koganbot | My Pazz & Jop Ballot, part one

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My Pazz & Jop Ballot, part one

Here's my Pazz & Jop ballot as I just submitted it; I've got a week to write comments. If I write any, I'll repost this with the comments added. Also, as far as I'm concerned the year doesn't end until December 31, so I'll post expanded lists then, and for all I know the order and contents of my top tens might also have changed.

Frank Kogan's Pazz & Jop Ballot 2008

SINGLES
1. Rihanna "Disturbia" (Island)
2. Ashlee Simpson "Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)" (Geffen)
3. Ashlee Simpson "Little Miss Obsessive" (Geffen)
4. Heidi Montag "No More" (no label)
5. Robyn "Who's That Girl?" (Konichiwa)
6. September "Cry For You" (Robbins)
7. Annie "Songs Remind Me Of You" (Island)
8. Britney Spears "Break The Ice" (Jive)
9. Buraka Som Sistema f. Pongolove "Kalemba (Wegue Wegue)" (Fabric)
10. V.I.C. "Wobble" (Reprise)

ALBUMS
1. Danity Kane Welcome To The Dollhouse (Bad Boy) 13 points
2. Willie Nelson Moment Of Forever (Lost Highway) 13 points
3. Scooter Jumping All Over The World (All Around The World) 12 points
4. Ashlee Simpson Bittersweet World (Geffen) 11 points
5. CSS Donkey (Sub Pop) 11 points
6. María Daniela Y Su Sonido Lasser Juventud En Éxtasis (EMI Mexico) 10 points
7. Vanessa Hudgens Identified (Hollywood) 9 points
8. Santogold Santogold (Downtown) 8 points
9. Britney Spears Circus (Jive) 8 points
10. Buraka Som Sistema Black Diamond (Fabric) 5 points

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Huh, I forgot to ask for a ballot for this. I think we may well have 0 crossover, despite me actually liking everything on your lists that I've heard, except Robyn.

I'm glad you like the Scooter album!

Every minute, every hour, got the power, take a shower!

Well, we overlapped on only one single. But then, I never got around to hearing the albums by Scooter and Buraka Som Sistema, both of whom placed songs on my top 10 singles list, and I have no excuse since both albums are streamable seem to be Rhapsody -- well, no excuse except that I still don't think listening to something once over my tiny shitty laptop speakers is a reliable way to hear (much live with) music. But, maybe I will anyway, if I have time, before I make my own "final" extended lists. (Less chance that I'll get around to CSS -- which I only listened to once on CD, and didn't like much, though for all I know was in a bad mood that day -- or Britney.) (A few of your other albums will probably wind up further down my list, though -- Ashlee probably in the 10's, Santogold maybe in the '70s, Maria Daniela somewhere in the very low 100's. Unless they move. Which is also possible.)

Anyway, here's what I voted for:

SINGLES
Miley Cyrus – “See You Again” (Hollywood)
Phil Vassar – “Love Is a Beautiful Thing” (Universal)
Sister Sin – “One Out Of Ten” (Victory)
Buraka Som Sistema featuring PongoLove – “Kalemba (Wegue Wegue)” (Fabric)
Kid Rock – “All Summer Long” (Atlantic)
Cyndi Lauper – “Into The Nightlife” (Epic)
Scooter – “The Question Is What Is The Question” (Sheffield Lab)
Alphabeat – “Boyfriend (Pete Hammond Remix)” (EMI Europe)
Sway featuring $tush – “F Ur X” (Dcypha Alliance)
Blackout Crew – “Put A Donk On It” (All Around The World)

ALBUMS
Jamey Johnson – That Lonesome Song (Mercury) 17
Ross Johnson – Make It Stop! The Most Of Ross Johnson (Goner) 13
Rose Tattoo – Blood Brothers (SPV/ Wacken) 12
Rick Springfield – Venus In Overdrive (New Door/UME) 11
Woodbox Gang – Drunk As Dragons (Alternative Tentacles) 10
The Tonic Rays – The Tonic Rays (thetonicrays.com ’07) 9
The Knux – Remind Me In 3 Days… (Interscope) 9
Carter’s Chord – Carter’s Chord (Show Dog Nashville) 8
Phil Vassar – Prayer Of A Common Man (Universal) 6
New Bloods – The Secret Life (Kill Rock Stars) 5

Actually, we overlapped twice, since "See You Again" was my number two single last year. A lot that's on your singles list will make my expanded list. (Have never heard of Sister Sin, however.) There seems to be more than one version of the Buraka Som Sistema album floating about, and it's hard to tell if they're really promoting it (their Portuguese label is affiliated with Sony BMG, but if this album is getting any kind of push anywhere other than Portugal, I'm not seeing it; maybe they're waiting for the new year). Also, it was borderline for me, is terrific for three songs or so but then tends to get real dry (though good) in a techno "savor the beats" way. (Compare to Scooter, who come off as the techno AC/DC.) A problem is that Buraka Som Sistema don't really have a lead vocalist, so they rely on guests. Wish they'd use Pongolove more.

On your albums list, I haven't heard the Ross Johnson, Rose Tattoo, Woodbox Gang, Tonic Rays, or New Bloods.

A problem is, when I compare albums to decide how they rank, everybody else sounds slow once I play Scooter.

Did you hear the Nappy Roots album, Humdinger? It would probably appeal to you in a Knux kind of way (both groups show evidence of liking OutKast and Kanye).

The Humdinger is AMAAAAZING and of all the excellent late-doors albums I heard, is the only one to have actually cracked my top 10 (which is all but set in stone now). There is not one song on it which is less than awesome. I keep caning it, expecting the cream to rise to the top, except it's all rising.

After only a couple hearings: the tracks are excellent but the vocals sometimes fall into too much placidity. Had a similar problem with the Knux, and, to tell you the truth, with Kanye and OutKast themselves, sometimes, which must seem strange since they'll often, quite obviously, be rapping with blatant energy. So I'm not totally sure what I mean. But yes, the Nappy Roots alb is good stuff. I've got an older one of theirs somewhere that I remember liking, though obviously I didn't stick with it.

Did you hear the Knux album?

I hear the vocals as less placid, more laconic. It fits with their small-town background, anyway, the pace of life going slower and all that. 'Small Town' is one of the most evocative tracks I've heard this year, you can almost taste the rural air.

(I didn't really like that Knux track which cropped on poptimists so didn't investigate further.)

I resist "Small Town" since I listen to a lot of country where I feel like I'm getting battered to bits by that theme.* Main problem I have with the song is the singing, which is dreadful. I like the rapping, even if the words are sentimental cliché. My favorite voice is the funny high-pitched one.

*I like Miranda Lambert's "Famous In A Small Town" in that it's a send-up of the sentimental small-town song. "Whether you're late for church or you're stuck in jail, hey, word's gonna get around." Even better is "Dry Town," about one of the drawbacks of a particular type of small town.

Did you ever hear Bubba Sparxxx's country-tinged "hick-hop" album from a few years back?

Next year I shall make an effort to get into country: I feel by resistance to it is unjustified at this point.

*my resistance

I got my book contract because an acquisitions editor read what I wrote in my comments to my Country Critics Music Ballot 2003 about Bubba and David Banner et al. (Posted it on ILM, where he read it.)

Resistance is quite understandable, but if you can get by it, you'll find an incredibly rich world of artistry and emotion. You can ease yourself in by starting with Taylor Swift, who's basically Ashlee South, even if not yet as good as Ashlee. Also, listen to Miranda Lambert who thinks of Ashlee as a great singer and songwriter, according to Chuck, who interviewed her boyfriend, Blake Shelton.

Taylor writes in realistic detail about her struggles with romance, while Miranda writes expressionistically about wanting to blow it all up with fire.

When you're ready for it, I'll post a country set on my MySpace playlist.

Yeah my resistance isn't much more than not really "getting" the little I've heard (as opposed to disliking it), and the general premonition of weariness at the thought of plunging into a whole new genre, set of rules, set of artists and so on.

I tried listening to the Nappy Roots album on Rhapsody; seemed too much like work to get all the way through (especially compared to the Scooter and Buraka Som Sistema albums, which I also finally listened to on Rhapsody, and liked enough that I wound up putting both of them in my year-end top 50, though strangely I thought the Scooter album also got a little too atmospherically techno-beat-savory toward the end, before it got more Tuetonic sprockety at least, and I'm not sure I think the Buraka Som Sistema album is as front-loaded as you seem to.) As for Nappy Roots, I definitely liked the countryish going-back-to-Georgia small-town tracks better than the tracks where they tried to get thuggish around the strip pole, which mainly just pissed me off, as most raps getting thuggish around the strip pole do these days. (Even the Knux ones, which seem to be making fun of the concept, if I'm reading them right. Also not sure I hear as much Kanye or OutKast in either the Knux or Nappys as you seem to; I mean, I hear OutKast's rock-guitared "Gasoline Dreams" in the Knux's guitars, but I also hear Fishbone, Rammellzee, Coolio, the Coup, the Cars, Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra,” Prince’s Controversy, and the Prodigy, all of whom have a lot more to do with why I like the record. Still, if there's an album that made my top 10 this year that I may wonder in a couple years why I put it there, I do have a slightly queasy feeling that *Remind Me In 3 Days* may be that album. But I voted for Ashlee Simpson last time she made an album, and her one this year disapppointed me in comparison, and I still think its first half was a lot better than its second half. And I liked having a hip-hop album in my top ten, so I don't mind, really.)

a little too atmospherically techno-beat-savory toward the end

I agree with this, actually, but they get three-quarters of the way through before this becomes a problem.

I assume that's a logged-out you below who's commenting on Lex's calling Scooter a joke act. You're right, but that is just Lex's tendency to make broad statements before necessarily knowing what he's talking about. (Of course, I never do this.) Remember, Lex is the guy early in 2007 on Rolling Teenpop who was complaining that American teenpop was too humorless and we were trying to get him to (1) listen more to the music he claimed to be talking about, since it was loaded with humor, and (2) also recognize that this music (the rock confessional teenpop) was giving way to HSM stylings or to dancepop anyway. So, anyway, he's not someone who thinks that having a sense of humor makes you a joke. (I'd say that out-and-out comedy acts do tend have lousy music, but there are plenty of exceptions.) As for the lowest-common-denominator thing, I would say that Scooter aren't the most subtly plumed animals in the menagerie.

For what it's worth, I thought Nappy Roots getting thuggish around the strip pole was very much making fun of the concept. But also agree that it's still a dull concept, and unfortunately they weren't making fun of the dullness. In fact, I think there's a basic dullness to the sound of their voices but that there's a lot of power in the beats and instruments. But I think that about the Knux too, whom I haven't listened to enough recently. Both groups are good-humored, but they're not uproariously funny. I like the Knux's "Cappuccino" more than anything on the Nappy Roots and more than anything on the Nappy Roots.

like the Knux's "Cappuccino" more than anything on the Nappy Roots and more than anything on the Nappy Roots.

I am repeating myself repeating myself. What I meant to type was:

Er, I like "Cappuccino" more than anything else on The Knux album and more than anything on the Nappy Roots.

come off as the techno AC/DC

Xhuxk, I just now listened to Scooter's "Jump The Rock (Whatever You Want)," which I guess is on the British version of the album. (Not on the version I have (fortunately?). I seem to have the German.) It features Status Quo!

"Jump THAT Rock," that is.

Yeah it's gross. I don't hate Scooter by any means but they're basically a comedy joke act and I am very much not down w/comedy joke acts for longer than 10 seconds (and my 10 seconds of Scooter appreciation are long gone).

Scooter are blatantly funny, sometimes irritatingly so, but I think you're quite wrong about their being a joke act. I think their essential goal is transcendence, not laughter. At least, I think it's their effect, whatever their intent. It's fundamentally religious. Each song is a story whose moral is the Return Of The Riffs And Of The Beats. So the funny chipmunk tunage is there to be indulged in but then overcome. It helps that the tunes are usually quite good and that the riffs and beats are usually very good. And the humor helps prevent the transcendence from being mired in piety. In other words they're not a modern metal band. A potential drawback in the little I've heard of Scooter (the new alb and a smattering of earlier singles) is that the chipmunk voice could be too much an escape hatch - perhaps the beauty needs to be delivered as straight-on sentimental balladic beauty, with the conviction of '50s-style rock 'n' roll ballads, or the conviction that someone nowadays like Brandy brings to her platitudes, beauty that would be a challenge to the beats and riffs, when they return, to either carry the beauty with them or to be better than a beauty you didn't think you wanted to end. I don't know. Right now the return of the beats and riffs comes as a release, but I think it might be even more or a release if it were a release from something to exquisite to bear rather. Potentially, if done well, if they were actual geniuses.

I think Scooter believe in the beauty and are using the chipmunk voice to protect the beauty from being destroyed by sentimentality, and maybe they're right.

Really, I'm so new to Scooter that I don't have them in any kind of perspective. I'll know better in six months. But I think they've got the tunes and beats and riffs.

Oh, I don't know. I think the chipmunks are quite beautiful, to be honest! Esp. in "Logical Song," which is on an earlier album.

argh, this got mauled:

Right now the return of the beats and riffs comes as a release, but I think it might be even more or a release if it were a release from something to exquisite to bear rather

How about:

Right now the return of the beats and riffs comes as a release, but I think it might be even more OF a release if it were a release from something TOO exquisite to bear ~~rather~~

(when it comes to dance, bear in mind that I basically like poncy hipster dance - which might be because I socialise to house/techno/balearic stuff, and I believe that it is important when it comes to going out to be as scene as possible - but stuff like Scooter is just too brash, too lowest-common-denominator for me. This is kinda indefensible snobbery but I figure that I only have a finite number of years to be an indefensible scenester so I am making full use of it, and it's not as if I'm pretending to like or dislike music. Simply put, it's not a groove I can dance to right now.) (The port may well be kicking in about now.)

Well, it's so ridiculously fast I don't understand how anyone dances to it for more than twenty minutes, but for those twenty it's irresistible.

>they're basically a comedy joke act <

Sorry, I gotta agree with Frank here -- I don't get this comment at all. "Funny" is hardly the same as "joke act." The idea that somebody would think funniness in music is a bad thing by definition is really beyond my comprehension. (Reminds me of fools at Pitchfork hating Northern State and Electic Six so much a few years ago, though I'd say Scooter is less overtly comedic than either of those) (I did appreciate Lex's honest explanation later about why dance music that hits him as cheeseball doesn't fit in his social sphere, though.)

(Still not sure, though, what lowest common denominators Lex hears in Scooter's music, or -- more importantly, though now I'm curious -- what other bands they've got those denominators in common with.)

I hate Electric Six for much the same reasons that I can't be bothered about Scooter. And I have a visceral dislike of comedy generally (as opposed to funniness).

On that live "Kalemba" video I linked, they give the release dates for Black Diamond as: Portugal 29/09/08, Europe 10/11/08... Rest of the world! beginning of 2009. So if you like it you can vote it next year.

http://pinkmoose.blogspot.com/2008/12/singles-beyonce-last-friday-at-about-2.html

that said, for the first time in forever, perhaps, frank and i only have one in common, and i don't think that chuck and i have any--though i got really close to including both all summer long, and santagold, and should have put santagold on there instead of maybe greenday.

i am suprised that you didnt have beyonce.

I don't think we've ever had more than two in common - and nonetheless our lists would tend towards similar ground. Do you think that this is happening less this year? I count five performers (more or less*) on your lists whom I've never heard of.

The only Beyoncé I've ever voted for is the "Survivor" single. She's generally too cold for me, though these days she's desperately cold rather than casually cold.

*Can't tell if The Baseball Project is a band name or an album title.

http://www.yeproc.com/artist_info.php?artistId=12539

Our country lists had more in common, however.

the baseball project is a collection of writers and artists making music about baseball.

i love how cold, how robotic beyonce has become, almost warholian in her formalist tendencies, in her ability to be above the fray--cold is a quality i view as positive.

wrt pop we usually have two or three in common, but this list was sort of super indie and guitary.

I seriously can't get over the fact that Vanessa Hudgens arguably put out a better album than Britney Spears this year. I don't know if I'd say that, but you could argue it, and a lot of my liking of the Britney alb is context-driven. Vanessa has nearly zero context, a natural result of her having nearly zero personality.

The key to Vanessa's aesthetic superiority success: when singing Martin-Luke-Dennis songs, it is better to have nearly zero personality than to have Katy Perry's personality.

(It seems to me that Gabriella has a context, though I tend to forget about it when listening to Vanessa's non-HSM material.)

By the way I have just seen an advert on the telly advertising a Clubland-style compilation called WIGAN PIER PRESENTS: BOUNCE, which referred to the genre earlier discussed as 'donk'! As in '38 of the best Bounce and Donk tracks of the year'.

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My Pazz & Jop Ballot, part one

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Lex, prepare to be horrified!

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The Return Of The King

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pazz/jop

that was me ob

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Donk: it's official