When 2008 started, I was sure it was going to be awesome. “It’s going to be two-thousand-great,” I told anyone who would listen, ignoring the various signs (MTV ringing in the New Year with Tila Tequila, hints of economic collapse, etc.) that things wouldn’t exactly go as planned. Or even be much good at all. But at least there was music to help the seemingly endless parade of bad news plod along a bit more jauntily, right?
THE GOOD: Getting back into R & B full-throttle thanks to Ne-Yo, Erykah Badu, Estelle, and Solange; Ida Maria’s twitchy “Oh My God,” which I am going to try and have every person I know hear at least once over the course of the coming months; Prince and Jarvis Cocker owning gigantic open spaces; Ne-Yo turning girls into goo.
THE BAD: You don’t want to hear about the bad aspects of my 2008. (And honestly, typing a blow-by-blow out would just depress me all over again.) So instead I’ll note that I often hate making lists because even though they’re supposed to be overviews, they’re inevitably of the specific moment at which the list was made, which means that completely worthy entrants will get slighted, or pushed out by space limitations, etc. Here’s a “sorry” to Black Mountain’s In The Future, the Air Miami demos that were reissued by Teen Beat, Panic At The Disco’s Pretty. Odd., Deastro’s “The Shaded Forests,” The Academy Is…’s Fast Times At Barrington High, Jazmine Sullivan’s “Bust Your Windows,” and the Robin Thicke record that was mysteriously forgotten about by everyone.
THE WHAAAA? Before August, if you had said that I would have put Billy Joel on any list that didn’t count down the reasons my ninth-grade social studies class was completely absurd (hi there, three-day lesson on “We Didn’t Start The Fire”), I would have laughed so, so hard. And yet, his show at Shea Stadium was totally solid, not only because of his undeniable showmanship but for the ways it stoked my nostalgia about growing up on Long Island.
Technically, the era of the b-side is probably long over. Even in digital form, a castoff track is more likely to appear as an iTunes bonus track or as extra material on the Japanese release these days than actually attached to a single. Still, even as the file-sharing age has diminished the joy of feeling like you’ve heard a song that few other Americans have thanks to plunking down ten dollars for a import single, there’s still something special about the non-album track. While the likelihood of finding a “How Soon Is Now?” on the back of a “William, It Was Truly Nothing” is low, there were a few songs this year I thought were worth a mention (and a few listens).
Rock scribe Jimmy Guterman wants to know how he might get his 12-year-old daughter in to see Ida Maria at a 21+ show. There are the obvious solutions: getting her in for soundcheck, getting her in as press, getting her in backstage, bum-rushing the door with the rest of her punk friends. But what are the less sensible, less effective methods she could use to get in?
More helpful suggestions after the jump!
It was all the way back in March that I first heard Ida Maria’s “Oh My God,” a twitchy, deceptively simple track from a be-banged Norwegian woman who was pleading with her audience to find a cure for her life, put a price on her soul, and build a fortress around her heart. The track walked the line between “nervy” and “nervous” in such a way that it perfectly captured the zeitgeist of 2008, a year that was marked by near-crippling anxiety emanating from even the most bravado-filled corners.
In this year’s installment of Scandinavian… More »
Paste‘s 2008 best-of isn’t unlike the magazine itself: largely predictable, but with a few surprises seemingly thrown in to confuse or distract. The list hews rather closely to their adult alternative aesthetic, but as likely obligated by law, they threw in Lil Wayne (No. 29). He’s not quite as good as MGMT, in case you were wondering.
THE GOOD: It cheered my heart to see that Ida Maria’s Fortress Round My Heart placed highly (No. 13); the odd, but charming acknowledgment of Torche (No. 34) elicited a similar reaction. For the Christian rock enthusiast portion of my heart, seeing Sandra McCracken buried near the bottom of the list was nice, although almost a wink and a nod to those who wonder if Paste is a undercover Christian rock mag. They may recommend Lil Wayne, but don’t worry, true believers. They still have room for Jesus rock.
THE BAD: Im sure any Idolator reader could pick out a record they don’t particularly care for and go all critically nutzoid, but Girl Talk at No. 7 seems like an odd slap in the face to the parade of “real musicians” who fall afterwards. I like Girl Talk; I downloaded the disc, and it stayed in my car stereo for a few months. But the question ends up being whether these best of lists are really running down the “best” of the year, and that the idea of lasting value and meaning is taken into consideration, or whether a disc’s inclusion just means that it was awesome to hear at parties.
THE WHAAA? Although I was surprised not to see Al Green on the list, and to note that Santogold’s Diplo mixtape outranked her actual album, nothing could top my shock to see She & Him at No. 1. The magazine defends the selection: “Maybe it’s just a sweet little folk record—a tiny, flawless diamond. Or maybe it’s a pristine distillation of harmony and craft; 50 years of songwriting experience served up on a spinning silver platter. Either way, it’s our album of the year.” To my ears, neither assertion is true. Volume One is a cute novelty record that has more preciousness than innovation, skill, or any other sort of metric people tend to judge great albums by. Last year’s number one was the National’s Boxer… this year’s pick is a long slide down in quality.
Midnight tonight isn’t the exact midway point of this year, but hey, it’s the last day of its sixth month, which is close enough for roadwork. Or, er, listwork, that is: After the jump, I give you the seven songs that I would be more likely to put on a mix CD than any other, in YouTube/blurb form. Think of it as a post for me and my creaky, prone-to-forgetting-stuff brain to come back to when the year-end listmaking craze hits in a couple of months and an invitation for you to engage in similar Monday afternoon quantifying!
It’s the last day of the month, a time for desk-clearing and “to do” list-finalizing and, in the case of April 2008, celebrating that a pretty horrible 30-day stretch is near its end. With that in mind, I’m going to use the last posting day of each month for “Rule Of Sevens,” in which I put together a couple of seven-item, mostly-commentary-free lists–from aborted post topics to my current best-of-the-year rundowns–for your reading pleasure. In the first installment, please enjoy these seven videos that I really wanted to post on various days during April, but didn’t, for reasons ranging from “I got distracted and watched it five times in a row instead” to “All I can really say about this song is ‘it’s awesome and you should listen to it now.'”
In the hour or so that has followed since I was first sent this video, which is by the Swedish-by-way-of-Norway singer Ida Maria, I have listened to the tense, frenetic song in the clip three times and ripped through all the songs offered up on her MySpace page twice. More »
