Apple’s Top 100 albums list

There were things I remembered. 1992 was the last year I had any formal instruction. It was my second attempt to take grade 8. There was no way I would have taken any performing diplomas, I think my technique was not good enough for that. But it was also the first year of my assembling my record collection. It’s the reason why I grew up skinny. My pocket money was going into music, not lunch. I spent a lot of 1994 hanging around Tower Records, which had just opened in town, and took up the top floor of Pacific Plaza. One of the most amazing things is that you could say that Tower Records wasn’t able to afford operating in Singapore anymore, but that space is unoccupied, the last I checked.

Back then, we didn’t have the internet. And even when the internet came along, it would be a decade or two before broadband and cloud technology advanced enough to enable streaming. For the last time, the music industry was in rude health. Instead of the internet, we had one or two information booths, which were basically PCs with keyboards, which displayed multi-media content. Those were the days when people believed that curated multi-sensory experiences were going to be the future of human computer interaction, rather than surfing the internet.

I rarely got to read music magazines. I never bought them, but I looked at the magazine racks to find out more about what the hottest and latest albums were. That was where I read the record review to find out that “Very” by the Pet Shop Boys or “Siamese Dream” by the Smashing Pumpkins belonged to the pantheon of acclaimed music.

And those booths would sometimes display some information about albums they had. For example, they indicated that certain records by Joy Division or Husker Du were the greatest records of the 80s. And I was curious to find out more. Eventually I found the master list, after plenty of searching high and low. People in the internet era would not appreciate how difficult it was to get these lists together back in the day, and how much effort I spent trying to assemble a good record collection.

There were times when I did trust these reviews too much, but I was a kid back then, and I was still growing and learning. After all, I came from the place where I did not trust mainstream opinion of music. The most popular music in Singapore for kids my age were from Richard Marx, New Kids on the Block and Debbie Gibson. I didn’t exactly hate Debbie Gibson, but instinctively, I recoiled from these mainstream acts because they represented a mainstream society that I could not entirely get along with. Then REM and Nirvana came along. Then I discovered David Bowie. David Bowie was a few decades earlier than alternative music, and he may have influenced a lot of the hair bands of the 80s who also got called glam rock. But I embraced the Bowies and the Roxy Musics because they were the flagbearers of the marginalized people. Of course it was a bit of a stretch to think of myself, a Chinese in Singapore, as a marginalized person. But I guess what indie rock is about – white people thinking they’re on the margins of society. On one hand, it’s a bit rich that they’re playing the card that they’re the outcasts of society. On the other hand, they’re genuinely disaffected, different from most people, and have one or two struggles with their daily lives. It was very natural that I would relate to those people.

So I didn’t trust mainstream opinion of music, but I did find that critics reviews would align more closely with how I came to view a record. Eventually I would grow and start realizing that these lists didn’t really make much sense on some levels, even though they would be useful.

Why best-of album lists don’t always make sense.

These lists don’t make sense because nobody can truly speak for the masses. Everybody has different musical tastes – this was something I barely appreciated as a teenager, when I was berating everybody else for having lousy taste in music. Even an individual would not have a top ranking of his greatest album of all time. I liked the idea, at a time, that an album that was great would always be irretrievably great and always great. But that’s not how things work. No matter how wonderful an album was, we would tire of it eventually. It would mainly be a record of some period in our lives. It would be a butterfly pinned to a picture frame.

And if we didn’t understand that, we wouldn’t understand that a record is an oxymoron. It is a permanent relic of an ephemeral period in time. For example, if you were to ask, “how long does Beethoven’s Symphony 5 last?” Both “hundreds of years” and “50 minutes” are correct answers.

Another reason why these lists don’t make sense is because they reflect some predominant power structure. As a Singaporean, it was sometimes hard to appreciate how segregated music was. There were tribal boundaries that you just didn’t cross. Rock music – after Hendrix, that is – is mostly white. Soul and R&B were mostly black people. Music was ridiculously Jim Crow, although this phenomenon is universal. Western pop was western pop, and mando pop was mando pop, and mat rock was mat rock.

So when a publication decides to come up with “the greatest albums of all time” and they put the Beatles and the Stones on top of the totem pole, and just leave a few slots for black music, or a few slots for Jazz, it’s quite problematic. It would always be “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis, because you can put Miles Davis, Bill Evans and John Coltrane into your list and save 3 slots. I get that people put a few albums of black peoples’ music into those lists so as to deflect charges that they’re not racist. But I wonder if that’s even more problematic. And yet separating these lists into “rock”, “jazz” and “soul” is also untidy, because there are albums which cover more than one of these spaces. So that’s the other criticism of these lists, from a “privilege” standpoint.

It would always irk me when I see these lists and they have one or two jazz albums. It allows a few hipsters to go “well I’ve listened to Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme and therefore I know everything about jazz”. But at the same time I’m pretty glad that there’s only one or two jazz albums, because it’s almost like they’re saying “jazz is jazz, and go and explore the jazz section if you’re interested, I’m not going to besmirch jazz albums by ranking them alongside rock albums”. Which makes perfect sense to me. I mean, is “Dark Side of the Moon” better than “Giant Steps”, “Bill Evans Sunday at the Village Vanguard”, “Monk’s Music” and “Maiden Voyage”? Don’t make me laugh.

Another reason why these lists don’t make sense is that not everybody is an album artist. There are a few people whose work would serve best as a greatest hits collection, but are pretty guilty of padding their albums with filler. Motown artists. The Spinners.

Where these lists would make perfect sense, is that they are lists of recommended albums. It would make sense to call these “albums you should listen to”. Instead of these lists being a dead end, they should be (to echo one of my favourite jazz albums) points of departure. It is true that you cannot definitively rank artists according to their greatness, but it is equally true that all artists are not equally great. These lists should serve as a signpost to point to some people who have contributed greatly to the advancement in music.

In one of those most famous lists, a few of the Beatles records were in the top 10. For many of us who never lived through the 60s, I was a bit surprised that the Beatles occupied the upper reaches of the list. In fact, the most interesting feature of that list was that “Revolver” by the Beatles and “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys would be #1 and #2. Another thing is that rock music would dominate the upper reaches of these lists. After a while, I started realizing that this was some assertion of the power structure. It would privilege the music of white baby boomers over just about everything else.

I saw “Astral Weeks” on the list, and was curious about it. I’m not sure that I completely love Van Morrison, given that it’s pretty well documented what a pain in the ass he can be in real life. But he occupies a very distinctive and unique space – a melding of his Irish / Celtic heritage, with black soul music. (It is also notable that another singer who’s famous for “blue eyed soul” music – Dusty Springfield – is also of Irish descent.) “Astral Weeks” is not an album I would include in my top 100. But I’m glad that I got introduced to it, and I appreciate its uniqueness, and that it also pointed me to “St Dominic’s Preview” and “Veedon Fleece”. One of the most appreciated features of these lists are the left-field selections. The ones that point us to the Captain Beefhearts and the alternative music.

So let’s get into the latest “top albums” list. The Apple 100 list. It’s important to note that there were some lists in the past that came from a place where 90s alternative rock was the dominant cultural reference. So it would include a lot of touchstones from that era. A lot of albums that proved to be influential on alternative rock would be included, such as Joy Division, Sonic Youth and maybe even the Meat Puppets. In contrast, one of the most interesting features of this list is that of the top 10, 7 of them are from black artists. The tables are turned and now it’s the rock albums which are included as tokens.

Lauryn Hill having the top album is something I find rather bemusing. It is a great album but not my favourite. In fact even back in the day when it was the top album of 1998 I thought that was contentious. Sure, there are only a handful of people who like her could rap, sing and write. But she was standing on the shoulders of giants like Stevie Wonder.

It’s nice to see that they’ve included blockbusters like “Thriller”, “Rumours” and “Purple Rain”. But that would beg the question of whether they are conflating artistic merit with artistic greatness. But it also tells me that if artistic merit were presumed to be equal, they would select the blockbuster. I’m pretty apathetic towards Taylor Swift, but I recognise that a list like this would look really weird without her being there.

The shift in emphasis away from white rock is welcome. We also realise that there are only 100 places here, and therefore at most only 60 spots for the 20^th century music. I’m apathetic towards most of 21^st century music, partly because I’ve not discovered much of it, and partly because a lot of 21^st century music was recorded after the collapse of the music industry.

What I mean by the collapse of the music industry is that today, while there are more opportunities for more people to record their own music, there are paradoxically fewer opportunities for the top musicians to record with the best facilities and session musicians. The economics no longer supports a stable of session musicians. You no longer have top producers like Quincy Jones, Mutt Lange or Phil Spector, whose purpose is to craft the perfect sound.

But I would question the complete omission of these, notwithstanding:

Omissions:

• Iggy Pop
• Captain Beefheart
• Philly
• Disco (given that maybe this is a genre that excels in singles and one hit wonders rather than albums. But nothing from Giogio Moroder apparently)
• Parliament – Funkadelic
• Fusion
• Hair Metal other than Guns n Roses (actually I’m fine with this, but no Bon Jovi is surprising)
• IDM
• A lot of indie rock: Cocteau Twins, REM, Pixies
• Shoegaze
• no post rock: Tortoise, Slint, Talk Talk
• No Southern Rock other than Exile on Main Street: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers, Derek and the Dominos
• 70s metal: only Led Zep and AC/DC, no Black Sabbath, Deep Purple
• Madlib / MF Doom / Kool Keith, although it’s also true that in general rap is adequately covered.
• World Music (other than Reggae)
• Dub

Genres that are included but I thought were misrepresented:

• Britpop – I wouldn’t have chosen Oasis’ What’s the Story and Arctic Monkeys’ AM. I might have chosen Pulp, Verve, Blur, Oasis’ Definitely Maybe or Suede.
• U2 – if I had to pick one album, it would be Achtung Baby, not Joshua Tree
• Electronica: I would not have chosen Homework by Daft Punk, but that’s a big favourite apparently. There’s no big beat and drum n bass. I’d have preferred works by Underworld, Prodigy.
• Only one representative for 60s soul: only Aretha Franklin, no Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Sam n Dave
• 00s indie: I’d not have picked the Strokes, although I don’t have any big favourites. I’d have considered the Dismemberment Plan, Arcade Fire and the Microphones.

Questionable inclusions.

• Some of these recent choices smack of flavour of the month. Or decade. Let’s see how Lorde, Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey will be remembered years from now.
• George Michael and Sade are known for well crafted and classy pop. But I don’t think their music merits a place on a top 100 list. More like a top 1000 list.
• Nine Inch Nails
• Beyonce having 2 albums on this list.
• I’ve never had that much love for Amy Winehouse, in spite of her tragic life story. I don’t think she did anything that the actual motown artists did even better. Similarly, Adele would have been better if she let other people write music for her.

Also, there are albums that maybe 10 years ago would have been on a lot of critics’ list. Like the Animal Collective album, some Lily Allen, Modest Mouse and Spoon. Those lofty positions haven’t lasted well. Indie music in particular is susceptible to these crazes where bands can suddenly go from being the leader of a scene that everyone can relate to, to being entirely forgotten.