Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

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