Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

xp And right, there wasn't a singles poll until a year later. But in 1979, the only Top 10 single overlapping with the album Top 10 was by Donna Summer. (Not a white ppl.)

FWIW the 'research shows the readers don't want that' doctrine pretty much destroyed the NME, in terms of both readership and quality.

There were always plenty of "non-mainstream" singles in the poll, though. (In fact, the singles poll was the first place that indie label rock -- the Brains, Robin Lane & the Chartbusters, Bush Tetras, Pylon -- actually placed. None had an album that did comparably well.)

Since I'd argue most of these albums come from what can easily be perceived as a "single aesthetic," does anyone know if this is basically what Rolling Stone was praising at the time?

RS 1978:

Best Album
• Some Girls - Rolling Stones

Runners-Up
• Darkness On The Edge Of Town - Bruce Springsteen
• Running On Empty - Jackson Browne
• This Year's Model - Elvis Costello
• Road To Ruin - Ramones
• Misfits - Kinks

Best Single
• Stayin Alive - Bee Gees

Runners-Up
• Life's Been Good - Joe Walsh
• Miss You - Rolling Stones
• Because The Night - Patti Smith
• Rock And Roll Fantasy - Kinks
• Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon
• Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty
• Just What I Needed - Cars

If "singles" were limited to songs heard on the radio and seen on MTV it would definitely be a consensus, what with shrinking playlists everywhere.

I definitely think the singles homogeneity is more concerning (i think that the "no reason to go outside musical comfort zone" has a lot to do with it) than the "homogeneity" of the album choices. The top ten is always about forming a canon, and since no one can really come up with some obvious LPs being ignored, I'd just say it was a year where you didn't have a lot of canonical LPs coming from pop, r&b, etc. But "hipster shit" tends to dominate whenever there aren't a lot of undeniable popular works outside of it - as Scott notes nobody's screaming "where are the black eyed peas???" - and this year just had fewer pre-indie canonical fogies of note to make the list look less pitchforky.

FWIW the 'research shows the readers don't want that' doctrine pretty much destroyed the NME, in terms of both readership and quality.

I don't think it's research so much as dollar votes and actual measurable metrics (i.e. hits)-- and I do think there is a lot more history of quality music writing in the UK tbh. There were far more music mags of note there, despite the smaller population.

(more defensiveness: fwiw, we don't trend toward embracing the lowest denominator anyway-- we write often about what we want to cover instead of waiting to sort out what readers might like, and we print lengthy reviews while everyone else is doing the opposite.)

There were always plenty of "non-mainstream" singles in the poll, though

Sure, there were, but they were usually limited to tracks that had a physical release as a single, like on a 7-inch. Since not every band released stuff on 7-inch, there was an upper limit on how much overlap there could be with the albums.

top 5 selling albums of 1978:
1 Saturday Night Fever - ost
2 Grease - ost
3 Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (#1 seller of 77!)
4 Billy Joel - The Stranger
5 Steely Dan - Aja

btw, for anyone who followed my attempt to review 1000 2009 releases over twitter, here are the 10 highest ranking records on Pazz And Jop and why I didn’t end up reviewing them. dunno what some of these exactly say about my "worldview" or "how I hear music"

43. Allen Toussaint – The Bright Mississippi
N0nesuch hasn’t sent me an e-mail in five years. I literally have no concept whatsoever of what’s happening over there at any given time. I literally didn’t even know this record existed until today. I saw Allen at Bonnaroo and he was amazing. What can I say?

50. Vijay Iyer Trio – Historicity
Everyone was raving about this record around September. I tried at least five times to steal a leak on the internet but “universally acclaimed jazz record” doesn’t exactly get as many Rapidshare hits as 'important' stuff like “Japandroids demos.” I literally tried but COULDNT FIND a leak of this record. Jazz nerds need to step their internet game up. I probably should have reached out to the label, but I had like 300 other records to hear and it got lost in the shuffle. I ended up hearing a copy in laaaaate December as i was in the home stretch and didn't really have room for it.

72. The Black Crowes – Before The Frost… Until The Freeze
It’s the Black Crowes. I promptly judged this book by its leather fringe, patchouli-soaked cover and avoided it entirely. Is this good? I don't believe it.

73. Loudon Wainwright III – High Wide And Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project
I respect his legacy and all but this dude’s stuff is like the Paste magazine jams that are just totally off my radar.

87. Buddy And Julie Miller – Written In Chalk
Them too.

90. Built To Spill – There Is No Enemy
Built To Spill make some of the most boring, uninteresting music I’ve ever heard. After hearing hundreds of bad indie rock bands that rip them off in 2009, the prospect of sitting through an album by them literally disgusted me. I was praying it would be just some probly-6.0-on-Pitchfork nineteenth album by some band people don’t care about anymore. But instead I was wrong and here we are.

94. Nellie McKay – Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute To Doris Day
I was bored just reading the title. What the fuck

103. Vic Chesnutt – At The Cut
R.I.P., dude. I still have no idea what your music sounds like.

115 Lee Fields & The Expressions – My World
I bet I would have liked this. I never heard of it until now.

122. Franco & Le Tout Puissant OK Jazz – Francophonic, Vol 2
I need to hear more jazz apparently

1978 music consumers >>>>>>>> Pazz Joppers imo

more like Nick LOL

quick think of 10 critically popular bands that broke after 1989 that aren't remotely "indie"

xxp 43, 50, 72, and 90 are all over 140 characters.

Green Day, System Of A Down, The Roots

and with RATM you have 4

U2

oh wait, scratch that

pretty sure they broke before 1989

xpost haha

The Prodigy

PJ Harvey

yeah, she's folk, right

nah she's blues

i guess she's not a band, though

Do Outkast, Wu Tang, etc. count as bands?

PJ Harvery is a band whose lead singer is Polly Jean Harvey, kind of like how Sade is a band fronted by Sade Adu.

Harvery

saying Green Day (or RATM) are not remotely indie reeks of massive revisionism.

DOKKEN

idk wtf is wrong with my typing today

*crosses fingers in the hope that this thread devolves into a crazy bunch of posts about what is and isn't indie.*

Mastodon, Queens Of The Stone Age, Dixie Chicks (or, if they're too early, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings. Or Tinariwen. Or Kings Of Leon.)

those nu metal and post grunge bands that sold shitloads arent remotely indie.
Hootie as well.

My Morning Jacket

indie - guitars, distortion, bad singing
not indie - a vagina

Fluxblog on xhuxk's article:

This is an extraordinarily depressing essay by former Voice editor/professional contrarian Chuck Eddy. It’s like a guy who used to be principal of a high school getting really angry about the outcome of his old school’s student council election.

http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/344479080/the-year-of-too-much-consensus

Ha ha.

Oh wait, '89? I thought you meant '99. '89 is easy.

those nu metal and post grunge bands that sold shitloads arent remotely indie.
Hootie as well.

Right, but they're not "critically popular."

wow, there's a lot of discussion going on about xhuxk's essay on Tumblr.

see T0m E.'s Tumblr: http://tomewing.tumblr.com/

yeah, none of that is indie-rooted or appeals to indie kids. The only that applies I think is SOTD and they, you know, sucked.

Kings Of Leon were definitely indie when they came out, could even make cases for QOTSA and maaaaybe Mastodon (though by there you're definitely into "non-indie that indie folks like").

yeah but all three of those bands sounds different^^^!

I refer you to my previous post.

yeah but "a vagina" is your answer to everything

touche

how long into our vessel reaches curvy colombian waters?

My friend raises this interesting point...

if it's so terrible that indie rock is in the top 5, what SHOULD have been there? Like and I mean things that people could actually rally behind, not just random shit you like

Tom Ewing: "It’s like when I first started blogging and I got the reputation of being fiercely pro-pop and anti-indie, and I played up to that a little bit, but what I was being contrary against was my immediate online vicinity."

THAT, my friends is indie guilt defined.

xpost

gucci mane seems to be getting a bit of attention online...

whiney, is your friend scottpl?

I can easily see The-Dream or Maxwell (neither of whom I like much, btw) finishing Top 5 in an earlier of era of P&J, Whiney. For starters.