Friday, January 1, 2010

'Tis the Season to look at the Pitchfork Top Hundred

Pitchfork E-Zine is always a great place to look for the absolute best in current music. Unlike many "serious" music websites that only focus on the most exclusive, obscure, and esoteric artists, songs, and albums Pitchfork seeks out the best music regardless of whether it's mainstream or not. I'd heard from a few people that the website was pretentious yet I when I viewed the yearly Pitchfork Top 100 I noticed artists like Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Lil' Wayne. I'm not hating on those artists or anything but they're definitely what would be considered pop in their genres. They get played on the radio frequently and aren't going to attract the attention of thick-framed-glasses-wearing-vinyl-collecting-hipsters (like myself haha) but they've proven that they can write catchy, complex, and lasting songs and sometimes deserve just as much attention as more obscure cult bands like Joy Division or the LCD Soundsystem.

Every New Year, Pitchfork releases a list of the top 100 songs of the past year as selected by staff and it spans all genres and levels of popularity. There's a noticeable lack of bias and favoritism in their top 100 lists (they've got other lists than the regular yearly as well) unlike the lists you find in bullshit, poser, hack, music publication like Rolling Stone. I can't even tell you all how many new bands and artists I've discovered or how many popular artists I know are good because of their annual list.

I'm not going to review the whole list for you but some of my favorite songs on the list are:
-Blood Bank by Bon Iver
-Bad Romance by Lady Gaga
-Paparazzi by Lady Gaga
-Watching the Planets by the Flaming Lips
-Daniel by Bats for Lashes
-Glass by Bats for Lashes
-11th Dimension by Julian Casablancas
-Moth's Wings by Passion Pit
-My Girls by Animal Collective
-1901 by Phoenix
-Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear
-Lust for Life by Girls

I can always depend on Pitchfork to direct me to all the coolest songs I might have overlooked during the past year.

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