2008's Top Music
This year wasn’t kind to our biggest pop stars.
More people watched Britney Spears’ MTV documentary than listened to “Circus,” her comeback-iest album yet. Justin Timberlake decided to postpone making a new album in favor of starring in Mike Myers’ disastrous “The Love Guru.” Madonna’s divorce was better received than “Hard Candy.” Even actual hard candy was more popular than “Hard Candy.”
That left Coldplay, banging their bass drum to worldwide acclaim (but getting only yawns from this listener), and Katy Perry, kissing and telling (she liked it, I heard ... a lot). Lil’ Wayne ascended to the rapper of the moment with “Tha Carter III,” the goofiest blockbuster record in recent memory.
It’s an annual tradition to say it was “the year rock returned,” but in 2008 some rock veterans came home to roost. Metallica sounded like Metallica again. AC/DC still sounded like AC/DC. And, after a 17-year wait, Guns N’ Roses actually made a sound. “Chinese Democracy” was an over-frosted crap cake, but at least some people scored a free Dr. Pepper.
Meanwhile, Kanye West’s heartbreak beats could be heard above the din. For the second consecutive time, the Chicago superstar tops my list of the albums of the year.
1. Kanye West, “808s & Heartbreak”
After losing his mom and ending his engagement, Kanye West wallowed in despair. While he was there, he found not raps, but melodies; not beats, but songs. With the help of Auto Tune, West sings his broken little heart out on “808s,” hurling barbs at his ex, reflecting on fame’s emptiness and detailing his “Coldest Winter.” His diary entries are enthralling, but so is the music – the best he’s crafted yet. West’s fourth LP is built of icy synthesizers, tribal drums and instrumentation that stretches to soar past the nightmares. An experimental, monumental masterpiece.
2. The Walkmen, “You & Me”
This jagged album is the weariest of “road” records. After seven years of drunken nights and foolish trysts, frontman Hamilton Leithauser sounds beaten. He’s lost his wife, he’s screwed up any shot a redemption and he’s got nobody left. Leithauser wanders around, howling rationalizations (“It’s gonna be a good year!” Yeah, sure it is) as his band sways and stumbles around him. They match his naked confessions with nervy tunes and a tumbling rhythm section. What a beautiful, ugly record.
3. TV on the Radio, “Dear Science,”
New York’s fearlessly creative TV on the Radio is like Radiohead with soul. On the band’s third album, horn blurts jut against hyper-blip beats and mutilated guitars drench street-corner harmonies. Dave Sitek remains an astounding architect of junkyard rock, while singers Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe’s crying interplay persists as the group’s main ingredient. But “Dear Science,” isn’t just sounds, it’s songs. “Crying” and “DLZ” eulogize a busted, corrupt society, while “Golden Age” looks at hitting the reset button. This is the sound of modern life.
4. Girl Talk, “Feed the Animals”
Pittsburgh’s preeminent laptop musician Gregg Gillis’s sample- silly sequel to 2006’s fantastic “Night Ripper” is more, more, more. Essentially a 53-minute dance party broken into 14 tracks, “Feed the Animals” packs more (illegal) pop samples, more mind-blowing mash-ups and more infectious moments. “In a Big Country” will never be the same again without “Whoomp! (There it is).” Ditto “Roc Boys” and “Paranoid Android,” “Low” and “Sunday Morning,” or “Nothing Compares 2 U” and “What You Know.” And, somehow, Gillis got this snob to “whoa” along with Journey in the album’s closing minute.
5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”
Apparently invigorated after his Grinderman side project, Nick Cave dug deep to unearth the hookiest rock ’n’ roll of his career. Wayward noise still seeps in between the choruses – from the circular saw guitar sounds on rave-up “Today’s Lesson” to the restless, scratchy strings on the Dylanesque “Hold On To Yourself.” Plus, Cave’s as wry as ever, using the word “prolix” in a song for humorous effect and detailing Lazarus’ tragic post-revival life on the title track.
6. Portishead, “Third”
A rebellion against expectations, “Third” came along 11 years after the last Portishead record to prove the band can conjure mysterious musical nightmares at any speed. Songs gallop, they hover, they saunter, they float. Most of all, they envelop. You could drown in Beth Gibbons’ watery, warbled divulgences or get pounded into the ground by the band’s machine gun electro-beats.
7. Vampire Weekend, “Vampire Weekend”
Nevermind the backlash, the college boys in Vampire Weekend have created a catchy, clever little record that can turn cartwheels around its detractors. The band has garnered plenty of (well-deserved) notice for its fusion of elegant pop and world beat. But, the best thing about this debut is how Vampire Weekend creates an atmosphere – of WASP-y collegiate life, East coast snobbery and the hollow feelings that hide beneath the prickly pastel exterior.
8. Q-Tip, “The Renaissance”
A Tribe Called Quest were jazz rap purveyors, but the second album from Tribe member Q-Tip plays more like a vintage soul record. With his cornet voice and babbling-brook flow, the Harlem rapper delivers sports-relationship analogies (rapid-response groove of “Won’t Trade”) or just tells his love troubles straight (the sparse, wounded “You”). Outside of a small contribution from late producer J Dilla (the insistent funk of “Move”), Q-Tip helmed all of “The Renaissance”’s sharp, smooth beats. It’s a welcome change from the standard schizophrenic hip-hop album.
9. Drive-By Truckers, “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark”
The Southern rockers returned to form with this big chunk of music, a compendium of 19 short stories. These murky tales rarely have beginnings or endings, even when death is involved. They’re more like snapshots – a loner who takes care of his mom, an alcoholic father, an enlisted man in Iraq, a soldier’s grieving family. Sure, there’s plenty of despair here, but plenty of humor and beauty, too. Mike Cooley’s story of a threesome gone wrong (“3 Dimes Down”) is a boogie-rock classic and Patterson Hood’s sunset postcard to John Ford (“The Monument Valley”) is the deliverance this album deserves.
10. David Byrne and Brian Eno, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”
Miles away from their experimental 1981 album “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” Byrne and Eno’s second proper collaboration is a winning mix of pop, folk, gospel, electronic music and R&B. There’s a little bit of everything on “Everything,” an endlessly effervescent recording that glides on the ex-Talking Head’s dulcet vocals. Taking inspiration from Eno’s gospel-influenced demos, Byrne wrote some blissfully hopeful songs – from the brassy tribute to love “Life is Long” to the patient prayer for better times “One Fine Day.”
The Runners-up
Okkervil River, “The Stand-Ins”
Kathleen Edwards, “Asking for Flowers”
The Hold Steady, “Stay Positive”
Fleet Foxes, “Fleet Foxes”
Lil’ Wayne, “Tha Carter III”
Los Campesinos!, “Hold on Now, Youngster”
The Raconteurs, “Consolers of the Lonely”
Al Green, “Lay It Down”
John Hiatt, “Same Old Man”
Kings of Leon, “Only By the Night”
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The Year's Best Songs
“White Winter Hymnal,” Fleet Foxes
This choral folk song of irrepressible beauty discovers what the Beach Boys would sound like if they grew up in Appalachia.
“Ready for the Floor,” Hot Chip
A nerdy come-on (with a lyric stolen from “Batman”) joins an 8-bit groove to form the sweetest of club anthems.
“Live Your Life,” T.I. featuring Rihanna
Facing a year of hard time, T.I. tries to set a good example on – gasp! – a hip-hop hit with a moral compass. Rihanna sends the tune into the stratosphere.
“M79,” Vampire Weekend
The well-to-do New Yorkers became the “baroque Strokes” with a blend of sublime strings, prickly harpsichord, supple bass and shout-outs that send you to Wikipedia (Khyber pass? Bleeding madras?).
“Librarian,” My Morning Jacket
Jim James muses about what he hears and sees on a trip to the library, then it all comes together in a daydream as the pedal steel lets loose a mournful cry.
“RoboCop,” Kanye West
West placed this lush gem amidst an album of starkness. Buoyed by a chugging string section, he’s even able to laugh a little while he dismisses his ex as “just an L.A. girl.”
“Strange Overtones,” David Byrne and Brian Eno
Byrne wrote a song about writing a song – not him, but the guy in the next apartment. He sings his advice while he shimmies to the electro-pop beat.
“Another Way to Die,” Jack White and Alicia Keys
If “Casino Royale” was the best James Bond flick since the Connery era, Jack White’s ominous stunner (written for “Quantum of Solace”) is the best Bond song since Shirley Bassey sang them. A pulpy, thunderous epic.
“Slapped Actress,” The Hold Steady
Craig Finn capped “Stay Positive’s” tragic story with this titanic rocker about fame and art and the theatricality of a rock scene. The a capella “whoas” deliver an unearthly chill.
“The Re-Arranger,” Mates of State
“Love loud, don’t lose loud” coo the Mates of State, who’ve written a bouncy, multi-faceted testimonial about the shock of parenthood.