In lieu of a traditional Top 40, Vibe has just published its list of the 44 best singles of 2007, and it’s headed up by a… Fabolous collaboration with Ne-Yo that we never paid much attention to until now. Yes, Fabolous over Kanye, 50, Rihanna, “Crank That,” anything featuring T-Pain, anything featuring a former American Idol contestant, and the way beyond omnipresent Lil Wayne. Never let it be said the folks at Vibe aren’t listening to their hearts. The full 44 is after the jump, but first our thoughts on everything that fell below the standard set by Fabolous.
THE GOOD: M.I.A. sneaks in by dint of a Bun B/Rich Boy remix, Keyshia Cole scrapes the Top 10 with her Biggie-twisting Missy collaboration, and most of our favorite ringtones urban radio hits of the year make an appearance.
THE BAD: 50 Cent over Kanye upset! Momentarily peeved about this, but upon further reflection, “I Get Money” still bangs months later while the luster has faded a little on the Jackson-sampling sheen of “Good Life.” Still, from an ideological standpoint, this feels suspect.
THE WHAAA? UGK’s “International Players Anthem” not even in the Top 10? We’d call foul even if Pimp C hadn’t just recently left us. (Okay, to be fair, Vibe‘s list was likely compiled long before his passing.)
Time was so smitten by the Amy Winehouse that makes music–rather than the Amy Winehouse that fuels gossip rags–that they went ahead and named Back To Black and “Rehab” the best album and best single of 2007. As for the rest of the mag’s 2007 faves, Time‘s all-things-to-all-people approach to listmaking means these are probably the most self-consciously “eclectic” lists so far, making sure to squeeze in one hip-hop pick, one teenpop record, one radio rock staple, etc. Both of the Top 10s are after the jump, but here are a few thoughts on the magazine’s non-Winehouse choices.
THE GOOD: Tokenistic Time offers little in the way of curveballs, but it’s still kinda weird (in the good way) to think that the electronic prog of Battles’ Mirrored is getting play in the magazine of choice for your more staid medical/dental waiting rooms.
THE BAD: We refuse to believe there weren’t three better rock songs released this year than a Radiohead album cut, “Hey There Delilah,” and something by the Fratellis. Anyone? Help us out here.
THE WHAAAA? We were gonna start bitching about Feist showing up in both the singles (at No. 2!) and albums list (at No. 3!), but then we clicked on the embedded YouTube link for “1-2-3-4” and before you knew it we were curled up and drooling on the keyboard with visions of shiny unitards dancing in our heads.
Taking time to actually cover pop music for once, New York puts forth its “Best Of 2007” as an odd list/rundown hybrid. The whole shebang is topped by Radiohead’s In Rainbows on the album front (apparently, it “had no serious rival this year”! Take that, all you old-model fuddy-duddys!) and Rihanna on the singles chart (because it made “the avant-garde irresistible”). The rest of the list is after the jump, but here are a few other high (and low) lights:
THE GOOD: Finally, someone has addressed the disappointment that was Bjork’s much-anticipated Volta, although I don’t know if it was pop music’s biggest stinker of the year. (The stench created by the industry as a whole was much, much worse, no?)
THE BAD: In a year that was marked by the city getting increasingly prettied up by glossy people and glossier buildings, the messy Animal Collective is your “signature New York band,” taking over from the Strokes. Maybe the New York editors didn’t have time to track down whoever does the music for all those new condo developments’ Flash-heavy Web sites?
THE WHAAAA? Pick one: Feist as an “art-rock diva”? Lil Wayne as an “open-source rapper”? Or LCD Soundsystem as “geek glam”? I’ll go with the last one, if only because to add insult to injury they were kinda robbed on that whole “signature New York band” thing. (And I’ll avoid the “… but you’re bringing me down” joke, too.)
LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver–which, based on my rough estimation of the number of times we’ve had to use the album cover illustration over the past few weeks, seems to be running away with this year’s top-albums lists, at least in the UK–topped the Guardian critics’ poll, with its now-familiar listmates Radiohead, the Hold Steady, M.I.A., and the Klaxons rounding out the top five. Full list after the jump.
THE GOOD: Because the Guardian‘s list reprinted lines–and star ratings–from each ranking album’s original review, we can all see that either the music writers have changed their stance on the Klaxons or the Guardian‘s fired the person who gave Myths Of The Near Future one star, saying that “Indie chancers trying to pass this ropey stuff off as a dance revival is insulting and pointless.” But maybe I appreciate this because Myths grew on me over the course of 2007, too.
THE BAD: Feist’s The Reminder at No. 10. Britney Spears’ Blackout at No. 17. Hey, if you’re going to have the year’s most talked-about dance-pop album on your list, why not get really ballsy and put it ahead of the snoozy dinner-party music?
THE WHAAA? “Like a hunk of blue cheese, Tennessee’s Kings of Leon seem to be getting better with age.” Really, Guardian? Really?
Electronic-focused XLR8R unsurprisingly has a dance album in the top spot on its list of the best albums of 2007, Parisian noize-house duo Justice’s †, but perhaps just to cover their love-hate bases (or screw with us), Justice also tops the magazine’s list of the worst albums of 2007. Both lists are after the jump, but for now our cursory look at this conflicted wrap-up.
THE GOOD: Sure, Justice is turning out to be the token dance album for just about every music mag this year, but since this is XLR8R‘s beat, you at least know they listened to more than one techno LP in 2007 before making their decision. Also big up for listing the big robo-beats of gruff Bay Area rapper Turf Talk’s excellent West Coast Vaccine as everyone else rushes to forget hyphy ever existed.
THE BAD: Not a whiff of LCD Soundsystem, a brave move for a mag with a very specific demographic. Also: wrong.
THE WHAAA?: Who knew Underworld even had a new album out this year, let alone that it was one of the worst?
Ring the alarm, bang a gong, let the dogs out: Mojo‘s list of the 50 best albums of the year is the first (that we’ve seen) to be headed up by Radiohead’s In Rainbows! Keeping it the realest! Mojo sure didn’t forget all that Radiohead has done for us, unlike all those other ingrates topping LCD Soundsystem or the Arcade Fire, neither of whom could change a dirty diaper, let alone everything about music. The full list is after the jump, but first our thoughts on the only honest list of ’07 so far.
THE GOOD: Yay Robert Wyatt, PJ Harvey, LCD, Grinderman, etc. etc. (Maura would like to put in a special “yay” for Edwyn Collins as well, all the way down at No. 47.)
THE BAD: Look, it’s all our old friends from every other 2007 year-end list, but at least Mojo spices things up with some cops to their aged audience in the form of Nick Lowe, Joni Mitchell, Linda Thompson, Kevin Ayers, etc.
THE WHAAA?: Pissed Jeans kinda stick out like a thumb with a big ol’ purple blood blister in this company. Also a special “really, them?” award goes to the Cinematic Orchestra for still doggedly slogging away on whatever’s left of the trip-hop circuit.
Ticket reseller StubHub released its 2007 “State Of The Market That We Won’t Refer To As ‘Scalping'” report yesterday, and perhaps surprising no one, the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana “Best Of Both Worlds” tour was all over it. Its $258 average ticket price and 55 dates resulted in it becoming the first tour to gross over $10 million in sales on the site, not to mention that it outsold bands like the Police, Van Halen, and Genesis–you know, old guys.
THE GOOD: Is sanity finally setting in to the secondary-ticketing market? Perhaps: “The average price of concert tickets sold through StubHub in 2007 was $117. That price DECREASED $28 per ticket when compared to average prices in 2006 ($145). The drop in average ticket prices has increased YOY, average ticket prices declined 19% in 2007, compared to 12% in 2006.”
THE BAD: Or perhaps not: “Celine Dion’s Las Vegas tour topped the average ticket price category at a whopping $352 per show.”
THE WHAAAA? In the “Rising Stars Under $100” category, the average price of a ticket to an Arcade Fire show was $94–making them the highest new band in the field. Surely if that average had factored in these peoples’ dignity, the price would have gone waayyyy higher.
Omnivorous online music mag Stylus sadly shut down several months before we started our Year-End Analysis series, but they helpfully published their 2007 Top 50 albums and singles lists before bowing out. So welcome to the first retroactive installment, where LCD Soundsystem once again tops both lists. (And they got the right single this time.) Both lists are after the jump if you missed ’em, but first an adieu to the site by way of our summary thoughts.
THE GOOD: Hey, look, the first list that actually remembers that electronic/dance music still exists, and/or that Justice wasn’t the only dance act to release an LP this year. Plus stuff that gets played on the radio that’s not “Umbrella” or Kanye West! It’s like popular music actually has some breadth or something.
THE BAD: We actually have little in the way of beef with these lists, though they do confirm that Miranda Lambert, a very goood singer who made a solid album, has found herself turned into the Muzik Mafia of ’07 by the planet’s rock critics.
THE WHAAA?: Vampire Weekend’s single ahead of Rihanna, R. Kelly, Lil Mama, and the best song off the Kanye LP? Also we’re starting to feel like the only people on Earth who got a rah-rah rash whenever Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” came on MTV. Even Stephen King liked it!
Brit rock mag Q gives countrymen Radiohead the gas face (by daring to stick them at No. 4!), choosing 2007’s first universe-altering rock release, the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, as the best album of the year. Their picks for more or less every middle-of-the-road rock album released in 2007the Top 50 albums and the Top 10 singles of the year are after the jump, but first a quick survey of the fallout from this bold snubbing of In Rainbows.
THE GOOD: Roisin Murphy’s second solo album, the dizzying disco-pomp of Overpowered, sneaks in at No. 29, with Robyn, PJ Harvey, M.I.A., and a handful of others doing their best to keep this list from being entirely made up of boring-ass, dude-centric indie rock.
THE BAD: The rest of the list is nearly all boring-ass, dude-centric indie rock. And they don’t even bother to include Wilco like every other similar list this year!
THE WHAAA?: Once again, Justice are a rock-friendly publication’s token dance pick, i.e. why even bother pretending to keep an ear to the clubs? And speaking of blatant tokenism: Hey, there’s Common, way down at No. 36! That fills the annual quota for one acceptably “conscious” album made by a black person. We guess C was Q‘s clever way of avoiding the default Kanye inclusion.
Stephen King, pop cultural pundit and guy who once made John Boy Walton fight a gay clown, has issued a list of the only seven albums he deems worthy this year. Possibly because the modern pop landscape is more frightening for a middle-aged crank than a possessed big rig chasing Emilio Estevez? “Stephen King’s taste in music is more eclectic than scary,” sez AP. Don’t forget boring! The full list is after the jump–y’all can start arguing about Wilco again if you feel like it–but first our impressions.
THE GOOD: Uh.
THE BAD: “In truth, your Uncle Stevie was disappointed with this year’s new music, very disappointed indeed, and his year-end list reflects that,” King says. “I could only find seven albums I wanted to mention.” We know laziness is kind of your thing when it comes to talking about music, Uncle Stevie, but what was so disappointing about ’07? Was your heart broken by Neon Bible? Did you feel ripped off actually paying for a copy of that A Place To Bury Strangers record? Were you bummed to hear how much filler was on the Soulja Boy album after taking all that time to learn how to Crank That? What??
THE WHAAA?: Anyone calling Ozzy’s Black Rain the “finest heavy metal record of the year; a true speaker-buster” needs to have the bridge of his nose rapped with a rolled-up copy of the Decibel year-end issue.
