DIS Artist of the Decade THE SEMI FINALS

Here’s where the big guns start to meet each other.

Semi Final One

  • Kendrick Lamar

  • Sufjan Stevens

0 voters

Semi Final Two

  • Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

  • Frank Ocean

0 voters

The second semi is a hard one for me. I’ve loved Nick Cave for 30 years and his albums this decade, especially the last two, have meant masses to me. As I’ve said elsewhere, I think his career as a whole now justifies talking about him alongside the real greats.

I just think that whilst ‘making great music’ is obviously a crucial part of being ‘artist of the decade’ it’s not enough in itself. It must also involve having a direct influence on the music of the decade and being emblematic of the mood and the sound of the period. In this second sense Nick Cave is clearly not the ‘artist of the decade’.

Frank Ocean’s made great music too (the only frustration is that he’s not made enough of it) and is utterly of the time, both in his elusive persona and the originality of his sound which pulls in elements of all of the truly popular music of the decade and reflects them back in a fabulous distorting mirror. Blonde is a record that could only have been made in this decade and is a complex, difficult, glorious, landmark of modern music

His music is enormously influential - you can hear elements of it everywhere from relatively mainstream artists like Billy Eilish to people like Solange, FKA Twigs, even the most recent Jenny Hval album.

The second semi is a hard one for me.

Save it for Thursday :wink:

5 Likes

Toughies. Good top 4.

On career it’d be sufjan and nick cave
On the decade it’s Frank and Kendrick imo

3 Likes

That’s pretty much my view

Totally.

I’m not a fan of Ghosteen but I love Nick’s previous stuff. But to produce the kind of music he has produced in the last 10 years with the bad seeds as grinderman and the soundtrack work with all the things in his personal life is nothing short of incredible. For me he is the undisputed artist of the decade. He’s an inspiration and a gentleman.

4 Likes

Nick Cave and the boring seeds more like

1 Like

Poll will close in the morning. A shock looking unlikely at this stage, to be fair.

1 Like

The final (and the third/fourth play off - the game no-one wants to play) up now.

No shocks so far. I thought Cave/Ocean would be closer.