Pazz & Jop 2008

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.

x-post

I think Matos said words to that effect on ilx somewhere. It was too many hours of work.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/img/music2/amyart.jpg

these things didn't draw themselves

Keep an eye on the metal poll on Friday. Glenn will be providing stats on it as well as comparing votes on it to the metal/rock votes on P&J. Amongst other stuff that he does so well.
I'm sure it will be of interest to just more than those who have voted/been posting on the thread.
You might even find out about some great music you may just have missed.

I'll be commencing rundown at approx 2pm UK time.

And here is the link ILX METAL ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2008 RESULTS

2xp: yeah, but these did:

http://cache.idolator.com/assets/images/gallery/33/2007/01/medium_346844511_c67903232b_o.jpg

For the record, I told Maura I didn't want to do another poll back in February. The '07 one was a fucking nightmare.

Not to sound all "I walked 18 miles barefoot in the snow just to get to my one-room schoolhouse" about it but I had no help at all last year. Most of the people we sent ballots to didn't get them the first time, necessitating my re-emailing 1400 people to ask if they'd received them and if not to let me know so I could re-send them. This I had the pleasure of doing over the course of a few days on six different email accounts, leading to my being blocked from my two main ones for a couple days each for going over my 24-hour sending limit. I also had other things going on at the time that necessitated my being able to send other kinds of email than "Did you get your ballot?" but you know, all in the line of duty, right? The three people who agreed to intern for me all backed out at the last minute. I think I'll leave it there since I took most of my irritation at the whole thing out on this board last year already.

hey glenn, thanks for the explanation on the centricity ratings (btw, i kind of miss "critical alignment," it always sounded like getting one's critical wheels rotated or something, which seems like it might be a useful service, in fact). and may i also say, thanks for keeping up the tradition. i'm pretty boneheaded when it comes to statistics, but i always really enjoy your sifting and sorting of the poll results.

andy k: hey you, get offa my cloud!
tim f: yikes!

:)

Dean's List '08:

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/deans08.php

bring back the reissues option dammit!!!

(worst thing about the last few P&J's has been the lack of a comprehensive Xgau year-end essay to tie shit up in a nice, neat lil' bundle for lazy sods like moi. agree; disagree; ban.)

?

i'm kind of shocked people aren't posting their rejected comments in the "comments" sections.

xpost i don't really know if i need to read an essay by a guy who thought the dan le sac vs. scroobius pip song was the 7th best single of the year

bring back the reissues option dammit!!!
Seconded.

Reissues don't really matter in the age of what.cd, sharity blogs, slsk etc. People relate to the past differently now.

yeah, maybe, but it would still nice to have a handy list to check through when browsing through the bins (i.e., searching for shit on amazon).