Who's sitting P&J out this year?
Dave over on Tumblr:
I like voting in it - stayed on board for the Jackin’ Pop year (voted in both polls) and have thought about staying on this year, since for better or worse it’s the only huge critics poll. Glenn McDonald is still doing stats, which alone kind of makes me want to participate. Just wondering if anyone is staging a parallel poll ( Read more... )
I like voting in it - stayed on board for the Jackin’ Pop year (voted in both polls) and have thought about staying on this year, since for better or worse it’s the only huge critics poll. Glenn McDonald is still doing stats, which alone kind of makes me want to participate. Just wondering if anyone is staging a parallel poll ( Read more... )
I don't know if P&J results fall under a power law, and I barely know any math anymore and couldn't tell you what a power law is. Wikip: "If the frequency (with which an event occurs) varies as a power of some attribute of that event (e.g. its size), the frequency is said to follow a power law. For instance, the number of cities having a certain population size is found to vary as a power of the size of the population, and hence follows a power law," the word "power" meaning squared, cubed, taken to the fourth power, taken to the fifth power, etc. If the number of cities varies as a power of the size of the population, you'll get (this is from Wikip's entry on "Rank-size distribution") a large city "with other cities decreasing in size respective to it, initially at a rapid rate and then more slowly. This results in a few large cities, and a much larger number of cities orders of magnitude smaller." You find something like that with radio play, Website hits, and, I assume, Pazz & Jop voting, though again I don't know if these exactly follow power laws or just look like they do at a glance. But way more acts will get six votes than will get twelve votes, way more will get twelve than eighteen, and so on. This is how these things tend to work, and even if everyone searched and voted with the great seeking that you do, the result would still be a small number of acts with a lot of votes and a lot of acts with a small number of votes. If you vote "Gangnam Style," "Merry Go Round," and a bunch of Dev and K-pop and metal that only a handful or fewer of ilXors vote for, and a lot of other people vote "Gangnam Style," and some other people vote "Merry Go Round," and then their votes scatter along their idiosyncratic interests, we'll look at the poll results and say, "Everyone's copying each other and voting for 'Gangnam Style.'"
(My guess is that "Thinkin Bout You" wins, but I'm hardly the one who's paying attention to this. "Gangnam Style" and "Call Me Maybe" will do reasonably well, but there'll likely be a few respecto-soul or respecto-indie or ambitious-sounding hip-hop tracks that'll edge them out, as there often are, though I have no idea what they are this year or if I'm right this time. Kendrick Lamar? Miguel?)
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'Cause it's the Lamar that sounds most like it was produced by Grimes?
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By the way, Frank, here's a long review of the Mumford & Sons album I wrote for Spin, in case you never saw it:
http://www.spin.com/reviews/mumford-and-sons-babel-gentlemen-of-the-roadglassnote
And while I'm at it, an even longer review of the new Ke$ha album:
http://www.spin.com/reviews/kesha-warrior-rca
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikebarthel/sleigh-bells-made-the-most-underrated-album-of-201
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*But I've yet to click on that Grimes interview you linked on Tumblr.
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Didn't even get through the Kendrick Lamar album when I tried last month. Maybe half of it. Though maybe (at least Frank's post suggests this) I just wasn't listening for the right things. But really (and something Dave said here mirrored this I think), these kind of overwhelming critic favorite albums just seem like work to try to get into (and actually, most hip-hop albums since the '90s have also seemed like worth to get into for me, so I've got a double blindspot there.) Though at least I tried with these three albums, which is more than I can say for, say, Fiona Apple.
Saw 15 minutes of Japandroids live at SXSW, and that told me all I needed to know about them. Ick.
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Which is to say that I'm kind of at the point in my career when, if I'm going to listen to something primarily out of professional duty, I kind of want to get PAID for it.
most hip-hop albums since the '90s have also seemed like worth to get into for me
Like WORK, I meant...And I still like plenty of them (and love even more singles), but to be honest I don't even return to those great old Eminem and Ying Yang and Mannie Fresh and Trick Daddy albums much. If at all. Though I did find a cool double-vinyl copy of Field Mob's From The Roota To The Toota in a dollar bin this year. Not as good as my memory thought it was, but not bad.
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