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— by Jem Aswad
My friend James recently got the music writer's equivalent of a drivers' license: He was officially allowed to vote in the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which is widely considered to be the ultimate poll because it's the oldest (31 or 32 years, they're not even sure) and it's culled from 1,400 or so critics' top-10 lists.
Those 1,400 or so people (of which I'm one) cast votes for our favorite albums and singles of the year, awarding points that are tabulated by some poor sap who must really want to get in good with the Voice music staff.
Anyway, James sent his top 10 around to several of his colleagues — because what's the point in doing it if you don't share it with people? — and, within minutes, was mocked mercilessly for creating the "whitest" top 10 we'd ever seen. He countered by saying that those were the records he liked and he wasn't going to include some hip-hop or R&B or Balinese folk music just to show how adventurous or diverse or cool he is.
Boy, does he have a lot to learn.
You might think that compiling these things is as simple as merely listing your favorite singles and albums of the year. HA!
In a business where appearances count for ... well, just about everything, your top 10 is your calling-card to the world, a combination of the personal statement you write for college admission, the profile you'd submit to MySpace, and your epitaph. In more ways than you'd like to think, it helps define who you are. (For more on the complex interrelations between one's identity and one's top-10 lists, see Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" and its John Cusack-starring film counterpart.) And it's every bit as politically loaded, intricately thought-out and handicapped as any political vote.
Why? Because you want your favorite records to win? Don't be ridiculous.
The real reason is because your list is posted on the Voice's Web site (on February 8 — go mark that Rhino Records calendar) for whatever friend, colleague, publicist, loser (or all of the above) in the world who cares to take the time to look at it. It's an opportunity, however obscure, to show off how cool you are, which is part of the reason why you'll find albums that were never released, downloads that were available for just 45 minutes and compilations of carnival music from Trinidad on some people's lists.
The winners are usually quite predictable, if you try to imagine what approximately 1,400 predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly over-25, predominantly rock fans — because that describes most music critics, including yours truly — will vote for. Granted, Outkast took the prize in both 2000 and 2003 (their innovation and popularity being so strong that even a bunch of old white guys had to take notice). But more characteristically, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot won for 2002, Bob Dylan's Love and Theft for 2001, Moby's Play triumphed in 1999 and Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road soundly trounced Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998.
This year, I predict that Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose will top the poll because:
a) It's a great album,
b) She's an icon who is 70 years old, and the critics just love to give props to icons while they're still around to notice (witness the critical praise that surrounded Johnny Cash in his last years),
c) She made the album in collaboration with a hot contemporary star: The White Stripes' Jack White produced and played on the album, so not only does he up her cool factor, she'll be garnering White Stripes fans' votes (Rick Rubin's work with Cash had a similar modernizing effect),
d) The album will add some diversity to the rock-dominated top-10 lists of the majority of the voters (who, unlike James, can't be seen to have narrow musical tastes).
As someone who's obviously spent way too much time thinking about all this (I'm such a geek that I've been doing these lists since I was in high school), I try to make my top 10 reflect the new records that I voluntarily listened to and enjoyed the most during the year. OK, so a compilation of carnival music from Trinidad is at the top of my list, but not because I'm trying to show off my esoteric tastes (hey, "Toxic" was one of my top-10 singles); the album contains some of the most joyous and exciting music I've ever heard. And although these days I'd rather listen to a snowblower than Kanye West — who actually kinda resembles a snowblower when he talks — I included his album in my top 10 because I really, really enjoyed it for several weeks before I got so sick of it I could vomit.
The singles chart is even more complicated because, for many, it's not simply a list of what you feel are the best songs of the year — it's gotta be the best singles, the songs that defined, embodied and inspired the year's vibe, mood and (that most overused of pop-culture words) zeitgeist. A single takes you by the hand or gives you a bear hug or a body slam; "Hey Ya!," "F--- Tha Police," "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Me So Horny" are singles.
The trouble is, apart from "Drop It Like It's Hot," I hated most of this year's songs like that, except for "Toxic" and "99 Problems," both of which were actually released in 2003. But the Voice's rules generously give leeway by saying that a song or album's "impact" might have been greater in the year after it was released, which was definitely the case with those.
Then again, who says you have to be consistent with something so difficult to quantify, and so ridiculous? I submitted top-10 lists to two different places, two weeks apart, for last year, and they were different: After two weeks of deep contemplation, I decided I liked the Arcade Fire album better than the Futureheads'.
Sound stupid? It is. But if you've read this far, you're just as bad.
My top-10 lists, because I can:
- 1. Various Artists - Lif Up Yuh Leg An Trample (Honest Jon's/Astralwerks)
- 2. DFA - Compilation #2 (DFA/EMI)
- 3. Kanye West - The College Dropout (Roc-A-Fella/ Island Def Jam)
- 4. Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat (Rough Trade)
- 5. CocoRosie - La Maison de Mon Reve (Touch & Go)
- 6. Arcade Fire - Funeral (Merge)
- 7. Ghostface The Pretty Toney Album (Island Def Jam)
- 8. Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum (Beggars Banquet)
- 9. Icarus Line - Penance Soiree (V2)
- 10. Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken (Anti)
- 1. Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell - "Drop It Like It's Hot" (Star Trak/ Geffen)
- 2. M.I.A. - "Galang" (XL/ Beggars Banquet)
- 3. Pixeltan - "Get Up/ Say What" (DFA/EMI)
- 4. Slim Thug - "Like a Boss" (Geffen)
- 5. Britney Spears - "Toxic" (Jive)
- 6. Young Buck - "Shorty Wanna Ride" (Interscope)
- 7. Jay-Z - "99 Problems" (Roc-A-Fella/ Island Def Jam)
- 8. Gretchen Wilson - "Redneck Woman" (Epic)
- 9. Terror Squad - "Lean Back" (Universal)
- 10. Modest Mouse - "Float On" (Epic)
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Photo: Karl Heitmueller
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