pop.idolator.comWelcome to the 2007 Idolator Pop Critics Poll
Welcome to the second Idolator Pop Critics Poll, a survey of critics and writers from around the world. We've tallied the 452 ballots, compiled mixes of our year's favorite tracks, found appropriate art for everything—and now, we're ready for you to comb through the results.
1:03 PM ON MON JAN 14 2008
BY MICHAELANGELO MATOS
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"You're not gonna get very far with a song like that."
In 2007, the idea of collective excitement surrounding an album became more of an unattainable ideal, thanks to a constant churn of music, increased fragmentation of the pop ideal, and listeners further burrowing into their own genre-specific niches with the aid of the Internet. (And even within the more Net-savvy niches, the idea of an album leaking on a specific date became more of an abstract idea, what with the demise of OiNK and the scurrying of that site's users to a variety of replacements.) But one band actually managed to bring together a relatively wide swath of music fans, and it was the result of 
Despite a pervasive rockcrit feeling to the contrary, jokes and grooves are more than enough on which to build a great record, even a great career. But we all know that an album like Sound of Silver doesn't escape its subculture, doesn't win the approval of this many rock critics of varying allegiances, without mixing in stuff like pain and fear and heartache and miscellaneous intangibles—usually at its own peril, especially when the artist is so adept at beats and laughs.
