Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

xp Or easier (though I'd never advocate this as a policy), what would happen if you just subtracted all album-duplicating singles votes in general. (Guessing that might hurt, say, DJ Quik and Kurupt's singles ratings as much as any indie band's -- might not help Taylor Swift's either -- but I'd still be curious how the results would shake out.)

what if people just voted for singles

De Stijl was a pretty big deal, indie-wise,

This isn't a great example to use, because the record came out in 2000, long before Pitchfork had nearly the kind of influence it does now. And aren't we trying to find examples of indie records that were not just popular in a particular scene but around which a widespread critical consensus developed? De Stijl only finished #229 in P&J.

I don't think that anyone's arguing that P4k doesn't provide a valuable service to the indie music-listening community, or that they aren't to some extent arbiters of taste within that sphere. They have a symbiotic relationship to that scene - both benefiting from its growing popularity and contributing to it. The music would exist without P4k or a similar site, but it wouldn't perhaps be as widely known or promoted outside the confines of that scene. Every scene needs some star acts to champion it, and P4k helps in the process of consensus formation around those stars. They don't dictate who the stars will be, but by generally listening to a lot of stuff and having taste that aligns pretty well with their audience, they are usually able to provide some filtering. So P4k may be a small contributing factor to indie domination of P&J, but I would argue that there are other more important factors, but it's difficult to discuss because "indie" is such an amorphous label.

what if people just voted for singles

i was going to say "would you bitch if people voted for airplay-only push tracks from pop albums?" but then that's a pretty '90s phenomenon with no real place in iTunes culture. And, for the same reason - any indie push track with an official video is a single.

btw PF "passing" on bands seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me -- once the site has made a big gesture of saying "this band sucks, don't believe the hype" or "they're not the kind of indie we like" or whatever, odds are slim that readers or staff are going to be following them much from thereon to even know if they end up improving or making a great record later on. there have been so many slow burn careers the last few years, from bands who just seemed to be plugging along for years and eventually got a big following (Of Montreal, Spoon, etc.) that it'll be interesting to see, 5 or 10 years from now, what bands can survive a quick-bursting blog/PF hype bubble and end up having a good long run and maybe winning back some of those media outlets (or finding different kinds of success).

I wrote for Pitchfork in 2000, and everyone I knew IRL (if not on staff, since I didn't really know any of those folks at the time ) that listened to indie at the time was talking about De Stijl or telling me to check it out. it definitely felt weird at the time that PF didn't review it.

I really want to see that Artist chart, but I got a login thing from your link, and can't find it on the main All Idols page.

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Pazz-Jop-2009&query=Combined+Artist+Chart

does anyone know how much a gap there is between # of readers, say, Stereogum, has and the # of reads P4k has?

Or easier (though I'd never advocate this as a policy), what would happen if you just subtracted all album-duplicating singles votes in general

This would solve the laziness issue - you can either vote for the single or the album, but not both - but it would penalize acts who release a great album that also spawns a lot of great singles. Interesting trade-off, I guess. I don't know if there's a more gradualist remedy that would be equally effective. I think maybe that it would be best to fragment the poll. Forget the idea of overall best album & single, but have separate polls for "Best Indie Album", "Best Dance Single", "Best Radio Single", "Best Video", "Best Country Album", "Best Metal Album", etc. Let people vote in as many of the sub-polls as they want to.

just trying to wrap my head around the relative significance (or lack thereof) of the more well-known sectors of the indie blogosphere and P4k

@some dude: sometimes PFork recants though or hedges and revises.

Case in point: Fever to Tell got a sort of damning with half praise review when it initially came out, but later made top 50 of the decade. Discovery got an even worse review and was even higher later. See also Andrew W.K.

Okay, sure, Al -- PF should've reviewed De Stijl at the time. I'm still not sure what that has to do with what we're talking about, though. It's not just indie bands that are popular without Pitchfork. It's indie bands that are *critically* popular in *the last few years* without Pitchfork.

well, i was being pedantic about a smaller point made upthread, not the big picture debate here. PF were reviewing 4 albums a day then compared to 5 now, so it just seems odd to me that a band that had been touring w/ Pavement and Sleater-Kinney, as the White Stripes had at that point, got kinda slept on by the site.

does anyone know how much a gap there is between # of readers, say, Stereogum, has and the # of reads P4k has?

― kshighway (ksh), Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:48 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's actually chasmlike. pfork DOMINATES all over any sort of indie blog, so the sense of entitlement a lot of them have is extra lolleriffic

though, stuff like Rolling Stone.com gets as much traffic as pitchfork on any given day. And the type of traffic that fuels shit like TMZ or Perez makes p4k look like it has the readers your little sister's myspace page

damn your sister must be hot

Oh, sorry, here's the correct link to the Artist Chart. (jaymc caught this already)

There was only one 2009 ballot that had more than three songs by the same artist (Jimmy Draper's Lady Gaga fiesta), and only three others with 3, so the counts aren't being abused that way. But the album-overlap is pretty significant. Here's a new table comparing the total vote-count to the count excluding song/album overlap (technically speaking, excluding song-votes from ballots with an album by the same artist; I don't have actual track-listings to work with, so some of these might be non-album singles). As surmised, GAPDY suffer dramatically in this version. Jay-Z still wins, but Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift jump up to #2 and 3.

This would solve the laziness issue - you can either vote for the single or the album, but not both - but it would penalize acts who release a great album that also spawns a lot of great singles.

Right, it would've cut into "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Billie Jean" and "When Doves Cry" and "Dancing In The Dark" and "Bring The Noise" etc. votes, which obviously makes no sense. I would actually advocate, though, a limit on the number of album-duplicating singles you can put on your ballot. Maybe two or three, tops. Beyond that, all your duplicating singles don't count. May actually mention this to Harvilla.

something has to be done

It would be nice if something was.

only one 2009 ballot that had more than three songs by the same artist

Well, that's not what I meant. I meant if you vote for three different singles off of three different albums you also voted for, not all off the same album. But I'll check that link when I have a chance.

damn your sister must be hot

I lold

xpost

yeah, that totally makes sense Whiney. i know plenty of people who reach P4k but, say, zero who read GvB or whateverthefuck.

Alexa rankings:

Rolling Stone: #2,457
NME: #2,819
Pitchfork: #2,903
Resident Advisor: #9,208
Stereogum: #10,162
Paste: #10,356
PopMatters: #12,153
Brooklyn Vegan: #14,921
Spin: #16,307

my mind is always blown at PopMatters traffic

Here's a new table comparing the total vote-count to the count excluding song/album overlap

This table seems much improved. A single should be something that appeals to more people than those who like the whole album.

xp Maybe b/c it's not just a music site but an all-purpose arts/culture/media site?

thanks for those rankings, jaymc! didn't realize there'd be such a disparity between Spin and Rolling Stone, tbh

also, most of the stuff I've read on PopMatters is really, really poorly written

I was actually surprised at how low Spin.com was, too. Then again, I'm not sure who its target audience is anymore.

So, according to Glenn's chart there (assuming I'm understanding it right), these are the singles that drew fewer than half of their votes from people who didn't also vote for the album (or, if this is clearer, more than half of their votes from people who did vote for the album):

4 Phoenix · 1901 81 38 0.469
5 Grizzly Bear · Two Weeks 65 29 0.446
7 Yeah Yeah Yeahs · Zero 59 29 0.492
8 Dirty Projectors · Stillness Is the Move 64 28 0.438
12 Animal Collective · My Girls 76 23 0.303
48 Yeah Yeah Yeahs · Heads Will Roll 27 10 0.37
67 Animal Collective · What Would I Want? Sky 14 2 0.143

why is this a problem again? because they're indie rock?

xhuxk, you're missing:

55 Girls · Hellhole Ratrace 17 8 0.471
57 Neko Case · This Tornado Loves You 19 8 0.421

But otherwise, yeah.

why is this a problem again? because they're indie rock?

No, it's just more boring when the albums and singles list overlap so much.

xp Yeah just noticed that! Oops, missed these two:

55 Girls · Hellhole Ratrace 17 8 0.471
57 Neko Case · This Tornado Loves You 19 8 0.421

These get exactly half of their support from album voters:

53 The xx · Crystalised 18 9 0.5
58 Raekwon (ft. Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck and Method Man) · House of Flying Daggers 16 8 0.5
60 Brad Paisley · Welcome to the Future 14 7 0.5

Singles that scored between 0.5 and 0.6: Girls "Lust For Life," Phoenix "Lisztomania," Bat For Lashes "Daniel," Maxwell "Pretty Wings," Avett Brothers "I And Love You," Pearl Jam "The Fixer," St. Vincent "Actor Out Of Work," Very Best (w Ezra Koenig) "Warm Heart Of Africa."

xp I think it's boring either way

albums and singles lists used to be different, though, a real demonstrable yin and yang. whether they wore boring, they were boring in different ways too.

i guess those days are over?

fucking internet ruined music this blows

2009: the year indie broke pazz'n'jop

but why should they be? P&J is one of the only major year-end lists that does singles-qua-singles, not just albums, not 'tracks,' and I think having that is valuable. (xpost)

i almost wonder if the pop critics are dying out because indie-critics have the DIY ethic where they're happy to do a review for $20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbhjXVHFeXA

Also, you could argue that Animal Collective's "What Would I Want? Sky" shouldn't be on there, because the Fall Be Kind EP that it appears on only got two album votes, while the song got 14 votes. But it looks like 12 of those 14 votes were from people who also voted for Merriweather Post Pavilion.

i'm with some dude. i really think p&J should be hard and about SINGLES. but then how do we decide what a single is?

i'm not even really sure what indie songs are actually released as singles and which ones aren't--i guess maybe that's how most of the votership feels?

i go on whether i hear something mainly outside of the context of the album or my iTunes (radio, TV, clubs and parties), because i mean, i liked the Quik & Kurupt singles, but i didn't really hear them anywhere unless i was the one pressing 'play' myself.

Which songs in particular are people bitching about re: not being singles? What are the hands-down "wtf no video, no 7", no promotion, BULLSHIT INDIE MOTHER FUCKER" plain and blatant album tracks.

xpost ok, "a single is defined by ubiquity" is one answer

as noted above, all the songs in the top 10 had videos and were, to some degree, promoted as 'singles' or emphasis tracks, and maybe the voters did hear them out at parties a lot or whatever. i mean, it's not for me to say whether them hearing a song at an indie dance party (or something? do they play new stuff at those or only old Smiths and Depeche Mode songs?) is less valid than me hearing a song on a Radio One-owned station or MTV Hits, but i think it's worth talking about.

how do we decide what a single is?

You really can't anymore, not when basically every song can be bought individually on iTunes or wherever. I mean, I know in my head what I'd consider a single, for my own list. But by the late '90s (really, starting with ubiquitous AOR airplay tracks that were never released alone, even pre-digital era) it became impossible to enforce.

Honestly, when Christgau let Doug Simmons vote for Guns N Roses' "Civil War" in 1991, that opened the floodgates. It's been downhill ever since.

This doesn't directly address the poll or the critics voting in it, but I've noticed with my students that the Shared Listening Experience we've talked so much about is gone – unless you're attending the indie dance party that Al mentioned. It's got something to do with the line blurring between "single" and "track I really like": if you no longer listen to the radio, you get your music from sampling it on YouTube, then either buy the track online or download it illegally. Listening is more atomized.