Backstage Pass

So much of being a music critic is solitary. You listen to the music alone. You write about the music alone. And, once your opinions are released, you defend them all by yourself.

That's what made the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop poll so important to me. It was about consensus, about hundreds of critics getting together and, through their votes, deciding on what was best about the previous year's music. It was about being part of something larger.

Despite the Voice's unceremonious booting last year of Robert Christgau, the dean of music critics and longtime caretaker of the poll, Pazz & Jop is scheduled to come out in a month or so. But the poll has been damaged, with many critics opting out, as a protest of the treatment of Christgau.

That's where Idolator's Jackin' Pop Critics Poll comes in, a new, protest-free option to create a consensus. This year, nearly 500 critics voted to crown TV on the Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain" the top album and Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" the top single of 2006.

Idolator's Jackin' Pop Critics Poll [Idolator]
'Voice' Music Poll Undermined by Internet [NPR]
My Jackin' Pop ballot

PHOTO: TV on the Radio by Roman Barrett/Interscope