Examples of Music Writers Who I’m Pretty Sure Aren’t Part-Time Buddhists
Rob Sheffield
Back in 2004, on one of my ever-exciting trips to the local Borders, I wandered past a nondescript black wooden shelf when I happened to discover a revised edition of the Rolling Stone Album Guide. Never having found the previous editions particularly useful, curiosity nevertheless got the better of me, and I proceeded, with a healthy skepticism, to thumb through it. Some of the artist reviews and star ratings appeared to have simply been reprinted from earlier editions, but several were brand new, many penned by a certain “R.S.,” which, as it turned out, did not stand for Rolling Stone (although the reviewer in question might have wished that it did).
Rob Sheffield strikes me as the kind of music writer who can often condense common cultural experiences into knowing, insightful, grin-inducing little bits. I would say that he possesses a gift for witty bon mots, he has a facility for expanding on and elaborating on material that might be considered overly familiar, and he cuts to the essence of certain recording artists’ appeal in a way that is relatable and humorous.
I might also say that he kind of comes across as … arrogant. Sometimes, I just want to slap the guy Three Stooges-style.
For instance, in the 2004 guide, he tosses off amusing nuggets such as characterizing Oasis’ Gallagher brothers as two Mancunians who “didn’t seem like they could count to twenty without eating their shoes,” or describing Creedence Clearwater Revival as “the only Bay Area band with a drummer who didn’t suck.” But for every hit, I feel like there’s a nasty miss. In a way, even his hits are misses, since they often involve him saying something gratuitously mean and dismissive (like the above comment about CCR).
Having panned, in his updated review of Elton John’s discography, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (an album that I and many other fans of ‘70s rock seem to enjoy quite a bit), Sheffield relishes the chance to throw in another jibe at that very same release later on in the guide, while panning Oasis’s Be Here Now (an album that I and many other fans of ‘90s rock might not enjoy quite so much, but let’s save that discussion for another day), describing the notorious follow-up to (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? as, “like Captain Fantastic, a concept album all about how long the songs are.” Sort of funny – because “long songs” isn’t much of a concept, get it? – except there’s just one problem: the songs on Captain Fantastic aren’t, as far as I can tell, particularly long, even by Elton John’s standards (the three longest clocking in at 6:45, 6:15, and 5:46, respectively). Unless I missed something, is this album even well-known in the rock community for being particularly bloated and indulgent, the way that, for example, Guns ‘n’ Roses’s Use Your Illusion I & II is? I mean, if you’re going to throw darts, you better at least be accurate.
[Disclaimer: Despite my best efforts to track down a copy of the 2004 edition, I have not been able to do so, and thus I have resorted to paraphrasing a few of the above quotes from memory. I suspect that Rolling Stone may have subsequently eliminated all traces of that edition from the earth, perhaps feeling that Sheffield’s hot takes have, in the intervening years, become a little too hot for the magazine’s comfort?]
To demonstrate the full yin and yang of Sheffield’s style, allow me to discuss, if I may, his entry on Pink Floyd (the exact text of which I did manage to find online).
In the introductory paragraph, he describes Pink Floyd’s most ubiquitous albums as “high-tech art-rock classics … memorized in their entirety by generations of stoners who used the original LP covers as spliff-rolling tray tables,” and describes Dark Side of the Moon in particular as “the sonic equivalent of one of those 3-D placemats where you can see Jesus’ eye move.” Never mind that I’m a massive Pink Floyd fan who has never smoked marijuana; I know what he’s going after, I’m into it.
He suggests that Wish You Were Here is his favorite Floyd album, writing, “It’s not as famous as Dark Side or The Wall, but Wish tops them both because the special effects have so much emotional resonance, mourning lost innocence in the spirit of male camaraderie that was always the band’s most underrated strength.” Hmmm. Yeah. That was kind of an underrated strength of Pink Floyd’s. I had never really thought about Wish You Were Here in that way. Thanks Rob Sheffield! When I read that kind of observation, I’m tempted to really open up my heart to this man. He sounds like my kind of dude.
And then whoa, he pulls out the dagger. Sheffield dismisses Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother as “a couple of miserable prog albums” and More and Obscured By Clouds as “dull film soundtracks.” As someone who actually enjoys More, Atom Heart Mother, and Obscured By Clouds a great deal (look, Ummagumma was a “transitional” album, although I will defend “The Narrow Way” and sections of the live disc), I find these evaluations laughable. It’s like his goal is to tell the reader, “You don’t need to bother with these albums; I did that for you, and why would I be wrong?”
Later he derides Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell as “a couple new albums that nobody listened to.” Here’s the thing. I find those albums’ presence in the Pink Floyd discography somewhat regrettable myself; they seem like they would have been better released as Gilmour solo albums (ironically, I prefer On An Island to either of them). However, to say that “nobody” listened to them strikes me as inaccurate. They sold by the truckload. Classic rock radio played certain tracks nonstop, whether they deserved that kind of exposure or not. I have met many a casual Pink Floyd fan who would list those albums as among their favorites, even though they are aware that those albums weren’t the product of the “classic Floyd line-up.” I suspect Rob Sheffield thinks that good music writing is turning his own personal take into “the” take.
But it’s with the Waters-dominated years where I feel like Sheffield really cranks up the obnoxiousness:
Animals was just a laser show looking for a soundtrack. If there’s one ironclad rule of rock & roll, it’s that songs about pigs are always lame. The Wall was Waters’ big autobiographical rock opera, the tale of a sensitive musician oppressed by the cold cruel world, including but not restricted to his wife, his mother, his teachers, their wives, the government, the bleeding hearts and artists, and chicks in general. If you went to high school in the Eighties, you probably recall The Wall fondly. But if you go back and try listening to “Waiting for the Worms,” “Run Like Hell” or “Young Lust,” you may be aghast at how The Wall sucks much worse than you remember—the music is just tossed-off atmospherics, and Rog never shuts up. Still, it’s a piece of history, and there are a few good songs: “Comfortably Numb,” a hymn for adolescents already nostalgic over their lost youth; “Hey You,” a rewrite of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain”; and “Nobody Home,” which never gets played on the radio but holds up as the album’s most touching moment. (Even when Waters complains about “the obligatory Hendrix perm”—didn’t anyone tell him Jimi’s hair could do that naturally?)
The Wall was the last croak of vintage Floyd. A Collection of Great Dance Songs and Works were pointless “hits” collections from a band that disdained hits, and The Final Cut was basically a mediocre Waters solo album of antiwar rants. He can’t sing, by the way.
Yeah, and he’s ugly too! What is this, the schoolyard playground? At the very end of the piece, he finds one last opportunity to dump on Roger Waters in his evaluation of the best-of Echoes, which includes “one unbelievably bad song from The Final Cut.” Wow. “Unbelievably bad”? That must be pretty bad. The reason I have a hard time believing how bad that song is (and the song in question actually has a name: “The Fletcher Memorial Home”) is because I don’t actually think it’s a particularly bad song at all (and neither does David Gilmour, for what it’s worth). What is the point of making a statement like that? Is it so that Sheffield can say to himself, “Thank God I’ve never embarrassed myself in front of millions of people like that loser Roger Waters has”? And lord knows, there are plenty of reasons why someone might want to complain about Roger Waters, but at least the guy got off his ass and created something. What did Rob Sheffield do? Make his buddies in the Rolling Stone writer’s lounge chuckle?
So, I like Sheffield’s writing … when he’s not insulting artists. His writing reeks of “I’m cool because I like this; you’re lame if you like that.” At times I wonder if he’s suffering from some horrible curse where he’s forever stuck being fifteen years old. Reading Rob Sheffield is like somebody slowly making love to me and poking me with a lit cigarette at the same time. I don’t know, maybe that’s your thing.
See, I don’t want to take issue with Sheffield’s writing just because I disagree with his opinion of Pink Floyd’s catalog. Some hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool Pink Floyd superfan gushing over their entire oeuvre and giving every album five stars would not be useful to me either. I truly believe, in a more impartial sense, that there’s something generally immature about the way he shares his opinions. It’s like he wanted to use the Rolling Stone Album Guide as an excuse to write funny essays that happened to be about music, not essays about music that happened to be funny. I find his “takes” on well-worn discographies to be fresh, illuminating, and amusing, but also alienating, glib, and dismissive – and not entirely accurate either. I didn’t go to high school in the ’80s, and yet somehow, I really like The Wall. Whoops!
Freakin’ Rob Sheffield. He’s so close to the kind of writing I like, without actually being that kind of writing. These days, if I find myself reading stories on the Rolling Stone website at all (which has not been terribly often), I just try to avoid the Rob Sheffield ones outright. A couple of years ago, I decided to be bold, roll the dice, take a chance, and dare to read his “sneak preview” of the 50th anniversary edition of The White Album, but alas, I got burned. In the midst of an otherwise enthusiastic, enjoyable breakdown of the newly released outtakes, Sheffield felt the need to drop this while discussing “Sour Milk Sea”:
A great George highlight from the Esher tapes—“Sour Milk Sea” didn’t make the cut for the album, but he gave it to Liverpool pal Jackie Lomax who scored a one-shot hit with it. (It definitely deserved to rank ahead of “Piggies,” which remains the weakest track on any version of this album.)
Well, I’m glad we’ve got that settled. Ladies and gentlemen, Rob Sheffield has finally managed to definitively establish what thousands of late-night dorm room conversations have failed to do: “Piggies” is the weakest song on The White Album! I’ve heard all sorts of suggestions for this dubious honor (“Wild Honey Pie,” “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road,” “Revolution #9”), but honestly, until Sheffield said so, I’ve never heard anyone suggest “Piggies.” I like “Piggies”! And what’s with this man’s irrational hatred for all songs about pigs? Was he molested as a child while being forced to read Charlotte’s Web or something?
My main point is this: the problem with simply letting an entertaining but unpredictably opinionated writer run rampant in an album guide is that … well, it lessens the value of the guide as a guide. I can’t recommend it to people. And that kind of writing also shows little respect for, say, other views and opinions. If I’m someone who happens to like that album, and I’m reading Rob Sheffield say something along of lines of “That album sucks,” it doesn’t make me dislike that album; it just makes me dislike Rob Sheffield! He is not succeeding as a guide. He’s telling me that my taste is “lame.” As I said regarding Pauline Kael, I’ve got enough people criticizing me in my life; I don’t need some music reviewer to sit there and criticize me too.
Robert Christgau (Or the Wikipedia Editor Who Keeps Quoting Him?)
Somebody at Wikipedia must be a relative of Robert Christgau’s, because that’s the only way I can explain how the “Release and Reception” segment of every Wikipedia article on a major rock album, almost without fail, features an excerpt from either a then-contemporary Robert Christgau review from the Village Voice, or a comment from Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies, published in 1981.
Now I don’t know about everybody else, but I have spent the past fifteen years of my Wikipedia-fueled existence promptly ignoring these excerpts. Few music geeks in my orbit consider Christgau some sort of “authority” on late 20th century rock (and its associated genres), and when I’ve asked Boomers if they ever considered him such an “authority” back in the day, they’ve basically told me, “Uh, no, not really.”
So, Wikipedia: what gives?
Since I’ve never read this supposed Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies book that Wikipedia keeps quoting from, and since I’m not inclined to actually acquire a copy, I’ve decided to look up random ‘70s albums on Wikipedia and quote a few choice samples:
Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
Robert Christgau was less enthusiastic in Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), feeling he could not take the band’s horror-themed music seriously enough to appreciate it as anything other than “camp”, noting that the title cut is especially “screamworthy”. However, he did note that the band does take musical heaviness to “undreamt-of extremes”.
Thick as a Brick (Jethro Tull)
Village Voice critic Robert Christgau disliked the album, calling it “the usual shit” from the band: “rock (getting heavier), folk (getting feyer), classical (getting schlockier), flute (getting better because it has no choice)”.
Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd)
In Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau found its lyrical ideas clichéd and its music pretentious, but called it a “kitsch masterpiece” that can be charming with highlights such as taped speech fragments, Parry’s saxophone, and studio effects which enhance Gilmour’s guitar solos.
Band on the Run (Wings)
Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote in 1981: “I originally underrated what many consider McCartney’s definitive post-Beatles statement, but not as much as its admirers overrate it. Pop masterpiece? This? Sure it’s a relief after the vagaries of Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway.” He praised the title track and the “Afro-soul” introduction to “Mamunia”, calling them “the high points“. Christgau ultimately awarded the album a C+ rating, indicating “a not disreputable performance, most likely a failed experiment or a pleasant piece of hackwork”.
A Night at the Opera (Queen)
Robert Christgau, writing in The Village Voice, felt that the album “doesn’t actually botch any of a half-dozen arty-to-heavy ‘eclectic’ modes … and achieves a parodic tone often enough to suggest more than meets the ear. Maybe if they come up with a coherent masterwork I’ll figure out what that more is.”
Ramones (Ramones)
Reviewing that same month in The Village Voice, Robert Christgau said that, while the power of the band’s music draws from “fairly ominous sources” like Nazi imagery and brutality, he cannot deny the “sheer pleasure” of the music: “For me, it blows everything else off the radio: it’s clean the way the Dolls never were, sprightly the way the Velvets never were, and just plain listenable the way Black Sabbath never was.”
News of the World (Queen)
For The Village Voice in 1977, Robert Christgau said that one side of the album is devoted to “the futile rebelliousness of the doomed-to-life losers (those saps!) (you saps!) who buy and listen”, while the other is devoted to songs about indecent women.
Marquee Moon (Television)
Christgau, in The Village Voice, claimed Verlaine’s “demotic-philosophical” lyrics could sustain the album alone, as could the guitar playing, which he said is as penetrating and expressive as Eric Clapton or Jerry Garcia “but totally unlike either”. Tom Hull, his colleague at the Voice, recalls being in Christgau’s apartment when he received an advance copy and witnessing his “instantly rapturous” reaction to the album.
The Stranger (Billy Joel)
In a less enthusiastic review of The Stranger, The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau held the album slightly above Joel’s previous works; speaking specifically of Joel himself, he wrote that the artist had “more or less grown up” with what he considered less egotistical songwriting, and that he’s “now as likeable as your once-rebellious and still-tolerant uncle who has the quirk of believing that OPEC was designed to ruin his air-conditioning business.”
London Calling (The Clash)
At the end of 1980, London Calling was voted the best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published by The Village Voice. Robert Christgau, the poll’s creator and supervisor, also named it 1980’s best record in an accompanying essay and said, “it generated an urgency and vitality and ambition (that Elvis P. cover!) which overwhelmed the pessimism of its leftist world-view.”
Breakfast In America (Supertramp)
Village Voice critic Robert Christgau was less impressed, saying that the “hooky album” evokes “random grunts of pleasure” but lacks emotional substance because of “glib” lyrics and no “vocal personality (as opposed to accurate singing) and rhythmic thrust (as opposed to a beat)”
OK. So. After gathering up all these excerpts, I have to say that I don’t find the negative reviews quite as harsh as they could have been, nor do I disagree entirely with some of his takes; Thick As a Brick isn’t a great personal favorite of mine, nor am I as fond of Band on the Run as I am of other McCartney solo albums. And sure, the lines about Jethro Tull’s flute playing “getting better (because it has no choice)” and Billy Joel resembling your uncle “who has the quirk of believing that OPEC was designed to ruin his air-conditioning business” made me chuckle. If you prick me, do I not bleed? He sort of comes off like a less drug-fueled version of Hunter S. Thompson and Lester Bangs, sprinkling his sentences with copious amounts of parenthetical asides, leftover beatnik lingo, and elaborate metaphors.
But … Jesus H. Christ(gau). He seems to act as if every album’s target audience consists of exactly one person, and that person is him. I feel like his style of album reviewing would have been terrific … as entries in his diary. The problem is, I’m not Robert Christgau, and neither is anyone else. Isn’t the point of publishing your writing to say something that is potentially of value to a person who is not you?
Compare Christgau’s approach with, say, the All Music Guide’s. The All Music Guide takes into account an artist’s target audience, and tends to review albums from that audience’s point of view. Christgau takes into account … himself? Just a wild guess here, but Christgau was probably not the main listener that the members of Black Sabbath or Queen had in mind while they were sorting out that next chord change or amplifier setting. So if that was the case, then what value was there in hearing Christgau’s thoughts on those particular artists? I feel like he basically wrote with a tone of, “Well, if Queen changed this and that, then maybe I’d like them more.” Uhh … I don’t think Queen was focused on changing their music so that they could please Robert freakin’ Christgau.
Terrifying plot twist: it turns out that the vast, boundless catalog of late 20th century popular music was merely brought into existence so that Robert Christgau could prance through it like a satyr and tidy up all the loose ends with his comically anal proclamations. Like many film and music writers I’ve encountered throughout the course of my humble existence, his reviewing philosophy often seems to be, “This artist has made a work of art that I don’t like; therefore, this artist has done something wrong.”
Also, in a paradoxical way, I find his “personal” style of music writing to not be particularly personal at all – which is to say that I find it alarmingly free of any hints of uncertainty, intimacy, or vulnerability. What Sisyphean burdens have you carried in your time on this earth, Robert Christgau? What festering scars and secret agonies have your passion for music aided you in overcoming? To paraphrase Marshall Mathers, will the real Robert Christgau please stand up?
I’m just looking for a little … what do you call it? “Compassion”? “Empathy”? Anybody else heard of those things around here? If I’m a part-time Buddhist, I might categorize Christgau as more of a part-time Fundamentalist Christian: I always feel like he’s telling me which albums are “sinful” and which albums are “redemptive.” If the artist in question was some up-and-coming punk or alternative artist, he’d most likely have drooled all over it (the Ramones, Television, the Clash), and if the artist was some relatively overexposed mainstream act, he’d most likely have said something snarky about it (Billy Joel, Queen, Supertramp), and … rinse and repeat? Here’s the big question on my mind: Did Christgau ever like an album that wasn’t “cool” to like?
Don’t get me wrong, he’s had his moments. While reading Elvis Presley’s Wikipedia article, I came across this quote that I enjoyed:
I know he invented rock and roll, in a manner of speaking, but … that’s not why he’s worshiped as a god today. He’s worshiped as a god today because in addition to inventing rock and roll he was the greatest ballad singer this side of Frank Sinatra — because the spiritual translucence and reined-in gut sexuality of his slow weeper and torchy pop blues still activate the hormones and slavish devotion of millions of female human beings worldwide.
See, Wikipedia, this is the kind of Robert Christgau snippet I can get behind – the kind where he highlights an underappreciated aspect of an already copiously-discussed artist (although does he really know what activates the hormones of female human beings?). Or this snippet from his contemporary review of Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush:
While David Crosby yowls about assassinations, Young divulges darker agonies without even bothering to make them explicit. Here the gaunt pain of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere fills out a little—the voice softer, the jangling guitar muted behind a piano. Young’s melodies—every one of them—are impossible to dismiss. He can write ‘poetic’ lyrics without falling flat on his metaphor even when the subject is ecology or crumbling empire. And despite his acoustic tenor, he rocks plenty. A real rarity: pleasant and hard at the same time.
Nice. This is kind of what I’m looking for in music writing: the author articulating what it is about a work that I enjoy but can’t quite put my finger on.
However: the “grades”? Oh man, I could really do without the “grades.” I swear, for every major release in pop music history, on the right-hand side of the Wikipedia entry, I will always see a “grade” from Christgau, and the grade invariably strikes me as random. The grade never changes my mind about an album, or makes me appreciate an album I didn’t quite appreciate before, or makes me feel like someone out there shares my overall view of human existence. If his grade happens to match my level of fondness for an album, I consider it essentially a coincidence. Every time one of Christgau’s “grades” catches my eye, I always hear a little voice in my head that says, in a sardonic tone, “OK, but who asked this guy?”
Most hilarious of all are the instances where I’ll be reading the article for a not-particularly-poorly-received album, which might have, say, a three-star rating from the All Music Guide, or a four-star rating from Q magazine, and then a little “bomb” symbol from Christgau. A “bomb” symbol? What is this, “Spy vs. Spy” from Mad Magazine? And the “bomb” symbol always comes out of nowhere. I mean, if CCR’s Mardi Gras or The Clash’s Cut the Crap had a bomb symbol next to them, then sure, I could understand, but it’s always, as far as I can tell, some perfectly fine album that gets the cartoon “bomb” symbol treatment, like Cracker’s Kerosene Hat, Stone Temple Pilot’s Purple, Smog’s The Doctor Came at Dawn, or Neil Young’s Live at Massey Hall.
Memo to Wikipedia: quoting Robert Christgau in the “Reception and Release” portion of the article doesn’t really count. It’s like quoting the gut reactions of some random hyper-opinionated blogger. You don’t need to do it. You don’t need to do it.
(Concluding note #1: Do you think it’s possible that the Wikipedia editor who constantly quotes Robert Christgau might actually be … Robert Christgau? Concluding note #2: I think this guy’s still alive somehow? Maybe arrogant and curmudgeonly music writing is the key to outliving Lester Bangs by forty years?)
Pitchfork Media (Or At Least Pitchfork Media As of About Fifteen Years Ago?)
Some people know more about certain subjects than other people do. However, I feel like it’s not merely one’s possession of knowledge itself, but what one chooses to do with one’s knowledge that separates the superficially intelligent from the truly wise.
I would like to ask a simple question. If you are one of these extra-knowledgeable people, and you come across a person who is less knowledgeable than you, should you:
- A) try to lovingly share your knowledge with that person in the hopes of helping to make this individual lead a happier, more fulfilling existence
- B) boast about how much more you know than that other person and try to cultivate within yourself a misguided sense of superiority
- C) use your knowledge to gripe about your dad constantly telling you how his generation’s music was the “best music ever”?
If you answered B) and C), then you might have been a writer for Pitchfork Media circa 2007.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that Pitchfork would call a list “The 200 Best Songs of the ’80s,” but I think what they really meant to call their list was “150 Great Songs That a Person with a Passing Interest in ‘80s Popular Music Might Not Be Familiar With, Plus 50 Great ‘80s Songs You Might Know and Love.” And if that’s what they had called their lists, I might not have been particularly bothered. But no, they wanted to pass their lists off as if they were “redefining” the canon of pop music – as if every list that followed would have to reckon with theirs. It’s like while they were sitting at their desk, composing their list, they were simultaneously glancing at some Rolling Stone “Greatest Albums” list that just happened to show up in the mail that day and get on their nerves. Maybe they could have just written a list while simply … glancing at the majesty of cumulus clouds hovering outside their window instead?
Take the Pitchfork 500. Please. But seriously, back in 2007, Pitchfork Media published a book titled The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to The Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present. In it, Pitchfork claimed to “condense thirty years of essential music into the ultimate chronological playlist, each song advancing the narrative and, by extension, the music itself.” They also claimed to do a lot of other fantastic things, like “reflect the way listeners are increasingly processing music—by song rather than by album.” OK, sure, whatever. Although they didn’t explicitly say so, they might as well have claimed that their list would finally prove, once and for all, that Baby Boomers had been mistaken, and really, really annoying, in claiming that their era had been a better era for music than the post-Baby Boomer era.
Full confession: I didn’t think that the Pitchfork 500 was an entirely ridiculous list. I honestly got quite a bit of value out of it. While part of me was expecting their list to be unwaveringly contrarian, I was somewhat relieved to see that they did not entirely exclude mainstream music (and maybe there wouldn’t have been anything wrong with a list that had), featuring acts that, over the ensuing decades, have managed the improbable shift from “uncool” to “cool,” such as Fleetwood Mac, ELO, Journey, Van Halen, Duran Duran, and Hall & Oates. Even so, the overall impression I got was that they were throwing a bone to mainstream music while essentially marginalizing it. Like “Yeah, we know, some commercial hits were really good.” Some? Thanks Pitchfork, I’m glad I have your permission. Maybe they anticipated that their list would have been accused of being too snobby, or maybe they genuinely appreciated and respected some mainstream music, but regardless of the reason, they included some very well-known, commercially successful songs released between 1977 and 2006 on it. So … good job, guys?
However. The mainstream choices that they made. Dear God. Some examples:
1) Bruce Springsteen. A list like this could have easily overlooked Bruce Springsteen, although – not to get bogged down into a lengthy discussion on the merits of the Boss – I’m not sure I would have objected too much if it had. So what songs did they pick? “Hungry Heart”? “Badlands”? “Born In The U.S.A.?” “Glory Days”? Oh no, no, no. Don’t be silly. They picked “Atlantic City” and “I’m On Fire.” Why, because those are like the cool, lo-fi, “artsy” Springsteen songs?
2) U2. Sure, they picked a couple of U2 songs. “One”? “With Or Without You?” “Where the Streets Have No Name”? “Desire”? “Mysterious Ways”? Ha! They went with “New Year’s Day” from War and “Bad” from The Unforgettable Fire. Apparently U2 disappeared off the face of the earth after 1984. Come on. Did they honestly believe that “Bad” was “more important” to this “definitive history” of popular music that they were trying to draw than anything off The Joshua Tree or Achtung, Baby? My guess is they sat around and thought, “Well, everybody already knows those songs, and they appear on plenty of other lists, so … let’s leave them off ours.” And yeah, OK, I’m fairly sick of all the big U2 anthems too (these days, I tend to prefer the second side of The Joshua Tree to the first). But still, that’s not a real list. That’s like a reaction to someone else’s list. That’s like a list once removed. Even if a song is extremely well-known, you gotta put it on the damn list, guys. Or call your list something else.
3) Same with R.E.M, who were represented by “Radio Free Europe” and “South Central Rain,” which were released before the Athens, GA quartet went completely downhill in … what, 1985?
4) Nirvana were represented by “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which is a very well-known song, and “Scentless Apprentice,” one of the so-called “noisy, alienating” tracks Cobain opted to put on In Utero, which is … not a very well-known song. Why didn’t they just represent In Utero with “Heart-Shaped Box,” “All Apologies,” or even “Serve the Servants”? You know why? Because they wanted to be kooky, that’s why.
And on and on and on. In so many places, I felt like the choices reeked of posturing. Why the Sugarhill Gang’s “8th Wonder” and not “Rapper’s Delight”? Find me a person who thinks “8th Wonder” is either better or more significant than “Rapper’s Delight.” No solo John Lennon (I mean, he still wasn’t dead yet), but Yoko Ono’s “Walking On Thin Ice?” Uh-huh. Your dad probably would’ve hated that choice, so therefore, by Pitchfork logic, it was an outstanding addition. The Pet Shop Boys made an appearance, but … their 1990 single “Being Boring”? Just go with “West End Girls” and stop trying to be so contrarian, damn it. Talking Heads’ album Remain In Light was represented by “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On),” not “Once In A Lifetime.” Look, I probably enjoy “Born Under Punches” just as much as “Once In A Lifetime,” but … come … on.
Meanwhile, no latter-day Pink Floyd, no latter-day Rolling Stones, no latter-day Bee Gees. ABBA somehow made the cut, but the song they picked was … their very last single (until recently, that is!), “The Day Before You Came”? No ‘80s superstars like The Police, George Michael, Janet Jackson, Phil Collins, Lionel Richie, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, etc. You know why? Probably because, while popular, those artists didn’t really “create new genres” or “leave a trail of influence” in their wake. But people still listen to their music 40 years later, so there’s that. Instead we got three Pixies songs and a solo Frank Black song and a Breeders song? “Wave of Mutilation”? How about “List of Mutilation”?
More objectionable to my peers, I imagine, rather than to myself, was the absence of many early ’90s American rock acts, such as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But Green Day, Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, and Nine Inch Nails all made an appearance, so the list wasn’t explicitly anti-American mainstream rock per se. It was just explicitly anti-“music your dad might have liked.”
(My own father, incidentally, enjoyed almost none of this music, mainstream or alternative).
I’m guessing some of my readers out there who may not be too familiar with the topic in question, or even some of my readers who are, might be thinking at this point, “Oh, this just sounds like nitpicking. So, some website came up with a list of songs, and they picked different songs from the ones you might have picked. Big freaking deal.” Obviously, differences in taste are inevitable. But all I’m saying is, I smell an agenda here, and it doesn’t smell like a part-time Buddhist one.
Now, can I scientifically prove that the Pitchfork writers were picking songs and albums that they wanted their peers to think they liked, and not the songs and albums they actually liked (say, when the lights were low and the room was devoid of the presence of others)? No. No, I cannot prove it.
But I can suspect it.
The thing is, The Pitchfork 500 included all sorts of songs from all sorts of out-of-the-way genres that I’m sure Rolling Stone would have never included on one of their lists. For instance, I’d love to see Rolling Stone compile a list of “Greatest Songs of the ‘80s” that included trailblazing (or so I understand it) early electronica singles like Mr. Fingers’ “Can You Feel It,” A Guy Called Gerald’s “Voodoo Ray,” or 808’s “Pacific State 808,” or “alternative” cult tracks like the Wipers’ “Youth of America,” Big Black’s “Kerosone,” the Chills’ “Pink Frost,” or Superchunk’s ‘Slack Motherfucker.” You know why these other songs never showed up on Rolling Stone lists? Because Rolling Stone was trying to sell magazines, and their readers had never heard of these people. So I think it’s commendable that Pitchfork wanted to shed light on certain songs from relatively obscure genres that nevertheless had a quiet, long-term influence on specific music scenes.
But did they have to be so … bratty about it?
I mean, if they had called the list “500 Overlooked Songs From 1977-2006,” then I wouldn’t have rolled my eyes so much. But no, these were the “essential” songs, not the overlooked songs. The problem is, if an alien landed on Planet Earth right this minute, and asked me to give him/her/it a list of the 500 best songs released between 1977-2006, I would not give the alien this list.
I guess I prefer lists that present themselves as simply one person’s taste in music. Because once you start trying to pass off a list as “definitive,” aren’t you basically trying to tell other people what music they should like, and in the process, somewhat making an ass of yourself? And what does it mean for a piece of music to be “significant” and “influential,” anyway? I think music can be significant and influential in several roundabout ways.
One way to measure the influence of a musician is to see how many other musicians who followed ended up creating music in a similar style. This is probably the definition of “influential” that Pitchfork had in mind. But hell, you could say that Alabama, the Judds, and Reba McEntire were extremely influential, in that the sheer volume of modern music that owes something to their borderline Adult Contemporary approach to ’80s country could fill the Caspian Sea. Does that make them “great”? Personally, I don’t think worthwhile music can just be “influential.” It has to be something more. If you ask me, to measure influence within the confines of some sort of linear musical narrative is to only measure a small slice of what music can mean to people. The other aspect of “influence” is the amount of influence a piece of music can have on an individual’s worldview and life philosophy. Allow me to explain.
Some rock critics, such as Rob Sheffield, would presumably say that Pink Floyd’s The Wall was not very influential, in the sense that few acts who followed tried to emulate its “bombastic, self-absorbed, meticulously produced rock opera” style, whereas they would say that The Sex Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols was influential, in the sense that many later acts tried to emulate its “we’re pissed off and we can’t play worth a damn but who really gives a shit” style. But personally, I’ve found that an album like The Wall (with its message against self-imposed isolation) has been more influential in my own personal development than Never Mind The Bollocks has (with its message of … telling the Queen to piss off?). In summary: I feel like looking at “influence” only in terms of some historical artistic narrative is to view influence in a narrow and limited way. But in order to talk about that other kind of influence, one would have to share much more personal information about oneself in one’s writing. Which is something that the writers of Pitchfork never seemed particularly prepared to do.
(Quasi-final note: While at least a decade has passed since I’ve found myself regularly clicking on the Pitchfork home page [given that they mostly review 21st century music, which isn’t generally my era of choice], every once in a blue moon, I’ll find myself reading the Wikipedia article of a “classic” album from the late 20th century, see an excerpted quote from a more recent Pitchfork review – usually composed in the wake of said “classic” album’s reissue – click on the hyperlink, and find the review surprisingly appreciative, fair, measured, and non-bratty. So, there’s that.)
I think of Pitchfork circa 2007 as the guy in college who goes up to the kid who’s only listened to Top 40 radio his entire life and says, “Oh God, don’t listen to all that corporate garbage, what you really want to be listening to is this.” Whereas I’m the guy in college who goes up to the kid who’s only listened to Top 40 radio his entire life and says, “Hey, that stuff’s great, I love it too, but if you’re ever in the mood for something different, have you heard of this?”