Beyonce’s Crazy In Love - The best song of the decade? ...Really?
It’s a regular each December, “Review of the year,” “Top ten of the last twelve months,” and now at the end of this decade “Top however-many-whatevers of the 00’s.”
The music press in particular are particularly fond of this tactic and I briefly considered jumping in with my own list of the decades top albums but after much consideration I came to the conclusion that these lists are almost always a bad idea.
The main problem I see with making a countdown of the last decade in music is that I believe a piece of music has to stand the test of time in order for it to be judged fairly, try and write a best of the 00’s list in 5 years time it just might work but right now it’s far too hard to be objective.
Some albums get completly overlooked in their time to become classics in the future, take most of Nick Drakes work, others get lauded on their release and then relegated to the bargain bin after a couple of months. I remember hearing a great fanfare about Andrew WK’s I Get Wet album, at the time it was hailed it as a return to rock perfection, now it sticks out as a laughably poor album that requires a significant amount of alcohol to be consumed before it becomes enjoyable.
Take the NME’s list of their top 100 tracks of the decade, I have a problem with it because they put Beyonce’s Crazy In Love at the top spot, It’s an awful song and if you like it you are an awful person, but aside from that the list is dotted with songs which are riding high on their post release hype. Sure MGMT are really big at the moment and Time to Pretend was one of last years most popular tracks but I’ve the feeling it could become very dated very quickly. Having said that, it’s too early to tell at the moment.
Another reason why I don’t think they work is that I feel an important part assessing music is it’s cultural context. For example the Velvet Underground and Nico sold hardly any copies and was virtually ignored by critics. I doubt it would’ve appeared in any greatest albums of the 60’s list had one been made in december ‘69, yet it’s proven to become hugely important and influential, inspiring the punk bands in the late 70’s. My point is some albums can prove to be important but only reveal themselves over time or only become classics because of events after their initial release.
Someday these countdowns might be interesting to cultural historians looking to see what we at the time judged to be best of our decade, but I get the feeling that they will be treated in much the same way as we treat those naive and optimistic films they made in the 50’s about protein pills a robot for every household. Predictions of the future that really only show the dreams of the past.
I just think that the presents idea of the past will prove to be just as inaccurate as the pasts idea of the future.