Pazz & Jop 2008

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"

Not directed to anyone in particular, just as a general thought, but as said upthread, there's always the possibility that a large number of P&J voters don't really care about it very much and dash their ballots off quickly to be sure to get it done on time. Sure, on one hand it's lazy, to scan some lists of big records this year and slap something together. But maybe writers feel that the 50,000 or 100,000 or however many words they've written through the year are more important and meaningful than contributing a top 10 to P&J.

I guess what I'm saying is, it seems like there's an assumption by some that voters define themselves as critics by what they submit to P&J. It's not necessarily important to everyone involved that these lists are "accurate" or "interesting" or what have you. If you want to know what Jon Caramanica thought about rap in 2008, you could read some of his pieces rather than drawing conclusions based on his P&J ballot.

And, like Glenn says as far as expanding the album list to 20, I think there are quite a few albums that: 1) tons of critics agree are good; and 2) despite the agreement that these album are good, not one of said critics thinks the album was one of the 10 best of the year. And those albums wind up with 0 votes.

oh boy, room for even more mid-level indie acts. just what the poll needs.

How many UK critics get a vote in P&J?

other than Simon...maybe zero?

Oh so it's just USA & Canada? I didn't realise that. I thought with the internet that there would be writers from all over the place.

It started as American but has expanded a tad. As noted upthread, there are some Canadians, there's Tim Finney from Australia, and I saw a comment from someone in Germany.

Writers from everywhere have to contact the P & J editor and tell them who they write for, to get included. Many folks have not done that.

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.

Not only that, it showed up in a few end-of-year lists, I think.

found two 50%+-country album ballots (at least if alt-country counts); suspect there might be more:

Randy Lewis

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685482

Bobby Reed

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685428

man i will defend the heck out of some lucinda, but the best thing i can say about little honey is that it's better than the last two.

Not heard Little Honey yet. Need to rectify that.

West turned out to be a pretty great record once i got over my initial "what the fuck is wrong with you, Lucinda? are you really trying to annoy me unto death by way of obnoxiously overwrought vocalisms?!!" reaction. took a while, granted.

I'm gonna skip it.

I accidentally left the exclamation mark off of my singles vote for Los Campesinos, "DEATH TO LOS CAMPESINOS" so it is not showing up with Christgau and the other voters for that song.

think there are quite a few albums that: 1) tons of critics agree are good; and 2) despite the agreement that these album are good, not one of said critics thinks the album was one of the 10 best of the year. And those albums wind up with 0 votes.

I always assumed that this was mostly offset by the size of P&J, i.e. if you poll enough people, then you're bound to find *some* critics who will like those albums enough to put them in their top ten. Conversely, if you poll a much smaller number of people (Pitchfork, for example, or virtually any website/mag with maybe a few dozen writers on staff) then everybody needs to submit a larger list (e.g. top 25 at least) to have those great-but-nobody's-favourite albums represented in the poll.

But with longer lists, actual rankings, as opposed to just "mentions", really start to matter -- I'm infinitely more likely to check out an album that was ranked #1 by five people than an album that was ranked #18 by twenty people. This is why I'm surprised that so many people on this thread would prefer un-ranked lists (and is the reason why I always take care to favourably weight the top few albums on my P&J ballot.)

not one of said critics thinks the album was one of the 10 best of the year. And those albums wind up with 0 votes...I always assumed that this was mostly offset by the size of P&J

Not if you are Katy Perry, apparently.

OK, one more stat thing. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but having calculated Voter Centricity, I can then turn around and retabulate the whole poll weighting votes by centricity. Or, for more amusement, inversely weighting by centricity. I.e., the farther from consensus a voter was, the more their votes were worth. Comparing these weighted scores as percentages of the albums' vote-counts then gives us a measure not of popularity but of cultishness! Ignore the albums that got very few votes (5 or fewer, for example) and this starts getting pretty interesting.

Most Cultish Albums
Cultishness Rank - Cultishness - Normal Rank - Votes - Artist - Album

1 - 0.942 - 143 - 7 - Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer
2 - 0.927 - 166 - 6 - Enslaved - Vertebrae
3 - 0.893 - 166 - 6 - Rodriguez - Cold Fact
4 - 0.873 - 143 - 7 - Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun
4 - 0.873 - 143 - 7 - Sic Alps - U.S. EZ
6 - 0.859 - 143 - 7 - AC/DC - Black Ice
7 - 0.857 - 143 - 7 - Rodney Crowell - Sex and Gasoline
8 - 0.852 - 115 - 9 - Opeth - Watershed
9 - 0.85 - 128 - 8 - Joe Jackson - Rain
10 - 0.847 - 143 - 7 - Sloan - Parallel Play

Least Cultish Albums

191 - 0.507 - 1 - 154 - TV on the Radio - Dear Science
190 - 0.536 - 2 - 105 - Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
189 - 0.549 - 105 - 10 - Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
188 - 0.557 - 82 - 12 - Robyn - Robyn
187 - 0.558 - 7 - 78 - Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
186 - 0.561 - 128 - 8 - Okkervil River - Stand Ins
185 - 0.563 - 8 - 73 - Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
184 - 0.564 - 62 - 15 - Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
183 - 0.566 - 6 - 79 - Santogold - Santogold
182 - 0.567 - 4 - 87 - Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

The full list is at http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2008/kvltosis.html

9 - 0.85 - 128 - 8 - Joe Jackson - Rain

A Joe Jackson album got 8 votes in 2008??? Wacky!

oh cultish albums ...

could someone post the most TRV KVLT albums that made the list?

haha

Glenn posted more stats on the metal poll thread btw m@tt

I'm infinitely more likely to check out an album that was ranked #1 by five people than an album that was ranked #18 by twenty people.

It's a given that the poll has peoples' #1 ranked albums covered, and there are no surprises. I'm much more interested in learning what album twenty people would have ranked #18, especially if it's something I might not have previously noticed. I don't understand why everyone else wouldn't be interested either, unless they actually believe there can't be more than 10 great albums in a given year.

Marcello's 10 cd's a year man!

you know, I JUST NOW heard fleet foxes for the first time! via a dvr recording of that SNL episode! and they're like lukewarm milk: harmless, pleasant, boring.

try having it shoved down your throat for a year. (sorry, I just heard the damn thing all the time in Seattle and my initial whatever about them soured over time.)

Fleet Foxes are apparently Paul Weller's favourite American band of the moment.

I'm an Idolator poll defender at heart (boycotted P&J the year the VV laid me off), but I'm still curious to hear Matos spell out how he thinks an Idolator poll would have shaken out differently this year; was the way I broke it down above way off?

Also, I have to admit, this is bugging me a little:

the Web-generation schism is showing... TV on the Radio and LCD Soundsystem were easy victories in I.P. and by noses in P&J...I imagine if I'd done it a couple more years those differences would show more clearly over time

Is it really good that TVOTR and LCD won more decisively in Idolator? If the big difference is the web-to-print ratio of critics in the polls, wouldn't decisive victories (especially by records that, to me, really aren't all that great -- though that's just me) mainly be indicative of the echo-chamber effect of blog opinions? Which Matos is saying would increase as time went on? I'm not sure I'd want that.

no offense, guys, but the real "big difference" was that Modern Times won the 2006 p&j albums poll.

It all depends on which additional voters you try to add and agree to vote. Adding more bloggers could skew the indie-rock vote upward but it might also skew the dance/techno whatever you want to call it votes upward. Depending on how you did it you could also end up with more backpacker/underground hiphop supporters as opposed to more ilx ringtone thread rap types. Or maybe both. Should more UK writers for all genres submit their names? I know there are folks who write about African music for the Beat, fRoots, Global Rhythms and blogs who have not participated in P & J. Chuck whould would you like to see added? All of the 74 contributors to the Nashville Scene country poll. The Poptimist LiveJournal folks? More metal mag writers?

Matos sent out over a 1,000 invitations for the Idolator poll and less than half responded. If the Voice greatly increased their mailings for next year would they have slightly more success because they've been doing a poll longer and because of the "Village Voice's" larger name and visibility.

Obviously adding any working critics who might counter the stupid indie-rock hegemony -- ones who wouldn't make the imbalance worse than it already is -- would be smart. But again, right, for the four-thousandth time, Xgau and I tried expanding the electorate in that direction for years (with far more success than either poll has seen later); Matos tried it; I don't doubt that Harvilla has tried it as well. Doesn't mean they'll vote.

And at this point, to be honest, the idea that adding a few techno or hip-hop voters here, a few metal or world voters there, would add up to enough of a consensus in any direction to break indie's hold on the poll seems pretty much like a pipe dream to me. It's not like critics within any of those genres all agree on a year's best records to begin with, right? And with the few exceptions I mentioned above, I don't see many records whose votes would have been significantly boosted even if the voting rolls had been expanded like they should be.

Chuck, why do you insist on reading some kind of taste agenda into what I said about those victories? I'm honestly curious. Especially when I explicitly didn't say it was good or bad; I said it happened.

If the big difference is the web-to-print ratio of critics in the polls, wouldn't decisive victories (especially by records that, to me, really aren't all that great -- though that's just me) mainly be indicative of the echo-chamber effect of blog opinions? Which Matos is saying would increase as time went on? I'm not sure I'd want that.

When was Pazz & Jop not an echo chamber? If blog critics listen to each other more than non-blog ones, why did TV on the Radio landslide this year? Because there were more bloggers voting in P&J? (Maybe there were--I have no idea.) It got 150% of the runner-up's mentions. That seems pretty echo-chambery to me. That's the nature of these things, whoever is hosting them.

It's a given that the poll has peoples' #1 ranked albums covered, and there are no surprises. I'm much more interested in learning what album twenty people would have ranked #18, especially if it's something I might not have previously noticed. I don't understand why everyone else wouldn't be interested either, unless they actually believe there can't be more than 10 great albums in a given year.

Moving down someone's list, you're more likely to find a token choice from a genre they wouldn't normally listen to, or a hype bandwagon choice, or something they sort of liked but not really, or any number of other sub-categories that fall under the umbrella of "music that the critic probably won't be listening to in six months time." The poll's results are weakened if they're too strongly influenced by those downballot choices that the critics don't care too strongly about -- to me, the whole idea of a poll is to survey a large number of people about their absolute favourites. What about the tokenism backlash for Arrested Development and Outkast's (for SB/TLB) wins in their respective years, despite a low avg number of points/ballot?

To be clear -- I'm *not* saying that everybody should make predictable choices or that longer, *individual* lists aren't interesting (just the opposite, they're extremely interesting!), but I feel that longer lists in the context of a large poll with 500+ ballots will simply water down the results.

why do you insist on reading some kind of taste agenda into what I said about those victories?

I don't, Michaelangelo, not at all. In fact, I know you don't have such an agenda, which is why I was trying to get the bottom of what else you think those decisive LCD/ TVOTR victories might signify; you're the one who connected them with the web schism, though maybe I misinterpreted that. All I'm saying is that "decisive victories" and "echo chamber" go hand-in-hand (right, in the case of this year's P&J, too), and I don't necessasrily think that's a positive thing. Didn't mean to imply you thought otherwise, though I'm curious what you do think. (Above, you connected this year's P&J's results to the "web-generation schism" and said P&J singles tastes were rock-entrenched, which seems to me naturally begs a question; I'm just trying to find out how you think the results might have turned out differently with a less entrenched voter group.)

And at this point, to be honest, the idea that adding a few techno or hip-hop voters here, a few metal or world voters there, would add up to enough of a consensus in any direction to break indie's hold on the poll seems pretty much like a pipe dream to me. It's not like critics within any of those genres all agree on a year's best records to begin with, right?

It would not break the indie hold but I think it would still be good to have larger subgroups than currently exist. My pipedream is just to get editors at genral interest publications to recognize that they should ocassionally cover non-indie music. Whether such editors would look down to the bottom fringes of future P & J polls and see the non-indie stuff I don't know, but at least it would be there .

Consensus is dull. Adding more voters isn't going to make the consensus any less dull. Adding more albums per voter isn't going to make the consensus any less dull. But both things could make the whole poll more interesting by providing more patterns that can be extracted by analysis. Demographic and genre information would also facilitate more analysis, even including the easy kind you don't need me to do.

But of these four things, one is way hard (getting more voters), one is hard and contentious (getting consistent demographic info), one is a little hard and a little controversial (genre info) and one is fairly easy (more slots per ballot), and even just the last one would give me more data to work with.

For another example of what I can do with more data, here's the poll retabulated to include only the 47 voters who by my count voted for at least 3 rap albums. My list of what's rap and what isn't comes from the voting in the hiphopcritic.com poll, plus a handful of additional artists I looked up and flagged after checking the ballots of people who voted for the first set:

28 - Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
20 - Q-Tip - Renaissance
19 - Erykah Badu - New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War
17 - Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak
15 - TV on the Radio - Dear Science
12 - T.I. - Paper Trail
10 - Roots - Rising Down
10 - Young Jeezy - Recession
9 - Nas - Untitled
7 - Portishead - Third
7 - Santogold - Santogold
7 - Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
6 - Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
6 - Ne-Yo - Year of the Gentleman
5 - Adele - 19
5 - Black Milk - Tronic
5 - Coldplay - Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends
5 - Estelle - Shine
5 - Foreign Exchange - Leave It All Behind
5 - Hold Steady - Stay Positive
4 - Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
4 - Cool Kids - Bake Sale
4 - Gaslight Anthem - '59 Sound
4 - Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
4 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
4 - Scarface - Emeritus
4 - Solange Knowles - Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams
4 - The-Dream - Love/Hate
3 - Atmosphere - When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
3 - Bun B - II Trill
3 - Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark
3 - Guilty Simpson - Ode to the Ghetto
3 - Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
3 - Jazmine Sullivan - Fearless (Jazmine Sullivan)
3 - Jazzanova - Of All the Things
3 - Ludacris - Theater of the Mind
3 - Murs - Murs for President
3 - Nine Inch Nails - Slip
3 - Raphael Saadiq - Way I See It
3 - Steinski - What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
3 - Taylor Swift - Fearless
3 - Usher - Here I Stand
3 - Wale - Mixtape About Nothing
3 - Z-Ro - Crack

xpost to Chuck:

I don't know how this year's would have turned out--I really didn't pay any attention to how which albums were doing with critics generally, though obviously I know what certain people thought of certain things. I knew I wasn't in the race this year and I was fine with that.

I think LCD and TVOTR's victories just signified younger fan bases; in fact (as was pointed out, which I wish I'd remembered to write the first time, since I'd intended to), the younger skewing is why Dylan finished sixth in I.P. (and first in P&J). In my '07 essay I talked about how I was prepared for a dogfight and it never came; then P&J came out with the Top 3 knotted close together. So my prediction had some substance, just for the other poll. Idolator had a lot of the voters were bloggers who'd never voted in P&J, and I think more of them vote for singles, and I think that boosted "Umbrella."

I think an echo chamber is inevitable; it's human nature, and I agree and disagree with it, but I don't feel like there's much I can do about it. So having an opinion about it seems kind of pointless to me, unless it's about specific instances where I agree with it or don't. As far as the singles tastes of P&J voters being "rock-entrenched," I should have just said what I meant, which is that old people voted for "Rehab" because it sounded like an old record and young people voted for "Umbrella" because it sounded like a current one. (I like both records a lot.)

get editors at genral interest publications to recognize that they should ocassionally cover non-indie music.

Not trying to be a crank this morning, or an apologist, but what publications don't already do this? (Do agree they could all do it more.)

Don't most general interest publications tend to cover mainstream, major-label music more than anything?

yeah newsweek is always going on and on about wolf parade and animal collective

Assumed he meant Spin/Blender/Rolling Stone (though yeah, they all tend more toward big-leagers too, as far as I can tell. Or at least bigger indie acts.)

old people voted for "Rehab" because it sounded like an old record and young people voted for "Umbrella" because it sounded like a current one

Yeah, that makes sense, and it's what I figured you meant. (As does the other stuff you said. Thanks!)