Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

the essay about the-dream is really self-defeating in the way that it glosses over electrik red in one sentence by saying that it provides "cheap thrills" but finds ample space to chide people for not being totally up on the-dream

the same year that he got a feature 4-star review in rolling stone magazine

can someone find the 08 results? i want to see how many ppl voted for his first album

wanna say it placed in the 50s

really? i wanna say it placed in the triple digits. i think there were at most ten votes for it or something but i could be imagining that

or #91, rather

ayo glenn can you do something like you did here?: Pazz & Jop 2008

thnx 2 noz for finding one of the funnier ballots to vote for 'trap goin ham'
http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/685700

*smh*

lol @ one of the comments being on the douchiness of "actually". get this dude on 77

uh deej that allison stewart vote is kinda awesome in way that I simply cannot put into words.

wait is that
http://blacksnob.com/storage/msnbc_alisonstewart-big.jpg

I hope so, she has hotness and we could have a totally awesome platonic but flirty relationship while listening to "White Lies".

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/686367

interesting list

snoop dogg smh .gif @ empire state of mind

I kinda disapprove of any votes for Daniel Merriweather's "Impossible".

its forks. what can u say.
dap for voting "own step" though, i dig that song

Lady Gaga had three singles in the top thirteen and scored votes for seventeen (!!) different songs (and nine of those seventeen were received multiple votes). There has to be a P&J record in there somewhere, right?

lol I've only just seen these. thanks, australian open, for distracting me. horrendous. get better taste, critics.

btw, i hate it when people justify their love of "empire state of mind" by citing its huge hook, as though a) we didn't already know that it has a huge hook - it doesn't exactly hide this, b) no other songs had huge hooks in 2009. i mean yeah there's a hollow power there but one of the TEN best songs of the year? i mean, no way. even its boosters mostly admit that jay-z is shit on it!

and you know, if you want big alicia keys drama, she did "try sleeping with a broken heart" herself in 2009 too.

biffed in the bean by Julian Casablancas's microphone stand

i don't think they're doing pazz and jop this year. budget cuts.

― scott seward, Friday, November 6, 2009 11:24 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if only

hi guys! What's an empire state of mind and how can I buy one?

My annual whine--Not enough critics who listen to stuff other than indie rock participate in the Pazz & Jop poll. The P & J poobahs every year say they reach out to be fully inclusive with the electorate, but it seems some folks who write about non-indie can't be bothered to be part of this or are somehow unaware of the poll. I've tried to encourage fellow writers in the past, but did not do so this year.

^^this is becoming my regular whine too.

on the plus side, great essays from maura, chuck and rich juzwiak.

I think the indie-centric nature of the list has been overstated a bit ... I see a lot of fashionable consensus picks at the top (e.g. Phoenix, Animal Collective) but a fairly wide variety of genres represented on the list overall.

I usually complain about the lack of techno on the list, but I understand that it's a fringe genre when you look at the big picture, and am generally happy to see which two or three other people voted for the albums I picked. This year, the dance music hivemind picked Joy Orbison (#20 on the singles list), and even though I'm ambivalent about that single, I find it more interesting to study the consensus that forms within a fringe genre than the consensus that forms around Phoenix being in the top 10 in every publication.

Glenn's stats mash ups...

All idols 2009
http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2009/
"All·Idols is an autopsy of the album ballots from the 2009 Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll. For All·Idols purposes all ranking and point-weighting is ignored; a vote is a vote."

Winners · All Albums · Similarity · Kvltosis Voters · Centricity · Similarity

including:

Most Eccentric Voters
0.000 Kerry Dexter
0.000 Nana Brew-Hammond
0.000 Todd Burns
0.000 Viva Las Vegas
0.000 William Ruhlmann
0.001 David Royko
0.001 J Poet
0.002 Angela Sawyer
0.002 Scott Seward
0.004 Justin Farrar
0.004 Ken Roseman
0.004 Nathan Birk
0.005 Stewart Voegtlin
0.006 Carol Cooper
0.006 Glenn McDonald
0.007 Miles Marshall Lewis
0.008 David M Snyder
0.008 Phil Freeman
0.009 Mike Wolf
0.010 Anthony Mariani
0.010 Bryan Reesman
0.012 Jace Clayton
0.012 Will Romano
0.013 Eric Arnold

I think the indie-centric nature of the list has been overstated

It's not overstated at all, because it's never happened before, not even close. (But yeah, as I said in my essay, the list gets somewhat less Pitchforky -- and slightly less indie -- past the Top 10. But I doubt the Top 40 has ever been near this indiecentric before, either.)

Surprised nobody else has noted that there are three metal albums in the Top 25 -- which is far and away the best showing for metal in Pazz & Jop, ever. I mentioned it in passing in my essay, but I would have thought that would have deserved an essay of its own. I guess not.

Love Scott Seward's ballot -- for all I know, he made all of these albums up -- but I'm kind of sad he didn't vote for Kid Sister!

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/685429

And here's one reason Lady Gaga got so many diverse singles votes:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2009/685630

was pazz and jop published early this year? as the official Stats Guru/Savior was Glenn McDonald

No, it wasn't published early, I actually did the data-correction and tabulation for real this year, not after the fact. (You can read more about that here if you're interested.)

Matthew Schnipper's ballot originally contained 10 votes for Girls, not just the one.

The-Dream got only 8 votes last year.

Here's a consolidated Gucci Mane report, and a similar one for Lady Gaga.

And as always, I'm happy to try to do any other extractions or calculations that anybody wonders about.

notice the ilm joke about GAPDY consensus it's statistically proven

GAPDY in order APYDG

http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2009/index.html

# votes album
1 154 Animal Collective · Merriweather Post Pavilion
2 139 Phoenix · Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
3 114 Yeah Yeah Yeahs · It's Blitz!
4 108 Dirty Projectors · Bitte Orca
5 106 Grizzly Bear · Veckatimest

The explorable version of the poll data here has several more views on it, including this voter-overlap for the top 10 albums...

btw, i hate it when people justify their love of "empire state of mind" by citing its huge hook, as though a) we didn't already know that it has a huge hook - it doesn't exactly hide this, b) no other songs had huge hooks in 2009.

Obviously everyone knows it has a huge hook. I'm not saying that as a nudge, like "hey did you ever notice this hook?" I'm just saying that that's a big part of why I like the song -- which I thought was worth mentioning in response to people criticizing the song for its lyrics or general attitude. Also, I agree with you that other songs had huge hooks in 2009. Some of those songs I like better than "Empire State of Mind," some of them I don't like as much.

The poll and comments are boring (Maura's excepted), the way people are down on r & b and think a bad year is sign of a greater trend. TOO NEGATIVE and why would you want all that negativity when you are buying music. Also I personally was underwhelmed by a lot of artists at the tops of these polls.

Seems to me a lot of people are still having trouble wrt internet and music. I don't see why the internet is such an obstacle for some people, back in the old days, most people relied on RADIO to get their music, conceptually the internet isn't much different, it's just that the variety is much greater.

I consume music on the internet in much the same way I consumed it when I was a kid: flipping the dials, if I am sick of one style, I go to another one. This poll seems so press-oriented and out of touch with how most people get their music these days.

Also, I like unperson's all-Latin ballot, this is the future in the USA, better get used to it.

mike powell's anco essay is typically well-written but (and i'm sure he realizes this) functions just as well as an argument against them as it does an argument for them.

I think what finally made "New York State of Mind" finally click with me was hearing it in a bunch of different settings, it just sounded huge and anthemic - a quality that seems to have been missing from hip-hop for a while now (cue the autogoon crew popping up with dozens of refs to "anthemic" Gucci mixtape moments). I liked how bold and brash it sounded, that's all. Wasn't my single of the year, in fact it wasn't even top five. It just had a quality that a lot of other rap singles have been missing. I mean, all you guys complaining about swag, this isn't Jay's young man swag, this is "fuck you, I run this city" swag.

i have a lot of mixed feelings abt this whole thing; i get why everyone is disappointed in the consensus this year but i really liked several records that made up that consensus and some of them placed high on my own list. part of me thinks it was a uniquely good year for mass-appeal pop/indie and we have to wait for next year to determine if there's any kind of trend.

It's not overstated at all, because it's never happened before, not even close. (But yeah, as I said in my essay, the list gets somewhat less Pitchforky -- and slightly less indie -- past the Top 10. But I doubt the Top 40 has ever been near this indiecentric before, either.)

I guess what I'm really saying is that I'm not convinced it *means* anything in the long run, I think it's a fluke. There were a handful of indie records that got an insane amount of hype but otherwise (i.e. if you showed me the entire list but removed #1-10) then it doesn't look too different from other years, complete with an inexplicably high showing for U2.

mike powell's anco essay is typically well-written but (and i'm sure he realizes this) functions just as well as an argument against them as it does an argument for them.

Yeah, that's what I loved about it!

There were a handful of indie records that got an insane amount of hype

There also wasn't a lot of hype for any non-indie rock from old touchstones - Dylan and Springsteen's were pretty much non-starters once the albums were actually out.

See, thats kind of what I was wondering. Would people have been more satisfied with the list if perennial faves like Dylan and The Boss had made the top ten? I think that would have disappointed me in a different way.

Empire State of Mind is awful, the chorus feels like it comes straight out of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about hip-hop.

any year, you can always say "gee, i wish people checked out this obscure stuff only i liked," but its not like that usually makes the top 10. but as much as I find most of the indie stuff negligible personally, i'd still take people ganging up over it instead of 21st century breakdown or whatever.

an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about hip-hop

Now I understand why I love the song.

it's not a fluke if things have been headed in this direction for the last several years of the poll (xpost)

i think the main reason its not an "interesting list" is that there's 700 critics voting in it--of course it's gonna be a bunch of consensus choices. The VV Film Poll is super-interesting--and prolly my fave critic poll anywhere--because they cap it at 94 ppl.

One of my rants to Flavorpill re: critics in 2009 is especially apt: There's so many records coming down the pipeline, and they are all so easy to hear that critics mostly have to heed advice of other critics just to decide what to even LISTEN TO. It's not like the 70s where there was 600 records that come out and you can hear all of them. Everyone has LIMITLESS access to EVERY record released, and "records" are easier than ever to release. The only way to decide what to even spin is to listen to other ppl doing the same thing.

that's not really true, it's possible to listen to a ton of music and still be on your own path and not really care about what other critics are recommending

mike powell's anco essay is typically well-written but (and i'm sure he realizes this) functions just as well as an argument against them as it does an argument for them.

well, it makes me not want to see where the wild things are, at any rate. otherwise the constant "white guys in their 30s"..."adults pretending to be kids"...refrain just made me think, oh fuck the fuck OFF you tiresome dudes and your tiresome mid-privileged-life crises, just fuck OFF, these things are not interesting or worthwhile.

it's also possible to cover a micro-beat, a very specific genre where you hear everything that comes out and then you can tell everyone else what the stand-outs that year in that genre are

it seems like one could strike a balance between listening to your fellow critics and then checking out other, less well-known stuff in whatever genre's one's interested in

Would people have been more satisfied with the list if perennial faves like Dylan and The Boss had made the top ten? I think that would have disappointed me in a different way.

I don't know about "more satisfied", but the narrative definitely shifts if you make just one or two (hypothetical) changes. If you bump Bob Dylan off the list in '06 (remove him completely and bump everyone else up one spot) then it's an indie-centric top 15 without the "indie was big this year but in the end, the old guard won out" storyline.