Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Music Weird: Not Even the Best Song on a Perfect Album Was The Best Song of the Year
Posted by Mike Conklin on Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 4:47 PM
If it seems like a foregone conclusion that Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy will take the top spot come Friday, well, that's because it probably will. Remember, they gave the album a perfect 10.0, which everyone now, thankfully, seems to agree it obviously did not deserve. As I've said before, it's a very, very good, probably even great album that is very clearly flawed, and the argument that those flaws are what make it so great is mostly just silly, especially in the context of an larger argument about whether it's a perfect album. Flaws are flaws, as they say. Likewise, great tracks are great tracks, and Twisted Fantasy has quite a few of them, chief among them being "Power" and "Runaway," which came in at numbers six and two, respectively, on Pitchfork's song list.
What's surprising about this is the degree to which Pitchfork has tried to flip the traditional script here. As much as Kanye and his supporters have tried to convince us otherwise, hip-hop is still very much a singles-based genre. And as much as Pitchfork is trying to dispel the notion by choosing "Round and Round" as the best song of the year, indie-rock is still very much an album-based genre. Twisted Fantasy is a chore to listen to in its entirety, and Before Today works best as a whole. It would be an important shift if it really were suddenly the other way around, but it's just not.
Also, just for kicks, based on what we learned from the songs list, want to guess the top five albums? Sure, let's go with:
5. LCD Soundsystem — This Is Happening
4. Big Boi — Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
3. Deerhunter — Halcyon Digest
2. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti — Before Today
1. Kanye West — My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
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