Not that anyone cares, but the critics have spoken, and the winner is…Universal Music Group. That's one way of looking at the just-released results of this year's Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll, which tallied the ballots of 586 rockcrits, including those of HITS hacks Roy Trakin, David Simutis and yours truly.
True, it was OutKast's "art-hop" extravaganza "Stankonia" that received the most votes—a mild surprise considering all the critical attention heaped upon Eminem's mega-controversial "The Marshall Mathers LP" (#4) and Radiohead's post-rock/anti-pop statement "Kid A." (#3). But what we couldn't help but notice (being trade-mag geeks) was (a) the intersection of critical acclaim and commercial success, a rarity in critics' polls of the last decade or two, and (b) the mindblowing fact that UMG's percentage of entries in the Pazz & Jop top 40 approaches the conglom's marketshare. Actually, this phenomenon was significant enough to catch the watchful eye of the perennially provocative Robert Christgau, who's been counting critics' votes and making pronouncements about the totals for the entire 27- (or 28-) year-history of the poll. And we thought our jobs were boring.
"A full half of our [top 40] major-label albums," writes Christgau in his essay, "came from the megacorp I call UniMoth—11 in all, four of the top seven, on Interscope, Island, MCA, Motown, Giant, DreamWorks. But breaking last year's record of 14, 18 of our finishers were on independent labels, be these well-capitalized ventures by renegade bizzers from the philanthropic Danny Goldberg to the profiteering Richard Branson or tiny outfits like Le Tigre's feminist Mr. Lady or renegade bizzer Aimee Mann's DIY SuperEgo."
Actually, Bob gave UMG just a bit too much credit—Giant, as our faithful readers know, is a Warner Music Group label. But jeez, the idea that one outfit can dominate the marketplace while also getting the most critical props has gotta be some kinda coup. It just doesn't seem fair that one group has the most cake and gets to eat it too.
More interesting facts:
LIVE NATION POSTS (ANOTHER) RECORD QUARTER
More butts in seats than ever before. (5/3a)
| ||
THE NEW UMG
Gosh, we hope there are more press releases.
TIKTOK BANNED!
Unless the Senate manages to make this whole thing go away, that is.
THE NEW HUGE COUNTRY ACT
No, not that one.
TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN PLAYLIST
Now 100% unlicensed!
|