"NME Top 50 Albums of the Noughties" or "black music scares us"

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crackerjack

Well-known member
bloc party higher than outkast? only on planet nme

actually i'm surprised there are so many black albums in there. i can't get cross about this anymore.
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
my favourite thing about these lists is that there are always loads of outraged comments suggesting a load of other crap at the bottom (what, No Belle and Sebastien! this is an outrage, etc etc)
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i can't get cross either - nme is a magazine for kids who like white indie music. just as you wouldn't expect the source's top 50 to include much (!) indie music.

indeed, nme at one time (2000-2001, as i recall) covered a lot of hip-hop/rnb - having Kelis on the cover, stuff like that.

it is annoying that music is so split genre-wise, but i don't think it's ever been otherwise. Very few people like both guitary stuff and also hip hop/rnb/'dance' - what's nice about this board (and unusual) is that people generally do have non-genre specific tastes. The fact that we have to find this space to talk about it reflects how unusual it is, i think.

Edit: am pleased the Strokes are #1 tho, cos I really like the pop tunes on that album. Tbh,. Interpol are the only band in the top 10 I find without much merit.

At least they got the best hip-hop of the album (imo) correct.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
also, isn't it just indicative of a wider cultural pattern of non-integration of cultures? that's the real problem, and music segregation is just symptomatic of it....

mind you, i do get tired of the number of people i meet who disregard RnB with the same old arguments (lack of lyrical content, can't play instruments, yadda, yadda, yadda). It seems almost Luddite.
 
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sjc

sjc

Active member
baboon2004 said:
i can't get cross either - nme is a magazine for kids who like white indie music. just as you wouldn't expect the source's top 50 to include much (!) indie music.
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right. you wouldnt expect to see the strokes or white stripes in a best of the 00s chart in an urban music mag. saying that tho, i remember radiohead cropping up in an end of the year list once in hip hop connection lol.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
sjc said:
right. you wouldnt expect to see the strokes or white stripes in a best of the 00s chart in an urban music mag. saying that tho, i remember radiohead cropping up in an end of the year list once in hip hop connection lol.
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Portishead used to too, though the connection there's more obvious. NME don't get off the hook that easy, though, not until they rename themselves Heritage Indie Express (steam-powered).
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
hmm, but i think there's wider forces that dictate what they cover (esp given how their circulation has shrunk over the past 20 years) - if the kids want indie, then commercial logic dictates that's what they'll give them. They tried including black music, and I assume it simply didn't sell to their demographic, so they stopped.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
baboon2004 said:
hmm, but i think there's wider forces that dictate what they cover (esp given how their circulation has shrunk over the past 20 years) - if the kids want indie, then commercial logic dictates that's what they'll give them. They tried including black music, and I assume it simply didn't sell to their demographic, so they stopped.
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sure. it's well known in magworld that you put black people on the cover and your sales take a tumble
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
baboon2004 said:
for the nme, it seems to have been true, sadly. more generally, is that true (wouldnt' surprise me if it was, unfortunately, but)?
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yeah, i mean probably not with, say, HHC (RIP), but even the Face, which used to pride itself on being very urban (in the literal sense, not the 'don't call it black music' sense) in outlook used to find that.

The editor of one (now dead) lad mag told me a story about how one of them put Halle Berry - mixed-race, gorgeous, just won an Oscar, brand new Bond babe - on the cover instead of their generic weather-girl-in-underwear shot. Sales fell 25%.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
crackerjack said:
The editor of one (now dead) lad mag told me a story about how one of them put Halle Berry - mixed-race, gorgeous, just won an Oscar, brand new Bond babe - on the cover instead of their generic weather-girl-in-underwear shot. Sales fell 25%.
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all too believable, sadly. if they'd put any other black female other than halle berry ont here, prob would have seen sales crash even more. god the world is sick.
 
sjc

sjc

Active member
regardless of what it was, or what people think it was, rock has always been the nme's bread and butter. obv i dont think youd ever get covers like you used to where you had ice cube and chuck d or that one about the new 'theft pop' (saw this somewhere the other day) but it still does feature little bits of other music here and there. its just 90% indie, 10% other music. in a slightly devils advocate kind of way, considering the worries about people being too eclectic and the death of pop tribes, etc etc, you could say that indie kids seemingly maybe being so myopic is perhaps not such a bad thing. the prob these days is you dont have mags like the face, sky, or sleaze nation etc to fill the void for stuff that the nme dont cover. theres the wire obv, and one or two black music mags still out there, but barely.

re: the stripes, elephant was great.
 
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mos dan

mos dan

fact music
taking it on their terms/with a massive pinch of indie salt etc.. they also got the wrong bright eyes album. lifted is far far superior.

i am also perennially amused by comments demanding the inclusion of some utter nonsense:

'wot no ikara colt/campag velocet?!?!?!' have been mine and boomnoise's (not hugely serious) responses on twitter..
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
I once read a letter in a very old NME in which someone was bemoaning the identikit indie coverage. The letterwriter concluded by saying '... when you should be covering challenging, innovative and downright brilliant bands like Dawn of the Replicants'.


Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhaaaaaaahahaha
 
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tom lea

Well-known member
i know it's only radiohead, but what sort of animal ranks In Rainbows over Kid A?

they also got the wrong bright eyes album. lifted is far far superior.
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nah, fevers and mirrors innit
 
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