Pazz & Jop 2008

I totally forgot that I own that Philip Jeck album! I should listen to it!

Do you like Jeck, Sundar?

Wow. Looking at my critical alignment rating (Centricity: 552/576), I'm kind of amazed I even have a job writing about music, as my tastes seem to have virtually zero overlap... (Juana Molina's Un Dia, with 10 other voters, was my closest "mainstream" inclusion; for most of my choices I was the only voter.)

Question for Glenn: What does it mean if a voter isn't included in the Similarity list?

I do, generally, Mark. Saw him in Toronto some years back and really enjoyed it. Enjoyed checking out his setup and stack of 7"s too.

Wow, I kind of <3 J.D. Considine's list. Should check out more of that.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/684566

Oh, here's my ballot

How do you see your critical alignment rating?

i like scrolling thru all the 1-mention stuff on the lists. more interesting than the top 100.

Fuck, 'Lookin' Boy'! I forgot 'Lookin' Boy'!

Fuck, 'Lookin' Boy'! I forgot 'Lookin' Boy'! YAHHH TRICK YAHHH

Only 5 votes for Supreme Balloon?

I've never really understood the rationale behind carryover votes either. For one thing, if you're going to claim that points awarded by a voter in 2007 are valid in 2008, then you're implicitly assuming that those voters feel the same way about that song (or album) in 2008 as they did in 2007 (unless they voted for the song in both years -- isn't double-counting votes a bit unfair too?) And of course, a record's impact won't necessarily be aligned with the calendar year, but the poll does have one (and only one) calendar year in its title, so compiling two year's worth of votes for some songs vs one year's worth for others doesn't present an equal playing field. The calendar year "cutoff" is arbitrary, but doesn't that mean that a single released in November (that will collect votes in two different years) has an unfair advantage over a single released in April (that probably won't?)

In analogy to sports, it would be like comparing two candidates for a 2008 MVP award, and favouring one guy only because he had the better year in 2007 (of course people actually do this, but I think it's also wrong.) They're different years!

Maybe a fairer system for P&J would be one in which only 50% of the vote from the previous year was carried over?

Has P&J always been this predictable? Apart from Nick Cave getting more love than I expected (which is great) and Kanye likewise (which I don't understand at all) there's not a single surprise on here. Over on the "Is it Rolling, Bob?" thread these whole Top 10s were pretty much predicted back in October.

Oh, and woot Portishead.

consensus is as consensus does.

Nick Cave in every freaking top ten list - is there some kind of Heidi Fleiss thing going on here?

t.i. should've kicked Nick's pasty ass!!!

Seconded!!

btw, was anyone expecting Q-Tip to do as well as he did? (beat the Truckers even.)

xp

xp???

I've only heard a couple of tracks off the new Q-Tip so far; quite pleasant but nothing earth shattering.

Only one vote for Paarvoharju?

Only heard one track off that so far and it was v. good indeed so clearly it's another album I have to get familiar with.

how many ilxors does it take to get Torche in the top 40?

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

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pshrbrn: to get a similarity score, a pair of voters have to have at least two albums in common, so a few people towards the bottom of the centricity list just didn't have anybody statistically similar. The scores also get weird when comparing ballots of very different lengths, so I ruled out another handful of people who didn't have at least 8 album votes.

Mordy: "Centricity" is the thing I used to call "Critical Alignment Rating". Or click on yourself in the Voters list; there's a page for every voter.

I totally cockblocked a couple pshrbrn lone wolf votes.

i totally cockblocked pshrbrn like a lone wolf.

Ignoring the two voters who shared no votes with anybody, if you take voting for the same album as the connection, the reminaing 575 voters are all connected within four degrees of separation. 526 are connected within three.

Torche should have been in the top 10

JVC, your Badu blurb really stood out when I read through the comments earlier (and I didn't even know it was you). Nice work.

Thanks. I was happy to see they printed my comment on my first year taking part.

I posted about this before, but my post got eaten somehow, so I'll bring it back: why on earth did Real Emotional Trash place so high? It's the least of Malkmus' albums, to these ears, Janet Weiss' addition nonwithstanding.

Btw: Is anyone else shocked Malkmus didn't place higher?

― Mordy, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 1:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I posted about this before, but my post got eaten somehow, so I'll bring it back: why on earth did Real Emotional Trash place so high? It's the least of Malkmus' albums, to these ears, Janet Weiss' addition nonwithstanding.

― Beatrix Kiddo, Thursday, January 22, 2009 9:16 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol perspectives

a lot of great comments this year - the one about the dude sitting on the writer's hood for over an hour listening to Death Magnetic (true or not) was probably my favorite.

but i liked this one too (even though, reading the author's crit growing up in baltimore, i detested everything he stood for and wanted to be the anti-him) and it raises an interesting question:

One question I'd love to see asked in a year-end poll would look into how many voters maintain an ongoing Best Albums/Best Tracks list, and how many spend a couple of desperate days each December trying to remember (like I do) what they were listening to and liking back in April. It's not that I don't understand the impulse to make lists; where I break ranks is when list-making becomes a form of ranking. Moving something up a list of favorites is obviously an act of affection, and declaring this or that recording to be the best is not unlike informing a loved one that he or she is the most wonderful person in the world (and about as objective). As critics, we're expected to make value judgments and declare some things worthy and others un-, but why does that have to become a form of scorekeeping? Really, isn't the notion of debating whether TV on the Radio made a better album than Vampire Weekend a bit like debating whether Wolverine could beat up Spawn?

J.D. Considine
Toronto, ON

personally, i keep a running list all year long - otherwise i'd forget great records and songs from early in the year. then when it's time to make ye olde lists i revisit stuff. how about you?

End of year: sort itunes by year and pick my favorite albums.

realistically in the aughts, the 20s are probably the highest malk can expect to place, am i right? and i say that as a serious fan.

isn't the notion of debating whether TV on the Radio made a better album than Vampire Weekend a bit like debating whether Wolverine could beat up Spawn?

i thought this was exactly the attraction of making year-end lists. (also, wolverine duh.)

yeah the last few years i've gotten pretty compulsive about keeping a running tally throughout the year and constantly revising it and re-listening to things and rethinking their place on the list. December is still a mad scramble to commit to some semblance of a 'final' decision, though.

if you're going to claim that points awarded by a voter in 2007 are valid in 2008, then you're implicitly assuming that those voters feel the same way about that song (or album) in 2008 as they did in 2007

Valid point, I guess. But I still think it's pretty fair to assume most voters still like the song. (Then again, you could go even further -- Why assume voters still feel the same way in January about the records they voted for a month earlier, in December?)

(unless they voted for the song in both years -- isn't double-counting votes a bit unfair too?)

Doesn't happen. As Harvilla explained in his M.I.A. essay, individual voters are only allowed to vote for a given record once -- when votes from two years are combined, any duplicated votes are subtracted. (For albums, if a critic votes for the same one twice, points given the current year would be used.)

doesn't that mean that a single released in November (that will collect votes in two different years) has an unfair advantage over a single released in April (that probably won't?)

Nope. People have had longer to live with the April record, for one thing. (And if voters have such short memories that they can't remember a record eight months after release, what makes you think they'd remember a record 13 months after?) And most singles released in November don't collect votes for two years straight; singles that do (which could have been released the previous April, too) have always been the exception. And critics don't work for record companies; they're not required to hear records the day those records are released (or even in the first few weeks). Sometimes they actually wait til the records are hits, and stumble across them by accident, like normal people! And the poll doesn't predetermine which records can get carryover votes; like those Ron Clark Academy kids said, you can vote for whoever you like. So, for what records is the playing field not equal?

In analogy to sports, it would be like comparing two candidates for a 2008 MVP award, and favouring one guy only because he had the better year in 2007 (of course people actually do this, but I think it's also wrong.) They're different years!

But they're the same record! So the analogy makes no sense at all. Pazz & Jop voters are (at least theoretically) voting for much they like a record, not "how good a year" the record had. (I'm not even sure what that would mean, if they did do it.)

Has P&J always been this predictable?

Well, no, becauase it didn't used to be preceded by 1000 mini-polls from other places. The Internets, among other factors, have made Pazz & Jop into way less an event than it used to be. Probably not hard to predict P&J placement after you've seen all those earlier polls. Still, I saw a bunch, and I have to say there are still a lot of records that finished higher or lower than I would have predicted. (I actually thought Kanye would do better than he did! And I have no opinion of that album at all.)

Only 5 votes for Supreme Balloon?

― Sundar, Thursday, January 22, 2009 12:37 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

Standing on Earth, not rapt above the Pole,
More safe I Sing with mortal voice, unchang'd
To hoarce or mute, though fall'n on evil dayes, [ 25 ]
On evil dayes though fall'n, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compast round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit'st my slumbers Nightly, or when Morn
Purples the East: still govern thou my Song, [ 30 ]
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.

[PL, VII, 23-31]

If you're going to enter a ballot, then keeping a running tally seems like a helpful thing to do -- no diff from note-taking, really.

x-post

lol that reynolds essay is probably the most tortured way that one could explain that vampire weekend are an indie pop band.

iTunes has made year-end list-making about a thousand times easier for me, both in the gather-the-shortlist stage and in relistening to stuff to make up my mind. Yay technology.

That said, I totally agree with JD's point about the inanity of fine distinctions, and if I ran P&J I'd ditch the points. I enjoy ranking my own list for my own purposes, but I definitely do not care 3-6 times as much about what another person thinks is #1 vs #10. The points usually don't end up making a very big difference in the results (see http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2008/winners.html for this year's poll redone that way), but I think they mischaractize the enterprise and implicitly encourage a pointless (hah!) lack of either perspective or humility, depending on how you look at it.

those Ron Clark Academy kids

Got three singles votes themselves, by the way:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2008/WW91IENhbiBWb3RlIEhvd2V2ZXIgWW91IExpa2U=

Biggest surprises on the albums list: Grace Jones right down at #1365, and not one single vote for Neil Diamond's US chart-topper.

The points usually don't end up making a very big difference in the results

Well, if you just went by votes, you'd probably hurt records like Fucked Up, which looks like it got a pretty decent point-to-voter ratio (finished #38 but was named on only 20 ballots.) I dunno, I like the points -- they add a degree of precision about how much people like each record. And voters can always opt of them, either by filing unranked ballots (every album gets 10) or by dividing their points 15-14-13-12-11-9-8-7-6-5. (Math-haters have always complained about the points, by the way, though that category clearly doesn't include Glenn.)

Thing about that Fucked Up record is, you can at least look at the numbers are deduce that people were actually excited about the thing; it wasn't just another perfunctory entry they thought they should vote for. I think that's pretty cool.

Points also let people like Greil Marcus give 30 points to each of the two albums they REALLY REALLY REALLY liked in a given year, and 5 to all the rest. Which is good. (Greil used to do that every year! I'm not sure if anybody did it this year, or not.)

i just saw a ballot where someone did that but can't remember who it was. but one of their 30s went to Lil Wayne as if he needed the help.

Aha, Neil Diamond *is* in there, at #238.

Unfortunately, he's listed as Neil Young.

Hah, I hadn't noticed the Neil Young/Diamond error. Looking at the ballots it's clear that when they tabulated the poll they only fixed up the album names. There's lots of variation in the artist names for the same album across multiple ballots, and for the lower things they appear to have picked the artist for the results page at random from the ballots that mentioned the album. If you check the five votes for Home Before Dark you'll see that Craig Hlavaty screwed it up, but the other four voters got it right.