Stephen Thomas Erlewine at Pitchfork chooses the ten best books about the Beatles, from Philip Norman’s Shout! to Rob Sheffield’s wonderful Dreaming the Beatles.
M.I.A. (fully cognizant of the fact that there are probably 25-30 “best” books on the Beatles):
cf. “Top 10 Beatles books” lists in: Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and Barnes & Noble.
On deck: Top 10 books about Sham 69.
The first ballot I’ve submitted in several years, in fact.
Top 10 Singles (videos below)
1. A.Chal, “Love and Hennessy”
2. Angus & Julia Stone, “Snow”
3. Blaenavon, Soko, “No One Else in Mind”
4. Kygo w/Selena Gomez, “It Ain’t Me”
5. Lana Del Rey, “Love”
6. LCD Soundsystem, “Call the Police”
7. New Pornographers, “Play Money”
8. Sevyn Streeter, “Before I Do”
9. Smokepurpp, “To the Moon”
10. Weekend w/Daft Punk, “I Feel it Coming”
We all know this is nothing
Ordered alphabetically, internet style (my actual #1 would be #3 or #5 or #9), and featuring: two songs experienced as radio singles (Selena Gomez and the Weekend/Daft Punk); two or three songs mined from other year-end lists; a bunch more discovered throughout the year via Spotify’s much-heralded algorithms (“Al Gore rhythms” as my friend Gary calls ’em); at least four songs (more on my runners-up list) about getting fucked up (Angus Stone says he “can get fucked up on absolutely anything” like it’s a great come-on line, which, here, it is); some girls; some boys; two or three songs I suspect won’t outlive February 2018, but who cares, they sound great now; hard and fast beats; sad, wimpy ones; Achtung Babyisms disguised as Berlin-era Bowieisms; pop music as an ageless conundrum (“look you kids with your vintage music” swoons 32-year-old grizzled veteran Lana Del Rey); fatalism if not utter defeatism about the future of making, if not experiencing, music itself (Neko Case: “I only play for money, honey”), the prognosis of which is apparently as comforting as the prognosis for everything else; fidget spinners.
Yesterday David Bowie died at the age of 69; today, the Village Voice published its annual Pazz & Jop Critics Poll, though they no longer cite (at least that I can see online) what edition it is—the 43rd or 44th, I think (unless it’s the 44th or 45th). I haven’t yet listened much to Blackstar, the album Bowie released just a couple days before his death, but it was touching to note that 21 critics thought highly enough of their advance copy of the title track to have placed it in the poll’s Top 40 (it came in at #23). (Another song—a better song, I’m thinking after one full listen—called “Lazarus” garnered two votes as well.)
As someone who has always believed that American critics mostly undervalued Bowie during his prime (which somewhat belies his early reputation as a “critical darling”), I started wondering specifically about how, in fact, he fared historically in Pazz & Jop, the best (certainly the most comprehensive) marker we’ve got of the American critical response. Not the only marker, though: you could also pore through original reviews of his records in Rolling Stone (many are available online), Creem (which I may try to do in the weeks ahead, just to get a gauge), Circus, the Voice, etc. Not every American critic who reviewed or praised a Bowie album in the ’70s necessarily voted in Pazz & Jop. More important, such a survey should probably come with an over-sized asterisk that notes the distinction between “critical raves” and “critical interest,” for it is also my long held belief that while American critics didn’t always “put out” for Bowie with rave reviews, he did command their attention throughout the decade in a big way. And with few contemporary rivals: Neil Young almost certainly jettisoned him in this regard, and possibly Springsteen (who didn’t truly arrive until the midpoint of the decade), and maybe (big maybe) Steely Dan or Stevie Wonder or Joni Mitchell, but… anyone else? My speculation is that American critics en masse were extremely interested in Bowie, wrestled with his many shifts and personas, and enjoyed writing about him, but that they just were not, in the end, blown away by the results of his work. (It is also my sense that the American critical reception of Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry was very much in parallel with that. A comparable survey of Bowie/Roxy in the UK press—compared to the American press, I mean—would show markedly—nay, radically—different results.)
So, here’s Bowie’s P&J scorecard, from Hunky Dory through Let’s Dance. With Christgau’s rankings added just for good measure.
Hunky Dory
Critics: #10
Christgau: #19
Bowie’s first P&J entry is also his highest; he never grazed the Top 10 again (repeat: he never grazed the Top 10 again). Six critics who listed it (there were others, presumably, as their vote counts don’t total the 88 points it garnered overall): Brian Cullman, Lenny Kaye, Patricia Kennely (who awarded it 30 points, the highest supporter among the bunch), Greil Marcus, Jeff Mesin, Tom Smucker. Note also Mike Saunders’s lone (and late) vote here for The Man Who Sold the World. And Christgau’s poll note, in which he suggests that HD “ought to make him a star, eventually.”
1972/73: Ziggy/Aladdin Sane/Pin Ups
Sadly, no Pazz & Jop in ’72 or ’73. Hard to imagine Ziggy not placing fairly high, just as it’s hard to imagine Aladdin Sane doing well at all, though this is mere speculation. (FWIW, Christgau himself gave both LPs a B+, though called AS “more interesting thematically than Ziggy Stardust, and… better rock and roll.”)
1974: Diamond Dogs
Critics: Didn’t place
Christgau: Didn’t place
This is hardly surprising; the album was poorly received. Had there been a P&J singles poll this early on, my guess is that “Rebel Rebel” would’ve found its way in. Christgau does note in his essay, “And only one [vote] for: each of David Bowie’s LPs (both from Robert Hilburn, a diehard).” By which I assume he means DD and Pin Ups, the latter of which was released late in ’73.
1975: Young Americans
Critics: Didn’t place
Christgau: Didn’t place
Ditto the above; not initially well received, “Fame” and/or the title track might have fared okay. It made Bangs’s ballot, garnering 5 points (tied with Born to Run and Metal Machine Music).
1976: Station to Station
Critics: #13
Christgau: #4
STS, along with Changesonebowie, was the Bowie disc Xgau favoured most. Bangs’s rave of the album (orig. from Creem) is in Psychotic Reactions.
1977: Low
Critics: Didn’t place
Christgau: #26
I seem to recall the reception to this was not (as per Diamond Dogs) anything like hostile, but probably closer to lukewarm. I would assume in a poll conducted today among U.S. critics, this might see the biggest jump in stature. Even many side 2 agnostics acknowledge the complete (and still startling) brilliance of side one. Charley Walters, whose 1977 fairly resembled my 1977 (with its mix of prog and punk), did rank it, awarding it five points. (As a side note, neither of the Bowie-produced Iggy albums placed in the poll, though the Dean places each in his Top 30, and Tom Hull has Lust for Life in his Top 10.)
1977: “Heroes”
Critics: #21
Christgau: Didn’t place
Critically, the mirror image of Low: no Christgau love, minor across-the-board critical support.
1979: Lodger
Critics: #31
Christgau: Didn’t place
Two voters shown here to place it: Jon Pareles and Tom Carson. Carson ranks it #1. In his great Rolling Stone Illustrated History essay about Bowie, he calls Lodger the fulfillment of the Berlin Trilogy. Some very good thoughts on that essay—and about the critical response to Bowie during the ’70s—in the interview Steven Ward and I conducted with Carson in 2002.
1980: Scary Monsters
Critics: #19
Christgau: Didn’t place
Interestingly, of the two ballots shown, Pareles and Carson again.
1983: Let’s Dance
Critics: #19
Christgau: Didn’t place
Critics also ranked “Let’s Dance” (the single) #14 and “Modern Love” #24. Christgau ranked the “Let’s Dance” video #7. (That one surprises me somewhat… the video? David Bowie made videos??)
Well, okay, now that I have commanded your attention.
I’m pretty certain I have left behind for good the year-end Top 10 list—or anyway, a Top 10 list confined to just music. For 25+ years, I could be relied on to at least produce a yearly Top 10 Singles list, sometimes supplementing that with additional songs (reaching a peak of utter uselessness at the end of 2006, when I blogged my “Top 100 songs of the year”) and/or a Top 5 or Top 10 albums list (needless to say, singles have mattered to me more than albums since around the time I posted my very first year-end, which was in 1985 in Toronto’s Nerve magazine). If my hard drive is to be trusted, the last year-end ballot I submitted, to both the Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll as well as the (since gone kaput) Eye Weekly Music Critics Poll in Toronto was for 2007, said list of which contained ten singles and eight LPs. (For the record, Kleerup ft. Robyn’s “With Every Heartbeat” was my #1 song that year, while M.I.A.’s Kala was my top album; still very comfortable with both those selections, especially the Robyn single which I continue to play and still adore.) I’m actually surprised it’s been eight years since I’ve posted a year-ender, but I have a few ideas as to why it’s worked out that way.
1) In mid-December 2008, we had our first child. While I somewhat resist the idea that there is a direct correlation between one’s ability to raise children and inability to file year-end music ballots, it was obviously the case that no list would be forthcoming in that particular season (“yes, honey, I’ll get to the diaper change; just let me figure out first if my #7 is Lil’ Wayne or Jordin Sparks”). My perhaps too-pat theory is that, missing that one year had a detrimental impact on my willingness to continue in subsequent years. Being a procrastinator by temperament, a hiccup became a trend.
2) Just to be clear, I do have my priorities straight here; I don’t mean to imply that having a child was a “hiccup,” anymore than I mean to imply that my unwillingness to continue with year-end lists is some kind of existential tragedy. But I do vaguely recall feeling a sense of relief that year (exhaustion had something to do with it, surely) that I now had a proper excuse to not bother with the annual futzing about to get my list just right. That was always the part of the balloting process I was least crazy about—so immersed in the process did I become, I would feel like I was starting to go deaf or senile after weeks of listening and re-listening, writing and re-writing, usually to arrive at something I was only half-satisfied with at best, all in the hopes of—well, of what? Of being quoted in the big leagues, mostly, if I’m being perfectly honest about it. (An ambition that had brutal ramifications, given that the one year I garnered four or five comments in P&J produced a feeling in me that was as close to emptiness as I’ve ever felt as a writer, at least in part because I really didn’t think the quotes themselves were terribly perceptive or funny or whatever.) In other words, I think I may have been looking for an out; the year-end list (which is a distinct thing from other kind of lists, some of which I’ve continued to produce) simply ran its course for me. I took it well past the point of jadedness.
3) Also in the “easy out” (if not “lame excuses”) category: for reasons I’m still not entirely clear about, I got taken off the P&J mailing list at some point, which gave me the passive-aggressive convenience card of, “I’m not voting because no one asked me to.” (That Eye Weekly bit the dust roughly around the same time, let me off the hook domestically.) I think a change of email had something to do with my being dropped in the first place—of course I (passively-aggressively) convinced myself it was something much worse than that—and after a friend sent P&J my new contact info a couple years back, I am once again the beneficiary of their gracious invites. And I did the same thing with their invite in 2015 that I did in 2014: pondered scrambling to respond with a list (even if without comments, just to, you know, keep my name in circulation), but decided in less than 24 hours that no such event would occur. Who knows, maybe I will feel otherwise next year.
4) I don’t keep up with nearly enough new music anymore during any particular year, do almost no writing about it (I do plan to change that in 2016, though I think I repeat that chorus to myself every January), and make very little (I won’t say “no”) specific attempt to stay in touch. Yes, kids and full-time employment, etc., have a lot to do with this, but it’s much more true, I think, that not freelancing about music anywhere—not having the imperative to keep up—has made me extremely lazy in this regard. I have not lost interest in new music, or anyway, in the idea of new music. I spend a good portion of January and February each year playing catch-up with stuff that has shown up on other people’s year-end lists (currently, I’m digging 2015 LPs by Lana Del Rey and Kamasi Washington, plus assorted and sundry previously unfamiliar songs). I hear way more new music on the car radio than most people my age would bother with (I can’t verify this with statistics, but I nonetheless pose it as absolute fact; it’s rare that I ever meet anyone of any age who listens to any radio anywhere anymore). And just in a more general sense, I’m not your average middle-age curmudgeon who thinks modern music sucks. I am your average, boring, white-male middle-aged curmudgeon, yes, but not so much about pop music (except when it’s true, when pop music does seem to suck, which is… often! Still…). But not organizing my life, or any part of my life, around the stuff any more has made all the difference. No one’s telling me to listen, no deadlines for my monumental opinions loom—I’ll get to it when I get to it.
5) Not that I believe a more casual approach to music listening is a total disqualifier for engaging in year-endism. Truth is, I have no theoretical issue with cramming, though I’m enough of a curmudgeon to think one should have at least earned the right to cram. (By which I mean, one should have experienced a few years at least of living and breathing and writing about music—that terrible thing called “honing your chops”—before jumping directly to the cramming phase of one’s existence. In short, you should be closer to old and jaded on the evolutionary scale; whippersnappers need not apply here.) I know, and in one case am friends with, living proponents of December cramming, and it works fine for them. Me, I’ve tried it for a few years, and I just can’t do it. It turns out I am simply incapable of fixing on stuff I love in a short time frame. Well, sort of. I’m fully capable of falling in love with a song on the radio after one or two listens (Lorde’s “Royals” worked that way with me; I was transfixed the first time it came on in the car). It is actually the subsequent listens when the complications begin, and my reactions crackle and pop and jump all over the map, to the point where I just don’t trust myself to file in print an early judgment. To write regular record reviews in this frame of mind—to be an early responder sort of critic—is fine, and sometimes it compels great writing (the “thrill of discovery” or whatever). For year-end lists, though, it doesn’t suit me at all. I really need to live with the stuff for a time, though “need” isn’t exactly the right word. I just vastly prefer to experience music that way.
6) Inevitably, too, I blame Facebook. Though really social media in general, I guess. I know this has been said by many already, and I promise you it won’t be any more exciting the way I’m about to say it here, but… having access to so many lists (and so many comments and arguments piled onto each list) not as a result of Pazz & Jop but prior to Pazz & Jop even appearing has kind of deadened the whole process for me a little. It’s certainly removed some of the (feel free to guffaw) mystery of the process and results. Though the bigger culprit for me is less the appearance of so many personal lists (and to a lesser degree, publication lists) than the ever-increasing appearance of interminably lengthy lists. Five or six people in my own Facebook feed have published Top 50, Top 75, and Top 100 lists. I shouldn’t have an issue with this for a number of reasons. One, as mentioned above, I have done my own version of this on at least one occasion; I fully understand, as a critic excited by all sorts of sounds from all sorts of different places, the impulse to just keep going. Why stop at 10? Two, I never once took issue with Robert Christgau producing long lists, which date back all the way to the mid-seventies, I think (though the obvious rejoinder is contained within that sentence; Christgau did so in a context in which such a list was still an actual surprise, if not a novelty, if not a hilarious fuck-you to a poll he himself invented). Three, I admit I sometimes use these lists as springboards for what I will listen to in the months ahead, and certain writers have earned enough goodwill as critics with me over the years that I will at least scan their full lists without losing my marbles by the time I reach #26. So… I don’t know what my complaint is here exactly, and anyway, it’s not really a complaint, just a potential explanation of my own continued alienation with year-endism. Too much too much, I guess. Or too much of nothing, as a perennial P&J winner himself once so aptly put it.
In the latest issue of New York, Jody Rosen creates a New York-themed playlist, running from 1928 to 2014 (from Sophie Tucker to Angel Haze). “I focused on songs about New York, and about archetypal New York folkways and experiences, and I aimed for a nice blend: iconic New York anthems and obscure ones, legendary artists and little-known ones, old songs and songs recent enough to name-drop Kinkos and ‘some kid from F.I.T.'”
From Jazz & Pop Magazine (formerly Jazz), the results of a critics poll right at the dawn of rock criticism (would like to know who actually voted). Biggest surprise to me is Donovan at #3. (Thanks Michaelangelo Matos for the tip.)
Christgau weighs in. Anyone care to weigh in on Christgau’s weigh-in? (I’ve only had time to skim the thing, and won’t likely get to it until next week.)
So asks Mark Kemp.
A: Yes, indeed, but this is not a new development (the patient’s condition has been worsening for years), nor does it (in my view) have anything (or anyway, very little) to do with the records the critics chose. Having said as much, I’m now obligated to come up with better reasons for its demise — and eventually I will.
The two minutes and 18 seconds it will take you to peruse the Pazz & Jop results? Probably better you devote them instead to the several hours (days?) it will likely take you to fish through all the reading material compiled in Jason Gross’s annual Best Music Writing summary, hosted this year at Red Bull Academy. Nice to see this is still a thing.
“From the frantic birth of rock’n’roll to the rages of punk, these books capture the excitement of popular music.” (An excellent list in the Guardian by the author of Yeah Yeah Yeah.)
I’ve grouped songs into three categories, but within those groupings, the order means nothing. The only thing I can say definitively about 2013 is that I did not have anything like a definitive #1.
A-List
Icona Pop, “I Love It”
Britney Spears, “Work B*tch”
Sky Ferreira, “I Blame Myself”
Zedd ft. Foxes, “Clarity”
Evol, “Get Up”
M.I.A., “Sexodus”
Ke$ha,”Die Young”
Mariah Carey feat. Miguel, “Beautiful”
Lana Del Rey, “Summertime Sadness” (Cedric Gervais remix)
B-List
Justin Timberlake, “Mirrors”
Justin Timberlake, Suit and Tie” (Four Tet remix)
Sky Ferreira, “Nobody Asked Me”
Rihanna feat. Mikky Ekko, “Stay”
Parquet Courts, “Stoned and Starving”
Katy B ft. Jessie Ware, “Aaliyah”
Calvin Harris, ft. Elle Goulding, “I Need Your Love”
Pet Shop Boys, “Axis”
Lucius, “Tempest”
Metric, “Breathing Underwater”
Lindstrøm & Todd Terje, “Lanzarote”
Daft Punk, “Get Lucky”
Wussy, “North Sea Girls”
Bajofondo, “Pide Piso”
Bauuer, “Harlem Shake”
Z-List
Christina Aguilera and Pitbull, “Feel This Moment”
Ke$ha and Pitbull, “Timber”
Saint Etienne member and the author of Yeah Yeah Yeah picks his top 50 tracks, from Pink Floyd to 3 Of A Kind via Barbara Mason.
[Note: this was a bonus beat included with the Simon Frith Online Exchange. Some YouTube links have been added.]
Souvenirs From a History of Popular Music, Part 1:
Simon Frith’s Top 50 (Originally published in Radio On, Fall ’92.)
I never usually get far with record lists. It’s like reading the dictionary: I start off down the right trail but hours later find I’m thinking about something altogether different. But for the last couple of years I’ve been trying to get rid of my record collection. This has meant cataloguing, and it’s meant deciding what, if anything, I have to keep. I’m about half done now (I won’t try to explain the logic of my halves) and my pile has, by an appropriate coincidence, just reached 50. This, then, is a found list. It isn’t a list of the best or even of my favourite records–many of which are etched so clearly into the soundscape (of my memory) that I feel no need to keep them. The only explanation I can give is that these are the records I feel the need to have by me to play to people. They are a source of explanation…
The order is as randomly chosen as the list:
1. Bob Dylan: “Positively 4th Street” (1965) — The aesthetic of the sneer I–the definitive boy’s bedroom song.
2. Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon: “(Blame It) On the Pony Express” (1970) — Now that intellectuals like Frank Kogan and Chuck Eddy have discovered Boney M they should check out an earlier root of Euro-pop: black GIs meet Denmark Street hacks to make the pop dance sound from which, eventually, came Pete Waterman (in whose shop I probably bought this).
3. Stephen Duffy: “I Love You” EP (1985) — Four perfect mod-pop songs written and recorded twenty years after the event.
4. Fatal Microbes: “Violence Grows” (1979) — Female singer who captured better than anyone else punk’s peculiar self-pitying glee.
5. Spoonie Gee: “Street Girl” and Toddy Tee: “Batter Ram” (nd) — Tracks from a tape Andy Schwartz once made for me–the obsession of language.
6. Bunny Wailer: Struggle (1979) — The singer who more than anyone else (except perhaps Burning Spear live) performs reggae as a religious rite.
7. Bunny Wailer: “Redemption Song” (from Tribute, 1981) — I’d never listened to the words before.
8. King Tubby Meets the Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub (nd) — With a pin-up of the mixing desks.
9. Don Williams: Greatest Hits Volume 1 (1975) — How to sing without opening your mouth.
10. David Allen Coe: Just Divorced (1984) — Puzzle time. What’s real and what’s fake? What’s touching and what’s tacky? What’s the difference?
11. A Billie Holiday Memorial (nd) — Has the advantage over later tributes in including those late tracks when she couldn’t, um, sing.
12. David Bowie: Low (1977) — The Sound of the Seventies (though see 41 below).
13. Associates: “PartyFearsTwo” (1982) — Further adventures of the ballad.
14. Misty in Roots: Live at the Counter-Eurovision (1979) — The most perfect reggae record ever made.
15. Bobby Vinton: Blue Velvet (1963) — Previous adventures of the ballad.
16. Cocteau Twins: “Aikea-Guinea” EP (1985) — New age music for people who pretend they don’t like new age music.
17. Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens: Thokozile (1988) — Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes eat your hearts out.
18. Bobby Bare: (Margie’s at) the Lincoln Park Inn and Other Controversial Country Songs (1969) — When it comes right down to it country music is essentially a comic form.
19. Temptations: Puzzle People (1969) — Those voices in pursuit of pure pop.
20. “Past, Present and Future” on the Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las (1966) — Excerpt from a teenage ballet.
21. The Jive 5’s Greatest Hits (nd) — Doo-wop at its most exhilarating and most weird.
22. The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys: The Columbia Sessions 1949-56 (1980) — Shut your eyes and belieeeeeve.
23. Eagles: “Lyin’ Eyes” on Their Greatest Hits (1976) — The most perfect pop single ever made.
24. Michel Legrand: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (nd) — Life reduced to a song, part 1.
25. Djeli Moussa Diawara: 1st LP (nd) — What is meant, I assume, by “the music of the spheres.”
26. Otis Redding: Live in Europe (1972 Japanese reissue) — Complete with transcribed grunts and groans.
27. Culturcide: “Bruce” from Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Revolutionary America (nd) — Uniquely effective rock criticism.
28. Dolly Parton: Dolly at Her Best (1972) — Just for the segue from “How Great Thou Art” to “Just the Way I Am.”
29. Tom T. Hall: In Search of a Song (1971) — Life reduced to a song, part 2.
30. Carol Jianni: “Hit ‘n’ Run Lover” (1981) — The Montreal disco sound–the girl group comes out of the closet.
31. Patti Smith: Horses (1975) — The sexiest record ever made.
32. Tabou Combo: 8th Sacrament (1974) — Tumbling percussion.
33. Kool and the Gang: “Get Down On It” (1974) — American minimalism–on the (low) dance floor.
34. Philip Glass: Dance Pieces (1987) — American minimalism–on the (high) dance floor.
35. Sharon Redd: “Never Give You Up” (1982) — The excitement of sexual dependency.
36. Mathilde Santing (10-inch promotional LP, 1982) — The coolest of cover versions.
37. Creation Rebel: Starship Africa (1980) — Space music.
38. Sona Diabate and M’mah Sylha: Sahel (1988) – Women’s talk.
39. Ladysmith Black Mambazo: Umthombo Wamanzi (1988) — Men’s talk.
40. Johnny Taylor: Just Ain’t Good Enough (1982) — For three tracks–“I’m So Proud,” “Don’t Wait,” “Just Ain’t Good Enough”–the most perfect soul record ever made.
41. Culture: Two Sevens Clash (1977) — The record from which the Clash took their name.
42. Butch Hancock: The Wind’s Dominion (1979) — Texan intellectuals at play.
43. Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) — The aesthetic of the sneer II–the definitive boys’ street sound.
44. Various Artists: Serious Beats Vol 3 (1991) — Or why Belgians don’t want to dance.
45. Paolo Conti: Concerti (nd) — An Italian chansonnier.
46. Kraftwerk: The Mix (1991) — All those glossy tunes in a single glossy packet.
47. Laurie Anderson: Strange Angels (1989) — I could listen to her for hours.
48. Sinead O’Connor: “Nothing Compares 2 U” (1990)
49. Carlos D’Alessio et Marguerite Duras: India Song et Autres Musique des Films (1984) — Euro-pop.
50. The John Barry Seven and Orchestra: Hit and Miss (1979) — Hits from 1958-1962–the last great instrumental era.
RockCritics.com 