Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

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?

fwiw, Bon Iver was ineligible for our 2008 list because he was already on our 2007 list. So if you're counting there was a 5/10 not a 4/10 top 10 crossover last year but one of the non-crossovers wasn't even in play. Even if you want to extend it to the top 10 records eligible in both polls, it stays at 5/10 since the p&j #11 (nick cave) made our top 20 or 25 but not our top 10.

Two of the other four records not shared last year in the top 10s were just outside ours at 11 and 13. So in 2008, p4k and P&j shared seven of the top 12 records that were eligible for both polls. This year they shared 11 of the top 13.

Looks like in 2006 five of our top seven records were also in the P&J top 10, so the count of 4/10 was wrong there too.

In 2005, it was indeed a 4/10 crossover; the P&J top three were all in our top four, so they nearly matched up across the top.

As I said, I think the similarities though are more striking as you break down by genre and extend past the top 10 to the top 40. If you were to set aside pretty much any baby boomer music-- and I am cherrypicking stats here like crazy point at this point, but if you're trying to figure out what sort of shit people under 40 or so want from a music press it's instructive-- they would become even more pronounced.

Again, I am in no way saying there is a casual effect but they match up quite well. At the same time, Pitchfork has thrived as a music magazine the past five years in a v difficult climate first for media and music, then for internet advertising, then for everybody. And I would guess being pretty ok at sniffing out what people who want to write, read, and think about music in this country tend to like is part of the reason.

//

sure. whiney, I agree with that. It is impossible for one thing to take a seedling of something totally in a vacuum and throw it onto the world these days. Someone was always there first, which is why, as I said above, it's a fool's errand to claim being there first as your badge of honor. So, no, the world doesn't change course; but I think the world accelerates course to some degree. The jump in audience that these "slow builds anyone can see coming" gets from us is a fast track that you are underestimating. There used to be a hell of a lot of more steps between "punk shows" and some of the places these bands have gone lately.

Again, I'm not saying "We did it" but we helped way more than you think. Unless there was some other platform as large as ours in which to broadcast all of this "creaming" people were doing (radio; no; tv: maybe one late-night appearance; RS: no). Or you think the rest of the world is in tune to all these small indie outlets (they are not). The odd sort of third-tier death cab-y stuff that gets into gossip girl and satellite radio does well w/o us, but it's the established channels of radio and tv selling those records, not the internet/bklyn types that you think would get AnCo09 all this attention w/o us.

If your theory holds, we haven't mattered since 2004 or whatever you said, then all this shit would presumably exist the same w/o us then it would follow that there would be popular indie bands from the past 5-6 years that Pitchfork doesn't like: So who do you think those are? Which indie bands are making the top 40 of p&j or doing very well in indie circles based solely on the "creaming" of the masses and w/o our signing off on them? I want to see some names.

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

you're the one who made the "they didn't praise costello twice, they praised grandmaster flash and marvin gaye" as well - so yeah, what are the obvious pop picks like "the message" and "sexual healing" in 2009 that should have top tenned and didn't? I'm actually being honest when I say "Party In The USA" and "Birthday Sex" are as close as I can get.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13478-i-and-love-and-you/

fwiw I was pretty surprised to see my #1, "Blame It," only get as high as 55, and my #2, "Pretty Wings," did pretty well but really shoulda been top 10.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12662-its-not-me-its-you/

xp Ha ha, actually some dude just reminded me of the year that Greil Marcus put three different Costello Punch The Clock singles on his ballot. ("Shipbuilding," "Pills And Soap," and uh, whatever that other one was.) (But Greil also had no problem voting for Blue Oyster Cult's "In Thee," Moon Martin's "Rolene," Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff," Foreigner's "Dirty White Boy," and an Esssential Logic EP in 1979, so no complaints here.)

any internet-savvy person who writes about music in any capacity doesn't need a hand-holding to like Grizzly Bear and Phoenix

doesn't need a hand-holding to hear grizzly bear and phoenix -- why so many people like them, enough to put on a 10-best-of-the-year list, that's a whole other issue. i think chuck's real root question is, what is this sensibility (which he largely does not share), where did it come from, what is shaping it? pfork is the most visible manifestation of it, but it's still just a manifestation, not a root cause. why such a seeming homogeneity of taste among music tastemakers at a time of such profligate musical diversity? when everybody (and especially people who really care about and write about music) can allegedly hear everything and anything they want to, why do so many of them gravitate to a seemingly narrow part of the spectrum? that's the real thing i think some people are scratching their heads at here, much more than the relative degree and importance of pitchfork's influence. (and obv. i know that in fact animal collective don't sound anything like phoenix and neither sounds like the yeah yeah yeahs, but i do think it's fair to group them as part of a sensibility if not a genre per se.)

I think either of the two Black Eyed Peas megahits from 2009 would've finished higher in a late '90s P&J poll.

does pop have to be "Sexual Healing"-level great to justifiably outperform a promo mp3 from Domino or Warp Records, I guess is my question now. (xpost)

I mean, Smash Mouth finished in the P&J top 10 singles TWICE.

Amid all this hand-wringing, 2009 wasn't exactly a vintage year for mega-selling pop music. I'm not really going to bang the drum for La Roux, the Black Eyed Peas or Flo Rida.

nobody said mega-selling, I'm just talking about singles that charted on any singles chart anywhere in the US.

what a disaster for 2009

xpost nah, and I'll definitely take "birthday sex" over "hyph myngo" or girls or whatever, I just can't get indignant that Jamie Foxx doesn't make the top ten singles or that Roseanne Cash, Green Day and that Sparklehorse/Dangermouse collabo didn't take their rightful place in the upper reaches of the album chart. There's an obvious nerd bias to this stuff, but I feel like people are just demanding indie guilt in the face of indie solipsism, and these criticisms are actually demanding young crits fulfill a duty than that they're missing out on fun.

typos galore there (and the disaster crack was re: BEPs).

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.

I think this is 100% otm.

why would indie guilt be the #1 reason to pay attention to music that isn't indie rock, or want other people to? once again, we're not talking about catchy popular ubiquitous hit songs, not brussel sprouts.

er strike that first "not" obviously

you're not talking about "paying attention to catchy popular ubiquitous hit songs," you're talking about finding them to be among the ten best songs they heard this year. and as much as I've enjoyed a few of the year's declarations of sexual prowess and fashion-line themes, I didn't enjoy them so much that I'm going to demand ambitious collegiates put the dirty projectors down to give them love or whatever.

and I would have totally gone to bat for smashmouth

P&J runs a "singles" list, not a "songs" or "tracks" list. I just think that should still count for something.

Ah, another iteration of the old Lloyd Cole post-collegiate fanbase vs girls wearing Madonna gummy bracelets divide, in other words.

some dude otm, i still only vote for songs that are actual singles

And again, the singles ballots are optional, and many have and still do just leave them blank. Maybe the only difference is that a lot of the people that used to leave them blank aren't anymore.

didn't maura say all the top ten entries had videos?

Nothing says ambition like the Dirty Projectors.

only 4 of them charted in the Hot 100, though, which is a record low (I won't give away more, since I'm still compiling more complete data).

So, just supposin', if PFM asked its single reviewers to review more R&B, diva pop, and Britishes (as, say, The Singles Jukebox does), would it make any dent on the P&J singles chart?

this is starting to sound like canadian content laws

I think it would have been hilariously awesome if all 3 of BEP's 2009 singles ended up in the top 10. I fucking love those songs.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12662-its-not-me-its-you/

so your example of a band that the indie cognoscenti behind Dan Deacon and Deerhunter has launched w/o us is an americana/folk group produced by Rick Rubin for his Sony label that gained a large audience in part touring with Dave Matthews and Widespread Panic?

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, in this context, is the difference between "nutrageous tastemaking" and "smart decisions", other than hyperbole and the pain each phrase exacts when you read it? Again, it's not like many of the hyped indie bands we "passed" on-- sound team, cold war kids, voxtrot, anathallo, ghostland observatory, white denim, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, birdmonster, for examples-- went anywhere in the long run did they?

Of course we are filtering through the bands around; of course some people freaking talk about them before we run shit, especially since, as I said before, we vet things carefully because every decision we make gets remembered. So we are sifting through things and making decisions based on what we like and broadcasting those decisions to an exponentially large audience than any other indie internet outlet. Then it turns out that only it's mostly only the bands we like that also get a foothold via these circles. And yet somehow we don't matter at all other than to the poor silly Starbucks drinkers and flyover kids who aren't wise enough to find this stuff through the much tinier outlets that exist? Honestly, Chris you know I love ya, but sometimes I think the whole of BKLYN has a pretty effed up perspective on this stuff. For us to drop out and not leave a central space in the middle of this process, would certainly alter things, or at the very least slow them down considerably. Maybe not for the tight circle of feedback-loop types feeding each other in NYC, but for many others, not just the people you're sniffing at here.

you linked to lily allen, silly head

it's not like many of the hyped indie bands we "passed" on--- went anywhere in the long run did they?

Yeah, but Electric Six are still making really good albums! (Something Anthony and I can finally agree on, I think.)

this is starting to sound like canadian content laws

― da croupier, Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:00 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm not saying the system is broken and new rules need to be enforced, I'm saying that a new approach is being taken to the singles list by the voters, and the list is less interesting (or at least far less distinct from the albums list) because of it.

The lack of critical enthusiasm for E6 is probably a big factor in my indifference as to which acts p'n'j does overrate.

Come back when E6 has been around as long as The Cure and Depeche Mode and you'll finally understand Ned and me.

there are plenty of bands that PF ignored or panned early on that went on to do big things -- De Stijl was a pretty big deal, indie-wise, but they didn't review the White Stripes until White Blood Cells, while defensively noting on the front page that they hadn't reviewed the first 2 albums because noone sent them promos.

at least those guys are rich!

xpost

haha true

you linked to lily allen, silly head

yeah wrong link; lily allen we were down with from the start though, and again the AnCo crowd didn't matter there at all

there are plenty of bands that PF ignored or panned early on that went on to do big things

yeah, totally. see, for instance, this review of Blood Visions that they didn't run until after Jay signed with Matador--long after it had been out and gotten pretty big with people I know

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/6760-through-the-cracks/