T’is the list season, and, this year closing a decade of - I think - unprecedented music explosion - and exploration - , it is good to see what everyone has to offer as their ultimate album collection of the decade. And today, Rolling Stone mag published their version of music history for the 2000s.
Though I did not review it at the time, I found Pitchfork’s 200 albums of the 2000s an excellent starting point to compare any other list.
To start off, both list is topped by Radiohead’s Kid A, which isn’t my favorite album of the decade, and is certainly isn’t the one I listened to most, but is a good choice, as the album set the tone of what was to come in the years after. Kid A will certainly be hailed as the album of the decade by many a lists.
But the positiveness ends there. A quick glance at the RS list, and one starts to notice way too many artist duplicates: Johnny Cash is listed twice, U2 three times, The White Stripes 2 times, Kanye West 4 times (!), Coldplay 3 times, Bright Eyes 2, Eminem 2, TV on the radio 2, and so on and so forth. That’s 20% of the chart given to 8 artists right there.
Some artists do deserve multiple rankings, and I am surprised Wilco made it to the first 5 on the RS list. But it is the only positive surprise on the list.
But: no Deerhunter? No Modest Mouse? No Hot Chip? No Animal Collective? No Grizzly Bear? No Rapture? No Broken Social Scene?
Unforgivable. But I expected it.
