Category: Year-End Lists

From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2004 edition

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BY JASON GROSS

In 2004, the only thing worse than being a Democrat was being a journalist. The battered profession had to contend with crises of confidence (not just Jayson Blair, but Dan Rather), newspaper circulation scandals, biting from bloggers, slowed ad revenue growth for publications, ever shrinking word counts and sections (review columns cover on average only 10 releases a week), and increasing consolidation of media outlets (something the record industry knows all too well). To top it off, an annual Gallup poll recently revealed that scribes get low marks for “integrity” and “honesty.” Continue reading “From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2004 edition” →

From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2003 edition

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The 2003 edition of Jason Gross’s yearly music writing roundup, broken links intact.

BY JASON GROSS, 2003

A common complaint about music today is that there aren’t a lot of good albums coming out anymore. Similarly, the same complaint is made about music criticism. My answer to both of these saws is that the good stuff is out there if you look for it. There’s no question that the Net has opened up a lot of possibilities and will help bring about many changes in journalism, but good work is still being done in the print world too–I found about twice the number of quality articles in 2003 as I did when I put together a round-up last year, and I’m positive that I missed plenty of other good things this time around. Continue reading “From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2003 edition” →

From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2002 edition

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From the let-me-take-you-way-wayback machine: Jason Gross’s “Best Music Journalism” summaries, which ran here every December from 2002-2006. (Jason’s survey eventually landed in other venues, which we spoke about in January 2022). We begin this archival dig with the debut edition. Continue reading “From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2002 edition” →

The Village Voice Pazz & Jop Ripoff Poll: Q&A with Glenn Boothe

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The spirit and methodology if not the copyright of Pazz & Jop currently carries forward in the cheekily named Village Voice Pazz & Jop Ripoff Poll, a Facebook group with close to 2,000 members, at least several hundred of whom will cast Top 10 Album ballots in the 2023 edition. PJRP is moderated by Glenn Boothe, who started the poll, and Keith Artin, who, according to Glenn, does the “heavy lifting” of the numbers. Continue reading “The Village Voice Pazz & Jop Ripoff Poll: Q&A with Glenn Boothe” →

Howard Druckman’s Top 10 Songs of 2023

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(Pictured above: Danny Michel)

1. Danny Michel – “Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself”
When the world is collapsing it’s hard sometimes to feel like you’re not. I haven’t had a bad year, but there’ve been some challenges, and ceaseless self-criticism doesn’t help. Ebullient, hopeful pop-rock like this anthem does a real service for people like me: it’s one of the few things that can reliably make you feel better, even if only for the duration of hearing the song. (As Pete Townshend once said, rock ‘n’ roll won’t solve all your problems, but it will let you dance all over them from time to time.) Continue reading “Howard Druckman’s Top 10 Songs of 2023” →

Best Music Journalism of 2023 (Jason Gross)

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Best Music Journalism of 2023: 30 great articles fly against the tide of misery

By Jason Gross

Ah, December… the time of year when we feast with family, exchange gifts with our loved ones, and reflect on yet another lousy, horrible year in the media. Horrendous job cus were reported mid-year and again in December, which might not be surprising since Americans aren’t even following the news like we did before and the tech companies aren’t working with publishers as much anymore either. Continue reading “Best Music Journalism of 2023 (Jason Gross)” →

Best Music Journalism/2021 edition (Jason Gross/R&R Globe)

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Back in the pre-blog incarnation of rockcritics.com, we used to post Jason Gross’s “The Year in Music Journalism” surveys, a sort of good-bad-ugly of all things rock writing-related. So I’m pleased to see that Jason is still doing his thing, with the 2021 edition of the survey hosted at Rock & Roll Globe.

I interviewed Jason recently about this feature—19 years in the running—which will be posted here hopefully later this week.

My year in

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…singles
Deliberately set out to hear (stream) more new music in 2021 than I have since whenever it was I used to write about the stuff, and that was a good thing. And I previewed a great deal of it in as unfiltered a fashion as is still possible—with zero prior knowledge of song, artist, sometimes even genre. One unintended not so great consequence was that it ultimately meant a lot more stuff to half-listen to. Constantly adding to playlists merely feeds my worst tendencies as a dabbler. Still, these ten are pretty well test-driven (in no specific order), and with more time and energy the list could quite easily be doubled. Continue reading “My year in” →

Top 12 Songs of 2021 (Howard Druckman)

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To kick off our year in this/that/and whatever posts, Howard Druckman posts his favourite songs of the past 12 months. (Pictured above: Snotty Nose Rez Kids.)
It’s actually 14 songs, because for Mustafa and Donovan Woods, it was impossible to choose the best out of two songs. So for each of them, it’s two-songs-per instead of one.

Needless to say, the pandemic figures heavily in my choices this year. Continue reading “Top 12 Songs of 2021 (Howard Druckman)” →