poptimists | PJ dunkin'

PJ dunkin'

Pazz and Jop time again - here's my ballot, I feel a bit guilty for not taking longer over it. 2005 was a strange year.

(from that you can access the whole bunfight, if you like - I've not actually explored it yet, even the singles list feels quite distant from anything I care much about. Is it just me or do the concerns of US and UK music fans feel further apart now than any time since about '95?)

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Been heading that way for a while, though, I think. Since crunk (and its offshoots) failed to set the UK charts alight.

U.S. and Brit charts have been diverging since the late '70s. But notice that you did vote for a couple of things that weren't singles anywhere.

Also - and perhaps they will correct this problem by the time you look again - they screwed up the point totals for "Be Mine!" by dividing its vote among those who used the exclamation point and those who didn't!. It really totals 14 points and places 48th!!!

But all of this pales in comparison to the fact that "KEROSENE" MADE THE TOP 40!

I think my ballot was full of pretty obvious choices, minus K-Bitches perhaps, the kind of ballot a typical pro-pop British crit might put together (except maybe I'm the only pro-pop Brit-crit who gets polled, who knows!) - and Glenn McDonald's rankings even on singles alone still have me right at the bottom.

Also there's been some occasions when the charts have been more convergent - the early 90s for instance, with Eurodance going one way and R'n'B and alt.rock the other.

they ask me also but i never get it together (also it clashes w.tax year which demands v.similar declarations about the recent past rendering me totally allergic)

Er, that was me again.

Me Again

I'm really surprised that a lot of people are really into it! The standard response to lists and polls is "botherd", I thought. The top 40 albums are woeful apart from four (three of which are in the top 5 though). How does one get a ballot?

You ask, pretty much. I guess if you see regular print work or have a prominent blog it helps, and ideally you should be American too. And once you're on the list I don't think they take you off, though since I don't tick any of those boxes any more they might not bother sending me one. (But I promise to do comments next time!).

Well I have regular print work! I don't think anyone at Plan B has ever, ever mentioned this thing though. It has a really silly name, who came up with that?

Who do I ask?

Regular print work usually means "regular print work in the US". Though Dorian Lynskey's on it. Dunno if Petridis is.

You ask Chuck Eddy I guess.

It does seem a very US-centric list. There are LOADS of names which I am convinced are completely made up.

Well, you know, it's a US publication!

I was just shocked by the ILM thread full of normally-botherd types actually appearing to care about it!

It has a certain historical weight, it's the biggest music crit poll in the world I think, and it's an interesting barometer of mainstream critical thinking in the states.

Hmm. It seems pretty much the same as all the other US end-of-yr lists except it has Rachel Stevens and Vitalic limping into its lower echelons.

Lex you seem not to be alert to the particular nuances of alt-country placings! I am SHOCKED I tell you shocked.

i think they would like it to be GLOBAL but their contacts are primarily US -- they pitch it as gatherin the thoughts of the MOSTEST CRITICS EVAH

whatever happened to quality over quantity!

I think there is a big difference between US and UK popworld at the moment (which P&J seems to bear out): which is that in the UK you can totally ignore hip-hop (well outside London certainly) whereas in the US it seems to be totally unavoidable (again might vary regionally, I guess). Given how little radio 1 plays, and how indie the charts are at the moment, the visibility of hip-hop seems to me quite low here. OK I guess by 'you' I mean white, middle class, late 20-something, people who write about music, but I reckon it's probably wider than that too.

Also: most US hip hop stars seem to have only the tiniest window of botherd when it comes to the UK - the singles will get released but even for something like 'Wait', the people concerned will rarely come over to promote it. And apart from the obligatory Big Single, r&b singers appear to feel the same. But this is really what separates Kanye West and Amerie from Brooke Valentine and Ying Yang Twins.

Maybe the heavy promotion of indie as 'antidote' to hip hop by Radio 1 et al is something of a tit-for-tat move.

Hein? In what sense does R1 promote indie as an antidote to hip-hop?

It may be more the print media - I don't listen to the radio - but for the past few years there's definitely been a rush to promote British music, to drape people like Joss Stone and Franz Ferdinand et al in Union Jacks, which seems to feed on a suspicion of overly-glitzy trademark-American celebrity (Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton and so on: blinged-up hip hop is certainly a large part of this but it equally applies to Britney) as well as some kind of weird post-Iraq general anti-Americanism in certain quarters (and associated questions of morality and might: 50 Cent rapping about guns and bling seen as immoral, musical equivalent of bombing Arab nations and so on)

Oh, OK, maybe that's true - I don't read the print media! - but R1 plays plenty of US acts, and some hip-hop, maybe not as much as it did a few years ago though. It also never really comments negatively on anything, which gives it a slightly detatched, antiseptic tone. You'd be right to say that most of the music it really gets behind is British though, but as you said earlier this is partly an access thing.

I'm basing a lot of this on seeing LOTS of union jacks gracing the front covers of eg NME, Q and so on.

I can't believe Destiny's Child once got on the NME cover! Yes just as wank-fodder but that still seems really bizarre in 2006.

ARRRRRGH make it stop.

it has been called PAZZ AND JOP since before the dawn of time (ie 32 or 33 years)

i imagine it was hilarious stoned hippie humor back in 73 or whenever

I really hate the title and the hype surrounding this poll. I guess I would much rather have this big poll than all those rubbish magazine ones that everyone was posting and then rubbishing on ILM. I'm just sick of how it's the same rub albums in every single list - it all feels so sheep-like. As if because the Goldfrapp album or something like Jackson & His Computer Band missing one poll means they miss every poll (even if you don't like these albums maybe it would be refreshing to see them in place of Art Brut and 'I Am A Bird Now' SOMEWHERE bar dance mag polls).

Is because the albums format (100 points divided among 10 albums, highest points-per 30, lowest 5) was taken from Jazz & Pop magazine's annual poll. It's a pun on the name--since J&P was a jazz magazine w/some pop, Christgau conceived it as a pop magazine w/some jazz. The reason it's "32nd or 33rd annual" is that he did an informal version of the poll in 1971, left the Voice for two years, came back in 1974 and started the poll again.

oh, and sorry for not signing that--it's Matos here.

and of course that should be "conceived it as a pop POLL w/some jazz."

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PJ dunkin'

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The reason it's called Pazz & Jop

Re: The reason it's called Pazz & Jop

Re: The reason it's called Pazz & Jop