30/11/2009
Why I don’t much care about your best of the decade list
Listen.
I get it.
It can be a fun little game to play. “Pick 5 records or we shoot this dog in the head.”
It can also be useful, a little mental exercise to organize and catalog all the shit you’ve watched, heard or bought (HA!) over some period of time. “What came out in January that I still care about at all?”
Finally, it certainly has proved a great way to engage your audience, get people talking arguing and thinking about whatever it is you’ve listed. The sheer definitive nature of rankings lends itself to argument, sharing, responding, re-posting and uncontrollable sobbing. “There is no way “Kid A” is 17 better than “This Is It”, it can’t be more than 11 better.
Many people who think about criticism have often said that these lists have little or no value. Of course most these folks have also said that the score, rating, star and thumb also have little value. The short hand offered by these devices would require really understanding the previous writings of the critic to put it into context and if you bothered to read the previous reviews, wouldn’t you probably read this one too, rather than just skipping to the score at the end (or at the top as is so now often the case)?
The real reason I don’t care about your best of the 2000’s list is I don’t think the context of time matters all that much to the relevance of the recording. In fact, when it does matter, it tends to paint the song as completely disposable and irrelevant. “19-90-5!”
At some point the time context of the performer/recorder/songwriter becomes completely subservient to the time context of the listener, almost to the point of irrelevance.
This is a point that’s often lost on critics and musics geeks alike. For the former, there is no better way to safely pad a music review than with biographical information or other background data. For the later, the music is never enough and sometimes even takes a backseat to collecting pertinent and arcane information alike, proving once and for all one’s superior irrelevant knowledge (until 2002, Jack Johnson only used Shure mics because he found them to be shinny and metallic).
How important is 1973 to the middle school kid who just discovered “Dark Side of the Moon”? 
Not very and just as unimportant as Pink Floyd’s house boat studio or the departure of Syd Barrett. The kid may indeed want to learn about Syd or 73 or barge based accomidations — but it doesn’t much impact what he’s hearing. For him, the year that matters is 2009. That’s the year, the time, the feeling, the place they’ll associate with the music — all of which might be very important to that listener.
Wait, what if the kid discovered Dark Side by browsing Rollingstone.com’s best of the ’70s?
First, I love the idea of a 12-year-old kid on a site like that when there’s perfectly good porno to be had on the web. Second, so what? Are you suggesting that without the list he would have stumbled upon Captain and Tenniell instead, then bought a Moog and a blue blazer and lead us to a musical apocalypse? Not effing likely.
This is not to say music history isn’t useful or interesting, the study of context and influence can be very interesting and even enlightening. But as any historian of anything will tell you history is in the details, not the dates.
As the ultimate value of the best of list is in cataloging or indexing material that is already cataloged and indexed in numerous other forms — they just aren’t worth much of anyone’s time — a fact I’m certain everyone will remind me of, next time I list or rate anything.
Text posted at 14:40
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