Reinventing the Music Listicle — Part I
Everybody hates listicles. Who’s everybody you say — well, in descending order:
- the people who read them hate them because the thing that should have been on the top (which just happens to be the big song, band, dance, writer, movie, or comic book character that was popular when they were young) is not at the top, and probably one of the things that are at the top should be at the bottom. Basically people who read listicles are incapable of speaking meaningfully about art, because they cannot concede that something they like is not the best, and something they hate might still have worth, but despite this incapacity they can whine and nitpick.
- the people who write them hate them because it is often ridiculous to rank things and to rank in sequential order neglects that many things are of equal worth. Also they hate them because they know they will be hated by the people in group 1. Finally they hate to write them because they are forced to write them because writing them gets hits and allows them to support their crazy lifestyles of buying two cans of cat food to eat on the weekend instead of just one. Selling out for an extra can of cat food on the weekend is the saddest selling out there is.
- the people who don’t read the listicles hate them because they have to hear the people in group 1 whine about how the listicle was wrong, and if they aren’t going to read the listicle that means they probably don’t care. If you get bothered about something you don’t care about your natural response is to hate the thing usurping your time.
- I hate even writing this list here, so let’s quit that.
Doing something new with the Listicle
Because they hate writing them so much, writers of listicles often try to do something new with their listicle du jour, which is generally not successful from the audience standpoint. Here’s a recent listicle that everyone hates:
All 240 Artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ranked From Best to Worst
By a writer named Bill Wyman in no way related to any musician named Bill Wyman (something one is required to say whenever mentioning him but it doesn’t matter, because someone is sure to come along that thinks he plays bass for the Rolling Stones, even though that Bill Wyman left the band in 1993) — I first came across this listicle on Metafilter, in a post that is perhaps the worst of Metafilter (note to self: potential future article, listicle of worst posts on Metafilter!).
The most annoying thing about was probably this comment:
About two-thirds of the text for the Buddy Holly entry is this weird detour into shitting on Jann Wenner, and has nothing at all about Buddy Holly.
It’s annoying because THAT IS OBVIOUSLY THE WHOLE POINT OF THE LISTICLE!!!
Wyman, assigned the unenviable task of writing a listicle ranking the R&R Hall of Fame inductees instead wrote an article about the history of the Hall, it’s induction process, and the people who are not in yet who should be, and the political machinations that allowed people to get in that shouldn’t be.
This is a pretty interesting inversion of the common listicle usage. In many superficial ways it looks like a normal listicle, it has a bunch of things that are ranked in quality with some things that are guaranteed to piss off lots of people — I could go into these things and perhaps I will in another article as there are interesting reasons why he is wrong or in some cases perhaps has a more cogent point than the people whining about their favorites not being ranked high enough. But in many of the listings the text is not about why that person is ranked at that position but rather about the process that put them there or who else should be there instead.
Here is a quote from the entry on Gene Vincent:
I’d like to take a break here and note this. As I look over the list to come, I think here is the point where we’re getting into the realm of acts that, while not entirely being undeserving of being in the hall for whatever reason, are markedly inferior to any number of others that haven’t yet been inducted. Here’s my current list, in rough order, of the acts that should be in the hall but aren’t, all based on those sliding matrices of influence, importance, and quality.
Joy Division/New Order
Afrika Bambaataa
Lonnie Donegan
Eric B & Rakim
Ian Hunter/Mott the Hoople
Barry White
The Carpenters
Outkast
KC & the Sunshine Band
War
Diana Ross
Nas
Warren Zevon
Mary J. Blige
Jonathan Richman
Willie Nelson
George Michael
The Shangri-Las
The New York Dolls
I’m not going to argue about his list of bands that should be inducted, just noting it. Also should note the next paragraph:
For the record, the original posting of this story advocated for induction of Roxy Music, Todd Rundgren, T. Rex, the Go-Go’s, Kraftwerk, and the Doobies, all of whom have since been brought in, Kraftwerk in a side category.
That’s right, this is another way that this article is not like the normal listicle — the first version of it was written in 2018 and evidently it gets updated periodically (if not every time there are new inductees).
This goes against the normal understanding of listicles as disposable bits of sass meant to aargghry up the punters and drive your hit-counter. Of course for a list of Hall of Fame inductees it makes sense to have an updated list with each inductee, so you can put them in the rankings, get readers to come back and read all over again and get even angrier. From a monetization point of view it is quite clever.
The continually updated listicle makes sense in a lot of scenarios, really. Pretty soon we will be seeing a lot of “Best of 2022” lists, Best of 2022 pop and so forth, but these are the opinions of 2022 obviously — not of posterity. It would be interesting to update the list in 10 years, see what 2022 songs have dropped off the list and how the rankings look, and then in 20, 30, 40, and 50 years on (perhaps where artists will be docked morality points based on how much electricity was used in producing the album indicating contribution to global warming and the downfall of human civilization).
Indeed given that we are entering into a moral age probably every listicle produced from now on should be continually updated when new moral failings are found for people who have made the best of pop songs in 2022 are found in 2026 we can update the 2022 list and appropriately punish their moral failings by down ranking them!
The problems of the Listicle persist
Despite the two big innovations Wyman brings to the form here:
- using the listicle to commit actual journalism
- making it an ongoing editable thing
almost everyone who reads it still whines about how the ranking or evaluation or word choice of an entry is wrong.
We will in the next article of this series suggest some other ways to handle such a complicated list, but for right now we would suggest people, including Wyman, read the article:
This article was written by IG Agent 19 with some input from IG Agent 9.
There have been multiple follow-ups to this article so far —
