Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

Genuine LOL

haha i was about to go for a different Sorkin soliloquy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqeC3BPYTmE

?!

All I said to Chris was that it's possible the publication with by far the second-biggest readership in the country had more effect on people than the kid down his block who runs a blog.

the few good men thing is a genuine lol tho ha

so which one are you beating, time or newsweek

Anyways if I had voted in P&J there would have been one more vote for AnCo - it's no #4 for me (when Dan says "biggest case of Emperor's New Clothes since The Avalanches" I think "get me that designer's number"). I don't think it's being defensive for me to say that this is less about whether or not critics like Anco and more about whether and why critics like or don't like the other stuff we think should be at or near the top of the list.

If Pitchfork either shapes or reflects the consensus (it doesn't matter for the purposes of what I'm about to say), and Pitchfork is in fact gfetting behind artists like Gucci Mane or Electrik Red (in terms of very positive reviews at least), why are hardly any other critics agreeing? Every person who voted for Burrprint: 3D is an ILM regular except for Tom Breihan, who's a Pitchfork writer! Same story for Electrik Red (replace tom with Julianne Shepherd).

Now admittedly the reviews for those albums appeared in Pitchfork in January and December respectively, i.e. they weren't gonna impact on voting habits. But it strikes me that to the extent that ILM might complain about the tastes of other critics, Pitchfork is ahead of any non-ILM critics anywhere...

(see also: Deej and Lex were the only two people to vote for "Inflation" despite it being the best song of the year)

so, to back up: No I don't think our year-end lists specifically do shit for P&J. Any effect, which is totally impossible to quantify (so no there is no credit involved!), would come from our reviews throughout the year and the rather easy way we present our bnm. It's quite simple to drop in and see what we've been most enthusiastic about. It's not simple to do that with nearly any other pub of any size.

But it's impossible to determine how much effect this or that thing has on the larger critical culture. Even w/AnCo, despite getting our best review in five years, I'm sure we had *zero* effect. We def had no effect on Uncut, since Stevie T, who wrote that review, heard the LP before I did and filed his review before ours. That's the one real-world example I can give either way.

oops, I meant to say: Even w/AnCo, despite getting our best review in five years, I'm sure we had *zero* effect in some cases. I'm sure we did have some effect, but to "take credit" for it all is silly.

so which one are you beating, time or newsweek

ha, *music* publication.

I didn't mean it as an inquisition. I was just confused. Scott sounded like he was downplaying the influence p4k has on music critics and music consensus and then started talking about how p4k was the most important music blog on the interwebz. I thought he was saying something different. I'm not trying to score any points here :P

ya i think all it is is that pitchfork is really dependable if you like that sort of thing, and so most critics who voted in pazz and jop's ballots were probably just a dozen or so albums that were best new music at some point this year shuffled about. it's easy to be lazy, and as we've seen from every other year-end list, there isn't really another big voice that's saying anything different. pitchfork are just victims of their own success.

i think a publication with a similarly wide scope, but significantly different tastes would be v welcome and nice in 2010.

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.

― you gone float up with it (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:43 AM (5 hours ago)

Sorry for coming back to this, but didn't he do that a billion times better on The Blueprint? ESoM doesn't even have the "fuck you" to accompany the running of the city.

So okay, just to make sure I understand the logic emerging on this thread, here's what I've got so far:

1) All current music is indie rock -- well, 99 percent of the good stuff anyway, at least when it involves white guys in guitar bands -- so using the category when analyzing which music scores better than other music in critics' polls is a fool's game.

2) Pitchfork covers all kinds of music all the time, so no matter how indie-rock biased, say, the site's Top 10 or 50 albums at the end of every year might seem to you, you're deluded if you associate the site with that particular genre.

3) Any sudden drastic increase (even doubling) in the overlap between records finishing near the top of the Pazz & Jop poll and those finishing near the top of the Pitchfork poll, even when said increase affects the P&J singles list as much as the albums list in entirely unprecedented ways, is mere coincidence. Commonality doesn't imply causality, of course, and the similarities merely reflect something in the air. The results would be exactly the same if Pitchfork had stopped existing a long time ago.

Let me know if I'm missing anything, or if I have anything wrong. But I'm pretty sure I'm getting there now; thanks!

^^that ether

Chuck, I kinda overstated my disagreement with your article - you've definitely made the case for this year potentially being a noteworthy one re: indie placing. Point 1 isn't so much that acknowledging it is a "fool's game," but that indie doesn't have nearly as rigid a definition now, and it's hard to find young critically successful rock artists that don't fall under the envelope (and the flaming lips aren't even young!). As pre-indie Pazz'n'Jop perennials get older/make fewer "clasics," you're going to see an influx of "indie" from that unless there's a sea change in what passes for critically acclaimed rock.

And as for 3, it's not necessarily a mere coincidence, but 5 of the 2008 p'n'j top tenners made Pitchfork's top 10. And of the five p'n'j placers that aren't - Erykah Badu and Lil Wayne made their top 20, leaving Bon Iver (who they actually bother to note would have placed if it hadn't already appeared on their 2007 list), Kanye and Santogold (both pretty pitchfork friendly). Only four of Pitchfork's top 10 for 2007 are in the pazz'n'jops, but kanye and the national made their top 20, leaving Amy Winehouse, bruce springsteen and robert plant, who made big classy hit albums that resonated with older fans - something we didn't see much of this year. Pitchfork and Pazz'n'Jops tastes were headed for this kind of alignment, and I'm not sold that the top 20 rather than top 10 placement of The-Dream and Maxwell signifies a new-new wave hegemony.

Not disputing Chuck's arguments but I still think this year was about a lack of consensus w/r/t wutz good in non-indie land more than anything else. Not saying this "lack of consensus" isn't itself erm politically charged (e.g. the "lack of consensus" re R&B being at least in part because most critics don't bother to check out R&B unless it's shoved under their noses) of course.

The sort of the pop hits that have done really well in P&J polls in the last five years or so have usually also done really well in Pitchfork polls as well.

And while I certainly find Pitchfork'n'Jops the-best-singles-are-the-best-songs-from-our-favorite-albums synergy at the very least boring, your main theory for why it happened makes me pause: Lazy indie voters turning a fun exercise into a dutiful one by listing random "singles" off albums they also voted for are the new version of lazy AOR voters who used to vote for perfunctory tracks off albums they also voted for. Only the genre and technology have changed, and the fact that the AOR squares—back before our newfangled, allegedly singles-oriented, iTunes-through-shitty-speakers era began—almost always got marginalized by radio-imbibing pop and dance and hip-hop fans. Though, hey, at least critics still fell for Lady Gaga this year.

Are you saying picking your favorite songs from your favorite albums is "dutiful" rather than "fun"? Wouldn't it be just as "dutiful" for them to deny themselves the chance to praise their favorite act twice in the name of True Single-hood? I feel like your decades-long contempt for indie rock fans in general cuts into your valid obsveration about what happened this year. Whether or not you like them, they're here. And whether or not they throw some token non-indie acts on their ballot in a slow year for non-indie - making the top ten look less creamcheese - they've been here for a long time.

xpost to Tim

Again, I'd be even more comfortable if said voters' favorite singles came from different indie bands than their favorite albums. As is, compared to 30 previous years of singles voting, by critics supporting all genres (indie rock included, which I've been known to sometimes vote for myself), the overlap really does look pathetic to me. (Then again, that admittedly might have something to do with my decades-long contempt for critics too lazy to find favorite singles that aren't on their favorite albums. Such as the AOR folks I talked about there.)

5 of the 2008 p'n'j top tenners made Pitchfork's top 10

Actually four, by my count (same as 2007, 2006, and 2005, unless I missing something somewhere, and -- again -- half as many as 2009):

1. TV on the Radio (#6 Pitchfork)
2. Vampire Weekend (#7)
3. Portishead (#2)
4. Fleet Foxes (#1)

but not

5. Erykah Badu (#13)
6. Lil Wayne (#11)
7. Santogold (#22)
8. Bon Iver (#29 in 2007)
9. Nick Cave (#32)
10. Kayne West (#21)

For what it's worth, the 2007 P&J top 10, by my count, had three albums (Plant, Winehouse, and Bruce) that didn't even hit the Pitchfork Top 40; 2006 P&J Top 10 had four (Gnarls Barkley, Arctic Monkeys, Neko Case, Tom Waits); 2005 had three (Fiona Apple, White Stripes, My Morning Jacket); 2004 had four (Loretta Lynn, Green Day, U2, Danger Mouse.) So 2008 was a big change in a more Pitchforky direction in itself, in way, already. 2009 just extended the simialirites more.

is it possible that this just has to do with no one being clear on what a single is anymore

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

the pazz i'm looking at has deerhunter (a pitchfork pick) at #10 and nick cave at #11

xhuxk, it kind of seems like you want the favorite tracks to come from different bands than favorite albums for very personal reasons. I'm not sure it really indicates anything other than, after years of being limited to "singles", voters have moved away from that criteria completely. It didn't happen overnight whatever year all tracks became eligible. These days, most peoples albums are made up of songs they like a lot, and I don't think they feel any obligation to honor P&J's history by separating the albums from the singles.

For what it's worth, the 2007 P&J top 10, by my count, had three albums (Plant, Winehouse, and Bruce) that didn't even hit the Pitchfork Top 40; 2006 P&J Top 10 had four (Gnarls Barkley, Arctic Monkeys, Neko Case, Tom Waits); 2005 had three (Fiona Apple, White Stripes, My Morning Jacket); 2004 had four (Loretta Lynn, Green Day, U2, Danger Mouse.) So 2008 was a big change in a more Pitchforky direction in itself, in way, already. 2009 just extended the simialirites more.

This is interesting, as it seems the likely top tenner albums from years past that got slighted this year weren't the-dream/maxwell straight-r&b albums, but boomer novelties, BIG rock bands and All Things Dangermouse.

Pretty sure people's favorite albums have always been made up of songs they like a lot. But I do agree the blurring definition of the single has something to do with this. But that definition has been blurring for at least a decade now; it doesn't explain the gigantic leap this year to seven top 10 singles (all "indie"-ish) from Top 10 albums.

xp Weird. The one I printed out from the site just a couple weeks ago had Cave #9 (687 votes, 61 mentions); Kanye #10 (603, 57); Deerhunter #11 (585, 55). Guess that's a question for the Voice tech folks.

same as 2007, 2006, and 2005

And 2004, oops.

And it's hard to imagine a more creamcheesey singles Top 10 than the one we got, to my eyes.

Can I just say: I listened to Phoenix a bunch and I totally didn't get the big deal. And I've read all this critical stuff about the album and I still have no idea why people like it. Unrelated, but I wanted to say this somewhere. I don't hate the album, but I really do not get the big deal at all.
― Mordy, Thursday, January 21, 2010 6:23 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

mordy, this is scottpl's perfectly sensible explanation from another thread:

This Phoenix record was a bigger deal than the others because it was the first one released into an environment in which most indie listeners and sites/blogs "agreed" that Phoenix were a relatively big deal. Like a 2009 example of why Elephant was a major release the week it came out but White Blood Cells wasn't.

The band had pulled in fans from different spheres over the course of the decade, released records that were mostly slow burns but eventually beloved to some extent (esp the one prior to WAP w/in the U.S.), but this time around it was a hotly anticipated record. The early two tracks, the singles, were then two of the only things people sort of stopped and made time for immediately last year. It didn't hurt that the consensus was then "wow, this is really good."

― scottpl, Friday, December 11, 2009 1:27 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It might be interesting to see which of the top tracks was widely disseminated as a free and legal mp3 by the label. Those songs are very, very easy to hear for people who spend all day listening to music on their computers. The other songs you have to work just a *little* bit harder, like 5 clicks instead of 2, and it's much harder to repeat those listens if you can't download them or don't take the time to do so. In this way, releasing free and legal mp3s is sort of like pushing a song on radio, b/c it has an easier time becoming ubiquitous for this segment of listeners.

it sounds really good in shops too

x-post

saw no love anywhere for the VERY Phoenix-like Das Pop album finally released last year - don't suppose it got a US release tho

One thing I've been curious about the past few years is how many voters simply vote for the ten singles (tracks, whatever) that their computer tells them they played the most through the year. Which to me seems weirdly clinical (part of what I meant about turning a fun exercise dutiful), not to mention not a even a very dependable guage of what songs somebody heard (let alone loved) most, since it leaves out, say, songs heard in public settings, on other computers, wherever. Maybe no voters do that; maybe hundreds of them do now. I really have no idea.

pretty sure most critics put more thought into in than that. if they didn't want to, why would they be critics?

funny, though - most cases where i've overlapped singles and albums, it's actually the album i might get tired of a few years later, not the song.

I do vote for the singles I played most often, which by definition means the ones I enjoyed most. When my computer starts telling me what to do, though, I'll start to pray that it hooks me up with a date on Saturday night.

one problem there is that songs that came out earlier in the year would likely have more plays. but releases from the first six months probably fare better generally anyway. what was the last P&J winner to have been released AFTER say, September? i see 'Modern Times' and 'Late Registration' both came out at the very end of August but would've been leaked a while before that anyway.

It might be interesting to see which of the top tracks was widely disseminated as a free and legal mp3 by the label.

A very unscientific survey reveals:

"Empire," no.
"1901," yes.
"My Girls," no.
"Two Weeks," no.
"Stillness," limited-release
"Zero," no.
"Bad Romance," no. (Although if you wanted the uncensored version you had to find a contraband version of it.)
"Lust For Life," yes.
"Lisztomania," no.
"You Belong With Me," no.

All these songs did have videos, which I think at least denotes them as "emphasis tracks."

people that rubber stamp their singles ballots w/ the same artists as their albums ballots are the worst imo, even moreso than people that don't bother to list any singles. i mean i usually end up having 1 or 2 singles that are from albums on my top 10, but those usually feel like big undeniable singles i'd feel dishonest not including. if you look at P&J singles lists in the 80s and 90s, they were full of big shameless pop hits that don't seem particularly "critic-friendly" in retrospect, no matter how predictable the albums lists look. how critics eventually started treating enjoying popular hit songs like eating their vegetables, I have no idea.

I just crunched some numbers to see what would happen to the results if all the votes from current Pitchfork staffers (I counted 29 on PFM's masthead) were dropped.

The answer: not much. At least within the top 20, which is all I looked at.

The only changes in ranking are that Girls and Mos Def trade places at #10 and #11, ditto Fever Ray and Maxwell at #13 and #14, and Baroness and Sonic Youth at #19 and #20.

Otherwise, it's like: Animal Collective wins by only 259 points, instead of 331.

Interesting, But I don't think anybody has suggested that Pitchfork staffers are a major part of the problem.

scottpl,

no one is denying that pfork has more sway than any blogger or music mag, and i'm sorry if i made it seem like Pop Tarts Suck Toasted or whatever is calling the shots. What I'm trying to say that NO ONE is calling the shots. Most bands that break big are part of some echo chamber fueled by the internet. Critics listen to bloggers, bloggers listen to critics, people listen to a Forkcast track, people see them when they open for the big band--its a big swirling snowball effect that you cannot credit one person or website to. Just because Pfork has the biggest, widest-reaching platform to write about this doesn't mean that they are calling the shots. I think it's really kind of condescending to think that the majority of the 696 biggest music nerds on the planet are just cribbing from the pfork list.

the fact is that a lot of the records that ppl give pfork credit for, anyone who works in the industry and does a modest amount of due dilligence could have seen coming a mile a way. I mean, I remember the lead-ups to Deerhunter, Dan Deacon, Dirty Projjies and AnCo09. None of those records were "pfork plants a review, world changes course." They were slow builds that anyone who writes about music and goes to punk shows saw coming. I remember TWO WEEKS (no pun intended) of people creaming all over MPP before pfork said the word boo.

People think I have a problem with pitchfork and I assuredly do not--hell i love pfork and read the damn thing all the time. But I have a problem with "the myth of pitchfork," that they're shaping the lives of 20/30somethings the world over with their nutrageous tastemaking, when they're really making a lot of incredibly smart decisions based on things people are talking about already, and using their enormous circulation to blast them out into the red states and starbucks dilletantes.

what happened to black kids who pitchfork hyped and then turned against btw?

think i prefer the former approach in all honesty xp

what happened to black kids who pitchfork hyped and then turned against btw?

― call all destroyer, Thursday, January 21, 2010 9:59 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they still sell plenty of records.

Also, I remember even having dinner with Maura and Jess @CMJ the year of Black Kids, and we all saw Black Kids coming because it was all ANYONE was talking about that week, not just pfork

i thought he was talking about the Clipse

hahah

it's really kind of condescending to think that the majority of the 696 biggest music nerds on the planet are just cribbing from the pfork list.

Just to be clear, this isn't what I've been suggesting, either. (In fact, in my essay, I talked about the exact snowball effect that Whiney names, in regards to Animal Collective -- even used that same word.) I think earlier end-of-year lists in general affect Pazz & Jop now, and Pitchfork is a very visible part of that. But it's one piece a much bigger picture. (Plus, not to play devil's advocate, but December is a really busy month for people! Maybe people need a crutch to help them fill out their ballot -- which, let's face it, is just one more than to do, amidst last minute holiday shopping or whatever. So it's not like I don't understand people looking at other lists to remind them what came out that year, or using their iTunes numbers to remind them what songs they played a lot. Just think it's kinda sad.)

i mean, if i'll credit anything on pazz and jop to pfork it's maybe exposing incredibly lazy indie-fied critics to particular dubstep records or metal records, but any internet-savvy person who writes about music in any capacity doesn't need a hand-holding to like Grizzly Bear and Phoenix

xp "one piece of a much bigger picture...one more thing to do...."

Totally agree with some dude about the vegetable-eating thing, though. I wonder how many critics regularly listen to the radio these days, compared to in years past. I assume way less, which I think is also sad. And I'm not saying all critics necessarily should listen to the radio -- I know lots of good ones who don't, and I didn't listen to it much myself when I lived in New York and didn't have a car -- but it's definitely one way to help expose critics to singles that might not be in their personal comfort zone. (And there were plenty of excellent singles on the radio in 2009, no matter what anybody thinks. So I don't buy the "it was just a bad year for hit singles" claim.)

Say what you will about the critics who made Imperial Bedroom the #1 album in 1982, but at least they didn't feel the need to put "Man Out Of Time" or "Beyond Belief" on their singles ballots, they voted for stuff like "The Message" and "Sexual Healing."

tbf I probably would have voted for "Party In The USA" and "Birthday Sex" had I voted

assume they're not "party in the usa" and "birthday sex," what were 2009's slighted "the message" and "sexual healing"?

could you frame that question in a way that doesn't set up any possible answer for easy dismissal and ridicule?