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Jonathan writes ("Luis Miguel 'La Incondicional'"):
This project has really been testing my patience with the Big Ballad, the single song form which I have to work harder to appreciate and, appreciation won, have less desire to revisit, than any other. I'm hardly alone: the single most widely-hated song of the last twenty years (at least among respondents with pretensions to youth and cool) is "My Heart Will Go On"...
So I thought I'd reprint here my Pazz & Jop ballot for 2005, where I asked "Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?":
Frank Kogan's Pazz & Jop Ballot 2005
Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?
The answer is maybe - if you're willing to call "Ms. Jackson" and "Gangsta's Paradise" ballads ("Fast Car"? "When Doves Cry"? "O Superman"?). But basically no, and whichever nonballad wins this year will come from a long line of previous nonballads. (None of the strong contenders is a ballad, though I suppose "Stay Fly" is something of a crypto ballad, which is why I didn't vote for it.) Occasionally a ballad makes my list (for what it's worth, Hilary Duff's "Fly" - which is something of a power ballad, if "power" is a word that's usable in connection with small-voiced Hilary - would have been my number one in 2004, if I'd been paying attention to Hilary), but in general I don't vote for them, and in general I don't like them.
This isn't just about ballads. I'm looking back on Nelson George's half-smart essay in the 1989 P&J supplement, wherein he identifies white critics' blind spot in regard to upscale bourgeois black music but doesn't take in that the blind spot is shared by most black critics as well and that it's a blind spot that critics black and white have in regard to white music too (Phil Collins, anyone?); furthermore it's based on a very questionable idea of what counts as upscale: the Sex Pistols' progeny that we (or "we") often vote for are at least as upscale as the performers we shun, but it's our version of upscale, and we're not willing to call it such (among other reasons because it, and we, have some genuine populist ideals).
Let's pretend for the sake of argument that most P&J voters are pretty good critics. Well, this means that Pazz & Jop has a built-in blind spot in regard to music that sucks. I mean, most ballads are sentimental shit, and they're deadening to listen to. That's why I don't vote for them. But it therefore means that P&J doesn't represent the year in pop and semipop. It can't. My ballot doesn't even represent my year in music, much less pop's. It wasn't designed to. "Gasolina" made the bottom of my Top Ten, and I'm guessing it'll make the bottom of P&J's Top 40, but it - and the hot-dance Luny Tunes reggaeton thing it represents - is not the major story in Latin crossover of the last few years, or it's only half the story, the other half being genteel stuff for smooching like "Suga Suga" (which is nice enough, but kind of bland); for the most part it's only Latinos who even know that the guy - Baby Bash - who did "Suga Suga" is Latino.
( Why do women rock critics hate ballads? Why don't girls who like ballads become critics? )
This project has really been testing my patience with the Big Ballad, the single song form which I have to work harder to appreciate and, appreciation won, have less desire to revisit, than any other. I'm hardly alone: the single most widely-hated song of the last twenty years (at least among respondents with pretensions to youth and cool) is "My Heart Will Go On"...
So I thought I'd reprint here my Pazz & Jop ballot for 2005, where I asked "Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?":
Frank Kogan's Pazz & Jop Ballot 2005
Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?
The answer is maybe - if you're willing to call "Ms. Jackson" and "Gangsta's Paradise" ballads ("Fast Car"? "When Doves Cry"? "O Superman"?). But basically no, and whichever nonballad wins this year will come from a long line of previous nonballads. (None of the strong contenders is a ballad, though I suppose "Stay Fly" is something of a crypto ballad, which is why I didn't vote for it.) Occasionally a ballad makes my list (for what it's worth, Hilary Duff's "Fly" - which is something of a power ballad, if "power" is a word that's usable in connection with small-voiced Hilary - would have been my number one in 2004, if I'd been paying attention to Hilary), but in general I don't vote for them, and in general I don't like them.
This isn't just about ballads. I'm looking back on Nelson George's half-smart essay in the 1989 P&J supplement, wherein he identifies white critics' blind spot in regard to upscale bourgeois black music but doesn't take in that the blind spot is shared by most black critics as well and that it's a blind spot that critics black and white have in regard to white music too (Phil Collins, anyone?); furthermore it's based on a very questionable idea of what counts as upscale: the Sex Pistols' progeny that we (or "we") often vote for are at least as upscale as the performers we shun, but it's our version of upscale, and we're not willing to call it such (among other reasons because it, and we, have some genuine populist ideals).
Let's pretend for the sake of argument that most P&J voters are pretty good critics. Well, this means that Pazz & Jop has a built-in blind spot in regard to music that sucks. I mean, most ballads are sentimental shit, and they're deadening to listen to. That's why I don't vote for them. But it therefore means that P&J doesn't represent the year in pop and semipop. It can't. My ballot doesn't even represent my year in music, much less pop's. It wasn't designed to. "Gasolina" made the bottom of my Top Ten, and I'm guessing it'll make the bottom of P&J's Top 40, but it - and the hot-dance Luny Tunes reggaeton thing it represents - is not the major story in Latin crossover of the last few years, or it's only half the story, the other half being genteel stuff for smooching like "Suga Suga" (which is nice enough, but kind of bland); for the most part it's only Latinos who even know that the guy - Baby Bash - who did "Suga Suga" is Latino.
( Why do women rock critics hate ballads? Why don't girls who like ballads become critics? )
