Pazz and Jop 2014 results

Huzzah.

pretty psyched about D'Angelo winning, especially given the alternatives if he hadn't released the album when he did

albums list: not mad
singles list: wtf

amen to the rev

i've tried with that future islands song and i don't think it's "bad" but i don't hear what's particularly special about it

at least i wasn't the only vote for "quarterback" or "babylon system"

lol @ Spoon breaking into the albums top 10. iirc (only a few) people were excited about that for approximately two weeks last year and then all talk of it vanished.

I didn't expect D to win the albums poll, but good for him!

lol @ Spoon breaking into the albums top 10. iirc (only a few) people were excited about that for approximately two weeks last year and then all talk of it vanished.

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, January 13, 2015 1:04 PM (3 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^
yeah this was startling, this album had no staying power for me

More excited about Sturgill Simpson placing in the top ten (yeah, that album is my token country album, so whaaaat) than D'Angelo, whose Voodoo is my favorite album released during my lifetime, topping it. Hmm.

OF COURSE DeRo voted for "All About That Bass"

makes sense that a late release won it to me, felt like a year when a lot of people were still looking for an AOTY at year-end and along came d'angelo. not that it's not worthy (esp given the alternatives) but everyone who voted for it did so having spent 10 days max with it.

the singles list looks batty but again it was a year when there weren't many big AND critically acclaimed singles. 24 votes for "all about that bass", more trolls among p&j voters than on ilx!

"the pazz and jop is going to be so boring and predictable you guys"

if anyone who didn't submit a ballot ever paid attention to this thing, they won't now that it's a VVM slideshow listicle

more interested in glenn's stats-crunching than the results per se!

if anyone who didn't submit a ballot ever paid attention to this thing, they won't now that it's a VVM slideshow listicle

― james brooks, Tuesday, January 13, 2015 2:10 PM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every list is on one page, just like previous years, I get the sentiment but come on

also it's not like i could name that many songs that would've been more predictable to see in the p&j top 10

Heck of a fall from #1 for tuneyards, considering that she actually made a really good record.

where did she place? i haven't looked closely enough at all results

Pete Ubu nowhere to be seen this year

there are four separate versions of "tuesday" plus a footnote about tuesday

xp tuneyards is at 29 -- I would've figured her for at least top 20.

(I mean, I didn't think the last one was really a #1 album, so I guess if you average the two you get something fair.)

they got the zz part right

Surprised at Sam Smith's low placing on the albums list

there are four separate versions of "tuesday" plus a footnote about tuesday

― katherine, Tuesday, January 13, 2015 2:20 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

good lord, so once they fix that it'll probably be the #2 single

oh n/m the footnote says the total for the #6 entry includes the 18 votes from alt versions

Just clicking around people's ballots, I noticed that one mention of Wussy's "Attica!" on Mike Barthel's ballot was mis-entered as "Shake It" on "Attica Records," which would put it just above YG.

Azealia Banks at #14 really surprised me.

For the first time I had a few picks where I was the only voter. Feels good.

Furia hasn't always asked for a password has it?

^^i was just about to ask that

2 votes for "Track 3"

Brad and I the only ones here to vote for The Way I'm Livin'

Honestly I forgot that Brody Dalle even released an album!

would've been in my top 20, 10 still seems too small a ballot

xp

So Makonnen got kinda screwed over, no? He's listed twice - 6 and 39 - with the same song, the only difference being Drake.

Jeff W, those two votes were for "Style".

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2014/QWxsIEFib3V0IFRoYXQgQmFzc3x8fE1lZ2hhbiBUcmFpbm9y/

xp
I doubt it (given one of the voters didn't vote for any other singles). For this more likely:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/eight-seconds-of-white-noise-is-top-of-the-canadian-itunes-chart-because-people-love-taylor-swift-that-much-9809022.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2014/QWxsIEFib3V0IFRoYXQgQmFzc3x8fE1lZ2hhbiBUcmFpbm9y/

― k3vin k., Tuesday, January 13, 2015 1:54 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good old DeRo!

Ugh, I now realize there was so much I could've voted for w/o resorting to reissues. For instance, Sharon Jones, Bob Mould and Shellac.

scrollin' thru voters list, always a couple ppl i didn't know were critics.

Ha, Trainor was Dero's only singles vote. Nihilistic ballot.

as someone who thought that war on drugs album was the dullest shit ever i'm not thrilled to see it at number three but i'm all HAHA SUCKAZ that it got locked out of the one and two slots.

People be lovin' Syro

(which I liked, but not enough to vote for it)

scrollin' thru voters list, always a couple ppl i didn't know were critics.

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, January 13, 2015 2:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They might not be.

And I really should've included Courtney Barnett's "Avant Gardener" in my singles list. Fortunately others did.

Wow U2 got slammed. 12 voters and I don't even recognise any of them.

Also lower than I expected: Wild Beasts, Black Keys, Jack White, Jessie Ware, Eno/Hyde, Schoolboy Q, Springsteen, Damon Albarn, Pharrell, Future, Mac DeMarco, Sam Smith.

i was surprised by being one of three or less votes for Chronixx's album, DJ Q's album, Lone's album.... only six votes for Popcaan! just one vote for Lemonade!

that singles list is a mess tho'

Exactly one vote for "A Better Tomorrow." How the mighty fall.

Ha, Trainor was Dero's only singles vote. Nihilistic ballot.

― Minaj moron (Re-Make/Re-Model), Tuesday, January 13, 2015 8:03 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"never compromise. not even in the face of armageddon." - rorschach finalizing his P&J ballot

i googled to see if dero had written about the song elsewhere and he called it a "guilty pleasure" in his best-of, noting it was the only song this year he preferred to "dancehall domine"

Just checked to see how common it is for Rolling Stone's album of the year to finish so low on Pazz and Jop. At #69, Songs of Innocence is the lowest P&J finish for an RS champ. Since 1978*, only two other RS number ones have ended up outside the P&J top 10: U2's No Line on the Horizon (2009; #32 on P&J) and Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball (2012; #15 on P&J).

(*Before 1978, from what I can tell, Rolling Stone listed several albums but didn't rank them.)

I am curious how many of the people who voted for Seasons first heard it via tastemaker trendsetter David Letterman.

(The Letterman clip was the first/only time I heard the song, so maybe I'm just projecting.)

That performance was great, but it's really weird to me that Letterman broke a band in 2014.

Future Islands weren't totally unknown before that, but the meme nature of the Letterman performance surely put the band on a lot more people's radar.

Maybe that's why he's retiring. "I finally conquered Pazz Jop!"

I guess he finally bailed on the Flaming Lips

shout out to Crystal for being the only one to vote for cher lloyd

does Crystal post here?

here's a deathless nugget of wisdom buried in the P+J comments:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7Qmxm3CUAAuHS5.jpg

"boom clap" and the flash, Yes, i dunno if i'd call them mountains, yes thank you very much soft foods diet, probably not, i already knew where that was, twirling twirling twirling towards freedom

i got lost between the moon and new york city

lol that p/j comment

xxxxpost i don't think so but she's on the singles jukebox

David Cotner has always been the shit.

xp Yeah, that's how I know her.

"i luh ya papi" only got 1 vote

only four votes for "coco"!

good lord @ "all about that bass" making the top 40 on the singles list and "bang bang nearly getting that high

The extended stats are now up, too. http://furia.com/pjs/index.html

I'll get that Wussy vote fixed, too. Sorry for not catching it.

hmmm. no overlap between album and mixtape voters: http://furia.com/pjs/artist_10682.html

yeah i dunno if anyone would wanna put BOTH on their ballot even if they like both.

Landing roughly in the centre of the "centricity" list always feels about right to me.

Some Spotify playlists:

Winning songs (5+ votes) - http://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/33fI7YmfrhZYfHke6FztQH

My song shortlist (50 songs) - http://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/7yyi9Qy2I4UWyr8WF2hWp1
My album shortlist (50 albums) - http://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/3NmX4kXmqxdTuuiMkMSclx

this year is the most 'centrist' i've ever been, primarily because i voted for D'Angelo

I feel like as long as Emm Gryner keeps on a regular record-releasing schedule, I will never become too centric.

gonna add all those +5 tracks to my listening list. that thing is getting unwieldy.

Khun Narin · Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band, Other Votes: 0

so disappointed in u, ilx

Dude, nobody else voted for "Let It Go" IN 50 FUCKING LANGUAGES. I mean, OK, it's actually only 43 languages for the in-film version and 7 languages for the credits version, and even though it's called Let It Go the Complete Set it actually doesn't have either of the English versions. But when have you ever before been able to hear the same song sung in 43 languages? It's a literally unprecedented listening experience. And yet 71 people voted for FUCKING SPOON. That shit right there is precedented.

[struggles to regain self-control]

let it go is that from a movie or something

okay, you have convinced me to try let it go in fifty fucking languages but I DON'T LIKE let it go so this could be a short experience

i like your thinking tho' glenn

all that "frozen" music is terrible but if you wanna talk about what the (literal) kids are listening to, there it is.

my strong prediction for 2015 is that major labels and big-money niche labels will be doubling down on their already big investment to market stuff to little girls.

i was just thinking the other day, as a 38-year-old father of two kids under the age of 5, i think i'm supposed to hate "Let It Go," but i actually just love it.

i've probably heard it, no joke, 500 times? maybe more? and i still sometimes get mild chills at the climactic moment.

this represents the first time i've heard it top to bottom or it would if i wasn't giving each version about thirty seconds

When it does that first "the cold never bothered me anyway" part I love to pantomime throwing off my cloak and it flying away

The truth is that the joy I get from my daughter falling in love with a song, whether let it go or fancy, is as substantial as any aural pleasure I get from listening to the music I love so I figure she can always have spots on my ballots. I did vote for let it go for vv but for ilx felt it was maybe a 2013 song? And left it off.

I neither love nor hate "Let It Go" (childless folks like myself not required to have an opinion on it), but thanks, glenn, for the new display name!

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2015/01/pazz_jop_2014_the_comments.php

For all of the ease in finding music on the internet, it still seems like if some music is not marketed to critics or the masses, it gets ignored. Southern soul, of the slightly-raunchy-lyric and synth-rhythm variety, continues to generate new songs by the likes of Nellie "Tiger" Travis and others, but since it's not pushed in a crossover manner, this line-dance-friendly sound for a largely older African American audience gets ignored. Similarly, Afrobeats (with an S), the African dance music style, is huge for the African diaspora, but with no major-label American releases and no PR marketing to critics, it's largely been neglected by the music critic media.

Lex and I were the only votes on the tracks list for the Afrobeats cut by Davido (ft. Mafikizolo), "Tchelete (Good Life)"
HKN Music

interesting icalics, curmudgeon. does anyone have any recent southern soul or afrobeatsss to recommend?

there's a thread
Rolling Afrobeats / Afropop 2015 thread

love the stats, love seeing how some artists grow from having a handful of voters early on to being juggernauts. can't believe no one seemed to have voted for taylor swift's debut album at the time.

zero crossover between ariana grande album voters 2013 and 2014

who is keith harris? usually my closest neighbour is an ilxor but not this year

once again boggling at how boring the taste of the most centric voters is

i spent most of the year in a child-free frozen-free world then spent xmas with a 2-yr-old and in those two days must have heard "let it go" 10 times at least. it's a good song, as disney songs go!

zero crossover between ariana grande album voters 2013 and 2014

that makes sense to me, it feels like the only people that really cared about the 2nd record were johnny come latelies to the first record

not that i hate the songs included, but the singles list is almost 'why did they bother?' pretty redundant. then again it does just remind of how hard it is to know what a real single is anymore. which could be why only the biggest songs of the year seem to be in there.

it's just a hugely steep drop-off with the singles, you're barely out of the top 50 before getting into single-figure votes territory. you have a relatively small bunch of monoculture artists/songs (by which i include critical faves as well as commercial smashes, as we're in critic land) and then a zillion personal favourites

which is to say, i agree w curmudgeon

For all of the ease in finding music on the internet, it still seems like if some music is not marketed to critics or the masses, it gets ignored.

it is odd how few votes the number one single in there has compared with the top album. pretty massive disparity. have people always voted less for singles in P&J?

I will leave that question to the stats people.

Re unmentioned by most citics genres:

T. Finney didn't vote. Deej voted for different afrobeats cuts and an album, than the few others of us who did. Xchuckx and I voted for different southern soul songs.

What a weird, shitty year.

Anyone read the essays yet?

love the stats, love seeing how some artists grow from having a handful of voters early on to being juggernauts. can't believe no one seemed to have voted for taylor swift's debut album at the time.

I thin Glenn's stats only go back to 2008, but yesterday I tried to find out where Taylor's debut had ranked, and all I could determine (because the entire 2006 results are no longer on the VV site) was that it wasn't in the top 200.

who is keith harris? usually my closest neighbour is an ilxor but not this year

Keith used to post on ilx!

Remarkable to me that both D'Angelo and Aphex Twin could break radio silence in 2014, and yet, it was still a pretty shit year.

Here's a Spotify sampler playlist generated from the Album poll: http://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/4aDJUI0RnDK2WaYK8uVChM

Thanks. Liked your tabulations article in the issue. This was interesting re who the new voters this year largely are coming from:

New voters represent about 20 percent of the votes, so albums with vitality above .2 are disproportionately supported by new voters over old, and below .2 vice versa. Mac DeMarco's Salad Days is a standout by this metric, with over 50 percent of its 186 points from those 20 percent new voters. Of the 39 albums with five-plus votes that no new voters picked, most had small enough vote-counts that we can attribute this to chance, but Wussy's Attica! had 28 voters and still none of the new ones, the probability of which happening randomly is about .002 (though whether this says more about the album or the new voters is a human question not answered by the numbers).

Wussy is a Christgau fave

Every track on Attica! could be titled "Beautiful Losers," but the whole thing sounds great, tempts me to keep it on eternal replay. I don't get that from many albums.

Has anyone who's never read Robert Christgau ever been into Wussy?

― jaymc, Monday, June 16, 2014 12:02 AM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

afaict the only fans Wussy has on earth are Christgau and his disciples

― lame adele rey (some dude), Friday, January 13, 2012 9:10 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The long and winding road:

Chuck Cleaver had a record store back in the late 80s, maybe early 90s, and used to write some of the funniest Goldmine Magazine ad copy ever--I ordered a bunch of stuff from him (it helped that I was way into Ohio punk and indie). Later I heard that he and some of his employees had a band; checked out Ass Ponys' Electric Rock Music really liked his boondocks tales(before Drive-By Truckers of The Hold Steady, or at least before I knew about 'em). Lo & Behold, "Little Bastard" was a hit of sorts, with a trailer park video on MTV.
Much later, got to cover some Wussy shows, which is pretty much when I started listening to them. Really like most of their album tracks, hoping for a live set.

― dow, Friday, November 14, 2014 5:55 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Huzzah: Sturgill Simpson
Pleased to see bubbling under: Hundred Waters, Mr Twin Sister, John Luther Adams, The Delines
Dismayed by poor showing:Andy Stott, Phantogram, The Juan MacLean, The Bug

Sturgill Simpson ended up with more crossover interest than Miranda Lambert

Please note that most Simpson voters had no use for country.

I'd also argue that we'll never see Lambert peak so high again.

imo the simpson album was better than the lambert, but except for a very few songs on the lambert (smoking and drinking) i didn't care for it much

ML had her best showing to date (3 spots higher than Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) but at this point she has a strong critical following that seems divided on whether she's still doing her best work or not.

Should I liveblog listening to the top ten singles, as I've not heard of any of them?

yes

yes plz

Her country audience has never been bigger – she finally got her first Billboard 200 #1 (something Paisley's never gotten).

I'd be curious to hear a morbs response.
that future islands song is SUCH a weird consensus pick.

It's high on my EOY ballot, but really it's the 'story' encapsulating it that makes it endearingly more than the sum of its parts.

Her country audience has never been bigger – she finally got her first Billboard 200 #1 (something Paisley's never gotten).

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 14, 2015 11:54 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Platinum is her first album not to go platinum, although obviously that has more to do w/ overall sales drop. but i will be surprised if this ends up with 4 big airplay hits like her last album (so far she's at 2).

xpost I mean this is a band who valiantly slogged away on the scene for the best part of a decade, attracting very little attention, and then blew up thanks to (an OUTSTANDING) performance on Letterman. You can tell the lead guy really loves what he does and it's one of the few moments I've seen in 2014 where I've felt I'm actually witnessing something genuinely unusual.

And it's not a one-off. Just watch this Tiny Desk Concert

Four the Record had an unusually long shelf life: "Mama's Broken Heart" was a hit in spring 2013!

Future Islands were at a real tipping point of critical acclaim/live following and had just jumped to a bigger label, there were years of "this lead singer is something else" live reviews, it seems pretty inevitable to me that their first TV performance would make a big impression, they just needed to get to the point where they were offered one. but i think it's kind of reductive to boil all of their current popularity/visibility down to Letterman.

ML had her best showing to date (3 spots higher than Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) but at this point she has a strong critical following that seems divided on whether she's still doing her best work or not.

never forget the talking heads' p'n'j topper was little creatures

ha I thought of Little Creatures, which I like more than most Heads fans, but idk Platinum doesn't at all sound like retrenchment. Also, the back to basics move for the Heads made sense; I would love to have been around in 1987 or 1988 and heard TS and Naked to go, "Yeah, the decline started in '85."

that's all beside the point, which is just that it's no shock for someone to still do well on p'n'j after some people think they're past their peak

Please note that most Simpson voters had no use for country.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 14, 2015 11:51 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"country"

also plz liveblog Morbz

the impression i get is that pre-platinum, miranda lambert was a household name in the US at the peak of her (tabloidy) fame) but whose most critically acclaimed albums were some years behind her - or at least she'd gone from being the fire-breathing, furious force of nature to being a lot calmer and conventional, mellowed with age. platinum surprised most of the people who best loved crazy ex-girlfriend, in a good way, for pulling herself out of an artistic semi-rut (obv she never *declined* as such, given the emergence of pistol annies) but not retreading her old persona - i guess i'm surprised that she's picking up new fans, though maybe pistol annies/kacey musgraves et al did set the scene for people who hadn't been into crazy ex-girlfriend to get into her?

xps re: future islands so the story is focused around a letterman performance catapulting them to greater awareness? bizarre.

i've been kind of baffled by how praised that song has been. i have never heard anything from future islands before and assumed there must be some context one has to be aware of in order to appreciate the song 'properly' or w/e b/c otherwise it's firmly in respect-but-not-enjoy territory

yeah it's funny i don't even HATE the song i just find it's increasingly iconic stature so absurd

i mean it's a fine '80s throwback but gee throw a rock at coachella and you'll hit one

that's more or less how I read it too.

xpost to lex

xps re: future islands so the story is focused around a letterman performance catapulting them to greater awareness? bizarre.

― dyl, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 5:16 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as far as i can tell this is the case and the performance wasn't even anything special imo

dunno if it's been noted on thread but jess h noted on twitter that 75 votes is pretty low for a #1 on p'n'j

in 2002 90 people voted for eminem's "without me," which came in at #5

future islands is a thoroughly deserved winner of panda and jiggle 2014 imo

in 2013 75 votes would have put you behind "Get Lucky" (117) and "Royals" (76), 2012 "Call Me Maybe" (94), 2011 "Rolling In The Deep" (116) "Countdown" (98) and "Super Bass" (95)

The performance is pretty special for that kind of music. Most indie electropop is delivered in a deliberately deadpan glassy-eyed way. There's a sense of daring and abandon and theatricality to the guy's performance that is genuinely rare among groups like this. I thought it was very refreshing. And sure,FI had a fanbase before but they had nowhere near the kind of attention up to the Letterman performance.

what cracks me up is that this "sense of daring and abandon and theatrically" is totally not rare in viral vids of balding dudes getting down. i mean the "evolution of dance" clip is almost a decade old.

the Letterman performance has 70% more YouTube views than the official "Seasons" video. both are under 4 million views, though, probably any middling Hot 100 hit could clear that in a week. it's 'viral' but at a pretty low level.

that only makes all the heavy-breathing about it in rockcritland more absurd

tbf this was a weak year for schmindie hits so it also had that going for it

taylor vote-splitting, relatively noxious summer #1s = no 100+ consensus pop choice, weak year for indie crossover = "midnight city 2: embarassing boogaloo" gets a little bump

(and let it be known i was originally going to make a "legend for curly's gold" joke before realizing in this case "boogaloo" was actually appropriate)

yeah it seems like a bizarre #1 but i can't think of anything that would've plausibly been up there

fun fact! the guy who wrote that "rappers didn't step up except for young jeezy" essay voted "rude" as his #1 single

bless him

don't you know i'm human too, a poignant, relevant message that echoed from car stereos, followed by a guitar solo that ached and belched in queasy, uncertain response

but in the face of our government's rudeness, life will go on. girls will be married, children will be born, society will move forward anyway. anyway.

this is the letterman future islands performance that got all the heat if you don't feel like googling; i'm still unclear as to why this is noteworthy but i am noncentric
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ee4bfu_t3c

i won't lie, pavement acting the fool on leno sure seemed like a big deal to me when i was a young sprat, and i still get a kick out of it. if i was an indie-centric person today who had to watch and promote live clips from late night tv daily for a living this may have been especially refreshing

the impression i get is that pre-platinum, miranda lambert was a household name in the US at the peak of her (tabloidy) fame) but whose most critically acclaimed albums were some years behind her - or at least she'd gone from being the fire-breathing, furious force of nature to being a lot calmer and conventional, mellowed with age. platinum surprised most of the people who best loved crazy ex-girlfriend, in a good way, for pulling herself out of an artistic semi-rut (obv she never *declined* as such, given the emergence of pistol annies) but not retreading her old persona - i guess i'm surprised that she's picking up new fans, though maybe pistol annies/kacey musgraves et al did set the scene for people who hadn't been into crazy ex-girlfriend to get into her?

― lex pretend

i got into ML via crazy ex-girlfriend (which i thought was a great country AND rock album but didn't make me explore her much further. platinum was i thought even better and caused me to seek out everything else she's done. pistol annies are great too, obv. i can't think of a more talented country supergroup since...idk, since the parton/harris/ronstadt collab?

r u concentric? xxp

jaymc, i know at least one voter who is not a critic per se -- wfmu md/dj Brian T -- but what other categories do voters fall into?

future islands guy seems like a great dude and i like his style but i've never felt 'seasons'. it has the sound but not the tune.

I did another statistical experiment in which I took all the artists who got 10+ points (album points + 2 points/song) this year and clustered them as if they were occupying parallel stages at a gigantic unruly music-festival. And then, for each stage, generated some other artists who weren't on the list. Maybe amusing.

http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=430 (and scroll down to the end of the post)

Noob question, but how does one vote in P&J? Is it US critics only?

non-US critics can and do vote, although it's obv mostly US critics. usually the current VV music ed or poll organizer or whatever can be reached to apply for voting (mostly it's just a matter of telling them where you've written about music professionally in the last year iirc) and once you're in you get sent a ballot every year without asking.

I really want Morbs to liveblog himself listening to "Shake It Off"

this board spends all day every day slagging indie bands as bland, creatively bankrupt pity-parties that lack personality and are fronted by mewling cornballs, and then Sam from Future Islands has a breakout performance and he sucks too, smdh

GROWLING CORNBALL

I voted for 3 or 4 years in the mid 00s and the only reason I can think of is that I had an infrequently updated music blog with an audience of never more than a couple hundred people. I imagine they've tightened the requirements for getting a ballot since then.

i do like his INVISIBLE ICE SKATING RINK dance moves tbh

I don't hate him! Far worse things in the world than an earnest Paul Young homage delivered by a young Frank Sobotka not afraid to groove and let phlegm get in his way (or uses phlehm to his advantage, your call).

we need a Rolling Growling Cornball Thread for all (future) Future Islands updates

jaymc, i know at least one voter who is not a critic per se -- wfmu md/dj Brian T -- but what other categories do voters fall into?

Former critics who are still on the e-mail list.

Glenn, I first read "orgcore" as "ogrecore" and thought, sweet! But what is orgcore?

orgcore, the name, came from punknews.org. It's the kind of punk music that got talked about there.

like warped tour punk?

http://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/1hLadJClq9oERcLtWnfB5m

hey glenn, is there a way to punch those http spotify links into my spotify client directly? i hate the web interface so much.

Yes, just copy and paste them, whole, into the desktop-client search box.

I imagine they've tightened the requirements for getting a ballot since then.
― Johnny Fever

I'm semi-living proof they haven't.

Great to see the Platinumlove here (for Lambert's album, I mean---though btw, I voted for this year's deluxe edition of Beyonce's Platinum, which got its title shortened to that of the plain ol' 2013 release.in P&J's posted version of my ballot. Oh well, the expanded edition was even better, but not drastically different than the original, at least in comparing the audio-only versions, dunno about the box incl. DVDs).
But meant to say: since I only had ten slots, I saved all my country picks for the Nashville Scene ballot, the results of which are due on Jan. 22, I believe. Wonder if anybody else did that? Seems like it might have affected the P&J totals, in some cases.

Wait--Beyonce's last minute 2013 original just s/t; her Platinum *is* the Deluxe Edition---sorry for wasting moments of y'all's lives w that!

it was about a year ago that I heard that Future Island tune: I disliked it immediately down to the fella's singing…but I will give credit in that it was immediately striking, in the same way that I disliked Alanis "You Oughta Know" but it was memorable from the git-go…

but I just watched that video from Letterman above… and…

are those guys like known by everybody in Baltimore? does Dan Deacon or Drew Daniel know them? wasn't there some Ballmurr indie boomlet in 2008 or 2009 or something? I get a "we variously tried to do the Tonic/Stabbing westward thing, then moved onto Hoobstank a decade ago, and then (which band do you think inspired their thing?) motivated us thusly… " feeling from them. I dunno, watching that guy stepping around like such a goof makes me have a glimmer of affection for 'em…

just hearing this year's #1 SINGLE WINNER for the first time; i kind of like his singing, and i do like the idea of indie people going for bigness and reach, but man the backing track is bad

the karaoke machine preset was "Atlantic Starr"

I've hated so many singles winners over the years, or at the very least have been mystified as to how they won. That song, based only on that performance, fits in somewhere on that spectrum. (I realize it topped a number of polls, not just Pazz & Jop.)

This was the Future Islands jam five years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvwZ6ylPh98

I dunno, an "indie rock" artist hasn't topped the P&J singles list since, what, Beck did in 1994?

If it's gonna happen I'm psyched it's one with the passion and power and ability of a major label pop act

I don't mind "Seasons" but wow that song you just posted is terrible.

Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" topped in 2004

with almost twice as many votes (145)

a decade ago 75 votes would have put you in 9th place, just above "maps" and (lolll) "vertigo"

that said "vertigo" > "seasons"

Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" topped in 2004

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 6:23 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I said "indie rock" not arena dorks playing Gang of Four riffs

I guess they were on an indie, so fine, first in 10 years

Pretty song when he's not singing. Not to fail to keep up with the new, but "Loser" next to "Seasons" seems like a painful mismatch to me. (Totally arbitrary comparison--maybe I'll love next year's winner even more than "Loser.")

oh whiney

and to think Platinum was on your ballot.

"loser" was already long rereleased-by-dgc buzz bin material when it topped p'n'j too. it received 3 votes in '93 courtesy of bong load.

oddly enough loser is another rare <100-vote #1

actually nevermind, the pazz voting pool was considerably lower pre-ethernet, lotta <100 winners back then

as a hater of all these songs

loser >>> take me out >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> seasons

i mean i can see why people might love "loser" and beck has character that's more than hammy overacting on light entertainment tv, and "take me out" has...er...a bit of it is catchy i think? i can't remember. but anyway "seasons" doesn't have have the appeal of those

hard for me to enjoy "take me out" at all because it reminds me of all the other melodically-bankrupt rock radio hits that were played out at that time

i remember there was a glut of really, really terrible indie rock around 04 and franz ferdinand got plaudits because they stood out for merely being mediocre. such a boring band tho

there are some typos on the p'n'j stuff in xgau's site, but if it can be trusted the last song to top p'n'j with 75 or fewer votes was quad city djs in '96 with 34 out of 236 ballots cast. 612 voted this year.

in '95 almost a third of the ballots cast had "gangsta's paradise" on them

there's little that cures fretting over current p&j results like looking back over past ones and realising how strange and/or shit and/or inaccurate either personally or otherwise they seem in retrospect

what a year

1. Coolio: "Gangsta's Paradise" (MCA Soundtracks) 81
2. Edwyn Collins: "A Girl Like You" (Bar/None/A&M) 48
Alanis Morissette: "You Oughta Know" (Maverick/Reprise) 48
4. Elastica: "Connection" (DGC) 39 *
5. TLC: "Waterfalls" (LaFace) 38
6. Joan Osborne: "One of Us" (Blue Gorilla/Mercury) 34
7. PJ Harvey: "Down by the Water" (Island) 31
8. TLC: "Creep" (LaFace) 30 *
9. Dionne Farris: "I Know" (Columbia) 22
Shaggy: "Boombastic" (Virgin) 22
11. Oasis: "Wonderwall" (Epic) 21
12. Foo Fighters: "This Is a Call" (Roswell/Capitol) 20
The Presidents of the United States of America: "Lump" (Columbia) 20
14. Method Man: "I'll Be There for You"/"You're All I Need To Get By" (Featuring Mary J. Blige) (Def Jam) 19
15. Foo Fighters: "I'll Stick Around" (Roswell/Capitol) 17
Matthew Sweet: "Sick of Myself" (Zoo) 17
17. Portishead: "Sour Times" (London) 16 *
Seal: "Kiss From a Rose" (ZTT/Sire/Warner Bros.) 16
Skee-Lo: "I Wish" (Scotti Bros./Sunshine) 16
20. Goo Goo Dolls: "Name" (Metal Blade/Warner Bros.) 15
Smashing Pumpkins: "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" (Virgin) 15
22. Elastica: "Stutter" (DGC) 14 *
Filter: "Hey Man Nice Shot" (Reprise) 14
Garbage: "Queer" (Almo Sounds) 14
Luniz: "I Got 5 on It" (Noo Trybe) 14

another factoid in perspective.

in 2014, 75 out of 612 p'n'j voters put "seasons" in their top 10 singles.

in 2001, 86 out of 622 p'n'j voters put "clint eastwood" in their top 10 singles.

176 voted for "get ur freak on" that year, though

1. Coolio: "Gangsta's Paradise" (MCA Soundtracks) 81
2. Edwyn Collins: "A Girl Like You" (Bar/None/A&M) 48
3. Alanis Morissette: "You Oughta Know" (Maverick/Reprise) 48
4. Elastica: "Connection" (DGC) 39 *
5. TLC: "Waterfalls" (LaFace) 38

okay that's a seriously great top five

are those guys like known by everybody in Baltimore? does Dan Deacon or Drew Daniel know them? wasn't there some Ballmurr indie boomlet in 2008 or 2009 or something? I get a "we variously tried to do the Tonic/Stabbing westward thing, then moved onto Hoobstank a decade ago, and then (which band do you think inspired their thing?) motivated us thusly… " feeling from them. I dunno, watching that guy stepping around like such a goof makes me have a glimmer of affection for 'em…

― veronica moser, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 4:54 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

those guys are all originally from North Carolina and it was Dan Deacon (another transplant) who convinced them to come to Baltimore. and like Dan they were welcome with open arms because their preexisting sound/aesthetic just fit in with what the natives were doing and it was clear they were contributing something worthwhile to the scene.

1984 had a pretty good top five too:

1. Prince: "When Doves Cry"/"17 Days" (Warner Bros.) 111*
2. Bruce Springsteen: "Dancing in the Dark"/"Pink Cadillac" (Columbia) 71*
3. Tina Turner: "What's Love Got To Do With It" (Capitol) 61
4. Hüsker Dü: "Eight Miles High" (SST) 56
5. Van Halen: "Jump" (Warner Bros.) 52

One more tiny number thing:

Before this year, the most song-votes a remix ever got was 8, which happened twice: Britney Spears' "Till the World Ends (Femme Fatale Remix)" and David Bowie's "Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix by James Murphy)".

This year, Beyoncé's "***Flawless (Remix)" got 17 and ILoveMakonnen's "Club Goin' Up on a Tuesday" Drake remix got 16.

So you're not counting "Ignition (Remix)" (70) or "Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)" (16)?

"Loser" is hot garbage, son.

Yeah, I meant a remix of a song that also got votes in its original form. And I should have also said 2008-2014, as I was only looking at my data.

That Wussy (which I just heard) album is fine, but I'd love to know why I should be excited by it.

Like, it's basically the Handsome Family plus Eleventh Dream Day, which is maybe what makes it critic bait. It's a cult band cocktail.

Cheers. My take, from Please Tell Me About Wussy
Tried to say it on Twitter last week:
Wussy, Attica!: luvly noise x melody ---> strata of time & space as boondocks, astute students of Neil Y, hot peers of Truckers, Hold Steady.
Thinking of narrators, "characters" or not, with personal history incl musical influences: where the DBT & THS comparisons come in. The Beautiful Losers bit on every track, but no prob listening over and over, which I rarely do with other albums Also, with The Hold Steady not holding steady with the quality, more room for another act with somewhat similar sensibility. The female vocals def help, as they usually do; I'm not that into most male rock voices.

Oh my god I just opened the first essay and...

It was an even worse year for police officers and grand juries.

FUCK. THIS.

i mean he's not sympathizing with them

it was awkwardly written. I thought an editor should have changed it.