Despite my penchant for bad music, I do occasionally listen to good music and consider myself appreciative of music I may not listen to all the time. So, it’s always a good laugh when some magazine/newspaper/webzine/blog comes out with their Top $QUANTITY Albums of the Last $TIMESPAN.
Toady’s entry is SPIN magazine, who I thought had been relegated to the test grounds for the improvement of bird-poop targeting systems years ago. Apparently, I was wrong, and they managed to turn the tables on their would-be bombers by foisting this turd onto the world.
Their top album of the last 20 years? “OK Computer“, Radiohead. Uh, yeah.
Don’t get me wrong. I think some of Radiohead’s songs are really good; in fact, if SPIN had to choose a Radiohead album, I would have gone with The Bends. But that’s just me.
But the article also mentions that the top grouping consisted of the aforementioned OK Computer, as well as Nirvana‘s “Nervermind” and Public Enemy‘s “It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” Where the hell did that last one come from? Public Enemy compared to Radiohead? Come on. Thom York and co. may have inspired a thousands knock-offs (and thanks for that, by the way), but Public Enemy was on the very visible, very influential spearhead of a new and different form of music. It hardly compares to a band that has tweaked the standard rock/indie format into something slightly more profitable than their predecessors.