Go to content Go to navigation Go to search
The Big Takeover > essays

To List or Not To List: Must Music and Musicians Be Ranked?

by
18 July 2006

The other day I was reading some random musical blog that was highlighted in the Music Press Report’s weekly email newsletter. The subject was a list of the ten best books about Rock. The author did a fairly good job, mentioning LESTER BANGS, and BOB DYLAN’s Chronicles Vol. 1, among others. Still, I immediately had objections about some of the included on the list—fo instance, SALMAN RUSHDIE’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet? That’s not a good book by any standard, in my not-so-humble-opinion. Then there were the obvious omissions—firstbooks thought after reading the list was that any list that didn’t include MICHAEL AZERRAD’s Our Band Could Be Your Life was sadly incomplete. Sure enough the first reader comment on the article pointed out the Azerrad omission.

Then later that same day, I manged to come across another article where ZAKK WYLDE, OZZY OSBOURNE’s guitarist was griping about Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list, and the fact that EDDIE VAN HALEN was listed at #70. He had a point. I’m a guitarist myself and I had my own problems with the list. Namely that JOHNNY MARR, arguably the most influential guitarist of the 1980’s after THE EDGE, wasn’t even on the list. (BTW, for another point of comparison, The Edge was #24 behind JOHN FRUSCIANTE of the RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS. Now how do you justify that?)

Then let’s not talk about Blender magazine’s infatuation with lists. By the time you get to the “The 25 Biggest Wusses In Rock” you’re scraping the barrel. And VH1 is practically the Channel of Lists.

I’m not foursquare against combining lists and music by any means. Making lists is an easy point of reference and arguing music’s relative merits is fun. But it would be nice every once in while to enjoy music for its own sake. I can barely listen to any new music without immediately trying to contextualize it. I have no doubt that my voracious consumption of music journalism is a large part of this conditioned response.

So next time you see “The Ten Best…” remember it’s just a point of comparison, and a subjective one at that. That way you can continue to enjoy music without pretending every new thing you hear has to be better or worse than anything else.

In the meantime, feel free to indulge my hypocrisy by checking out my weekly Top Ten.

Filed under music criticism magazines

Comments

Hi Mark,

If only the “list obsession” in media were just based on a desire for contextualization. If anything, most of these lists do the exact opposite by presenting artist after artist without connection to each other in terms of sound or influece. I remember one of RS’s “100 most influential guitarists” had Jack White somewhere around #15-20, without demonstrating who or what his guitar playing had ostensibly influenced during his brief career. Meanwhile, Tony Iommi, who probably has as many guitarists consciously trying to sound like him as any guitarist in rock history, was down around #80. The point is that these lists are not created for context or enlightenment but for obfuscation. The upshot is that obfuscation, in turn, leads to “ongoing discussion” and argument, which keeps the given piece of media at the center of the dialogue vortex, maintaining an indefinite momentum of publicity, whether you love, hate, or are indifferent to the original list. “Come, check out our list! See how you compare to us!” It’s an invitation, maybe even a challenge, almost like they’re picking a fight. It’s a tough fight to turn down, especially when the one being challeneged feels they know their fair share about the subject being argued.

Not that there’s anything wrong with lists, in and of themselves. Showing how 10 bands relate to the Clash, in terms of influence or aesthetics can lead a reader in all sorts of fruitful paths of exploration. The problem with most lists is that they’re not designed for exploration and discovery but for those media outlets to cynically increase their own profiles while really doing more to muddy the waters than blaze trails.


— Ari Abramowitz    2006-07-20 14:47    #

some “some random musical blog”? What is this site Rolling Stone?


— Jeff Davidson    2006-08-18 15:36    #