This guy right here has told you what to like and not like for the last 25 years.

Here it is, the only list that anyone really cares about anyway. Let’s just get it out of the way now. Continuing my series of year-end list analyses that I started last week with the Quietus’ Top 100, here’s my similar Pitchfork writeup. The Tastemaker! The publication that put Radiohead on the map with their perfect-10 OK Computer and Kid A reviews from the turn of the millennium. Or perhaps those albums put Pitchfork on the map? Either way you slice it, their relevance 20 years ago was astoundingly important for independent and fringe rock music, and their relevance today is shaped entirely by their relevant past. The smoldering embers of their actual past relevance still burns brighter than the rest of the publications today do combined. Still. To this day. Everyone complains about Pitchfork being washed-up, but people still talk about Pitchfork anyway. It doesn’t matter how washed-up they get, they’re finding new ways to be talked about no matter what they do.

Enough of my inane rambling, good god! Embarrassing! Condé Nast, the notoriously mainstream corporate-minded mass media company, acquired Pitchfork in late 2015. Ever since then, their year-end lists have a had an unmistakable, odious funk of blatant pandering to popular opinion. Some may say that the opinion of the publication as a whole had started gravitating toward the safer options for favorable criticism: Taylor Swift, Lana del Ray, Lil Uzi Vert, Solange, Tyler, the Creator, the kind of music that they normally, historically, wouldn’t touch otherwise. I DISAGREE! They’ve always been this way. Kanye West, Drake, Lil Wayne, Charli XCX, the Flaming Lips, I could go on. I think there are just MORE new artists emerging these days than there ever have before, and people start to feel out of touch when they see too many new names pop up on any official “MUSIC YOU GOTTA KNOW GODDAMNIT” type roundup.

I will say this, though: 2021 is the first year in about five years where I feel like the Pitchfork year-end list isn’t a carbon copy of twelve other publications’ lists with the top 15 slightly rearranged. I’ll go one step further: 2021 is the first year in about five years where I feel like EVERY year-end list isn’t a carbon copy of everyone else’s lists with the top 15 slightly rearranged. So, for right now, I’m guardedly giving Pitchfork the benefit of the doubt, but I think it’s just been a very strong and varied year for music in general. Plenty of artists got their post-Covid lockdown musical epiphanies and it has shown through in spades this year.

Here’s the list: Pitchfork’s “The 50 Best Albums of 2021”. Here are the points I feel compelled to jot down on my shitty blog:

The Top 10

Meh.

Yeah, I suppose I don’t have anything to completely rage over like some Reddit incel about the top ten. The Weather Station at #7 is surprising; I predicted that they’d be a lock for #1 this year, considering that it matched Floating Points / Pharoah Sanders for the highest score of 2021 with a 9.0. Plus, ever since 2016 when Solange was the first woman to secure the top spot in a decade (and skipping the Kendrick Lamar circlejerk of 2017), Pitchfork has given the honor to a woman every year since: Mitski in 2018, Lana Del Rey in 2019, Fiona Apple in 2020, and now Jazmine Sullivan in 2021. I think The Weather Station was the predictable option this year, and I’m relieved that they aimed to surprise this time.

I don’t think that Heaux Tales is anything that special anyway, though! Weird pick for #1, but if they were gonna stick with a woman this year then it was as good a choice as any, I suppose Underwhelming, though. I would’ve gone with Black Dresses! The other top ten picks are a diverse grab bag at least, with no blatant genre repeats whatsoever, and nothing that stands out stupidly overrated.

That Playboi Carti album, though? The one at #9? The one that was released in 2020? That’s fucking dumb of them.

Pitchfork’s #15: Snail Mail – Valentine

Feh.

Pitchfork was all over this lady’s debut in 2018, and they were similarly all over this lady this year as well, so placing Valentine at #15 seems uncharacteristically low. By comparison, her debut Lush was #5 on Pitchfork’s 2018 list. Snail Mail could have been a contender for the publication to round out their top three with a trifecta of disparate female solo artists, but alas! Hell, even Japanese Breakfast beat her out at #14, and they didn’t even give Japanese Breakfast a “Best New Music” distinction!

Other than, yeah, 22-year-old Lindsey Jordan sounds like a 45-year-old woman singing a style reminiscent of a time before she was even born, I don’t fully understand the collective mass indie appeal for her music. She has all the building blocks of an indie darling: focused, honest lyrics, consistency to a fault, a great voice, a complex open-book emotional presentation, yada yada yada, but I’ve heard Valentine eight times and there’s not much I can find to take away from it except for the catchy title track. I just wish there was more diversity. There are plenty of other albums that came out this year that scratch the same itch for me, but better! JAPANESE BREAKFAST! WOLF ALICE! TORRES!

And that’s my dumbass two cents!

No Metal

A heart made out of vegetables? Come on, that’s high art!

No metal! NO METAL! Once upon a time, Pitchfork used to embrace a few token metal bands per year. Sunn O))), Deafheaven, Mastodon, Kylesa, and many others, have all made the list in the past. The last album that made a Pitchfork year-end list was Blood Incantation’s overrated 2019 death metal album Hidden History of the Human Race.

So what do I think would be appropriate for an upstanding indie rag such as this? The Converge / Chelsea Wolfe collaboration from a few weeks ago was pretty good, but Pitchfork didn’t like it! Carcass! Torn Arteries! They could’ve been all over that one, the classic stalwart death metal band that keeps churning out the goods? How about King Woman, the female-fronted post-metal outfit, with their solid sophomore effort? Perfect! How about I’ve Seen All I Need to See, the January release from the noisy, industrial experimental band The Body? All excellent, easy choices. All adequate picks for the clean-cut hipster edge needed to fit the bill.

But no, I guess there’s no place for headbangin’ in the COVID world. Sad!

Notable Omissions

Sorry, Taylor. Gotta be more swift next time.

BESIDES THE METAL??! All right, so when it comes to Pitchfork the only “notable omissions” that you can hold them to are any albums that they flagged with the coveted “Best New Music” award in a review. Usually, this is any album that achieves an arbitrary score of 8.2 or higher. There are certainly many albums that DON’T get Best New Music and end up on the list anyway. That’s fairly common, it happens every year. The highest ranked album this year is Jubilee at #14, from the aforementioned Japanese Breakfast, which got a 7.8. Even rarer, though, is the reverse situation, where Best New Music winners are completely absent. Here are the albums that got Best New Music but didn’t crack the Top 50 in 2021:

Taylor Swift – Red (Taylor’s Version)
Granted, this is a rerecording of an existing album in order for Swift to reclaim rights to it, but Pitchfork treated it like a new album instead of new reissue and slapped an 8.5 score on it. Maybe it was their way of sucking Taylor Swift’s dick while still adhering to a possible policy that a rerecording wasn’t eligible? It happened with Car Seat Headrest’s Twin Fantasy rerecording too a few years back. Still curious, though, these jobbers love Big Swifty.

Arca – KicK iii
Again, a technicality. Arca dropped four albums in four days during the week after Thanksgiving. Still though, KicK iii was available on December 1st and Pitchfork’s list went out on December 7th. Plenty of time to add it in, right? It’s not like that one year when Baroness dropped Purple right before Christmas and they were like “oh shit” and added it to their BEST METAL ALBUMS consolation page. Still a weird oversight. Maybe they’ll include it in the 2022 list since they obviously have no problem adding albums from other years to the list *cough* Playboi Carti *cough* *cough* *wheeze*. Try putting your list out at the END of the year and maybe this won’t happen, dumbfucks.

Iceage – Seek Shelter
Yeah, this was a straight-up snub. Best New Music in May with an 8.3, not on the list. However, I thought this album was an absolute turd so maybe they wised up. Good. Every single one of Iceage’s albums have gotten a terrific score and half of them are unwarranted. HOWEVER, if you are an Iceage fan, seek solace from the fact that Pitchfork included it in their 31 Best Rock Albums of 2021 “whoops we forgot” consolation page! Typically, a year has at least a small handful of Best New Music albums that don’t make it. Iceage being the only legitimate Best New Music omission of 2021 is very hilarious to me! Merry Christmas!

So That’s It?

Yeah, bitch, that’s it. I don’t write finales.