Year-End Critics' Polls '07

Every time someone calls Pharrell "poignant", god sews through a little girl in Nicaragua's hand.

/\ Holy shit, Rev.

what's his verse even about? at these stages in their careers, i couldn't even imagine the hilarity that would ensue over the course of a kanye-pharell-lupe super-group super-album.

(Pharrell)
G.R.I.P P.I.M.P
I, any spelling ***** come on that’s me
I bring a burning sensation to the urban eye
Like an eye-drop of Turpentine
You can listen to the serpent, fine
But the earth got gas once it burps its fine
Someone around me they talk about the grease
Not G.H.G, how to cook a quarter ki
Talking all nasal, he aint over that cold
No glove scrub, Manny just over that stove
Perfect paradigm
Wrong place wrong time
Should have been Phizer, GlaxoSmithKline
Number one chemist
Look at him no blemish
Egg shell off white like a DuPont finish
Young, dumb, high strung, who could handle us
I wonder how Gods gon’ paint today’s canvasses
Cause who knew that day that man would just
Go to VA with a Tec and spray campuses
What a way to see the cover of Time
I know that ***** wish he was standing in line
To see it….As if he didn’t do it.

Lupe's a great rapper who got lost on a venture up his own ass.

yup.

and wack beats with wacker hooks.

It's Dormitory Hip-hop.

you made that pharrell verse up right? "but the earth got gas once it burps it's fine"????

is that even the worse line??

No! That's the actual verse in question.

poignant is really the only word that comes to mind.

"Egg shell off white like a DuPont finish
Young, dumb, high strung, who could handle us"

Makes me tear up. It's like listening to Time Of Your Life.

(See what I did there? A little thread-mix and matchin.)

"Young, dumb, high strung, who could handle us
I wonder how Gods gon’ paint today’s canvasses
Cause who knew that day that man would just
Go to VA with a Tec and spray campuses"

this rhyme structure is actually pretty def, too bed the words are indescribably bad.

deft*

Perfect paradigm
Wrong place wrong time
Should have been Phizer, GlaxoSmithKline

Kanye could never elicit this kind of emotion.

Hey Reverend. I was as surprised at the pharell verse as you should be.

http://bp0.blogger.com/_bJX2ryvw3U8/RiWKkS0gFOI/AAAAAAAAAQc/zhIT9VVCHZY/s400/pfft.jpeg

Look, I didn’t say it was the best thing ever. I think it ends well.

Are you really making a case for Kanye as a lyricist here? Come on... the guy can barely make the last syllable match the next last syllable and when it does, it's all cloud/proud, oft/soft and the number of times he rhymes 'me' with 'me'...

Out of interest, does anyone think Kanye has any strength in this?

battle of the heavyweights over here.

OK, to get away from the boring crap above, the Resident Advisor polls are starting to go up. So far:

Top 5 producers

Top 10 comps

THANK YOU

Does anyone else find it weird that there is almost no dance music AT ALL in ANY of the generalist lists (bar FACT's)? Justice scrapes in, I suppose.

Par for the course tho, innit? Nice to see that RA have given some love to that Lee Burridge mix, which I didn't notice getting much otherwise

LCD isn't dance? (I mean sure it's indie, but it's also dance.)

(or am I just out of it in terms of how these things are discussed now?)

(haha "these things" "discussed" "now")

Aren't there normally a few crossover or token records?

NME list is actually more varied this year - Rhianna!

It just seems that indie (loosely, inc folky stuff) AND hip-hop/r&b are the mainstream this year, whereas dance music (and also the whole disco-edit balearic dub disco side of things) has just vanished, which isn't how it feels out here.

The utter style-less-ness of stuff like Q's list shouldn't surprise me, but does. Someone commented that the FACT list seemed overly hip and mp3-blog influenced, but wouldn't/shouldn't what's fashionable have some bearing on these polls. I feel like a dick for decrying their sobriety, but it just seems so dull.

'Atlas' reminds me too much of 'Doctorin' The Tardis'

NOT ENOUGH

xpost

LCD is indie music for dance fans, as someone on here once said.

That's a good example, though. Obviously they have several constituencies and cross all sorts of boundaries, and have the profile to make it onto these polls, but if you look at their remixers - Harvey, Windsurf, Carl Craig (and er Franz Ferdinand and John Cale, but that doesn't help my argument) it's clear that they have the same idea of "what's going on" as I do, so it's then odd that people who like their record enough to poll it, have a completely different idea.

I agree. I was shocked by how popular "All My Friends" got with people because when I first paid attention to the lyrics all I could think was that it was so specific to raves that no one else could possibly get it. How wrong I was!

"That's a good example, though. Obviously they have several constituencies and cross all sorts of boundaries, and have the profile to make it onto these polls, but if you look at their remixers - Harvey, Windsurf, Carl Craig (and er Franz Ferdinand and John Cale, but that doesn't help my argument) it's clear that they have the same idea of "what's going on" as I do, so it's then odd that people who like their record enough to poll it, have a completely different idea."

It's not really that odd. LCD Soundsystem represent the furthest foray into balearic disco etc. for some people in the same way that M.I.A. represents the furthest foray into dancehall etc. for other people (or, indeed, sometimes the same people). To some extent you could argue that both acts process all sorts of stuff so that a good chunk of their fanbase doesn't have to.

Tim OTM--LCD are processing indie for its dance fans as much as the other way round.

The AV Club list is really white-guy indie this year. More so than usual, I mean. Arcade Fire at #1, The National at #2, Band of Horses in the top 5. I was about to say it reads like a Pitchfork list from six years ago, except Pitchfork usually threw in a couple of IDM records and, like, Cannibal Ox.

I know you voted in this, Matos, but still.

the 'processing' meme kind of implies that in a well-ordered world, everyone would be a music geek innit.

Yeah I'm generally not one to tsk tsk about whether people are more indie than they should be or whatever, but I was kind of appalled at that list. (xpost)

I also voted in <I>City Paper</I>'s poll and the results were as opposite of <I>The Onion</I>'s as could be while existing in the same basic area.

yeah, can't really hold any one voter responsible for a poll's results, even when the pool of voters is relatively small.

This isn't a critics poll, but here's Pitchfork's "Guest List: Best of 2007"
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/47091-guest-list-best-of-2007

x-post
I think editors at general interest publications or websites (not pubs or sites devoted to one genre of music) should try to recruit writers to cover a broader spectrum. I think the editors at such locations can be held responsible. Even if their votes only make up a small percentage of the overall poll, I hope writers from dahnce publications and sites, and Living Blues magazine, metal mags, Latin Beat, etc. all contribute and/or are solicited to contribute to the Idolator and P & J polls.

I'm sure you're preaching to the choir with most of the editors and would-be editors here.

I dunno. I've had editors who were pretty narrow in their choices and would really marginalize folks who didn't play ball, esp. at an alt-weekly that will remain nameless.

[also: the singles lists make me feel like i never listen to enough songs.]

I do not think so actually Al. I think most editors are swamped with work and editing and maybe getting lots of indie-rock copy, and they do not spend the time to seek out marginalized genre specialists. Also, some editors just don't care or feel like they have any obligation to reach out and cover more. Plus it depends on who is sending them promos and press releases, which turns into a Catch 22 situation. Folks associated with non-indie rock music think that the editors don't care about their genres (plus some club owners and labels and musicians don't reach out either). Sharon Jones & the Dapkings get more media attention than Denise Lasalle because they consciously bombard indie-rock and mainstream media while Lasalle's chitlin circuit soul label Ecko does not. If dancehall music acts are only appearing on short notice, late at night at clubs in shady locations in DC and their labels are not sending promos or downloads or whatever to the DC alt-weekly, there's not gonna be much coverage unless the editor reaches out.

I was glad that M. Matos responded to my e-mail with information on The Beat, Living Blues, and Latin Beat magazines, with a pledge to contact those folks. Last year, I forwarded a Jackin' Pop poll e-mail to 'world' music publicists Rock Paper Scissors who send it out to the folks they solicit and most of them apparently didn't bother to respond. With some I am guessing that they do not care to participate in polls dominated by American and Brit pop, rock, and rap. Which is a shame.

I e-mailed Bob Boilen of NPR to encourage them to make the spectrum of concerts they include on their website as wide as the music they review on the air. But while NPR reviews Congolese music, their website concert series is still dominated by indie-rock 930 club shows--even though Youssou N'Dour, Tinariwen, Cafe Tacuba, and numerous neo-soul, chitlin circuit soul, and whatever other genre type acts have played in DC.

I'm not saying every editor ever is making an effort to diversity their coverage or pool of freelancers, or even ever editor that posts to this board. But I've seen way too P&J threads where people complained to xhuxk about a lack of this kind of writer/voter and he sounded pretty exasperated about how hard he'd tried with little success to include those people to a degree that would actually impact the results. So it does feel a little like beating a dead horse to talk once again about, hey, there sure are a lot of critics who like indie, but I get what you're saying, and it's good that you're actually e-mailing editors and lobbying for that kind of change.

This isn't a critics poll, but here's Pitchfork's "Guest List: Best of 2007"
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/47091-guest-list-best-of-2007

wow that list is like MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala

but it was fun to read. i always like seeing what musicians were listening to.

x-post

I think XChuck and some others who do reach out are exceptions to the rule. Christgau complained in P & J in the early '80s that he he could not get some hardcore punk fanzine writers to contribute to P & J, so as you noted this is not a new issue. Also, you've been lucky to deal with editors that try to be inclusive (as far as I can tell)at the Baltimore City Paper. Not everyone is so lucky.

again, my original comment was that you're kinda preaching to the choir re: editors that post on this board, not all music editors everywhere, so i don't think we're actually disagreeing.

wow that list is like MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala, MIA Kala

so no different from most of the boring critics' lists, then.

Yeah she's got a real shot at #1 in THE ONLY POLL THAT MATTERS.

Pitchfork?

slight lol at Diplo and Bonde Do Role dude NOT picking 'Kala' tho