1. Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion 131k 2. Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca 48k 3. the xx xx 35k 4. The Flaming Lips Embryonic 75k (estimate) 5. Raekwon Only Built For Cuban Linx Part II 141k 6. Grizzly Bear Veckatimest 132k 7. Bat For Lashes Two Suns 36k 8. Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 205k 9. Fever Ray Fever Ray 23k 10. Girls Album 19k
Sales figures are from Soundscan through December 6th, 2009. I was hoping to get data for the entire Pitchfork top 50 and reshuffle the list to reflect sales, but that’s looking to be a tall order. Here are sales numbers for other albums on the list:
12. Yeah Yeah Yeahs It’s Blitz 184k 13. St. Vincent Actor 38k 19. Atlas Sound Logos 9,500 20. Real Estate Real Estate 3,400 21. Neko Case Middle Cyclone 169k 26. Bon Iver Blood Bank EP 89k 28. Micachu and the Shapes Jewellery 6,000 34. Passion Pit Manners 82k (GAH disregard previous number!) 37. Antlers Hospice 13k 38. Major Lazer Guns Don’t Kill People…Lazers Do 15k 40. Mos Def The Ecstatic 114k 41. Baroness Blue Record 12k 44. Tune-Yards Bird-Brains 2,100 45. Mountain Goats The Life of the World to Come 14k 48. Doom Born Like This 45k
To get an idea of context, here are some sales figures of some other artists who did not make the Pitchfork list.
Wilco Wilco (The Album) 243k Lily Allen It’s Not Me, It’s You 250k Metric Fantasies 76k Andrew Bird Noble Beast 126k The Gossip Music For Men 19k Silversun Pickups Swoon 193k Muse The Resistance 292k Lonely Island Incredibad 266k Owl City Ocean Eyes 384k Pearl Jam Backspacer 394k Arctic Monkeys Humbug 72k Matt & Kim Grand 64k U2 No Line On The Horizon 1m Paramore Brand New Eyes 327k
I made a collection of 10 extended playlists designed to provide a panoramic view of the music of each year of the 1970s across all major genres, and as much as possible, around the world. Each playlist is available on both Spotify and Apple Music, and you can find them all here! All of the artwork for the surveys is taken from old issues of After Dark, an arts magazine from the era that was intended for a mostly queer audience.
I have heard that “High Hopes” song out in the world too many times but just now noticing the first verse opens with the guy’s mom urging him to “fulfill the prophecy” - the prophecy???
This is a collection of the finest non-hit pop songs from the 16 year history of this site. (Well, actually, one legit hit made it through because it fit in nicely.) It’s basically nothing but world-class bangers.
You can experience it as an Apple Music playlist, a Spotify playlist, or as an expanded download version featuring 16 extra songs that are not available on streaming platforms. I’ve marked the bonus songs in the track listing for the download set below.
Sleigh Bells “Crown on the Ground” / Maria Magdalena “CVMC (Cada Vez Mas Cerca)” / Friendly Fires “Hurting” / The Rapture “Whoo! Alright – Yeah… Uh-Huh” / M.I.A. “URAQT” / Ce’cile “Rude Bwoy Thug Life” / Redinho “Playing with Fire” / CSS “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” / Spank Rock “Sweet Talk” / Stazi “Love Is Lethal” * / Yellow Note vs. Pukka “Naked, Drunk, and Horny” / Armand Van Helden feat. Spalding Rockwell “Hear My Name” / Cut Copy “Saturdays” / Quarks “I Walk” + / QT “Hey QT” / Peaches “Dumb Fuck” / Heloise and the Savoir Faire Dancers “Odyle” / Tracy and the Plastics “Henrietta” * / Junesex “Gets Close to Mine” / Mouse on Mars “Mine Is In Yours” / LCD Soundsystem “Yeah (Crass Version)” / Ladytron “Destroy Everything You Touch” / Of Montreal “The Party’s Crashing Us (I Am the World Trade Center Remix)” / Futon “Gay Boy” + / Dog Ruff “Jon E Storm” * / Chicks on Speed “Shick Shaving” * / Avenue D feat. Cazwell “The Sex That I Need” / Gene Serene “Electric Dreams” / Vanessinha & Alessandra “Gira” * / United State of Electronica “La Discoteca” * / Planningtorock “I Wanna Bite Ya” / Nouveau Riche “Take Me Home” * / Hilary Duff “Danger” / SEVENTEEN “Change Up” / Britney Spears “How I Roll” / MNDR “Cut Me Out” / Skrillex “Stranger” / Sophie “Lemonade” / Saint Pepsi “Better” / Sky Ferreira “I Blame Myself” / Lolita Storm “Dancing with the Ibiza Dogs” * / Chairlift “I Belong In Your Arms” / Au Revoir Simone “Through the Backyards” / La Big Vic “All That Heaven Allows” / Rework “Not Quite Like Any Other”
* = Not on either Spotify or Apple + = On Apple, but not Spotify
My friend Matthew pioneered music blogging waaaaaaaaay back when, and for over a decade and a half he’s brought his vision of pop music to the masses. This two-disc retrospective is Matthew’s Mirror Mirror II, basically — it sums up the Fluxblog aesthetic and declares it worthy of consideration the same way me and Julia’s anthology did for our aesthetic. I think you’re going to see more and more of these kinds of efforts from people with singular visions (or double visions in our case, I guess), as a combination of factors — media contraction, layoffs and job insecurity, and the ongoing transformation of entertainment journalism and criticism into boosterism for the products of the world’s largest corporations — drives veteran critics and writers toward the same kinds of independent expression that helped them get their start in the first place. It’s a bit like what our mutual friend Chris Ott encouraged in one of his very earliest Shallow Rewards video podcasts/jeremiads: “Declare victory and leave the playing field.” When the work you value can’t find purchase, be confident in what it and you have to offer and plant your flag on your own.
(FWIW those playlists really are full of bangers. That opening run on Disc 1 will kick your ass)
If you’ve ever wanted to hear me talk about Marilyn Manson for two hours, now’s your chance! I’m the guest on this week’s installment of Molly O’Brien and Chris Wade’s music podcast And Introducing, where they read and dissect a different rock/pop star’s memoir every episode. We talked about Manson’s book The Long Hard Road out of Hell, written and release at the height of his fame, and we go deep. Listen and subscribe!
Thanks to Rob Sheffield for reminding me this song exists. I’d kinda forgotten about it, and I guess Stephen Malkmus has too since this song still hasn’t been released nine years later. But it’s a really lovely one, and I really hope that he finishes it someday.
“Matthew, when are you gonna make a gardening personality quiz? There’s a woeful lack of gardening stuff on BuzzFeed dot com the website, and it’s a travesty.”
“That would require me to know about gardening.”
“Okay, fair. But…hear me out…*I* know about gardening.”
Tim O’Neil’s ongoing series of essays on The Hurting about coming out as trans is one of the best things I’ve read in the past year. Tim’s essays shift back and forth between sharp critical writing about topics such as the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the discography of Spoon, and Carl Banks’ Donald Duck comics, and intense memoir sections detailing their struggles with self-defeating rage and despair while obliviously living in the closet into their 30s. Tim also writes a bit about the beginnings of their transition, and one of the most striking things is that in Tim’s writing, masculinity is like this chronic disease that’s being treated. It’s fascinating and very moving, and Tim’s insights into art are incredibly thoughtful and not always predictable. I particularly like how Tim writes about deeply relating to Anakin Skywalker, in part because I totally get where they’re coming from as a person struggling with intense self-loathing, but mostly because I’d never considered that people related to the Anakin of the prequels at all.
