Smile Voted 88th Best Album of the decade - Rolling Stone

[Shady]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31248017/100_best_albums_of_the_decade/44

I demand a recount 

Better than nothing a guess.

[A Million Units In Jan!]

'Industry Insiders', eh?  I hate these kinds of lists.

[Wilsonista]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31248017/100_best_albums_of_the_decade/44

I demand a recount 

Better than nothing a guess.

I'd say that's a good showing considering how divided the guy's own audience is about the album.

[Wirestone]

It is the top-rated album on Metacritic ever. http://www.metacritic.com/music/bests/

It also sold better than anything Brian or the BBs had done in a long time (top 20 US, top 10 Britain). I've seen it in people's homes who don't own another BB-related album.

The fan discussion about this album, while real, shouldn't obscure the fact that Brian and co. hit this one out of the park both critically and commercially.

As for the list -- it's silly. But whatever.

[TdHabib]

It is the top-rated album on Metacritic ever. http://www.metacritic.com/music/bests/

It also sold better than anything Brian or the BBs had done in a long time (top 20 US, top 10 Britain). I've seen it in people's homes who don't own another BB-related album.

The fan discussion about this album, while real, shouldn't obscure the fact that Brian and co. hit this one out of the park both critically and commercially.

As for the list -- it's silly. But whatever.

Can I get an amen?

[Dr. Tim]

Well it's on the list.  That counts for something.

I actually agree with most of the selections,  though anyone see that Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" is on there - an illegal self-released bootleg mashup?  (Though it did get the guy a career and Jay-Z himself was tickled by it).

Anyway, like Clay said.  (Now I'll duck before I'm clobbered with a fake harpsichord)

[Dancing Bear]

The problem with BWPS in those lists, and I swear i'm not saying it just to make a dig at Brian's solo career - it's not clear if it's a brand new work or a celebration of a piece of music originally written in the sixties. It is what it is, but will never have a fair chance.

[runnersdialzero]

Kid A number one? Sorry, but no.

Sad that Silverchair's Diorama and Young Modern aren't anywhere on that list. So, so underappreciated and so unknown outside of their home country aside from people who either think they're lame because of their older, lesser material or who like their older, lesser material and won't give a new ear to an old name.

[hypehat]

I just can't believe i lived through a decade in which 50 Cent is considered a highlight

[Awesoman]

Hey, one of my favorite albums this decade was Robert Lamm's Subtlety & Passion but there wasn't a chance in hell that would ever make the list.  I'm just glad to see that SMiLE made the cut. 

[Ganz Allein]

Hey, one of my favorite albums this decade was Robert Lamm's Subtlety & Passion but there wasn't a chance in hell that would ever make the list.  I'm just glad to see that SMiLE made the cut. 

I totally agree. "Subtlety & Passion" is great - IMHO it's the best Chicago-related release since the '70s.  Another one I think deserves to be on the list is Prefab Sprout's 2009 release, "Let's Change the World With Music," which is sort of Paddy McAloon's "SMiLE."

[rogerlancelot]

Gnarls Barkley should have scored big with "St. Elsewhere". And where is Paul McCartney's "Chaos & Creation In The Backyard" or David Gilmour's "On An Island"? Or Sean Lennon's "Friendly Fire"? Or esotERICa's "One Grain Of Sand"? Oh wait, the last one was my own work..... 

[Awesoman]

Gnarls Barkley should have scored big with "St. Elsewhere". And where is Paul McCartney's "Chaos & Creation In The Backyard" or David Gilmour's "On An Island"? Or Sean Lennon's "Friendly Fire"? Or esotERICa's "One Grain Of Sand"? Oh wait, the last one was my own work..... 

With these "Top 100" lists you have to be realistic.  I dug McCartney and Gilmour's albums but exactly how much of an impact did they have on pop culture during the first decade of the 21st Century?  Sure, both albums were recorded by rock legends but other than being solid in terms of music, neither album had a tremendous impact on the times.  Were Kid A and Is This It really the *best* of music this decade had to offer?  That's open to anyone's opinion, but at least according to Rolling Stone they had the most profound impact and perhaps helped define these last ten years.  Any Sean Lennon album?  Not so much. 

[Mr. Cohen]

Hey, SMiLE is good, but is it a Kanye West album type of good? No way.

[XY]

Album of the Decade isn't an appropriate title for SMiLE IMO anyway, since it's been around for the last 40 year in one form or another. An interactive album that changes all the time, how many SMiLE's are out there? It's a great album, but a child of the 60's.

[Dove Nested Towers]

One wonders what a similar hypothetical list would have looked like had Smile been finished in its original time.

Best albums 1961-70:

#1 Sgt. Pepper, #2 Smile? Or perhaps vice versa! Pet Sounds would have been out of the running in the U.S., but perhaps Rolling Stone (had they been making such lists at the time, when they were first getting started) wouldn't have had such an anti-BB bias, despite their no-show at Monterey Pop. Another frustrating what-if.

[The Heartical Don]

I own 8 albums out of the RS list. All artists are over 35, perhaps 40 (depending on Gillian Welch's name). What does that say about me?

[absinthe_boy]

I own the Radiohead albums, the Dylan records and SMiLE....oh and Fleet Foxes.

Don't own anything else on that list but I admit I am intrigued by a few.

[Roger Ryan]

Between my son and myself (we share a lot of the same tastes in music), I have/heard 32 of the top fifty albums. SMiLE would still be my top choice. I'm ticked that nothing by The National was included (SAD SONGS FOR DIRTY LOVERS and/or ALLIGATOR would definitely be in my top 15) and certainly TWIN CINEMA is the superior album to ELECTRIC VERSION if one is including the New Pornographers. I'm on-the-fence as to whether SMiLE should be disqualified since it is essentially 40-year-old material; most people would have only heard half-of-it if they avoided the boots (and less than that if they ignored the GV box set) so it was still relatively new in 2004. Given that few 60s artists made a dent in the list, I'm glad Brian is represented.

[The Song Of The Grange]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31248017/100_best_albums_of_the_decade/44

I demand a recount 

Better than nothing a guess.

It should at least be top 40.  Take away all its history and myth, the disc BW put out in 2004 is a great listen, an inventive album even by today's standards.  I would say it is at least better than:


8 | Bob Dylan: Modern Times (IMO just a rehash of the few albums before, lots of old man blues, everyone just got excited because he said Alicia Keys' name)
12 | LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver (IMO way over rated.  This guy makes ok music but the critics think it is much better than it really is, no staying power)
15 | Bruce Springsteen: The Rising (IMO a decent record, but he has made better.  Not nearly as cool as BWPS)
18 | MGMT: Oracular Spectacular (these guys just have that one song that has been played to death, no way it could be 18)
22 | Green Day: American Idiot (IMO they really stretched to try to be "profound" and have a big message, but I found it boring as hell, shouldn't be on the list at all, and tell that guy to stop singing in that fake british accent already)
36 | U2: No Line on the Horizon (IMO just came out, no way to tell its impact, I am a big U2 fan and I get board with it, they are just going through the motions)
38 | Ryan Adams: Heartbreaker (IMO this guy's album Gold was pretty good, but this album was way over rated)
39 | Kings of Leon: Aha Shake Heartbreak (the public needs a southern-rock rock band and Leon fits the bill, but I'd rather just listen to lynard skynard or CCR and get a dose of the real stuff)
41 | Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (IMO way over hyped, some decent songs but pretty much the same old punk pop thing with maybe a few smarter lines thrown in there)
42 | Elliott Smith: Figure 8 (IMO not his best record, and he made some really great records)
43 | The Killers: Hot Fuss ((IMO a couple good singles and a bunch of glam rock back wash, if I need this stuff I will go listen to classic Bowie)
44 | System of a Down: Toxicity (give me a f*cking break!)
47 | Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes (IMO they make a decent mood, but that's all it is, no girth in the song writing department, 60-ish sounding muzak for hipster cubical workers)
53 | Kings of Leon: Only By the Night (see comment on other Leon record above, the Blues Travelers, only young and cute)
56 | Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend (IMO an interesting record, but there is something strange about these NYC boys trying to make West African music.  I have the same problem with the Dirty Projectors, who don't claim the influence so much, but are still sounding like the same thing.  In general these new Williamsburg bands never COMMIT to anything other than a mood, and they make a great mood, but the songwriting itself is weak)
59 | Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights (IMO a Joy Division rehash, I hear these guys and I want to go listen to a Joy Division record.  They are an early 80's revival band like a modern Dixieland jazz band is a revival band, just different eras being revived. They are good at what they do, but this album ain't nearly as well realized as BWPS)
60 | Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (IMO an interesting group but they just arrived and haven't proved a thing other than the potential for something great down the line)
63 | Kanye West: 808s and Heartbreak (IMO this is the weakest of West's records so far, it is the one where he became a parody of his former self)
68 | U2: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (IMO another lack luster U2 record, with the standard quota of big arena ready rockers and some power ballads.  Don't get me wrong, achtung baby and joshua tree are two of my all time favorites, but this album ain't one of those)
70 | Sleater-Kinney: The Woods (IMP their first few records were fun and then they just did the same thing record after record, and this one is their most boring)
71 | Bright Eyes: Lifted or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Eart to the Ground (IMP Conor Oberst is a good songwriter, but he thinks he is an even better songwriter than he is, and though I own some of his records and like them, this one ain't his best and not nearly the piece of art that BWPS is)
74 | Red Hot Chili Peppers: Stadium Arcadium (IMO they haven't made a great record since Blood Sugar Sex Magic, they have graduated to their later bland commercial stage in which they work the word "California" into at least one chorus per album)
76 | Sigur Rós: () (IMO their first record was pretty spacey and trippy, but this starts to sound like the sound track to a spooky disney movie, and when I found out the guy wasn't singing in Icelandic, but his own made up non-sense language, it turned me off big time)
79 | The New Pornographers: Electric Version (IMO they are at their best with Nico Case singing, she has an amazing voice, and in general this record is decent, just not as good as BWPS)
80 | Kings of Leon: Youth and Young Manhood (IMO God D*mn it! These guys again.  It takes more than good hair and nice guitars to make the kind of music they are peddling)
82 | Queens of the Stone Age: Rated R (I am burned out on this kind of grunge/metal stuff in general, and these guys have made the same record over and over, with or without a famous sometimes drummer showing up)
83 | The Black Keys: Attack & Release (IMO I don't need to here any more white boys playing 40s, 50s, or 60s era blues rock, I will turn to the masters if I need a dose of it.)

[Shady]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31248017/100_best_albums_of_the_decade/44

I demand a recount  

Better than nothing a guess.

It should at least be top 40.  Take away all its history and myth, the disc BW put out in 2004 is a great listen, an inventive album even by today's standards.  I would say it is at least better than:


8 | Bob Dylan: Modern Times (IMO just a rehash of the few albums before, lots of old man blues, everyone just got excited because he said Alicia Keys' name)

haha, what was with that.

This is Rolling Stone now people, a mag that's a shadow of it's former glory, and to be quite honest I don't care about any best of lists by any magazine or on line site. I'm sick of them.

Hey, at least Brian is getting recognized by the majority of them though. Smile is getting it's due.

[armona]

Pretty funny, Jann Wenner even blew it when he assumed back in late '67 that Smiley Smile was the sum of Brians efforts after Good Vibrations.

[Nicole]

I'm just relieved that I don't see Nickelback or Creed on that list. It's an interesting list, some things I disagree with, but you can't like it all, I guess. Smile definitely should have been higher than 88, though.

[Shady]

I'm just relieved that I don't see Nickelback or Creed on that list. It's an interesting list, some things I disagree with, but you can't like it all, I guess. Smile definitely should have been higher than 88, though.

Oh if they made it, first thing I checked on that list before smile was to see if Nickelback were reconsied haha

[Big Bri]

Green Day's "American Idiot" should have at least been in the Top5 on that list........

No question on just how good that CD really is.