Actually, we realized that Rolling Stone was full of shit about a decade and a half ago when they proclaimed — and we’re paraphrasing — that Kurt Cobain was Jesus. Really, let’s be honest. The guy wrote good pop songs. Is he a Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Buddy Guy or Sam & Dave or Led Zeppelin or The Pixies or Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin or The Supremes? No.
Anyway, our years-old epiphany was proved right this week when we opened the “Best of the decade” issue. How? you ask. On the album front, Wilco’s unlistenable Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is #3 while the sublime Sky Blue Sky is #97, Arcade Fire places #6 (really? fucking Arcade Fire?), and that supreme piece of shit Kanye West rounds out the top 10 (although he’s been right about one thing in his career: George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people).
And Bruce Springsteen’s Magic is #24 but Working on a Dream isn’t on the list? (At least Springsteen’s epic “Outlaw Pete” made third best song of the decade.) Radiohead’s Kid A is Rolling Stone’s #1 for the decade and though it’s a delightful head-scratcher that demands (and rewards for) repeat listings, is it the best album of the decade? And just how did fucking Kings of Leon and that hack Fiona Apple end up on the list at all but Pearl Jam didn’t?
The problem may not be Rolling Stone. The problem may be popular music, and by extension, us. RS has always covered the mainstream. Of course, when Rolling Stone published its first issue in 1967, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Animals, The Who and The Supremes were the mainstream. And who’s mainstream now? White trash baby-shitting Britney Spears? Lady Gaga? The Jonas Brothers? Rihanna? Oh, fuck you, Fat America.
We won’t get into a rant that rock & roll and all its subgenres have been infantilized to a homogeneous bullshit because someone else — lots of someone elses — has done that. Just go back to sitting in your Barcalounger, using Sarah Palin’s nightmare conservatism as a playbook while watching “The Biggest Loser” as you pack on the pounds by eating processed food, drinking a ton of shitty beer and wondering why the middle class is shrinking while you’re buying made-in-a-Chinese-sweatshop toys for your fat, stupid, hateful children.
Like the category says: You’re the problem.
