Today, the Village Voice announced the results for Pazz & Jop, the 35th rendition of their annual poll tabulated from ballots filled out by 576 music critics. If it seems too late to run a 2007 best-of list, it’s really not. Although we’re nearly at the end of the first month of the new year, I still haven’t finished mining through all of 2007’s polished gems and diamonds in the rough (not to mention the endless amounts of worthless debris that gets passed off as music).
I used to be obsessed with classifying my musical tastes in list form, my personal desert-island-top-n. Even so, I won’t be indexing my Top 10 of 2007, and not just because it’d take me until April to figure it out. Pazz & Jop, as well as Idolator’s spin-off Jackin’ Pop (right, the name’s been changed, much thanks to the commenter—Ed.), ostensibly aims to reach the critical consensus through a roll call of hundreds of established writers—the creation of the official pop canon. But at what point does the institution become arbitrary?
Popularity: 20%