I don’t go on Pitchfork everyday or even once a week, but when “Best of” season comes around, I’m in-depth all over it. So I was hooked when their bonanza of BEST STUFF 2000-2009 began, culminating in naming of the top 20 albums of the decade (Radiohead’s Kid A got the top honor, to the surprise of no one who’s geeked out on Pitchfork in the past few years). Reading through the lists proved both enormously validating (Hey! Lots of my favorite songs and albums being raved about by a paid critic!), but also provoked some frustration and annoyance (How have I never heard the “2nd best song of the decade?” — LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends”). If the radio stations and billboard charts are a thousand miles off indicating who’s making the good music, I think its fair to say Pitchforks hits a lot closer to the mark.
So am I on their tip? Not at all. But I think they’re an interesting topic of discussion for all their contradictions and hypocrisies.
Adding humor to the entire list-mania is that the whole fiesta is sponsored by Haagen-Daaz. Does mentioning that imply PF has gone bourgeoisie? Yes, but I don’t believe it. I’m just astounded that Pitchfork can sell ice cream. Try making an ice cream commercial soundtracked to Kid A. Then again, I bet Animal Collective could pull it off. Regardless, they self-consciously takes great pains to explain the Haagen Daaz, albiet indirectly. From “The Decade in News”, I give you Exhibits A:
“Float On really reached its zenith with the release of Kidz Bop 7, as a mob of tykes chirped the song like it was “Since U Been Gone” or something. The weirdest thing about it was that it didn’t really seem too weird by that point.”
And B:
“Old-school notions of selling-out had been flipped on their head. Since most non-megastar bands could no longer rely on album sales to pay their way anymore, sponsorship, advertisements, and TV placements came off less like cred-killers than necessary evils.”
Going back to the idea of Pitchfork as self-conscious: yes, but not ‘painfully’ so. I think a better adjective would be “arrogantly”. If you’ve read their album reviews, you know they’re pretentious. You know they’re self-important. And you know they paint broad strokes of judgment over the subjective and ambiguously. And yet, looking at their old lists compared to new, it’s easy to see an implicit swallowing of words, foot-in-the-mouth embarrassment at great music they once overlooked or gave too little credit for. Not wanting to feed into a hype bubble, they gave The Strokes’ Is This It strong but reserved praise. Their retrospective, placing it as the seventh greatest album of the decade, is gushing. Time heals all hype, I guess.
But despite the imperfections they critique on, bigger and more watched. Isn’t it some sort of scientific law that you can’t observe something without changing it? Pitchfork’s got the same problem: Too aware of their power, they lose that John-Cusack-in-High-Fidelity cred. But look at Rolling Stone: zero cred with most music fans, and still influential. And now that I’ve brought up “cred”, the worms start wriggling out of the can. All I mean by cred is who you trust, who you respect, when it comes to matters of music. For most people it’s a few select friends, I think.
But back to Pitchfork’s arrogance: Their music-finding feelers stretch out far and wide for lo-fi, unsigned, small label rock, and to a lesser extent, noise music. But hip hop? There isn’t a single track by Atmosphere on their “500 songs of the decade”. They cover very little or no underground hip hop on a regular basis. But they nut off to Outkast, and blow loads to Lil Wayne mixtape tracks. They even review Drake songs. Imagine this in reverse: If XXL focused mostly on indie, out-of-the-mainstream-hip-hop, and then threw in some gushing praise for Coldplay and The Dave Matthews Band. It wouldn’t make sense! But pitchfork doesn’t make sense. I’ll keep on reading anyway. It validates me sometimes.
-PAUL
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That’s cause Atmosphere suck, and Outkast & Lil Wayne are awesome.
10.23.09 at 10:49 am
i too feel validated by them, on occasion.
10.23.09 at 11:02 am
I live in Minneapolis, 1 block from “5th Element”, and even I know Atmosphere is some of the worst music of all time
10.23.09 at 11:33 am
Let the product sell itself.
10.23.09 at 11:59 am
Pitchfork is just the flagship of the current mareket of taste. Taste is no longer acquired but marketed so now everyone is an interesting person. The consumer can log onto pitchfork download todays 9.99872 rated album and listen to it on their way to mcdonalds where they order their chipotle mayo and fries. If someone was actually interested in music they would never bother reading pitchfork, or any other review, because there is an assload of music no one has given a stamp of approval to which would probably stimulate you more than animal collectives newest b-sides live remix up-side down record.
10.23.09 at 12:00 pm
HI GREG!
10.23.09 at 12:01 pm
outkast is a LOT fuckin better than coldplay, though
also atmosphere is a joke — underground hip hop is occasionally still relevant (new dungeon family stuff for instance, and even stones throw sometimes poops out a good record) but atmosphere definitely isn’t
10.23.09 at 12:06 pm
I come to this site to get away from BS like pitchfork, so please shut the fucking hell up about that weak crap, assholes.
10.23.09 at 12:09 pm
Atmosphere is for white-boy closet cases. A decent (but not perfect by any means) measure of a rap record is to ask black dudes if they’ve ever heard (of) it. In the case of Atmosphere I think you’ll find that they haven’t.
10.23.09 at 12:34 pm
Pitchfork is real gay and rap sucks except for big L 139 AND LENOX ALL DAY
10.23.09 at 12:46 pm
i dont even like pitchfork and im siding with them. do you even like music?
10.23.09 at 12:50 pm
Who describes ANYTHING a underground anymore? It’s either on TV or the internet and it all sucks anyway.
10.23.09 at 1:05 pm
The biggest compliment that you could give pitchfork is saying that their biggest flaw is disliking atmosphere.
10.23.09 at 1:27 pm
Oh and who gives a fuck if Haagen-Daaz advertises on their site? Thinking that all advertising somehow taints the purity of the “underground” is such an outdated and weird attitude. MAYBE you could almost make an argument if the advertising was for something like puppy poison but Haagen-Daaz!? That shit is delicious!
(It is funny that pitchfork HATED Daft Punk one more time when it came out and then named it on of the top best songs of the decade.)
10.23.09 at 1:53 pm
Paul, you can tell you read Pitchfork because your post is long, boring and most people probaly won’t read the whole thing.
10.23.09 at 3:27 pm
Anyone who feels validated by Pitchfork really missed out on the whole Heaven’s Gate thing.
10.23.09 at 3:28 pm
So you wrote an entire page and a half of shit about a website that spews pages of shit about music?
Dude, fucking die.
10.23.09 at 9:06 pm
i dont mind the subject matter. the fact that everyone who reads pitchfork claims to hate it (meself incl.) is a great example of young intelligent america’s self-loathing. kinda like this site and most of yooze.
i feel bad for this guy and anyone else who missed ‘all my friends’ by the by
10.24.09 at 4:31 am
pfork has good writers but better yet they are able to admit when they are wrong. that is why they released the staff lists-to backtrack and then move forward with more current theory. and seriously? atmosphere? that shit is not even a blip on the radar.
10.24.09 at 5:25 am
Eli, go back to stuffwhitepeoplelike.com where you can snigger insecurely at the flaws of your race.
10.24.09 at 10:28 am
P.S. Pitchfork is alright. Stylus was good.
10.24.09 at 10:29 am
Atmosphere is not underground. You don’t even listen to underground music. If you did you probably host some hipster house show every year. Is anything ever really underground? Pitchfork is never a good subject to write more a than a paragraph about.
10.24.09 at 4:38 pm
snoozefest
10.25.09 at 2:50 am
they gave andrew wk’s first album 0.1 because they were feeling nerdy, and it was on of the most sneering garbage reviews I’d ever read. I think the writer even mentioned how much he loved the decemberists in the review.. anyway that’s been taken down now, but wtf it’s a blog written by reviewers who get paid monkey nuts to write about their opinions and back those opinions up with other opinions and a little bit of research so they sound more objective/knowledgable. I read it to get tips on new bands and songs to check out but who the fuck cares what some cunt from chicago or toronto thinks about anything.. my ears sure don’t
10.25.09 at 4:06 pm
are there still people who listen to “new” music?
10.25.09 at 6:35 pm
your point about PITCHfork overlooking certain amazing raps is true, but certainly not in regards to fucking Atmosphere, who i truly wish i could appreciate (injecting Hip-Hop with angst is such a good idea.) but they gave, say, Cadence Weapon his due, and to a lesser extent Bus Driver.
and obviously Drake is mainstream garbage that should blow over the radio waves soon enough, but you gotta concede Lil Wayne is a total package better than Atmosphere.
10.25.09 at 8:04 pm
[...] so apparently some fag decided to get something off his chest about Pitchfork Media. Let me get this shit off mine: People who go on for more than about two sentences of opinions [...]
11.09.09 at 11:17 am
Message for the Middle Classes:
Regardless of what kind of music you listen to, you are going to need anywhere from $25,000-$75,000 per year for the next 40-60 years, if you are going to repeat the ambitious lifestyles of your parent’s generation. (Not adjusted for inflation)
11.09.09 at 1:45 pm
is this satire or what
real people dont have opinions like this
11.09.09 at 5:34 pm