The Q Awards took place in London earlier this week, ushering the beginning of the end in the year of music for 2010. Soon music-based websites, newspapers, bloggers, radio presenters, DJs and record shops will all be compiling their end of year lists. It’s fair to say this unfortunately for the most part is an exercise in the art of conforming to one’s audience. While I appreciate the angle, genre or subculture a magazine or website is trying to represent is important - and that it reflects their readership and possible existence - it is often almost painstakingly obvious what will be included on their respective lists.
Take the American online giant Pitchfork.com, for example. We know that within their top 10 albums of the year 2010 will be the following: two or three albums from established indie/alternative favourites (Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem); two or three more albums from relatively unknown acts and innovative newcomers (The XX, No Age, Best Coast); one or two records from respected and popular R & B and Hip Hop Acts (Big Boi, Mos Def); one from a respected pop act (Robyn); and, finally, one or two records from the obscure side of electronica (Caribou, Mount Kimbie).
I’m not suggesting for a minute that the acts mentioned releases aren’t of high quality. Many of them I own and have enjoyed immensely. However, each year presents us with the same scenario. Pitchfork aim to identify key trends in the market and the changing demographics of the music world to suggest to us all what is worth listening to and what isn’t. While I’m sure they want to remain popular and an established reference point for music fans across the world, their underlying motive is maximising traffic. More traffic means more clicks on the hundreds of advertisements splashed across their pages. More clicks, more revenue. More revenue, more money. More money, more power. More power to aim to control the tastes of its target audience of mainly 16-35 years who historically have purchased more music than any other age group. The power now stretches to its own music festival and collaboration with the excellent All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.
When you attempt to read a Pitchfork review (which could essentially be a promotional sales pitch), make sure you have a dictionary handy so you can try and make sense (sometimes it’s impossible) to decipher what the fuck they are on about. If the BBC music reviews have a faint unpleasant smell, Pitchfork reviews stink to high heaven of the most disgusting and foul smelling dogshit you’ve ever been unfortunate to come across. They are also quite unique in the marks they give reviews. Why a proper mark out of 10 is not a good enough guide of how good they think they records are is beyond me. No, no, no. They have to use 8.3 or 9.2 or 6.5 or 5.4 (or 100000000.0 if it was the new Radiohead record). Selling advertising, bad maths and dogshit. Pitchfork in a nutshell.
Speaking of shit has reminded me to discuss the Q Awards, which was originally my intention for this entire post. They quite unbelievably sprung a surprise by awarding their best album prize to the fantastic High Violet by the National. This was a welcome award for one of my favourite bands of the past 5-6 years and thoroughly deserved. Not surprisingly, this was where the positive results of the night began and ended. Kasbian are apparently the best act in the world today. FUCK ME.
Other awards went to established industry turd such as Paolo Nutini, Mark Ronson and Mumford and Sons. My highlight of the awards winners list is surprisingly not the National but the award of track of the year. The winner was ‘You Got the Love’ by Florence and the Machine. How an awful cover of a once great song was the best track of the year is quite unbelievable. The original was a beautiful mid-80s disco groove with a beautiful vocal from a soul and disco legend. This ‘winning’ version is just unlistenable fronted by an industry creation with an average voice who fails, even though many makeup artists, fashion designers, hairdressers have tried their best, to look attractive. We know the original track has been played and reworked to death over the past 20 odd years, so I thought why was it necessary to choose this track as the track of year?
I then decided to look at the rest of the nominations. Now I saw the judges’ dilemma. They were all decidedly average and with the majority of them a rehash of what has been done better before (click to see the full list). Choosing the best out of this lot must be like choosing a portaloo on the last day of a three-day Rock Festival. You all know they are pretty shit, some smelling of shit and some having more shit on them and around them than others. But you take a punt and hopefully pick the right one. However there isn’t a right one. They’re all horrible and disgusting and choosing one makes you realise that it’s best to not bother in the first place. If you can’t go to a clean toilet or pick a good song you may just as well foul yourself. It’s probably a more pleasant experience than listening to any of their choices for tracks of the year.
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