On the more positive side, Loveless is absolutely fine at #1. Seems the most Pitchfork album to go for. I never expected OK Computer in the top spot so #3 is pretty good. The top 6 are convincing choices and I’d say putting Exile in Guyville really high is an interesting in a good way choice. Nice to see Baduizm and Rid of Me high up as well. Ditto If you are Feeling Sinister.
Well, I agree with most of the complaints that have been expressed so far (namely jazz and international music being underrepresented and of course the complete absence of metal), though I have to add I'm reasonably happy with the hip hop inclusions quantity-wise and quality-wise. I don't think I saw Doggystyle or Stress: The Extinction Agenda anywhere (I'm going by memory, so I could be wrong), but you can't fit everything in 150 spots, I'd say they got it right for the most part. _________________ Bob Dylan Charles Mingus
Honestly don’t mind it too much as someone who pays little to no attention to Pitchfork generally, some real great stuff on there in surprising positions.
Small bit I haven’t heard and will have to get to at some stage.
And Rhythm Nation 1814 is where it’s at with Janet, she’s got a couple of quality albums though that I’m more than happy grooving to.
Must have a sconce at their song list next. _________________
Myself and a colleague tried to guess the top ten before we looked. We were allowed to name ten albums, and gave ourselves two mins to write them down.
Of the ten we named, six were in the top ten (Miseducation; OK Computer; Nevermind; 36 Chambers; Homogenic; The Velvet Rope) and another two came in at #11 and #12 (Dummy; Aquemini).
Pitchfork is crazy predictable these days. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
I thought it was fairly good too. I'm still lost as to how I'd never even heard of it (and, truly, I don't think I'd ever heard a single song from it). I'm surprised "Got 'til It's Gone" was a major single (apparently?). It's borderline a beat with a Q-Tip verse. There's a really nice run at the end of the record (last quarter or so) that makes it though. Good stuff. Somehow didn't feel overlong despite being a lengthy record.
My favourite Dilla beat.
I'm shocked that people were previously unaware of The Velvet Rope - it's an absolute classic. It was nailed on for their top ten, particularly in the wake of the recent critical reappraisal of Janet's oeuvre (the recent documentary, her induction into the Rock Hall, various articles and podcasts basically all reaffirming her status as a pop icon - there was a Guardian article covering her best songs a while back, and her ten #1 singles have an average score of 8/10 and plenty of deserved praise in Tom Breihan's ongoing series of articles The Number Ones over at Stereogum, which is a crazy hit rate). It's currently far, far too low on my own 1990s chart (which hasn't been updated in years), and I'm fairly sure it's featured on at least one past iteration of my overall. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
I'm shocked that people were previously unaware of The Velvet Rope - it's an absolute classic.
I don't think people have been unaware of it so much as they just haven't heard more than one or two tracks from it...?
The long version of that statement is that the late 90s were the Worst Years Ever for centrally-controlled homogenous radio formatting, especially in the USA due to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that allowed Clear Channel and other big corporations to buy up all the radio stations and put them on computerized playlists and national syndication. As advertising revenues went up-up-up, the number of actual different songs you were hearing went down, down, down. So, if you listened to "classic rock radio" or "alternative rock radio," you simply were never going to hear an R&B album, no matter how interesting or even groundbreaking it happened to be. The Velvet Rope was tagged as an R&B album, so in order to hear it you either had to watch MTV or switch to a completely different radio station.
And the worse it became, the more people started looking for alternatives, some of which came with their own set of problems. That's how we got Napster, "tape trees," In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, the iTunes store, digital satellite radio, and ultimately, streaming services. The amazing thing is that radio (or what's left of it) hasn't really changed since then, other than that some stations have given up on music altogether to go all-news or (mostly right-wing) talk-only.
This is sorta what I meant earlier when I wrote that "we could argue about why" we might expect that a critics' list for the 90s is likely to be more diverse than a fans'/listeners' list. And I'm just as guilty as anyone of not seeking out music from other genres in the 90s, if not my whole life — if you don't have people like DJs and music critics (or web-based chartmaking communities) nudging you in that direction, and instead all the nudging is being done by corporations who are mostly just trying to stabilize their revenue streams, this is what happens.
Still, The Velvet Rope did sell a lot of records and win a ton of awards, so it worked out OK for Janet Jackson herself at least.
Pitchfork. Scaruffi. Blah...blah...blah...these people and their over publicized opinions mean nothing to me. My opinion, and your opinion mean more than any pompous "Take me seriously, because I do this for a living" hack will ever matter in my world. _________________ May we all get to heaven
'Fore the devil knows we're dead...
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