Elaboration on a Theme.

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…

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)