Dave From Knoxville's 100 Most Important Recording Artists of the 21st Century

[dave from knoxville]

I wrote a blog post last year about my attempt to classify the 100 greatest artists of the 21st century. You can review the criteria here

http://gaughin.edublogs.org/2006/12/09/reading-the-musical-zeitgeist/

I am going to try to update that list every year in December. Here’s the updated list from 1 through 100, along with each artist’s position on the chart from last year.

Apologies in advance to “The Kid.”

http://gaughin.edublogs.org/2007/12/14/re-adjusting-the-zeitgeist/

[Gilly]

Seriously, I'm not even a Best Show/Scharpling apologist. I will never get the critical love for Tom Waits.

Anyway, those are some interesting choices. I disagree with most of them (at least the order) but it's your super-caller world.

[Andy]

I would seriously be interested in finding out about your formula.  Care to explain a little?

[Forrest]

Dually fascinating and infuriating, just the way a list of this nature should be.

[Josh]

Dave is this straight up aggregation or are reviewers weighted?

[dave from knoxville]

Straight up aggregation. Every month I scan Uncut, Mojo, and Paste. Some months, when it's available to me, I include Rolling Stone, Spin, and Q. I take every review that's listed on metacritic.com. I average all of those together, giving extra weight to metacritic according to the number of reviews listed there.

The average recording gets a score of around 71. An artist releases a disk. Say it's a an 80. They get 9 points, equal to the number of points that recording is above the average. Artist 2, say Kid Rock, releases a CD that averages, say, 12. He gets -59 points. I add these points together for all of the artists releases since Jan 1, 2000, and list them in descending order.

Please note, this is REPORTAGE, and not my personal opinion. For instance, while I don't hate Tom Waits, I don't own any of his recordings. So this is like an uber-critic listing of which artists get most favorably reviewed. It's not scientific, authoritative, or even necessary. It's just part of what I do in my part-time gig as OCD man.

[samir]

my beloved Monsterists are at number 6 so I'm not frowning on TN today.

[yesno]

Seriously, I'm not even a Best Show/Scharpling apologist. I will never get the critical love for Tom Waits.

It's that he writes brilliant songs: Jersey Girl, Way Down in the Hole, Hang Down Your Head.  The haters get tripped up by the fact that the brilliant songs are often lost in a haze of weird klinking klonking.

To use one of my examples-- Hang Down Your Head from Rain Dogs.  I just don't see how you could not like songs like that.  Oh well.

[dave from knoxville]

Just in case anybody's still interested, here's the worst 20 under that scheme.

1831) Enya 1832) Juliana Hatfield 1833) Mariah Carey 1834) Robbie Williams 1835) Mudvayne 1836) Liz Phair 1837) Duran Duran 1838) Stereophonics 1839) Dirty Vegas 1840) Everclear 1841) Live 1842) Paul Oakenfield 1843) Kevin Federline 1844) Athlete 1845) Alanis Morrisette 1846) Backstreet Boys 1847) Limp Biskit 1848) Ja Rule 1849) Staind 1850) Jennifer Lopez

You can tell that my opinion is not reflected in the selections, because Buck Dharma does not appear in the top 100.

[paul]

David Holmes? really? what did he even do this decade besides the Ocean's 11-13 soundtracks, and maybe 1 or 2 albums that nobody talks about? the only album i have by him is Let's Get Killed, which is from 10 years ago. it's really good but.... wha?

[Gilly]

Dave, have you ever looked at the site acclaimedmusic.net? Seems like it would be right up your alley.

[Matt]

Seriously, I'm not even a Best Show/Scharpling apologist. I will never get the critical love for Tom Waits.

It's that he writes brilliant songs: Jersey Girl, Way Down in the Hole, Hang Down Your Head.  The haters get tripped up by the fact that the brilliant songs are often lost in a haze of weird klinking klonking.

To use one of my examples-- Hang Down Your Head from Rain Dogs.  I just don't see how you could not like songs like that.  Oh well.

I like the klinking klonking - Real Gone is my favorite Waits record. I think the problem most people have with him is either the voice or his public persona; I remember Tom not liking that this millionaire songwriter was affecting being poor to sell records, which I understand, but it doesn't bother me nearly as much. I mean, they're only songs. Someone's gotta write 'em. And I agree with you - many of his songs are great, but I prefer the noisy ones: "All Stripped Down", "Hoist That Rag", etc.

What I don't like about Tom Waits is his 70s shtick, where he portrayed himself to be the "poet of the barroom," or something like that. That stuff (everything pre-Swordfishtrombones) really makes me cringe, aside from a handful of songs. The best line on Tom Waits during this period belonged to Martin Mull on Fernwood Tonight: as Waits sits down to be interviewed, Mull says, "Take a load off your act." Burn!

So, bottom line: Hobos > Drunks, although we all knew this already.

[dave from knoxville]

David Holmes? really? what did he even do this decade besides the Ocean's 11-13 soundtracks, and maybe 1 or 2 albums that nobody talks about? the only album i have by him is Let's Get Killed, which is from 10 years ago. it's really good but.... wha?

I just report the news, I don't create it

http://wc03.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=A2vjeea144xs7

http://uk.launch.yahoo.com/l_reviews_a/23928.html

http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/soundtracks/soundtrack-oceanseleven.shtml

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,11712,1384474,00.html

http://tinyurl.com/yqtj4u

So yah, sounds pretty good. Of course, I don't listen to the stuff. I don't know David Holmes from John Holmes. I don't know David Holmes from Larry Holmes. I don't know David Holmes from Better Holmes and Gardens. I don't know David Holmes from Stock Holmes.

[dave from knoxville]

Dave, have you ever looked at the site acclaimedmusic.net? Seems like it would be right up your alley.

I do indeed love this site.

[Forrest]

I had no idea the guy who lost a VJ contest to Jesse Camp was so championed by the critics.