Pitchfork's "Top 100 Albums of the 1990s [Redux]"
Pitchfork’s introduction to its feature article of November 17, 2003:
It’s been just over four years since Pitchfork published its first-ever Top 100 feature, "Pitchfork’s Top 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s":http://www.listsofbests.com/list/55, and looking back at that list a lot has changed: our perceptions of the decade are different now, our personal tastes have expanded, our knowledge of the music has deepened, and excepting myself, Mark Richardson and Brent DiCrescenzo, the staff has turned over twice. It got me to thinking about how the musical landscape, too, continually changes. Revisionism ushers in new classics which had simply been forgotten, or altogether undiscovered, and while most truly essential albums will always be represented on these types of lists, even their relevance can be dictated by current trends.
It occurred to me that, since we have the means, it might be worthwhile to revisit these lists every few years and see how they change. So, over the past few months, the current Pitchfork staff convened to tabulate their revised individual lists, with the ultimate goal of presenting an updated list of 1990s records that have remained essential into the first part of the new decade.
A big surprise for me was just how different this new list is from the old one, and how many more albums we all felt deserved inclusion that, unfortunately, a list of only 100 records could not encompass. Among the casualties were Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power, Chavez, The Wrens, Throwing Muses, Spoon, The Roots, Mos Def, Happy Mondays, Archers of Loaf, Amon Tobin, Jay-Z, XTC, Morphine, Royal Trux, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Drive Like Jehu, Orbital, Super Furry Animals, Sunny Day Real Estate, Sebadoh, Snoop Dogg, Method Man, Mobb Deep, Low, Codeine, Flying Saucer Attack, The Sea & Cake, Underworld, Polvo, Shudder to Think, Trail of Dead, Cornershop, Shellac, Gang Starr, Gastr del Sol, John Zorn, Coil, Jawbreaker, Autechre, and countless others. But something we could all agree on were that the albums that did make the list belonged there.


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