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The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present | 
 enlarge | Creators: Scott Plagenhoef, Ryan Schreiber
Publisher: Fireside
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $9.39
You Save: $6.61 (41%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 818
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 8 x 0.6
ISBN: 1416562028
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.6609
EAN: 9781416562023
ASIN: 1416562028
Publication Date: November 11, 2008 (New: This Week)
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
FROM THE BRAIN TRUST BEHIND PITCHFORKMEDIA.COM -- THE WEBSITE THE LOS ANGELES TIMES DECLARED "AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE IPO D GENERATION'S LEXICON, A MUST-READ" -- A FRESH GUIDE TO THE 500 BEST SONGS OF THE PAST THIRTY YEARS.Named the "best site for music criticism on the web" by The New York Times Magazine, Pitchforkmedia.com has become the leading independent resource for music journalism, the place people turn to find out what's happening in new music. Founded in 1995, Pitchfork has developed one of the web's most devoted followings, with more than 1.6 million readers monthly who tune in for daily reviews, news, features, videos, and interviews. In The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present, Pitchfork offers up their take on the 500 best songs of the past three decades. Focusing on indie rock (Arcade Fire, the Shins), hiphop (Public Enemy, Jay-Z), electronic (Daft Punk, Boards of Canada), pop (Madonna, Justin Timberlake), metal (Metallica, Boris), and experimental underground music (Suicide, Boredoms), it features all-new essays and reviews written with the sharp wit and insight for which the site is known. Kicking it off in 1977 with the birth of punk and independent music, The Pitchfork 500 runs chronologically, with each chapter representing a distinct period and offering a narrative of how the musical landscape of the day influenced its artists. The book opens with David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Kraftwerk, and Brian Eno, the "art-rock godfathers" who set the tone and tenor for the next thirty years, and wraps up in the present, when bands connect with new audiences through social networking sites and prime-time TV placements -- and when a single mp3 can turn a niche indie artist into a global sensation. Sidebars like "Yacht Rock," "Runaway Trainwrecks," "Nanofads," and "Career Killers" call out some far-from-classic musical trends and identify the guiltiest offenders. Modernizing the music-guide format, The Pitchfork 500 reflects the way listeners are increasingly processing music -- by song rather than by album. These 500 tracks condense thirty years of essential music into the ultimate chronological playlist, each song advancing the narrative and, by extension, the music itself.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Interesting and informative November 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found this book to be very insightful and it is a good conversation piece for when friends come over and see it on the table. It has helped a great deal when it comes to making mix CDs for people. I don't agree with all the songs listed in the book but for the most part I do and I have found some interesting tracks from this book.
 Narrow minded, pretentious and self-serving. November 16, 2008
5 out of 11 found this review helpful
The premise of Pitchfork's attempt at a music guide is that the songs of today are just as relevant, exciting and creative as the boomer approved canon of the 50's through early 70's.
To this I answer...no duh.
Misguided and insecure, editors Shreiber and Plagenhoff subsequently claim to offer a bold repudiation of the established cannon but do little more than play it safe offering only well worn staples of the past 30 years. Entire vibrant genres of music (metal, post 70's punk) are relegated to single page featurettes, obnoxious non-factors are legitimized and major musical movements such as house music and rap are either mangled beyond recognition or see their long established classics dug up and exhumed by a writing staff of closed-minded hipsters in way over their heads. While this thankfully prevents the book from falling into the snotty shlock journalism and sensationalism that Pitchfork's online component is best known for, it also makes the book feel like little more than a Rolling Stone guide for the tight jeans and ugly haircut set: a smug canonization of records with little in common apart from being socially acceptable among the slime that inhabits the gentrified neighbourhoods of Williamsburg and Silver Lake rather than the suburbs of middle America. Fantastic songs are ignored, agonizing failed experiments are deified in the name of "indie" and the resulting book is just as ignorant and misunderstanding of black music and non-rock as any "boomer approved" tome (to say nothing of the near total lack of African, Asian and South American music).
Of course, the book isn't all bad. Anywhere from 300 to 400 of these songs are either quite good or flat out spectacular though they're better covered in other more authoritative music guides. I also suppose that if one had to turn a cousin or friend into an obnoxious music snob overnight, this book could also be useful.
In trying desperately to live up to the 60's (I haven't seen anyone this angry at that decade since the Neo-Cons took power), the Pitchfork staff do little to nullify the errors of the previous generations' music writers. Instead they simply erect monuments to their very own Paul McCartneys and Jimmy Pages, the only difference being that the new idols prefer drum machines to guitar solos. While the late 70's through today offers an incredible array of fantastic music, you'll only find a fraction of it covered here...along with a whole lot of garbage and bad writing that serves only to prove the idea that good music is still being made wrong.
I rate this book 1.3 out of 10.
A Fun Read needs some editing November 12, 2008
I did learn of some new songs from this, and I'm ecstatic about that. Sometimes I was forced to think about an artist/song in a way I hadn't before. These are fantastic accomplishments. I enjoyed reading it, but was there an editor? The very first entry gets one of its facts wrong; later there's misspellings, at least two instances of subject-verb disagreement, and one sentence that went nowhere and didn't even make poetic sense. Fragments. I appreciate the subjective nature of their reviews (Bellbottoms as the important JSBX song?), but often they are show off-ish, pandering, and cutesy. I like Pitchfork (except for their belief that Springsteen actually matters) but this feels like an undergrad project that an ex-prom committee chairperson put together ("Great job, guys!" even though everything is crooked and amateurish.)
I think you should buy this, I'm sure you'll love arguing with it as much as you agree with it. I did. I just expected some professionalism & care.
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