Too stupid to use m.i. Alas.

Nice!

This is cool in its own right. But is anyone else sick of being told what you "must" see, do, eat, wear, try, experience, visit, etc...before you die?

In fact, people die all the time without completing someone else's curriculum for their lives.

It's really just the framing I object to. Saying to someone "here are 100 seminal, first-quality films that will give you a great grounding in the film arts" just has a different and less presumptuous tone than saying "here are 100 films you MUST see."

Good list, but no Laurie Anderson? Seems at least Big Science should have been there.

I have more music on my hard drive now than I will listen to in my lifetime, which is nice because I always have something new to listen to.

I agree, Miko. As I've said at other times, I'm hopeless when it comes to most Western popular culture, music particularly. I feel compelled to check out these lists just to get a sense of the iconic sounds I should have heard at some point, rather than stumbling across them on a bar jukebox somewhere and thinking to myself, "Wow, that's a great melody! I should see what else this Joplin woman did."

But still, for people like me, who grew up elsewhere and now don't have the time to invest in researching 20 years of missing knowledge, there's some value in lists like these, so long as we know that we're not bound by the compiler's idea of what is vital.

i think it's like when people say "Best" or "We" to mean their own opinion, it's to make their own opinion seem more grand or qualified because "I" or "my" is not enough, but since, in this case, it's a group effort involving the likes of pop magazine and MTV writers, i say it's a combination of a certain mindset, geeky preachiness and earnestness, but laziness.

And there's definite room for substitutions, i say. It's interesting to see what some people think but i'mperfectly happy to die by a different set of rules.

Yeah, to be clear, i mean i think they actually asked specific music geeks "What albums must you hear before you die?"

As usual, the list is a sorry sack of shit. One small example: do you really need to hear Slipknot before you die? Follow your instincts, kids.

Anything could be justifed or rationalized. i'd like to see some of the reasoning involved in some of the choices. Does a couple good songs justify a whole album? being made, but being listened to?

i'd like to see some of the reasoning involved in some of the choices.

Yes yes yes. It's one thing to make up a BS list like this; it's another thing entirely to justify it. This should be mandatory.

Wait, i thought there were qualifiers. i don't think it's a sorry sack of shit, i just see some obvious bias and personal limitations. i was just hoping there were write ups of the logic involved.

Not only was I too stupid to use [more inside], but the post was also unclear. There's a book out there that you can buy, by that title.

From wiki:

The book is arranged chronologically, starting with Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours and concluding with Get Behind Me Satan by The White Stripes. Each entry in the list is accompanied by a short essay written by a noted music critic. The entries are accompanied by pictures, quotes, and additional information (such as the album's running time and producer).

I don't know how it's presented, but a title that stark strikes me as tongue in cheek. Of course there's a ton of omissions and inclusions that anyone could complain about ("Brutal Youth" is there but "King of America" isn't? WTF?). But I don't really care; I just listened to some Little Richard and Ryan Adams that I hadn't gotten around to hearing.