A Theory of Lists

On the Anti- Blog, Beck Hansen interviews Tom Waits. As part of the conversation, they talk about lists. Since the pressure to list comes from all sides and in various forms, I found this interesting:

BH: I get asked to write "Best of" lists occasionally. An emphasis on ranking things. Having a hierarchy and having it be written in granite, written in stone.

TW: It's economic. So you can charge more.

BH: Yeah, it must be. But maybe it's just a need to have some order that's been established, and that everybody has been notified. I don't know.

TW: There's too much of everything.

BH: Maybe it's a millennial thing. It started around the millennium. "What are the best movies? What are the best songs?"

TW: Well, then there's the pressure of feeling that you need to have what has been already rated the best. A lot of people are afraid to explore their own peculiar taste for fear - that it would be uncool. Just like when you're a teenager you don't want to be caught with the wrong sports shirt, the wrong socks.

BH: I think there's a bit of that. Certain things haven't made it to the "List," so then they go into the category of guilty pleasure or something.

TW: My theory is that the innovators are the ones that open the door to things, and then behind them there's a huge crowd and they are trampled by the crowd behind them. And then you have to peel the innovators off the ground like in the movie, The Mask. Like a Colorform.

More on Lists

[Updated 2:20]

I'm not a list person, so I'm not much of a year-end list person. But I'm fascinated by people who are. As I mentioned before, I've enjoyed watching Scott at Pretty Goes with Pretty rummage through a year of listening in a series of lists laced with self-scrutiny.

Geoffrey Himes wrote as clear a defense of year-end lists as I've seen, even if I think there's a straw man or two in his writing.

I love year-end 10-best lists. I love getting tips on albums I had ignored or never heard of. I love watching my colleagues forced out of the comfort zone of easy generalizations such as "This is good" and "That is bad" and compelled to make the finer, more difficult distinctions between the "good," the "really good" and "the really, really good." I love to see how other listeners organize the chaos of a year's worth of music into the architectural order of a list. I love the story - or at least the psychological profile - that emerges.

Me, I like the psychological profile, too, but more in how obsessive listers seem. PGWP has been at it for a couple of weeks now, and though Himes was asked for his Top 10, he listed and organized a full 100. Since I couldn't rank with any certainty albums 7, 8 and 9 in a list I'd make, I'm slightly in awe of his ability to sort out anything from mid-60s on.

... and here's another who knows the difference between No. 87 and No. 88.