Is It The End Of The Decade Already?

The folks over at Pitchfork have recently compiled a list of the top 500 songs of the decade. According to them. I followed it as it wended it's way from number 500 all the way down to number one over the course of five installments.

What made the list so cool to follow was that the contributers to the list including samples from each song included, but really if you wanted to hear the full version of any of the songs you could just pop over to youtube and there would likely by a homemade video from some film student in New Jersey (so many homebrew music videos come from a film student in New Jersey). Anyway, if you're like me, you're always looking for new music to keep your ears interested and, needless to say, I found a few bands I hadn't discovered yet, but will definitely give some listening time to now that I've been made aware.

Aside from the learning experience of getting to check out all this music that has captivated Pitchfork writers and editors so much this past decade is that it has proven to spark debate over the internets about bands and songs that got too much recognition and bands and songs that deserved more recognition but received little or none at all. So, in the process, I ended up digging around on youtube some more checking out names that were being tossed around by the people debating the list's contents. So, even more music to check out.

Whew! My ears have been getting a workout this week.

But one thing that has bugged me about the whole thing is that so many people who came away from reading the list upset over its contents would just dismiss it the whole thing as shit, that Pitchfork was a bunch of hipsters who only wanted to recognize either totally unlistenable crap for hipster cred or techno/rap/r&b because it's fashionable to be in love with those genres right now. I just find that position so lazy. Fine, some online music magazine has proven with a list of their top songs of the decade that their tastes don't match yours. Instead of dismissing the whole list make your own damn list to contradict them. I mean if it bothers you that much They don't owe it to anybody to change their list to suit your tastes. Why not change the world instead of asking it to change for you?

Incidentally, "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" by: The Arcade Fire, the song that is number one on my iPod according to the number of times it has been played was number ten on the list, the highest-ranked Arcade Fire song. So maybe my own musical tastes aren't too different from that of the fine folks at Pitchfork.

There's a lot of great music out there. It was a rich decade sonically speaking.

The links below go to the installments...

Songs 500-201
Songs 200-101
Songs 100-51
Songs 50-21
Songs 20-1