Per my extensive work in hip-hop research and history, there have been several excellent runs of albums by artists and groups throughout the last 40 years. Surely, this will shock you. Great people doing great things consistently is rarely seen at any level, and it’s also rare in music.
A few weeks ago upon the release of Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN., I wondered how many artists had pulled off the feat that Kendrick had just completed: three straight A-level albums. The list is, as you’d expect, pretty short.
I was informed by my friend James that I left out Lil Wayne’s three-album run of Tha Carter I to Tha Carter III. Upon further review, I do not agree with this suggestion, but respect it. I would rate Wayne’s three album run respectively: Carter I a B, Carter II an A-, Carter III either a B+ or A-. That’s still a good and solid run, just not that spectacular. My views are my own et cetera.
Regardless of that, it gave me this question: which artist possesses the greatest three-album run in hip-hop history? It’s the music equivalent of the Lakers winning three in a row or when UCLA won a bajillion titles in the 1970s. Those were really fun, great runs that you had to be a major hater to not enjoy. (Happy hip-hop history to all, even the haters and losers!) Historically, music has had several of its own, and while high variance can work very well (Young Thug is probably the best current example of this), it also leads to high inconsistency.
The rules are as follows:
The artist must release three albums in a row that I, personally, have rated at an A-minus (~8/10) or higher.
That’s the only rule.
After further research, I’ve got a few more artists to add to the pile: The Roots, MF Doom*, Ice-T, M.I.A. We’re removing from the pile of consideration A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Danny Brown. The cases against each:
Tribe: I hate to be That Guy but The Low End Theory is barely a B+; it scrapes itself up on the efforts of some of the beats but Phife in particular isn’t very good on this album. Sorry 😦
De La: The DLS issue is that they released their debut and Buhloone Mind State as #1 and #3 of a series and both are masterpieces, but #2 – De La Soul Is Dead – is one of the most overrated hip-hop albums to have been released. It came close, but it’s a B+ too.
Danny Brown: Before coming through again with Atrocity Exhibition, I was a bit let down with Old – not enough going for it in much of any way, though still good-ish. It’s a B.
That gives us the following pool of 13 artists or groups to choose from:
Beastie Boys
Chance the Rapper
Ghostface Killah
Ice-T
Kanye West
Kendrick Lamar
MF Doom*
M.I.A.
Missy Elliott
OutKast
Pete Rock
Public Enemy
The Roots
Four major issues I found when creating this:
Tons of artists released two great albums in a row or two out of three or two out of four. The numbers significantly decreased to these 13 when I looked for those who’d done it three straight times out. It’s like baseball, kind of: in 2016, there were 318 occurrences of a player hitting two home runs in one game. Three or more home runs in one game? Just 19. That level of consistency and explosion is extremely rare.
About MF Doom: yes, he’s released tons of works under other names. But under the MF Doom project, which he’s pretty easily best known for, he has three A-level albums released, technically, in a row. It’s over a ten-year span, but it does exist.
Pete Rock’s a producer, not a rapper. Doesn’t matter – he’s a hip-hop artist, so he counts.
A pair of artists had multiple three-album runs of excellence. I’ve selected the better run.
My statistics-based research backed with scientific methods and other methodology has led me to find what I believe to be the best three-album run ever. Let’s count down first – they’re slotted into four groups.
The Consistently Very Goods
13. The Roots
Game Theory (2006, A-), Rising Down (2008, A-), How I Got Over (2010, A-)
12. MF Doom
Operation: Doomsday (1999, A-), Mm…Food (2004, A-), Born Like This (2009, A-)
11. Ice-T
Power (1988, A-), The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech (1989, A-), O.G. Original Gangster (1991, A-)
10. Missy Elliott
Miss E…So Addictive (2001, A-), Under Construction (2002, A-), This Is Not a Test! (2003, A-)
If you’re super nerdy about basketball and sport like me, consider this the Gordon Hayward range of players who don’t have many off nights but aren’t always spectacular – they’re just always very good. And that’s fine! Teams kill for reliable players who bring 23/6/4 to the table every night. All four of these are like that for me: none of their albums are able to hit the A level for me, which represents a great album and a peak in that artist’s career. They’re consistent, but they can’t break out of very good into great. The two albums that come closest are from the artists ranked towards the bottom, actually: The Roots’ Rising Down (as David Amidon said, their loudest and angriest record, and maybe their best) and Ice-T’s O.G. Original Gangster, a classic that’s unfortunately about 20-25 minutes too long. But that’s okay – I enjoy listening to all 12 of these, some more than others, and all four had runs worthy of your respect and money. Kind of like Utah this year – they were never going to beat or even steal a game from Golden State but they’re still fun and worth your time.
Here come the complaints about OutKast: where’s ATLiens? Why is the way too long double album here? Are you serious with giving Stankonia the same grade as it? In response: the production on ATLiens really hampers it, and I hate to say that as someone who once loved it, but the cover’s still really cool; have you heard the hits from those albums lately?; yes. A friend of mine once said Aquemini represents the greatest step up in production and quality of an album since Public Enemy’s debut to It Takes a Nation… I’d disagree with going that far, but I do think the step up is a lot larger than people realize – there’s almost no wasted time on Aquemini, and I’ve strongly considered an A+ on it from time to time. Tough call.
Pete Rock is a producer, yes. But he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer in our Hip-Hop Hall of Fame: the All Souled Out EP is one of the five greatest EPs ever released by anyone, Mecca and the Soul Brother is a phenomenal debut album, The Main Ingredient progresses forward even though CL Smooth starts to slow on the mic, and 1998’s Soul Survivor gives a million guest spots to basically every respected rapper at the time. It’s a really fun one.
Chance is an interesting case: he hasn’t made anything resembling a bad release yet, and I seem to be the only one who thinks he’ll never top 2015’s Surf with his buddies in the Social Experiment. The list of artists who have dropped four A-level albums in a row is basically nonexistent – to my knowledge, it’s just the Beastie Boys and questionably Kanye. That would be a very fun post to write, and I have the same question for a current rapper in the next category of if he can achieve those heights.
League Pass Lover’s MVP Candidates
6. Kendrick Lamar
good kid, M.A.A.D. city (2012, A-), To Pimp a Butterfly (2015, A), DAMN. (2017, A)
5. M.I.A.
Arular (2005, A), Kala (2007, A+), MAYA (2010, A-)
4. Beastie Boys
Licensed to Ill (1986, A), Paul’s Boutique (1989, A+), Check Your Head (1992, A-)
For these artists to rank this low on any list feels weird given their history, but that’s just how it goes. All four of these are phenomenal, wonderful artists who should have 90% of their released be owned by you, the reader. All four came in pretty close to each other, too – they beat out the All-Hip-Hop Third Team by a fair margin by having better albums. I’d prefer not to do them as a group, though – they each have strong cases for being higher that I had to consider.
Kendrick Lamar is four albums in, if you count Section.80, and none of them have been less than good. That’s remarkable in and of itself. But the last two have been great, and one of those (To Pimp a Butterfly) is pretty likely to be remembered as a hip-hop classic, by virtue of a combination of ambition and quality rarely seen in music, let alone in this genre. DAMN., in any other era, would be destined to be a bit underrated – an album focused fully on breaking the mainstream from within that relies heavily on unconventional sound ideas and a rapper whose wordplay is a tough nut to crack. But I’m feeling that it may actually benefit from the 2017 hype machine and be properly rated as Great.
M.I.A., depending on who you ask, isn’t a rapper. But I don’t think that’s my fight to score. Her music is classified as hip-hop by a large quotient of the internet so we’ll roll with it. Anyway, have y’all heard “Paper Planes” or “Galang” or “Bird Flu” or “XXXO” or “Steppin Up” or “Born Free” or “Bucky Done Gun” lately? Goodness, she’s good. There was a legitimate time in the late 2000s when she was the best musician on earth. She’s since slowed down and ‘retired’, and Kanye got better. But what a run it was: listening to those three albums in a row is like running from the cops on GTA when you’re at five stars.
The Beastie Boys were another group similar to Kendrick in a strange way – they blew up rap from the inside and forced haters to recognize their strengths (sampling techniques that many would steal, rap harmonies, etc.) even if they didn’t agree with what was happening. They’re perhaps the most fun group to ever exist, and certainly the one that makes you feel the coolest. Anyway, they released three albums over the course of six years that each were very different from the other and still pulled off nearly every style and sample they tried. All young rap fans and hopeful hip-hop heads should go straight to the Beastie Boys for a learning process; the first five albums are worth buying at your local used record store. Trust me, they’ll have copies on copies of all of them and it’s worth the $6.50 each or whatever.
Ghostface is, bar none (sorry!), the greatest capital-R Rapper to ever live. IMO, JMO, TIFWIW, SMDFTB. In all seriousness, no one has matched visceral power, humor, storytelling, wordplay, and musicianship like Ghost. For some reason, fans of Wu-Tang Clan typically go to Genius/GZA’s Liquid Swords first once they listen to the immortal 36 Chambers, but they should be going to Ironman. No member of the Clan could match Ghost on the mic, and considering Ghost had RZA and many others in his corner for production, no one could match him on the music, either. The biggest shame for Ghost is that we can’t include 2006’s outstanding Fishscale in this, because he released multiple albums in between the incredible Supreme Clientele and that. Ghost would have a reasonable complaint here, because he might have the best top three albums in hip-hop history. But that’s for another post.
LeBron vs. Michael
2. Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010, A+), Yeezus (2013, A), The Life of Pablo (2016, A)
1. Public Enemy
It Takes a Nation… (1988, A+), Fear of a Black Planet (1990, A), Apocalypse 91… (1991, A)
This one took several days to decide on. Taken together, these two cases are nearly even: I have the exact same grades and success curve for each, and I’m trying to leave cultural importance and all the subjective stuff out. Strictly talking about the music and its words, Public Enemy came out very slightly ahead. Here’s why:
While both worked in visceral power and anger, PE’s is slightly more effective.
There’s no direct comparison to Yeezus in hip-hop history: it is the darkest, angriest album released in this genre by a musician who operated as a top five Most Important Person at the time of release. It offers you exactly two sonic colors: black and red. It offers a listening experience unlike any other. And yet…Public Enemy probably comes out on top here. I hate to bring the actual history component into it, but News Channel 5 wasn’t running reports in 2013 about the dangers of listening to Kanye West quite like they were in 1988 when It Takes a Nation came out. That album terrified white people more than a FOX News report on a Black Lives Matter rally, except for my mom – shoutout Mom – who went to a Public Enemy show in Nashville where people died. That happened! Regardless of that, PE’s visceral anger will last forever as a sort of calling card to disaffected youths tired of being told what they can and cannot do by a class of elites they’re supposed to respect because of Experience of whatever.
2. In order: MBDTF > It Takes a Nation > Fear of a Black Planet > Yeezus > Apocalypse 91 > Pablo.
Together, that comes out to a ranking of 10 total spots versus 11. It really was that close, but Public Enemy has two of the three best albums here and not the least outstanding one. Pablo is great and I hate that backlash had to happen for it, but that’s the hype machine stupidity at work. Regardless, it has the most fat by a significant margin of any of these albums: you can safely take a solid 15 minutes off without missing much of anything. (“Highlights”, “Facts”, “Fade”, “Saint Pablo”.) It’s also pretty obviously the most sheepishly dumb album of the six: Kanye goes from talking about bleached butts to Instagram trash talk to No Seriously, I Am a God, You Are Not, Go Home Peasant. And even with all that it’s incredible because the music is as great as anything he’s ever pushed out.
3. PE is likely the greatest rap group to ever exist.
I don’t think they’ll ever get topped. That three-album run is the hip-hop equivalent of something like Beggars Banquet to Exile on Main St. I’ve got nothing else to say, I’m out.
The writer of this rambling article with dumb opinions can be found on Twitter dot com at @gyrateplus.
How can Anglo-Saxon Americans approach and appreciate international music, most notably African music?
I genuinely struggled with how to answer this for months, because there is no right answer. Even though I believe you can measure the quality of art without your own emotions involved (though not in a robotic way), I understand that taste is very real and I recognize that there are certain people open to listening to certain things and others who aren’t. That’s simply the way the world works.
So here’s my guide for expanding your horizons a bit beyond white people with beards in the United States or the United Kingdom. (Formerly.)
Search out recommendations from people you trust that know about these things. This is the best and easiest way to start for several reasons, and a major reason why people such as knowledgeable record store clerks are desperately needed right now. These people will understand what you’re looking for and direct you to stuff you’ll like, which will enable you to uncover more and more. I am not one of these people, as much as I’ve tried – I struggle with figuring people out musically. So I rely almost entirely on Robert Christgau and Jason Gubbels, who collectively have the two best pairs of ears when it comes to African and other international music.
Use the Internet. It really is this simple – search something like “good African music” and as long as you don’t click on a Putumayo compilation you’ll be headed in the right direction.
Spotify is your friend. It amazes me how many of the seemingly-obscure African albums this streaming service has ready for your enjoyment.
Keep an open mind. Something that sounds unnatural to you is very likely something you will not like in the first ten minutes you hear it, unless you have a major heart-to-heart connection that can only be topped by God himself.
Read about your subjects. African music is political by nature, and it’s always worth knowing if the songs you’re hearing are about subjects worth caring about. I can report that African music has a significantly higher batting average than American or European at this. Plus, the beats are dope.
2. Grantland’s (and now just Zach Lowe’s) NBA League Pass rankings are a joy to read and a nice summary of what teams are most fun to watch or be a fan of each season. What are bands or musicians that are unusually fun to listen to?
Shockingly, this is the most fun question I’ve answered thus far. Plus, it was very easy to find names! To quantify this, I considered the following criteria: rapidity of releases (do they release upwards of six albums in a decade? Awesome!), consistent quality, enjoyable listens, and accessibility. So this list will be very optimistic and happy-sounding – that’s much more accessible and listenable than sadness. I thought about also making sure they were currently active, but music is pretty definitely not as great on the whole as it used to be, so that got dropped. Some of these are, by nature, outdated. But I have a hell of a lot of fun when I hear them.
These are, of course, entirely my own opinion and more or less a bunch of my favorite musicians/bands. The reader will have different responses.
ABBA
Arcade Fire
Beastie Boys
Chance the Rapper
Charlie Parker
Cocteau Twins
David Bowie
Drive-By Truckers
Duke Ellington
Franco
Husker Du
Kacey Musgraves
Kanye West
Kendrick Lamar
Laurie Anderson
M.I.A.
Miles Davis
Miranda Lambert
Ornette Coleman
Paul McCartney
Paul Simon
Pavement
Prince
Public Enemy
Pylon
Sonic Youth
Sonny Rollins
Spoon
Stevie Wonder
Talking Heads
Taylor Swift
The Go! Team
The Replacements
Vampire Weekend
Yo La Tengo
3. What differentiates extended successes from one-hit wonders?
This comes from my friend JL, who I do the Highland Ave. Raps podcast with. He mostly focused this query to me on the hip-hop and rap side of things in wondering how someone like a Kanye West or a Beyonce hangs around longer than a Chamillionaire. (Sorry, Chamillionaire.) The answer is two-fold, both easy: it’s mostly major differences in talent and creativity levels, but it’s also due to knowing your market and who your music is attempting to speak to.
Basically: no one is going to remember who Desiigner was in 2046. “Panda” is a hit now, but I’d be willing to bet my paycheck he doesn’t have another #1 hit…or a #1 album…or much of a career. Sure, his rap in “Panda” has a nice flow, and it’s weirdly had some staying power this year. But who in the world can relate to anything he says (or we’re assuming he says) in “Panda”? There’s a reason why Paul Wall isn’t nationally/internationally relevant at this point in time.
However, they’ll remember Kanye West. It helps that Kanye has extraordinary musical talent unlike any other popular artist currently working, but he really knows how to gain fans and market himself: look at the types of collaborators he brings in for his albums, look at how he decides to release albums, look at how he understands who listens to him and how he decides to market to them. I’m fascinated by his career above all others. Beyonce is the same way, even if I personally have a lot of problems with her music: they both can treat themselves as having ideal life stories for fans to treasure and aspire to, because they made it. But: they didn’t stop after making it. They’ve continued to go in different directions that alienate old fans and gain new ones.
Basically, the long-term staying power comes from that ability to go in different directions, but you’ll notice how self-aware all major artists currently are of their reach and ability to gain new listeners through unusual release strategies, fashion, and basic business/economics principles. That may be a more idealistic and difficult view of it than some would hope, but this seems to be the easiest explanation to me.
1. From 1958 (formation of the Billboard Hot 100 chart) to now, who has owned the Music Championship Belt?
This one is from Harrison, who is a fine writer in his own time and loves to ask me challenging questions. We both agreed on the 1958 date as the best starting point; probably the first real attempt to estimate what can be currently recognized as popular music. Billboard popular charts existed before this with good success, but this is the first chart to really tie in with what we know today. One disclaimer: the beginning of this list will be very, very white – Elvis Presley, while great, was not the best of his era, but black jazz music did not chart nearly as well as Presley due to radio discrimination. White people south of New York in 1958 weren’t going to like Miles Davis. We’re going to use this chart to combine something resembling an equation of Quality plus Quantity Sold, so this could be a very unsatisfying chart or a satisfying one. Just so everyone knows, this took forever to answer and is the reason why I had to split one post into two…anyway, let’s get it rolling.
1958-1959: Miles Davis.
I struggled with this for a long time, because Elvis Presley will be more remembered than Miles Davis by the average music listener and he sells way more records. Also, he’s way more accessible. Also also, it does not take effort to get someone to hear an Elvis Presley song. But Miles Davis made “So What”, “Freddie Freeloader”, “Blue in Green”, “All Blues”, and “Flamenco Sketches”. Then Miles Davis put all of those five compositions, all perfect, on one album. It’s titled Kind of Blue. Please buy it. He also made Milestones, Miles Ahead, and Porgy and Bess in this two-year span.
Honorable mentions: Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley.
1960-1962: Elvis Presley.
The first three of these are incredibly easy. Elvis is the first true star of the Hot 100 era, and he owned the charts up and down for its first four-plus years. 12 of his singles ended up on Billboard’s year-end top 100 songs during this run, and 9 were #1 hits. Of course, this is actually after of his most prolific chart run – 1956 and 1957 had 8 #1s combined.
However, that might be selling him a tiny bit short. Every single Elvis Presley single from 1958 to 1962 peaked at #4 or higher on the Billboard charts, meaning that every song Presley deemed important enough for major radio play was one of the four-most played songs in the entire country at any given time during a four-plus year run. Fifteen singles! And he did those first two years of this run while serving a draft notice in Germany!!!
Imagine, if you will, that Taylor Swift was suddenly removed from all public and private eyes for…three years exactly. Her record label released two B-side singles total over those three years (we’ll say they both end up top 5 because of name), and her importance would fade. I love Swift, but would she be able to come back, and over the course of three years, resume complete and total chart dominance like she had never left? (Probably.) God, what an accomplishment. And pretty much all of the hits are airtight, excellent pieces. Next time some doofus tells you Elvis didn’t matter because he didn’t write his own songs, pick up the nearest guitar and whack them in the preferred body part of choice.
(But, and I’ll say it again: Miles Davis is one of the greatest musical innovators to ever exist, and was better than Elvis through 1962. I recommend Kind of Blue as the one album every novice jazz listener should own, because there is not a single second on the album that could be perfected more. It really might be the greatest LP since LPs became a thing. That or Abbey Road. Too bad that A. jazz has the worst stigmas of any kind of music because people were conditioned to hear it as background noise, and B. he never charted an album higher than #35. Blame white people for being stupid.)
Honorable mentions: Miles Davis, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, The Kingston Trio.
1963-1970: The Beatles.
No real explanation needed here – from the moment they released Please Please Me to the day they broke up, they were the greatest band in the world and no one has since touched the heights they touched. Now, to be fair, we’re talking rock music only – no one would blame you if you submitted Mozart, Beethoven, or the like (or, more recently, Miles Davis) for being better composers and musicians. But in popular music, they are the greatest of all time.
Also, it helped that they totally dominated the charts from the moment they started selling their albums in the US in 1964. (They sold singles in the US starting in 1961.) Both Please Please Me and With the Beatles were smash hits in Britain, topping the UK charts for a combined 51 straight weeks. Wait a minute, I didn’t phrase that correctly – THEY TOPPED THE ALBUM CHARTS IN BRITAIN FOR ALMOST AN ENTIRE YEAR WITHOUT INTERRUPTION. That will never, ever, ever happen again anywhere.
Anyway, every single album the Beatles put out in the States peaked at no lower than #2, and every one achieved at least RIAA Platinum certification (one million records or greater shipped). Even more fascinating to me is that at one time, “Penny Lane” topped the Hot 100 charts. Something as bizarre and eclectic as that was a hit. Imagine that happening now – you can’t! God, what a band.
Honorable mentions: Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Who, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin.
1971-1972: The Rolling Stones.
Imagine being one of the three greatest rock groups to ever exist and only holding the Music Championship Belt for two years. This is what happens when your peak happens to coincide with the greatest white musical innovators since Debussy. (The real greatest innovators since then are Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington, but they’re black, so in Donald Trump’s America you’re required to hate everything they stood and fought for.) The Stones released Sticky Fingers in 1971 and Exile on Main Street in 1972 – two albums that really should’ve made a lot of bands that came after them inconsequential and unheard. But then they made Goats Head Soup and things tumbled after. It was a good two years, and perhaps the final two years of the theoretical Golden Age of Rock. Or at least of the British Invasion.
Honorable mentions: Led Zeppelin, the Who, Miles Davis, Sly & the Family Stone, Steely Dan, Carole King, Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
1973-1974: Paul McCartney & Wings.
Wings gets a lot of crap for being the type of stuff retirement-age folks like to sway along to as tribute bands butcher electric compositions like “Band on the Run”. The issue: they made a lot of electric compositions. Here is my argument for Wings’ entire existence, and why they owned the Belt for two full years and could have for three if Venus and Mars was more important than Wish You Were Here or Blood on the Tracks: Side A of Band on the Run leads off with “Band on the Run”, “Jet”, and “Bluebird”. That is all.
Honorable mentions: Stevie Wonder, Genesis, Can, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Steely Dan, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Sabbath, The Who.
1975: Pink Floyd.
And I say this as someone who personally hasn’t had a desire to listen to anything from Wish You Were Here in nine years (ninth grade). But I got away with putting someone in the Belt who still hasn’t sold a ton of records in Miles Davis, and I can’t really get away with the guy who made the best album of 1975 by some distance (Brian Eno, Another Green World) but didn’t even chart the album in the United States or the United Kingdom. You can probably chalk that up to being a solid two decades ahead of its time (probably even still ahead of its time) or to what I’m sure wasn’t an easy marketing campaign, but…here we are. Anyway, people know Pink Floyd. They love Pink Floyd. They remember Pink Floyd. Desperate high school children across the universe love and worship Pink Floyd. This band deserved a Belt somewhere, and here, they got it.
…on second thought, this really could’ve gone to Bruce. Born to Run is a worldwide classic, it’s sold nearly as many copies as Wish You Were Here, and it’s better. But this is not about my personal preference. More people that are open to being influenced love Wish You Were Here. It’s that simple. (God, I hate this.)
Honorable mentions: Bob Dylan, Brian Eno, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Neil Young, Elton John, The Who.
1976-1977: Stevie Wonder.
I have no idea how he only held it for these two years, either. Stevie owned music way more than we gave him credit for, but he was never The Best until Songs in the Key of Life. That album is the equivalent of one of those Career Achievement Awards they hand out at the Oscars, but it’s one of a very few cases I can think of that deserves it – there are but a slim number of albums in all of music that can better sum up everything one could possibly like about an artist.
I mean, no joke: this album covers so much, past, present, and future. You want to know what every Gospel song is based on? “Love’s in Need of Love Today”. Chance the Rapper’s newest album? “Have a Talk With God”. “The Message”? “Village Ghetto Land”. Steely Dan starting at Katy Lied? “Contusion”. Bringing jazz fusion (not the cheese-ball stuff you hear on Music Choice) to a greater audience? “Sir Duke”. Knotty interactions between the “real” (sax, trumpets, bass, vocals) and the “fake” (synthesizers and vocoder)? “I Wish”. John Legend? “Knocks Me Off My Feet”. “Gangsta’s Paradise”? “Pastime Paradise”. (Too easy.) I don’t even know, a fascinating combination of instruments, voice, words, and atmosphere? “Summer Soft”. Motown’s Greatest Hits, but the deep cuts? “Ordinary Pain”. And that’s just the first half of the album!
Honorable mentions: David Bowie, Ramones, the Clash, Fleetwood Mac, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
1978: The Police? Talking Heads? Kraftwerk? Blondie??? Bruce????
There are five near-equally okay cases for this year, so we’ll dive into each on its own terms. This year is a little less about sales, though both Blondie and Bruce dropped their albums into the Billboard top 5 and “Heart of Glass” was a smash hit. The main struggle is this: there are no A+ albums that I could immediately identify in 1978, though Kraftwerk and Talking Heads came closest with Blondie and the Police close behind. But we can’t give it to Stevie Wonder, who forfeits the Belt by not releasing an album in the two years following Songs in the Key of Life. Plus, sales really are meaningless this year: the two best-selling albums of 1978 are the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack by the Bee Gees and the Grease soundtrack. It’s rather difficult to give the Belt to Various Artists. What we’re left with is an ugly five-way battle for the winner of 1978 but without an actual #1 stand-out musician. It’s like if WWE held some sort of five-way title match but with AJ Styles, Sami Zayn, Roman Reigns, John Cena, and Alberto Del Rio. I mean, I like them all for different reasons….but where’s the runaway star?
Anyway, the case for each:
The Police: Former jazz cover band turns punk because their drummer missed his punk years, so they work the heck out of it on a really neat little record called Outlandos D’Amour. It’s very influential. You may have heard of it. You’ve at least heard “Roxanne”, which was their biggest hit until the next one. But, some issues: it’s their third-best album, there are some real lows on it they wouldn’t touch again for some time (“Be My Girl”), it’s a style that they largely quit on within two years, and they came to punk after punk had started to die out in 1977. Plus, could you really have sold Sting as a punk singer in the same way you sold Colin Newman?
Talking Heads: Weirdo unclassified group that can resemble post-punk, reggae, and country on any given song releases their second album, More Songs About Buildings and Food. Band starts to gain cult audience (#29 on Billboard albums chart). They made better albums, but this is basically the breaking point for them becoming the most beloved post-punkers to ever live. But, again: they got better, and the best song on this album isn’t even a Heads original: it’s an Al Green cover.
Kraftwerk: Their second-best album but the one everyone knows most. Not as influential as you’d hope, I suppose. No hits, no real charting. This isn’t a real contender, I just love Kraftwerk.
Blondie: The case: huge hit, good sales, very well remembered…but how influential are they, exactly? They aren’t that different from their contemporaries of the time even though “Heart of Glass” owned rock radio for a while. I don’t know, making the case for them is much more difficult than I anticipated. But I think you could also make a case for them paving the pathways for groups like Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, etc. I like them, but it’s not a winning resume.
Bruce Springsteen: Basically the same case as Born to Run, but with Darkness on the Edge of Town being a significant step down, both in mood and quality. I still like it, but…does anyone still listen to Side B? Anyone? Bueller? However, Bruce is still huge at this stage, and it’s sold over three million copies.
After some hemming and hawing, I went with the Talking Heads for a pair of reasons: they’re the only one of these groups that broke and stuck for a considerable amount of time; they don’t sound dated; they had commercial and influential success; and it’s a really, really good album. Better than its follow-up, I think.
Honorable mentions: I just made a case for all of them. Also, Van Halen as a distant runner-up.
1979: The Police. Or the Clash. No, the Police.
Everything I already said about them, but they’re starting to break from punk and sound like the Police. They hadn’t broken over in the States by 1979, but they were huge in the UK – two #1 hits from their album Reggatta de Blanc (“Message in a Bottle” and “Walking on the Moon”), the album itself hitting #1, and them finally crossing over to the States and winning a Grammy for “Reggatta de Blanc” (the instrumental) in 1980. I mean, there are real, legitimate reasons you hear Police songs every day of your life: because they were really that great and because Reggatta de Blanc is an A-grade record in a year with not many of them.
…
But I kind of want to give this to the Clash instead, because London Calling is on the same level as Reggatta de Blanc and is unquestionably the more influential record. My personal preference is very obviously the Police because guess who you actually hear on the radio in 2016, but…argh, this is tough. I stuck with the Police, but I feel bad about this one. However, London Calling comes out with 17 days left in the decade, so I think I can get away with this for now. (Reggatta de Blanc at least had three months to marinate, as did “Message in a Bottle”.) I also neglected to mention that the Talking Heads were still amazing in 1979, as were the B-52s. Also, Michael Jackson existed.
Honorable mentions: The Clash, Talking Heads, the B-52s, Michael Jackson, Neil Young.
1980: The Police/Talking Heads.
I struggled with this one for a long time before deciding to hand out a 2003 Steve McNair/Peyton Manning co-MVP award. There’s very little left to say about either Zenyatta Mondatta or Remain in Light other than both deserving their status as outstanding classics of a could’ve-been-rivalry. This year looks especially nice in retrospect when you see the list of all of two artists for 1981.
Honorable mentions: Joy Division, Prince.
1981-1982: Prince.
Imagine turning on your radio in September 1981. The #1 song as of a month prior is Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl”. Your president is Ronald Reagan, and I say that as apolitically as I possibly can. It, quite simply, is not the best time for art. And then you hear “Controversy”. On the radio. In 1981.
The next year, our beloved Prince released 1999. I don’t think people realize this, but the first three singles were all top 12 hits in the United States. That’s an incredible accomplishment for anyone. It’s even more incredible when those songs are “1999”, “Little Red Corvette”, and “Delirious”. By the way, at one point in time, songs like that were massive hits. I suppose we have “Panda” now. Great trade!
Honorable mention: Kraftwerk, who made the best album of 1981. But they did not make the best Prince. Also: Kate Bush and The Cure.
1983: Michael Jackson.
Thriller is released on November 30, 1982, making it technically eligible to make Michael Jackson the king of 1982 as well. But he didn’t own 1982 like he owned 1983. So it’s a huge album and all immediately, but the aftershocks of the album – the newfound ability to play black artists on networks like MTV, it becoming the best-selling album of all time, etc. – aren’t felt until years later. With regards to 1983 specifically, Thriller and Michael Jackson hit The Next Level when “Billie Jean” is released as a single on January 4th. It becomes the #1 song in America on March 5th. From that point forward, every new single released by Michael Jackson but one enters the Billboard Top Ten. All but “Another Part of Me”, which peaked at a weak #11.
Honorable mention: For who owned the belt in 1983? No one. But from my personal loves, U2, R.E.M., and the Police.
1984: Prince.
This is an extremely tough choice to make for some people, but I will defend it in this way: when Prince died in April, they immediately put Purple Rain back in theaters and played Prince marathons or Prince from A-Z for days on end. I have some extreme doubts they’ll be doing that for Bruce Springsteen.
Honorable mentions: Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., the Replacements, Cocteau Twins (who made the second?-best album of 1984), Husker Du (who helped define a beloved scene with their double album Zen Arcade).
1985-1986: The Replacements.
The 1980s are the only decade that one could point to and say that an unusual amount of great music didn’t see success at any point during the decade. A ton of great bands that worked like hell during the 1980s to achieve success simply didn’t: Husker Du, the Cocteau Twins (though “Carolyn’s Fingers” becomes a massive Modern Rock hit in the States in 1988), Sonic Youth, R.E.M. (who are one of the very few bands to get worse once achieving mainstream attention and success), any number of your favorite regional bands who played shows to at most 300 people, and the Replacements. (Please, dear God, do not tell me the Smiths deserve more attention.)
It goes without saying, but I’m very defensive of this pick for the following reasons:
The charts are at a state of fragmentation to the point that no one has any idea of where to go and it looks and sounds like a muddled mess.
Neither of the previous two artists who were owning this award like nothing else were making anything worth your time. (Prince was diving deeper into making self-indulgent movies; Michael Jackson hadn’t released a new album since November 30, 1982.)
They are the best representation of an artistic culture growing more and more frantically left-wing as they grew more aware of how a very strict right-wing regime could affect their art. (This could be negative or positive depending on your own political views, but the correlation between the decline in artistic quality in the 1980s and the two major leaders in the US and UK is, uh…striking.)
Plus, Tim is a Desert Island album and it has so many very identifiable hits: “Bastards of Young”, which plays in the opening credits of Adventureland; “Left of the Dial”, which college radio stations are required to play at least once a month; “Swingin Party”, butchered by Lorde; “Kiss Me on the Bus”. Jesus, “Kiss Me on the Bus”.
Honorable mentions: Kate Bush, the Smiths, Paul Simon, Husker Du (whose New Day Rising is also a Desert Island album), R.E.M., Peter Gabriel, Janet Jackson.
1987: U2.
I can hear the jeers already. Sign o’ the Times is the best Prince album! (Questionable.) How could you not give it to Prince a third time? (Because he didn’t own the direction of music at this point in time.) How can you give an award to a band that frontloaded an album so badly no one plays it after the fourth track? (Hey, I do!) Also, where is Whitney Houston? (The sooner you realize she was a one-trick pony and the one trick wasn’t actually very interesting, the better.)
Honorable mentions: Prince, Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, R.E.M.
1988-1991: Public Enemy.
And here we are. Seriously, thank Jesus for Public Enemy. Art desperately needed anger and something to shake it up and make it uncomfortable, not continuing in the same apolitical stagnant across-the-board microwaved bowl of bland that listeners had become used to. To make this a little more clear, Public Enemy is the type of group that had to happen 25+ years ago just so Black Lives Matter and similar groups even had a chance to have their voices heard. And when they were active at their peak, no one in this era controlled the media and the listener’s imagination like they did. A true marvel. Yes, people my age and younger, the guy from Flavor of Love was a phenomenal rapper and showman at one point in his life.
Honorable mentions: Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Eric B. & Rakim, The Cure, Pixies, Cocteau Twins.
1992-1993: Dr. Dre.
Again, stealing from a very reliable source: “as far as gangsta rap goes, especially the West Coast kind, this album is the highest the kite ever flew.” That, and Dre continued the Public Enemy line of thought in his own ways, though less effectively rap-wise and more laid-back beat-wise. (The whole laid-back thing is pretty much just West Coast rap in general – imagine how great everyone could have been if they were attentive and highly aware in beat-making!)
The newfound flood of rap and hip-hop to the mainstream is a true treasure of the late 1980s/early 1990s. Without that, you don’t see rap in the mainstream today, you don’t hear Kanye West, you don’t hear Chamillionaire’s “Ridin'”, and I really don’t want to think about a life having not heard Chamillionaire’s “Ridin'”. Basically, these dudes put in a ton of work just so you could still hear it today, and they owned your ears then, too.
Honorable mentions: Beastie Boys, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Pavement, My Bloody Valentine.
1994: Pavement.
Here comes a pair of offbeat picks, starting with a band that had exactly one song chart in the United States on any chart (“Cut Your Hair”, #10 U.S. Modern Rock, 1994), still hasn’t had an album certified Gold, and who doesn’t appear to have a song with more than 4.5 million plays on Spotify. (For comparison’s sake, “I Got the Keys”, a song by DJ Khaled, Jay-Z, and Future, has 6.6 million plays in its first 19 days of release.) But Pavement is easily the most emblematic band of a horrifically remembered decade.
“A Pavement album is a series of small labyrinths. The pleasure of the maze matters more than finding a way out. After many repetitions, the strangeness of the language remains; at the same time, the lyrics mesh with the music in ways that make nearly every word sound natural and exact. The band plays the same trick over and over, so far without exhaustion: weird words decay into infectious music. Pavement has found its place in the pop landscape and has refused to move an inch. It protects its core of mystery, which is also a kind of blazing innocence.”
Which I will add: in a decade that thought being removed from something and treating everything with irony was profound, they somehow took a very silly and dumb decade less seriously than everyone else feigned doing. And they succeeded, wildly.
Honorable mentions: Beastie Boys, Nas, Beck.
1995: PJ Harvey.
This one was also pretty difficult because much like Pavement, PJ Harvey wasn’t selling particularly well at this point of her career (though she had a sizable rock radio audience), and this is more of a collective achievement award for her first three albums than for anything else immediate, especially considering her third album was her least effective to that point. But who else is this going to? Pavement another year? That’s my preference, but their fan base dropped drastically due to a supposed massive change in style with Wowee Zowee. Tricky? I love Maxinquaye, but no one has listened to trip-hop since 1998. Moby? No. Elastica? Even Sleater-Kinney diehards don’t remember Elastica. The first Foo Fighters album came out this year, I guess.
This shouldn’t be about a bad year of music; it should be more about the first female solo winner of this award, and it being long overdue. Ms. Harvey’s unique blend of style and music is a voice desperately needed in rock, and a void that really wasn’t properly filled after Harvey’s career drop-off from 2000 on until Courtney Barnett appeared last year. And heck, it was either Ms. Harvey or Alanis Morissette as someone to properly sum up the 1990s…
Honorable mentions: Pavement, Tricky.
1996: The Fugees.
Why write your own summary when a better writer did it for you?
“They got black humanism, gender equality, and somebody to eclipse Duke Bootee in the Columbia alumni magazine. They sample “I Only Have Eyes for You” from before they were born, misprise “Killing Me Softly” like it was the Rosetta stone, emerge unscathed from the both-sides-of-gangsta trap, and aren’t so nervous about being followed they won’t leave landmarks on their soundscape. And astonishingly, they’re not just selling to a core audience–this is one of the rare hip hop albums to debut high and rise from there. So you bet they’re alternative–they’d better be in a subculture backed into defiant self-pity by rabid reactionaries, lying ex-liberals, and media moguls suddenly conscience-stricken over the nutritional content of what they always considered swill. Forget their debut, from before they discovered the gender-equality formula in which one girl learning equals two guys calling the shots. Forget the Roots, Aceyalone, Pharcyde. This isn’t another terrible thing to waste. It’s so beautiful and funny its courage could make you weep.”
Honorable mentions: Beck, DJ Shadow.
1997-1998: Radiohead.
This is one of the easier selections in this post. Bands have been trying to copy “Karma Police” and “Electioneering” for 19 years now with no actual success. It’s one of the few major albums of the last couple of decades that could truly be said to be predicting what would come after its release – politically, musically, vocally. It’s ten great pop songs and two good ones, simple as that. But I’d also like to warn that it most certainly is not the greatest album of all time. Anyway, no other serious contenders for these two years – the level of immediate positive reception from critics that OK Computer was given is on a level unlike any album since The Dark Side of the Moon. (Also an album that is not the greatest of all time.)
Honorable mentions: The Notorious B.I.G., Lauryn Hill, Bjork, Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Modest Mouse, Erykah Badu.
1999: Teenage pop stars.
Here are the major hits released in 1999: “I Want It That Way”, “Genie in a Bottle”, “…Baby One More Time”, and a ton of similar stuff. This was a horrific year for actual albums and Radiohead didn’t release one within two years, therefore forfeiting the award. Sometimes I wonder if this is the low point in modern music history.
Honorable mentions: No one. This year sucked.
2000-2002: Radiohead.
And here they are again. You could more appropriately say that they owned a six-year stretch of popular music, but per the rules of this post they forfeited the award for a year. But the success of this run almost amazes me more than the run of OK Computer, which is significantly more palatable to a wide audience, therefore getting hammered with the “overrated” tag much less than you’d think. Here are Kid A‘s direct influences, none of whom had major US chart success: Aphex Twin, Autechre, Bjork’s Homogenic, Can, Neu!, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Underworld, Blackalicious, and DJ Krush. (Straight from the Wikipedia page!)
Fascinating is the notion that, at that point, the Biggest Band in the World (having usurped the title from U2 somewhere in the 90s) purposefully made a record to alienate their fan base, a commercial market, and a marketing campaign. They did this knowing that Kid A was the most anticipated rock record in nearly a decade. They released no advance copies and did almost no promotion for it. Yeezus fans may see some direct inspiration here. So they released a cold, harsh sonic palette of an album (though very similar in tone to the politics of OK Computer without a fun melody to distract the listener), knowing that even their most devoted critics would be tested – Mojo magazine famously called it “awful.” But it still debuted at #1, still sold over a million copies in the US, and is now recognized as their second-best album by most. Must be fun to pull these things off.
Honorable mentions: OutKast, U2, Eminem, The Strokes, Jay-Z, Wilco.
2003: OutKast.
For the following reasons:
I don’t care what scene you ran in or what age you were in 2003 – “Hey Ya” reigned and reigns supreme.
So did “Roses”. Have y’all seen the “Roses” video since 2004? It’s incredible.
Look at this dreadful, godawful list of the #1 albums of 2003 up to the week Speakerboxxx/The Love Below was released. I do not care that this is an egregious double album that should be about an hour long to be great, I only care that finally, something was worth caring about.
Andre 3000 > Big Boi. However, Speakerboxxx > The Love Below.
Did you know “Hey Ya” was the #1 song in America until it was replaced by “The Way You Move”? Look it up, that’s a real fact that only gets more incredible and hilarious and depressing with each play of “Panda”.
Honorable mentions: The White Stripes.
2004-2007: Kanye West.
And now we get the first chapter in a now-12 year story of rivalry, hate, love, desire, honesty, cornball-ness, excellence, attitude, ego, genius, idiocy, and…so much more. The College Dropout is the perfect album for people who love success stories and positive characters with almost no flaws written into their dialogue. It’s still incredible now. But I’ve never understood why no one reps for Late Registration quite as much when it’s considerably better and his second-best album overall (that’ll come later).
At no point during these four years did anyone seriously threaten Kanye’s crown, because no one had the stranglehold on popular music that he had. A Kanye album was (and, of course, still is) an Event in the truest meaning of the term. People stayed up all night to buy a musician’s albums! In physical format! There are exactly two artists currently working that people will do that for. Anyway, the College Dropout > Late Registration > Graduation period was so much fun. It was fun later on, too, but for entirely different reasons.
“This album is called Fearless, and I guess I’d like to clarify why we chose that as the title. To me, Fearless is not the absence of fear. It’s not being completely unafraid. To me, Fearless is having fears, Fearless is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, Fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death. Fearless is falling madly in love again, even though you’ve been hurt before. Fearless is walking into your freshman year of high school at fifteen. Fearless is getting back up and fighting for what you want over and over again… even though every time you’ve tried before, you’ve lost. It’s Fearless to have faith that someday things will change. Fearless is having the courage to say goodbye to someone who only hurts you, even though can’t breathe without them. I think it’s Fearless to fall for your best friend, even though he’s in love with someone else. And when someone apologizes to you enough times for things they’ll never stop doing, I think it’s Fearless to stop believing them. It’s Fearless to say “you’re NOT sorry”. I think loving someone despite what people think is Fearless. I think allowing yourself to cry on the bathroom floor is Fearless. Letting go is Fearless. Then, moving on and being alright… That’s Fearless too. But no matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it. You have to believe in love stories and prince charmings and happily ever after. That’s why I write these songs. Because I think love is Fearless.” – Taylor Swift, from the Fearless liner notes.
She wrote that and said songs that meant these things through and through at age 18, making her the youngest pop genius in a long, long time. There is no more to say.
Honorable mentions: Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Vampire Weekend.
2010-2011: Kanye West.
I knew My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was going to be the Biggest Thing from the time I walked into my high school the week after it was officially released and I noticed two otherwise dissimilar humans discussing Nicki Minaj’s verse on “Monster” the way they would have discussed a common homework assignment – comparing their thoughts, vocalizing lines, laughing, having a good time. And this was in the middle of the Conservative South in a town of 12,000 people.
People have written about this record’s impact much more exhaustively than I have the time to. You can find them here, here, and here. You can read the oral history about how Kanye stopped his life to move out of the Continental United States to figure out where to go from the Swift VMAs blow-up. No matter what record you personally loved most from these two years (and for a long time, my answer was not MBDTF), this mattered most.
Honorable mentions: Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend, Jay-Z, Drake.
2012: Taylor Swift.
Again, people just keep writing bits about artists I like way better than I can put them, so why put in unnecessary work?
“People are having a hard time dealing with Taylor Swift. You’ll generally have to twist some arms to get them to acknowledge that the young lady is, at the very least, an impressively talented and developed songwriter for her age. Or that she’s already showed a greater willingness to experiment with all sorts of different genres than about 90% of her colleagues. Or that her singing seems genuinely open-hearted and empathetic. Or that her lyrics seem genuinely open-hearted and empathetic.
. . . What’s ultimately so satisfying, though, is that Swift has specified and broadened her comfort zone to such a degree that nobody can write her music off as child’s play anymore (well, they probably will, but they’ll gradually start to look really stupid), and the always-daft accusations that she’s some sort of puritanical anti-role model for young women now seem especially silly.
. . . When she’s at her best, Swift seems like something much more than a country-pop teen star who got lucky: there’s a feeling of honest human connection in her songs that can only come from someone who feels that they need – truly need – to understand others and herself a whole lot better; a feeling of knowing how to look beyond the eyes glazed over at a computer screen, face buried in a phone, head spaced-out in headphones, to get an answer.” – Nathan Wisnicki
Honorable mentions: Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Drake.
2013-present: Kanye West.
Consider this a placeholder for the end-of-year list I always do, which (SPOILER) will be about Kanye West, The Life of Pablo, and (SPOILER) Yeezus. I listen to both weekly, I treasure them both, and hopefully always will. There is no question as to who the premier artist currently working is – notice how everyone’s favorite, Beyonce, very quickly shifted her sound to become much darker and artsy to match the mood Kanye had created on Yeezus. So why don’t we make an argument for the runner-up?
For a lot of pop-chart hopefuls, Taylor Swift’s formula is one more easily followed: find good melodies, write good lyrics, make it catchy, and sell a TON of records. But the issue is no one else is doing it nearly as well as her, and no one has the viewpoint she has! Why people attack every Swift lyric and quote in the New York Times but let some incredibly useless BS like, say, Radiohead’s new record (An Inconvenient Truth set to elevator music) slide without a second thought is extremely annoying. Let’s steal a saying that I like to use for basketball but you can pretty much use for anything – let Taylor Swift cook. 1989 is dope, everyone is copying that sound like crazy (even though it means an unfortunate extension of the 1980s revival poisoning popular music), and the new HAIM record will sound almost exactly like it. (A good thing.)
Honorable mentions: Taylor Swift, Vampire Weekend, Chance the Rapper, Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, Drake (whether I like it or not).
Whew……okay, we’re done for now. Some more answers to your questions coming later this week.
No reason in particular, and this will be updated over time. I’ve only included albums I’ve given an A (great) or better (A+). Consider this the Rough Guide to the 2010s or whatever.
Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment, Surf
Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City
Kanye West, Yeezus
Mbongwana Star, From Kinshasa
Tune-Yards, Whokill
Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972
Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d city
Oneohtrix Point Never, Replica
Taylor Swift, Red
John Moreland, In the Throes
The Go! Team, The Scene Between
Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma
The original headline stated that these were the best 13 albums of the 2010s. Unfortunately, 14 are listed. Porzingis LLC regrets the error.
For some reason – which I have humblebragged about here and there – people think I know things about music. I do, barely: I have an Internet connection, an iPhone, Spotify Premium, and other resources that help my days go by quickly and provide the nights with great soundtracks that I pick. I got tired of reviewing and recommending because trashing stuff gets old and because not many others seem to think music isn’t exactly in the best place right now. (Or, if they do, they seem to stop listening to music right around 1997. If they’re older than 40, 1987.) I do critical listening for my own benefit mostly, as I’d like to know what I’ll remember fondly 10 or 20 years down the road.
But this hasn’t stopped me from (HUMBLEBRAG) getting several questions, some asked frequently, about my views on music. To be honest, I’d rather hold a conversation with Trump voters about their views on race relations, but I like being alive and not in the hospital. I held off on some of these for a while because they all equally deserve their own posts, but because I’ve stopped writing for the time being I’d rather just do abridged versions here. So, uhhhhhh…yeah, here are some questions I’ve received over the last few months from friends that they wanted answered. (Names removed.) More to come over the next few years, I’m sure.
Why do you believe music in 2016 isn’t as good as music, say, 50 years ago?
This is a tough one, because this ties in with two other opinions I hold, one of which gets more attention later:
Like it or not, most genres are not renewable resources; their initial form dies off and can be replaced by a somewhat similar replica as kind of a look-alike, but it’s not the same quality or item.
I mean, straight up, I don’t see most artists caring about being great or daring to do things other aren’t or attempting to create a sound unlike their contemporaries. I see Kanye, Taylor Swift, and Chance the Rapper doing that right now, and that’s about it. You can get away without it if you’re an excellent arranger (Chance, Sufjan Stevens) or an excellent writer (countless examples here, all of whom I love, but let’s use the Mountain Goats as an example), but if you’re neither….I’ll pass.
The truth is this: five decades ago, there were plentiful supplies of both. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Velvet Underground were pretty great at both characteristics, and the rate of great releases was significantly higher. This continues up through…I don’t know, the late 1970s? The early 1980s? I’m not an expert, but I’ve written enough stupid things on the Internet for people to fool themselves into thinking I know things, so whatever works for you.
Anyway, from Sign o’ the Times Prince (rest in peace, you wonderful, beautiful man) to Kanye, there were almost no major popular artists who consistently innovated and changed their sound to care about, so the underground surged. The underground is deep, but not wide, necessarily; there are hundreds of thousands of so-called independent bands, and they all sound like Archers of Loaf circa Vee Vee. This continues today, mostly thanks to streaming services and very debased record companies/radio. Good for the underground and their sales, but the best way to measure the quality of music as a whole is to see who’s selling…and Mariah Carey, who was on the Billboard Hot 100 charts for 467 of the 521 weeks in the 1990s (which is, no joke, a near-impossible accomplishment), ain’t it. If you’re itching to hear “Dreamlover” again, go for it, but I’m good.
This is a poor, rambling answer, but there’s a lot of factors: laziness, a lack of innovation in rock music and a lack of depth in popular music, media coverage (do not tell me Taylor Swift gets the same fair treatment that someone like Justin Timberlake gets), tons of trees without branches (one-trick ponies), the natural decay of long-standing genres (rock music, especially), and an all-too-quick natural instinct to follow the leader without exploring your alternatives first (trap/hip-hop). And I even like several artists that fall directly into these categories!
2. What popular musicians/bands from the last 12 years (College Dropout to today) will be widely well-remembered in, say, 2050?
I wanted to insert 2040 here, but I’m not quite sure that’s enough time. Generally, people are still sorting out who was good post-Nirvana (and even those three years pre-Nevermind), so we’ll move it back ten years. That’s the same distance from 2016 to 2050 as from 2016 to 1982, and I think we generally have that down pat: Thriller is Thriller, Kate Bush is awesome, The Cure were getting there, Prince was starting his run as The Great One, “Come On Eileen” still rocks, and Survivor sucked. (Not the TV show, people my age.)
Anyway, there are two very obvious answers no matter what your opinion is: Kanye West and Taylor Swift. They could both release ten albums a piece of straight trash from here on out and it wouldn’t change the fact they wrote “Gold Digger” and “You Belong With Me”. Kendrick Lamar will be loved by many for eternity. Madonna and Adele don’t make similar music in any way, but they’re linked in the fact that despite me being baffled at their raucous success, they are (and will, in Adele’s case) be very fondly remembered by many. From there on out, it’s murky and difficult.
Justin Bieber? Very small chance – unless someone gives him a real voice, this will not look good in the rear view. Katy Perry? If she ever made an album that got rid of the BS and was just straight hits (I think she could do some good 8 or 9 track albums), it’s possible, but likely not. Mumford and Sons will not be taken seriously after their next attempt at recreating The Joshua Tree. Justin Timberlake won’t be remembered as an all-encompassing Pop Superstar but will be remembered for the hits. Lady Gaga? To some, not to me; she has about three or four songs you’ll hear in constant rotation for the rest of your life but little else.
So who else? Bruno Mars? (Three songs.) Drake? (Will be contentious; it’s possible that he could be viewed on a hypothetical second tier despite my arguments for lower.) Lorde? (Have you heard a Lorde track since January 2014?) One Direction? (New Kids on the Block.) Macklemore? (Already a joke even if he’s got songs.) Lana Del Rey? (Zero chance.) Frank Ocean? (The first album is, obviously, excellent…but it’s been four years with barely a coherent hint to a follow-up.)
Well, wait, there’s one that will likely be beloved by a large amount of the population: one Beyonce Knowles. More on her later.
3. What non-popular (meaning mostly without radio hits or major chart success) musicians/bands will be well-remembered in 2050? (As an alternate/easier to answer question: What non-major musicians/bands have released A-level work in the 2010s?)
This one is just about impossible to project. Some are pretty obvious – Vampire Weekend, Chance the Rapper (probably major, but no hits or charting success at the moment), Arcade Fire (barring another massive disappointment like Reflektor), Sufjan Stevens (despite a very low level of solo productivity), and Kacey Musgraves (a couple semi-hits and two well-sold albums, but just enough left of center to miss the mainstream).
More controversially, here’s a few you won’t remember a single note from in 2030, much less 2050: Father John Misty, Tame Impala, FKA Twigs (the word “dull” was invented for this), the War on Drugs, Sun Kil Moon (we’re already halfway to erasing his influence, it seems), Kurt Vile, Disclosure (minus “Latch”), and, one can only hope, Bon Iver.
As you can see, I gave up answering the original question halfway through and decided to go with a more refined one in parentheses. The best I can do for this is give you a subjective list of who I hope to remember 10, 20, 30, and 40 years from now who have released either a great album (A-level) or multiple very good ones (A minus-level) this decade, aren’t consistent chart-toppers, and haven’t already been mentioned. Some have been active for multiple decades, but are forgotten by the charts. It’s longer than I’d like, but this is a good start:
Azealia Banks
Courtney Barnett
Big K.R.I.T.
D’Angelo
Das Racist
Deerhunter
Drive-By Truckers
The Go! Team
Tim Hecker
Himanshu/Heems
Hop Along
Van Hunt
Japandroids
Kool A.D.
Bassekou Kouyate
Mbongwana Star
Miranda Lambert (who has had a #1 album, but no song higher than #19)
Low Cut Connie
James McMurtry
Miguel
Ashley Monroe
John Moreland
The Mountain Goats
No Age
Old 97’s
Oneohtrix Point Never
Parquet Courts
Pusha T
Caroline Shaw
The Social Experiment
Jazmine Sullivan
Tune-Yards (Whokill only)
Wussy
Yo La Tengo (who have yet to have a bad album)
Young Fathers
Young Thug
Tom Zé
And quite a few others who could make this list very soon depending on the quality of their future releases. In my mildly humble opinion, this is a good start if you’re looking for what you may have missed this decade. As I mentioned earlier, the industry is debased to the point that quite a few of these artists who would either be too weird for radio or too unwilling to sell themselves otherwise may gain major, unprecedented fame. But we’ll see. This is also a very America-centric list, which I’m actively trying to expand to Africa, Asia, etc. with some success. I may come back and update this.
4. What does the term “poptimism” mean to you?
I’d like to believe it’s a very noble and accurate cause, with some caveats. If you’re unfamiliar with this, poptimism has two key tenets:
Pop music is no less authentic or less respectable than rock music;
It deserves the same critical recognition and interest/review.
That’s a nice way of rewording the Wikipedia definition, anyway. So this looks fine to me at surface level – there was a significant period of time where pop music was indeed considered less authentic and less respectable (probably peaking in the late 1990s-early 2000s) for reasons likely both sexist and obstructing. Your philosophy should be to judge a Taylor Swift album on the same grading scale you would judge a Beatles album on. There are no inherent differences making one grade more important than the other; it’s an A+ to F scale no matter what.
The wave of poptimism has helped in some ways with artist attention, mostly good. Taylor Swift wouldn’t be as beloved by the hipsters as she is now without a significantly more serious tone of coverage than Britney Spears received. So, straight up, poptimism is good, right? Well…
This article by Chris Richards in the Washington Post last year sums up what I’m about to say, but critics (and enabling listeners) are pushing it too far. Pop musicians do no longer seem to get bad reviews for making bad music – I’m looking DIRECTLY at you, Drake. (And Meghan Trainor. Someone, please help.) “Worst of all, it asks everyone to agree on the winners and then cheer louder.” That’s my largest issue – this kind of bastardized version of a very good idea is actually narrowing the charts more than it’s helping.
I mentioned this in a music wrap-up post last year, but 2015’s final tally had just 44 different songs enter the Billboard top 10 last year, which is the lowest total in the SoundScan era and the second straight year creating a new low in variety (2014 had 48). That’s very dangerous. Narrowing radio and charts down – which is still the main way to hear songs for a vast majority of people, no matter what service they use – only furthers the massive gap we have between innovation and current product.
The best summary of this comes from a message board I look at frequently, and this should be a lesson to all idiots who say message boards are worthless (they mostly are):
“The problem with music today is, basically, a lack of sophistication in the extant styles of popular music, and the esotericism in the extent styles of classical music; depth without sophistication on one end, and sophistication without depth on the other. The gap has not been bridged because the task might simply be impossible at this point in time, and will remain that way until evolution takes its course (or doesn’t).”
Thanks to the guy who goes by LimedIBagels but apparently is named Nathan. Anyway, Mr. Bagels is a great linguist, but to make it more readable, here are some translations:
Popular music – generally, surviving genres with large fanbases. Pop, rock, rap/hip-hop, etc. You know them.
Extant – surviving.
Classical – well, classical, but also music outside the box, for lack of a better term. Non-popular genres.
This is the smartest take on this I’ve read, and it stuns me that this guy rarely does music writing outside of the site. (He does have several reviews on Pretty Much Amazing.) He’s right: music is certainly deeper than it ever has been, thanks to extremely available access on your pick of a streaming service and a frustrated music industry. You can generally get what you want whenever you want it. It’s terrific for the ADHD consumer.
However, this is leading, again, to a significant narrowing of fields. Ever wonder why 90% of music you hear on the radio sounds the same? (Everyone has an example of this; for me, it’s those trap hi-hats.) It’s because similarity sells and sophistication is long forgotten. Nearly every Pitchfork-approved band sounds the same. All these NEXT BIG THING!!! indie bands that half-journalists who go to SXSW are ‘lucky’ enough to cover sound the same. (Except for Tacocat. They rule.) It’s all very, very blah and boring at the moment, but some people love this stuff.
So, until the next musical revolution, there’s a significant disconnect between the normal and the weird, which in a just world isn’t how it should be. I mean, does it blow anyone else’s mind that something as bizarre for its time as “Light My Fire” topped the 1967 charts for three straight weeks? Is “Somebody That I Used to Know” seriously the most experimental hit of the 2010s? I need help.
5. Who currently holds the throne of Best Active Artist in each major genre?
Answering the major genres part of this is very difficult, because there are seemingly no good ways to measure this apart from sales…and even then, sales in Europe and Asia vastly differ from those in North America. So I’m taking sort of a best guess here. Your major genres, more or less, are:
Country
Electronic
Hip-hop/rap
Pop
Rock
Generally, all other genres can be derived from these five. (I nearly went with R&B, but that doesn’t sell on the level of the others.) It’s a difficult thing to shoehorn, but I think this works for now. Anyway:
Country Music’s Queen: Miranda Lambert. I had to think about this one for a while because, certainly, others sell more. Despite my strong protests, bro-country still rules the charts and the airwaves, and the most-covered movement for women in country music in the last few years was Tomatogate. But is any country artist more consistent and more intelligent than Ms. Lambert right now? Let’s check the stats:
All five of her released albums have debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart (the first artist to do so).
All five of her albums are certified Platinum in the United States.
Before the release of “Smokin’ and Drinkin'” as a single in June 2015, her previous sixteen singles all placed on the Billboard Hot 100.
She divorced Blake Shelton.
She’s won seven consecutive Female Vocalist of the Year Awards from the Academy of Country Music.
Who currently playing has a better argument? I like Kacey Musgraves a lot, but Miranda’s best is better and she sells very well. Ashley Monroe? Not quite there yet – less mid-tempo ballads, more variety. Jason Aldean? Kill me first. Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, et al? Really good, but not to this level. Certainly there are artists rising to threaten her throne, but I don’t see any serious challenges for this until Lambert releases a stinker, which hasn’t come close to happening yet. Plus, I like her as country music’s leader – she’s outspoken and smart and very lovable. Keep her there!
Electronic Music’s King: Oneohtrix Point Never. The only artist on this list to experience insignificant commercial success. His best claim to chart fame at this point is having his most recent release (Garden of Delete) place at #2 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic albums chart. But I have a feeling this is the one genre where chart placement doesn’t mean very much. Electronic music seems to be the most universal of the genres in terms of appeal and access – ANYONE can make it, as long as they’re talented – so we’re going based on quality of work.
Let me remind you of the King from 1992 to 2001: Aphex Twin. Richard James experienced pretty much no real chart success, though “Windowlicker” was a brief Top 20 UK hit. In the most recklessly jaded decade we may ever see (one that deserves way less nostalgia than it gets), James’s music is a beautiful burst of light in the darkness. He sounds enamored with…well, sounds, and he can’t believe the fact he’s allowed to make stuff like the drum programming on “4” or the weird voices on “Milk Man” or the gorgeous, radiant tones of “#6” on Selected Ambient Works Vol. II.
Daniel Lopatin (AKA Mr. Point Never) is the closest thing we’ll have to Aphex Twin for the next 20 years, now that even Aphex Twin’s newest works sound kind of conventional. He pushes music forward in a way that seems unthinkable – fellow musician Tim Hecker described his music as the sound of “a 2018 main stage”, which is a rare moment of non-irony in such a description. I mean, it blows me away that a human can make something like “Sticky Drama” not even a decade after making such simple synth arpeggiations as “Computer Vision” or the like. No one in this field dreams bigger or thinks wider or casts larger nets than Lopatin does. Not all of it works, but when it does, it’s unlike anything else we have right now. Too bad it’s the least universal of these five. Oh well – maybe in 2018.
Hip-Hop/Rap’s King: Kanye West. There are no other serious contenders except for Kendrick Lamar. It’s that simple. No one brings to the table West’s brand of bravado, insecurity, goofiness, openness, masculinity, fear, anxiety, joy, anger, and, my God, THE MUSICALITY. You know a Kanye West song when you hear it – how many artists get that same sentence ever? “Blame Game” contains more talent in its first 15 seconds of sad-sackery than any Bon Iver album contains as a whole. Not only do we get the music, we get the most There public persona from a major star in decades. I love this era.
Future contenders: Chance the Rapper.
Pop Music’s Queen: Taylor Swift. Really, inarguably the Queen of Music overall – no one controls headlines, sales, airwaves, or anything else quite like Ms. Swift. Is her quality of work above Kanye’s? No, but she’s the only one in the same league of songwriting – “You Belong With Me”, “22”, “Love Story”, and others will be looked upon as songwriting classics decades from now. She is excellent in many ways, but very few others have such a control of language and theme. I love her, and there’s not much more to be said about her other than there is no serious current contender to knock her from her throne in the next decade at least. By then, she’ll have ruled the pop world for nearly 20 years – pretty much an unforeseen run.
Rock Music’s Kings: Vampire Weekend. The general rule here is once you take the throne, someone has to do better or you have to willingly step down from the throne for the title to go to someone else. Amazingly, they’re still here, and they took it over from the co-leadership of Drive-By Truckers (2001-2013) and Arcade Fire (2004-2013) thanks to creating their masterpiece, Modern Vampires of the City. (I do want to take a moment out to give due credit to the weirdly unheralded Contra, which is also outstanding.)
But they’re about to give it up. I made the call almost immediately after City released in 2013 that they should break up before releasing a fourth album that would very likely underwhelm, and it’s starting to look like they agree. No new releases of note since May 2013. A band member left. Ezra Koenig seems to be busy with many things that aren’t band-related, including his Apple Radio show or whatever it is. But while they take their short time at the top, I want to call appreciation to why they’re here:
They got made fun of for “Ivy League lyrics,” implying white privilege and appropriation…while the same people making fun of them promoted millions of other bands actually using white privilege to get promotion.
Their eclectic sound is the most sonically-varied rock/faux-rock music since…Jesus, since Neon Bible? Has it really gotten that bad over the last decade? (I love Neon Bible. Have you guys heard “The Well and the Lighthouse” recently? What a great rock song.)
None of their records sound the same as what came before it. The debut is smart but conventional shy punk music, the follow-up focused on world conflict and is musically unclassified, MVOTC a revisitation of the warmth of 60s/70s recordings paired with anxious views on what’s next.
Sales-wise: two #1 albums, all three Gold certified, two Grammy nominations (one win). In the most debased field rock music has ever created, they’re rock stars to a surprisingly wide demographic, including the author.
Believe me, it kills me to not list the Drive-By Truckers here – they released the best rock album of the 2000s (Brighter Than Creation’s Dark) and maybe the second-best of the 2010s (English Oceans). But: whereas from 1999 to 2004 all four of their albums released are inarguable rock classics, they’ve released two fully recommended records in the 12 years since. They’re elder statesmen who are still excellent, but it’s been eight years since their best output. And that’s okay! They’re still the greatest rock band of the last 15 years. They just aren’t the greatest right now.
Arcade Fire ruined it with Reflektor. I’m still mad about that one. But the tour was nice.
Here’s some future contenders: Parquet Courts (who will take the throne when Vampire Weekend break up this summer), Courtney Barnett, Sleater-Kinney (probably belonged in that DBT/Arcade Fire co-ruling), Yo La Tengo (always in the top 5, forever), and maybe Hop Along.
If you’ve got other questions you’d like for me to answer, send them to the appropriate channels if you know me personally. If not: will7615 at gmail.
gyrateplus: the website 