Pazz and Jop "paste your comments here" thread.

Name: Michael Daddino
Code Name: Nice Nipples
Place of Residence: Upper East Side, New York City
Age: 34
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Lazy gay bastard. (Sorry Paul.)
Position Within the Rock Critic Justice League: Member of the Freaky Trigger/ILx cabal, sometime updater of the "Land of a Thousand Dances" blog, reviewer for the Seattle Weekly. Exactly the same as last year, in fact.

THE BALLOT: ALBUMS

1. Jason Forrest - Shamelessly Exciting - Sonig (20)
2. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois - Asthmatic Kitty (16)
3. Kanye West - Late Registration - Roc-A-Fella (16)
4. Jan Jelinek - Kosmischer Pitch - ~scape (12)
5. Eluvium - Talk Amongst the Trees - Temporary Residence Limited (9)
6. Electric Six - Senor Smoke - Warner Bros. (7)
7. Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree - 4AD (5)
8. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy - Jagjaguwar (5)
9. Mike Jones - Who Is Mike Jones? - Swishahouse/Asylum (5)
10. Miranda Lambert - Kerosene - Epic (5)

THE BALLOT: SINGLES

1. Chemical Brothers - Hold Tight London - Astralwerks
2. Mountain Goats - Dilaudid - 4AD
3. Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone - RCA
4. Shooter Jennings feat. George Jones - 4th of July - Universal South
5. Tori Alamaze - Don't Cha - Universal
6. Ada - Blondix 1 - Areal
7. Ciara feat. Ludacris - Oh - LaFace
8. Brad Paisley - Alcohol - Arista Nashville
9. Sebastian Tellier - La Ritournelle - Lucky Number
10. Capone - U So Craaazzzy - Fastlife

TURN AROUND BRIGHT EYES I GOT A USE FOR YOU

(From an ILx thread, reprinted here at the request of Michaelangelo Matos.)

When a bright young singer's a hype,
Does it mean he must suck the pipe
Of his own exhaust?
Or perhaps he's just lost,
though the heart of this headcase
is in a comfortably correct place?

When a narcissist gets political --
Offers something more than treacle --
*Must* he sound like a fool?
Speak in headlines like a tool?
While raging 'bout Bush's misrule?
(Which I admit is quite cruel.)

ELECTRO-CONVULSIVE THERAPY, PART ONE

Well, once again, there were certain subjects related to the fate of the world that totally made me feel like my chest was on the verge of implosion, but after the umpteenth panic attack my therapist kindly suggested to me that maybe maybe maybe I should just start avoiding the news entirely. That's not like me at all, I've been monitoring the news since I was five, but now I treat the sight of the Wall Street Journal like it was vomit on the sidewalk and am somewhat happier for cultivating incuriosity, as vile as that sounds. So I didn't allow myself to think very much about George Bush this year, apart from the ceaseless internal soundtrack of "MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER!" Hardly the sound of a progressive revolution that'll lift mankind onto the Type I civilization fast-track, sure, but you could probably use it in a mash-up or something.

I GOT YOUR LIFE-JACKET RIGHT HERE. IT'S CALLED "THE EIGHTIES," AND IT'S GONNA BE AROUND FOREVER.

*Shamelessly Exciting* is a blipvert tour through the musical timbres familiar from my childhood, all the California jazz and white blooze and gated drums and nerf metal spooge. It's spastic enough to poses as "critique," and contains enough "critique" to reassure reviewers at The Wire they're not actually enjoying the hooks, 'cause that would be false consciousness. Why, there's even a point mid-way in "Evil Doesn't Exist Anymore" where all the icky pop music speeds up and arcs away into the wild blue wonder to reveal...F.T. Marinetti! Sounding like Hitler! Ranting about what-the-fuck-EVER! Jesus. But I'm not gonna kid myself: I can offer no defence against the charges that it mirrors my political retreat in the face of shitty times. It probably does. I mean even more than usual. I love its frission of the familiar, even when Forrest's sources elude my identification, and even when they verge on the crappy. I mean, it's got "War Photographer" which incorporates all the awkward fuck-off hooks from three Blood, Sweat & Tears songs, including David Clayton-Thomas scatting out something like BA! Ba! BA-duh-da-dum-dum-di-dubba-dum! Da-dum! BAAAH-diddy-da-da-da-dum! Da-dum! Bleurgh-bum-du-di-blargh! (Charming video, btw: Viking band-geeks destroy Voltron-manqué with horns spurting rainbow jizz.) But the seventies-eighties still mean "home" to me, and home is still home even when the new occupants paint it aqua and put solar panels on the roof.

LATE REGISTRATION

The possibility that I might be putting Kanye, Sufjan, and Jelinek on another year-end list initially made me resistant to treating their albums as anything other than redundant. Worse, I didn't even bother to listen to *Arular* more than twice (though it really *did* seem redundant after *Piracy Funds Terrorism*); *Campfire Headphase*, not even once. It's like, if I'm gonna listen to more new albums in 2005 than I ever have in my life, and STILL fall in love with the same guys all over again, well, why bother? It's just gonna feel like a failure of nerve in a go-go world of endless product, right? Well, liking *Illinois* came real easy once I was asked to review it, and *Kosmischer Pitch* was that rare bit of sonic vaugeness that turned propulsive rather than irritating once I started to really pay attention. (I was all set to vote for *Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra* and Kammerflimmer Kollektief's *Absencen* until I listened to them in critic-mode -- now I think they've got only one masterful cut each.) And Kanye...damn. He sure as hell earned that Time Magazine cover, didn't he? Having the big consensus hip-hop album of '04 did nothing to lessen his hunger, and being as self-possessed as Diana Ross at her peak didn't blunt his empathy for others; indeed, it may have sharpened it, of all things. So I feel crummy for even temporarily rejecting these guys' next episodes; makes me wonder if, had I been born in the post-war boom, I'd be totally over the Beatles by *The Beatles' Second Album* . Or if, come the revolution, I'd complain that I liked the last revolution better.

Compounding the self-doubt, in December I finally listened to *Goodbye, Babylon* after keeping an unlistened-to copy on a high self for a whole year, and devoured it in big gulps like it was the most natural thing. So now I also feel regretful that I didn't spend 2005 monitoring reissues of public domain material the way I'd been monitoring every random indie and post-techno release someone on ILx recommended. I know damned well my hit-to-miss ratio for the albums I listen to would be higher, and their pleasures probably wouldn't dissolve on second contact, like too many middling releases did this year. (Another big regret of '05: I should've learned to play banjo after I heard the *Anthology*; I figure by now I'd be no worse than Peter Stempfel, who's good enough.)

WHEREIN MR. DADDINO HELPS TO MAKE "NO SUFJAN, NO CREDIBILITY" A POPULAR INTERNET MEME

(Also by request of Mr. Matos -- I wouldn't put this in my P&J comments otherwise, since I sorta touched in these issues in my review. Not published this anywhere 'cept in private conversation.)

I read St. Teresa's autobiography when I was a teen, and while it had some awesomely sick visions involving tunnels of lizards leading to a dresser of pure evil (I may be misremembering this a little) I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the way she flaunted her humility. I can understand that God's visitations might fill a person with self-doubt, sure, yet all of her repeated protestations that any random prostitute or criminal she'd come across was sooo obviously more holy and deserving of God's love than she was just came across as willful and false, since SHE was the one putting herself through the virtual cheese-shredder for Christ, what with all her mortifications.

Now I'm as big a Sufjan cheerleader as any, but I see "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." as coming from a sorta similar impulse, a kind of wimp-macho attempt at out-self-abasing all Christian comers, and thus an inverted form of vanity. It's ridiculous, like a verbal volley in the Monty Python skit where old men keep telling increasingly absurd tales about childhood hardship: "I am no better than a wino on the street." "Oh yeah? Remember that psycho Martin Short played on Law & Order:SVU a while back? Dig?" "Well, you remember John Wayne Gacy Jr.? In my best behavior, I am really just like him." "Well, dude, I'm like Stalin and G.G. Allin rolled into one...FROM HELL." (Maybe this wouldn't be quite as ridiculous if he didn't sometimes he comes across as so pious that all of his sins are on the level of stealing post-it notes from work.) (For the record, in my review I begrudgingly granted his comparison also "suggests the moral equality amongst all men and women in the state of original sin.")

It also annoys me because you can read the comparison as neo-Platonist distrust-of-art commentary: Gacy manipulated emotions and OOH AAH INDIE SINGER-SONGWRITERS DO TOO, WE'RE ALL GUILTY, ETC. Which, again, is not only obnoxiously trivializing but patently silly coming from a committed formalist like Sufjan. And I can't even begin to fathom the possible meaning of his identification with a sexual predator who exclusively worked his evil on young men, all of whom probably looked the part of indie-rock hottie as much as Sufjan does -- or why so many indie-rock hottie fans and critics find all this so moving.

Sounds like Arcade Fire, Mike.

Mannie Fresh's sense of humor is downright *goofy*. *The Mind Of* is almost a comedy record, as over-the-top wacky as Bobby Jimmy and the Critters or Oran "Juice" Jones. The skits don't even seem like skits; they just arise naturally out of everything else that's going on, so they're not annoying. And even though he makes fun of himself for doing it (just like he makes fun of himself for everything else), Mannie incorporates Southern soul music *at least* as beautifully as Kanye does. I also love the parts that go beyond Cash Money-type electro-beats and into even bouncier Take Fo Records-style Ninth Ward party music, even (I swear) second-line Mardi Gras gumbo r&b territory, Lee Dorsey or "Hey Pocky Way" or "Iko Iko" or whatever it is. And though I don't want to make too much of voting for two New Orleans hip-hop albums the year of Katrina--it's not a *statement*; if anything, it's just a coincidence--I think Lil Wayne's album is soul music, too: celebratory and funny, then sad and uplifting, but somehow always triumphant and warm-hearted (and catchy catchy catchy) before and after he finally mentions the hurricane, even during the make-money-fuck-bitches parts . And even if it's just the context, I can't help feeling Katrina's presence in the mood throughout--like, say, when Wayne wearily confides to us that he's an old soul but a young man. But "I'm a D-Boy" makes me dance around my kitchen, and the moaning monastery druids in "Best Rapper Alive" perform the impossible trick of making me like Iron Maiden, and sure, I'll buy that the worldplay Lil Wayne drawls is amazing, too; even though "dexterous lyric skillz" are almost never why I listen to hip-hop.

I also don't always notice when rappers are bragging about slinging cocaine, by the way; as often as not for me, "figuring out what they're rapping about" is completely counter-intuitive, almost incidental to the listening experience. I can do it if I *have* to, but it'd just be a parlor game. So anyway, what I really want to know is, what are the "filler" tracks supposed to be on the Young Jeezy or Mike Jones or Paul Wall albums? I mean, I like some tracks more than others, and I have no doubt that Jeezy's thing, especially, could be shorter, but hip-hop critics overrate "consistency" even more consistently than other critics. (Though admittedly, I'm less likely to play hip-hop albums start to end than albums in most other genres, and that *is* something to be held against them. Also, it's hard to concentrate at work with hip-hop on in the background. So usually I play it at home, on shuffle with other music--at least when my 14-year-old (who insists lyrics are a lost skill, but they're gonna come back, just you wait) isn't hogging the CD player with Wu Tang, Jedi Mind Tricks, Danger Doom, and, um, Kanye West.

Then again, it's Kanye West, not the post-crunk stuff my kid now won't let me play when he's around since it's not real and/or backpacker enough, who his ninth grade English teacher now assigns readings about, and puts fill-in-the-blank questions on quizzes where sentences start by talking about Kanye's "crazy flow." If I was my younger, crankier self, I'd note (accurately) that Pazz & Jop generally tends to honor the sort of music that high school English and Social Studies teachers would approve of. But I have nothing at all against Kanye; he's great. I especially love the song near the end with Cam'Ron on it. Also, if "Gold Digger" wins, I think it might be the first Pazz&Jop winner ever that can be taken as an answer song to a previous winner (i.e., "No Scrubs" by TLC -- sadly, "No Pigeons" by Sporty Thievz failed to chart.) (And is "Alcohol" by Brad Paisley the highest-charting waltz ever? I am too lazy to check. But I have a feeling that I have a tendency to prefer waltzes to musical theater.)

Mystery of the year, who I shamefully never got around to fully investigating: Akon. I'm pretty sure I've liked every song I've ever heard by him, not to mention a whole bunch that he was a guest on, but I never got around to buying his album *either* time it came out. I'm still not sure if people consider him a rapper, a reggae toaster, an r&b crooner, or what--being Senegalese can do that to a Jersey guy, I guess, as can being the missing link between Bobby Vinton and Young Jeezy. I also have no idea how he's marketed. He almost seems like an accident, an after-thought. Which is pretty cool, and these days, pretty rare. (All of which goes double for Crazy Frog.)

Plot Synopsis (with apologies to amazon.com and Arlo Guthrie): R. Kelly's song is converted into a motion picture. R. Kelly goes to see Rosey the Nosy Neighbor for Thanksgivng and as a favor takes her trash to the dump. When the dump is closed, he drops it on top of another pile of garbage at the bottom of a ravine. When the policeman who was a gay drug dealer on *The Wire* finds out, a major manhunt begins. R.Kelly manages to survive the courtroom experience but it haunts him when he is to be inducted into the Army via the draft. The movie follows the song with R.Kelly's voiceover as both music and narration.

I missed the boat on reggaeton, and I'm pretty sure it was my own fault. (Rule #1: When it all sounds the same, don't blame the genre--especially if it's a real popular genre to dance to.) Still, I gotta say that reggaeton sure does piss me off a lot; it's all I hear when I'm walking around my neighborhood in Queens, and it almost always sounds boorish to me. And thing is, I have always had a soft spot for Spanish language/Latin-rhythmed hip-hop, for decades. I still get the idea there's a huge gap between what reggaeton promises and what it delivers. I mean, "Gasolina" was obviously fun, and the Pitbull remix album is great, and Don Omar's new mix CD has some real cool tracks. But I want this stuff to be the new freestyle, or the new Banda, or the new rock en espanol. I want it to be at least half as intriguing as Baltimore club or New Orleans bounce or Oakland hyphy or Houston screwchop or Atlanta laffy-taffy minimalism or Chicago duranguense or the baile funk of Brazil or Nashville's awesome John Cougar and BTO ripoffs or whatever some American Idol I never heard of put out this week or fucking freak folk from fake acid-cult communes in suburban Vermont, for crissakes, which I'm starting to eat up despite my best intentions. Reggaeton *deserves* to be that good! But I dunno, probably its only problem is that I'm not hearing it right. Still, I swear, that Ivy Queen *Flashback* best-of was a chore to get through. Plus she sings like a man.

On the other hand, I say this all the time, but with so much going on, with regional micro-genres almost nobody knew existed two months ago always springing up everywhere, with hundreds upon hundreds of interesting records to sift through and to make sense of and to barely have time to absorb and to just plain get you through the week, how anybody could say 2005 wasn't a great year for music is beyond me. (And people who think 2005 was bad because "nothing new happened in grime/microhouse/schaffel plus that Daft Punk album really stunk" aren't even living on the same planet as me. Or at least the same country.) There is something pathological, not to mention strangely ascetic (or maybe just plain lazy?), about obsessively and sullenly waiting with arms crossed and lips pursed for some mythical (hence, probably imaginary) Great Album and nothing less. That's got so little to do with how I experience music, with how most people I know experience music, it leaves me dizzy. I mean, fuck a Great Album--I never liked them much anyway. Great Albums are work. Transcendance is stressful. Good albums are fun, and so are good songs. And though the ones you think are good won't always be the same as the ones that I do, there are still more of them out there than you'll ever have time for. Me, I'm just now finding out about Carrie Underwood (pro-salvation) and Bocephus King (anti-salvation) and KT Tunstall from 2005, and I'm not done yet.

Can anybody explain by what logic Nine Inch Nails get nominated as "hard rock" but Rammstein and Ministry as "metal" by the Grammys? They all have way more in common with each other than with the other respective bands in their categories (Audioslave, Queens of the Stone Age, System of a Down, Robert Plant in hard rock; Mudvayne, Shadows Fall, Slipknot in metal). Then again, I'd never call System of a Down "hard rock" either. By now, they probably belong in the world music category. Just kidding.

Encouraging and surprising and deserving and overdue, though they just missed making my ballot: The sudden press surge for Living Things, who'd been floating around aimlessly for like two years, with two (three? I lost count) barely released EPs, a never-released (except in Japan or somewhere) album, and an reported reputation as loose canons not terribly easy to work with. Nirvana-style success unfortunately ain't never gonna happen, but maybe Caesars or Killers (or Green Day, thanks to the protest angle?) fans might go for them at least. I'm crossing my fingers. The video for the dancey single "Bom Bom Bom" has frontguy Lillian all glammed up and dancing to look totally like Marc Bolan, howling about kids too young to drink and smoke signing up for the Army to go drop bomb bomb bombs in the desert, his bandmate siblings riding camels around him, bringing Iraqis to their knees and Republican elephants (which you *see*, he never calls them Republicans) to their knees; then Lillian turns into a giant flag-waving Uncle Sam character; is he for or against the war? Nobody will know. And of course "Bombs Below," probably the best hard rock single of the decade, revolves around the same theme. Other songs are religion-baiting incoherence about how God created hate, and you can tell the Berlin brothers get off on the same hate and war that makes them so mad, like any street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm or runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb would. Political incoherence in music is not always a bad thing--and that likewise goes for Kanye and M.I.A., who seem just as confused or confusing. I'm far from convinced politics are what makes any of these artists great. But sometimes just knowing we're all on the same side is good enough.

I thought Sufjan's album had some very pretty background music, and some intriguing words I mostly couldn't follow here and there on the lyric sheet -- most compelling ones were about Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, I think; I trust that there was Jesus stuff on there, if people insist, but it's not like it ever made its presence felt. When it was in my CD changer, and a little songlet would peek out now and then between two more energetic songs by other people, I thought I might even like the record; those little Philip Glassy swirls in the arrangements and stuff, at least. A surprise, after his previous album about Michigan completely ticked me off for not having anything about Michigan on it, as far as I could tell, beyond the song titles and postcard CD cover, which I found endearing. But when I tried to play *Illinois* start to end, I never got through it; it was unbearable. Dude plain does not have a singing voice. At all. He might be a great songwriter, I wouldn't know, but hey, great songwriters who can't sing are why God made American Idols. (Then again, if it makes a difference, I did grow up Catholic, believing saints and popes aren't false idols, even ex-Nazi popes who ban limbo and wish Vatican II never happened. So I sure as Hell understand *The Hold Steady's* Jesus stuff, all their rememberances of the Baltimore catechism at the St. Paul mall and saints it's hard to be in the city and/or Midwwestern suburbs. And even if I rarely relate to it, I can at least tell Kanye's and Big & Rich's Jesus-in-the-sky-with-diamonds stuff is there. More likely, I just don't understand Puritans. And Sufjan's voice sort of convinces me he is one, even if his words might totally suggest otherwise.) (As for the whole, um, thespian-rock movement, this whole idea that Modern Pop Music Might Someday Be as Intelligent as Showtunes if It Tries Hard Enough-- that'd be Sufjan/Fiona/Antony/Rufus Wainwright, kids; hey, my oldest son's got Nellie McKay on his screen saver now, and my daughter loves the Decemberists --I won't be mean; let's just accept that I'm not in the demographic, so live and let live. On the other hand, I really did like this one Gilbert O'Sullivan LP I picked up for a dollar at a flea market last summer, so maybe there's hope for my stodgy rockist ass yet.)
_________

2. EVEN MORE RANDOM RAMBLING THOUGHTS ABOUT DOWNLOADING AND STUFF

[Eh, fuck it. These were all from ILM in the first place anyway (feel free to search), and they'll just inspire the same old technology fetishists to whine about how I still own a VCR again. And besides, all I give a shit about in 2006 is cdbaby.com anyway. So never mind.]

it's a time-honored tradition. plus, i might actually read some of these. nice to have them in one place.

SINGLES
1. Kelly Clarkson -- "Since U Been Gone" -- RCA
2. Rich Boy -- "Get to Poppin'" -- Zone 4/Interscope
3. Ashlee Simpson -- "La La" -- Geffen
4. T. Waters -- "Throw'd Off" -- So So Def/Virgin
5. Deana Carter -- "The Girl You Left Me For" -- Vanguard
6. Miranda Lambert -- "Kerosene" -- Epic
7. Foxy Brown f. Sizzla -- "Come Fly With Me" -- Roc-A-Fella
8. Pharrell Williams f. Gwen Stefani -- "Can I Have It Like That?" -- Star Trak/Interscope
9. Ciara f. Ludacris -- "Oh" -- LaFace
10. Daddy Yankee -- "Gasolina" -- V.I.

ALBUMS
1. Fannypack -- See You Next Tuesday -- Tommy Boy (13)
2. Ashlee Simpson -- I Am Me -- Geffen (13)
3. t.A.T.u. -- Dangerous and Moving -- Universal (13)
4. Various Artists -- Run the Road -- Vice (12)
5. Lady Sovereign -- Vertically Challenged -- Chocolate Industries (11)
6. Deana Carter -- The Story of My Life -- Vanguard (9)
7. M.I.A. -- Arular -- Interscope (9)
8. Annie -- Anniemal -- Big Beat (8)
9. Franz Ferdinand -- You Could Have It So Much Better -- Sony (6)
10. Robyn -- Robyn -- Konichiwa (6)

Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?

The answer is maybe - if you're willing to call "Ms. Jackson" and "Gangsta's Paradise" ballads ("Fast Car"? "When Doves Cry"? "O Superman"?). But basically no, and whichever nonballad wins this year will come from a long line of previous nonballads. (None of the strong contenders is a ballad, though I suppose "Stay Fly" is something of a crypto ballad, which is why I didn't vote for it.) Occasionally a ballad makes my list (for what it's worth, Hilary Duff's "Fly" - which is something of a power ballad, if "power" is a word that's usable in connection with small-voiced Hilary - would have been my number one in 2004, if I'd been paying attention to Hilary), but in general I don't vote for them, and in general I don't like them.

This isn't just about ballads. I'm looking back on Nelson George's half-smart essay in the 1989 P&J supplement, wherein he identifies white critics' blind spot in regard to upscale bourgeois black music but doesn't take in that the blind spot is shared by most black critics as well and that it's a blind spot that critics black and white have in regard to white music too (Phil Collins, anyone?); furthermore it's based on a very questionable idea of what counts as upscale: the Sex Pistols' progeny that we (or "we") often vote for are at least as upscale as the performers we shun, but it's our version of upscale, and we're not willing to call it such (among other reasons because it, and we, have some genuine populist ideals).

Let's pretend for the sake of argument that most P&J voters are pretty good critics. Well, this means that Pazz & Jop has a built-in blind spot in regard to music that sucks. I mean, most ballads are sentimental shit, and they're deadening to listen to. That's why I don't vote for them. But it therefore means that P&J doesn't represent the year in pop and semipop. It can't. My ballot doesn't even represent my year in music, much less pop's. It wasn't designed to. "Gasolina" made the bottom of my Top Ten, and I'm guessing it'll make the bottom of P&J's Top 40, but it - and the hot-dance Luny Tunes reggaeton thing it represents - is not the major story in Latin crossover of the last few years, or it's only half the story, the other half being genteel stuff for smooching like "Suga Suga" (which is nice enough, but kind of bland); for the most part it's only Latinos who even know that the guy - Baby Bash - who did "Suga Suga" is Latino.

But being what it is, Pazz & Jop is good for telling us something about "us," that is, about the sort of people who become rock critics. It isn't that we vote only for people like ourselves, but that we vote for the sort of thing that people like us vote for - which is a tautology. But, among other things, by liking what we like and writing about it in the way we do, we turn some of the readers into people like us. But this is the question that P&J starts to address but never quite gets to: Why do people like us like what we like? You can't really address this unless you're willing to ask why people like us don't like the things we don't like. The P&J supplement (and too much of the ILM commentary about P&J) fumbles around because it keeps changing the question to something like, "How can we get white male rock critics to stop overlooking all this good stuff by black people/women/Hispanics/Asians?" So here are some alternative questions: Why do women rock critics hate ballads? Did they always hate ballads - most teenybopper girls like ballads - or did they learn to hate ballads? If the former, why don't girls who like ballads become critics?

Look back at the 2002 P&J: The most important hip-hop track of the year - one of the most important of the decade, probably as important as "Get Low" and "Still Tippin'" - Fat Joe f. Ashanti "What's Luv," got 4 votes, as opposed to Missy's "Work It," which got 212; now my problem isn't that Missy clobbered Joe (though 212 to 4 is ridiculous, and "What's Luv" is better than "Work It" anyway), since P&Jers shouldn't vote for something if they don't like it, but that neither you nor Sasha F-J said anything about it, and this was an absence that should have screamed at you. Jess and Sterling over on the ILM thread were the ones who, reading Sasha's piece, asked "Where's Gotti?" I'll point out that I didn't vote for "What's Luv" either - it was a near miss at #11 on my ballot, and I genuinely felt that my 10 choices were better (though it would be interesting for me to relisten now). But also I was looking hard for better choices because I wanted "What's Luv" off my list, due to Joe's telling Ashanti from the start that he wouldn't go down on her and because of all the similar but terrible thug-n-slush tracks that followed "What's Luv" onto the charts.

I wouldn't say that "What's Luv" is a ballad, necessarily, and the fact that I did like it makes my example not quite typical. When people dislike something they don't think to themselves, "This is the sort of thing that people like me don't like," they think "This sounds terrible." (And of course they might be right to dislike it.)

But the question here: Why "Since U Been Gone" and not "Breakaway" or "Because of You"? Well, "Since U Been Gone" is better, but why do people like me think so? In 2005 the Kelly Clarkson song that got the most play on Radio Disney was "Breakaway," with "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and "Since U Been Gone" getting about three-quarters as much play. (And of course Jesse McCartney's "Beautiful Soul" was ahead of all of them.)

But this leads into a final thought. In the past I'd have assumed that someone like Kelly Clarkson would eventually feel the need to go legit and leave stuff like "Since U Been Gone" behind. I'm not so sure now. For one thing, "Since U Been Gone" - its sugar as well as its rock - is considered more legit than it would have been in the past. And another is that the adult charts have changed. Not only do a lot of adults stick with Top 40 rather than jumping to Adult Contemporary, but also the ones who go AC aren't necessarily forgoing the bouncy stuff. Mediabase actually lists two AC formats to register this difference: Mainstream AC and Hot AC. (I think Billboard divides it into Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40.) The cliché is that you go from "fun" to "serious" as you mature, but I don't know if this ever was the case - or, for that matter, that the bounce and the sugar make "Since U Been Gone" altogether not serious. In the song she claims she can breathe for the first time, but lots of other Clarkson songs (including some that, unlike "Since U Been Gone," were written by her) have her unable to breathe, not breaking away, or breaking away but finding that her breakaway leads to fear not growth, etc. etc. So the bounce is part of a more complicated story.

1. Sugababes - Taller In More Ways - Island (18)
2. Trina - The Glamorest Life - Atlantic (18)
3. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter II - Atlantic (8)
4. Mariah Carey - The Emancipation of Mimi - Island
(8)
5. Sleater Kinney - The Woods - Sub Pop (8)
6. Annie - Anniemal - Big Beat (8)
7. t.A.T.u. - Dangerous and Moving - Universal (8)
8. Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree - 4AD (8)
9. Sean Paul - The Trinity - Atlantic (8)
10. Various Artists - Crunk Hits - TVT (8)

Your Pazz & Jop singles ballot was submitted as
follows:

1. Gwen Stefani - Cool - Interscope
2. Rachel Stevens - Some Girls - Polydor
3. Foxy Brown ft. Sizzla - Come Fly With Me - Def Jam
4. Three 6 Mafia ft. Young Buck, Eightball & MJG -
Stay Fly - Hypnotize
Minds/Columbia
5. Mariah Carey - We Belong Together - Island
6. Daddy Yankee - Gasolina - V.I.
7. Rihanna - Pon De Replay - Def Jam
8. Sugababes - Push The Button - Island
9. R. Kelly - Trapped In The Closet, pt. 3 - Jive
10. Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone - RCA

---

Pazz and Jop Comments, one-off lines, grumpy rants,
you know the deal:

Pity Kelly Rowland and Hogan who missed this year of
the Kellys (Clarkson, Osbourne, R.) "Since U Been
Gone" of course being the greatest crossover hit since
Nine Inch Nails, or maybe that Baz Luhrmann thing.
Personally, when I sing to myself I forget the new
wave touches and invent even more screechy one-note
guitar riffs. A serious take on what "Stroke of
Genius" jokingly conjectured, this and plenty else
leaves mash-ups feeling out-outrageoused by the
material they've come to cannibalize.

But then, Rachel Stevens and the Sugababes were just
as unabashedly great, so Britain has something the
U.S. doesn't, which I suspect is an ability not to eat
its teen-pop young before they shed their pupal stage
and emerge as adult-contemporary butterflies. Witness,
in contrast, the frenzied, class-driven clawing of the
tabloids over Britney.

R.'s soap-hopera was great as it was dropping, and
continues to be better in concept than execution. If
he was gonna do them all over one beat, why not the
"Step..." one, or even "Heaven I Need a Hug"?

Either I'm finally getting older or hip-hop lyrics are
getting... dumber, like the universe wants to prove
that Tate was right all along. While rap used to
out-verbose Dylan and Mark E. Smith without trying,
the current crop of top singles, and 50 Cent
especially, barely have lyrics at all. Kanye excepted,
and that's only because punchlines are supposed to
make up for lack of breath control, I suppose. With
Missy guesting on Ciara, the LOX with Mariah, Busta
with the Pussycat Dolls, Eve with Gwen Stefani, the
best pop raps seem to have found a better home
altogether in R&B.

Came, went, stuck around once the hipsters picked 'em
clean: Reggaeton, Screw, "Crunk", DC Go-Go (at least
in samples). Left for strip-mining (as goes Diplo, so
goes the world): baile-funk, baltimore breakbeat,
Bach. Which, come to think of it, are just what the
dipset *does* mine, so the hipster love-affair with
the overground "underground" of mass market mixtapes
has that to consider too, to the extent it considers
at all.

There's no artist this year to make us ask what it all
means, but rediscovering Sophie Ellis Bextor's "Murder
on the Dancefloor" from some time back had the same
effect on me. Handclaps, disco beats, diva vocals,
choral swoops. Why search for the next big thing when
it seems the 70s had it right all along? Music is for
music and maybe we should just grow up and look
somewhere else to justify the rest of our lives. After
all, the Kanye furor and general souring on the
current folks holding office demonstrate that politics
doesn't improve music, and oddly enough that artists
with "political" statements (with the aforementioned
exception) generally don't have much to say either.
The current mood of weariness has less made music
dangerous than just rendered the latest crop of
"statements" (back from, what, Green Day again?
c'mon!) all the more tepid and comfortable. Meanwhile,
"Welcome to Jamrock"'s great statement is just that
shooting is bad, Lil Kim's that the courts done her
wrong so just shut up, and The Black Eyed Peas that
The Man can now turn them on and off by remote. When
the field is open to Jim Jones, then you know the
going's bad. But don't go looking to indie for
transgressive kicks, b'cause, Morning Jacket, M.I.A.;
clap your hands, what else do I have to say?

I am insulted, yes, INSULTED tho I've never actually knowingly heard them, why, I don't even have a grasp of what they sound like.

Greetings, poobahs! Here’s my demographia: 28, white, straight, married, rockist, just had my first kid, still really work as trainer at a bookstore and organist/ choir director at church. I should inform you that my #2 single pick, Conjunto Primavera’s “Moño Negro,” is misspelled on my ballot due to the non-transferability between fonts of special symbols, including n’s with tildes. Just as George Bush doesn’t care about black people, so does the IT world in general (including the Voice online voting system?) not care about Latin music--not in any pejorative way, but just in the sense that it doesn’t occur to anyone that easy transferability of special symbols, like n’s with tildes, might be a good idea. But I should get off my high horse, cos for half the year I thought the song was “Moño Negra”, and I still can’t speak any Spanish to know what Mr. Conjunto Primavera (whose name I’m too lazy to look up) is singing about, besides his guitarra--but my goodness, he has the most beautiful upper range, and the accordion part is busy as all getout.

I did try to get into regional Mexican this year, and I made some serious headway--I can now distinguish between norteno (I’m giving up on the special symbols myself here), banda, and Duranguense, rather than just hearing a bunch of alternately boring and crazy polkas. But I’m still voting for a bunch of boring rock and pop records, sticking with the music that’s gotten me to where I am today. That’s Loyalty! And it’s also comfort, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with comfort. I love Rod Lee’s mixtape and all the exciting effects he pulls off, but when we were bringing baby Zack home from the hospital and were worried about his head flopping over in his car seat and what the heck we would do with him when we got home, my wife asked me to turn off the austere house mix, and I agreed--there just wasn’t enough warmth in it. Nor would there’ve been any warmth in several of my other pix, including Run the Road or the Alacranes/Lamento 2fer. They’re fine and exciting, but my musical heart (especially in an unfamiliar or crisis situation) goes for the warmth. (This is why I’ve never really loved Sleater Kinney.)

And rockist me, I find warmth in the Lightning Bolt album. Whether it’s because real people are playing it (which I don’t think is the case, cos I can’t always tell--I long assumed Alacranes and Lamento had real tuba players, but somehow having fake tuba players is even cooler) or (more likely) because it uses tools I’m familiar with, like hardcore rants and minimalist arpeggios and the title song’s “text” painting, I feel right at home in Lightning Bolt’s music, and it still manages to thrill and delight me almost from beginning to end. (Zack likes it too--thus begins my long boring tradition of “my boy likes this” boasts--along with Metal Machine Music and Stan Brakhage movies, though I really shouldn’t put too much stock in that stuff, as he likes anything that moves or makes sound.) It took me a couple more listens to feel that way about Mercenary, but now I’m convinced that Kral and Mikkel--not MIA--are the year’s most important new voices. Kral, for instance, growls while Mikkel sings like Roger from Rent, and the effect is totally stunning, as stunning as Big and Rich’s close harmonies. Fierce while beautiful, acknowledging pain while longing to escape it, these Danes’ 11 Dreams are the antidote to our government’s wastrel thuggery, an act of Platonic devotion in the face of inescapable drudgery! Thuggery and drudgery, and Mercenary’s beautiful violence counteracts both. (Notice I didn’t vote for any other metal CDs, really, because I don’t really know what I’m talking about.)

Now seems the perfect time to talk about why everyone else’s PJ votes suck. I don’t mind MIA and Sufjan and the Hold Steady so much--they probably would’ve all made my top 20. (Actually, I may have just forgotten to vote for the Hold Steady, but it’s certainly more fun having Alacranes/Lamento on my ballot, and HS would’ve only gotten 5 unneeded points anyway.) (And anyway, if you forget to vote for someone, there must be a reason.) MIA has the same warmth problem as Run the Road, but is less funny or varied. Sufjan I bought for my Pastor. Sufjan is 10x a better orchestrator than fucking Jon Brion (foreshadowing!), and manages some startlingly beautiful effects, and has created an album that is consistently well made. Whoever engineered that thing should be up for a Grammy. Some of his songs are little nothings, though, and there’s a stretch toward the end where I can’t remember what happens. So, no good for Sufjan! I eagerly await his chapter on Durango. (Arriving in, what, 2060 or something, when I’ll’ve had too much knee surgery to polka.) Who else is a contender? I didn’t listen to Fiona, who I’ve actually enjoyed in the past so she may deserve it. Bloc Party may have the best drummer outside my top 2 albums and whoever does auxiliary for my #10, so I won’t begrudge them a top 10 finish.

But Kanye! Who the hell likes this album? Oh yeah, everybody on earth. Having voted him #1 last year (and I stand by that, though R Kelly’s easier to listen to some days), maybe I was just predisposed to be disappointed, but I can really only conclude that I enjoyed College Dropout for different reasons than other people. Well, no, that presumes you have to like the two albums for the same reasons, which is certainly not true. But we’ll go with that presumption anyway! College Dropout had at least four songs that were jaw droppingly gorgeous, whereas Late Registration has zero. The closest, “Hey Mama” I suppose, is a total cliché with a tidy chord progression that’s too smiley to have any emotional heft; whereas “Never Let Me Down,” “We Don’t Care,” “Family Business,” and “Through the Wire” are lyrically inventive and self-aware (or amusingly unaware--I still dig Jay-Z’s inappropriate cameo in the first one), plus have heart-wrenching music. (Kanye’s “Hey Mama” song isn’t even as pretty as Mannie Fresh’s, which name I currently forget--it’s the one with the Band-Aids in the Escalade.) College Dropout had two songs that were sociologically (if you want) dead on and powerful, whereas Late Registration has zero. I suppose “Crack Music” is there lyrically, but what a dull song! “All Fall Down” and “Jesus Walks” sound like they’re able to mobilize a nation, while “Crack Music” is too musically esoteric or something. I hate to call it esoteric, because its “aficionados” can take that as a compliment--what it really sounds like, and this is true of most of the album, is Kanye inserting the first musical idea that popped into his head and producing the hell out of it. The musical ideas are just nowhere near as compelling as they were the first time around. And the production, while I’m sure it cost plenty, has some major flaws. The Brion Parts (what I’m calling strings and mallet percussion) in “Crack Music,” “Hey Mama,” and “Gone” sound mixed completely separate from the rest of the tracks, as though Kanye were playing the “classy music” parts over the raps. The end results are amateurish, without any connotation of refreshment or surprise. He should’ve spent another week on it. Not that that’d make up for the lack of compelling ideas. Common’s song seems a total waste, Paul Wall’s song is mildly interesting (mostly for the local geography, not for the bizarre klezmer klarinet), Just Blaze’s song sounds like Kanye recorded his rap in a sterile room--it needs backup singers or something. The only unqualified successes are “Gold Digger” (during whose reign Zack can be proud to’ve been born), the “Diamonds” songs, and the bassline in “Heard ‘Em Say.” “Gone,” despite its distracting string parts, is also good. The others I rarely think of.

So Mannie Fresh was my Kanye, and Against Me! were my Hold Steady, and Run the Road my MIA, and “Jesus Can Work It Out” my “Trapped in the Closet” (that is, my WGCI audience participation hit), and “Better Now”’s sax solo my Stones album, and I dunno what else’ll place but I definitely dug a lot of music this year; and thanks to the library system and a CD player in my car and getting paid by the Voice (hey, it’s OK if you don’t care about Latin music), I heard more new CDs than I’ve ever heard during any year of my life. So now I, too, can pretend to be a pretentious rock critic and vote for stuff none of my friends have heard of! At least I didn’t vote for Isolee.

Albums
Mercenary (30) Century Media
Liquor & Poker (15) L&P
Lightning Bolt (12) Load
Trail of Dead (10) interscope
Mannie Fresh (8) Cash Money/ Universal
Run the Road (5) 679/ Vice
Orishas (5) Surco/ Universal Latino
Against Me! (5) Fat Wreck Chords
Rod Lee (5) Club Kingz/ Morphius Urban
Alacranes/Lamento (5) Univision

Singles
Mudd (InsideOut)
Moño Negro (Fonovisa)
Music Non Stop (Century Media)
These Words (Sony)
Can’t Behave (Island)
Se Fue (Musimex/ Universal Latino)
Beverly Hills (Geffen)
Better Now (El Music Group)
Gold Digger (Roc-a-Fella)
Work It Out (ICEE)

I've never even heard Mercenary. I guess I need to give Rob Lee and Lightning Bolt another shot.

Pazz and Jop Comments:

Personal Info:
Straight white male, 32, married, just finishing up the “Year of the Baby” (which, oddly enough, is NOT an Amy Rigby song). My daughter Rosie (as in, “The record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance!”) turns 1 this month. She likes Arular an awful lot, but her record of the year is My Blue Heaven by Fats Domino, which was the afternoon father-daughter dance party record of choice at my house for all of my paternity leave. Needless to say, we were both happy to see Fats make it out of New Orleans in one piece.

I don’t want to get all think-piece-y on music and Katrina, but one of the most compelling things for me this year was watching hip-hop struggle to meet the challenge, especially on all those benefit telecasts in the weeks after. Kanye doing “Jesus Walks” (and bearing down hard on “victims of welfare living in hell here, hell yeah”) worked; his triumphant “Touch the Sky” on the next telethon not so much. What I really wanted to hear was “We Don’t Care,” which has the combination of defiance (“Wasn’t supposed to maker it past 25/Joke’s on you we still alive”) and menace (“When we get the hammer better call the ambulance”) that seemed to be proper responses to the federal government’s criminal negligence and which was later nailed by the Legendary K.O.’s “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People,” which made Kanye’s big hit most relevant as source material.

Similarly, I wanted to hear from David Banner but not from his new music, and he seemed to know that as well. It was telling that when he performed on a Katrina benefit, he reached back to Mississippi: The Album (maybe the most relevant album of 2005, even before the hurricane hit) for material, performing “Cadillac on 22s” instead of anything off Certified. But nothing captured the problem contemporary hip-hop had in responding to the Katrina aftermath than The Game performing “Dreams” on the same broadcast: I can’t imagine all the homeless in Houston, and here in Memphis, and scattered all over the region were all that interested in the Game’s desire to “fuck an R&B bitch.”

But even if hip-hop faltered, it was interesting that the genre, with all the content problems critics (myself often among them) grouse about (and the most troubling theme in mainstream hip-hop right now isn’t drugs, violence, or “bling,” it’s sexual coercion), the genre still carried more moral authority than anything else. At least with me.

Most overrated phenomenon of the year: “Trapped in the Closet,” a mind-numbingly tedious saga made all the more annoying by the knowledge that there are self-styled hipsters around the country having “Trapped in the Closet” parties who wouldn’t recognize “Half on a Baby” or “Happy People” if they came across them on the radio.

Anyway, here are some blurbs on some of the records I voted for:

Separation Sunday -- The Hold Steady:
The year’s other great records (Kanye West and M.I.A.) have tons to say about the world we're living in, but this intricate concept album from a Brooklyn guitar band mostly illuminates a world of its own creation. While his comrades are busy cribbing classic-rock guitar and piano riffs, songwriter supreme Craig Finn spins a chronologically complex, intellectually addictive, and emotionally engrossing tale about a Catholic high school girl sucked down a drug-culture rabbit hole and onto a 16-year, cross-country journey back to salvation, with Sopranos-worthy subplots ("Charlemagne in Sweatpants") along the way. Mixing up their mythologies and pushing them out through p.a. systems, the Hold Steady concoct a twisty good-girl-gone-bad narrative that plays like a rock-and-religion version of Mulholland Dr., albeit with a much happier ending.

Arular -- M.I.A.:
It was absolutely no surprise to see this Sri Lankan/British import fail to cross over into the American mainstream. No matter: Fusing Jamaican dancehall, Brazilian baille funk, American hip-hop, and British techno and grime into something as spellbindingly new as it is utterly familiar, this homemade polyglot pop is an instant dance party. Twentysomething Maya Arulpragasm may not have completely sorted out her conflicted feelings -- terrorist or freedom fighter? -- about her estranged Tamil Tiger father, but in the crossfire of global pop genres, political bullhorn lyrics, lovely double-dutch melodies, and utter confusion, she fashioned something more important: the year's most undeniably crucial album.

Late Registration -- Kanye West:
While The College Dropout was built around high-concept anthems ("We Don't Care," "All Falls Down," "Jesus Walks"), the lyrical profundity of this far sneakier follow-up is almost casual. It's in the litany of mundane social ills on the sadly beautiful "Heard 'Em Say"; the Randy Newman-esque satire of pimp-rap and R. Kelly-R&B sleaze on "Celebration"; the incredibly gentle counterpoint to Houston hip-hop's myopic content on "Drive Slow." Instead, Late Registration is more immediately bracing as music: Bringing in pop producer Jon Brion as a collaborator, this is West's attempt to make a hip-hop album with the opulent soulfulness of a classic Stevie Wonder or Curtis Mayfield disc. Mission accomplished.

Man Like Me -- Bobby Pinson:
I've long been a defender of big, bad mainstream country music against its mostly knee-jerk detractors, and I think the genre's in better artistic shape right now than ever in my listening lifetime. But even I can't imagine this individualistic, gruff-voiced songwriter having much of a chance at lasting Nashville stardom. Which is too bad, because Bobby Pinson's debut album is a wonder. More than anyone else on either side of country's mainstream/alternative divide, Pinson respects the touchstones of country music -- small-town life, simple Christian faith, high school sweethearts, family heritage -- while investigating them fiercely. And no one else in music right now redeems red-state religiosity so convincingly.

The Woods -- Sleater-Kinney:
The best American guitar band of their generation, they make a bid for reinvention by cranking up the amps and delivering the most fuzzed-out, most distorted, heaviest, and most effed-up record of their career. Less blistering and delighted than Dig Me Out and without the precision and clarity of 2003's diamond-hard and beautiful One Beat, The Woods is nevertheless a near sonic equal of those great records. It's more rattled, more chaotic, more fuzzed-out. It's where Carrie Brownstein gets to flaunt her inner guitar god, unleashing a solo on "Wilderness" that would fit in on Electric Ladyland and otherwise freaking out like she's on stage at the Fillmore back in '69, all while Corin Tucker shreds vocal cords and Janet Weiss pounds the skins like Keith Moon never went away.

Kerosene -- Miranda Lambert:
Who could have predicted that a third-place finisher on cable's Nashville Star -- a small-town Texas girl with pin-up looks -- would pen the class-rage anthem of the year? Or that, after ripping off Steve Earle's "I Feel Alright" and ripping it apart on that title single, the rest of her smart, tough, almost entirely self-written debut album would be almost as strong? Pop music: where the unexpected always happens.

Funny...I've always read her "coming back" at the end meaning that she ended up dying, kinda a nod to "long black limosine" by elvis....hm....i'll have to listen again...

Hey Matt!

But the return to the church ("She crashed into the Easter Mass with her hair done up in broken glass") seems like her very much alive and returning home. (Especially since she wakes up in the confessional on the song before)

Every time I listen to that record something new pops up.

yeah that's what made me think she was dead...who know?

[close circuit: hey chris hope you are doing well!]

its called 'squawking'

It's called a British accent.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), February 2nd, 2006.

Thanks Frank! I was hoping some anti-Kanye rant would make it in, but to no avail. Anyway, I thought to ask you, what do you like/find important about "What's Luv"? Cos I really can't stand the song, but that might fit into your point. Is it the "thug-n-slush" aspect? I haven't heard it in years, so I'm not sure I can cite examples of dislike beyond "the melody's annoying" and "the refrain sounds cutesily scripted". And I even liked Fat Joe's '05 CD!

it's also called annoying, forgotten in 2 years time, overhyped, non-selling,fodder for lonely fanboy fantasies,..........

I can't figure out if this is a dig at electronic-music listeners like myself, or electronic purists (not like myself, despite what y'all may think). Or just coincidental. But actually, 2005 was a fantastic year for techno (in the broadest possible definition of the term; you can say "electronica" if you like too, i don't care). Fucking fantastic, the great stuff just kept coming. In fact, probably the reason I heard so little OUTSIDE the electronic diaspora was that the e-music was so good (plus I am sort of lazy), I didn't feel much need to go straying elsewhere. I used to feel guilty about living in such a narrow little corner, but no longer.

Re: MIA and grime, I don't really see the connection--the rhythmic signatures are quite different, and grime's way heavier on the low end. MIA's is quite sunny music, at the end of the day; it doesn't have the same cavernous, apocalyptic qualities as grime. But then again, I haven't really heard any new grime for 18 months or so, so perhaps it's all changed; I lost interest when the emphasis shifted from beats/production to lyrics.

Maybe next year I should actually submit some P&J comments or something, so y'all don't have to listen to me thinking about loud on threads like these.

Does Lady Sovereign? (Just asking.) (I mean, I don't know that apocalyptic cavernousness is something I associate with *any* of the grime I've heard, to be honest. But obviously there are people out there, including Phil I'm guessing, who've heard way more of it than I have.)

>people who think 2005 was bad because "nothing new happened in grime/microhouse/schaffel plus that Daft Punk album really stunk"<

...may well have been a *strawman*; I'm not sure. But I *think* I heard people saying stuff like that about 2005. Can't name any names off hand though. Was I just imagining things?

re: strawmen & 2005 in techno - obviously i can't say what you may have heard people saying, but i don't think i heard anything like that (aside from, yeah, a litany of complaints about the daft punk album); maybe i just hang out with shameless boosters, but everyone i know shared my boundless enthusiasm, in real and netspace alike. and judging by what i've heard so far, 2006 is going to be even better. if people were saying things like that, chuck, fuck'em!

This makes me think of Henri Michaux, for some reason.