Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, and Spin are given a once-over by a writer who’s contributed to many of those magazines, as well as a few others! In this installment, he looks at the new issue of Rolling Stone:
Your Boy guessed that this week’s Rolling Stone would have been the special “ha ha, our candidate won, blow it your ass if you don’t like it” edition, and as such would bear the image of the President-elect on the cover for what would have been the fourth time this year. Thus, YB wasn’t inclined to be the hundred millionth person to contribute to an ocean of commentary regarding the election.
And to be sure, the Nov. 27 issue includes “Requiem for a Maverick,” Matt Taibbi’s National Affairs column, in which he describes John McCain’s comportment in the last months of the race as such, “with Sarah Palin on his arm and Karl Rove’s cock in his mouth.” YB supposes that it’ll be a little while before “progressives” decide its okay to like McCain again, although perhaps the Senator will be in no hurry to hug up to RS after articles like this.
But Editor/Publisher Jann S. Wenner employed uncharacteristic restraint w/r/t to Obama, and instead chose as this issue’s cover centerpiece “The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.” And thank goodness for that, as YB much prefers throwing pseudonymous spitballs at the mag’s self-appointed role as popular music’s canon-keeper to finding himself agreeing with Mr. Wenner’s limousine liberal posturing. Here ‘tis, in all its terribly predictable glory.
YB will only briefly note that he suggested this spring that the mag cool it with compiling lists of the greatest guitarists and greatest guitar songs, and instead emphasize, among other things, singers. Which isn’t to say that producing a list of vocalists, typically the musician in a recording with which the average listener will best identify, is particularly bold.
Unlike May’s “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time” compendium, this list was not picked exclusively by a bunch of RS staffers and selected freelancers. According to an explanatory note therein, 178 individuals—121 artists (15 of whom are ranked on the list, and one of whom is the father of an RS staffer), 18 RS staffers, 24 music biz machers and 15 non-RS journos and academics— were asked to “list his or her favorite singer of the rock era.” (That contradicts the package’s “of all time” claim, don’t it)
Furthermore, “those ballots were recorded and weighted according to methodology developed by the accounting firm of Ernst and Young, which then tabulated and verified the results for Rolling Stone.” That kind of settles it, huh? If anyone suggests that the list reflects RS’ institutional predilections, then the imprimatur of a respected accounting firm will shut down any debate: this is true consensus, if one arrived at by music biz elites WHO are in collusion with the mag anyhow.
But! Ernst & Young also verified the mag’s 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Therein, ranked at No. 432, was Peter Wolf’s Sleepless, released in 2002. The list ranked neither any J. Geils Band records, nor Wolf’s first solo record, 1984’s Lights Out. This seemed mucho fishy to YB: it strained credulity that an album unnoticed by anyone outside Wolf’s core of diehard fans would make it into a list otherwise composed of albums that could credibly fit various definitions of “classic.” Of course, Wolf is a longtime Wenner crony, and Wenner has been known to crowbar his friends’ work into his mag’s various canon-building exercises. What’s more, the capsule review of Sleepless was probably written by Mr. Wenner, who has been known to write album reviews himself when staffers resist his whims.
Anyway, the list in this issue is apparently free of monkey business: YB can only point to Art Garfunkel, ranked at No. 88, as a possible beneficiary of Wenner’s interference. But while he’s a Wenner pal, he sang the original version of a pop-gospel standard known and loved by your grandma, your mailman and possibly your five-year old nephew, so YB won’t cry foul.
And of course, Prince is the only performer in the list’s top 30 to have debuted in the last thirty years—Bono follows two places behind at No. 32. Post-Springsteen, Boomer-approved artists like Kurt Cobain (No. 45), Bjork (No. 60), Axl Rose (No. 64), and Thom Yorke (No. 66) all place behind YB’s beloved Jeff Buckley (No. 39).
YB guesses that most of RS’ respondents who voted for Whitney Houston (No. 34) and Christina Aguilera (No. 58) and Mary J. Blige (No. 100) are of the “her music is terrible, prefabricated slop, but that bitch can SANG” variety. And Morrissey, a guy who’s been treated with near-Springsteenian levels of reverence in the United Kingdom but has been long considered by RS as far, far too removed from the mag’s preferred notions of “rock and roll” to earn its full-throated advocacy, gets at in No. 92—this is probably due to his increasing influence over the likes of the Killers, Conor Oberst, and Phil Anselmo.
But YB is most pleased to report that Steve Perry, a man who introduced Sam Cooke’s melismatic stylings to thousands of poodle-headed prom-goers while in a band that RS and fellow baby-boomer gatekeepers regarded as a particularly vile communicable disease from 1978 to 1985, is rated at No. 76. Ah, the wonders bestowed by including an unjustly maligned pop-gospel standard in the final scene in the final TV program most beloved by the petit bourgeoisie! If David Chase had gone with, say, “One on One,” then Daryl Hall would have likely appeared on the list in Perry’s stead.
But wherefore art thou, RS BFFs Sting, Eddie Vedder, Elvis Costello, Billy Joel, and Jackson Browne? The latter two pen paeans to Ray Charles (No. 2) and John Lennon (No. 5), so YB assumes that both aren’t cheesed off about not being included.
YB has made it a standard practice not to cry like a little girl that his fave artists are not included on this list or that. He’ll just say that he’d rather RS emphasize the vastness and variety of the history of music, and not continually present one canon-building exercise after another. For instance, Mr. Wenner wasn’t evidently satisfied with his pre-existing wretched pit of favor-trading, so RS presented this redundant package in 2004.
But YB’s preferences are not foremost in the minds of Mr. Wenner and his underlings. “The Greatest Singers of All Time” has been mentioned twice on Howard Stern’s show in two days, has been picked up all over the place, and is probably starting an argument in a bar somewhere as YB writes.
Well, Aretha Franklin nabbed a RS cover after all these years.
@Al Shipley: popularity is different than acceptance by a crowd that long looked down on journey and other bands of its ilk.
@Maura Johnston: Even that’s a stretch IMO. Are there really people who turned their nose up at Journey in 2006 that don’t in 2008?
YB guesses that most of RS’ respondents who voted for Whitney Houston (No. 34) and Christina Aguilera (No. 58) and Mary J. Blige (No. 100) are of the “her music is terrible, prefabricated slop, but that bitch can SANG” variety.
Actually, I’ll bet those voters don’t think those gals’ music is terrible. That’s because they’re probably different voters from the RS lifers.
If this poll is indeed as un-rigged as you say it is, then it probably contains votes by industry types and pop singers who unabashedly, and unironically, love Houston et al.
The 2003 500-album list–as suspect as aspects of it were–featured numerous albums that the RS brain trust would never have advocated, from Whitney Houston to Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope. It was pretty easy to spot which albums were voted on by the likes of, say, David Fricke and which by other non-magazine poll-respondents like, say, Clive Davis or Britney Spears.
@Al Shipley: I think Maura’s trying to pinpoint who these “people” are.
People out in the real world, who listen to pop music? No, you’re right, their opinions haven’t changed (though, thanks to that Sopranos finale, there are surely more of them).
But “people” like the staffers at Rolling Stone, who invented the term “Corporate Rock” 25 years ago and dumped on Journey (not entirely undeservedly) all through the 1980s? Yeah, I think Maura and Anonocritic are right–these are people who wouldn’t have tolerated Journey’s presence on a greatest-anything list as recently as May of 2007.
Read this exchange from Slate last December to see how Robert Christgau–not an RS guy strictly speaking but definitely an avatar for all of Wenner-era criticism–feels about Journey. Because Bob isn’t a total tool and is confident in his opinions, he actually hasn’t changed his mind about Journey (and says so, emphatically); but it’s not a stretch to imagine that his more impressionable peers softened on the band after David Chase’s endorsement.
RE: the Slate piece Herr Molanphy linked…
XGau’s “core values” = not being able to ever change his mind about anything, barring deciding that the King Sunny Ade rekkid he reviewed in 1985 should get an A rather than an A—…
He hit his teenage years around the time of the big bang of Berry, Lil Richard and Elvis and obviously his view is that “rock music” done correctly should oppose a status quo, i.e. parents, Richard Nixon, polite society. So when Journey and Styx and Boston roll around, rock music has been around for 25 years and, in the case of those acts, the kind of confrontation and otherness that Xgau’s aesthetic is completely invested in is absent. I would also think that those bands values were premised on notions of professionalism that offends him: “refinement” on the part of white musicians probably reminds him too much of-oh I don’t know- classical music and other art forms championed by highbrow types he thinks he’s different from.
Journey spoke to white teenagers who lived outside of XGau’s frame reference (Lower manhattan), were mainly concerned with drinking Budweiser and getting a piece of ass in the back of a Camaro, and were otherwise were beneath his contempt. This may also explain his metal problem.
@Anono-Critic: you “almost think” that–well, duh, that’s pretty much exactly what he’s already said.
Robert Christgau is the greatest rock critic. Deal with it.
Christgau isn’t everyone’s cup of poison, certainly. And a critic who doesn’t like Nick Drake is a hard critic for me to love. But he’s turned me on to more good music in the average year than every other music critic I’ve read combined (and I read a lot of ‘em). No one else has heard nearly as much as he has, or written about it with so much authority, wit, and utter disregard for the passing fad.
Besides, the true test of a great critic isn’t whether you always agree with him — how boring would that be? — but that he gets you examining your own likes and dislikes from a new angle, in the process maybe learning something about them or even about yourself.
Hell, he even made RS’s “Recordings” section readable for a brief while there. Now that’s heroic.
Excuse me while I cry like a little girl that my fave artist is not included on this list for a moment… But it’s really depressing to see Levon Helm on this list, realizing that Richard Manuel is nowhere to be found. I don’t think it’s any slight to Levon to say that his singing can’t possibly stack up against Richard’s. Rolling Stone should know this simple fact.
Plus… BB King #90-something? and, no Levi Stubbs? No Bon Scott? No Weird Al?
OK, feeling much better now… rant over.
No mention of how surprising it was that they gave the new Nickelback 3 and 1/2 stars?
Man, I’ll say this much: Iggy Pop’s analysis of James Brown made me glad to be a fan of both of ‘em.
And I know at least one surefire way you can tell this ballot wasn’t completely rigged: Al Green outranks Mick Jagger, even if it’s a narrow margin.
Very nice article. I’ve been a RS subscriber for a decade and I’m only 26. My father is a lifer. It was the only mag around when I grew up and I have come to use their reviews as a sort of standard ‘well-written review.’ So many maganizes these days (online and off) have terrible reviewers and writters. I haven’t seen an article as in depth and thorough as your piece in RS in years. That’s just sad!
Lately I’ve found myself favoring GQ over RS because GQ can at least pique my interest in things going on fashion wise. RS does not give any space to soon-to-be-breaking-artists. It’s a bummer because I think they have good writers. I just got so sick of the insanely one sided political coverage. They write about politics like a bully on the playground. They point and call names.
Nice piece.
@natepatrin: (though I wish Iggy had used the word “primal” where he used “primitive”, since I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant.)
People who act like The Sopranos has much of anything to do with the popularity of “Don’t Stop Believing” or Journey in general are weird.
“Robert Christgau is the greatest rock critic”
The trouble is that Xgau himself came to this conclusion almost four decades ago. Which suggests that he has created his own canon, which is then perpetuated over and over again. Fresh thinking and emerging facts threaten the hegemony he’s built up over forty years.
but I guess he backed off from the “psychedelic uncle tom” judgment around a decade ago, in a Voice essay where I believe he did not address said slur and carried on as if he thought Hendrix was great all along.
sadly for him, he no longer has the perch from which he makes his pronouncements.
I think many crits have a schoolboy crush on the guy. He’s who they want to be when they grow up. Which is odd, because he’s one of the most arrogant individuals I’ve ever been around in person.
@solidstatendc: I was always puzzled by Xgau’s dissing of Nick Drake–He haughtily said of Nick–”I’m not inclined to revere suicides”—but everyone has their blind spots.
He spends too much time on world music, too, at the expense of genres more pertinent to music “consumers.”
But he is a superlative writer, and has earned his authority.
His “perch” is secure, at msn.com