jon pareles' top ten albums are at the literally dead center of the critical consensus. the list is composed without any imagination whatever; it is merely an attempt to enforce the common wisdom. it is the expression of a person that cannot distinguish at all between what he hears and what people he thinks he should respect say. this is one reason i gave up on rock criticism in the eighties. i was one of the reviewers for a mag put out by rolling stone called "record." one month, if i'm recalling the timeline aright, they assigned me "purple rain," which like most other critics i loved. the next, they gave me springsteen's "born in the usa." i hated bruce, in part precisely because he had been annointed for years as the only rock star by people like the rolling stone combine, who viewed their function as creation and enforcement of consensus. i wrote something quite negative. the editors reacted not with disagreement but with the attitude that what i was saying was demonstrably false. why? because the top three guys - christgau and whomever - disagreed. we drifted apart. when i was in england writing for melody maker the attitude was precisely the opposite. the editor wrote a review slamming the pretenders after "learning to crawl." the next night i covered their show at the hammersmith odeon, and raved, and also raved about the album. he loved it.