Pazz and Jop.

My 20 points helped keep Paramore in the top 50 and my 15 points kept the Regrettes in the top 90. So, yay.

"publishing" the results without much comment alongside a state of the union by a septuagenarian rock critic vs not doing it at all

the accompanying cardi gif is v v bad
http://villagevoice.freetls.fastly.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/VillageVoice-CardiB-MarinaEsmeraldo.gif

I emailed the person who assisted me with my login asking if they would post ballots. Will post any response I get.

christgau's essay ultimately lands on and closes with what he considers to be the political albums of the year: Mount Eerie and Randy Newman

Top 100s, I meant. I agree that without individual ballots showing, the whole thing is close to moot.

otm. I know it probably doesn't matter much to most of the readership, but as a participant, I have no idea why I would continue to vote. Not because I want to see my ballot published, but for the cross-referencing, etc.

Yeah, it's mostly about the individual ballots for me too; keep 'em coming. Losing access to the database sounds like a real good alibi, although I just now googled something I wrote in the 90s and it was still on there (still, there have indeed been enough shakeups over the years that I set up my own blogspot archive). Maybe they just don't have access to the numbers etc.
But mostly why I'm posting this: Just under the villagevoice.com search results were many more voice items at openlibrary.org, which, if you pay for it to open, apparently will present the sound recordings (sic) mentioned in reviews and in Pazz & Jops (of the 90s, anyway, which is where I was looking). I didn't spring for it, so no idea how thorough this is, or whether it works at all (didn't see the text of my 90s piece, or of the P&Js; maybe that's part of what you pay for).

I don't even remember my ballot, fwiw

dow, think about the time it would take to format/post/hyperlink like 100 ballots from scratch, let alone connect them to individual pages for each song and album.

Without a custom CMS, forget it

Even with help from a program that generates HTML for albums based off IDs, receiving and processing merely/roughly 400 albums and singles (for a simple one-page feature) is a mite arduous.

Yeah, I don't mean to imply that anyone should do this from scratch, or at all--and certainly not demanding links to all the songs ever mentioned on all the ballots of all the polls---but rather that openlibrary.org seems to be implying that they/their gigslaves have done something like this.

Did yall see this? Mostly not that surprising, but some I'd forgotten about:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/22/pazz-jop-top-10-albums-by-year-1971-2016/?utm_source=Village+Voice+Music&utm_campaign=f5027b4451-Music+Newsletter+1%2F19%2F2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_58e5ed4fcb-f5027b4451-58804241

Coldplay!?

I was surprised by the scarcity of hip hop in the mid-90s. No Illmatic for instance. Also I didn’t know Steely Dan was so dominant in the 70s.

They published a bunch of voter comments the other day. Still no ballots though.

Also a profile of L'Rain! Thought it was a P+J feature for a second, then remembered that album only placed in my imagination :(

if pazz and jop let me vote it might have ;)

I only gave it 7 points. Wish I'd voted more strategically.

Wow, I got a comment posted.

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/25/pazz-jop-comments-further-listening/

Not sure how, but i got two—one on lorde and one on club chai.

Mine mentioned a few of my Afro-southern faves who don’t get mentioned as Americana

More comments here by others https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/25/pazz-jop-comments-protests-and-escapes/

if it's the comment I think it is that sounds intriguing

this was mine:

ALBUMS

01. Susanne Sundfor: Music For People In Trouble
02. Julie Byrne: Not Even Happiness
03. Kelela: Take Me Apart
04: Perfume Genius: No Shape
05. SZA: CTRL
06. MUNA: About U
07. Lorde: Melodrama
08. Baths: Romaplasm
09. Kelly Lee Owens: Kelly Lee Owens
10. Jessie Ware: Glasshouse

SONGS

01. SZA ft. Travis Scott: "Love Galore"
02. Mondo Grosso ft. Hikari Mitsushima: "Labyrinth"
03. Lorde: "Supercut"
04. Slowdive: "Slomo"
05. Wolf Alice: "Don't Delete The Kisses"
06. Hercules & Love Affair ft. Sharon Van Etten: "Omnion"
07. yaeji: "raingurl"
08. Tove Lo: "Disco Tits"
09. Phoebe Bridgers: "Motion Sickness"
10. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: "To Feel Your Best"

ALBUMS
Jakuzi – Fantezi Müzik (City Slang) 15
Kenji Minogue – En Dermee (Music Mania) 13
Louis Sclavis – Frontières (JMs) 12
Reniss –Tendon (New Bell) 12
Scooter – Scooter Forever (Sheffield Tunes) 11
Cabbage – Young Dumb and Full Of… (Skeleton Key) 10
Charlie Worsham – Beginning Of Things (Warner Bros.) 8
Bruce Cockburn -Bone On Bone (True North) 7
Carlinhos Brown – Semelhantes (Candyall) 6
Nadia Rose – Highly Flammable (Relentless) 6

SINGLES
Baghi Mann – Soorme (Jass)
Haley Georgia - Shots (Haley Georgia)
Kabeer Nasha – Aaj Club Mein (Turban Hits)
Omar Souleyman – Ya Bnayya (Mad Decent)
Meet Bros. – Roar on the Shore (Party Mix) (Meet Bros.)
Haley Georgia – Becky (Haley Georgia)
Lindsey Buckingham & Christie McVie – In My World (Atlantic)
Heize – Hello! UFO (Universal)
Sevyn Streeter – Before I Do (Atlantic)
Tuxedo – 2nd Time Around (Stones Throw)

Albums

Kendrick Lamar-Damn
SZA-CTRL
Yemi Alade-Black Magic
Trio Da Kali & Kronos Quartet-Ladilikan
Oumou Sangare-Mogoya
New Pornographers-Whiteout Conditions
Moses Sumney-Aromanticism
Various Artist, Trailride Music Vol. 1
Daniel Caesar-Freudian
Ms. Jody- Thunder Under Yonder

Songs

Kendrick Lamar-DNA
SZA-Love Galore
Mary J. Blige-Thick of It
J. Balvin & Willy William- Mi Gente
Future-Mask Off
Migos-Bad and Boujee
Olamide-Wo!!
Goldlink (ft. Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy)- Crew
The Courtneys-Silver Velvet
Sam Hunt -Body Like a Back Road

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/25/pazz-jop-comments-the-top-albums-and-singles/

so it looks like Uproxx is going to try to pick up the Pazz & Jop torch.

hey twitter -- ballots for @uproxx's first music critics poll just went out. @Philip_Cosores and i did our best compiling a list of who might be interested. if you're a music writer who wants to vote, please send me an email: cait✧✧✧.wh✧✧✧@upr✧✧✧.c✧✧. all are welcome!

— caitlin cristin (@harmonicait) December 3, 2018

reminder: Uproxx is owned by Warner Music.

this bothers me. does it bother others or is it an unavoidable fact of music-critic life in 2018?

uproxx has bigger problems than its owners

https://deadspin.com/reading-product-plugs-from-joshua-tree-helped-me-unders-1822234122

Voting for U2's 'Joshua Tree' Helped Me Understand My Own Twisted Heart

Did anybody here get one of these invite emails? I didn't.

Yep.

I dunno if I want to participate. If you email her, I'm told, she'll allow you to participate.

I don't want to participate. I voted in The Wire's poll and the NPR jazz critics' poll, and wrote a jazz top ten for Stereogum. I'm listed out.

I sent them an email. I love skewing whatever lists there are with my questionable musical taste as long as I feel qualified to make a list. When I stopped writing I didn't. But now I do.

fuck this imo

r.i.p. pazz & jop

https://deadspin.com/reading-product-plugs-from-joshua-tree-helped-me-unders-1822234122

My list is already sponsored by Arby's.

@maura oh I know. besides ownership issues, I can’t really stand the thought of her and P.C. as gatekeepers for “the” big critics’ list

http://cleverbeans.blogspot.com/2006/12/pazznjopnhinder.html

hmmmmm re uproxx, I dunno

Let it die.

Let’s face it, Pazz and Jop was running on some serious fumes those last couple years. It got to the point where all the things that made it special in the first place were gone. Near the end there was no Robert Christgau year-in-review essay, there was no “see what your favorite critics voted for” webpage, there were no Singles Jukebox-y critic blurbs. So in the end all you had left was the same list of albums and singles that I can just go to Metacritic and get myself whenever I want. So yes, let it die.

The last couple years’ P&Js couldn’t even get their own ILM thread.

My own interest aside--I never hesitated for a second as to whether I'd participate; I planned to keep going for as long as they kept me on the mailing list--I agree. Honestly, the actual results lost all interest for me somewhere in the middle of the '90s.

This will be lost to history, but I bet I submitted more Pazz & Jop commentary than anyone this side of Christgau. Only a tiny fraction of it ever made it into print, but from '97 through to last year, I'd send in two or three pages of comments on my singles list every year--somewhere between 25-30,000 words, I'd estimate. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe a lot of voters did that. My sense is that most ballots were much shorter, and that many came in with no comments at all.

Wow, that’s a lot of comments. You’re probably right.

I have no idea how people wrote comments for those, by late December the thought of writing anything is like the thought of scooping my brain out with an ice pick (or rather, more like that than usual)