The only thing I love more than a music list is a BIG music list. This one is brought to you by the good folks at NME (New Music Express), a British based mag. It is very easy to bash any list and this one is no exception, but NME makes it especially easy. Its to be expected that these guys would put a heavy emphasis on punk and Britpop, and newer British bands theyve championed that no one seems to care about, but they really do go overboard. First- the good. 1) I do like that theyve spread the love around chronologically- no one year has more than 17 albums and every year between 1967-2011 has at least 5. No one wants to see the same old boring list of baby boomer groups with only a smattering of albums after 1990. Also they refreshingly thread the needle between the square out of date Rolling Stone lists and lists by Pitchfork, which are great but always tend to include at least two handfuls of albums only 3 people in the world actually care about. 2) And no irrelevant albums by past their prime artists make it on ala every Rolling Stone list of the past 25 years (no Mick Jagger solo albums for instance- yay!) 3) There is a ton of great music hear and some more new stuff for me (and whoever) to discover, but because the list is so all over the place I will likely listen with a more wary ear. 4) They actually get all of the release years right Now the bad: 1) O.K. its cool that you dont lad the list up with classic rock album after classic rock album but these albums: The Horrors - Primary Colors Alt-J- Awesome Wave The Cribs- New Fellas The Bluetones - Expecting To Fly Made the list over these albums: Pink Floyd- The Wall Led Zeppelin- II Van Morrison- Moondance U2- Achtung Baby Does anyone find that not completely ridiculous? 2) Some of the stuff they didnt include seems like nothing more than an affectation. I know some people hate U2 but to only include The Joshua Tree and have it in the 400s just seems a bit rude. Only two Pink Floyd albums and one of them is Piper at the Gates Of Dawn (no Wish You Were Here or The Wall???) and only two Zep albums (III & IV) is completely lame. 3) They completely screw the genres of heavy metal and prog. I dont think I could find a single prog album, unless you consider Dark Side of the Moon or Can or Neu! prog. There are some token metal albums (SLayer Reign In Blood, AC/DV Back In Black, Master of Puppets and The Black Album) but there should have been many more. Not one Sabbath album? Really? Not even Paranoid? Come on now. 4) Their ranking are totally all over the place. See above with Joshua Tree, but really just look at the whole list. Look- I love the Libertines too and I know they were a huge band in Britain in particular. But not one but two of their albums make the top 100? Up the Bracket is a bit of a stretch but the self-titled album, while decent, shouldnt even go near the top 500 much less 100. 5) The White Stripes/De Stijl actually appears twice on this list- at #77 and again in the 300s. Im pretty sure they meant for the #77 album to actually be White Blood Cells, as they included that album cover, but the write-up is about De Stijl and is different from the De Stijl write-up in the 300s. Very weird and very sloppy. 6) To start the list of with Stankonia at #500 hit me a bit below the belt as I still consider it the mightiest album of our current millennium. And their rap choices werent even that bad, even is a bit safe (but they did totally miss the boat by not including Low End Theory at all and including Hello Nasty and Ill Communication over Check Your Head and License to Ill. For Shame!). I would love to hear from any of you all who like to dork out on these lists as much as I do. I think Rich Kamermans head may just explode when he reads it though.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 19:37:18 +0000
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