Music Artist Rankings

In the tradition of my recent film director rankings, here's a similar list, this time for bands! You'll notice it's tilted more towards older bands, that's because I only did bands with at least four or five albums in their catalogue. One day the best current bands will be part of a similar list, but not yet!

Abba
1.The Album
2.Abba
3.Super Trouper
4.The Visitors
5.Arrival
6.Voulez-Vous
7.Waterloo

Aimee Man
1.Lost in Space
2.Bachelor No. 2
3.The Forgotten Arm
4.Whatever
5.Fing Smilers

Air
1.10,000 Hz Legend
2.Talkie Walkie
3.Moon Safari
4.Love 2
5.Pocket Symphony

Belle and Sebastian
1. Dear Catastrophe Waitress
2. The Life Pursuit
3. If You're Feeling Sinister
4. Fold Your Hands Child...
5. The Boy with the Arab Strap
6. Tigermilk

Bruce Springsteen
1.Born to the Run
2.Darkness on the Edge of Town
3.Magic
4.The River
5.Tunnel of Love
6.The Rising
7.We Shall Overcome
8.Born in the USA
9.The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle
10.Human Touch
11.Greetings from Asbury Park
12.Working on a Dream
13.Nebraska

Coldplay
1.A Rush of Blood to the Head
2.Viva La Vida
3.X&Y
4.Parachutes

David Bowie
1.Ziggy Stardust
2.Aladdin Sane
3.Heroes
4.Scary Monsters
5.Hours
6.Hunky Dory
7.Low
8.Young Americans
9.Diamond Dogs
10.Station to Station
11.Reality

Doves
1.The Last Broadcast
2.Lost Souls
3.Some Cities
4.Kingdom of Rust

Electric Light Orchestra
1.A New World Record
2.Out of the Blue
3.Discovery
4.Face the Music
5.Time
6.Xanadu
7.El Dorado
8.ELO
9.On the Third Day
10.ELO II

Elton John
1.Madman Across the Water
2.Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
3.Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
4.Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player
5.Honky Chateau

Elysian Fields
1.Queen of the Meadow
2.Bum Raps and Love Taps
3.Bleed Your Cedar
4.Dreams that Breathe Your Name
5.Afterlife

Fleetwood Mac
1.Rumors
2.Tusk
3.Fleetwood Mac
4.Tango in the Night
5.Mirage
6.Heroes are Hard to Find
7.Behind the Mask

Goldfrapp
1.Head First
2.Supernature
3.Black Cherry
4.Seventh Tree
5.Felt Mountain

Jay-Z
1.The Blueprint
2.Black Album
3.American Gangster
4.The Blueprint 3
5.Reasonable Doubt

Kanye West
1.808s & Heartbreaks
2.Late Registration
3.The College Dropout
4.Graduation

Led Zeppelin
1.Houses of the Holy
2.Led Zeppelin IV
3.Led Zeppelin II
4.Physical Graffiti
5.Led Zeppelin
6.Led Zeppelin III
7.Presence
8.In Through the Out Door

Madonna
1.Like a Prayer
2.Confessions on a Dance Floor
3.Madonna
4.Ray of Light
5.Like a Virgin
6.American Life
7.Hard Candy
8.True Blue

Michael Jackson
1.Thriller
2.Bad
3.Off the Wall
4.Dangerous
5.HIStory

Moby
1.Hotel
2.Play
3.18
4.Wait for Me
5.Everything is Wrong
6.I Like to Score
7.Last Night
8.Ambient

Muse
1.Black Holes and Revelations
2.The Resistance
3.Absolution
4.Origin of Symmetry
5.Showbiz

New Order
1.Low Life
2.Republic
3.Power, Corruption and Lies
4.Technique
5.Waiting for the Siren's Call

New Pornographers
1.Twin Cinema
2.Electric Version
3.Mass Romantic
4.Challengers
5.Together

Nine Inch Nails
1.The Downward Spiral
2.Pretty Hate Machine
3.With Teeth
4.The Fragile
5.The Slip
6.Year Zero

Pet Shop Boys
1.Actually
2.Behavior
3.Very
4.Please
5.Yes
6.Bilingual
7.Introspective

Phoenix
1.Alphabetical
2.Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
3.United
4.It's Never Been Like That

Pink Floyd
1.Dark Side of the Moon
2.The Wall
3.Wish You Were Here
4.Animals
5.The Final Cut
6.Meddle
7.Atom Heart Mother
8.Piper at the Gates of Dawn
9.Saucerful of Secrets

Prince
1.Purple Rain
2.Prince
3.1999
4.Around the World in a Day
5.Sign O' The Times
6.Parade
7.LotusFlow3r
8.Controversy
9.Planet Earth

Radiohead
1.OK Computer
2.The Bends
3.Kid A
4.Hail to the Thief
5.In Rainbows
6.Amnesiac
7.Pablo Honey

Rilo Kiley
1.More Adventurous
2.Under the Blacklight
3.Take Offs and Landings
4.The Execution of All Things

Super Furry Animals
1.Phantom Power
2.Love Kraft
3.Hey Venus
4.Rings Around the World
5.Radiator
6.Guerilla

The Beatles
1.Magical Mystery Tour
2.Abbey Road
3.The Beatles (White Album)
4.Revolver
5.Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
6.Let It Be
7.Rubber Soul

The Flaming Lips
1.Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
2.At War With the Mystics
3.Embryonic
4.The Soft Bulletin
5.Clouds Taste Metallic
6.Transmissions from the Satellite Heart

The Smashing Pumpkins
1.Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
2.Adore
3.Machina: The Machines of God
4.Siamese Dream

The Smiths
1.The Queen is Dead
2.Meat is Murder
3.Strangeways, Here We Come
4.The Smiths

The Who
1.Who's Next
2.Tommy
3.Quadrophenia
4.Who Are You
5.The Who By Numbers

Tori Amos
1.Under the Pink
2.From the Choirgirl Hotel
3.Little Earthquakes
4.Boys for Pele
5.American Doll Posse
6.To Venus and Back
7.Scarlet's Walk
8.Abnormally Attracted to Sin
9.The Beekeper
U2
1.Achtung Baby
2.Zooropa
3.Pop
4.How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
5.The Joshua Tree
6.All That You Can't Leave Behind
7.War
8.No Line on the Horizon
9.Boy
10.The Unforgettable Fire
11.October

Timbaland: Today's Beatles

I'm listening to Timbaland's Shock Value for the second time right now. It's a strong album, not quite as effective as his work with Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado last year, but it's seventeen weird, but catchy songs like only he can make. At this point, Timbaland is so ubiquitous, and just so fucking good, he's creating songs that are critically respected and beloved by club kids, hip hoppers and elitist indie hipsters. His work transcends boundaries in a way that reminds me of very few artists before, one of the most notable being The Beatles.

The Beatles have become something of an institution, they're so good, it's barely worth talking about them. What can we really say that will add to what's come before? Perhaps a little something. I think of the most notable things about The Beatles is the fact that they were simultaneously the most groundbreaking band in the history of recorded music and the most popular. That happens so rarely, in film and literature, it always seems to take a few years for people to catch up to the really good art. Spielberg is probably the closest thing film has to a Beatles, but he's much more mainstream and traditional than The Beatles were.

The genius of The Beatles was their ability to experiment so much within an accessible form, the three minute pop song. Part of the reason they've been so analyzed is the layers within the songs, the many instrumental tracks and subtle details. Like a lot of great artists, they seemed to be positively running over with ideas, leading to songs like "A Day in the Life," which fuse together two potentially good songs into one great one. Listening to Rubber Soul or Revolver is intimidating, to hear just how many now classic songs they stacked, one after the other. Virtually all their songs have become part of our collective culture, everyone just seems to know every Beatles song, you can't say that for other very respected bands from their era, even massively popular ones like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin.

While there certainly isn't a direct correlation between popularity and artistic credibility, I think it's important to look at music's place in our collective consciousness. While I may love some Daft Punk songs more than ""One More Time," if I was in a club, I'd rather hear "OMT" than " Face to Face" just because it's what people know. There's nothing like hearing people cheer when a song is dropped, and a song has to have a certain level of popularity to reach that point. That's why it's important that we still have mainstream radio, or some kind of media through which songs can become widely popular. Without that, we lose our shared culture. Part of the reason that 80s songs are so ubiquitous today is because everyone knows them, and you can't say that about most bloghouse tracks. I'd imagine a large part of why people go to concerts is just to be with a bunch of people who know the same songs and love the same band, it's the collective experience as much as the performance.

The 90s was a downtime for pop music, a lot of bad songs were wildly popular. Now, there's always going to be bad songs that go over, but there's very few popular 90s songs that were actually good. So, I've been really happy to see pop music resurge in the 00s, thanks primarily to two producer teams, The Neptunes and Timbaland. These two put together a list of incredible songs that were both great songs and incredibly popular. The Neptunes have slipped off the radar a bit, but looking at the songs they were involved in earlier this decade is astonishing.

But, this past year, Timbaland has surged ahead, with an unprecedented dominance of radio and the pop culture music space. Most of this is his work with Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake. It's been amazing to watch Justin go from middle school girl icon to one of the most respected men in music, largely because his work with Timbaland is just amazing. The album has spawned five singles, and there's still a bunch of strong tracks in the wings. It's so rare that a song become both incredibly popular and get such strong critical response, but "My Love" did just that, getting love from everyone.

What does it all mean? Basically, I think it's important that we have a collective musical experience to draw on as a culture, and I'm glad that Timbaland is making it such a good one. He's making the best and most popular songs, and dominating things in a way that The Beatles did before him. Artists may say they don't want to be popular, or it doesn't matter to them, but I think ultimately all of us want people to love our art, only some artists are most willing to make compromises to do that than others. I pride myself on making the movies I want, but it's tough to watch people respond to a mainstream comedy more than my stuff. What I want is for people to love the movie I want to make. I'm not quite able to do that yet, but with music, Timbaland is. It takes a little bit, but already, his solo album is spawning a bunch of hits. "The Way I R" hooked me, and it's getting better with very listen. I'm really glad to be part of a time when an artist like Justin Timberlake can get the respect of everyone, that we've moved past the idea that being popular, or being pop, is equal to selling out.

Ten Works that Changed My Life: Part I: 10-6

Here, I'm going to write about the ten works of art that made the biggest impact on me, the works that changed the way I look at the world, and the way that I created fiction. If I hadn't encountered these works, I would be a very different person.

10. The Beatles 'Magical Mystery Tour' - When I was young, about eight or so, I was watching a documentary on The Beatles with my parents and I heard this song called 'I am the Walrus,' which was just the most bizarre song I'd ever heard. The lyrics were nonsensical, but reallly vivid, and the music was really off beat. I'd say this was the first song I really loved, and I have a really vivid memory of hearing it for the first time and just falling in love with that sound, so I listened to the whole 'Magical Mystery Tour' album, and that was the first album I really loved. It's still one of my favorite albums, and 'I am the Walrus' still stands out to me as one of the best songs ever made. This is the album that made me open to older stuff and made me explore a lot of different types of music.



9. Batman Returns - I first saw this film when in 1992, at the Mamaroneck theater. I remember getting a little poster for the film when I went to see it, and I also remember loving the movie. A few years later, I bought the movie on VHS and watched it a whole bunch of times. When I was younger, this film was #4 on my top films list, behind only the Star Wars trilogy. At the same time, I loved both the original Batman and Beetlejuice, and when the film Ed Wood came out, I realized they were all directed by the same director, Tim Burton. A few years later, when I was in eighth grade, I decided to rent Edward Scissorhands, because it too was directed by Tim Burton. I watched this and loved it, and it gave me a greater understanding of the thematic development of Batman Returns, something I applied when I watched it again. I also started to really investigate Danny Elfman's scores, and I bought the soundtrack to Batman Returns, my favorite score of his. So, what this film did was set off my first investigation of a filmmaker's whole body of work. Tim Burton was my favorite director for a long time, I sought out all his films and read a bunch of books on him. Even my Nightmare Before Christmas shirt, which I always wear, was a result of this.



So, I guess what makes the film so special to me was that it was really the lynchpin for my love of Burton's work. It was the thing that I loved enough to seek out his other work. I always loved the film in a way that went beyond just liking the action, there was something deeper there. Subsequent to viewing all Burton's work, I've gone through a number of other directors: Gilliam, Lynch, Wong, Linklater, Tarantino, etc. but I don't think I ever was so immersed in one director's work as I was in Burton's. A few weeks ago, I revisited Batman Returns and was struck by how amazing it still was. It's Burton's best film, visually magnificent, thematically rich, and still #8 on my all time best films list. I wrote a 23 page paper on the film, which I finished last week, and I felt like that wasn't even enough room to say what I wanted to about it. The film was crucial to making me view cinema as not just a bunch of random movies, but instead as the product of a director with a unique vision.

8. Chungking Express - Last year about this time, I saw the film Chungking Express in class, and I loved it. I bought the DVD soon after, and enjoyed it even more the second time. I love this film, but perhaps more important, it really changed the way I view the medium. I used to view cinema primarily from a storytelling context, and, while I appreciated technique, I saw that primairly as an additional cool element, but what this film, and Wong Kar-Wai's subsequent work did, was to make me see how every single frame of a movie could be an amazing experience in and of itself. His perfect synching of music and visual produces moments that don't need to be understood in the context of a story, but instead stand alone as just dazzling images. When I was shooting Ricky Frost over winter break, I just imitated a bunch of Wong Kar-Wai shots, particularly with the so called 'Chungking effect,' aka using a low shutter speed. This sent me off to Wong Kar-Wai's other movies, and watching them really changed the way I approach and create cinema. I would argue since seeing this film I have been in the Wong Kar-Wai stage, where his was the dominant type of story that dominated my views, and I viewed things in the context of his work. More than most of the works on here, he's made a huge impact on how I want to create cinema.



7. Blade Runner - Blade Runner is a film that reignited my love for science fiction, in a way that no film since has done, it's a film that really showed me how cinema has the potential to create entirely new worlds. And, watching this film sent me down a number of intersting paths. After seeing the film, I began to seek out the work of author Philip K. Dick, and reading his book VALIS exposed me to a ton of new ideas, paving the way for The Invisibles. In addition, it sent me to the internet, where I became a part of the alt.fan.blade-runner newsgroup, where I have been talking about the film for five years. I've never analyzed anything as long as I've talked about this film, and this paved the way for a lot more online participation in the film scene. Also, from reccomendations on the newsgroup, I found a number of my other favorite films, including Brazil and Leon: The Professional. Also, the work's primary theme, what is human, as well as its noir influences, has influenced a lot of what I've done. I guess what this film does is show me how well cinema can transport you to another world.



6. Magnolia - I think the moment Magnolia really clicked for me was when we see Claudia put an Aimee Mann song on, and quietly sing with it, then we cut to another character, and he's singing it too, and we cut to every character singing along to the song, a moment that could seem so goofy, but in the context of the work, is the most unbelievably heartbreaking moment, and that's when I knew that this wasn't just any movie, it was something so special. And, as the film was ending, I was wishing that it would go on just a bit longer, because I didn't want to leave its world, quite a feat considering it's a three hour film. As I said about Blade Runner, this is a work that creates a world, but this one is much more in our everyday world, what it does is take a bunch of individual dramas, and by weaving them together, makes it into a film that contains virtually the entirety of human emotion. I think that's what makes the work so special to me, the fact that by creating all these parallels, it makes simple stories into something so much larger.

I feel like more than any other work, I wish I could make something like Magnolia, something that's at once incredibly intimate and also epic. It instantly made me love multi-character films, with narrative weaves between the lives of many people. It made me want to make films like this, where we see many perspectives, and are able to compare them. The film I want to do over the summer is three different narrative strands that cross over, clearly influenced by Magnolia. In addition to this, the filmmaking technique completely changed my belief in what cinema could do. PT Anderson so perfectly used really showy technique to support characters' emotional development, and build an atmosphere around the film, so that even as we go through the lives of many characters, we feel like it's one unified story. This is largely due to the use of music, both Jon Brion's score and the Aimee Mann songs, which unite the characters. No matter how many times I see the film, I can't help but smile as Claudia does at the end of the film, because I feel like I've been through everything she's been through over the course of this day. One day I hope to make a film that is on the scale of Magnolia, and will have the emotional impact on other people that this film had one me.



Alright, that's it for the first five, tomorrow see what could possibly eclipse these absolutely brilliant works, and influenced me even more.

More Pop

I noticed in that last post that almost all my images of pop involved people with guns. What's so cool about guns? I don't know, I don't like them in real life, but in movies, they're awesome. Perhaps it's because it's such a great prop, it gives you power and gravity. I'm all for gun control in real life, but in the movies, sometimes a firearm is needed.

Anyway, movies and comics, we know what's pop there now. But what about music, and my other favorite medium, TV? TV's probably a bit easier, since it's basically the same as movies. The most pop show on TV now is Alias. It's all about dressing up cool and being a spy, few things are more pop than that. The show is at its best when it busts out really cool, innovative costumes, in interesting settings. Sometimes the plot gets lost, but at least they always look cool, no matter what they're doing.

The other pop TV show, one that has both substance and surface is Cowboy Bebop. This series is beautiful to look at, and for a good chunk of its run is a salute to being cool. Spike is the ultimate pop character, and the music of the series creates some amazing purely aesthetic/music moments. Like The Invisibles, this show is at once beautiful, but also has a lot of depth. You can appreciate it on many levels.

Music is a tougher realm. Despite having an actual genre called pop, I don't think that catergory includes all of what is actually pop in music. It's tough to actually describe what makes a song pop, it's more one of those things where you hear it and you know it. The best pop album of all time is Daft Punk's Discovery. The songs are really hooky, with really infectious beats that just make you smile. 'Digital Love' is perhaps the most pop song of all time, with vocoder vocals, great quasi-cheesy guitar, and just phenomenal music. What are the lyrics? Not great, but they work in the context of an undeniably pop song. On this album, you've also got 'One More Time,' 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' and 'Something' forming an army of brilliant pop songs. They dress like robots, this must be pop.



A recent album I listened to that was incredibly pop was Gwen Stefani's Love Angel Music Baby. 'What You're Waiting For' is genius. Other than this sort of fluffy club type music, we've got another favorite genre of mine, Britpop, from people like Oasis and Travis. These are songs that aren't trying to reinvent the wheel, but they work as really entertaining pop songs.

The undisputed masters of pop, the Morrison of music, are The Beatles. What they did was create songs that are at once incredibly complex, and imminently pop as well. 'Magical Mystery Tour,' 'Strawberry Field,' 'Penny Lane,' these are all great songs that really pop, but are also really deep, with a ton of instruments that work together to form an interesting whole. Too many bands today that make really 'important' albums like The Beatles did get bogged down in really ugly music. Pop music is always beautiful, and that's what The Beatles' stuff was.

I think that's one of the main problems with much of today's music that's actually popular, stuff like Linkin Park, Korn, etc. It's just so ugly, there's no sense of joy in the making of the music. That's part of the pop aesthetic, in The Invisibles, you can practically see Morrison loving any minute of his writing, I can't see Linkin Park doing the same.

So, why is pop a dirty word in music? Why is it synonymous with selling out, and why is being beautiful and melodic somehow not a goal? I feel like a prime case to explore is that of Radiohead. They made one of the best pop albums of all time, The Bends, which, like The Beatles' stuff, is complex and groundbreaking without sacrificing great song writing and beautiful musical moments. Then they drop an even better followup, OK Computer. From there, there probably was a need to reinvent, but they go so far in a glitchy electronic direction that they lose a lot of the pop train, making music that's so self consciously distant from their past stuff, it becomes much less entertaining. I enjoy Kid A, but the fact that it's less melodic doesn't make it better than OK Computer. I love electronic stuff, and if Radiohead had dropped something like DJ Shadow or Massive Attack on us, I would have loved it. However, they straddle an odd line between electric and rock, not really committing to either, and therein lies the problem.

This isn't to say that all music need to pop, pop is more instantly listenable, but there's merit in music that's more mood than melody. As much as I do love Sub Sub's really poppy single, 'Ain't No Love (Ain't No Use),' I like the stuff they make as Doves much more, even though it is definitely less pop.

Some of the bands I like correspond to Wong Kar-Wai's less narrative (melody), more mood. Air feels sort of like a Wong Kar-Wai movie, where you're not letting a vocal guide you, you're more just enjoying every moment of the music.

So, pop in music, it's indefinable, but a lot of really good club stuff has it, and when it works, it's horribly undervalued. I'm unashamed to say that 'Like I Love You' and 'Rock Your Body' by Justin Timberlake are two of the best songs of recent years. These are infectious songs that just pop.

Pop, when you hear it, see it, or read it, you just know it somehow.

Related Posts
Pop! (2/7/2005)
Cowboy Bebop: The Show Which Has Become a Genre Unto Itself (1/23/2005)
Daft Punk (2/11/2005)

On Music

I was listening to some Beatles recently, the albums Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. What struck me about these was the way they were incredibly experimental, and yet extremely popular. These albums were breaking new musical ground, but rather than doing it in obscure genres, they worked with songs that were easy to get behind, and enjoy, either as just catchy pop songs, or as a work of art. I could almost compare it to someone like Quentin Tarantino, who's making really personal, arty films, that are also easily enjoyable by a mass audience.

When you compare The Beatles to rock today, most notably radio successful rock, what immediately comes to mind is the fact that The Beatles is so much more pop. The most popular bands on the radio are either pop punk, which I just don't enjoy, and certainly doesn't aspire to be anything more than a catchy riff, and a decent chorus, or angry rock, from people like Linkin Park or System of a Down. Angry rock is probably my least favorite genre of music. You're successful musicians, what have you got to be so angry about? But, that's not even my main problem. It's more the fact that it just doesn't sound good. It sounds harsh and nasty, whereas music, even dark songs, should have some beauty in them. So much of radio rock today has no beauty.

The Beatles had really beautiful songs that did rock, but also were successful on an artistic level. They were more ambitious than any popluar band before or since. Which isn't to say that they're the greatest band of all time, though a good argument could be made, it's just that the great music being made today, and what's popular isn't in line.

On a semi-related note, something that really bothers me is that popular music today is basically two genres. We've got rock and we've got hip hop/r&b. I love all kinds of music, and listen to a wide variety of stuff, but I often find myself wanting an even bigger variety. One of my favorite albums of all time is Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By, a fabulous album of lounge/trip hop songs that is also completely unique from anything else out there, except perhaps the song "I've Been Thinking" on Automator's new Handsome Boy Modeling School album. That song and the album are an example of an updated version of the sort of songs that were popular in the pre-rock era, singer driven, but surrounded by interesting instruments, just really cool songs, and notable, in the fact that they're not guitar driven. Ever since the creation of rock and roll back in the 1950s, the vast majority of popular music has been guitar driven. Now, there's the exception of hip hop, but that's its own thing, that I'll touch on later.

Because everything is guitar driven, it's tougher for people to adapt to an album like Lovage. It has choruses, but rather than instrumental hooks, it has bass lines, and instrumental samples to construct the melody. Lovage has a level of sonic experimentation that only the best rock can match. You don't know what to expect from song to song because The Automator throws a variety of beats at you. When rock took over, the use of different instruments, other than the guitar, generally fell out of favor.

Now, there is electronic music, and I do love it, I love the combination of electronic with different real instruments the most. Electronic stuff is just another resource, and the best bands take advantage of everything. One of the reasons I love The Polyphonic Spree is the vast variety of instruments they work with. You get a great variety of sound from them, and it makes them really interesting to listen to.

I guess what I'm saying is, don't just rely on guitars, make songs that use all sorts of instruments, and don't be limited by the dictates of a musical genre. The Beatles certainly weren't.

Related Posts
Handsome Boy Modeling School: White People (11/13/2004)
Lovage: Music to Make Love To Your Old Lady By (11/19/2004)