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The NYT has dropped a list of the 100 best books of the 21st Century. According to them.
I find the list to be vapid beyond words. The inclusion of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow alone, even in the upper 70s, disqualifies it from being anything except for a circlejerk of the rag. Trash like The Fifth Season cements it.
You can walk through the list and see the same themes being hammered over, and over, and over, and over. It is exactly what you'd expect from the culture war, and the percentage of books written in the last 10 years (much less the last 20) is absurdly high.
A couple years ago I collected what I think are the best hundred songs of all time. A friend's python visualization of my Spotify playlist illuminated that, despite all the deep cuts, I didn't have a single entry from before I was born. My musical blind spots are enormous, and I think most old music just fucking sucks. At least I can admit it's because I'm susceptible to the level of manufacturing that modern music goes through, along with a huge obsession with sick beats. My list is "wrong" for most people.
I can't imagine having this level of navel-gazing weakness in self-reflection. Did nobody look at this list and realize how stupid the title is? Did anyone over 25 contribute to it?
In any case as the number got higher there were at least some decent books listed that you could read without hating yourself. They're all still liberal, by default, but at least have significant redeeming qualities.
I was at a bar over the weekend and a woman who was probably in her early 40s was complaining about the music her husband was playing on the jukebox — classic country like Waylon Jennings and Ronnie Milsap. She said it was "old people's music". I sided with the husband and told her that she's not so much complaining about the music itself as she is the cultural connotation. For example when I listen to music I focus on the melody, the harmony, the rhythm, the arrangement, the competence of the performers, the emotional impact, etc. Year of release doesn't really factor into it much. I might dock a song a few points from a critical perspective if it's merely a lazy retread of what's already been done, but that's ultimately a minor consideration. As I'm in the process of very occasionally updating my own list for this site, I'd be curious to see yours.
Here's a dump of tracks, also following the rule of limiting the number of songs per artist to 1. Otherwise a ton of artists would show up multiple times.
Side note: Excellent exercise to do with friends, and it's about the same length as a monstrous road trip. Highly recommend.
So, you have some of my absolute favorite bands on here (especially happy to see The Band CAMINO get a shout-out) but I find it very strange that you enjoy those bands but can’t find anything to like about the bands and genres that directly influenced them. Like, a number of these bands are clearly very inspired by 80’s New Wave and arena rock, as well as 70’s disco and power pop. Like, if you’re into slick production, multilayered instrumentation, and bubblegum melodies, I think it’s very odd not to have any interest in, say, Def Leppard, ABBA, Prince, and Cheap Trick. Even if you think that music has moved in a direction of pure improvement, taking the raw clay of Boomer Music and fashioning into the Actually Good Music of today, surely you can see that there’s at least some music from 1990 and earlier which still holds up?
If you want me to give you a list of some older music that has all of the same important qualities as the music you’ve listed here, I’d be happy to provide it.
(Also, I want to shill my favorite band Marianas Trench here, as it seems you’d love their music based on the genres you’re into.)
I've heard from multiple people secondhand that one cool thing about Camino is the members are also mostly normal and good dudes. I'm going to get to see them on this tour which I'm psyched for.
I wouldn't say that I can't find anything to like about old music at all. I enjoy a good chunk of it, it just doesn't get pushed into making the cut here. If I tried to pinpoint why, a few things come to mind:
Bottom line though: I'd love to have a sample playlist of your suggestions. I would prefer to rectify this blind spot rather than leave it hanging.
How big a playlist do you want? As I told the last person here for whom I made a playlist, my autistic fixation will quickly overtake me if I’m not given a limit.
Twenty songs.
Twenty songs? That’s barely a warm-up! We’re trying to bring this man up to speed on four decades of music! We need to let this thing breathe.
You asked for limits, man! Work with them!
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