Consider This from NPR - Why We Can't Resist 'Best Of' Lists

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

'Tis the season for lists! Best films of the year, best albums, best podcasts. Lists can provoke strong emotions- from spirited debate to outrage - over who or what made the cut or ranked higher. This week, Rolling Stone magazine faced backlash over their list of the 200 greatest singers of all time, which omitted some big names (Celine Dion, Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole to name a few) Lists! We love to hate them. and yet they are almost irresistible. Can they function as more than just clickbait? NPR's Andrew Limbong talks to Aisha Harris and Stephen Thompson, hosts of Pop Culture Happy Hour.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. If we're talking about great singers, there are some names pretty much everyone can agree on. Aretha, Elvis, Whitney, no last names needed here. They were all included in Rolling Stone magazine's online list of the 200 greatest singers released earlier this week. But of the 197 remaining names, one was noticeably absent. Celine Dion did not make the list, and the people were not amused. A crime against humanity goes one over the top reaction. What in the world happened? When you think of Celine Dion and her magical voice and all that she's done around the world,

it's like, wait a minute, you really missed out on this name? There's 200 singers. I cannot believe that out of 200, Celine Dion's not on this. I agree with you there. Protesters even gathered outside of Rolling Stone's New York offices, singing and waving signs demanding justice for Celine. And people were heated over other omissions, inclusions, and rankings, fueling passionate discussions and clicks. This list has, up to this point, almost 200 million page views.

And that's 200 million people who have their own special connection with certain singers. And they are going to have strong opinions. And that's what makes, I think, this great. It's such a vast topic. John Dolan is the reviews editor for Rolling Stone. He spearheaded the creation of the list, wrangling the contributors, engaging in the debates, trying to map out the criteria for how they would even define greatest. It's not just the great voices list. It's the great singers list. It's, you know, it's what did you do with what you were given? And another factor was, you know, originality and not novelty, but originality. And I think, you know, you're just all you're doing when you sing

is opening your mouth and to do that and do something different, you know, to change a genre, to offer some perspective that no one had thought. Riling up the masses, Dolan says, was not the point. It's not there to cause controversy. It's not there to exclude anybody. It's there to be like a celebration. But when it comes to lists, someone or something will always be excluded. And in a ranked list, it is impossible to get everyone to agree on the order. Consider this. We're constantly bombarded with critics' picks for best films of the year, best albums of the year, best podcasts. So many lists, especially during that transition point between years. We love to hate them. We almost always click on them. But can a list be more

than just clickbait? The ultimate purpose of a list like this is to initiate conversations like this one, where we're all talking and arguing about Rolling Stone, right? That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's Saturday, January 7th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. I was kind of shocked to not see Celine Dion there, because it just seems crazy to me when you look at some of the people they did include. I mean, I think it's clear that Celine Dion

is one of the 200 best song singers the world knows. And, you know, it kind of opens up a lot of conversations about what kind of standards were put in place in terms of what the list makers considered. Aisha Harris and Stephen Thompson host NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour and have contributed to, commented on, or even created their fair share of lists. And they have a lot to say about Rolling Stone's new list and lists in general.

One of the nice things about these lists, and we're seeing now more and more as the years go on, is that the people creating these lists are broadening their horizons and including people who would not typically have been considered in years past. And some would argue that that's like woke posturing. I think it's just expanding and making our cultural canons more interesting and more exciting and not feel all stuffy and repetitive. So I like that the Rolling Stone list included a lot of international artists I'd never even heard of. So it made me actually want to go and check them out. And I think that's another benefit

of these lists when they're done well, or at least thoughtfully, is that you're not just arguing about who was left off, but maybe you're turned on to something you wouldn't have been turned on to before. Yeah, like 30 years ago, there would not have been like a K pop star on their list, right? Right, right. Or Celia Cruz, who I think made their top 20. Like, it's very doubtful that she would have made it on there 20 years ago. Yeah. When you guys make lists, right? What are you thinking of? Like editorially? What do you guys like, you know, when you're doing the TMZ sort of style of like, what are we doing this year? Like, what kind of discussions are you guys having?

Well, I think it's important to keep in mind that Pop Culture Happy Hour, at least, doesn't really necessarily go down this particular rabbit hole too often. We're often more kind of approaching these things anecdotally, talking about the stuff that really, really matters to us instead of kind of trying to collect a consensus around ranking the best. Though at NPR, we have. I'm part of NPR Music. NPR Music has been doing this series called Turning the Tables that's kind of tried to re-envision the musical canon through the lens of the contributions of women. And I think that that kind of speaks to a larger movement around putting these lists together, which is kind of trying to reframe the collective received wisdom of what the greatest things of all time are, and then kind of trying to look at what has gotten short shrift and what deserves more attention. And I think that's where these lists,

kind of like Aisha said, these can be hugely valuable if they're giving the readers of that list an opportunity to go down rabbit holes and discover new things that they would love if only they'd encountered them. Right. I mean, I, several years ago when I was at Slate Magazine,

put together the Black Film Canon alongside my colleague at the time, Dan Coyce. And the purpose of that canon, our creation of that quote unquote canon, was to emphasize that Black filmmaking had come a long way and that also it had always existed and it deserved to be celebrated. And so we chose 50 films. We didn't actually rank them, but we collected 50 films. We interviewed and spoke with different filmmakers and critics and had them include their picks. And it was a great way to both like celebrate the obvious choices, like Do the Right Thing, you know, or Boys in the Hood,

but also highlight other films that people might not have heard of, like Dookie Bookie or Losing Ground. So I think what I love about those kinds of lists, I like it when we can create things that hopefully generate conversation and also are just different or feel new or introduce people to new things. You guys both actually brought up ranking, which I know I don't like, and I think like NPR is generally like allergic to, right? A lot of people like to dismiss these things as, you know, you're just using this to get clicks. You're just using this to like start a big argument that you can be at the center of. And I think a ranking really ties into that idea. If your favorite singer is ranked number six

and your least favorite singer is ranked at number four, you will have a big grand statement to make about it instead of just kind of looking over a list of conventional wisdom and saying, okay, this looks more or less like the canon to me. Putting things in a ranking will often create these little sub-arguments within taking in these lists. The other thing is like, ostensibly, we're talking about art, right? And we don't like to, or at least a lot of critics like myself, don't like to put a number to that. Like we already have enough hard enough time trying to wrestle with the fact that art and commerce go hand in hand. Like you just can't discount the fact that capitalism plays a role in art and how we make it and how we consume it. And I think when you're ranking things, that kind of adds another layer of like taking away from the art itself and trying to assign a specific meaning to this art that is hard to codify because it's art. And also it's like, these are things, especially when it comes to music and movies, these are

things that are collaborative experiences. It's not just one person making it. So how do you measure something that may be aesthetically grandiose in some ways versus something that's quieter and try to put those up against each other? It's really hard and it doesn't really make sense. Coming up. The canon needs to expand because as time goes on, more art is created. When we return. This message comes from Indiana University.

Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu slash forward. I think we keep saying this, but if there's any benefit to these lists, it is that hope or that possibility of discovery. Aisha Harris and Stephen Thompson of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour know that the definition of what makes art and artists great can change over time. And I asked them how new art changes and challenges the notion of the canon. Obviously, you know, there are things that you want to keep in rotation if you are studying things in school or if you know, there are things that you want to keep in rotation if you are studying things in school

or if you're if whatever your your medium is or your your expertise is, there's going to be the classics, there's going to be the Shakespeare's, you're going to have the Citizen Kane's like those are the things you must see. But you have to account for the fact that there are going to be other films that have been made after that might be better or might be worth putting alongside. And I think part of the issue that I find when people like to criticize these lists for being, you know, pandering to progressive sensibilities is that just because now Toni Morrison is considered canon, that doesn't mean that Shakespeare is no longer considered

canon. It just means they both live alongside each other. And I think that's great. We should be celebrating that. And we should be happy that all of these things that are being created can be considered alongside each other. Yeah, I think the way these lists evolve tells us a lot about not only history, but how we are reacting to history in real time. And I love to see the canon shift where you're releasing, like Sight and Sound has this poll of the greatest movies of all time. And all of a sudden, a movie most people have never heard of is number one instead of Vertigo or Citizen Kane. Like, that's really interesting to pick apart why. And so as much as it's really easy to kind of dismiss these lists as clickbait or as fodder for arguments, they do have a lot to say, not only about what people should be trying to discover, but about the way we kind of process. I love the fact that there is not this fixed canon. This is the only best movie that's ever been made and nothing can ever be better. Like, no, it's constantly shifting. Yeah, Aisha, I was actually going to ask about the sight and sound list, which is, you know, they pull like critics, right? They pull a bunch of...

Yeah, every 10 years for the last few decades they've been doing this. Yeah. Yeah. And so were there any like notable movers and shakers from this list? Were there now? So Stephen already kind of hinted at it, but the number one film that replaced it was Jean D'Aumont by Chantal Ackerman. According to Paul Schrader, the great filmmaker, he called it a, quote, landmark of distorted woke reappraisal. So, you know, I admire his filmmaking, but he is sometimes the equivalent of man yells at angry cloud. Like it's very annoying. But, you know, I admire his filmmaking, but he is sometimes the equivalent of man yells at angry cloud. Like, it's very annoying. But, you know, also the list included movies that have been made in the last few years, like since the last poll was created.

So you have Moonlight, Get Out and all of these like Portrait of a Lady on Fire. And, you know, obviously some could say this is recency bias, but at the same time, these are films that have been making other best of lifts of the last few years. So that's not that surprising. And I think also, again, this is a list that is made every 10 years. There will be another one most likely in 10 years. And so it'll shift again. And I think that it's really exciting. There were a ton of movies on that list that I have either been dragging my feet on, haven't watched yet, or

hadn't even heard of. And so I'm excited to dig into those and be able to sort of expand my interest. That doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to think that they deserve to be on that list, but at least it's piqued my curiosity. So let's rank the concept of a list. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Yeah, you know, what are we doing? You know, I think I'm like, can I put my thumb in the middle? Like, when done well, when done well and thoughtfully and with a little bit of invention, I'm all for it.

But some of these lists, we don't need them. We don't need to keep reimagining them. I think we can leave them behind. Yeah. So what you're saying is you want a list of the best of lists. Yeah. Actually, I would read that. You know, I mean, there's a word that gets applied a lot when people like Aisha and I talk about our jobs, and that word is curator, right? Like our job is to provide kind of a guide for people who look at this just massive fire hose of content. And people look and there are hundreds of movies are released every year. Thousands of albums are released every year.

Hundreds of TV shows come out every year. And how do, you know, how do people who want to consume that content know what to try, know what, you know, what to pursue, what to give their one wild and precious life over to for however many minutes. And I think that lists like these can provide a real curatorial help for people. And in that way, I probably tip my thumb in the upward direction, even as they can be extraordinarily frustrating. They can be, they're frustratingly reductive. They sometimes perpetuate things

that don't need to be perpetuated. But on balance, I think anything that gives people a guide, anything that points people in useful directions when they're trying to consume art, I think can be a good thing. That was Stephen Thompson and Aisha Harris, hosts of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. NPR. Thank you.