Village Voice Pazz & Jop Top 50 Albums Of 2010
Just when you thought we were done with 2010 lists, the Village Voice went and published the results of their 38th annual Pazz & Jop poll. This year it combined the votes of 708 music critics, did some complex mathematics, and arrived at the same No. 1 as everyone else. That said, the list features plenty of albums not often spotted on other year-enders, a nice example of the individual vs. the editorial board.
50 Emeralds – Does It Look LIke I’m Here?”
49 Jónsi – Go
48 Agalloch – Marrow Of The Spirit
47 Gil Scott-Heron – I’m New Here
46 Hot Chip – One Life Stand
45 Yeasayer – Odd Blood
44 Women – Public Strain
43 Robert Plant – Band Of Joy
42 Sharon Van Etten – Epic
41 Mavis Staples – You Are Not Alone
40 Tallest Man On Earth – The Wild Hunt
39 Sharon Van Jones & The Dap Kings – I Learned The Hard Way
38 Neil Young – Le Noise
37 Sufjan Stevens – The Age Of Adz
36 No Age – Everything In Between
35 Four Tet – There Is Love In You
34 Rick Ross – Teflon Don
33 The-Dream – Love King
32 Das Racist – Sit Down, Man
31 M.I.A. – MAYA
30 Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
29 Swans – My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope
28 Spoon – Transference
27 Caribou – Swim
26 Taylor Swift – Speak Now
25 Bruce Springsteen – The Promise
24 Drake – Thank Me Later
23 Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part Two: The Return Of The Ankh
22 Best Coast – Crazy For You
21 Cee Lo Green – The Lady Killer
20 Jamey Johnson – The Guitar Song
19 Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
18 The Roots – How I Got Over
17 Superchunk – Majesty Shredding
16 Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today
15 Grinderman – Grinderman 2
14 Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me
13 Robyn – Body Talk
12 Titus Andronicus – The Monitor
11 Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
10 Black Keys – Brothers
09 Sleigh Bells – Treats
08 The National – High Violet
07 Beach House – Teen Dream
06 Big Boi – Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty
05 Vampire Weekend – Contra
04 Janelle Monáe – The ArchAndroid
03 Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
02 LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
01 Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
In addition to this list, a top singles list, and individual contributor ballots — me, Amrit, Jessica — there are fine Pazz & Jop-related essays at VillageVoice.com. Start with Zach Baron’s “Rise Of The Douchebags” then never say the words “Kanye West” again.
Happy New Year from Promo News – our page views top one million in 2010!
Tuesday, 4. January 2011 – 11:35 am
Happy New Year from the team at Promo News – we sincerely hope you enjoy a very healthy and prosperous 2011.
As you can see here – we saw in the new year in style. In fact, we’re still actually partying, celebrating the huge increase in traffic to Promo in 2010, and the number of pages viewed by visitors on the website broke through the one million barrier for the first time.
Promo clocked over 1.16 million page views in 2010 – nearly 65% up on 2009 – according to statistics provided by WordPress (our publishing platform).
The stats on Google are if anything even more impressive: despite the fact our profile and status on Google was hacked and hijacked for over a month early last year, and we’re missing traffic figures for that period, Google still registered over one million views – and over 650,000 unique visits.
More impressive traffic stats are available with the new Promo News ad ratecard, which is now here. Traffic is way up, but ad rates are still very reasonable – and (despite the VAT increase today) no VAT at all to pay.
Skillz’ ’2010 Rap Up’: The Key Lines
For the past few years, there has been no better year-end roundup than the annual “Rap Up” tracks dropped by rapper Skillz. The Detroit-born, Virginia-bred MC is probably best known for his underground single “Ghostwriter,” which was a jarring tell-all track that revealed exactly which superstars had tapped Skillz for assistance in writing hits (though in the original mix of the track, the actual names of the artists are edited out). But since 2002, Skillz has owned the end of December with the “Rap-Up” tracks, which run down the events of the past 12 months with a full side of punchlines and sharp references.
While Skillz has usually just unleashed his “Rap Up” into the ether of the Internet, this time around he’s capitalizing on the popularity of the series with an iTunes premiere. Released on New Year’s Eve, “2010 Rap Up” will only cost you 99 cents, which works out to roughly a penny for every key line in the song. The “Rap Up” tracks used to be simply a summation of what happened in the hip-hop world over the past year, but he has widened his worldview. Of course, the main meat of the song runs down the key stories in the rap world, including the feud between 50 Cent and Rick Ross, Nas’ sticky divorce, Erykah Badu’s controversial video for “Window Seat,” Lil Wayne’s jail sentence, the rise of Drake and Kanye West’s Twitter account. But Skillz also nails a lot of the big stories of the year, including the disaster in Haiti, the volcano cloud that shut down Europe, the World Cup, the BP oil spill and the launch of the iPad.
But of all the great lines on “2010 Rap Up,” none of them hit as hard as this gut-busting, sharp-shooting set of bars: “Republicans? They still trippin’/ A Wiki-Leak? Nah, where I’m from man, we call that snitching.’” (That being said, the following line comes in a close second: “The miners got freed live on TV/ Y’all could have gave’em something/ Maybe a Double Down from KFC.”) All told, it’s another victory for Skillz, who has to be one of the most underrated rappers in the history of the game. Do yourself a favor and check out “2010 Rap Up,” and also dig Skillz’ 2010 album The World Needs More Skillz.
What’s your favorite line from the “2010 Rap Up”? Let us know in the comments!
Chromewaves Chronicles 2010 in Photos
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Chromewaves: The Year in Photos
Our musical tour kicks off with an icon, the godfather of punk, Iggy Pop. The artist headlined a raging (shirt-free) outdoor 90-minute concert as part of NXNE for 10,000 fans in downtown Toronto on June 19, 2010.
Promo News’ Heroes of 2010: OK Go
Friday, 31. December 2010 – 2:51 pm
We all know that pop and rock stars should leave the making of their videos to the professionals. But then there’s OK Go.
They had already earned their position in the pantheon a few years back by pretty much kickstarting the phenomenon of the viral music video with A Million Ways, followed by Here It Goes Again, the first proper YouTube video (and still the most favourited video on YouTube ever).
But in late 2009 and throughout 2010 came an outpouring of creativity to support their album Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky that confirmed them as extraordinarily dedicated exponents of music video art: the video for WTF? late last year was followed by two videos for This Too Must Pass – one of which voted Video Of The Year at the UK Music Video Awards – and then by the videos for End Love and White Knuckles (and to just to wrap things up, an animated video for Last Leaf).
OK Go collaborate with directors, it’s just the relationship is rather different than with pretty much everyone else. And who else will devote days, weeks even months to an idea? The result is a kind of music video performance art. It’s extraordinary – and awesomely popular.
Whether it’s the Rube Goldberg Machine in This Too Must Pass II (22 million views YouTube), or the dog choreography in White Knuckles, or even the goose in End Love, these works are going to be marveled over for years to come. So although there were several contenders for this utterly spurious end-of-year honour, OK Go have to be Promo News’s Heroes of 2010.
2010 Is Almost Gone: Wake-Up Video
Today is December 30, which means there are less than 48 hours left in 2010. On Friday night (December 31), the big sparkly ball will descend in Times Square in New York City, signifying not only the end of the old year but also the beginning of the new one. Since New Year’s Eve is always something of a lost day, that means that today is your last chance to accomplish the things you promised yourself you would do in 2010. Have a resolution left over that you never got around to? Time to put it to bed. Need to square accounts with friends or family before the calendar changes? Today is the day. There are all manner of things that you could have let slip, but the road to keeping those things in 2010 begins and ends here.
All this month, the MTV Newsroom Blog (and the entire MTV News organization, really) has been looking back at some of the greatest moments from the past year. There were incredible albums (Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Eminem’s Recovery, Taylor Swift’s Speak Now and others), killer concerts (Lady Gaga, Em and Jay-Z, Kings of Leon, Pavement, the whole of Lollapalooza), controversial moments (Lil Wayne’s adventures behind bars, Lindsay Lohan’s struggles with addiction and the law) and strange sights (just about everything Katy Perry did, come to think of it). But in looking back on the year, it turns out that, somehow, the MTV Newsroom Blog never once featured the video for the Flaming Lips’ “Bad Days.” So to rectify that, enjoy said video below, and feel free to use it as your personal anthem if you’re particularly happy to see 2010 come to an end.