Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

If so, well, mods, you know what to do.

e-mail me when we start talking about the animal collective.

Email me when we've won the war on terror.

more like pazz and get a job

"the" animal collective

"pazz and nod off"

man, i need to change my screen name, like, last week - i'm sick of this thing

Pazz is the teacher, Job is the preacher.

i don't think they're doing pazz and jop this year. budget cuts.

maybe they'll just do pazz.

would prefer jop tbh

I don't want to be one of those ppl who are like "every songs a single in the digital age, maaaaan" but i'm having the hardest time trying to find 10 honest-to-god singles i really loved this year

And like every year, I didn't bother voting for singles.

Here's the Top Ten I submitted, btw.

http://i36.tinypic.com/wbvxv5.gif

there were so many good singles this year! more than in '08 anyway.

Various Artists, Sí, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba, Vol. 2

Interesting to see this on yr ballot. It's been out for a few months, at least. Aside from a Dusted Magazine review I spotted this week, I hadn't heard anything about the disc (by contrast, Vol. I seemed to get lots of attention). I'm going to give it a listen now, so thx.

Top Ten Metal Albums of 2009 to Village Voice Media (which will show up on the Voice's blog, as well as the blogs of numerous other VVM papers across the U.S.A.)

First I've heard of this. Are they doing other genre-specific polls as well? (The jazz one goes back a few years, I realize.)

Btw, re P&J, I asked this on another thread yesterday but nobody noticed: Are people who voted eventually getting an automatic confirmation email back? (I didn't, at least not yet.) Weird that you don't even get to a page where you can doublecheck your votes after you press submit, before you absolutely confirm your ballot (which was always the way the site worked in the past, at least a few years ago.)

First I've heard of this. Are they doing other genre-specific polls as well?

I don't know. Last year, one of their editorial high-ups emailed me asking if I'd want to do a metal Top Ten for which I'd be paid a flat fee, and which would run throughout the chain, on the various papers' blogs. I said sure. It got a pretty decent response - varying numbers of comments depending on the paper. This year, I emailed him and asked if he wanted another one, and he said yeah.

I heard so many good singles in the last four weeks that my ballot runneth over.

pazz & job = why do good things happen to bad records?

Oh hey look:
http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/

Go nuts.

Hahah simultaneous posts ahoy.

well lookee here

1 Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion
Domino Points: 1794
Mentions: 154
2 Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Glassnote Points: 1463
Mentions: 139
3 Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
Anti Points: 1201
Mentions: 106
4 Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz!
DGC/Interscope Points: 1199
Mentions: 114
5 Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca
Domino Points: 1169
Mentions: 108
6 Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
Warp Points: 1073
Mentions: 106
7 The xx, xx
Young Turks Points: 977
Mentions: 93
8 Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Part II
Ice H2O/EMI Points: 857
Mentions: 85
9 The Flaming Lips, Embryonic
Warner Points: 681
Mentions: 65
10 Girls, Album
True Panther Points: 652
Mentions: 63
11 Mos Def, The Ecstatic
Downtown Points: 613
Mentions: 59
12 St. Vincent, Actor
4AD Points: 573
Mentions: 62
13 Fever Ray, Fever Ray
Rabid Points: 551
Mentions: 53
14 Maxwell, BLACKsummers'night
Columbia Points: 525
Mentions: 49
15 The Avett Brothers, I and Love and You
American/Columbia Points: 497
Mentions: 42

(this will surely look a mess when I submit the post... but damn, what a lazy top 15)

Lots of overlap between the albums/singles top 10: six songs in the singles top 10 (Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dirty Projectors, and Phoenix [x 2]) come from albums in the albums top 10. That's gotta be a record, no?

i feel robbed of the fact that no one associated w/ ilx got the inevitable dream essay

The The-Dream essay mentions that he got the highest point-average. The lowest (among albums with 10+ votes) was the Decemberists.

More stats:

http://furia.com/all-idols/2009

Even more, and the whole data-set in the system used for tabulating it this year:

http://www.needlebase.com/pj2009

Hoison/jaymc, you left out Girls, which makes 7. Ties a record; I wrote about it in there somewhere.

Crazy Cousinz, This Is UK Funky House, Vol. 1
Warner Points: 5
Mentions: 1

:(

Already read Chuck Eddy's essay complaining about too much indie rock in the top 40. Thought I'd show y'all where my all-Latin ballot turned up in the total.

Bebe - #1384 (I was the only vote)
Graciela Beltran - #1207 (me on my own again)
Bomba Estereo - #501 (one other person voted for them)
Don Omar - #1387 (alone again, naturally)
Girl In A Coma - #645 (one person with me on this one)
Natalia Lafourcade - #180 (THREE other voters!)
Paulina Rubio - #1093 (just me)
V/A - Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats Of Revolutionary Cuba Vol. 2 - #654 (two votes)
Los Tigres del Norte - #599 (two votes)
Wisin y Yandel - #616 (two votes)

I think these are the worst P&J results I've ever seen.

i think that was the worst phil freeman post i've ever seen

For some reason I'm shocked to see that many "more eccentric" voters than Scott Seward.

The fact that Ryan Schrieber is the 5th-most centric voter says everything you need to know.

rev otm

anyone have any comments?

i like xhucx's essay about how boring and predictable the results are

lol @ 2009 header being up & having a link up to the 07 poll (?)

My comments weren't printed; you can read them here.

I had a comment printed (on lol Animal Collective)

also: on lol Adam Lambert.

Hoison/jaymc, you left out Girls, which makes 7. Ties a record; I wrote about it in there somewhere.

Ah you're right.

I actually just spent the last 30 minutes trying to figure this out! Should've just read your essay first, xhuxk.

But since I've got the stats on hand, these are the years in which there was a lot of overlap between the singles and albums lists:

2009, 1987 (7 songs in the top 10 singles were by artists in the top 10 albums)
1984 (6)
2000, 1994, 1991 (5)
2004, 1993, 1988, 1985, 1983, 1980 (4)

favorite ballot: http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/684580

good comments unperson.

it's funny i was thinking of a list of all-decade albums if i was actually a rock critic or something and a surprising number of them were local minneapolis bands that pressed in quantities of <1000, like just people i know and stuff but make great music IMO...and part of it was just tied to having had the bands be more a part of my life like seeing them on a regular basis

miles marshall lewis needs a 77 invite

I liked metal thread denizen J3ff T's comments on the futility of it all.

though i am glad ol' man raekwon got on the top 10

It's almost reassuring that this is the worst consensus of my lifetime.

idk i'm too young to really have a deep emotional connection with michael but that ballot is a bit OKAY WE GET IT *APPLAUSE* for my taste -- it's like a ballot that justin timberlake would've sent in

2009 was the year of Gucci's World—we were just living in it.
2009 was the year of Gucci's World—we were just living in it.
2009 was the year of Gucci's World—we were just living in it.
2009 was the year of Gucci's World—we were just living in it.
2009 was the year of Gucci's World—we were just living in it.
2009 was the year of Gucci's World—we were just living in it.
2009 was the year of Gucci's World—we were just living in it.

Anyway, I've got theories. First off: Lazy indie voters turning a fun exercise into a dutiful one by listing random "singles" off albums they also voted for are the new version of lazy AOR voters who used to vote for perfunctory tracks off albums they also voted for.

I don't think it's as random as you think, xhuxk. I think these days, it's much more obvious what the "singles" are from indie-rock albums, because they're the promotional mp3s that labels release in advance of the album, they're the songs that Pitchfork posts on its Forkcast, they're the videos that make it onto countless blogs, etc. All of this online chatter codifies certain songs as the ones to pay attention to, and I bet there are even people who voted for Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" without even having heard the album, just because that's the one that you could download for free on the band's website, or that's the one that was recommended by NPR's All Songs Considered blog, or whatever.

For the record, Miles Marshall Lewis' original ballot had three entries, all of them Thriller, but I caught it.

MML's Sly and the Family Stone 33 1/3 is a fun read.

Hi Maura!

Hoison/jaymc, you probably have a point. But it doesn't really explain the overlap between the album and singles top tens. It would be less pathetic if there were different indie bands on each list -- which is what's always tended to happen in the past, historically, in this poll, with indie rock and every other kind of music.

(waving)

My "centrality" was .008 (#679 of 692).

MML's Sly and the Family Stone 33 1/3 is a fun read.

― forksclovetoFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU- (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 6:51 PM Bookmark

^^ love that dude

good article, xhuxk

It's almost reassuring that this is the worst consensus of my lifetime.

reassuring to me that it's my least-centric ballot ever. i only had two things in the top 100 (jay reatard #79, nellie mckay #94). and my #1 vote for nels cline secured him a 200th-place finish, yay.

seems to me the boring consensus problem is the result of most balloteers just not having heard enough albums. it'd be interesting to see sum comparative stats on the distribution of mentions across the list. seems the number of albums released and those actually listened to by critics are going in opposite directions.

It's almost reassuring that this is the worst consensus of my lifetime.

reassuring to me that it's my least-centric ballot ever.

My albums (final position): Koze (245), Art Brut (75), Quik & Kurupt (62), Tanya Morgan (185), Hyperdub 5 (143), Fiery Furnaces (99), A-Trak (one vote), BMSR (132), Bloody Mary (one vote), Syran Mbenza (818).

(I do wish they'd collate the ties a little more clearly, but BELIEVE ME I KNOW what a pain in the ass that is.)

Albums — Votes For How to Be a Lady, Volume 1
Marcello Carlin
Tom Ewing
Steve Kiviat
Frank Kogan
Alex Macpherson
David Moore
Jordan Sargent
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Al Shipley

sup ilx

the results are absolutely atrocious but tbh i'm pretty excited to read the essays. more than a few could be interesting

The Dreamer essay doesn't really get to his appeal at all. If I wasn't already a fan, I wouldn't find it convincing.

really liked xhuxk's essay, but this singles list is seriously abysmal.

soderberg voting for bp3 is depressing too

and wavves, wow, wtf from one of my fav critics

This might be a dumb question, but how much of Pazz and Jop does the Village Voice include in the print version? Do they print all of the ballots they received, just the names of those who contributed to the poll, neither, something else entirely?

They have a print edition? (Haven't been to NYC in a couple years.)

usually they print the results, comments, essays and a list of the voters (not their ballots -- that's an online-only feature).

Cool. Would someone mind grabbing a copy and sending one to me in the mail? If it's no trouble, of course. It's kind of silly, but it's a real kick to have my name printed in the Village Voice.

THE FACT I WAS THE ONLY ONE TO VOTE FOR "GUTTER MUSIC" (Starkey featuring Durrty Goodz) IS SHAME, SHAME, SHAME ON THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Do they not automatically send you a copy of the print edition anymore? I guess they probably don't in this economy.

idk how "empire state of mind" became the year's critically coalesced huge pop single & not "blame it"

anyone who thinks the former is better is obv retarded but i'd guess it has something to do w/ the stars, jay & alicia are way safer rockcrit picks

it's almost as if people were looking for another signature song about fuckin' new york

I don't for a second understand why non-NYers can begin to give a shit about that song.

dude, that song is a fucking tourist trap. my mind is blown that any New Yorker thinks of it as anything but corny garbage

Voting "Empire State Of Mind" is like getting your picture sketched in Times Square

Yeah, as I said elsewhere, it's a chart-topping pop song featuring two well-regarded personalities that became a minor cultural phenomenon and that most everybody seems to like, or at least not mind too much.

whiney otm

smh @ this http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/1519966

a vote for 'empire state of mind' is a vote for a-rod. THINK ABOUT THAT.

xpost

looks like schnipper slept on music in 2009

Do they not automatically send you a copy of the print edition anymore? I guess they probably don't in this economy.

― Hoisin Murphy (jaymc), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 11:40 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think u can just request it tho

smh @ this http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/1519966

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, January 19, 2010 11:47 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

coincidentally his videotaped interview with project pat is one of my least favorite things of the year

yeah i'm sure there's plenty of writers w/ better taste who'd like to actually vote in this thing, thanks for playing matthew schippner & that goof who voted for thriller or whatever

xp lol maura

Shit, I might've voted for "Empire State of Mind," if I'd voted this year. Jay-Z is kind of terrible on it (he sounds out of breath most of the time), but that hook is pretty damn unstoppable. Plus, I've got a soft spot for hip-hop that samples old soul songs, and there's not enough of it on the radio these days.

ethan p posted 'for fucks sake' im assuming re: the election results -- i thought about making a joke abt it being pazz & jop related but just settled on kent brockman's 'democracy simply doesn't work' which could also apply here

(on facebook)

hey i found some more of schnipper's ballots

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/lizardpeopleb.jpg

11 of the top 13 LPs and five of the top six singles are shared between this and the Pitchfork list. fwiw.

dude, that song is a fucking tourist trap. my mind is blown that any New Yorker thinks of it as anything but corny garbage

Voting "Empire State Of Mind" is like getting your picture sketched in Times Square

― forksclovetoFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU- (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 9:46 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ok, I can buy this. My disinterest (beyond being annoyed at mediocrity from an artist I've liked a lot in the past) probably boils down to the fact that I've never been to or particularly cared about going to New York.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/686073

Hahahahahahahahhahaahha.

amazing

I noticed DJ/Rupture voting for himself, too.

Ten favorite albums? What's an album?

Steve Ciabattoni
Brooklyn, NY

in which year was this comment cryogenically frozen

I still maintain that people wouldn't care about OB4CL2 any more than The Lex Diamond Story if it weren't for the title.

i can't wait for Purple Haze 2 to be the only rap album in the top 10 of Pazz and Jop 2018

Well, Rodney, I certainly agree that the Dre beats are BRICKS. They're terrible. I've actually had people try and defend them to me.

Does the 2003 long list still exist somewhere so I can see how many votes Raekwon's last (relatively equal in quality) album garnered?

this is better than lex diamond story

hes been on fire for awhile though, anyone who copped mixtapes he was dropping in like '06 knew he had this in him. i believe i even *pats self on back* wrote about it in '06

Rev, your super-challopy argument about raekwon is fucking stupid and it would have done just as well if he called it "CRANK DAT RAEKWON" because it's a dope album and lex diamond was crap

xpost

Reverend: http://web.archive.org/web/20040221181050/http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/03/

If it's anywhere, it'd probably be there?

whiney is that a note of triumph in your voice from the critical cabal around gucci mane u predicted

Those who know me have heard the story a dozen times apiece. When the Strokes still played clubs right after Is This It? came out, I stood in the front row at the Casbah and got biffed in the bean by Julian Casablancas's microphone stand, producing an impressive golf-ball-size knot. Between the head injury and the revelation of hearing "Barely Legal" for the first time, I fell in love on the spot with what became one of my five favorite bands of the decade. Phrazes for the Young is the first time since Room on Fire that I felt a tingle in that phantom spot on my forehead.

Jennifer C. Cooke
Chula Vista, CA

someone needed to inform this woman that the head is not the #1 body part associated with the word "bean"

I personally would've loved if he titled it CRANK DAT RAEKWON.
.
The kids would've loved it.

deej: good point about him having been killing it for a while prior, but I don't think it really translated to the album

gucci would have been higher if dude didn't split his vote between 17 mixtapes

with no critical on which was the best

My disinterest (beyond being annoyed at mediocrity from an artist I've liked a lot in the past) probably boils down to the fact that I've never been to or particularly cared about going to New York.

The NYC boosterism has nothing to do with why I like it.

oh come on. do i have to go in & count how many people voted for him?

as far as i can tell, two of his mixtapes got votes, and his one album. also, one random dude voted for a mixtape from 2008. i doubt there were even 12 ppl voting for gucci long players

xxxp to whiney

What works for me is that "Empire State of Mind" could conceivably be about ANY mega metropolis, EVEN with the very NY-specific references and such. Plus, the emotions it conjures aren't exclusive to NY. Any city you love makes you feel like that.

its a good song bcuz of alicia but it never really resonated w/ me in a big way. i think its an odd #1

Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks" **
Warp

if this song isnt about total recall then fuck indie rock imo

http://www.haaretz.com/hasite/images/iht_daily/D070902/ny_running110902_ap.jpg

Background: this thread
Foreground: every poster besides deej and whiney

someone needed to inform this woman that the head is not the #1 body part associated with the word "bean"

I guess someone needs to inform me, too. And Merriam Webster's should fix that fifth definition.

xps: gawwwd, the idea of "LEEETTTSHEARITFORSEAAAATTTTLLLEE" makes me even more nauseous

lol jordan

Background: this thread
Foreground: every poster besides deej and whiney

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:28 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he wasnt taking the bait in the gucci thread \o_O/

i mean, you were being monster stupid on the swag thread coming up with some weird inverse critic venn diagram sitch where for every writer that cosigns drake a gucci loses his wings. And then some dude called me psycho on the hugitout thread. I'm just pretty much gonna let this one lie

nah i just needed to i-told-you-so after yr shit about all the hipster critics who were overrating gucci cuz it really was you being a vayjayjay about admitting you just didnt agree with those of us on ilx who talk about him

the essay about the-dream is really self-defeating in the way that it glosses over electrik red in one sentence by saying that it provides "cheap thrills" but finds ample space to chide people for not being totally up on the-dream

the same year that he got a feature 4-star review in rolling stone magazine

can someone find the 08 results? i want to see how many ppl voted for his first album

wanna say it placed in the 50s

really? i wanna say it placed in the triple digits. i think there were at most ten votes for it or something but i could be imagining that

or #91, rather

ayo glenn can you do something like you did here?: Pazz & Jop 2008

thnx 2 noz for finding one of the funnier ballots to vote for 'trap goin ham'
http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/685700

*smh*

lol @ one of the comments being on the douchiness of "actually". get this dude on 77

uh deej that allison stewart vote is kinda awesome in way that I simply cannot put into words.

wait is that
http://blacksnob.com/storage/msnbc_alisonstewart-big.jpg

I hope so, she has hotness and we could have a totally awesome platonic but flirty relationship while listening to "White Lies".

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/686367

interesting list

snoop dogg smh .gif @ empire state of mind

I kinda disapprove of any votes for Daniel Merriweather's "Impossible".

its forks. what can u say.
dap for voting "own step" though, i dig that song

Lady Gaga had three singles in the top thirteen and scored votes for seventeen (!!) different songs (and nine of those seventeen were received multiple votes). There has to be a P&J record in there somewhere, right?

lol I've only just seen these. thanks, australian open, for distracting me. horrendous. get better taste, critics.

btw, i hate it when people justify their love of "empire state of mind" by citing its huge hook, as though a) we didn't already know that it has a huge hook - it doesn't exactly hide this, b) no other songs had huge hooks in 2009. i mean yeah there's a hollow power there but one of the TEN best songs of the year? i mean, no way. even its boosters mostly admit that jay-z is shit on it!

and you know, if you want big alicia keys drama, she did "try sleeping with a broken heart" herself in 2009 too.

biffed in the bean by Julian Casablancas's microphone stand

i don't think they're doing pazz and jop this year. budget cuts.

― scott seward, Friday, November 6, 2009 11:24 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if only

hi guys! What's an empire state of mind and how can I buy one?

My annual whine--Not enough critics who listen to stuff other than indie rock participate in the Pazz & Jop poll. The P & J poobahs every year say they reach out to be fully inclusive with the electorate, but it seems some folks who write about non-indie can't be bothered to be part of this or are somehow unaware of the poll. I've tried to encourage fellow writers in the past, but did not do so this year.

^^this is becoming my regular whine too.

on the plus side, great essays from maura, chuck and rich juzwiak.

I think the indie-centric nature of the list has been overstated a bit ... I see a lot of fashionable consensus picks at the top (e.g. Phoenix, Animal Collective) but a fairly wide variety of genres represented on the list overall.

I usually complain about the lack of techno on the list, but I understand that it's a fringe genre when you look at the big picture, and am generally happy to see which two or three other people voted for the albums I picked. This year, the dance music hivemind picked Joy Orbison (#20 on the singles list), and even though I'm ambivalent about that single, I find it more interesting to study the consensus that forms within a fringe genre than the consensus that forms around Phoenix being in the top 10 in every publication.

Glenn's stats mash ups...

All idols 2009
http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2009/
"All·Idols is an autopsy of the album ballots from the 2009 Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll. For All·Idols purposes all ranking and point-weighting is ignored; a vote is a vote."

Winners · All Albums · Similarity · Kvltosis Voters · Centricity · Similarity

including:

Most Eccentric Voters
0.000 Kerry Dexter
0.000 Nana Brew-Hammond
0.000 Todd Burns
0.000 Viva Las Vegas
0.000 William Ruhlmann
0.001 David Royko
0.001 J Poet
0.002 Angela Sawyer
0.002 Scott Seward
0.004 Justin Farrar
0.004 Ken Roseman
0.004 Nathan Birk
0.005 Stewart Voegtlin
0.006 Carol Cooper
0.006 Glenn McDonald
0.007 Miles Marshall Lewis
0.008 David M Snyder
0.008 Phil Freeman
0.009 Mike Wolf
0.010 Anthony Mariani
0.010 Bryan Reesman
0.012 Jace Clayton
0.012 Will Romano
0.013 Eric Arnold

I think the indie-centric nature of the list has been overstated

It's not overstated at all, because it's never happened before, not even close. (But yeah, as I said in my essay, the list gets somewhat less Pitchforky -- and slightly less indie -- past the Top 10. But I doubt the Top 40 has ever been near this indiecentric before, either.)

Surprised nobody else has noted that there are three metal albums in the Top 25 -- which is far and away the best showing for metal in Pazz & Jop, ever. I mentioned it in passing in my essay, but I would have thought that would have deserved an essay of its own. I guess not.

Love Scott Seward's ballot -- for all I know, he made all of these albums up -- but I'm kind of sad he didn't vote for Kid Sister!

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/685429

And here's one reason Lady Gaga got so many diverse singles votes:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/685630

was pazz and jop published early this year? as the official Stats Guru/Savior was Glenn McDonald

No, it wasn't published early, I actually did the data-correction and tabulation for real this year, not after the fact. (You can read more about that here if you're interested.)

Matthew Schnipper's ballot originally contained 10 votes for Girls, not just the one.

The-Dream got only 8 votes last year.

Here's a consolidated Gucci Mane report, and a similar one for Lady Gaga.

And as always, I'm happy to try to do any other extractions or calculations that anybody wonders about.

notice the ilm joke about GAPDY consensus it's statistically proven

GAPDY in order APYDG

http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2009/index.html

# votes album
1 154 Animal Collective · Merriweather Post Pavilion
2 139 Phoenix · Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
3 114 Yeah Yeah Yeahs · It's Blitz!
4 108 Dirty Projectors · Bitte Orca
5 106 Grizzly Bear · Veckatimest

The explorable version of the poll data here has several more views on it, including this voter-overlap for the top 10 albums...

btw, i hate it when people justify their love of "empire state of mind" by citing its huge hook, as though a) we didn't already know that it has a huge hook - it doesn't exactly hide this, b) no other songs had huge hooks in 2009.

Obviously everyone knows it has a huge hook. I'm not saying that as a nudge, like "hey did you ever notice this hook?" I'm just saying that that's a big part of why I like the song -- which I thought was worth mentioning in response to people criticizing the song for its lyrics or general attitude. Also, I agree with you that other songs had huge hooks in 2009. Some of those songs I like better than "Empire State of Mind," some of them I don't like as much.

The poll and comments are boring (Maura's excepted), the way people are down on r & b and think a bad year is sign of a greater trend. TOO NEGATIVE and why would you want all that negativity when you are buying music. Also I personally was underwhelmed by a lot of artists at the tops of these polls.

Seems to me a lot of people are still having trouble wrt internet and music. I don't see why the internet is such an obstacle for some people, back in the old days, most people relied on RADIO to get their music, conceptually the internet isn't much different, it's just that the variety is much greater.

I consume music on the internet in much the same way I consumed it when I was a kid: flipping the dials, if I am sick of one style, I go to another one. This poll seems so press-oriented and out of touch with how most people get their music these days.

Also, I like unperson's all-Latin ballot, this is the future in the USA, better get used to it.

mike powell's anco essay is typically well-written but (and i'm sure he realizes this) functions just as well as an argument against them as it does an argument for them.

I think what finally made "New York State of Mind" finally click with me was hearing it in a bunch of different settings, it just sounded huge and anthemic - a quality that seems to have been missing from hip-hop for a while now (cue the autogoon crew popping up with dozens of refs to "anthemic" Gucci mixtape moments). I liked how bold and brash it sounded, that's all. Wasn't my single of the year, in fact it wasn't even top five. It just had a quality that a lot of other rap singles have been missing. I mean, all you guys complaining about swag, this isn't Jay's young man swag, this is "fuck you, I run this city" swag.

i have a lot of mixed feelings abt this whole thing; i get why everyone is disappointed in the consensus this year but i really liked several records that made up that consensus and some of them placed high on my own list. part of me thinks it was a uniquely good year for mass-appeal pop/indie and we have to wait for next year to determine if there's any kind of trend.

It's not overstated at all, because it's never happened before, not even close. (But yeah, as I said in my essay, the list gets somewhat less Pitchforky -- and slightly less indie -- past the Top 10. But I doubt the Top 40 has ever been near this indiecentric before, either.)

I guess what I'm really saying is that I'm not convinced it *means* anything in the long run, I think it's a fluke. There were a handful of indie records that got an insane amount of hype but otherwise (i.e. if you showed me the entire list but removed #1-10) then it doesn't look too different from other years, complete with an inexplicably high showing for U2.

mike powell's anco essay is typically well-written but (and i'm sure he realizes this) functions just as well as an argument against them as it does an argument for them.

Yeah, that's what I loved about it!

There were a handful of indie records that got an insane amount of hype

There also wasn't a lot of hype for any non-indie rock from old touchstones - Dylan and Springsteen's were pretty much non-starters once the albums were actually out.

See, thats kind of what I was wondering. Would people have been more satisfied with the list if perennial faves like Dylan and The Boss had made the top ten? I think that would have disappointed me in a different way.

Empire State of Mind is awful, the chorus feels like it comes straight out of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about hip-hop.

any year, you can always say "gee, i wish people checked out this obscure stuff only i liked," but its not like that usually makes the top 10. but as much as I find most of the indie stuff negligible personally, i'd still take people ganging up over it instead of 21st century breakdown or whatever.

an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about hip-hop

Now I understand why I love the song.

it's not a fluke if things have been headed in this direction for the last several years of the poll (xpost)

i think the main reason its not an "interesting list" is that there's 700 critics voting in it--of course it's gonna be a bunch of consensus choices. The VV Film Poll is super-interesting--and prolly my fave critic poll anywhere--because they cap it at 94 ppl.

One of my rants to Flavorpill re: critics in 2009 is especially apt: There's so many records coming down the pipeline, and they are all so easy to hear that critics mostly have to heed advice of other critics just to decide what to even LISTEN TO. It's not like the 70s where there was 600 records that come out and you can hear all of them. Everyone has LIMITLESS access to EVERY record released, and "records" are easier than ever to release. The only way to decide what to even spin is to listen to other ppl doing the same thing.

that's not really true, it's possible to listen to a ton of music and still be on your own path and not really care about what other critics are recommending

mike powell's anco essay is typically well-written but (and i'm sure he realizes this) functions just as well as an argument against them as it does an argument for them.

well, it makes me not want to see where the wild things are, at any rate. otherwise the constant "white guys in their 30s"..."adults pretending to be kids"...refrain just made me think, oh fuck the fuck OFF you tiresome dudes and your tiresome mid-privileged-life crises, just fuck OFF, these things are not interesting or worthwhile.

it's also possible to cover a micro-beat, a very specific genre where you hear everything that comes out and then you can tell everyone else what the stand-outs that year in that genre are

it seems like one could strike a balance between listening to your fellow critics and then checking out other, less well-known stuff in whatever genre's one's interested in

Would people have been more satisfied with the list if perennial faves like Dylan and The Boss had made the top ten? I think that would have disappointed me in a different way.

I don't know about "more satisfied", but the narrative definitely shifts if you make just one or two (hypothetical) changes. If you bump Bob Dylan off the list in '06 (remove him completely and bump everyone else up one spot) then it's an indie-centric top 15 without the "indie was big this year but in the end, the old guard won out" storyline.

that the-dream essay is really not v. good at all

one thing that struck me about the trax ballot particularly - it only took SEVEN mentions for a track to place in the top 100?? is that unusually low? because it seems so.

yay lex we agree on a thing (re: midlife crises etc.)!

:D

it seems like one could strike a balance between listening to your fellow critics and then checking out other, less well-known stuff in whatever genre's one's interested in

It's possible people aren't - I'm not looking at full ballots of pitchfork types or anything to see what they put between grizzly bear and the xx - but there's no way we'd see that just by looking at the top 40 of pazz'n'jop, where the consensus choices are what would be apparent.

I really miss the separate reissue category. Wish they'd bring it back.

if all critics are just going to vote for the same records that P4k bumps, it seems like what we really need is fewer critics. or at least fewer indie rock critics, because at this point we can pretty much glean everything about a wide swath of critics' tastes just by visiting one website. still, i'd be more interested in reading more ballots from genre specialists. the most interesting ballots were the most idiosyncratic ones.

to be fair (if that's the word) to animal collective, their potsy-dotsy childhood-wonder thing has been part of their dna forever. it's not a midlife crisis, it's just plain old arrested development.

as a lolindie sidenote, it also seems strange that Animal Collective didn't break with Strawberry Jam, which production and songwriting-wise is much more immediate than Merriweather. it was probably a bootstrap thing whereby SJ got them a much bigger audience from 2007-2008, and then when Merriweather leaked there was a huge group of people waiting to hear from it, and the hype machine pushed it to even more people from there.

pazz'n'jop always tends to reward cult lifers a little after their peak

so who's this year's John Hiatt?

kshighway otm

We prolly need more actual "critics" and less "internet people" on this list. I think when the poll opened itself up from just a handful of bloggers to TONS of bloggers, it just started reflecting hype machine--which basically is a pazz and jop-style blogger poll that runs all year.

But then again RSS-ville is maybe better than when P&J reflected the Springsteeny tastes of a bunch of 40+ alt-weekly editors?

that's not really true, it's possible to listen to a ton of music and still be on your own path and not really care about what other critics are recommending

Sure, it's possible. But I think it's far easier to pay attention to your peers. I don't vote in P&J anymore, but I know that a lot of the stuff that I choose to buy or download is a direct result of recommendations from ILXors or ex-Stylusers. I pay attention to those albums in part because I trust the people recommending them, but also because I want to participate in the discourse around the album. Which only leaves a handful of albums each year that exist outside the critical vacuum.

Btw, I wrote about this issue at length in Stylus a couple years ago:
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/soulseeking/life-inside-the-hivemind.htm

i think the main reason its not an "interesting list" is that there's 700 critics voting in it--of course it's gonna be a bunch of consensus choices. The VV Film Poll is super-interesting--and prolly my fave critic poll anywhere--because they cap it at 94 ppl.

One of my rants to Flavorpill re: critics in 2009 is especially apt: There's so many records coming down the pipeline, and they are all so easy to hear that critics mostly have to heed advice of other critics just to decide what to even LISTEN TO. It's not like the 70s where there was 600 records that come out and you can hear all of them. Everyone has LIMITLESS access to EVERY record released, and "records" are easier than ever to release. The only way to decide what to even spin is to listen to other ppl doing the same thing.

― forksclovetoFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU- (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 3:00 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The number of critics is not the problem. Would you complain if next year a number of additional folks who write about non-indie for websites, magazines, or newspapers decided to submit their names to Harvilla and vote. Regarding your other point, everyone may have "limitless" access to tons of music, but part-time freelance writers with dayjobs and families and whatever else, all use their limited time they have available to keep up on music differently. Alas for some of us, most of the P & Jers use that time mainly for indie.

2002:

1. Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Nonesuch) 2328 (201)
2. Beck: Sea Change (DGC) 1506 (139)
3. The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Warner Bros.) 1227 (111)
4. The Streets: Original Pirate Material (Locked On/Vice) 1189 (101)
5. Sleater-Kinney: One Beat (Kill Rock Stars) 1126 (100)
6. Bruce Springsteen: The Rising (Columbia) 1108 (96)
7. The Roots: Phrenology (MCA) 1092 (109)
8. Eminem: The Eminem Show (Aftermath/Interscope) 1012 (93)
9. Coldplay: A Rush of Blood to the Head (Capitol) 964 (88)
10. Missy Elliott: Under Construction (Elektra)

i get a ton of recommendations from ilx - and my like-minded peers here remain probably the most reliably excellent recommenders i know - but i'd feel seriously claustrophobic if it was my only source - i pay just as much heed to UK critics, IRL friends, my own forays into random stuff and so on

actually, v pertinent and interesting is this kogan post-ballot post on where we first heard/heard about the albums/trax on our ballots (mine are in the comments) - http://koganbot.livejournal.com/199238.html

Would you complain if next year a number of additional folks who write about non-indie for websites, magazines, or newspapers decided to submit their names to Harvilla and vote.

this is such a weak argument because PLENTY OF people who "write about non-indie" usually end up voting for a few token indie records too--just like many indie critics end up voting for Raekwon or whatever

geez i don't care for anything in that 2002 top 10

It was the last list to inspire so much....dissent.

i mean, i don't know what ppl expected. the pazz list is exactly what critics polls on every site and mag have been leading up to all year except throw Neko Case in the middle of a GAPDY top 6 because a lot of P&J voters are older,

But then again RSS-ville is maybe better than when P&J reflected the Springsteeny tastes of a bunch of 40+ alt-weekly editors?

in both cases the tastes of one very specific demographic are being over-represented and passed off as the "critical consensus," where there really is no single monolithic critical consensus anymore. either the editors should rebrand this as an indie rock poll, or it should be reconfigured so that there are separate genre polls.

as it is, i don't think P&J is an exercise worth doing anymore. as Whiney said, Hype Machine tells people what the indie blogosphere thinks is hot all year round. we know a lot of indie rock critics and bloggers liked Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear, and making that semi-definitive by polling them is a worthless exercise.

I love the Neko Case placement, btw. I think the album definitely deserves it.

This poll seems so press-oriented

Well, that tends to happen when it's a poll of writers.

the main reason its not an "interesting list" is that there's 700 critics voting in it--of course it's gonna be a bunch of consensus choices

But 700 P&J voters is nothing new. And the list is way less interesting than it used to be. (If not the album list, then definitely the singles list. But as I say in my essay, it's not just Springsteen and Dylan who fell short this year. As for whether this is a long-term sea change or a one-year blip, only time will tell. For the people who think the latter, I'd be curious why they think that; are they suggesting that Pitchfork's influence will diminish in the near future? And if so, why?)

One guy commenting on Voice website did find an error in my essay, though; I kind of love this:

Rob Tomshany on Wed Jan 20, 2010, 07:18:26, says:
As a longtime Pazz & Jop watcher I mostly liked your essay, but found one slight error; Los Lobos's cover of "La Bamba" was the title song from the movie of the same name, and did not appear on their top 10 Pazz & Jop album By the Light of the Moon which came out in the same year. That makes only six top 10 P&J singles from top 10 P&J albums in 1987, so this year's seven is a record. (1987 still came close, though; R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It"--from Document, same as "The One I Love"--missed tying for 10th by a single point.)

We prolly need more actual "critics" and less "internet people" on this list.

But, conversely, putting more interesting internet people on the list would probably get more votes to more idiosyncratic albums; by all rights they should take me off of the list, what with not reviewing anywhere for forever, but then that Crazy Cousinz comp would lose its vote :(.

Also tough to draw the line with internet people -- most of the "most central" voters are, I imagine, legit reviewers for alt-weeklies, online sites like Pitchfork or PopMatters or [insert indie site I don't happen to read]. I think everyone who writes at the Singles Jukebox should be eligible to vote in P&J -- not sure what the stance on UK/non-US people is these days -- but under stricter guidelines some of the more interesting writers there might not make the cut. Part of what makes them valuable contributors is not being sucked into to some of the more deadening cycles of music/internet chatter.

yeah, ksh kind of otm. i don't think it's "not worth doing," i just think it has to be like the film poll and work with a higher standard for what it considers a critic if we want interesting results

at this point i'm not even sure what "interesting results" would look like

I wonder if the poll spotlighting interesting ballots, like the all-Latin one, might not help this issue. Not only would it add some variety to the same top 10, but it would encourage other micro-beat following critics to submit more obscure lists for next year -- which would in hand start to reshape the general albums list.

i do wish more UK writers took part - i actually can't think of a single british critic who submits ballots who hasn't been ilx-affiliated, which obviously skews towards "internet people" again - afaik not a single one of my own guardian colleagues sent in a ballot

xpAlso, P&J never really "reflected the Springsteeny tastes of a bunch of 40+ alt-weekly editors," I don't think. The Kevin McFrenches I talked about in my essay were one demographic of critics out of several -- a real easy one to make fun of, even back then. They never dominated the top of the poll as fully as indie voters this year. And their lame singles votes never had much effect on the overall results.

I think that's because British writers who aren't "internet people" have no idea what Pazz and Jop is. (xpost)

well yes, precisely! but it seems so random and illogical that some british writers contribute to it and others have no idea

I want people who do not participate in the previously published critics polls to write. I want the Latin Beat magazine poll participants to vote (even if Rudi thinks they're too NYcentric and vote for too much Latin jazz and not enough salsa); I want Southern soul (Ecko/Malaco type stuff) bloggers to vote; I want California and Texas banda and mariachi fans to vote; I want NY based Haitian compas types to vote; I wanted the contributors to the now in 2010 defunct Los Angeles based Beat magazine(African, Caribbean music mainly) to vote; I want more rap and r'n'b and dahnce and reggae and soca folks to vote.

i guess what i'm trying to say is partially that, when you ask mostly white, middle class, college-educated males writing for indie rock blogs, indie rock websites, and alt-weeklies what they thought the best albums of the year were, they're probably going to get back to you with a lot of indie rock records. the few people polled who fall outside this demographic, unsurprisingly, tend to vote for different records, but their votes don't affect the overall results very much for obvious reasons.

you get the results you ask for.

I don't even consider myself an indie-blogger, but when you're sure that the consensus is going to shake out a certain way it's hard to vote for albums that you know will never place in a visible place on the list.

another thing: in this discussion, "internet people" is more or less a stand-in for "white, middle class, college-educated males writing for indie rock blogs, indie rock websites, and alt-weeklies." hip-hop, metal, electronic, world, etc., etc. bloggers and writers are on the internet too, but their voices aren't heard either because they don't want to participate or because their voices don't dominate the same parts of the internet that most people voting in the poll tend to hang around.

poll Pitchfork's entire masthead, receive results similar to P4k's own year-end list

Comparing to other years, did it take fewer points for AnCo and Phoenix, e.g., to take the top spots? If so, what's happening on P&J is not dissimilar from what's happening on the charts -- the falling ceiling would mean that smaller consensus looks bigger when you make a list. The other question would be whether or not there are more albums TOTAL listed than ever before (someone may have mentioned this already.) It might just be what a "selling 100,000 albums now counts as a really big deal in a way that it didn't before" looks like in a critics poll. But I could be totally off base.

The 2002 list is excellent!! Fresh sounds that are accessible, that is how an alterna-list should look.

The 2002 2009 list is excellent!! Fresh sounds that are accessible, that is how an alterna-list should look.

i don't like this top 10 either, but i don't see how you vote with any sort of broad pool and not end up with a kind of boring consensus (even if the nature of the consensus shifts over time from say dadrock to alt-dadrock). the film poll model wouldn't do you any good because let's say you limit it to the 100 most prominent critics or whatever -- go look at the top 10 lists from the 100 critics at the biggest publications, and you'll see a lot of animal collective and grizzly bear etc. limit it to one critic each or five critics each from a bunch of different specialty areas (rock, country, hip-hop, jazz, latin, avant-garde, whatever) and you'd get a bunch of interesting individual lists and no meaningful "consensus" at all -- and if you want that you can just scroll through the individual ballots or go look at the lists in the specialty mags and websites.

the problem may be with the democratic poll model. maybe a tournament system would be more fun: nominating committees of specialists could select a handful of candidates in various categories and send a field of 64 things out to fight each other. then the broader voting pool could listen to all of them and vote in each head-to-head matchup. you might still end up with animal collective winning, but everybody would hear a lot more stuff along the way.

The reason that 2002 list inspired so much dissent is because it's almost as dull as this one.

Pazz & Jop, proving once again that the target audience for most music polls are not the people who post to www.ilxor.com

The All-New STYLUS.

mostly white, middle class, college-educated males writing for indie rock blogs, indie rock websites, and alt-weeklies

Take out the word "blog" and this is pretty much just "rock critics" from the beginning of time

the more i think about this top 10, the more i'm cool with it in the sense of "if you want to know what critics were talking about in 2009, here ya go." it is what it is - and I'd only be annoyed by its lack of excitement for me if I thought 2009 was an exciting year for music.

yeah well i thought 2009 was a super-exciting year so maybe that's why all these dull EOY lists grate on me

Take out the word "blog" and this is pretty much just "rock critics" from the beginning of time

is it too much to hope that this might, you know, change at some point?

Just pulling some data randomly since the P&J archives are useless (if they even exist anymore), here's a stat from ILM re: 2005 that I'm assuming is accurate:

Late Registration on 28.6% of ballots cast
Arular 27.4%

By comparison, MPP was on 22% of ballots cast, Phoenix on about 20%. Not that huge of a difference, possibly not significant at all, but I do wonder if it's a trend. (TVOTR and AnCo had the same number of mentions at #1 this year and last, though I don't remember how many people were in the poll at that point.)

the answer is not getting nichey microgenre obsessives or these mysterious critics of race that you guys think pazz and jop isn't reaching out to (tons of non-white ppl vote in pazz and jop, and NEWS FLASH, African-American rock critics like indie rock too!)

the answer is focusing more on a smaller selection of pan-genre pop critics like Christgau, SFJ, Caramanica, Powers, Harvilla, etc who listen to tons of music that lives outside of the hype machine

Imaginary comments on imaginary 1960s poll--"aw man, nothing but Beatles, Beach Boys and garage rock, what about Motown, Stax and all those hard to find Franco records from the Congo"

sincere question: if P&J were to only poll the type of critic you want them to, why do you think the results would be more interesting/useful?

would there even be a consensus or would all of their ballots be so disparate that it wouldn't be worth doing anything but publishing each one of them individually?

Um.

xp Ha ha, pretty sure what few critics actually existed in the '60s had even less use for garage rock (which wasn't even called that then) than the Supremes, fwiw.

i mean, i know they'd be more interesting/useful. i guess i'm asking in what way that would be true, beyond the obvious "they would know the field better and wouldn't all vote for Animal Collective"

I agree with people who are saying that the top 10 of a large poll like P&J will, by definition, be predictable and "boring". The spots from #11 - ~75, OTOH, now this is where you're hoping to find quirks and surprises. I evaluate a poll (and the diversity of the participants) more from what I see in that section of the list, not from what I see in the top 10.

I don't understand your point. Lots of the critics you're talking about would probably like the Animal Collective record!

xpost

Don't get me started on A. Powers, Whiney

Would hate for Pazz and Jop to turn into the Slate year-end "chats," though. Anyway, this has always been the exact opposite of what Christgau wanted to do with the poll. I think the most reasonable answer would be that anyone with a weak link to some other critical universe should use it to try to get other people on board, but this has been a plea since the beginning.

(xpost)

Who is "Viva Las Vegas"? http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2009/4552.html

Alfred: Whiney's point seemed to be that, if we were to poll the critics he was mentioning, we'd get very different results than the ones we got. So, I was assuming that, yes, while some of them would vote for Animal Collective, we wouldn't see the same overwhelming consensus for the same handful of indie rock bands that we saw.

"The world would be a better place, the Dems would have won in Mass., dogs and cats would live together if they all voted for the Maxwell record."

Someone find an individual ballot that has all of GAPDY on it

Scott Brown is truly my state's Animal Collective

Yeah, if people from across the spectrum all happen to like AC, then great. But Glenn's similarity scores show strong correlations between people who voted for AC, and people who voted for Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear, to name two. If you know with a fairly high degree of certainty that voters who like Band A will also like Bands B, C, and D, then you're going to end up with a boring list that will be dominated by a small number of genres.

just wants a gigantic house in wrentham for his girls

it's the truth

poll Pitchfork's entire masthead, receive results similar to P4k's own year-end list

This whole exchange is kind of amusing to me now (pretty sure this was my second-ever post on ILM):

Hey nabisco, et al. -- how come no Pitchfork writers voted in the Pazz & Jop? Seems like writing for the site should be make you far more reputable than some of the freelancers they get lists from. Then again, I don't know what's involved in submitting a list.

Partially, I bring it up cuz I feel like PFM writers could have some sway. At least Enon, who put out such a fun record (#15 on Pitchfork's year-end), wouldn't have to languish at #733 (!!) on P&J02.

― jaymc, Wednesday, February 12, 2003 12:09 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Jaymc: I have no idea how they decide that stuff, but it seems pretty print-oriented to me. I can think of a lot of other issues, too.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, February 12, 2003 2:55 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Like?

― jaymc, Wednesday, February 12, 2003 3:16 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well, ILM associates seem to be one spot of non-print inclusion -- which, so far as I care, is terrific!

"Other issues" wasn't meant snarkily: I'm thinking of things like the fact that Pitchfork has quite a few writers (do you ask them all to vote?) with a more consistent aesthetic (would they turn into a voting bloc and do you want that?) that's not entirely in line with the Voice's (most of the critics included cover wider varieties of material than Pitchfork as a whole does). (Also I don't imagine Chuck being very into Pitchfork: a hunch.) These aren't giant issues, I don't think (I think several of the individual writers actually aren't a bloc and probably would cover a wide variety of stuff), but it's not as if I'd expect them to sit down and give this careful chin-scratching consideration: it's not like they use loads of people from equivalent web sites and I seriously doubt they're all that bothered about the issue.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, February 12, 2003 3:30 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think it's less about getting certain people to vote than getting qualified people to--people who cover music regularly, basically.

― M Matos (M Matos), Wednesday, February 12, 2003 3:33 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh man, that whole exchange: prescient.

the exact opposite of what Christgau wanted to do with the poll.

Well, the really early Pazz & Jops (pre mid '70s) just polled critics he handpicked, right? By it would be hard to go back to that, more than 30 years after opening the floodgates to everybody out there.

Who is "Viva Las Vegas"?

http://vivacide.com/about/vivalicious/

Not sure if she's still at Willamette Week in Portland or not.

wow, looks like nabisco was......OTM!

I think the "let's get more specialist writers in" position is noble but I don't think it changes "the results" - it means more (better?) records at the bottom of the list, at best a more interesting 50-100 perhaps. But it doesn't change the top 50 whatsoever.

What this list reflects is the lack of consensus around many if any great non-indie records among "boring" critics. I mean, we have to accept that if records we like get into the top 20 it's because a huge whack of critics who are otherwise consensus types put them there.

So the interesting question for me is why only a couple of non-indie records were able to beat the indie-onslaught - notably in the tracks list - and what it is about the ones that did make it that that is distinguishable. Why "Empire State Of Mind", "Bad Romance", "You Belong With Me" in the top 10 but not other stuff? All "anthems" in their respective genres, and in Taylor and Gaga's case it seems the moment when enough steam had built up to bust down genre-based resistance to the artist - lots of critics (myself included in Gaga's case) breaking down and embracing these songs after ignoring or disliking the artists previously.

Why such a marginal presence for R&B in the top 50 (Alicia and Rihanna's Jay-Z choruses, the critically distinguishable "Pretty Wings", the stylistically borderline "Best I Ever Had" and "I Gotta Feeling", then 2008 hit "Single Ladies" at 46) in particular?

Likewise with rap - Jay-Z wins, but then hardly anything else in the top 50 - though both of Jay-Z's other singles, Kid fuckin' Cudi, weirdly "Shine Blockas", Raekwon.

The R&B results look like genre-abandonment en masse. The rap results look like critics lost in a world suddenly unfamiliar and mostly looking for familiar faces to grab onto until the storm passes.

The dance results are curious: if we ignore "Day 'n' Nite" (assuming votes were for the original and the remix) then the top and only result in the top 40 is for "Hyph Mngo", a decent record but not one which deserves such spotlighting relative to other dance music released, and certainly not one which fits the "big anthemic hit by established artist that was also critically popular" mould for non-rock placements.

This suggests to me a similar story as for R&B - mainstream critics just weren't interested this year - with the proviso that "Hyph Mngo" was probably pushed that high owing to a bloc vote from dance critics, or at least dance critics bloc-promoting a track which then gets picked up by less dance-focused listeners ("Raindrops" at 46 feels more like an organic choice from mainstream voters to me). This reflects two things:

1) "Hyph Mngo" (which won Resident Advisor's poll) is the "cross the board anthem" you have when there were no cross the board anthems and no one sub-scene big and exciting enough for that not to matter - it's dance music critics looking for a record that seems best (or least worst) able to play the role of "telling the story of 2009 dance music" and pushing it as such.

2) R&B, which has no similar self-identified critic base to speak of (refer to discussion of this in the Stylus poll thread), relies on the scraps thrown by mainstream critics to get any placings whatsoever - i.e. stuff has to translate as pop-crossover (or push general crit buttons a la Maxwell) to do well at all. I think it's notable that this year the really big R&B records in ILM terms - The-Dream, Electrik Red - weren't exactly massive hits singles or albums wise.

3) Rap structurally should act more like a combination of 1 and 2, getting both scraps from maintream critics and its own bloc push, but maybe this year the mainstream were nervous while the bloc was confused and didn't really unite behind anything - I thought maybe "Shine Blockas" was the default option there but it's hard to say as it looks like almost all its votes were from indie types - was this indie types picking up on rap crit hype, or independently tracking Big Boi for lack of any other old reliable heroes to latch onto?

There were four people who listed all five of those indie albums. 18 people had at least 4 of them, 67 had 3+, 176 had 2+, 356 had at least one...

wow

Hyph Mngo's status as critical placeholder really snuck up on me, it must be said.

Congratulations Luke Hackney whoever he is for winning the prize for least original taste imaginable.

http://lukehackney.com/

"He also regularly contributes to the Village Voice's annual music critic's poll, Pazz & Jop."

Matt I reckon that prize goes to Julie Seabaugh actually. At least Luke voted for "Thao Nguyen with the Get Down Stay Down".

don't blame it on luke hackney.....blame it on his wiiiiiiiild heaaart!

Pitchfork gave "Shine Blockas" a 9.

Have to admit it's interesting that Barry Walters -- a gay man well into his 40s, I believe, from San Francisco who has been writing about dance-pop music for over a quarter century; also, a real good writer fwiw (and the first critic I know who wrote about Scooter, who I voted for this year) -- is one of those four.

tim's whole post v otm - and i LIKE "hyph mngo" a lot, but as per twitter earlier a) don't get why it, particularly, and not ikonika or joker or guido or a host of same-genre-but-betters; b) it really is a proxy for the whole genre given the total lack of anything else from the same scene

The R&B results look like genre-abandonment en masse. The rap results look like critics lost in a world suddenly unfamiliar and mostly looking for familiar faces to grab onto until the storm passes.

also this sentence, while otm, reflects so badly on critics and their so-called critical faculties in 2009

"Raindrops" at 46 feels more like an organic choice from mainstream voters to me

haha, no, to me it looks like:

critics lost in a world suddenly unfamiliar and mostly looking for familiar faces to grab onto until the storm passes

Ha ha yeah those two mean the same thing really!

Re the placement of "Hyph Mngo" relative to other "post-dubstep", I guess combo of:

1) it fits better into house/techno type sets; while
2) not actually being house/techno, hence people have an angle

An actual house/techno record couldn't do well at the moment because of the weird self-hating cul de sac dance crit has wandered into, but even stuff like "Purple City" or "Digidesign" are too closely tied to dubstep's torpidity for them to become the number one consensus people who are still operating in a house/techno framework.

Dudes his name is HACKNEY. What did you expect? (jk)

is the goal of the P&J poll to celebrate originality or to reach concensus?

It's really to celebrate consensus.

tim's whole post v otm - and i LIKE "hyph mngo" a lot, but as per twitter earlier a) don't get why it, particularly, and not ikonika or joker or guido or a host of same-genre-but-betters

Hyph Mngo has a classicism that's absent in the others (Subeena excepted), and also a hands-in-the-air dancefloor MOMENT element to it that the others lack. It's reference points are things like Pacific State, Papua New Guinea, Halcyon and even So Much Love To Give as much as they are any dubstep.

Hyph Mngo elevation is particularly annoying if like me you actually like Wet Look a bit more (maybe one of 09's best double-whammy singles along with Walter Jones I'll Keep On Loving You/Living Without Your Love)

subeena soooo overlooked, her new single is amazing

I suppose Hyph Mngo is the track that feels like it would work as well in big fields as it would in dark and grimy basements. It's appeal is pretty obvious (and I don't even like it that much).

i dunno, maybe the time for stuff like pazz and jop has passed. maybe they shouldn't do it anymore.

And it doesn't help that straight house and techno, especially of the post-minimal variety, has been somewhat short on anthems over the last year or so.

yeah I can't claim to be surprised or disappointed by the albums list, but the singles list is always more unpredictable and this year it was total shit. I've been thinking for a while about running some numbers on how much of P&J's singles list for any given year is actual Hot 100 charting hits and how much isn't -- might get motivated to do that now if I have the time.

fair enough but the #1 p&j single is also a gigantic chart hit, and it's just as shitty as the indie stuff below it.

and "1901" apparently hit the top 100, tho not by much.

It cracks me up how when I'm looking at various pages on the P&J site, my browser title bar says "New York Pazz and Jop," but when I'm on the singles list it simply says "New York," as in "LET'S HEAR IT FOR NOOOOO YAAAAWWWWWK"

well yeah, didn't mean to imply that the lack of commercial hits is the only thing wrong with the singles list.

haha i thought the same thing re: NEW YOOOOOOORK

i thought that was intention!;

I don't even consider myself an indie-blogger, but when you're sure that the consensus is going to shake out a certain way it's hard to vote for albums that you know will never place in a visible place on the list.

How’s that? All 1,934 albums are listed on the same page. It would still be nice if ballots allowed for up to 50 or even 100 albums though.

Whiney: the answer is focusing more on a smaller selection of pan-genre pop critics like Christgau, SFJ, Caramanica, Powers, Harvilla, etc who listen to tons of music that lives outside of the hype machine

Exactly! My idea was dismissed on previous threads, but I think the ballot should include an estimated number of albums the voter had listened to, and allow readers to sort the results if they choose to factor that in.

My suggestions for improvements aside, I really don’t see the point in griping about Pazz & Jop every year. I’m unconvinced by the argument that it’s “less interesting” this year than any other year.

I've been thinking for a while about running some numbers on how much of P&J's singles list for any given year is actual Hot 100 charting hits and how much isn't -- might get motivated to do that now if I have the time.

Would LOVE to see that, Al.

Figured out the decade in percentages of voters voting for #1 and #2 albums

2001: 38% 1st place, 25% 2nd place
2002: 29% 1st place, 20% 2nd place
2003: 42% 1st place, 29% 2nd place
2004: 31% 1st place, 21% 2nd place
2005: 29% 1st place, 27% 2nd place
2006*: 19% 1st place, 20% 2nd place
2007: 24% 1st place, 26% 2nd place
2008: 27% 1st place, 18% 2nd place
2009: 22% 1st place, 20% 2nd place

So 2009 actually looks like an anomaly here in terms of how few voters overall voted in the #1 album (except 2006 which had a ton of different issues). Would be interesting to see if this has happened at other points in the poll's history, will check it out. One question I have is where the extra 100 voters between last year and this year came from (696 up from 577).

The gap seems to have closed in 2005 between the #1 and #2 album -- Christgau wrote at the time that it was the closest 1-2 finish (between Kanye and MIA) in the poll's history, but it seems to have repeated itself just about every year since, except for 2008. But it's also possible that each year in which this happened after 2005 was due more the general shake-up at the Voice plus fewer voters overall than a trend.

I'm guessing that total albums listed have increased dramatically this decade.

except 2006 which had a ton of different issues

Are you just referring to the boycott of P&J by voters who defected to Jackin' Pop? Or something else, too?

where the extra 100 voters between last year and this year came from (696 up from 577).

I was actually wondering whether Glenn McDonald recruited metal voters! (Which would help explain that mysterious Mastodon/Baroness/Converge convergence between #18 and #24, which apparently nobody but me cares about. Not to mention Sun O))))))))))))))) at #42, maybe.)

^^^best thing about this year's poll results imo.

Your musical compatibility with lukehackney is Very Low

Music you have in common includes Grouper, LCD Soundsystem, Blonde Redhead, The Cardigans and The Blow.

thank fucking fuck for that, last.fm. ps who are the blow and when did i listen to them, lol

you don't remember because the blow is a band that reviews themselves

dude really likes m. ward

the(y) blow

you don't remember because the blow is a band that reviews themselves

A curious sentence.

Re the placement of "Hyph Mngo" relative to other "post-dubstep", I guess combo of:

That song was in the Pitchfork top 20, was made a big deal of on Pitchfork, etc. 30% of its voters are Pitchfork staffers.

Also, two of the seven all-metal voters are Pitchfork's primary metal writers the past few years. (The others voted 7/10 and 5/10)

And six of the nine people P&J asked to write essays have written for Pitchfork in some capacity, including the two primary editors of the whole thing.

So to blame us for just the indie stuff ignores that, again, most of our non-indie selections are also the same ones picked out here; and to blame us for crashing the gates is silly since the two top names on the masthead of pazz and jop are p4k vets.

//

hell, also:

* in general, I don't see why it's weird to anyone that nominally indie rock is at the top of this. Rock music made by 20s and 30somethings presumably *always* was pretty well at the center of this stuff. Today almost any of that stuff that gets any critical traction is under the pointless tent of 'indie', whether its yyys or lcd or spoon or hold steady or some tiny band in williamsburg - or hell even electronic (v acoustic/electric) artists like mia or hot chip or anco. The change is with rock music more than it is with critics. This is what rock music made by and for adults looks and sounds like now.

* e.g. I don't see anyone here riding for radio-ready modern rock and complaining about Kings of Leon. I don't see them plumping for Flo Rida or BEP whatever either. In fact in all the hand-wringing I see very few realistic alternatives that people "should" be making, which makes me wonder what people thought would place high on this thing instead of what actually did.

* "stuff pitchfork covers" isn't just an indie diseases here-- take any music not made by boomers, performing in any genre, and it matches up well with our publication. (e.g. a full 30 of the top 34 songs also made the pitchfork list; exceptions: BEP, Kings of Leon, Avett Bros., and a Lady Gaga song that was tossed because she already had two spots on the list)

* more examples: the four metal lps in the top 50 here are the same as the four in our top 50/hm; five of the six hip-hop lps in the top 62 here are the exact same ones on the pitchfork list as well; the two r&b lps in the top 50 are the same; The *whole thing* matches up with our sensibilities, so long as we cover that genre)

* Which is another way of me saying for the 100th time: we cover a lot more than the indie stuff, and I think we can direct people to more than that too. If anything, with our readers, it's safer to say they'd have found Phoenix regardless and what we do more than anything is expand their POV, which I've said previously as well: For all the shit we get, I think our coverage of pop over the past seven years arguably did as much for "poptimism" as anything else. certainly more than the one time the NYT published an article on it, or whatever gets credit for that. (e.g. I assume joy o and shine blockas weird placements are more due to us than, say, phoenix or yyys)

*last thing, which amazes me is almost never brought up in these handwringing threads, is everyone says "it's too bad there aren't more crits who want to write about x, y, z" and I would guess there are plenty of them-- but there aren't many readers who want to read about that stuff.

In the internet-era, when there is way less guesswork about what readers want from critics, I don't see much evidence from consumers or whomever that people want to read analytical or intelligent writing about, say, R&B or modern country, or even most metal. Maybe I'm wrong and there is some sort of place for discussion of this stuff, but I've seen us and RA and Stereogum and some other places thrive and/or get a foothold while the old VV, Blender, the thing CNET tried to start, Maura's Idolator, Stylus (which was about 5% less indie than p4k anyway) drift away and I feel like by now everyone complaining about that or missing them are people, say, posting in this thread. Don't get me wrong: And I say that regrettably, it's an awful state for music criticism to be in, but after watching this happen for five years I have a pretty realistic and less romantic view about it than I used to. This is the way it is and unless you turn the people who do want to discuss and read about music online (i.e. who many of you would call "indie fans") into R&B fans too, I don't see where the audience for this stuff comes from.

And, so, it's possible, just possible, that it was *always* like that-- and a lot of outlets were publishing a lot of words about a lot of things their readers cared zero about, and now that we have fairly direct metrics to sort out what readers do like, that is being exposed.

don't mean to sound either confrontational or triumphant, just feel a little defensive in the face of some of the finger-pointing and I think a lot of it is a matter of scapegoating us for the things one doesn't like but never giving any credit for things that you all do like about these results.

hell, I'm sure there are a lot of typos there, which is what I get for hastily tossing thoughts off the top of my head and not re-reading, anyway..

re: the first bulleted point up there, I didn't close my thought, but shit like spoon or yyys or THS is only indie these days by default; it's basically just "rock" but since there is no place in the marketplace to validate rock music that isn't utter lunkhead third gen grunge or made for pre-teens, it's all called "indie" and it appears that "indie" is growing when more to the point "rock" is contracting

Are you just referring to the boycott of P&J by voters who defected to Jackin' Pop?

The boycott (and in some cases just plain lack of interest after the firings at the Voice) was a part of it, but generally I just meant the participation drop from about 800 critics in '05 to 500 in '06, the lowest number of critics polled since at least the 90s (not sure which year participation was comparably low).

I don't know that anyone is "blaming" Pitchfork for the indie stuff, or claiming that indie stuff is the only thing Pitchfork covers, either. (And I do agree that the genre "indie" is really vague now -- in the top 10, for instance, do YYYs or Flaming Lips or New Pornographer Neko Case even fit the genre? I honestly have no idea. Which was one reason I didn't try to quantify indie vs not-indie in my essay.) What I tried to get around in my essay was (1) the unprecedented overwhelming domination of a single aesthetic, or what is perceived to be a certain aesthetic, at the top of the poll; (2) the poll's unprecedented overlap with a poll published by a website largely dependent on that aesthetic (i.e., my problem isn't that Pitchfork exists, but that P&J voters suddenly seem so reliant on what it's already decided counts as good music); and (3) most dumbfoundingly for me, the overlap between the singles and albums results, only with records that people associate with that aesthetic. Maybe that really is "just the way it is" now. But it wasn't always. It's something new, and it's worth figuring out.

scott: all great points, as usual! my only question would be: why do you think P4k, Stereogum, and RA are "thriving" while those other publications you listed aren't? because the former are writing to a large audience that wants to read about indie and related music and the latter were more esoteric?

(i read what you posted twice, just trying to think it through a bit more.)

In the internet-era, when there is way less guesswork about what readers want from critics, I don't see much evidence from consumers or whomever that people want to read analytical or intelligent writing about, say, R&B or modern country, or even most metal.

Is this also your reasoning for dropping the reggae/dancehall column? Monthly grime column ok, ocassional cd reviews of Afropop and r'n'b and metal and and reggae reissues ok, but nothing more.

Do Tim Finney's ocassional reviews of R'n'b on Pitchfork get less internet hits?

curmudgeon: well the main reason was that Dave Stelfox moved and that coincided with us moving from five/features a week to three -- something had to go. You could blame the economy as much as anything else.

I actually tried going back to previous P&J Top 10s, fwiw, and counting the number of indie artists in each. But it was basically impossible, because there are so many grey areas in the definition -- where do you put Portishead, Santogold, Nick Cave, Radiohead, M.I.A., Danger Mouse, White Stripes, Drive By Truckers, Modest Mouse? So I put that piece of paper away. Thing is, no matter how stringently or liberally you define the genre, no Top 10 came close to 2009's in terms of artists that people somehow associate with the genre. And by my count, there are at least five, probably six (Phoenix?) artists this year where there's no grey area at all. As far as I can tell, that's never happened before. And the singles Top 10 is way beyond any previous year's total; again, I'd be more comfortable if it at least had different indie artists on it than the album list. As is, it just looks retarded.

1978
1. Elvis Costello: This Year's Model (Columbia)
2. The Rolling Stones: Some Girls (Rolling Stones)
3. Nick Lowe: Pure Pop for Power People (Columbia)
4. The Clash: Give 'Em Enough Rope (Epic)
5. Talking Heads: More Songs About Buildings and Food (Sire)
6. Bruce Springsteen: Darkness at the Edge of Town (Columbia)
7. Ramones: Road to Ruin (Sire)
8. Neil Young: Comes a Time (Reprise)
9. The Cars: The Cars (Elektra)
10. David Johansen: David Johansen (Blue Sky)

Since I'd argue most of these albums come from what can easily be perceived as a "single aesthetic," does anyone know if this is basically what Rolling Stone was praising at the time? There's no singles chart for P'n'J yet so I don't know how much overlap there would have been.

look at all the white ppl

oh to return to those unpredictable days when top 10s looked fresh and unusual

Well, 1978 is also the year that Christgau wrote his essay about "new wave hegemony," right? He was worried then that one aesthetic was coming to dominate the poll. (Black artists did really shitty, too, as I recall, partly in the wake of "disco sucks.") I'd say that Top 10 looks more homogenous in retrospect than it did then (I'm not sure; I wasn't writing about music yet.) But his 1978 essay was to some extent in the back of mind when I started thinking about the 2009 results.

(3) most dumbfoundingly for me, the overlap between the singles and albums results

Singles used to have a somewhat objective definition - something you could hear on the radio or see a video of on MTV. Now any artist can make a video and upload it to YouTube, hence the explosion of what qualifies as a single. I think the old pattern was that critics would vote for their less mainstream favorites under albums and then the mainstream stuff would go under singles. Now the mainstream is whatever you want it to be, so there's less need to go outside your musical comfort zone for singles picks.

xp And right, there wasn't a singles poll until a year later. But in 1979, the only Top 10 single overlapping with the album Top 10 was by Donna Summer. (Not a white ppl.)

FWIW the 'research shows the readers don't want that' doctrine pretty much destroyed the NME, in terms of both readership and quality.

There were always plenty of "non-mainstream" singles in the poll, though. (In fact, the singles poll was the first place that indie label rock -- the Brains, Robin Lane & the Chartbusters, Bush Tetras, Pylon -- actually placed. None had an album that did comparably well.)

Since I'd argue most of these albums come from what can easily be perceived as a "single aesthetic," does anyone know if this is basically what Rolling Stone was praising at the time?

RS 1978:

Best Album
• Some Girls - Rolling Stones

Runners-Up
• Darkness On The Edge Of Town - Bruce Springsteen
• Running On Empty - Jackson Browne
• This Year's Model - Elvis Costello
• Road To Ruin - Ramones
• Misfits - Kinks

Best Single
• Stayin Alive - Bee Gees

Runners-Up
• Life's Been Good - Joe Walsh
• Miss You - Rolling Stones
• Because The Night - Patti Smith
• Rock And Roll Fantasy - Kinks
• Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon
• Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty
• Just What I Needed - Cars

If "singles" were limited to songs heard on the radio and seen on MTV it would definitely be a consensus, what with shrinking playlists everywhere.

I definitely think the singles homogeneity is more concerning (i think that the "no reason to go outside musical comfort zone" has a lot to do with it) than the "homogeneity" of the album choices. The top ten is always about forming a canon, and since no one can really come up with some obvious LPs being ignored, I'd just say it was a year where you didn't have a lot of canonical LPs coming from pop, r&b, etc. But "hipster shit" tends to dominate whenever there aren't a lot of undeniable popular works outside of it - as Scott notes nobody's screaming "where are the black eyed peas???" - and this year just had fewer pre-indie canonical fogies of note to make the list look less pitchforky.

FWIW the 'research shows the readers don't want that' doctrine pretty much destroyed the NME, in terms of both readership and quality.

I don't think it's research so much as dollar votes and actual measurable metrics (i.e. hits)-- and I do think there is a lot more history of quality music writing in the UK tbh. There were far more music mags of note there, despite the smaller population.

(more defensiveness: fwiw, we don't trend toward embracing the lowest denominator anyway-- we write often about what we want to cover instead of waiting to sort out what readers might like, and we print lengthy reviews while everyone else is doing the opposite.)

There were always plenty of "non-mainstream" singles in the poll, though

Sure, there were, but they were usually limited to tracks that had a physical release as a single, like on a 7-inch. Since not every band released stuff on 7-inch, there was an upper limit on how much overlap there could be with the albums.

top 5 selling albums of 1978:
1 Saturday Night Fever - ost
2 Grease - ost
3 Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (#1 seller of 77!)
4 Billy Joel - The Stranger
5 Steely Dan - Aja

btw, for anyone who followed my attempt to review 1000 2009 releases over twitter, here are the 10 highest ranking records on Pazz And Jop and why I didn’t end up reviewing them. dunno what some of these exactly say about my "worldview" or "how I hear music"

43. Allen Toussaint – The Bright Mississippi
N0nesuch hasn’t sent me an e-mail in five years. I literally have no concept whatsoever of what’s happening over there at any given time. I literally didn’t even know this record existed until today. I saw Allen at Bonnaroo and he was amazing. What can I say?

50. Vijay Iyer Trio – Historicity
Everyone was raving about this record around September. I tried at least five times to steal a leak on the internet but “universally acclaimed jazz record” doesn’t exactly get as many Rapidshare hits as 'important' stuff like “Japandroids demos.” I literally tried but COULDNT FIND a leak of this record. Jazz nerds need to step their internet game up. I probably should have reached out to the label, but I had like 300 other records to hear and it got lost in the shuffle. I ended up hearing a copy in laaaaate December as i was in the home stretch and didn't really have room for it.

72. The Black Crowes – Before The Frost… Until The Freeze
It’s the Black Crowes. I promptly judged this book by its leather fringe, patchouli-soaked cover and avoided it entirely. Is this good? I don't believe it.

73. Loudon Wainwright III – High Wide And Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project
I respect his legacy and all but this dude’s stuff is like the Paste magazine jams that are just totally off my radar.

87. Buddy And Julie Miller – Written In Chalk
Them too.

90. Built To Spill – There Is No Enemy
Built To Spill make some of the most boring, uninteresting music I’ve ever heard. After hearing hundreds of bad indie rock bands that rip them off in 2009, the prospect of sitting through an album by them literally disgusted me. I was praying it would be just some probly-6.0-on-Pitchfork nineteenth album by some band people don’t care about anymore. But instead I was wrong and here we are.

94. Nellie McKay – Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute To Doris Day
I was bored just reading the title. What the fuck

103. Vic Chesnutt – At The Cut
R.I.P., dude. I still have no idea what your music sounds like.

115 Lee Fields & The Expressions – My World
I bet I would have liked this. I never heard of it until now.

122. Franco & Le Tout Puissant OK Jazz – Francophonic, Vol 2
I need to hear more jazz apparently

1978 music consumers >>>>>>>> Pazz Joppers imo

more like Nick LOL

quick think of 10 critically popular bands that broke after 1989 that aren't remotely "indie"

xxp 43, 50, 72, and 90 are all over 140 characters.

Green Day, System Of A Down, The Roots

and with RATM you have 4

U2

oh wait, scratch that

pretty sure they broke before 1989

xpost haha

The Prodigy

PJ Harvey

yeah, she's folk, right

nah she's blues

i guess she's not a band, though

Do Outkast, Wu Tang, etc. count as bands?

PJ Harvery is a band whose lead singer is Polly Jean Harvey, kind of like how Sade is a band fronted by Sade Adu.

Harvery

saying Green Day (or RATM) are not remotely indie reeks of massive revisionism.

DOKKEN

idk wtf is wrong with my typing today

*crosses fingers in the hope that this thread devolves into a crazy bunch of posts about what is and isn't indie.*

Mastodon, Queens Of The Stone Age, Dixie Chicks (or, if they're too early, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings. Or Tinariwen. Or Kings Of Leon.)

those nu metal and post grunge bands that sold shitloads arent remotely indie.
Hootie as well.

My Morning Jacket

indie - guitars, distortion, bad singing
not indie - a vagina

Fluxblog on xhuxk's article:

This is an extraordinarily depressing essay by former Voice editor/professional contrarian Chuck Eddy. It’s like a guy who used to be principal of a high school getting really angry about the outcome of his old school’s student council election.

http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/344479080/the-year-of-too-much-consensus

Ha ha.

Oh wait, '89? I thought you meant '99. '89 is easy.

those nu metal and post grunge bands that sold shitloads arent remotely indie.
Hootie as well.

Right, but they're not "critically popular."

wow, there's a lot of discussion going on about xhuxk's essay on Tumblr.

see T0m E.'s Tumblr: http://tomewing.tumblr.com/

yeah, none of that is indie-rooted or appeals to indie kids. The only that applies I think is SOTD and they, you know, sucked.

Kings Of Leon were definitely indie when they came out, could even make cases for QOTSA and maaaaybe Mastodon (though by there you're definitely into "non-indie that indie folks like").

yeah but all three of those bands sounds different^^^!

I refer you to my previous post.

yeah but "a vagina" is your answer to everything

touche

how long into our vessel reaches curvy colombian waters?

My friend raises this interesting point...

if it's so terrible that indie rock is in the top 5, what SHOULD have been there? Like and I mean things that people could actually rally behind, not just random shit you like

Tom Ewing: "It’s like when I first started blogging and I got the reputation of being fiercely pro-pop and anti-indie, and I played up to that a little bit, but what I was being contrary against was my immediate online vicinity."

THAT, my friends is indie guilt defined.

xpost

gucci mane seems to be getting a bit of attention online...

whiney, is your friend scottpl?

I can easily see The-Dream or Maxwell (neither of whom I like much, btw) finishing Top 5 in an earlier of era of P&J, Whiney. For starters.

I think Tom's onto something here:

My point is that at the moment we have one very big taste-cluster and it’s centred on the Pitchfork Top 10. This is no fault of Pitchfork’s and indeed the editors and publisher should be very proud and happy about it. But there’s also no reason why competing large taste-clusters shouldn’t exist, large enough that P4K’s Top 10 only crosses over with 30% or 40% of the P&J Top 10.

Neither The-Dream or Maxwell making the top 5 would really make my day, personally. The-Dream would especially be a case of P'n'J praising the album after the one they should have.

I think what finally made "New York State of Mind" finally click with me was hearing it in a bunch of different settings, it just sounded huge and anthemic - a quality that seems to have been missing from hip-hop for a while now (cue the autogoon crew popping up with dozens of refs to "anthemic" Gucci mixtape moments). I liked how bold and brash it sounded, that's all. Wasn't my single of the year, in fact it wasn't even top five. It just had a quality that a lot of other rap singles have been missing. I mean, all you guys complaining about swag, this isn't Jay's young man swag, this is "fuck you, I run this city" swag.

― you gone float up with it (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:43 AM (5 hours ago)

i know this will have already been addressed but it sounds awful like you're grading on a curve here - "well hip hop sucks and this is the only one i heard on the radio so i'll vote for this!" cool if you dig the big hook or whatever, but it's a failure as a rap song considering, you know, jay is a below-average rapper and he sounds as awful on this as he's sounded for the last five years. and tbh to everyone who acknowledges the song is fatally flawed but votes for it anyway: either listen to more singles or stop voting for singles

"...sounds an awful lot like..."

I was actually wondering whether Glenn McDonald recruited metal voters! (Which would help explain that mysterious Mastodon/Baroness/Converge convergence between #18 and #24, which apparently nobody but me cares about.

I care very much. Both Mastodon and Baroness were high in my ballot. I think it's also remarkable that Sunn O))) (#42) beat out Them Crooked Vultures (#58), a band with considerable star power. Also:

Kylesa, Static Tensions (71)
Cobalt, Gin (136)
Slayer, World Painted Blood (160)

Still plenty of stadium rock with Muse, Wolfmother, Cheap Trick, Alice in Chains, Black Crowes, Pearl Jam, arguably Dinosaur Jr. I didn't even know about the Black Crowes album.

also the closest analogy in an earlier top 5 to maxwell's album(cult r&b figure with some pop success finally makes another album) would be erykah badu at no. 5 last year, which wasn't that long ago.

PJ Harvery is a band whose lead singer is Polly Jean Harvey, kind of like how Sade is a band fronted by Sade Adu.

i think this was the case until TBYML - since then she's been pj harvey, solo artist.

fair point, although I like to think that in the context of the time frame being discussed I'm still right

how long into our vessel reaches curvy colombian waters?

Into?

typo but then again

last year, which wasn't that long ago

Which was the point of my essay, partly.

we have one very big taste-cluster and it’s centred on the Pitchfork Top 10. ...there’s also no reason why competing large taste-clusters shouldn’t exist, large enough that P4K’s Top 10 only crosses over with 30% or 40% of the P&J Top 10.

Which was another point of my essay.

i know this will have already been addressed but it sounds awful like you're grading on a curve here - "well hip hop sucks and this is the only one i heard on the radio so i'll vote for this!" cool if you dig the big hook or whatever, but it's a failure as a rap song considering, you know, jay is a below-average rapper and he sounds as awful on this as he's sounded for the last five years. and tbh to everyone who acknowledges the song is fatally flawed but votes for it anyway: either listen to more singles or stop voting for singles

First of all, I don't think the song is fatally flawed. Secondly, I don't think Jay sounds that awful. I think it's one of the only two songs on the album where he actually sounds somewhat inspired. Of course it isn't a patch on his glory days, but I think his flow fits the song pretty well. I voted for it because I think its a fucking great pop song with a lot of swagger, not because its a well executed example of hip-hop. I guess I might have brought this on by making my point about hip-hop lacking "anthems" lately, but whatever. Also, fuck you for the inference that I don't listen to enough singles.

the point of your essay (partly) is that a type of album that made the top 5 in 2008 only made it to no. 11 in 2009?

sorry, no. 14.

and my point in pointing that out is that cult r&b comebacks HAVEN'T regularly made the top 5...unless you wanna count the Neville Brothers in 1987 or something.

Maybe that was a little overboard, but ffs I hate that more than anything, "you have different taste than me, so you must not listen to enough music to be as enlightened as I am"!

Of course it isn't a patch on his glory days

right, i get how one could kinda enjoy and even defend the song despite this, but really, this should disbar it completely from being one of the TEN BEST singles of the whole year! reserve that ballot for the fucking crème de la crème, not the enjoyable-but-flawed.

My annual whine--Not enough critics who listen to stuff other than indie rock participate in the Pazz & Jop poll. The P & J poobahs every year say they reach out to be fully inclusive with the electorate, but it seems some folks who write about non-indie can't be bothered to be part of this or are somehow unaware of the poll. I've tried to encourage fellow writers in the past, but did not do so this year.

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 6:44 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

i just want to say and i know this has been addressed upthread to some degree (also, whiney OTM re: black people like indie too) but basically the thing about becoming a critic & being aware that you're voting in this poll is that for 99% of all-genre critics, they go through a not-well-thought-out bit of "what does REAL MUSIC sound like?" that ends with rap critics giving up a lot of ground to other genres aesthetically (& im sure the same is true to some degrees with other genres) -- that just the act of seeing yourself as a critic is like "maybe i should find out what these yeah yeah yeahs sound like" & that 'interesting ballots' that reject critical consensus as a baseline of appreciating music are usually the product of ppl who are concentrated on an aesthetic outside of crit, who are self-aware enough to look at what ppl are listening to who dont exist wholly within an indie rock consensus bubble -- i.e. andy k's list, which yes has a few indie-approved albums, but it genuinely feels like a list with a strong aesthetic worldview that is informed by multiple discourses & filtered through his own worldview, that hes not simply like "man i love all these R&B records but animal collective are very 'worthy'"

jon i deliberately distinguished the parts of that 'graph where i was responding to you and where i was talking about all the "yeah jay's kinda boring, but great hook!"

but whatever, let's get angry

& here's the thing i really really strongly disagree w/ scott about -- (or maybe i agree with him, and i just think it needs to be stated this way) -- the idea that readers of criticism dont care about R&B is, in my opinion, a failure of RHETORIC. That the values celebrated in this poll & on pfork are not nearly as written in stone as they may appear.

My official involvement was strictly data-handling after the ballots were submitted, I didn't do any recruiting, metal or otherwise. Not intentionally, anyway. Obviously I can't control the massive internet ripple effects caused by my offhand comments in Rolling Metal. But I don't actually like Mastodon, Baroness or Converge, myself, so if it was a subconscious secret plot on my part, it backfired.

The results of the ILM Metal poll are interesting in this regard, but Kerr is still rolling them out in another thread, so I won't spoil his slow reveal.

and tbh to everyone who acknowledges the song is fatally flawed but votes for it anyway: either listen to more singles or stop voting for singles

Like I said, I didn't vote this year. I'm not even convinced it would've made my list if I had.

But I wouldn't say that it's "fatally flawed" -- sure, Jay-Z doesn't sound that great on it, but there are other aspects of the song that more than make up for that. I don't always listen to rap for the rapping.

And even if wouldn't have made my hypothetical P&J ballot, it's still in my top 10 R&B/hip-hop singles of the year, along with Amerie's "Why R U?", Mos Def's "Casa Bey," DJ Quik and Kurupt's "Hey Playa!," The Clipse's "I'm Good," Ciara's "Love Sex Magic," Ryan Leslie's "You're Not My Girl," Whitney Houston's "Million Dollar Bill," Kid Cudi's "Day N Nite," and The-Dream's "Sweat It Out."

right, i get how one could kinda enjoy and even defend the song despite this, but really, this should disbar it completely from being one of the TEN BEST singles of the whole year! reserve that ballot for the fucking crème de la crème, not the enjoyable-but-flawed.

Why? Jay's flow is weaker than it used to be, but there's a lot more to the song than just his delivery. Alicia owns the hook, my favorite part of the song and I really actually love the beat. So, yes, the vocals can be a little lackluster compared to earlier Jigga, but still be one of the ten best singles of the year.

I'm not angry, I just hated the inference whether it was aimed at me or not. It's lame.

And ha to jaymc getting to the same point as me.

xp That there was a major change at the top of the poll, even between 2008 and 2009. Not sure how you missed that. (I thought by #11 you meant Mos Def!) (And yeah, I don't want to quibble about the specifics of r&b comebacks; I'm not about to look at all those past years' polls again. I've done that enough for one month. My point is that having a cult r&b album or two in the top 10 -- say, D'Angelo's at #6 and Jill Scott at #9 in 2000 -- was hardly a rare occurrence in the past. If you're right about them never making the top 5, I stand corrected.)

right, i get how one could kinda enjoy and even defend the song despite this, but really, this should disbar it completely from being one of the TEN BEST singles of the whole year! reserve that ballot for the fucking crème de la crème, not the enjoyable-but-flawed.

This is bullshit. If you think a song is one of the best songs of the year, regardless of how it compares to the rest of the artist's output, you should vote for it. THIS is not only grading on a curve, it's grading on one horribly unfair to anyone who ever releases something that gets universal acclaim.

and xps to myself, the idea that the audience for criticism is set in stone is not correct, i dont think -- you speak to a crowd, the people who you speak to are gonna respond. there are lots of people out there who arent reached by criticism because people arent reaching them in the right way, imo.

HI DERE otm

Ciara's "Love Sex Magic,"

ha the idea that anyone could pick THIS enjoyable-but-generic ciara track from her output this year is actually more baffling now

I don't always listen to rap for the rapping.

yeah i get this but you can't really get away from the rapping in a rap song, and jay-z's flow on ESOM makes me flinch even if i try to ignore it.

This is bullshit. If you think a song is one of the best songs of the year, regardless of how it compares to the rest of the artist's output, you should vote for it. THIS is not only grading on a curve, it's grading on one horribly unfair to anyone who ever releases something that gets universal acclaim.

i didn't mean crème-de-la-crème in terms of artists - i meant in terms of songs - basically if i think i song has a massive, obvious flaw then no matter how much its other elements make up for it to the point that i can enjoy the thing, i don't feel i can vote for it in a ballot - save that for songs i feel don't have flaws. i love every moment and every aspect of every track on my ballot.

Okay, but my acknowledging that Jay's flow is weaker than it used to be doesn't make it a "massive, obvious flaw".

no i agree with lex, if you can't think of ten songs you love completely w/o reservations, why are you submitting a list? not only is jay not as good as he used to be, imo he's just not good. that's my position at least, and all i'm saying is that if you agree that jay's not any good, you really can't think of ten songs that don't have an awful performance on them? if you love the whole thing, more power to you.

xps

i'm so tired of arguing with people who insist that there's no audience for well-written non-indie (or specifically r&b) criticism, and that we should just follow the readers1 follow the readers! as though cultural commentators are unable to LEAD audiences, but deej otm

i mean shit, if there's no audience for well-written r&b criticism i guess i should just give up now, huh?

I don't think Jay's performance is "awful" on that song though. I think it fits the song just fine, even if it isn't Reasonable Doubt level.

(xpost)

alright fair nuff, that's cool then

I mean, I can love a Bob Dylan song and still objectively admit his vocals are shit, right?

i mean, there's BARELY an audience for well-written indie rock criticism

That there was a major change at the top of the poll, even between 2008 and 2009. Not sure how you missed that.

when combined with the overlap between the singles and album top tens, you could definitely make the case for an increase in indie solipsism. But if a comeback from a fairly minor IMO cult R&B figure and a sophomore slump from an otherwise promising artist are the ones being slighted, then it could be argued that indie guilt (which your article appears to argue for by baiting people with "you're all just AOR MOR/wish you'd actually go out on a limb" talk) wouldn't have necessarily made for that much better a list.

i think the real test of how pernicious this indie strangehold would be whether it ignores some upswing in pop quality, not whether it dominates in a slow year

Whiney OTM. I don't think 90% of your average daily, non-crit Pitchfork visitor even reads the reviews. They come for the news updates and listen to the streaming tracks.

you thinking The-Dream's 2nd album was a sophomore album doesn't make it an objective truth.

ha the idea that anyone could pick THIS enjoyable-but-generic ciara track from her output this year is actually more baffling now

It's the only Ciara track I heard this year. Or wait, maybe "Like a Surgeon," too, since I seem to recall Singles Jukebox reviewing that and I probably gave it a cursory listen, but it didn't stick. Anyway, I have a huge soft spot for that kind of light disco-funk, with the Chic-like walking bassline (e.g., Omarion's "Entourage" or some of those Snoop Dogg/Neptunes collabs or even Ryan Leslie's "You're Not My Girl," which I also listed), so it was something I immediately liked. If you want to recommend more R&B songs with that same "generic" sound, I'd love to hear them.

yeah, al, but even chuck - the only guy who brought it up - couldn't get excited for it! if people want to say it's equal to or better than Love/Hate fine, but my point is that I don't see a lot of that happening.

Quoting scottpl from above:

Maybe I'm wrong and there is some sort of place for discussion of this stuff, but I've seen us and RA and Stereogum and some other places thrive and/or get a foothold while the old VV, Blender, the thing CNET tried to start, Maura's Idolator, Stylus (which was about 5% less indie than p4k anyway) drift away and I feel like by now everyone complaining about that or missing them are people, say, posting in this thread.

xp Well, I get the idea that a lot of people who like The-Dream more than me (and like his second album more than you) do perceive that there was an upswing in pop quality in 2009. I actually think it was a decent year myself; I like Lady Gaga more than you. But right, like I said in the essay (the part with the "go out on a limb" aside you're keying in on), I don't expect most of my favorites to place anyway, in good years or bad years, since they haven't done so in a long time.

the market for intelligent writing about anything seems to be rather small right now . . . and perhaps always has been?

i think it's better than love/hate

the market for intelligent writing about anything seems to be rather small right now . . . and perhaps always has been?

depends on a) how you define intelligent and b) what you mean by "anything"

market's the same small-but-vocal minority, but the ability to make money off it is IOYVFIY:IOUGEOU(G#R*)Y#)TG#()&Y#)*&T#)(&T#)*^T*FO*YF

yeah, al, but even chuck - the only guy who brought it up - couldn't get excited for it! if people want to say it's equal to or better than Love/Hate fine, but my point is that I don't see a lot of that happening.

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 4:06 PM (51 seconds ago)

love/hate is probably my favorite album of the decade but i love the new one too...besides guys like kellman and deej from what i can tell the consensus seems to be money > hate though

It's the only Ciara track I heard this year

you could do worse than to check out "echo", which is incredible http://www.last.fm/music/Ciara/_/Echo

money and hate are on a similar level for me but undoubtedly money codes more "catnip to critics"

xp I never liked D'Angelo, Jill Scott, or Erykah Badu much either, tbh. Or Lauryn Hill, who did a lot better than Top 5 one year. Not a big neo-soul/alt-r&b/whatever fan in general. But I'm not really sure what me liking them, or you liking them, has to do with their P&J placement.

I'm sorry, but when I see Love/Hate I think Blackout In The Red Room.

Carry on.

TS: L/H vs. LM aside, we're talking about whether albums in the top 20 deserved to be in top 10, and what it says about the polling base that they weren't. We can either assume a) they didn't hear these undeniable efforts because they were too focused on their little world or b) they weren't undeniable. Even with my mild disappointment, I prefer Love Vs. Money to most of the top ten, but I don't think the case for A is that strong.

Pretty sure I gave some other possible reasons in my essay, Anthony.

But if a comeback from a fairly minor IMO cult R&B figure and a sophomore slump from an otherwise promising artist are the ones being slighted, then it could be argued that indie guilt (which your article appears to argue for by baiting people with "you're all just AOR MOR/wish you'd actually go out on a limb" talk) wouldn't have necessarily made for that much better a list.

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 2:59 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

hey bro maxwell was one of the best selling albums of the year & he was really not a 'minor cult' figure for R&B fans

well, I didn't vote for The-Dream (LVH was about my 17th favorite album of the year), I'm just saying it's disingenuous to refer to an artist's critical peak/breakthrough as a sophomore slump just because you happened to like the debut more.

xpost

love/hate is probably my favorite album of the decade but i love the new one too...besides guys like kellman and deej from what i can tell the consensus seems to be money > hate though

― ethan PADGY (k3vin k.), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 3:09 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest

nah the consensus is "woops we missed his first album"

hey bro maxwell was one of the best selling albums of the year & he was really not a 'minor cult' figure for R&B fans

non-indie artists who are not overtly commercial = minor cult figures
indie artists who are not overtly commercial = big deals who we should just expect to see dominate supposedly generalist discourse and lists

*pats self on back*

― The GAPDY Band - "You Jopped A Bomb On Me" (some dude), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 3:19 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol @ dn

when I see Love/Hate I think Blackout In The Red Room.

Ha ha, me too.

And yeah, pretty funny to bemoan "minor cult figures" while defending this particular Top 10.

i don't think i ever said maxwell was less important than girls or whomever (though yeah didn't realize his album was THAT big a seller, my bad), just that I wouldn't be sure his inability to beat them is neither a) shocking in the context of previous pazz'n'jops or b) cause for concern. He still did well.

maxwell probably sold more than anyone else above him in the list right?

Hey, did you guys know pop-bachata group Aventura starts a four-night headlining stand at MSG tonight?

I mean, as long as we're talking about who's big vs. who's important...

i'm so tired of arguing with people who insist that there's no audience for well-written non-indie (or specifically r&b) criticism, and that we should just follow the readers1 follow the readers! as though cultural commentators are unable to LEAD audiences, but deej otm

those are two v different things. I think there is little evidence that the first half isn't correct though. Where are people reading longform music criticism in any sizable numbers? I mean, outside of things called "indie" in this thread? (I would say Okayplayer board probably, but I also think the general sensibilities and values of those boards are fairly "indie")

I def agree that people should not just follow the readers though, and I've think we've done that better than about anyone the second half of this decade. We've taken a staunchly indie audience and opened up a lot of doors for them, at risk to our reputation and therefore business. Not as many ppl choose to walk through those doors as I'd like but we keep trying.

But like I said upthread if you want people to read about R&B in any large numbers, I think your best bet is to turn music crit readers into R&B fans, not R&B fans into music crit readers. And if you disagree, plz circle back to the question above and let me know the names of the successful pop and R&B outlets doing what you'd like them to do, and how many readers they get. Considering you actually think our site, with its 2.5mm monthly readers and 1.5mm twitter followers, is merely "a niche website with a very specific demographic" I don't think you'll be able to locate an answer.

<em>when I see Love/Hate I think Blackout In The Red Room.

Ha ha, me too.</em>

And me!

<em>And yeah, pretty funny to bemoan "minor cult figures" while defending this particular Top 10.</em>

Not to rehash my Tumblr but:

<blockquote>cumulative scans (through 1/10): AnCo 148k; Phoenix 277k; Neko Case 180k; YYYs 201k; DPs 58k; Grizzly Bear 153k; The xx 66k; Raekwon 154k; Flaming Lips ??; Girls 27k.</blockquote>

(oh jeez, sorry about the html/bb mixup, ugh)

Maxwell's by far the biggest seller of the upper reaches of the list (until Jay-Z at #27)

i apologize for calling him a minor cult figure, now can we bitch about green day's sale-to-p'n'j-stature ratio, dudes barely made the top 40

btw, sorry for being a dick there. I only feel comfortable being one to the lex since he's such an unrepentant one about us. btw he unironically posted the "a niche website with a very specific demographic" comment on the single jukebox.

p.s. lex: the #1 LP in america this week is vampire weekend

p.s. lex: the #1 LP in america this week is vampire weekend

The fuck.

seriously

well done, vampire weekend up there with susan boyle and ke$ha now

Can't wait for "That's What Friends Are For '10"

Not sure why that should be surprising...?

Score one for the indie kids. In a rather amazing turn of events, Vampire Weekend — they of the piqued Polos, pan-ethnic pop stylings and proudly independent label — will snag the top spot on next week's Billboard albums chart. And the competition wasn't even close.

Contra, the band's second album, sold close to 124,000 copies in its first week to debut at #1, besting runner-up Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream by nearly 50,000 albums. Released on XL Recordings, Contra is the first independent album to debut at #1 since Pearl Jam's Backspacer bowed at the top of the charts back in September (that album was released on the band's own Monkeywrench label but sold exclusively through mega-retailer Target, independent stores and online). Contra is also the highest indie-rock debut since both the Shins and the Arcade Fire released albums — Wincing the Night Away and Neon Bible — that opened at #2 back in 2007. It's the first #1 album in XL's 20-year history, not to mention the label's highest debut since Thom Yorke's The Eraser bowed at #2 in 2006.

didn't you hear jaymc? indie is a little nothing that nobody cares about.

Not that I agree with much of what Lex is posting here, but Scott, haven't you been expending a bunch of energy on this thread explaining the precise niche and specific demographics of your website?

P4k still regularly publishes many of the best music writers working today, and their news section and features are also consistently excellent. i used to read it almost exclusively, and even though over the past few years i've branched out to read other sites too, it's still one of my favorite things to read.

I mean, my line for a while now has been that most everything in pop music, broadly defined, is a niche, including the mainstream. It's a generalization, obviously, and clearly Lex is throwing a dagger there. But is that niche/specific thing altogether bad in Pfork's case? It's done very well by it. (xpost)

xpost

(i also wish blogs/more publications would follow P4k in (1) splitting up their RSS feeds into categories that make sense and (2) using sensible, non-bullshit headlines for their stories. makes things so much better for people using feed readers.)

Indie is a niche Matos, I agree. I think outside of very few artists, all of music is niche these days. But I don't think we are a website that just covers one niche for an audience that only wants one niche, which is what I think the Lex believes.

p.s. lex: the #1 LP in america this week is vampire weekend
The fuck.

Clue: Their album was released the second week in January.

(2) using sensible, non-bullshit headlines for their stories. makes things so much better for people using feed readers.)

seo optimization = death

(trust me on this. it doesn't take that much effort to skim the first line of a story!)

yeah but xhuxk, just as a point of comparison, last year's no. 1 this week was taylor swift's 'fearless' -- it scanned 63k. breaking six figures in this era is a legit good showing.

(surely i'm not the only one who has seen the 'cousins' video on mtv hits? and thought it fit in well with the rest of that channel's manic-leaning playlist?)

Suggest Ban Permalink

p.s. lex: the #1 LP in america this week is vampire weekend
The fuck.

Clue: Their album was released the second week in January.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 3:54 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i also maintain that while im sure these guys are pretty super-popular that sales dont actually represent popularity as a proportion in any meaningful way any more

God I miss when headlines were considered writing, too.

What does then -- ILM mentions?

xpost

nothing?

there is no good way to measure popularity right now, which is part of why critical coverage of genres like rap are so awful

xpFearless had been out how many weeks by then, though? At least two months (since November '08), right? I'm not scoffing at the VW numbers; just saying that their entering at #1 was pretty obviously going to happen, wasn't it? What other albums even came out last week?

Also that album was like $3.99 on iTunes, so come on fuckin guy

I don't know, deej. Even in this climate a #1 record is a pretty accurate gauge!

...of people who buy albums. which includes ... no teenagers basically

do u remember how many CDs j0rdan sarg3nt owns

xpost

but maura, i'm not asking for TechCrunch-style, bland, link-baiting headlines, just ones that make sense! (back when you were running it, and i was reading it, i thought Idolator headlines were good.)

but shit like Tiny Mix Tapes headlines circa-2007 were borderline unreadable, sentence-long jokes that had little to do with the corresponding story, which itself often began with sentences of bullshit puff-text that had little to do with anything. as a reader, i want well-written, non-bullshit headlines, which doesn't equate to non-creative, SEO-bullshit ones.

but albums aren't CD's anymore, as you admit!

xpost

From http://web.archive.org/web/20071214102355/http://www.tinymixtapes.com/

Sufjan Stevens Brings His State Odes To Japan and Australia For The First Time, And You and I Know That The Japanese and Australians Will Probably Relate More To The Songs Than Us Because They Know More About American History. Admit It.

Americans are narrow-minded sonsabitches. We’ve been proven scientifically to be the most racist and sexist humans in the history of human civilization. But you know what? We’re god damn proud of it! Simply put: we’re better than everybody who doesn’t hang our red, white, and blue flag — it’s in our DNA. Fuck with us, we’ll fuck with you. Don’t fuck with us, we’ll still fuck with you. We’re mighty proud of being assholes and even prouder of havin’ lower scores in arithmetic than pretty much the whole world.

^ bad headline, bad lead-in

i agree with ksh, but gotta admit that this cracked me up today

but albums aren't CD's anymore, as you admit!

― Blue Fucks Like Ben Nelson (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 4:05 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

itunes sales are a minuscule fraction of the amount of music traded online

Also that album was like $3.99 on iTunes, so come on fuckin guy

but chris, I thought the charts mattered because that was our shared culture and that's why critics have a responsibility to engage with pop and what audiences are buying? That was the crux of your twitter talk. I see it doesn't always apply ;)

Who reads TMT as an up-to-the-minute news source though?

i did in 2005 i think. even as a non-timely news source tho, it was useless back then. looks better now, although i don't read their site regularly

nabisco has an insanely long blog post about (after skimming it v.briefly, what seems like) this kind of stuff up on his tumblr today btw. haven't read it yet, but will definitely do so later.

haven't read it but i bet it's otm

Weren't the album charts historically imperfect reflections of what was "really" popular? What with the buyer-reported sales and all? Does no one remember the sea change that occurred during the first week of the SoundScan era?

I mean, I'm not saying that sales as they're measured now aren't an accurate reflection of *something* -- and honestly I do think that the hothouse provided by the Internet makes many a phenomenon seem more important on a grander scale than it actually might be -- but I don't think the Billboard 200 is sacrosanct at all, and I wasn't posting the SS numbers above to claim such. Just trying to point out that, even though they're in the vernacular in these parts and in other Pitchfork-fluent corners of the Internet, probably not everyone out there knows who Girls are!

i just mean that plies is probably still a bigger name to most of america than vampire weekend even if hes never had a #1 album

haven't read it but i bet it's otm

It is.

probably not everyone out there knows who Girls are!

In more contexts than one.

i just mean that plies is probably still a bigger name to most of america than vampire weekend even if hes never had a #1 album

I don't know about that, I mean Vampire Weekend has gotten tons of hype in NYT profiles and other outlets that non-music fans are more likely to be exposed to.

nabisco hasnt really made a point yet though, just set up the framework for 'part 2'

when people start talking about "most of america" i think of my sister, who's just a little younger than me and likes bruce springsteen and green day (and also plays fiddle and listens to a lot of old-time music), and who i just this christmas introduced to an obscure artist she had never heard of: taylor swift.

"most of america" doesn't belong in this conversation at all.

(btw my sister is now a big taylor fan and her 11-yr-old son is mad at me about it.)

I think this is a point, even if he's made it before recently:

What’s always interesting to me w/r/t critics and “indie” is that many people seem to think of middlebrow music criticism as automatically occupying the sphere of privilege and dominance — like the U.S., in this analogy — even though its readership and importance in the wider world of music is really more comparable to that impoverished African nation and its quaint local sport. And they often do this because — even as they lambaste criticism for privileging “collegiate” or middlebrow types of music — they themselves privilege “collegiate” and middlebrow ways of talking about music; the way critics talk is closer to them, more comfortably in their vicinity, than the ways many people talk about many other kinds of music. Which is fine, and not hypocritical at all, though I do wish it were acknowledged more.

(xpost to deej)

Do Tim Finney's ocassional reviews of R'n'b on Pitchfork get less internet hits?

Pretty sure this is the case! The only emails I ever get about my R&B reviews (and I rarely get any) are from trolls wondering why it's being favourably covered in the first place.

The fact that this is probably the case and yet Pitchfork still publish me reflects well on Pitchfork (w/r/t its interest in covering non-indie-rock at any rate) rather than the reverse.

The absence of a "critical community" for R&B is not some new problem by the way. Scott is right to say imply that the big difference this year was a the lack of a critico-commercial nexus that traditionally pushed big Neptunes productions or Missy Elliot albums so high. And yeah I think the difficulty in identifying what is popular is part of that.

Deej's point about the relationship b/w sales and popularity is important in another way: the more "niche" something is (i.e. the more central to the taste of a niche fanbase) the more likely that a significant proportion of its actual consumption will be done for free - not just in the typical sense of illegal downloads, but also specialist radio shows and mixes, which appear online with pristine sound quality and in a vast and regular profusion in a way that simply wasn't true even a couple of years ago.

What this means is that the remaining audience(s) for actually purchasing music tends to be the crossover audience(s), who still depend on the traditional top 40 radio / video clip / stories in broadsheet papers / physical CD or iTunes download process for identifying the pop music they like. This audience will go for Ke$ha and Lady Gaga and BEP and even Vampire Weekend, all of whom are not only populist but receive a level of mainstream non-"critic" journalistic coverage in a way that, say, The-Dream, just... doesn't (in part because of their sales - the cycle is self-perpetuating obv).

The traditional nexus whereby niche fans purchased something such that it gained enough critical and commercial prominence to then crossover to a broader audience is, if not broken, then a lot weaker than it used to be. Why would niche fans go out and buy e.g. a Gucci album when they already have five mixtapes, and probably downloaded his "official" album for free anyway?

This, I think, has been even more deadly for dance music sub-genres than for others. I've stopped expecting a UK Funky track to actually chart prominently in the UK because - unlike in the case of its obvious predecessor UK Garage - much of the core audience who might care enough to gain any potential hit or foothold in popular consciousness probably don't need to buy it: if they haven't already downloaded an illegal copy they probably have it on an internet DJ mix or radio set and that's sufficient for their purposes.

The upshot of all of this is that I think the current dominance of these more marginal/liminal pop figures who exist on the borders between genres (Gaga, BEP, increasingly Taylor Swift) is here to stay, at least until something changes in patterns of music consumption.

i just mean that plies is probably still a bigger name to most of america than vampire weekend even if hes never had a #1 album

possibly. But to the music writing-reading population of the U.S I imagine it's no freaking contest.

no question. but i think its important when writing to have a sense of perspective that way, and acting as if indie is the most popular kind of music out there, as if this justifies its critical dominance, rather than recognizing that these are independent variables, is wrong imo

of course, but I don't think anyone thinks indie is the most popular music out there! I'm obviously teasing Chris upthread. VW is one thing but it's not like the #1 (or even #200) LP next week is going to be Surfer Blood.

*doodlydoodlydoodly*

"SURFER BLOOD TOPS CHARTS; 'We Owe It All To That One Meme.'"

xp yah i mean i have other issues w/r/t people not recognizing sales which we've talked about before -- i think that purely from a journalistic standpoint ppl dont have a very good grasp on how popular things are & what the shape of pop music really is, and that this affects the way they talk about music & how music outside their comfort zone is treated -- its easy to marginalize music that doesnt claim the center if its outside of the genres you usually pay attention to.

i don't know who GIRLS are!

i think that purely from a journalistic standpoint ppl dont have a very good grasp on how popular things are & what the shape of pop music really is

Need it be purely from a journalistic standpoint? It's hard to conceive of any true definitive statement from anyone from a creator to a consumer, it's more a constantly shifting battle of claims.

it also effects the rhetoric people use around music's "importance" -- [x] is the first album to do [y] -- in a way that can be very misleading. the example that used to drive folks nuts in hiphop was how a lot of writers saw clipse as the creators of 'crack rap,' -- it would have been fine if the writing was covering the critical phenomenon of covering rap about crack but instead it was ostensibly about the music itself, which ignored that rapping about crack had never gone away, and in fact had a much more popular & significant incarnation in no limit & master p's "ghetto d," which was certainly a much larger influence on rap as a whole.

i think it's a really important part of being a cultural commentator, especially now when consumers and fans can retreat easily and comfortably into their own tastes to the exclusion of everything else, to cover as wide a range as possible of other experiences and perspectives

influence & importance are not always reflected by critical recognition, or are in certain ways but not others, but this is not recognized & leads to very misleading rhetoric around music

i think it's a really important part of being a cultural commentator, especially now when consumers and fans can retreat easily and comfortably into their own tastes to the exclusion of everything else, to cover as wide a range as possible of other experiences and perspectives

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 4:44 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont agree with this. isnt this exactly what the whole frankendance bmore/baile/disco/crunk gross club scene is based in?

"All these ways we classify things as r&b and hip-hop and rock . . . It's bullshit," he recently told Elvis Mitchell in Interview. "It's all music. If you put yourself in that box, then you won't be able to hear that it's all music at its soul. When people say stuff like, 'Oh, that's soft rock. I don't listen to that,' I find that elitist. It's music-racist." Just another made-up tag to avoid.

Jay Z OTM

commentators should do it, artists mostly shouldn't!

xp