Topic: Pitchfork's 200 best albums of the 2010s

[Johnboy]

uh oh, here we go

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/

there's gold in them hills but I dunno if I can be arsed digging

[chveik]

no Swans in there,  dickheads

[holyzombiejesus]

2 Vampire Weekend though.

[sevendaughters]

Wu Lyf! ahahahahahahah! they were a joke played on the press to see if they'll like any old shit.

[peanutbutter]

Pitchfork used to be really good at these contemporary lists. A top 100 songs for the year list would be a pretty great sampler of that year. Something went way off following the Conde Nast purchase though.
By their recent standards this one is okay

[sevendaughters]

well I don't agree with much of it but it's an interesting document of their rebrand and maybe a better marker of the culture when people look at it 10 years from now. some interesting insertions such Chromatics won in 2012, now outside the top 100. i'd say Ariel Pink's worst release of the decade trumps 95% of this list though.

[sweeper]

Pretty much correct on the top ten. Those Frank Ocean records are wonderful things.

[BlodwynPig]

Pretty much correct on the top ten. Those Frank Ocean records are wonderful things.

Beige.

Wot no Beatles or Elvis or Dylan

Ha ha ha

[purlieu]

I own nine of these.
Around 25 that I've previously owned and got rid of because I didn't really get into them.
About as many I've heard and didn't like.

I'm not really the audience Pitchfork is aiming at these days.

[sweeper]

I'd say there was too much guitar music on this list. In fact, any list with any guitar music on it at all at this point in the 21st century probably has limited street cred.

At least fucking IDLES aren't no. 1. I'm going to put money on them being top of every other similar list. Jesus Christ.

 

[sevendaughters]

that's the thing though. 'street cred' isn't really synonymous with emotional honesty. i've accepted that i'm past it in the demo of p4k but there are some clear oversights purely based on it being a very guitar-centric/blokecentric enterprise. that's fine if you want to reorientate listmaking to include those historically overlooked, i ain't mad. and i'm not talking about the lo-fi shitstained music i like; i mean records they have given super reviews to that now are in the dustbin of time. fuck if Berman had died in 2013 and Purple Mountains was his swansong i doubt he'd get in (he's barely there as it is) which is kind of messed up.

[buttgammon]

Rolling Stone for thirtysomethings. Nah.

[Brundle-Fly]

I had thirteen albums on there. Three from the top ten. Oo, get me. I couldn't say if this was a good or a bad list because I haven't heard 95% of the albums. Even if this list was made in my heyday, I still would not have heard about 75 % of the albums.

It's a bit suspect to dismiss a whole album list like this because surely, unless you're the ghost of John Peel, how could you possibly judge it so?

[jobotic]

Skimming through that I think I've heard of about one in ten and haven't seen any I actually have.

Sad to see Clive Dunn didn't make it.

[Cardenio I]

Nice to see DJ Koze's Knock Knock & Tribe Called Quest's swansong make unexpected appearances.

Don't know how they could possibly overlook album I like and include album I hate though.

[sevendaughters]

just whipped through and divided into 4 piles - LOVE, FINE, HATE, NOT HEARD

FINE and HATE (an overreaction, I only really didn't like a handful) were tied on 73 apiece
NOT HEARD was on 47.
I only really LOVED seven of them.

I do feel that two albums by The 1975 are two too many and Falco's dismissal of them as the new Living in a Box is probably fair.

[Cuellar]

Pretty NA-centric innit.

[alan nagsworth]

I, too, am furious that this list of things compiled by a big bunch of people does not match my singular personality to a certain unclassifiable degree.

[Egyptian Feast]

I'm not sure what I expected from a Pitchfork top 200 of the decade, but I was surprised I had so many from the list - eighteen, including four from the top 10 (Channel Orange, D'Angelo, Kendrick and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - the last of which I admittedly picked up for 25p in a charity shop and have never played). It's reminded me of another dozen or so I've been meaning to listen to, so it wasn't a total waste of time like these lists usually are. No place for Swans at all, though?

Interesting that the only reason I never heard the number 1 album is that he made it a pain in the arse to purchase a physical copy (didn't you have to buy it with a style mag at some fancy clothes shop or am I remembering it wrong?) and I forgot all about it after a while. Never even thought to pinch it off Soulseek. Fucked up there, didn't you Ocean? Thought you could forget all about fifty quid man and his disposable income, maybe attract some more aesthetically appealing punters, you know, the ones that rarely spend any money on music because they have better things to spend their money on, like perhaps a single t-shirt from that shop your album was available in for 5 minutes? It's easier to buy my CDs and I never check my email. Well, I'm pinching it now and you only have yourself to blame.

[studpuppet]

Top 200 albums? Fuck that. I don't think I've listened to 200 albums in my lifetime.

[sevendaughters]

i think this has been a really great decade for songs. not singles, because the single is sort of dead and been replaced by the video trailer. albums i think are thinner on the ground, partly because the auteurist aspect of crafting the album is out of the window more than ever. there's a lot more tasteful music around, cool music, stuff that sounds radio-ready and it's free on bandcamp. you don't get the equivalent of Ringo Starr's 7th solo album so much anymore.

[SteveDave]

I've got 8 of them. Most of them I've never heard of because I'm not cool or hips.

I also fail to believe that anyone's sat through a complete Rihanna LP without losing the will to live.

[Johnboy]

I own 5 of them - Fleet Foxes, Radiohead, Bowie, Beach House, Kate Bush

borrowed 1 from a mate and ripped it to mp3 - Gil Scott Heron

streamed 2 of them  - Tame Impala, King Krule

no Field Music, nah, that's not right

The lists they have of 200 songs from 80s, 90s etc are easier to navigate, you can pick up some gems that way

[holyzombiejesus]

I, too, am furious that this list of things compiled by a big bunch of people does not match my singular personality to a certain unclassifiable degree.

Can't see anyone saying that.
Although, am aghast that there's no Nick Cave in there.

Just counted and physically own(ed) 26 of the 200 but there's a massive chunk of the rest I've never even heard of. Also, the Burial one is an EP.

[buttgammon]

I've heard 41 of these and didn't even like about half of them. This really has been the decade in which I've become really out of touch.

[peanutbutter]

Just counted and physically own(ed) 26 of the 200 but there's a massive chunk of the rest I've never even heard of. Also, the Burial one is an EP.

A 30 minute EP, Whack World is like 15 minutes long. Pretty bizarre that Whack World got #38 though, that'll be the kind of thing that'll be funny to look back on in a decade.
Weird how these lists can vary vs the year on year ones. Be The Cowboy was their album of the year last year but 5 albums from 2018 are ahead of it here.


No Swans seems like a weird oversight that probably highlights the kind of things their permanent staff ignore more strongly than anything else.  Things like Wu Lyf being included seem like they're more about trying to retain consistency with earlier lists they've done than an actual sincere opinion from right now too.

[sevendaughters]

Swans *clap hand emoji* are *again* problematic

[The Culture Bunker]

I've got six of them, not listened to any of the others. I've never really been "in touch" with modern pop even back in my teen years, so I'm actually surprised the figure was as high as six. I suppose you can get a fairly decent handle on my pop leanings from then: 1975x2, M83, Chromatics, Paramore, Weyes Blood, Tame Impala.

[Crabwalk]

Plenty of my favourites on there which means it's an objectively decent list. Especially good to see Destroyer's Kaputt and Jessica Pratt's On Your Own Love Again included, as they're stone cold classics that aren't widely enough known.

Ariel Pink's CANCELLATION (like Michael Gira's) alone can account for the absence of For Today, surely?

[alan nagsworth]

Wait what happened with Ariel Pink?