Posted on March 9th, 2002 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.
Blender has a list of top 100 American albums. Most of the selections are good, obvious, or at least defensible. They do a couple things I don't like in lists of this sort: they mix albums and compilations, but inconsistently -- I'll get back to that -- and they dabble. They make a few nods toward jazz and country -- Kind of Blue, Johnny Cash, you know -- just enough to make a pretense at being not ignorant, but not nearly enough to actually give jazz and country a fair shake. To my mind, you either have to give jazz and country their due, and let the best of them compete on an equal footing with the best of rock, or just ignore them and admit that the list is only really about rock'n'roll.
The most sigh-inducing thing is their number-one choice, though, which is Madonna's Immaculate Collection. It's not that I don't believe there are some people who would claim it's the best American album ever made; I just don't believe Blender thinks so. I think it's a transparent controversy generator. After a whole list of hipster favorites, we top it all off with a big populist anti-hipster choice! Which of course is a play at being really hip. Except it's not a card they've been playing through the list, so it doesn't convince at the end. Sure, sure, Madonna. Whatever.
And they have to stretch the spirit of the exercise to make the choice at all: since apparently no individual Madonna album could be put at the top of the list without inspiring derision, they chose the hits collection (and a fine collection it is). But what of, say, Stevie Wonder? There he is at number four with his great Innervisions. Maybe you could argue that Immaculate Collection is better, somehow, than Innervisions. But what if you chose Stevie Wonder's hits package (Original Musiquarium) instead? Is Immaculate Collection better than that? Seriously? Better than the best of Bob Dylan? than the best of Joni Mitchell? the Supremes? James Brown? Duke for god's sake Ellington?