Winners from the 2009 Grammy Awards, presented Sunday night in Los Angeles:
What were the 80 most important musical recordings, artists, trends, events, and performances of 2008? What were the eight things this year that broke our hearts—or, at least, our ears? We’re happy to announce 80 ’08 (and Heartbreak), Idolator’s year-end overview. The list is below the jump.
Nominees for the 2009 Grammy Awards, announced Wednesday, Dec. 3 (winners were announced on Feb. 8, 2009):
Sure, in the long run, “which artists had to take moonmen home from tonight’s Video Music Awards ceremony” is probably a meaningless statistic on the level of, say, “almost-no-hitters in Mets history,” but admit it, you want to know if Paramore beat out Fall Out Boy or if both of them got robbed by Linkin Park I MEAN COME ON YOU GUYS–uh, I mean, full list of winners after the jump.
While we wait for comments to get fixed, those of you who would like to comment on Mike’s fine liveblogging of the night can chat here, at least until we hit 100 posts, at which point I guess we’ll go into thread No. 3? More »
Today’s list that’s going around some blogs that I read: List the albums you like most from each year that you’ve been alive. It sounds simple, right? But in making a list like this, you realize things about yourself, like how Aerosmith’s peak for me came right around the year I was born, even though I didn’t really hear them until many years later. And how 2004 was something of a weak year for my personal canon, while 1989 was a really huge year for it, one where I had to pick between Like A Prayer, Doolittle, Cocked & Loaded, Full Moon Fever, and the album I finally wound up selecting. Anyway, peruse my list after the jump–Anthony made one too–and feel free to pick mine apart/make your own, although I should warn you that it took me a while to do. (I’m usually loath to use Wikipedia as a source, but its lists of album releases were helpful to cross-reference with Amazon, as were the Pazz & Jop rundowns on Robert Christgau’s site.) If people enjoy this exercise, maybe we’ll do singles lists next week! Or, hell, runners-up lists, since some of these “best” decisions were a lot harder than others.
Enter to win one of four pairs of tickets to Devo’s June 26 show at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn, courtesy of Live Nation. Just e-mail tips@idolator.com with the subject line “Devo tickets!” before 11 a.m. Thursday, June 19; we’ll select four e-mailers randomly for a spot–and a plus one–on the show’s guest list. More details on the bill after the jump.
I generally assume that the biggest song of the summer–or, at very least, the one I’m going to remember–will come from the playlists of R&B/hip-hop stations. However, something about “Put A Girl In It” by Brooks & Dunn just screams out hanging out on the lake with a cooler full of beer. More »
When I wrote about so-called Wonky Pop movement and its brightest prospect, the big, goofy Danish band Alphabeat, I said of my summer-jam nominee “…it hits you like a load of laundry just out of the dryer… More »
We’ve been waiting as patiently (or not) as you have, and it’s finally here: The second annual Critics Poll is now open for business–and this time we’ve expanded it a little. Today, you get the poll proper: Albums, Tracks, Reissues, Artists, plus essays by myself, Jess, and Maura. More »
