A kung fu fighter in a disco

They could literally have reprinted one of the 938343493 lists from last year and I don't think I'd have noticed. Oh well the same things are good and bad about it I suppose. Still think the presence of 'Single Ladies' in these lists is symptomatic of 90% of critics not paying attention to pop or r&b for the whole year and then hurriedly shoving a random chart-topper on to their ballot, but better that than MGMT or Fleet Fucking Foxes or whatever these people with terrible taste also vote for.

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(And I agree w/Martin - the Beyoncé album is as inexplicably underrated as 'Single Ladies' is inexplicably overrated.)

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martinskidmore.livejournal.com

I'm guessing it might have done better if it had been released even a month earlier, but I may be misremembering exactly when it was available and when the polls were done.

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There's no excuse w/P&J where ballots were due on the 5th. But I don't think the B album is much good, so I'm not that bothered.

"Single Ladies" has grown on me but yeah, a baffling choice as the consensus pop pick. Maybe she's pop's Springsteen as far as the P&J voters go!

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Except it isn't "the consensus pop pick" obv - that's "American Boy"!

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agincourtgirl.livejournal.com

Word! (Esp. about not paying attention to r&b until list-making time.)

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oh wtf is kid rock doing in the singles poll ffs. and i see vampire weekend's sickness has spread across the pond. and the wrong mgmt song always wins things. (kids>electric feel by dint of being the only semi-listenable mgmt song)

slipknot made it in at 561st in the albums chart. which depending on your position could be taken as "doing surprisingly well." surprised that xiu xiu was 559th, although to be fair it's far from their best album and has the world's worst cover of 'under pressure' on it but i thought indie types'd like that.

i think what these charts teach me is that critics have mostly bad music taste.

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you do know that vampire weekend are american, right? ;)

sorry, i'm not following you round the internet correcting you on purpose!

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oh what who's lied to me and told me they're from oxford? shows how much attention i pay.

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hehehe, some foals are from oxford, and vampire weekend have a song called oxford comma, so i could see where the confusion may arise.

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ah, that'd probably be it.

either way, they're still rubbish.

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i like VW but then i am an indie who grew up on gracelands

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Have you read Simon R's essay about them that accompanies the P&J poll. It is funny! Also VW + "Put A Donk On It" = HE IS YOU!

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hahaha oh dear i was just writing a grumpy post in my own journal about how much that essay made me want to throw bricks through things.

i think i have a semi-subconscious personal vendetta against reynolds for thinking it's clever to have taped things off the radio in the 90s though so cannot pretend to be unbiased.

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hahaha, yes i have just read it now, well done SR, there.

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Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years
Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years
Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years
Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years
Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years
Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years
Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years
Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years

OH MY GOD YOU ARE SUCH A FUCKING JOKE, REYNOLDS. though this sentence makes sense if the number of hip-hop records he has heard is zero, which is actually totally plausible.

I wouldn't get annoyed by him if people didn't keep pointing his stupid shit (copyright Girlicious) out to me!

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Lex he is trolling and you are feeding!

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I would ignore it if everyone else ignored it b/c then I would not know about it!

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boyofbadgers.livejournal.com

I strongly resemble this comment.

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Don't they just make you want to listen to Graceland instead though?

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well, sort of, so i bought a copy of graceland (previous version being on twenty year old audio tape) as well.

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chezghost.livejournal.com

what about El Guincho?

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petronia.livejournal.com

They made me want to listen to Graceland and I hadn't even heard Graceland. (So I did. And it was better.)

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Damn right critics have bad music tastes -- I'm pissed (and also kind of suprised) that "All Summer Long" didn't finish HIGHER. But then, I'm one of the tasteless chumps who voted for it:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2008/QWxsIFN1bW1lciBMb25n

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it's not that i particularly have anything against the song aside from not especially liking it myself, it was more a genuine 'wtf' because to me it's ...i dunno, such a casual track i can't imagine it being something for lists. but each to their own, etc.

hurrah for 'into the nightlife' being on your ballot, though; i still can't get over how utterly, utterly brilliant that whole album is and especially that track.

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so rly MIA is only third if you discount last year's votes (when, what, she must have been in teh top ten anyway...) and american boy wins.

are none of the top 16 albums on majors or is it just a big pile of vanity labels?

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koganbot

Singles — Votes For Wobble

Frank Kogan

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also, who even ARE all these people (http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/)???? i only recognise 15 names...

...i'm sure 3/4/5 years ago i knew/had heard of like half the list...

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koganbot

Four people whose names I didn't recognize who voted for something that I voted for that wasn't Santogold or "Disturbia":

Rachel Devitt (Robyn, which I voted for in '05, Ashlee Simpson "Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)")

Theon Weber (Ashlee Simpson "Little Miss Obsessive")

Tracy Hopkins (actually did vote for Santogold, but also voted for Danity Kane's Welcome To The Dollhouse)

Marc Hirsh (Miley Cyrus "See You Again," which I voted for last year)

Honorable Mention to Rickey Wright, who didn't vote for anything I voted for, but who did - along with Keith Harris and Chris Weingarten - vote for Soulja Boy's "Yahhh!"

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koganbot

For all I know, half these people have carried on convos with me under their Internet monikers.

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jel-bugle.livejournal.com

I like the Gaslight Anthem and Enslaved from the albums list!

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My favorite ballot so far (four Flipper albums!):

[www.villagevoice.com]

I also think it's funny that the Top 40 albums includes bands called both Fleet Foxes and Frightened Rabbit (the latter of whom I swear I never heard of before, though I probably just wasn't paying attention.)

Another thing I had no idea of til now: That some people still care about the Walkmen (32nd!?) and the Black Keys (55th).

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Oops, here is that Flipper-happy ballot:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685463

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That was J. NEO MARVIN (also the only other voter besides me to vote for the New Bloods album.)

Another critic with similar indie-rock tastes to me is apparently DOUG MOSURAK, who I've never heard of. We don't actually share any albums on our lists, but he did vote for THREE indie-rock albums that made the Top 58 of my Top 150 albums list that I published in Rhapsody (Prisonshake, Eddy Current Suppression Ring -- who finished 73rd, not bad! -- and Pumice). (On the other hand, I've heard a few other albums on Mosurak's list, and didn't like those much. But still.)

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686364

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koganbot

I knew Neo a little bit when I lived in San Francisco; he was friends with Patty Stirling and Alan Korn.

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dickmalone.livejournal.com

I'm pretty sure Doug is a NYC promoter and general music dude who I know through Dan Seltzer's nyhappenings list. I seem to remember him being a noise dude, but maybe he's an italodisco dude? It's very hard to keep these things straight.

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koganbot

People who voted for three or more things that I voted for:

David Moore 6 (CSS Donkey, Ashlee Simpson Bittersweet World, Danity Kane Welcome To The Dollhouse, The Veronicas Hook Me Up, which I voted for last year, September "Cry For You," Ashlee Simpson "Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)") [we both voted for "See You Again" last year, which by my rules - one of the votes has to be this year - doesn't count, but it gives Dave the tie breaker over Jimmy])

Jimmy Draper 6 (Miley Cyrus "See You Again," Ashlee Simpson "Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)," which he voted for last year, Danity Kane Welcome To The Dollhouse, Santogold, Britney Spears Circus, Rihanna "Disturbia")

Caryn Ganz 4 (Britney Spears Circus, Robyn, Santogold, Rihanna "Disturbia")

Josh Timmerman 3 (Santogold, Britney Spears Circus, Miley Cyrus "See You Again")

Chris Molanphy 3 (Santogold, Miley Cyrus "See You Again," Rihanna "Disturbia")

Not surprising that I'd vote a lot in common with David and Jimmy, since we're regularly telling each other what we're listening to. I don't know much of Caryn Ganz's work, should do an Internet search. Josh Timmerman you'll remember as the fellow who gave I Am Me a favorable review at Stylus, to the distress of some of the peanut gallery; here he is on blogspot; Chris Molanphy and I were colleagues on Radio On back in the day)(not that I ever met him or anything)

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