Earlier: Village Voice Doesn't Know Jack
[Photo via]

After the jump, a full screenshot of the Word document we were leaked, complete with "Properties" screen. (Note the word count—1,100, which seems to be an awfully long-winded way of saying "We're taking our ball and going home.")

Earlier: Village Voice Doesn't Know Jack

Pazz and Jop

Bill Jensen

Spit and sweat. Vodka and pills. Chunks of sod, delta mud, lighter fluid and a well-placed red snapper. That's what popular music is made of. Oh, and this year, add plenty of piss and moan to the mix, since some people who used to make a living going to shows and writing prose about music traded in their +1s for whiny chain emails and ILM message board posts about how the Village Voice is killing music criticism.

Welcome to the Pazz and Jop poll.

In an era when dailies are cutting arts critics by the dozens, the Village Voice is hiring new arts writers for newly created positions. The paper is owned by Village Voice Media, a company that spends millions of dollars a year paying music journalists across 17 American cities. VVM doesn't like thumbsuckers who sit on their ass and stare into their distended navels while hungrier writers are out in the clubs. It's just a little quirk of ours. Get over it.

Many of our writers, along with hundreds from other media outlets, make up this year's Pazz and Jop poll, the 33rd (or 34th) annual poll in which America's top music critics weigh in on the year's best music. Pazz and Jop is the most important critic's poll of the year. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to copy it.

You may have heard that a local gossip website was going to launch its own music poll. You heard it because mainstream media has had a stick up its ass about the alternative weekly universe since the Voice changed hands a year ago. Michaelangelo Matos is a critic who got his start in the alt-weekly world, collecting some of his first freelance paychecks from Village Voice Media newspapers and even working as music editor of the VVM-owned Seattle Weekly before he quit rather than have to actually speak to the new owners. After fleeing the Weekly, it didn't take long for Matos to tire of blogging snotty remarks about his successor at the paper. So he turned chickenshit into chicken salad by trying to run his own music poll on a three-month old sister blog of Gawker, a website which spent 2006 worrying whether Radar would ever publish another issue again while giving us updates on Tony Danza 's ordering habits at Balducci's.

The Village Voice, even after parting ways with long-time music critic and Pazz and Jop founder Robert Christgau, was still conducting its Pazz and Jop Poll. So who gives a shit about a three-month old blog doing a poll of its own?

No one, other than 55-year-old white guys who spend their nights snapping the rubberband of their ponytail while listening to Yo La Tengo reissues that get sent directly to their apartment (since they don't want that upstart calendar editor making 24k a year sorting through their mail back at the office).

Some of those critics, aided by carefully placed PR calls and some daily-newspaper-editor stroking, started the pile-on, attacking the Village Voice after parent company Village Voice Media decided it would rather have in its employ writers who actually went to shows and did some reporting on the artists they were writing about.

Until now, the Village Voice has not commented on any of these non-stories. But at some point, the bullshit gets so thick that you have to flush the toilet and clear the air.

Although many of the stories referred to Pazz and Jop as a venerable and cherished institution, most of these media outlets had little or nothing to say about the poll in year's past, usually not reporting on it at all. They were only interested in our cultural treasure when someone tried to piss on it and they could add their own stream-of-conscience to the golden shower. NPR—an entity living off the teat of government subsidies and Ray Kroc's widow's transfat-drenched death money—decided there was a national story in a guy with a website doing a music poll just like the Village Voice.

"Many of the country's most prominent critics, including Tom Moon of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Ann Powers of The Los Angeles Times and Jim Derogatis of The Chicago Sun-Times have told NPR that they won't be voting in the [Pazz and Jop] poll this year," said the story. Never mind the fact that two out of three of the critics they mentioned by name have collected paychecks from public radio, one of them an old acquaintance of Matos' from Seattle. Silly NPR, full disclosure is for kids. (NPR, which conducted a circle jerk of former Voice employees in a 2006 story, was good enough to tell the listener that Mr. Christgau is now a paid contributor of NPR.) The New York Times and the LA Times joined the whine parade as well—and if the mainstream media runs with a story, you know the conspiracy theorists at the San Francisco Bay Guardian will be right there to pick it up after a few months.

Gawker sent out its invitations to critics in November. How did they get people to contribute? With a small bribe. "As an added bonus," Matos wrote at the bottom of the ballot he sent to more than 1,200 critics, "once you've accepted the invitation, you'll be able to post comments on all Gawker Media blogs." Translation: the once-powerless music critic who accepted the invitation would now be able to call people "douches" under relative anonymity.

Matos kicked off his cover version of Pazz & Jop with a 5,000 word essay in which he mentioned himself more than 125 times. That's something he likes to do, as anyone who read his pamphlet on Prince's Sign O' the Times can attest to.

"I rooted for the Hold Steady on principle, though I do wish their most acclaimed album wasn't also their weakest," wrote Matos, who must have been really tired by the end of it all. Otherwise he would have never written a sentence that made him sound like such a tool (and would easily have earned "douche chill of the week" honors from Gawker, had they not been paying the guy who wrote it).

We're all dancing about architecture. At the end of the day, you don't want to read Matos' rail on about how so very hard it was to put his Gawker poll together, and how he couldn't have guessed how so many critics would have voted for Gnarl's Barkley's "Crazy" as song of the year" (regardless of the fact that "Crazy" was christened song of the year by every music critic back in June). You don't want to hear how some critics are boycotting this poll, or boycotting the other poll, or voting in both.

No.

You just want to know what the best music is to dance to/drink to/fuck to/live to.

That's what the music sections of Village Voice Media ultimately deliver.

Village Voice kills music criticism? Dewey Defeats Truman, Motherfuckers.

Yep. Gotta be a fake. Not even a hacksta's paradise like the Voice would run this crap.

Earlier: Jackin' Pop Survey 2006

Honestly, we weren't expecting Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" to do well in Jackin' Pop—chalk it up to music writers' bias against musicians who are pathological knit-cap wearers. But we were surprised that it didn't get a single vote from our critics, given that it was the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 this year. Sure, the Hot 100 does tend to skew on the adult-contemporary side of things, and the end-of-year charts do favor singles that came out in the year's first half—the seemingly everywhere "Crazy" only came in at No. 7 on the year-end list, while the Jackin' Pop No. 3 "My Love," which was released as a single in the fall, ended the year at No. 61. (And forget anything as comparatively outré as the poll's No. 5, "Wolf Like Me.") But we glanced at the Hot 100's top ten and found that three of the year's top 10 songs—-including one that was a near-miss on one of your Idolators' ballots—received no votes at all, a stat that we found a little odd. (Isn't there someone out there who will admit to liking that James Blunt song?)

After the jump, we compare the Billboard Hot 100's top ten with their Jackin' Pop results.

1 "Bad Day," Daniel Powter (0 votes)
2 "Temperature," Sean Paul (No. 240 (tie), 2 votes)
3 "Promiscuous," Nelly Furtado/Timbaland (No. 6, 45 votes)
4 "You're Beautiful," James Blunt (0 votes)
5 "Hips Don't Lie," Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean (No. 42 (tie), 12 votes)
6 "Unwritten," Natasha Bedingfield (0 votes)
7 "Crazy," Gnarls Barkley (No. 1, 169 votes)
8 "Ridin'," Chamillionaire Featuring Krayzie Bone (No. 19 (tie), 21 votes)
9 "Sexyback," Justin Timberlake (No. 7 (tie), 35 votes)
10 "Check On It," Beyonce featuring Slim Thug (No. 165 (tie), 3 votes)

Jackin' Pop Critics Poll 2006 Results
Year-end Singles - Hot 100 Songs [Billboard.biz]

Burial - Distant Lights [MP3, link expired]
Burial - Broken Home [MP3, link expired]

Eddie Kendricks - Keep On Truckin' (Unreleased Version) [MP3, link expired]
Don Downing - Dreamworld [MP3, link expired]
Patti Jo - Make Me Believe In You [MP3, link expired]

(Also, we'd really like to check out A Tom Moulton Mix (tied for No. 9), Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys' Legends of Country Music (tied for No. 21), and Fats Waller's If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It (tied for No. 31)—if you happen to feel like sharing an MP3 or two, send 'em our way.)

Jackin' Pop Critics Poll 2006 Results
Delta 5 - You [MP3, link expired]
Caetano Veloso - Alfomega [MP3, link expired]
General Echo - Rapping Dub Style [MP3, link expired]
Pulp - Mis-Shapes [MP3, link expired]

Of the 5,200 words that make up Michaelangelo Matos' all-encapsulating Jackin' Pop essay, this passage seems ripe for further debate/deconstruction/dissing:

Because what our critics did hear isn't especially inspiring. A couple years ago, my pal JBR defended the previous 12 months with a phrase that's stayed with me longer than most of the music she was describing: "It was a great year for middling indie." That's what this Jackin' Pop feels like to me, and not just in terms of collegiate guitar music, either. Many of the finishers here feel like fallbacks rather than causes—not so much in the "I'm sick of 'Crazy'" sense as in the "really? Jenny Lewis?" one. Obviously, it could have been worse; we could have had the scant six hip-hop albums featured in the Top 40 the weekend before Jackin' Pop's final deadline, rather than the less-scant eight that finished. Still, the tracks list is patterned way too familiarly. Inevitable smashes dotted with college-radio staples ("Wolf Like Me" at No. 5?!) in almost equal portions—throw in a death ballad, a 10-minute album track, and/or a random mixtape cut, and voila! Instant Pitchfork.

We've always had our own definition of "middling indie"—or "mindie," as we'd like to rename it—and it usually applied to wistful invertebrates like Takka Takka and Oh No! Oh My!: They're just the sort of groups that pick up half-hearted endorsements from over-excitable fans, but will eventually be relegated to one big flash-drive full of quickly out-of-favor MP3s.

But maybe we're kidding ourselves, and the "good" bands that topped so many Jackin' Pop lists (TVOTR, Arctic Monkeys, the Hold Steady) are benefiting from altruistic writers looking for something—anything—to champion. In ten years, maybe we'll look back at our record collections and wonder, "M. Ward? What?"

So: Is the "middling indie" a fair judgment? And if so, which artists best fit that description ? And could we be any more overt in our attempt to post a tangentially related picture of Jenny Lewis?

Hi, this is probably the sort of thing that would only interest an obsessive-compulsive stat/list geek, but I found something that I believe places the Jackin' Pop results in an interesting light. The Jackin' Pop page says that 497 critics voted for 1300 different albums. According to information I got from robertchristgau.com and villagevoice.com, the 1998 Pazz and Jop had 496 critics who voted for 1242 different albums, similar numbers.

However Cookie Mountain only got 1338 points from 125 votes, a 10.7 average. The '98 winner, Lucinda Williams Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, got 2129 points from 167 votes, a 12.7 average. While the Jackin' Pop's somewhat different points system accounts for part of that difference, it doesn't explain why TVotR got 25% less votes.

Something similar happens over the top portion of both polls. The top 22 albums in the '98 Pazz and Jop all got more points than their Jackin' Pop counterparts, and the top 25 Pazz and Jop records got more votes. Both trends immediately reverse thereafter, and the Jackin' Pop albums start to dominate.

So, what causes a nearly identical number of critics to vote for a similar number of albums, but with much less consensus as to what the top 20 or 25 albums were, especially the top 10 or so? Fragmentation, dispassion, just a lack of real masterpiece type records this year? Dunno, not my strong suit.

We're guessing that fragmentation—helped along by the wide path cut by Internet distribution (of the legal and illegal varieties)—is one of the key factors here; there's just more music now, as many voters noted in their comments sections, and while that may not result in a larger number of total vote-getters, it's surely helped spread the points-love around, at least on the albums side of things.

Another stat set that might shed some light on this reader's query: Glenn McDonald's album clusters, which chart the overlap in votes between various records.

Jackin' Pop Critics Poll 2006 Results

2006 Jackin' Pop critical alignment ratings [The War Against Silence]
Jackin' Pop Critics' Poll 2006

Matisyahu, Youth
WHY WE THOUGHT IT WOULD AT LEAST GET ONE VOTE: When it was released in March, Youth was one of the most heavily covered albums of the first quarter, with profiles and reviews in most of the major music magazines and a smattering of mainstream publications (not that press equals votes, but the sheer volume of Matis love led us to believe that at least a few writers actually liked him).
WHY IT GOT SNUBBED: Youth is completely unlistenable.

Rick Ross, Port Of Miami
WHY WE THOUGHT IT WOULD AT LEAST GET ONE VOTE: Ross made a few dents on the singles chart, including "Hustlin'," which landed at No. 36. Plus, wasn't this guy at one point supposed to be a critics' darling? Or did that just last a day?
WHY IT GOT SNUBBED: He couldn't stretch his "I used to deal, and I like Miami" bit past five songs.

Rascal Flatts, Me And My Gang
WHY WE THOUGHT IT WOULD AT LEAST GET ONE VOTE: Even though it received less-than-favorable reviews, Gang sold more than 2 million copies; you'd think someone would champion it—or at least go the "It's actually a new country-pop-rock gem!" route.
WHY IT GOT SNUBBED: Soundscan be damned, it's only slightly more listenable than the Matisyahu record.

After the jump, a few writers comment on technology trumping content, blogstalking writers, and rock-critic flame wars.

Robbie Mackey:

What I'm saying is this: 2006 was an exciting year for music, but it was an even more exciting year for Music Writing. The monsterbeast is changing, sprouting more heads, more legs, more teeth, more stomachs and totally feasting on all these parts of itself. Even so, as interesting as all that Lord of the Rings shit is, it's 12:13 am on Monday December 18th and I just want to unplug my computer and listen to Cornershop tapes on my walkmen.

Maria Tessa Sciarrino:

...one thing went down the proverbial shitter: music critics. Could there have been a worse year to be a writer? Paid writing gigs dried up, one of the remaining outlets for respectable music journalism got caught with its pants down (on so many levels), etc. Maybe it was a lousy year for music after all, if the best we could muster was hurling insults at each other. I can only hope in 2007 we learn to stop shitting where we eat.

Mike McGonigal:

And yes, reading all these rad writers' blogs has been a nice, though mildly stalker-y, way to stay in touch with a group of people I never see/ talk to anymore, at least to have a vague sense of consensus and concerns. But I'm rarely satisfied after a good hour or two's worth of blog-reading, even if in doing so I've also participated in the theft of intellectual property and seen a famous person's un-bearded clam again. I just can't help but think, might not all this bloggeration be better spent doing something worthwhile, something that "sticks"? The answer is, probably not. And again, I fear that I sound like (or am) a boring old man. Hooray! I can't wait for the new year.

John Davidson:

Technology is winning the battle for content supremacy, just as it always has. The tumult and ineptitude in the music press mirrors what's happening in the music industry at large, as both industries make the infuriating transition from a mature phase to one of decline. The good news is that while the machines that drive the business continue to sputter helplessly, the music itself has never been better.

BawstonSean:

O-dub runs Soul-Sides.com, one of the best music blogs on the net. While most of the blogosphere was sucking off the Decemberists, Mr. Wang was biguppin' Afro-Fillipino boogaloo-star Joe Bataan and "Little Miss Dynamite", Sugarpie Desanto. This was the year of the whiney white boy, the year where being the sniveling little turd in eyeliner and women's pants paid off BIGTIME. O-dub had nothin' to do with any of that.

Later today: A few albums that didn't show up on the Jackin' Pop lists.

Jackin' Pop Critics Poll 2006 Contributors
This is the thread where I repost comments from the Jackin' Pop poll... [I Love Music]

The Enthusiasm Top 40 arranges the Jackin' Pop albums that received more than 150 combined points by the level of enthusiasm they generated among the voters. Total points were divided by number of voters. The mean number of points per album was 10; 10.5 or above indicated high enthusiasm.

How does it shake out? Well, let's just say that there's only one holdover between the traditional critics' top-10 list and that in the Enthusiasm Top 40's—and the Enthusiasm list's No. 1 is the traditional list's No. 49. (Click the 'enthusiasm 40' tab on the results page to see the full breakdown.)

Jackin' Pop Critics Poll 2006 Results [Idolator]

We've all been waiting, and now it's here: Idolator's first Jackin' Pop Poll, edited by Michaelangelo Matos, is now live. We've got the results, a few essays, and a gallery of the poll's top artists ready for you to click through and debate over. Enjoy, and be sure to use the comments section to let us know what artist every critic out there inexplicably forgot to laud.

Jackin' Pop Survey 2006

This Sunday is Dec. 31, the date we were supposed to unveil our first annual critics' poll. And guess what? Thanks to our ballot-deadline extension, some tech delays, and the fact that nobody is on the Internet during the holidays except for us, we're going to hold off on announcing the results until later in the week. It'll be worth it, believe us! You won't believe that [ARTIST REDACTED] placed so high, and that [NAME REDACTED] voted for [ALBUM REDACTED]!

Earlier: Time To Raze The Village: Announcing Idolator's 2006 Jackin' Pop Critics Poll

Good news, Jackin' Pop voters! You now have a little more time to obsess over your year-end musical choices: We're extending the ballot deadline to this Friday at 3 P.M. EST. If you've been approved for the poll, and yet have not received your ballot, drop us a line ASAP. Unfortunately, we can't take any more new voters at this time, though we're more than happy to help if your pre-approved ballot is stuck in some bizarre fifth dimension of spam.

We're getting reports about a few Jackin' Pop ballots getting lost to the Internet's ether, so if you requested and/or expected a ballot and it didn't show, please drop us a line so we can figure out what happened. (Also, we suggest that you check your spam folders—we're going to guess that our use of the word "Jackin'" in the subject line might have set off some more delicate e-mail clients' red flags.)

Earlier: Idolator's 2006 Jackin' Pop Critics Poll

The time has come: Today, we'll be sending out ballots to voters in Idolator's 2006 Jackin' Pop Critics Poll, edited by Michaelangelo Matos. Invitations and ballot instructions will be sent out to our critics' database over the next few hours, and all ballots must be finalized by 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, December 14. If you're a voter, and you're having any problems with your ballot, shoot an e-mail to tips@idolator.com describing your issue. For now, happy listmaking, and get ready for even more ballot-dissection over the coming weeks.

Earlier: Idolator's 2006 Jackin' Pop Critics Poll

Last week, we announced our first-ever Jackin' Pop Critics Poll, a challenge to the decades-old Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll. While poll editor Michaelangelo Matos works on prepping the ballots, a few outside developments:

- The Voice this week sent informational emails to about 1,500 prospective Pazz & Jop voters. Ballots and comments are due Jan. 1; results will be announced in the Feb. 7th, 2007 issue (the albums-singles-comments format seems to be the same).
- Menwhile, the blogger behind Anthony Is Right is campaigning to get Hinder the top spot on the Voice, which could happen if 1,499 critics accidentally mistake Extreme Behavior for Modern Times.

Earlier: Time To Raze The Village: Announcing Idolator's 2006 Jackin' Pop Critics Poll

It looks like our Jackin' Pop poll has really caused those alt-weekly weenies at Village Voice Media to get all worked up: First we find out that our poll editor, Michaelangelo Matos, has been banned from the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages—the paper where he began his career; and then we receive the following spirit-crushing email from a tipster, who claims it was sent from one of the chain's music editors, in the hopes of steering VVM writers to Pazz & Jop, and away from Jackin' Pop:

Village Voice wants us to vote, as Idolator is going to compete with us head-to-head on the Pazz and Jop poll. I'm not allowed to vote in the Idolator poll, and while you do not have to be exclusive to Village Voice, I do encourage you to be exclusive to us and not participate in the Idolator poll."

Such "Hey guys, come on now" wording is pretty funny, especially since we've already been told that VVM is telling ALL of its employees—even if they don't write about music—they're not allowed to vote in our poll anyway. Good going, supposed champions of the free press! To get revenge, we plan to not patronize the porn ads in the back your magazines for the next week. You have no idea how much that's gonna cost you.

P.S. Weenies!

Earlier: Time To Raze The Village: Announcing Idolator's 2006 Jackin' Pop Critics Poll

UPDATE: Don't forget, if you want to be considered for the poll, send your info to matos@idolator.com by 8 p.m. EST.

The word is getting out about our Jackin' Pop poll—and in a few days, so will the ballots. So if you're interested in voting, make sure to send an email to matos@idolator.com with the following: Your name, your email, links to your blog and/or some pieces you've written during 2006 (if you primarily write for print, the name of your outlet(s) and a short list of recent work would be great; URLs to web-available work is even better). We need all of this info by the end of tomorrow. Happy lobbying!

Earlier: Time To Raze The Village: Announcing Idolator's 2006 Jackin' Pop Critics Poll

We figured that the people over at New Times Media—the company responsible for putting the "ill" in the Village Voice—would be a little pissy about our announcement of the Jackin' Pop Critics Poll; what we didn't realize was that they'd be such thin-skinned weenies about it: We've been told that an email is circulating among New Times staffers that not only talks up how great their poll is going to be this year, but also warns its staffers not to vote in our poll! So let's get this straight: A company responsible for putting out alt-weeklies—supposedly a place where you go to find independent-minded writing and reporting—is essentially putting a gag order on its staff. Yay, corporate interests trumping employees' right to free speech! Yay, bad journalism!

Anyway, we'd love to read (and post) this email in full; if you'd like to anonymously send it in, we can be reached at tips@idolator.com.

Earlier: Time To Raze The Village: Announcing Idolator's 2006 Jackin' Pop Critics Poll

For the last three decades, the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll was the premier music-critic survey in the country. Overseen since the early '70s by Robert "The Dean" Christgau—and co-edited in recent years by Chuck Eddy—Pazz & Jop was a godsend for those in need of intelligent cultural criticism, a bellwether of the musical tastes of the nation's critics, and a testament to the power of the independent press.

And this year, the Voice completely blew it.

A quick recap: Last fall, the Voice was acquired by Arizona-based publishing company New Times Media; it took only a few months for everything to go higgeldy-piggeldy. Christgau and Eddy were canned (along with several other respected critics and writers), and a seventh-rate American Idol nitwit went on the cover. For those who had long turned to the Voice to help guide them through the realm of pop, rock, and hip-hop, the 51-year-old alt-weekly now had about as much musical credibility as, say, a three-month old blog.

Which is why we're proud to announce the Idolator Jackin' Pop Critics Poll. Edited by Michaelangelo Matos—a Seattle-based music critic and author of the 33 1/3 book Sign O' The Times—Jackin' Pop will maintain the Voice's thoughtfully anarchic approach to music criticism, merging it with the technological reach of Gawker Media. In the coming week, more than 1,200 critics, writers and editors will be sent ballots, and results will be announced Sunday, Dec. 31st.

As for who will be voting, we'll allow Matos to explain, because he's the only one crazy enough to take this on: "The Pop Poll is open primarily to people who write regularly about music in print, for broadcast, or on the web," Matos says. "That means 'regularly'—if you haven't been writing lately, or limit your writing to discussion groups, we're probably going to pass. All requests will be considered, though." To be considered, send an email to matos@idolator.com
and include your name, your email, links to your blog and/or some pieces you've written during 2006 (if you primarily write for print, the name of your outlet(s) and a short list of recent work would be great; URLs to web-available work is even better). "If you write regularly already, we may well have your info," Matos says. "But a quick double-check never hurts."

Look for more Jackin' Pop updates here on Idolator.com, where we look forward to analyzing, debating, and thoroughly mocking the results well into the new year.