Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

When did you send it? I get the impression Will has been pretty stressed out lately.

Isn't part of the reason for having a singles poll to throw a spotlight on fantastic music which either isn't on an album at all, or where the parent album really is mostly filler? The "hit" thing is sort of a red herring - sometimes that music has hit big, sometimes it hasn't.

But obviously a poll full of tracks from beloved albums isn't doing that job.

So the questions I'd be asking are: what is the great music that doesn't turn up on albums? And why aren't critics hearing/voting for it? It seems to me internet consensus shouldn't be a big factor here - if that consensus can form around an album, it can surely form around a track.

"Lust for Life" was released as a single in 2008 (I downloaded it from eMusic; didn't care for it then, don't care about it now).

I voted for two album cuts myself (Art Brut's "Demons Out!" and Dam-Funk's "Brookside Park") because I played them obsessively, like singles. Better send me back to the non-voting salt mines, Harvilla.

Oh, I see what you mean now, Chuck. Here's the breakdown of 2009 ballots by artist-overlap between albums and singles:

1 ballot had exactly the same artists on both lists, in the same order even.
0 ballots had 9 overlapping artists.
1 had 8.
14 had 7.
24 had 6.
42 had 5.
57 had 4.
74 had 3.
88 had 2.
81 had 1.
315 had none.

So with a no-more-than-3 rule, 139 people would have had more work to do, for a total of 284 votes that would need to be changed. But that's only ~6% of the single votes cast, and so dwarfed by the laziness of people who didn't vote for *any* singles, or only a couple (~2200-ish blank single slots).

Are there really very many songs that exist outside of albums these days? I just went through my 78-track favorite-songs-of-2009, and these are the only ones I found that did not have homes on full-length albums:

Spoon, "Got Nuffin" (from Got Nuffin EP)
Lady Gaga, "Bad Romance" (from The Fame Monster EP)
Washed Out, "Feel It All Around" (from Life of Leisure EP)
Destroyer, "Bay of Pigs" (from Bay of Pigs EP)

Furthermore, the Spoon song eventually showed up on the band's 2010 album. And with eight tracks, The Fame Monster is really pushing the limit of an EP.

Maybe I'm the problem, though. I guess the best example this year of a popular single without an album was "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell."

Actually, you also probably see it way more often with dance/electronic music.

man, Pitchfork circa 2000 and 2001 vs now is night and day. The size of the site now utterly dwarfs the site then, and certainly the way it's run and decisions are made are different (then: one guy in his apartment trying to juggle it all by calling a few labels and emailing people for reviews turned around asap; today: 17 f/t employees in two offices planning all aspects of a small biz/publication) is drastically different as well. It is amazing that people think the one is relevant to the other.

but I guess since many of you all live on the internet, and have an idea of "what pitchfork is" that extends back a decade, I don't think you recognize the ways "what Pitchfork is" has changed. We reach more people right now that Spin or Vibe ever did, even if you use the bs print mag idea that "every copy is read by 2.5 people." I get that we're free, and that not everyone looks at everything, and that someone clicking on the site by accident or for a second counts as a "reader." But not everyone looked at every individual piece of content in print pubs and the # of bs clicks we get is certainly not close to the number that were built into mag circ numbers/ad rates. e.g. it's hard as hell to fudge our metrics once you get away the frontpage; I know how many people have read, say, our Contra review or our The Fame Monster review. I would not be surprised if in a month those are the most-read reviews of either album in the U.S.

But a lot of people are happy to just ignore our readership because they personally knew some blog or dude who knew about dan deacon before we published a track review. You know who didn't? Most of our readers. (And Chris, if we're talking about the effects on Pazz and Jop: We matched 11 of the top 13 LPs, the top four metal LPs, five of the six top h-h LPs, and 31 of the top 34 songs were on our top 100. Again, we didn't do that through some sort of puppetmaster shit, but we are by any metric plugged in to what other critics and listeners want from music right now. We've succeeded at a time when nobody else has. I don't beg for credit or claim to be responsible for things, but to dismiss us outright as if we don't matter at all, which you've done, feels odd.)

hell, I should stop caring, get back to work, and let people keep underestimating us.

xp (Like "Hyph Mngo.")

can't stand the mngo! wait, i think that's the one i don't like. i remember it from my foray into xlr8r-land.

Hmph Mngo

i like the new, aggressive, scottpl

i don't think we'll ever know whether pitchfork is the chicken or the egg

I think we're neither

we can basically 1. expose a lot of people to something, often something that would take years of touring and work to generate the exposure we can potentially provide, 2. expose nominally indie/guitar rock kids to non-indie music, 3. provide a large platform for opinions/artists that aren't related in some ways to the machinations of the music industry (i.e. we don't need a "cover star" or only have 12 "lead reviews" a month, or to run features only on newsstand-ready artists), which is something we share with the whole of the internet granted. Though we have a much bigger soapbox.

we are, at most accurate, I think something that accelerates a process that is or would already happen (the Whiney opinion to be fair, though he doesn't recognize the "acceleration" part I don't think) and/or be a pub that can stand up and say, in ways that other pubs can't (to the same # of ppl) or won't (bcuz they aren't built to do that), "this newish thing is important and deserves some attention" and people will at least follow up on that.

nobody likes some thing just because we do, and we aren't telling people what to think and they are listening, that's crazy. If anything you could argue we're better A&R people than journalists, but it's possible that's all readers want from a pub these days anyway.

Are there really very many songs that exist outside of albums these days?

Well, I don't know how many were on albums (definitely a bunch of them, looks like) but from Glenn's list, these are the singles I see that had no overlap between album and singles voters, if that helps:

13 Joy Orbison · Hyph Mngo 22 22 1
14 Big Boi (ft. Gucci Mane) · Shine Blockas 21 21 1
18 Das Racist · Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell 18 18 1
21 Kid Cudi · Day 'N' Nite 16 16 1
22 Miley Cyrus · Party in the USA 16 16 1
26 Beyoncé · Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) 14 14 1
33 Jay Electronica · Exhibit C 13 13 1
36 Jamie Foxx (ft. T-Pain) · Blame It 12 12 1
37 Kelly Clarkson · My Life Would Suck Without You 12 12 1
45 Major Lazer (ft. Nina Sky and Ricky Blaze) · Keep It Goin' Louder 10 10 1

Pretty sure Miley and Das Racist have no corresponding album. Beyonce' obviously came off an '08 album. Never heard of "Jay Electronica" until this very second. Skeptical about Kid Cudi up above -- didn't his album get a bunch of votes? Odd that there would be no overlap at all there.

i think the jay electronica song is going to be on an album this year?

i like the new, aggressive, scottpl

haha, I don't. Need more sleep. Less stress. I def don't mean any antagonism to Chris or Chuck or anyone, other than maybe lex and even that's tongue-in-cheek and I think I agree with him personally a hell of a lot more than he'd think.

For whatever reason I just find it odd that we get swept under the rug so completely. I've generally stopped taking it personally years ago, but we take pride in what we do, we work very hard, we don't rush judgments...I dunno, I got into this conversation talking about some of the marco reasons that rock = indie, or that the internet is homogenizing opinions (not a good thing mind you), but I can't help find it weird that the one pub that has succeeded the past five years in this music, media, and economic environment was considered meaningless by 2003. in 2003, it was a one-man show, now it's a real pub. This is just tunnelvision to me.

And obv I take that personally since I started here in late 2004, and also bcuz I like Chris and respect him and it's hard to hear from him that he thinks we're a lark. Alright, I will get out of this thread.

Never heard of these people until the last few minutes either, fwiw:

39 Washed Out · Feel It All Around 14 12 0.857

xxxp "Blame It," "My Life Would Suck Without You," "Keep It Goin' Louder," "Day 'N' Nite," and "Single Ladies" are off full-length albums. "Party in the USA" is off the Time of Our Lives EP. Presumably "Shine Blockas" is from Sir Luscious Left Foot (2010 release). The rest appear to be completely stand-alone (though I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually end up on albums this year).

Are there really very many songs that exist outside of albums these days?

Nine of my singles (and they were singles) did not appear on a single-artist album in 2009. One of the nine will definitely appear on a 2010 album. Not sure about the others.

also w/ a lot of popular music these days, especially R&B and rap, there's such a long lead time between singles being released and their parent albums being released that they're increasingly straddling different years

Yeah, Andy, I realized belatedly that it's far more common for dance/electronic artists to release stand-alone singles.

like, the 2010 album Big Boi had a single off of on this year's poll also had an earlier single get 6 votes in the 2008 poll (xpost)

ilxor, did you see one of nabsico's Tumblr posts from earlier? you were quoted.

Didn't see this, actually... mind pointing me in the right direction?

xp True -- I voted for a Kid Sister song in 2007 that eventually turned up on her 2009 album.

Didn't see this, actually... mind pointing me in the right direction?

http://agrammar.tumblr.com/post/344749076/a-lengthy-hack-through-recent-music-crit-stuff-mostly

Thanks!

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

what do you base the idea that there was ever a wide U.S. audience for pop crit? Seriously. It's always been for rock or things that sprouted from punk/new wave/etc. No different then as it is now. We have no legacy of Smash Hits or The Face. Blender lasted as long as it did because of its covers, corporate money, and celeb-based features, not its writing (sorry). A lot of other crits wrote for papers and stuff about pop stars but that audience now has gossip mags, celeb sites, tv to find out about, say, Rihanna. People want photobooks of Fergie not 400 words on her new LP. Now they don't need the words to see the photos. They don't to read how some critic thinks she bit M.I.A. in order to hear about her personal life.

When the Lex claimed Rihanna's TV iviews were proof that people cared about her LP, not only did it not matter she had an LP out, it probably didn't matter she was a musician in the first place. She was a celebrity. If she was ScarJo and Chris Brown was Ryan Reynolds and everyone involved behaved the same way, the narrative would have played out the same-- except more people would have cared since film is so much bigger than music.

Isn't it possible that, like I said before, a lot of people used to get paid a lot of money to write a lot of words about things that in actual fact nobody wanted to read? And now that we have direct metrics to measure online what is read, and less utilitarian need for critics (from a reader not a cultural POV), that has been found out to a degree?

I'm far far from celebrating that. It's depressing as hell. But I'd guess that music crit is being kept alive by (and therefore populated by), as one of my colleagues said, the exact same people keeping record stores alive. Those are the diehards and the specialists and the people who care enough to buy product. And to read and reviews. And they listen to indie. And AnCo is #1 in pazz and Jop. And VW can sell 125K records on an indie label.

That is simplistic as hell, but I still think there are elements of sad sad truth there. People are asking "where are the non-rock/indie crits" and maybe they should be asking "where are the non-rock/indie readers." You could start by locating where they were. If they existed.

(btw "where are the non-rock/indie fans." is not the same as "where are the non-rock/indie readers" btw. the answer to the first is, I assume, justjared, ew, people, perez hilton, etc. And maybe...that's all those listeners ever wanted to know about those artists other than their music.)

aw, you know i love you, scott! and i def don't mean to sound cranky or antagostic either!

And i DEFINITELY don't p4k is a lark. I mean, i think the popularity of pitchfork has had a huge influence on indie culture being the dominant critical discourse and probably even has a huge effect on the singles list being more "songs" than "singles" these days and pushing certain songs into that arena. and i think we both agree that pfork is the dominant factor for the ACCELERATION of bands like dirty pro

And maybe...that's all those listeners ever wanted to know about those artists other than their music.

cough

"i def don't mean to sound cranky or antagostic either!"

!

antagostic were robbed by the way. best death metal album of the year.

Wow- scottpl's post just keep getting better the more irritated he gets. I'm serious. That last one was awes.

where are the non-rock/indie readers

This is where someone should introduce class and race, right? WELL IT'S NOT GONNA BE ME.

I don't think it's a matter of class and race. It's a matter of those who like to listen to music vs. those who like to think & read about it. Those who like to think & read about their music by and large listen to indie (if they don't listen to classical or jazz or samba).

o really

after jaymc posted some Alexa rankings earlier in the thread, I decided to go check out the numbers on some more music pubs and blogs. here's what i found:

PUBS

Drowned In Sound - 27,794
The Quietus - 85,535
Tiny Mix Tapes - 96,162
Cokemachineglow - 161,925
Dusted - 164,749

BLOGS

Brooklyn Vegan - 14,921 [?!]
Idolator - 36,194
Hipster Runoff - 52,139
Largehearted Boy - 67,700
Gorilla vs. Bear - 74,497
You Ain't No Picasso - 162,415
MBV - 176,732
My Old Kentucky Blog - 234,986
Fluxblog - 262,131
Chromewaves - 279,463
Said the Gramophone - 289,300

This conversation is about to turn really lovely.

Oh sorry to offend yr delicate sensibilities Ned.

I'm not sure I was being really serious above. I didn't even vote in P'n'J. Carry on then.

The thing is, pop music doesn't have to generate as much relative interest in criticism and analysis, compared to indie, to be profitable or able to capture an audience. If (let's say) Rihanna sells 20 times as much as Animal Collective, she only has to have 5% as many fans interested in reading an intelligent, well-written review of her album, and it doesn't really matter if the other 95% just follow her through the gossip sites and fashion rags, if that review is well targeted toward its potential audience.

And I mean, it's not like there aren't drooling, barely literate indie rock fans either -- ever take a look at the Stereogum comments section?

Oh sorry to offend yr delicate sensibilities Ned.

Haha I was talking about o.nate's response, not your post!

i don't know how me and scott end up arguing because i agree with like 95% of what he says

Those who like to think & read about their music by and large listen to indie

Wow. Uh...I have no words. (Though it's nice to know where all the great "thinkers" have been hiding lately, I suppose.)

I've always kinda felt that the more common ground you have with somebody, the better and more interesting your arguments will be about what little you don't see eye to eye on. I mean, The Lex is my #1 most similar voter on glenn's site!

I was just as much of an artist completist and producer credit scavenger when I was 12 and listening exclusively to Twin Cities Top 40 radio as I was when I discovered college rock after being thoroughly repulsed by hair metal's ascendancy shortly thereafter. I strongly suspect most of the other people here were the same way and I also believe we aren't measurably different from most other voracious music heads.

wow I can't believe I got all the way through that without typing "STFU"
oh, damn

Two more Alexa rankings:

Metalsucks.net 48,828
Blabbermouth.net 67,208

for the love of god everyone ignore that o nate post

hahahaha uh oh

I was just as much of an artist completist and producer credit scavenger when I was 12 and listening exclusively to Twin Cities Top 40 radio as I was when I discovered college rock after being thoroughly repulsed by hair metal's ascendancy shortly thereafter. I strongly suspect most of the other people here were the same way and I also believe we aren't measurably different from most other voracious music heads.

wow I can't believe I got all the way through that without typing "STFU"
oh, damn

― Vajazzle My Nazzle (HI DERE), Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, this is a good point -- i was definitely a big overthinking nerd about music even when i listened exclusively to grunge and pop rap and classic rock.