Silly List Slogs: My 100 Favorite Musical Acts Of The Pop-Rock Era (In Terms Of Quantity)
This might be the silliest list slog yet. My 100 "favorite" musical acts that started making albums after 1960, based on how many tracks of theirs I find worth keeping around, whether on physical media or in streaming playlists. Predictably, this metric benefits prolific white male guitar rockers I've been paying attention to since my adolescence. So it's worth reaffirming I'm not saying Mark E. Smith is better than Aretha Franklin, or more worth your time. I'm just saying that, as we reach the end of 2022, I've kept around more Mark E. Smith songs than Aretha Franklin songs. This isn't surprising, considering I owned every Fall album through The Unutterable in college, and I haven't really checked out Franklin's last forty years of work.
So as I said, this is silly. But while I'm exploiting the countdown format for a little cheap eye-grabbing, I'm also saying these 100 acts are worth your time - or at least were VERY worth your time for a period long enough to merit a decent box set (for instance, The Kinks' Anthology 1964-1971 or Guided By Voices' Hardcore UFOs). If there's someone you think is criminally absent (and not in a "every band to release an album on Capricorn in the '70s is worth your time more than frikkin' Eagles Of Death Metal by default" way), please let me know, either through your social media outlet of choice or with a line to anthonyisright at gmail.com. At worst, I'll tell you they're at 132.
Oh, and I'm saying tracks instead of songs, because I didn't exclude multiple versions kept of a real humdinger. I think this mostly boosted the Velvet Underground. Check them out already, if you haven't. Stop being so stubborn! They're neat!
- Neil Young
- The Mountain Goats
- Bob Dylan
- Electric Six
- Guided By Voices
- The Beatles
- The Fall
- The Kinks
- Low
- Yo La Tengo
- The Rolling Stones
- R.E.M.
- John Prine
- Rocket From The Crypt
- Superchunk
- Loudon Wainwright III
- The Ramones
- Sonic Youth
- Spoon
- Randy Newman
- Sloan
- Husker Du
- Luna
- The Cure
- Drive-By Truckers
- Pavement
- The Flaming Lips
- Harry Nilsson
- Al Green
- Prince
31. Stevie Wonder 32. Amy Rigby 33. Magnetic Fields 34. Beastie Boys 35. Half Japanese. 36. The Mekons 37. AC/DC 38. The Velvet Underground 39. Wire 40. Beck 41. The Minutemen 42. A Tribe Called Quest 43. Fugazi 44. The White Stripes 45. East River Pipe 46. Devin The Dude 47. Fleetwood Mac 48. The Replacements 49. Ghostface Killah 50. Mudhoney 51. Wilco 52. !!! 53. The Pixies 54. Missy Elliott 55. Hot Chip 56. Rufus Wainwright 57. Aretha Franklin 58. Teenage Fanclub 59. Radiohead 60. Sleater-Kinney 61. Van Morrison 62. Los Lobos 63. David Bowie 64. Les Savy Fav 65. Bill Withers 66. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion 67. The Bats 68. Scrawl 69. Screaming Trees 70. New Order
71. Talking Heads 72. Joni Mitchell 73. Nine Inch Nails 74. The Go-Betweens 75. Motorhead 76. Death Cab For Cutie 77. Bonnie Raitt 78. Rod Stewart 79. Lou Reed 80. The Flatlanders 81. Public Enemy 82. Sly & The Family Stone 83. Weezer 84. The Afghan Whigs 85. Steely Dan 86. Queen 87. The Beach Boys 88. Killing Joke 89. Elvis Costello 90. Tom Waits 91. The Feelies 92. Eagles Of Death Metal 93. Archers Of Loaf 94. Queens Of The Stone Age 95. Clem Snide 96. Camper Van Beethoven 97. Led Zeppelin 98. Lemonheads 99. Aerosmith 100. Mary J. Blige
I do enough crate digging and online "discovering" that I wouldn't be surprised if there's a healthy bit of flux in this foddered canon if I post it again next year. Maybe I will, Milhouse. Maybe I will.