Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper The Village Voice and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year absence from the Voice, each year from 1974 till 2018. The polls were tabulated from the submitted year-end top 10 lists of hundreds of music critics. It was named in acknowledgement of the defunct magazine Jazz & Pop, and adopted the ratings system used in that publication's annual critics poll.
History The Pazz & Jop was introduced by The Village Voice in 1971 as an album-only poll; it was expanded to include votes for singles in 1979. Throughout the years, other minor lists had been elicited from poll respondents for releases such as extended plays, music videos, album re-issues, and compilation albums—all of which were discontinued after only a few years. The Pazz & Jop albums poll uses a points system to formulate list rankings. Participating critics assigned a number value, ranging from 5 to 30, to each of the albums on their top 10 list, with all 10 albums totaling 100 points. The singles lists, however, are always unweighted.
The Pazz & Jop was created by Village Voice critic Robert Christgau. The idea behind its name (a spoonerism of Jazz & Pop) was that, since the words "pazz" and "jop" do not exist, participating critics would judge a musical work on its own merits rather than be distracted by categories and genres. In 1971, English rock band the Who topped the first Pazz & Jop albums poll with Who's Next. The following year, Christgau left The Village Voice for Newsday, and the poll was not conducted again until 1974, when Christgau returned to the Voice and the poll "became an institution", according to fellow Voice critic Chris Molanphy. English singer Ian Dury and his band the Blockheads topped the first singles poll with "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" (1979). Bob Dylan and Kanye West topped the albums poll the most number of times, with four number-one albums each. West, in addition, won the singles poll of 2005. Christgau oversaw the Pazz & Jop poll for more than thirty years; he also wrote an accompanying essay that discussed the poll's contents.
Writing in 2002, author Bernard Gendron cited the lack of overlap between the 1999 poll results and that year's best-selling albums on Billboards US charts—whereby only five of Pazz & Jop's top 40 appeared in the Billboard list—as indicative of a continued division between the avant-garde aesthetic of cultural accreditation and commercial considerations. Although Pazz & Jop established itself as a critics' poll with a clear identity, it has attracted criticism, particularly for its methodology. Addressing the participants in 2001, Mike Doughty of the New York Press complained: "In the guise of a love of music, you've taken the most beautiful nebulous form of human expression, squeezed it through an asinine points-scoring system specially cooked up for this pointless perennial, and forced it into this baffling, heinous chart system."
Later years Christgau's tenure as Pazz & Jop overseer came to an abrupt end when he was controversially fired from The Village Voice after a company buy-out in August 2006. In response to his dismissal, several prominent critics publicly announced that they would no longer be turning in their lists for the poll; Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker described Christgau's firing as "a slap in the face to so many of us [critics] in so many ways". Regardless, The Village Voice continued to run the feature, with Rob Harvilla succeeding Christgau as music editor and overseer of the poll. Christgau's annual Pazz & Jop overview essay was discontinued and substituted with multiple retrospective articles of the year's music written by a selection of critics.
In 2016, the poll's name was changed from Pazz & Jop to the Village Voice Music Critics Poll by the new owners of the newspaper. Christgau, who had continued to vote in the poll since his departure from the newspaper, expressed dismay at the name change. When the 2016 results were announced in January 2017, the poll had reverted to its Pazz & Jop name.
The Village Voice ceased publication altogether in August 2018. Despite the closure of the newspaper, a Pazz & Jop poll for 2018 was announced on December 20, with Christgau confirming its legitimacy on Twitter. The 2018 poll was published on The Village Voice website on February 6, 2019.
Glenn Boothe and Keith Artin had organised a "Village Voice Pazz & Jop Rip-Off Poll" starting in 1995 and created a Facebook Group for the poll in 2019. The poll was conducted via private Facebook group and included over 1,100 members—music writers, business execs, or artists themselves. Purple Mountains' eponymous album was voted the best album of 2019. Uproxx also launched an annual music critic poll in 2018.
Albums voted number one
Year Artist Album Mentions Points Ref. 1971 Who's Next 540 1974 Court and Spark 186 1975 and 285 1976 Songs in the Key of Life 292 1977 Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols 412 1978 and This Year's Model 783 1979 Squeezing Out Sparks 767 1980 London Calling 1,347 1981 Sandinista! 862 1982 and Imperial Bedroom 1,061 1983 Thriller 1,305 1984 Born in the U.S.A. 1,757 1985 Talking Heads Little Creatures 1,078 1986 Graceland 1,131 1987 Prince Sign o' the Times 1,491 1988 Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back 1,011 1989 De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising 1,050 1990 and Crazy Horse Ragged Glory 1,282 1991 Nirvana Nevermind 1,699 1992 Arrested Development 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of... 1,050 1993 Exile in Guyville 1,383 1994 Hole Live Through This 1,552 1995 To Bring You My Love 1,492 1996 Beck Odelay 1,134 1997 Time Out of Mind 1,655 1998 Car Wheels on a Gravel Road 2,129 1999 Moby Play 1,548 2000 Outkast Stankonia 2,660 2001 Love and Theft 3,010 2002 Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 2,328 2003 Outkast Speakerboxxx/The Love Below 3,554 2004 2,826 2005 Late Registration 2,525 2006 Modern Times 1,123 2007 LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver 1,662 2008 TV on the Radio Dear Science 1,744 2009 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion 1,794 2010 My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 3,250 2011 Tune-Yards Whokill 1,645 2012 Channel Orange 1,952 2013 Yeezus 1,991 2014 D'Angelo and the Vanguard Black Messiah 2,008 2015 To Pimp a Butterfly 2,639 2016 Blackstar 2,367 2017 Damn 1,756 2018 Golden Hour 1,155
Singles voted number one
Year Artist Single Mentions Ref. 1979 and "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick"/"Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3" 29 1980 "" 40 1981 "O Superman"/"Walk the Dog" 56 "Start Me Up" 1982 Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five "" 156 1983 "Billie Jean" 75 1984 Prince "When Doves Cry"/"17 Days" 111 1985 Artists United Against Apartheid "Sun City" 101 1986 Run–D.M.C. "Walk This Way" 78 1987 Prince "Sign o' the Times" 54 1988 "Fast Car" 55 1989 Public Enemy "Fight the Power" 75 1990 Deee-Lite "Groove Is in the Heart"/"What Is Love?" 74 1991 Nirvana "Smells Like Teen Spirit" 116 1992 Arrested Development "Tennessee" 100 1993 "Cannonball" 78 1994 Beck "Loser" 89 1995 Coolio featuring L.V. "Gangsta's Paradise" 81 1996 Quad City DJ's "C'mon N' Ride It (The Train)" 34 1997 Hanson "MMMBop" 96 1998 Fatboy Slim "" 110 1999 TLC "No Scrubs" 109 2000 Outkast "Ms. Jackson" 124 2001 "Get Ur Freak On" 176 2002 "Work It" 212 2003 Outkast "Hey Ya!" 322 2004 Franz Ferdinand "Take Me Out" 145 2005 featuring "Gold Digger" 145 2006 Gnarls Barkley "Crazy" 151 2007 "Rehab" 97 2008 M.I.A. "Paper Planes" 107 2009 Jay-Z featuring "Empire State of Mind" 89 2010 "Fuck You" 187 2011 Adele "Rolling in the Deep" 116 2012 "Call Me Maybe" 94 2013 Daft Punk featuring "Get Lucky" 117 2014 Future Islands "Seasons (Waiting on You)" 75 2015 Drake "Hotline Bling" 76 2016 Beyoncé "Formation" 99 2017 Cardi B "Bodak Yellow" 62 2018 Childish Gambino "This Is America" 64
Defunct categories
Compilation albums Year Artist Album Mentions Ref. 1995 Various artists Macro Dub Infection: Volume One 28 1996 Logical Progression 11
Album re-issues
Year Artist Album Mentions Ref. 1986 Treacherous: A History of the Neville Brothers (1955–1985) 43 1987 At the Dark End of the Street 35 1988 35 1989 65 1990 108 1991 Star Time 84 1992 Songs of Freedom 51 1993 Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys 42 1994 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1923–1934) 34 1995 Peel Slowly and See 57 1996 25 1997 Various artists Anthology of American Folk Music 100 1998 Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 111 1999 Os Mutantes Everything Is Possible: The Best of Os Mutantes 31 Various artists Loud, Fast and Out of Control: The Wild Sounds of '50s Rock
Extended plays
Year Artist Album Mentions Ref. 1981 Ghost Town 44 1982 Trap Door 75 1983 Los Lobos ...And a Time to Dance 54 1984 Places That Are Gone 32 1985 Feudalist Tarts 32 1986 No Sex 27 1988 Chimes of Freedom 13 1989 Passionate Kisses 17 1990 F.U.N. '90 27 1991 Pavement Perfect Sound Forever 26 1992 Watery, Domestic 23 1993 Luscious Jackson In Search of Manny 31 1994 Pizzicato Five Five by Five 15
Music videos
Year Artist Music video Director(s) Mentions Ref. 1983 "Beat It" 63 1984 Art of Noise "Close (To the Edit)" 35 1985 Artists United Against Apartheid "Sun City" , Godley & Creme 68 1986 "Sledgehammer" 87 1987 Squeeze "Hourglass" 12 1990 Deee-Lite "Groove Is in the Heart" 35 Madonna "Justify My Love" 1991 Nirvana "Smells Like Teen Spirit" 59 1992 "In Bloom" 23 1993 "Heart-Shaped Box" 34 1994 Beastie Boys "Sabotage" 66 1995 Björk "It's Oh So Quiet" 33
References
External links Official Pazz & Jop page at The Village Voice Pazz & Jop polls and essays by Robert Christgau (from 1971−2007)