Commentary, Pt. 3: Pitchfork Top 500 of the 2000s

After spending an inordinate amount of time trying to determine which year had the best music, we settled on some ill-conceived algorithm that used the average ranking of the top 5 songs from each year. Completely arbitrary. Well, maybe it would be a good idea to at least tell you what a couple of those songs were. Below is the order of "Good Music Years" with the top 2 songs from each year (and their overall rank in parentheses). There are some pretty great tracks, and we offer comments for each, whether you wanted them or not:

2003
Beyonce - "Crazy In Love" (4) [No way is this the best Beyonce song. Period.]
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Maps" (6) [A little surprised that such a relatively bland song climbed all the way to #6. Yeah, it's a good song, but #6? Come on.]
2000
Outkast - "B.O.B." (1) [Great track, but the only way you could make a case that this is better than "Hey Ya" is that Big Boi was on it.]
Daft Punk - "One More Time" (5) [Such a fun, happy song. Really pushed them into the mainstream]
2007
LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends" (2) [Um... wow. I love James Murphy as much as the next guy, but #2? Wow.]
M.I.A. - "Paper Planes" (3) [Not sure you can argue this one. Ubiquitous doesn't even begin to describe how pervasive this song became.]
2002
LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge" (13) [Snarkiest, funniest song on the entire list.]
The Knife - "Heartbeats" (15) [Always thought both the band and the song were overrated. This does nothing to quell that feeling.]
2004
Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" (10) [One of the great opening tracks off any album this decade.]
Annie - "Heartbeat" (17) [Clearly, heartbeats were a popular topic for songs.]
2005
Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy" (11) [Unbelievable how intolerable this song is. Almost completely unlistenable. Thanks, radio!]
Kelly Clarkson - "Since U Been Gone" (21) [This should be in the Top 10. End of discussion. Is there a more anthemic song from any year??]
2001
Missy Elliott - "Get Ur Freak On" (7) [A little surprised by how high this one went, but can't argue with it. Incredibly cool song that still sounds original.]
Daft Punk - "Digital Love" (23) [Not as commercially successful as "One More Time," but just as good.]
2006
Justin Timberlake - "My Love" (26) [When is his next album coming out? Why do we have to wait 3-4 years??]
Hot Chip - "I Was a Boy From School" (29) [Completely shocked by this. Great song, never would have guessed it was the second-best song of 2006.]
2008
Hercules & Love Affair - "Blind" (18) [Ridiculous.]
Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal (66) [Just about as ridiculous.]
2009
Animal Collective - "My Girls" (9) [Obvious.]
Dirty Projectors - "Stillness Is The Move" (115) [Just about as obvious.]

So there you go. The best two songs from each year, according to your friends at Pitchfork. A lot has been made of their infatuation with certain groups/genres (i.e. LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk, Animal Collective, IDM [intelligent dance music]) and how they're disproportionately represented at the top. To which I would respond, "Who cares?" It's what they like! And it's fun to argue why certain songs do/don't belong at the top.

Our final analysis of the Top 500 will look at the artists and labels with the most songs on the list and hypothesize why they may be on there...

The Chris Brown Situation

Can we please just settle something? Because it's been bothering me for a while and this blog was down for a long time and I don't feel like I ever got a chance to say it. But recent events have rekindled a fire, and I just need to get it off my chest:

Chris Brown is a chode.


I mean, look at him! Sure, you could make fun of his atrocious choice of Carolina blue, the fact that he almost looks asleep while being interviewed by Larry Fucking King, or that bowtie (really, a bowtie?). But clearly, none of those reasons adequately explain why Chris Brown is such a chode. If you had the unfortunate inclination to actually watch the interview yesterday, I feel sorry for you. If you didn't get a chance, let me summarize:

Larry King: Obviously this was a horrible incident. What do you remember from that night?
Chode Brown: Man, it was like, oh my God. I can't believe this. It's all so crazy to me. Like, wow.
Larry: So you're saying you don't remember?
Attorney + Mom: He already answered that. Next question.

So he's, uhhh, clearly learned his lesson? He's not going to hit another woman? Really?

A defense I've actually heard a surprising number of people argue is that "He's just a young kid who's made a mistake. How much do you want him to suffer? Do you really never want him to make music again? Let's just move on." I'd like to address each one of those statements/questions:

1. "He's just a young kid" - He's not that young, but all right. I'm reasonable. I will grant that he is, in fact, a kid (technically speaking).
2. "[He's] made a mistake" - a.) this isn't the first time it's happened, so that singular noun needs to get the hell out and b.) yes, he's made a mistake. I think we can all agree that he's made a really, really big mistake that any normal person would be punished for.
3. "How much do you want him to suffer?" - Come on! That makes me sound mean! I don't want the guy to suffer, but something should happen, given that he "punched [Rihanna] in the left eye. He then drove away and continued to punch her in the face … caus[ing] her mouth to fill with blood and blood to splatter all over her clothing and the interior of the vehicle*" Mike Vick went to prison for two years... Chris Brown has 6 months of community service and 5 years of probation. His sentence is basically what most good people do every day. Congrats.
4. "Do you really never want him to make music again?" - I mean, he's a pretty good singer, and I like some of his songs. But is the world that much worse of a place without Chris Brown's music? Probably not. Is the world a more depressing place with people who abuse women, don't go to jail, and have the opportunity to do the same thing again? Probably.
5. "Let's just move on."

And number 5 is the biggest reason why he's such a chode. He's getting a free pass to move on. Let's just imagine for a second that you had no idea who was involved in this police report. It boils down to a pretty simple truth: he beat the shit out of a girl. It doesn't matter that she's famous. It doesn't matter that he had a rough upbringing. It doesn't even matter that Rihanna didn't want to press charges. What matters is that he lost his temper and repeatedly, physically assaulted a girl. He isn't a victim of the media and he isn't someone we should feel bad for.

He's just a chode.

* From wwtdd.com

Commentary, Pt. 2: Pitchfork Top 500 of the 2000s

Lists like the Top 500 Songs of the 2000s are great because they offer a jumping-off point for a conversation that could last days. Since these lists are inherently subjective, and since I have a simple engineer's brain, finding objective trends in that sea of personal opinion is always fun. We saw yesterday that, based on sheer number of songs in the Top 500, the order of years in terms of "quality music" is as follows:

1. 2003 (63)
   
2. 2005 (61)
   
3. 2002 (60)
   
4. 2000 (59)
   
5. 2006 (58)
   
6. 2001 (52)
   
7. 2004 (51)
   
8. 2007 (48)
   
9. 2008 (33)
   
10. 2009 (15)
    

Clearly, that's a blunt instrument for measuring quality, so the question becomes how to best analyze the rankings. Maybe average rank of songs from each year is the best mechanism? Maybe the median? Not surprisingly, things change significantly when you look at statistics like that. Using the average rank (the median was essentially the same) for songs released in a given year, the hierarchy of "quality music" then becomes:

1. 2007
2. 2001
3. 2005
4. 2000
5. 2003
6. 2002
7. 2006
8. 2004
9. 2008
10. 2009

What would cause such a large-scale change in the order of years? A cynic (or statistician) would say that the smaller sample size allows for a higher ranking, and there is undoubtedly some sample bias inherent in the calculation. Or maybe music from 2007 was just better? But we already said that ranking 500 songs is ludicrous. What would actually qualify as "the best music?" The top 250? 100? How about 50? If all years were equal, each would likely have have 5 songs in the Top 50? Maybe a good idea would be to analyze the overall rank of the top 5 songs from each year... for example, if the 5 best songs from 2004 were ranked 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 overall, the Average Top 5 ranking for 2004 would be 15. Well, when we ran the numbers for the past decade, our Average Top 5 ranking comes out like this:

1. 2003 (13)
2. 2000 (14)
3. 2007 (17)
4. 2002 (18)
5. 2004 (25)
6. 2005 (27)
7. 2001 (34)
8. 2006 (40)
9. 2008 (69)
10. 2009 (144)

What falls out are some pretty obvious tiers, which in all honesty is probably the best way to look at something like this. Occupying the Top Tier would be 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007 (interesting, since 3 out of 4 of those years had the most overall songs in the Top 500... we get quantity and quality). 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2006 occupy a Middle Tier; however, I'm not willing to call 2008 and 2009 the "Bottom Tier." Let's just say "Not Yet Appreciated" and leave it at that.

Tomorrow, we'll actually dive into some of the songs from each year, and maybe try to defend and/or argue the inclusion of a few.

The End of Music?

It's a legitimate question. Don't think that just because two months have passed and music still exists means we're in the clear...



PS. Do yourself a favor and listen to the Song of the Day, "Forever." I don't know what Drake has on the world of rap (pictures of Eminem playing with a kitten? Lil Wayne's spaceship? proof that Kanye watched Degrassi?), but he's keeping royal company these days (he's also on Jay-Z's Blueprint 3). Regardless, he holds his own... until Eminem shows up, sounding interested and inspired to rap again. Not bad, gentleman. Not bad at all.

Commentary, Pt. 1: Pitchfork Top 500 of the 2000s

So I doubt many people who read GSATW visit Pitchfork on a daily basis. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that a large percentage of people who do make the daily click on that site wouldn't admit it anyway. Pitchfork, an original online purveyor of indie rock criticism, has apparently turned into the pariah of a scene they helped build. Now, most trendy, hip blogs and legitimate sites continually knock Pitchfork, regardless of the quality of their material. Say what you want, but it's fairly clear that they're still a cornerstone of the indie rock community, and what they write has weight.

During the rest of the year, Pitchfork is releasing a number of features centered around "Music of the 2000s," and their first piece is probably the most ambitious (and foolhardy?): the Top 500 Songs of the 2000s. The link will take you straight to #20-1, with links to all 480 other songs. Breaking down each of them would be a complete waste of time... how could anyone say whether the #287 song is better or worse than the #172 song. Rather, we're going to play with some data in Excel and pop out some information... hopefully providing some interesting analysis to the discussion (although probably not). This isn't a novel idea, and I'm sure other site have done it much better and with much prettier graphics.

Our first foray into the list is a simple one: to determine which year had the most songs on the list.

So what's notable (besides the horrible blurriness)? Well, the pollsters clearly needed a few years to fully put a song's importance in perspective (insert sarcasm, eye-rolling). The list is heavy on songs from 2000-2005, and while we're obviously only 8 months into 2009, there's no reason to believe that this year only has 15 of the 500 best songs of the entire decade. From this graph, it would appear that 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006 would be the best years for music in the 2000s, although we're going to analyze that claim a lot more throughout the week.

AOTW: Bowerbirds - "Upper Air"

I've actually come down a little from the initial high that the Bowerbirds' Upper Air afforded me. That's not surprising, seeing as it's almost 2 months old at this point. But upon first listen (and second, and third, and many more after that), it was absolutely blissful. Sure, a lot of albums come out that sound as pretty as Upper Air, but very few have the same impact. And I'm not really sure why that is. After seeing them twice in concert, I'm starting to believe that a lot of it stems from the fact that the two main vocalists, Phil Moore and Beth Tacular, are in a relationship. That maybe, because of their romantic chemistry, their voices sound that much more perfect in harmony. Of course, that's almost undoubtedly untrue, but I can't shake the thought that on some level, their vocal cords resonate at a special "boyfriend/girlfriend" frequency (although I shudder to think what the Kurt Cobain/Courtney Love corollary would be to that theory). Regardless, something gives me goosebumbs every time I listen to "Northern Lights," and it's as good an album as any to kick-off our Album of the Week series. Enjoy.

"I Blacked Out... What Happened?"

I had a lot of great explanations lined up for you all (and I use "all" in the most liberal sense possible). I mean, they would have to be great to justify an absence for more than 2 months.

There was the "RIAA Lawsuit" explanation in which I go to trial for offering illegal downloads of music. In that one, Audra takes a crash course on intellectual property rights and media law from her sister, serves as my representation in court, and wins the case in dramatic fashion. It'd be set to music that I acquired for $Free.99.

There was the "Brokedown Palace/Moveable Island" explanation in which some combination of the following things happened to prevent us from writing: we got stranded in Myanmar after the government confiscated our passports, Audra was held in Thailand for trying to smuggle back a child and is still awaiting extradition, and/or Matt's plane crashed on the LOST island and he's just now discovered how to alter time and space to get back home.

Lastly, there was the "E! True Hollywood Story" explanation in which we were courted by a major media outlet, sustained a bidding war for our site, received ridiculous offers, signed a huge contract for an undisclosed amount, went on a multi-week celebratory bender after making huge bank, had our contracts terminated for lack of material, then went on another multi-week self-loathing bender... all to arrive at the realization that we only ever wanted to do this for the love of music and television.

Which of them is actually the reason? How would I know... I blacked out.

It doesn't really matter, because we're back up! And we have a lot to talk about... Fall premieres, new albums, great concerts, and of course, reality television. And just because you all have been so patient, we're adding a couple of new features: Album of the Week and Song of the Day. They're pretty self-explanatory and easy to find. Remember, if you don't have a lala.com account yet, sign-up for free so you can take advantage of the embedded players! Thanks for reading, and if a 2 month sabbatical doesn't convince you that Grad Students Are The Worst, just wait until we start posting dissertation excerpts!