Stephen King Takes A Shine To Girl Talk And Al Green

noah | December 1, 2008 1:00 am

Last year, Stephen King could only pick seven albums that he liked from the year’s offerings, but 2008 has apparently been kinder to King’s ears: Not only was he moved to pick a full top 10, he placed two albums—Buckcherry’s Black Butterfly and the Pretenders’ Break Up The Concrete—at No. 1. Whoa, don’t get too crazy now!

THE GOOD: Hey, I liked that Al Green album too. THE BAD: The gallisticle (my new term for those pageview-inflating lists that are presented as galleries: feel free to pass it along!) is peppered with “dancing about architecture” punnery and “aw, gosh, EW, you don’t have to give me space in your mag” bloviation like the following: “Of all the things I write about for EW, pop music’s the hardest, because a columnist doesn’t get paid for saying, ‘I dunno, I just like it.’ But can I really explain why I love ‘I Kissed a Girl’ by Katy Perry and would be delighted never to hear Taylor Swift’s ‘You’re Not Sorry’ again? No. All I can say is that I find ‘the taste of her cherry ChapStick’ in ‘Girl’ entrancingly sexy, while everything about ‘You’re Not Sorry’… makes me sorry.” That’s the sort of wordplay that gets Uncle Stevie the big bucks! Suck it, layoff victims! THE WHAAA? “This is as dense and allusive as James Joyce’s Ulysses, only you can dance to it.” Guess what copyright-busting PC user he said that about? Somewhere, some dude who gets paid to write about rock full-time (well, at least most of the time in this economy) is sobbing for not having thought of the Joyce allusion first.

1. Buckcherry, Black Butterfly / The Pretenders, Break Up The Concrete 2. AC/DC, Black Ice 3. James McMurtry, Just Us Kids 4. Girl Talk, Feed The Animals 5. Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal 6. Coldplay, Viva La Vida 7. Al Green, Lay It Down 8. Lindsey Buckingham, Gift Of Screws 9. Randy Newman, Harps And Angels 10. James, Hey Ma

Stephen King’s Top 10 [EW via Stark Online]