I don't think there are any music magazines I really like in general, besides the ones aimed at creators of music, especially engineer and programmer types; magazines like Keyboard, Remix, EQ. Although I've read plenty of them and admit they do have interesting content sometimes, I dislike magazines like Rolling Stone and Blender. And I dislike Spin.
I noticed that it's the 25th anniversary of Spin, and on their website they have a readers poll about the past 25 years of music. As I was reading the first category "Best Band", I was trying to think about how long ago 25 years actually was, and that's when I realized it was 1985 25 years ago, the year I was born, and that next month is my 25th birthday.
All of the choices available in this poll are ridiculously mainstream, and many of them are choices I don't think belong if we're talking about the best in music from the past 25 years. Choices like the recent Jay-Z hit "Empire State Of Mind" in the category of "Best Song". And there are so many things I think are missing. I'm not even talking about slightly less mainstream bands, songs, and albums either, even though there are plenty I can think of that are better than most of the choices on this poll. What I'm talking about is very popular and amazing things missing, like the album "Disintegration" by The Cure and "Loveless" by My Bloody Valentine.
What's even more baffling is the results of the poll so far. According to the readers who voted in this poll, The Killers are the best band from the past 25 years. How does that even happen!? Apparently "American Idiot" by Green Day is the best album of the past 25 years. And I thought the hype surrounding that album 5 years ago had died. So far, the results had me wondering what kind of people read Spin. When I came to the "Best Rap or Hip-Hop Artists" results, I think it might have painted at least a vague picture of what kind of people. I say that because in first place is The Beastie Boys and second place is Eminem. Unless I'm mistaken they're the only two white hiphop artists on the list of choices. I'm not saying either are bad... but the best? In the past 25 years? That's pretty much as long as hiphop has been popular. Do these Spin readers only or mostly just listen to white rappers? Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur, and Notorious B.I.G. didn't even make it in the top 5. Snoop Dogg and Puff Daddy weren't even choices in the poll.
I'm just confused about these results. I think it's probably mostly just a result of people not really putting any thought into their answers, and just picking their favorites. And those favorites being a result of bad taste and limited exposure to music. If there was really no better band than The Killers and no better album than American Idiot in the past 25 years, this would be a pretty terrible era to live in.
I think part of the problem with things like this is that we've moved into a world where we're absolutely overloaded with culture. In 2008, about 115,000 albums were released (which means that to plow through them, you'd have to listen to more than 300 new albums a day). There is simply so much music, that when people attempt to sort through this massive number, they instead settle on safe choices that they 'think' they should choose. So The Killers isn't the best band of the last 25 years (and honestly, how would you even decide that); they just have the most aggressive promotion combined with the most memorable tunes. They're in the cultural memory, so they get the nod.
ReplyDeleteBest album? 'American Idiot' is just offensive as a choice. I mean hell, in the last twenty five years we've seen stuff running from 'Graceland' to 'Automatic For The People' to 'Kid A' to any number of things. But 'American Idiot'? Perhaps the title is more apt than given credit for.
Best song is always a joke. It's always whatever single has been hot over the last couple years. Had we taken this poll three or four years ago, it would have been Gnarles Barkley's 'Crazy'. Fifteen years ago it would have been 'Come As You Are'.
When it comes to culture, sad to say, a consensus by consumers is absolutely worthless. All it will tell you is what's number one in the cultural zeitgeist among the group that's voting.
I understand what you mean, but even with the points you made, it still baffles me that The Killers were chosen over various other bands. I expected there to be bad, and not so thought out choices on this poll, but that one just seems strange to me. It's like if there was a "Best Soda" poll and 7-Up won instead of more obvious choices like Pepsi or Coca-Cola, even if none of those are best. The Killers are the 7-Up of this past 25 years of bands in my mind. Maybe they're more popular than I thought.
ReplyDeleteAnd the "American Idiot" one baffled me because I would have understood it being chosen 4 or 5 years ago, but not now. It would be like if your example, "Crazy" got chosen as best song in this poll now.
I just checked the results again, and the "best album" right now is "OK Computer". Much better.