Pazz and Jop.

Ballots are out. I got Charles Aaron's. Anyone else get the wrong ballot?

Fixed. That was quick.

lol i got charles aaron's too

WE ARE ALL CHARLES AARON.

I didn't get Charles Aaron's :(

Only the correction email.

You're missing out on crucial lulz, Mordy.

Has anyone else not gotten a ballot yet?

I got one, inexplicably enough.

I'm still out, explicably enough.

I'm really looking forward to 2 more months of P&J threads where Dimension 5ive reminds us that's abstaining from the poll at every opportunity.

I'm looking forward to BITE ME.

kudos

I wasn't being sarcastic, <3 pissy cibula :) :) :)

Yeah, I assumed that Charles Aaron was the first on the list, alphabetically.

Btw, I don't think I am voting b/c I've barely written anything about music this year.

x/p to al: yeah well you can still bite me, ya big baltimorean dorkwad. :[]

I didn't get a ballot. Probably since I don't write about music, except on ILM.

I'm drafting music 2.0's obituary for the comments.

Aww man, I voted last year but have not gotten a ballot yet.

I'm gonna try not to whine this year about polls not seeking out writers who review non-rock music. I will also try not to whine about writers who write about such genres who don't bother to try to get included in general interest music polls.

haha what up s-kizzle

Gonna go eat some Ethiopian chow later. Maybe I'll hear from the Voice on Monday.

Ummm... are they not doing one this year??

They are.

http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo259/wodarno/first.jpg

Ballots now being sent out.

Last year I had to ask to have a ballot sent, a week after they went out, even though I've voted for years and my email has always been the same, so I'm wondering if I'll get one this year (without requesting one). As of this writing nothing yet.

I haven't gotten a ballot for the last 3 years now, but I don't feel that bad since I'm really not writing/blogging anymore.

I've narrowed my pool of Top Ten candidates down to 51... http://bit.ly/4rtd1m

really thought that was some weird suggest ban joke for a sec

Does anyone know if these ballots are sent out all at once?

You can have my ballot if you really want it.

I'll keep that in mind, but I'll try sending Rob Harvilla an email asking for one first. Thanks.

Does anyone know if these ballots are sent out all at once?

Assuming the technology hasn't progressed backwards since I was sending them (three years ago? four? who counts anymore?), yes. Definitely.

Using my old P&J link from last year's ballot, I can get to the 2009 ballot page, but the only thing I need (assuming I can't get a ballot this year) would be a voter ID. I noticed that my 2007 and 2008 ID's are different. Wondering if I use my 2008 voter ID # will the ballot go through?

Doubtful. The rolls change every year.

When you email them about this stuff they usually add you on provided you can reasonbly qualify yourself as a rock critic (and if you've voted before recently you should be eligible to vote again for the most part, I think).

I sent Rob an email, so we'll see what happens.

I got my ballot today.

I got mine Friday.

dunno if I'm gonna have any comments to send this year...

I am still boycotting.

So are people who voted eventually getting an automatic confirmation email back? (I didn't, at least not yet.) Weird that you don't even get to a page where you can doublecheck your votes after you press submit, before you absolutely confirm your ballot (which was always the way the site worked in the past, at least a few years ago.)

I have a tiny suspicion this isn't "officially" up but it's official to the internet:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/pazz-and-jop-2015-robert-christgau-joe-levy-ann-powers-and-greg-tate-take-on-the-record-s-8137202 (the essays in general are good this year)

http://furia.com/pjs/table_voter_all_total.html

Besides, as everyone's noting on Facebook, not listing the singles in order on your ballot (I don't vote for albums, so don't know if it's the same there), am I reading it correctly that they don't have the mixed compilation of voter comments anymore? Maybe they'll be posted later. I'll hold off further comment until that's clear.

The order glitch wasn't intentional, and is already being fixed.

I will also apologize for the "we" in my Tabulation Notes making it seem like the Voice made up Winey's term "GAPDY". I wasn't thinking of myself as part of the Voice's "we" as I was writing, but of course that's how it reads. I'm trying to get them to edit this in the online version, at least.

Interesting how P&J commands far less attention on ILM than it did just a few years ago.

Ran into Joe Levy on the street a week ago, but neglected to ask him about this.

There’s a great Jill Scott record this year no one paid a shred of freakin’ attention to!

It debuted at number one.

many #1-debuting albums receive no attention from the press/critics

it was an OK Jill Scott record this year no one paid a shred of freakin' attention to

many #1-debuting albums receive no attention from the press/critics

The previous sentence contains "radio" and "the pop chart." I don't think "no one" there means only critics.

If the statement is referring strictly to critics, it's still off. The album was reviewed by several outlets, including Pitchfork and (cough) AllMusic.

Why am I finding it hard to see the P&J results on the Voice's site? Or are they not there yet?

In the letter w the ballot:

results will be published in print and online in our January 13, 2016, issue. So I'm not gonna look 'til then; always some glitches, twitches in whatever shows up before.

I'm browsing it no problem-http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/index/2015

Village Voice fucks up their P&J rollout every year.

612 voters for 2014, but looks like only close to 500 or so for 2015. I wonder why the drop in numbers...

This year, nearly 500 Pazz + Jop voters submitted their top ten albums and singles.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2015

I forgot to vote. I know some other people did, too.

if it's indeed being officially rolled out the 13th, it's probably too late for print deadline but as much as a collaboration with the entire country would be an improvement over the version that exists, Miguel's "Coffee" doesn't feature Wales.

(sorry)

hotline bling huh

Any pleasure I have at Bieber not making it into the top 10 of either list is offset completely by that travesty

NO ONE ELSE VOTED FOR ANGEL HAZE??????????????????????

a groundbreaking year, a humorous gif wins the singles poll

what's the meme of this song

Thanks, Glenn, I probably should have just emailed you instead of being a boner on Twitter about it. Sorry abt that

Interesting how P&J commands far less attention on ILM than it did just a few years ago.

― jaymc, Tuesday, January 12, 2016 10:58 AM (1 hour ago)

it all just seems so tepid

:(

640 Gaz Coombes · Matador 10 1 .002

Wales, hah. I won't reveal which voter was the source of that typo, but it was my correction code that picked it as the canonical form of that credit. Will fix.

it all just seems so tepid

I think part of it is the massive proliferation of EOY lists and consensus trackers, so that by the time P&J rolls out in January, the results are fairly anticlimactic.

well also voting Hotline fucking Bling as the top song of 2015

that and just, journalistic criticism is so beaten down that there's no drama or conflict to its consensus-finding process. or no conflict about the records themselves. like, i like courtney barnett, but i feel there was hardly anything at stake as to whether or not her or hop along did better 'in the polls'.

hotline bling huh

― nomar

I think all of our excitement has been reserved for ILM's own Year End Poll, because it's the only one that truly matters.

I'm not even excited for that poll, tbh

I think part of it is the massive proliferation of EOY lists and consensus trackers, so that by the time P&J rolls out in January, the results are fairly anticlimactic.

well, and like...I can already see the poll results of Hundreds of Writers, in real time, daily. it's just what's getting coverage. if the poll was 30 critics, it's interesting. somewhere between 30 and 500 I stop caring

as every year, a *massive* thank you to glenn for powering this thing.

i notice the voice picked up a new music editor about a year ago, who seems... pretty ok?

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/hilary-hughes-to-join-village-voice-as-music-editor-6647178

glad to see the roundtable with xgau etc p&j, certainly a sign of goodwill as well.

and now we have a management who might not be terrible to the music section. but i completely trained myself out of caring about the voice through the very lean years, so i really haven't been paying attention to anything with it, tho i'm a bit optimistic for a change.

Do they not do the critics-send-in-little-comment-blurbs thing anymore?

I'm getting the impression that a significant amount of people just forgot to do a ballot

There are about 100 less critics voting this year...That's a lot of "I forgots"

was christgau re-hired by the voice under its new ownership??

in the past the VV was one of the few venues that both had the clout and resources to even do a massive poll of music critics (or really mostly 'rock' critics, don't want to conflate the two), now everyone can basically be their own aggregator. unless they are going really far afield to, say, ask a bunch of musicians what music /they/ liked, or poll people outside of the usual USA/UK cohort, i'm afraid their aren't going to be any revelations or really much that's unexpected given what we already know.

Re Christgau rehire--Not that I've read. They did invite him for that roundtable of former Voice music staffers.

In some years past, NY Times main critics would participate, but I don't see them this year. No Washington Post pop critic but there's a Washington Post editor who did participate...

Last year southern soul blogger Daddy B. Nice participated, but not this year. No Lindsay Zoladz from Vulture/New York Magazine, and previously w/ Pitchfork

i like when they ask people whose "beat" and/or tastes don't conform to the consensus. that's the only way i actually learn about stuff! i don't need 75 more critics to tell me i need to listen to courtney barnett or whatever. but if someone recommends something i've never heard of, now we're cooking...

Dawn Richard -23 album votes
Jazmine Sullivan --18 album votes.... Was hoping for more votes for both.

if you've heard neither, amateurist, get to it!

Sullivan was my #1

i've heard all these records! well, most of 'em. i don't really care what pazz and jop says, never really have.

Sorry to be "that guy", but Grimes' REALiTi placed 26th, while the demo is at #74. The REALiti at #26 however seems to have incorporated the votes for the demo.

There are long-standing P&J rules for how votes for remixes or alternate versions, and previous-year votes, are applied to the canonical versions of songs in the current year. "Canonical" is a human matter, in principle, but in practice it has rarely seemed even vaguely controversial in the last few years.

Oh ok, if that's how it works then fair enough. I just thought it was odd that effectively a handful of votes were being counted twice.

this is the first i've heard of courtney barnett lol i am so out of it

It's okay, you haven't missed that much

i hear its one of the top albums of the year

it's a good record but you would probably be bored by it

I haven't heard the album but I saw her play two songs on TV and she was awful. We already had one Sheryl Crow, we don't need a new one.

breaking down some Future stats...

Future tracks that got votes: 15
People who voted for all 3 Future albums: 1

singles top 40 is full of nice surprises: "what do you mean" not being nearly as high as its ridiculous placement on some of the year-end lists would have suggested, "sorry" sneaking its way in there (both of them rightly well below "where are ü now" tho), "cool for the summer" and "here" and "coffee" doing well despite not being outright smashes as commercial/radio often has to be in order for critics to rate them highly/see them as 'significant', "realiti" also not being nearly as overrated as it could have been (and likely will be on ilm's poll), etc.

but then in the top 10 are several embarrassments: "hotline bling" as #1, "trap queen" being present but only seventh, missy elliott's new single being all the way up there O.o (has she graduated to rockist hero, where all she has to do to be showered with praise is release something kinda decent?)

*commercial/radio songs often have to be

yeah i liked "wtf" and its video but it really is just kinda decent

"sorry" >>>>>>>>>> "where are ü now" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "what do you mean"

not that i put any stock in p&j generally but the tracks list just seems like a total crapshoot given the tiny ballot, 10 songs are just not representative of anyone's year or taste

some very minor tabulation questions/quibbles:

- tswift's "style": clicking on it shows that 10 voters this year cast a vote for it. the asterisked note says that an additional 12 are carried over from 2014 (which can be verified from looking at its entry on the 2014 page). then why is its total listed as 20 rather than 22 (10 + 12)? and none of the voters from this year seem to be repeat-voters from last year.

- miguel's "coffee" received one vote last year. should it not be carried over to this year's total? (the 2014 voters page for the song shows several others as well, but that's because it accidentally combines voters for sylvan esso's "coffee" as well; if you check the listed voters individually, you'll see that the "coffee" 2014 voter was ross scarano.)

wait, Sheryl Crow?

Sheryl Crow singing Nirvana unplugged--Courtney Barnett

29 album votes for Leon Bridges retro-soul is more than the votes for r'n'b singers doing current styles (Dawn Richard got 23 album votes). Pazz & Jop electorate.

dyl: Yes, it looks like the Voice site is combining all songs with a given title. I could swear they fixed this last year, but I'll point it out again. In the case of "Style", 2 of those 10 are votes for Ryan Adams' version, so 8+12=20 is the right total for Taylor's.

You're correct that I missed the 2014 vote for Miguel's "Coffee" (because of "Miguel" vs "Miguel (ft. Coffee)"). I'll fix that, because I hate wrongness, but thankfully it doesn't change the order.

20 album votes for Congolese act Mbongwana Star at 34th, yes! Wonder what the highest ranking African album vote has been?

As for afropop, I cast the sole track vote for Nigerian Wizkid's "Ojuelegba " ...I haven't looked to see what other afropop cuts or albums made it

two votes for South African track-- Heavy K (ft. Tresor), Give Me Luv

Wonder what the highest ranking African album vote has been?

Probably Fela or King Sunny Ade in the '80s. Maybe Konono No. 1 a few years ago.

Yes....I feel like "the Indestructible Beat of Soweto" comp back in the 80s might have also done well.

The Mbongwana Star vote probably includes a number of Konono No. 1 supporters

I am never going to hear Sheryl Crow in Courtney Barnett no matter how many times people say it. I'm not doubting that other people hear it, it's just never made sense as a reference point to me. I wonder if those comparisons mostly come from people who started with this album rather than the EPs? Anyway, even though I like her a lot, #2 is absurdly high. But as indie-rock-consensus AOTY I'll definitely take it over Father John Misty ...

Also, hat tip to those who got Miguel, Dawn and Jazmine as high as they did. I still get PnJ ballots but I haven't submitted one since I stopped writing about music four years ago. Now I'm just a guy who likes music and listens to some of it, so a ballot would feel illegitimate. But this was the first year I was tempted anyway, mostly to vote those three as high as I could.

could someone explain how you use the poll or McDonald list to find new music or critics to follow?

1. Read poll results
2. Click on entries you like
3. Click on the names of the people who voted for the things you like
4. Check out the other things they voted for that you don't know
5. Remember the names of the new things you found that you liked
5. Remember the names of the people who voted for things you didn't know but liked after you listened to them

i just wrote more or less the exact same thing and missed it by five seconds

it would be nice if they had bios, step 3 can turn into a dead end.

http://lmgtfy.com/

i just click on the first blue writing i see and hope that eventually music will start playing

the conversation

2012: "maybe don't vote in this, guys"
2013: "don't fucking vote in this, you amoral fucks"
2014: "if you vote in this or give it any attention you are literally satan"
2015: "why is no one talking about this???"

touche. seriously, that works great if it's say Annie Zaleski, but kind of a black hole if it's James Bradley.
plus I gotta check and make sure they didn't vote for FJM.

So Greg Tate (who participated in the pnael discussion) and a number of others are also doing writing now for the revived MTV music news website...hmmmm

I didn't get a ballot this year so one reason for lower numbers must be omissions in the mailout. Unless they have a particular grudge against me this year, which I'm not ruling out.

the ballot also had glitches (it didn't work at all on chrome)

Shout out to Universal Music B.V. (of the Netherlands), listed as Dornik's label, even though I entered the label name that appears on the copy I purchased.

Obviously no "The Personals" section this year--random comments from voters. If that's because they didn't have enough comments submitted, or enough that they thought were usable, I can understand that--maybe that section will be back next year. If they've dropped it because of space limitations, or because they feel the world needed another essay on poptimism (which, in fairness, I haven't read--and won't), then from my vantage point, that's lousy. Checking to see if anything of mine made it in has been the sole interest of the poll for at least the last 15 years. The results mean less than nothing.

I'm guessing it was space limitations.

The Poptimism essay read like a direct response to the Chris R*chards Washington Post piece where he suggested that poptimism had become an excuse for fluff reviews/coverage of pop stars.

I thought the piece was certainly better than the genius.com one that barely addressed any of the criticisms of the company.

Obviously no "The Personals" section this year--random comments from voters.

Bummer. That was always my favorite part of pazz and jop.

the ballot also had glitches (it didn't work at all on chrome)

Jesus! No wonder no one voted.

Whiney tweet on that genius.com story is worth reading

Uh, I somehow got it to work in chrome I think. But yep was nervous whether it worked.

Glenn: There should be two more votes, if I'm not mistaken, for Erykah Badu's "Cel U Lar Device" bc they were credited as "Hotline Bling (Remix)" (these are the same track)

I admit that I didn't know that. Will fix.

Fixed on my site. Will get the Voice to update theirs, too. The Gods of Accuracy appreciate our efforts. Probably.

the ballot also had glitches (it didn't work at all on chrome)
Jesus! No wonder no one voted.

― Mr. Snrub, Wednesday, January 13, 2016 3:55 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i submitted my ballot on Chrome and it was counted fwiw

you sure there was no problem with it, it seems like there's a Walk the Moon song that turned up in your singles ballot

dog i voted for "Hey Soul Sister," just try and shame me about this

Obviously no "The Personals" section this year--random comments from voters. If that's because they didn't have enough comments submitted, or enough that they thought were usable, I can understand that--maybe that section will be back next year. If they've dropped it because of space limitations, or because they feel the world needed another essay on poptimism (which, in fairness, I haven't read--and won't), then from my vantage point, that's lousy. Checking to see if anything of mine made it in has been the sole interest of the poll for at least the last 15 years. The results mean less than nothing.

― clemenza, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 20:27 (Yesterday) Permalink

I noticed the lack of Personals, too, but I wonder whether it would make sense to keep running that in an era when anyone could blog or tweet 'em or FB 'em or include them in whatever publication they happen to contribute to. Though I DO remember a time when honing and submitting Personals was a huge, huge deal - doesn't seem so long ago.

It makes sense in that we might see a comment by someone we didn't know of or might not think to google.

by the time ballot submission day comes around I am too despondent about writing and the thought of doing it to ever do *more*

("ever" lasts until january, unless it doesn't, but it really should)

Some clarification on why that Personals section was always important to me. I actually do very little music writing through the year nowadays--some for my homepage, very rarely for some other online project. So I always tried to include a lot of commentary with my Top 10; invariably, it's the first time I'm writing about most of my choices. It was always exciting, even almost 20 years after I first voted, to get a comment or two into that section. And it looks like it's probably gone for good now.

Yeah, that section was fun.

A kind of "favourites" metric for the lower reaches, showing the best placing for albums that received <= a given number of mentions:

Best with <= 30 mentions: The Weeknd, Beauty Behind the Madness (312/30)
Best with <= 29 mentions: v/a, Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording) (309/24)
Best with <= 23 mentions: Dawn Richard, Blackheart (256/23)
Best with <= 22 mentions: Mbongwana Star, From Kinshasa (220/20)
Best with <= 19 mentions: Jazmine Sullivan, Reality Show (192/18)
Best with <= 17 mentions: Royal Headache, High (182/15)
Best with <= 14 mentions: Future, 56 Nights (151/12)
Best with <= 11 mentions: Julien Baker, Sprained Ankle (120/11)
Best with <= 10 mentions: Susanne Sundfør, Ten Love Songs (115/10)
Best with <= 9 mentions: Joan Shelley, Over and Even (110/9)
Best with <= 8 mentions: John Grant, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure (97/8)
Best with <= 7 mentions: Beauty Pill, Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are (87/6)
Best with <= 5 mentions: Faith No More, Sol Invictus (67/5)
Best with <= 4 mentions: Marilyn Manson, The Pale Emperor (66/4)
Best with <= 3 mentions: Irène Schweizer & Han Bennink, Welcome Back (49/3)
Best with <= 2 mentions: Dodheimsgard, A Umbra Omega (45/2)

3 of my top 4 are in that metric ;_; (and the 4th can't be too far off)

Sullivan, Richard and who else Lex? I'm curious

susanne sundfør

(plus, angel haze was my #2 and i was the sole voter)

minus the weeknd, that's a very ilx list

Wish I'd checked Hamilton! Rare to see so much p&j interest in a cast recording. I did vote for Mbongwana Star. Jazmine Sullivan's album is really distinctive too. Joan Shelley seems influenced by early Joni Mitchell, but the voice of her own experience comes through well enough.

Speaking of studious young singer-songwriters, Courtney Barnett, like her Melbourne neighbors Dick Diver, seems to have learned from the Go-Betweens, especially Forster, re how to compress and clarify (with oblique strokes) her observational verses, wand her guitar on the choruses, as she says, draws on Television, for bracing yet partial release from verse situations---partial cos she's neurotic(does have a sense of humor, though). The double-EP was lyrically denser, but also good. Dick Diver is more chill.

1. Read poll results
2. Click on entries you like
3. Click on the names of the people who voted for the things you like
4. Check out the other things they voted for that you don't know
5. Remember the names of the new things you found that you liked
5. Remember the names of the people who voted for things you didn't know but liked after you listened to them

― Very selfish, and very ironic (DJP), Wednesday, January 13, 2016 10:37 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this.

Oh yeah, remember that strategy, it's all coming back to me.

I started doing just that but I gave up after seeing that most of the ballots were 'that one thing I liked' + kamasi/barnett/etc and in the rare event there was something unknown you had absolutely no info about it (even just the artwork would have helped). Just doesn't seem worth the hassle.

is there one or two voters whose ballots you really like, Dinsdale? glenn's stats offer a list of similar ballots ... should get you closer to other voters worth your time, i would think

in the rare event there was something unknown you had absolutely no info about it

aside from google

i mean, i don't use pazz & jop for discovering new stuff, but i did a similar thing w the ilx eoy nominations

is there one or two voters whose ballots you really like, Dinsdale? glenn's stats offer a list of similar ballots ... should get you closer to other voters worth your time, i would think

That's the thing, it's hard to find out. I would pick one album I like from the albums list then click on the writers who had it on their ballot, and most of the time everything else on the ballot is stuff I already know and usually don't like. Sometimes there's one thing you don't know so you google it etc. (because yes lex, I'm aware of google) but it's just super tedious after a while. I mean if you're going to do something like that make it so that it entices people to discover stuff, instead of making it feel like a very boring day job. Take the ILX Metal EOY for instance, I listened to plenty of stuff and discovered a few good ones because it was done in a way that made it easy to (direct links to stream the album, reviews and so on).

As soon as I find something worth digging into I will try out the glenn thing though, thanks for the heads up

I like Marc Masters' ballot the best so far

I forgot about that Obnox album he listed. They/he were good live last year. I like the punkier and poppier (Chills) stuff he listed, more than the noisier/experimental ones.

Ha. I'm the opposite.

instead of making it feel like a very boring day job

man can't you just let these sad pros have their fun

I'm finding that searching the furia stats is much easier/better (can search by artist for example).
Glenn is there a way to search for 'breadth'? I think that's a stat of interest to me.

Glenn, not sure if this is anything you're actually interested in or care about, but have you ever inquired about getting older data?

I know the voice site swallowed and distorted many of the aughts polls, but I bet the original ballots are somewhere to be found...

I know I can def access, like, my 2003 ballot via wayback machine

I just clicked on the 5 most similar ballots to MMast3rs and there were a couple Wilco votes here and there, but lots of other stuff I didn't know (granted, Dinsdale, you and I are different humans).

D*ve S3gal of The Stranger in Seattle - who is one of Mast3rs' similar ballots, and may be on ILM? - is a fave of mine as far as finding interesting/weird/good stuff.

why are you googleproofing their names

I just clicked on the 5 most similar ballots to MMast3rs and there were a couple Wilco votes here and there, but lots of other stuff I didn't know (granted, Dinsdale, you and I are different humans).

Yeah that's a very useful feature, I've found some stuff I plan to investigate.

I've asked about older data before, yes. So far it hasn't been a priority for them, but with the upcoming sale and potential data-system changes I'll ask again.

I mean, I'm sure a site like furia that they don't own or make a penny of ad money from is zero priority to them, but I was just thinking maybe an intern could dig it up for shits and giggles

Marc is my closest P&J neighbor. We share two albums.

I don't think Dave S. is an ilxor, or at least I feel like I'd know if he was. Maybe a lurker? Idk

Just in case someone here is in charge of the pazz+jop thing, the Shopping album listed is their 2013 release, the new one is called Why Choose

Let me rectify: the 2015 album is there but one critic voted for the 2013, I assume he got the title wrong

Well I'm dumb, he voted for both and the 2013 was also reissued last year so... Let's pretend the last three posts never existed.

Hey glenn, if you're still soliciting corrections: "Kime Ne - Insanlar" has the artist and track title reversed.

Thanks!

so, uh, is this still happening

it's a reasonable question. Glenn are you on it this goround?

wasn't last year's ballot mailing not done until December too?

Yes, it's still on. I don't have anything to do with it until after voting closes, but I know ballots haven't gone out yet, so nobody has missed anything.

cool, thanks!

http://www.villagevoice.com/authors/robert-christgau-6354191

CHristgau is writing for the Voice again. I wonder if he'll be involved

thanks! (for some reason I keep thinking the initial email comes out in november)

Whoa! The Voice hired Xgau back?! Why wasn't this bigger news?

Last year's ballot showed up Dec. 4, so they're not running late.

I swear, every other year when I try to vote I encounter some sort of technical crap that makes it impossible, then I wind up having to re-enter everything.

(Sorry, that sounded bratty, given everything happening right now)

Ballot arrived today. I'll probably submit the same top 10 I sent The Wire.

did not expect to get a ballot from someone I know from ifmud

"Welcome to the Village Voice's annual Music Critics Poll (formerly known as Pazz + Jop)"

RIP Pazz + Jop

Why would you fuck with the name? Especially for generic ass one?

"NFL Annual Championship Game Between the American and National Football Conferences"

Probably some unhip marketing person going "what's a Pazz"? What's a Jop?" No one knows what means.

what that means

Good for them. "Pazz and Jop" is a fucking terrible name.

Probably some unhip marketing person going "what's a Pazz"? What's a Jop?" No one knows what means.

― curmudgeon, Saturday, December 3, 2016 2:17 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whereas the hip marketing person is strutting around like 'Pazz! Jop! Zappatypow! Hoobalooba! Ramalama shakkow! Zump! Haha'

i agree that pazz & jop was always an awful name

it had a shred or two of character though

who gives a fuck about the annual Music Critics Poll

Yeah, if anything, now it sounds LESS interesting.

anyway i have no idea how i'm still getting invited to participate, i haven't done any music writing in years and i could've sworn there was a point where they were like "please resubmit your credentials" or w/e, maybe not

I voted for either 2 years or maybe 3 years in the mid-00s, and then one year nobody sent me a ballot and I never bothered to find out why because I'm lazy. And now it's been a really long time since I've written anything anywhere.

Is there a VV contact more responsive and/or less inundated than the generic address through which the ballots are sent? Trying to get a colleague added to the mix.

Neil deMause, the Special features editor is listed on the email that was sent out but not his email

His about page just gives a form link to send messages to a general box I think

http://www.villagevoice.com/about/contact?to=6731940

deadline in 4 hours

submitted an hour late because I suck, hope it's counted

I submitted late too. Nous verons.

perhaps it will be for the best if it isn't counted, I forgot to put swan song series on it

Heck, I forgot to *listen* to Swan Song Series. It's not every year Tanya Donelly and Kristin Hersh both release insanely long albums, and I barely got to either :(

Results tomorrow?

No, it'll be in the 1/25 issue this year.

Two more weeks, gotcha.

So we won't be able to put P+J placings in the tracks poll images? What a disaster for tradition :(

a liberation more like, let's excise p4k while we're at it

done.

RIP, ILM

Hallelujah!

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop

David Bowie- Blackstar tops the albums

and Beyoncé "Formation" tops the tracks

my comment about Tiwa Savage (featuring Dr. Sid) afropop/afrobeats track made it!

Maura, Greg Tate and SFJ have essays

Not Pazz & Jop 2016

So they didn't change the name.

I know this is even earlier, but there have been some... "developments" is exactly the opposite of the wrong word, at the Voice this year

so, uh, is this still happening

― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Wednesday, November 30, 2016 1:38 PM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pvmic

Last year's ballot showed up on Dec. 4.

i am also curious (p+j)

My sources say: Yes.

But voting may be a lot earlier than in past years, and for scheduling reasons I may not be involved...

why are the results for past polls impossible to find on the voice's site now?

when I want results I go here:
http://furia.com/pjs/ (Glenn's amazing site)

and here:
https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/

Thanks alpine! I told yall wrong about the date I got last year's ballot: Dec. 13, not Dec. 4. But I'll keep Glenn's xpost heads-up about the speed-up in mind.

If they move it up any more this year, that may well be the end of the road for me. The antiquarian notion that the year actually ends on Dec. 31 used to sync up well with my workaday life. The rush to get year-ends out earlier and earlier is just one more thing that makes no sense to me.

I think it has to do with people ceasing to care about last year once the new year has started.

Maybe--which is actually pretty weird, since the calendar year is such an artificial construct anyway. And it's also almost like giving out sports MVP awards with two weeks left to go in the season.

But I guess I prefer that to the idea that every publication is simply being driven by what every other publication does.

The truth is, I'm just looking at this in terms of my own participation and nothing else.

The antiquarian notion...

Found only in rare and expensive books, I guess--let's go with antiquated instead.

Unless I've been dropped from the list--something that should have happened 15 years ago, and since it didn't happen then, I'm not sure why it would happen now--I assume this is the end of Rico.

I've gotten nothing either.

Knowing nothing about how these things work, I always assumed it'd be the one thing that would remain till the last online edition--that it was one thing they could reasonably expect would generate some ad sales. I really am living in some 1987 time warp.

When it comes to the "media landscape," I mean. Mostly I live in a 1972 time warp.

Glenn, upthread, thought they would start earlier this year, but that hasn't happened.

I bowed out of tabulating, so I no longer have any inside info on when, how or if this is going to happen...

There's talk that it's coming.

Of course, I just realized that earlier this year I deleted the Hotmail account where my ballot used to be sent.

did some searching and found ballot dates for the last 5 years, looks like it kept getting earlier til now

12/27/12
12/11/13
12/10/14
12/4/15
12/2/16

Yeah, as far as I could squint into my ancient and apparently almost bottomless inbox, got the same impression. There have been several years when ballots showed up after Xmas, pretty sure. If nothing by New Year's Day, let's post out lists here, okay?

Otherwise, all that work for nuthin!

glenn - does that mean furia.com/pjs will stop updating w/ 2016? :(

We gotta see if we can find pre-2008 data and have him do previous years

I would donate to a Kickstarter for that

Yeah, as far as I could squint into my ancient and apparently almost bottomless inbox, got the same impression. There have been several years when ballots showed up after Xmas, pretty sure. If nothing by New Year's Day, let's post out lists here, okay?

― dow, Sunday, 17 December 2017 20:01 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ILM's 2017 End of Year Tracks & Albums Poll / NOMINATIONS THREAD

I'm a sucker for pop-music cannons; I hope Pazz and Jop hasn't died as an institution.

We gotta see if we can find pre-2008 data and have him do previous years

I would donate to a Kickstarter for that

― mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, December 18, 2017 5:02 PM (five hours ago)

totes. that site is a tremendous resource. i refer to it at least once a couple times a month, sometimes more.

A lot of info pre-2008 data is available in the Wayback Machine. I would donate to just have someone mine that data to make it useful for furia. Glenn should come up with a dollar amount to make doing that worth his time

would fund

while we're doing this can i also slip my 2011 ballot in there that i sent to VV but they did not count

I'm told the film poll is still happening this year, so I see no reason this wouldn't continue.

End of Net Neutrality, time to dust off the printer and find the big stapler, and look to way the old changing way, brothers and sisters---cue Richard Thompson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRCzvMNIZqg

And come along typos

i've used wayback machine to look thru old p&j data, some years are easier to go thru than others and for a good number of years it is basically impossible to get a full/comprehensive look at all the data (b/c wayback didn't archive some critics' ballots, for example). i would also fund any effort that would successfully reobtain all (or even a good portion of) this data tho!

iirc if you look closely you can also find some tabulation errors that were not caught prior to the published ranking or even fixed on the website's ranking (in the 90s and early 00s especially)

“Some Dude “ is tweeting that Pazz & Jop is dead. Has an official statement been issued by anyone at the Village Voice?

But someone tweeted back on the 20th at him that ballots are going out next week.

Oops, this week.

I'm told Pazz & Jop is happening; ballots going out this week

— Zach Schonfeld (@zzzzaaaacccchhh) December 20, 2017

One like on that Tweet

Ballots sent out this morning. Due 12 noon wed. January 3, 2018

Is anybody else unable to log in? Not sure if I got the wrong ID or what

wonder if the deadline is a typo, it's normally midnight IIRC

Okay, voted. Let's see if I ever receive a confirmation email...

I'm also unable to log in. Looks like some people are getting through. I've emailed the site, but nothing happening so far.

Update. Was finally able to log in thanks to a email reply from the Pazz & Jop people. A new ID number did the trick.

My login isn't working; I've emailed.

ditto

They sent me a new ID number and I voted. Always curious how many albums I'll be the only voter for. I think my record is 6/10.

I just now logged in, no prob, but while I was entering my first single, suddenly got taken to the confirmation of submission page. Went back a page, there was my ballot where I left off, so finished, hit submit, got confirmation again. So sent a query if they got the whole thing, or do I need to re-submit, with new ID? Hope they're still minding the store tonight.

i’m dreading bodak yellow’s win

It's not so much the lionization of a boring "I'm rich/fuck you" song; it's the pretending that it's so much more than that just because it's coming from a Latinx woman.

I love I’m rich fuck you songs it’s just not an especially creative or interesting one

it's the pretending that it's so much more than that just because it's coming from a Latinx woman

lol ok

ppl keep saying such bizarre things here to detract from "bodak yellow"!! it's funny y'all disliked lorde so much when she broke through b/c half of these ridiculous reaches y'all are coming up with could have been lifted directly from "royals" lol

i didn’t like that either but okay

To be clear I don’t agree with unperson. Lol

The song sucks bc it’s the same basic uncrearive derivative bs New York gets behind every year and everyone forgets about one year later

They took a beloved celeb & had her do the 30th no flocking freestyle over Asap ferg “work” beat & gave it a million dollar rollout which is more than they’d invest in any female artist famous for u know creativity or style or innovation or anything beyond charisma & the masses of lames who get their rap marching orders from rap caviar decided it was the best female rap record ever made or something. Boring

I don’t even think the song itself “sucks” really, it’s effective and well executed, it’s “fine,” but it’s fine in such a boring way & the hyperbolic overreactions are 👎🏻

I really wish more ppl had heard the Rapsody album

also agreed W D40 that NYC's thirsty trend hopping is really sad and pathetic, like one suspects Cardi, Desiigner ABoogie wouldn't even make a dent without the industry push off people wanting wanting someone who's nominally a "New York rapper" to pop.

not surprisingly, since the city is so moribund the only good rap is 40ish year (Griselda crew being younger as the exception) old practitioners of the lost art, but basically taking the Sean P (RIP Decepticon Sean)/MF Doom mode of doubling down on commerically unviable 90s styles, but pushing them even farther into dark back alleys, lost in multisyllabic rhyme scheme gun talk hall of mirrors, cooking down the most cryptic and morbid elements of The Infamous and Cuban Links into Spartan nearly drumless heartbeats (Ka and Roc Marci especially), scraping together enough dough through moderately attended club dates and 5k guest verses on songs by lyrical nobodies in the Midwest. If hip hop is dead, they are the Templar knights forced to guard the cup of Herc for all eternity

booming posts deej

I really wish more ppl had heard the Rapsody album

Seconded.

To be clear I don’t agree with unperson. Lol

This has been crystal clear as long as we've both been on ILX, don't worry. Merry Christmas!

got my login sorted out, now time to figure out if any of the songs I liked this year were singles.

'hyperbolic overreactions' where? here? i am one of like three users on ilm that i have seen admit to having a positive impression of the song, and i have yet to see anyone gush over it (the way lex probably would if he still posted here). if you mean elsewhere/the year-end lists then sure i guess.

it's the pretending that it's so much more than that just because it's coming from a Latinx woman

i actually want to respond to this in more detail instead of just being flippant and mean about it as i was above, because i think(/hope) there may have been some point intended that is more nuanced than what was actually communicated.

obviously, cardi's persona and what we as an audience know and don't know about her are inseparable from what we think the song ~means~ when we hear it. a line about not needing to strip might come across as condescending unless we believed that to be part of cardi's past (as it is); braggadocious rapping often feels more viscerally thrilling when it's delivered by someone who's emerging from hardship or obscurity*, etc. etc. anyone with any sense of how opportunity structure tends to bend along the lines of race/class/gender (i.e. any american who is honest with herself) will naturally tend to read more into the lines cardi delivers based on her identity as black, latinx, and a woman, sure. but to suggest that these aspects of her identity have shielded the song from criticism (they certainly haven't here!) or somehow put it on the Canonization Fast Track is, uh... well, it's an argument i'd sooner expect to see on /mu/ than on ilm.

(* side-note, i don't buy deej's contention that cardi b was a celeb before this song -- social media celeb, maybe, but even today that means nothing in the grand scheme of things. and maybe i'm just naïvely buying into pr stories here, but fancy video aside, i'm not even sure if this song's launch was actually aggressive by major label standards? it didn't even seem like her team was sure if it would be 'the hit'.)

(i don't think it even got an adds date at radio which is not exactly indicative of an aggressive, million-dollar rollout lol)

if you mean elsewhere/the year-end lists then sure i guess.

this is, i think, obviously what they mean

(* side-note, i don't buy deej's contention that cardi b was a celeb before this song -- social media celeb, maybe, but even today that means nothing in the grand scheme of things. and maybe i'm just naïvely buying into pr stories here, but fancy video aside, i'm not even sure if this song's launch was actually aggressive by major label standards? it didn't even seem like her team was sure if it would be 'the hit'.)

― dyl, Monday, December 25, 2017 5:40 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You’re wrong about this. She’s been hugely famous before she had a recording career. Was the obvious breakout star on love & hip hop & iirc appeared on fader before she’d even recorded a mixtape. She was a significant instagram celeb before reality tv.

(i don't think it even got an adds date at radio which is not exactly indicative of an aggressive, million-dollar rollout lol)

― dyl, Monday, December 25, 2017 5:45 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She got a million dollar deal at Atlantic when no other female rappers are getting deals at that level, because she was a proven star

And again I don’t agree w unperson’s line of argument

Radio isn’t really the vector for hits any more, labels are very good at manufacturing “organic” marketing via social media personalities, apps, youtube, etc

To be clear lots of songs I like are broke that way & I have no issue with marketing being marketing, but it’s unquestionable that labels thought she was a better bet than literally any other rapper bc she was already a proven public personality

oops my post about adds date is wrong (not that it matters). it did get an adds date for radio but it was already well into the top 40 on the hot 100 based on early play + (largely apple music) streams by then.

*any other female rapper

Yes streams are driven by playlisting & social media marketing now, which is expensive

i hope it didn't seem like i was suggesting you agreed with what unperson said/what i responded to, deej. i just mentioned that as a side-note about how i perceived her level of celebrity-or-obscurity when the song got on my radar, the larger point being that her star being on the rise definitely helped sell the song as ~authentic~/meaningful/whatever. i got the impression that she was somewhat obscure, as i'd never heard of her before the song. given the magnitude of the deal and other things you've mentioned it seems safe to say i was mistaken! but my larger points, which were directed to unperson, remain, as does my impression of the song.

(i'm sorry, i had trouble responding to that side of things when this song was discussed elsewhere too. you obviously are much more aware of what's going on in rap music/the industry than i am.)

i didn’t hear bodak yellow on pop radio here until the week it was no. 2. and it wasn’t because i was tuning in at the wrong times

labels are even more into signing people with already existing celebrity these days even if it’s more “notoriety” than anything else. the whole “let the police reports act as the one sheets” wave, bhad bhabie, etc. i know i know pia zadora put out albums too but there’s something much more craven about this edition of it

My friend's nine-year-old daughter treated me to many verses from Bhad Bhabie and Bodak Yellow last night. Very enlightening.

Not surprisingly, since the city is so moribund the only good rap is 40ish year (Griselda crew being younger as the exception) old practitioners of the lost art, but basically taking the Sean P (RIP Decepticon Sean)/MF Doom mode of doubling down on commerically unviable 90s styles, but pushing them even farther into dark back alleys, lost in multisyllabic rhyme scheme gun talk hall of mirrors, cooking down the most cryptic and morbid elements of The Infamous and Cuban Links into Spartan nearly drumless heartbeats (Ka and Roc Marci especially), scraping together enough dough through moderately attended club dates and 5k guest verses on songs by lyrical nobodies in the Midwest. If hip hop is dead, they are the Templar knights forced to guard the cup of Herc for all eternity

― Joan Digimon (upper mississippi sh@kedown) Compelling description!! Almost makes me want to start reading comic books again and the movies made of them and catch up with this radically reactionary sound of de trop---hope to manage some of this last.

or maybe just try the Dr. Yen Lo album or Honor Killed the Samurai; they're both great.

yeah i'd start w/dr. yen lo or honor, also marcburg by roc marciano and sean p's jesus price superstar and conway the machine's reject 2

i guess marcburg is kind of a landmark album at this point, and sean price kind of pioneered the whole "brokest rapper you know" lane but he is [was :( ] def more gregarious and "fun" than the others

The Night's Gambit was also pretty great

first time voter, anything i should keep in mind in my picks/points/comments? was thinking about writing a short little essay about what i feel ties all my choices together, but i also don't know how much people read those.

I'd read it!

When I used to write squibs, I'd alternate one- and two-sentence zingers with paragraph-length observations.

Write whatever you want to write, austin, however you want to write it, then post it somewhere, on a blog or somewhere. That's really what year-end polls have been for me since the early '90s; an organizing reason/excuse to write about my favourite songs each year (more than ever the past three or four years, now that P&J basically stopped printing random comments).

alright, just went for it! https://medium.com/@abrown512/pazz-and-jop-2017-and-my-year-in-music-e07393ce889c

My login isn't working. I emailed them. Hope they fix it tomorrow... :(

(xpost) Good job. If they print your comments and not mine, though, I take it all back.

clemenza, I just sent you a Facebook friend request. Would like to see about fixing my P&J issues.

Thanks!

Didn't get it--in any event, I'm just a voter and don't have anything to do with the Voice or the poll. You're supposed to e-mail them directly, no? They must keep regular hours today. I didn't have any trouble with my own code.

Sorry, I thought you were more involved. Never mind.

I'm about as less-involved as it gets.

I emailed them wrt my log-in issues just a few days ago and they had me straightened out in a matter of a few hours.

*fingers crossed*

error here, just emailed them

evol j - did they just say "try again" or did they tell you to do something different, like, idk, "type your number, don't copy/paste it" or something like that?

they gave me a new ID number.

Now that I read this thread, I think they are sending out new ID numbers although I have an apostrophe in my name which often fouls up internet forms such as this.

Yeah, a new ID did the trick. Go me.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSjRCkTWkAI4bE0.jpg:large

my ID doesn't work either -- hopefully it isn't too late to get it fixed

i wrote them like 3 hours ago and got it fixed, you'll be fine

yeah, they just emailed back

(six minutes ago)

Sorry, I thought you were more involved. Never mind.

you guys could still be friends tho

Well, my friend request was still there.

No pressure though.

I emailed on Xmas evening, got a response the next morning.

Anyone know when it's running? I threw out my email which might have had that information and I am too lazy to scroll up and see if someone mentioned it.

Film ballots were due last week, so I'm not really sure. I expected that poll's results this week.

I got an email about an unveiling event in New York this coming Thursday. Instead of canceling the poll they're going all out! Complimentary beverages will be served.

Took a quick look to see if the poll was up, and I was baffled by the current layout. I had to go through three screens to find a music piece. Unless I'm not navigating correctly, there doesn't seem to be a music section anymore. There doesn't seem to be sections of any kind anymore.

hover over "the culture" >> click on "music" in the subnav >> music stories

granted, they should really move that subnav w/ "film tv music theater" up above the three features articles. that would make a lot more sense (to me, who is not a website designer)

*featured not features

lmao

as a former social media editor, just posting the number ones on twitter is such a boring move. thread the respective top tens, or release some saucy ballots ahead of time even.

olol

blahdak yellow

yello > bodak yellow

boDAMN yellow

as a former social media editor, just posting the number ones on twitter is such a boring move. thread the respective top tens, or release some saucy ballots ahead of time even.

― austinb, Thursday, January 18, 2018 8:56 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2.5 hours ago, and these tweets only have like 5 retweets and 5 likes. I don't know if that says something about the Village Voice these days, or the state of music criticism, or what. Also, the #sonosstorenyc hashtag is super lame.

I went to the thing because it's about two blocks from my office and why not, and the vibe was super weird, starting with the whole thing taking place beneath a large alexa ad

what was "the thing"

there was a “launch event” panel discussion

they got christgau, surprisingly(?)

Not with a Bangs, but with a Twitter.

Hi Katherine, Maura, did the thingers happen to mention when the results will be posted? Found Music Event etc. listings just now pretty easily, but didn't see anything about issue (or whatever we should call it now) date---seems like if it's worth a launch event, worth mentioning on site---a video coming at me or whatever.

a facebook post from another attendee indicated that the results would be up early next week.

they said monday, no idea if that means "actually monday" or "we're gonna try"

^guess it was the latter

Wow, Girlpool didn't even make the top 100.

Participation must've been low? "Damn" was the clear favorite and still won with the least points since "whokill." "Bodak Yellow" won with the least # of votes since... Quad City DJs!

spoke too soon! https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/22/pazz-jop-the-top-albums-and-singles-of-2017/

Nice to see Slowdive make the Top Ten!

is this going to be the first time in 20 years that they don't allow the results to be fully explored online? (i.e. browsing full ballots, seeing who voted for each song/album, etc.)

"allow"

Poring over ballots is the only thrill I get from P+J.

Seems like there have been times when elements gradually appeared online----but meanwhile, screw it here's mine (post y'alls!)

Albums (10 points each, listed just in the order they came to mind):

Allen Ginsberg: The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience (Omnivore)

Jane Ira Bloom: Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson (Outline)

Algiers: The Underside of Power (Matador)

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda:The Ecstatic Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda (Luaka Bop)

Harriet Tubman: Araminta (Sunnyside)

JLin: Black Origami (Planet Mu)

Jaimie Branch: Fly Or Die (International Anthem)

Les Amazones d’Afrique: Republique Amazone (Real World)

Ornette Coleman: Ornette At 12/Crisis (Real Gone)

Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber: All You Zombies Dig The Luminosity (Avantgroidd)

Singles:
Willie Nelson/Tony Joe White/Leon Russell/Jamey Johnson: “God’s Problem Child” (Legacy)

Whitney Rose: “Can’t Stop Shakin’” (Six Shooter)

Arto Lindsay: “Grain By Grain” (Northern Spy)

A. Savage: “What Do I Do” (Dull Tools)

Chuck Berry: “She Still Loves You” (Duotone)

Caroline Spence: “Southern Accident” (Tone Tree)

Lee Ann Womack: “Hollywood” (ATO)

Amanda Anne Platt/Honeycutters: “Eden” (Organic/Crossroads)

Amanda Anne Platt/Honeycutters: “Learning How To Love Him”(Organic/Crossroads)

Rodney Crowell: “Life Without Susanna” (New West)

that's a good ballot imo, even tho i have minimal overlap.

Albums:
Stokley - Introducing Stokley
Gabriel Garzòn-Montano - Jardin
Syd - Fin
SZA - Ctrl
Ibeyi - Ash
Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.
Alice Coltrane - World Spirituality Classics
Bicep - Bicep
Cecile McLorin Salvant - Dreams and Daggers
Daniel Caesar - Freudian

Singles:
Dua Lipa - New Rules
Sun-EL Musician with Samthing Soweto - Akanamali
Lil Uzi Vert - XO TOUR Llif3
Vince Staples - Bagbak
Black Thought - #FREESTYLE087
Charli XCX - Boys
Migos - T-Shirt
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - If We Were Vampires
Cam - Diane
The Black Madonna - He Is the Voice I Hear

waxahatchee in the top 10 is very surprising, that album was pleasant but fairly unremarkable and didn't seem to show up much in EOY lists at all

OK, I found my ballot (10 points for each album, and I never vote for singles):

Jaimie Branch, Fly Or Die (International Anthem)
Christian Scott, The Centennial Trilogy (Ropeadope)
Elder, Reflections Of A Floating World (Stickman)
Kamasi Washington, Harmony Of Difference (Young Turks)
Cavalera Conspiracy, Psychosis (Napalm)
Rødhåd, Anxious (Dystopian)
Immolation, Atonement (Nuclear Blast)
Prurient, Rainbow Mirror (Profound Lore)
Big K.R.I.T., 4eva Is A Mighty Long Time (Multi Alumni)
Lana Del Rey, Lust For Life (Interscope)

Any idea how many ballots were cast? I like to compare points-per-ballot figures from year to year.

I wish they'd just stop with the charade that they're still open to printing random comments. (Maybe they're there and I missed them--all I see are the two commissioned pieces.) I went back and checked if that was still part of the e-mail they send out, and indeed it is ("As always, we also welcome (i.e., encourage) comments, be they one-liners or novellas, on any and all music-related matters." That line goes back at least to 2009, the earliest one that's still in my in-box. They have eliminated "We'll publish a great deal of these -- some in print, and a great many more only online -- and pay a small fee for their use in either case" in the intervening eight years, but maybe they ought to scrap the other half too.

i just hope they get individual ballots up at some point. if anyone has a connex there, let 'em know that's the best part of this whole thing.

That too, of course--that's the bare minimum to justify its continued existence. I mean, I can't believe anybody actually cares about the results in a world with 37,000 year-end lists.

A little bummed there's no individual ballots or seemingly an ability to look past the top choices.
Here's my ballot. I don't remember how I distributed the points but the order is correct. I didn't do singles.

1. Oxbow - Thin White Duke (Hydrahead)
2. Brutus - Burst (Sargent House)
3. Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun (Sargent House)
4. The Regrettes - Feel Your Feelings Fool! (Warner Brothers)
5. Idles - Brutalism (Balley)
6. Anwar Sadat - Ersatz Living (LP) (Broken World Media)
7. Wolves in the Throne Room - Thrice Woven (Artemisia Records)
8. Irreversible Entanglements - Irreversible Entanglements (International Anthem / Don Giovanni)
9. The Midnight Ghost Train - Cypress Ave. (Napalm Records)
10. Rebel Wizard - Triumph Of Gloom (Prosthetic Records)

A little surprised that the highest charting metal album was Power Trip's Nightmare Logic at #65.
One of my choices cracked the Top 100 but not one of my metal choices (The Regrettes at #79).

http://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/22/pazz-jop-top-10-albums-by-year-1971-2016/

Fantastic piece. Where else could you find such obscure information?

Ooh ballots -- happy to see these! I did one.

1. Kelela - Take Me Apart (Warp)
2. The Courtneys - II (Flying Nun)
3. Aimee Mann - Mental Illness (SuperEgo)
4. The Magnetic Fields - 50 Song Memoir (Nonesuch)
5. Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory (Def Jam)
6. Circuit Des Yeux - Reaching For Indigo (Drag City)
7. Girlpool - Powerplant (Anti-)
8. L'Rain - L’Rain (Astro Nautico)
9. Charly Bliss - Guppy (Barsuk)
10. Cornelius - Mellow Waves (Rostrum)

Spent a lot of time determining what was a single, came up with these.

1. Slowdive - Sugar for the Pill (Dead Oceans)
2. St. Vincent - Pills (Loma Vista)
3. Moses Sumney - Lonely World (Jagjaguwar)
4. Kehlani - Undercover (Atlantic)
5. Alvvays - Plimsoll Punks (Polyvinyl)
6. The Stevens - Chancer (Chapter Music)
7. Emily Haines - Legend of the Wild Horse (Last Gang)
8. Chastity Belt - Different Now (Hardly Art)
9. Lomelda - Interstate Vision (Double Double Whammy)
10. Perfume Genius - Wreath (Matador)

Very disappointed in the lack of individual ballots.

Here's mine:
Albums
1. Various Artists - Club Chai, Vol. 1 (Club Chai) 20
2. Japanese Breakfast - Soft Sounds From Another Planet (Dead Oceans) 15
3. Ty Dolla $ign - Beach House 3 (Atlantic Records) 15
4. SZA - CTRL (Top Dawg Entertainment) 10
5. Waxahatachee - Out In The Storm (Merge Records) 10
6. Lorde - Melodrama (Republic Records) 10
7. Octo Octa - Where Are We Going? (Honey Soundsystem Records) 5
8. MUNA - About U (RCA Records) 5
9. Grizzly Bear - Painted Ruins (RCA Records) 5
10. Julie Byrne - Not Even Happiness (Ba Da Bing! Records) 5

Singles
1. Slowdive - Slomo (Dead Oceans)
2. Mount Kimbie ft. King Krule - Blue Train Lines (Warp Records)
3. House Of Feelings - It’ll Cost You (Infinite Best Recordings)
4. Chief Keef - Told Y’all (Glo Gang/RBE Records)
5. Chris Jeday ft. J Balvin, Ozuna, Arcangel - Ahora Dice (Universal Music Group)
6. Avalon Emerson - One More Fluorescent Rush (Whities)
7. Hercules & Love Affair ft. Sharon Van Etten - Omnion (Big Beat Records)
8. yaeji - Full of It (GODMODE)
9. Playboi Carti ft. Lil Uzi Vert - *wokeuplikethis (AWGE/Interscope Records)
10. The Chainsmokers - Paris (Disruptor Records/Columbia Records)

Albums
Kendrick Lamar - Damn
Syd - Fin
Carly Pearce - Every Little Thing
The Ocean Party - Beauty Point
2 Chainz - Pretty Girls Like Trap Music
Kelela - Take Me Apart
Moon Diagrams - Lifetime of Love
Charlie Worsham - Beginning of Things
Chloe x Halle - The Two of Us
Milk Teddy - Time Catches Up With Milk Teddy

Songs
Kendrick Lamar ft Zacari - "LOVE"
Migos - T-Shirt
Young Thug - Safe
Joan Shelley - Wild Indifference
Sunny Sweeney - Bottle By My Bed
Playboi Carti ft. Lil Uzi Vert - Wokeuplikethis
Washington Hebrew - Ima Try
Last Leaves - The World We Had
SZA - Drew Barrymore
Cam - Diane

ALBUMS, 10 points each.

Matt Jencik - Weird Times (Hands in the Dark)
Bob Dylan - Triplicate (Columbia)
The Fun Years - Heroes of the Second Story Walk-Up (Spring Break Tapes)
Benoît Pioulard - Lignin Poise (Disques D’honore)
Ulver - The Assassination of Julius Caesar (House of Mythology)
Vattnet - Vattnet (New Damage Records)
The Angelus - There Will Be No Peace (Tofu Carnage Records)
Divide Replace - warp wrap (self released)
Biblical - The City That Always Sleeps (New Damage Records)
Eiyn Sof - Meadow Thrum (Arachnidiscs)

Christgau's definition of "post-rock" is making my brain bleed.

I think this was my ballot

ALBUMS
1. JLin, 'Black Origami'
2. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, 'The Kid'
3. Kendrick Lamar, 'Damn.'
4. Blanck Mass, 'World Eater'
5. Lanark Artefax, 'Whities 011' EP
6. Saicobab, 'Sab Se Purani Bab'
7. Songhoy Blues, 'Résistance'
8. Traxman, 'Tekvision'
9. Migos, 'Culture'
10. Chino Amobi, 'Paradiso'

SINGLES
1. Tee Grizzly, "First Day Out"
2. Kendrick Lamar, “Humble”
3. Taylor Swift, “Look What You Made Me Do”
4. Migos, “Bad and Boujee"
5. Kendrick Lamar, "DNA"
6. Tay-K, “The Race”
7. Margo Price, "Pay Gap"
8. Taylor Swift, "…Ready for It?"
9. DJ Khaled and Friends, “Wild Thoughts"
10. Pink, "What About Us"

I didn't vote this year, but with no individual ballots showing and only the top 10, my votes would have been invisible anyway. They would have been something like:

VUUR: In This Moment We Are Free - Cities
The Dark Element: The Dark Element
Ravenscry: The Invisible
Metalite: Heroes in Time
Amberian Dawn: Darkness of Eternity
Exit Eden: Rhapsodies in Black
IKINÄ: Samoista Soluista
Haloo Helsinki!: Hulluuden Highway
Ideas: Egység
Moonspell: 1755

MUNA: "Crying on the Bathroom Floor"
Dappy: "Spotlight (Acoustic)"
Dave Days: "Hurts So Good to Be Alive"
Jule Vera: "Lifeline"
Battle Beast: "Familiar Hell"
Clock Opera: "You've Got What I Need"
Force Majeure: "Church of Steam"
Ayben: "Baskan"
Bright Light Bright Light: "Running Back to You"
Perfume Genius: "Slip Away"

Top 100s, I meant. I agree that without individual ballots showing, the whole thing is close to moot. I don't think my declining to tabulate was the cause of this, although it can't have helped. Mainly the change in corporate ownership meant that they couldn't use the old database/publishing system any more, so all processes had to be recreated from scratch. Given that, I was a little surprised they went through with it at all, and not at all surprised that they stuck to just publishing the flat list. Data publishing in a blog-post world is hard.

Yeah, I remember whatever system they had ca. 2007(?) broke? I don't know if they ever updated it, but it would make some logical sense that it would not be too functional after who knows how many redesigns and CMS changes. I wouldn't blame any media company for not wanting to go through the cost in money and man hours to build/rebuild a functional list

My 20 points helped keep Paramore in the top 50 and my 15 points kept the Regrettes in the top 90. So, yay.

"publishing" the results without much comment alongside a state of the union by a septuagenarian rock critic vs not doing it at all

the accompanying cardi gif is v v bad
http://villagevoice.freetls.fastly.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/VillageVoice-CardiB-MarinaEsmeraldo.gif

I emailed the person who assisted me with my login asking if they would post ballots. Will post any response I get.

christgau's essay ultimately lands on and closes with what he considers to be the political albums of the year: Mount Eerie and Randy Newman

Top 100s, I meant. I agree that without individual ballots showing, the whole thing is close to moot.

otm. I know it probably doesn't matter much to most of the readership, but as a participant, I have no idea why I would continue to vote. Not because I want to see my ballot published, but for the cross-referencing, etc.

Yeah, it's mostly about the individual ballots for me too; keep 'em coming. Losing access to the database sounds like a real good alibi, although I just now googled something I wrote in the 90s and it was still on there (still, there have indeed been enough shakeups over the years that I set up my own blogspot archive). Maybe they just don't have access to the numbers etc.
But mostly why I'm posting this: Just under the villagevoice.com search results were many more voice items at openlibrary.org, which, if you pay for it to open, apparently will present the sound recordings (sic) mentioned in reviews and in Pazz & Jops (of the 90s, anyway, which is where I was looking). I didn't spring for it, so no idea how thorough this is, or whether it works at all (didn't see the text of my 90s piece, or of the P&Js; maybe that's part of what you pay for).

I don't even remember my ballot, fwiw

dow, think about the time it would take to format/post/hyperlink like 100 ballots from scratch, let alone connect them to individual pages for each song and album.

Without a custom CMS, forget it

Even with help from a program that generates HTML for albums based off IDs, receiving and processing merely/roughly 400 albums and singles (for a simple one-page feature) is a mite arduous.

Yeah, I don't mean to imply that anyone should do this from scratch, or at all--and certainly not demanding links to all the songs ever mentioned on all the ballots of all the polls---but rather that openlibrary.org seems to be implying that they/their gigslaves have done something like this.

Did yall see this? Mostly not that surprising, but some I'd forgotten about:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/22/pazz-jop-top-10-albums-by-year-1971-2016/?utm_source=Village+Voice+Music&utm_campaign=f5027b4451-Music+Newsletter+1%2F19%2F2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_58e5ed4fcb-f5027b4451-58804241

Coldplay!?

I was surprised by the scarcity of hip hop in the mid-90s. No Illmatic for instance. Also I didn’t know Steely Dan was so dominant in the 70s.

They published a bunch of voter comments the other day. Still no ballots though.

Also a profile of L'Rain! Thought it was a P+J feature for a second, then remembered that album only placed in my imagination :(

if pazz and jop let me vote it might have ;)

I only gave it 7 points. Wish I'd voted more strategically.

Wow, I got a comment posted.

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/25/pazz-jop-comments-further-listening/

Not sure how, but i got two—one on lorde and one on club chai.

Mine mentioned a few of my Afro-southern faves who don’t get mentioned as Americana

More comments here by others https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/25/pazz-jop-comments-protests-and-escapes/

if it's the comment I think it is that sounds intriguing

this was mine:

ALBUMS

01. Susanne Sundfor: Music For People In Trouble
02. Julie Byrne: Not Even Happiness
03. Kelela: Take Me Apart
04: Perfume Genius: No Shape
05. SZA: CTRL
06. MUNA: About U
07. Lorde: Melodrama
08. Baths: Romaplasm
09. Kelly Lee Owens: Kelly Lee Owens
10. Jessie Ware: Glasshouse

SONGS

01. SZA ft. Travis Scott: "Love Galore"
02. Mondo Grosso ft. Hikari Mitsushima: "Labyrinth"
03. Lorde: "Supercut"
04. Slowdive: "Slomo"
05. Wolf Alice: "Don't Delete The Kisses"
06. Hercules & Love Affair ft. Sharon Van Etten: "Omnion"
07. yaeji: "raingurl"
08. Tove Lo: "Disco Tits"
09. Phoebe Bridgers: "Motion Sickness"
10. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: "To Feel Your Best"

ALBUMS
Jakuzi – Fantezi Müzik (City Slang) 15
Kenji Minogue – En Dermee (Music Mania) 13
Louis Sclavis – Frontières (JMs) 12
Reniss –Tendon (New Bell) 12
Scooter – Scooter Forever (Sheffield Tunes) 11
Cabbage – Young Dumb and Full Of… (Skeleton Key) 10
Charlie Worsham – Beginning Of Things (Warner Bros.) 8
Bruce Cockburn -Bone On Bone (True North) 7
Carlinhos Brown – Semelhantes (Candyall) 6
Nadia Rose – Highly Flammable (Relentless) 6

SINGLES
Baghi Mann – Soorme (Jass)
Haley Georgia - Shots (Haley Georgia)
Kabeer Nasha – Aaj Club Mein (Turban Hits)
Omar Souleyman – Ya Bnayya (Mad Decent)
Meet Bros. – Roar on the Shore (Party Mix) (Meet Bros.)
Haley Georgia – Becky (Haley Georgia)
Lindsey Buckingham & Christie McVie – In My World (Atlantic)
Heize – Hello! UFO (Universal)
Sevyn Streeter – Before I Do (Atlantic)
Tuxedo – 2nd Time Around (Stones Throw)

Albums

Kendrick Lamar-Damn
SZA-CTRL
Yemi Alade-Black Magic
Trio Da Kali & Kronos Quartet-Ladilikan
Oumou Sangare-Mogoya
New Pornographers-Whiteout Conditions
Moses Sumney-Aromanticism
Various Artist, Trailride Music Vol. 1
Daniel Caesar-Freudian
Ms. Jody- Thunder Under Yonder

Songs

Kendrick Lamar-DNA
SZA-Love Galore
Mary J. Blige-Thick of It
J. Balvin & Willy William- Mi Gente
Future-Mask Off
Migos-Bad and Boujee
Olamide-Wo!!
Goldlink (ft. Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy)- Crew
The Courtneys-Silver Velvet
Sam Hunt -Body Like a Back Road

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/25/pazz-jop-comments-the-top-albums-and-singles/

so it looks like Uproxx is going to try to pick up the Pazz & Jop torch.

hey twitter -- ballots for @uproxx's first music critics poll just went out. @Philip_Cosores and i did our best compiling a list of who might be interested. if you're a music writer who wants to vote, please send me an email: cait✧✧✧.wh✧✧✧@upr✧✧✧.c✧✧. all are welcome!

— caitlin cristin (@harmonicait) December 3, 2018

reminder: Uproxx is owned by Warner Music.

this bothers me. does it bother others or is it an unavoidable fact of music-critic life in 2018?

uproxx has bigger problems than its owners

https://deadspin.com/reading-product-plugs-from-joshua-tree-helped-me-unders-1822234122

Voting for U2's 'Joshua Tree' Helped Me Understand My Own Twisted Heart

Did anybody here get one of these invite emails? I didn't.

Yep.

I dunno if I want to participate. If you email her, I'm told, she'll allow you to participate.

I don't want to participate. I voted in The Wire's poll and the NPR jazz critics' poll, and wrote a jazz top ten for Stereogum. I'm listed out.

I sent them an email. I love skewing whatever lists there are with my questionable musical taste as long as I feel qualified to make a list. When I stopped writing I didn't. But now I do.

fuck this imo

r.i.p. pazz & jop

https://deadspin.com/reading-product-plugs-from-joshua-tree-helped-me-unders-1822234122

My list is already sponsored by Arby's.

@maura oh I know. besides ownership issues, I can’t really stand the thought of her and P.C. as gatekeepers for “the” big critics’ list

http://cleverbeans.blogspot.com/2006/12/pazznjopnhinder.html

hmmmmm re uproxx, I dunno

Let it die.

Let’s face it, Pazz and Jop was running on some serious fumes those last couple years. It got to the point where all the things that made it special in the first place were gone. Near the end there was no Robert Christgau year-in-review essay, there was no “see what your favorite critics voted for” webpage, there were no Singles Jukebox-y critic blurbs. So in the end all you had left was the same list of albums and singles that I can just go to Metacritic and get myself whenever I want. So yes, let it die.

The last couple years’ P&Js couldn’t even get their own ILM thread.

My own interest aside--I never hesitated for a second as to whether I'd participate; I planned to keep going for as long as they kept me on the mailing list--I agree. Honestly, the actual results lost all interest for me somewhere in the middle of the '90s.

This will be lost to history, but I bet I submitted more Pazz & Jop commentary than anyone this side of Christgau. Only a tiny fraction of it ever made it into print, but from '97 through to last year, I'd send in two or three pages of comments on my singles list every year--somewhere between 25-30,000 words, I'd estimate. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe a lot of voters did that. My sense is that most ballots were much shorter, and that many came in with no comments at all.

Wow, that’s a lot of comments. You’re probably right.

I have no idea how people wrote comments for those, by late December the thought of writing anything is like the thought of scooping my brain out with an ice pick (or rather, more like that than usual)

I contributed comments from 2003 to about 2012, then realized I was repeating stuff from other published things.

I voted. The email I got asked for pitches for essays for what it's worth but didn't seem to solicit comments.

The number and length of comments I send decreased over the years as I got more and more assignments, and the desire to be part of that aspect of P&J lessened somewhat.

I... just got my ballot?

lol I was just coming here to post that

Last year, writing in his Pazz + Jop essay, Robert Christgau called the poll “America’s most comprehensive survey of ‘rock critic’ taste,” and we’re happy to say that that legacy will continue with this year’s poll, as well as the essays, analysis and voter comments that have accompanied Pazz + Jop in the past.

who's doing it?

The email is from "The Village Voice" and says the poll will be posted on their site. But no editor name on the email

Ballots due 12 noon Friday January 4

Yeah, I got an email asking for a ballot as well... Strange!

I'm definitely gonna send them my list. I already have it made up so it's no real extra work.

In fact anyone who wants it I'll be happy to tell them.

it's a phishing scam, but they're phishing for music recs

wonder how uproxx feels right now

Mystified. It's like...a bankrupt store announcing a final sale after they've vacated the premises?

thank god, one more list to tell us that mitski and kacey musgraves made the best albums of the year

Mystified. It's like...a bankrupt store announcing a final sale after they've vacated the premises?

― clemenza, Thursday, December 20, 2018 11:27 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hear if you submit a ballot you get a great deal on copper wiring.

Forks said:
Hi! Could you clarify who is running this poll and how the (now defunct) Village Voice is involved?

D@v1d Sw@ns0n said:
Sure. We have a skeleton editorial crew who are working on the Voice archives project, and given that we have the capability to continue the poll, we wanted to do so. And I’m happy to answer any other questions.

well christgau says it's ok

WOL? LUT? Huh? But just for the record, I knew Pazz & Jop 2018 was in the works and I'm voting. In fact, I'm kinda proud. The list has been updated, and any cross-publication/generation poll will will be better than none. I urge anyone who gets a ballot to participate. https://t.co/41mTiOM5pE

— Robert Christgau (@rxgau) December 20, 2018

Swanson answer is OK by me. Def voting in this. F Uproxx.

lmao wol & lut

but, as i've said before, any effort by anyone to run this thing without updating this site is incomplete: http://furia.com/pjs/table_voter_all_total.html

I would be happy to donate to a Kickstarter to get 2017 updated in there if Gl3nn names his price

i'd love to see a kickstarter to get that site updated for 2017 and 2018, and then start moving backward, too. i assume the voting data is long gone, but it'd be nice to go back as far as possible. that site is *already/still* a great resource .... it'd be even better if it went back a decade or two.

fund it immediately

I'm hoping somebody else will take over. I already told the Voice I would be happy to talk to anybody they could find to be the poll's new statistician. Most of the math I did isn't that complicated, and I can help pass it on. Let me know if you're interested, or know anybody else who might be.

But while I appreciate the notional Kickstarter sentiment, a lot, money is not the issue for me, it's time. And love.

When I started crunching P&J numbers, it was some of the most interesting music data I had. That stopped being the case a while ago.

A part of me is thrilled that the poll might survive, and I did get a ballot and might vote (I didn't last year). But I also spent enough years analyzing this poll, and now analyzing a lot more music data, to realize that the P&J in its honorable and venerable form is not really helping music in any of the ways I care most about. If it didn't exist, I wouldn't be trying to start it. I want some new thing, something far more inclusive and wider-reaching and less arbitrary.

There's an obvious, however partial, sense in which Spotify is that thing: a P&J with 200 million voters and a ballot of unlimited length. You can object, of course, that those 200 million listeners aren't all committed to thinking critically about music, and ballots of unlimited length don't force you to make any hard decisions. And, indeed, just counting streams isn't that interesting, in the same way that just counting P&J votes isn't that interesting, which is how I got involved in the first place. But I basically squeezed as much insight out of the P&J numbers as I could think to. That's nowhere near true of listening data yet.

money is not the issue for me, it's time. And love.

yeah, but ... how much money would make it worth your time

*whiney fans a fistful of washingtons and leers suggestively*

glenn, how do you parse Spotify listening data into conclusions that aren't dulled by this:

those 200 million listeners aren't all committed to thinking critically about music

That's the fun part.

But the key, of course, is that we have all the listening data. We don't have to ask somebody what kind of listener they are, and we don't have to stipulate that an individual listener has only one answer to that question.

xxxpost clemenza, sorry they didn't use more or your or my comments, but either way, I've been blogging mine for the past 15 years, I think (ones before that will have to wait 'til I find an external floppy drive that works, any suggestions?)Reading your own ancient stuff can be educational, if you can stand it.
P&J will prob be the same thing I sent Uproxx or however you spell it---just now asked whether all ballots will be accessible; that was always my main interest. Probably won't, but still hoping.

The Pazz and Jop mailing list never, ever got scrubbed. I remember it used to be in an access database? I'm still getting ballots even though I stopped voting in the mid 2000s.

There's an obvious, however partial, sense in which Spotify is that thing: a P&J with 200 million voters and a ballot of unlimited length. You can object, of course, that those 200 million listeners aren't all committed to thinking critically about music, and ballots of unlimited length don't force you to make any hard decisions. And, indeed, just counting streams isn't that interesting, in the same way that just counting P&J votes isn't that interesting, which is how I got involved in the first place. But I basically squeezed as much insight out of the P&J numbers as I could think to. That's nowhere near true of listening data yet.

― glenn mcdonald

i think my objection would be more that i never thought that the primary goal of p&j was to provide interesting fodder for data analysis.

it's certainly nice to have a user base of 200 million people, particularly when one realizes the leverage one possesses over that userbase (which realization renders questions of simple data analysis relatively insignificant...)

The Pazz and Jop mailing list never, ever got scrubbed.

Well, I didn't get a ballot this time around, but I wouldn't have voted if I had. P&J's moment has passed.

"pazz and jop ballot submitted," a sentence I never thought I'd type ever again

Oh, I wasn't saying data-analysis was the P&J's primary goal, just that my involvement was all about tabulation accuracy and data analysis...

Pazz & Jop is a critics' poll, it's not really comparable with streaming. Spotify is more like Kazaa or something

I'll happily vote, but yeah, it's a missed opportunity to be something bigger and better and different than Uproxx or the results of the AOTY aggregate.

I'd love to see a poll that allowed for up to 100 ballots, and disqualifies anyone who can't list at least 25. Also give them an opportunity to vote for an optional genre category, whatever the voter feels they have enough knowledge of.

i'd love to see a poll that disqualified you, for walking around wishing you could disqualify people

and disqualifies anyone who can't list at least 25

Strongly disagree with this. I really, really like 15-20 songs a year. When people throw lists of their 100 favourite songs of the year at me, I always wonder where "I've heard this and I don't dislike it" kicks in.

Constantly! I generally can pull a thousand tracks I heard and kinda like any year. The 1 or 2 hundred at the top are things that really clicked.
All this comes down to (imo) the fact that we all listen and appreciate differently and it's often hard to cope with other peoples gifts or restrictions when it comes to ability to enjoy.

I honestly find it hard to name 10 songs I really liked this year

“Mo Bamba,” “Big Bank” and four things produced by Kanye West

Good thing you don't work in the music industry or any of its supporting branches!
http://i.imgur.com/Ki8qjpS.jpg
(<3 u whiney)

personally whenever i see ppl write 25-to-50+-deep lists of their favorite albums of the year my first thought is always "idek if i've even listened to that many albums this year". and somehow some of the ppl who can draw up such lists struggle to come up with a similar list of songs? like, do the albums you supposedly love not have songs on them?

It's rare that my singles and album lists overlap. I'm cheating if they do.

never really understood why people like to pretend that none of their favorite albums contain favorite tracks (esp as the concept of the 'single' continues to erode)

For me, as pertains to best of year lists, it's so that I can share the love more effectively. If there's enough great stuff on an album to justify it as one of the best things I heard this year, you can assume several great singles are on there. Inverse isn't always the case.

ever really understood why people like to pretend that none of their favorite albums contain favorite tracks (esp as the concept of the 'single' continues to erode)

― dyl, Sunday, December 23, 2018

Because I love enough singles that I don't need to fill precious spots with tracks from albums that I'll place.

Good thing you don't work in the music industry or any of its supporting branches!
(<3 u whiney)

or should I say, more accurately, last year as a “journalist”

I generally can pull a thousand tracks I heard and kinda like any year.

How many are you hearing total (including the ones you didn’t kinda like)?

Whiney, sorry to hear that or maybe happy for you? Would love to hear what you're up to sometime, drop a fella a line.

Morrisp: Tough question! I can ballpark based on some metrics of what's on my playlists. Figure I think 70/80% of what I hear is worth giving more than a single listen and roughly half sticks. So maybe 3500-4000 tracks a year or so? Generally at least an album a day; on days when I'm traveling or working in the studio, maybe more like four? That doesn't take into account other streams of music and live music and CDs and so forth. This was a year when I made an effort not to do too very much repeat listening.

If you care, here's the current (unorganized and very much incomplete) list of 2018's keepers that are on Spotify. Would be happy to talk about any of these!
https://open.spotify.com/user/forksclovetofu/playlist/5F4O9GGhAEY5zYDDakpCuB

as always, though i'm aware my dilettantism is extreme from a lot of folks perspective, i'm continually aware of the massive amount of well-known, obscure or just unknown-to-me (and often great!) music I'm missing out on. the great thing is that it's not going anywhere and hopefully I will find or be guided to it in good time.

Thx, very interesting! I can’t fathom consuming/processing that much music; it’s really impressive.

Life is easy, albums are hard.

I feel like almost anyone - with the proper handholding - can make a great song, but - to augment your point Al - albums _are_ hard.

Xp Nice of you to say Morris! I consume/process a lot of media, period! Some of it's a function of my pathology, some of it is insatiable curiosity. Even when you hit a run of lousy albums in a row, the payoff high of hearing something new that broadens the soul is almost always worth the investment of time and energy.

Al, how much new music would you say you listen to on a yearly basis?

Singles? Well over 500. Albums are in the 100 range.

Singles Jukebox alone accounts for over 700 tracks a year, so there's that.

At this point, I aim at making two lists every year:

Best 25 Albums
Best 25 Tracks

There was a time not long ago where I was capable of making a list of 50 of each, but those days are gone; I don't listen to quite as much music.

I know there are folks who put tracks from albums on their albums lists, but this has always seemed really weird. That's repetition.

If an album of songs hits me hard enough, that's going on the Albums list. Some folks will say "I love this album so much that I put each of these songs on my Tracks list." Huh? Why? That means you love an album very much; it should be on your Albums list.

If one song on an album outshines the others so brilliantly that the others pale by comparison - and if that one song gets a lot of play from me - that's a sign that it deserves a shot at the Tracks list. The Tracks list is also for songs like "New Light" or "Free Yourself" or "Venice Bitch" where no album exists for consumption yet, and won't for a minute, or something like "Godbody," where the album missed me but I stumbled upon the song very late in the year and was wowed by it.

(Each to his or her own, of course.)

Should read "I know there are folks who put tracks from albums on their albums lists on their tracks lists, but this has always seemed really weird."

As a person who likes the dark arts, I don't do song lists. I do make a Spotify playlist of my favorite songs off my favorite albums but there is no ranking. Actually I often find myself playing it on random. But I only rank albums since that is my preferred format both as a fan and insignificant writer of music criticism.

songs have to really call to me as singles before i put them on a tracks list so there’s not usually much overlap between the two, but yeah i absolutely have “love it if we made it” on my tracks list and a brief inquiry into online relationships on my albums list

i'd love to see a poll that disqualified you, for walking around wishing you could disqualify people

That's a bit dramatic. All I'm suggesting is the form doesn't submit unless at least 25 entries are in there. Pretty standard, but just suggesting 25 instead of 10. It's really not a stretch, that's what our Doom Charts group does. If a person who's job is partly to review and recommend music, can't come up with more then ten albums, then that list probably isn't going to be much good.

that's it, you're disqualified

what my list needed was more boring doom to be counted

If a person who's job is partly to review and recommend music, can't come up with more then ten albums, then that list probably isn't going to be much good.