spreadsheeting music fandom is the entire point
On growing up a collector and the deep psychological itch that’s scratched by creating, sorting, ranking, and envisioning a canon of your own.
By 1997, I’d amassed enough action figures to fill a deep Rubbermaid tub that sat in my parents’ East Pea Ridge basement. With my dad’s unused electric typewriter and a stack of blank notecards, I’d get to “work.” I typed on one: “Captain America.” Finished, I’d put it aside and load up another. “Human Torch.” The font size was tiny; I only wrote one proper noun. I grew up in a house with comic books and got the bug to collect little dudes pretty young. With zero logic backing my decision, I felt a deep compulsion to catalog them.
Those notecards didn’t help me find these guys more easily, and I don’t think I needed them to remember which ones I had. It was way more simple than that—collecting, organizing, grouping, sorting, and classifying were wildly soothing to me. I’m seeing this same impulse in my 3-year-old. While I had super heroes and other kids had monster trucks, he’s gradually amassed a substantial number of toy animals. “It’s a scarlet ibis,” he’ll say, holding the correct bird. Sometimes he’ll sing a song, plugging in “Tasmanian devil” or “octopus” or “caterpillar” or “pelican” with each verse. There’s research about how kids learn this way. By fostering deep engagement with the subject they’re interested in, kids develop things like early math skills and cognitive flexibility.
Developmentally, it’s a straight line from the tub of superpowered plastic dudes (now stashed in my attic) to the completely untenable stacks of records in my office. After over two decades of bringing these things into my space, I’ve tried to keep the habit under control by implementing two rough silos: “is it a crucial living room record for full family enjoyment” or “is it a punk record that I can’t live without.” You’re reading see/saw, which means you almost definitely already know that the latter category is dangerous—especially when I start consulting a spreadsheet titled “best music 2025” on my phone at Extreme Noise.
I’m convinced my early childhood collector brain engineered me for music criticism. My first music blog was an attempt to catalog and rank my record collection. I once organized all my LPs in chronological order, genre be damned, to bring together previously spread out records in the spirit of 1974 (or whenever). I have always adored lists and canons despite whether or not I agree with them, which is probably why my late ’00s garage rock blog Five Tunes asked bands for favorite song playlists. see/saw jukebox is a punk records canon.
When I was finally in the position to start making ballots for Pitchfork year-end lists, I savored the experience of shuffling records on a Google Doc or spreadsheet. I fully understand people who don’t think there’s value in ranking art, but honestly the competitive “this is better than that” aspect of list-making is secondary to the feeling of making a list. The gradual process of organizing the year’s “best music” spreadsheet is energizing and, perhaps embarrassingly, wildly fun. Seeing how new information (a new good record) can coexist with what’s already there is relaxing. Dragging and dropping a record around a spreadsheet sounds pretty bloodless when you talk about it out loud, but there’s something legitimately peaceful and comforting about seeing how this canon of my very own takes shape as the year progresses. It’s probably the same reason people like puzzles or gardening or fantasy football.
The new class of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was announced this week, which is the annual music news story that lights up that part of my brain like a goddamn pinball machine. It’s an absolutely ridiculous institution, the ultimate “art as capitalism” experience that’s easy as hell to dunk on. Everyone who talks shit about the Rock Hall seems to find a big caveat every few years: “They finally got it right now that _____ is in.” It’s a canon, an absolute collector brain’s feast not only because of who gets in, but because of all the countless possibilities of who could or should get in.
When I was running news at Pitchfork, I’d do my best to grab the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees press release embargo and work up the news story myself. Here’s a paragraph from the one I wrote in February 2021 when JAY-Z, Foo Fighters, Kate Bush, and Rage Against the Machine were nominated on the long list (prior to full induction):
Artists who became Rock Hall eligible for the first time this year but weren’t nominated include D’Angelo, Garbage, Deftones, Backstreet Boys, and Robyn. Previous nominees who haven’t been inducted and didn’t make the long list this year include Soundgarden, the Replacements, Bad Brains, Motörhead, Dave Matthews Band, Thin Lizzy, Pat Benatar, Eric B. & Rakim, MC5, Kraftwerk, Jane’s Addiction, John Prine, Eurythmics, Judas Priest, the Smiths, and Gram Parsons.
Like holy shit, did you read that spreadsheet-ass paragraph? It genuinely does not matter to me that some of these artists have been iced out from the Cleveland pyramid. All those artists are part of plenty of other canons, but organizing those names for a bitchy little “huh I guess you don’t think Thin Lizzy are good enough” spice instead of just regurgitating a press release lionizing Dave Grohl? Creating a canon of “the Rock Hall’s misses this year”? It’s just like slotting the Suburban Pagans demo and byproxy tape between the Institute 7” and Mujeres Podridas LP on the “best punk 2026” spreadsheet—a big hearty snack.
When my kid sings the names of animals for 40 straight minutes or places them in an elaborate scene on the coffee table, I’m witnessing how deeply he’s taking in his current favorite subject. I absolutely relate to it. see/saw is a sprawling exercise in organizing and cataloguing my favorite music whether that’s via the columns or the podcast or the radio show or the live shows or the annual “top records” broadsheet. I’ve got multiple spreadsheets bubbling at any given moment, a digital Rubbermaid tub filled with my favorites. Apparently, this is who I am.
So of course, when I saw that list of 2026 Rock Hall proper nouns, I started to feel it again: “OK, but who’s missing?” My collector brain is low key such a bitch. Congratulations to Iron Maiden and Ed Sullivan.
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