The Pitchfork 500

Last updated

The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present is a book compiling the greatest songs from 1977 to 2006, published in 2008 by Pitchfork Media. The book focuses on specific genres including indie rock, hip-hop, electronic, pop, metal, and experimental underground. The book is broken down into 9 chronological periods, each period beginning with a description of the music scene before the featured artists, and how those artists changed the music scene. [1] Time described the book as having "42 critics to cover 30 years of music, from 1977 punk to 2006 crunk, and all the starry-eyed, acoustic acts in between." [2]

Contents

Critical reception

The book received attention and criticism from mainstream and alternative media. TIME commented that the book's record reviews "have been pleasantly stripped of their supercilious phrases" and that "its tributes to popular songs are exquisite" but concluded, "the project comes off like a personal message that High Fidelity's Rob Gordon might obsessively attach to a mix-tape." [2] The Washington City Paper called it Pitchfork's "boomer-like shot at print-based respectability, a coffee-table book..." [3] Under the Radar gave the book a 7/10 rating, noting that Pitchfork "has emerged as arguably the preeminent music criticism source of its time while fashioning itself into a multimedia powerhouse". [4]

On the other hand, the Houston Press criticized the book for what it saw as its unwarranted disregard for Latin, country, funk, soul, and classic rock, opining that Pitchfork's "school of criticism has always relied more on trendy perceptions than actual musical merit and song structure." [5] And Time Out Chicago called the book "a slow, meandering walk through the arbitrary tastes of the site's editors and authors" and "a wasted opportunity". [6]

Statistics

Prince and Talking Heads had the most songs featured on the list with four each. The Cure, the Clash, New Order, OutKast, Pavement, Pixies, Radiohead, and the Smiths received three spots each. 38 bands and artists had two songs listed. Björk is featured three times: twice in solo work, and once in Icelandic pop group the Sugarcubes. The surviving members of Joy Division have five total when coupled with their work as New Order.

Brian Eno features once as a performer, twice as co-writer (David Bowie's "Heroes" and Talking Heads' "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)"), four times as a producer (Talking Heads' "Memories Can't Wait" and "Born Under Punches", U2's "Bad" and Devo's "Mongoloid"), and two entries are cover versions of his songs (Bauhaus' "Third Uncle" and Uilab's "St. Elmo's Fire").

The 1977–1979 period had the most songs on the list with 66, and 1997–1999 had the fewest with 38.

1977–1979

1980–1982

1983–1986

1987–1990

1991–1993

1994–1996

1997–1999

2000–2002

2003–2006

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pixies (band)</span> American alternative rock band

The Pixies are an American alternative rock band formed in 1986, in Boston, Massachusetts. Until 2013, the band consisted of Black Francis, Joey Santiago, Kim Deal and David Lovering (drums). They disbanded acrimoniously in 1993 but reunited in 2004. After Deal left in 2013, the Pixies hired Kim Shattuck as a touring bassist; she was replaced later that year by Paz Lenchantin, who became a permanent member in 2016.

<i>Surfer Rosa</i> 1988 studio album by Pixies

Surfer Rosa is the debut studio album by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released in March 1988 on the British label 4AD. It was produced by Steve Albini. Surfer Rosa contains many of the elements of Pixies' earlier output, including Spanish lyrics and references to Puerto Rico. It includes references to mutilation and voyeurism alongside experimental recording techniques and a distinctive drum sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonny Greenwood</span> English musician (born 1971)

Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood is an English musician. He is the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the rock band Radiohead, and has composed numerous film scores. He has been named one of the greatest guitarists by numerous publications, including Rolling Stone.

This is a timeline of punk rock, from its beginnings in the 1960s to the present day. Bands or albums listed either side of 1976 are of diverse genres and are retrospectively called by their genre name that was used during the era of their release.

Like a Version is a weekly segment on Australian youth radio station triple j. It involves Australian and international artists playing two songs live in the triple j studio, one of their own songs and then a cover version, hence the name of the segment. The title is wordplay on the Madonna song "Like a Virgin".

This is a comprehensive listing of official post-Idol releases by various contestants of the television show American Idol.

MuchDance is a series of pop/dance albums featuring various artists compiled, mixed and released by the Canadian television station MuchMusic, starting in 1997. It continues a similar series released in association with Quality Records from 1990 to 1997 under the name Muchmusic Dance Mix.

Indie 2000 was a series of alternative music compilations that enjoyed moderate success in Australia throughout the latter half of the 1990s. There were a total of nine volumes. The title was changed to simply Indie for volumes 8 and 9. The compilations consisted of popular alternative songs, a considerable amount of them being by Australian bands.

"Rock N Roll Nigger" is a rock song written by Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye, and released on the Patti Smith Group's 1978 album Easter.

Cahill are a dance music group based in Liverpool, UK consisting of producers Anton Powers, Tim Condran and Scott Rosser. They are best known for their 2008 single, "Trippin' on You", which features vocals from Nikki Belle.

Classic Rock was a 31-volume series issued by Time Life during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The series spotlighted popular music played on Top 40 radio stations of the mid-to-late-1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pity Sex</span> American alternative rock band

Pity Sex were an American alternative rock band from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The band formed in 2011, and released two studio albums – Feast of Love (2013) and White Hot Moon (2016) – prior to their split. The band combined elements of indie rock, shoegaze, dream pop and noise rock in their music, and were described by Pitchfork as "post-coital pop-punk". The band announced its reunion in 2022, as part of the Sound & Fury festival line-up.

Aaron Jennings Puckett, better known by his stage name Lil Aaron, is an American rapper, singer and songwriter from Goshen, Indiana. Merging elements of pop punk and emo with hip hop and pop, he has released five solo EPs, as well as two EPs as a member of the alternative hip hop collective Boyfriendz. He has also written songs for artists such as Blackbear, Liam Payne, Hailee Steinfeld, Dev and Kiiara. He took part in the writing of Lizzo's 2019 album Cuz I Love You, which won a Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album.

References

  1. ↑ Archived February 27, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  2. 1 2 Suddath, Claire (2008-11-26). "Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews". Time . ISSN   0040-781X . Retrieved 2024-02-10.
  3. ↑ Matthew Siblo, "Rank Bullshit: Pitchfork's list to end all lists should, in fact, end all lists." Washington City Paper , December 18, 2009.
  4. ↑ Evan Rytlewski, "Reviews", Under the Radar , November 1, 2008.
  5. ↑ John Nova Lomax, "Get Lit: The Pitchfork 500", Houston Press , November 12, 2008.
  6. ↑ Jonathan Messinger, "Books: The Pitchfork 500", Time Out Chicago, November 17, 2008.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.