Pazz & Jop 2008

Pazz & Jop 2008 critics poll for albums and songs is now out. TV on the Radio wins for albums and M.I.A. "Paper Planes" for singles

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

Top albums with points and mentions

TV on the Radio, Dear Science
Interscope Points: 1744
Mentions: 154
2 Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
XL Points: 1075
Mentions: 105
3 Portishead, Third
Mercury Points: 1058
Mentions: 102
4 Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War
Motown Points: 910
Mentions: 80
5 Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
Sub Pop Points: 907
Mentions: 87
6 Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
Cash Money Points: 817
Mentions: 78
7 Santogold, Santogold
Downtown Points: 808
Mentions: 79
8 Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago *
Jagjaguwar Points: 770
Mentions: 75
9 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
Anti- Points: 687
Mentions: 61
10 Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
Roc-A-Fella Points: 603
Mentions: 57
11 Deerhunter, Microcastle/Weird Era Continued
Kranky Points: 585
Mentions: 55
12 Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
Nonesuch Points: 546
Mentions: 48
13 The Hold Steady, Stay Positive
Vagrant Points: 540
Mentions: 54
14 No Age, Nouns
Sub Pop Points: 452
Mentions: 45
15 Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
Illegal Art Points: 440
Mentions: 43
16 My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
ATO Points: 429
Mentions: 43
17 MGMT, Oracular Spectacular *
Sony Points: 425
Mentions: 43
18 Hercules and Love Affair, Hercules and Love Affair
DFA/EMI Points: 416
Mentions: 42
19 Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It
Columbia Points: 415
Mentions: 45
20 Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs - Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006
Columbia Points: 402
Mentions: 36
21 Coldplay, Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends
Capitol Points: 366
Mentions: 36
22 Los Campesinos!, Hold On Now, Youngster...
Arts & Crafts Points: 365
Mentions: 32
23 Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
Modular Points: 338
Mentions: 30
24 The Gaslight Anthem, The '59 Sound
Side One Dummy Points: 321
Mentions: 28
25 R.E.M., Accelerate
Warner Brothers Points: 313
Mentions

haha--beat me to it by two minutes.

pretty dire looking on first glance.

BADU GOES TOP FIVE, good enough for me.

I knew I'd be the only person to vote for Ecko records bluesy Southern soul artist Miss Jody but I thought someone else would vote for Julieta Venegas besides me. Oh well. Erykah and Lil' Wayne were the only top 10 album winners that I went for.

way to go Torche!

As I whine about every year, not enough folks into 'specialist' genres vote. They either don't care despite being aware, or don't know about the poll, or don't try to get involved.

yeah, that and the P-head placing surprised me. kinda.

xxxp

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-21/pazzandjop/janelle-erykah-and-santogold-are-the-afro-techno-revolution/

At the Apollo in late December, we Afrofuturist acolytes bowed down and kissed Labelle's skyscraping stilettos, and were
rewarded with a glimpse into the Eternal.

This Simon Reynolds quote from his P & J essay "The People vs Vampire Weekend" about the detractors and supporters of Vampire Weekend is questionable imho, especially the second part (and I like Vampire) --

Vampire Weekend make more amusing and thought-provoking play from the signifiers of wealth and exclusivity than any rapper I've heard these past several years. (But then, Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years.)

At the Apollo in late December, we Afrofuturist acolytes bowed down and kissed Labelle's skyscraping stilettos, and were rewarded with a glimpse into the Eternal.

Is it saying the acolytes looked up her skirt?

x-post

The second part of the sentence makes sense if Simon has not listened to many hiphop records the past few years

Elsewhere there are comments from Ned R., Alfred S., and Phil F. to name a few ilx contributors

Top 25 singles (more listed on their site)

M.I.A., "Paper Planes" * **
Interscope Mentions: 107
2 Estelle featuring Kanye West, "American Boy"
Homeschool/Atlantic Mentions: 71
3 Beyoncé, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" **
Columbia Mentions: 59
4 MGMT, "Time to Pretend"
Columbia Mentions: 53
5 Lil Wayne, "A Milli"
Cash Money/Universal Mentions: 50
6 Santogold, "L.E.S. Artistes"
Warner Bros. Mentions: 49
7 Hercules & Love Affair, "Blind"
DFA Mentions: 46
8 Coldplay, "Viva La Vida"
Mentions: 39
9 Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" **
Mentions: 38
10 Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal"
Sub Pop Mentions: 32
11 Portishead, "Machine Gun"
Mercury Mentions: 25
12 Hot Chip, "Ready for the Floor"
DFA/Astralwerks Mentions: 25
13 T.I. (featuring Rihanna), "Live Your Life"
Atlantic Mentions: 23
14 T.I., "Whatever You Like"
Grand Hustle/Atlantic Mentions: 22
15 Rihanna, "Disturbia"
Def Jam Mentions: 21
16 Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart"
Atlantic Mentions: 21
17 Adele, "Chasing Pavements"
Sony Mentions: 20
18 MGMT, "Electric Feel"
Sony Mentions: 20
19 Pink, "So What"
Mentions: 20
20 Vampire Weekend, "Oxford Comma"
XL Mentions: 19
21 TV on the Radio, "Golden Age"
Interscope Mentions: 18
22 Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West, "Put On"
Def Jam Mentions: 18
23 Lykke Li, "Little Bit"
LL Recordings/EMI Mentions: 17
24 Duffy, "Mercy"
Polydor Mentions: 17
25 Ne-Yo, "Closer"
Def Jam Mentions: 16

...or if he's still on crack.

xp

Yep

They actually ran part of my comment? I'm honestly quite surprised.

shame I never made my bet w/ Whiney that "A Milli" wouldn't go to #1 an official cash wager, I coulda collected big time.

No one on the corner has swagger like us.

x-post-Lil' Wayne backlash or has the electorate changed or something else.

D.C. go-go band Mambo Sauce just put out a new version of their song "Welcome to D.C." with the new lyric, "never before have we had a president with a swagga like us."

I haven't read this essay yet--

Celebrating Mr. Carter's best means tolerating his worst
By Tom Breihan

I don't think it would've gotten to #1 at the height of "A Milli"-mania, backlash or no.

so this is pretty much what everyone expected, huh? i'll also say i'm pleased erykah got love

I know it's silly to complain about this poll being too MOR or whatever, but I'm kinda surprised how high Coldplay, Adele and Duffy got on the singles list.

I submitted an all-metal Top Ten, but if I hadn't, the Erykah Badu album would have made my list.

A guess--less bloggers and more contributors to regional newspapers. Also, internet or not, those who get commercial radio and tv or movie soundtrack attention do better, especially if they're pop.

Holy shit, that's like a Galactus of consensus

Where were you at ringtone cru?

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2008/WWFoaGgh

I wonder how many folks who voted in last year's idolator poll did or did not vote in this year's pazz & jop. I just spaced out on the name of that guy who does all the mathematical calculation on the number of ballots (etc.), but hopefully he will eventually show up here with such information.

That would be Glenn Mcdonald, who's currently busy helping with the roll out of the ILX Metal poll. But I'm sure he'll be here.

I didn't submit a ballot, just submitted the comment, but had there been an Idolator poll I would have done the same there.

"Donk" was almost on my ballot. "Yahhh" was never a contender.

Kinda surprised that I'm the only person that voted for "Lookin' Boy," but then part of my reasoning for voting for it was that everyone seemed to love it over the summer and then forget about it by September.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2008/VGhlIFJlY2Vzc2lvbg==

Jeezy album ballots

they used my jeezy joke, which was nice. they also put me back in tennessee, where i haven't lived for 6 years, but that's ok. makes me sound more exotic.

torche was the highest album finisher i voted for. the only other things i voted for in the top 50 were jeezy and gang gang dance. i'm really kinda surprised how low ggd placed but shows what i know. also wondering how bad an album kanye will have to make to not get grandfathered into the top 10.

yeah, I knew 808s would be his lowest placing album to date, but I thought it'd be by a bigger margin (Graduation was only 1 spot higher last year). that album amassed a pretty large number of defenders.

any idea how many voted this time?

My favorite ballot so far (four Flipper albums!):

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685463

I also think it's funny that the Top 40 albums includes bands called both Fleet Foxes and Frightened Rabbit (the latter of whom I swear I never heard of before, though I probably just wasn't paying attention.)

And Eddy Current Suppression Ring finished 73rd -- hey, that's pretty good! (Would have done even better if I'd voted for them, but still.)

woot Portishead!

I'm so tired of people always saying "woot Portishead"

woot woot Portishead

see, there they go again

Another thing I had no idea of til now: That some people still care about the Walkmen (32nd!?) and the Black Keys (55th).

Did Jess Harvell and M. Matos just post their lists at idolator or on blogs because they did not vote in P & J

so was that walkmen album any good after all? the third one was so blah i more or less gave up on 'em.

barely anyone voted for what i voted for, which i should be used to by now, but still bums me out.

seriously, only seven people voted for Atlas Sound, including me? come the fuck on.

only place i've seen Jess's top 10 is here: http://www.citypaper.com/special/story.asp?id=17187

matos' is there, too.

Thanks. x-post

But the Deerhunter one got a bunch of votes. I read someone describe the Walkmen album as a comeback effort that should be heard, but I never got around to hearing it.

I'm pretty sure both are considered persona non grata at New Times publications.

I seriously doubt the New Times would force P&J reject their ballots, though, if they wanted to vote. (Though I could be wrong.)

I totally forgot this was still happening!

(But then, Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years.)

I know this has already been called out, but WOW.

This ILM contributer also had a comment.

Btw: Is anyone else shocked Malkmus didn't place higher?

Who else rendered a song about fucking that somehow evokes every accidental headbutt, elbow in the eye, broken bed, leg cramp, and belly fart of lovemaking like the sloppy finale, "Lover's Day"?

Was is the horns that evoked the belly fart?

Was it, rather

Love that Kathleen Edwards placed before Laura Marling, Jenny Lewis, etc.

It looks like the only NY Times writer to participate is Jon Caramanica. No Ann Powers from the LA Times.

How many non-amurican writers participate(and do they have to write for American sites or publications)? I see Tim Finney.

Anthony Easton is Canadian.

Vampire Weekend make more amusing and thought-provoking play from the signifiers of wealth and exclusivity than any rapper I've heard these past several years. (But then, Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years.)

Even ignoring the latter part, surely Simey would recognize that the hiphopers' nouveau-riche anthems and VW's old-monied signifiers are coming from completely different places? Faulting an against-all-odds, self-made man for not exuding the trappings of wealth as properly as a priveledged trust-funder seems kind of asinine.

I think he's entirely aware of that; I take it as him arguing that old-money japery of VW is more interesting than the new-money braggadocio of hip-hop. And given how utterly fucking boring and creatively bankrupt that side of hip-hop is at this point, I can only say that I don't like Vampire Weekend either.

This is the same Simon Reynolds who was bothered by M.I.A.'s music because it wasn't real enough, aka the Simon Reynolds I stopped paying attention to.

plus she wasn't "exotic" enough (or some such) for him.

>This is the same Simon Reynolds who was bothered by M.I.A.'s music because it wasn't real enough, aka the Simon Reynolds I stopped paying attention to.

Yeah, it's important to have only one yardstick by which you measure every single artist.

How many non-amurican writers participate(and do they have to write for American sites or publications)? I see Tim Finney.

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 1:06 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Anthony Easton is Canadian.

― dan, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 2:35 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ditto Phil Dellio, Barry Bruner, Ian Mathers, and probably a couple more I don't know. Jonathan Bradley is, like Tim, Australian. And Reynolds is, of course, British, though he lives in the US now.

the signifiers of wealth and exclusivity than any rapper I've heard these past several years.

so for us non-rock critics, this basically means dressing like "popular kid" extras in a john hughes movie?

also i heard that record and it's pretty tame rhymically to me, esp considering how Nomo fucking BROUGHT it so hard with african influenced stuff on Ghost Rock...or other bands like Gang Gang Dance etc etc

Q: what is it called when you at first really hated some indie critic's darling, but eventually reached a point where you just don't care enough to argue?

A: vamp ire, weakened

Ha

I like when VW quote Lil Jon

Heh, apparently I'm from New York now. And the way the two pages are formatted, my comment is credited on a completely separate page, so it looks like my name is paired with Michael Barthel's comments.

Yeah, it's important to have only one yardstick by which you measure every single artist.

Is this directed towards me or towards Reynolds? I can't tell if you are sarcastically mocking me for not caring about what Reynolds had to say after he accused an artist who pretty much freely admitted that she was ripping off a whole bunch of world music styles to make Western club music of not being authentic enough or sarcastically mocking Reynolds for privileging "keeping it real" above all else.

real links to your real ballots please. this thread could use some real laffs.

Laff away.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686603

:/

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685749

yeah, i saw yours before...Coldplay was my only o_O moment there.

xxp

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686367
I honestly completely forgot about paper planes; thought it was 07!
Probably would've cracked my top 10 if i had thought about it.

Royal Flush brethren: http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2008/Um95YWwgRmx1c2g=

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686287

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686145

and here's the rest of the Yahhh Brigade

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2008/WWFoaGgh

me and ke1th harr15 had some great conversations about "yahhh" at rye playland and i'm very glad to see he is my yahhh brother.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686239

of the handful of things i voted for that no one else did, i'm only surprised by sprengjuhollin. would've thought it would scare up one or two more. (i suppose it would help if it were actually released, but it's on emusic, easy to get.)

JVC, your Badu blurb really stood out when I read through the comments earlier (and I didn't even know it was you). Nice work.

My ballot (heavily but not entirely metal):

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685521

And lots of stats, including voter centricity, voter similarity and album similarity:

http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2008/index.html

Am I really the first one to point out that Third came in...third?

Nice to see "It's All Your Fault" on a ballot, Glenn. I'm pretty uptight about only listing singles but it'd definitely be in my top 10 album tracks.

Mine: http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685882

I limited releases to some vague notion of roots/rock and rock/folk/countryish stuff. First year I didn't try to create some well-rounded ballot. I like how it turned out though. Made more sense to compare/contrast stuff that was a bit more related, although it forced me to leave some gems out in the cold. For example, I listened to that Jennifer Cardini mix on Kompakt A LOT. Oh well. Fun exercise.

Is it me or in previous years did VV offer a top ten reissues section? Or did I simply miss it?

In some previous years they had a reissues list but I think they stopped that a couple years ago.

Didn't the Voice poll back in the '90s and early 00's get alot more than 577 voters?

Ayyyy

0.441 Alfred Soto
0.399 Tim Finney

Unsurprising.

Last reissues tally was in 1999:

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres99.php

Voters peaked at 795 in 2005, just before the New Times merger/changing of the guard; plummeted to 494 a year later, and is apparently still recovering:

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres05.php

By the way, I swear I couldn't find the number of voters anywhere in the hard-copy of this week's Voice I picked up today, but maybe I just wasn't looking on the right pages. If there really are 577 voters, as Glenn says, that's exactly the same as last year; kind of curious how hard the sub-poobahs had to work at the last minute to match that number.

So has anybody mentioned Nick Cave in the Top 10? That's just crazy to me, given that, as far as I can tell, he's been making the same album for the past couple decades, and I'm pretty sure he never used to score in Pazz & Jop at all until the past few years. Talk about being grandfathered in (as an actual grandfather, for all I know). Has he ever finished Top 10 before? Last couple did okay, maybe, but I bet no Birthday Party LPs ever finished Top 300. (I voted for Kicking Against The Pricks in 1986, but I wouldn't be surprised if nobody else did.)

marcello to thread

He ranted about that in the end of year poll threads

Am I really the first one to point out that Third came in...third?

― The Reverend, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 3:09 PM Bookmark

Wait, hold up. Third in third and 4th World War in fourth.

i don't know if it's related to the vote number, but i never got the first ballot email, just a "reminder" the day before it was due. it's possible some people never got it at all.

x-post

Dig and that earlier Grinderman cd have more energy than the prior 12 or so Cave releases since the end of the Birthday Party. I think in some ways its viewed as a comeback so that folks who were too young to have voted for the Birthday Party can cast a vote for them now.
I wasn't wowed enough by what I heard from Dig (and Marcello was ranting on another thread about how he could not understand the raves it was getting), but I understand Cave on his most recent US tour was just as charismatic as ever and the band sounded great. So that might have helped also.

Mine: http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686236

Why did they a) let "Paper Planes" be eligible even though was released in 2007 and placed on the 2007 poll, and b) include those 2007 poll votes in the tally for 2008? Not really fair. No wonder it finished first.

they always allow rollover votes, which for singles especially i think makes sense since their impact doesn't necessarily follow calendar years. and if you had to pick one year to assign "paper planes" too, it was much more a 2008 single. that's the year it actually charted.

Yep. Other P&J carry-over repeat finishers:

Soft Cell, "Tainted Love" (7th in 1981, 5th in 1982)
Pretenders, "Back on the Chain Gang" (7th in 1982, 3rd in 1983)
Michael Jackson, Thriller (15th in 1982, 1st in 1983)
John Fogerty, "Old Man Down the Road" (13th in 1984, 3rd in 1985)
XTC, Skylarking (33rd in 1986, 9th in 1987)
Tone-Loc, "Wild Thing" (20th in 1988, 5th in 1989)
Cypress Hill, "How I Could Just Kill a Man" (22nd in 1991, 5th in 1992)
TLC, "Creep" (outside of Top 25 in 1994, 8th in 1995)
Oasis, "Wonderwall" (11th in 1995, 4th in 1996)
Coldplay, "Yellow" (14th in 2000, 5th in 2001)

mine: http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686278

xp Album impact doesn't necessarily follow calendar years either (especially if they're released late in the year, and/or give up a bunch of hit singles in the following year.) The rule makes perfect sense.

Here are some minor (i.e., not affecting the top 100) collation errors I caught, either album typos that didn't get corrected and combined, or votes where the artist and album were reversed.

Alphabeat (1+1)
Bodies of Water (1+1)
Boduf Songs (1+1 reversed)
Cloud Cult (2+1)
Dirtbombs (1+1 reversed)
Disfear (4+1 reversed)
Ettes (1+1+1 reversed)
Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant (1+1)
Future Clouds and Radar (just 1, but reversed)
Grand Buffet (1+1 reversed)
In Flames (1+1)
Joseph Arther (1+1 reversed)
Jucifer (just 1, but reversed)
Margot and the Nuclear So-and-So's (2+1)
NOMO (5+1 reversed, would move them from 212 to 186)
Sam Phillips (6+1, would move her from 170 to 152)
Savina Yannatou (1+1)
Shapeshifters (2+1 reversed as "Shape Shifters"
Slim Cessna's Auto Club (1+1 reversed)
Snowman (2+1 reversed)
Theresa Andersson (3+1 reversed)

Also: 579 voters, total. 577 in my stats because I use only the album ballots, and two people voted only for singles...

Phil Dellio is one of the singles-only (as he has been for over a decade now); who's the other one?

My ballot, fwiw:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/684436

Spencer Kaufman was the other singles-only voter.

Are the links on your site working Glenn? If you click my name (Mark Richardson) Simon Reynolds' ballot comes up.

I just uploaded new files after making a few more minor corrections, and you must have clicked your link after the index was updated but before your new page got sent up. They're all in sync again now...

I probably would've voted for "Lookin' Boy" if I had only remembered.

I totally forgot that I own that Philip Jeck album! I should listen to it!

Do you like Jeck, Sundar?

Wow. Looking at my critical alignment rating (Centricity: 552/576), I'm kind of amazed I even have a job writing about music, as my tastes seem to have virtually zero overlap... (Juana Molina's Un Dia, with 10 other voters, was my closest "mainstream" inclusion; for most of my choices I was the only voter.)

Question for Glenn: What does it mean if a voter isn't included in the Similarity list?

I do, generally, Mark. Saw him in Toronto some years back and really enjoyed it. Enjoyed checking out his setup and stack of 7"s too.

Wow, I kind of <3 J.D. Considine's list. Should check out more of that.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/684566

Oh, here's my ballot

How do you see your critical alignment rating?

i like scrolling thru all the 1-mention stuff on the lists. more interesting than the top 100.

Fuck, 'Lookin' Boy'! I forgot 'Lookin' Boy'!

Fuck, 'Lookin' Boy'! I forgot 'Lookin' Boy'! YAHHH TRICK YAHHH

Only 5 votes for Supreme Balloon?

I've never really understood the rationale behind carryover votes either. For one thing, if you're going to claim that points awarded by a voter in 2007 are valid in 2008, then you're implicitly assuming that those voters feel the same way about that song (or album) in 2008 as they did in 2007 (unless they voted for the song in both years -- isn't double-counting votes a bit unfair too?) And of course, a record's impact won't necessarily be aligned with the calendar year, but the poll does have one (and only one) calendar year in its title, so compiling two year's worth of votes for some songs vs one year's worth for others doesn't present an equal playing field. The calendar year "cutoff" is arbitrary, but doesn't that mean that a single released in November (that will collect votes in two different years) has an unfair advantage over a single released in April (that probably won't?)

In analogy to sports, it would be like comparing two candidates for a 2008 MVP award, and favouring one guy only because he had the better year in 2007 (of course people actually do this, but I think it's also wrong.) They're different years!

Maybe a fairer system for P&J would be one in which only 50% of the vote from the previous year was carried over?

Has P&J always been this predictable? Apart from Nick Cave getting more love than I expected (which is great) and Kanye likewise (which I don't understand at all) there's not a single surprise on here. Over on the "Is it Rolling, Bob?" thread these whole Top 10s were pretty much predicted back in October.

Oh, and woot Portishead.

consensus is as consensus does.

Nick Cave in every freaking top ten list - is there some kind of Heidi Fleiss thing going on here?

t.i. should've kicked Nick's pasty ass!!!

Seconded!!

btw, was anyone expecting Q-Tip to do as well as he did? (beat the Truckers even.)

xp

xp???

I've only heard a couple of tracks off the new Q-Tip so far; quite pleasant but nothing earth shattering.

Only one vote for Paarvoharju?

Only heard one track off that so far and it was v. good indeed so clearly it's another album I have to get familiar with.

how many ilxors does it take to get Torche in the top 40?

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2008/TWVhbmRlcnRoYWw=

Reply All

pshrbrn: to get a similarity score, a pair of voters have to have at least two albums in common, so a few people towards the bottom of the centricity list just didn't have anybody statistically similar. The scores also get weird when comparing ballots of very different lengths, so I ruled out another handful of people who didn't have at least 8 album votes.

Mordy: "Centricity" is the thing I used to call "Critical Alignment Rating". Or click on yourself in the Voters list; there's a page for every voter.

I totally cockblocked a couple pshrbrn lone wolf votes.

i totally cockblocked pshrbrn like a lone wolf.

Ignoring the two voters who shared no votes with anybody, if you take voting for the same album as the connection, the reminaing 575 voters are all connected within four degrees of separation. 526 are connected within three.

Torche should have been in the top 10

JVC, your Badu blurb really stood out when I read through the comments earlier (and I didn't even know it was you). Nice work.

Thanks. I was happy to see they printed my comment on my first year taking part.

I posted about this before, but my post got eaten somehow, so I'll bring it back: why on earth did Real Emotional Trash place so high? It's the least of Malkmus' albums, to these ears, Janet Weiss' addition nonwithstanding.

Btw: Is anyone else shocked Malkmus didn't place higher?

― Mordy, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 1:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I posted about this before, but my post got eaten somehow, so I'll bring it back: why on earth did Real Emotional Trash place so high? It's the least of Malkmus' albums, to these ears, Janet Weiss' addition nonwithstanding.

― Beatrix Kiddo, Thursday, January 22, 2009 9:16 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol perspectives

a lot of great comments this year - the one about the dude sitting on the writer's hood for over an hour listening to Death Magnetic (true or not) was probably my favorite.

but i liked this one too (even though, reading the author's crit growing up in baltimore, i detested everything he stood for and wanted to be the anti-him) and it raises an interesting question:

One question I'd love to see asked in a year-end poll would look into how many voters maintain an ongoing Best Albums/Best Tracks list, and how many spend a couple of desperate days each December trying to remember (like I do) what they were listening to and liking back in April. It's not that I don't understand the impulse to make lists; where I break ranks is when list-making becomes a form of ranking. Moving something up a list of favorites is obviously an act of affection, and declaring this or that recording to be the best is not unlike informing a loved one that he or she is the most wonderful person in the world (and about as objective). As critics, we're expected to make value judgments and declare some things worthy and others un-, but why does that have to become a form of scorekeeping? Really, isn't the notion of debating whether TV on the Radio made a better album than Vampire Weekend a bit like debating whether Wolverine could beat up Spawn?

J.D. Considine
Toronto, ON

personally, i keep a running list all year long - otherwise i'd forget great records and songs from early in the year. then when it's time to make ye olde lists i revisit stuff. how about you?

End of year: sort itunes by year and pick my favorite albums.

realistically in the aughts, the 20s are probably the highest malk can expect to place, am i right? and i say that as a serious fan.

isn't the notion of debating whether TV on the Radio made a better album than Vampire Weekend a bit like debating whether Wolverine could beat up Spawn?

i thought this was exactly the attraction of making year-end lists. (also, wolverine duh.)

yeah the last few years i've gotten pretty compulsive about keeping a running tally throughout the year and constantly revising it and re-listening to things and rethinking their place on the list. December is still a mad scramble to commit to some semblance of a 'final' decision, though.

if you're going to claim that points awarded by a voter in 2007 are valid in 2008, then you're implicitly assuming that those voters feel the same way about that song (or album) in 2008 as they did in 2007

Valid point, I guess. But I still think it's pretty fair to assume most voters still like the song. (Then again, you could go even further -- Why assume voters still feel the same way in January about the records they voted for a month earlier, in December?)

(unless they voted for the song in both years -- isn't double-counting votes a bit unfair too?)

Doesn't happen. As Harvilla explained in his M.I.A. essay, individual voters are only allowed to vote for a given record once -- when votes from two years are combined, any duplicated votes are subtracted. (For albums, if a critic votes for the same one twice, points given the current year would be used.)

doesn't that mean that a single released in November (that will collect votes in two different years) has an unfair advantage over a single released in April (that probably won't?)

Nope. People have had longer to live with the April record, for one thing. (And if voters have such short memories that they can't remember a record eight months after release, what makes you think they'd remember a record 13 months after?) And most singles released in November don't collect votes for two years straight; singles that do (which could have been released the previous April, too) have always been the exception. And critics don't work for record companies; they're not required to hear records the day those records are released (or even in the first few weeks). Sometimes they actually wait til the records are hits, and stumble across them by accident, like normal people! And the poll doesn't predetermine which records can get carryover votes; like those Ron Clark Academy kids said, you can vote for whoever you like. So, for what records is the playing field not equal?

In analogy to sports, it would be like comparing two candidates for a 2008 MVP award, and favouring one guy only because he had the better year in 2007 (of course people actually do this, but I think it's also wrong.) They're different years!

But they're the same record! So the analogy makes no sense at all. Pazz & Jop voters are (at least theoretically) voting for much they like a record, not "how good a year" the record had. (I'm not even sure what that would mean, if they did do it.)

Has P&J always been this predictable?

Well, no, becauase it didn't used to be preceded by 1000 mini-polls from other places. The Internets, among other factors, have made Pazz & Jop into way less an event than it used to be. Probably not hard to predict P&J placement after you've seen all those earlier polls. Still, I saw a bunch, and I have to say there are still a lot of records that finished higher or lower than I would have predicted. (I actually thought Kanye would do better than he did! And I have no opinion of that album at all.)

Only 5 votes for Supreme Balloon?

― Sundar, Thursday, January 22, 2009 12:37 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

Standing on Earth, not rapt above the Pole,
More safe I Sing with mortal voice, unchang'd
To hoarce or mute, though fall'n on evil dayes, [ 25 ]
On evil dayes though fall'n, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compast round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit'st my slumbers Nightly, or when Morn
Purples the East: still govern thou my Song, [ 30 ]
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.

[PL, VII, 23-31]

If you're going to enter a ballot, then keeping a running tally seems like a helpful thing to do -- no diff from note-taking, really.

x-post

lol that reynolds essay is probably the most tortured way that one could explain that vampire weekend are an indie pop band.

iTunes has made year-end list-making about a thousand times easier for me, both in the gather-the-shortlist stage and in relistening to stuff to make up my mind. Yay technology.

That said, I totally agree with JD's point about the inanity of fine distinctions, and if I ran P&J I'd ditch the points. I enjoy ranking my own list for my own purposes, but I definitely do not care 3-6 times as much about what another person thinks is #1 vs #10. The points usually don't end up making a very big difference in the results (see http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2008/winners.html for this year's poll redone that way), but I think they mischaractize the enterprise and implicitly encourage a pointless (hah!) lack of either perspective or humility, depending on how you look at it.

those Ron Clark Academy kids

Got three singles votes themselves, by the way:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2008/WW91IENhbiBWb3RlIEhvd2V2ZXIgWW91IExpa2U=

Biggest surprises on the albums list: Grace Jones right down at #1365, and not one single vote for Neil Diamond's US chart-topper.

The points usually don't end up making a very big difference in the results

Well, if you just went by votes, you'd probably hurt records like Fucked Up, which looks like it got a pretty decent point-to-voter ratio (finished #38 but was named on only 20 ballots.) I dunno, I like the points -- they add a degree of precision about how much people like each record. And voters can always opt of them, either by filing unranked ballots (every album gets 10) or by dividing their points 15-14-13-12-11-9-8-7-6-5. (Math-haters have always complained about the points, by the way, though that category clearly doesn't include Glenn.)

Thing about that Fucked Up record is, you can at least look at the numbers are deduce that people were actually excited about the thing; it wasn't just another perfunctory entry they thought they should vote for. I think that's pretty cool.

Points also let people like Greil Marcus give 30 points to each of the two albums they REALLY REALLY REALLY liked in a given year, and 5 to all the rest. Which is good. (Greil used to do that every year! I'm not sure if anybody did it this year, or not.)

i just saw a ballot where someone did that but can't remember who it was. but one of their 30s went to Lil Wayne as if he needed the help.

Aha, Neil Diamond *is* in there, at #238.

Unfortunately, he's listed as Neil Young.

Hah, I hadn't noticed the Neil Young/Diamond error. Looking at the ballots it's clear that when they tabulated the poll they only fixed up the album names. There's lots of variation in the artist names for the same album across multiple ballots, and for the lower things they appear to have picked the artist for the results page at random from the ballots that mentioned the album. If you check the five votes for Home Before Dark you'll see that Craig Hlavaty screwed it up, but the other four voters got it right.

By the way, speaking of carryover votes from previous years, I wonder if the Voice guys gave any thought about what to do about this record, which was already getting votes back when I had their job:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2008/Um9ieW4=

happy badu is so high.

Glad I gave it 30 points (it outscored Fleet Foxes by three).

No one loved the Ribot-fronted Zorn albums! I'm a bit surprised, esp about Asmodeus. I thought it was probably the best guitar rock of the year. Should have appealed to e.g. Sharrock fans.

(I enjoyed spinning that Jeck again, Mark. He does sometimes tend to slip into a formula but it can really work.)

Tzadik doesn't send promos for anything to anyone so tons of Zorn stuff just flys under the radar.

how many spend a couple of desperate days each December trying to remember (like I do) what they were listening to and liking back in April.

One big problem with this method is that too many voters wind up using other critics' Top 10 lists to jog their memories. Which eventually amplifies the bandwagon effect exponentially, and makes lists way more similar than they might be otherwise. (Not that JD's own list seems to have been affected that way.)

Yeah, none of you fuxx voted for Maryanne Amacher either but that's less surprising.

xpost (JD said that he doesn't use that method himself though, didn't he? I had no idea Quinsin put something out last year.)

here's a scientific study for someone: what's the correlation between huge promo mailouts and top placings in P&J? (there probably isn't any, and folks can download all kinds of stuff for free, but i wonder anyway.)

Oh, there's definitely a correlation (though maybe not as big a one as there once was.) Somebody should tally up the results by publicity company sometime -- I bet Girlie Action gets LOTS of P&J action.

nick cave is awesome

here's a scientific study for someone: what's the correlation between huge promo mailouts and top placings in P&J? (there probably isn't any, and folks can download all kinds of stuff for free, but i wonder anyway.)

― Beatrix Kiddo, Thursday, January 22, 2009 12:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban

Bon Iver released LITERALLY the same album in 08 as 07, but one had a huge promo bomb with it. I mean just because people CAN download something still means its less likely to be listened to than something that's sitting on your desk.

I don't think that Bon Iver record is the best to use for a promo bomb exactly. I think that had more to do with blog after blog after blog buzzing about it with the re-release.

does that mean there are critics that actually open & pay attention to the dozens of hugely unappetizing indie rock publicist e-mails that they're sent everyday? scary.

I listen to 80% of what comes to me in an envelope.

ahem, I hope everyone here has participated in the vastly superior ILX 2008 poll

and you can all view the results of ILX METAL ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2008 RESULTS

Over the past few years I've gotten really into maintaining an ongoing iTunes playlist where I can slot all the songs I like throughout the year -- which means I rarely forget anything -- but I've sort of stopped caring about ranking music. When I was younger, I placed a lot of value on ranked lists from critics because they seemed to reflect the critics' vast knowledge and authority, and my own lists were largely attempts to emulate that superior perspective. Then I realized that a lot of critics, including ones I admired, just slapped the things together at the behest of their editors and couldn't actually tell you the difference between their #7 and their #6. And even though I was still obsessive enough to try to be true to my own sense of what I liked best throughout the year (especially when I was regularly writing about music), it increasingly seemed like a fool's errand. (At one point I was convinced that the best way to do it was objectively, through playcounts, but that doesn't factor in all the times when I've listened to albums because I want to like them more than I do, or when I've put stuff on just because it's comfortable or familiar or isn't too disruptive to listen to at work.) So 2008 was the first year this decade that I just didn't bother.

http://flavorwire.com/8659/critical-review-an-interview-with-village-voice-music-editor-rob-harvilla-on-pazz-jop

So, I listened to all the top 40 tracks I hadn't heard.

• "Electric Feel" is great. Why did no one whose taste I trust tell me MGMT were worth caring about? Their other song that placed is decent, too.

• The song about wanting to kick Jesus' ass is hilarious and I'm glad people voted for it.

• The Bon Iver song has a good tune and I might even like it given an entirely different perfomer and style.

• Didn't realize Lykke Li is indie pop as in pop that's a little bit indie (acceptable), rather than indie that isn't quite rock (terrible).

• WTF kind of sub-Nickelback bullshit is "Sex on Fire"?

u get tired of electric feel pretty quick

its weird cuz i liked it too at first

I'm sure when I do, I can just move on to the Jim Jones remix. /jo3k

Anyway, do the fuxxors really like indie guitar sounds so much that Hinder+indie guitar sounds becomes something praiseworthy?

i been saying that for years. instead of macho posturing to get laid its awkward posturing to get laid

random side note relating to nickelback: my roomate has nickelback lyrics as his away message right now. i read them and was like "hm, that's kinda rapey", looked it up and voila. Same kid who thinks dane cook and carlos mencia are funny tho, not much of a surprise.

It's kind of inexcusable that in 200fuckin9 they didn't post online links to the singles on a voice youtube page or embedded them in imeem or something.
Anybody related to the paper that can explain why that didn't happen?

So basically, what you're saying is that you're too lazy to even search for them on youtube without someone else doing the work for you.

INEXCUSABLE

you know that's actually a valid poiYAHHH TRICK YAHHHGLLDABAUGGH GLLDABAUGGGH

lol

'Lazy' has nothing to do with it; it's just ridiculous that there wasn't an intern or someone who raised a hand and offered to put in an hour and a half of work to do it. The internet connects things? Series of tubes?

It's 'inexcusable' in that any twelve year old would've assumed that clicking on the song name would've played it; not sure why they wouldn't have done the obvious work.

Different topic: One metric I dig is the albums that got one vote at thirty points; meaning that one critic thought this was the best album of the year and no one else thought it good enough to make a top ten. This year's thirty and ones are:

Joel Alme - A Master Of Ceremonies
JAMBANG - Connecting
Menahan Street Band -Make the Road by Walking
Hanne Hukkelberg -Rykestraße 68
Prosumer & Murat Tepeli - Serenity
Trees - Lights Bane

I know and can stand behind the Hukkelberg and Menahan Street Band; anybody wanna tell me about the others?

Dude, the magazine shrinks every week, the pazz and jop archives are totally fuxxored, and they just did a bunch of layoffs. The last of their concerns is "making sure forksclovetofu doesn't have to open another tab"

Also Trees is pretty ok drone metal

sigh: Whiney, you know as well as I do that drawing in readers online and keeping them sticky by NOT having them open another tab helps justify their ad-rates. This isn't fanboyish bloggy whining "poor me I have to c+p to google"; this is me bemoaning a lack of common sense in marketing and support for the poll online... which is likely the only place it's gonna be in ten years at this rate, so they might wanna get on the ball with the easy stuff.

/publicist

great argument guys

Is there an obvious reason I just didn't hear about as to why Idolator didn't do a poll this year?

having two polls probably starting to feel a lil pointless

they had that 80+8 countdown thing, which i thought was pretty interesting

xp
it seems odd though after investing so much into it for 2 years.

783 For Against, Shade Side, Sunny Side
Words on Music Points: 10
Mentions: 1

wow

you crits can all go fuck yourselves (except for the ace dude who voted for this record)

^overreaction

still, there are a lot of tremendous records that only got one mention. very disappointing. at least the bloc party album did badly.

why Idolator didn't do a poll this year?

Money, man-hours, some combo thereof. (Anything more specific should probably come from the guy who used to run the poll, if it comes from anybody.)

Idolator was dropped by Gawker this year too, which didn't help, although it seems that running a year-end poll would kind of be a no brainer, even if the situation isn't great.

x-post

I think Matos said words to that effect on ilx somewhere. It was too many hours of work.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/img/music2/amyart.jpg

these things didn't draw themselves

Keep an eye on the metal poll on Friday. Glenn will be providing stats on it as well as comparing votes on it to the metal/rock votes on P&J. Amongst other stuff that he does so well.
I'm sure it will be of interest to just more than those who have voted/been posting on the thread.
You might even find out about some great music you may just have missed.

I'll be commencing rundown at approx 2pm UK time.

And here is the link ILX METAL ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2008 RESULTS

2xp: yeah, but these did:

http://cache.idolator.com/assets/images/gallery/33/2007/01/medium_346844511_c67903232b_o.jpg

For the record, I told Maura I didn't want to do another poll back in February. The '07 one was a fucking nightmare.

Not to sound all "I walked 18 miles barefoot in the snow just to get to my one-room schoolhouse" about it but I had no help at all last year. Most of the people we sent ballots to didn't get them the first time, necessitating my re-emailing 1400 people to ask if they'd received them and if not to let me know so I could re-send them. This I had the pleasure of doing over the course of a few days on six different email accounts, leading to my being blocked from my two main ones for a couple days each for going over my 24-hour sending limit. I also had other things going on at the time that necessitated my being able to send other kinds of email than "Did you get your ballot?" but you know, all in the line of duty, right? The three people who agreed to intern for me all backed out at the last minute. I think I'll leave it there since I took most of my irritation at the whole thing out on this board last year already.

hey glenn, thanks for the explanation on the centricity ratings (btw, i kind of miss "critical alignment," it always sounded like getting one's critical wheels rotated or something, which seems like it might be a useful service, in fact). and may i also say, thanks for keeping up the tradition. i'm pretty boneheaded when it comes to statistics, but i always really enjoy your sifting and sorting of the poll results.

andy k: hey you, get offa my cloud!
tim f: yikes!

:)

Dean's List '08:

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/deans08.php

bring back the reissues option dammit!!!

(worst thing about the last few P&J's has been the lack of a comprehensive Xgau year-end essay to tie shit up in a nice, neat lil' bundle for lazy sods like moi. agree; disagree; ban.)

?

i'm kind of shocked people aren't posting their rejected comments in the "comments" sections.

xpost i don't really know if i need to read an essay by a guy who thought the dan le sac vs. scroobius pip song was the 7th best single of the year

bring back the reissues option dammit!!!
Seconded.

Reissues don't really matter in the age of what.cd, sharity blogs, slsk etc. People relate to the past differently now.

yeah, maybe, but it would still nice to have a handy list to check through when browsing through the bins (i.e., searching for shit on amazon).

Reissue packages will continue to matter so long as all the stuff obtainable via blogs, slsk, etc. sounds like total crap.

that too.

mike barthel's second comment is really nicely thought out and well said

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/uponsun/2009/01/pazz_and_jop_2008_is_out.php

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was definitely the album of 2002

I tuned out here.

keep reading for a xgau dig

an

who he?

xxp

4. The poll was founded by former Voice music editor Robert Christgau, who is the worst music critic ever, in my humble opinion. I almost didn't want to vote just to avoid furthering, in any way, his legacy of shitty writing.

x-posts

maybe it's Dom in North American indie-crit drag?

i would punch that guy in the cock if I met him.

and I don't even like Xgau much, he just comes across like all through that.

like a dick

Hey, I just hoped Michael Lacey smacked the dipshit silly for hedging his bet with that wussy "in my humble opinion."

I've long said the problem with current music writing is that so much of it is a reaction to what some dudes in Chicago -- dudes increasingly over enamored of Eurotrash disco -- think.

loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool @ "eurotrash disco"

What is the approx average age of a Pazz & Jop voter?

100000

Ha! That dude is trying to so hard. He definitely read his Hoffman.

I tuned out here.

The arbitrary comma usage did it for me.

While it was huge this year, "Paper Plans" actually came out in 2007.

thank u for this valuable information.

And then his next sentence after the Chicago dis is about how they're/we're "ahead of the game." Guy isn't very bright, is he?

at i got a username out of it.

at least i got ...

Arrested Development winning in 1992, the year The Chronic came out is hilariously telling of how ignorant rock writers were about rap at the time.

^^ shit like this sends me into automatic challops mode because, like, that arrested development cd is pretty good, hindsight is 20/20, and rock writers are still pretty ignorant about rap. cant stand that "lol look how backwards they were 15 years ago!" shit

I know it's been said, but it's really fucking hilarious calling out someone's writing ability using the phrase "in my humble opinion"

also: wasn't The Chronic released like December '92?

"Dear reader, your humble narrator feels that the writer in question has a difficult, and dare I say almost obscene, way of belaboring even the simplest point which could be summed up in but a few concise words as I will attempt to do forthwith."

The Chronic finished sixth in 1993. (xxpost)

wait until we see how well token rock-crit rap album of the year Lil Wayne is gonna hold up in 15 years.

I wanna add that my verdict re dude's brightness isn't limited to the passage about Chicago/"Paper Planes," by the way.

This is all kind of inside baseball to me, but it cracks me up that he's gonna show bluster about how he hates a guy who used to work at the parent publication so much that he "almost didn't want to vote" but they didn't even send him a ballot because no one at the parent corporation was aware that he's the in-house cool dude now. I bet that his powerful protest has them quaking in their boots.

I wonder how his "they don't know I exist so I'll just act like a grousy douche until they acknowledge my shining light" gambit will work out for him.

No great loss, but I'll vote next year since this is a Village Voice Media paper.

Guess he hasn't been keeping up with this thread:
Village Voice Media being acquired by New Times very soon

No great loss, but I'll vote ring up your order at Barnes and Noble next year since this is a Village Voice Media paper.

They kept the VVM name when they bought it.

I'm talking about all the layoffs

Got it.

http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/61/m_cef56201b2804b0e99be4ef617daec6a.jpg

^^^your lolworthy phoenix scribe

Ha! Forgot out totally minimalist my ballot was.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/769868

Of course, the fact that I can't vote for my booking clients does cut into my ability to honestly make a year end list.

Um, forgot how. Not "out".

Here, for amusement, is the poll recalculated by taking the 89 albums that got 12 or more votes and ranking them by the percentage of their votes that came from people who voted for at least three things nobody else picked. An eccentricity ranking, maybe.

Eccentricity Ratio - Votes by Eccentrics - Total Votes - Arist - Album:

0.42 - 6 - 14 - Fennesz - Black Sea
0.33 - 4 - 12 - Toumani Diabate - Mande Variations
0.31 - 6 - 19 - Young Jeezy - Recession
0.3 - 7 - 23 - Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
0.3 - 4 - 13 - Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy
0.3 - 4 - 13 - James McMurtry - Just Us Kids
0.3 - 4 - 13 - Knux - Remind Me in 3 Days...
0.28 - 4 - 14 - Elvis Costello and the Imposters - Momofuku
0.27 - 6 - 22 - Duffy - Rockferry
0.25 - 7 - 28 - She and Him - Volume One
0.24 - 11 - 45 - Raphael Saadiq - Way I See It
0.23 - 3 - 13 - Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Primary Colours
0.23 - 4 - 17 - Hayes Carll - Trouble in Mind
0.23 - 3 - 13 - Shelby Lynne - Just a Little Lovin'
0.22 - 5 - 22 - Al Green - Lay It Down
0.22 - 4 - 18 - Jamey Johnson - That Lonesome Song
0.22 - 4 - 18 - Taylor Swift - Fearless
0.21 - 3 - 14 - Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
0.21 - 5 - 23 - Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Fight
0.21 - 3 - 14 - Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
0.2 - 3 - 15 - Beach House - Devotion
0.19 - 4 - 21 - Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna
0.19 - 8 - 41 - MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
0.18 - 3 - 16 - Lindstrom - Where You Go I Go Too
0.18 - 19 - 102 - Portishead - Third
0.18 - 6 - 32 - Q-Tip - Renaissance
0.17 - 4 - 23 - Alejandro Escovedo - Real Animal
0.17 - 5 - 29 - R.E.M. - Accelerate
0.16 - 4 - 25 - Beck - Modern Guilt
0.16 - 2 - 12 - Bonnie Prince Billy - Lie Down in the Light
0.16 - 2 - 12 - Dr. Dog - Fate
0.16 - 3 - 18 - Estelle - Shine
0.16 - 4 - 24 - Metallica - Death Magnetic
0.16 - 2 - 12 - Spiritualized - Songs in A and E
0.15 - 2 - 13 - Orchestra Baobab - Made in Dakar
0.15 - 3 - 20 - Sigur Ros - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
0.15 - 2 - 13 - Times New Viking - Rip It Off
0.14 - 2 - 14 - Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
0.14 - 2 - 14 - Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing
0.14 - 6 - 42 - Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
0.14 - 4 - 28 - M83 - Saturdays=Youth
0.13 - 5 - 36 - Bob Dylan - Bootleg Series, Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs - Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006
0.13 - 2 - 15 - Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
0.13 - 11 - 80 - Erykah Badu - New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War
0.13 - 3 - 22 - Magnetic Fields - Distortion
0.13 - 8 - 61 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
0.12 - 3 - 24 - Kings of Leon - Only by the Night
0.11 - 2 - 18 - Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid
0.11 - 5 - 43 - Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
0.11 - 3 - 26 - Torche - Meanderthal
0.1 - 3 - 30 - Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
0.1 - 3 - 28 - David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
0.1 - 8 - 79 - Santogold - Santogold
0.1 - 16 - 154 - TV on the Radio - Dear Science
0.09 - 5 - 55 - Deerhunter - Microcastle/Weird Era Continued
0.09 - 2 - 22 - Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
0.09 - 2 - 22 - Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash
0.09 - 2 - 22 - T.I. - Paper Trail
0.09 - 2 - 21 - Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls
0.08 - 2 - 25 - Blitzen Trapper - Furr
0.08 - 1 - 12 - Glasvegas - Glasvegas
0.08 - 5 - 57 - Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak
0.08 - 7 - 78 - Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
0.08 - 2 - 25 - Ne-Yo - Year of the Gentleman
0.08 - 4 - 48 - Randy Newman - Harps and Angels
0.08 - 2 - 25 - Roots - Rising Down
0.07 - 2 - 28 - Gaslight Anthem - '59 Sound
0.07 - 4 - 54 - Hold Steady - Stay Positive
0.07 - 2 - 26 - Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
0.07 - 1 - 14 - Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
0.07 - 1 - 14 - Nas - Untitled
0.07 - 1 - 14 - Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
0.07 - 8 - 105 - Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
0.06 - 6 - 87 - Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
0.06 - 2 - 32 - Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngster...
0.06 - 1 - 15 - Lykke Li - Youth Novels
0.06 - 3 - 43 - My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
0.05 - 1 - 18 - Black Keys - Attack and Release
0.05 - 2 - 36 - Coldplay - Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends
0.05 - 1 - 20 - Fucked Up - Chemistry of Common Life
0.04 - 3 - 73 - Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
0.03 - 1 - 28 - Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark
0.02 - 1 - 45 - No Age - Nouns
0 - 0 - 13 - Adele - 19
0 - 0 - 12 - Jay Reatard - Matador Singles '08
0 - 0 - 17 - Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely
0 - 0 - 12 - Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
0 - 0 - 12 - Robyn - Robyn
0 - 0 - 26 - Walkmen - You and Me

Offering the obvious insight that if you liked the Walkmen a lot, you probably didn't hear anything new...

i dont get what hes talking about -- i love eurotrash disco & im from chicago & obviously im hugely influential in the game but who else is he talking about?

xp Ha ha -- Also suggesting that Fennesz was the consensus choice for critics who have no use for consensus. (I thought it sounded good myself, but couldn't figure out why I'd need three Fennesz CDs on my shelf when I already couldn't honestly tell the difference between the other two already there.)

keep on thinkin deej

lol he voted girl talk @ #1

Yeah the Fennesz is def underwhelming compared to his other stuff, but he's like the one laptop dude that corny indue fuxxors mess with. He's like the Amadou And Miriam of speaker static.

Albums I haven't heard of at all are clustered in the second quartile of that eccentricity list.The top quartile is familiar if not conventional. This suggests (I think) that, at their most eccentric, eccentrics may think alike. Or something.

Chinese Democracy was definitely a maverick pick

i like that eccentricity list. more stats like that please!
and yeah, it's really interesting to see fennesz' contrarian-consensus status reaffirmed. (though i suppose you could make the argument that some of the "eccentric" critics that voted for it may have done so as a means to make it place... while i never (consciously) list anything just because i think it has the chance of actually charting, i definitely screw with my points (or have in other years, not this) to help nudge eccentric-consensus picks up a notch or two.)

haha eccentricity might not be the whole story -- jeezy jumping from 48 or whatever he was to #3 is about the 'eccentricity' of people who like rap music i imagine

deej voting for gucci mane makes you an 'eccentric' both in the scope of this poll and in a broader sense

i cant tell if thats an indictment of loltimore or @l sh1pl3y but nah hes actually v popular??

'in a broader sense' more popular than 85% of the rap that gets voted for in VV polls

Here's the same idea again, but this time I define "eccentric" as having voted for no more than 1 of the top 10 albums:

Eccentricity Ratio - Votes by Eccentrics - Total Votes - Arist - Album

0.85 - 12 - 14 - Elvis Costello and the Imposters - Momofuku
0.84 - 11 - 13 - James McMurtry - Just Us Kids
0.78 - 11 - 14 - Fennesz - Black Sea
0.76 - 10 - 13 - Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Primary Colours
0.76 - 10 - 13 - Times New Viking - Rip It Off
0.75 - 9 - 12 - Toumani Diabate - Mande Variations
0.73 - 17 - 23 - Alejandro Escovedo - Real Animal
0.69 - 9 - 13 - Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy
0.66 - 12 - 18 - Jamey Johnson - That Lonesome Song
0.62 - 15 - 24 - Metallica - Death Magnetic
0.61 - 8 - 13 - Orchestra Baobab - Made in Dakar
0.6 - 15 - 25 - Beck - Modern Guilt
0.6 - 14 - 23 - Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
0.6 - 17 - 28 - She and Him - Volume One
0.59 - 13 - 22 - Al Green - Lay It Down
0.58 - 17 - 29 - R.E.M. - Accelerate
0.58 - 7 - 12 - Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
0.58 - 7 - 12 - Spiritualized - Songs in A and E
0.56 - 9 - 16 - Lindstrom - Where You Go I Go Too
0.55 - 20 - 36 - Bob Dylan - Bootleg Series, Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs - Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006
0.55 - 11 - 20 - Fucked Up - Chemistry of Common Life
0.55 - 25 - 45 - Raphael Saadiq - Way I See It
0.54 - 12 - 22 - Duffy - Rockferry
0.54 - 13 - 24 - Kings of Leon - Only by the Night
0.53 - 8 - 15 - Beach House - Devotion
0.53 - 8 - 15 - Lykke Li - Youth Novels
0.53 - 7 - 13 - Shelby Lynne - Just a Little Lovin'
0.53 - 14 - 26 - Torche - Meanderthal
0.52 - 12 - 23 - Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Fight
0.52 - 11 - 21 - Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna
0.52 - 9 - 17 - Hayes Carll - Trouble in Mind
0.52 - 11 - 21 - Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls
0.5 - 9 - 18 - Black Keys - Attack and Release
0.5 - 7 - 14 - Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
0.5 - 6 - 12 - Dr. Dog - Fate
0.5 - 14 - 28 - Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark
0.5 - 9 - 18 - Estelle - Shine
0.5 - 6 - 12 - Glasvegas - Glasvegas
0.5 - 21 - 42 - Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
0.5 - 6 - 12 - Jay Reatard - Matador Singles '08
0.5 - 7 - 14 - Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
0.5 - 14 - 28 - M83 - Saturdays=Youth
0.5 - 7 - 14 - Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
0.5 - 9 - 18 - Taylor Swift - Fearless
0.48 - 20 - 41 - MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
0.47 - 9 - 19 - Young Jeezy - Recession
0.46 - 15 - 32 - Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngster...
0.46 - 21 - 45 - No Age - Nouns
0.44 - 19 - 43 - My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
0.42 - 6 - 14 - Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
0.42 - 6 - 14 - Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing
0.42 - 6 - 14 - Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
0.41 - 7 - 17 - Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely
0.41 - 20 - 48 - Randy Newman - Harps and Angels
0.4 - 10 - 25 - Blitzen Trapper - Furr
0.4 - 9 - 22 - Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
0.4 - 9 - 22 - Magnetic Fields - Distortion
0.4 - 8 - 20 - Sigur Ros - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
0.4 - 9 - 22 - T.I. - Paper Trail
0.39 - 11 - 28 - Gaslight Anthem - '59 Sound
0.39 - 17 - 43 - Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
0.38 - 10 - 26 - Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
0.38 - 10 - 26 - Walkmen - You and Me
0.37 - 20 - 54 - Hold Steady - Stay Positive
0.37 - 12 - 32 - Q-Tip - Renaissance
0.36 - 13 - 36 - Coldplay - Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends
0.36 - 11 - 30 - Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
0.33 - 5 - 15 - Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
0.33 - 6 - 18 - Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid
0.32 - 9 - 28 - David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
0.32 - 18 - 55 - Deerhunter - Microcastle/Weird Era Continued
0.31 - 7 - 22 - Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash
0.28 - 7 - 25 - Ne-Yo - Year of the Gentleman
0.28 - 7 - 25 - Roots - Rising Down
0.24 - 15 - 61 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
0.23 - 3 - 13 - Adele - 19
0.23 - 3 - 13 - Knux - Remind Me in 3 Days...
0.21 - 3 - 14 - Nas - Untitled
0.21 - 22 - 102 - Portishead - Third
0.18 - 16 - 87 - Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
0.16 - 2 - 12 - Bonnie Prince Billy - Lie Down in the Light
0.15 - 12 - 79 - Santogold - Santogold
0.14 - 22 - 154 - TV on the Radio - Dear Science
0.13 - 11 - 80 - Erykah Badu - New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War
0.13 - 14 - 105 - Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
0.1 - 8 - 78 - Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
0.09 - 7 - 73 - Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
0.08 - 1 - 12 - Robyn - Robyn
0.05 - 3 - 57 - Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak

That last one might be more "disenfranchised" than "eccentric".

I recall the idolator poll last year skewing slightly differently from the P & J poll. Do you know how many folks who participated in that final idolator poll did not also participate in last year's P & J (or this year's)? It does not appear that P & J gained that many previous idolator only voters.

There were 212 people who voted in Idolator's poll but not P&J last year. Of those I see only about 20 in this year's P&J, and I didn't try to count how many of those had already voted in the P&J in previous years. P&J itself had 574 last year.

Will be posting no2 album in the metal poll in the next 10 mins and then after the no1 some stats Glenn gave me. Then he will be along later to post his complete stats rundown. Please have a look at ILX METAL ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2008 RESULTS (NOW COUNTING DOWN THE TOP TEN, BTW)

Glenn has just started posting the stats there now

For my one crossover stat with P&J relevance, here is a True Metal ranking (I call this kvltosis; please alert me via messenger pigeon if you get this joke) calculated by taking the albums voted-for in the ILM Metal poll as a definition of what was metal this year, then scoring each P&J voter by how many of those they voted for, then re-rating the P&J albums by the average of those voter-scores for their voters. 1.0 would mean that all an album's voters voted exclusively for metal. But there weren't any of those.

7.3 - Amon Amarth - Twilight of the Thunder God
7.0 - Neuraxis - Thin Line Between
6.0 - In Flames - A Sense of Purpose
5.5 - Leviathan - Massive Conspiracy Against All Life
5.5 - Wetnurse - Invisible City
5.4 - Nachtmystium - Assassins: Black Meddle, Pt.1
5.2 - Enslaved - Vertebrae
5.1 - Opeth - Watershed
4.8 - Gojira - Way of All Flesh
4.8 - Genghis Tron - Board Up the House
4.8 - Meshuggah - obZen
4.8 - Krallice - Krallice
4.5 - Dead Congregation - Graves of the Archangels
4.0 - Harvey Milk - Life...The Best Game in Town
4.0 - In This Moment - Dream
4.0 - Lair of the Minotaur - War Metal Battle Master
3.5 - Ceremony - Still Nothing Moves You
3.5 - Jex Thoth - Jex Thoth
3.5 - Judas Priest - Nostradamus
3.5 - Slim Cessna's Auto Club - Cipher
3.3 - Blood Ceremony - Blood Ceremony
3.3 - Made Out of Babies - Ruiner
3.3 - Sword - Gods of the Earth
3.0 - Darkthrone - Dark Thrones and Black Flags
3.0 - Howlin' Rain - Magnificent Fiend
3.0 - Testament - Formation of Damnation
2.8 - Torche - Meanderthal
2.6 - Disfear - Live the Storm
2.6 - Earth - Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull
2.5 - Burning Star Core - Challenger
2.5 - Rhys Chatham and His Guitar Trio All-Stars - Guitar Trio Is My Life!
2.0 - Snowman - Horse, the Rat and the Swan
2.0 - Metallica - Death Magnetic
1.8 - Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
1.7 - Marnie Stern - This Is It . . .
1.7 - Dirtbombs - We Have You Surrounded
1.7 - Mogwai - Hawk Is Howling
1.5 - Baby Dee - Safe Inside the Day
1.5 - Bohren and der Club of Gore - Dolores
1.5 - Boris - Smile
1.5 - Fennesz - Black Sea
1.5 - Heavy - Great Vengeance and Furious Fire
1.5 - Lukestar - Lake Toba
1.5 - Melvins - Nude With Boots
1.5 - Mr. Gnome - Deliver This Creature
1.5 - Necrovation - Breed Deadness Blood
1.4 - AC/DC - Black Ice
1.3 - Jean Grae - Jeanius
1.2 - Dungen - 4
1.2 - Fucked Up - Chemistry of Common Life
1.2 - James Blackshaw - Litany of Echoes

Note that there are a few albums that didn't make the ILM Metal poll even though they might be considered metal by many, including Testament, Judas Priest, and Black Sabbath, but none of these got enough votes to matter much. AC/DC and GNR also don't count, so Phil Freeman, who arguably has the sole all-metal P&J ballot, had 3 of those 5 and thus was scored in these calcualtions as 7, not 10. There was no 9, and the only 8 was Kurt Orzeck, who lost one point for the deathcore band Dr. Acula (no votes in the other poll) and one for My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges, which I have to wonder whether he voted for based on the title without actually listening to it.

LOL

Evil Urges was one of the year's absolute worst albums, metal or not. I listened once and filed that sucker back on the shelf to collect dust for a few years. I remember thinking maybe three or four tracks were passable, the rest awful.

Finally decided to check out Torche. Youtube comments are funny:

this is suppost to be sludge metal
what a shit voice for sludge metal he is trying to sing all pop. i think they need to find a better vocalist cos this is shit

That's why I kinda like it

Next question: Are there really that many p&j voters who are so stuck on old rap paradigms that they think "Black President" is better than "My President Is Black"?

Are you really asking that question, Rev?

Long day.

Also in "Are you really asking that question, Rev?", WTFingF at Q-Tip placing so high? Are people so happy to see he finally got an album out that they'll take any old piece of garbage from him? Amplified was about eighteen times better and still wasn't one of the best few rap albums of that year.

q-tip album was cool

i mean if yr mad at the shitty placement of rap music i dont know that its helpful to shit on one of the few decent rap records that made it

Amplified was about eighteen times better and still wasn't one of the best few rap albums of that year.

Wrong.

right/wrong.

well if jeezy follows the normal course of these things, his next album will be overrated by people who slept on this one. so you can look forward to bitching about that in a year or two.

but his last album wasn't all that good. (the debut is all i'll ever need, i think.)

^^^Jeezy

Recession was a BIG letdown for me. Although there seems to be a lot of love for it on ILM.

Marcello raved about it, that i do remember.

really? all i can remember is him calling T.I.'s latest album of the year (and he wasn't too far off there, afaic).

no, he was very far off there.

possibly his worst album.

the singles were great, but the album on the whole didn't do much for me.

xp

if by worst you mean best, then sure.

the recession for me is the first time jeezy's lived up to his hype. i like thug motivation but never loved it, am sort of so-so on inspiration (but "i luv it" is good toomp). but mostly i mean that the recession is sort of breaking late in critical quarters, which i think will set him up for "omg new jeezy!"-type stuff next time around.

If Keleffa Sanneh had stayed at the NY Times and raved about Jeezy that might have helped win over some other critics. Really.

what happened with Keleffa anyhow?

He's writing for the New Yorker now. Mostly about non-music related stuf with the exception of a profile of Will olham.

hmm...

The Top 100 tracks, in ascending order, as a Spotify playlist. Only 10 tracks are missing. Spotify isn't available in the US or Canada.

but his last album wasn't all that good. (the debut is all i'll ever need, i think.)

― Ioannis, Saturday, January 24, 2009 9:40 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

his new one was great, autogoon cru pretty united behind that one

i tried to get into it, but...

the singles were great, but the album on the whole didn't do much for me.

― Ioannis, Saturday, January 24, 2009 5:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I made two lists this year, one metal and one not. Last year, when there were two polls, I filed one list in each poll, but this year I had to combine parts of both into one ballot. So here's a shout out to the other things I didn't get to vote for, and how they fared without me:

Trinacria - Travel Now Journey Infinitely (0 votes)
Cynic - Traced in Air (1 vote)
Gyongyver - Vilagok Viraga (0 votes)
In Flames - A Sense of Purpose (2 votes)
M83 - Saturdays=Youth (28 votes! would have been my most popular pick!)
Katy Perry - One of the Boys (0 votes! I smell some critical cowardice...)
Delays - Everything's the Rush (0 votes)
Ida - Lovers Prayers (2 votes)
Bob Mould - District Line (3 votes)
Shearwater - Rook (8 votes)
Asian Kung-Fu Generation - World World World (0 votes)

Comments on these, as well as on the ones I did vote for, at http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=twas&id=twas0510 .

Yeah, I was initially pretty tepid about The Recession except for the most obviously awesome songs, but I've mostly come around to it.

well if jeezy follows the normal course of these things, his next album will be overrated by people who slept on this one. so you can look forward to bitching about that in a year or two.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Saturday, January 24, 2009 6:16 AM Bookmark

Probably otm, but this didn't happen with The Inspiration.

q-tip album was cool

― xhuxk d (deej), Saturday, January 24, 2009 1:07 AM Bookmark

i mean if yr mad at the shitty placement of rap music i dont know that its helpful to shit on one of the few decent rap records that made it

― xhuxk d (deej), Saturday, January 24, 2009 1:07 AM Bookmark

Really dude? Production was pretty boring and as of this point in time, Q-Tip CAN. NOT. RAP. AT. ALL.

I'll give the Roots voters more of a pass, because they are P&J perenials (whereas nothing Tip did has placed since Midnight Marauders) and the album does contain one genuinely amazing song, although WTF at "75 Bars" only getting one vote?

Are there really that many p&j voters who are so stuck on old rap paradigms that they think "Black President" is better than "My President Is Black"?

Fwiw, "My President" actually got one more vote than "Black President" did.

And I'm not saying that hip-hip probably isn't under-represented in the poll like always, but five albums in the Top 40, six if Badu counts (albiet two just squeezing in at the bottom of the list) is at least way better than metal (two albums at #s 31 and 37), country (none unless Drive By Truckers and Alejandro Escovedo count, which they shouldn't), or chart-pop (none unless Santogold or Coldplay count) did this year. Not to mention African, reggae, or Latin, all of which used to do way better. (Metal used to do even worse.) I actually think five hip-hop albums is about par for the course, over the years; definitely better than some years. Bottom line is, every genre that isn't indie-pop is getting the shaft in Pazz & Jop these days. Even the old farts have slipped some (well, they've also gotten older -- this year I guess there's Randy Newman, R.E.M., Byrne/Eno, Nick Cave though he's still really more indie, and that Dylan reissue.) (Not sure what would count as electronic/dance -- Portishead, Cut Copy, Hot Chip, Hercules & Love Affair? So that's maybe back on the upswing, but again, all four of those acts have just as much to do with indie rock.)

I also agree with Glenn that it's messed up that Katy Perry didn't get at least one album vote (especially when she placed two singles in the Top 40.) Also was really surprised Ne-Yo wound up way down at 51 -- thought he'd be Top 40 for sure, though it was partially my own fault for not voting for the guy, I guess. (Badu and Saadiq took the only r&b spots, with Al Green also coming close at #47. Outside of Green and Jeezy, 41-50 is all indie too, assuming the category still includes Death Cab and Beck and Elbow, and I don't know why it shouldn't.)

Actually, Escovedo's an old fart too obv (and I guarantee he pulled in the old-fart-critic vote; I'd wager that his average-voter-age skews higher than anybody else in the Top 40, Newman and Dylan and Byrne/Eno included. Album isn't bad, by the way.)

Yeah, if you'll notice, I was complaining about quality of hip-hop albums, rather than quantity. As you say, five is about par for the course.

all four of those acts have just as much to do with indie rock.

And I'll disagree with this, I'm not sure what Hercules have to do with indie rock other than being on/produced-by DFA (who have been releasing a lot more dance than rock lately anyway).

In good news, "Happy House" placed and all of it's voters are excused from any other P&J related sins.

although WTF at "75 Bars" only getting one vote?

wasn't really a single IMHO. The singles were shitty "Birthday Girl" and shity stupid sad b-girl Wale song.

I think it kinda had "street single" status or something like that. At any rate, they made a video for it and promoted it, good enough for me.

q tip can still rap fine

I'm not sure what Hercules have to do with indie rock

Antony, for one thing. And Nomi had connections to CocoRosie, right? And I'm guessing their audience (at least in the States) is more indie than dance/ electronica; seems to me they arrived through indie-rock distribution and promotion channels, even if they don't sound indie rock. (Which depends on whether you think of Arthur Russell more as an art guy or a dancefloor guy, maybe.) I could be wrong, though (I haven't done any audience surveys) and I'm probably splitting hairs, either way. Just saying no "pure" techno acts (whatever that is) scored on the Pazz & Jop chart, as far as I can see.

Oh yeah, forgot about the obvious Antony thing.

Guess Girl Talk could count as dance/electronic, too (but he's got an indie element as well, obviously.) And I might have missed one or two others, who knows. (No idea what Frightened Rabbit sound like.)

I do tend to call these things more by "what do they sound like?" than by "who is listening to this?" because that just leads to any number of rabbitholes. Also, if indie-electro acts like Hot Chip and Cut Copy get to count, then surely indie-electro acts like M83 & MGMT do.

But yeah, splitting hairs, etc.

You're right about M83 and MGMT. So that makes (at least) seven P&J Top 40 electronic acts, all with indie-rock fan bases (which might just mean that critics who like indie rock have accepted synths and samplers in recent years, not exactly news.)

And I've been known to classify music by what it sounds like, too, now and then. (People find it upsetting sometimes.)

how dare you??? (btw, Rev, when's your metal album book coming out?)

xp And duh, Santogold probably counts as dance/ electronic indie too. (She's also the closest thing to any kind of "world music" in the Top 40, unless Byrne/Eno -- which I haven't heard -- is. Or, uh, Vampire Weekend. Though at least Escovedo has a Latin surname.)

strange how badly the Taylor Swift album did.
you didn't vote for it, did you, Chuck?

The better half the TVotR album is all afro-popped out, too.

it's an indie-pop world, guys. we just live in fear of it.

strange how badly the Taylor Swift album did.

She really needs to work on her release schedule -- Pazz and Jop isn't the Oscars! I'm starting to click with Fearless (I don't think I'd have put it in my top ten anyway), but the same thing happened with her first album: heard it in Dec. '06, liked it most in '07 but didn't consider it an '07 album. Although Taylor did very well in Nashville Scene poll, I think.

Pazz and Jop isn't the Oscars!

ah, if only: "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for. drumroll please... and the Xgau for album of the year goes to...TVOTR!!!"

xp Nah, I didn't like Fearless nearly as much as Taylor's debut LP. Too Lillith, not enough obvious hooks for impatient dumbies like me. Put it at #39 on the year-end list I did for Rhapsody.

the thing about metal doing worse than rap on this chart is that rap has been selling gajillions more units than metal for the last decade so one would expect it to probably being doing a bit better, but as per usual the consensus celebrates a couple albums while completely ignoring the overall rap world as a whole. nothing new i know, just sayin

yeah, but rap has always been better represented on the single's list p&j-wise, no?

Glenn posted stats that 5ive, who finished 8th in the ILX Metal Poll, didn't even get 1 vote in P&J.

Rap and Metal are always the losers in general lists. (though yes you can add plenty of other genres in there too as Chuck said)

I ran the metal poll as stuff does get missed out and it deserves more.
For the same reason a hoy hoy is thinking of running a rap poll btw Give him some encouragement Here
I'm sure he will appreciate it. And it will help the non-autogoon cru to check out good stuff that has slipped under the radar.

xp And hip-hop hasn't always sold gajillions more units than chart-pop (which is at least represented on the singles list more nowadays than it used to be.) (Sometimes country's sales can rival hip-hop's, too. And country only placed one single in the Top 40 -- By Hayes Carll, an alt- guy who gets no commercial radio play outside of possible Triple A stations.) (And if sales are the issue, then the real people who should be complaining are Nickelback and Daughtry and Josh Groban fans.) (Also, fwiw, AC/DC had a really kick-ass opening week. And they finished 140th, one spot lower than the Cool Kids.)

(By "chart-pop" I mean "teen-pop-like-stuff," or whatever. Obviously songs from the pop charts have always placed on the P&J singles, back to "Pop Muzik". But it actually seemed kind of unprecedented when "Mmmbop" won in whatever year that was -- no Debbie Gibson or New Kids on the Block single had ever come close. Then the floodgates opened for Britney, Christina, Backstreet, NSync, etc. Not sure who'd fall in that category this year -- both Katy Perry singles? Or maybe not. Pink and Britney seem pretty old by now. And I don't see any equivalents of Britney or Justin on the album chart this year.)

Also remember thinking it was really cool when "Missing You" by John Waite tied with "Jam On It" for the #25 single on a 25-song list in 1984. Journey, Foreigner, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Lynyrd Fucking Skynyrd -- none of those bands ever did anything in Pazz & Jop. So while I empathize and agree with people who point out every year that hip-hop should have done better, I also think it's horseshit to pretend that hip-hop is the main genre being shut out, when it's not being shut out at all.

Once again, I never said that. I said better hip-hop should have placed.

Better everything should have placed!

Well, yeah.

...and, scene.

the only people irl who like girl talk are indie ppl

Frightened Rabbit (my #1 vote!) are not electronic, to put it mildly. They're indie, put broadly, but not coy enough to place higher.

It's hard for me to not conclude that the main emotion driving whatever "consensus" the P&J represents is fear. It certainly never looks like joy.

Also, "Missing You" is a great song.

yah but xhuxk there already exists a rap music canon and substantive rap music discourse whereas that sort of thing w/r/t teenpop/chartpop has been pretty negligible until recently. this is not a judgment about the worth of this music or anything at all but you realize that most teenpop fans arent interested in the canonization of their favorite stars whereas rap & critrock have always had that type of discussion going on (or have for a long long time). the idea of even having those discussions is pretty new and limited to the ilm teenpop threads (RIP) and those livejournal discussion groups right?? whereas there are kids in every town in america who were arguing about whether jay beat nas back in 01 for ex.

rap didn't do well in the P&J in the 90s?

im not saying that in an idealized world everything isnt represented im just pointing out that the continued marginalization of rap music is particularly weird. part of the problem is rap writers themselves ... dudes like caramanica voting for 2 rap albums is wtf

the metal writers (from ilx anyway) didn't exclusively vote for metal either. Do some writers just vote for what they think might get enough votes from others so it places high?

which btw is weird & self defeating. we'll never elect a black president so im not voting for obama in the primary.

i think some ppl do put shit in at the end if they think it will give it a boost as opposed to something that's gonna get 2 or 3 votes

rap writers are just more open minded than indie pop fans ^__^

Maybe (too be naive and uncynical for a moment -- though actually I suspect this is the case) writers (like Caramanica, for instance) just vote for what they like best?* (I mean, I assumed, when Glenn suggested that critics who only put one metal album on their P&J list lacked "courage", he was joking. Now I'm kind of getting the idea he maybe wasn't. But, you know, some of us might just have thought only one metal album -- in my case, one that might not even count as "troo" metal, as if anybody over the age of 12 should give a fuck -- was good enough.) (Also, deej, I do understand your point about chart-pop, though how that applies to the shut-out classic rock bands I also mentioned is sort of beyond me. And country has had a canon for longer than rap has, though I'm not sure whether fans argue about whether Toby could beat up Kenny or not.)

* - I assume Caramanica does, anyway. Why wouldn't he? And why second-guess his motives? He's not just a rap critic, hasn't been for several years.

I do, though, assume a lot of writers much hackier than Jon just follow the bandwagon, for expediency or out of sheer laziness, maybe -- copying down what other writers put on their Top 10s in December, and thinking, "yeah, I kinda liked that, too." So I guess that's what Glenn means about P&J voters lacking fortitude, which may well be the case. (And yeah, I wonder who gutlessly left off Katy Perry.)

Glenn was joking.

there are kids in every town in america who were arguing about whether jay beat nas

I have a feeling there were kids in every town arguing about whether NSync was better than Backstreet, and Christina better than Britney (and Debbie better than Tiffany, and the Monkees better than the Beatles), too. So let's ammend what I just wrote to say I sort of get your point.

yeah but no one is arguing if torche is better than made out of babies

Did anyone say people were?

re carmancia deej is right. ppl obv like tons of stuff but the most high profile p&j voters who are rap critics (fennessey, breihan for instance) voted for tons of non-rap shit, whereas you don't see any david fricke or rob sheffield or david marchese voting for 6 rap albums even tho they work for rock mags

well herman, deej's original post was about why rap does better than metal

Well on metal boards neither torche or made out of babies get considered metal but they will argue about whether dimebag darrell was a better guitarist than kirk hammett or if new Enslaved is a sell out compared to someone else. Kids think Trivium are metter than old Metallica etc. So yes, metal kids do argue about it.

yeah but its not as popular as rap

"Why isnt traditional bagpipe music bigger on pazz n jop??"

all the bagpipe ppl argue about who's better at bagpipes

anyway i don't mean to be condescending - i wasnt saying that metal ppl didn't care enough about the genre to argue just that obv rap has reached a pop scale where "kids in every town" argue about shit whereas metal is not on that plane anymore

basically what deej said

I wouldn't argue with rap being bigger than metal. Was just meaning metal kids can be as anal about their music as any other genre. And there's still going to be metal kids in everytown. Hell, even nu-metal crossed over to 10 year old kids in the uk. You still see 12 year olds in Slipknot tees.

most high profile p&j voters who are rap critics (fennessey, breihan for instance) voted for tons of non-rap shit, whereas you don't see any david fricke or rob sheffield or david marchese voting for 6 rap albums even tho they work for rock mags

Again, I don't get the point here. Breihan, like Caramanica, writes about all different kinds of music. Including, presumably, some albums he likes as much as his favorite rap albums. Both Caramanica and Breihan are also real good country critics, and I'd never suggest they should vote for all (or even mostly) country albums. You're acting like there are only two kinds of music out there -- rap and non-rap.

there are like 3 total critics who voted more than 50% rap albums. dont you think thats weird?

There are like 3 total critics who voted more than 50% rap country albums. don't you think that's weird?

i think it's good that major rap critics and higher ups at major rap mags are into other genres - as opposed to, say, rolling stone - it's just that the commodification of the same rap shit is helped along when the most high profile rap writers - and most vocal supporters on the internet of guys like rich boy and scarface etc - end up voting for bon iver and tv on the radio

xp Pretty sure Glenn said only one critic voted for all metal albums too. (News flash: HUMAN BEINGS LIKE LOTS OF DIFFERENT MUSIC!) (And Rolling Stone covers lots of different kinds too, last time I checked.)

xp no - it seems like country has always been a relative critical blindspot despite its popularity in numbers

especially when compared to rap in terms of crossover w/ rock critics

I was making fun of the....monochromatic inclinations of some of our posters. Carry on.

I wasn't joking, but I'm not sure whether my criticism actually applies to individuals, or is kind of a reaction to the aggregate effect of polling this way. Obviously nobody is required to like Katy Perry, for example. I didn't vote for her myself, not out of a lack of courage but because her album was in my second 10, not my first 10. Maybe everybody simply voted what they liked, and really that many people genuinely like TV on the Radio and the Fleet Foxes. But yeah, like Chuck, I suspect that isn't 100% the case. I think there are some systemic biases and recurrent trends in P&J, and I think two years of Idolator constrast helped demonstrate them. Adding a few more voters, especially voters with different predispositions, wouldn't hurt.

But actually, if I were in charge, I'd make two structural changes to the poll that I think might make it significantly more interesting whatever the electorate:

1. Expand album ballots to 20 or 25. I bet nearly every voter in the poll could fill 20 as easily as 10, and we'd get more diversity and less tokenism from each person.
2. For singles, do a pre-poll nomination round, and then in the poll itself have people pick 10 (or 20) from the hundred or two songs that got nominated most. This would get a little more consensus into the singles voting, which has become pretty scattered recently.

And I'd ditch points, too, or perhaps reduce the points scheme to 2 points for your #1 and 1 point for everything else.

Obviously nobody is required to like Katy Perry

that's a relief

there are like 3 total critics who voted more than 50% rap albums. dont you think thats weird?

Actually, to be honest, if this is true (I have my doubts, and haven't checked) I do think it's weird. It's also a huge drop from a few years ago. (At least if you count rap and r&b albums together. There were always several critics whose ballots leaned that way -- with maybe one token White Stripes album, or whatever. If that's changed now, it's kind of fucked, though I don't see how it's Briehan's or Caramanica's fault; the problem is probably more the electorate than individual voters. And I'm sure Harvilla wants more hip-hop voters (and non-indie voters in general) -- he's said so himself. (But I'm the last person who has a reason to defend the current state of Pazz & Jop, seeing how I, uh, ran the thing for several years.)

Not sure I've seen any ballots that are 50% country, though. (Though mine might come close, if you stretch the definition somewhat.) And yeah, rock critics paying attention to commercial country is a fairly recent development, compared to hip-hop.

pre-poll nomination round

Just want to say I hate this idea. (Also don't think the lack of consensus is a problem. And I'm not convinced there used to be more of a consensus among the singles voters, except in the sense that -- especially in pre-download days -- there were way fewer "singles" to choose from. So why not do what Pazz & Jop always used to do, and limit the voting to actual singles, defined as broadly as the poobahs think might be workable?)

how would they police the voting if they limited it to "official singles"? i think the singles voting is flawed but "paper planes" and "rehab" seem ubiquitous enough to be picks of the consensus

It'd be tough to police, admittedly -- maybe impossible, given that people have grown used to voting for random "tracks" for several years now. But they could at least attempt to control it by somehow defining singles in the P&J letter, like we used to. ("Singles" could include, say, "airplay tracks", "tracks promoted with videos," etc., not just physical releases, which obviously barely even exist anymore. I dunno; Wikipedia for instance seems to do pretty well in their singles discographies, though maybe they miss more than I've picked up on.)

xp Of course, another possibility for the recent lack of hip-hop voters might just be that the actual consensus has changed -- i.e., that critics are increasingly convinced (rightly or wrongly) that hip-hop just isn't as good as it used to be -- or that indie rock has improved in comparison, or whatever. (Personally, though, I suspect that the voting demographic is the biggest thing that's changed.)

Obviously, for instance, any song that hit any of the Hot Songs charts in Billboard would be eligible, and that's another thing the letter could spell out. (Basically, I think you could police it more by directing definitions than by excluding songs.)

Speaking of singles, did anyone else notice Andrew Scott Earle's ballot?:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685529

I also liked that Ben Westhoff (whoever he is) voted for a White Lion single:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686481

And Ken Roseman (whoever he is) voted for a Chumbawamba album:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/684703

Thought Joe Tangari's worldbeat-heavy ballot was intriguing, too. (Never heard of him, either):

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686268

nickelback voters

NOMO and Baobob were almost on my ballot; I don't know why I haven't listened to the new Amadou and Mariam album yet.

Tangari I think has written a few pieces on African music for Pitchfork.

the problem is probably more the electorate than individual voters. And I'm sure Harvilla wants more hip-hop voters (and non-indie voters in general) -- he's said so himself. (But I'm the last person who has a reason to defend the current state of Pazz & Jop, seeing how I, uh, ran the thing for several years.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, January 25, 2009 1:09 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I agree. This is the dead horse I've been beating for awhile. But as Chuck and Matos know, you can e-mail hundreds of folks but that does not mean they will respond. I think Ethan tried to get more rap critics to vote in the Idolator poll with little success and I recall Chuck or Christgau complaining about rap and punk critics not responding. Last year I gave Matos some whirled music names and I notified whirled music publicists Rock Paper Scissors that the idolator poll was happening, and very few of those folks responded (despite Matos' efforts). Yet, the fRoots world music critics poll has lots of folks who do not vote in P & J, and I bet a number of US based Global Rhythms and the Beat contributors won't vote in P & J either.

The new Amadou & Marian and the new Rokia Traore were out in Europe in '08 but aren't being released in the US till February I think

I have a feeling there were kids in every town arguing about whether NSync was better than Backstreet, and Christina better than Britney (and Debbie better than Tiffany, and the Monkees better than the Beatles), too.

but they didn't grow up to vote in pazz & jop, obv. and of course you might be sort of dispirited to see what kind of stuff people who were arguing about nsync vs. backstreet in 9th grade are listening to now. we can all idealize our optimal open-eared voters, but they mostly don't exist, is the problem.

i think more than diversifying the voter pool, there are a lot of things that could be done to make the whole thing more interesting. alongside the p&j (or whatever poll), run a set of "stuff i like" lists compiled from random people of random ages in random places. it wouldn't give you anything more than anecdotes, but it seems like the absence of anecdotes is what's being lamented here -- the tendency toward dull consensus and away from individual enjoyment and obsession. i mean, aggregation is all about the dull consensus; the way around that might not be to change the aggregation, but just to supplement it.

(and believe me, i agree that anything that gives you tvotr and vampire weekend as your 1-2 in any year can use some serious supplementing.)

Another thing they could theoretically do (though they'd never find the time or pages to do it, not these days) is something Xgau tried once (1986 or so?) in the '70s -- namely, run lots of demographic mini-polls from, say, female critics and African American critics and voters over 40 and under 30. (Fuck the thirtysomethings, man. Just kidding.) The one time it was done, the results were really interesting. (Sidebar mini-polls by genre used to look really cool in N.M.E. in the late '80s, too. But again, you're talking man hours it's hard to imagine unless you've actually done of these. And the deadlines just keep getting tighter every year.)

(Contradicted myself. Obv meant he tried it in the '80s.)

tendency toward dull consensus and away from individual enjoyment and obsession.

This is another reason I really can't stand Glenn's pre-poll nomination idea -- which, as far as I can tell, would only make the poll more dull.

couldnt a glenn-type person just go through the results and figure out the gender/race/age breakdowns? or are you talking about something else?
(xpost)

Well, you'd have to get all the demographic information -- which I assume Glenn isn't privy to -- first. (Christgau used to ask for it in the poll letter every year, but I think that's another old tradition that's gone by the wayside. And voters were never all that forthcoming even back then.)

If I had demographic information I could give you poll slices with my pinkie. But I don't. I've spent a little while trying to get some genre information, taking artist lists from the ILM Metal poll and the HipHopCritics Poll, but this is a pretty unreliable method of getting data that's kind of dubious even if you have it.

I can confirm, at least, that there are only a handful of voters whose ballots are more than half rap. Ditto for metal.

I see Q-Tip won that album poll of 25 folks at hiphopcritic.com and 74 people voted in the Nashville Scene country music poll (Jamey Johnson album winner) and Every year fRoots polls a panel of hundreds of experts, in the UK and internationally, to decide the Album Of The Year in the fields covered in the magazine – world folk and roots music.

ordinarily i might be on the side of taking rap-friendly crits to task for not having much rap on their lists, but i don't know if there's any way you can spin this year without admitting that at least as far as official albums with a national profile '08 was pretty barren. i only had the Jeezy album on my list (not counting R&B singers), almost had ABN and Scarface in my top 10 but ultimately gave those spots to more weirdo indie shit. a well done hip hop-only poll would be cool and i'd have a ton of albums to vote for in that, but up against other genres it's whatever. i can't act outraged when i didn't hear any truly exceptional albums that were otherwise ignored by P&J, which happened more in previous years.

Yeah but searching for my favorite rap album of the year led me to its only vote in the poll from my new favorite critic, Jimmy Draper.

I am amused by your fave rapper as a panelist on America's Best Dance Crew 2. I see Draper voted for Latin-pop singer Ximena Sariñana. She reminds me of Julieta Venegas.

Why are you amused by that? She's the best judge on the panel -- Shane Sparks is too sentimental and the other guy just sucks.

nothing Tip did has placed since Midnight Marauders

"Vivrant Thing" was the No. 15 single in '99.

What I think is basically happening is that the Web-generation schism is showing. There was a definite, if subtle, difference between Idolator Poll in '06/'07 and P&J then, and as it is this year: P&J is older, has more rock-entrenched tastes in singles. (They had many long-timers who didn't vote in my poll, and a lot of bloggers only voted in mine.) "Rehab" squeaked a win in P&J and finished fourth in I.P., even with a fifth of its votes carried forth from '06. "Umbrella" sailed to No. 1 in Idolator and finished a close second in P&J. I don't think that's a coincidence; I think it signals the shift to which I'm referring. Similarly, TV on the Radio and LCD Soundsystem were easy victories in I.P. and by noses in P&J. The tastes are essentially the same but the emphases are different. I imagine if I'd done it a couple more years those differences would show more clearly over time, unless maybe P&J went after new voters who'd participated in I.P.

Chuck, I did actually do the demographics in '06. I got the information in '07 but when I asked for it the IT person said, "Here you go, every ballot has the info on it." I said, "I need you to collate that info so I can make charts from it." Crickets.

"Vivrant Thing" was the No. 15 single in '99.

― Matos W.K., Saturday, January 24, 2009 9:34 PM Bookmark

Aye, I was only focusing on albums. The Rennaisance could use a song as fun as "Vivrant Thing" or eight.

I like-not-love the Q-Tip album, though "Gettin' Up" really does grow on me as a single. It's definitely the old-man-rap pick of the year. Recently I picked up, for 49 cents at Value Village, some old music magazines: a 1997 Request w/Portishead cover and four issues (two 1991, two 1994) of Pulse!--both retail giveaways, published by Sam Goody/Musicland and Tower, respectively. I always liked both mags' genre columns--hip-hop, world, blues, whatever. One of Request's was "Geezers." I can't wait to see rap mags, print or web, adopt this.

There are plenty of dudes Tip's age or older who are rapping so much better than him it's ridiculous. I'll even take current-era Common over him when I'm down for some stiffly rapped platitudes.

I just meant consensus pick.

yeah and at least common's releasing albums every 12-16 months or so. if tip's gonna wait 6 years he should really bring it

fuck u dudes i like the tip album & its so much better than the com its not funny

i'm with deej, the Q-Tip album is perfectly nice and he hasn't lost his skills that much. plus you can't say he "waited 6 years" when the guy had albums shelved by like 4 different labels, though i will admit some of my enthusiasm for the album is that one of rap's greatest geniuses finally stopped getting fucked by the industry for a decade. definitely not any worse than nu-Common.

the Web-generation schism is showing. There was a definite, if subtle, difference between Idolator Poll in '06/'07 and P&J then, and as it is this year: P&J is older, has more rock-entrenched tastes in singles. (They had many long-timers who didn't vote in my poll, and a lot of bloggers only voted in mine.) "Rehab" squeaked a win in P&J and finished fourth in I.P., even with a fifth of its votes carried forth from '06. "Umbrella" sailed to No. 1 in Idolator and finished a close second in P&J. I don't think that's a coincidence; I think it signals the shift to which I'm referring. Similarly, TV on the Radio and LCD Soundsystem were easy victories in I.P. and by noses in P&J. The tastes are essentially the same but the emphases are different. I imagine if I'd done it a couple more years those differences would show more clearly over time

Hey Michaelangelo, forgive me, I'm probably being really dense here and missing something obvious, but it's not at all clear to me what "those differences" are. (They're probably so subtle that I can't even see them.) How do you think an Idolator poll would have shaken out differently than P&J this year? Are you saying the higher blogger participation would have prevented people from voting for "Paper Planes" (a la "Rehab" last year), since they would have considered it old news? And if so, why would that be a good thing? Or maybe that's not what you're suggesting, unless you somehow think "Paper Planes" signifies "rock-entrenched tastes" like you apparently (rightly? because people compare Winehouse to an old soul singer?) "Rehab" did. (I guess it's rockier than "Umbrella," anyway.) Also not following how you think the album tally would have wound up differently -- as I said above, geezer acts already didn't score too well (compared to their past record) in P&J, as far as I can tell; by now, I'd say having a couple old farts like Escovedo on there makes the list more inclusive, not less. If the rolls skewed more indie, the list would only be more monochromatic. Maybe you're saying Idolator's electorate would have helped hip-hop, metal, etc? If so, I guess I don't get how TVOTR's and LCD's decisive showing supports that conclusion.

some old music magazines: a 1997 Request w/Portishead cover and four issues (two 1991, two 1994) of Pulse!--both retail giveaways, published by Sam Goody/Musicland and Tower, respectively. I always liked both mags' genre columns--hip-hop, world, blues, whatever. One of Request's was "Geezers."

Ha ha, I am so old that music magazines from '97 and '94 definitely are not what I'd think of as "old" ones, but yeah, I used to write for Request; totally remember that section. The Rhapsody blog I write for (currently being somewhat overhauled) includes a genre category tag they call "Old Man Rocking," which is similar. Though I never know whether to put old women there, too.

Only one vote for Paavoharju?

― M.V., Thursday, January 22, 2009 11:20 AM

I just got back from vacation, so missed most of the discussion. I'm surprised I'm the only one who voted for it. I thought it was kind of popular around here.

Following up on Matos's point about the differences between Idolator and P&J, I did some number-crunching with the 2006 polls to see which albums were disproportionately favored on each poll. Of the eight albums that got >50% more points on P&J (after weighting for the discrepancy of total voters), six were by artists over the age of 50.

Okay, well, it's obviously impossible to miss the difference with those stats. But that was two years ago, and assuming I'm eyeballing the results accurately, the P&J's geezer-leaning problem seems to have self-corrected since. A younger, bloggier Idolator electorate might have pushed Gang Gang Dance and Jeezy and maybe Blitzen Trapper or the Vivian Girls or Ne-Yo into the Top 40, and pushed Fucked Up up several spaces, but it would have been at the expense of who? Escovedo, obviously. And maybe Metallica, Walkmen, Kings of Leon, Byrne/Eno, even Drive By Truckers. Wouldn't have helped Al Green, either. (Jamey Johnson? Taylor Swift? I dunno.) Not sure if that's an improvement or not.

Metallica, Walkmen, Kings of Leon, Byrne/Eno

Okay, these do like dead weight, I admit. (As does R.E.M. way up at #25, and a lot of the aging indie standbys between 41-50: Beck, Malkmus, Magnetic Fields.) And I bet the Idolator electorate would push up T.I. and Torche (though maybe not Roots or Q-Tip) too. So I guess that's a little better.

"do look like dead weight"

Not directed to anyone in particular, just as a general thought, but as said upthread, there's always the possibility that a large number of P&J voters don't really care about it very much and dash their ballots off quickly to be sure to get it done on time. Sure, on one hand it's lazy, to scan some lists of big records this year and slap something together. But maybe writers feel that the 50,000 or 100,000 or however many words they've written through the year are more important and meaningful than contributing a top 10 to P&J.

I guess what I'm saying is, it seems like there's an assumption by some that voters define themselves as critics by what they submit to P&J. It's not necessarily important to everyone involved that these lists are "accurate" or "interesting" or what have you. If you want to know what Jon Caramanica thought about rap in 2008, you could read some of his pieces rather than drawing conclusions based on his P&J ballot.

And, like Glenn says as far as expanding the album list to 20, I think there are quite a few albums that: 1) tons of critics agree are good; and 2) despite the agreement that these album are good, not one of said critics thinks the album was one of the 10 best of the year. And those albums wind up with 0 votes.

oh boy, room for even more mid-level indie acts. just what the poll needs.

How many UK critics get a vote in P&J?

other than Simon...maybe zero?

Oh so it's just USA & Canada? I didn't realise that. I thought with the internet that there would be writers from all over the place.

It started as American but has expanded a tad. As noted upthread, there are some Canadians, there's Tim Finney from Australia, and I saw a comment from someone in Germany.

Writers from everywhere have to contact the P & J editor and tell them who they write for, to get included. Many folks have not done that.

Only one vote for Paavoharju?

― M.V., Thursday, January 22, 2009 11:20 AM

I just got back from vacation, so missed most of the discussion. I'm surprised I'm the only one who voted for it. I thought it was kind of popular around here.

Not only that, it showed up in a few end-of-year lists, I think.

found two 50%+-country album ballots (at least if alt-country counts); suspect there might be more:

Randy Lewis

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685482

Bobby Reed

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685428

man i will defend the heck out of some lucinda, but the best thing i can say about little honey is that it's better than the last two.

Not heard Little Honey yet. Need to rectify that.

West turned out to be a pretty great record once i got over my initial "what the fuck is wrong with you, Lucinda? are you really trying to annoy me unto death by way of obnoxiously overwrought vocalisms?!!" reaction. took a while, granted.

I'm gonna skip it.

I accidentally left the exclamation mark off of my singles vote for Los Campesinos, "DEATH TO LOS CAMPESINOS" so it is not showing up with Christgau and the other voters for that song.

think there are quite a few albums that: 1) tons of critics agree are good; and 2) despite the agreement that these album are good, not one of said critics thinks the album was one of the 10 best of the year. And those albums wind up with 0 votes.

I always assumed that this was mostly offset by the size of P&J, i.e. if you poll enough people, then you're bound to find *some* critics who will like those albums enough to put them in their top ten. Conversely, if you poll a much smaller number of people (Pitchfork, for example, or virtually any website/mag with maybe a few dozen writers on staff) then everybody needs to submit a larger list (e.g. top 25 at least) to have those great-but-nobody's-favourite albums represented in the poll.

But with longer lists, actual rankings, as opposed to just "mentions", really start to matter -- I'm infinitely more likely to check out an album that was ranked #1 by five people than an album that was ranked #18 by twenty people. This is why I'm surprised that so many people on this thread would prefer un-ranked lists (and is the reason why I always take care to favourably weight the top few albums on my P&J ballot.)

not one of said critics thinks the album was one of the 10 best of the year. And those albums wind up with 0 votes...I always assumed that this was mostly offset by the size of P&J

Not if you are Katy Perry, apparently.

OK, one more stat thing. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but having calculated Voter Centricity, I can then turn around and retabulate the whole poll weighting votes by centricity. Or, for more amusement, inversely weighting by centricity. I.e., the farther from consensus a voter was, the more their votes were worth. Comparing these weighted scores as percentages of the albums' vote-counts then gives us a measure not of popularity but of cultishness! Ignore the albums that got very few votes (5 or fewer, for example) and this starts getting pretty interesting.

Most Cultish Albums
Cultishness Rank - Cultishness - Normal Rank - Votes - Artist - Album

1 - 0.942 - 143 - 7 - Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer
2 - 0.927 - 166 - 6 - Enslaved - Vertebrae
3 - 0.893 - 166 - 6 - Rodriguez - Cold Fact
4 - 0.873 - 143 - 7 - Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun
4 - 0.873 - 143 - 7 - Sic Alps - U.S. EZ
6 - 0.859 - 143 - 7 - AC/DC - Black Ice
7 - 0.857 - 143 - 7 - Rodney Crowell - Sex and Gasoline
8 - 0.852 - 115 - 9 - Opeth - Watershed
9 - 0.85 - 128 - 8 - Joe Jackson - Rain
10 - 0.847 - 143 - 7 - Sloan - Parallel Play

Least Cultish Albums

191 - 0.507 - 1 - 154 - TV on the Radio - Dear Science
190 - 0.536 - 2 - 105 - Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
189 - 0.549 - 105 - 10 - Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
188 - 0.557 - 82 - 12 - Robyn - Robyn
187 - 0.558 - 7 - 78 - Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
186 - 0.561 - 128 - 8 - Okkervil River - Stand Ins
185 - 0.563 - 8 - 73 - Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
184 - 0.564 - 62 - 15 - Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
183 - 0.566 - 6 - 79 - Santogold - Santogold
182 - 0.567 - 4 - 87 - Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

The full list is at http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2008/kvltosis.html

9 - 0.85 - 128 - 8 - Joe Jackson - Rain

A Joe Jackson album got 8 votes in 2008??? Wacky!

oh cultish albums ...

could someone post the most TRV KVLT albums that made the list?

haha

Glenn posted more stats on the metal poll thread btw m@tt

I'm infinitely more likely to check out an album that was ranked #1 by five people than an album that was ranked #18 by twenty people.

It's a given that the poll has peoples' #1 ranked albums covered, and there are no surprises. I'm much more interested in learning what album twenty people would have ranked #18, especially if it's something I might not have previously noticed. I don't understand why everyone else wouldn't be interested either, unless they actually believe there can't be more than 10 great albums in a given year.

Marcello's 10 cd's a year man!

you know, I JUST NOW heard fleet foxes for the first time! via a dvr recording of that SNL episode! and they're like lukewarm milk: harmless, pleasant, boring.

try having it shoved down your throat for a year. (sorry, I just heard the damn thing all the time in Seattle and my initial whatever about them soured over time.)

Fleet Foxes are apparently Paul Weller's favourite American band of the moment.

I'm an Idolator poll defender at heart (boycotted P&J the year the VV laid me off), but I'm still curious to hear Matos spell out how he thinks an Idolator poll would have shaken out differently this year; was the way I broke it down above way off?

Also, I have to admit, this is bugging me a little:

the Web-generation schism is showing... TV on the Radio and LCD Soundsystem were easy victories in I.P. and by noses in P&J...I imagine if I'd done it a couple more years those differences would show more clearly over time

Is it really good that TVOTR and LCD won more decisively in Idolator? If the big difference is the web-to-print ratio of critics in the polls, wouldn't decisive victories (especially by records that, to me, really aren't all that great -- though that's just me) mainly be indicative of the echo-chamber effect of blog opinions? Which Matos is saying would increase as time went on? I'm not sure I'd want that.

no offense, guys, but the real "big difference" was that Modern Times won the 2006 p&j albums poll.

It all depends on which additional voters you try to add and agree to vote. Adding more bloggers could skew the indie-rock vote upward but it might also skew the dance/techno whatever you want to call it votes upward. Depending on how you did it you could also end up with more backpacker/underground hiphop supporters as opposed to more ilx ringtone thread rap types. Or maybe both. Should more UK writers for all genres submit their names? I know there are folks who write about African music for the Beat, fRoots, Global Rhythms and blogs who have not participated in P & J. Chuck whould would you like to see added? All of the 74 contributors to the Nashville Scene country poll. The Poptimist LiveJournal folks? More metal mag writers?

Matos sent out over a 1,000 invitations for the Idolator poll and less than half responded. If the Voice greatly increased their mailings for next year would they have slightly more success because they've been doing a poll longer and because of the "Village Voice's" larger name and visibility.

Obviously adding any working critics who might counter the stupid indie-rock hegemony -- ones who wouldn't make the imbalance worse than it already is -- would be smart. But again, right, for the four-thousandth time, Xgau and I tried expanding the electorate in that direction for years (with far more success than either poll has seen later); Matos tried it; I don't doubt that Harvilla has tried it as well. Doesn't mean they'll vote.

And at this point, to be honest, the idea that adding a few techno or hip-hop voters here, a few metal or world voters there, would add up to enough of a consensus in any direction to break indie's hold on the poll seems pretty much like a pipe dream to me. It's not like critics within any of those genres all agree on a year's best records to begin with, right? And with the few exceptions I mentioned above, I don't see many records whose votes would have been significantly boosted even if the voting rolls had been expanded like they should be.

Chuck, why do you insist on reading some kind of taste agenda into what I said about those victories? I'm honestly curious. Especially when I explicitly didn't say it was good or bad; I said it happened.

If the big difference is the web-to-print ratio of critics in the polls, wouldn't decisive victories (especially by records that, to me, really aren't all that great -- though that's just me) mainly be indicative of the echo-chamber effect of blog opinions? Which Matos is saying would increase as time went on? I'm not sure I'd want that.

When was Pazz & Jop not an echo chamber? If blog critics listen to each other more than non-blog ones, why did TV on the Radio landslide this year? Because there were more bloggers voting in P&J? (Maybe there were--I have no idea.) It got 150% of the runner-up's mentions. That seems pretty echo-chambery to me. That's the nature of these things, whoever is hosting them.

It's a given that the poll has peoples' #1 ranked albums covered, and there are no surprises. I'm much more interested in learning what album twenty people would have ranked #18, especially if it's something I might not have previously noticed. I don't understand why everyone else wouldn't be interested either, unless they actually believe there can't be more than 10 great albums in a given year.

Moving down someone's list, you're more likely to find a token choice from a genre they wouldn't normally listen to, or a hype bandwagon choice, or something they sort of liked but not really, or any number of other sub-categories that fall under the umbrella of "music that the critic probably won't be listening to in six months time." The poll's results are weakened if they're too strongly influenced by those downballot choices that the critics don't care too strongly about -- to me, the whole idea of a poll is to survey a large number of people about their absolute favourites. What about the tokenism backlash for Arrested Development and Outkast's (for SB/TLB) wins in their respective years, despite a low avg number of points/ballot?

To be clear -- I'm *not* saying that everybody should make predictable choices or that longer, *individual* lists aren't interesting (just the opposite, they're extremely interesting!), but I feel that longer lists in the context of a large poll with 500+ ballots will simply water down the results.

why do you insist on reading some kind of taste agenda into what I said about those victories?

I don't, Michaelangelo, not at all. In fact, I know you don't have such an agenda, which is why I was trying to get the bottom of what else you think those decisive LCD/ TVOTR victories might signify; you're the one who connected them with the web schism, though maybe I misinterpreted that. All I'm saying is that "decisive victories" and "echo chamber" go hand-in-hand (right, in the case of this year's P&J, too), and I don't necessasrily think that's a positive thing. Didn't mean to imply you thought otherwise, though I'm curious what you do think. (Above, you connected this year's P&J's results to the "web-generation schism" and said P&J singles tastes were rock-entrenched, which seems to me naturally begs a question; I'm just trying to find out how you think the results might have turned out differently with a less entrenched voter group.)

And at this point, to be honest, the idea that adding a few techno or hip-hop voters here, a few metal or world voters there, would add up to enough of a consensus in any direction to break indie's hold on the poll seems pretty much like a pipe dream to me. It's not like critics within any of those genres all agree on a year's best records to begin with, right?

It would not break the indie hold but I think it would still be good to have larger subgroups than currently exist. My pipedream is just to get editors at genral interest publications to recognize that they should ocassionally cover non-indie music. Whether such editors would look down to the bottom fringes of future P & J polls and see the non-indie stuff I don't know, but at least it would be there .

Consensus is dull. Adding more voters isn't going to make the consensus any less dull. Adding more albums per voter isn't going to make the consensus any less dull. But both things could make the whole poll more interesting by providing more patterns that can be extracted by analysis. Demographic and genre information would also facilitate more analysis, even including the easy kind you don't need me to do.

But of these four things, one is way hard (getting more voters), one is hard and contentious (getting consistent demographic info), one is a little hard and a little controversial (genre info) and one is fairly easy (more slots per ballot), and even just the last one would give me more data to work with.

For another example of what I can do with more data, here's the poll retabulated to include only the 47 voters who by my count voted for at least 3 rap albums. My list of what's rap and what isn't comes from the voting in the hiphopcritic.com poll, plus a handful of additional artists I looked up and flagged after checking the ballots of people who voted for the first set:

28 - Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
20 - Q-Tip - Renaissance
19 - Erykah Badu - New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War
17 - Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak
15 - TV on the Radio - Dear Science
12 - T.I. - Paper Trail
10 - Roots - Rising Down
10 - Young Jeezy - Recession
9 - Nas - Untitled
7 - Portishead - Third
7 - Santogold - Santogold
7 - Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
6 - Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
6 - Ne-Yo - Year of the Gentleman
5 - Adele - 19
5 - Black Milk - Tronic
5 - Coldplay - Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends
5 - Estelle - Shine
5 - Foreign Exchange - Leave It All Behind
5 - Hold Steady - Stay Positive
4 - Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
4 - Cool Kids - Bake Sale
4 - Gaslight Anthem - '59 Sound
4 - Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
4 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
4 - Scarface - Emeritus
4 - Solange Knowles - Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams
4 - The-Dream - Love/Hate
3 - Atmosphere - When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
3 - Bun B - II Trill
3 - Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark
3 - Guilty Simpson - Ode to the Ghetto
3 - Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
3 - Jazmine Sullivan - Fearless (Jazmine Sullivan)
3 - Jazzanova - Of All the Things
3 - Ludacris - Theater of the Mind
3 - Murs - Murs for President
3 - Nine Inch Nails - Slip
3 - Raphael Saadiq - Way I See It
3 - Steinski - What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
3 - Taylor Swift - Fearless
3 - Usher - Here I Stand
3 - Wale - Mixtape About Nothing
3 - Z-Ro - Crack

xpost to Chuck:

I don't know how this year's would have turned out--I really didn't pay any attention to how which albums were doing with critics generally, though obviously I know what certain people thought of certain things. I knew I wasn't in the race this year and I was fine with that.

I think LCD and TVOTR's victories just signified younger fan bases; in fact (as was pointed out, which I wish I'd remembered to write the first time, since I'd intended to), the younger skewing is why Dylan finished sixth in I.P. (and first in P&J). In my '07 essay I talked about how I was prepared for a dogfight and it never came; then P&J came out with the Top 3 knotted close together. So my prediction had some substance, just for the other poll. Idolator had a lot of the voters were bloggers who'd never voted in P&J, and I think more of them vote for singles, and I think that boosted "Umbrella."

I think an echo chamber is inevitable; it's human nature, and I agree and disagree with it, but I don't feel like there's much I can do about it. So having an opinion about it seems kind of pointless to me, unless it's about specific instances where I agree with it or don't. As far as the singles tastes of P&J voters being "rock-entrenched," I should have just said what I meant, which is that old people voted for "Rehab" because it sounded like an old record and young people voted for "Umbrella" because it sounded like a current one. (I like both records a lot.)

get editors at genral interest publications to recognize that they should ocassionally cover non-indie music.

Not trying to be a crank this morning, or an apologist, but what publications don't already do this? (Do agree they could all do it more.)

Don't most general interest publications tend to cover mainstream, major-label music more than anything?

yeah newsweek is always going on and on about wolf parade and animal collective

Assumed he meant Spin/Blender/Rolling Stone (though yeah, they all tend more toward big-leagers too, as far as I can tell. Or at least bigger indie acts.)

old people voted for "Rehab" because it sounded like an old record and young people voted for "Umbrella" because it sounded like a current one

Yeah, that makes sense, and it's what I figured you meant. (As does the other stuff you said. Thanks!)

poll retabulated to include only the 47 voters who by my count voted for at least 3 rap albums

So the Knux's votes came almost exlusively from voters (like me, I admit) who listed almost no other rap? (Or did you just miss them? Pretty funny if, despite finishing 96th in the overall poll, they actually less turn out to be less troo hip-hop than Drive-By Truckers or Taylor Swift.)

(Same with Steinski, which finished 93rd, and I guess Why?, at 97th -- he used to be sort of hip-hip, right? -- though those are less surprising. Not that Knux are all that surprising themselves.)

Knux voters and their rap votes:

Arielle Castillo - Knux - Lil Wayne
Sean Daly - Kanye West - Knux
Corey du Browa - Knux
Chuck Eddy - Knux
Andy Gensler - Knux
James Hannaham - Knux
Dave Herrera - Knux - Murs
Christian Hoard - Knux - Lil Wayne
James Hunter - Knux
Melissa Maerz - Knux - Lil Wayne
Kembrew McLeod - Knux
Alex Rawls - Cool Kids - Knux - Lil Wayne - Steinski
Ben Wener - Knux

Here's the Metal version from the 26 voters who picked at least 3 metal albums ("metal" labels from ILM Metal poll plus a couple more uncontroversial ones I flagged myself):

10 - Nachtmystium - Assassins: Black Meddle, Pt.1
10 - Torche - Meanderthal
8 - Opeth - Watershed
7 - Portishead - Third
6 - Harvey Milk - Life...The Best Game in Town
6 - Metallica - Death Magnetic
5 - Enslaved - Vertebrae
5 - Genghis Tron - Board Up the House
5 - Sword - Gods of the Earth
4 - Fucked Up - Chemistry of Common Life
4 - Gojira - Way of All Flesh
4 - Meshuggah - obZen
3 - Amon Amarth - Twilight of the Thunder God
3 - Disfear - Live the Storm
3 - Fennesz - Black Sea
3 - Krallice - Krallice
3 - Leviathan - Massive Conspiracy Against All Life
3 - Made Out of Babies - Ruiner
3 - Sigur Rós - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
3 - Testament - Formation of Damnation
3 - TV on the Radio - Dear Science

I guess "general interest" was not the best term. I meant alt-weeklies. It is starting to seem like to me that for some daily newspapers and Time, Newsweek, etc. that after covering major-label popular releases, indie-rock seems to be the only acceptable genre to cover that does not have the same number of followers sales-wise.

Alt-weeklies and Spin, Blender, & RS

Pitchfork has some specialty columns.

RS, Spin, Blender, and the alt-weeklies all include reviews of other genres (especially hip-hop), so I'm still not real sure what you're getting at...(Though sure, again, they could all conceivably include more country, African, Latin, metal, electronic, blues, etc. And some do better than others I'm sure.)

(And the reviews could be longer, and there's no reason for them to be so sycophantically "pegged" to release dates or tour stops, etc. Not claiming coverage couldn't be a whole lot better, obviously.)