Can Bands "Do" Things Without Doing Things?

I happened to notice the headline for the article about the winner of this year's Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll: "The Revenge of TV on the Radio: Bob Dylan (and the Voice itself) finally humbled, Dear Science wins the 36th Annual Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll." Apparently last year, or two years ago, more people voted for Dylan (and the Voice ran a cover with a drawing of Dylan running over TVOTR in a car or something like that), but not this year. So here's the thing: to say TV On the Radio "got revenge" on Bob Dylan implies that the band did something.

The best writing about music -- or about anything, for that matter -- cracks things open, reveals things. Finding what's hidden and bringing to light what a band or album does is a worthwhile pursuit for the critic. But it's kind of funny when music critics (myself included) exercise this power to animate bands and albums, to suggest that a band or album has done something when what has actually happened is that the band or album has been written about or understood in a certain way. It's a kind of speech act by proxy (or maybe not by proxy, actually), but does it hold the same weight as a minister saying "I now pronounce you husband and wife?" 

The Voice declares that TV on the Radio got revenge, Bob Dyland and the Voice were humbled, and Dear Science won the poll. It seems that only the last act is true. If somebody writes "Band X has won Contest Y," where Contest Y is a critics' poll, the subject, the doer, is obviously Band X, but of course the Band had nothing to do with winning the contest. The implication, "I declare that Band X has won Contest Y," itself implies, "According to the rules, which are that if enough people say Band X is the best band, I will declare that Band X has won Contest Y." That all seems legit, but the other things can't be said to have actually taken place outside a few (hundred?) peoples' imagination -- or maybe not even that. I guess it depends on what you think of critics' polls in general.