The History Of Jop Part 17 aka I'm the kind of G the little homies wanna be like

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The amazing history of JOP reels round to 1995 - NINE ticks from 25 singles!


[Poll #856398]


1994 - Joptimism Unplugged

1. Girls And Boys (39 votes)
2. Sabotage (38 votes)
3=. Regulate (35)
3=. Here Come The Hotstepper (35)
5. Loser (34)
6. Gin And Juice (31)
7. Cut Your Hair (30)
8. Whatta Man (25)
9. Doll Parts (23)
10. Miss World (22)

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! Exactly 9 songs I like!

tuff poll!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i only ticked 6 -- and wonderwall wd have been my 7th! bcz i dislike it less than everything else i didn't tick

(except for a couple of unknowns i am no doubt sliming)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I was strangled by medically needing to tick both Elasticas and both TLCs. It's probably my favourite Shaggy song up there though, amazing stuff.

This year the combined forces of Elastica, Portishead & Massive Attack turned me off the glorious chart dance I had loved so much in the previous 3 years and sent me down the path of guitar-playing gothery.

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

I like everything on this list! (apart from the ones I haven't heard) I feel slightly ashamed.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Who was voting for Joan Osborne?

This poll has a strong "must vote for alt.rock regardless of quality" streak to it, for me - Wasis, Foo Fighters twice(!), Smashing Ps, and then that weird sort of power-pop revival thing that was going on (I had completely forgotten about Matthew Sweet even existing!). It's kind of a bad list, but then I was pretty detached even from UK 'alt' by this point - I nearly put "A Girl Like You" as worst!

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

It's just wrong!

[koganbot]

Oh, yes, it's a terrible list (coming right after 1994's quite packed one), but Joan Osborne at least had a melody, would have ticked it if you'd forced us to pick another four. The Dionne Farris song is terrible way beyond the terribleness of the rest of the stuff on here, since being actively catchy and irritating is far better than being NOTHING.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I could only stand to tick seven, some of which I totally love. Yeah, far too much terrible alt-rock.

My Year

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I left University. I got a job in a comic shop. I went to Finland to see the Moomins. I got the TLC album as a Christmas present. I posted to USENET for the first time. I had a mostly good year.

Re: My Year

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Was this the year you got in Mojo mag?

Wonderwall not that bad really honest

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Would have been my tenth tick. Lots of decent cover versions around, which suggests to me it's good songwriting. There was a good Pinefox thread about the song on ILM once.

Morning Glory period Wasis = only Wasis I will defend. I don't own it but I have all the CD singles from it I think.

'You Oughta Know' has really good lyrics

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Really good use of verse-chorus-verse pop song structure to tell you everything you need to know about the situation in three minutes, straight up, no messing, angry but funny enough to be more than just angry.

Every other lyric Alanis wrote wasn't just not-good, it was actively awful hippy-drippy shite, and by her next album she was laughing-stock bad.

Garbage's decline was also rather rapid too. Difficult to believe they were once decent!

Re: 'You Oughta Know' has really good lyrics

[koganbot]

Also amazing chords when she goes "I am here to remind you." Of course I can understand the people who find her voice a torment. I generally like it, since the voice is at odds with her basic tunefulness. Also, not only does she pave the way for Avril, but for Shakira and Ashlee as well. And I like what she's trying to say in "You Learn" (Ashlee's favorite song at age 10), though she ends up tripping over her own obviousness.

With 19 votes in...

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Portishead in the lead, but zero "Best Song" votes. Discuss.

Re: With 19 votes in...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ppl are kinda pro portishead but cannot actually remember this song (this is the entire "justification" for my vote!) (it was my sixth = i guess it's ok)

not sure what my elastica allergy is -- possibly residual punk snobbery

Re: With 19 votes in...

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

uh, it may be my least favourite song on 'Dummy'

Re: With 19 votes in...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard anything like it before! Tucked away on the end of Now 30, it was a total "WHAT THE FUDGE MUST BUY ALBUM NOW". Beginning of the end.

Re: With 19 votes in...

[koganbot]

Good music but she sounds like she's singing with vomit clogging up her nasal cavities. In general I was ticking lots of stuff this time that were good tracks or good melodies with singing I had problems with.

My Stupid And Contagious ballot, 1995

[koganbot]

My singles ballot, 1995 (once again I wasn't part of Pazz & Jop; this ballot went to Jill Blardinelli's fanzine Stupid and Contagious):

1. Hole "Violet"
2. Fun Fun "I'm Needin' You"
3. Lordz of Brooklyn "Saturday Nite Fever"
4. Mo-Do "Eins, Zwei, Polizei"
5. Rednex "Wild and Free"
6. Mariah Carey "Long Ago"
7. Rancid "Salvation"
8. Real Joy "La Danse d’Helene"
9. Gillette "Mr. Personality"
10. Gillette "You're A Dog"

My alienation from rock criticism continued apace. I have no idea how old "I'm Needin' You" was at that point; I willfully believed it was from 1994, but it may well have been from 1984. "Wild and Free" and "Long Ago," while being from 1995, were album cuts not singles. I chose "Wild and Free" because it was uniquely weird and was better than "Cotton-Eye Joe"; "Long Ago" because I'd created a rule the previous year that any best-of with Courtney had to include Mariah, and vice versa, and Mariah's for real singles from 1995 were too much from the air-freshener section of her repertoire.

Violet scorned

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

What happened to "Violet" this year? I remember it being Hole's biggest hit. First Hole song I remember hearing a lot, anyway.

If anyone is wondering...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

...where perennial Poptimists pollbuster "Common People" is, it turns up next year.

Re: If anyone is wondering...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I really really really hope it doesn't win esp as there is so much other awesomeness next year.

Though looking ahead it's '98 and '99 which will really kill me.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

blimxor - i had to untick about 6. where last year i was struggling at 7 ticks.

other things from this year

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i only remembered dubstar in the poll up there, but His and Hers, and Mars Audiac Quinte and the 2nd Stina album i suspect was dominating a lot of my time, along with getting v annoyed at how successful Oasis has become and BLUDDY WONDERWALL.

It Was A Bad Time For The Empire

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

NME list, 1995 (xovers in bold, abominable typos c/o Rocklist)

Black Grape: Reverend Black Grape
Supergrass: Alright
Pulp. Sorted For E's And Wizz
Oasis: Some Might Say
Foo Fighters: Th Is Is A Call
Oasis: Wonderwall
Mcalmont & Butler: Yes
Pulp: Common People
Blur: The Universal
Tlc: Waterfalls
Tricky. Black Steel
The Boo Radleys: Wake Up, Boo!
Coolio: Gangsta's Paradise
Orbital: Times Fly
The Verve: History
Teenage Fanclub: Mellow Doubt
Radiohead: High And Dry
Ash: Girl From Mars
Method Man: Release Yo'delf
The Bluetones: Bluetonic
The Stone Roses: Ten Storey Love Song
Blur: Country House
Radiohead: Fake Plastic Trees
Plush: Found A Little Baby
Blackgrape: Kelly's Heroes
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: Llanfwrog Ep
Nick Cave And Kylie Minogue: Where The Wild Roses Grow
Clubbed To Death: Clubbed To Death
Scarface: Hand Of The Dead Body
Alanis Morissette: You Oughta Know
Black Grape: In The Name Of The Father
The Cardigans: Sick And Tired
Ash: Kung Fu
The Bluetones: Are You Blue Or Are You Blind
Weezer: Buddy Holly
Nicolette: No Government
Passengers: Miss Sarajevo
Edwyn Collins: A Girl Like You
Beastie Boys: Root Down Ep
Pavement: Father To A Sister Of Thought
Pj Harvey: Down By The Water
Alex Reece: Pulp Fiction
Elastica: Waking Up
Hole: Doll Parts
Spooky: Stereo Ep
Tortoise: Gamera/Ciiff Dweller Society
Take That: Back For Good
Radiohead: Lucky
Supergrass: Mansize Rooster
The Connells: '74-'75

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

well the NME got the #1 right at least

I actually don't like the horsey-voiced vocals in "Creep" even though I tickied it

[koganbot]

I actually don't like the horsey-voiced lead vocals on "Creep" even though I ticked it. It's got an amazing backing track, though. Almost ticked "Connection" because it's got pushing niggling insinuating guitar parts when no one is singing, but then the voices start and it forgets to be a song. I think "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" is great passionate music with a singer who's running away from the passionate goodness - still, I'm surprised it's doing so poorly in the Land of Tickdom. "A Girl Like You Before" needs vocals that are either more r&b or more flamboyant Rick Astley. But it's a catchy dance track.

This year was the tickiness of ambivalence for me.

Re: I actually don't like the horsey-voiced vocals in "Creep" even though I tickied it

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

It's T-Boz's horsey-voiced vocals that really help make TLC for me, it's very different from most female R&B groups (where all the girls sound like Chilli, the sweet-voiced one from TLC). Plus obviously Left Eye's rapping, so they have three different vocal styles in one group, which makes them much less samey than most of their peers.

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

what i remember of joan osborne, was being on a temple trip to cardston, and having the leader of the group turn it off, because the song didnt magnify god.

its not a very good song, but im fond of it for the anecdote...

Total Eclipse of the Pazz & Jop

[koganbot]

Billboard's Top 25 singles, 1995

1. Gangsta's Paradise - Coolio
2. Waterfalls - TLC
3. Creep - TLC
4. Kiss From A Rose - Seal
5. On Bended Knee - Boyz II Men
6. Another Night - Real McCoy
7. Fantasy - Mariah Carey
8. Take A Bow - Madonna
9. Don't Take It Personal (Just One Of Dem Days) - Monica
10. This Is How We Do It - Montell Jordan
11. I Know - Dionne Farris
12. Water Runs Dry - Boyz II Men
13. Freak Like Me - Adina Howard
14. Run-Around - Blues Traveler
15. I Can Love You Like That - All-4-One
16. Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman? - Bryan Adams
17. Always - Bon Jovi
18. Boombastic / In The Summertime - Shaggy
19. Total Eclipse Of The Heart - Nicki French
20. You Gotta Be - Des'ree
21. You Are Not Alone - Michael Jackson
22. Hold My Hand - Hootie & The Blowfish
23. One More Chance-Stay With Me - Notorious B.I.G.
24. Here Comes The Hotstepper - Ini Kamoze
25. Candy Rain - Soul For Real

Re: Total Eclipse of the Pazz & Jop

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Nicki French! I really like this version. Boshtacular.