Data Crunching the Pitchfork P2K Top 200 Albums List

Pitchfork’s top 200 albums of the decade (2000-2009) have been unveiled, and regardless of your opinions regarding what was included and what was left out, one thing is certain: numbers don’t lie. Pitchfork has been reviewing albums and compiling year end lists all decade and the 200 albums they feature on this list have been elevated to a place on the popular music canon, at least for a certain segment of the population.  So let’s take a closer look at the numbers behind this list and see what we discover.

The Best Year of the Decade

The chart above shows how the top 200, top 50, and top 10 albums break down by year.   2001 comes out ahead for in all three breakdowns and the years 2000-2004 totally dominate the entire list, with 117 of the top 200 albums released in the first 5 years, 31 of the top 50, and 9 of the top 10.  It only makes sense that 2009 would have the fewest showings (and none in the bottom 100); not only is the year not yet over but the impact 2009 has on the musical history of the decade is sure to be minimal when compared to the legacies of earlier years.  Ditto 2008, although that year seems to have made a much stronger showing than 2003, a year which didn’t crack the top 10 and only saw 2 albums make the top 50.  Ultimately, the argument for ‘which year was best/worst’ can’t be settled by this list but there is plenty of ammunition here for any side to use.

Comparing Changes in Pitchfork’s Rankings and Lists

The P2K Top 200 Albums highlights how Pitchfork, as a publication, has changed focus over the past decade.  Many albums which were originally met with average or poor reviews, or were never reviewed at all, are included on this list.

Obviously higher-rated albums still dominate the list, but over 20% of the list is devoted to albums with average-to-low reviews.   Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet takes the prize of lowest rated album to appear on the list; it was originally given a 0.6 rating in a review by Ryan Schreiber himself.  Certainly there have been albums with a lower review (there have been a few 0.0’s in the past), but going from an abysmally low original rating to a place in the top 200 albums of the decade marks a decided shift.  Basement Jaxx’s Rooty takes 2nd place in lowest original score with a 3.8 original rating, but it has the good fortune to land in the top 50 category of the P2K list (it was also featured at 65 on the ‘Best of 2000-2004’ list, making it not quite as big an anomaly as the Andrew W.K. album).  10 albums are featured on the P2K Top albums list with an original rating of less than 7.0, and none of these 10 albums were released after 2003.  Thus we can assume 2 things: The Pitchfork of 2003 would hate this list, and the Pitchfork of 2009 is substantially different in taste, tone, and quality assessment than its earlier incarnation.

Since the original reviews were the product of one writer and there probably was not much editorial oversight in assigning ratings, the original year-end lists provide a clearer point of comparison with regards to the changes in Pitchfork over the past decade.

Here we see 28% (55 albums) of the P2K top 200 albums did not appear on the site’s original year-end list for their respective year.  This would seem to comply with the comparison to the original ranking list.  Just as interesting, though, is the fact that 17 former top 10 albums do not appear on the P2K list at all. 5 albums ranked 10 on their original year-end list are missing altogether here, with the most recent being 2006’s The Drift by Scott Walker.  The highest ranked album to be left off the P2K list is The Lemon of Pink by the Books, which was the number 2 album of 2003.

Pitchfork provided a ‘Top 100 albums of 2000-2004’ list that also gives a point of comparison in assessing how this list differs from their earlier assessments:

While 44 of the top 50 albums of 2000-2004 appear on the P2K list, 42 albums that weren’t included in that list make the cut here.  This makes sense considering 76 of the top 100 albums are on this list and the relevant years make up 117 of the total 200 albums.  Only 6 top 50 albums from the 2000-2004 list aren’t featured on this list, which must suck for those 6 artists.

Before we move to the next category, it’s also interesting to see how Pitchfork’s ‘Best New Music’ selections ranked on this P2K list.

The ‘Best New Music’ designation was instituted in 2003 and was awarded to most, but not all, albums with a rating of 8.3 or higher (and some 8.0-8.2 albums).  31 albums reviewed by Pitchfork from ’03-’09 appear on the P2K list but did not originally receive the Best New Music Designation.  If we say that every album released before 2003 with a rating of 8.3 or higher would receive ‘Best New Music’ status, that still leaves 70 albums that do not qualify for Best New Music status.  Again, some of this makes sense:  Pitchfork didn’t really review as many rap, pop, or dance/techno/electronica albums before 2002 and in the early years they were especially critical of otherwise-popular acts like Bright Eyes, Elliott Smith, Andrew W.K., and Daft Punk.  Still, this stands as evidence that ‘Best New Music’ is not necessarily the same thing as ‘Music with the Best Staying Power’ or ‘Most Important Music.’

Comparing Pitchfork to Other Critics

A common complaint I hear regarding Pitchfork is that they are often contrary to both popular and critical opinion; that their reviews, scores, and lists set the site apart from other critical sources and popular opinion as radically different.  When we compare Pitchfork’s P2K top 200 albums with the critical consensus compiled on Metacritic, though, this argument starts to break down a little:

Here we see the majority (110 albums) of the P2K top 200 albums were reviewed comparably by other critics.   Only 40 albums on the P2K list were rated with more than 10 points difference on Metacritic.  Perhaps just as telling is the fact that, of the 200 P2K top albums of the decade, 76 appear on Metacritic’s top 200 of the decade list.

So while Pitchfork might maintain some “outsider status,” by reviewing albums that slip past the other mainstream critics Metacritic compiles (46 albums were reviewed by Pitchfork but not by Metacritic) only 18 of these ‘outsider’ reviews are for albums from 2004-2009; either Pitchfork has become more mainstream or Metacritic has become more ‘outsider’ (probably both are true; indie music has become increasingly popular throughout the decade and Pitchfork has increasingly given positive reviews to more mainstream music).

Conclusions

This list of the top 200 albums features some glaring omissions and some surprising inclusions, especially considering the source.  But, more importantly, it documents a clear change in the type of music review coverage Pitchfork provides over the past 10 years; several albums that were not reviewed early in the site’s life are placed favorably on this top 200.  Similarly, albums that received negative or average reviews originally- or were not included on their respective ‘best of the year’ list- are included while albums that were lauded at the time saw steep declines.  The most obvious thing we can take away from this list is that the Pitchfork of 2009 has a very different voice than the Pitchfork of earlier in this decade.

For more data, see my database of the Pitchfork Top 200 Albums of the Decade

Pitchfork’s P2K Top 20: Predictions

Pitchfork unveils the top 20 albums of the decade tomorrow.  Nevermind the wild predictions I made yesterday, here are my predictions for the top 20:

	Artist	Album	Year	Original  Rating	Original Rank on End of Year List	Rank on Best of 2000-2004 List	Best New Music
20	Brian Wilson	Smile	2004	9	5	25	Yes
19	White Stripes	White Blood Cells	2001	9	8	8	N/A
18	Deerhoof	The Runners Four	2005	9	6	N/A	Yes
17	Ghostface Killah	Supreme Clientele	2000	—	—	19	N/A
16	The Books	The Lemon of Pink	2003	8.4	2	20	Yes
15	Wilco	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot	2002	10	2	11	N/A
14	Sigur Rós	Ágætis Byrjun	2000	9.4	2	6	N/A
13	Modest Mouse	The Moon and Antarctica	2000	9.8	3	7	N/A
12	Kanye West	Late Registration	2005	9.5	2	N/A	Yes
11	The Arcade Fire	Funeral	2004	9.7	1	45	Yes
10	Daft Punk	Discovery	2001	6.4	—	12	N/A
9	Interpol	Turn on the Bright Lights	2002	9.5	1	3	N/A
8	The Knife	Silent Shout	2006	8.6	1	N/A	Yes
7	Panda Bear	Person Pitch	2007	9.4	1	N/A	Yes
6	Animal Colletive	Merriweather Post Pavilion	2009	9.6	N/A	N/A	Yes
5	Avalanches	Since I Left you	2001	—	3	5	N/A
4	Jay-Z	The Blueprint	2001	8.7	—	2	N/A
3	Sufjan Stevens	Illinois	2005	9.2	1	N/A	Yes
2	Radiohead	Kid A	2000	10	1	1	N/A
1	LCD Soundsystem	Sound of Silver	2007	9.2	2	N/A	Yes

The most notable exception from this list is OutKast’s Stankonia, which appeared at number 4 on the top 100 albums of 2000-2004.  If I had to fit that in here I would put it in the bottom 16, most likely replacing Ghostface or Deerhoof.  I’m taking the biggest risk in adding Daft Punk to this list; they had several songs in the top 100 songs of the decade and those singles may take the place of the album.  However, considering the other albums that have appeared on the list thus far (Justice, Basement Jaxx) and how influential Daft Punk has been over the past decade (they seem to have especially influenced Pitchfork’s editorial voice, in particular), I think it’s a reasonable guess to put them in the top 10.

I’m willing to bet at least 18 of my top 20 will appear on tomorrow’s list.  I’ll also bet that, of my predicted top 10, at least 9 will appear in tomorrow’s top 10.  I’m like Nate Silver, but with pretension and without knowledge based on fact!

Pitchfork’s top 50 albums of the decade

I’m data-crunching the top 200 albums of the decade and I’ll post my findings on Friday, but based on the top 150 I feel like I can make some pretty strong speculations about how the top 50 will go.  Here are my thoughts and predictions:

–Of the Top 10 albums from each year’s list, 47 albums have not yet been listed.  Obviously, when you take 2009 into account, there is no way all 47 remaining top 10 albums will be included.  I predict at most 30 of these top 10 albums will make the final 50, and some albums will be notably absent.  Here are ones I expect we won’t see in the top 50:

Spoon- Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga  and Kill the Moonlight (number 7 on the 2007 top 10 and 6 on the ’02 top 10)
Animal Collective- Strawberry Jam (6 on the ’07 top 10)
Brian Wilson- Smile (5 on the ’04 list)
Radiohead- Hail to the Thief and Amnesiac (4 on the ’03 list and 6 on the ’01 list, respectively)
The Unicorns- Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? (10 on the ’03 list)

Also I don’t think anything by Prefuse 73 will make the cut, and I think we’ve seen all the Joanna Newsom, Boris, Books, Microphones, Sigur Ros, and Shins we’ll see.  MAYBE the White Stripes will get in with White Blood Cells, but they already made the list with ‘Elephant’ (which was not met with positive reviews the first time around).

—The Top 10 will include
Panda Bear- Person Pitch
Modest Mouse- The Moon and Antarctica
Broken Social Scene- You Forgot it In People
Wilco- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Sufjan Stevens- Illinois
LCD Soundsystem- Sound of Silver
Animal Collective- either Sung Tongs or Merriweather Post Pavilion
The Knife- Silent Shout
Radiohead- Kid A
Deerhunter- Microcastle
Madvillain- Madvillainy
Avalanches- Since I Left You

(I realize that’s 11 albums.  If I’m going to be wrong, which I most certainly am, I might as well weigh the odds in my favor)

—The Top 10 Will NOT Include
-Fleet Foxes
-TV on the Radio
-Grizzly Bear
-Fennesz
-Interpol
-M.I.A.
-The Arcade Fire
-Any album from 2008
-An album you really think deserves to be there

—The Top 50 will include, at most, 3 albums from 2009.  This is only if it’s not too early for the Girls album to make the cut (which it probably is).  Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective will be included, nothing else from the year will.

—You will find something to be pissed about on the list
Even if you’re Ryan Schreiber.  Especially if you’re Brent Dicrescenzo.

—If Meriweather Post Pavilion is in the top 10, it will not be Pitchfork’s number 1 album of 2009.
‘My Girls’ is a lock for Pitchfork’s number 1 song of ’09, even if Marvin Gaye rises from grave and records a duet with zombie John Lennon and zombie Michael Jackson, that song is going to take the year’s prize.  If Meriweather Post Pavilion gets in the top 10 on the decade-best list, expect Grizzly Bear or Girls to take number 1 for the year.

—The deal Pitchfork has going on with Lala is amazing.  It really is.

P2K: Pitchfork’s Top Tracks of the Decade

Pitchfork is among the first major media outlets to begin cataloging the past decade in list form, beginning last week with their Top 500 songs of 2000-2009.  I had contemplated data crunching the Pitchfork 500, published in ’07, but never got around to it.  So now, since I have grad school, a full time job, another part time job, and plenty of books I’d like to read and other things to do with my time, I figured I’d start this blog as a way of occasionally crunching the numbers on big, ‘canon deciding’ lists like this.  I’m an avid, and unabashed, Pitchfork reader and they have almost single-handedly influenced all of my musical discoveries over the past decade so it’s only fitting that I begin this project with one of their lists.

Here is the data on the top 200 tracks of the P2K Top Tracks of the Decade.

Like many edited media review publications, Pitchfork’s lists seem to be determined primarily by staff votes, with the editors getting the final say over list placement and things like that.  Pitchfork has previously published lists tracking their top songs of each year since 2003, with a top 100 singles of 2000-2004 appearing in the middle of the decade.  They have also published a physical, real-life print book of their top 500 tracks since 1977 with about 60 tracks chosen from 2000-2006.  In an effort to track the site’s internal consistency in creating a canon of ‘the top songs’ over the decade I have compared all of these lists with the songs chosen for the P2K list.

I also tracked the year each song was released, a tracking method Pitchfork uses inconsistently.  Several songs on the P2K list had years listed different from the years listed on a given end-of-year top songs list.  I realize the word list was in that last sentence 4 times.  That’s a problem that happens when you blog about lists.  In the interest of giving Pitchfork the benefit of the doubt, if a song was on the, say, ‘Top Singles of 2004’ list I gave the year as 2004 in the P2K list.  This is how I generated the ‘Top Songs by Year’ charts, with one caveat.*

I attempted to break down the songs by genre, an exceedingly difficult feat considering bands like Animal Collective and M.I.A. obviously cross multiple genres and I find sub-sub-sub genre labels pointless for a list like this.  Also, I know next to nothing about electronic music and I have no idea what the difference between ‘house,’ ‘techno,’ ‘dance,’ and ‘electronic’ is so I used ‘Dance/Electronic’ as a catch-all.  Finally, unless the artist was Kelly Clarkson if the song was performed by a band that included guitars I most likely labeled it as ‘rock,’ thus a band like Radiohead, who have 0 rock songs on the list despite appearing on the list a few times, get counted as ‘rock’ rather than ‘artsy musicians purposefully defying genre labels and fan expectations.’

Top Songs, by Year

So let’s get to the numbers.  Of the top 500 tracks, no one year proved a true standout and the songs are spread rather evenly across years (with 2009 being an obvious exception, and a glaring proof that Pitchfork’s list is a bit premature).

Pitchfork broke their list down into distinct parts: 500-201 and the Top 200.  If we look at the Top 200 we begin to see some clear dominance by year:

Here 2005 and 2003 hold a slight edge.  Whe we look at the top 100 2005 jumps to the lead with 15%.

But perhaps the best way to determine which year performed the best, especially given the relatively equal number of songs per year in the top 500, we can compare how many songs, per year, ended up in the top 50.  Here, 2007 emerges a clear winner: 21% of the songs listed from 2007 end up in the top 50 (when we just look at the top 200 the number jumps even more to 45%).  Compare that to the next highest percentage; 2004 with 13% of its songs in the top 50.

Since 2 of 2007’s songs ended up in the top 5 it can be said with some confidence that, according to Pitchfork, 2007 was the greatest year for songs in the past decade (with a strong showing by 2000, 2002, and 2003; better luck next list guys!).

Points for Consistency

When comparing the top 200 P2K songs with other Pitchfork lists we see several interesting things.  First, a handfull of songs are making their Pitchfork list debut on this list.  Excluding 2009, here are the songs that have never before appeared on any Pitchfork staff list, as far as I can tell:

24 Radiohead- Everything in Its Right Place

46 Robyn [ft. Kleerup]- With Every Heartbeat

49 Sufjan Stevens- Chicago

53 The Strokes- Someday

61 Wilco- Jesus, Etc.

71 Kanye West [ft. Consequence and Cam’ron]- Gone

100 Jamie Lidell- Multiply

108 The Hold Steady- The Swish

109 Grizzly- Bear Knife

111 Aaliyah- We need a Resolution

120 Phoenix- If I Ever Feel Better

129 Andrew W.K.- Party Hard

130 Spoon- The Underdog

146 Fennesz- Caecilia

148 Air France- Collapsing at Your Doorstep

149 Dan Deacon- The Crystal Cat

152 Life Without Buildings- The Leanover

157 Kanye West ft. Lupe Fiasco- Touch the Sky

165 Jimmy Eat World- The Middle

169 Ludacris- Southern Hospitality

178 Air Cherry- Blossom Girl

179 Bon Iver- Skinny Love

181 Morrissey- The First of the Gang to Die

182 Yo La Tango- Our Way to Fall

185 Dead Prez- Hip-Hop

186 Fugazi- Cashout

187 Booka Shade- Mandarine Girl

192 Pulp- Sunrise

194 David Banner- Cadillac on 22’s

195 Love Is All- Make Out Fall Out Make Up

196 No Age- Teen Creeps

200 Beck- Lost Cause

Considering any song released in 2003 or 2004 had the opportunity to appear on 3 lists before this one (Top 100 Singles of ’00-’04, Top 50 Singles of the Year, Pitchfork 500) some of these choices are very surprising.  Morrissey’s biggest single of the decade (and the only song he’s released in a few decades that I’ve enjoyed personally) has been absent from Pitchfork’s lists until now.  Looking at these 32 songs is a chance to see Pitchfork admitting some of its biggest errors or attempting to distance the Pitchfork of ’09 from the Pitchfork earlier this decade.

When taking into account the previous lists we still get some interesting numbers.  101 songs from the P2K 200 originally appeared on their respective year-end list (discounting ’00-’02 and ’09 since those years didn’t have year end lists as of press date, this amounts to 75% of the list).  Of these 101 songs, 44% appeared in the Top 10 of their respective lists.  Even when we include the Top 10 from the ’00-’04 list, only  39 of the 70 potential songs ended up in the top 100 of the P2K list.  Plus, while only 1 song with a ranking of 8, 9, or 10 ended up in the top 100 of the P2K list  (The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s ‘Maps’ was ranked 10 on the ’00-’04 list); 21 songs ranked 11-100 made it to the top 100 of the P2K list.  So the Top 10 for each year, while a strong indication at the time, didn’t actually prove much other than songs ranked 8, 9, and 10 probably wouldn’t stand the test of time as well as songs ranked 25.

The Rise of Bun B.

Which artist had the most successful decade?  Animal Collective, Jay-Z, and Kanye West all had 4 songs in the top 200.  If we count guest verses and band members’ side projects then Jay-Z appeared on 8 songs total in the top 200 while Kanye West appeared on 6, Animal Collective’s Panda Bear appeared 6, and UGK’s Bun B appeared on 4.

Daft Punk‘s 2001 album Discovery saw 3 of its 14 songs end up in the top 200, making it the most successful album on the list.

In the Majors

Pitchfork is arguably most closely associated with ‘indie’ music, with much of the site’s content focused on music other ‘mainstream’ music press would otherwise ignore.  When we look at which labels, and which type of label, had the most successful year according to the P2K top 200 we see that only about half of the songs on the list came solely from independent labels.

This is hardly surprising: Pitchfork has always given attention to songs coming from major labels (not to mention the fact that seemingly independent labels like Mute, Astralwerks, and V2 are actually owned by majors).  Still, this may be indicative of two trends: first, major label songs and artists can put out songs enjoyed unironically by even the most ardent hipsters this side of cokemachineglow, and second, major labels have been signing and distributing artists who take substantial risks.  It would be interesting to see how this label breakdown compares to Pitchfork’s other decade-tracking lists.

XL, Interscope and Roc-A-Fella had the most successful decade: XL had 11 songs in the top 200, Interscope had 10 and Roc-A-Fella had 9.  When we look at labels that had 5 or more songs appear in the top 200, the majors perform much better:

XL 11

Interscope 10

Roc-A-Fella 9

DFA 7

Domino 6

Columbia 6

Jive 6

Rough Trade 6

Warp 6

Matador 6

Astralwerks 6

Virgin 5

Epic 5

Sony 5

Mute 5

Only 6 of these 15 labels are ‘independent.’

Genre Hopping

As I said, I tried to track genres but I did so cautiously and would advise that this is the least scientific portion of the data (albeit probably the part people get most excited to discuss).  I tried to use as few genres as possible so there is obviously some overlap, but I did decide to include ‘indie’ as a genre as a way to differentiate between, for example, the kind of pop Annie and Aaliyah produce from the kind of pop Grizzly Bear and Camera Obscura produce.  Thus this is mostly subjective and, if you were to crunch the data yourself, you would probably get a slightly different result for a few categories.  Nevertheless, these numbers state plainly what looking at the P2K list only implies: the Pitchfork staff’s favorite songs from the past decade are largely NOT the sort of indie hipster stuff we all tend to associate the site with.  In fact the list is dominated by rap, dance/electronic, and pop music.

Sorting it All Out

Obviously this is the first of a few lists Pitchfork will publish ranking the music of the decade, and I plan on covering the top albums as well.  Judging the top songs of the decade is obviously subjective and I anticipate other lists will be published by the end of the year that will contrast with this one, but I do appreciate Pitchfork’s attempt to capture ‘the sound’ of an entire decade it undoubtedly impacted; it’s hard to imagine a band like Animal Collective becoming as popular as they have if there weren’t Pitchfork to champion them, for example.

I won’t bother waxing philosophic any more extensively on this list, but I will point out one thing: the smart money is on ‘My Girls’ being Pitchfork’s number 1 song of 2009.

*MGMT’s ‘Time to Pretend’ appeared on the ‘Best of 2007’ list as the 97th best song, and on the ‘Best of 2008’ list as the 30th best song.  The P2K list appears to be using the 2008 version.