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 Again)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

My stat is way more rudimentary than Glenn's centricity ranking -- basically just tallies what percentage of the overall number of voters the top two albums got. You see a sharp decline between the 90s and the 00s.

What I think is probably true is that there is more general consensus for a pool of, say, twenty albums. Centricity only measures how close you voted to the Top Ten. I would bet that if you expanded that to twenty or thirty, you'd be able to test how strong the clusters around those albums actually are. Problem is that there are no stats before 2008, when the pattern I was seeing by just taking the #1 and #2 slots had been established for about four years already.

Re: (Chuck Again)

[koganbot]

What I think is probably true is that there is more general consensus for a pool of, say, twenty albums

Why do you say this? What's your evidence, and what's the comparison? Are you saying that in '87 an album that a lot of people didn't give a shit about could nonetheless finish top twenty on the basis of the people who liked it, but now near everyone agrees a top twenty album belongs there? Why in the world would you think so?

I'd assume that lots in the top twenty evokes a "why that?" or "what's that?"* among the many who didn't vote for it, and fewer now are likely to have even heard number twenty than in 1987 (first year I voted), when we had less access to a glut of sound from everywhere.

Or are you saying that something that places top twenty has more agreement among the people who've heard it than something in the top twenty in 1987? How can you possibly know this, and why do you think our psychology has changed since then, anyway?

Or are you saying that, if we take all the people who also vote for an album or single I vote for that places in the top twenty, that the rest of my ballot will have more in common with those people's ballots in 2011 than in 1987? If this is what you mean, I still really doubt it.

Also, I know I'm fighting a losing battle, but whatever "consensus" means, it shouldn't mean "8 percent of 700 voters put it on their ballot," which is about what you need to reach the top twenty. What we're looking at is "potentially significant clusters," not "consensus," a term I'd reserve for "broad or nearly unanimous agreement."

*Kurt Vile, Smoke Ring For My Halo, 56 mentions.

Re: (Chuck Again)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I rescind that -- I think it's more my list fatigue talking. It feels like I see the same albums a lot before P&J publishes, but that speaks more to my own tendency to look at all those lists (and accordingly listen to the albums, usually) than anything else. "I've seen this before" is the result of my access to the stuff I've seen.

Re: (Chuck Again)

[(Anonymous)]

there is more general consensus for a pool of, say, twenty albums


Yeah, so maybe what's worn me down is that a majority if not plurality of critics nowadays seem to gravitate around a certain aesthetic that's a ticket to boredom to me, if not necessarily always around a particular album. And as Frank suggests, it's not like critics haven't always gravitated around specific aesthetics -- in the 1978 Pazz & Jop poll results, which I think are amazing regardless (despite leaving out lots and lots of just-as-great 1978 albums), the top 26 finishers were rock albums (a good chunk of them punk-related) by white people. (Number 27 was Funkadelic.) That's probably more homogenous than Pazz & Jop has been in forever, but I'd still take it over any Pazz & Jop Top 30 since the '80s, at least.

Re: (Chuck Again)

[(Anonymous)]

Oops, Dave quote now voided apparently. But most of what I wrote under it still stands, I think.

Re: (Chuck Again)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

This seems more reasonable, and I think it connects to the idea that who's leading the (milder) winning albums voting pack has changed over time. Which IIRC is partly what your "consensus" article(which was only called that in the headline) was talking about -- the changing of the guard from the boring-and-I-know-it daily grind reviewers and the boring-and-I-think-it's-provocative indie guard. (I still like a lot of indie OK, I just no longer think it's usually daring or important.)