2007 was the first time I participated in the two big music critics lists, the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop and the Idolator Pop Critics Poll, even though I've been following the latter for nearly a decade and it was my 3rd year as a paid professional critic (although I came close to submitting ballots the previous 2 years). Mostly this is because this year the first time I actually felt like I'm in this music writer business now for at least the semi-long haul, and will most likely still be doing this a year from now for the next poll, but also because I write for Idolator and it'd be silly not to contribute to their poll (and I have no reason to vote in one but not the other).

One of my favorite things about Pazz & Jop time every year is the page of voter statistics that Glenn McDonald compiles after the results are published. This year he put up All·Idols 2007, a collation of stats from both P&J and Idolator's polls. And the best part of Glenn's stats is the Voter Centricity/Voter Eccentricity list, which rates all of the polls' voters based on how much their ballots have in common with other ballots, or feature albums other people voted for. And I take a little pleasure in the fact that I'm on the eccentric, noncomformist side of things, with my ballot ranging #682 out of 782 voters. Here's how my top 10 syncs up with the average list placing of those albums between the 2 polls:

Eleni Mandell · Miracle of Five #288 · 4 votes
Freeway · Free at Last #147 · 9 votes
Paramore · Riot! #133 · 10 votes
Parts and Labor · Mapmaker #86 · 15 votes
Prodigy · Return of the Mac #105 · 13 votes
Scarface · Made #207 · 6 votes
Sloan · Never Hear the End of It #123 · 11 votes
T-Pain · Epiphany #288 · 4 votes
Ted Leo/Pharmacists · Living With the Living #75 · 17 votes
UGK · Underground Kingz #41 · 28 votes

I didn't go out of my way with many obscure choices (although less than half of albums were released on major labels), but only 3 albums on my ballot cracked the top 100. Glenn's stats also include each person's top 10 most similiar voters, and includes mostly people I know, or whose work I read regularly (and also Glenn himself!), so not many surprises there.

And just to go ridiculously overboard with my OCD list obsession now, some meta-lists and stats:

The top 10 lists I compiled in the past 2 months
1. Top 100 Singles Of 2007 part one and two
2. Top 10 Baltimore Club Tracks of 2007
3. Top 20 Television Shows Of 2007
4. The 2007 Hip Hop/R&B Remix Report Card
5. Top 25 Most Posted Topics On Government Names Of 2007
6. Top 10 Concerts I Saw In 2007
7. Top 50 Albums Of 2007 part one and two
8. Top 50 Baltimore releases of 2007
9. Top 5 Artists of 2007
10. Top 20 Most Anticipated Baltimore MCs of 2008

The artists with the most frequent appearances in these lists
1. Swizz Beatz - 8 in singles, 4 in albums, 1 in artists
2. Lil Wayne - 5 in singles, 5 in albums, 1 in artists
3. Nate "Danja" Hills - 8 in singles, 1 in albums, 1 in artists
4. T-Pain - 6 in singles, 3 in albums, 1 in artists
5. Kanye West - 7 in singles, 2 in albums
6. T.I. - 5 in singles, 3 in albums
7. R. Kelly - 4 in singles, 3 in albums
8. Polow Da Don - 5 in singles, 1 in albums
9. The Runners - 2 in singles, 4 in albums
10. Timbaland - 4 in singles, 1 in albums

The TV list sorted by network
NBC: 4
CBS, Discovery Channel: 3
Animal Planet, VH1: 2
ABC, CW, E!, FOX, Food Network, FX: 1
broadcast network shows: 10
basic cable shows: 10
premium cable shows: 0
shows that aired their final episodes in 2007: 7

And finally, according to my calculations, I wrote 183,148 words in 2007 that were published in a newspaper or magazine, or on a website or blog. That's probably at least a few times more words than I've published in any previous year of my life, and I guess goes to show that if I had focus or anything to say not about music, I could probably write a novel someday. That’s not counting blog comments, message board posts, cut-and-pasted text from other sources, lists, reduntant things posted on more than one blog, or the Stylus Singles Jukebox (which I probably wrote at least a couple thousand words for this year, but its archive appears to be offline now). These numbers will probably be more depressing for you than they were for me if you actually read a large percentage of the frequently sloppy prose I penned this year. At least I got paid for my side of the deal almost half the time (for everything except Narrowcast and Gov’t Names):

Narrowcast: 81,496 words
Noise on City Paper website: 45,847 words
Government Names: 27,576 words
City Paper (print edition): 21,170 words
Idolator: 5,451 words
Scratch: approx. 1,050 words
Bmore Vibe Magazine : 558 words

And with that, I bury 2007 once and for all, at least on this site. Let us never speak of it again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 1:27 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.