Pazz and Jop 2010

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.

right, it's all good. I'm glad we can sort that out without screaming "STRAWMAN!" :)

Well, as I mentioned earlier, "Bloodbuzz Ohio" goes from #9 to #7 when you eliminate singles votes from people who also voted for the corresponding albums, whereas all Kanye's singles plummet, so while I'm definitely not arguing that the music-critical world hasn't changed, I don't think singling out the National this way is helping us understand how.

Just for another bit of information, I added the P&J top 100 albums to this dataset I happened to have of 39 other year-end polls:

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Album-of-the-Year&query=Pazz+%26+Jop

The National appear on 33 of those 39 (including Rolling Stone and Spin), and in the top 10s of 20 of them (including last.fm and Amazon).

eg the fives' "it's what you do", i've no idea what the status of that is. it's not available (on itunes) to buy, but they put it on their soundcloud and made a video for it

The way I construct my ballot, if a video was made to promote it separately from the album, I'd probably let myself consider it a single for Pazz & Jop purposes. (I try to limit myself to actual "singles," but how I define the word might not make sense to anybody else. Like, when I got an email yesterday that "Midnight America," my favorite track on the spotty 2010 album by Texas country band Rosehill, now has a video, that automatically put it in the running for consideration as a single in 2011. If I get a press release singling out a track I like a lot as a focus track, that counts too, even if I never hear the song on the radio or it never charts or I never see the single in a physical format.)

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.

Well, for one thing, when those three earlier songs charted in Pazz & Jop, none of them existed as part of an album, did they? "Eight Miles High" wasn't on Zen Arcade; Anderson's debut album didn't come out until 1982 (and didn't have "Walk The Dog" on it even when it did -- the single scored with both sides in Pazz & Jop.) The Pretenders album technically came out at the tail-end of 1979, but iirc didn't show up on Pazz & Jop until 1980, which is the year critics actually heard and connected with it. So that's a huge difference, right there.

The way I construct my ballot, if a video was made to promote it separately from the album, I'd probably let myself consider it a single for Pazz & Jop purposes. (I try to limit myself to actual "singles," but how I define the word might not make sense to anybody else. Like, when I got an email yesterday that "Midnight America," my favorite track on the spotty 2010 album by Texas country band Rosehill, now has a video, that automatically put it in the running for consideration as a single in 2011. If I get a press release singling out a track I like a lot as a focus track, that counts too, even if I never hear the song on the radio or it never charts or I never see the single in a physical format.)

yeah i assumed this as well, which is why i voted for a 2 yr old max b mixtape track & a year old boosie mixtape track

"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."

the burden of proof kinda is on you if you are the one saying that one thing is better than another. does that make sense?

i think whiney had a problem w/ that logic or something tho? xp

"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."

the burden of proof kinda is on you if you are the one saying that one thing is better than another. does that make sense?

― scott seward, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 11:03 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Saying one is better than the other isn't what I've done, though. That's one of the misconceptions I strained to clarify upthread.

okay must have missed that.

The way I construct my ballot, if a video was made to promote it separately from the album, I'd probably let myself consider it a single for Pazz & Jop purposes.

makes sense - but if there's a free-floating track around, unattached to album/mixtape, there may well not be a video, but i may well still want to rep for it. some of them are just personal faves, like rich boy & yelawolf's "go crazy" or shawnna's "nappy boy" this year - but they can still take on lives of their own despite never being available to buy and never being promoted as a single (or at all), eg ms dynamite's "bad gyal" in 2009, which was definitely a club anthem in itself.

(which is why i put no stock in "singles" vs "tracks".)

I think when you say people are choosing songs that are "not necessarily the best, just the most critic-friendly" you are saying the songs they're picking are not as good as other pop songs.

Just for another bit of information, I added the P&J top 100 albums to this dataset I happened to have of 39 other year-end polls:

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Album-of-the-Year&query=Pazz+%26+Jop

That's a nice resource, Glenn. I'll have the ILM poll results spreadsheet link up with your AoY and P/J databases.

Oh yeah Lex, "free floating tracks" (which don't otherwise exist on an album), leaked or not, would definitely count for me, too, if I liked them enough. If they're not on an album, they're a single by definition; what else could they be? (I also figure that any track that shows up on, say, a compilation of dancehall or South African house tracks by various artists must be considered a single by somebody somewhere, and if it shows up on a mix CD curated by a DJ, it must be getting played as a single in some club somewhere, even if I don't go to clubs. So my definition definitely has a real wide scope, but it still has to hinge on something less solipsistic than "a random track I liked a lot.")

I think when you say people are choosing songs that are "not necessarily the best, just the most critic-friendly" you are saying the songs they're picking are not as good as other pop songs.

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 11:18 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

don't know what the word "necessarily" means, huh

part of the problem in this debate is that we don't really know what we want out of these things. i mean, we want to see our favorite tracks and albums at the top of the ballot results, mixed in with some awesome stuff we've never heard, but beyond that, i don't think there's any clearly defined ideal process or result that things are falling short of.

can anyone honestly say with a straight face that there are certain tracks or albums that are absolutely more or less deserving of high placement in the results than others? i'd hope not, but you never know... for my part i'll happily say that certain artists, due to their popularity and critical respect, will very likely top the polls. but i don't think there's any more to it. people have their tastes, and that's that.

since we can't appeal to absolute artistic virtue, we're left with the wan hope that some sort of wholesome diversity can be obtained. diversity is inherently interesting, and would reassure us that we're not unfairly excluding anyone or anything. it's comforting, like when everyone gets a cookie. we therefore become distressed when evidence of herdlike homogeneity expresses itself, especially when that homogeneity can't be written off as the will of the invisible populist hand.

it's okay when pop artists win, after all, because everyone knows that everyone loves pop artists. being loved by everyone is the job of the pop artist. it's less okay when flaccid indie schmutz blots the landscape, because that sort of homogeneity carries with it a number of uncomfortable implications regarding the voting body. hell, they might even be middle-class for all we know. and they're hoarding all the cookies!

anyway I gotta go do some stuff, maybe later I'll have the energy to spoonfeed my relatively simple point some more

ive been enjoying more contenderizer posts in the past few months but once in awhile you still write long paragraphs of things establishing issues not in question & im like 'man i just read that'

I think when you say people are choosing songs that are "not necessarily the best, just the most critic-friendly" you are saying the songs they're picking are not as good as other pop songs.

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 11:18 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

don't know what the word "necessarily" means, huh

― trv kvnt (some dude), Wednesday, January 26, 2011 4:26 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

dude, you know that's a cop-out. otherwise you're saying the p'n'j placers COULD the best songs, but you're concerned about how critic-friendly they are.

and if your point is simple, why don't you just repeat it once, short and sweet, instead of whining about how no one gets it.

I'm just saying that I don't buy the idea that "Bloodbuzz Ohio" represents a failure to engage with popular music any more than anything else on the poll. I think we can probably all agree that the new ways in which music circulates have different dynamics than the old ones, but I suspect that has just as much of an effect on Kanye and Janelle as it does on the Arcade Fire. That is, I suspect you're actually understating the situation, and the disconnect between "popular" and "critical", or between "people who just listen to music" and "people who read and write about music", is actually much deeper than it seems in your chart lists, and the intersections of the sets is increasingly the result of coincidence and second/third-order reactions against reactions...

ive been enjoying more contenderizer posts in the past few months but once in awhile you still write long paragraphs of things establishing issues not in question & im like 'man i just read that'

― tuomascratch beat (deej), Wednesday, January 26, 2011 8:28 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, i was peripherally aware i was doing just that, but kept at it anyway.

need to get better at hearing the little voice...

"need to get better at hearing the little voice..."

http://www.mydisguises.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/noid.gif

thanks for the board descrip, scott

still has to hinge on something less solipsistic than "a random track I liked a lot"
So, if it's on an original-release album or EP, rather than a comp (or offical single, video, free-floater, focus track, your other exceptions), then it can't be in Singles? Is choosing such a track (especially if it's not from an Albums album) *necessarily* solipsistic and random?

Not judging what other folks do in that situation, Don. But yeah, for me, I wouldn't consider a mere album track like that a single. (One reason I didn't vote for Flynnville Train's "Sandman" as a single last year -- though, since they made my albums ballot, it would've been redundant, despite definitely being good enough to make my singles ballot.) (Actually, though, I can see how, uh, Track #1 on an EP might count as a single. If it was a real short EP, and it was clearly the main track, so the other songs were just basically B-sides: Think "Never Say Never" by Romeo Void, or "Ghosttown" by the Specials, say. Which were probably real singles otherwise, anyway.

I think when you say people are choosing songs that are "not necessarily the best, just the most critic-friendly" you are saying the songs they're picking are not as good as other pop songs.

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 11:18 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

don't know what the word "necessarily" means, huh

― trv kvnt (some dude), Wednesday, January 26, 2011 4:26 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

dude, you know that's a cop-out. otherwise you're saying the p'n'j placers COULD the best songs, but you're concerned about how critic-friendly they are.

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 11:30 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

What I'm saying is that the list feels more 'filtered' through a critical sensibility, in the broadest most stereotypical "this is what critics like more than the average music listener" way, than it used to be. The critics that put Quad City DJs and Donna Summer and Naughty By Nature and Van Halen and Cameo and Chumbawumba in the top 5 in years past don't seem too cool for school to me like the voters this year and last year. I'm not saying those artists' songs are better than "Fuck You!" or "Runaway," just that they don't easily fulfill a similar kind of predictable critical calculus (Kanye/guy from Gnarls Barkley + expletive-filled chorus = song of the year).

and if your point is simple, why don't you just repeat it once, short and sweet, instead of whining about how no one gets it.

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 11:31 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

1) In its first 20-odd years of existence, the P&J singles poll was markedly more populist and unpredictable than the albums poll, which made for an interesting counterpoint and went against the grain of a lot of stereotypes about the snobbishness or tunnel vision of music critics.
2) That has changed dramatically in the last few years, with non-singles and minor hits, usually by the same artists that dominate the albums poll, beating out even the most critically well regarded major hits.
3) As a result, the singles poll now feels more predictable and redundant, and P&J's ability to sum up a year in music or contribute to the dialogue about it feels hampered or more limited.

btw I just looked at the VV site and realized that the singles list has changed pretty substantially since I wrote my essay a week ago, I guess Glenn's been pretty busy triple-checking the numbers. I should reevaluate my stats before I continue mouthing off!

When I looked at the album list a couple days ago, the Bob Seger bootleg was up to #93! But then I noticed how that happened: Placements (on both lists, I think) had been altered to acknowledge ties, but instead of say, two albums tied for #32 followed by an album at #34 (which would be the proper way to do it), they're now followed by an album at #33. And so on, increasingly, down the chart. So the placements now don't really give you an accurate point of departure with which to compare with charts in recent years -- Top 40 or 100 now means something different than Top 40 or 100 used to, since suddenly way more than 40 or 100 albums can fit within those charts, if that makes any sense to anybody.

"Charts in previous years," I mean -- specifically, ones that ran in the VV P&J print versions. (For all I know, that same situation with numbering "tied" albums eventually happened in the past few years in the website version, and I just never noticed. Possibly a software glitch?)

(And of course only the Top 40, not Top 100, would have ever run in print. But Christgau's essay regularly mentioned where other finishers placed, almost always down to #50, and sporadically down to 100 or even lower.)

woah yeah the tie thing explains all the changes -- is that a glitch or a deliberate change of approach?

was looking at the P&J top 20 albums to see what they had in common. though some of these distinctions are quite arbitrary, this is what it looks like to me:

pitchfork best new music - 15/20
indie - 13/20
rock (all indie) - 12/20
chart topping (US top 20 albums) - 10/20
club pop (rap, r&b, dance) - 7/20
rap and r&b - 4/20
electronic - 4/20
billboard #1 - 3/20
country and americana - 2/20
progressive - 2/20
punk - 2/20

I don't control the Voice's site, although I will continue my attempts to get them to get it right. At the moment the numbering there is wrong in two ways: not skipping numbers properly, as Chuck noted, and on the album side, not respecting the number-of-votes tiebreaker for albums tied on points. Both of these are right in the Needle version.

Also, if you'd checked the Voice's version of the singles results during the first 24-ish hours after they came out, you might have seen them before they included remix and carryover votes, so several things shifted around once that data was added.

yeah i think i updated my stuff after the first couple days, i was just confused by the more recent changes.

good orig. research cntndrzr--that's quite depressing.

to amuse myself, P&J top 20 singles broken down by similar categories (21, actually, through the two #16s):

would-be chartpop (billboard top 100, or close to it) - 15/21
appeared on the pitchfork playlist - 14/21
rated "best new music" on the playlist - 13/21
appeared on an album rated "best new music" - 13/21 (16/21 in either of these 2 categories)
appeared on an album in the P&J top 20 - 12/21
club pop (rap, r&b, dance) - 12/21
indie - 8/21
rap and r&b - 8/21
US top 40 - 7/21
electronic (excludes most rap and r&b) - 6/21
rock - 5/21 (4/5 indie)
US #1 - 2/21

Metal - 0/21