HMV Poll of Polls 2008
 

Elbow's Mercury Prize-winning album The Seldom Seen Kid is UK music critics' album of the year, a survey says.

The "poll of polls", conducted by retail chain HMV, took into account votes from media critics as well as the firm's staff and online customers.

The Seldom Seen Kid was nominated by 18 out of the 35 outlets polled, with Portishead's Third coming second on 17.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Dig, Lazarus, Dig came third, followed by Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend.

Their self-titled debuts came fourth and fifth respectively.

TV on the Radio and MGMT also featured in the top 10, as did Bon Iver, Glasvegas and Hot Chip. BBC


1) The Seldom Seen Kid - Elbow
2) Third - Portishead
3) Dig, Lazarus, Dig - Nick Cave
4) Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
5) Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
6) TV On The Radio - Dear Silence
7) MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
8) Bon Iver - For Emma Forever Ago
9) Glasvegas - Glasvegas
10) Hot Chip - Made In The Dark

Thoughts...

Well it's like every other list out there i suppose so it makes sense!

I'm more interested in Elbow's 'Seldom Seen Kid' topping the list.
It's an under rated album on these boards and may come as a surprise to some.

I haven't heard it. I've never thought they were an interesting band and the singles and whatnot i've heard from it haven't changed my mind sadly.Could have done a lot worse picking a Mercury winner though.

well it's a good album imo, and I would include "On a day like this" in my list of best songs of 2008, but I wouldn't rate the album as the best of the year.

They're all indie albums. What an amazing coincidence.

So, the poll took into account votes from the firm's staff and online customers. So much for it being the 'UK music critics' album of the year. Lolz.

The claim, as far as goes media critics, is without any shadow of a doubt untrue: Elbow's record is very scarcely regarded as the album of the year in any critical circles. Hell, even Q magazine couldn't fit it in their top 5.

It is true that the UK music journalist community is heavily indie-oriented (as is the generality of the more widely read American music media community, as evidenced by looking at data on compendium sites like Metacritic), but I think there is a single very good reason why this year there was nothing from outside of indie at all in this list: whatever one might think about the quality of the indie music that came out this year, it would be hard to argue that there were many particularly worthy releases from other sectors of the popular music spectrum. It was not really a great year for any one genre of music. What indie has on its side is a vast quantity of widely accessible albums to choose from, so it's bound to hit with about 15 or so well-circulated records a year. It has no competition from mainstream pop, for which the albums almost invariably consist of about 2 or 3 hits and the rest filler. It has no competition from metal, which is far too niche these days. It also has little competition from non-mainstream hiphop, which has seen a massive decrease in the amount of widely accessible albums in circulation over the past 3 years. Other broad genres (and their sub-genres), similarly, are much too niche to really hit these lists - e.g. minimal techno.

In summary, these lists have to be indie oriented, because there's not an awful lot else in terms of album music that's widely listened to in the readership community.

lol

I wasn't making a statement about the releases this year, just expressing my distaste for the unilateral ****pile of music that critics divulge. The indie community is so ****ing insular -- I didn't really expect end-of-year lists to breach music beyond indie's repertoire. I know it wasn't a very good year, but there were plenty of releases which deserve recognition, especially hip-hop and metal albums.

The problem, as I see it, is that it is society that determines the nature of these lists. Cultural journalism is essentially a manifestation of widespread demand. These critics are not laws unto themselves - they answer to their readership. In order to succeed as journalists, they must put out material that a big enough audience actually want to read.

Fashion, in that case, is really the supreme arbiter of taste. Indie is widely fashionable, so the main tide of critical journalism must cater to indie. Metal and alternative hip-hop are more niche and far less in distribution. In a society where metal was the main type of alternative music listened to (and the most recorded), the end of year lists would have a massive metal bias.

I'd go as far as to argue that metal and hip-hop, in general, ought not to be recognized at all in these webzines because, plain and simply, those genres have little to do with these sites' readership. They don't belong. There are webzines that deal exclusively with other genres - people interested in those genres will go and read those sites. Aside from that, where do you stop? To be completely free of bias to one genre, a site would have to include compositions from the avant garde, obscure electronica recordings, and so forth. Nah. Critics should stick with their areas of specialty. Otherwise it gets embarrassing. I always laugh whenever Pitchfork throw in their token hip-hop album into an end of year list - especially since the album is usually one of the most banal, least interesting hip-hop releases of the year.

I used to work at HMV and most of the staff and customers were complete bimbos with no taste at all, so I'm surprised even these albums made the list!