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Summer schedules necessitate that I hold off on posting my next interview and instead give you a discussion about music, recorded in Nov. 2021.
How does canonization work in popular music? Is Rolling Stone’s 500 Best Albums of All Time list just a modest record of the favorite albums of people associated with Rolling Stone? Is it a statement of what “experts” in popular music enjoy? Does it reflect English-American popularity, and what responsibility to list-makers have to experience and include world music, indie music, and other music by those not powerful enough to have promotional backing?
Mark is joined by journalist Noah Berlatsky (who just published The Best Greatest Albums of All Time Ever), musical artist Mobley, and The Hustle podcast host Jon Lamoreaux to discuss the album as a format, music curation, the subjectivity of taste, and our childhood love affairs with particular albums.
We refer to this 2017 NPR list of 150 greatest albums by women. There’s also a greatest albums list by PopVortex.
Follow my guests @mobleywho, @thehustlepod, and @nberlat.
Hear Noah on PMP#36 on criticism, and hear Jon on PMP#99 on the music of your youth. Better yet, subscribe to PMP to get episodes about all sorts of entertainment topics at prettymuchpop.com.
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Most of us have one favorite album. Mine is King Crimson’s, featuring Court of the Crimson King. The signature song by this band, for me, is 21st Century schizoid man. Particularly since it was written in the 20th century. More so, because it predicted, accurately, where civilization was headed.