Pazz and Jop.

you constantly evade the actual point of this conversation because you never get beyond asserting that listing music in volume is equivalent to realizing some other relevant values associated with loving music. you might believe that about yourself, but if your way of articulating that value to others, or even for yourself, is confined to list-picking then i seriously doubt that the exercise would be all that meaningful. i don't know if you are being disingenuous or if you have really been posting here for years without ever understanding the point of genuine music criticism.

if i wanted i could list and 'rank' most of the albums i've heard this year and the list would be impressively long to everyone but healthy vigorous paragons of volumetric music appreciation such as yourself. but it's not hard to recognize that those albums are worthwhile IN SOME BASIC WAY (i'm listening to things that some other relatively experienced or tasteful or differently-situated listeners have liked, too, i'm not just culling shit from the promo bin). that borders on the empty registration of a data point, like capturing biometric data on a fitbit. it's a different matter to form meaningful connections to some of them by experiencing them and reflecting on those experiences.

I guess you're saying that the Pazz and Jop poll is pointless. My argument is longer ballots would result in more varied and interesting results.

The way each person reacts to, processes and interprets music is a very personal, individual thing, which I do appreciate reading about. But to say a poll is completely meaningless without criticism to create context seems pretty patronizing. I think people are fully capable of putting music into their own context. I certainly don't mind blurbs and criticism accompanying lists, but they aren't essential to my using the polls to discover new music.

Christgau was always allowed to list more than 10, but trying to understand why one album is someone's 43rd favorite rather than 44th favorite always seems almost pointless to me.

Correct, that's definitely not the point. A person who has listened to and/or reviewed a lot of music could have a top 10 that is naturally weighted to their own personal tastes. So I might not like any of Christgau's top 10, but could find some cool discoveries lower in his list.

My personal top ten is made up of jangle pop, garage & psych noir, psych prog, hard rock, post-punk and doom, which only appeal to certain people. But I enjoy a pretty wide range and a look at my genre lists (which total over 600 albums) could turn you on to stuff aligned with your own tastes.

the actual answer to this is that the people voting in pazz and jop are (mostly) working music critics, which means that a large chunk of their listening time is spent listening to albums they are reviewing, which may or may not overlap with albums they like, and which by definition takes time away from music discovery.

This just came into my Twitter feed.

For what it's worth, we'll be publishing the ballots again this year. And sorry, @NYC__Native , that we didn't get back to you last year.

— The Village Voice (@villagevoice) December 27, 2018

But for the most part, we all work full time. There may be a few writers who still only listen to what's put in front of their faces in the form of promos and assignments, but those old ways are receding alongside print journalism. But even in traditional journalism, writers are expected to take initiative to do the research to become knowledgeable about their subjects.

There are actually a good number of 50-100 album lists out there as it is (405, The Alternative, Alternative Press, Bandcamp Daily, Billboard, Blare, BrooklynVegan, The Wire, God Is In the TV, Noisey, Piccadilly, PopMatters, The Quietus, Rough Trade, etc.) that are counted by the Albumoftheyear aggregator. Unfortunately they skew the points so heavily toward the top 10 that they don't make much difference in that context (but if you take a look at those lists, most of them have the most interesting, cool discoveries in the lower half).

It would be more work to change the Pazz and Jop Poll, unlikely to happen with the diminished resources. Just wishful thinking as a way to keep it unique and relevant.

But for the most part, we all work full time. There may be a few writers who still only listen to what's put in front of their faces in the form of promos and assignments, but those old ways are receding alongside print journalism. But even in traditional journalism, writers are expected to take initiative to do the research to become knowledgeable about their subjects.

yes, but an album only becomes "my subject" if I am commissioned to write about it in a one-to-two-week window surrounding its release date. otherwise, it isn't my subject, and listening to it means actively not doing my job, i.e. not listening to the album(s) that I am expected to write about/pitch. obviously I still do seek out new and/or older music, but with the knowledge (and weird accompanying guilt) that doing so is the equivalent of playing Solitaire on office time.

also, re: My argument is longer ballots would result in more varied and interesting results.

this is often, in fact, the the opposite of how it works. longer ballots can result in greater consensus, via: "well, fuck, I've only listed 16 albums and I need 20, and I've exhausted everything I really, truly loved this year... might as well throw the Mitski album on there, even though I thought it was just OK and not amazing." (the Mitski album here is just a standin for "consensus album," not a statement on its quality)

That doesn't appear to be the case in the examples I cited.

fwiw I've heard maybe 200 albums from this year and the Mitski is one of the 5 best imo

what exactly is your goal here? to make people feel like they're shitty people who should just stop writing about music? because you're succeeding

writing just gets in the way of list discovery

just stanning for mitski. RYM is going quite hard on the 'mitski is overrated, boo to the critics' angle so i get defensive when an actually-great album like that is used as an example of critical pablum. no personal offence meant at all

I wasn't referring to you but to this whole "you're not a REAL music [noun?] and should be disqualified" thing

Who are you quoting? I never said that. I was responding to the sentiment that Pazz & Jop is no longer relevant, and is redundant when the results are too similar to other polls and aggregates. Expanding ballots to 25, and optionally, up to 100, would definitely make it different. I'm not saying anyone who can't/won't come up with 25 be stripped of their critic credentials. I don't know you katherine, I'k sure you're a great critic and writer, who simply does not like more than 10 albums this year. That's fine. You'll get to submit your 10 picks on P&J along with the others and life will go on.

simply

I'm quoting you:

I'd love to see a poll that allowed for up to 100 ballots, and disqualifies anyone who can't list at least 25.

― Fastnbulbous, Sunday, December 23, 2018 9:03 AM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(also, most aggregate year-end polls that I'm aware of mandate well above 10 votes, and have done so for years, but what are facts, really?)

(this also seems to rest on a bunch of unspoken assumptions: that in any year there are only N possible "consensus picks"; that N is also approximately the size of the ballots on the polls you dislike; that after N albums people's tastes diverge not just into obscurities and into mutually exclusive obscurities; that thus expanding the ballot will produce a wealth of unheard gems instead of simply turning more albums into consensus picks.)

I also said this: "All I'm suggesting is the form doesn't submit unless at least 25 entries are in there"

But did NOT say this:

"you're not a REAL music [noun?]..

Apparently the word "disqualified" triggered this kerfuffle. I'm sorry if that offends you. How about if the form gives you a friendly, "MORE PLEASE!" until you submit at least 25 entries, and it quivers in anticipation and rewards you with unicorns and rainbows when you've completed it?

That's a lot of unspoken assumptions. For the record I never said I dislike Pazz & Jop. I'm glad it's still going, and am sorry that many people think it's irrelevant. The top ten might not be terribly different, but expanding the ballot would definitely change the overall top 100. Obviously nothing would be unheard obscurities, as it's all consensus. Part of the fun is clicking on the contributors who voted for interesting stuff to see their ballots. There's lots of writers I wished I could see more than their top 10. This would be a great opportunity to do so.

Hey, I can post my top 60 if you want.

I voted in Pazz and Jop ca., I don't know - for a number of years in the '00s. And I sometimes had a hard time putting ten albums together because...I was probably listening to old music more and because there were only certain albums each year that interested me. But I don't know, I felt like I had something to contribute anyway? So I voted. For me, it's a question of whether or not you can accept that a critic's voice might be of interest relative to what the critic is interested in (rather than a hypothetical of what the critic came up with when they also listened to a bunch of things they might not have been interested in).

Writing comments was always more entertaining than ranking albums/songs.

Apparently the word "disqualified" triggered this kerfuffle. I'm sorry if that offends you. How about if the form gives you a friendly, "MORE PLEASE!" until you submit at least 25 entries, and it quivers in anticipation and rewards you with unicorns and rainbows when you've completed it?

you can phrase it however you like, but there is no benign way to word the concept of wanting a list that does not contain people that you have deemed insufficiently knowledgeable about music

I'm all for comments, it need not be mutually exclusive. I've always included blurbs on my album choices along with general comments, and have had a few quoted over the years. I'd love to see comments included when you click on each album.

I don't think it's about being sufficiently knowledgeable. I don't see how it's asking too much to vote for more than 10 albums.

In the monthly poll I participate in, it's sometimes a stretch for me to come up with 25 albums for that month. So I spend a little time exploring and finding music that I'd missed before. It's not a big deal, and I don't accuse the poll runners of being evil elitists!

what are you even doing with the massive amount of music that you 'find' and list though, is what people are prodding you about and you never say anything meaningful about

it's fine if you just wanna churn through records and you have some private process for reconciling that as a listener with the public output of it, but it is prima facie not credible that doing so results in meaningful outcomes that you are in a position to faux-naively condescend to others about ('do you even really love music', let's disqualify critics, discovering as much as possible is the primary goal, etc.).

if you think we are faulting you for being an elitist, you are mistaken. i am faulting you for distorting and debasing the idea of being a well-informed and appreciative listener and critic. what you're up to seems like a parody of that.

maybe someone listened to 100 albums in a year, making a good-faith effort to seek out things they'd like, but could only honestly say they liked 10 of them. maybe it is important to someone to have the clean cut-off of a Top 10. maybe the songs someone REALLY discovered and loved came out in 2017, or 1987, or 1957. maybe someone just didn't have time to listen to more than 10 albums in a year, for whatever reason. maybe people are picky and are reluctant to list an album on a year-end list that they do not wholeheartedly love. there are dozens of potential reasons this might happen to a person.

turning it into something about "consensus" is a deflection because you still haven't said what about a list of 25 albums is inherently less consensus-bound than a list of 10. it makes no sense statistically (listing albums isn't a 50-50 coin flip between "obscure" and "consensus"; if 17/25 of someone's albums are popular picks, that's a decent enough sample size to suggest that if they kept picking albums there would be a similar proportion. I'm sure there is actual math that can be done with the statistics that we have on the past couple of years, but it's been years since I've studied that.) it also makes no sense if you just think about it for any amount of time at all. maybe someone only enjoys Duke University a cappella groups, or children's chorus cantatas about Super Mario World, or garage rock songs they find in an actual garage one year, and thus their list only contains a tiny number of entries, yet is extremely obscure. maybe someone only listens to mainstream radio, or the top-ranked Metacritic albums, or Pitchfork's albums above a 7.0, etc. and assembles a list based on what they hear there; that list contains a large number of albums, yet is likely to more closely resemble consensus.

for what it's worth, my ideal system would be "Rank as many or as few albums as you wish; the one criterion is that you must truly have loved and connected to that album/song, believe that you will still listen to it years into the future (or have an excellent reason why you wouldn't)."

this would probably result in very short ballots and would likely be useless for tabulation purposes, but it'd be interesting. (it'd also get rid of strategic voting, which I'm sure exists)

you can phrase it however you like, but there is no benign way to word the concept of wanting a list that does not contain people that you have deemed insufficiently knowledgeable about music

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, December 27, 2018 6:29 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd enjoy a list that does not contain people that I have deemed insufficiently knowledgeable about music, tbh

a significant percentage of the best music i heard this year was thirty to sixty years old and much if it was from Aretha

Katherine - The ILM poll allows us to vote for 25 albums, and it’s great, and very different from any other poll. It’s not required to vote for 25, but it seems most people do anyway. You disagree that 25 be required for Pazz & Jop, but it does require 10, so it’s discriminating against critics who don’t like more than 5 albums a year. Your ideas for changes are even more interesting, but maybe a bit complicated to enforce!

i don't know if you are being disingenuous or if you have really been posting here for years without ever understanding the point of genuine music criticism...
…i am faulting you for distorting and debasing the idea of being a well-informed and appreciative listener and critic. what you're up to seems like a parody of that.

You are getting increasingly personal and petty. Are you going to go after Whiney now too?

what are you even doing with the massive amount of music that you 'find' and list though, is what people are prodding you about and you never say anything meaningful about

What the fuck does that even mean? I listen to it. I write about it when I have time. I put a lot into my labor of love in order to share with anyone who is curious about the music I'm into. I take personal days in order to complete my year-end piece and share my passion: http://fastnbulbous.com/lucky-18/

I get viscerally physical negative reactions when I listen to Ariana Grande and The 1975 in particular.

I’m really feeling Roy Kinsey, a Chicago librarian who has the courage to be an openly gay man in a culture that sadly remains quite homophobic.

🤔

whiney is a real critic who works to earn his elitism by trying to convince people outside its usual audiences about the value of underappreciated music and to generate a context for making sense of its social meaning

For like three more days, soak it up!

xxxp

Huh, I didn’t know John Kimbrough was back.

Anyway... you listened to all that music, and RBCF was your #1?? Ok, I guess...

You disagree that 25 be required for Pazz & Jop, but it does require 10

isn't this false? i certainly recall plenty of respondents having submitted ballots with fewer than ten, and sometimes even zero, selections on their singles/tracks ballot. i assume this to have been true for the albums ballots too.

yeah glenn’s stats allowed you to sort out votes by people who only voted for singles and people who only voted for albums.

every year I've done pazz and jop has contained the following instruction: "If you rank fewer than 10 albums, just subtract 5 points from your 100 total for each blank."

Anyway... you listened to all that music, and RBCF was your #1?? Ok, I guess...

― underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Thursday, December 27, 2018 6:01 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao o t m

xp but

Katherine - The ILM poll allows us to vote for 25 albums, and it’s great, and very different from any other poll.

do you really not think there is a single confounding variable here between this and other polls, that might better explain why the results are different than "well, the ballots are bigger"

"well, we tested two cups of bottled water and one cup of toilet water, pre-flush, and found that the two cups had significantly less harmful bacteria than the one cup. must be that extra cup!"

for what it's worth, my ideal system would be "Rank as many or as few albums as you wish; the one criterion is that you must truly have loved and connected to that album/song, believe that you will still listen to it years into the future (or have an excellent reason why you wouldn't)."

Agreed. Though in the last few years I've found the best lists are ones where people have a smaller list with something interesting to say about each entry; the worst are ones that seem like an entry into a dick measuring contest about who loves music the most (with the criteria for who loves music the most being the one who listens to and likes the most music from CURRENT YEAR).

'New' has stopped being a particularly important qualifier for me in deciding what to listen to, and the entirety of pop music history being available on streaming services has played a huge part in this. 10 years ago I might be able to make a legitimate Top 50 albums of the year, because I mostly listened to new stuff and followed blogs and Pitchfork religiously. These days I'm more like, "Wow, how did I not get into Prefab Sprout until now? Now let me go and listen to everything they ever did for the next few months." I'm sure there's lots of great stuff from this year that I've missed - If I get around to it, great. If not, I'm still enjoying music as much as ever, so whatever. But with streaming now it's a little weird to me that people think they should pay attention to like 200 albums from this year just 'cos they...were released this year.

whiney is a real critic who works to earn his elitism by trying to convince people outside its usual audiences about the value of underappreciated music and to generate a context for making sense of its social meaning
― j.

This is illuminating. So it's not that the substance of my suggestion was outrageous, it's that I dared to question "real" critics who write for glossies and papers, so you tried to put me in my place with personal insults and imply I'm not important enough to criticize the professional critics.

A long time ago I might have been pretentious enough to mansplain the "social meaning" of music to the ignorant masses. I've written for fanzines, newspapers, academic journals and glossy magazines, but I chose a different career path. To be clear, I am not saying Whiney does that (thanks for that snipe Whiney, I was referring to Kinsey's experiences growing up with homophobic-fueled bullying that he discussed
here and
here...I defended you when people pigpiled you on the CMJ board back in the day), it's just the pompous way that J. frames it that's offensive.

I thought the more expansive ballots in ILM polls were a good model. It seems J. would restrict the poll to writers from publications that have a certain reach. And they apparently have to advocate the right kind of underappreciated music.

morrisp, in three minutes you managed to extract that one negative sentence from my 15,000+ word piece, with the subtly diminishing, "Dang, blogger!" Well done. And then you dismiss me based on my #1 album. Wow you got me good! Do your frenemies fear you on social media?

Like I mentioned before, a person's top ten doesn't tell the whole story. Often the top choice is very personal, as it's what they choose to listen to most often. It's why a food critic might say they'd want a hamburger for their favorite meal instead of something complicated and extravagant. Maybe the food critic is tired of people asking for their #1 meal recommendation because they aren't patient enough to hear recommendations of a longer list that would include a wide variety of incredible experiences. Or why some clothing designers mostly wear a t-shirt and jeans rather than their own creations.

Are you all still sore from Krampusnacht? What is with the nasty, Grinchy spirit this season? It's not a good look on you guys. Katherine is the only one actually trying to discuss rather than get personal. I could have sworn I remember my P&J ballot being rejected if I missed a field or the points added up to less than 100, and all the individual ballots having ten entries, but the links to the old pages and data seem broken, so I'll take your word for it. No, I don't think there is only one variable that would make P&J different. I just made that one suggestion as it was relatively easy and feasible.

triggercut - along with the option to submit votes for a variety of genres, I would totally include a "New Old Discoveries" category. Because sure, it's just as thrilling to discover something that came out a long time ago. I've been including that in my year-end pieces too!

it's a little weird to me that people think they should pay attention to like 200 albums from this year just 'cos they...were released this year.

It's still important to me to try and find out about a band I'd love before their 20-year reunion tour so I can have a chance to see them live in the exciting early stages of their development, buy a t-shirt and/or their album on Bandcamp and do my best to spread the word about them. I just want to see bands and artists I like succeed, no measuring of dicks necessary.