On the Hotel California thread, the NPR 100 came up. It is a list of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th Century, as voted by the listeners and a panel of experts.
So, does this list really cover all the important genres of 20th Century American music? Are some vital pieces of music left off? Is anyone on this board familiar with EVERY piece on the list?
And why was Kung Fu Fighting left off? (That’ll make sure that some of you sing that song all day now.)
Hmmm … while it’s a refreshing change from those lists claiming to be “The best music of all time” but which only contain songs written in the last 5 years, I’m kinda surprised that there are only 3 songs on this NPR list that were written in the last 2 decades. Was “Smells Like Teen Spirit” really the only top-100-important song written in the 1990s?
And more importantly, why isn’t “American Pie” on the list?
I think that rock in general is under-represented on the list. This is probably due to the demographics of the people who voted and the ballot you could choose from. But it’s like they were looking for something, anything, to represent the 80’s and 90’s, so they could go back to picking jazz tunes.
I voted when the ballot came out last year, and it was surprising tough to narrow my choices down to 100. There are some on the list, like Appalachian Spring, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Blowin’ in the Wind, In the Mood, Oklahoma!, Rapsody in Blue, Round Midnight, Take Five, Purple Haze, and the Warners Brothers Cartoon Music that I just couldn’t imagine being left off the list.
There are others that moved on and off my choices depending on my mood, like (Smells Like) Teen Spirit, Stand By Your Man, Oye Como Va, Peggy Sue, and Good Vibrations. I noticed that most of the questionable ones were from the 1960’s on.
I just browsed through the list so I might have missed it, but I thought there should be at least one rap/hiphop song, they certainly had a societal impact. Maybe an early NWA song.
But what I really must object to is that there’s not one John Williams song! I mean this guy wrote the themes from Jaws, Superman, Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Any one of those could be on that list.
I’m glad they got A Chorus Line, on there at least. Where would we be without that? :rolleyes:
Although, as musicals go, glad to see Fiddler on the Roof made it. I always watch that with my dad when I go home. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to use this: ;j
Gotta run, I’m late for my weekly matinee performance of Cats…
I thought it was a pretty good list, a little weighted towards swing/jazz, but that’s not a bad thing.
However, unless I completely missed it, I didn’t see any Ragtime music at all (“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” isn’t Ragtime. It’s almost proto-Broadway music) Where’s Scott Joplin? Thre should have at least been one song/work: maybe “Tremonisha” or “The Entertainer” or the “Maple Leaf Rag” (is the MLR Joplin?). Since Ragtime was a predecessor of Jazz, I think it’s lack is the one major flaw in an otherwise good list.
I also think it could have used another George M. Cohen song or two. Maybe “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.
I’d also quibble and not use “Graceland” by Simon but rather one of his earlier albums. Possibly even one of Simon and Garfunkle’s works. “Graceland”'s goo, but I don’t know that it’s all that important compared to some of his earlier works (excluding all the political crap that when he ignored the “cultural ban” by the U.N.)