Petal & Mop
The predictably yawn-inducing results (by which I mean I predicted the top six in my sleep—check my dream journal if you don’t believe me—& the reason I was asleep is that I had been listening to the top six) are in for the 37th (or, I insist, 38th) Village Voice Pazz & Jop music poll. Here’s my ballot:
Albums |
||
| 1 | Sonic Youth, The Eternal | Points: 15 |
| 2 | Mastodon, Crack the Skye | Points: 15 |
| 3 | Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night | Points: 10 |
| 4 | Raekwon, Only Built for Cuban Linx, pt. 2 | Points: 10 |
| 5 | Baroness, Blue Record | Points: 10 |
| 6 | The-Dream, Love vs. Money | Points: 10 |
| 7 | Converge, Axe to Fall | Points: 10 |
| 8 | Fever Ray, Fever Ray | Points: 10 |
| 9 | Deer Tick, Born on Flag Day | Points: 5 |
| 10 | Grizzly Collective, Veckatimest Post Pavilion | Points: 5 |
Singles |
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| 1 | Taylor Swift, “Love Story” | |
| 2 | Girls, “Lust for Life” | |
| 3 | DJ Quik & Kurupt, “9x outta 10″ | |
| 4 | Maxwell, “Pretty Wings” | |
| 5 | Lady GaGa, “Just Dance” | |
| 6 | Shuttle, “Tunnel [High Rankin Remix]“ | |
| 7 | Neko Case, “People Got a Lotta Nerve” | |
| 8 | Mew, “Beach” | |
| 9 | Kelly Clarkson, “I Do Not Hook Up” | |
| 10 | Modest Mouse, “Satellite Skin” | |
And some of my comments here (note that I provide the tag line). As usual, this list doesn’t reflect my current thinking about last year’s pop music. When I made it, I hadn’t yet processed Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” which should replace “Just Dance,” or Sleigh Bells’ completely delightful “Ring Ring,” & I now suspect that Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.” was the best single of 2009. Also, The xx’s sort-of-self-titled record has now shorted out all my anti-hype defenses. Finally, I decided not to include compilations, but the best album of the year by a long shot was Sterns’ overview of Zairean giant Franco’s later recordings, Francophonic, vol 2: 1980-89, while Hyperdub’s 5 Years of Hyperdub is pure dystopian killer-parties-almost-killed-me not-for-dancing dance music.
Other music released last year that made me happy, sometimes against my better judgment: Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion & “What Would I Want? Sky”; Annie, Don’t Stop; Art Brut, Art Brut vs. Satan; The Avett Brothers, I and Love and You; The Baseball Project, Volume One; bunch of remastered albums by some band on EMI; Big Boi, “Shine Blockas”; Big Star, Keep an Eye on the Sky; Brakes, “Crush on You” & “Ancient Mysteries”; Built to Spill, “Planting Seeds”; Kelly Clarkson, “My Life Would Suck without You”; Leonard Cohen, Live in London; DJ Koze, Reincarnations; Bob Dylan, Together through Life; Fiery Furnaces, I’m Going Away; Fuck Buttons, Tarot Sport; Girls, Album; Heartless Bastards, The Mountain; The Hold Steady, A Positive Rage; Jay-Z & Alicia Keys, “Empire State of Mind”; Kinch, Collars and Sleeves; K’Naan, “People Like Me” & “Wavin’ Flag”; Lady Gaga, “Speechless”; Miranda Lambert, “Airstream Song” & “Dead Flowers”; Lifter Puller, Fiestas + Fiascos & Slips Backwards; whatever that Metric record is called; Mew, No More Stories Are Told Today; Micachu & the Shapes, Jewellery; Nirvana, Live at Reading; Pet Shop Boys, Yes; Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix; La Roux, La Roux; St. Vincent, Actor; Slayer, World Painted Blood; Sleigh Bells, Sleigh Bells; Regina Spektor, Far; Sunset Rubdown, Dragonslayer; Sunn 0))), Monoliths & Dimensions; Taylor Swift, “You Belong to Me”; tUnE-yArDs, BiRd-BrAiNs; Wussy, Wussy.
And while we’re on the subject, might as well make like S/FJ:
Best of 2010
1. Fucked Up, Couple Tracks
2. Little Boots, Hands
3. Spoon, Transference
I do NOT get the Maxwell. Mawkish breakup blah. But the Sonic Youth was great.
Was “Love Story” really 2009? I feel like I’ve been hearing it for four years.
Ha. You sound like Ange emailing me about Taylor Swift (”I do not get it”) (hope it’s OK to quote you on that, AM).
“Love Story” was released as a single in 09, but the album came out in 07 or 08, I can’t remember.
I was in Banana Republic or H&M or something the other day trying to find a dress shirt & “Love Story” was playing & these teenage girls were pawing thru stuff & singing along unselfconsciously. It was kind of great.
I’ll take sounding like Ange any day.
I’d go into some detail here about your ignorance in lumping the DP and Neko Pipes with those snoozers, but I’m too busy reconciling this Clay Shirky thing about asshole self-promoters with my pet theory about Machiavelli and containment strategies.
Hey, I like Neko. I just wish she’d loosen up a bit more. Her work with the New Pornos is much better than her solo stuff. As for the DP’s, [redacted].
btw, the-dream should be, like, third. that record keeps on giving. walking on the moon? fuggedaboudit.
plus i don’t know what you’re talkin bout clay shirky but i would like to subscribe to yr newsletter.
ok i looked it up i don’t think that guy’s ever met any women.
Compared to Micheael R. and Jordan D., I’m pretty clueless about pop music. But is there no *non-Western* pop music worth mentioning? African, Middle Eastern, Japanese? It’s not like “foreign” stuff needs to be translated. Some months back here at DE I put up a post about an incredible African music web site. Lots of African pop is amazing. On new Arab music, Gary Sullivan knows a lot about it. I haven’t looked at his blog for a long time, but I think he may still have listening lists available there, somewhere.
I’d provide the link to the Likembe blog, but I don’t know how to group and find my posts, now that I’m off the Contributor’s list. Any chance you could give that link, Bobby, for those who might be interested?
Hey Kent, it’s here. You can find posts by searching in the box above the word “subscribe” up there on the right.
That’s not quite right about translating, but it doesn’t matter. I totally agree with your point.
There’s lots of non-Western pop music worth mentioning. Sites like P4k and TPTSNBN’s annual music poll index the ever-mysterious critical reception of new releases, and certain well-publicized imports, such as the blind Malian couple Amadou and Mariam, tend to do very well.
I’m drawn to Jon Hassell’s mildly offensive concept of “coffee-colored” music — not quite “post-racial,” but acknowledging that at least as far as music goes the trade routes still carry the news.
You didn’t read my post? I said the best album of the year was by Franco. He was Zairean, when it was called Zaire, & Congolese before that.
Nobody reads anymore, Michael — we just look at lists.
ah. well, for the record, kj, i been keeping up on afropop since the late eighties.
Sorry, Michael, I’d missed that– was looking at the rankings at the top. But still, you have to admit, all in all, your Taste List is a bit centered in what Dependency theorists back in the 70s and 80s used to call the Metropole!
Hey, if you really love African pop and want to learn much more, I can put you in touch with my friend, John Beadle, from Likembe: He is one of THE Anglo U.S. experts in the field.
Pop’s a purgative.
As Kurt Vonnegut said, gotta get the sh*t out to get to the good stuff.
Then again, I like a lot of what most people consider sh*t - grew up in the Victoria punk scene, lost my first adult teeth at NoMeansRamones in ‘88. I hardly ever get to hear any pop music unless I’m visiting friends - no radio, no time, no patience, busy writing (and staring out the window dreaming, part of the job).
OK, grampa.
Viva constipation!
I am pleased to report Twitter users noticing my “Veckatimest Post Pavilion” joke. (Yeah, it’s not much of a joke, what have you done for the cause lately!)
Don’t understand Twitterspeak. What does this mean:
RT @soundofthecity:
I thought it meant he was addressing himself to soundofthecity, but he’s actually quoting soundofthecity.
The irony of sounding cluelessly old …
RT = retweet.
Pop does not exist.
There, I said it. Whew.
John Latta, by “Pop’s a purgative” are you talking the Aristotelian biz?
Actually, “pop” does exist, as a category of commercial music, but not a musical or sociological (or ethnomusicological) descriptor. The year-end lists are capitalist fantasies, akin to the Oscars, with the jokes more recondite and fewer production numbers and without the gowns. They’re . . . pop! If I prefer the Oscars, it’s only because I like production numbers and gowns. Like the Oscars, the only records with a chance of winning are the ones with substantial promotional budgets. Do very many critics get bushels of free 3rd World pop records from companies?
Excuse, please, don’t at all mean to interrupt the discussion on pop. But over at Harriet there is new talk on a topic that was posted about here at DE not too long back and which generated over one hundred comments: The policing dust-up at Segue involving Eileen Myles, Nada Gordon, unidentified others, and the unlucky non-poet “shoppers” who came in off the street and made the fatal error of “inappropriately” laughing when naughty words were spoken by the poet reading.
Amazingly, the organizer of the Segue series (that was news to me until he announced it today), Thom Donovan, has posted a long comment under the most recent post by Craig Santos Perez (the post today on Flarf and the Segue event). I say “amazingly” because Donovan’s comment–reproduced from previous remarks he’d made on Facebook–is a broadside character-assassination volley against the two gigglers, and Donovan had just in the past couple days posted a lengthy post/manifesto at Harriet, arguing, with violas in the background, against “negative criticism” in the poetry community (a post that has just had a follow-up by Travis Nichols at the Huffington Post).
Likely you can’t make out what the heck I’m talking about, but take a look. I pointed out at Harriet that I thought Donovan’s comments were inappropriate and–given the tone of his previous post–truly bizarre, though that doesn’t seem to have registered with anyone at Harriet yet.
As I said in a comment under Donovan’s first post: In our poetry field, it is often those who earnestly proffer golden norms of best-behaviors who are quickest to pull out the cutting knives.
> it is often those
Absolutely - and as I was reading in an Adam Phillips essay the other day, feelings of guilt often lead to aggressive acts.
Incidentally, Kent - what’d you think of Dan Hoy’s follow-up in that comment stream to your citation of his flarf essay?
>what’d you think of Dan Hoy’s follow-up in that comment stream to your citation of his flarf essay?
It was fine, Dan’s a sharp guy, but his comment wasn’t intended as a follow-up to my citation– we sent our comments in at the same time, it appears.
>guilt often lead to aggressive acts.
This might be a good way to frame Thom D’s posting of his comments on the Segue incident. Maybe that’s what you meant.
This is why I love it when you hijack threads to post something completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
> to frame Thom
We don’t have to frame anyone, Kent, when there’s more than enough rope to go around.
Now I remember — I was going to post a link to the wikipedia article on spittoons.
>This is why I love it when you hijack threads to post something completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
You’re right. Shouldn’t have done that. Go ahead and delete the two comments, with my permission.
@Kent: O, like he could delete them now without seeming just pure mean. Way to play the man, eh?
Oh, Michael’s deleted entire long threads before and without anyone’s foreknowledge. So it wouldn’t seem “mean” if he deleted two comments by me with my personal permission.
I was all set to apologize for being cranky, & now this. Do you feel any obligation to be honest, or at least precise, Kent? What are these long threads, plural, of which you speak? I deleted ONE thread that had degenerated into vile bullshit, & I said I would not do so again.
@Kent: (@risk of Michael’s powerful and undetectable displeasure) Yeah, but now you’ve placed the mirror of words in front of the act…it’d be like participant observation distortions now…sly, very sly, man…
@Michael: You type fast, senor. Do you have six fingers on each hand (obscure, cheesy movie reference)?
signed,
Diego Montoya
@Michael ps. Really enjoying the art selection on refresh…do you know what the picture sources are for this page?
OK, OK, ONE whole thread. I don’t recall anything vile. I do remember people pointing out some soft spots in your argument. But I admit my memories of that are rather fuzzy by now.
Anyway, I think people should go back to talking and Twittering about Pop.
He sd, “You go all around the subject.” And I sd, “I didn’t know it was a subject.”
– C. Olson (please forgive botched lineation)
Speaking of purgatives and social emulsions, is there a singular form of Twittering? Is it to Twoot?
It is to tweet. The pictures are Bobby Baird’s, our intrepid leader.
The only thing about this thread that isn’t an advertisement for the XY chromosome is Peter’s mistaken citation of “Diego Montoya.” That’s INIGO, muchachos.
XY isn’t a chromosome, it’s a pair of chromosomes. How’s that for an advertisement for XY? Represent!
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
@Anahid: I stand corrected. Just don’t hit me any more with that glove, OK?
I love how living in America but being a fan of British pop music makes me feel as if I can see the future. It is strange to see Little Boots on a best of 2010 list because in the blogosphere she seemed old hat by the beginning of 2009. The album’s fantastic, though, even if it does seem that Boots is less than the sum of her parts.
I’m looking forward to a new Robyn album this year, which should reach the US by about 2013 at approximately the same time America catches on to Ellie Goulding and Marina Diamond.
> Marina Diamond
Hey now. “I am not a robot” was in heavy rotation in my household. (Still disappointed that The Feeling’s “Love It When You Call” didn’t circulate here.)