Frank, from his 2021 ballot:
I joked that I was doing the Uproxx [critics’ poll] as a conceptual art piece, i.e., I knew my ballot wasn’t going to make an impact. But I was actually doing it to combat my alienation and to engage with some of my critic friends via email. Then when Chuck tipped me off to the P&J Rip-Off thing I jumped in further. I worry that this conflicted with my other listening and writing, and that I’m e.g. putting off writing about singles and about baile funk in particular ’cause I want what I write to be good and not too overwhelmingly ignorant, meanwhile I’m lounging around in album rabbitholes.
I am so far removed from all of these worlds—Uproxx, Pazz & Jop Ripoff, even Facebook at this point—but glad Frank and some others whose work I’ve felt a kinship with over the years (less because our tastes are closely aligned) are not (though I guess he’s also admitting he sort of is?). I will certainly try to listen to some of Frank’s list; always on the lookout for new, different wild things. (But am I really open to this? I don’t know anymore. It always sounds good to say that, but…)
P.S. Here’s the Uproxx poll results.
RockCritics.com 
Thank you, Scott.
The Pazz & Jop results are here; navigation guide is here.
My post was deficient in that I didn’t say anything about the music, which is something I hope to do later (“hope to” “do”; “hope” “to do”; which verb will end up the effective one?). But I’ve been getting ever more lax about posting end-of-year lists not too far from the actual end of a year – or even in the following 24 months – so I felt like throwing one up quick on my LiveJournal, at least.
A quick question, though – but not a quick answer, I’m sure:
What do these end-of-year polls do? What do they accomplish? What have they done in the past? How do people use them these days, and how did they use them those days?
Pazz & Jop took in a bit of the world and tried to engage the world. Maybe Uproxx hopes to. The Pazz & Jop Rip-Off is buried within a Facebook community – though maybe for those within the community there’s big engagement. It’s run by a couple of people in their spare time, so the resources don’t seem to be there to push further, at the moment.
Anyway, haven’t read the Uproxx blurbs yet; the site feels uncomfortable, as if it wants to be on top of trends but doesn’t have a sense of where it itself trends. But I don’t know that, just a feeling from looking at titles without having read anything, so take my impression with a grain of salt.
Don’t know if there’s a swirl of conversation and inquiry that is generated by either of these polls. I haven’t seen it, but would I?
What population do they draw on, reveal (in their results), speak to?
Not a lot of women participating.
I don’t know what purpose these polls serve, or for whom. I figure a good policy is don’t vote in any poll you have no interest in reading after the results are posted, though I guess in theory at least you can’t always determine that in advance (though it’s not difficult to predict that most if not all publication-oriented polls will be boring), and anyway I broke that rule several times myself , being barely interested in the Voice, or what people had to say about it, by the time I was voting in pazz & jop.
The music that used to be the essence of Pazz and Jop (I was an original contributor, since 1974) is disappearing: album artists, and albums. None of my students in my Writing About Music class at St. John’s U in New York even think in terms of albums. All depend on Apple Music or Spotify playlists; we’re devolving quickly to the point that they might not even know the artist, though they recognize the song.
Oh well. Too late to stop yet, so here’s my 2021 post-ballots (Uproxx, P&J Rip-off etc) Real Top Fave Albums, Gut Picks, Bias Babies, also Also Cool and other brilliantly-named tiers of jazz x related, bluestronic realness, hiphopoid, even some rock:
https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2022/02/youve-got-to-pick-up-every-witch-lists.html Oh yeah, and Singles/Favored Tracks; I’m not a totla albumist..cpm
“total albumist” either. And here’s “Changed The Lox” on Lucinda Williams’ Lu’s Jukebox covers sets series, and other worthy geezer considerations, but Top Country this year is almost all youngbloodz, but as you get further into ratings, also see Loretta, Willie, Stampfel, Billy Joe & Kinky, many more, incl. new to me faces & ancient headz: https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2022/03/changed-lox-country-etc-lists-comments.html