Music Features

Winning losers

Stand up for your write(-ins)

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | May 7, 2008

FALSE ALARM: For all the bloggorhea and backlash, Vampire Weekend scored one whole vote.

View results and more from this year's Phoenix/WFNX Best Music Poll at BestMusicPoll.com.

Every last one of you who votes in our Best Music Poll is a treasure; but blessed are those who write-in. Our meager handful of nominees can only do so much, and compiling our list often ignites within us a level of anguish that can only be likened to choosing between one’s children, or selecting your Top 8, or something. Be assured, despite what our system suggests, we are well aware that plenty of other awesome bands and records are out there; but print, you might recall, is a charmingly finite medium, and we can only type up so many choices. Besides, polls without shameless mechanisms to skew numbers and/or generate outrage are no fun at all.

Those Phoenix readers who scan the nominees, release an indignant puffing sound, and huffily write in their alternatives are of a distinguished line. They are the people who will never settle for what is given to them. They are the folks who do not simply rise above their options but stand and shout into the din, convinced by their conviction that independence is, indeed, the only path to truth. Writers-in are heroes. (Unless we’re talking about the presidential race — then they’re just assholes.)

As much as our gallery of winners can convey (or reaffirm) to you the state of which prominent artists have the longest Boston-based buddy lists, a survey of the less fortunate can offer some much-needed clarity in a musical atmosphere gone murky with the smog of hype. Example: essentially inoffensive but obnoxiously ubiquitous Graceland-ganking boy-toys Vampire Weekend were all anyone could bother to post about just months ago; but for all the premature blogorrhea and resultant backlash, the lads scored one whole vote in the category for Breakthrough Act. A devoted, decisive, “don’t-forget-Vampire-Weekend” vote, sure, but just one. Feist smoked them by like 296 clicks. In the same race, Rihanna bitchslapped Lily Allen but fell to comfortably funded punkers Against Me! (exclamation point theirs). Point being: weird.

Clearly, this is not about getting definitive answers, nor is it about dissing the winners. Answers are boring and dissing winners is for losers — the bad kind of losers. I’d rather talk about the good kind of losers. Losers like Freezepop, who, despite being über-local favorites, somehow showed up two votes strong on the national Best Album rankings — getting trounced by Radiohead’s vanilla opus In Rainbows but deadlocking with Arcade Fire and Band of Horses, and straight-up smacking R. Kelly, Jens Lekman, and — oh snap! — Feist. That two overzealous “Freezerpop” [sic] fans with a fuzzy understanding of the poll’s parameters are behind this unlikely battle, there is no doubt. Still, it’s nice to imagine this fantasy world on the other side of the ballot, where the National’s Boxer socks the Foos right in their Fighters, where Bright Eyes and Bruce Springsteen split their six total votes right down the middle of mediocrity, and where one whole person gives a shit about Nickelback.

1 | 2 | 3 | next >

Topics: Music Features , Celebrity News, Entertainment, Arcade Fire, More

Comments

Add a Comment

Today's Event Picks

[WORDS] Jhumpa Lahiri (Unaccustomed Earth) at Brown University

Plus 2 more >>

ARTICLES BY MICHAEL BRODEUR

TREAT OF VERSAILLES | December 01, 2009
It's been a good year: their relentlessly catchy Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (V2) — whisked into the public ear this year atop Cadillacs via ad-ready singles like "1901" and "Lisztomania" — is about to cause some year-end listomania of its own. Since its release, they've been circling the globe playing to a steadily swelling audience.

SING YOUR LIFE | November 24, 2009
Charles Spearin's Happiness Project — to be performed this Friday at the Middle East Downstairs as part of a trio of Torontonian acts — was originally just that: a project.

A BAND, A PART | November 24, 2009
My lingering qualms with Devendra Banhart's new album have very little to do with its substance and more to do with its consistency, a quality that throughout What Will We Be? seems present only in its glaring absence.

HEATHER WOODS BRODERICK | FROM THE GROUND | November 17, 2009
Let not the minimalist packaging of Heather Woods Broderick’s From the Ground mislead you into assuming it’s some sort of heady ambient work that you’ll get around to next time you’re cleaning — as happened to me.

DO OVER | November 18, 2009
I tried hard to be born earlier, but it didn't work. As a result, I've had to contend with an irritatingly positioned cultural blind spot (roughly 1976–1986) that currently occupies all that open space once filled with childhood memories.

See all articles by: MICHAEL BRODEUR

Most Viewed

Most Emailed

PHOTOS: GROSS THANKSGIVING FOOD TO AVOID
Thanksgiving is a time for gorging on food and hanging out with family, but really it's mostly about the food. There are some dishes that take it too far, however, and we are here to help you steer clear of those.

GREG EPSTEIN, ATHEIST SUPERSTAR
Once an intellectual taboo, atheism has become one of the great growth industries of the third millennium.

REVIEW: CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2
You're standing in an elevator with men wearing bulletproof vests and wielding machine guns. "No Russian," the leader reminds you, as the doors open to reveal a line of persons waiting at the airport security gate.

THE BIG HURT: FACES REFACED
Faces refaced, Spears speared, Hook hacked

TALE OF THE TAPES
Soon after music-minded UMass-Boston management professor Pacey Foster signed on to write a Boston chapter for the most comprehensive hip-hop tome ever compiled, his mission brought him to rural Maine, where it has long been speculated that the Hub rhyme scene's Holy Grail is safely stored.

THE X FACTOR
Martha Coakley should be plenty thankful for the holiday weekend. The polls suggest that, if nothing significant changes between now and the December 8 primary, she should handily claim the Democratic nomination for US Senate.

CLASSIC ROCK?
If you're looking for meaning in the overly sanitized myth that is our national Thanksgiving celebration, a good place to start is southeastern Massachusetts, where nearly 400 years ago that band of hungry, ill-prepared religious zealots tried to colonize the middle of nowhere at the start of winter.

WHALIN' ON PALIN
Give Sarah Palin this: she isn’t driven by polls. If she wanted to improve her chances at political success, she would have used her book and promotional tour to convince America that she has substance and gravitas .

INTERVIEW: GABOUREY SIDIBE
"While reading the book, I realized that I knew this girl in so many different people. Not just girls but boys, and not just black people but white and Asian and Indian."