Who's sitting P&J out this year?

[koganbot]

Dave over on Tumblr:

I like voting in it — stayed on board for the Jackin’ Pop year (voted in both polls) and have thought about staying on this year, since for better or worse it’s the only huge critics poll. Glenn McDonald is still doing stats, which alone kind of makes me want to participate. Just wondering if anyone is staging a parallel poll or “vote for Hinder” style shenanigans.

I'm voting (also voted in '06, when they fired Chuck and Xgau and, not incidentally, shut the door on me, too). The poll obviously doesn't mean what it once did: it's not going to reveal many surprises, since these days polls and wrapups and sum-ups are all over the Internet weeks and months prior. Also doesn't have the brains on call it once had. But it's the only place where ballots and writers show up in bulk, and it can provide an excuse for mass taking-of-stock all over the Web, not just at the Village Voice site. I remember some exciting ILM back-and-forth back in the day. Better some chance for a mass taking-of-stock than zero chance of a mass taking-of-stock, and there's no good reason for me not to be part of it.

Given that Pazz & Jop has little news value anymore, maybe the Voice will opt for intelligence, deciding that that will draw the reader. I wouldn't bet on it, or trust them to know it when they see it, but I can hope. Not that I'm likely to notice if they do: I haven't been reading their or most people's year-end talk for years. But I'll surely look at a lot of ballots. Looking at ballots is how Trevor Link found me last year, and therefore how I found him.

Mid year I'd have guessed that the Korean track most likely to garner multiple votes would be Sistar's "Alone." This was before "Gangnam Style." Don't know if anything other than "Gangnam Style" will exceed "I Am The Best"'s seven votes last year.

Speaking of Dave, a.k.a. DJ Bedbugs, this is the first year a friend of mine is a serious candidate for my albums ballot.* But he's also someone whose lists I'm checking for overlooked music. It would be ironic if something he recommends knocks him off my ballot. Am listening right now to the Dave-recommended Rebirth, by Jimmy Cliff; has a couple corkers ("One More" and "Bang"), but I don't know if there'll be enough to carry it through.

Currently on the bubble: Serebro, Miss A, DJ Bedbugs, Orange Caramel, Jewelry, Taylor Swift, After School.

*Iirc. Maybe I voted for a friend or two in years past and have forgotten.

Comments

Re: Chuck Pazzing And Jopping

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

The relevance of P&J has even shifted since I started following it, around the turn of the last decade (like lots of things on the internet) to a long tail enterprise.

Even before the 2006 craziness, albums weren't winning as handily as they were since any time since (IIRC) the mid-80s, a trend that got increasingly more obvious after Kanye West's two-win (and relative consensus-y) showings.

When whokill won for best album, e.g., it was with the lowest percentage of total voters in what I think was the history of the poll (maybe outdone in 2006 for a very weak Bob Dylan/TVOTR one-two). That means that the real stories are beyond the top tens and even twenties and (with the publication of other lists) even forties. The stories (to me) are mostly valuable in the individual ballots, or clusters of them that are now discernible thanks to Glenn's work doing the compiling. There's nothing comparable to either Xgau's rudimentary archiving on his own website of the previous polls and then Glenn's navigable stat frenzy to go through general musical opinion in a given year, to my knowledge. Certainly the critical aggregators don't do that kind of long tail work; usually they just help all of the middling bloat stay at the top and shove everything else down into irrelevance.