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Pitchfork People’s List Confirms That Everyone Really Likes Radiohead

Thom Yorke of British band Radiohead performs as a special surprise performer on The Park stage at the Glastonbury festival near Pilton, Somerset on June 25, 2010. Celebrating it's 40th anniversary this year, the festival showcases some of the world's best artists from all areas of music and performance. This year's headline acts on the main stage include Muse, Gorillaz and Stevie Wonder. U2 were set to also perform until lead singer Bono had to pull out due to needing emergency spinal surgery. AFP PHOTO/Leon Neal (Photo credit should read LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images)
Photo: LEON NEAL/2010 AFP

Last month, Pitchfork assigned its readers the emotionally harrowing task of list-making — in this case, a personal Best Album list for the years 1996–2011. The 28,000 or so ballots (of up to 100 albums) were fed into a magical counting machine, and the result is Pitchfork’s People’s List, a handy guide to what people who read about indie music actually listen to when they’re done reading about new indie music. Your most important album, as chosen by the people, is … Radiohead’s OK Computer. Your No. 2 album, as chosen by the people, is … also by Radiohead (Kid A). In fact, Thom Yorke and friends have five total albums in the Top 200 — tied only by Kanye, whose My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy snuck in at No. 9 (after the requisite Wilco and whatnot). The whole list is here; you can sort by year or city (including, hilariously, a New York–Brooklyn breakdown.  Though Brooklyn did contribute more albums than any other city on the list, so don’t argue with the people.  Or argue a lot; that’s what lists are made for.).

Pitchfork People’s List: Radiohead Still Popular