Yesterday, Paste released its list of the 50 Best Albums Of The 2000s, and the list was topped by none other than Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise, which honestly seems like it was released way longer ago, so established has he become in the indie-rock firmament. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Radiohead’s Kid A, and Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning rounded out the top five. Full rundown after the jump, but first, a few reactions.
THE GOOD: Hey, look, Stankonia! At No. 8! Three places beneath… Bright Eyes. Sigh.
THE BAD: Instead of noting the male-white–breadiness of the list—because that is, after all, the way of Paste, and you can’t expect them to change their stripes just for the sake of a mid-autumn pageview-generation ploy—I’m going to zero in on one totally questionable choice. Namely, the selection of M.I.A. albums on the list. Arular (No. 10) and not Kala? Really? I mean, Arular is fine, but Kala is kinda next-level. Is it because of the (admittedly unfortunate) Timbaland track?
THE WHAAAA? Dear Paste fact-checkers: Not for nothing, but Radiohead’s In Rainbows was not entirely “self-released,” as you claim. I know that would screw up the “it changed everything with its revolutionary pricing methods” that serves as the angle for your gushing write-up of the record. Pity that you muffed the opportunity to write about something so (yawn) groundbreaking by regurgitating a tired, half-true spiel. MORE »
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decade-end analysis
“Paste” Makes A Very Tasteful Illinoise
pointless listmaking
“Sexy Video” Poll Proves Once Again That People On The Internet Are Confused/Confusing
In one of those online polls that makes you fear for the sexual development of Internet-enabled persons as a whole; Britney Spears’ clip for “Toxic” has been named the “Most Sexy Video” of all time by the users of the UK music-video site Muzu.tv; No. 1 on the corresponding “Least Sexy” list, meanwhile, is Madonna’s leotard-tastic “Hung Up”. In case you’re wondering just what the gender breakdown of the artists included on each list is: The “Most” list has a 6.5/3.5 female/male split (although I don’t think I’d be wrong to guess that Robert Palmer’s “Addicted To Love,” No. 10, was deemed “sexy” not because of the late blue-eyed soul singer but by his fake female backing band); the “Least” list’s split, meanwhile, is 4/6. The only artist to make both the “most” and “least” lists? Robbie Williams-spawning Britboyband Take That. (How UKrazy!) The two top tens after the jump. MORE »
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Handicapping The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Nominations: Don’t Get Ready To Pucker Up Just Yet
Kiss, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and LL Cool J lead this year’s roster of first-time nominees for Jann Wenner’s shrine to his concept of “rock and roll,” the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. This year’s nominations total 12, with returnees like the Stooges, ABBA, and Donna Summer competing with the aforementioned newbies. Which nominees are the most likely to pass muster with the shadowy group who decides these sorts of things? Our odds after the jump. MORE »
pointless listmaking
Is “Pork & Beans” Really The Third-Best Music Video Of The Past Ten Years?
Just in time for the arguing over their Top 500 Tracks Of The Decade list to die down, the folks at Pitchfork have put together another end-of-the-oughts ranking for people to nitpick—this time, a list of the 50 best music videos of the past 10 years. MORE »
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Pitchfork Counts Down The Decade, Embraces Early-’00s Nostalgia
Pitchfork’s “P2K” project completed its first installment today, with its countdown of the best singles released between 2000 and “sometime in mid-2009″ revealing its top 20. The site bequeathed its “No. 1 single of the decade” title on OutKast’s “B.O.B.”—which, as it turns out, was also No. 1 for the site’s best of 2000-2004 list from a few years back. I actually don’t have a problem with either the pick or the implied classic-rock consistency; the messy chaos of “B.O.B.,” which splatted all over the genre map when it came out at the beginning of this decade, was and remains, as the ‘Fork’s Stuart Berman writes, “a future-shocked ferocity… that just cannot be duplicated.” But it made me wonder about how well the songs from the first part of the decade had aged in the minds of writers—and, by extension, the minds of people who love arguing over every proclamation Pitchfork makes. Let’s get counting down! MORE »
pointless listmaking
Ten Bands That Should (And Ten Bands That Shouldn’t) Grace Us With A Cover Of “Yakety Sax”
I don’t know about you, but the dog days of August are making me long for some levity. And what better way to bring in some hilarity than to think about the late Boots Randolph’s delightful “Yakety Sax,” a.k.a. “that Benny Hill Show song,” a.k.a. the best way to make any YouTube clip hilarious? Noted “Yakety Sax” enthusiast Jess Harvell and I put together a pair of lists related to the song—namely, a top 10 countdown of artists who need to cover the song soon, and a counterpoint list of 10 artists who should never get within a 25-mile radius of its implied hilarity, for fear of ruining it for all time. The countdowns after the jump. MORE »
pointless listmaking
The “NME” Looks To Pop (And Crabcore) For Its Future
Apoplectic British music magazine NME has just issued its latest Future 50 list—”the 50 acts pushing things forward in 2009,” in the rag’s sorta-esteemed opinion—and one thing that’s sort of surprising to me is how pop-centric the overall list is. Sure, the top two slots are taken by Pitchfork darlings (a one-two punch of Animal Collective and The Knife), but the list also includes Lady GaGa, frequent Girls Aloud collaborators Xenomania, and the Idolator-beloved site Popjustice? Also the kids’ program Yo Gabba Gabba!, and… The Take That stage show?? Also, perhaps to goose newsstand sales by putting a little bit of the fear of God into anyone browsing the list online, the hyper-annoying, hypersexist, Hypercolored outfit 3OH!3 is at No. 41. The full list after the jump. MORE »
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The Top 30 Songs Of 2009 List Put Forth By The Listeners Of “All Songs Considered” Surely Did Not Consider All The Songs Released This Year
While I am fully aware that the NPR music-centric program All Songs Considered has its name because of the public-radio network’s news block All Things Considered, it still pained me to see the results of their reader poll for The Best Music Of 2009 So Far (Because The Music-News Well Is Dry And We Need Some Pageviews, Now, Don’t We). If Camera Obscura’s brilliant “French Navy” showing up way too low on the best-songs list was the only issue I had with it, I probably wouldn’t be posting. But two Decemberists songs in the top 10? A Lily Allen track that isn’t the unnerving “Everyone’s At It”? No Micachu/Ida Maria/Dinosaur Jr.? Not even a token No. 30 mention for Kelly Clarkson? Sigh. So, perhaps we can spend a chunk of this hazy, news-free afternoon coming up with our own rebuttal list of their rundown of best songs? And then we can all have a little blog contretemps, or at least a mix-CD exchange. The NPR list after the jump. MORE »
pointless listmaking
Consider Yourself Warned: LMFAO Is Trying To Be Everywhere, Bitch
Last month I found myself in Miami, and while I was there I noticed that a bunch of souvenir shops lining the more popular drags were stuffed with brightly colored T-shirts emblazoned with the all-caps statement I’M IN MIAMI BITCH. (Some were more gramatically incorrect than others.) Initially I ascribed this to some sort of oddly placed civic pride—hey, times are tough down there what with the condo glut and all—but in fact, it’s an extension of a song by the unfortunately named joke-hop outfit LMFAO. In an effort to boost the song’s slowly deflating chart ranking, and/or so other cities don’t feel left out, the group released versions of the track for many major metropolitan areas to iTunes this week. MORE »
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Happy Canada Day: The Two Best Pieces Of CanCon Given To Me By MuchMusic
It’s Canada Day! As people celebrate our neighbors to the north with ice-cold Molsons and even chillier responses to having bankrupted NHL teams relocate there, I thought I’d look back on the brief period 10 year ago when my cable system received the Canadian music-video channel MuchMusic, which later turned into MuchMusic USA, which then became Fuse. But I remember those early, heady days of non-Viacom-sponsored music television quite fondly, because the Toronto-based MuchMusic had something going for it that boring old American channels didn’t: CanCon regulations, which stipulated that a certain amount of programming had to be given over to acts from the homeland. Sure, this resulted in a lot of Our Lady Peace, but it was an OK enough tradeoff for the occasional video by Sloan–as well as the clips after the jump. MORE »
