Vote for the Best Album of the Decade (from rateyourmusic.com top 50)

wow, i thought i was reading p4k's list until i saw opeth at no. 5!

kate maybe women dont post lists on RYM. Or even just dont post lists.

Exactly my point.

1) So how on earth is this at all representative of "best album of the decade"

2) why the fuck don't men listen to female artists? it's not like women have the same weird moratorium on listening to male artists.

I know, I know, like bashing my head against a brick wall. Just registering my general frustration and discontent.

edit - why the fuck don't the kind of men that post stupid crap lists to some stupid crap list website for total aspies listen to female artists.

Before someone comes and shouts at me.

I just used the word "aspie" on ILM. I am going to to boil my head.

it deserves it for saying "aspie!"

btw i might be wrong and geir can correct me, but these lists change regularly due to voting i think , so there might be more female artists in the rest of the list.

isnt there a woman in unwound? was paz on that qotsa album? i forget. Natural Snow Buildings is 1 woman 1 guy.

Madvillain vs. Ligeti

some of the groups i dont know and i have no idea who is in them.

It's a top 1000 http://rateyourmusic.com/customchart?page=1&chart_type=top&type=album&year=2000s&genre_include=1&genres=&include=both&origin_countries=&limit=none&countries=

this is basically Kid A vs Lateralus vs Leaves Turn Into You vs Geogaddi for me; voted Geogaddi as it's the one I play the most

There are a couple of female musicians on the Godspeed record I think, but yes, there are obviously a lot of great albums by female artists missing from this.

this list is terrible - I only like a handful of these albums and wouldn't call any of them BEST OF THE DECADE. calling Interpol the "Best of the Decade" seems ridiculous.

Bjork is at 73 at the moment according to that list

gillian welch and pj harvey are down at 114 and 115. I woulda had that gillian welch in my top 50 . not my fave pj harvey album though.

lotsa prog metal ,folk metal and death metal in rym lists. Bit strange seeing that amongst p4k approved stuff even if i dont care for prog metal folk metal or death metal. But those folk metal bands tend to have lots of female members. As do the goth metal bands.

Does it not just seem like glaring omissions to anyone else?

It's just odd.

And it's not like I have this weird exclusionary "I only listen to female artists" policy or something because to be honest, most of the groups I listen to the most are collaborations between female and male artists. (School of Seven Bells, Goldfrapp - I've been noticing these things since signing up for last.fm)

But I'll shut up about it, as I know that this way flamewars lie. Just disappointed. :-(

Also, on a different tack - for a "best of the naughties" that top 10 really is slanted towards 2000/2001.

Kate did you look through the top 1000?

With a top 50 like that, why would I bother?

the digger you deep the more gems you find you like?

theres loads of jeff style metal on RYM. Im surprised since isnt RYM the site Geir used to always use?

the correct link is

top 1000 albums of 2000s
http://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/2000s

the women artists are even further down in that one!!

haha look whats no1 in 2009 http://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/2009

wtf @ that Flaming Lips album cover

30 Unwound Leaves Turn Inside You (2001)

this is probably my favorite indie rock album of the decade and i was hoping it'd show up on pfork or other music mags lists

Here is the top 1000 of the 2000s as voted by UK Users

Here is the top 1000 of the 2000s as voted by US Users

Some differences there.

wait, the UK rates Tool more than the US does???

but the uk hates wilco

lol @ no 29 in the UK one

A disproportionate share of the music I like best is/was made by men, or primarily by men. Not all of it by any means, but a lot. Dunno why this is, but it seems absurd to view my taste as a direct expression of internalized sexism or anything like that. People listen to music for all sorts of reasons, but I imagine that "relating to it" figures way up there for most folks. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that a lot of men relate strongly to music made by men. Perhaps more so for guys who spend a lot of time on the internet making lists? I dunno...

Anyway, DOPE THRONE

here's the thing, Kate -- if you spend some time on RYM, you'll see that plenty of women are highly rated and well loved by the RYM community. so the question is this: why are so few current female artists represented in the very highest ranks of the list, while so many female artists are rated quite highly elsewhere?

I think the answer has a lot to do with controversy. people (i.e. aspie men on the internet) take female artists seriously enough to place them on a pedestal, pat themselves on the back and say "ya, we respect the wimmin," but not seriously enough to hotly debate their place in the canon, write frantic 5-star reviews about why x female artist is more groundbreaking than y female/male artist, et cetera. to take an artist seriously is to passionately stan for them with insincere 5-star reviews and to call all your internet friends to your side on message boards when someone dares to challenge their greatness. but female artists are kept apart from this fierce debate, and therefore they don't inspire quite enough fanboy fervor to trouble the upper ranks.

it's like sports: men's teams tend to inspire front-page news articles and foaming-at-the-mouth editorials, whereas women's teams end up in the Lifestyle section where they're interviewed politely about motherhood and cosmetics. cf. the load of angry 1-star reviews about Meriwether Post Pavilion and the relative lack of fierce jabs directed at, say, Aerial. women aren't outright hated: they're just protected from serious, two-sided discourse and serious, potentially reputation-solidifying controversy... and that can be just as troubling as outright hatred, sometimes.

Maybe that's generally true, but like, CocoRosie to thread.

there are always exceptions, yeah. but I'm mostly talking about the very very top echelon of artists in the RYM canon, and Cocorosie (and even Joanna Newsom, for that matter) don't really occupy that position. they're open to controversy, yeah, but they inevitably fail to come out on top, for reasons I don't totally understand.

if it's not true that the albums with the largest number of positive reviews are generally the ones with the largest number of negative reviews, then part of my argument falls flat, to be fair.

Yeah, I totally agree in a general sense (with yr xpost). Actually, the thing that surprises me more is that like Tori freaking Amos doesn't make the cut! Her fans are fucking crazy dedicated to her, and they seem exactly like the sort who'd spend time discussing and defending her on the internet (if you'll grant the wild assumption). Maybe not on RYM? Or maybe the votes are split on her recent stuff? I dunno.

tbqf i think a lot of men simply don't "get" female artists (maybe because they don't try), which leads to music collections with 99% male artists and cracks about lilith fair or whatever. maybe male listeners just aren't as empathetic in their listening? i dunno.

Something I've noticed about ratings sites (like IMDb, f'rinstance, where I've spent some time) is that they often skew heavily towards male users. IMDb helpfully includes demographic breakdowns of its ratings, and they're pretty illuminating. I've also noticed that dedicated horror and metal fans tend to be very vocal, social and active -- hell, they're often/usually the same group. Finally, a pronounced anti "girly shit" sentiment is more common on such sites than I'd like to think. Maybe specifically among the horror/metal demo, maybe just among (internet) dudes in general. I dunno. Anyway, I suspect it all combines to give us perfect storms like that RYM list.

rym only seems to break it down by country. Dunno if theres any less female artists on the uk or us lists than the general one.

but id bet that there's more males voting than females. So perhaps thats why theres such a difference in female acts. Perhaps we can also ask why dont more ladies vote in these things?

generally ladies seem to spend their time more wisely than we do

because they generally seem less interested in obsessing about lists and rankings and record store completism? there are no female artists on the list for the same reason that there are relatively few females on ilm. this is not some crazy new phenomenon.

xp

otmotmotm

Why is ILM almost exclusively male?

well what im saying is that its not just guys who arent voting for female acts.

Yeah, but I think it's mostly guys, and the few women who do participate are probably the ones who feel more comfortable in a largely male-defined social culture.

nah, i think there are just some women who like some of the same things as guys and they'll be part of the scene regardless of the gender breakdown. i don't think comfort level necessarily comes into play.

Maybe that's a better way to say it. Happiness in vs. comfort in...

Do think that the social texture of ILX would be very different if it was mostly women, even if the point of focus was still music crit.

enjoyment of vs. comfort in. or whatever...

considering that list, the type of music that the rym crowd seems to like, the proggish/metal side of indie - I mean, it's not like there are tons of women making this type of music, and it's not like there are any bestofthedecade classics that they seem to be ignoring just because a female made it. bjork is on there, and that sorta makes sense.

if the rym list was nothing but pop albums and it was still 100% masculine, that'd be weird and suspicious. but that's not the case.

furthermore, plenty of men listen to female artists. have you noticed how much ILM loves Kate Bush? or Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie? What about MIA, or Annie, or Sleater Kinney or... c'mon. At least try to think about things for a minute before getting up on some stick-horse abt it.

But this is what I'm saying! It's not as if women don't get props here. So why don't they ever make it onto these canonical lists?

It is *so* discouraging. It's like... honestly, it's like you start to feel invisible after a while. It's so frustrating.

Some of those artists are popular on RYM as well:

The Dreaming #8 for 1982
Hounds of Love #3 for 1985

Dig Me Out #25 for 1997

but but but, this "canonical list" is just compiled by a bunch of random dudes, nothin' canonical about it imo.

Ian (re: Kate),

Thing is, ILM, as a community, is pretty PC in its expressions of taste. It's self-policing wr2 diversity, sensitivity, cultural representation, etc. Even so, its collective taste often skews white, male and indie/dance. RYM aggregates are a less "careful" summary of group taste, thus maybe all the more depressing -- though it's probably a very different group.

Just taking a quick skim through the new albums (didn't count reissues) that I bought in the 2000s, and the grand total is 104 albums that have a significant female presence (either singing or writing the majority of songs on the album) out of 275 albums (and loaded into iTunes).

On the other hand, of those 275 albums, only seven are on this list.

RYM maybe needs more ilxors and females on it then.

Or, I'm only 37% not sexist. Weirdly enough, I did notice that (sorting by album title), the female artists are clustered near the beginning of the alphabet and at the end of the alphabet. Through the first 40 or so albums, about 75% were female; then the last 20 or so albums are also disproportionately female.

Yeah, I've done, like, almost nothing on RYM, though I do have an account somewhere gathering dust. I realized pretty quickly that I don't actually care what most other people think of my music, nor do I care what they think of theirs; I think I actually started reading ILX just a few months before trying to get into RYM (because of DJ Martian, I think), and then I was like, man, fuck this, it's taking time away from listening to music that I like, and I have too much shit to worry about cataloging it all properly. If I had an intern, I'd make them do it.

It's funny, I enjoy reading lists and voting on polls, but not compiling a list. It's too damn hard to choose!

I enjoy constructing rules more than I enjoy trying to come up with "the best." It's like, to get all hippy bullshit, what's the best color? What's the best tool? Well, best for what? The dissection of criteria is almost always more interesting; listening to music more interesting still.

but lists can be fun (as long as im not compiling them)

This is a depressing list. I can't bring myself to vote for any of the metal albums, they're all so dire. I'll probably vote for Coil or something.

Also wtf is that Immolation record doing there? Decent in a meat-and-potatoes DM way but I am puzzled why anyone would rate this album so highly.

you don't like Opeth, Siegbran?

the metal albums i like in this list are :
Tool Lateralus (2001)
Agalloch The Mantle (2002)
Isis Panopticon (2004)
Electric Wizard Dopethrone (2000)
Converge Jane Doe (2001)(i know its not exactly metal but half of its fans are metalheads)
Neurosis A Sun That Never Sets (2001)
Boris Boris at Last -Feedbacker- (2003)
Isis Oceanic (2002)
Ulver Perdition City (2000)
Neurosis The Eye of Every Storm (2004)
Agalloch Ashes Against the Grain (2006)
Mastodon - Leviathan

and if they count ATD-I, Qotsa.

Howard Shore The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

I have not seen one person ever rep for this anywhere.

the music when Frodo and co are going down the river and passing those giant statues of the kings is fiyah

I have not seen one person ever rep for this anywhere.

There are a lot of soundtrack fans out there. They realize their taste is not very "hip" and they usually aren't too profilic about it, but they do like those albums. If they didn't exist, then soundtrack albums consisting of actual score music wouldn't have existed either, as there wouldn't have been a marked for it.

you don't like Opeth, Siegbran?

last guy to spread the rumor that Siegbran liked Opeth still missing btw

:(

i needed to take a six months break from opeth because it was all getting a tad too much. the latest album never quite clicked with me despite repeat listens and they just seemed to be showing signs of hitting the wall creatively - apart from the occasional flourish here and there like the circusy synth breakdown in 'lotus eater'. but... i reckon i'm ready to brace it all again. might try and ease myself back into it via my arms, your hearse. now that's an album.

some great albums on this list by the way.

but it just seems to be getting progressively pointless to put my weight behind the same old albums in these polls. i could stick up for YHF for the billionth time, but i get the idea people know where i stand.

silly to poll it, but as it's there i voted 'a sun that never sets', for which i do not get the hate

^^^yeah, that is one awesome record!

when that alarm-call bit kicks in about 4mins into 'from the hill' it actually becomes unreasonable to dislike the album

less intense or flat-out sublime than TSIB (which is my favourite record of the 90's authored by someone other than cardiacs or mansun) but retains a really menacing, thrilling, tragic sensibility all the way through.

there's hate for a sun that never sets? from whom? burn them!

Just revisted The Ape Of Naples a few times again and that's easily my favourite on this list.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

YHF

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

This proves it for once and for all. Madlib and Boards of Canada have the best albums of the decade.

I voted Madlib.

for once brian is happy.

geogaddi is ok but best of the decade? apparently it has been even lousier than i thought.

That's ILM for you

Didn't realise anyone had actually listened to that album more than a couple of times.

5 votes for Agalloch, cool.

I'd probably have voted for 'Relationship of Command' on this list, but the list doesn't contain any of my favourite albums of the decade.

Got down to no.695: The Knife 'Silent Shout' to find anything which might have a chance of getting into a top 10 I might make (not that I'm going to.)

5 votes for Agalloch, cool.

8 actually in total.

geogaddi is ok but best of the decade? apparently it has been even lousier than i thought.

― alex in mainhattan, Thursday, October 29, 2009 7:27 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

I think it's just that the top 50 RYM albums suck.

(Coil, Unwound, Ligeti excepted)