So, I wake up this morning and I start my daily Internet routine as usual. I realize it’s Monday, so Pitchfork will have new information and reviews, etc. I am glad they posted the new WILD FLAG single because I hadn’t heard a high quality version of it yet. I then look over at the reviews and I see that they typically gave Bon Iver’s new album (Bon Iver) a Best New Music stamp. I didn’t think the album deserved it after three listens (and I sort of love Bon Iver) because it’s middle section was very weak, although there are many standout songs (“Calgary,” “Perth,” “Holocene”). I was expecting them to give it an 8.4, 8.5, which is what they usually give BNM’d material. But to my absolute horror, they gave it a 9.5. I just couldn’t believe it. This album received a higher score than anything Joanna Newsom has ever created? And yes, that is seriously always my indignant question when Pitchfork rates something higher than Ys, which received Newsom’s highest score of 9.4 from the publication. I know I shouldn’t care because it’s just a music journalism website, but I care because everyone else in the damn indie universe cares. Soon, as a result of the Pitchfork phenomenon, everyone will start talking about how Bon Iver’s pretty good album is the album of the century, just like Kanye West’s pretty OK My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which I think are absolutely false claims. Sure, Bon Iver’s new album and Kanye West’s last album did not receive such glowing reviews from other music criticism sites, but it’s undeniable that Pitchfork is the most prominent and trusted by indie music fans. I know I am part of this exact phenomenon. As with a lot of people, I go to Pitchfork at least three times a week for news and their reviews and their Pitchfork tv stuff and I know all about them and their habits and usually can remember the numbered reviews they give to albums I like. But I do hate them. I hate their elitism, I really hate their numbered reviews (despite my memory of them), I hate their sexism the most, which I have pointed out all over Blessing All the Birds. But—I loath to admit this—they give me the news I want to read in music because I generally like the music they like (I don’t like jazz or metal, genres which they ignore among many others). They tell me what I want to know. For example, In late 2009, they are the ones that told me Joanna Newsom had a new album coming out. They’re the one that posted her news songs first. I wouldn’t have known all this otherwise because even though I spend a lot of time on the Internet, I only try to go to a few centralized sites that will give me the information I want.

Sure, I know it’s my personal and subjective problem that I find Joanna Newsom’s Ys the best album of the century and it’s my personal and subjective problem that I get miffed when the most important music journalism publication rates any album more highly than it. But I started to research the highest numbered Pitchfork ratings of all time and I was very dismayed with the results. Not a single album made primarily by a female artist has even received a 10.0 rating from Pitchfork. Only two albums have been named album of year which has a significant female creator—Fever to Tell by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for 2003 (if we go by the end of the decade lists), with Karen O as the primary lyricist and songwriter and Silent Shout by the Knife for 2006 with Karin Dreijer Andersson as the primary lyricist and songwriter, both of which are two of my favorite albums of all time. There are a few other albums which have received best-of-the-year nods that have song writing credits for female musicians on some of the songs: Remain in the Light by Talking Heads with Tina Weymouth as a songwriter, although David Byrne has always made it very clear that he was the mastermind behind the Talking Heads corpus and everyone else was just his puppet; Loveless by My Bloody Valentine with Bilinda Butcher; Surfer Rosa by the Pixies with Kim Deal; and Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth with Kim Gordon. Arcade Fire’s Funeral was also named album of the year in 2004. I love Arcade Fire, but I’ve always been a little confused about how their songwriting works. At first, I thought Win Butler wrote the lyrics for the songs he sung and Regine Chassagne wrote the lyrics for the ones she sung and the band wrote the music as a collective. Then, I thought Win and Regine wrote everything at its core, with them still writing the lyrics for individual songs they decided to sing, and with the band fleshing out the core. Now, I think it might truly be a just a collective with Win and Regine merely the lead singers because they formed the band. Someone please tell me what’s up with that. I can’t find any information about this. Sarah Neufield, one of their permanent and touring violinists, is also another female musician who receives writing and personnel credit on Funeral.

I think this is an enormous, sexist problem and it deepens my antipathy for this publication even more. We at Blessing All the Birds have been chided before for focusing on Pitchfork’s obsession with Newsom’s funny faces and appearance. It’s a trivial matter, according to some. I don’t think it’s trivial per se, but now in comparison to abysmal these statistics, it probably is. Only 7/40 top albums of the year from 1970-2010 have had women as songwriters and only 2/40 with women as the primary songwriters and lyricists (and let’s remember that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Knife have men in them, so I am a bit hesitant to even count them; there is this crazy phenomenon in the world where women cannot be respected or trusted as thinkers without the help of men; read this article to hear more about it). It’s almost unbelievable to think that music journalism is this sexist. This, right here, is the gender-binary in music criticism that I cannot shut up about on Blessing All the Birds. According to the most important indie music publication, men are the best at music 33 out of 40 times and women are not. I thought this year a solo female artist—tUnE-yArDs, the ridiculously innovative project of multi-instrumentalist and feminist, Merill Garbus—might actually get the album of the year from Pitchfork for 2011. But no, her album w h o k i l l will probably shunted aside by a man again. This depresses me beyond belief. PJ Harvey probably isn’t even going to get it and we all know she is ridiculously brilliant.

Now, how can I make this rant appertain more to Joanna Newsom? Well, I was wondering if she has received the highest numbered rating ever from Pitchfork as a solo female artist. From what I can tell, she has. But it would be nice if a solo female artist has received higher than a 9.4. That seems a bit low.

N.B. I might improve this research by going through every album they have ever BNM’d and see how many female musicians and bands have made their way into these hollowed halls. For 2011, PJ Harvey, EMA, Julianna Barwick, tUnE-yArDs, Lykke Li, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and Gang Gang Dance are the only bands/artists with primary female songwriters to receive the BNM stamp out of twenty-five bands/artists. That’s still a rather disheartening statistic.