The Jackin' Pop reissues poll was handily won by the deluxe edition of Pavement's
Wowee Zowee, and while its upper reaches were filled with familiar names—David Byrne, Brian Eno, R.E.M., The Clash—we were pleasantly surprised by a few of the results.
· The long-overdue compilation of recordings by the all-female post-punk outfit Delta 5,
Singles And Sessions 1979-1981, came in at No. 16. One interesting wrinkle; it tied for first in the reissue race among female critics with Karen Dalton's
In My Own Time, which placed second overall.
· The essentials-compilers at the UK label Soul Jazz had a strong showing:
Tropicália! A Brazilian Revolution In Sound, its 20-track, meticulously annotated overview of the Brazilian artistic movement, came in at No. 5, and
Big Apple Rappin', two discs full of early New York City hip-hop, reached No. 21.
· And, since we are contractually obligated to mention Jarvis Cocker at least once a week, you should know that the deluxe reissue of Pulp's
Different Class—an import-only release in the States, which meant that a lot of our voters had to work to get it—tied for No. 27 on the reissues list.
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Idolator
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?)
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