Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

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