To celebrate its 25th birthday, Spin magazine has decided to score itself some easy newsstand/page view success by counting down the 125 greatest albums since its launch in 1985. We’ll save you the suspense/click-through time: U2′s Achtung Baby is #1. Yeah, we know. And although, at first glance, the rest of the list looks more solid than the magazine’s bogglingly bland top pick, after a more thorough perusal, we were shocked at how many genre-defining records and undisputed classics were left off. After the jump, we suggest 10 albums mysteriously absent from Spin‘s “125 Best Albums of the Past 25 Years.” Add your gripes in the comments.
1. James Franco will not be stopped at a double masters; after he finishes at NYU and Columbia, he’s reportedly heading to Yale to pursue a Ph.D. For a taste of Franco’s English mastery, read his short story from this month’s Esquire magazine. [via The Daily Beast]
2. Serpentine Pavilion’s latest starchitect pick Jean Nouvel gets snippy when asked about that MoMA project and declares that Abu Dhabi “doesn’t even know there is a financial crisis.” [via Bloomberg]
3. A New York dealer is hawking what he claims is the last privately held copy of “Schindler’s List,” a manuscript typed by German industrialist Oskar Schindler, whom you may recall from a little 1993 indie movie of the same name. [via Reuters]
4. At the Movies — the show that made Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert into household names — is being canceled after almost 25 years in national syndication. [via Variety]
5. Back issues of SPIN magazine are now available to read via Google Books. [via Fimoculous]
Bonus link: watch the (mock) trailer for the forthcoming Weird Al biopic.
Revisionist rock criticism is a bona fide trend this year, with Slate’s Jonah Weiner vindicating the likes of Creed and Limp Bizkit, and Vulture defending the legacy of Third Eye Blind. Now that everything bad is good again, critics are getting to work dismantling the houses they built. Enter Spin’s new feature: “16 Rock Myths Debunked.” The magazine takes apart the idea that Nirvana destroyed hair metal, tells us Marilyn Manson is a fairly normal guy and reveals that Ozzy Osbourne never bit the head off a bat. But the #1 rock myth of all time, according to Spin, is this: “Radiohead can do no wrong.”
Strangely, writer Chris Norris’ is the second high-profile attack on Radiohead this month. A few weeks ago, The Fiery Furnaces’ Matt Friedberger rocked the web by making fun of the band’s newish song, “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” Then, to make sure no one misunderstood him, Friedberger issued a press release reaffirming that he doesn’t like Radiohead. What’s weird about all this is that the band hasn’t put out an album in over two years, and it’s not like they’re out picking fights with indie rockers. So, what’s the deal with the current backlash?
