Pazz and Jop 2010

its redundant?

― challopian youtubes (deej), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:45 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Maybe it's not "inferior" but it seems narrow and limiting to me.

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

let me say up front that i'm not defending the way i vote. i tend not to have much crossover between albums and singles/tracks in my own poll ballots. but i wouldn't be at all annoyed by someone who did. it doesn't strike me as redundant, because the questions being asked are different. for example, two people who both loved the taylor swift album might differ on which single off the album is best.

nor does it seem particularly narrow or limiting. in fact, the attempt to enforce a clear distinction between singles and album artists seems far more limiting to me. if we do this, the tracks poll generates not a straightforward list of our favorite singles of the year, but rather a summary of our favorite singles by artists whose albums we didn't vote for, which strikes me as an odd skew to force upon the results. especially given the power of popular singles to seize the public imagination without the assistance of this kind of forced diversity policy. especially given the fact that we increasingly live in a post-album age.

especially given the power of popular singles to seize the public imagination without the assistance of this kind of forced diversity policy

well that's kind of at issue isn't it

are ppl really paying attention to singles if they privilege albums over them

In essence because it asymmetrically privileges album-oriented music. It goes without saying that if you like an album you like the songs on it. By someone listing an album in their top ten it should be pretty obvious that they also think the songs on it are awesome. OTOH the fact that they like the album so much suggests that it's likely (not definite, but likely) that they enjoy those songs in the context of listening to the album.

But there's lots of songs that are listened to in absence of an album - either because they're big hits, or because there isn't an album, or because there is an album but it's bad, or it's in a genre from which the listener checks out songs but rarely buys albums. When we think of songs that shine as songs (outside the context of an album) it is usually stuff in these categories we think of.

If critics simply replay their albums lists in their songs list it marginalises these categories (except possibly "big hits", which might also be from a high-rating album), and fills the list with stuff that is really enjoyed in an album context anyway (for, if it was not, if it really was listened to as a standalone, the critic wouldn't have voted for the album as well).

― Tim F, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i'd agree that ballots featuring heavy album/single crossover might privilege album-oriented music, and probably would tend to exclude certain categories of singles (as you suggest above). but i'm not sure that there's anything particularly wrong with privileging album-oriented music, if that happens to be what one genuinely likes. and less popular singles by non-album-oriented artists will only be marginalized relative to a ballot by someone with differing tastes. i mean, it's not like there won't be at least a few voters who specialize in non-album-oriented singles to take up the slack.

that said, i understand the basic inequality built into the system. popular albums will always contain a slew of at least moderately popular tracks, but popular singles aren't necessarily associated with a parent album. as you suggest, this means that there's a built-in tendency for tracks from popular albums to sweep aside some of the weird minor hits that keep the singles poll interesting. that's a sound argument, imo. i'm somewhat suspicious of the assumed need for this protective umbrella, however, because i don't think people would vote so very differently if we were less insistent about the need for it. nevertheless, i'll grant that it probably has some benefit in this regard.

my deep-down objection to the "albums here, singles there" policy is that it seems intended to arbitrarily diminish the presence of certain types of music in the singles list. not just "album-oriented music," but specific strains of it. i hear a lot of complaining about the strawman indie voter (a character i've invoked before) who threatens to gunk up the singles list with arcade fire and the national cuts, but everyone's cool with the appearance of taylor swift, kanye, and lady gaga in the albums list, when we know that these artists will also dominate the singles poll. i would say that it is the ubiquity in ballots of hugely successful pop artists like this, more than anything else, that leads to homogeneity in the two lists. but perhaps that's unavoidable. a giant hit is hard to deny.

i guess i come out of this conflicted. i like the idea that the singles list could be a haven for secret stars and would be bummed if it simply regurgitated tracks from the albums list. but i'm philosophically okay with imaginary arcade fire fan voting his/her heart.

No-one's arguing for a protective umbrella, they're just saying it's an unfortunate trend.

but everyone's cool with the appearance of taylor swift, kanye, and lady gaga in the albums list.

As chuck's comment upthread indicated, artists with absolutely massive singles and albums have always crossed over both lists. But lots of pop artists with big singles don't cross over to the albums list. Which is fine. But it's not like The National have been promoted as a singles band.

Taio Cruz ending up with an album in the top 10 would be equiv of The National ending up with a single in the top 10, but that would never happen.

Or maybe a better comparison is Katy Perry: number 11 in singles, number 158 in albums.

Whereas every single artist with an album in the P&J Top 20 also had a "single" in the P&J Top 40.

xpost:

yeah, i get that, but the way those songs and albums fall out in the rankings probably reflects the underlying realities fairly accurately. "dynamite" gets lots of love, but very few P&J voters rate rockstarr overall. a bunch of them probably only know the song as a stand-alone single. meanwhile, it's likely that tons of "bloodbuzz ohio" fans love the national album all the way through (can't fucking stand that song/band, btw).

however the national have been promoted, the distinctions between "album artist" and "single artist" aren't as clear in the itunes/youtube age as they might once have seemed. "dynamite" is obviously a much more popular song, but i'm sure we can agree that gross popularity isn't the only or even the best measure of a song's right to do well in a poll such as this.

No, but is it really likely that fans of The National enjoyed "Bloodbuzz Ohio" as a song in any sense meaningfully distinct from the album as a whole?

Katy Perry: number 11 in singles, number 158 in albums.

Whereas every single artist with an album in the P&J Top 20 also had a "single" in the P&J Top 40.

i don't want to argue this too aggressively because your point makes sense to me, and i'm conflicted by my own. but i can easily see why all those top 20 album artists would also have songs in the top 40. albums are nothing but collections of songs. we therefore perhaps mislead ourselves in thinking of certain artists as "album-oriented." these artists are popular among voters only because their albums contain songs the voters love. there are very few albums i'd number among my personal favorites that fail to include at least one or two of my favorite songs. i wouldn't say that albums and album-oriented artists are superior to singles and singles artists, but i do put all songs on an equal footing. in this sense, maybe albums are just singles with really long b-sides.

No, but is it really likely that fans of The National enjoyed "Bloodbuzz Ohio" as a song in any sense meaningfully distinct from the album as a whole?

― Tim F, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 4:08 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's a really tough question that i'm not going to go off on. i want to say "yes," but need to think it through first. plays into what i just said about albums being singles with long b-sides.

on reflection and on a functional level, i guess i have to agree with you and the lex. the best strategy is that which encourages maximum broadness in the lists, representation for as many different artists and musical approaches as possible. with that in mind, album-oriented critics should speak to the album-oriented audience primarily through the albums list.

i'd insert the the caveat that there must be the occasional non-hit song on a critically-respected album that so clearly rises above the rest of the material that it deserves mention on a singles ballot (caribou's "odessa" springs to mind atm). but maybe that's just me.

No actually contenderizer I agree with your last point entirely. And I think insisting on absolute separation across the board is extreme.

This is one of those things where one person doing something in isolation is fine but a large number of people doing it has unfortunate (mostly unintended) consequences.

And yeah albums aren't superior to singles or vice versa - but the two lists being a bit different from one another does make for more interesting reading.

Hey all I'm saying is that in 2002 or 1997 or 1991 or 1985 or 1979, the top 10 of the P&J singles list was basically "here are 8-10 of the best hit songs everybody heard this year, with maybe one or two songs that only critics and music nerds know about but generally agree on." The last couple years it's been "here are 3-5 hit songs everybody knows but not necessarily the best, just the most critic-friendly, and the rest are things we heard on the Forkcast."

I think "not necessarily the best, just the most critic-friendly" is not really a supportable accusation. The P&J was always the list of the most "critic-friendly" songs, whatever their sales, by definition: It's a poll of critics. I don't see how "Bloodbuzz Ohio" making the top 10 is materially different than "Stop Your Sobbing" in 1979, or "O Superman" in 1981, or "Eight Miles High" in 1984. Nor how the Forkcast is any less valid a source of exposure than KZEW or Billboard or however "critics" were hearing (about) new music 30 years ago.

A poll can be (at least) two things: the aggregated trip reports from year-long voyages of musical discovery, or the judgment of a panel of experts on the artistic merits of popular material. If you want the latter, you need a constrained set of choices. Arguably radio and the professional demands of a print-based electorate implicitly provided enough constraint in the early days. Now, not so much, for many many reasons.

But who cares? Why should popularity be the first filter? Why should the Pazz & Jop be the post-amateur division of American Idol? To me the trip-report idea is hugely, overwhelmingly more compelling. The "results" are the least of the poll, to me (and currently I'm the one providing them...). The much deeper value is in the network of associations and connections and commonalities. I'd love to see the poll pushed, in both electorate and structure, towards more diversity, more-varied specialization, more conscious and comprehensive embrace of this role of thoughtful exploration.

well put

Cool discussion - the proper distinction seems to be between good and bad critics/voters rather than admissible and inadmissible tracks. If a voter listens to a wide range of music over the year (Glenn's voyage of musical discovery) then I'd trust whatever he/she lists as his/her favourite tracks. Someone who restricts themselves to a small number of critically-acclaimed albums and votes for six Vampire Weekend tracks probably shouldn't be voting.

my single votes in the pazz & jop weren't singles. i just used that list as an excuse to vote for ten more albums that i liked. you can sue me if you want. i'm not the only one doing that now either. in other words, nine albums that never would have been a part of the poll are now a part of the poll. (voted for the books and other people actually did vote for that as a single.)

very well put. but i think some dude's point has merit, and it's echoed in glenn's closing paragraph:

To me the trip-report idea is hugely, overwhelmingly more compelling. [...] I'd love to see the poll pushed, in both electorate and structure, towards more diversity, more-varied specialization, more conscious and comprehensive embrace of this role of thoughtful exploration.

it's hard not to be disappointed when the aggregate trip-report reflects the fact that everybody took the same guided tour.

But it's not like The National have been promoted as a singles band.

http://stereogum.com/314001/the-national-bloodbuzz-ohio/mp3s/
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11866-bloodbuzz-ohio/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodbuzz_Ohio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K779pqvYQds
http://www.4ad.com/thenational/news/~download-free-mp/

lol auto-embed

okay, make that 8 albums. cuz i put a swans song on my list and they were a part of the poll album-wise.

that last "very well put" went to glenn xp

yeesh that national song. yuck. for when you want to get bored by interpol AND coldplay at the same time, i guess. and the video is just as boring as the song. maybe that was the point.

No, but is it really likely that fans of The National enjoyed "Bloodbuzz Ohio" as a song in any sense meaningfully distinct from the album as a whole?

I don't see why this is implausible.

In 2004 P&J I voted for Phoenix's Alphabetical album and also the song "Everything Is Everything," which I heard before the rest of the album and which I found to be clearly the standout track, even as I frequently listened to the whole album. It's the song I put on mixes or put on randomly when I wanted to dance or whatever. It's also the first track on the album, so sometimes I'd get the urge to listen just to the song but then find myself listening to and enjoying the rest of the album, too.

Certainly "Everything Is Everything" wasn't any more of a single than "Bloodbuzz Ohio" -- both were promoted as singles by the label and had videos, but didn't receive radio play or anything.

I think "not necessarily the best, just the most critic-friendly" is not really a supportable accusation. The P&J was always the list of the most "critic-friendly" songs, whatever their sales, by definition: It's a poll of critics. I don't see how "Bloodbuzz Ohio" making the top 10 is materially different than "Stop Your Sobbing" in 1979, or "O Superman" in 1981, or "Eight Miles High" in 1984. Nor how the Forkcast is any less valid a source of exposure than KZEW or Billboard or however "critics" were hearing (about) new music 30 years ago.

My point is that "Bloodbuzz Ohio" is the rule, the songs you point out used to be the exception. Moreover, "O Superman" and "Stop Your Sobbing" were UK chart hits (which, even if the P&J voters were American, they were probably big enough anglophiles to be aware of), and "Eight Miles High" is a cover of a very famous song, so all three of those signal an engagement with popular music that voting for "Bloodbuzz Ohio" does not.

"Fuck You!" and "Runaway," the 2 biggest songs in this year's top 10, were relatively moderate hits and code as way more "critic-friendly" than previous high P&J placers as such Kris Kross or Hanson. It used to be that a high ranking single from a high ranking album signified kind of a big deal, like Nevermind and "Teen Spirit" or Thriller and "Billie Jean." Now it's everyone's 3rd favorite album from journeyman indie band #4742 and the mp3 you got off Stereogum a couple weeks before the album leaked. I think that represents a bigger shift than you're giving credit for.

This year I decided that I wouldn't vote for any singles by the artists on my albums ballot, not because I wanted to enforce a strict separation between "albums" and "singles" artists, but because I didn't want to have any "automatic" choices on my singles ballot. IOW, I felt that by voting for singles from my favourite albums, I'd be making somewhat safe and lazy choices, without really thinking about which other songs and artists I liked last year. It felt necessary, at least for this year, even though my ballots hadn't contained much overlap in the past (never more than two or three artists in common, I think).

for when you want to get bored by interpol AND coldplay at the same time

the most otm thing i've ever read about the national ^^

Ha, I kinda like both Interpol and Coldplay selectively.

I don't see why this is implausible. [see jaymc xpost for details]

yeah, i'd agree with that. the objection has to be that non-smash singles by indie artists are somehow categorically illegitimate relative to "real singles" by non-indie artists and/or that indies get enough love in albums world and thus should keep their grubby pink fingers out of the singles poll.

those are the only arguments i can see, because there's no way to say with any real authority which songs are or aren't meaningfully distinct from the albums that contain them. better to stick with the fact that it's disappointing to see such a narrow and timid range of [redacted]-approved choices passing itself off as the P&J singles list.

Now it's everyone's 3rd favorite album from journeyman indie band #4742 and the mp3 you got off Stereogum a couple weeks before the album leaked. I think that represents a bigger shift than you're giving credit for.

― trv kvnt (some dude), Wednesday, January 26, 2011 6:48 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

truthbomb

How are people gonna know about "Hey Soul Sister" if critics don't put it on their pazz'n'jop ballots?

Why should the Pazz & Jop be the post-amateur division of American Idol?

the proper distinction seems to be between good and bad critics/voters rather than admissible and inadmissible tracks

enforce a strict separation between "albums" and "singles" artists

non-smash singles by indie artists are somehow categorically illegitimate relative to "real singles" by non-indie artists and/or that indies get enough love in albums world and thus should keep their grubby pink fingers out of the singles poll

I would like to point out for the record that none of these in any way accurately describe the position I'm taking here. And if anyone reads my posts carefully and still doesn't see the difference, I would be happy to explain why.

How are people gonna know about "Hey Soul Sister" if critics don't put it on their pazz'n'jop ballots?

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 10:15 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

never said that voting for Train was an evangelical move, just that I don't think it's that different from people voting for "Tubthumping" in the '90s. and I think voting for that song if I actually like it is different from and more defensible than your "lol let's vote for Hinder" stunt.

haha ok now who's projecting meaning onto posts

so were you just making a general zing and didn't know that I had personally voted for "Hey, Soul Sister"?

Oh I knew, but I didn't meant to suggest it was in bad faith (and my Hinder vote has nothing to do with anything we're talking about here). I totally agree that this was not a year of critical/commercial consensus on singles, but if you're gonna complain that back in the day people used to vote for "jump" and "mmmbop," it's worth looking at what the "jump"s and "mmmbop"s of 2010 were. I for one think Justin Bieber's "Baby" was robbed, but with all the gaga and "empire state of mind" in last year's poll, I'm not sold that this is a sign of blinkered indiedom.

jeezuz a battle between a train fan and a hinder fan. i can't look...

i love the idea that trying to punk the pazz'n'jop after a media conglomerate fired its creator isn't "defensible"

I didn't perceive or respond to any implication of bad faith, I perceived and responded to the joking suggestion that I or anyone else voting for pop hits is trying to educate people about the existence of hugely popular songs they've probably already heard and made up their minds about.

It's defensible as a protest move, I'm just saying voting for uncool pop facetiously and mocking people who do it sincerely just makes it seem like you'd rather throw sarcastic asides into the discussion (the discussion being both the poll and this discussion about the poll) than engage with it.

I guess you forgot my own history of sincere uncool pop promotion

Anyhoo, to ask the question I probably should have from the get-go, what are the great pop artists who are being slighted by this indie blinkerdom? From your own list, it would sound like Train is one.

sorry, I should say "great pop songs" not artists

I would like to point out for the record that none of these in any way accurately describe the position I'm taking here. And if anyone reads my posts carefully and still doesn't see the difference, I would be happy to explain why.

― trv kvnt (some dude), Wednesday, January 26, 2011 7:17 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

hey, some dude, the quote of mine you're griping at had nothing to do with you. it was me responding to jaymc responding to tim f responding to me. understand how these chains of communication can get fuzzy, but believe me when i say that i'm not trying to put words in your mouth.

My standard complaint--While it might not impact the top of the poll, I still wish more of the folks who do write for publications and blogs about genres other than indie-rock would choose to submit ballots. It might distract me some from looking at the albums and songs chosen by the indie-rock only participants.

I guess you forgot my own history of sincere uncool pop promotion

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 10:38 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I haven't. That's why I, if not expect you to have my back on this, then at least don't understand why you seem so eager to take cheap shots at my argument.

contenderizer: I didn't mean to imply you were purposefully misrepresenting me. But since I seem to be the only person ITT standing roughly on the side of the argument you were describing, I wanted to draw a distinction before I got grandfathered into the gray area.

That's why I, if not expect you to have my back on this, then at least don't understand why you seem so eager to take cheap shots at my argument.

Because I think it's a pretty pious one! It's one thing to notice a lack of enthusiasm for pop wares among the critic pool, it's another to be critical of it without suggesting what they're ignoring. It should probably be noted that the national's last album went Silver in the UK.

"I wanted to draw a distinction before I got grandfathered into the gray area."

that's what she said!

I did a year-end list of my favorite singles of the year and I did stats on Glenn's site that show what hits would've ranked higher if they hadn't been outvoted by non-hits, so you can look at either of those depending on whether you're asking for what I like best or what well-liked hits theoretically would've done better. But either way, I kind of feel like any song I point out is going to met with snorts of derision of "of course that's not as good as the 5th best song on the LCD Soundsystem album!" and I don't really feel like the burden of proof is on me to explain why someone might actually enjoy a multi-platinum pop hit more than an indie album track.

I didn't mean to imply you were purposefully misrepresenting me. But since I seem to be the only person ITT standing roughly on the side of the argument you were describing...

gotcha, and fwiw, i'm more-or-less in yr corner here. what i was trying to do with that post was to come up with a good, defensible way to object to lazy pfork cluster-selection on ballots. in the process, i clowned some less defensible arguments i've seen tossed around but that no one was actually making ITT.