Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

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,