A Voice vote for Dylan

Bob Dylan wasn’t nominated for an album of the year Grammy, but his “Modern Times” was voted the best album of 2006 in the Village Voice’s annual “Pazz & Jop” critics poll, whose results were announced Wednesday. Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” was named the top single in the annual survey, which has been a prominent barometer of pop-music critical opinion for more than three decades. The other artists with albums in this year’s top 10 are, in order, TV on the Radio, Ghostface Killah, the Hold Steady, Gnarls Barkley, the Arctic Monkeys, Clipse, Neko Case, Joanna Newsom and Tom Waits.

This year’s poll was embroiled in controversy, following the 2005 acquisition of the New York-based Voice by New Times Media, and the firing of longtime critic and Pazz and Jop originator Robert Christgau in August. The irreverent new music blog Idolator initiated its own poll, called Jackin Pop, and urged writers to vote there and boycott the Voice. In the end, the rivals counted virtually the same number of ballots: 494 in the Voice, 497 at Idolator. Dylan finished No. 6 in the latter’s poll, which was won by TV on the Radio.

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Richard Cromelin