The book focuses on specific genres including indie rock, hip-hop, electronic, pop, metal, and experimental underground.
TIME commented that the book's record reviews "have been pleasantly stripped of their supercilious phrases" and that "its tributes to popular songs are exquisite" but concluded, "the project comes off like a personal message that High Fidelity's Rob Gordon might obsessively attach to a mix-tape.
"[2] The Washington City Paper called it Pitchfork's "boomer-like shot at print-based respectability, a coffee-table book..."[3] Under the Radar gave the book a 7/10 rating, noting that Pitchfork "has emerged as arguably the preeminent music criticism source of its time while fashioning itself into a multimedia powerhouse".
"[5] And Time Out Chicago called the book "a slow, meandering walk through the arbitrary tastes of the site's editors and authors" and "a wasted opportunity".
Brian Eno features once as a performer, twice as co-writer (David Bowie's "Heroes" and Talking Heads' "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)"), four times as a producer (Talking Heads' "Memories Can't Wait" and "Born Under Punches", U2's "Bad" and Devo's "Mongoloid"), and two entries are cover versions of his songs (Bauhaus' "Third Uncle" and Uilab's "St. Elmo's Fire").