At the end of 1977, "Marquee Moon" was voted the third-best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics nationwide, published in "The Village Voice". Christgau, the poll's creator and supervisor, ranked it number one on his own list. "Sounds" also named it the year's best album, while "NME" ranked it fifth on its year-end list. Verlaine later said of the overwhelmingly positive response from critics: "There was a certain magic happening, an inexplicable certainty of something, like the momentum of a freight train. That's not egoism but, if you cast a spell, you don't get flummoxed by the results of your spell."