Pazz and Jop 2010

nabisco otm

I.e., singles poll = Europa League.

good point, nabisco. that's why i didn't really take that into account in my theories about indie-heavy singles ballots -- i'm sure there are people that are just using their singles ballots to vote for up to 20 indie artists instead of rubberstamping the 10 from their albums list.

"indie artists"

indie...bands?

Yeah, Nabs, that's a good point and one that I did consider as I was glancing at every ballot on which the National appeared.

maybe one thing i can bug glenn about trying to do, whether this year or for next year's poll, is crossover between artists on both the albums and singles poll and what artists appeared on both of a critic's lists, i imagine that's changed a bit in recent years as well.

i'm sure many of you will consider it something that calls for bloodshed or a UN tribunal

not the tribunal, we don't need that if we KILL THEM ALL FIRST

the bloodshed, yes.

seriously, looking at some of the people who got to submit ballots is enraging. how do those people have careers in music journalism with their incuriosity and ignorance.

yeah, man. righteous! so, how does the latest Agalloch CD strike you, lex?

seriously, looking at some of the people who got to submit ballots is enraging. how do those people have careers in music journalism with their incuriosity and ignorance.

Pretty sure I would fall into this group. (Or maybe, not having a career in music journalism, I'm exempt.) It sure has been a long time since I was enraged by anything concerning a year-end poll, though.

some dude: like this?

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Pazz-Jop&query=Duplicate+Artist+Votes

how do those people have careers in music journalism with their incuriosity and ignorance.

How can you tell that they're incurious/ignorant?

cuz they voted for the wrong stuff obv

i can tell you that not all 700 of those people don't exactly have thriving "careers"

some dude: like this?

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Pazz-Jop&query=Duplicate+Artist+Votes

― glenn mcdonald, Sunday, January 23, 2011 9:59 AM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

i was thinking more something that shows the single list for a given year w/ a number of percentage of its votes that came from people that voted for albums by the same artist, although that's cool too.

Oh, I did those earlier: look for "20xx Non-Album Song Ranking" in each year.

oh right duh, i saw that at one point and then forgot it already existed when i thought about the idea later. very interesting that "Monster" drops way less than the other Kanye singles in that version.

so, how does the latest Agalloch CD strike you, lex?

pffft lex doesn't like agalloch. isnt he more of a sun city girls type iirc?

my girl pointed out that a CONSIDERABLE percentage of those polled are so far out on the periphery of "music journalism" or the bidness that she takes these results with a grain of salt.

I mean, the results would be way more interesting if the poll was back to like it's roots of having like 200 people. Never understood that horserace between the Voice and Jackin' Pop to get the most people involved so the results can be even more homogenous?

If you vote once you're grandfathered into to like every subsequent poll iirc. There's like names of dudes on that list who haven't logged a valid clip in years.

It could be worse, they could have voters who aren't even critics like in all the ILM polls.

Welll--dunno about "critics" (big word!) but some of us are reviewers--meaning money involved, publisher's getting some even if writers aren't. I won't usually do it for free, and never a freebie for a publisher, meaning I see ads. Which makes you a publisher, not a blogger. Even if you claim the ads just keep the site going. Might not follow such a rule forever, but I won't do away with it. Fewer and fewer publicists care about such distinctions--they may say "Please do not share this download" --of a track, vs. watermarked EPs or albums, but those tracks are meant to go viral as possible, and the "please" just makes it more enticing, of course. Up front "Do share" is becoming more common, especially for embeds. So, the distinction between approved bloggers and real journos is becoming less significant, at least in terms of legit access. Plus, you maybe could not let the intern out til he's checked the latest filing of everybody on the mailing list, but that wouldn't nec be accurate either. For instance, a couple of my own regional outlets keep reviews and previews print-editon only (so you can't google past those giant glossy-ass ads)

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2010/RW1waXJlIFN0YXRlIG9mIE1pbmR8fHxKYXktWiAoZnQuIEFsaWNpYSBLZXlzKQ==/

Never understood that horserace between the Voice and Jackin' Pop to get the most people involved so the results can be even more homogenous?

Not sure what you're talking about ... didn't P&J participation peak in the years before the turnover at the Voice, i.e. before Jackin' Pop (which only ran for like two years) even got started?

lol good find kev -- dude voted for 3 09 singles

Again, speaking as someone far out on the periphery of music journalism who hasn't logged a valid clip in years and who aren't even a critic anymore, a big high-five to all the other voters who fit that description too. To me, the only criterion that matters is whether you have anything interesting to say about the records you vote for. It doesn't matter whether you get paid to write or not, doesn't matter whether you have a popular blog or not, and it doesn't matter whether you heard 1,000 albums last year or whether you heard 25. Someone who votes for all the right records but has nothing interesting or (even better) funny to say about them, that kind of voter holds no interest for me. If you're an old guy with your own voice, a bit of perspective, and a good joke or two, that's much more valuable to me. What was missing from the commentary for me this year wasn't somebody explaining to me the importance of LCD Soundsystem; it was (by choice or otherwise) Rob Sheffield, Chuck Eddy, Frank Kogan, people like that (I still miss Marcus, who doesn't even vote anymore). Those are the people I want to read. Does Billy Altman still write about music? Probably--I don't know. I know he still writes about baseball. But who cares? He should be allowed to vote forever. He's Billy Altman.

I accidentally voted for an '09 song too--May of '09! The world continued function as before.

I may criticize the results of the poll or theorize about the thought process of voters, but imo the electorate is what it is and there's not much point in hand-wringing about who gets let into the treehouse and who doesn't. you can't turn back time to before blogs and everything swelled the ranks, and trying to sort out who's famous or experienced or cool enough to deserve a ballot is suuuuuch a bad direction to take the conversation. really there are a good number of retired or lapsed critics (including some here: jaymc, da croupier, haikunym) that don't vote in P&J anymore because they don't write professionally about music much anymore that i wish did still vote. and any attempt to narrow the votership down to make the results 'better' would be a total folly.

OK, I only just noticed that applegirl002 got no votes. Burn the thing down.

Alao, what's necessarily so wrong with "music as a tool to jack up your credibility" (Caution: may not be exact phrase)? Musicians do that too. The music gets raised a little higher for scrutiny's sake, if you do it right.

For the record, the non-metal ballot I would have cast if I were allowed to cast 2:

Albums

BUMP OF CHICKEN: COSMONAUT (15)
Fefe Dobson: Joy (14)
Manic Street Preachers: Postcards From a Young Man (13)
Juliana Hatfield: Peace & Love (12)
Jewel: Sweet and Wild (Acoustic) (11)
Jimmy Eat World: Invented (9)
Frightened Rabbit: The Winter Of Mixed Drinks (8)
Shakira: Sale El Sol (7)
Shearwater: The Golden Archipelago (6)
Jónsi: Go (5)

Songs

Editors: "Bricks and Mortar"
Delays: "The Lost Estate"
Belle & Sebastian: "Suicide Girl"
Manic Street Preachers: "Distractions"
Goldfrapp: "Head First"
School of Seven Bells: "Heart Is Strange"
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: "New Babies; New Toys"
Killing Joke: "Honour the Fire"
Kim Yeo Hee: "My Music"
HIM: "Love, the Hardest Way (Tiësto Remix)"

There were 3 other votes for the Manic Street Preachers, 10 for Frightened Rabbit, 4 for Shakira and 25 for Jonsi; the other 6 albums I'd have been alone on. Of my singles, "Heart Is Strange" got 1 vote and "Bricks and Mortar" got 1 last year; the other 8 got nothing. Not even "Head First", which I really thought was my pop crossover for the year.

Weirdly, my centricity score for this ballot would have been exactly the same as the one for my real (metal) ballot. My highest-placing metal album was Agalloch at 48; my highest-placing non-metal album would have been Jonsi at 49. In fact, these 5 points for Jonsi would have been enough to swap their positions.

well, now i know that Jewel had an album out in 2010. Jewel, really? Jimmy Eat World, really? Manic Street...okay, i'll stop.

Bump Of Chicken -vs- Frightened Rabbit

i was sad that i was the only person to vote for the watson twins album. i love that album. but i think i might have been the only person on earth who ever heard it. vanguard records should be thrown in jail. i kinda wonder if the label is some sort of tax shelter these days. they put out some good stuff, but unless npr picks up on it or someone ends up on prairie home companion it disappears without a trace. i'm glad they send me actual promos though. once or twice a year i get a great record. that nobody hears...

and i guess it makes me sad cuz most of the stuff i vote for is tiny label freakshow stuff that will always be exactly that and i know that and i'm fine with it, but when i vote for something totally normal that could be a modest success commercially it STILL ends up being something that 99.99% of the world is unaware of.

The Jewel album is a country record, and decent, but my vote is for the bonus disc with her solo acoustic versions of all the songs. No matter what over-produced weirdness she consents to, she's still a truly great singer.

The Jimmy Eat World album would belong on the list for its drum sounds alone.

And the MSP album is them back in shameless radio-anthem mode, and there are few bands better at that.

The Frightened Rabbit vote needs an asterisk: I HATE the single "Swim Until You Can't See Land", so my version of the album drops that and adds the later b-side cover "Don't Go Breaking My Heart". Much, much better flow that way.

Glenn, you made me seek out "Distractions," which is indeed a good track, better than most of the album it didn't make it onto.

Oh, and all the b-sides are better-mixed than the album itself!

lex lex i've got u this time!!!

what abt when princess nyah says "u see the legs & the back but no arse out" out on her pass out freestyle? u think that's funny right? ok bad example that's not that funny but what abt when na'tee is ripping some wasteman a new one, that's p fuckin funny right? for profit!

What was missing from the commentary for me this year... was (by choice or otherwise) Rob Sheffield, Chuck Eddy, Frank Kogan, people like that

Flattered. And while I can't speak for those other two guys, for me, not submitting comments in recent years is definitely "by choice" -- I'm just not inspired to do it the way I was back in the Christgau era, at least partly because the Pazz & Jop section really doesn't strike me as a conversation anymore; Xgau's essay, whatever one thought of it (there was a lot to agree or disagree with, which is part of my point!) always served as a center in the old days, and there's just no equivalent in the new regime. This is in no way a knock on Harvilla (I'm not sure I could have centered the conversation without Christgau's help, either), but it's maybe a sign of the times: Also the fact that Pazz & Jop seems to have so much competition these days, and follows such a deluge of best-of polls now. Also, maybe I've just become lazy.

That said, I'm still curious about what people think of the essays that supplemented this year's poll. I only skimmed most of them, but I actually liked my old intern Tom Breihan's piece about Wiz/Yelawolf/Lil B/Curren$y/etc. a lot -- though that may be because my listening is so outside of that world (and even so, I still don't understand how Drake is "weird" in any interesting way, and I think it's a stretch to say "rap is a safer place for weirdos than it's ever been"; haven't there always been Divine Stylers and Rammellzees and Baseheads and Sensationals out there? Though I suppose they never got to rap for Pittsburgh Steelers fans like Wiz, but I'm not really convinced yet that he's as strange as them, either.) Also learned things from Simon Reynolds' Altered Zones/chillwave essay, though he lost me a few graphs in.

On other issues mentioned here in the past couple days, fwiw, here's what I said in my own essay last year:

Just as disconcerting, there's this year's Top 10 P&J singles, seven of which come off indie-identified albums that also finished in the Top 10. Unheard of--as a point of comparison, perennial P&J album high-charters Sleater-Kinney never placed a single above #35. In the three decades since singles tabulating started, only once before have seven Top 10s emerged from Top 10 albums: 1987, and it took three verifiable hits by Prince and two by Bruce (along with one each from R.E.M. and Los Lobos) to pull it off. The last time even five singles turned the trick was 2000, and none of those—two OutKasts, two Eminems, one U2—had indie cred...
I've got theories. First off: Lazy indie voters turning a fun exercise into a dutiful one by listing random "singles" off albums they also voted for are the new version of lazy AOR voters who used to vote for perfunctory tracks off albums they also voted for. Only the genre and technology have changed, and the fact that the AOR squares--back before our newfangled, allegedly singles-oriented, iTunes-through-shitty-speakers era began--almost always got marginalized by radio-imbibing pop and dance and hip-hop fans.

Yeah tbh I probably have not given you fair credit for influencing the stuff I've written and the stats I've compiled about the singles poll this year, I definitely read your essay last year but had not gone back to it more recently or remembered how spot-on it was.

I still don't understand how Drake is "weird" in any interesting way

don't worry, no one else on ILX does, either

It's appealing to think the album/single convergence is a result of lazy indie voters, of course. Hey, any time you can feel smugly superior to any majority, however local, right?

But see this ranking of artists by the percentage of their ballots (2008-10) that include both an album and a song:

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Pazz-Jop&query=Duplicate+Artist+Votes

#1 is Kanye, and Janelle Monáe is almost tied with Animal Collective. This isn't the only way to do this analysis, but it suggests that laziness, if that's what it is, isn't a purely indie failing.

If I can ever persuade the Voice to give me historical data, it would be interesting to see this table of artists per ballot, by year, for the whole history:

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Pazz-Jop&query=Artists+per+Ballot

Well, I was referring to the 2009 poll (when the Top 10 albums and singles list were both more overwhelmingly indie, and both overlapped more overwhelmingly with each other), not the 2010 one. And I never suggested that critics voting for indie music were the only lazy people out there. (In fact, I use the word "lazy" to describe myself in the very same post above where I quote my 2009 essay!)

And I do realize that chart is for 2008-to-2010, too...But as far as I can tell, outside of Kanye, Janelle, and Robyn, acts generally identified as indie pretty much have a lock on the chart's Top 14.

But there's indie stuff towards the bottom of that list, too, including 2008 winner TV on the Radio. You might still be right, but the numbers could have dramatically confirmed your hypothesis, and don't. Maybe those people aren't lazy, they just really liked those songs. Or maybe they're no lazier than hip hop voters or R&B voters or any other large subset...

Kanye/Janelle are big indie-crit institutions in 2010 I thought...?

Right, "indie voters" inasmuch as they exist, don't only vote for indie rock. (I'm sure quite a few cast ballots for Robyn, as well.) And if the tally doesn't confirm my hypothesis (not sure how such figures could confirm "laziness"), it doesn't disprove my hypothesis, either -- and the plethora of indie toward the top of the list supports my theory more than it argues against it, I'd think. But sure, I have no doubt that the voters "really liked those songs," too -- in fact, I said so in my essay last year. And 2009 may well have been a blip that will never be repeated, and no doubt there are some indie acts (say, maybe TV On The Radio) who aren't perceived even by their supporters as great singles bands. But the one thing that's inarguable is that, in 2009 at least, for whatever reason -- probably not a coincidence -- there was a convergence of albums and singles by the same acts at the top of the lists that had no remote precedent, in Pazz & Jop history, and those acts generally happen to be classified by most people as indie rock. And to me, that still seems noteworthy.

"No remote precedent" except maybe all those Bruce/Prince/etc. hit singles in 1984, I guess, if you want to get technical. (Though again, those were hit singles, which makes them different than most of what placed high in 2009 by definition. But to be honest I was all argued out about stuff this a year ago -- and people argued it to death upthread here a few days ago, too -- and I didn't really plan to dredge it back up now.)