Pazz & Jop 2010: Kanye Had The Best Album, Cee-Lo Had The Best Single. You're Surprised?

Late yesterday afternoon, our colleagues at the Village Voice up in New York City released the annual beast that is the Pazz & Jop poll, which, in short, accumulates the year-end lists of hundreds of critics from around the country and compiles them into a database that helps determine a...

By Pete Freedman

January 19, 2011

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Late yesterday afternoon, our colleagues at the Village Voice up in New York City released the annual beast that is the Pazz & Jop poll, which, in short, accumulates the year-end lists of hundreds of critics from around the country and compiles them into a database that helps determine a critical mass for the year that was in music. There's also some point value stuff thrown in there, too.

It's pretty complicated stuff, so kudos to our NYC friends for once again pulling off the feat and accompanying it, once again, with some intensive, compelling coverage on the music of 2010.

As for what the poll revealed this year? Well...

Nothing too surprising, necessarily. Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (rightfully) walked away from the polls with a landslide victory in the albums category. So, too, did Cee-Lo Green's impossible-to-avoid "Fuck You" in the singles count.

For what it's worth, I had each as No. 1 in my own respective ballots. So did a lot of others, clearly -- and you can peruse everyone's ballot right here if you have a couple hours to spare. And if you have even more time, then I recommend you check out this site, which compiles all the Pazz & Jop data into even more drawn-out formulas, like which voters had the most centric tastes (I came in at No. 16 out of 711, and I'm not sure that's a good thing) and what the list might look like if you removed from it everyone's ballot that included Kanye. Interesting stuff for sure.

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