin colours, just sound and nothing but sound.

http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/charliex/spock_leer.jpg

contenderizer its kind of annoying how u say something no one agrees with, they disagree w/ you, you say you agree with what they just said & then move back a level to restate basically the same argument

― deej

Not sure what yr referring to, deej. I try to clear things up when I've been misunderstood or misrepresented, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

for the rest of us

I think the 2010's will be musically dominated by...

http://www.allkings.org/images/agame.jpg

1) NV, your screen name is freaking me the fuck out. I keep thinking he's discovered this forum and thinking I'm gonna have to run away.

2) "hard dance" meaning, esentially that "post-Justice highly aggressive more than slightly rock oriented distorto bass rapey nanorobot crap" that Erol (not bomber) Alkan etc. seem to play. Not just indie friendly electrowibble but that super-aggressive boys noize stuff. Which has almost 0% female content these days. I'm still taking baby-steps into dance music that I don't know the proper terms for certain things, so I'm making them up.

3) In thinking about this and what to *do* about it, I did actually wonder if a Can-con style approach would be something worth considering. I mean, as ridiculous as a quota type system might seem, the Can-con thing has had a positive effect on Canadian music. That it actually puts the onus on promoters, radio programmers, journalists etc. to go and FIND that content rather than just be lazy and take whatever comes down the promotional pipe. You can do that and still keep your god-given right to have "taste" - no matter what genre your taste is confined to, I'm sure you can go out and find some womens making it. Except brass band music, clearly. :-P

Now I'm gonna put the leech-block back on coz I need to work this morning.

I was mostly away from ILX for the last week so I missed this conversation, but i wanted to ask about something nabisco wrote:

part of what makes certain things the "critical canon" is about who talks about stuff in a way we consider sufficiently "critical." right? i.e., there is a discourse about music that is considered sophisticated and discerning and critical and there are other discourses about music that aren't, generally. so sure, on one hand it makes sense to look at certain publications and ask that they expand their discerning critical discourse to encompass as much stuff as possible. but that's also a pretty narrow and strange reaction, isn't it? especially if the stuff you don't like about their focus correlates pretty directly with the traits that make their discourse seem sophisticated and discerning. (e.g. obviously your canon will seem collegiate if the discourse you deem important is exactly the kind that's all educated and collegiate in the first place.) I mean, I don't disagree with you about a certain discourse having a bigger pull, but I think it's important to look at why that is and what it serves -- and whether the answer to it is that a given music publication should talk differently, or whether it's that the people reading and passing those tastes on should be less beholden to it. I dunno.

Is there a causal relation between favoring "collegiate" critical discourse and favoring indie rock? Like, being into hyper-literate songwriters is "natural" for people into hyper-literate critical discourse?

This seems wrong to me because the terms "collegiate" or "hyper-literate" are pretty loaded.

But still: I wish there was more hyper-literate or collegiate discourse about country music or r&b. We do ok on ILM about this. I gather the problem is that there's not a perceived market for such criticism about those genres. But I think it matters, in terms of pushing people who want to have "college" talk about music into fandom of indie rock, where they can have that talk.

1. Indie rock has depended on rock crit much more closely for survival than have genres such as pop, dance music, R&B, country etc. all of which have alternate means of finding their market (the radio, the club/dj endorsement etc.).

2. And insofar as the above is true, it's also true to say that the status of the rock critic is elevated w/r/t indie rock. Britney, Beyonce et. al. were going to be big no matter what was written about the quality of their music, whereas there is strong evidence to suggest that, say, Pitchfork "broke" The Arcade Fire to the public by pushing them so hard.

3. To the extent that indie is, by and large, not experienced socially (except at live concerts and perhaps increasingly through film and tv soundtracks...) the crit (and crit-like-discussions) becomes perhaps the primary means by which people can seek to share their experience of the music.

4. The above are all mutually reinforcing, in that (1) people look for new indie via music criticism; (2) they therefore pay attention to what the criticism is doing and saying, (3) the language and forms of music criticism seep into their own discussions until they are essentially engaging in amateur rock crit (but is there any other kind); and (4) they start to take seriously the debates and crusades of music criticism, such that they feel obliged to e.g. "have an opinion" on the new Animal Collective.

That all seems correct, Tim. Especially 3; and on 3 I'd add that I have no "easy" way to experience r&b or country socially, because my profession doesn't include people into those areas---most are into classical/opera exclusively, and the ones who listen to "pop" music are the indiest of the indie. And, sad or not, most of my friends are people I'm professionally related to. And it's not just my profession (academia)---my closest friends outside the academy report similar experiences.

Yeah the other thing to note here, which is basically your point above, is that in many cases probably the strongest calls for rock crit style treatment of non-indie is from people who experience that non-indie music in an "indie" fashion.

On the UK funky thread Lex wanted to know why I get so worked up over what people say or don't say in articles about uk funky or related to it - and the answer is, being on the other side of the world, I'm unable to experience the easy communality I might get from going to a rave or club.