Pazz & Jop 1979 Singles Poll

money changes everything

"Stop Your Sobbing" both because it is a great song in its own right, and also because hearing it signals to me that
"Pretenders is starting!"

Have to go with Sister Sledge. Absolutely sublime, and the arrangement is genius -- like Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," there's nary a cymbal crash to be heard.

Knee-jerk vote for "My Sharona".

"Dreaming"

Ian Dury without a second thought.

Money Changes Everything by a wide margin.

Lotsa good choices, leaning toward "Stop Your Sobbing"

"Good Times" by Chic came out in 1979. I mean what the hell.

one of the weaker top 10s of the first decade or two of P&J singles polls imo. voted for "Dreaming."

"Good Times," and also "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now"; the list (which I assume is the Top 10) is missing all three of the year's crossover epics. There is disco on there, so puzzling.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres79.php

9. The Brains: "Money Changes Everything" (Gray Matter) 15
The Flying Lizards: "Money" (Virgin) 15
The Specials: "Gangsters" (2 Tone import) 13
12. Michael Jackson: "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" (Epic) 12
The Pretenders: "Kid" (Kid import) 12
The Records: "Starry Eyes" (Virgin) 12
Talking Heads: "Life During Wartime" (Sire) 12
16. Lester Bangs: "Let It Blurt" (Spy) 11 **
Chic: "Good Times" (Atlantic) 11
Dave Edmunds: "Girls Talk" (Swan Song) 11
Funkadelic: "(Not Just) Knee Deep" (Warner Bros.) 11
Peaches & Herb: "Reunited" (Polydor) 11
Donna Summer: "Bad Girls" (Casablanca) 11
22. Gang of Four: "At Home He's a Tourist"/"It's Her Factory" (EMI import) 10
Robin Lane & the Chartbusters: "Why Do You Tell Lies"/"When Things Go Wrong" (Deli Platters EP) 10
Nick Lowe: "Cruel to Be Kind" (Columbia) 10
McFadden & Whitehead: "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" (Philadelphia International) 10 *
Sugarhill Gang: "Rapper's Delight" (Sugarhill) 10 ***

*Includes votes for both seven-inch and 12-inch versions.

among the full list my fav would be "don't stop 'til you get enough"

A lot of good stuff. Maybe "Dreaming"? "Stop Your Sobbing" was my knee-jerk first thought but, while great, it's kind of a second-tier song in the context of an amazing album full of more amazing songs. "Money" is okay but I vastly prefer every other non-cover song on the first Flying Lizards album, and I vastly prefer Fourth Wall (one of the best albums of the '80s) to their first album. They're unfortunately one of those great new wave-era acts who are mostly only known for one fair-to-middlin' hit (see also: Bow Wow Wow, The Waitresses, Josie Cotton, etc).

(xpost) Yeah, I should have looked at the whole list--finishing in the second ten instead of the first ten is no big deal in a small sample.

Excerpts from Christgau's essay that year regarding who contributed votes to the poll(155 voters), and whom he couldn't get to vote (he says not enough folks who were covering r'n'b, not enough punkzines, & folks who lived in Nashville or Denver or Omaha or New Orleans:

Ain't representative democracy grand?

Representative of what, you might ask, and I admit I could be happier with the answer. This was to be the year the P&JCP grew up; I vowed that in 1979 I'd start tackling the problems of regional and racial spread early. But that vow, like others before it, went down to defeat. Instead I spent two days in mid-December working phones with co-Poobah Tom Carson.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pj79.php

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

MJ would likely win a poll of the 9th through 22nd songs on that Pazz & Jop 79 poll, but what would be second?

TUSK!

can't believe lester bangs tied good times!

I'm really surprised "My Sharona" made the top 10; convention wisdom is that critics in the years B.E. (Before Eddy) loathed the Knack.

"conventional"--there was no convention called to litigate this point.

**The Poobahs feel impelled to point out that at least seven of those voting for this disc are intimates of Lester Bangs, and at least one is Lester Bangs himself. They also feel impelled to acknowledge that it's a pretty good record anyway

On the xgau link but I never c & p'd this

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Dreaming was such a disappointing follow up to the Parallel Lines singles. "When I met you at the restaurant / you could tell I was no debutante" is the stupidest opening rhyme since "My love don't give me presents / I know that she's no peasant".

pop pop pop muzik pop pop pop muzik

Her regal vocal sells it -- I can practically see plumage.

well sure, she's all time

I missed this but I probably would've voted Tusk

Believe I voted Sister Sledge... good, will no longer consider it a "guilty pleasure" (ugh).

For some reason expected Drury to land on top... maybe Tom's 9 rating came across as critical consensus. For lyrics alone it wins hands down, tho, maybe bottom is fitting.

Let's rank the #1 singles of 1979.

A mistake to write that list when I had other top tens to consider...