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Music critic Robert Christgau created^[1] and presided over the Pazz & Jop poll from its inception in 1971 to 2005.

Pazz & Jop is an annual poll of musical releases compiled by American newspaper The Village Voice, publishing lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and each year between 1974 and 2017. The polls are tabulated from the submitted year-end top 10 lists of hundreds of music critics.^[2][3] It was named in acknowledgement of the defunct magazine Jazz & Pop, and adopted the ratings system used in that publication's annual critics poll.^[4]

Pazz & Jop was introduced by The Village Voice in 1971 as an album-only poll;^[5] it was expanded to include votes for singles in 1979.^[6] Throughout the years, other minor lists had been elicited from poll respondents for releases such as extended plays,^[7]music videos,^[8]album re-issues,^[9] and compilation albums—all of which were discontinued after only a few years.^[10] The Pazz & Jop albums poll uses a points system to formulate list rankings.^[11] 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.^[11] The singles lists, however, are always unweighted.^[11]

History

The idea behind the poll's name 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.^[12] In 1971, English rock band the Who topped the first Pazz & Jop albums poll with Who's Next,^[13] while English singer Ian Dury and his band the Blockheads topped the first singles poll with "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" (1979).^[13][12]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. Music critic Robert Christgau oversaw the Pazz & Jop poll for more than thirty years; he also wrote an accompanying essay that discussed the poll's contents.^[14][15]

Writing in 2002, author Bernard Gendron cited the lack of overlap between the 1999 poll results and that year's best-selling albums on Billboard's 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.^[16] 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."^[12]

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.^[17] 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".^[18] Regardless, The Village Voice continued to run the feature, with Rob Harvilla succeeding Christgau as music editor and overseer of the poll.^[19] 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.^[20]

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.^[21] Christgau, who had continued to vote in the poll since his departure from the newspaper, expressed dismay at the name change.^[21] When the 2016 results were announced in January 2017, the poll had reverted to its Pazz & Jop name.^[22]

The Village Voice ceased publication altogether in August 2018.^[23] Despite the closure of the newspaper, a Pazz & Jop poll for 2018 was announced on December 20, with Christgau confirming its legitimacy on Twitter.^[24] The 2018 poll was published on the Village Voice's website on February 6, 2019.^[25]

Albums voted number one

American musician Bob Dylan topped the Pazz & Jop albums poll four times.

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003) by American hip hop duo Outkast garnered the most total points of any number-one album in the history of the poll.

American hip-hop artist Kanye West topped the Pazz & Jop albums poll four times out of the seven solo albums he released during the poll's existence.

Singles voted number one

English musician Ian Dury performed "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick", which topped the first singles poll in 1979.

American rapper Missy Elliott is the only artist with two consecutive Pazz & Jop number-one singles: "Get Ur Freak On" and "Work It".

Defunct categories

Compilation albums

Album re-issues

Extended plays

Perfect Sound Forever and Watery, Domestic by American indie rock band Pavement were voted the number-one extended plays of their respective release years.

Music videos

American rock band Nirvana topped the music videos poll for three consecutive years.

References

External links

• 
  Official Pazz & Jop page at The Village Voice
  


• Pazz & Jop polls and essays by Robert Christgau (from 1971−2007)