barthel:

openapplev:

The songs that improved or maintained their standing from Pitchfork’s mid-decade list to the new 2000s list:

White Stripes - “Seven Nation Army” (#97 to #30)

Basement Jaxx - “Where’s Your Head At?” (#94 to #83)

Clipse - “Grindin’” - (#92 to #27)

TV On The Radio - “Staring At The Sun” (#88 to #44)

Freelance Hellraiser - “A Stroke Of Genius” (#87 to #75)

Arcade Fire - “Neighborhood #1” (#85 to #10)

Dr. Dre feat. Eminem - “Forgot About Dre” (#84 to #68)

Jay-Z - “Big Pimpin’” (#83 to #30)

Interpol - “Obstacle 1” (#76 to #64)

Spoon - “The Way We Get By” (#62 to #33)

Sigur Ros - “Svefn-G-Englar” (#44 to #36)

The Walkmen - “The Rat” (#33 to #20)

Daft Punk - “One More Time” (#27 to #5)

Jay-Z - “99 Problems” (#22 to #14)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - “Maps” (#10 to #6)

Beyonce feat. Jay-Z - “Crazy In Love” (#7 to #4)

OutKast - “B.O.B.” (#1 in both)

The 2003-04 songs were still relatively new, so their leaps don’t surprise me as much. Any idea why “Obstacle 1” went up?

Note: As with their year-end lists, Pitchfork shifted from singles to tracks here, so this doesn’t include songs like “Idioteque” that undoubtedly would have made the 00-04 list if they’d been eligible.

V. helpful. I’m glad that TVOTR, Arcade Fire, Spoon, and White Stripes are further entrenched in the polling, as I think they’re all excellent rock singles (so long as it’s the “Staring at the Sun” from the Young Liars EP, still the best thing TVOTR have done by a mile in my estimation).

The other indie selection don’t seem like much more than a holding pattern (be it Interpol or Sigur Ros or Walkmen) that was likely (in part) a result of the writers looking back at that 2005 list. It’s an excellent way to jog one’s memory, for one thing, but it also feeds into the strange feeling of auto-mythologizing that accompanies writing blurbs for Pitchfork. It’s about intuiting the publication’s internal expectations, the audience’s expectations, and other writers’ expectations, all of which combine into what feel like necessary picks. These aren’t exactly “canon” picks, mind, but rather a sense of near-obligation to include tracks that you may have more nostalgia than genuine fondness for (“Obstacle 1”) or tracks that you have more abstract appreciation for than genuine fondness (Sigur Ros, at a somewhat ridic for “track of the decade” 10 minutes of atmosphere!).

My guess is that the most holding-pattern entries are hanging on by a thread here and wouldn’t appear similarly in another five years. I can’t say as much for the bigger jumpers — my guess is that “Seven Nation Army” and Spoon will both settle into indie rock godness as the next decade progresses, and that Arcade Fire will essentially equal a big-for-indie-britches band like Modest Mouse or the Shins, both of whom (somewhat shockingly!) didn’t appear in the top twenty for “Float On” or “New Slang,” even though these two tracks, more than anything else that appears on this list, will likely signal “indie” more immediately to more people in the U.S. than any other two songs, period. The White Stripes were maybe the first of these 00’s Bigger Than Indie bands.