I have to say it surprises me that there is nothing more recent than "A Rush Of Blood To The Head". Like, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers and why aren't the numerous Muse fans reading Q voting for anything newer than "Origin Of Symmetry"?
In the 90s polls there was a tendency that way too many recent albums were popping up in the polls, but now it's the opposite. Of course this is partly an indication that there has been very much a drought of indie type British music in the past years - the biggest indie names have largely been North American.
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Friday, 24 December 2010 08:42 (thirteen years ago) link
Er, Geir - Funeral was 2005, Black Holes & Revelations was 2006, In Rainbows was 2007. And the Killers are in there.
― The baby boomers have defined everything once and for all (Dorianlynskey), Friday, 24 December 2010 10:06 (thirteen years ago) link
wow! diff betwixt britishes ilx then and now is mind-boggling. (also: what ever happened to that nice Enrique lad?)
― 69 65 51 46 (Ioannis), Friday, 24 December 2010 10:58 (thirteen years ago) link
X-Post. Didn't notice those. Although "Funeral" was indeed 2005. Still puzzles me how the Q readers have already forgotten about Franz Ferdinand though.
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Friday, 24 December 2010 13:19 (thirteen years ago) link
Was indeed 2004, I mean
I bet most people wish they could forget Franz Ferdinand ever existed.
― Shakey Moe Szyslak (Algerian Goalkeeper), Friday, 24 December 2010 13:21 (thirteen years ago) link
The Kaiser maybe, not the band. They are (still) great. :)
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Friday, 24 December 2010 13:22 (thirteen years ago) link
The band, not the Archduke!
― Shakey Moe Szyslak (Algerian Goalkeeper), Friday, 24 December 2010 13:25 (thirteen years ago) link
Q: What's the difference between Franz Ferdinand and jokes about Franz Ferdinand's name?A: Jokes about Franz Ferdinand's name can get old.
― once more Jagger faps the hivemind (symsymsym), Friday, 24 December 2010 14:59 (thirteen years ago) link
5. Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not – Arctic Monkeys
amazing
― markers, Friday, 24 December 2010 06:29 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
^^^^^^^
so, two ladies in the top 25, no non-whites. Surprised, surprised.
still, loveless! never would have thought they had it in them.
― irish xmas caek, get that marzipan inta ya (a hoy hoy), Friday, 24 December 2010 15:20 (thirteen years ago) link
Two ladies? Who? Which? Regine? Bilinda?Sorry for being "worked up" but the UK can sink into the sea.
― ARP 2600 vs. Atari 2600 (Ówen P.), Friday, 24 December 2010 17:27 (thirteen years ago) link
hahaha
― markers, Friday, 24 December 2010 17:29 (thirteen years ago) link
Sorry for being "worked up" but the UK can sink into the sea.
this should be the catchphrase on yr tour posters next time you visit the UK
― i genuinely thought when i first joined that he was the admin (ilxor), Friday, 24 December 2010 18:17 (thirteen years ago) link
the 9 american (and 1 canadian!) albums paint an even bleaker picture:
2. Nevermind – Nirvana11. Is This It – The Strokes15. White Blood Cells – The White Stripes16. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel17. Hot Fuss – The Killers19. Funeral – Arcade Fire20. American Idiot – Green Bay24. Only By The Night – Kings Of Leon27. Appetite For Destruction – Guns N’Roses29. Automatic For The People – R.E.M.
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Friday, 24 December 2010 20:03 (thirteen years ago) link
NOT IN MY NAME
― acoleuthic, Friday, 24 December 2010 20:18 (thirteen years ago) link
Why does limey people never want to black?
― Mr. Snrub, Friday, 24 December 2010 20:56 (thirteen years ago) link
Why doeslimey people Q readers never want to black?
Look at the UK # 1s thread. Lots of limey people is black.
― sonofstan, Friday, 24 December 2010 21:12 (thirteen years ago) link
I guess you know Q readers don't like R&B or hip-hop much. Then, namecheck some black indie rock bands that should have been in the list
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Saturday, 25 December 2010 00:32 (thirteen years ago) link
Neutral Milk Hotel is so so so so weird on that list.
― sean gramophone, Friday, 24 December 2010 06:10 (Yesterday)
not really
― No Wicked Heart Shall Prosper.rar (nakhchivan), Saturday, 25 December 2010 00:46 (thirteen years ago) link
rmde at ppl getting upset a q lists
might as well get upset that the nra end of year list is full of guns
― No Wicked Heart Shall Prosper.rar (nakhchivan), Saturday, 25 December 2010 00:47 (thirteen years ago) link
sorry for forgetting that yr friends in arcade fire are grrrls owen. :)
― irish xmas caek, get that marzipan inta ya (a hoy hoy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 01:00 (thirteen years ago) link
haha
― ARP 2600 vs. Atari 2600 (Ówen P.), Saturday, 25 December 2010 02:32 (thirteen years ago) link
well yeah obviously that's true to an extent — like, why wouldn't anyone read Q if they *didn't* think OK Computer was the best album ever made? — but I still think this list is bad enough to warrant a lil bit of upset-ness
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 03:00 (thirteen years ago) link
basically the only thing that has changed in the past 5 yrs is that two of the better albums (Kid A and Automatic) drop out of the top 10 and are replaced by Arctic Monkeys and Muse
smdh
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 03:05 (thirteen years ago) link
I would say it shows the Q readers have gotten the point. Of course the best music is being made in the UK. :)
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Saturday, 25 December 2010 11:12 (thirteen years ago) link
OK, so they may not be in the Top 30, but these are all in the list.
94) Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain 93) Bob Marley and the Wailers - Exodus 91) Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back 84) Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life 65) Massive Attack - Blue Lines 63) The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced?58 ) Michael Jackson - Thriller 38 ) The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland 32) Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
The lack of women is more obvious, but I guess there are still too few female singer/songwriters out there.
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Saturday, 25 December 2010 11:18 (thirteen years ago) link
Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley are both surprising, given they both died before 1985, in Hendrix's case 15 years before the poll is supposed to start. It's like Q readers don't know what they're on about!
― Neil S, Saturday, 25 December 2010 12:16 (thirteen years ago) link
Well in the case of Bob Marley, Q readers are legally required to own a copy of 'Exodus' so that they can go around telling everybody that they "listen to reggae".
― Les centimètres énigmatiques (snoball), Saturday, 25 December 2010 12:44 (thirteen years ago) link
At what point did ITAOTS turn from underground Elephant 6 album into proper cannon fodder? Or has it been such a slow process I didn't notice?
― 전승 Complete Victory (in Battle) (NotEnough), Saturday, 25 December 2010 12:49 (thirteen years ago) link
No idea, although it should have been some Apples (In Stereo) album instead as they have always been much better.
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Saturday, 25 December 2010 13:11 (thirteen years ago) link
http://iaspm-us.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Blake-2.pdf
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 15:27 (thirteen years ago) link
(some paper I found while googling — "INTERNET MUSIC CRITICISM AS ARCHIVE: PITCHFORK MEDIA AND NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL’S IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA")
((that's the name of the paper, not the gogogle search I did to find it))
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 15:28 (thirteen years ago) link
Magazine claims to have "always" liked an album that it was actually lukewarm towards on it's release, film at 11...
― Les centimètres énigmatiques (snoball), Saturday, 25 December 2010 15:29 (thirteen years ago) link
potentially relevant to this discussion:
McGonigal’s introduction for the second part [of Pitchfork's c.2008 10th-anniversary feature], a retrospective by currently in- vogue indie artists, continued to link the album’s release and Pitchfork. In the opening sentence, McGonigal claimed that “in indie circles, In the Aeroplane over the Sea was hailed as an instant classic.”11 McGonigal emphasized its influence on contemporary indie artists by associating the band with artists such as Devendra Banhart, the Decemberists, and Beirut who were themselves lauded by Pitchfork. McGonigal’s reiterated that he, and thus Pitchfork, immediately understood the album was brilliant: “I’m really glad that Aeroplane is so revered. I love it to death, myself—cried when I first listened to the promo cassette and everything. I knew immediately that this was something really special, and wasn’t surprised when quite a few other people agreed.”12 Since the original sources were deleted, and since many of the original sources are from out-of-print magazines or on defunct websites, someone reading Pitchfork today has no choice but to believe Pitchfork was the sole source to laud the album from the beginning.[...] The album’s manner ofcirculation is seen as archetypically indie, receiving airplay on college and alternative radio, but not on mainstream media outlets such as MTV or Top 40 radio. Since then, the album has been described as selling via word-of-mouth, although it can be purchased at major music stores. This method of advertising was found in the artists’ retrospective; many of them described being introduced to the album by a friend.
[...] The album’s manner ofcirculation is seen as archetypically indie, receiving airplay on college and alternative radio, but not on mainstream media outlets such as MTV or Top 40 radio. Since then, the album has been described as selling via word-of-mouth, although it can be purchased at major music stores. This method of advertising was found in the artists’ retrospective; many of them described being introduced to the album by a friend.
for my own part, I hadn't listened to any E6 stuff (altho I think I had heard of Apples in Stereo) before I was introduced to NMH c.2002 through a recommendation by a cool older dude from Austin who posted on the same video-game message board as me and had generally excellent taste (also put me on to Haruki Murakami — thanks Chris!). but I got the impression, at that time, that it already had quite a cult following; and most of my friends in high school who were into 'indie' music had at least heard of it (remember getting clowned on for liking "that anne frank album")
also, I like Blake's idea that the album's "anti-mainstream qualities have ossified due to the group’s musical silence" — which could maybe more cynically rephrased as "they haven't done anything to embarrass themselves or create a backlash".
at any rate, it does seem to still be perceived as essentially 'weird' in a way that is rare for an album of its stature, 'mainstream' or not. part of which is of course due to the attitudes listeners and critics bring to the thing, but let's be real, the music also has to do a lot of work to sustain such a reading.
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 15:45 (thirteen years ago) link
'nother interesting angle:
Radiohead, Neutral Milk Hotel Help Vinyl Sales Almost Double In 2008JANUARY 8, 2009 2:05 PM EDTWhile CD sales continue to decline, vinyl is still experience a renaissance: 89 percent more LPs were sold last year than in '07. Part of the leap can be attributed to Capitol Records' decision to reissue many of their most famous albums on vinyl, as the Beatles' Abbey Road was the year's second-highest-selling vinyl album, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon ranked seventh and Radiohead's OK Computer rounded out the Top 10. Radiohead's In Rainbows, an album that began its career as a free download, was 2008's biggest vinyl seller, a position that was no doubt aided by the fact that the album came out on January 1st of last year and therefore had plenty of time on shelves.Other shockers: Neutral Milk Hotel's 1998 classic In The Aeroplane Over the Sea came in sixth, ahead of Dark Side, Fleet Foxes and Metallica's Death Magnetic. Guns n' Roses' Chinese Democracy, while struggling to sell CDs, sold enough vinyls to place third on the Top 10 list. But the biggest surprise: The B-52's' new album Funplex was the year's fourth best-selling record as it bridged the gap between people who probably owned record players decades ago and the new class of vinyl buyers.As we examined back in June in our "Vinyl Returns" feature, the death of the CD and the influx of the MP3 — with its varying degrees of less-than-CD-quality sound — have opened the door for vinyl to be relevant again. Plus, the artwork for Aeroplane looks so much better on a larger canvas. In all, the number of records sold last year leapt from 988,000 in '07 to 1.88 million in '08. Still, the sales from vinyl only made up 0.1 percent of the music sales in 2008, a year that saw a 14 percent decrease across the board.
JANUARY 8, 2009 2:05 PM EDTWhile CD sales continue to decline, vinyl is still experience a renaissance: 89 percent more LPs were sold last year than in '07. Part of the leap can be attributed to Capitol Records' decision to reissue many of their most famous albums on vinyl, as the Beatles' Abbey Road was the year's second-highest-selling vinyl album, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon ranked seventh and Radiohead's OK Computer rounded out the Top 10. Radiohead's In Rainbows, an album that began its career as a free download, was 2008's biggest vinyl seller, a position that was no doubt aided by the fact that the album came out on January 1st of last year and therefore had plenty of time on shelves.
Other shockers: Neutral Milk Hotel's 1998 classic In The Aeroplane Over the Sea came in sixth, ahead of Dark Side, Fleet Foxes and Metallica's Death Magnetic. Guns n' Roses' Chinese Democracy, while struggling to sell CDs, sold enough vinyls to place third on the Top 10 list. But the biggest surprise: The B-52's' new album Funplex was the year's fourth best-selling record as it bridged the gap between people who probably owned record players decades ago and the new class of vinyl buyers.
As we examined back in June in our "Vinyl Returns" feature, the death of the CD and the influx of the MP3 — with its varying degrees of less-than-CD-quality sound — have opened the door for vinyl to be relevant again. Plus, the artwork for Aeroplane looks so much better on a larger canvas. In all, the number of records sold last year leapt from 988,000 in '07 to 1.88 million in '08. Still, the sales from vinyl only made up 0.1 percent of the music sales in 2008, a year that saw a 14 percent decrease across the board.
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 15:48 (thirteen years ago) link
okay one last quote just for lols:
Shortly after the release of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Puncture magazine had a cover story on Neutral Milk Hotel. In it Mangum told of the influence on the record of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. He explained that shortly after releasing On Avery Island he read the book for the first time, and found himself completely overwhelmed with sadness and grief. Back in 1998 this admission made my jaw drop. What the hell? A guy in a rock band saying he was emotionally devastated by a book everyone else in America read for a middle-school assignment? I felt embarrassed for him at first, but then, the more I thought about it and the more I heard the record, I was awed.
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 15:51 (thirteen years ago) link
(that's from the 2005 pfork review of the reissue, which argues that Aeroplane's most distinctive quality within the 90s indie rock canon is that it "is not cool.")
― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Saturday, 25 December 2010 15:53 (thirteen years ago) link
The Q readers feel no need to tell everyone they listen to reggae. They don't feel like they are required to like a certain kind of music that they don't, for instance they don't give a damn about listen to any token R&B or funk. However, Bob Marley had more way with a tune than any (true) reggae act ever before or since, and as such, he has gotten a well-deserved position as the leading reggae act ever.
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Saturday, 25 December 2010 22:28 (thirteen years ago) link
Bob Marley had more way with a tune than any (true) reggae act ever before or since
no way, e.g., horace andy; cornell campbell; jimmy cliff; the congos.
― Daniel, Esq., Saturday, 25 December 2010 22:33 (thirteen years ago) link
I like Jimmy Cliff, but I feel like his melodies were more repetitive and harmonically less varied than a lot of Bob Marley's tunes. I don't like "Exodus" (the song) at all, but thankfully Bob Marley was usually able to go way beyong one chord songs like that one.
― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Sunday, 26 December 2010 12:33 (thirteen years ago) link