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.
Listomania 