Village Voice's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll Charts

The general mindset among critics at the time was that butt/arena rock was bad and evil. No idea how Cheap Trick got a pass that they wouldn't have given to a band like Van Halen.

Elvis Costello's debut isn't that good. Television are alright I guess. The McGarrigle Sisters, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor belong in the trash.

The Clash don't belong on any list, Springsteen is very overrated, those Who and Dylan albums are trash, and Van Morrison is meh.

These are ranked in order left to right, top to bottom. Yes, Graham Parker - Squeezing out Sparks, an album never memed here was the album of the year in 79.

van halen's debut was pretty well liked critically upon release

Again, the Clash rhymes with "trash", B-52s are unlistenable unless you're gay, Tom Petty is buttrock, Donna Summer is not rock, Ry Cooder blows, and that Fleetwood Mac album was not very good.

shit taste

Cuckgau wrote in Consumer Guide to the '70s--"This why for example I made the case for the McGarrigle Sisters and against Black Sabbath."

Yeah, fuck you. I made it a quarter of the way through Dancer With Bruised Knees before deciding this was a waste of time.

>why does the dumb old man have different opinions than me? everyone needs to think exactly the same as me or i'll scream!

1980

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>Argybargy
BASED

Dude, he just wanted to fuck them. Admit it.

Weren't they just a hipper, more upmarket version of Heart or something?

They sound more like a 70s Joanna Newsom.

That Peter Gabriel album isn't very good.

1981

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1982

1982

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kill yourself

1983
For Some reason Thriller and 1999 are on this and 1982's.
They also had a Jerry Lee Lewis Sun Recordings rerelease so I took that off.

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1984

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Ok, I went back and listened to the entire Dancer With Bruised Knees and it was the single most boring album I've ever heard. It sounds like something you'd play over the sound system at an antique shop.

They suck and Cuckgau sucks.

1985

There were reissues on here as well so they were removed.

This isnt just Christgau. Its all music critics from the music magazines, newspapers, alt weeklies and the ones in england as well.
Christgau just put them together.
His personal list is the Dean's list.

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Actually...

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1986

Actually what? He shares some or sometimes the majority of the tastes of the others.

I think their rankings are mostly shit looking at the polls thus far. Extra heavily weighted towards acts they already like, even when they made substandard material.

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1987

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>I think their rankings are mostly shit looking at the polls thus far. Extra heavily weighted towards acts they already like, even when they made substandard material.

"I'm a fan of records, not bands. Even the Beatles made some stuff I wouldn't take if you paid me."

Truer words were never spoken.

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Yeah you can tell that albums like Who Are You and Street-Legal only got in there because the voting panel liked the artists involved.

>Janet Jackson
It's time to stop.

James Taylor rules honestly.

Cuckgau was the ideological father of Pitchfork.

Street Legal is fucking great.

1988

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1989

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pretty great picks desu

1990

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1991

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World Party are super underrated.

>ah bloo bloo women suck so much fml
Incel: The Album

Also they're leafs trying to LARP as Southern dames.

I like how it sounds. And most tracks aren't even about that.

Most of these 80s lists are pretty dire because it was the time when the hip thing with rock critics was "Back to Africa" and complaining about apartheid.

1992

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1993

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1994

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1995

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1996

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1997

1998

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1999

Last one. Pitchfork took over as mass music critic taste makers by 1999, so there's no need to continue on.

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Why do critics pretend to like every genre but metal?

Some people just don't like metal. Lots of critics do, though.

Lots of forgotten gems in these charts, thanks OP.

No problem

Metalfags remind them of their old high school bullies.

Granted, this one surprised me.

Even with these being the best of, so much of these are truly awful.
PM Dawn
Macy Grey
Arrested Development
Erika Badu
Living Colour
Me Shell ndegeocello
All these majority WOKE afrocentric artists are so bad it's laughable.

Al Green
Ornette Coleman
Marvin Gaye
Biggie
Public Enemy
NWA
They're OK.

But that WOKE neo-hippy shit is ridiculous. That's why they faded from the spotlight so fast. Not even African Americans liked them.
So corny.
youtu.be/wyDjRd0Tjss

youtu.be/0AOVf9p9ht4

Special Beat Service is hot garbage and I didn't shed many tears over Ranking Roger's passing.

Living Colour is great.
Suck my ass.

Call The Doctor has nothing on it resembling music.

>Significant Other not listed

Dayglow spandex version of Van Halen with a Hootie-level singer. Terrible.

Were you expecting it to?

>Dayglow spandex version of Van Halen
so just van halen?
>with a Hootie-level singer
they sound nothing alike.
>Terrible.
nah.

Why do Dave Grohl followers get so asshurt that nobody with taste likes their arena/butt/cockrock bands?

what is this in reference to

Entire thread is redneck idiot complaining that meal and buttrock didn't get onto these critics' polls.

like three posts

The point was more that these polls are full of shitty albums included for political reasons or because it was a legacy artist like The Who or Dylan, not because they were actually any good.

Shitty in your opinion.

I hope you're not alleging that Who Are You is as good as Tommy.

This is very true.
Everyone complains about pitchfork and melon, but the burnout Rolling Stone-tier and local newspaper music critics had ultra-dire taste. Christgau looks like less of a hack,when you see what the majority of critics liked.

I'm not, and neither were the critics who voted for it in the poll. What a complete non-sequitir.

>Christgau looks like less of a hack,when you see what the majority of critics liked
He thought Dirty Work was AOTY.

Back in the 70s, magazines like Creem and Circus had a more blue collar audience and focused on hard rock and metal and publications like RSM were more elitist and hipster and aimed at the college audience.

Funny how he did have to admit that Led Zeppelin's Camaro-driving audience were not as smug or self-righteous as the people who were into James Taylor or CSN.

how old are you? not being an ass, honestly curious

Yeah but all those reviewers died or grew up and moved on to weeklies and local newspapers and started writing about Dylan, Springsteen, and numerous old blues rock or country rock bands in the 80s and stunk up everything.
The 80s "best albums" are absolute garbage compared to what actually was out there.

he's right though

I looked at Cuckgau's 80s best of lists and they're mostly a joke. Half the albums he ranked were Afro woke shit.

I have a vague memory from 1999-2000 of Macy Gray existing.

The Trouble With Being Myself [Epic, 2003]
I know she's supposed to be an eccentric hipster--helps explain that grit-on-velvet voice, which seems so very outré with female pop options cut back to girlish simplicity and operatic aspiration. But except on the magnificent "I Committed Murder"--revisited here in a jokey variation that doesn't wash--her songwriting hasn't been up to the role. Now, done with that id shit, she finds her voice by pleading with her man to stay or come back as the case may be. Her big argument: "She Don't Write Songs About You." She's pretty, she's rich, she cooks, she reads, she keeps house, she gives good head. Macy will grant all that. But she don't write songs. B+

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The thing you have to understand is that, childish though it can be, metal is more "real" in that it speaks to the elemental human condition like death, anguish, empowering oneself, that kind of thing. For hipster critics, politics is the highest form of art and human expression even though it's actually shallow as fuck and amounts to little other than getting angry at the evening news.

metal is super political though. especially 80s thrash.

>For hipster critics, politics is the highest form of art and human expression even though it's actually shallow as fuck and amounts to little other than getting angry at the evening news.
It's not either or. Political content is ok if it speaks in generalities like for example Blowin' In The Wind. Stuff that actually bitches about specific news events or politicians is the worst cancer imaginable.

Bump for a fantastic CHART THREAD!

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Unironically based and redpilled