RM Top 87 Artists-COMPLETE OFFICIAL LIST ANNOUNCED

[LetMeSleep]

Holy shit, I had 15/20. Am I the most average RMer?

Didn't rank:
Midnight Oil
Paw
Kyuss
Anathema
Arctic Monkeys

[psychobain]

Arctic Monkeys

Also here
Needed one more

[Mickey]

I think the Pearl Jam albums should be considered, on the grounds that after all, almost none of them are "good"

Hard disagree.

First of all none of them pass the bechdel test

What a weird thing to post

You're right, there is that elderly woman on one of them, and a daughter too.

[chewm]

half my list made it:
Sleater-Kinney
R.E.M.
Kate Bush
The Replacements
Pavement
Pearl Jam
Broken Social Scene
Elliot Smith
Fugazi
Nick Drake

[tree_]

What’s ur fav ES chewm?

[chewm]

Basement probably, but Either/Or is very close

[Mickey]

just give the people what they want, PhatJ: Do you regret supporting Trump and are you ready to grovel for our collective embrace?

Not even a little bit.

Honestly this is pretty fucked up on spike's part. We successfully bullied Josh until he basically quit posting here. No need to be a sore winner.

[Higgs]

Holy shit, I had 15/20. Am I the most average RMer?

Didn't rank:
Midnight Oil
Paw
Kyuss
Anathema
Arctic Monkeys

Yes. You are Mr RM.

I had 9 in the end (as prophesied by Leatherman).

Midnight Oil were also on my list. We needed the one more. Did Brad put a list in I wonder?

[Ello Sailor]

Anathema

That's a name I haven't heard in some time!

Surprised Arctic Monkeys didn't appear.

[Ello Sailor]

13/20. A tier RM normie.

Did anyone top LMS?

[Kevin Davis]

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.

[Anders]

Would be interesting to see a list with only artists that released their first album after the year 2000.

[BurtReynolds]

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.

- Mostly ranked based on purely emotional impact an artist had on me at some point, based on memory (which is probably all wrong.) An artist could make the list because of an amazing body of work built up over decades or an amazing show I went to once.

- A weird failing of Gen-Xers is our obsession with ranking things and believing that there is some definitive, objective list of the best things out there somewhere, so I try to avoid any notion of objectivity when making these lists. I just listed what was impactful for me. Thinking that we have to respect some objective ranking created by authorities (that turned out not to be authorities at all) runs deep with our kind.

- That said, I basically know nothing about how to make music, and have no deep understanding of music at all. And I'd kinda like to keep it that way. I've obsessed over the nuances of other artforms to the point that I've nearly suffocated the magic out of them, so I think I'll keep my enjoyment of music ignorant and pure!

- I usually get tired of listening to great songs after a few plays, and need some time to recharge. So when a rare album comes along that causes me to hit repeat for weeks, months or even years, the artist goes on my list. End of debate. So anyone that makes an album like Siamese Dream or Warp Riders goes on my list even if they make nothing but crap afterwards (and they nearly have!) or even if I stop listening to them entirely.

- I spent about 4 minutes coming up with my list.

[Anders]

I did the opposite. Disregarded artists that I loved 20-30 years ago, even if they have some five star albums, and I have spent hundreds of hours listening to them. Instead I prioritized what I listen to now.

[Ello Sailor]

I went with an approximate 5-10 year cutoff and tried to get some variety in outside of the cemented Ween, Pumpkins, Faith No More, Soundgarden and Radiohead. I feel like a few posters had the same idea, but I went Mingus while y'all went Coltrane, Outkast but you went Wu-Tang etc.

None of our metal picks were worth a damn, though--that much is certain.

[Ello Sailor]

And poor TV on the Radio. They were so good.

[BurtReynolds]

I did the opposite. Disregarded artists that I loved 20-30 years ago, even if they have some five star albums, and I have spent hundreds of hours listening to them. Instead I prioritized what I listen to now.

I will allow it.

[Ello Sailor]

Proud of the Grimes homies, though.

[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 love that NIN falls in between stevie wonder and prince. excellent work, RM!

[Ello Sailor]

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