Year-End Critics' Polls '08

I have to recuse myself from commenting on the metal lists, but otherwise, Blender's is by far the best of these so far.

yes but MOJO have never really been into experimental electronic or minimal composition in the past have they?

I don't know what the staff's iPod's look like but they seem to have an in-house expert on everything. (And if they don't have one for something they usually know where to find a good one)

Their canonizations and monthly covers can obscure that finer point though.

It's probably a bit like Pitchfork's 2000 list where Gas' Pop stood out like a sore thumb amidst all the indie-rock (obv. Pitchfork's end of year lists are a bit different now). I queried this at the time and Mark Richardson (who obv likes a lot of electronic music) explained that he'd loved that album and converted several other writers. Pitchfork weren't trying to say this was the only good electronic album of that year, it's just that several writers happened to vote for it. I'm sure that Mojo has its equivalent or equivalents to Mark.

Which is totally fair enough. But it still points to the problem with tabulated lists generally: one reads meaning where in fact there is only statistical randomness.

Having said this, the "nine similar things plus one different thing" approach to individual end-of-year listmaking is always (to my mind) a sign that one should not take said list too seriously. The presence of the one different thing can only be seen as perplexing, ultimately meaningless - remember all those indie rock + Outkast album lists of 2003.

ultimately meaningless

No, not at all. All those indie rockers came to the album for that one song. I think it was "Ghetto Musick."

i mean, "hey ya" was no pushover either

I queried this at the time and Mark Richardson (who obv likes a lot of electronic music) explained that he'd loved that album and converted several other writers.

I think the exact same thing happened the next year with Fennesz's "Endless Summer" at #2!

I agree with Tim for the most part, but statistical randomness in poll results is somewhat dependent on the point tallying system for the poll (yeah, I harp on this every year) ... so for example, one person might convert a bunch of colleagues to something completely new (to them), but chances are they'll toss that album in at #8 or #9 on their list, not #1 or #2, so if pollmakers choose an unweighted (50, 49, 48, ... 3, 2, 1) point scheme or even a mildly weighted scheme, then they're opening themselves up to having a poll that's inexplicably dominated by a bunch of #9 throw-in votes.

The statistical-randomness bit is much closer to what I was referring to w/my high-school crack: it would be more unusual to not see those kinds of deviations on long lists like these ones.

OTOH the very fact that a single record stands out as a "deviation" on a list tends to suggest that the reigning ideology at that publication is a little too well entrenched.

(metal mags tend to be more honest about this - no non-metal whatsoever)

Surely Lil Wayne will be the main beneficiary of the 9th/10th votes this year. People who like hip hop but don't listen to it all the time tend to feel odd about not including at least one example in their top 10, even in a weak year, but what they intend to say - "I like hip hop even though I haven't heard much good stuff this year" - reads more as "I don't really like hip hop but feel obliged to include one album in order to seem eclectic", ie a sincere motive (at least in some cases) reads as a bogus one. Hence an album which even most Lil Wayne fans admit is patchy ends up, once the votes are tallied, looking like a masterpiece for want of any serious competition. Like Tim says, the same thing happened with OutKast in 2003, although I unfashionably still think that was genuinely deserving.

Anyway, the lists so far prove that my theory about Portishead placing highly in P&J obviously derives from hanging out with an unrepresentative number of Portishead fans.

Q Magazine

1 Kings of Leon - Because of The Times
2 Fleet Foxes - s/t
3 Coldplay - Viva La Vida...
4 Vampire Weekend - s/t
5 Glasvegas - s/t
6 Duffy - Rockferry
7 TV On The Radio - Dear, Science
8 Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
9 The Racontuers - Consoluers of The Lonely
10 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
11. Sigur Ros - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
12 Keane - Perfect Symmetry
13 MGMT - Orcular Spectacular
14 Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads
15 Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
16 Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
17 Adele - 19
18 British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
19 Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
20 The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound
21 Razorlight - Slipaway Fires
22 The Killers - Day and Age
23 Beck - Modern Guilt
24 The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of The Understatement
25 Metallica - Death Magnetic
26 Conor Oberst - s/t
27 Neil Diamond - Before Home
28 Paul Weller - 22 Dreams
29 AC/DC - Black Ice
30 Portishead - Third
31 Black Mountain - In The Future
32 Oasis - Dig Out Your Souk
33 Hercules & Love Affair - s/t
34 Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
35 The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
36 R.E.M. - Accelerate
37 Lykke Li - Youth Novels
38 John Mellencamp - LifeDeathLoveAndFreeedom
39 Santogold - s/t
40 My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
41 Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
42 Liam Finn - I'll Be Lightning
43 Joan As Police Women - To Survive
44 Black Kids - Partie Traumatic
45 Jack Johnson - Sleep Through Stattic
46 Jenny Lewis - Acid Tounge
47 The Verve - Forth
48 Randy Newman - Harps and Angels
49 Emmylou Harris - All I Indented To Be
50 Dido - Safe Trip Home

How can all these mags release their best-of-2008 lists now, when there's still more than a month left of 2008?

Tradition

wish these mags would show some balls for once and just do a Top 50 Albums We Feel Deserve More Love ignoring anything that went top 40 or sold over a certain amount. what is the point of a list like Q's? they could do something a lot more interesting and useful to their readers but no.

32 Oasis - Dig Out Your Souk

http://sail-world.com/photos/Med_Marrakech%20souk.jpg

what is the point of a list like Q's?

So that people who buy five albums a year and Q once or twice in a year can feel like they're catching up?

Including The Killers (this week no doubt) 28 of those albums made the UK top ten.

So that people who buy five albums a year and Q once or twice in a year can feel like they're catching up?

why cater an EOY list for people who only buy your magazine once or twice a year? why fill it with best-selling albums when those same people could just go into Tesco and see the same albums there in the actual chart?

On further analysis if The Killers make #1 this weekend the list will have 15 chart toppers. You can see 13 of those records in this weeks Top 75. I also don't see why have a top 50 like that, has they gone down to 100 and put something you might not see in Tesco it might have been worthwhile.

I hear Uncut went with Portishead, haven't seen it myself but that's good to hear.

why cater an EOY list for people who only buy your magazine once or twice a year?

"Cater" might be too strong a word, but there's def. a market for people who won't follow music all year-round but will pay closer attention at the end of the year because they know they everything they want to know will be condensed into convenient summaries. It's kind of the music equivalent of people who don't watch much sports, but stay glued to the TV during the Olympics, or even people who don't watch too many movies, but will watch the Academy Awards to check out the winners and make sure they haven't missed out on anything big.

Perhaps the Q list will convince them that they don't need to bother anymore.

Those annual Q lists are the only ones which seriously raise my suspicions re. authenticity.

mass outrage at middle aged music lists in magazines aimed at middle aged readers, News at Ten

Before Paper Thin Walls shut down, we picked Portishead as our Album Of The Year...

So

Paper Thin Walls
1. Portishead - Third

I like your approach.

Ned's ballot:

1. Portishead - Third
2. The Cure - Disintegration Pt IV

The Voyage Home

Sad thing is that's not too removed from the truth, which is another reason I'm not drawing up a list this year.

These lists need more Matmos, methinks.

Don Cavalli album's pretty good tho it's like a parody on old blues albums done with electric gtrs

The only list I really get excited for anymore is probably THE WIRE list

Surprised to see Bon Iver and Okkervil pop up but not Shearwater.

w/r/t to what Dorian said above, I just realized that I haven't voted for a single rap record this year, in all the various year-end lists I've submitted (they're different for diff publications for criteria reasons and the fact that I actually vote for "national" and "local" CDs for one outlet).

nothing was AWESOME in hip-hop this year, you know? and the likeliest candidates all got pushed back from late 2008 to early 2009.

simon otm

Q's list is really just depressing and is surely some cruel joke

nothing was AWESOME in hip-hop this year, you know? and the likeliest candidates all got pushed back from late 2008 to early 2009.

― Beatrix Kiddo, Tuesday, November 25, 2008 12:16 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean, it wasn't the best year for hip-hop sure...

But The Roots, ABN, TI, Jeezy, Webbie and Guilty Simpson are all pretty awesome in my eyes.

Whiney, I'm going to go ahead and fess up that I haven't heard ANY of those!

Wait, who are ABN?

I spend waaaay too much time and energy listing to avant-garde and noise...

ABN are Assholes By Nature, Houston diehards Z-Ro and Trae together. I think all those records I mentioned are better than the Lil Wayne record.

If you like avant-garde and noise, i suggest starting with the Roots record, which is pretty apocalyptic and unforgiving and moving on to Guilty Simpson, which is Madlibby stuff that The Wire readers could prolly fuck with.

Also, since you're here, can we talk about the best NOISE noise records (ie, harsh noise, not Fuck Buttons) of the year?

The only ones I've really loved are (in order)

1. Carlos Giffoni - Eternal Noise
2. Emeralds – Solar Bridge
3. Prurient - And Still Waiting
4. Burning Star Core - Challenger
5. The Goslings – Occasion
6. Robedoor - Rancor Keeper
7. Wold - Stratification
8. Skull Defekts - The Drone Drug

But I'm sure there's some I haven't copped. Supposedly Jason Crumer on Hospital is supposed to be ill.

But I'm sure there's a bunch

scratch that last line

also feeling nappy roots and bun b, in terms of hip-hop

Oh yeah, add Nappy Roots to that list, definitely!

nothing was AWESOME in hip-hop this year, you know? and the likeliest candidates all got pushed back from late 2008 to early 2009.

― Beatrix Kiddo, Tuesday, November 25, 2008 11:16 AM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark

yah maybe try listening to rap before saying stuff like this??

ooooooohboy I sure do love these conversations

and the likeliest candidates all got pushed back from late 2008 to early 2009.

― Beatrix Kiddo, Tuesday, November 25, 2008 11:16 AM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark

jay-z? common? timbaland?

50 and Alchemist too (I don't think Common got pushed back to next year, though)

whiney you HAVE to cop crumer, that disc is amazing

also i'll second prurient, giffoni (that album and his other releases), bxc

That Lil Wayne record should be finishing high in critics polls, probably higher than it has on these listed. I mean it's really good and really popular, which tends to be what rises to the top when consensus is measured.

I don't think it's the best record of the year or anything, but it's one of the best albums that also sold a lot and MIGHT be the best hip-hop album in a relatively weak year for hip-hop albums.

It's the preponderance of Fleet Foxes/My Morning Jacket/Kings of Leon/etc. indie-roots mediocrities that's more depressing.

deej, i'll amend what i said to

"nothing was AWESOME in hip-hop this year for me"

that i heard

carter iii was great for what it was but couldn't be top ten for me given that there was so much better stuff out in other genres

robedoor and pocahaunted kinda leave me a bit cold, to be honest