More Moments In Magazine Reader Fail

Yesterday, it was Rolling Stone’s readers and their inexplicable devotion to Green Day. Today, it’s SPIN’s readers and their downright confusing reader’s poll.

Apparently, 2009 was the year of Pearl Jam and music writers all over the world simply missed the memo. Backspacer, the PJ album the readers chose as the year’s best, is currently moldering as the 56th most acclaimed album of the year (according to Acclaimed Music). In fact, SPIN magazine itself didn’t even have that album in their Top 40 of 2009. Even stranger is “Unthought Known” getting voted the year’s best song, despite the fact that it wasn’t even a single off the album. Either Eddie Vedder’s been stuffing the online ballot box or a few SPIN readers got way too zealous. There’s just no way tens of thousands of fans arrived at that conclusion independently.

Either way, it seems like there’s a major disconnect between SPIN and their readers. Just look at their little graphic at the top of the reader’s poll page. They’ve got Green Day, the Dead Weather and Bat For Lashes on display, despite the apparent mandate for more Pearl Jam by their own readers. Meanwhile, the magazine’s choice for Artist of the Year, Kings Of Leon? Nowhere to be found. Awkward…

Ten Thousand Green Day Fans Can't Be Wrong...?

We live in a country that values giving “the people” a voice. However, those people and their voices can often say some very, very stupid things.

We learned that in two different places today. On one hand, the Baseball Writers Association of America embarrassed themselves (again) by only electing Andre Dawson to the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite the presence of at least half a dozen other deserving players on the ballot. However, this isn’t a sports blog. This is a music blog. Therefore, it’s with great sadness that I present you with this link.

Did you catch all that? Rolling Stone’s readers elected Green Day to be the best musical artists of the past ten years. They also thought that Green Day’s American Idiot was the best album of the decade and that “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” was the top single. Needless to say, I’ve got more than a few problems with this. I refuse to believe that two overblown concept albums, fueled by sloganeering, reductive politics and just plain ignorance, qualify a band to be the best of the decade. Oh, and Warning, which no one bought. No matter who you feel deserves a title as awkward as “Best Artist of the Entire Decade,” you should have someone higher on the list of nominees than Green Day.

However, this is apparently what people want. Democracy in action, folks. We live by it, we die by it. And, today, Green Day have won some undeserved accolades by it.