Pazz & Jop Voter Comments: The Personals

I think Kanye was such a critical smash because he’s the only person more insecure than a rock critic.

Jason Arthurs

Superchunk, who're on the coolest label ever

Details

Pazz and Jop 2010
Rise of the Douchebags
Kanye West and James Murphy turn their private flaws into public triumphs
By Zach Baron

Never Forget
Cee Lo Green sums up 2010 in two little words
By Rob Harvilla

Little Pink Polos for You and Me
Wallowing and/or reveling in social anxiety with Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend
By Eric Harvey

The Wayward Crucifixion of M.I.A.
On the dodgy, opportunistic, truffle-fry-fueled campaign against both Maya and Maya
By Charles Aaron

Leave Chillwave Alone
In defense of the nostalgia-steeped genre Ariel Pink both invented and abandoned
By Simon Reynolds

Attack of the Singing Rappers
On Drake, Nicki Minaj, B.o.B., and the art of the debut-as-pop-crossover
By Clover Hope

The Great Gay-Pander-Off of 2010
Katy, Nicki, Ke$ha, P!nk, and Gaga taste the rainbow
By Rich Juzwiak

The Internet-Rap Atomization
Odd Future, Lil B, Wiz Khalifa, et al. build tiny kingdoms, and rule them
By Tom Breihan

Justin Bieber, Twitter Casanova
The Most Popular Boy in the World rules the only voting bloc that matters: pre-teen girls
By Camille Dodero

The Top Ten
From Kanye West to The Suburbs

Stuff We Like
Rick Ross Lies, the Rolling Stones Plunder, And Taylor Swift Triumphs

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More About

• Kanye West
• Michael Robbins
• Brooklyn (New York City)
• Indie Rock and Indie Pop
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Christopher R. Weingarten
New York, NY

“General workplace changes”? Seriously?

George Varga
San Diego, CA

Generalist, buffet-table pop criticism is dead. Specialist genre criticism is all that matters anymore, because listener communities are atomized, self-sealing, and frequently hostile to outside input. I know who I’m writing for, and more importantly, I know who I’m not writing for. And I’m not gonna pretend to give a flying fuck about Taylor Swift or Kanye West just because all the other writers on my Twitter feed still think platinum-selling records “say” “something” “about” “the culture.” There is no monoculture. Pick a niche and grind it out.

Phil Freeman Elizabeth, NJ

What are you planning to call the section devoted to oh-so-clever comments about Sasha Frere-Jones’s premature hip-hop eulogy?

Michael Robbins
Chicago, IL

I was hemming and hawing about whether to put Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister,” in my year-end Top 10; it’s massively catchy, but so deeply uncool that I really have no idea what other critics, if any, will vote for it. That it was used, sarcastically, as an example song title in the ballot instructions e-mailed to Pazz & Jop voters was what helped me decide to go ahead and give it its props. Why even bother trying to be cool about such a nerdy hobby/profession, anyway?

Al Shipley
Baltimore, MD

Hardly any labels—and certainly not any “tastemaking” ones—are keeping track of America’s compositional wilds right now, which is why Mikel Rouse released Recess on his own imprint, Exit Music. “I wanna fuckin’ build my own goddamn documentary and say it the way I wanna say it,” he sings in “Designing Women,” just after dropping a field recording of a woman flacking a “Medicare for All” campaign. Or, to put another way, “Fuck this industry.”

Seth Colter Walls
Brooklyn, NY

I had a dream this year that I was in a bar, and a man came up to me and slapped me in the face with a paperback copy of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, and then sat down beside me and yelled for a long time about how there’s a conspiracy to distract the public from the content of M.I.A.’s and Julian Assange’s work by focusing on the sordid details of their personal lives.

David Marchese Brooklyn, NY

So, chillwave? At least now I don’t have to hide my Christopher Cross records when girls come over.

Brandon Soderberg
Forest Hill, MD

I’m calling bullshit on the entire indie/alternative rock scene. The staggering proliferation of alternative artists of color—and your mulish refusal to acknowledge same—is the four-ton pink elephant in the room right now. This is underscored by the glut of column inches, blogs, and Tweets on white mid-America expatriates washing up on the Wallabout Channel co-opting Afrobeat, retro soul, high life, and lo-fi crunk-punk.

Darrell McNeill
Brooklyn, NY

Just wait till Jamey Johnson’s admirers discover Mickey Newbury and Harry Chapin.

Michael Robbins
Chicago, IL

For me, 2010 was a year to reassess the resilience and importance of artist collectives and small, artist-owned or artist-friendly nightclubs, as musicians must continue to fiddle as the morphing monolith formerly known as “The Music Industry” burns. Tiny East Village enclaves like Nublu, Banjo Jim’s, and the Bowery Electric may each serve slightly different musical demographics, but each is open to letting both emergent and established acts curate and promote theme nights that keep their weekly bookings lively and diverse. The San Francisco–based Round Whirled Records showcase at Nublu; the vintage pop-rock solo projects that Maura Kennedy and Edward Rodgers brought to Bowery Electric; and the local blues, bluegrass, and ragtime players that anchor Banjo Jim’s weekly programming were all fluid, collaborative examples of how new bands and songwriters might survive the heat-death (by homogenization) of corporate pop-music monopolies.

Carol Cooper
New York, NY

Jay Reatard and Captain Beefheart. That hurt.

David Marchese
Brooklyn, NY

After writing a music and nightlife column in the Los Angeles Times for 15 years, I find Facebook and Twitter frothy nirvana. Look, Ma: no editors.

Heidi Cuda
Sherman Oaks, CA

Das Racist’s “Fake Patois” is the funniest song I’ve heard in years, but, damn it, I can’t stand the thought of hearing it again.

David McFadden-Elliott
Berkeley, CA

2010 is really the first year that I became a fan of a label as much as any band. Merge Records may have scored mainstream wins with the likes of Spoon and a label-first #1 from Arcade Fire, but four of my top 10 albums came from the outskirts of their stunning 2010 catalog. Not only did label heads Mac McCaughan and Laura Balance rally their band Superchunk for its first album in nine years (the endorphin-laden Majesty Shredding), but quiet masterpieces from Versus, Tracey Thorn, and the Extra Lens (to hold us over until 2011’s Mountain Goats release) proved that the North Carolina operation has the kind of enviably balanced taste that most people lie about.