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]