Pazz and Jop 2010

Just got my ballot.

Me too.

I haven't voted since 2006. Surprising, I don't miss it.

Haven't gotten my ballot yet, but I've begun relistening to my favourite albums to see what order my lists will be in/what will make them.

i got mine

i forget, is there a way to input albums & "save" the ballot? or was that just jackin pop?

got mine!

i forget, is there a way to input albums & "save" the ballot? or was that just jackin pop?

Usually you can.

i just realized like, last week, that my ballot on last year's P&J site is messed up, my top 2 albums are at #9 and #10 and everything else is two spots higher -- don't know if it was my fault but i'm gonna be really careful when i submit this year

K, ballot arrived.

100 points for Lil B.

lol @ "Hey Soul Sister" being the example song title in the e-mail announcement. that song's been just outside my top 10 but i'm kind of tempted to vote for it now.

Ballot received, submitted. I probably haven't even heard your favorite album, so I almost certainly didn't vote for it.

lol ok tough guy

What other job can someone legitimately brag about how little they know about doing their job?

I'm sure there's some dude that's working on the Hadron Collider that's all "Yeah I don't really care about the Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses via electroweak symmetry."

his post isn't hilarious because he's saying "I don't know anything about music," it's hilarious because he's all "hey everyone sending me copies of your favorite album in 'For Your Consideration' envelopes, you can just stop it, I've made up my mind"

whoops, whiney's back
and cranky!
welcome back cranky man.

What other job can someone legitimately brag about how little they know about doing their job?

Dude, we've met face to face exactly once and I liked you then, and I enjoyed having you as a PTW editor. But your idea of what a music critic's job is is totally fucked and off-base. Has been pretty much as long as you've been doing it. Basically, you're frantically defibrillating a long-dead paradigm. Generalist, buffet-table pop criticism is dead. Specialist genre criticism is all that matters anymore, because listener communities are atomized, self-sealing and frequently hostile to outside input. I am a metal writer and a jazz writer, who occasionally writes about Latin music. I know who I'm writing for, and more importantly, I know who I'm not writing for. And I'm not gonna pretend to give a flying fuck about Taylor Swift or Kanye West just because all the other writers on my Twitter feed still think platinum-selling records "say" "something" "about" "the culture." There is no monoculture. Pick a niche and grind it out.

man, gis'ing "dogfight" to find an image to kick this back and forth off was one of the dumbest things i'm going to do today

Don't waste your time; I'm sure one or the other of us will be banned any minute now.

http://www.beyondhollywood.com/uploads/2008/06/clash-titans-remake-2.jpg

man i can't do anything right this morning. going back to bed.

i probably agree with more of that post than i disagree with, but man that was one scenery-chewing rant, man. you say your passion is metal and jazz, but are you sure it isn't The Theatre?

wait i have to go to work. never mind. bed so warm though...

Scott you're making me jealous. I'm already AT work and you're three hours ahead of me!

tbh i often worry that my dilettantism is counterproductive and weakens my ability to get my hands around the specifics or depths of a genre but when you're primarily a listener/promoter and only occasionally (and amateurishly) a critic in the way that i am, i think it's an apples and oranges debate.
vocationally... i dunno. i'd be curious to see you two duke it out on this point if you can keep it above the belt.

Eh, I'm as generalist as they come, maybe. Have been kind of forever. But I still don't get how "doing your job" necessarily equals "listening to the same records everybody else listens to." Just the opposite, a lot of the time. (Also don't think I agree with somedude, or have ever seen the "envelopes" he's referring to. After decades of voting in these polls, I'm pretty wary of albums that I suddenly convince myself I connect with in December, vote for, and then never listen to again. I haven't voted yet, probably won't for a couple weeks, but my ballot's fairly set in stone, I think. Even tentatively figured out the points last night. If some album gets released before December 31 and I wind up totally loving it, I can always stick in on next year's ballot.)

But I still don't get how "doing your job" necessarily equals "listening to the same records everybody else listens to."

Cosign eternally etc.

Also if/how you change a listener means a hell of a lot. I'm still actively engaged with music but I am not constantly marinating in it as I did when I was younger. I'm not going to force myself to return to that older pattern since that change actually gave me a lot of peace of mind and I'd be nuts to go back.

i might actually vote for the waka flocka album. and i only just heard it last week. but its addictive. so keep those cards and letters coming.

and i'd like to thank hell's headbangers records for the fruit basket.

Unperson, I like your blog and posts and writing on Latin music. But per your post on the 2010 magazine thread, you have also apparently decided that no metal, Latin, or jazz music is released after Thanksgiving (around the time your Wire ballot was due), and that you have heard everything in those genres for 2010 that you need to hear, already. I don't get that.

Chuck, you never miss anything through the year up to this point that interests you? You've heard all the Southern soul and country that might be of interest to you already?

No, of course not! I'm sure I've missed a ton. (More metal and hip-hop and Latin than country or soul these days.) Always do; it's impossible not to -- and I've probably heard a thousand or more albums this year. But I want to live with albums before I vote for them, so they can really sink in; forcefeeding at the last minute (in my case, anyway) just isn't reliable from a taste standpoint.

December releases always have the odds set against them as far as year-end lists are concerned, don't hold that against one guy.

OK, first off, just because you seemed to get this out of the way in your post: I'll add that yeah, none of this is personal and I loved working with you and I hope to work with you again, love following you on Twitter, and consider you a bro, etc etc etc. This is def nothing more personal than two peers having an online debate, so moderator forks needs to stop trying to turn this into BEEF IV

Anyway, obviously, I love your passion for jazz and metal, and you have def turned me on to a good record or two over the years. My problem is not that you refuse to listen to Kanye/Taylor/Grizzly Bear/etc, its that you always use your ignorance of pop music as a pole to raise you flag upon. Like, I can't fault anyone for not caring about Adam Lambert, I'm faulting you because you constantly think its grounds for bragging rights. And yeah, you are def right about the music audience getting more stratified and retreating to more insular worlds, but I generally see this as a BAD THING and its hard for me to wrap my head around not wanting to see these walls topple

xp I mean, the Pazz & Jop letter has always stressed "year of impact." If I hear anything new and great at this point, it's almost guaranteed to impact me more in 2011 than 2010.

What xhuxk said; plus, I know what labels' release schedules are, and I do know there's nothing coming out this month that might make its way onto my year-end lists.

Generalist, buffet-table pop criticism is dead. Specialist genre criticism is all that matters anymore, because listener communities are atomized, self-sealing and frequently hostile to outside input.

i think whiney's got his specialist thing going, too; i have a pretty good idea of what he'll think of a given album before he fires off a tweeted "review" a couple weeks after its release. he just likes to comment on what he doesn't like as well, which is where the generalist aspect comes into play. but really, if whiney likes the kanye album as much as sightings or yelawolf or dalek, why should he restrict himself to only talking about albums that fall under a specific genre umbrella? i'd say the unspoken reason you're a jazz and metal critic is that you enjoy listening to metal and jazz a lot; some writers prefer a more widescreen approach, instead of a specialist one. neither's right or wrong, and neither is "dead" -- just different approaches

my 2 cents

also, fuck a grizzly bear

My problem is not that you refuse to listen to Kanye/Taylor/Grizzly Bear/etc, its that you always use your ignorance of pop music as a pole to raise you flag upon. Like, I can't fault anyone for not caring about Adam Lambert, I'm faulting you because you constantly think its grounds for bragging rights.

Well, it's intended as more of a joke than it's maybe received as. But it ties into a larger point which is my view that a lot of (indie and pop) records are really only super fucking important to a few dozen critics who all follow each other on Twitter and Facebook, and who then jabber about them in terms that basically boil down to "You haven't heard this? This isn't hugely important to your life? What kind of person are you?" And my point is, well, the records that are super important to me are records so-called "generalist" critics would probably would look at like something they scraped off the bottom of their shoes. So I ridicule that whole approach for being a) attached to an utterly fictional idea of music audiences, and b) every bit as insular as headbangers or techno obsessives, while pretending to be all-inclusive.

ilxor,

i mean businesswise, there's no doubt that Phil's way is much smarter and much more profitable. (So many times I hear editors asking me "who's a good metal guy" or "who's a good rap guy"). As a writer it's def good business and def the way of the future. But as a music fan, it's extremely limiting.

Phil, you're really missing out on the Kanye record

Phil, you're really missing out on the every Kanye record

What about cultures that follow other calendars?

None of Kanye's singles (I have MTV at my house, guys, and YouTube on my computer) have ever converted me.

curious how much time you spend watching MTV if you deliberately don't give a fuck about most "big" albums

busted.

Albums are way more of a time and energy investment than occasional videos or singles, though. If you don't connect with the selected samples you're hearing or seeing, it's usually (not always) an indication that you won't connect with the album, either.

really boring thread so far guys

lets try to make these controversies really mean something

new board description ^^

December releases always have the odds set against them as far as year-end lists are concerned

this allegedly comes out today, coincidentally

http://musicistheheartofoursoul.toxicstrut.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/HinderAllAmericanNightmare.jpg

i'd love to vote in P&J but i dont write anyplace except for ILX, and typically just send my year-end list around to irl friends and facebook ppl and so forth. but i do have my top ten albums about 90% worked up!

I still lurk sometimes. (Hi Scott!)

dirty dirty lurkers. they steal all their good ideas from me. hi!

No, some dude, that wasn't really aimed at you. The "populism"/"corporatism" thing was just too good to pass up. I understand that you're trying to figure out what's going on. I'm backing up and saying that my issue isn't with your distinction between hits and non-hits, but before that: that the idea of letting distribution methods define "single" (regardless of sales or charts) is morally/artistically broken to begin with. Maybe one could justify it by some consumer-guide argument in 1979, when official singles were the only thing cheaper than an album that people could buy, but these days what isn't available streaming or individually? (Says the guy who voted for Triptykon's "The Prolonging", which is album-only on iTunes...)

Yeah...the xhuxk quote you used as an example is interesting to me because I almost come at it from the opposite direction -- you think he shouldn't have to wait to put it on a singles list only after the label has decided it's a single; I would say that since he decided he likes it by listening to it on an album and hasn't heard it in any standalone context, isn't it just part of an album he likes?

A lot of it comes down to not wanting my singles list to be redundant with my albums list, and likewise thinking that the more the P&J singles poll resembles the albums poll, the less it feels like it has a reason to exist. A lot of times one or two deep cuts I really love are what make me champion an album, regardless of whether I dislike or am just indifferent to the rest. If I start putting those songs on a singles list, I'd lower the impetus to include the album in my top 10 and my albums list would be kind of distorted or whittled away. By only listing singles I really heard on their own a lot, outside my iTunes window, the singles list becomes its own distinct thing with relatively little crossover or redundancies. That's my methodology, and I get the sense that methodology was more common before than it is now, but beyond extolling the virtues of voting that way I'm not really trying to tell people their way is wrong and my way is right.

Ha ha, I have fallen behind on this thread (and am too hungry for dinner to catch up.) Anyway, Glenn: If you read some of my posts upthread, you'll note that it's not only record companies that can make something a single for me: There's also DJs, for instance, and whoever curates various artist compilations (or runs certain websites where tracks are singled out regularly, maybe). Maybe even (gasp!) the artists themselves. But yeah, basically, as I told Don upthread, for my own singles ballot, I'm kind of stuck on some bastardization of the old-school definition: I want the singles I vote for to be designated as singles or focus tracks or whatever by somebody other than me. Just seems less solipsistic that way -- Like I'm connecting with the world outside my head. And yeah, that's probably a major delusion. And I don't think less of other folks because they don't share that delusion. But I'm stuck with it (and have been known to bend it now and then, too, to be honest. So let's just say I try to hold myself to it.) On a more practical level, it just keeps my list more manageable -- there are lots and lots of songs I like through the year; somehow, having some fuzzy semblance of a definition for the word "single" reins my list in somewhat; so I know what to compare.

And by the way, I'm pretty sure I've never complained about the placement of "Bloodbuzz, Ohio." (I like Ohio! Used to live in Cincinnatti! But mainly, I've been less engaged with the poll in general this year, than I was last year -- trying to stand on the sidelines, just not always succeeding at.) (Pretty sure I've never argued for "populism," either, for whatever that's worth. I just like the poll results more when they're not boring, is all. And too much of any one thing is a pretty good ticket toward boredom, I'd say.)

Yeah I think "Bloodbuzz" just became an easy go-to example of a song on the singles list that feels a bit like a stand-in for its album/artist -- although you did give it a 4 on Singles Jukebox so I'm sure people could make the assumption you don't think it deserves its placement.

Also, Whiney said, upthread, "Like I'm really into certain rando Rotting Christ and Dillinger and Torche album tracks, but I would exactly call any of them 'singles' by any stretch of the imagination."

To which I cheerfully point out that exactly one voter voted for a Rotting Christ album track, and I am that voter. "Demonon Vrosis". It's a great song, and in my opinion it is more powerful in isolation than Aealo taken as a whole. I spent a fair amount of time and thought selecting this, and at no point during the process did it occur to me to look up whether it was "released" individually in some jurisdiction. You don't know, either. Maybe it sat on top of the South-Eastern Bulgaria chart for three months like a fetid toad. I can't see how it makes the slightest bit of difference.

xp I don't think lots of things deserve placement! So? I've thought certain records were over-rated in Pazz & Jop forever. But I don't expect to agree with the poll; pretty sure I said that in my essay last year, too. If I ever thought Pazz & Jop should coincide with my personal tastes, somebody should lock me up. (I agreed with way more of it 30 years ago, sure. But hey, I'm old!)

I was just joking around; I don't think Glenn was accusing you of expressing any opinion of that song or its placement.

Also, I totally support the idea of personal rules for voting. Mine, which I don't claim anybody else should follow unless they feel like it, are that I do the album list first, thinking of it as "year's greatest achievement at album length", and then I do the song list, thinking of it as "honorable mention for notable achievement at song length". So no duplication of songs from listed albums, and no duplication of artists, but the songs always end up being a mix of standout moments from albums that just missed my album list (but album #11 doesn't necessarily get a song slot), and random songs that blew me away even though their albums didn't (or didn't come from albums).

I rarely get much overlap with other voters this way -- none in 2010 -- but I figure people who wander into my ballot via album votes or trawling around at the bottom of the song list will get this little playlist of suggestions that you might be interested in if you like the kind of thing I vote for...

Idiosyncratic singles ballots that are full of songs that only got one or a few votes are totally cool in my opinion, especially if your tastes run exclusively towards the esoteric or outside any singles charts. Mine don't, personally, so when I'm making my singles ballot I'm kind of rooting for each song to get votes from other people, even as I know some of those songs have a better shot than others. I'm wary about how consensus has formed around some songs and types of songs, but the people that are just total individualists should go for it.

But I mean, the Arcade Fire thing -- they were #3 on the albums list, plus a non-single got to #11 on the singles list. I'm sure every top 3 Pazz & Jop album ever has had some deep cut that everyone who voted for it could agree was great, but what's really the point of voting for that song too? It's not a question of how many of the song's voters also voted for the album, either -- someone might vote for just the song as a 'statement' about how they dislike the album but love the song, but that's not expressed in any meaningful way by the song finishing in the top 20.

maybe they were bewitched by regine's streamers when the arcade fire performed the song on SNL.

It's not a question of how many of the song's voters also voted for the album, either -- someone might vote for just the song as a 'statement' about how they dislike the album but love the song, but that's not expressed in any meaningful way by the song finishing in the top 20.

― williamstevenjames (some dude), Thursday, January 27, 2011 6:44 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think you have to accept that people may have voted for arcade fire jam #7 simply because they love it, love it not exclusively as an inseparable part of an album but as a thing in itself, a thing to be watched on youtube, slotted into playlists, or bought for 99 cents from itunes. voting for an album track needn't be a "statement" about the album as a whole, and it isn't necessarily lazy or incurious. such a vote can be a sincere statement regarding what one honestly believes: that the song in question legitimately deserves to be singled out for individual attention. worrying about it any more than that seems petty.

I accept that, sure. Thinking about how one's vote effects the results of a poll one is participating in beyond the main motivating factors behind how one votes isn't necessary or important -- I don't know if I'd use the word "petty," maybe just neurotic.

yeah, that's fair. "petty" was kinda sharp, no snub intended.

A lot of it comes down to not wanting my singles list to be redundant with my albums list, and likewise thinking that the more the P&J singles poll resembles the albums poll, the less it feels like it has a reason to exist

OTM. The same line of thinking applies to my own ballot -- if I voted for the album then I've already endorsed all the songs on there, so why not use my singles ballot to vote for something different? That was my thinking this year, at least. It helped that there weren't any obvious hit singles on the albums I voted for.

I do a top 50 albums list and a top 50 singles list every year; this year, my singles list this year featured 11 songs that appeared on records on my albums list, and 16 songs from albums I've heard. I know not every critic has the time or inclination or compulsion to do that. But I mean, when people can't come up with 10 songs they loved that weren't on albums they listened to and I was able to think of 34, I'm not calling them "lazy" but I do think they could maybe to treat their singles ballots as more of a unique space to honor music that's not a permanent part of their record collection.

^^ Yes. You've made good arguments here for that.

For another slightly different perspective, I just did a quick calculation to give each P&J year since 1979 a Single/Album Vote Ratio, by taking the average ratio between the corresponding single and album at each chart position from 1-25. So if the two top 25s in a year had the same number of votes all the way down, they'd get a score of 1.0, and the lower the number, the less consensus the singles list represented compared to the albums list.

1979 - 0.54
1980 - 0.614
1981 - 0.921
1982 - 0.872
1983 - 0.969
1984 - 0.839
1985 - 0.886
1986 - 0.719
1987 - 0.799
1988 - 0.755
1989 - 0.855
1990 - 0.719
1991 - 0.835
1992 - 0.654
1993 - 0.708
1994 - 0.722
1995 - 0.8
1996 - 0.659
1997 - 0.676
1998 - 0.599
1999 - 0.55
2000 - 0.693
2001 - 0.642
2002 - 0.644
2003 - 0.84
2004 - 0.742
2005 - 0.656
2006 - 0.622
2007 - 0.53
2008 - 0.537
2009 - 0.581
2010 - 0.551

Interesting that the numbers vary so much. They've been low the last few years, but statistically the overall downward trend is both slight and debatable. If you look only at the top 10s it's even less clear whether there's a trend.

yeah it's interesting to see how the strength of the consensus has varied, that definitely seems like something that's fluctuated independent of any single factor or trend.

...the average ratio between the corresponding single and album at each chart position from 1-25. So if the two top 25s in a year had the same number of votes all the way down, they'd get a score of 1.0

so, where there is track/album correspondence in the top 25s, you compared the number of votes each got, generating a ratio from 0 (statistically impossible) to 1 (both got the same number of votes). is that right?

if so, it's interesting that this sort of consensus, whatever it might indicate, seems to be declining over time. wonder what might be motivating that? might be that participants have, over time, become less inclined to vote for matching albbums and tracks, but it's hard to say.

I'm slow here. So, you're comparing the #25 album to the #25 single (and both #24s, both #23s, both #22, etc.), right? It has nothing to do with whether the same artist places on each list, right? Or does it? (If it does, I'm confused -- wouldn't that just take into account artists who do place on both tallies, whether there's 1 of them or 25, and artists who don't place on both lists wouldn't be a variable at all? But I don't think it does. Still kind of dense about what point it's making! I think part of my confusion is your use of the phrase "corresponding single and album" -- corresponding because they're from the same act, or finish in the same slot?)

If you're doing what I think you're doing (comparing #25 to #25, and so on), seems the biggest factor might just be the number of voters who actually file singles ballots, vs. ones filing album ballots. (Which would explain the low scores in 1979 and 1980, when lots of crusty old cusses were resistant to voting for singles, as I believe Christgau talked about in his essays back then.) Interesting exercise, but I'm not really following what it has to do with there being a "consensus," I guess.

I'm slow here. So, you're comparing the #25 album to the #25 single (and both #24s, both #23s, both #22, etc.), right?

lol, that's what i thought at first, based on the explanation. but i decided i must be wrong, because i couldn't see the utility in measuring that sort of consensus. i guess i don't really get what's being measured there.

Idiosyncratic singles ballots that are full of songs that only got one or a few votes are totally cool in my opinion, especially if your tastes run exclusively towards the esoteric or outside any singles charts.

lol are you really trying to claim ud b any less of a crybaby if ppl started voting for noise cassingles & chillwave 7" instead of the shitty malltrash stuff u like? werent you mad last year when forx was repping for youtube only synth experiments & videogame dlc trax or w/e hes into?

i mean i admire that u have such a consistent aesthetic but itt it just comes across like your mad more ppl didnt give mumford & sons a vote & i dont really get why its remotely valuable or admirable that some 36 yo critic votes for a ke$ha track instead of the national or if someone uses the singles list as an 'honorable mention' type of thing or just to rep for specific trax from their albums list

LAMPOTMUS

No, Chuck's right, this is just averages the differences between album #1 and single #1, album #2 and single #2, etc. It's just one way of measuring how much less clustery the singles votes are than the albums in a given year. Adjusting for the numbers of album vs single *votes* in a given year would be better, but I don't have that historical data on hand.

lol are you really trying to claim ud b any less of a crybaby if ppl started voting for noise cassingles & chillwave 7" instead of the shitty malltrash stuff u like? werent you mad last year when forx was repping for youtube only synth experiments & videogame dlc trax or w/e hes into?

My giving forks a hard time about putting "so-and-so's YouTube output" on an albums ballot was about my pious reverence for the sanctity of the Album. This is a whole different type of pedantry. If you think I don't want people to vote for anything obscure or unloved check my centricity score on Glenn's site, dogg, I was the sole voter for at least 3 album son my ballot.

*albums on my ballot

haha fair enough. again fwiw i respect your taste a lot even if (mb bcuz!) its so different from mine. also i think only one of the albums in my top ten had another person repping it :-/

i guess it just feels like the way you use the singles ballot is valid but any more than the person using it to single out a particularly great beach house deep cut. the only value p&j has is as a reflection of what a specific group of ppl liked that year its not historically impt or definitive in any way imo so let ppl vote what they like & not what you want them to like

I guess I should stop the injunction I filed with the state of New York to block the Village Voice from holding next year's poll until they fulfill my demanded changes to the voting policy, huh.

It'll take 3-5 years to work through the courts, anyway.

Do we know how many of the contributors to the Nashville Scene newspaper Country music poll voted as well in P & J?

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/country-music-critics-poll-voters/Content?oid=2191637

hold on, I'll correlate

37 of those 75 voted in P&J this year, 38 didn't.

38 actually, after I fixed one stray name. And here's what we get from looking at those 38 as a subset of the P&J:

https://pub.needlebase.com/actions/visualizer/V2Visualizer.do?domain=Pazz-Jop&query=A+World+Centered+in+Nashville

interesting:

Janelle Monáe · The ArchAndroid
Jamey Johnson · The Guitar Song
Kanye West · My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Arcade Fire · The Suburbs
Elizabeth Cook · Welder
Taylor Swift · Speak Now
Black Keys · Brothers
Robert Plant · Band of Joy
Mavis Staples · You Are Not Alone
Neil Young · Le Noise
Chely Wright · Lifted Off the Ground
Robyn · Body Talk

remove kanye from that list on the theory that everyone voted for kanye this year so he doesn't mean anything particular for any specific subgrouping, and you're left with a list that suggests, not too surprisingly, that (a) nashville (and nashville-esque) voters like real music played real people who have real roots, and (b) they're probably older than the average voter. that's what that list says to me. except for robyn. not sure how robyn fits in there. but everything else, including janelle, makes complete sense.

robyn is pretty 'real music played by real people' for her style of music

probably not any less so than janelle monae, anyway

well, the inclusion of kanye does mean something. it supports the argument that nashville critics are engaged with the same overarching pop cultural narratives that vibe and pitchfork (etc) are. it isn't a balkanized territory.

i like a number of things about that list, not least that it includes several recordings by older artists where P&J includes none. it's pretty diverse, really. subtract, say, two of the three telegenic country pop idols, and you've got a surprisingly broad view of the american pop landscape in just 10 records. you've got young & old, club music and rock, indie and rap, black and white, homegrown americana and songs from other lands. not bad.

i don't know, just looks like a paste magazine playlist to me.

who are the three telegenic country pop idols?

there's only one artist on the list who fits that description, i'm a dick to have suggested otherwise and should be shot. leave it at that.

what i should have said: there are four artists in that top 12 that code straight country (johnson, cook, swift and wright). drop a couple of those and you have a top 10 that...

dunno from paste playlists, but their published 2010 top 10 is much narrower. it's almost all indie, it's whiter, it makes no room for older artists, allows for nothing from outside the US/UK, etc.

The Paste I knew almost definitely wouldn't have had room for Taylor Swift or Chely Wright. (Too, uh, "telegenic" or something. Even if one of them did come out of the closet this year.)

Also, it's kind of a misnomer to call Michaelangelo Matos, Mikael Wood, Frank Kogan, Carol Cooper, Robert Christgau, Kandia Crazy Horse, Anthony Easton, myself, and several other critics whose votes would've figured into that tally "Nashville critics."

Yeah...that group probably votes for more non-country in P&J than, say, the people from ILM's metal poll voted for non-metal or the goons voted for non-rap (or maybe I'm wrong? I dunno).

Also, it's kind of a misnomer to call Michaelangelo Matos, Mikael Wood, Frank Kogan, Carol Cooper, Robert Christgau, Kandia Crazy Horse, Anthony Easton, myself, and several other critics whose votes would've figured into that tally "Nashville critics."

ulp, gotcha. was making the ridiculous/ignorant assumption that contributors to the nashville scene newspaper country music poll would mostly = industry insiders and people who write exclusively about country musicc.

"forx was repping for youtube only synth experiments & videogame dlc trax or w/e hes into?"
pfffft youtube only synth experiments and videogame dlc trax are SO 2009

One last (maybe) note about Kanye's margin of victory. Measuring margin by the ratio of votes for #1 over #2, this was only the 3rd most decisive victory: Arrested Development beat Pavement 97-50 in 1992, and Beck beat the Fugees 110-58 in 1996. If we do a weighted average by taking twice the #2 album's votes plus the #3 album's, and dividing by 3, and then comparing the #1's votes to that, Kanye's win drops to 4th, after Beck over the Fugees and Sleater-Kinney, PJ Harvey over Tricky and Moby 120-71-44 (1995), and Arrested Development over Pavement and REM.

The lowest such-weighted ratios, of course, went to Dylan in 2006 and LCD Soundsystemin 2007, both of whom won on points but were 3rd on votes...