RM Top 87 Artists-COMPLETE OFFICIAL LIST ANNOUNCED

[spike]

argo's work here is done

off to devise the next train wreck

[Ello Sailor]

#ReleaseTheData

[warehouse]

When I said Radiohead would win I had assumed PJ would be left out. It was profoundly stupid to include them.

i still expected radiohead to when even when including pearl jam lol

[warehouse]

great list, although i thought radiohead was gonna win again. the top 10 looks more like the top 10 from a pearl jam board than the last list, which just looked like the top 10 from any classic rock radio station.

I was surprised to see Alice in Chains at #5 on this year's list -- I feel like that had to have been a result of the frequency-of-apperance ranking scale. It's not surprising to me that they would have been a common thread of interest among users of this board, but somehow it seems unlikely that they would have received many people's heavy hitter points.

Of all the bands I ever loved I think AIC would be among a very few who once would have rated in a top 5 or 10 for me, but now wouldn't even be in my top 100.

i assume its probably frequency as well. AIC and soundgarden obviously stood out, especially being above the beatles. ill have to think about your comment. i can't think of a band i loved that i don't really care for any more.

i made my list spur of the moment, and looked at my youtube playlist once i got passed like #10. if i put a lot of thought into it, i think my top ten would turn out similar w/ few changes. the top 3-4 don't change. 11-20 was a combination of whatever i listened to on youtube recently combined with a few hail mary's to see if they ended up on the list.

1-20
pearl jam
dmb
radiohead
the strokes
stevie wonder
the doors
the toadies
Neil Young
system of a down
wu tang
queens of the stone age
inxs
the temptations
the supremes
bruce and the e st band
the band
billy joel
the white stripes
tom petty and the heartbreakers
eminem

[Ello Sailor]

Proud of the Grimes homies, though.

hold me

Are you kidding? Always.

[spike]

#ReleaseTheData

oh yeah, almost done.

post this stuff, Argo.

[knee tunes]

How many artists got only two votes? I wonder if it was exactly 13 of them ...

[Brett]

Spoiler: show

Elvis Costello
Tom Waits
Bob Dylan
Neil Young
Miles Davis
John Coltrane
Thelonious Monk
Duke Ellington
Sonny Rollins
Brad Mehldau
Bill Frisell
Keith Jarrett
Frank Sinatra
Billie Holiday
The Beatles
Nirvana
Pearl Jam
Smashing Pumpkins
REM
Grateful Dead

11 for me. Every single one of my non-jazz picks made the list (I'm going on the logic that Sinatra is jazz-adjacent enough for me to make the claim). Suddenly I am feeling super self-conscious about how much higher that number would have been had I omitted jazz completely (I definitely would have voted for Cohen, Cave, Sonic Youth, etc.) -- I think I'd have given LMS a run for his money as #1 RM normie.

That said: I'm interested in how other people went about creating their lists. Any time this type of exercise comes around I feel like I'm beholden to some element of "all time favorite" criteria that honors long-term connections, personal influence, etc., while also not just repeatedly regurgitating all the same stuff I listened to when I was 14. But then I look at it and always inevitably feel like it skews too heavily toward the latter, leaving off things that are more important to me now. At the same time, any list purely focused on things I'm interested in now feels too ephemeral to even bother interjecting into an experiment like this (even though there is probably always a small amount of overlap). I never feel like I find the right balance.

Ultimately, I find I have become increasingly poor at ranking large numbers of things; after about 7 or 8 artists that are just special to me in ways that transcend any degree of objectivity, a lot of what tempts me to rank certain artists higher than others is simply how much work they have to experience, and how much of it I've continued to enjoy engaging with. There are a lot of artists who have made albums in the past decade that I play with as much pleasure as I play anything by Tom Waits or John Coltrane, but when I'm asked to consider favorite artists -- meaning complete bodies of work and my level of engagement with them -- artists who've made 1 or 2 albums I really like just don't stand a chance against artists who've made 20-25 albums I really like. This obviously skews the list in the direction of old people, but in a lot of ways it's a byproduct of the circumstance more than it is a belief that those artists are necessarily inherently superior talents to others I didn't list.

I realize I'm overthinking, but that's the fun of it for me -- I'm way more interested in how people narrowed down their lists than I am in what actually ended up on it.

My method was pretty much as I described when I posted my list. I chose twenty artists that I've followed for a while now, most of whom I listen to somewhat regularly, and also whose work I have some strong connections to. Some of them I've listened to for nearly half my life (and Pearl Jam even longer), while others have been closer to over the last decade.

I did briefly consider adding more recent favorites, such as Duster, but I decided against it. I didn't bother to pay much attention to the actual order of the list, though the stuff closer to the top is generally what I enjoy more. There were some near-misses that I had on my original version of the list like Vic Chesnutt and Tim Hecker; I left off Vic because I don't listen to him all that often (I always get sad about his death) and I've only recently started getting a deep enough appreciation for what Hecker does. Broken Social Scene was kind of a surprise late addition. A year ago I wouldn't have put them on here, but I've been getting big into them again recently including their last album and couple of EPs that I had previously ignored.

[Leatherhead]

13 of my picks made the list, starting with #79.

[Leatherhead]

Did Pearl Jam have the most #1 spots?

[knee tunes]

Did Pearl Jam have the most #1 spots?

We may never know

[psychobain]

RIP Argo
This thread was too much for him

[spike]

there's a rumor he was banned for this abomination.

[BurtReynolds]

there's a rumor he was banned for this abomination.

Deserved

[spike]

there's a rumor he was banned for this abomination.

Deserved

i thought you held a firm anti banning stance?

[lennytheweedwhacker]

ban burt for being a troll

[spike]

list is out

argo's deceased

this thread should be unstickied now

[lennytheweedwhacker]

am i the only person who voted for steel panther?

[Ello Sailor]

Burt, why don't we have a Pinback thread? They've got some good shit.

[TremorJam]

Here's what we have on physical media at the house:

Pearl Jam
Led Zeppelin
The Rolling Stones
Oasis
Dave Matthews Band (seriously missing the violin Dave - the band's signature sound is gone. It doesn't have to be BT, but DMB NEEDS a Violinist meh - mini rant over about that )
Soundgarden
AIC
RHCP
GNR
Blind Melon
STP
Pixies
The Cult
Neil Young
Springsteen
Dylan
The Who
Paul McCartney & Wings
The Doors
Talking Heads (always dug this band, but heard "This Must Be The Place" while watching the season 5 premiere of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and fell head over heels in love with their music)
Aerosmith
KISS
Metallica
Everclear (it was so much fun collecting the singles - In 1997 Father Of Mine hit me like a ton of bricks and I fell in love with this band)
Sublime
Queen
QotSA
Them Crooked Vultures
The Strokes
Modest Mouse
Ace Frehley
Jack Johnson
Jimmy Buffett
Motley Crue

PJ, LZ & Oasis are the only 3 bands I have EVERYTHING from. Everybody else, I cherry picked my favorite albums. I didn't include side projects like TotD or Mad Season & I put MLB in with PJ.
And stuff like Rush, U2, Tom Petty, R.E.M., The Clash, Jane's Addiction, Weezer (1st 4), White Stripes, etc are in my "car collection". It will be a sad day when I have to get a new car. Growing up in the late 80's/early 90's I just couldn't let go of a few bands lol. I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff and the digital selection is so much more comprehensive overall nowadays.

edited because I somehow forgot about Oasis