The Pitchfork People's List - top albums 1996-2012

I know there are a million P4K threads, but this is quite a nice idea they've concoted in terms of giving people a pleasant, simple interface and display to choose favourite albums, and I thought it'd be nice for people who've put one together to share it.

Here's mine. http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/733d2938/

Mines is here;

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/733d2938/

Unfortunately all my records and CD’s have been in storage for the past 3 months while I’m moving house so my end list is probably drawn more from the Pitchfork suggestions than it would have been if I’d have had access to my collection to look through.

Yeah, our collection has been boxed up fro a fortnight - handily I had my Stylus Decade ballot list to consult, which covers a big chunk of the same time. Fear there may be late 90s stuff that fell through the cracks, though.

Pretty much every other list I saw reminded me of things I probably should’ve included but by that point I didn’t have the energy to keep on making changes and just went with what I had originally.

I’ve seen lots of complaints about the formatting on Twitter but personally I was well impressed it.

- A lot of albums I thought would have existed on their database don't.
- It's hard for me to think of my favourite albums
- This is making me realise just how long ago 1996 was.

Mine is here:
https://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/7549df59/

Order gets increasingly meaningless. As usual

Another Dead Hero - your list is the same as Nick's!

- A lot of albums I thought would have existed on their database don't.

LOL the first FIVE albums I looked for don't exist

what a redundant, repugnant website pitchfork is

Ah, copy and paste error.

Here's mines for real like.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/413a0bed/

A lot of albums I thought would have existed on their database don't.

LOL the first FIVE albums I looked for don't exist

what a redundant, repugnant website pitchfork is

― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 09:45 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Do you have an RSS Feed that shows up every time the word Pitchfork is mentioned so you can turn up and say something generic about it?

They didn't have Hello Nasty, Dopethrone, Blur or LP5 - but they did have lots of other albums by those acts but not these major ones.

you realise theres an 'add album' button

yeah, i'm not sure i trust it.

Mercer Finn, I had completely forgotten about 'Run The Road' and how much I used to love it. Will now dig it out and give it a spin :)

I added loads - any without a cover on my list were added by me.

Can you add a picture if you add your own?

I've not seen a way to do so yet but I didn't really look.

can you add 12"s or do they have to be cds

Mmm lists.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/304752b7/

what a redundant, repugnant website pitchfork is

― lex pretend

Yet you still tried to play along and make your own list.

Pretty sure the database is comprised of those records Pfork have reviewed, so no great surprise that lots of stuff is missing. Therefore it seems a bit silly to complain about it, when you can enter details of missing albums yourself. Or, y'know, just not bother.

fwiw i didn't bother

the procrastination impulse can only take one so far

im going to try add a 12" and a picture will let you know how i get on wish me luck

you can add what you like it doesnt have to be an album or even a record

but you can't add a pic

Here's mine so far. WTF am I missing though? http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/d173f3ce/

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/46674527/

Is there any kind of check? Like, can you add records that don't actually exist?

(don't give me terrible, terrible ideas.)

yeah you can add whatever you like pretty much

(In another lifetime I'd have posted 20 fake Shimuras records just to troll the thing, but I am so much more grown up now. Honest.)

1. Denny Vertigo - Hanging On The Edge
2. Denny Lethargy - Can't Be Arsed

I'm conflicted I don't really like record sleeves but the ones with no picture just look wrong going to have to pass on the whole thing

Wasn't going to bother with this but, eh, then I did:
http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/16b8d1d5/

Hmmm, didn't think to add In Sides by Orbital; it was early 96 and I kind of think of it as being pre-P4K.

yeah, i added it after seeing tim's list.

Finished it for now http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/d173f3ce/

they really should have used someone else's database. I guess they wanted to discourage people from adding too much non-Pitchforky stuff though

Well it is an exercise in brand reinforcement, pretty much. I think it's a great step to allow people to add their own albums; what'd be even better is if they had someone trawling the database for added albums and consolidating them into proper entries.

Quite fun, this.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/c0498b19/

ok i have to say i really like how nike and adh's list have a 'sound' to them. when i make a list it will be all over the shop, whereas i feel i could make a playlist of their choices and learn something about a type of music i kinda half like/am half interested in. this thread could work wonders for me.

It was easy to add albums -- their catalog is deep -- but the "edit" function hasn't worked so far. It says "Loading" forever. Any cures?

No clue how to help you Alfred. Seemed pretty fast for me.

My list, with the top pretty set and the rest based mainly on a list from a few years ago:

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/01bce74f/

I like Tim's list a lot - gutted I forgot about Platinum Breakz!

This is fun!

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/090a03f3/

Even tho it's so new, gonna rep hard for DJ Rashad... and gotta have those Sparks records in there. What an Indian Summer they've had.

Nice to see "The Drift" turnin up on lists. What an album.

it's supposed to be to 2011 !

oh drat!

this is actually a lot of fun. I have liberal anxiety & aging-dude sadness that there's no rap in my top 25 tho :(

My list!

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/188fd797/

The top twenty more or less accurately reflects the last thirteen years.

The Drift and Discovery'll do well if ILX has anything to do with it.

Argh shit Fugazi!

haha, now Tom and Alfred are tied on my "Pitchfork People's List Game."

Where's Tom's?

Oh, he posted it on Twitter this morning.

The Drift and Discovery'll do well if ILX has anything to do with it.

― Yes please, I'll have a pint, and another one for this asshole here (dog latin), Friday, August 17, 2012 9:08 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And "White Bread, Black Beer," it seems.

Nice to see "Oceans Apart" poppin up too!

Apart from the distinct lack of Yorke, there's a lot to love on Tom E's list

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/2eecd8bc/

(Apologies if he didn't want that posted here, but I did enjoy reading it this morning.)

Radiohead barely sneaked into mine.

What's the game then?

Radiohead were on mine originally but fell off as i remembered other stuff i listen to more that I'd forgotten to include.

I'd probably put the solo Yorke album on before a ~Radiohead album~ at number 100 just to be ornery.

It would just take me too long. And my list would be too all over the place and "Sugababes! School of Seven Bells! Ellen Allien! Missy E!" maybe I'll give it a try later tonight.

yeah i want to know what the game is too.

i'm terrified i've missed something off mine. it's funny when i do lists like this because around the 30-50 mark I start thinking "There must be at least some other OUTSTANDING albums I can think of from the last 15 years" but no, it's like your Facebook friendslist, you might have 600 of them, but only about 10 you might consider to be true friends.

You lot have known me for 12 years and you can't figure out what the game is?

I think OK Computer would probably be top 10 in any list I put together but any other Radiohead is unlikely. It feels really weird to be comparing anything that old to, say, the Katy B album and putting them in the same list.

Yeah, I mean Katy B is so obviously completely superior it would be an insult to her to stick something as stale as OK Computer next to her.

Also there's like four albums from 1996 that I'd put in there but that might has well be prehistoric.

It does. I can appreciate an "albums of all time" type thing, but these are records that came out within my lifetime. That said I had very different tastes in 1996 as I did in 2004 as I do now, and trying to work out where Pearl Jam's Yield fits in compared to Nicolas Jaar is just o_O

Just put'em side by side.

1996 stuff like Reasonable Doubt and ATLiens is missing from the list but it's probably because p4k didn't review that kind of thing back then

I was just about to post my list and then I refreshed this thread.

Just given mine another edit after reminding myself of some more stuff via old lists. The sins of fading memory.

I am having big cognitive dissonance putting late 90s favourites on a list with stuff from last year. The world is different. I am different. Magical World of The Strands!

In Rainbows has totally cemented itself as my favourite Radiohead over the last 2 years.

i can't find my old lists/ballots for some reason

The past does not exist.

It's a different country.

if i have to look something up then it isn't a current fav

This isn't saying "what are your ten favourite records right now" though, it's asking what are your 100 from the last 16 years... I'm vaguely trying to weight long-term affection alongside 'just this minute' excitement.

it isn't what are you fav records right now that were released in the last 16 years?

i have to make a composite of me at different stages of my life?

if i liked something a lot for 18 months in 2006 but don't like now, what percentage weighting should that be given?

i mean, ok, it was closer to 2 years than 18 months but do i really want to admit that

.345

Here's my list. So many missing album covers...

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/3122a1e0

I don't even want to ~know~ what 1996 me would want to put on this list.

(Apart from Kenickie but I'd probably still agree with her on that.)

i make it .09375

One thing that surprised me about my own list was the relative lack of capital-P Pop albums.

I mean I love 'Blackout' and 'Chemistry' and 'The Fame Monster' and 'Robyn' and so on and so forth but somehow none cracked top 100. The closest was Sugababes' 'Three' which like two dozen albums it saddened me to leave off.

tho that presumes all months or years are equal this stuff is tough!

You use whatever internal algorithm you like, coal.

Tuomas comes in second in my game. (Alfred and Tom still tied for winning.)

Capital-P Pop albums, in my mind, burn brightly and then fade quickly; that's part of their appeal. There are loads of albums by the likes of Timberlake, Sugababes, Missy, Neptunes, etc etc, that I loved at the time and still have favourite songs from, but which I never go back to "as an album" and take in the whole thing; consequently pretty much none of them are on my list. Whether that speaks to anything about me, or whether it speaks to anything about the nature of art and personal canons and musical longevity, is a thing people have been trying to unravel for aeons. But I don't go back to that second Sugababes album anymore than I go back to World Clique by Deee-Lite, even if each album has individual song/s I will love forever on it.

I included no album on which I didn't love without reservations at least six tracks.

You use whatever internal algorithm you like, coal.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Friday, 17 August 2012

i can just choose my fav records right now?

yes!

If that's what suits you best, dude. I've liked to be reminded of old favourites I'd forgotten.

Submitted for your approval, my list. Dig it, people.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/139d3ab8/

I don't think that's just a facet of Capital-P Pop albums. There's a lot of Capital-R Rock albums which I was obsessed with in the late 90s which I have no urge to revisit more than 1 track off. And listening to Miss E So Addictive the other day, which you dismiss as a one-song Pop album, listening to that all of a piece for the poll the other day, it stood up as a work a lot more than I think you give it credit for.

every time I almost surrender to making one of these I see a bunch of squares with pitchfork logos in them and can't work up the energy to sign on with facebook.

ok i am making what looks like it could be a massive spotify playlist of things on ppls lists that interest me/ive never heard of before etc.

first can i say wow In Sides is incredible, ty Nick for having this so high up yr list. where has this record been all my life?

xpost to Nick It's not that for me I think - and anyways there was heaps of R&B on my list (Missy and Kelis and Aaliyah and The-Dream and really Timberlake is in the category and so on).

If I had to guess I'd say it's that I'm so wired to receive Pop on a singles basis that even when you get these really solid and/or ambitious albums I don't end up connecting with them that way emotionally... e.g. ironically (given it's the kind of reaction one typically reserves for difficult rock canon albums) 'Chemistry' is an album I probably respect more than I listen to.

Even though I listen to 'Whole Lotta History' and 'Long Hot Summer' and (especially) b-side 'Singapore' a fair amount.

I'd love a glenn mcdonald style stats breakdown for similarity between lists etc.

You think anyone really listens to any tracks off e.g. Urban Hymns except the singles any more?

I heard the whole fucking thing in the pub the other night. Interminable.

xpost Yeah but the difference is that 'Urban Hymns' isn't even a great album (obv 'A Storm In Heaven' is amazing).

Obv Storm in Heaven >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Urban Hymns but the latter is the one that tends to turn up on "greatest albums of the 90s" lists.

The Verve are weird because they were so obviously and consciously going for instant canonisation around 1997 and people were on board with that but they just sort of faded and there was so little excitement around their reunion compared to, well, nearly every other big Britpop-era reunion.

I guess a lot of those big tentpole rock albums aren't on my list either.

I've never heard a whole Verve album.

I agree So Addictive hangs together; it's on my list - Under Construction is the one I thing of as Work It + Gossip Folks + some other stuff I don't really care about.

You're lucky, DL.

Bits of A Northern Soul still do it for me. The really fucking harsh bits.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/c1289cbf/

Pretend I never posted this.

I ended up leaving off Under Construction just b/c 4 Missy albums seemed excessive but actually it's very strong throughout I reckon - esp. 'Bring The Pain' and 'Play That Beat'.

I like how you couldn't put TKOL in the top 10 but couldn't bear to leave it out. ;-) x-post

^^^ I at least 'quite like' most of that list with the exception of Joanna Newsom, a lot of it is really great. (xpost)

xpost Love how Melissa's list is basically a very ILM list with the entire recorded work of Radiohead and bandmembers dropped at the beginning.

This is Not a Test! made my list

I don't want to be "that privacy guy" but what access exactly would I be giving it to my Google/FB account? Why can't I just make a list?

Heard a bit of Sonnet the other day and it was still fucking horrible.

I should probably revisit the Missy albums. I think I kind of took the best of as an end point with regards looking back at the albums.

man I'm listening to the '08 CeCe Winans record that came in at #18 in mine - it's been a while. So fucking great.

This is Not a Test! made my list

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 17, 2012 2:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but you already know this is fucked up.

The access thing is presumably mainly about ease of accessing the system, rather than making everyone make yet another account that needs another username and password just for one tiny system. I've give it Twitter access; there's no 'data' in that account other than my tweets (and geolocation when I make them, I guess).

noticing Rounds by Four Tet on a lot of these ilm lists so far. was always more into the last record.

It asked for fewer permissions than standard apps do, really commendable imo

yeah but you already know this is fucked up.

It and SDF are the only ones that work as albums imo.

I much prefer the last record. Have you heard the Ringer EP?

Can't believe you've not heard In Sides before! Do you know other Orbital?

What does 'work as an album' mean?

I know that's a fucking horrible question to ask on a friday afternoon in the middle of a thread.

xpost Love how Melissa's list is basically a very ILM list with the entire recorded work of Radiohead and bandmembers dropped at the beginning.

I was going to try to lie and space them all out for cool points, but I went with honesty instead.

I skip hardly any tracks; it's got a gestalt.

xpost

Fave Missy is def "Da Real World." Kinda seemed like she could do anything at that point.
Better singles later on, for sure... but the next two didn't connect for me, as albums.

"This Is Not a Test" was neat though. Fun (sometimes) hearing Tim flailing around for a new sound in that couple years before Danja got him (commercially) back on track.

I don't even think I've listened to enough music to do one of these things.

I mean, obviously I've listened to quite a bit. But I've wasted so much time on albums that do nothing for me any more. And then I look at a list like Melissa's, and I have to google half the people in the post-RH bit (not a dis in any way) and I just think "man, I've heard nothing."

No! I think I may have heard... something in passing before to actually sit down and listen to Orbital this seems like the first time. It really is blowing my mind :D If I wasn't already half busy flicking through these lists/spotify/supposedly job hunting/making arrangements with friends, i'd be picking through an old orbital thread right now.

How am I doing in your game, btw? x-post

So great: Love vs Money beside Stop Your Nonsense in Tom E's list.

Yeah, our collection has been boxed up fro a fortnight - handily I had my Stylus Decade ballot list to consult, which covers a big chunk of the same time. Fear there may be late 90s stuff that fell through the cracks, though.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Friday, August 17, 2012 4:26 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like Amelia?

Man, you need Snivilisation and Brown and Middle of Nowhere.

AMELIA!!!!! FUCK!!!!

OMG yes 'Amelia'! (though even more so for Nick haha)

I would like to add Position Normal to my list as well, somehow. It's all so hard.

Nick you can go back and edit them though you know.

You came in 4th, Melissa!

Another edit done...

Oh I'm going back every 30 minutes, Tim!

Loving KitchenPerson's list. Also it reminded me I need Muddy Waters on mine.

When I was doing the list I considered 'Cassidy' but it didn't quite make the cut, but I simply forgot about 'Amelia' entirely. I keep forgetting the list includes the late 90s.

Yeah, 'internet music' starts for me in about 2001 really.

It was easy to add albums -- their catalog is deep -- but the "edit" function hasn't worked so far. It says "Loading" forever. Any cures?

This is happening for me too, hoping it works on my laptop at home so I can take out my sole 2012 album and add Platinum Breakz in properly.

Wonder when "internet music" starts for people. Because I was a late downloader, but the first album I can remember discussing on the internet around the time of its release was probably Pure Phase (I'd guess I have Elvis Telecom to thank for that.)

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/a9f386e6/

probably not going to go back and edit this

"Internet music" for me starts with Kid A (first album I downloaded before its release date) or possibly with Since I Left You, which I checked out purely on the basis of internet buzz and got it months before it was released in the UK.

Gavin, I switched from Explorer to Firefox and it worked.

Oh noes! Dan has thrown a cog in my game. He's either 3rd or else he's in a three-way tie for 1st depending on how I define the rules.

And so on that note, I give up. It sure has been an interesting (and mostly disappointing) game, though.

Awesome list, too, (and the right RH album at the top.) But our tastes have been slowly converging over the years in a kinda scary way.

I remember when that Portishead album came out, I bought it, listened to it once, and couldn't bear to try it again! It was just so oppressive and relentlessly grim! I've still got the album on my shelf, but I've never listened to it again after that one time. Who knows, maybe it's actually a good record, but I'm not the sort of person to find out.

(x-post to Dan)

In Sides is exceptional because it's an electronic album that even 16 years later still has the power to blow people's minds for the first listen round. It really hasn't aged all that much at all. Rather than simply being appreciated as a necessary step in the onward march for electronica, it can still be very much appreciated as a "current" record.

It sounded pretty dated seven or eight years ago but strangely less so now.

Gavin, I switched from Explorer to Firefox and it worked.

Cheers Alfred - our work computers are all IE, will try that at home.

oh shit, In Sides

maybe I will be editing this

I'd love to see a WCC list.

also: But our tastes have been slowly converging over the years in a kinda scary way.

Haha you've noticed this too! It's definitely at a point where when you start talking about a band/artist I think "there is a very good chance I will love that" these days.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/65e95a70/

Scrolling records into order on here sucks. It took like 15 minutes to 'make' my top 10 and kinda move some things around a small amount, so I'm giving up there. I'm sure its not so out of character.

oh fuck Baduizm is eligible

I should just not look at other people's lists

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/1e02e0e0/

only the top 15 are in anything like order.

argh just looked at Tom's list and Dig Your Own Hole!

I am not getting any work done today

My list: https://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/2113a36f/

As usual, the more interesting picks are toward the end.

Fuck I forgot 'Reasonable Doubt'!

Uptown Saturday Night
Camp Lo

how the shit did i forget this???? damn you rennavate, i might have to go back and edit mine.

I have been assuming WCC has been operating some sort of gothometer but I've no idea really.

Nice to see "The Drift" turnin up on lists. What an album.

― mr.raffles, Friday, August 17, 2012 8:48 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is Tilt eligible (by taking the US release year rather than the UK one?)

I have been assuming WCC has been operating some sort of gothometer but I've no idea really.

― Matt DC, Friday, 17 August 2012

women artists no?

yeah

1. Denny Vertigo - Hanging On The Edge
2. Denny Lethargy - Can't Be Arsed

It's all about "Solar Cock" imo.

I need to stop looking at other people's lists so I stop adding albums to mine

Oh come on. Given I'm such a single-issue poster in most people's eyes, what's my big chain-jerking issue like compression is to Sick and...

coal got it. Just start at the top and count until you hit a female artist. (I was trying to figure out if 1/3 of Portishead counted, I'd say they do if she's co-songwriter.)

I would love to put a Missy or TLC album on my list but, at this point, I honestly wouldn't remove any of the albums I have there for either; I feel them more as singles artists anyway

Mya's Moodring would have had a shot had I not relistened to it recently; parts of it just don't hold up (although the great songs are still great, luv u "Late" now and forever)

And now I've just started randomly checking Spodify for artists that DJP namedrops and nodding. Dude, what is your spodify username so I can just cut out the middleman and subscribe to your stream?

Tim: Have you written about Iron Flag anywhere? What makes it yr #2/highest 96+ Wu record?

I spent over an hour on my list, might as well share it.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/6260cf0b/

without that much thought. order is kinda irrelevant : http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/f2a3948c/

djperry1973

also I should probably swap out Santogold Top Ranking for Piracy Funds Terrorism, shouldn't I

If someone makes a massive Spotify list of all these Ilxorz' picks it might just get me back into pop music...

i am making a list of things ive not heard/am interested in but its not v poppy

http://open.spotify.com/user/sutrarama/playlist/39V9l2MXcBS1t19OF22QBn

oh shit Unwound

man I can't in good conscience put that album on my list because I haven't played it in like 10 years but I remember it being amazing

If someone makes a massive Spotify list of all these Ilxorz' picks it might just get me back into pop music...

― Lewis Apparition (Jon Lewis), Friday, August 17, 2012 12:24 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd check that playlist.

man i guess eventually i'll order this thing and add a few more albums at the bottom but this is basically it

https://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/1b34d33d/

oh shit New Order

ARGH

Wonder is it's possible to guess list-makers' ages by their selections:

via
a)importance given to their entry points into genres
b)slack given to lesser works by artists that meant much to them while young
c - z) ?

Contest!

https://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/3e922c58/

not very accurate or thought out (outside of the top 9), but w/e.

i didn't take this very seriously.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/a8a3acc8/

Oddly, I think the Brand New album might be the one I've seen the most write-ins for. (It made mine, too.)

the kind of (ridiculous) authority this thing aspires to is amusing at best but I guess the data mining should improve the music they cover. I am daydreaming that with enough techno votes they will give sherburne back his column or something? anyways, couldn't resist.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/55fbbef4/

sweet list, wolves!

i regret leaving off aerial; i just didn't think to add it. i spent a lot of time with that record when it came out. it's better than 50 words for snow.

here's mine just for fun: http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/ee2058a1/

items after #20 or so are unsorted more or less

FYI my list is absolutely sorted 1 - 100, which is why things keep dropping off the bottom as I remember other albums I love (sorry Spiritualized, Beta Band, TV on the Radio, Santogold mix tape)

oh my god ordering this shit is excruciating

eh, it's not so bad in Chrome, you do have to do a kind of sprain-inducing wiggle once you hit the upper or lower boundary to get the list to scroll effectively tho

here's 25 from me. a bit thrown together but i'm fine with it. i may expand it to 50 at some point.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/4d6d80f5/

voting for this ends tonight. any p4k writers know when the rollout/proceeding clusterfuck is?

if voting end tonight i won't expand it then!

argh wolves has reminded me that insen should be on mine.

i really wish we could've added album art to our written-in entries... i hate how the blank covers look ugh

I got bored of going through my discogs collection at 90 albums.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/4fe2326c/

here's mine. did not take this very seriously and if something wasn't in the system i sure as fuck wasn't going to bother typing it in. also went heavy indie cuz it's pfork. also went heavy nostalgia cuz i'm old. http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/a1df4e15/

emil.y your lists always consist of 30% things i've heard and really like and 70% things i've never heard, There's never stuff I've heard but don't like. Which usually makes me think I should check out these unheard albums, but 60+ albums is too much to check out so I give up. I am useless. This time I will at least check out the unheard of the top 20

oh fuck theres only a few hours left for this... ima do this now

Awww, thanks pandemic!

Took it semi-seriously, but I'm sure I forgot some things:
http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/d8319955/

Kinda wondered if someone was gonna start a thread for this.

About 2/3 of my original picks weren't in Pitchfork's database, and I ultimately got rid of all of those except for my #1 because I couldn't stand the absence of album covers. So my compromised list, then:

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/351fd856/

didn't take this too seriously and only picked stuff from the database, but everyone's doin it so:

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/63477b18/

how do you guys even come up with this, there are so many albums. i could come up with 100 i really like and then think of 100 more and hate myself

My basic formula was to throw down the ones I knew I'd vote for and then scroll through my iTunes favorites playlist and see which albums were most heavily represented. Some of which surprised me but made total sense.

i could not have done it if i'd started adding albums that weren't in the database and tried to actually make a definitive list

I went through their lists and picked off ones I liked, then scanned through my discogs account.

OK, why did I spend nearly my entire workday doing this

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/30e7a5a5/

I assumed Millions Now Living... must have been too early - I mean, I guess pre-2000 Pitchfork was not professional or comprehensive, but still...

OK, why did I spend nearly my entire workday doing this

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/30e7a5a5/

― doglatting (jaymc), Friday, August 17, 2012 4:51 PM (6 minutes ago)

^^^things no one was wondering

Yeah, it's '96. I thought it was weird that Pavement's Brighten the Corners wasn't in the database, but I think that's because the original review was taken down.

(xp)

Some sweet overlap with my own picks, jaymc. Camoufleur and Dots And Loops were high on my original list before my anal demand for album covers necessitated their unfortunate removal.

i figure it would be more fun to choose stuff outside of the pitchfork database..

my anal demand for album covers necessitated their unfortunate removal

So you'll not vote for things you like just so your list will look nicer, thereby lessening their chances of making the final results?

is this being used to compile the results somehow? it would be fun to see a few write-ins receiving multiple acknowledgements

This is the only thing being used to compile the results, iirc. It's THE PEOPLE'S LIST.

haha at the idea of write in votes making the final results

So you'll not vote for things you like just so your list will look nicer, thereby lessening their chances of making the final results?

Ha, I was only vaguely aware when I put it together that the results were being used for anything other than my own amusement. So, yeah.

I would be interested to see if any write-ins make it, I imagine a lot of people will just pick from their lists.

xpost

I mean, my #1 is a write-in, and there's no way it even makes it into the top 1,000 of any compiled list. So besides the fact that I never even look at Pitchfork, I'm not personally too concerned about omitted write-ins.

my guess (willing to hear other possibilities) most likely write in to make it: le tigre - s/t

Mostly likely is Hello Nasty imo.

I think Brighten the Corners and Terror Twilight both stand a chance.

heres mine http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Sze9mWNOy4g/TqYseVEt93I/AAAAAAAAA4w/8SAYpd7s7AI/s1600/middle+finger.jpg

I like the psychedelic swirl in the middle of that.

I voted for Brighten. I wouldn't have voted for Terror Twilight if I had 1000 places.

and tbh willing to bet le tigre or hello nasty doesn't make it. also willing to bet most of the ppl's list will come off the staff lists. http://yalepress.yale.edu/images/full13/9780300122237.jpg

also kinda odd looking at staff's lists (even ryan pfork's) and seeing write in's (of super super prominent indie records too) - i get that say tom ewing maybe can't get something added to the database but ryan pfork? indicative of how half assed this affair is

where are the staff lists? link?

Yeah, it's '96. I thought it was weird that Pavement's Brighten the Corners wasn't in the database, but I think that's because the original review was taken down.

― doglatting (jaymc), Friday, August 17, 2012 5:00 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol my first published review was of that album in the high school paper, so it's strangely comforting to see one that's even worse

http://pitchfork.com/news/47538-the-peoples-list-our-staffs-picks/

heres mine: http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/02ce3abb/

I got to 50 and then got bored and gave up. I also made it hard for myself by saying I couldn't pick any more than one album by any artist which sometimes made for some weird choices. The moment I hit submit I will think of 100 things I should have picked instead and forgot.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/e7f160ee/

Don't blame me for number 2, my vagina picked that one, not me. I have really boring and predictable taste in music blah blah blah, the end.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/a2dbd57c/

pretty much random (order added) after the first few

forgot tons of stuff :(

I like the psychedelic swirl in the middle of that.

― emil.y, Friday, August 17, 2012 5:15 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thx it was sort of an obscure write in by me

here's mine http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/4601c9da/

(SORRY WHINEY)

Some artists I like who didn't make the cut -- Phoenix, Kanye West, Air, Cut Copy, Spoon, Blonde Redhead, LCD Soundsystem.

But I guess it's my own fault for including four Jim O'Rourke albums.

(Also, I suspect at least a couple of those won't need my votes.)

strictly albums, i guess, huh? or can i vote for the Eluvium box set?

like j0rdan's list, although the presence of three Erykah Badu albums but not 4th World War is puzzling

think you can vote for anything. i included my cat.

^ not true

Okay this was worth whatever time I spent on it as it led me to listening to Comet Gain on youtube for the last hour thanks to them appearing at #2 on emil.y's list. So wonderful!

:D

i mean, i'm really a "stick to proper albums" kind of dude on year-end lists, etc. i tend to leave out EPs, mixes ... though that has been shifting in recent years.

don't know that i can go as far to include a 7xLP, comprehensive box, though. doesn't seem right.

looks like some 2012 albums might show up... i included one.

Tim: Have you written about Iron Flag anywhere? What makes it yr #2/highest 96+ Wu record?

― a hoy hoy, Friday, August 17, 2012 3:56 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's Wu's party album.

pitchfork never reviewed/acknowledged ironman apparently..

Pre-2003 era.

my list. http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/822fb186/

Picking albums was fun, but ordering them was A REAL DRAG ohoho

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/3dc2e6f2/

Double Leopards deserve higher than 88.

yeah see i forgot wolf eyes entirely. and yura yura teikoku.

Oh shit, I forgot the Conet Project.

at this point i'm most interested in the results of this to see if it confirms that MBDTF is now kanye's "canon" album amongst rock-leaning fans

figure it has an outside shot at the top 10

ugh, I hope you are wrong

i've been kind of hoping those guys are slightly embarrassed of the MBDTF hysteria and just want to quietly forget about it

forgot dalek too, dammit. filthy tongues at least should have been on there.

seriously side-eyeing so many people (not on here) whose only rap album on their list is MBDTF. It's almost certainly going to be voted the best rap album of the past 16 years on this list which is yeah, so embarrassing. the whole thing still feels like some inside joke to me.

i'm most looking forward to the lists broken down by what ppl say is their genre of choice (well at least I hope they do this) - want to know what the results are for self-professed pop/r&b/dance/hip-hop heads and not the main indie list where the results are gonna be the most predictable thing ever.

here's mine -- thanks to tim f, alfred, deej, alex in mon for helping me remember things

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/cb9c83e5/

Please predict the top ten indie.

I'm not willing to put money on it yet, but I think Arcade Fire's Funeral is nearly a lock for #1 (if it's not In the Aeroplane Over the Sea).

...OK Computer?

Oh shit, forgot about Radiohead.

Who reads Pitchfork most and who would be most inclined to take the time to vote? If it's youngs, Arcade Fire wins. If it's not-so-youngs, Radiohead or NMH win.

pretty funny that the suggested search for an album is "e.g. Grimes"

is scott pl not involved with p4k anymore?

seriously side-eyeing so many people (not on here) whose only rap album on their list is MBDTF.

Haha the only rap album on mine is Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Came very close to putting on one of the first three Kanyes but couldn't decide which one and it seemed kind of tokenistic. For better or worse, S/TLB was an Important Album for me at the time.

Nice to see "Oceans Apart" poppin up too!

― mr.raffles

Oh shit, this should have been on my list. I did find room for the Robert Forster album though.

looks like some 2012 albums might show up... i included one.

― billstevejim, Friday, August 17, 2012 6:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

everything says "1996-2011" though

is scott pl not involved with p4k anymore?

― ticagrelor rotini (k3vin k.), Friday, August 17, 2012 11:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah he left a while back. Replaced by ILM's own Mark Richardson.

richardson had been there since forever too tho?

tim your list is awesome btw. want to make one myself but not really feeling up to the task atm - can you still do this after the voting closes?

I did one here. Tricksy. Happy with the first 25, for definite.

Yeah I mean Mark took Scott's old role.

And thanks.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/351fd856/

― Old Lunch

Another Charlotte Hatherley fan. I love those albums.

my guess is that pitchfork's audience skews young enough to the point where radiohead will be passed up for no. 1 -- my bet would be something like funeral or yankee hotel foxtrot or w/e

still expect them to have 2 albums in the top 10 tho

nah radiohead will definitely place over arcade fire and wilco

think i'm done fussing with mine:

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/179a6412/

I wonder if we added up all lists posted on this thread which albums would come out on top. Homogenic, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, The Drift, Sound Of Silver, Aquemini, New Amerykah and Voodoo would all be up there I think.

oh yeah -- the year retrospectives on some dude's blog were vital to me being able to put this list together while maintaining my sanity

XD

think/hope you're wrong about anyone really preferring Dark Twisted Fanta Girls to College Dropout but historically PF reader poll results are pretty insane so who knows

Another Charlotte Hatherley fan. I love those albums.

Right!? The first two are among the most criminally underrated albums of the '00s, and seem to be practically unknown/nonexistent in the US.

I like Charlotte fine, but don't love her albums. Coolest thing I've ever seen her do is play guitar with Bat for Lashes on Jimmy Fallon's show. She was INTO IT.

Right!? The first two are among the most criminally underrated albums of the '00s, and seem to be practically unknown/nonexistent in the US.

― Old Lunch

They're hardly that known in the UK either, it's a real shame. New Worlds is pretty good too but the first two are just so good. I was never an Ash fan but she's turned into one of the best songwriters around.

Hey Johnny Fever have you done your list yet? Would be really interested to see it.

I think the potential winners are: Kid A, OK Computer, Funeral, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. I would be shocked if anything else took the top spot.

Yeah, here's my list (I pretty much sorted the top 10 or 15 into an order, and then just lumped a bunch of others on there in no order at all): http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/9e677131/

NMH is pretty likely imo

i'm confident that in time this will be accepted as the true canon http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/17a105ed/

Yeah, here's my list (I pretty much sorted the top 10 or 15 into an order, and then just lumped a bunch of others on there in no order at all): http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/9e677131/

― Johnny Fever

Good list, is there a chance you forgot the Portishead album? I seem to remember you had that as your number one in the 2005-09 list.

The act which suffered the most from my decision to avoid write-ins was Capsule, who would've easily gotten four spots in my top 100 and probably two in the top 25.

realizing that I could mess around with this forever and I need to figure out how to refrain: http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/35b5599a/

I'm down with about half of your list, ogmor, and probably need to listen to the half I haven't heard.

think/hope you're wrong about anyone really preferring Dark Twisted Fanta Girls to College Dropout but historically PF reader poll results are pretty insane so who knows

― some dude, Friday, August 17, 2012 8:22 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

i've seen MBDTF rated really highly on a number of lists... plenty of people on staff have it in the top 10/15 i think

ah i didn't look at all the staff lists but i feel like i've seen it like twice out of the couple dozen lists i've seen so far

PF reader poll results are pretty insane so who knows

How many reader polls have there been?

Maybe they do it every year and I just don't pay attention.

i think every year or almost every year lately there's been some sort of reader poll component to the year-end rundowns

yeah they're done every year... honestly the readers polls are maybe even slightly indier than you would expect, but not unexpected given the exercise

childish gambino is probably going to make an insane showing in this poll, just fyi

well every year for the last 3 or so years i think

Anybody know if they've got staffers writing blurbs this weekend or are they just going to throw up the results and leave it at that?

they're going to make people buy Chuck Taylors with the results printed on the soles

think/hope you're wrong about anyone really preferring Dark Twisted Fanta Girls to College Dropout but historically PF reader poll results are pretty insane so who knows

― some dude, Friday, August 17, 2012 8:22 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

please tell me this is a personal coinage

― dark twisted fanta girl (some dude), Wednesday, August 11, 2010 8:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yeah i thought this was gonna be another bone to their readers since they don't do comments, etc (good call btw), they do a readers poll every year for a few years now but the results are just released under the radar, certainly not promoted like their big lists. i assumed this would be the same but it definitely looks like they're gonna make it their big list this year. and then what next year? start cycling thru the decades again? come up w/ a fresh idea?

of course. god bless

xp

Yep, also did a Pitchfork list. Probably missed some, but it's okay, for something I did real quick.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/bf3ec758/

highest ranking album from past five years - vampire weekend? animal collective? mbdtf? something i'm horrified by and have forgotten? also, call me crazy, but i bet discovery tops yhf. and i think the winner is definitely either a merge release or a radiohead album.

Last 5 years? Probably MBDTF, but maybe MPP is just as likely.

nah MPP will smash kanye -- i wouldn't be at all shocked if MBDTF was the highest rated rap album, period

it will def be the highest rated rap album of the last 5 years

It's so weird to me that MBDTF is held in such high regard. I mean, it's fine, but even the first time I heard it, I thought a lot of it was awfully tl;dr. And it certainly falls short of his first two albums.

a lot of it was awfully tl;dr

Yes, this is the best description of it ever.

are there really that many people besides the douchebag that wrote "we are young" who started to appreciate this rap music thing as more than a fad because of MBDTF? i mean i'm sure there are a few but what the hell

tbh mbdtf getting top kanye wouldn't make me rmde smh and maybe even kmt as much as yhf beating summerteeth and being there for top wilco (a certainty).

I gave myself some restrictions (1 album per artist, everything recorded for release in the period) otherwise it'd be 100 albums of Scott Walker, Robert Wyatt, Arthur Russell & Lungfish.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/939da9bd/

As seems to be the way, all rankings beyond the top 10 everything are somewhat arbitrary.

What are the top ten rap albums likely to be?

1. MBDTF
2. Hello Nasty
3. College Dropout
4. SB/TLB
5. The Black Album

??

Please don't tell me Watch The Throne will crack top ten.

Stankonia will be in there. Blueprint 2 as well.

stankonia (bet it wins even), graduation, aquemini, blueprint, carter III

Should I try to fill mine out to 100? Dunno, maybe, ok. Also went for the 1 album per artist idea, no write-ins.

I'd love to know the albums people rated highly at the time but realized while composing this list were actually kinda shitty/didn't age all well.

Won't other Outkast albums be higher than the double? I have seen Aquemini on a lot of peoples lists.

The Blueprint and maybe Reasonable Doubt will do well. The Marshall Mathers LP will be up there too.

curious to see where marshall mathers lp ends up

Re: top 10 rap albums, I feel like I've seen The Cold Vein in several people's lists. Maybe a little too backpacky to make the top 10.

i do not as highly rate endtroducing as i did at the time

o jesus christ guys

i just remembered something that may well be top ten pfork hip hop

http://www.thedailyspin.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Gorillaz_-_Feel_Good_Inc.jpg

wouldn't be at all surprised. i even voted for it!

A post-Blur retrospective box set of Damon Albarn projects would rate quite highly on my list, if such a thing were to exist. Demon Days made it onto the tail-end of my list, anyway.

i made a list, missing plenty canon stuff but Ø\(∞_o)/Ø - http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/64066fb2/

ah fugg, i forgot spank rock

Confirming this will flag the post for the attention of the moderators.

Posters whose posts are repeatedly flagged may be limited from posting or banned.

Watch out, we got a badass over here.

went a little over 100, but I'm guessing they'll just trim that off

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/a78213a2/

Okay I'm seeing Homogenic on a lot of lists, I'm thinking this might do very well.

As it should, tbh.

yeah, i'm not a fan, but i'd be very surprised if it didn't score high

I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One seems to be another old-timey favorite.

and damn. just got my list down to 100 by ruthlessly enforcing a 1-per-artist rule. cutting stankonia and white chalk in favor of stuff that could never possibly make the top 1000 just about killed me, but i did what had to be done. down from nearly 150 when i first looked up from adding stuff...

kind of astonishes me that i had to write in for hello nasty when 22 albums with the word "hello" in the title are there for the clicking.

*sighs*

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/9cbc1ca0/

hi

2.0: http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/a2dbd57c/

^ more or less unsorted

thanks mh!

xps Nice, except you picked the wrong Hot Snakes album.

Top Pick
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kanye West

oh

i'm sayin

i truly don't understand a viewpoint where that's kanye's best album. it would be like telling me my mom is an alien or some shit.

*sighs*

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/9cbc1ca0/

― ships and chicks, Friday, August 17, 2012 11:26 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

nice to see someone else with makaveli and flockaveli

Also, can you imagine Kanye's ego explosion if he were to win a poll like this where "the people have spoken"?

My only Kanye album was Graduation but I've accepted I'm alone about it.

i wonder what write-in votes, if any, will place. don't see any consensus appearing to form around any.

reasonable doubt is the big one

as far as rap i mean

i don't think kanye has much of an idea of what pitchfork is tbh

he def does, esp since the 10.0

yeah are there any non-rap write ins that could place? i have no concept of that

pretty sure Kanye depends on critlove for moral propulsion these days

i'm not sure if that's true either

his world seems incredibly isolated to me

Pitchfork is big enough for Kanye to keep tabs, I'd think. You don't have festivals on two different continents and still fly under the radar.

i don't know if someone getting perfect marks from every pub really cares more about one than the other but if so i kinda imagine 5 stars in rolling stone is a bigger feather in his cap (while still meaning a fraction of what his various grammys mean to him)

if kanye gave a fuck about pitchfork cool points he probably would've played the festival at some point

i don't think kanye has much of an idea of what pitchfork is tbh

― a hoy hoy heat (J0rdan S.), Saturday, August 18, 2012 12:02 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh i highly doubt this

as for what will place/write-ins specifically, we should remember this is not an ilx poll, actual pitchfork readers are allowed to vote in this

i just came to terms with mbdtf being my favorite of ye's when doing this. hasn't fully sunk in yet.

creeping #peopleslist on twitter and the only album i've seen more frequently listed (highly) than mbdtf is voodoo.

Pretty sure that Brighten the Corners is a lock for one of the write-in placements.

xp Voodoo is all over the place on these ballots. Year 2000 Pitchfork wouldn't know what to make of that.

i'm sure kanye has clicked on pitchfork for a few seconds before spending another hour looking at hypebeast or whatever

i'm sure kanye KNOWS what pitchfork is, obviously. but i don't think you'll hear him saying "kim's a 10.0 and so is my last album" on 'cruel summer'

of course Kanye knows what Pitchfork is. That doesn't mean he would deign to play their festival

xp Voodoo is all over the place on these ballots. Year 2000 Pitchfork wouldn't know what to make of that.

― Chick-on-Chick-fil-A (Johnny Fever), Saturday, August 18, 2012 12:10 AM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ship wrote a review for them that they apparently didn't accept!

but again, what ballots

i could see voodoo being in the bottom of the overall top 100. obv it's not coming close to sniffing MBDTF

what's funny is Voodoo is in their archive i guess from being in their best of decade list, but it was never reviewed. i remember because it was one of my sample reviews that got me hired, but the only one that didn't get published.

xpost lol k3v's xls is impressive!

although it was already several months old at that point is probably why, i mainly wrote it because i was annoyed they hadn't covered it already

ship i thought i remember you saying that you didn't really give voodoo much of a chance up until very recently (like the last 2-3 years)

ILM ballots and fb friends' ballots. However, I realize I live inside a bubble where people who'd vote in this poll don't listen to mopey dudes with greasy hair all day long.

right that's what i'm sayin. remember who the voting base is here

cmon kanye def cares what TASTEMAKERS think & pfork is exactly the kind of thing hed care about

ship i thought i remember you saying that you didn't really give voodoo much of a chance up until very recently (like the last 2-3 years)

― a hoy hoy heat (J0rdan S.), Saturday, August 18, 2012 12:14 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

hmmm did i? it was more the opposite, grappled with but ultimately embraced it early on, but it fell in my esteem over the years as i heard Brown Sugar, Instant Vintage, other things i hold in comparison to now

fuck i just realized i didn't vote for Instant Vintage

dude gets more excited about being in Paris newspapers than any music website though

fuck i just realized i didn't vote for Instant Vintage

― some dude, Friday, August 17, 2012 11:19 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ugh me either.
this is like when i realized urban hang suite was actually '96 too

yeah but tastemakers to kanye are fashion designers, not journalists

yeah, ship OTM

i haven't seen any evidence in the past 5 years that kanye defines himself/his art in traditional ways

pitchfork has been around since he was not the noted name he is today

al I just read back the post on narrowcast where you wrote about voodoo in your decade wrap and I just misremembered it

ah ok

around the good friday run, kanye did show up at one of those pfork bowling alley shows that I think a-trak was DJ-ing iirc

still I think the amount with which he cares about what the site/its readers think is being overstated

being overstated by who?

I never meant to imply he cares that much on a day to day basis, but if MBDTF were to win he'd sure talk about it all day.

he didn't actually seem to talk, publicly anyway, about all the album's initial claim much at all. only public statement i can remember was an unhappy one about the Grammy AOTY snub.

initial acclaim

tbh the only time I know what Kanye's doing is when someone else brings it to my attention.

the site didn't specify but i was hoping it was 11:59 pacific time. apparently not.

lol at you guys wondering what write-in might make it and thinking 'reasonable doubt' and going huh at old pfork not covering d'angelo

balls: tickled

also are you guys actually befuddled at there being ppl (esp ppl who read pfork) whose favorite kanye might be mbdtf? really?

kanye talks recent pfork album reviews with rob kardashian

i mean i can imagine the argument for watch the throne or 808s and those would be alot more whuh to me.

i know people love MBDTF and all, i just always wonder how much that was tied up in it being the supposed best of its year/era and whether that many people actually ultimately prefer it to all his other albums. College Dropout was, um, pretty popular with the Pitchfork crowd too iirc.

It's kind of funny how much of an outlier I'd be if I actually tried to do one of these.

which is a reason to do it imo, but having to add lots of albums really does make it more of a time-consuming pain in the ass

feels futile, too

like you know you're gonna wind up getting swept by kanye/arcadefire/neutralmilk/builttospill/blueprint/radiohead/pavement/etc

all his albums were pretty popular w/ the pfork crowd. but yeah i can totally buy an indie rock audience leaning towards the 'ambitious' rockist statement album that features bon iver, esp since it came out recently and it's strongest comp came out when pforks demo was in junior high. if you were to ask me which kanye would most appeal to a demo that's gonna vote ok computer the best album of the past 15+ years i would put my money on the one w/ the prominent king crimson sample. i wouldn't get my panties in a wad or kmt if/when it happened either.

pavement's got no shot at this plz

i did this but got angry at it bc of the whole "before you start take a tour through our greatest hits and we'll stick them at the top of your list" + it's really annoying moving all those albums to the bottom/almost crashed my browser so i just gave up with the ordering

if i didn't know pfork was too half assed and incompetent (amy phillips, senior news editor) i'd almost suspect the huge 90s gaps were left in to slant the results younger/more recent.

it's weird for me to think of a kanye album unseating LR as the rock critic favorite, but yeah balls makes a pretty good case.

it's funny... by no other means is it kanye's most popular album, except that a lot of critics seem invested in willing it to be so

they're all ambitious rockist statement albums, though. and the jon brion thing seemed like a bigger deal at the time than the bon iver thing. but right yeah, being more recent may be the biggest factor in his favor (maybe? isn't this thing totally gonna be dominated by stuff from before, say, 2003?)

xpost

you can substitute "fans" for "critics" in that post and it all still applies

kanyetothe forum definitely gonna have a huge turnout in this thing

whats the difference amirite xp

kanyetotheforum cares so much about pfork reviews

that place is hilarious/awesome

yeah i alluded to it w/ the nudge mention above (and it WAS convenient so i can't bitch too much) but i do think they stacked the deck having those staff lists there as a guide. if this thing gets that many votes beyond dorks and cranks a pretty big plurality is just gonna go thru those lists, click on the ones they know/like, get outraged at the omission of one or two faves and maybe bother to look them up and them maybe bother to reorder their list. it'll be interesting to see if the final list has a weird chronological bent to it at all, esp beyond the top 20 or so. i do know if the album's not in the database it's fucked on some level, looking at several lists i've seen olivia tremor control's from dusk at cubist castle entered in several slightly different ways which maybe the tallying will pick up or maybe not.

if i didn't know pfork was too half assed and incompetent (amy phillips, senior news editor)

I'm not saying Pitchfork is a mansion on the hill or anything, but news and editorial have always been separate and completely different in tone.

ktt is more (unintentionally) hilarious, less awesome. too much naive teenage angst to ever be taken seriously...but i doubt anyone here would be taking it seriously in the first place.

i'd almost suspect the huge 90s gaps were left in to slant the results younger/more recent.

― balls, Friday, August 17, 2012 9:55 PM (4 minutes ago)

thought this abt several albums, especially hello nasty: "no conceivable reason to exclude this except to skew the results." other albums i was genuinely surprised i had to write in on a pitchfork ballot:

white stripes - de stijl
blur - blur
guided by voices - under the bushes under the stars
sleater-kinney - dig me out

@balls - They don't have listings for records they haven't reviewed so that's why there are pretty huge gaps. ie: hip hop earlier in it's history, metal when brandon wasn't involved. If I remember the early days it was a) much more reflective of ryans taste b) was lighter on album reviews? That said, there's no excuse for any website not exalting the Wrangler Brutes as saviours of modern music.

yeah it always amused me that PF dropped the ball on even reviewing De Stijl when the buzz seemed huge with their readership at the time, and the White Blood Cells reviews was hilariously defensive about how hey we weren't sent promos of the first 2

I think they started with three a day early on and now they're up to five. Also, they purposely scrubbed a lot of the pre-millenium content from existence.

a good amount of early millenium stuff too

o yeah alot of the stuff was reviewed at the time. trust me pfork reviewed pavement and gbv and olivia tremor control at the time. the first time i'd ever heard of pfork was 1998 from k3vin b4rnes bitching about what they'd written about him and asking him 'wtf is pitchfork? and why do you care what some dork on the internet wrote about you? besides everybody reads sonicnet anyway' and then by no more than two years later max it was huge, i can remember if you went into the university library and looked at a computers browser history someone had just been looking at either pfork or jambands.com and then a little later when i was working at wuxtry it was pretty much guaranteed that if pfork raved about something that shit was gonna sell, the only other thing that was guaranteed to move product like that was npr love. i wonder how much this is the case anymore. tbh more than the results i'd be curious to see what the median age for voters is, it's still big obv but i wonder about it's relevance. as welcome as the popist changes there have been it seems like it's lost some of its voice maybe or its authority.

must've been a lot of pre-millennium tension.

<3, tricky.

xpost rah

it was pretty much guaranteed that if pfork raved about something that shit was gonna sell...i wonder how much this is the case anymore.

How much does anything sell anymore? I think it's cute that they still wait until around the time of street dates to put up album reviews.

i can also remember when cmj (remember cmj?) had their scandal w/ rigging their charts and falsifying data and stuff thinking that if pfork really wanted to kill cmj (at a time when that would've been an accomplishment) they would start doing college radio charts but now seeing how badly they've managed something as simple as this poll there is no way they could've ever managed something like that.

I'm still wondering why you think this poll is badly managed? The decision to sweep old Pfork content under the rug was done a long time ago, and definitely without a poll of this nature in mind. To me, it appears they constructed a pretty user-friendly voting system (except for the scroll and drag ordering) and neither over nor underpublicized it.

ever notice how every ILM thread eventually comes around to talking about Kanye?

― to welcome jer.fairall, pie is served. (jer.fairall), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 10:06 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weirdly i think the 'actually the internet HELPS record sales!' argument actually might apply to indie rock nevermind the big indie rock acts of today playing much much bigger rooms than the big indie rock acts of the 90s (nevermind the 80s) did.

To me, it appears they constructed a pretty user-friendly voting system (except for the scroll and drag ordering) and neither over nor underpublicized it.

yeah, it seems pretty well managed to me. easy & fun to use (except for the bullshit pain of reordering, unless i missed something). plus p much guaranteed by design to subtly reinforce pitchfork's authority.

johnny when you construct a poll that has even the staff having to write in not remotely obscure choices in their top ten (among other problems) than that is a poorly constructed poll. nevermind other ways they play into default biases. this thing's alot closer to a drudgereport poll than quinnipac or whatever.

What did you want them to do? Best I can tell, all their album matches (with art) come from the review database. I guess they could've set it up to scrape Amazon or something, but writing-in votes is easier for the builders and not hard at all for us.

They could've spent the last year behind the scenes building a database of everything someone might conceivably vote for in this poll they probably cooked up only a short while ago, OR they could just let people write in things. I'd have gone with the latter too.

last 'year' - really

One way they could do it that once someone typed "Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty," it would be automatically entered into the database and come up as a suggestion for the next user. Maybe that would create an unusably large database, though?

...could do it IS that once...

lol at you guys wondering what write-in might make it and thinking 'reasonable doubt' and going huh at old pfork not covering d'angelo

― balls, Friday, August 17, 2012 11:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

RD has totally become a retroactive illmatic among the jay-z stans, if any unreviewed rap album makes it it'll be that one

johnny when you construct a poll that has even the staff having to write in not remotely obscure choices in their top ten (among other problems) than that is a poorly constructed poll. nevermind other ways they play into default biases. this thing's alot closer to a drudgereport poll than quinnipac or whatever.

― balls, Saturday, August 18, 2012 12:56 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a poll of the albums in the current archive, not hard 2 understand

Hate Kanye.

And good morning to you.

One way they could do it that once someone typed "Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty," it would be automatically entered into the database and come up as a suggestion for the next user. Maybe that would create an unusably large database, though?

the problem isn't that the database would be large, but that it would be full of the album "smell of bals" by the artist "likk penis"

They could've spent the last year behind the scenes building a database of everything someone might conceivably vote for in this poll they probably cooked up only a short while ago, OR they could just let people write in things. I'd have gone with the latter too.

― Johnny Fever, Saturday, August 18, 2012 2:01 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

last 'year' - really

― balls, Saturday, August 18, 2012 2:03 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As someone whose job is creating a huge database of information for a living, with new information coming in all the time, I can tell you that it's a slow process. Places like Rate Your Music or Discogs weren't created in a week or two. Like I mentioned before, they probably could've set up something to scrape those databases or used Amazon as a backbone or any number of other options, but it's so much easier and cheaper to just let voters write-in albums on their ballots. Especially for something that's just a summer timekiller and a demographic info net.

yeah i know reasonable doubt's rep (not retroactive btw though i understand you were 8 at the time or whatever), i'm just thinking that it might not feature highly among a demo that tbh probably think the black album is the best jay-z album (if not "whichever one has 'niggas in paris' on it"), write-in factor (which it apparently might surprise some ppl actually works as a big hurdle for respondents in polling) seals it.

xxp Fair point, but each person wouldn't necessarily know that their unmatched entries were being added.

johnny explaining why it's half assed or poorly designed isn't really working as an argument against 'this poll is half assed and poorly designed'. well aware that pfork is lazy and has no incentive to be otherwise (again, 'amy phillips, senior news editor').

a) I don't know why you're taking such issue with the fact their database isn't all-encompassing.
b) Did Amy Phillips shit on your rug? I know she wrote the terrible Sonic Youth article a decade ago, but damn.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/090eb47f/

Didn't realise that the voting would close so soon, otherwise some of the final positions would change. Top 20 looks about right.

i'm not taking such issue w/ the fact their database isn't all-encompassing. i merely pointed out that this poll is poorly designed and half assed in standard pfork fashion. to which capn-save-a-poll jumped in and said 'b-b-but doing it another way might require WORK!' to which i responded this doesn't really argue against my point at which time you decided to disagree w/ a straw man instead. if one of the interns in my lab read some tubes at the spec for me but didn't validate the spec ('work') and o yeah the readings were out of range and they couldn't be bothered to do dilutions ('work') and o yeah they read it at 450nm instead of 280nm i wouldn't regard the data as valid or their performance as anything other than poor and half assed. if the point of this exercise was to gather any kind of accurate data about their readers they've failed in nearly every way a poll can fail at this (all encompassing database wouldn't solve it and isn't necessary). if the point of this was to create some buzz and build the brand than maybe they've succeeded (big maybe). eg requiring all choices to be written in would help the former cause of data gathering but hurt the latter cause by making this exercise much less user friendly. i was merely noting that putting a finger on the scale, nevermind five fingers, can skew the results and that in this case that the results would probably be skewed in a way favorable to how pfork would like to present itself and that this might prompt suspicion if one wasn't pretty sure that this poor design was due to incompetence and not cunning.

lol. poll more than likely did what it said out to do. complaints that it failed to be something else are beside the point.

capn-save-a-poll

lol @ me being nicknamed this after how I routinely create chaos in any poll Algerian Goalkeeper creates.

yeah if the poll was designed to get ppl on facebook and twitter to promote pitchfork it succeeded (maybe? i literally don't know anyone non-ilx who gave a fuck about this and i live in a place where their black kids review was a major topic of conversation), if the poll was designed to survey their readership's opinion of the best records of the pfork era and by doing so provide the world w/ a 'people's list' than it's a highly flawed (but not useless and for the triviality of the task almost definitely good enough) model.

seriously nowhere near as perturbed by this issue as i am by this: the jason alexander body double in this nickelback video is a really poor jason alexander body double imo

Just realised I voted for completely the wrong spoon album and forgot 'in a beautiful place out in the country'. Fuck. My. Life.

Completely forgot Mahogany. Bah.

Would really like a cross-rating system whereby one could check one's musical compatibility with other posters (e.g. in order to decide whether to take their musical opinions seriously or not) that came up with a percentile match based on albums and/or artists listed.

(Would also like ability to put in a facility for posters' particular bugbears like "no rap except Kanye" mentioned above or "has no female artists in their top 10/fewer than 10% in whole list" for me or "slags off Radiohead but still put OK Computer in their list" for Melissa or Turangalila)

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/090eb47f/

Didn't realise that the voting would close so soon, otherwise some of the final positions would change. Top 20 looks about right.

― fun loving and xtremely tolrant (Billy Dods)

Great list. Especially pleased to see another vote for Beyond The Sun and a great choice for your number one.

My female artists as a proportion of overall list is 23% (counting stuff like Hole and Gang Gang Dance). Not sure if that's low or high or what.

If I were at work, I'd get out a spreadsheet and work out the average (I should have started one while I was bored at work yesterday.) I have a gut feeling it's higher than average (from a lifetime spent calculating the female content of critics' lists, it's often a depressing 10% - obviously depending on genre. Pop and R&B lists tend to slant higher.)

I only placed 17 female artists in my top 90, so not that good really.

It's an impossible percentage to even calculate because (this comes up every time) how do you even define "female artist" - like, can you count a sole female singer fronting an otherwise all male band? What about duos of one female/one male songwriter (an arrangement which makes up a great deal of my list.) What about artists that are two blokes, but routinely use a shifting series of female singers? (Thinking of Basement Jaxx e.g.) Is that better because female voices are included, or is it worse because the blokes are the named artists while the women are so anonymised they don't even get named? What counts? Does having a female violin player in your backing band count? I only know what doesn't count.

I mean, I had a bit of a panic when I got to about 40 and I was all "OMG, I have included ~no men~!!!" and went to throw in some Aphex Twin and FlyLo, but then realised that SVIIB, The Knife, Medicine, Goldfrapp - the bulk of the artists in my top 10 were female/male duos.

But I do think that it says something about a person's taste, and what they recognise as worth counting when I see a list which is 90% all-male groups. It's not even that I think they're deliberately excluding females - and in some ways throwing in a token is kind of worse, because it's a kind of "look, I've addressed this!" with a last-minute impulse when really they haven't addressed it at all. It's more the idea that in their day to day listening and counting and judging-of-merit they just do not encounter or include female voices at all. That does say a lot to me about a person and what they value.

Anyway, it's an observation, not an invitation to a clusterfuck, so please take it with several thousand grains of salt.

yeah i know reasonable doubt's rep (not retroactive btw though i understand you were 8 at the time or whatever), i'm just thinking that it might not feature highly among a demo that tbh probably think the black album is the best jay-z album (if not "whichever one has 'niggas in paris' on it"), write-in factor (which it apparently might surprise some ppl actually works as a big hurdle for respondents in polling) seals it.

― balls, Saturday, August 18, 2012 1:12 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was 13. & no, reasonable doubt was not considered the new illmatic at the time

no one gave 2 fuxx about jay-z like THAT till hard knock life

My female artists as a proportion of overall list is 23% (counting stuff like Hole and Gang Gang Dance). Not sure if that's low or high or what.

― Tim F, Saturday, August 18, 2012 4:30 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

that strikes me as low because you seem to heavily favor female artists (compared to someone like me, anyway, and i'm at 17%)

gah, came to the library this morning just to do this (stupid work PC has such an out of date browser it couldn't handle the software though I could view everyone else's lists) only to find that entries are closed. Stupid pfork.

yeah I've been away for a week and spent this morning reading this thread and looking at everyone's lists and jotting some favourites down into a text file to do my own... and then realised halfway down the thread voting is closed.

I mean I am not a super-regular p4k reader so, sure, the poll wasn't intended for me anyway, but I liked the delusion that I could bump some favourites up the ranking or that a treasured obscurity would somehow creep into someone else's worldview because of being at #37 on a list compiled by someone they've never heard of

I was prepared to come in here all defensive about how I listen to a ton of female artists even if my ballot doesn't necessarily reflect that, but then I counted and realized that over half of my votes went to solo females/female-fronted bands/male-female duos and that my #1 was Charlotte Hatherley so I figure I'm off the hook. I'll blame any dearth of racial diversity on Pitchfork, though (they didn't have any of the '60s-'70s r&b I've spent most of the year listening to in their database).

ooh, Sick Mouthy's first list is loaded with albums i like! probably only a handful are what i would actually put in my top 100 but if the one's i know already reflect your taste i should probably get to downloading some of yer recommended indie electronica selections post haste

I lol'd:
http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/11fc973b/

I just got in under the wire, which means I can't tamper with it. Which is both annoying and a relief. https://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/b8261215/

i only wound up with 17 female artists (or bands w prominent female members) in my list of 100. while that's a disappointingly low ratio, it's probably an accurate reflection of my day-to-day listening. to some extent that's a product of genre. i like metal, garage rock and "american primitive" guitar stuff, genres in which female artists are a decided minority. nevertheless, that feels like an excuse as much as an explanation.

they didn't have any of the '60s-'70s r&b I've spent most of the year listening to in their database

Probably because '60s-'70s R&B doesn't really fit the remit of a '96-'11 poll.

Joeks, emil.y. Joeks.

32 of my albums were by female artists or female-anchored bands.

I just checked my list and I'm actually quite shocked that 51% is made up of all-male groups/male solo artists, whereas only 8% is all-female. The remaining 41% of mixed artists I divided into completely mixed (15%), male-fronted (12%) and female-fronted (14%), though my definition of 'fronted' kind of changed depending on the sort of act...

Just realized that much of my 'female-fronted' percentage is represented by Broadcast and Deerhoof, who collectively compose a whopping 10% of my ballot. Guess I'm a fan.

Now That's What I Call Female-Fronted Bands!, Vol. 32

90% of my album covers were female-fronted, or specifically featured the front of a female. The other 10% featured penises.

doing this I realised I listened to a lot fewer women ten years ago

continuing defensively from my last post...

i listen to rap more than R&B, guitar rock at least as much as modern indie, electronic music and chartpop. these are habits as much as they are considered expressions of taste. not sure whether i'm attracted to male-dominated genres because or in spite of the gender imbalance, but that feels like a dodge and it's beside the point anyway. i could have made room for portishead's third, melt banana's cell-scape, joanna newsom's milk-eyed mender, cat power's moon pix, goldfrapp's felt mountain and the fourth angel in heavy syrup album, all of which i've spent a good deal of time with during the last decade and a half.

and the bellrays' let it blast is a top-ten favorite that i just plain forgot. fuck. what i get for doing this at the last minute >:[

I would really love to see the compiled ILXor-specific results of this particular poll, if anyone has scads of free time and the hyperanal determination to see it through.

I don't think I'd ever give anybody the business over a tendency towards listening to more music from a particular gender or race than another (although a Skr3wdr1ver album in their collection would certainly be cause for alarm). I probably tend to listen to a fair number of female-oriented artists because I'm not a very dude-y brah, but I'm sure a lot of guys are probably much more drawn to testosterock. I don't tend to listen to much current r&b or hip hop, but (as hinted at above) old school r&b is very nearly my personal popular music high-water mark. At any rate, I'm not sure that a whole lot can be legitimately discerned about gender/racial bias based on the 50-100 albums that someone cherrypicked from a 15-year span of time.

It's an impossible percentage to even calculate because (this comes up every time) how do you even define "female artist" - like, can you count a sole female singer fronting an otherwise all male band? What about duos of one female/one male songwriter (an arrangement which makes up a great deal of my list.) What about artists that are two blokes, but routinely use a shifting series of female singers?

Yeah I had this problem - I'm on about 20% but quite a few of those are bands featuring a combination of male and female voices (e.g. Low, New Pornographers) or female vocalists collaborating with male producers (Aaliyah, Electrik Red).

Never mind the fact that there are very few legitimately solo albums and therefore very few albums sans artistic collaborators. And artistic collaborators tend at least half of the time to be male. I can't even imagine what might count as a legitimately female-only album on my ballot.

More female producers and session musicians now!

Considering this is a "people's poll" and not an official critic's end-of-year/end-of-decade round-up, I don't think you should feel pressured toward gender- or genre-neutrality.

I mean I have a "where's the rap? where are the girls? where are the gays?" stump but if I were participating in this thing there wouldn't be any rap between 2001 and 2010 because I didn't listen to rap during those years.

I dunno. On the contrary, I think that those cherry-picking and self selecting exercises are exactly where people's subconscious biases pop up the most.

Like, no one at all should feel pressured to represent themselves as listening to music that they don't. That's absurd. But recognising that those biases are there, and that they do influence what we expose ourselves to and what we value - I think that's important.

But anyway, the point was mostly that, for me, if someone has an exclusively 90% male list, our tastes are unlikely to overlap and that's not someone whose choices or recommendations I'm likely to pay attention to. That's not a value judgement on a person or on a person's taste, it's just whether their guidance is likely to be useful to me or helpful to me or not.

I'm bemused and impressed at the popularity of this thing, I have such trouble making even an end-of-year list and I can't imagine how an individual can look back on fifteen years of music and say "this is #1". Some pretty cool lists, though.

I love maura's list, it's so fun it could double as a personals ad

ILX0rs love making lists. Don't get why that's such a mystery!

I can never do an end of year list - the only one I did last year was kind of a joke to knock a point home. But it is fun to read and criticise them.

I do them half-heartedly, I usually just name all my friends' bands so I don't get any angry e-mails when any of them read it. (Half-hearted only toward list-making, it's not that I only half-heartedly like their records).

I put two of yr albums in my top 50 iirc!

I appreciate your sentiment but I don't care. Not a dis to you! I don't like lists or rating systems.

I can't help but feel skeptical about these canon lists, firstly b/c the part of my brain that listens to rap isn't the same part of my brain that listens to Supersilent, secondly b/c the results suggest that a zeitgeist-harnessing record like "Funeral" is somehow more valuable than another local record I love so much more (Hank's "How to prosper in the coming bad years" for example), thirdly b/c all it really ends up being is a contest between "Ok Computer" and "Kid A" and fuck it I haven't listened to either record in over ten years.

Anyway I'm just hungover and grumpy and I am loving reading these lists, it's cool to see Fonal getting such love from ILXors

Nah, I get it. I mean, it's fun putting together these lists, but only because I try not to get too worked up over the likelihood that I'm one of maybe three people who would think to vote for Zero 7's Yeah Ghost in a ballot like this.

Canon lists really aren't helpful on an aggregated level, they really aren't.

But individual lists can be helpful for the reasons I stated above - that they reveal a person's tastes and foibles and whatnot. Not (as people have often interpreted me as doing) to judge them and go "YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON FOR NOT LIKING ANY WOMEN" (though that is problematic on a cultural level, which is another story which we have discussed too many times already) but more just to figure out whose tastes are aligned to mine, in terms of who to trust when they make recommendations. Given how much my personal taste is "wow, I just really like the sound of female vocalists" then for me, finding someone who also appreciates that in music, too, that's a plus for me. Or wubby synths. Or tremoloed guitars. Or hopefully all three together.

Like, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if a person picks OK Computer or Kid A. But that weirdo who goes "you know what? I like Amnesiac (or Hail To The Thief) better!" is the kinda person I want to talk to.

I wasn't even trying to make a list of "these are the best records ever" I was trying to make a list of "if someone wanted a representation of What I Like in music, well, here it is."

I mean, aggregated lists can show you the bias of a culture.

But mostly it's like, if I look at a list - like Tom E's or DJP's or Melissa's - and I know that I like at least half of what they have up there. It makes me curious to check out the other half of what they have listed to see if it's also something I'd like.

Yeah, I was super interested in looking at ILXors lists-- I love that you got Electrik Red and "W" on yours, WCC, those are awesome underrated records-- but then I looked at some P4K staffers lists and got poo-faced

i didn't know this had a deadline, i was going to start mine today

oh wellll

damn, was excited to see your list when i saw that you posted on the thread

tbh, someone probably should've started a thread for this before yesterday.

Yeah, by the time my brother posted his list on Facebook, I figured the news had already come and gone on ILM.

there was talk on the PF thread about it before this thread

Here's mine:
http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/5e340118/

I didn't get a chance to rearrange order and add more albums because the applet kept crashing when I was voting but the top 10 is pretty much in order.

I picked albums from their recommended top lists to increase the chances of getting them in the final countdown.

See, the point of these lists to me is (for example) noticing that this Paavoharju band that you've never heard of is popping up on every other ballot and subsequently listening to their songs on YouTube and realizing that you've found something new and awesome that's very firmly up your alley.

imo the most intriguing&useful lists aren't the ones which chime w/ a significant portion of my current tastes

without that much thought. order is kinda irrelevant : http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/f2a3948c/

^^ obv there are many things that have been forgotten, but these should've definitely been included :

gas - pop
mouse on mars - autoditacker / niun niggung
brandy - full moon
tlc - fanmail
stereolab - dots & loops
boredoms - rebore vol. 0
gang gang dance - god's money
kevin drumm - sheer hellish miasma
annie - anniemal
jim o' rourke - bad timing / insignificance
dialing in - ketalysergichmeta mother

and am i the only one who has a tendency to think about albums post-00 way more easily than the ones from the 90's? like if it's a best of the decade/noughties kinda list?

also, hole - celebrity skin

(how could i forget that?)

I did too. And Madvillain.

I hope that when Pitchfork anounces the results, they also post an additional list of top 50 or 100 albums not in their database. I'd actually be most curious about the results of that.

Thought I had more time for this too--thought I'd voted for Aquemini but it's not there, and there's lots I'd delete, ah well.

lol, i put the death album in there w the wrong title. it's for the whole world to see, not for all the world to see. but it should have been in the database, dammit. they reviewed it and everything.

70.

Forgot the last Broadcast album, agh, fuck me, just fuck me.

I will be totally ready for a singles list, should they ever do one.

Oh god didn't realise TLC - Fanmail was in the right time period.

well, last night's deadline hit me in the head before i could rearrange shit and add/delete more stuff so this pretty much looks like a work in progress

but anyway http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/71a7ac6b/

2 that i def forgot that are prob top-30 ish for me are

rachel stevens - come and get it
magik markers - boss

I will be totally ready for a singles list, should they ever do one.
--Michael Daddino

you can just post your singles list, you don't have to wait for them, you know

lol can you imagine if they did a singles poll like this, the only songs pre-loaded as options would be songs covered in 'we are the world' and 'the forkcast'

magik markers - boss

― johnny crunch, Saturday, August 18, 2012 6:26 PM (2 hours ago)

goddammit, i forgot that one too >:[

I started writing this in the box here but it started getting long so I figured I'd put it on my blog, but here are some thoughts on whether to not my list makes me a racist, sexist scumbag - http://sickmouthy.com/2012/08/19/am-i-a-racist-sexist-scumbag-when-it-comes-to-being-a-music-fan/

That is the most unhelpful, reductive way of putting that you possibly could have found.

This is what is so frustrating about this conversations. That you can try to have these nuanced conversations about personal taste and unconscious bias - and all you hear of that conversation is "someone's calling me a racist, sexist scumbag" ? When that was the thinking that was never said, and I went to great pains to say that was NOT what I was saying?

But that's how you frame it? Really?

I thought the post was pretty nuanced and interesting tbh, especially in the context of unconscious biases.

I'm sorry WCC, framing it in those terms is a clumsy, pseudo-defensive shorthand on my part and is the result of a little socio-cultural guilt, an attempt to confront those terms head-on and thus make it NOT be about those issues as much as if they'd gone unwritten and ended up inferred, which I clearly failed at from your perspective, plus a bit of antagonistic top-and-tailing to try and drag people outside of this thread into the debate (which it's done elsewhere a bit already). Like it or not, those words get attention in the way that titling the post "a nuanced discussion of gender bias in my musical taste" just wouldn't have done. I have a natural inclination for Daily Mail-esque click bait SEO when it comes to my blog which can be counter productive. I hope the actual content of the post is a bit more thoughtful.

xpost; thank you.

I wonder how much class is an unspoken bias, too? Much harder to get a grip on than race or gender. I don't think there's much music in my selection that I'd codify (no that I quite know how I would do so) as "working class" or "upper class".

My female artists as a proportion of overall list is 23% (counting stuff like Hole and Gang Gang Dance). Not sure if that's low or high or what.

― Tim F, Saturday, August 18, 2012 4:30 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

that strikes me as low because you seem to heavily favor female artists (compared to someone like me, anyway, and i'm at 17%)

― some dude, Saturday, August 18, 2012 11:30 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I was kinda surprised myself. Chalk it up to the baleful influence of dance music and rap I guess (though I did vote for Foxy Brown and a ridiculous 3 Missy albums).

i only finally knuckled down and put one of these together because i felt a certain professional obligation (guess i've just lost the list-making jones), but in doing so i realized that the late 90s have become a giant blank spot in my memory. albums keep popping up on people's lists that are total how-could-i-forget-that head-slappers, and whole swathes of stuff that dominated the pop culture discussion in those years has just seemingly evaporated from my brain, whether i would have included it or not. on the other hand, i had to go over almost every professional top ten i've submitted in the last ten years to even remember some of my "favorite" albums from this decade, so maybe i've just developed early onset dementia.

I learned that I still listen to late nineties albums more than mid 2000's ones.

i only finally knuckled down and put one of these together because i felt a certain professional obligation (guess i've just lost the list-making jones), but in doing so i realized that the late 90s have become a giant blank spot in my memory. albums keep popping up on people's lists that are total how-could-i-forget-that head-slappers, and whole swathes of stuff that dominated the pop culture discussion in those years has just seemingly evaporated from my brain, whether i would have included it or not. on the other hand, i had to go over almost every professional top ten i've submitted in the last ten years to even remember some of my "favorite" albums from this decade, so maybe i've just developed early onset dementia.

― big-mammed punisher (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Sunday, 19 August 2012 12:53 (28 minutes ago) Permalink

I'm similar. Maybe it's something to do with the period 98-00 not really being defined by a handy musical 'era' - i.e. I'm at pains to think of it the same way I do 94-96, which to me is epitomised by BRITPOP! TRIPHOP! DRUM'n'BASS! etc. etc. There were still plenty of decent albums going around in the late 90s, just no handy category to draw memory from, discounting things like garage which wasn't a big album genre anyway.

ugh, sorry, what a horribly formed 'post'

All caps when you spell the album's name (anyone else put Madvillainy at #1?):
https://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/cf710159/

Hi Craig, sorry I missed you last night

No prob, Owen (btw, I'm contemplating hitching a ride to Hamilton in a few weeks to watch you et tes mouches play--have had fun at Supercrawl before </thread derail>)

nice to see Tim Hecker on so many lists; i don't think he's discussed much on ilm.

Craig good on you for remembering "Music is rotted one note" that is a forgotten former love if I've ever seen one

I must admit, if I'd bothered to write in/add records not already in the P4K ballot system database my list would've looked pretty different (and would've taken hours longer to complete).

what surprised me about my list, timeline-wise, was 2003-'05 having a heavier presence than '00-'02, which was not the case when i did a '00s decade list a couple years ago.

1999 to 2002 pretty much killed everything else on mine, which i was not surprised about in the least.

http://i48.tinypic.com/30a8dmt.jpg
Wendy Van Camp | August 19, 2012 at 3:31 pm | Reply
If you want to try some interesting female singers, I can recommend “Indigo Girls” to you. Excellent vocals. I found your conjecture about if you are a racist or not to be interesting. Why think that about yourself? If you are white and male does society automatically feel there is something wrong with you and you MUST feel guilt about the race and gender to which you were born? Is that not also racism? Perhaps it is time that we all feel equally good about ourselves. Dr. King said it best: let the measure of a man’s character be how we judge, not the color of his skin.

Gotta love blog comments.

the scales have fallen from my eyes

so who is wendy van camp on ilx again?

i don't care if you're black, white, purple, indigo

I thought it was you.

if you sing about your penis or putting it in things, fuck you

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v681/blusapphire/Prince/Tongue-40.gif

I can recommend “Indigo Girls” to you. Excellent vocals.

otm

indigo girls laid the groundwork for dave fm

nice to see Tim Hecker on so many lists; i don't think he's discussed much on ilm.

Harmony In Ultraviolet was one of the last albums I cut from my ballot, unfortunately.

you know i think this whole thing was awesome b/c all weekend i've just been listening to records on my list and on your guys' lists and thinking "this album rules" to myself every few seconds

like any project that makes me feel compelled to listen to celebrity skin, beaucoup fish and folie a deux in a day is a totally worthwhile project

somehow i'd missed that you posted yours itt, awesome list

i need to scour this thread just for list links and paste them into a word file.

follow up to last post: i tried pasting a bunch of links into this thread but i got an error message.

I started to analyze the breakdown of my list but basically my tastes are not that exciting to women (only one girlfriend I've had in my lifetime has enjoyed Swans or minimalist drone) so it makes sense that the gender bias would skew heavily male (interestingly though the top ten contains around a third of the women in my list). Also, I hate hip hop & my desire to not muddy my poll w/ re-issues meant that I couldn't include any of the afrobeat / ethiopiques reissues or mississippi records / soul jazz compilations which would have hugely added to the racial diversity of my list.

So there you go. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

An interesting question though. Does anyone know what percentage of records made overall were by women? I fell like that base level would be an interesting figure to compare the percentages people feel guilty about.

basically my tastes are not that exciting to women (only one girlfriend I've had in my lifetime has enjoyed Swans or minimalist drone)

i am a woman and this is v. exciting to me.

I am woman
hear me drone

at this point in my life, the "music enjoyed by my girlfriends" list is probably a lot broader than "music enjoyed by me".

amount of women in your record collection seems very very tied to what types of music you prefer, since the participation of female musicians varies pretty hugely from one genre to another.

how much the musicians you listen to 'look like you' (racially, culturally, etc.) is a little more complicated. my listening habits might be "diverse" by some standard but it's all relative, i know i'm pretty incurious about music from outside America and especially non-English speaking countries.

my desire to not muddy my poll w/ re-issues meant that I couldn't include any of the afrobeat / ethiopiques reissues or mississippi records / soul jazz compilations

God yeah this would have made things even more difficult - I allowed myself compilations/retrospective releases but only if the material on them came inside the '96-'11 time frame. No shortage of great reissue labels these days.

I did my best to leave out reissues but had Calling out of Context on mine because I couldn't omit it and it was never previously released anyway, also African Scream Contest because well not sure.

It pained me to leave out Arthur Russell but if I'd started w. reissues I think at least 95% of my list would have been recorded pre: 1985 which would have defeated the point no matter how accurate an insight into my actual listening habits it would have been.

they should've let us know ahead of time, if you want to be more anonymous you should sign in through twitter

i went with gavin's rule, though i made space for death's for the whole world to see, which wasn't issued in any form until 2009. probably should have included calling out of context for similar reasons. shangaan electro was the only genre compilation i included, allowed because the tracks it comprises are contemporary.

Yeah I had Shangaan Electro too, don't see any reason to exclude compilations of new stuff.

Craig good on you for remembering "Music is rotted one note" that is a forgotten former love if I've ever seen one

― Ówen P., Sunday, 19 August 2012 15:01 (6 hours ago) Permalink

The definition of a 'grower'. Sounds better each time I've given it a go every time since it came out all those years ago. Wish I'd voted it.

Also, I swear I voted for Arcturus's The Sham Mirrors, but I think it got lost down a plughole.

Re: compilations - I had to include bangs & works ii and 2manydjs as I see them both as important in shaping sounds, attitudes etc

UGH I forgot Charlotte Hatherley's The Deep Blue. Bummer. Love that album.

My thoughts on @Sick Mouthy's blog post abt gender/race/class in yr music taste, this bit in particular:

“I’m a white male 30-something and I mostly listen to music made by people like me”; when couched in that terminology, it doesn’t seem outrageous at all.

Idk, man, one (perhaps the biggest) appeal of pop music for me is engaging w/ the world-view of completely DIFFERENT ppl. So listening to Robyn, Dizzee Rascal, Pistol Annies takes me into their worlds, as it were. And hopefully makes me understand them, or their image of themselves, a bit better. But tbh, one of my concerns regarding my taste is the propensity to fetishize these different (more 'authentic', 'relevant') experiences, w/o really understanding them.

Anyway, I agree w/ the "I’m trying not to be. Are you?" mssg. You like what you like, and self-awareness about yr preferences is always A GOOD THING.

Kinda feel left out that I wasn't compelled to do this until exactly after the poll closed... should I post a handmade one here anyway or is it old news by now?

Sorry that was a bit long. For the record, there are plenty of whiny middle-class English boys on my list, so I'm not casting stones at anyone

xpost - sure, do one anyway.

Alright I'll give it a shot!

Idk, man, one (perhaps the biggest) appeal of pop music for me is engaging w/ the world-view of completely DIFFERENT ppl. So listening to Robyn, Dizzee Rascal, Pistol Annies takes me into their worlds, as it were. And hopefully makes me understand them, or their image of themselves, a bit better. But tbh, one of my concerns regarding my taste is the propensity to fetishize these different (more 'authentic', 'relevant') experiences, w/o really understanding them.

Yes is absolutely OTM and a big part of it. The part about attempting to engage with the worldview of people who are not like you. Not as a fetishised others, but in an attempt to understand and normalise the experience of difference. It becomes very easy, if stuff that looks just like you is the only stuff that comes into your sphere, to believe that everyone else is just like you. When we are not. Those experiences are not the default, they are one set of experiences among many many others.

And then there is the other half of it, which is: if you are a straight, white, middle class, male anglophone, it is very *easy* to find a whole lot of material that reflects back your experiences of and perspectives of the world. This stuff is frequently put in a position where it is just routinely considered first, and considered more.

If you are a person who is on the other side of one of those qualities (if you are not-male, not-straight, not-white, not-middle-class or some form of other-than-the-frequently-represented-image) it becomes much harder to find material which does accurately describe or reflect your experiences. Which makes it harder for you to accept and recognise yourself and your experiences as good or even normal. And when the things that *do* represent your experiences are routinely ignored (or even denigrated or put down as just not as worthy) that's even worse.

So, for one group of people, it's "here's a way to explore people that are not like you" and for other groups of people it's "here is the rare place where you *do* see people like you."

It's complicated. What it's *not* is about making people feel guilty. What it *is* about is saying "open yourself to the possibility of multiple viewpoints and experiences."

And then there is the other half of it, which is: if you are a straight, white, middle class, male anglophone, it is very *easy* to find a whole lot of material that reflects back your experiences of and perspectives of the world.

haha yes the idea of only or even mostly listening to music that reflects who i am is completely bizarre to me even if you only take into account the surface things like ethnicity, sexuality and nationality

my entire history of loving music is finding stuff that i deeply identify with in the work of artists who are nothing "like me"

Well, the thing is, that for many many people (including me) trying to find something to identify with in the work of artists that are not like them is the default mode.

While for this other group of people (people whose group has a disproportionate control over and representation of "what culture is") it's something weird or unusual that they have to be pushed or tempted into doing.

It's just lopsided.

yeah - the idea that i might not find a piece of music resonant because it doesn't reflect myself accurately is just unfathomable to me. white str8 middle-class men really think like that, huh.

See, I don't know if it's like that. I don't think it happens at the individual level. Or if it's more the case that what culture in general serves up to them is such a reflection of themselves again and again (in music, in movies, in books, whatever) that they've come to think it's just normal, that art should be a mirror for their own world, not a mirror into someone else's.

(Art should ideally do both. Like I said, it's the lopsidedness of it that bothers me.)

that art should be a mirror for their own world, not a mirror WINDOW into someone else's.

I should really not go on ILX when I'm so sleep deprived.

There's an implied assumption in this discussion: "you are what you like". Like, you're defined by your taste. I know it's a popular idea round here but it isn't necessarily true? Anyway @ Nick I wouldn't look at any list of records with a pile of white dudes innit and assume the listener was same.

Mad strawman building going on here. If I listen to a particularly whiny or entitled Terius or Kanye title I do find myself thinking "why should I give a shit?" but I doubt that's exactly a default mode for a lot of listeners.

If this were the main factor at play here then yr "white str8 middle-class men" wouldn't be able to identify or empathise with vast swathes of film or literature. It's inane.

(I mean we are talking about a world where Jonathan Franzen is currently one of our most celebrated authors but still...)

It's not that they're not *able* to, it's that 1) they rarely get fed anything but StraightWhiteMen, it's a very easy option to take and 2) they are routinely told, either implicitly or passively, that they shouldn't have to do anything else. (And indeed, there's a whole industry dedicated to telling them that listening to or rating the experiences/work of others will make them somehow less of a man.)

Yah I don't think there's any strawmen here, Nick's being self-evaluative

Oh, I'm not saying "taste = identity" is false, either. But if you stop saying "I'm a guy who should like Clipse because" then you don't owe anybody an apology for not being into it except yourself (and maybe Clipse).

Oh, look. Here is the conversation I did not want to be having. That I was actively trying to resist having. And yet, lo and behold, I am unable to resist the little open circle, and here I am having it again.

I really need to do something else with my day than argue about piles of lists of straight white men, or my head will explode.

(x-post to myself, sorry Owen.)

@ WCC there's no debate in my mind that the long tradition of str8 white men writing about music has (un)-coloured its development and what works have been canonized. But Nick's article isn't about "my responsibility as a music writer" but an invisible debt he feels he owes

In full disclosure, I did not read Nick's blog post. Mostly because of the way it was framed was so head-deskingly depressing to me. But also because I really don't need to read any more straight white man guilt in my life. I'm glad that he is having that conversation and I hope that he and others find it useful. I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm saying it genuinely completely honestly and I generally rate Nick as an A+ human being.

I just really do need to go and think about something else for some time because this is reaching OCD levels for me.

(Hah easily my favourite album of the past five years is Let England Shake ie a woman writing largely about StraightWhiteMen whose perspectives are infinitely harder to comprehend than the Pistol Annies/Dizzee Rascal/Kanye West).

as far as the identification question goes, it's not at all hard to find pop music of almost every imagine sort made both by men and women. male artists obviously dominate in certain genres, and the critical discourse often seems to favor them, but those factors don't (or shouldn't) have much to do with our ability as individual listeners to find music to relate to and/or learn from. and obvious difference isn't the only sort that exists, after all. i often relate very easily to music made by people who aren't superficially "like me", and just as often find music made by straight white men completely alien to my values and sensibilities.

we might legitimately ask why female are so much less common and successful in certain genres, but there's no simple answer to that question, and it's difficult to meaningfully address in making an honest list of personal favorites.

how do you define "successful"

some intersection of popular appeal and critical respect

in which genres have women been less successful?

Err, rock music?

yeah, technical death metal is a more specific example.

You know where they're less successful too? The kitchen. Damn things can't even boil water.

rap's another example. we can certainly find female rappers, but there do seem to be a hell of a lot more men actively pursing careers in the genre. this is less true now than it was, say, 20 years ago, but i think the imbalance still exists.

I can only assume you guys are talking at cross purposes here.

oh my god it's the exact same argument with the exact same people saying the exact same things all over again

totally feeling WCC's frustration

White male guilt: don't wanna read about it (but you guys better feel it)

White male guilt: don't wanna read about it (but you guys better feel it)

Owen, that was an uncharacteristically dickish thing for you to say, and out of line.

<3 I was joking and I'll stfu if I offended

oh my god it's the exact same argument with the all over again

totally feeling WCC's frustration

― lex pretend, Monday, August 20, 2012 4:28 AM (18 minutes ago)

you can hardly make this complaint when you're one of "the exact same people saying the exact same things"

otm

erm, i haven't really been posting in this thread for that exact reason

me neither! high five

The idea of "identification" is an interesting one to me, whether it's about exploring the world view of someone "other" and finding common ground in some aspect of it (and expanding yourself), or whether it's about having yourself reflected back at you. Because I don't think I look for either in music particularly; I'm not really into lyrics and I don't think that much of the music I love describes world views or experiences all that much (although some of it clearly does), and even the stuff that does do that, it's generally not an important facet of it to me. I think I mainly get an aesthetic, sensual kick out of music, for the most part.

I wanna make an "...on my yacht" joke but instead I'm just gonna

I find it very difficult to discuss topics like this, so forgive me if I appear gauche here.

But the discussion's set me thinking about the relevance of something like hiphop in a country like America, compared to say the UK. Say (like me) you're a white middle class male from the UK. And say the majority of acts you picked were white middle-class males. Now, a lot of critics may ask "Why such a lack of black artists on your list?" which is a fair enough question - hip hop and r'n'b being huge genres with a whole gamut of records to pick from. But surely (for someone from the UK) this is intrinsically asking "Why are you not listening to music of a very specific genre, from a location miles away across the Atlantic, often made by Black Americans?". It completely discounts the question of why as a UK resident you're not taking the time to listen to music of Indian or Arabic or Polish origin etc, seeing as you're just as likely (if not more likely) to come across people of these backgrounds in day-to-day life than you are a Black American. Yes, the UK has it's own plethora of black musical styles such as grime, but it's not really an 'albums' genre.

I absolutely agree with the idea of music as escapism, of being shown a window into another world. Coming from a pretty staid suburban town, not quite near enough to London to allow regular trips, literally all music that isn't the Bluetones provides that kind of escapism. Strictly speaking minimal house (being way more popular in urban settings) is almost as foreign to me as African kuduro. In order to branch into music that doesn't speak directly to white Britishers from commuter belt market towns, I have to mentally assume a role; pretend I'm someone or somewhere else for a bit. That's what music is in a lot of cases really - the soundtrack to an imaginary film. In some cases I want Spike Lee, in others I want Mike Leigh. It takes different levels of play acting to get into that mental role as a listener; to imagine the scene and therefore create a world around oneself that will suit whatever style of music one is listening to, be it death metal, experimental electronica, Britpop or Miami bass.

I think something like hip-hop can seem a lot more exotic, and therefore maybe more impenetrable to Britishers than to Americans. I do like a lot of hiphop, but if I find myself shying away from listening to it on a regular basis, it's not because of any reason other than I find it takes a fair amount of mental work to understand the lyrics and truly soak it up. I can't read and listen to hiphop for example, or concentrate on very much at all unless I'm doing nothing else but listen. I feel like it needs my full attention, like watching an episode of the Wire or something - it doesn't work for me as wallpaper music.

I think I just realized that at least part of the reason I listen to a larger percentage of music that doesn't fit my particular demographic is that (speaking as a straight, white male) I find most straight, white males to be completely baffling.

I thought I hated Ludacris for years and then I realized I only hated him because I ~am~ him