Come down after work. Or if you don’t work, just come down before practice. They’ll pass the hat, but admission is free, and I won’t be counting the quarters in the collection plate.

Tris McCall
Tuesday, March 30
7pm
Rockwood Music Hall
184 Allen Street
NYC, NY

Tris McCall & The Housing Bubble
11pm
Maxwell’s
1039 Washington Street
Hoboken, NJ

This is a full band show. I hope to see you there.

They're out to get you; demons closing in on every side.

When Elvis went into Sun Studios to grab his crown — and for many years after — pop music was child’s play. Real stars didn’t make pop, and they sure as hell didn’t stay in Memphis. They went to California and starred in sorry entertainment with Gidget. We know this from Elvis’s own choices: he and Colonel Parker decided they’d rather do Fun In Acapulco than “Heartbreak Hotel”. Better to be a mediocre movie star than the world’s greatest rocker. These days it’s fashionable to blame Elvis and his management for shortsightedness, but it’s easy for us to say now. The pop charts weren’t a destination for an entertainer then. They were a means to an end.

By the time Thriller dropped, the industry had figured out how to make gazillions of dollars off of pop records. Consequently, “pop musician” became a respectable career path for the lucky few who made it to hit radio. Michael Jackson did appear in movies — he even managed to make The Wiz vaguely watchable. But movies were a sideline. Jackson made more impact as a music video star (the first, and still the greatest) than Elvis did in all of his feature films put together.

Since MTV has spaced on its mission, you can’t really be a music video star anymore. Beyonce and Lady Gaga qualify, just barely; they don’t do anything that Michael Jackson didn’t do better. In the years since Thriller, the industry seems to have forgotten how to make gazillions of dollars off of pop records. The starmaker machinery still groans away in Los Angeles, but it appears to be running short of toner. The suits like to blame the Internet and file-sharing. I believe it’s far more complicated than that; but that’s a discussion for another day. Michael Jackson’s early adulthood coincided with the zenith of pop music mass-marketing. Conditions had never been quite as favorable for pop blockbusters than they were in the early Eighties, and they’d never be as favorable as they were again. Jackson’s own talent had plenty to do with that, but probably not as much as I think it did, and I am a crazed, rabid, one-glove-wearing fan who nearly broke my neck trying to moonwalk too close to the staircase of our suburban house in Springfield, New Jersey. Because of the time during which he made his most famous records and the unparalleled hysteria that followed their release, it is next to impossible to compare Michael Jackson’s career to that of any other pop star.

Me, I like to compare Michael Jackson to Jackie Robinson.

Here’s something about Michael Jackson and Thriller that people forget: “The Girl Is Mine” was the lead single. They had “Billie Jean”, and “Beat It”, and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”, and “Baby Be Mine” in the can, and they released “The Girl Is Mine” first. Paul McCartney shows up to do a not-quite-serious duet vocal that almost sinks the track, and it didn’t even matter to CBS. Those who felt at the time that Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones were pandering to white MOR pop fans had all the ammunition they needed to make their argument. But I’d like to think that the real purpose of “The Girl Is Mine” was to sneak a fight between a black guy and a white guy onto mainstream radio, and to do so in advance of several singles that were, by their very nature, assaults on the color bar. Consider the possibility that they were more theorized than it seemed: McCartney’s limp insouciance might well be meant to stand in for white complacency. And as for Jackson, it’s pretty clear that he’s not singing about a woman.

And could you blame him for his frustration? In 1982, MTV would not air videos by black people. This was definitely part of the station’s brand launch; it was also nearly its undoing. Younger people sometimes don’t believe me when I mention this — they say things like “oh, you mean there were separate shows for ‘urban’ videos?” No, it wasn’t like that at all. If you mugged Nina Blackwood for an ‘81 MTV playlist, you wouldn’t find any black people on it, period. Music Television was a whites-only club as exclusive as any in Johannesburg, or Columbia, South Carolina. Jackson didn’t even bother making a video for “The Girl Is Mine”; even after he’d turned the station inside out with “Thriller”, he opted against spots for “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”, “P.Y.T.”, and “Human Nature”.

Many of you know the tale of Walter Yetnikoff’s strongarm tactics against the network: he allegedly told MTV that if they refused to air Michael Jackson, he’d pull all of the other CBS clips from the channel. He could get away with that because Columbia Records was part of a gigantic corporate entity and MTV was still a start-up. The story is misleading because it suggests that MTV acted alone. As anybody with a cursory knowledge of Eighties mainstream radio can tell you, the video channel was by no means the only media outlet with a Blacks Keep Out sign on the fence.

It was just the most desperate. MTV may have been bankrolled by the majors, but there were plenty of folks certain that it wouldn’t catch on. We have a nice retrospective appreciation of roly-poly fish heads and Martha Quinn’s floral dresses, but early MTV aired quite a bit of not-ready-for-prime-time crapola. No matter how strategically segregationist your marketing strategy may be, there’s only so many times you can air the guy from A Flock Of Seagulls with his middle finger on the synthesizer before it starts getting ridiculous — especially when you’ve got the “Billie Jean” video collecting dust on your desk.

So it’s not surprising that MTV was the first to cave. Once they did air Michael Jackson, everything else on the channel looked sloppy and amateurish by comparison. Yes, we’re all lo-fi appreciators and communitarian punk rockers here, but even the most relentless egalitarian will lose his shit in the presence of glass-shattering talent. (And in case you haven’t noticed, most of America isn’t made up of relentless egalitarians.) After “Billie Jean”, the playlist had to change; otherwise, the station would have been hobbled by its incongruity. “Thriller” can’t be followed by “I Wanna Be Lifeguard” — it’s just unfair. Prince and Lionel Richie were in, Blotto and Dog Police were out. The station would continue to control its melanin level — it still does — but the whitewash was over for good.

If Yetnikoff tried the same trick with commercial radio, he didn’t get far; at least not at first. “Beat It” rocked harder than Billy Squier, but the heavy music deejays wouldn’t cooperate. We no longer think of Michael Jackson as lyrically provocative (although he always was), but in ‘82, he was a young and dangerously androgynous black man singing about unwanted pregnancy, gang violence, abuse, and miscegenation — and it scared the holy hell out of the MOR programmers. His blatant queerness was an issue for new wave stations that had no problem airing David Bowie and Human League. Top 40 is a self-defining institution, so at least we could count on Casey Kasem. But the best place to hear Michael Jackson was on MTV.

He used the videos to obliterate the barriers that separated black and non-black audiences. In 1980, the music that played on my block bore no resemblance to the songs that played on the African-American side of town; to me and my playmates, “urban” music meant the Billy Joel songs that explicitly addressed the city. By ‘83, we were all listening to Michael Jackson. Maybe his motivation was money; we all know how he drew his sales goals in condensation trails on the mirror every morning. He must have realized he needed to penetrate white America to stack that kind of bank. Certainly he made no political statements. Then again, he didn’t need to. No black nationalist ever did a better job of forcing mass American culture to confront an African-American face. That he obliterated that face beyond recognition almost underscores the point: Michael Jackson’s image became a symbol, and it can’t help but feel unreal to exist as a walking signifier.

Critics of Michael Jackson like to point to the brevity of his productive seasons: he doesn’t have Paul McCartney’s discography, let alone Van Morrison’s, so we’re not supposed to take him seriously as a songwriter or as an artist. I love Paul McCartney and Van the Man, but they never had to shoulder the burden that Michael Jackson did. They didn’t have to pry the padlocks off mass prejudice with nothing but force of personality. They weren’t up against a color bar. Jackie Robinson got a late start; he didn’t pile up the sort of career numbers that you’d expect from a typical Hall of Famer. But everybody who saw him play called him electrifying. Likewise, nobody who saw Michael Jackson in 1982 could ever dispute his utter mastery of pop music. Nobody has ever done it better. If you were there, you knew.

I first saw him perform on Soul Train; I also remember watching rebroadcasts of the Jackson 5 cartoon when I was very small. Normally I resented child stars for getting the attention that ought to be accruing to me. But here was a kid so stupefyingly talented that he transcended any petty resentments I might have had. Half a decade later, he worked the same magic on the entire country. The rappers who came in his wake — and, honestly, all rappers came in his wake — would invade suburban living rooms and set all the furniture on fire. It was fine; that furniture had to go. I’m grateful to every one of them. I’m more grateful to Michael Jackson for clearing the path.

Commercial radio resegregated in the early Nineties; I think they called it “alternative music”. Much of the work that Michael Jackson did was undone by faceless white guys wearing flannel. By then, Michael Jackson had lost his marbles, predictably, and in public, too. He became an easy target. I pulled for Dangerous to do the same thing to grunge that Thriller had to post-punk, but honestly, I knew it was too late. You can’t except the same guy to turn the world upside down twice — even George Washington only had one revolution to fight. Jackie Robinson died young, too; he was only 53. In 2010, we don’t focus on his endorsement of Richard Nixon or his cranky anti-drug crusading. We remember a ballplayer who made history for all the right reasons. Thankfully, now that he’s gone, the image of Michael Jackson the lunatic child molester and plastic-surgery disaster is already beginning to fade. It’ll never go away completely, and I can even accept that it’s a part of the story. But it’s a sidebar at best — and as all of the tawdry stuff recedes further into the haze of celebrity nonsense, it’s a sidebar that’ll grow smaller and smaller.

In conclusion, let me put it to you this way:

When I was in college, much effort was given by my progressive professors to debunk the “great man” theory. History, we were taught, was made not by single actors but by social movements. Valorize a long line of heroes and you tend to reduce history to a statue garden. Well, maybe. There’s good patricidal fun to be had in throwing stones at idols, but I never stopped thinking my progressive professors were wrong. My proof for this wasn’t Abraham Lincoln, or John F. Kennedy, or Bella Abzug, or Captain America. My proof was always Michael Jackson. In 1983, anybody who didn’t believe in the great man theory didn’t have a television set. Talent, grace, and charisma are all real, and magnificent, and historiography that doesn’t make room — lots of room — for these qualities feels curiously cold and impersonal. Michael Jackson had Columbia Records in his corner, and that’s certainly a sturdier platform than most charismatic artists get. But Columbia Records didn’t shake the globe. Michael Jackson did. Call Mr. West a bigmouth (he will surely agree) but he’s right about this: everybody in this pop game is trying to be like Michael Jackson. They’ve realized what Elvis and Colonel Parker didn’t; something we all learned in ‘82: a pop star is something like a magic bullet. They can fire you out of the biggest gun they’ve got, but once you’re out there, it’s still your own speed and force against gravity. If you’re fast enough, and strong enough, there’s no barrier you can’t penetrate.

Final words continue tomorrow.

Catherine Ireton.

Best Vocal Harmonies

Catherine Ireton. She’s a one-woman girl group on “Musician, Please Take Heed”, and she’s right there to spot the other GHTG acrobats when it’s their turn on the beam.

Best Rapper

Joell Ortiz. His verses on the Slaughterhouse album split the difference between Supreme Clientele-era Ghostface and Sir Mix-A-Lot. In other words, they go straight to my sweet spot.

Best Bassist

Jamie T.

Best Guitarist

Max Bemis.

Best Drummer

That kid from Passion Pit is crazy good, or his beat replacement software is. But I’m going to go with Tyler Minsberg of the Dangerous Summer. by a hair over Paramore’s Zach Farro. I gotta love these art-punk kids who make every part ten times more complicated than it needs to be. I mean that. Needless complication rocks.

Best Drum Fills

They’re all on the outro of “Lost At Sea”, the saddest song the Friedbergers have ever written. And they’ve written some sad ones.

Best Pianist/Organist

Yoni Wolf. But wait, I’ve got more to say about drummers. How about that immensely-entertaining fella from The Blackout? Everything he does is straight-up cliche, and he makes a damned good case for cliche.

Best Drum Programming

And while we’re on the subject of cliche, let’s give this one to Adam Young. Nothing he does on Ocean Eyes hasn’t been done a thousand times before, but it’s all so effective that it’s impossible to mind. Strip away the fey vocals and the lyrics about getting hugs from lightning bugs, and you’re left with a track that Prince Be might have rhymed on in 1992. You cannot say the same for any of those Postal Service hits.

Best Synth Playing

Kendrick Strauch of the Harlem Shakes. They’ll be missed.

Best Use Of A Non-Traditional Instrument

I’m partial to the electric didgeridoo on the Loney, Dear album, but it might just be a sample. The electronic tamboura that imparts the ghostly texture to the Clientele’s “Harvest Time”? — that was actually played by a human. With an electronic tamboura. Not too many folks have one.

Best Backing Vocals

Why?, “This Blackest Purse”. The funniest backing vocals were Matt Friedberger’s ultra-deadpan “what I would do”s on “Drive To Dallas”. I laugh every time, and it’s not otherwise a humorous song.

Best Instrumental Solo

More Matt Friedberger: pick a solo from I’m Going Away. They’re all great. You might be partial to those tentative telegraph signals on “Even In The Rain”, or the berzerk tickertape stutter of “Charmaine Champagne”, or the slack-string chaos on “Ray Bouvier”.

Best Instrumentalist

If she really did do all the bass and guitar on New Worlds (I don’t have liner notes, but I’m guessing she’s responsible for everything but the drums), the answer has to be Charlotte Hatherley.

Best Songwriting

Stuart Murdoch. Have we given him his lifetime achievement award yet? Where does Murdoch fit, I wonder, in the greatest-of-all-time discussions that we like to have around the hot stove? You can call him the songwriter of the decade, and I won’t fight; call him the songwriter of the past two decades, and I’ll put together a meek counter-argument with the words “Liz Phair” in there somewhere. But I don’t think he’s passed Ray Davies yet. He definitely hasn’t passed Townshend yet. Standards were higher in the Sixties and Seventies. Sorry, they just were.

Best Production

Lukas Burton claims to have co-written an album that even I won’t defend: James Blunt’s bazillion-selling debut. He’s got a lot to make up for. Luckily for Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy, she’s the current instrument of his penance. There are one or two Lilith Fair-style missteps on Bomb In A Birdcage, but for the most part, it’s the most arresting-sounding singer-songwriter album I’ve heard since… well, since Brooke Fraser’s set last year. But if you obey Satan and pretend Fraser doesn’t exist, you’d have to go back to Mitchell Froom’s mid-Nineties creative demolition of Suzanne Vega’s operating paradigm. My favorite production on a single song was done by the underrated Shondrae “Bangladesh” Crawford on Gucci Mane’s “Lemonade”. Pulling out the backbeat on the chorus was an outrageous choice.

Best Arrangements

Elizabeth & The Catapult. Also heavily indebted to the Vega-Froom albums. Folks were ambivalent about 99.9F and Nine Objects Of Desire when they were released, but they suggest a way forward for singer-songwriters tired of making wannabe iPod commercials.

Best Musical Moment Of 2009

On “Down And Dusky Blonde”, the last song on God Help The Girl, the operatic narrative conceit disappears completely: the story is ostensibly Eve’s, but just about every singer on the record gets a crack at a verse. They’re all pretty good, or at least game; some of the God Help The Girl singers do sound a little too thrilled to be there to do justice to Stuart Murdoch’s typically-ambivalent lyrics. After four different vocalists have taken their turn on the microphone (including two who he probably really did turn up on the Internet), Catherine Ireton ends amateur hour abruptly, clearing the bases with a grand slam. “It’s a drag that you’re getting old” is her first line, and of course she’s singing to Murdoch himself, and about the May-December love affair that they didn’t have to have because she’s on his record instead. For months, I wondered what Ireton’s performance reminded me of, and then it hit me. It’s exactly like Q-Tip’s entrance in the middle of “Scenario” — but exactly. The rest of the emcees on the posse cut are having a good time, engaging in friendly competition, trying to outdo each other. Then the voice for the ages comes in and makes them all sound like the secondary characters they are. It’s a Leader Quest mission, and she’s got the goods here.

Best Lyrics

The Roadside Graves, “My Son’s Home”. John Gleason is turning into Stephen Crane, right before our eyes. He’s got better tunes, too.

Best Lyrics Over A Full Album

Darren Russell Hayman, Pram Town. Nobody stateside picked up on the French, Hayman’s first post-Hefner band, which is a shame: Local Information, their first album, was a stupendously funny (and sad, of course; Hayman specializes in sad) examination of the London suburbs. He’s back to the satellite towns, and this time, he’s digging even deeper. If you don’t find urban design moving, you’ll probably be taken aback by Pram Town at first, but if you can’t get into “High Rise Towers In Medium Sized Towns”, you aren’t from New Jersey. Or any place like it.

Band Of The Year

Paramore by an eyelash over Metric. I go for the traditional stuff. Also, before we go any further, I’d like to say that Metric’s decision to leave “Waves” off of Fantasies was the most inexplicable thing anybody did in 2009, and quite possibly the most inexplicable thing any big league band has ever done. With “Waves”, that’s a five-star album, and at least number four on the year-end list. Fantastic melody, great performance, excellent lyric; sure, Emily, throw it in the crapper. Sometimes I think they’re taking too many cues from Elvis Costello.

Best Live Show I Saw In 2009

Roadside Graves @ Pianos.

Best Music Video

Mos Def, “Casa Bey”. The Ecstatic took awhile. Some of the world music experiments are brilliant, especially “The Embassy”; others struck me as gimmicky. For the first time, Mos Def seemed (intermittently) self-conscious. After I saw the “Casa Bey” clip, all was forgiven. It did everything a video is supposed to do: reinforce the star’s charisma and underscore what’s essential about his work (the rapping, dummy). Also, for the first time in decades, he flashes us a smile.

Sexiest Person In Pop Music

Valerie “Lights” Poxleitner. To paraphrase David Cone after he got a glimpse of Darryl Strawberry’s member, I’d like to look like that for a couple of days. I’d like to see how my life would change.

2009 Album You Listened To The Most

Fantasies.

2009 Album That Wore Out The Quickest

Wale, Attention Deficit. In retrospect, the warning signs were on the mixtapes. His faux-sympathetic songs about girls in the club are taxing on second listen and impossible on the third. I move we go back to the days when rappers pretended that women didn’t exist. We’ll make an exception for Kanye West, just so we don’t forget what the prohibition is there for.

Most Romantic Song

Say Anything, “Crush’d”. Never mind the cheesy pick-up lines — when was the last time you heard a boy this excited about a girl on record? Honorable mention: The Clientele’s “Never Anyone But You”.

Funniest Song

“Hardcore Gentlemen” is apparently funnier to Von Pea than it is to anybody else on earth, but give him this: the public access radio sketch on Brooklynati really is hilarious. That’s not a song, though. My vote goes to “Perfection As A Hipster” from God Help The Girl. Neil Hannon plays it deadpan — absurdly so — and Catherine Ireton’s backing vocals are seriously LOL.

Most Frightening Song

On Hospice, Peter Silberman of The Antlers falls for a dying girl while working in the cancer ward, watches her kick the bucket, and then gets chased around by her ghost. Some of it is chain-pulling, some of it is emotionally manipulative, and, considering the subject matter, it all sounds much more like “Streets Of Philadelphia” than it ought to. But when it works, boy, does it work. In the epilogue, he’s buried alive in the morgue, and the screaming face of his dead lover is pressed up against his. He sounds scared shitless. Listen to it in the dark and you will be, too.

Most Moving Song

“High Rise Towers In Medium Sized Towns”. Since community can’t be planned, planned communities are a tragedy in concrete.

Sexiest Song

“Electric Twist”, by A Fine Frenzy. A crazy-horny performance by a wordy young woman — an intellectual’s pinup — who is teased by her bad, bad boyfriend and told not to think or talk. By the end of the song, she wants it so bad that she can’t do either. She can only “uh uh uh uh” in a fetching sort of way. She may as well be pointing to her genitals and screaming. I reiterate: this is a wordy young woman and an intellectual’s pinup.

Meanest Song

Morrissey, “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore”. Even if you haven’t heard it, can’t you just imagine?

Most Inspiring Song

In “Do Better”, Max Bemis disses Scientologists, Will & Grace, Harvard, and athiesm in the first eight lines. He really knows how to get my Irish up. But I can’t imagine you have the same afflictions that I do, or Max does, so the answer is “Face Up”, by Lights. That is some first-rate self-actualization pop. Which leads us to my favorite category (now in its third year):

Song That Most Makes Me Wish I Was A Christian

Lights, “Lions”. Brooke Fraser she is not, but I am sure Hillsong would appreciate this ferocious chorus: “Lions make you brave/ giants give you faith/ death is a charade/ you don’t have to feel safe to feel unafraid.” Charles Martel notwithstanding, Christianity didn’t become a world-famous belief system by accident.

Most Inspiring Moment

Hayley Williams gets the feeling that if she sings it loud enough, you will sing it back to her. Then she sings it, loud enough. Did I sing it back to her? What do you think?

Rookie Of The Year

Drake. No, I don’t care that he was on DeGrassi. I don’t watch that junk, and I am pleased as hell that he’s not watching it anymore, either.

Best Cover

Bryce Avary’s solo YouTube version of “Maps”. He turns it into the Johnny Cougar heartland number it always begged to be. YYY fans, line up to smack me.

Most Unwelcome Cover

The lazy-ass iconoclast who did that wretched cut-time version of “All You Need Is Love” for the Blackberry ad.

Best Guest Appearance

Shara Worden as the Queen on Hazards Of Love. Holy crap, she sounds remarkably not unlike Grace Slick! If she’d ever sang like that on her My Brightest Diamond records, I wouldn’t have sold them back to Princeton Record Exchange. How did this happen, I wonder? Colin Meloy says to her “I think you ought to sing this one like Grace Slick”, and she says “okay!”? And then she leaves the studio and goes right back to the operatic hooey? How many hundreds of thousands of pop starlets have tried to sound like Grace Slick on “Mexico” or some other far-out Airplane number, and flopped? Don’t waste the gift, Worden.

Most Convincing Historical Recreation

More Lights. This time, it’s “Second Go”, which is ‘87 like the Debbie Gibson who never grew up and starred in Broadway schlock. Poxleitner wins extra points for playing a keytar with zero irony. Warms my dayglo heart. Don’t give me Jesus & Mary Chain, folks, give me Jesus and Taylor Dayne.

Crummy Album You Listened To A Lot Anyway

Fever Ray.

Thing You Don’t Know, But You Know You Should

Love Vs. Money by The-Dream. Also, MUSE sounds right up my alley, as long as it is, as advertised, more Queen than Radiohead.

Album That Felt Most Like An Obligation To Get Through And Enjoy

Working On A Dream. God forgive me.

Album That Sounded Like It Was The Most Fun To Make

Passion Pit, Manners. Proof positive that college rock doesn’t have to be joyless.

Album That Sounded Like It Was A Chore To Make

Honestly, Abnormally Attracted To Sin. Tori Amos’s bona fides as a concept-master can never be questioned; here, the concept seems to be her bizarre S&M fantasies. “To get off, he screams ’slutty goth’/ but I’m a brightly colored person!”, she complains on “Police Me”. Hoo boy. Part of her appeal is that she’s always been about a centimeter away from losing it altogether; these days, she’s posing for pictures with an iguana while wearing a leather bustier. I will always love her to death, and she is entitled to a mulligan and as many orgasms as Kevin Barnes has, at least. But I’m damned glad I’m not her manager.

Man, I Wish I Knew What This Song Was About

“Outlaw Pete”. Also, is “Queen Of The Supermarket” a joke?

Most Overrated

Lil Wayne. He’s a caricature now, totally displaced; he doesn’t even bother to talk about New Orleans anymore. He could be from the moon for all the average American pop listener knows. Sure, he’s a good rapper. So what? There are plenty of those. The task for Weezy now is coming up with something worth saying. Freddie Gibbs packs more meaning into an average couplet than Wayne has in his last two albums.

Song Or Album That Should Have Been Shorter

Every single track on the Diane Birch debut wears out its welcome, especially the interminable “Rewind”. The jam just goes on and on, even after the drummer falls down drunk on his snare (okay, maybe it just sounds that way.) She needs an editor, and a real producer.

Song Or Album That Should Have Been Longer

Farmer Dave Scher, Flash Forward To The Good Times. Also, after nine tracks of lyrical wheel-spinning, the Golden Bloom album concludes with a minute-long hidden track about Rod Blagojevic. It’s over far too soon, but it still makes the rest of the album seem indirect and limpid by comparison. Sing about stuff, people! It won’t make you cool or get you positive notice in Showpaper, but it will make your songs memorable.

Album That Turned Out To Be A Hell Of A Lot Better Than You Initially Thought It Was

Eskimo Snow.

Worst Song Of The Year

Lil Wayne & Chris Brown, “I Can Transform Ya”. “I can transform you/ like a transformer/ I can turn you from a human into a Carter.” See, he admitted it!, he has no interest in being a person anymore. I guess if there’s a place for Disco Duck on the pop charts, we can still make room for Weezy, but there was a time when I believed he was after something a little more significant than that. No longer.

Worst Video Of The Year

Pink, “Please Don’t Leave Me”. The pop star in an evil nurse uniform, torturing her boyfriend with a golf club. She really knows how to press all of the gauche buttons at once. This is a shame, because it’s a good song, and I don’t necessarily want to turn the channel when it comes on. The backing vocals reminded me of Trembling Blue Stars (no joking). Later, George Pasles told me “Please Don’t Leave Me” sounded like “Room Enough”, a song by George Pasles. So there you have it from two cupcake-pop makers: Pink is on some straight-up Sarah Records shit. Appearing at Cake Shop this Wednesday: Pink, with Hospitality and Metric Mile.

Worst Singing

Fuck it, I’ll say it: I like him a lot, but I’ve got to admit that Peter Silberman strangles the hell out of his own excellent writing from time to time. Antony Hegarty can get away with singing like that because he’s basically an art buffoon. Silberman wants to be a real reporter, but real reporters don’t ululate.

Worst Rapping

I was thrilled to hear Leighton Meester spit, because I didn’t want to have to vote for Ke$ha in this category. But the real answer is Bruce Hornsby’s ten-year-old kid on “Space Is The Place”. I know music is the family business, but that bordered on child abuse.

Worst Lyrics

Phoenix. At some point “we’re French” ceases to be an excuse.

Worst Lyrics By A Good Lyricist Who Should Have Known Better

Tracyanne Campbell, “French Navy”. It is intelligence-insulting and borderline racist for the author of “Teenager” to write a Motown fake containing the following refrain: “you make me go oooooh/ with the things that you do”. Also, “you with your dietary restriction/ you said you loved me with a lotta conviction” is the lamest couplet to come out of Glasgow since Stuart Murdoch rhymed “poet” with “you don’t even know it” in “Funny Little Frog”.

Worst Song On A Good Album

“In The City”, by Rahim Samad. Travel Properly represents Tampa well, but this one is a misstep. Detuning the sample during the verse in order to change key: a big, sick-sounding no-no. Not to mention that it speeds up and slows down the beat. Who knows?, maybe he thought it was avant garde.

Most Thoroughly Botched Production Job

All the college rock that came from the hipster centers in 2009. We’re going to look back on the past two years and wonder what the hell we were thinking. Now, you might live in some wholesome place like Franklin, Tennessee, or the Biosphere, so let me share with you what you’re missing. The fashion in Williamsburg and (especially) Bushwick is to get a crappy guitar, like a Danelectro or a weatherbeaten imitation Strat, put it on the shrillest pickup possible, and run it through a tube amp with the treble cranked to eleven. Then, just in case there’s somebody in the listening audience who can still make out the words, the vocals are smothered in reverb and distortion. This is then home-mastered by some kid with a laptop and thirty seconds of recording experience: he believes that pegging the VU meters into the red is intrinsically awesome. Oh, you’re looking for a scapegoat? You want me to name names? How about Vivian Girls?

Best Sounding Album Of 2009

Holly Williams, Here With Me.

Most Appropriately-Named Album or Artist

The Leftovers, Eager To Please. They sure are.

Most Inappropriately-Named Album or Artist

Forever The Sickest Kids.

Song That Would Drive You Craziest On Infinite Repeat

Architecture In Helsinki, “That Beep”.

Song That Got Stuck In Your Head The Most This Year

“Carry On Wayward Son”. I heard it in the grocery store in April, and didn’t stop singing it until October.

Thing You Feel Cheapest About Liking

Barack Obama.

Hoary Old Bastard Who Should Spare Us All And Retire

Sufjan Stevens, apparently. Everything you need to know about college rock in the ’00s: Stevens went from “I’m going to do an album about each of the fifty states!” to “there is no point in writing any more songs” in five years. It would be funny if it wasn’t sad, and sad if it wasn’t funny. Okay, I admit it’s a little funnier than it is sad.

Young Upstart Who Should Be Sent Down To The Minors For More Seasoning

It’s still Natasha Khan, and after the shapeless mess that was her last album, I think she’d better get some at-bats in the Arizona Fall League, too. Here’s a statement about contemporary college rock that’s sadder than it is funny: the obscenely-talented Charlotte Hatherley, who could not get her album released stateside, spent much of the the year touring as a sidewoman in Bat For Lashes. That’s like hiring Mario Batali to be a line cook at the Olive Garden.

Artist Most In Need Of Some Fresh Ideas

Rich Burlew. Maybe seven hundred stick figure comics is enough.

Most Unsexy Person In Pop

Jay-Z.

Best Line Or Rhyme

Slaughterhouse is nonstop vulgar witticisms, and of course I loved them all. But my favorite line on the album wasn’t clever or poetic, and doesn’t even scan very well. Joell Ortiz: “There’s no reason a musician should wanna watch a television/ instead of be listening to the radio”. Words to live by.

2009 Album You Feel You’ll Probably Re-evaluate in 2010

Eskimo Snow might be a bit low at #12.

Place The Next Pop Music Boom Will Come From

Moneterrey, Mexico, if Todd Patrick has anything to say about it.

Will Still Be Making Good Records In 2019

Max Bemis. He’s over the suicide thing, and the drug overdose thing, and about to settle in for a long run as a loudmouth social observer/big brother.

Will Be A One Hit Wonder (Tinted Windows Doesn’t Count)

Ida Maria, but you’ll be hearing “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” for the rest of your life once it’s placed on the soundtrack to some screwy romantic comedy.

Forbidden Concepts For 2010

No rapper is allowed to write another song about hip-hop that rehashes Common’s dead-in-the-water “Used To Love Her” metaphor! No rapper is allowed to write a “love” song to his gun! 50 Cent, are you listening? You’re better than this, man.

Biggest Musical Trend Of 2010

Bands rediscovering — and then rehashing — Pavement and Guided By Voices.

Best Album Of 2010

Of Men And Angels.

You're gonna make mistakes; you're young.

So am I at it again?

The year’s most appealing album was also its most audacious: God Help The Girl, the imaginary soundtrack to an equally-imaginary film by Stuart Murdoch. If Sinister felt like a sudden, welcome break from the relentless midrange guitar nonsense that ruined pop in the ’90s, GHTG is even more of an outlier: an album loaded with ostentatious musicianship and boisterous personality, released to a college rock demimonde that has had little time for either lately. The college rock is now a druggy, underproduced, inarticulate mess; that’s part of its appeal. Murdoch’s new recordings are as tight and bright and crisply-illustrated as candy bar wrappers. In the early years of the decade — back when blueberry boats were still in vogue, I mean — its ornamentation and comprehensive storyboarding wouldn’t have been astonishing. In 2009, God Help The Girl sounded radical.

A surprising (to me) number of B&S diehards slept on this set. They might have been turned off by the devotional-sounding name, or the two recycled tracks from Life Pursuit, or prior bad experience with the band’s imaginary soundtrack to Todd Solondz’s not-so-imaginary Storytelling, or Murdoch’s insistence in interviews that this was something other than a Belle & Sebastian album with a female singer upfront. Only that’s Richard Colburn on drums, and the great Bobby Kildea on bass, and Chris “Beans” Geddes bouncing away on the electric piano. Stevie Jackson funks out on the guitar and contributes a fairly good song, just as he does on all the other Belle & Sebastian albums. Murdoch doesn’t sing, except for the songs where he does. The lyrics are about sexually-ambiguous and bookish students in the city (likely Glasgow) who struggle with romantic relationships, eating disorders, and the pains of being pure at heart — as they have been on every B&S set since Tigermilk. There’s even a soft-focus picture of a chick on the cover. So, yeah, it’s a Belle & Sebastian album.

And the female singer upfront isn’t just anybody. For reasons I don’t understand, Murdoch has attempted to obscure this, circulating the story that he’d assembled a girl group by anonymously placing “musician wanted” ads on the Internet. There are many voices on God Help The Girl, and I’m willing to believe that a few of them were waiver-wire pickups; you can pad out a championship team like that. However, the Girl herself is no stranger — astute B&S completists will recognize Catherine Ireton’s face from the front of the White Collar Boy EP. And upon close inspection, the “girl group” turns out to be a bit of a conceit: Ireton takes many of the songs herself, handling lead and backing vocals with equal confidence. Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy and Asya from Smoosh drop in to portray characters in Murdoch’s narrative, but Ireton steals those songs, too.

These Poll designations are all subjective, of course, and if you didn’t like Ireton’s vocals at all, I can’t say I’d be surprised. She has absolutely zero in common with any other singer on any other album released in muffled old 2009. She refuses to slur any of her syllables; instead, she articulates every consonant, pausing over her “r”s and “p”s and marking each glottal stop precisely. She sings chromatic runs, like she’s Jenny Lind or somebody from the last turn of the century. She carefully invests every word — right down to the conjunctions — with personality and meaning; throughout the album, she sounds almost unbearably awake. She gets all of Murdoch’s jokes. Were Henry Higgins a voter in Critics Poll 2009, I am confident he’d list Catherine Ireton as Best Singer.

This presents a problem for Murdoch’s storytelling: the more command Ireton demonstrates, the less she has in common with the typical aimless B&S narrators. This disjunction may torpedo the film project. But I’m not a moviegoer, so I don’t care. I’m just glad Murdoch finally found a foil who could jump him out of his routine — and maybe even make fun of him a bit in the process. Ireton may not be “Eve”, the hospitalized main character of the story that accompanies God Help The Girl, but she’s completely believable as a funny, literate ingenue with a desperate desire to get the hell out of a gray university town.

I placed the album third. Really, nobody had any chance against my #1 — that set went straight into my bloodstream. Max Bemis’s last set (which also topped my list) was meant to be an intervention in an age-old fight between establishmentarians and the kids whose lives they casually ruin; this one, I am convinced, was made especially for me. But I’ve also listed God Help The Girl behind the latest from a singer-songwriter whose debt to Belle & Sebastian is greater than Colin Meloy’s. The reasons feel familiar to me: like all B&S sets, God Help The Girl is uneven; it rehashes old ideas; some of the other girls aren’t too impressive. The jazz-orchestral instrumentals (especially “Unified Theory”) are time-killers. At times the project does feel like one of those Woody Allen vehicles where the director casts a bunch of nubile Hollywood starlets in leading roles so he can have a legal excuse to do nude scenes with them. We’ve always known that Stuart Murdoch likes to surround himself with pretty girls. Sometimes lightning strikes: one of those girls proves to be more than just a fantasy. If you’re very lucky, she might even show you that she’s the mack, and you’re just along for the ride.

As for Ireton herself, all bets are off. She might get shipped back to Cork, never to be heard from again. She might put out dazzling records of her own, or she might decide to front some sadly-generic folk-rock project. Murdoch might pull a Carl Newman and find a place for her in his band. Or maybe that movie will get made, and she’ll prove to be every bit as revelatory on the big screen as she is on compact disc. The story of Eve that accompanies God Help The Girl is, if you’ll forgive me, a comprehensive encapsulation of everything that’s bad about Belle & Sebastian: on the printed page, tales of young girls lost in the system start to feel very much like fodder for the Television for Women. Ireton saves Stuart Murdoch from his worst excesses. She may go right on saving him. One way or another, I hope to be hearing from her for a long, long time.

One last word about #6, and then it’s on to the list, I promise. Many believe that since Colin Meloy is never going to top the “Apology Song”, he may as well hang them up and go home. I prefer to say that since he’s never going to top the “Apology Song”, he may as well attempt to craft neo-prog epics about mystical beasts on the Scottish taiga. The Hazards Of Love ends like Titanic, and of course that’s not so good. But I love everything else about the album: the over-the-top ELP organ breaks, and Tull sludge guitar, the Strawbs-y harpsichord, the Annie Haslam art-folk melodies, the subcontracted performances from Shara Worden and Becky Stark, the absurd theatrical aspirations, the little kids who play the ghosts of the Rake’s victims. I don’t even mind that Meloy hogs all the good songs; unlike Murdoch, he didn’t change the name of the band on the sleeve of his concept set, so he knows he’s singing to the initiated. It doesn’t deserve the top spot, but it might deserve a laser show. In 2009, that’s enough.

Best Album of 2009:

1. Say Anything — Say Anything
2. Darren Hayman & The Secondary Modern – Pram Town
3. God Help The Girl
4. Jamie T — Kings & Queens
5. Drake — So Far Gone
6. The Decemberists — The Hazards Of Love
7. Cruiserweight — Big Bold Letters
8. Ace Enders & A Million Different People — When I Hit The Ground
9. Metric — Fantasies
10. The Dangerous Summer — Reach For The Sun
11. The Roadside Graves — My Son’s Home
12. Why? — Eskimo Snow
13. Mos Def — The Ecstatic
14. Holly Williams — Here With Me
15. Tanya Morgan — Brooklynati
16. Paramore — Brand New Eyes
17. Lights — The Listening
18. A Fine Frenzy — Bomb In A Birdcage
19. Future Of The Left — Travels With Myself And Another
20. Slaughterhouse — Slaughterhouse

Album I didn’t know where to place:

Every Avenue’s Picture Perfect. Since critics are snobs, most do not bother with the corporate rock. Those of us who do will often glibly demand of our faceless favorites that they sprout personalities and shoehorn some specifics into their generic heartache numbers. Be careful what you wish for. David Ryan Strauchmann (now just David Ryan) used to be just another lonely masturbator, wanking himself asleep in his empty room. A year later, he has morphed into every woman’s nightmare: a glib, winking, self-entitled emo Lothario comfortable leading the gang vocals about the “trap” between his girlfriend’s legs. After the ‘08 release ofShh… Just Go With It (boy, does that title sound sinister in retrospect), I likened Strauchmann to Huey Lewis. With Picture Perfect, the comparison still holds — Huey was a smug motherfucker, too. The casual cruelty of “I Forgive You” and “Tell Me I’m A Wreck” — in which the singer deadpans the vicious breakup couplet “I guess we just want different things/I want space, you want a diamond ring” — make the romantic “don’t go” power ballads feel all the more emotionally manipulative. But I cannot front: I always ask artists to inscribe a specific time and place in their recordings, and Strauchmann really does get you right in the middle of a tawdry Midwestern pick-up scene. You can almost smell the onion rings coming from the Applebee’s kitchen. No, it isn’t a triumph, and it’s not better than Slaughterhouse or A Fine Frenzy, but Picture Perfect is a weirdly compelling album that does reflect genuine growth. He’s drawing characters and establishing settings. His knack for rafter-raising melodies hasn’t deserted him, either.

Most unfairly-maligned album:

Til The Casket Drops. The latest Clipse got body-slammed because it isn’t as good as Lord Willin’ or Hell Hath No Fury. I have to believe there is a double-standard operating here, or perhaps our expectations for rappers are higher than they are for college rockers. Those who came for verbal acrobatics from Pusha T and got nothing but intermittently-hot flossing anthems are pardoned their disappointment. But listen again: it’s Malice who makes this album indispensable. His Christian conversion — the first convincing one in rap music in a blue moon — makes his verses a fascinating counterpoint to his brother’s. Also, “Door Man” is off the hook.

Nicest try:

Elvis Costello’s Secret, Profane, And Sugarcane. With nothing left to prove, MacManus tries to pull off musical miracles. (Just for kicks, I mean.) Here, he gathers the detritus that washed up onshore when his musical about P.T. Barnum foundered on the rocks of its own (welcome) conceptual overreach, some outtakes from the pseudo-country set The Delivery Man, a quick revision of a not-so-good tune from All This Useless Beauty, and a few new originals about old obsessions. Noted accomplice T-Bone Burnett attempts to harmonize these show tunes, folk tunes, and standard-issue Costello tunes into something resembling an album. He does so by recording them all with a bluegrass band, coaxing a few stellar performances out of Costello’s whiskey-strangled throat, and I will be damned if he doesn’t almost turn the trick. Costello threatens to push into new territory, too, hinting in his lyrics at connections between prison, slavery, 19th century propriety, hidden shame, and the myth of the American West. If he’d started writing from scratch, he might’ve come up with another classic, or at least another Momofuku. As it is, it’s a frustrating set, and a compendium of interesting dead ends. As B-sides compilations go, it’s one of the bravest.

Best Single of 2009:

1. Metric — “Gimme Sympathy”
2. Owl City — “Fireflies”
3. The Blackout — “The Warning (S.O.S)”
4. All-Time Low — “Weightless”
5. Gucci Mane — “Lemonade”
6. The Dangerous Summer — “The Permanent Rain”
7. Big Boi & Gucci Mane — “Shine Blockas”
8. Camera Obscura — “Honey In The Sun”
9. Panic! At The Disco — “New Perspective”
10. Kid Cudi — “Day ‘N’ Nite”
11. Lady Gaga — “Bad Romance”
12. Micachu & The Shapes — “Golden Phone”
13. Ilyas — “Real Hip-Hop Don’t Die”
14. God Help The Girl — “Come Monday Night”
15. Brandi Carlile — “Dreams”
16. Ne-Yo — “Mad”
17. The Leftovers — “Telephone Operator”
18. Every Avenue — “Tell Me I’m A Wreck”
19. Pitbull — “I Know You Want Me”
20. New Boyz — “You’re A Jerk”

Best Album Title:

Mum — Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know

Best Album Cover:

The Best In Town, by the Blackout. Help me out, though: is it a human ascending from a hell town, or a straight-up evil exaltation? Works for me either way.

Best Liner Notes And Packaging:

Say Anything. The dumpy kid on the cover does battle with Max Bemis throughout the booklet. Max is the villain, see, and the kid is the superhero. They use as many toys from his bedroom as they can. (Yes, I have left the pronoun intentionally unclear.) My favorite band shot was the one on the back of I’m Going Away: the Friedberger siblings, sitting together on a sofa in a stark hi-rise living room decorated with African art.

Most Welcome Surprise:

The Hazards Of Love. I figured “The Island” was about as far into the prog-folk as those guys were willing to go; I mean, they’re crowd-pleasers at heart. I didn’t think Colin Meloy had the stomach to alienate his fraternity fanbase. Now I have to believe that they’re all in, and that we’ll eventually look at The Crane Wife as a transitional album. Welcome to the cabal, Colin.

Biggest Disappointment:

Before I Self-Destruct. I was the only person on the globe who expected it to be great. I was wrong, the world was right. Not for the first time, either.

Album that opens the strongest

Slaughterhouse. I don’t think any of the four emcees pause to catch their breaths until the second song. Then they just keep on passing the baton in a circle, running lap after lap at full speed. Eventually they hit the skits, the lactic acid catches up with them, and they all get cramps. Until then, it’s a hell of a race.

Album that ends the strongest

Eskimo Snow peaks with “Blackest Purse”, the penultimate song, and probably the best thing Why? has ever recorded. A thrillingly bitter digestif follows.

Song of the Year

After …Is A Real Boy dropped in 2004, some well-meaning grownup critic hung the “new Bob Dylan” tag on Max Bemis. I have come to see this as an insult to Max. The newly-converted Dylan stuck us with the flat and humorless Saved, which still plays as a pretty good advertisement for the Devil. Say Anything’s “Cemetery”, on the other hand, records a conversion experience that, from the sound of it, had to have been akin to getting thrown through a plate-glass window. Throughout the song, Bemis sounds absolutely astonished by his depth of feeling; like all the greatest Christian badasses from Augustine to C.S. Lewis to Brooke Fraser, he has come to realize that faith gives the ultimate middle finger to bureaucratic authority. He inhabits his belief as an act of defiance — and in so doing, he liberates himself. Christianity, as Chesterton points out, is the only world religious system with the guts to make God a rebel, an underdog, and a lifeline for reprobates, a leading light for inveterate punks, provocateurs and mischief-makers, and anybody angling against the establishment. Better still, his new wife (almost certainly the instrument of his conversion) sings backup on the choruses. Sherri DuPree is the “you” of the second verse, the true believer who convinces Bemis; later, stuck in the lake of fire, condemned but personality intact, it hardly matters if he’s shouting Jesus’s name or hers. God knows the important thing has already happened: he’s been reborn, flamethrower mouth intact, more himself than ever. Just like C.S. Lewis promised. Thanks, Max, for letting us in on it.

Okay, I have reached the strange word limit that this software system imposes. I’ll pick this up tomorrow.

Sorry, old friend.

Best Album Title:

Fewer votes in this category than usual, and many of those that did come in expressed frustration with the enterprise. “Not a good year for titles”, wrote Alan Young, and indeed, our winner was something of a protest against the concept of handles: the flat-footed Album by Girls. Extra Golden’s Thank You Very Quickly got some love, as did Travels With Myself And Another and the somewhat-inexplicable No One’s First And You’re Next by Modest Mouse. But your blank fields spoke volumes, as did this reply by the reliably colorful Steve Carlson: “None. That’s right, none. The best album titles this year were those that didn’t make me wince upon reading them; those, sadly were few and far between. But in a year that brought us such gems as Raditude, Mama I’m Swollen and Big Whiskey And The Groograx King, a band had to try real hard to come up with something worse, something so terrible that it guaranteed I would never listen to a second of the band’s output no matter how many sparkling reviews they got. So congratulations, Avett Brothers, for the repulsively twee I And Love And You.”

Best Album Cover:

Rachel Neill nominates a remarkable image I hadn’t seen (and maybe didn’t want to): the shocked businessman regurgitating status symbols on the cover of You Can’t Take It With You by As Tall As Lions. Twelve votes came in for It’s Blitz by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, because who doesn’t want to see Karen O crack a raw egg with her fist? (That freeze frame of the flying yolk is a startling photographic achievement, but still, that could have been somebody’s breakfast, or somebody’s chicken.) Ordinarily, that would’ve been enough to win, but the YYYs were up against some stiff competition. The support for Middle Cyclone was enthusiastic, to say the least; Jeff Norman called it the album cover of the decade. Efrain Calderon summed up its appeal like this: “babe with a sword + muscle car = winner”. For horny devils, anyway. I think it’s cute that she’s barefoot, but who is she looking at?

Biggest Disappointment:

“It was in myself”, confessed Anna Howe, “in my inability to engage with the classic artists who put out records this year”. She meant The Boss, among others. As it turned out, many voters who had paid a call to Springsteen while he was in the living years — especially Jersey loyalists who have been backing their hometown favorite for decades — wished that they hadn’t. Others chose to name rockers who didn’t make it through ‘09: Vic Chestnutt, Jay Reatard, Ron Asheton. Ironically, nobody mentioned the year’s most earthshattering passing, but maybe the cosmic implications of MJ’s death aren’t best understood as disappointing? As always, there were many political themed answers submitted, including the Supreme Court, the Massachusetts electorate, the Democratic leadership, and the Senate Democratic Caucus. No votes, though, for a fella with the following initials: BHO. Andrew Hamlin gave the most inexplicable answer — he voted for “my feet”. I didn’t ask; it seemed impolite to ask.

Most Welcome Surprise

Forest Turner voted for the Booker T comeback. Did you know Booker T came back? I sure didn’t, but I certainly welcome it. Most of the rest of you were shocked at the quality of contemporary radio. You don’t listen to me, do you? Taylor Swift got her votes, as did Alicia Keys and (especially) Lady Gaga. Here’s Oliver Lyons on the old-school postmodernist with the expansive wig collection: “It’s a damn shame we already know so much about Lady Gaga when she was a nobody because, at this point, Marilyn Manson was the last truly crazy musician to get people worked up into a frenzy as to where this strange thing came from. Regardless, the next Madonna she is not but I’m never not going to love someone who incorporates stage blood into their pop videos.”

Worst Song Of The Year

A few of you nutcases were even surprised (positively) by the Black Eyed Peas. I’ll give them this much: they’re better than they used to be. will.i.am is nothing if not a diligent follower of contemporary fashion, and let’s just say he’s been spending some quality time with his copy of *808s and Heartbreak*. Those of you who suggested renaming this category the “My Humps Memorial Award” got your shots in, too: eight votes in this category for “Boom Boom Pow” and another five for “I Gotta Feeling”. Pitbull found his way into your sights in ‘09, which I can’t say I understand — what’s the difference between “I Know You Want Me” and the last twenty singles he’s released? — and supervillian Chris Brown, which I certainly do understand. But our plurality winner (eleven votes) was the song that came closest to denying Phoenix a Critics Poll sweep. Zack Lipez, on “New York State Of Mind”: “I like Jay Z. Saw him perform and instantly got what people have been talking about. Mick Jagger at his hymen melting prime levels of personal charisma. What a crap song. The first 30 times I heard it, I thought someone was just playing an old NY State tourism jingle from the ’80s. Seriously, some Gavin MacLeod bullshit.” Take it from a real New Yorker, Jay.

Best Singer

Neko Case in a landslide. Carl Newman’s foil was named on a remarkable sixteen ballots. That said, I feel I must point out that not a single vote for Case came from a woman. Looks like she appeals to the Joanna Newsom demographic. I’d like to propose some new Poll terminology: a “Newsom” is any critically-acclaimed female artist whose fanbase is disproportionately comprised of dudes. Is Neko Case a Newsom? No way to say for sure, but let’s consider that album cover one more time. Margaret Cho might dig this image; maybe Camille Paglia too. But no other woman on earth is going to get with that iconography. Other singers recieving multiple votes: Richard Hawley, Taylor Swift, conversational Eddie Argos, and Catherine Ireton of God Help The Girl.

Best Rapper

Mos Def in a mini-landslide. Boogie Man did not get much love for Tru3 Magic, but his globetrotting latest has reintroduced him to Poll voters. Senior citizens Jay-Z, Eminem, and Raekwon drew their loyalty votes, and one of those guys even deserved the praise. The man on the rise is Gary, Indiana mixtape master Freddie Gibbs, whose roughneck verses has won the hearts of our notorious inna-city voters. In other news of the unlikely, George Pasles nominated me in this category, again. What on earth is George talking about? A better leftfield response came from Milton, who voted for Chuck Berry. In a weird sort of way, that’s a fantastic answer.

Song That Got Stuck In Your Head And Drove You Crazy

Resident globetrotter Jason Paul spent the year touring the Far East. His vote was for something called “Feng Hang Chuan Qi”. Even the name has a catchy cadence. Back stateside, a few of you pop warriors seem to have a problem with Taylor Swift, especially her “Love Story”. Steve Carlson reports that “most of te time I’d at least try to salve the pain by rearranging the lyrics into pornographic entreaties.” Hey, I did the same thing with “1,2,3,4″ a few years ago. We all have our coping strategies; we can’t be blamed when the survival instinct kicks in. Presumably, Ben Krieger did not need to resort to our gutter tactics — he voted for something called “Two Girls One Cup” by Toby Goodshank. If you don’t catch the reference, take my advice and forget you ever read this. Seriously.

Thing You Feel Cheapest About Liking

“Why do you continue to ask me this?”, begs Jonathan Andrew. Blame my Catholic upbringing, Jonathan; the nuns trained me to be a guilt-generation machine. And what fun is dirty laundry if you can’t air it and offend the neighborhood? Bradley Skaught played it safe by naming Smokey Robinson’s latest smooth jazz record; I don’t know, that sounds pretty sweet to me. Generally, this is a dump category for day-glo radio hits that are irresistible but still kinda boneheaded: Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You”, IYAZ, “Birthday Sex”, Ke$ha’s lovably-inept “TiK ToK”. Other true confessions — Natasha Marena digs Das Racist’s admittedly-unforgettable stoner anthem “Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell”, while OG punk Jim Testa takes a shine to the cast of Glee. A surprising number of poll respondents feel cheap about boarding the Animal Collective bandwagon. Don’t worry, guys, I know that if you were indulging in ‘net-driven groupthink, you wouldn’t be doing this Poll. Finally, foreign correspondent Tom Snow steps beyond 2009 to file this report from the ski resorts of Switzerland: “I’m now playing in a cover band here in Geneva, catering mainly to the expat anglophone crowd. Our repertoire is mainly classic and modern rock, and we play ”What I Like About You,” and, to my infinite surprise, it fucking rocks. Out of fidelity to the Romantics’ version, the drummer sings it [Tom is the drummer], although we’re still waiting for our leather suits to arrive. Awww-hawww, hey!”

Hoary Old Bastard Who Should Spare Us All And Retire

“Hey, to each his own”, answered Wesley Verhoeve. Wes is good-hearted; he doesn’t want poison anybody’s prune juice. The rest of us weren’t so squeamish. “If you were watching Neil Young’s performance on Conan’s last Tonight Show broadcast closely”, wrote Matt Sirinides, “you could see his lunch off to stage right: grilled cheese, tomato soup, jello.” The gerontocracy came under fire: votes were counted for Lou Dobbs, John McCain, Chris Christie, Mitch McConnell, Arlen Specter. Brad Luen named Harry Reid; whether Senator Harry wants to pack his desk or not, Brad, I think you’ll be seeing that happen this November. Bruce Springsteen — the leader of the Democratic Caucus of Rock — was asked by many to step down. In ‘09, it pains me to admit I have no ammunition to use against those asking for his gavel. But the winner by plurality was Bob Dylan (again). That Christmas album really left the old coot wide open to potshots from the pop-radio paintballers. I’d give him credit for chutzpah if it didn’t sound so much like he was caroling from his gurney.

Young Upstart Who Should Be Sent Down To The Minors For More Seasoning

Mike Cimicata voted for Cole Hamels. Mike, he’s already won forty-eight games in the bigs! He threw about forty thousand pitches in 2008; of course he was dragging ass last year. The Cimicata ballot was pinstriped-themed: he voted for the Boston Red Sox for Most Overrated, the New Yankee Stadium for Most Welcome Surprise, Joe Girardi’s bullpen management in the ALCS for Most Thoroughly Botched Production Job, and Championship Number 28 for Best Album of 2010. Let him bask in the glow of the championship trophy if he wants; I doubt the upcoming season will be kind to the interlocking N and Y. Here come the Kansas City Royals, I tell you. Here come the Royals. Stop laughing at me. STOP LAUGHING AT ME. Oh, you want a musical answer? How about the Vivian Girls (five votes)? How about Wavves (five votes)?

Most Overrated

Animal Collective. When an album tops nearly every year-end poll and critic’s list, you’d better hope that it’s overrated. You’d better hope that’s the explanation. Otherwise, shit starts to get really spooky, in a hurry. Possible alternative theories: mind control on a national scale, orchestrated by shadowy (and possibly alien?) overseers. Chips implanted in the wrists of rock critics, set to detonate unless Merriwether Post Pavilion wins Album Of The Year honors. The discovery of musical vibrations that generate unreasonably euphoric responses in primates; the scientific isolation of these narcotic frequencies and their subsequent mass broadcast via Animal Collective’s recordings. Bullying, peer pressure, breaches of journalistic integrity on a cosmic scale, zombification, sunspots, strange vibrations from beneath the earth’s crust. Yes, you’d better hope that Merriwether Post Pavilion is overrated, and the near-unanimity of the critical response to this album is simply the product of unprecedented herd mentality among rock writers. Otherwise, friend, you’d best fit yourself for a fallout shelter.

Album That Wore Out The Quickest

“The Eternal“, answered Jens Thuro Carstensen, “ironic, no?” Jens, Thurston Moore should have known he was baiting you with an album title like that. Usually it’s the freshly-minted buzz bands that take this title, though, and 2009 was no different — The Big Pink’s Brief History Of Love and The XX tied with six votes apiece. Strangely (at least to me) The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart got away scot-free this year; Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, and Dirty Projectors all took their lumps on the Poll, but I can’t find a single negative citation for Kip Berman’s equally hyped debut. Nobody wants to throw stones at Sarah Records soundalikes — that hits a little too close to home. Steve Carlson cited a project that was almost universally vilified: “I initially gave Chris Cornell’s Scream a spin because I figured the vicious reviews had to be reacting against the idea of the album instead of the album itself, and I was right — it’s weird and screwy and awkward and doesn’t quite work, but it’s not as bad as all that and even has a few memorable tunes. I listened to it a second time to confirm that impression. And then I never listened to it again, and I don’t really feel bad about that.” Oh, and Working On A Dream drew opprobrium in this category, too. What can I say, Brucie?; you’ve got some angry fans on your hands.

Artist You Don’t Know, But You Know You Should

“I want to spend more time with Micachu And The Shapes”, wrote Jeff Ciprioni. Well, I definitely like it. But like the Timbaland productions it quietly (and inexpensively) apes, it’s never going to get any better than that first arresting listen. Meanwhile, Ben Krieger made a rare concession to mainstream tastes: “I’m sure there was at least one album on the Pitchfork Top 40 I ought to get”. Come to think of it, Ben, it’s probably Micachu.

Most Thoroughly-Botched Production Job

Look, I don’t want to discuss Brendan O’Brien’s association with the Boss any more than you do. It depresses me. Allow me to point out that while the dynamic range of Magic was indeed squashed, he didn’t bury any of those songs. Devils & Dust sounds just fine, thank you; I realize there’s not so much damage a producer can do to an acoustic guitar record, but at least he didn’t pull a Steve Albini on Ys. Brendan O’Brien makes a nifty lightning rod for our collective frustration, but he didn’t write the lyrics to “Outlaw Pete”. He didn’t make Bruce put those jackass blues numbers on the album. He didn’t force Bruce to include stupid checkout scanner noises in the outro of “Queen Of The Supermarket”. Well, okay, maybe O’Brien did have something to do with the checkout scanner noises. But the Boss is a big boy. The buck stops with him. And since I don’t want to talk about this anymore, I’m going to concentrate instead on the other leitmotif running through your replies — if you weren’t bashing Springsteen, you were complaining about the marijuana haze that is currently choking the underground. Calling out Woodsist Records, Dan Purcell writes “I’m no audiophile, but ‘Hey, what if we made the entire studio into a bong?’ is not what I’m looking for.”

Most Unsexy Person In Pop Music

Allow me to turn over the floor to Zachary Lipez: “I understand whatever girl may feel the need to say Lady Gaga to this question. Shit can get pretty intense out there. Any GUY who answers Lady Gaga,however, is trying to impress whatever female may be helping you proofread this. Are you going to let that disingenuous graduate school prick, that emo singer in castrato’s clothing, that wikipedia skimming WEASELWORD do that to you,Tris?! He’s fucking lying. There’s NOTHING sexier than borderline ugly girls who make themselves hot by sheer force of will. Noth. Ing. Dig? Lose that dude as a friend, Tris, he’s an Iago in waiting.” I feel the need to assure Zack that Lady Gaga is A-OK in my house.

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