Pazz & Jop 2008

basically what deej said

I wouldn't argue with rap being bigger than metal. Was just meaning metal kids can be as anal about their music as any other genre. And there's still going to be metal kids in everytown. Hell, even nu-metal crossed over to 10 year old kids in the uk. You still see 12 year olds in Slipknot tees.

most high profile p&j voters who are rap critics (fennessey, breihan for instance) voted for tons of non-rap shit, whereas you don't see any david fricke or rob sheffield or david marchese voting for 6 rap albums even tho they work for rock mags

Again, I don't get the point here. Breihan, like Caramanica, writes about all different kinds of music. Including, presumably, some albums he likes as much as his favorite rap albums. Both Caramanica and Breihan are also real good country critics, and I'd never suggest they should vote for all (or even mostly) country albums. You're acting like there are only two kinds of music out there -- rap and non-rap.

there are like 3 total critics who voted more than 50% rap albums. dont you think thats weird?

There are like 3 total critics who voted more than 50% rap country albums. don't you think that's weird?

i think it's good that major rap critics and higher ups at major rap mags are into other genres - as opposed to, say, rolling stone - it's just that the commodification of the same rap shit is helped along when the most high profile rap writers - and most vocal supporters on the internet of guys like rich boy and scarface etc - end up voting for bon iver and tv on the radio

xp Pretty sure Glenn said only one critic voted for all metal albums too. (News flash: HUMAN BEINGS LIKE LOTS OF DIFFERENT MUSIC!) (And Rolling Stone covers lots of different kinds too, last time I checked.)

xp no - it seems like country has always been a relative critical blindspot despite its popularity in numbers

especially when compared to rap in terms of crossover w/ rock critics

I was making fun of the....monochromatic inclinations of some of our posters. Carry on.

I wasn't joking, but I'm not sure whether my criticism actually applies to individuals, or is kind of a reaction to the aggregate effect of polling this way. Obviously nobody is required to like Katy Perry, for example. I didn't vote for her myself, not out of a lack of courage but because her album was in my second 10, not my first 10. Maybe everybody simply voted what they liked, and really that many people genuinely like TV on the Radio and the Fleet Foxes. But yeah, like Chuck, I suspect that isn't 100% the case. I think there are some systemic biases and recurrent trends in P&J, and I think two years of Idolator constrast helped demonstrate them. Adding a few more voters, especially voters with different predispositions, wouldn't hurt.

But actually, if I were in charge, I'd make two structural changes to the poll that I think might make it significantly more interesting whatever the electorate:

1. Expand album ballots to 20 or 25. I bet nearly every voter in the poll could fill 20 as easily as 10, and we'd get more diversity and less tokenism from each person.
2. For singles, do a pre-poll nomination round, and then in the poll itself have people pick 10 (or 20) from the hundred or two songs that got nominated most. This would get a little more consensus into the singles voting, which has become pretty scattered recently.

And I'd ditch points, too, or perhaps reduce the points scheme to 2 points for your #1 and 1 point for everything else.

Obviously nobody is required to like Katy Perry

that's a relief

there are like 3 total critics who voted more than 50% rap albums. dont you think thats weird?

Actually, to be honest, if this is true (I have my doubts, and haven't checked) I do think it's weird. It's also a huge drop from a few years ago. (At least if you count rap and r&b albums together. There were always several critics whose ballots leaned that way -- with maybe one token White Stripes album, or whatever. If that's changed now, it's kind of fucked, though I don't see how it's Briehan's or Caramanica's fault; the problem is probably more the electorate than individual voters. And I'm sure Harvilla wants more hip-hop voters (and non-indie voters in general) -- he's said so himself. (But I'm the last person who has a reason to defend the current state of Pazz & Jop, seeing how I, uh, ran the thing for several years.)

Not sure I've seen any ballots that are 50% country, though. (Though mine might come close, if you stretch the definition somewhat.) And yeah, rock critics paying attention to commercial country is a fairly recent development, compared to hip-hop.

pre-poll nomination round

Just want to say I hate this idea. (Also don't think the lack of consensus is a problem. And I'm not convinced there used to be more of a consensus among the singles voters, except in the sense that -- especially in pre-download days -- there were way fewer "singles" to choose from. So why not do what Pazz & Jop always used to do, and limit the voting to actual singles, defined as broadly as the poobahs think might be workable?)

how would they police the voting if they limited it to "official singles"? i think the singles voting is flawed but "paper planes" and "rehab" seem ubiquitous enough to be picks of the consensus

It'd be tough to police, admittedly -- maybe impossible, given that people have grown used to voting for random "tracks" for several years now. But they could at least attempt to control it by somehow defining singles in the P&J letter, like we used to. ("Singles" could include, say, "airplay tracks", "tracks promoted with videos," etc., not just physical releases, which obviously barely even exist anymore. I dunno; Wikipedia for instance seems to do pretty well in their singles discographies, though maybe they miss more than I've picked up on.)

xp Of course, another possibility for the recent lack of hip-hop voters might just be that the actual consensus has changed -- i.e., that critics are increasingly convinced (rightly or wrongly) that hip-hop just isn't as good as it used to be -- or that indie rock has improved in comparison, or whatever. (Personally, though, I suspect that the voting demographic is the biggest thing that's changed.)

Obviously, for instance, any song that hit any of the Hot Songs charts in Billboard would be eligible, and that's another thing the letter could spell out. (Basically, I think you could police it more by directing definitions than by excluding songs.)

Speaking of singles, did anyone else notice Andrew Scott Earle's ballot?:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685529

I also liked that Ben Westhoff (whoever he is) voted for a White Lion single:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686481

And Ken Roseman (whoever he is) voted for a Chumbawamba album:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/684703

Thought Joe Tangari's worldbeat-heavy ballot was intriguing, too. (Never heard of him, either):

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686268

nickelback voters

NOMO and Baobob were almost on my ballot; I don't know why I haven't listened to the new Amadou and Mariam album yet.

Tangari I think has written a few pieces on African music for Pitchfork.

the problem is probably more the electorate than individual voters. And I'm sure Harvilla wants more hip-hop voters (and non-indie voters in general) -- he's said so himself. (But I'm the last person who has a reason to defend the current state of Pazz & Jop, seeing how I, uh, ran the thing for several years.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, January 25, 2009 1:09 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I agree. This is the dead horse I've been beating for awhile. But as Chuck and Matos know, you can e-mail hundreds of folks but that does not mean they will respond. I think Ethan tried to get more rap critics to vote in the Idolator poll with little success and I recall Chuck or Christgau complaining about rap and punk critics not responding. Last year I gave Matos some whirled music names and I notified whirled music publicists Rock Paper Scissors that the idolator poll was happening, and very few of those folks responded (despite Matos' efforts). Yet, the fRoots world music critics poll has lots of folks who do not vote in P & J, and I bet a number of US based Global Rhythms and the Beat contributors won't vote in P & J either.

The new Amadou & Marian and the new Rokia Traore were out in Europe in '08 but aren't being released in the US till February I think

I have a feeling there were kids in every town arguing about whether NSync was better than Backstreet, and Christina better than Britney (and Debbie better than Tiffany, and the Monkees better than the Beatles), too.

but they didn't grow up to vote in pazz & jop, obv. and of course you might be sort of dispirited to see what kind of stuff people who were arguing about nsync vs. backstreet in 9th grade are listening to now. we can all idealize our optimal open-eared voters, but they mostly don't exist, is the problem.

i think more than diversifying the voter pool, there are a lot of things that could be done to make the whole thing more interesting. alongside the p&j (or whatever poll), run a set of "stuff i like" lists compiled from random people of random ages in random places. it wouldn't give you anything more than anecdotes, but it seems like the absence of anecdotes is what's being lamented here -- the tendency toward dull consensus and away from individual enjoyment and obsession. i mean, aggregation is all about the dull consensus; the way around that might not be to change the aggregation, but just to supplement it.

(and believe me, i agree that anything that gives you tvotr and vampire weekend as your 1-2 in any year can use some serious supplementing.)

Another thing they could theoretically do (though they'd never find the time or pages to do it, not these days) is something Xgau tried once (1986 or so?) in the '70s -- namely, run lots of demographic mini-polls from, say, female critics and African American critics and voters over 40 and under 30. (Fuck the thirtysomethings, man. Just kidding.) The one time it was done, the results were really interesting. (Sidebar mini-polls by genre used to look really cool in N.M.E. in the late '80s, too. But again, you're talking man hours it's hard to imagine unless you've actually done of these. And the deadlines just keep getting tighter every year.)

(Contradicted myself. Obv meant he tried it in the '80s.)

tendency toward dull consensus and away from individual enjoyment and obsession.

This is another reason I really can't stand Glenn's pre-poll nomination idea -- which, as far as I can tell, would only make the poll more dull.

couldnt a glenn-type person just go through the results and figure out the gender/race/age breakdowns? or are you talking about something else?
(xpost)

Well, you'd have to get all the demographic information -- which I assume Glenn isn't privy to -- first. (Christgau used to ask for it in the poll letter every year, but I think that's another old tradition that's gone by the wayside. And voters were never all that forthcoming even back then.)

If I had demographic information I could give you poll slices with my pinkie. But I don't. I've spent a little while trying to get some genre information, taking artist lists from the ILM Metal poll and the HipHopCritics Poll, but this is a pretty unreliable method of getting data that's kind of dubious even if you have it.

I can confirm, at least, that there are only a handful of voters whose ballots are more than half rap. Ditto for metal.

I see Q-Tip won that album poll of 25 folks at hiphopcritic.com and 74 people voted in the Nashville Scene country music poll (Jamey Johnson album winner) and Every year fRoots polls a panel of hundreds of experts, in the UK and internationally, to decide the Album Of The Year in the fields covered in the magazine – world folk and roots music.

ordinarily i might be on the side of taking rap-friendly crits to task for not having much rap on their lists, but i don't know if there's any way you can spin this year without admitting that at least as far as official albums with a national profile '08 was pretty barren. i only had the Jeezy album on my list (not counting R&B singers), almost had ABN and Scarface in my top 10 but ultimately gave those spots to more weirdo indie shit. a well done hip hop-only poll would be cool and i'd have a ton of albums to vote for in that, but up against other genres it's whatever. i can't act outraged when i didn't hear any truly exceptional albums that were otherwise ignored by P&J, which happened more in previous years.

Yeah but searching for my favorite rap album of the year led me to its only vote in the poll from my new favorite critic, Jimmy Draper.

I am amused by your fave rapper as a panelist on America's Best Dance Crew 2. I see Draper voted for Latin-pop singer Ximena Sariñana. She reminds me of Julieta Venegas.

Why are you amused by that? She's the best judge on the panel -- Shane Sparks is too sentimental and the other guy just sucks.

nothing Tip did has placed since Midnight Marauders

"Vivrant Thing" was the No. 15 single in '99.

What I think is basically happening is that the Web-generation schism is showing. There was a definite, if subtle, difference between Idolator Poll in '06/'07 and P&J then, and as it is this year: P&J is older, has more rock-entrenched tastes in singles. (They had many long-timers who didn't vote in my poll, and a lot of bloggers only voted in mine.) "Rehab" squeaked a win in P&J and finished fourth in I.P., even with a fifth of its votes carried forth from '06. "Umbrella" sailed to No. 1 in Idolator and finished a close second in P&J. I don't think that's a coincidence; I think it signals the shift to which I'm referring. Similarly, TV on the Radio and LCD Soundsystem were easy victories in I.P. and by noses in P&J. The tastes are essentially the same but the emphases are different. I imagine if I'd done it a couple more years those differences would show more clearly over time, unless maybe P&J went after new voters who'd participated in I.P.

Chuck, I did actually do the demographics in '06. I got the information in '07 but when I asked for it the IT person said, "Here you go, every ballot has the info on it." I said, "I need you to collate that info so I can make charts from it." Crickets.

"Vivrant Thing" was the No. 15 single in '99.

― Matos W.K., Saturday, January 24, 2009 9:34 PM Bookmark

Aye, I was only focusing on albums. The Rennaisance could use a song as fun as "Vivrant Thing" or eight.

I like-not-love the Q-Tip album, though "Gettin' Up" really does grow on me as a single. It's definitely the old-man-rap pick of the year. Recently I picked up, for 49 cents at Value Village, some old music magazines: a 1997 Request w/Portishead cover and four issues (two 1991, two 1994) of Pulse!--both retail giveaways, published by Sam Goody/Musicland and Tower, respectively. I always liked both mags' genre columns--hip-hop, world, blues, whatever. One of Request's was "Geezers." I can't wait to see rap mags, print or web, adopt this.

There are plenty of dudes Tip's age or older who are rapping so much better than him it's ridiculous. I'll even take current-era Common over him when I'm down for some stiffly rapped platitudes.

I just meant consensus pick.

yeah and at least common's releasing albums every 12-16 months or so. if tip's gonna wait 6 years he should really bring it

fuck u dudes i like the tip album & its so much better than the com its not funny

i'm with deej, the Q-Tip album is perfectly nice and he hasn't lost his skills that much. plus you can't say he "waited 6 years" when the guy had albums shelved by like 4 different labels, though i will admit some of my enthusiasm for the album is that one of rap's greatest geniuses finally stopped getting fucked by the industry for a decade. definitely not any worse than nu-Common.

the Web-generation schism is showing. There was a definite, if subtle, difference between Idolator Poll in '06/'07 and P&J then, and as it is this year: P&J is older, has more rock-entrenched tastes in singles. (They had many long-timers who didn't vote in my poll, and a lot of bloggers only voted in mine.) "Rehab" squeaked a win in P&J and finished fourth in I.P., even with a fifth of its votes carried forth from '06. "Umbrella" sailed to No. 1 in Idolator and finished a close second in P&J. I don't think that's a coincidence; I think it signals the shift to which I'm referring. Similarly, TV on the Radio and LCD Soundsystem were easy victories in I.P. and by noses in P&J. The tastes are essentially the same but the emphases are different. I imagine if I'd done it a couple more years those differences would show more clearly over time

Hey Michaelangelo, forgive me, I'm probably being really dense here and missing something obvious, but it's not at all clear to me what "those differences" are. (They're probably so subtle that I can't even see them.) How do you think an Idolator poll would have shaken out differently than P&J this year? Are you saying the higher blogger participation would have prevented people from voting for "Paper Planes" (a la "Rehab" last year), since they would have considered it old news? And if so, why would that be a good thing? Or maybe that's not what you're suggesting, unless you somehow think "Paper Planes" signifies "rock-entrenched tastes" like you apparently (rightly? because people compare Winehouse to an old soul singer?) "Rehab" did. (I guess it's rockier than "Umbrella," anyway.) Also not following how you think the album tally would have wound up differently -- as I said above, geezer acts already didn't score too well (compared to their past record) in P&J, as far as I can tell; by now, I'd say having a couple old farts like Escovedo on there makes the list more inclusive, not less. If the rolls skewed more indie, the list would only be more monochromatic. Maybe you're saying Idolator's electorate would have helped hip-hop, metal, etc? If so, I guess I don't get how TVOTR's and LCD's decisive showing supports that conclusion.

some old music magazines: a 1997 Request w/Portishead cover and four issues (two 1991, two 1994) of Pulse!--both retail giveaways, published by Sam Goody/Musicland and Tower, respectively. I always liked both mags' genre columns--hip-hop, world, blues, whatever. One of Request's was "Geezers."

Ha ha, I am so old that music magazines from '97 and '94 definitely are not what I'd think of as "old" ones, but yeah, I used to write for Request; totally remember that section. The Rhapsody blog I write for (currently being somewhat overhauled) includes a genre category tag they call "Old Man Rocking," which is similar. Though I never know whether to put old women there, too.

Only one vote for Paavoharju?

― M.V., Thursday, January 22, 2009 11:20 AM

I just got back from vacation, so missed most of the discussion. I'm surprised I'm the only one who voted for it. I thought it was kind of popular around here.

Following up on Matos's point about the differences between Idolator and P&J, I did some number-crunching with the 2006 polls to see which albums were disproportionately favored on each poll. Of the eight albums that got >50% more points on P&J (after weighting for the discrepancy of total voters), six were by artists over the age of 50.

Okay, well, it's obviously impossible to miss the difference with those stats. But that was two years ago, and assuming I'm eyeballing the results accurately, the P&J's geezer-leaning problem seems to have self-corrected since. A younger, bloggier Idolator electorate might have pushed Gang Gang Dance and Jeezy and maybe Blitzen Trapper or the Vivian Girls or Ne-Yo into the Top 40, and pushed Fucked Up up several spaces, but it would have been at the expense of who? Escovedo, obviously. And maybe Metallica, Walkmen, Kings of Leon, Byrne/Eno, even Drive By Truckers. Wouldn't have helped Al Green, either. (Jamey Johnson? Taylor Swift? I dunno.) Not sure if that's an improvement or not.

Metallica, Walkmen, Kings of Leon, Byrne/Eno

Okay, these do like dead weight, I admit. (As does R.E.M. way up at #25, and a lot of the aging indie standbys between 41-50: Beck, Malkmus, Magnetic Fields.) And I bet the Idolator electorate would push up T.I. and Torche (though maybe not Roots or Q-Tip) too. So I guess that's a little better.

"do look like dead weight"