Best of Lists Can Miss One Very Important Point
Last night on Fresh Air I was talking to Ruth and Neil about how the albums which define the Noughties, or indeed any particular place or period of time, for me will probably not be the great ones. The great ones get listened to again and again and end up with memories spread all over your life, and asssociations with all sorts of things, so I actually think it’s the stuff I have since stopped listening to that will end up with the strongest associations to a particular time and place.
So for all, say, The Libertines debut won’t make my Best of the Decade list, it will probably end up being one of the albums I most associate with the decade. I played that record to fucking death when it came out. Listening back, I still love it, but for some reason I really don’t play it that much any more. Even when I think about the fact that I still love it, the urge to actually stick it on the stereo isn’t there. Unlike, say, the Giant Sand album released at around the same time.
The Libertines – The Good Old Days
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
By contrast, we played The Streets last night as well, and Christ it was embarrassing. I was really into that album too, but it was just painful to listen back to. Maybe that’s because his subsequent albums seemed to charicature the flaws and annoyances in his style so much that on re-listening to Original Pirate Material that has become all I can hear. Whatever the reasons though, it’s a record I listened to quite a bit at the time and, honestly, am never likely to (voluntarily) listen to again.
The Streets – Let’s Push Things Forward
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Killers debut Hot Fuss is another slightly different example. A brilliant, infectious, pop record that their subsequent failures don’t negate at all. Nevertheless, I still have no real urge to play that album particularly, and so the songs and the memories they evoke have become entirely locked in the latter years of the decade.
The Killers – Smile Like You Mean It
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
So basically, I think that for all this listery is kind of interesting I do find myself thinking more, not about the best albums of the decade, but the albums which I will most strongly associate with the decade in about ten years from now, and the two really don’t overlap all that much. I think of this one as a sort of lost list, not really one you can write down off the top of your head, more one which will slowly reveal itself over the course of time as you either continue or cease to listen to particular records.
Well, I guess it just depends on what you mean by “best” record. To me, the best means those that I’ll still be listening to ten years from now, not the ones that I listened to a lot in the first flush of their popularity and then forgot about. If I forgot about them, or pushed them aside, they’re not the best, pretty much by definition.
Well that’s what I mean – I don’t that the best (or my favourite) albums of any particular period will be the ones I associate the most strongly with that particular period, which initially seems a little counter-intuitive.
I ended up on a halfway house for my list, trying to distinguish it as my favourite records rather than the best. Which also turned out very different, like you said some can still be favourites without having the urge to listen to them.
Records that define the decade would be the ones I like. And ones that define culture as a whole will be a long way away from my list.
Matthew, I know what you mean. Time-defining records can be awful. I went on holiday a few years back and it was one of the best trips of my life. That said the locals forced me to listen to James Blunt on repeat (the bastards), and though I hate both his face and his musical enema I also, distressingly, have a soft spot for it.
Maybe in ten years when I’ve properly lost touch with music, maybe then I’ll buy it, and maybe it’ll stand out as the best of the decade.
Who’s with me?
Did you see James Blunt when he was interviewed on Top Gear?
Annoyingly he came across as a really nice bloke..
That’s the worst thing about him – he’s almost impossible to hate in reality. You have to make sure you never watch or read any interviews or anything, and just base your judgment on other people contantly playing his music. Then it’s okay.
But yes, how dare he be so down to earth and affable when I am determined to think he’s a bastard!
There was an interview with Newton Falkner in the Metro this week.
He came across as a bit of a prick.
Bart, you of all people can’t have been surprised. Were you judging the poor man on his MySpace page again?
* * * *
My wife loved James Blunt for a while. It drove a wedge between us.
That you’re still together, or even still speaking, is testament to either you devotion or your insanity, not sure which.
The URL under your screen name isn’t working, Ed.
I had to type stuff into the browser and everything.
Fixed the link for you Ed.
Tsk tsk, imagine having to type things into the Internet! I get annoyed with bands who email me and don’t include direct links to music, meaning I have to COPY AND PASTE their names into fucking Google. Who do they think they are, dammit?
And then I realise that I’m being a dick and I bloody well pack it in.
i reckon the best of the decade debate has been a brilliant one and the point missed is effectively the reason why…
Depends on the kind of list you want to do – do you want to churn through the history of music and pull out the music you think warrants its place on the list, or do you do one that is significant to you? The latter is more interesting surely… even if it does feature James Blunt, who was very funny on Top Gear, but there’s just no excuse for his 3 men by the sea…
oh, my somewhat tongue in cheek comment has hit the spam filter! pffft… your blog is so very sensitive darling
There’s nothing in the spam filter, Tarticles.
Shonagh, I think this is a different question. Best of lists can be personal or they can be ‘era-definining’, but often it’s stuff on neither list that becomes most closely and specifically associated with that point in time, precisely because it isn’t good or loved enough to be considered for any kind of list.
It’s just that old argument between the intellectual and emotional that all forms of art stimulate.
It’s kinda what art’s for.
I’m clearly not making myself understood here. No, it is nothing to do with that argument. I am saying that sometimes the stuff that is not the best or the favouritest or the Most Important actually ends up being most evocative of an era – evocative, not symbolic or representative.
Irrespective of how you decide what the best or the most important or whatever it is might be, it is often the stuff on the level below that, whether it be in global importance or your own personal affections, which often reminds you the strongest of that period in time. Take Echobelly or Sleeper – very good bands who were listened to a lot at a particular time, but for most people not meaningful enough to have stayed on the stereo, even intermittently, ever since.
Consequently, whenever I hear those songs I am reminded more of the mid-nineties than I am by other songs from that time which have gone on to become more enduring or which I personally loved more. This is precisely because they were less enduring and/or less loved, and are therefore only evocative of that one moment in time.
Whatever the argument, ‘listery’ is a great word
Interestingly, (I hope!) “Original Pirate Material” came out top of the Observer Music Monthly’s albums of the decade. I’d agree he’s completely lost his way latterly, but, for me, the “where the hell did THAT come from” sensation I got listening to this when it came out has never left me. So each time I hear a track or listen to it in full I’m still filled with that sensation that was with me at the time. Maybe because of that, I’ve never found it to be as dated as you clearly do. I also loved “A Grand Don’t Come for Free” but the fall since then has been spectacular and looks unstoppable too I’m afraid. Shame.
Oh! Well the Internet ate a perfectly good stab at you for posting the Libertines track after Pete Dohgerty made such an ass of himself singing the German national (Nazi) anthem last week. I had a link and everything. Pfffft
Slackdad, that’s a perfect description of my emotions when first listening to that album: what the fucking hell was that?!
Subsequently the sheer surprise has given way to a lack of affection, but I will always remember the ‘whoah, fuck, what?‘ sensation I first felt when hearing it. So I may not remember the music fondly, but I will probably still retain affection for the album, if that makes sense.
Tart, you, rude, on the internet? Surely not!
well Matthew, I wish i could add my own insight here and some thoughtful words but …. i agree with basically everything you’re saying. it’s nearly impossible on a personal level to keep the two in perspective *together* – as we grow our wants/needs will be dynamic and continually changing. it really is a great point to bring up.
So really there are three categories you can use define the elusive “Best Of” a particular period.
There are the songs you personally love, the stuff that moves you and has personal meaning and resonance for you. It may be something that you’ve spent a lot fo time with over the period in question. Stuff that falls into the ‘emotional’ category.
Then there are the ‘important’ releases of the period in question. The records that, if you’re inclined to consider things from an intellectual point of view, you would have to acknowledge had a significant historical impact, regardless of whether or not you liked them much personally.
Finally there are the examples that Matthew’s describing, the ones that have an intangible ability to evoke the period. They might not necessarily have a deep emotional resonance for you, or have had a huge historical impact on the course of human artistic endeavour, but are nevertheless enjoyable in a nostalgic sense.
Yes?
Yes, in a sense. That last category is the one I was talking about. Often these songs don’t really belong on any best of list, because if anyone liked them that much then they’d be played a lot more out of context and hence lose a bit of that strong association with a particular time period.
The thing I find interesting about the 00s is that it’s the first decade in which my listening habits have been scrupulously chronicled by a third party. I couldn’t tell you the song I’ve listened to the most over the past decade, but iTunes can. I can’t remember all of the albums I bought in 2006, but iTunes can.
iTunes (or similar database software) will be able to pick out that Death Cab For Cutie album I listened to over and over back in the day, and it’ll be able to tell me that it’s been 3 years since I last listened to it.
Of course if you still listen to a ton of vinyl and listen to CDs in your living room, you’re not going to get this. Yet.
And I wasn’t being rude, merely trying to hijack this thread to a more interesting debate than the “some records are important, some are important to me, and some are important to everyone or fucking well should be – hence important!” See? now THAT’s rude. xoxo
Our tastes may vary now, but we apparently had a lot more in common earlier in the decade.
Especially what you said about The Libertines (loved the album then, still like it now, but won’t include it on my list) and The Streets (holy crap, what a turnaround. I was obsessed w/ the CD when it first came out, now find it unlistenable).