Pazz & Jop 2008

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.

By the way, speaking of carryover votes from previous years, I wonder if the Voice guys gave any thought about what to do about this record, which was already getting votes back when I had their job:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2008/Um9ieW4=

happy badu is so high.

Glad I gave it 30 points (it outscored Fleet Foxes by three).

No one loved the Ribot-fronted Zorn albums! I'm a bit surprised, esp about Asmodeus. I thought it was probably the best guitar rock of the year. Should have appealed to e.g. Sharrock fans.

(I enjoyed spinning that Jeck again, Mark. He does sometimes tend to slip into a formula but it can really work.)

Tzadik doesn't send promos for anything to anyone so tons of Zorn stuff just flys under the radar.

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.

One big problem with this method is that too many voters wind up using other critics' Top 10 lists to jog their memories. Which eventually amplifies the bandwagon effect exponentially, and makes lists way more similar than they might be otherwise. (Not that JD's own list seems to have been affected that way.)

Yeah, none of you fuxx voted for Maryanne Amacher either but that's less surprising.

xpost (JD said that he doesn't use that method himself though, didn't he? I had no idea Quinsin put something out last year.)

here's a scientific study for someone: what's the correlation between huge promo mailouts and top placings in P&J? (there probably isn't any, and folks can download all kinds of stuff for free, but i wonder anyway.)

Oh, there's definitely a correlation (though maybe not as big a one as there once was.) Somebody should tally up the results by publicity company sometime -- I bet Girlie Action gets LOTS of P&J action.

nick cave is awesome

here's a scientific study for someone: what's the correlation between huge promo mailouts and top placings in P&J? (there probably isn't any, and folks can download all kinds of stuff for free, but i wonder anyway.)

― Beatrix Kiddo, Thursday, January 22, 2009 12:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban

Bon Iver released LITERALLY the same album in 08 as 07, but one had a huge promo bomb with it. I mean just because people CAN download something still means its less likely to be listened to than something that's sitting on your desk.

I don't think that Bon Iver record is the best to use for a promo bomb exactly. I think that had more to do with blog after blog after blog buzzing about it with the re-release.

does that mean there are critics that actually open & pay attention to the dozens of hugely unappetizing indie rock publicist e-mails that they're sent everyday? scary.

I listen to 80% of what comes to me in an envelope.

ahem, I hope everyone here has participated in the vastly superior ILX 2008 poll

and you can all view the results of ILX METAL ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2008 RESULTS

Over the past few years I've gotten really into maintaining an ongoing iTunes playlist where I can slot all the songs I like throughout the year -- which means I rarely forget anything -- but I've sort of stopped caring about ranking music. When I was younger, I placed a lot of value on ranked lists from critics because they seemed to reflect the critics' vast knowledge and authority, and my own lists were largely attempts to emulate that superior perspective. Then I realized that a lot of critics, including ones I admired, just slapped the things together at the behest of their editors and couldn't actually tell you the difference between their #7 and their #6. And even though I was still obsessive enough to try to be true to my own sense of what I liked best throughout the year (especially when I was regularly writing about music), it increasingly seemed like a fool's errand. (At one point I was convinced that the best way to do it was objectively, through playcounts, but that doesn't factor in all the times when I've listened to albums because I want to like them more than I do, or when I've put stuff on just because it's comfortable or familiar or isn't too disruptive to listen to at work.) So 2008 was the first year this decade that I just didn't bother.

http://flavorwire.com/8659/critical-review-an-interview-with-village-voice-music-editor-rob-harvilla-on-pazz-jop

So, I listened to all the top 40 tracks I hadn't heard.

• "Electric Feel" is great. Why did no one whose taste I trust tell me MGMT were worth caring about? Their other song that placed is decent, too.

• The song about wanting to kick Jesus' ass is hilarious and I'm glad people voted for it.

• The Bon Iver song has a good tune and I might even like it given an entirely different perfomer and style.

• Didn't realize Lykke Li is indie pop as in pop that's a little bit indie (acceptable), rather than indie that isn't quite rock (terrible).

• WTF kind of sub-Nickelback bullshit is "Sex on Fire"?

u get tired of electric feel pretty quick

its weird cuz i liked it too at first

I'm sure when I do, I can just move on to the Jim Jones remix. /jo3k

Anyway, do the fuxxors really like indie guitar sounds so much that Hinder+indie guitar sounds becomes something praiseworthy?

i been saying that for years. instead of macho posturing to get laid its awkward posturing to get laid

random side note relating to nickelback: my roomate has nickelback lyrics as his away message right now. i read them and was like "hm, that's kinda rapey", looked it up and voila. Same kid who thinks dane cook and carlos mencia are funny tho, not much of a surprise.

It's kind of inexcusable that in 200fuckin9 they didn't post online links to the singles on a voice youtube page or embedded them in imeem or something.
Anybody related to the paper that can explain why that didn't happen?

So basically, what you're saying is that you're too lazy to even search for them on youtube without someone else doing the work for you.

INEXCUSABLE

you know that's actually a valid poiYAHHH TRICK YAHHHGLLDABAUGGH GLLDABAUGGGH

lol

'Lazy' has nothing to do with it; it's just ridiculous that there wasn't an intern or someone who raised a hand and offered to put in an hour and a half of work to do it. The internet connects things? Series of tubes?

It's 'inexcusable' in that any twelve year old would've assumed that clicking on the song name would've played it; not sure why they wouldn't have done the obvious work.

Different topic: One metric I dig is the albums that got one vote at thirty points; meaning that one critic thought this was the best album of the year and no one else thought it good enough to make a top ten. This year's thirty and ones are:

Joel Alme - A Master Of Ceremonies
JAMBANG - Connecting
Menahan Street Band -Make the Road by Walking
Hanne Hukkelberg -Rykestraße 68
Prosumer & Murat Tepeli - Serenity
Trees - Lights Bane

I know and can stand behind the Hukkelberg and Menahan Street Band; anybody wanna tell me about the others?

Dude, the magazine shrinks every week, the pazz and jop archives are totally fuxxored, and they just did a bunch of layoffs. The last of their concerns is "making sure forksclovetofu doesn't have to open another tab"

Also Trees is pretty ok drone metal

sigh: Whiney, you know as well as I do that drawing in readers online and keeping them sticky by NOT having them open another tab helps justify their ad-rates. This isn't fanboyish bloggy whining "poor me I have to c+p to google"; this is me bemoaning a lack of common sense in marketing and support for the poll online... which is likely the only place it's gonna be in ten years at this rate, so they might wanna get on the ball with the easy stuff.

/publicist

great argument guys

Is there an obvious reason I just didn't hear about as to why Idolator didn't do a poll this year?

having two polls probably starting to feel a lil pointless

they had that 80+8 countdown thing, which i thought was pretty interesting

xp
it seems odd though after investing so much into it for 2 years.

783 For Against, Shade Side, Sunny Side
Words on Music Points: 10
Mentions: 1

wow

you crits can all go fuck yourselves (except for the ace dude who voted for this record)

^overreaction

still, there are a lot of tremendous records that only got one mention. very disappointing. at least the bloc party album did badly.

why Idolator didn't do a poll this year?

Money, man-hours, some combo thereof. (Anything more specific should probably come from the guy who used to run the poll, if it comes from anybody.)

Idolator was dropped by Gawker this year too, which didn't help, although it seems that running a year-end poll would kind of be a no brainer, even if the situation isn't great.