David Cantwell writes:

It’s that time of year again when people in my line of work are expected to compile a series of lists, honoring the best and worst whatevers of the preceding twelve months. And this annual necessity reminds me that one aspect of contemporary culture I am well past weary with is…The List.

Let me be precise here. I believe listmaking is a helpful, and sometimes even perhaps the best, way of foregrounding an argument. For example, Dave Marsh’s The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1,001 Greatest Singles Ever Made not only makes my short short list of essential pop music criticism; its list structure has inspired my own work. This is not because I appreciate so many of Marsh’s selections, though I do (He puts Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It through the Grapevine” at number one, a savvy choice), anymore than it is because I disagree with so many of his selections, though I do that as well (I’d go with the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” at number one) Listmaking’s enjoyments include the way lists alternately flatter our individual tastes and provide opprotunities to assert our distinctiveness.

Still, none of this accounts for the primary reasons I recommend to you, specifically, the listing in The Heart of Rock & Soul, nor does it explain why I have grown to loathe our listing culture, generally. THOR&S works, I think, because Marsh uses the list merely as a rhetorical tool to advance arguments about all sorts of bigger issues: about what qualities really are at the heart of rock & soul, for starters, and also about the importance to that heart of singles relative to albums, of reconcilliation revelevant to rebellion, of sound relevant to words, and so on.

(Typing this last sentence, I am struck, and not for the first time, that Marsh’s book might have been the first in what is termed today a poptimist approach to rock history. And, yes, I am well aware that observation directly contradicts Marsh’s reputation among many of those very same poptimists.)

When Bill Friskics-Warren and I wrote our Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s Greatest Singles (It makes a great Christmas gift!), we tried to follow Marsh’s model, laying out our arguments and criteria up front, then elaborating and illustrating those arguments via the book’s 500 cases in point. In our introduction we take Marsh’s motto as our own: “It’s a book, not a list.” We could as well have written, “It’s not a list; it’s an argument.”

Most lists out there these days, from all those list shows on E! or VH1, to Q’s Top Singers Ever or Rolling Stone lists of greatest albums or songs and so on and on, ad infinitum, are not making arguments. Indeed, they dismiss argument all together in favor of…well, I don’t know what. They’re just lists, at best rough drafts for an argument no one is willing to make, at worst an exercise not even in trivia but in randomness and arbitrary subjectivity.

Rolling Stone’s Greatest Singers of All-Time is the lastest example. First thing we notice is that “All-Time” means merely “since 1954 or so.” Aretha Franklin tops the list, and who could argue? I mean, seriously, without a thesis, some criteria, something, who could argue?

*****

Speaking of essential pop music criticism, Carl Wilson resports at Zoilus that his contribution to the 33 1/3 series, Let’s Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (I explain why here) has been selected by Toronto’s Globe & Mail as one of the best books of the year and by London’s Telegraph as a swell Christmas gift for music loving readers. Congratulations!

*****

My colleague here, Charles Hughes, and Living in Stereo’s best friend, Roy Kasten, both inform me they will be returning with contributions here soon. Some year-end lists perhaps?

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