Music of the Weak: Here’s the New Canon, Just Like the Old Canon – The Pitchfork 500

As a canon-building exercise, The Pitchfork 500 completely succeeds on its own terms.  In profiling their 500 favorite songs of (roughly) the last thirty years, editors Scott Plagenhoef and Ryan Schreiber both cast an extremely wide net and keep their focus firmly on their audience.  Just like the website itself, the book builds upon a foundation of indie rock-leaning taste, which attributes to the few holes in its coverage (R&B, jazz.)  While students of any particular genre won’t likely be surprised by the songs included—rap, for example, focuses on touchstones like “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” “Big Pimpin’” or “It Takes Two,” while only throwing a couple curveballs like Luniz’ “I Got 5 On It”—most of the fun comes from seeing your favorites rub up against iconic songs from other corners of the musicverse.  “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” doesn’t qualify as a particularly earth-shattering pick in and of itself, but it begins to be more interesting positioned next to Heavenly’s “C is the Heavenly Option” and Ween’s “Doctor Rock.”

Pitchfork has impeccable taste for sure, even if their ideology seems a lot like SPIN Magazine’s mid-90’s focus on the indie rock/electronica/rap cool troika, free from the magazine publishers’ burden of having to cater to corporate advertisers and major labels.  The 500 chosen songs provide a fun skeleton for the book, and give a new twist on a publishing warhorse: The Record Guide.  Plagenhoef and Schreiber even organize The Pitchfork 500 into a loosely chronological 500 song playlist to give the book maximum front-to-back readability.  But, where delicately choosing the songs for The Pitchfork 500 (as well as its numerous sidebars on sub-genres and topics such as “Selling Advertising: Indie Songs in Commercials Shockah”) was an obvious labor of love, the actual writing generally seems more like a chore.

Pitchforkmedia, the website, has an uncanny knack for sending even the mildest internet music fan into a back-biting frenzy.  Their taste has been called insular, their ratings system inconsistent, their writers elitist.  Even the site’s defenders usually qualify their defenses with acknowledgments of Pitchfork’s inconsistency or love of hyperbole.  Of course, if they’re shooting at you, you’re probably doing something right, and Pitchfork has demonstrably had a hand in shaping the careers of some of the 21^st centuries best musicians (I’m looking at you, Broken Social Scene.) Yet, among the numerous unfair complaints about Pitchfork, there are some legitimate complaints:  The reviews are sloppily edited, if they’re edited at all; they sometimes struggle to articulate the reasons behind their enthusiasm (or lack of enthusiasm); they have weaknesses for certain types of artists (usually those of the droning variety.)

When Pitchfork announced that they were publishing their first book, the real question wasn’t whether or not they would pick the right songs to include.  Odds were that they would pick the right songs, but no one would admit it.  The real question was whether their lackadaisical attitude toward actual, you know, writing would carry over to their first book.  Part of the reason for the website’s success was that it was able to learn on its feet.  The first couple of generations of Pitchfork writers were rank amateurs who taught themselves to be music critics on the job—and likely earned Pitchfork the reputation it still has today.  In the past couple of years, however, Pitchfork has attracted some phenomenal music critics—Douglas Wolk, Julianne Shepard, Tom Ewing, Nate Patrin, to name a few—who have helped to increase the quality of writing and thought on the site.  Publishing a book doesn’t really give you time for on-the job-training.  A book is permanent; a website is fluid.

The Pitchfork 500’s writers are split between old-school Pitchfork cronies and critics who made their name elsewhere before coming to Pitchfork, as well as a few hired guns.  There’s no palpable difference in quality between the two groups, though there is enormous inconsistency in the interest levels of the contributors.  If The Pitchfork 500 is a statement that these are the greatest 500 songs of the last 30 years, each write-up should be an impassioned argument for WHY.  Sometimes the write-ups are, and when they are, they’re exhilarating.  Joe Tangari shed some new light on one of my favorite songs of all time: “‘Graceland’ mixes its themes of love, loss and musical pilgrimage with an actual musical pilgrimage [to

South Africa

], and emerges with a cross between two traditions.”  More often, we’re not so lucky.  Sometimes, the arguments are just plain wrong, like Plagenhoef’s assertion that, in the 70’s, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, and Kraftwerk “laid the foundation” and “set the tone and tenor for the next three decades”—because apparently black people didn’t show up until The Sugarhill Gang.  Many times, songs are merely placed in relation to a historical, with no indication as to why they’re better than other songs of the same era.  Michelangelo Matos, one of the hired guns who has never written for Pitchfork, writes about 100 words’ worth (1/2 as much as most of the entries) of routine platitudes on Funky 4 + 1’s “That’s The Joint”—and it’s his favorite song of all time!

The editing, while infinitely better than the editing on the website, still has plenty of sloppy points (like Nitsuh Abebe citing hip-hop’s reign as “a quarter of a decade, and still counting.”)  But the editing doesn’t bother (far be it from me to chastise anyone for sloppy editing) as much as it simply points toward the book’s priorities: the list of songs itself, and the knowledge of rock history needed to make the list.  These are undoubtedly The Pitchfork 500’s strong points, but they make a much better case for formatting the book as a traditional record guide rather than a loose narrative.  The book simply lacks the passion in the writing needed to make it anything more than a clinical exercise, and because of that, the playlist structure only makes the book less easy to use—though they do include an index, possibly in place of a search engine.

That being said, The Pitchfork 500 is a great resource.  The writers are at the top of their game in terms of knowing their shit (they might just be bored of saying it.)  Together, the songs make an incredible tapestry of three decades of music.  Chase after the precedents and antecedents of any given song, and you’re likely to find a wealth of great music.  Lesser known gems like Another Sunny Day’s “You Should All Be Murdered” are given equal consideration as stone classics, as are critically neglected favorites like Simple Minds’ “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” and Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer.”  Most of all, it’s a direct challenge for you to dig around in the history of rock and build your own 500, as rich and rewarding as this.  The book doesn’t have to be flawless to be inspiring.

-Martin Brown, 2008

Comments

[Kenny]

Wow, Marty, you're *much* nicer about Pitchfork than I've ever been. I have no use for them, so I doubt this book and I will ever cross paths. It sounds like it could be an interesting read, though.

I'd honestly be *much* more interested in your top 500. I think it would be a much better read than the Pitchfork book!

[Squidhelmet]

I'll second the recommendation for MCStankbooty's hardbound top 500, collector's edition.

I always dug the Aphrodite remix of I Got 5 On It better than the original. At least I did when I was into jungle, which we all can agree was a very brief and confusing time.

I really enjoyed this read - thank you!