Best of the decade

My list:

1. Radiohead, Kid A (2000)
2. Spoon, Kill the Moonlight (2002)
3. M.I.A., Arular (2005)
4. Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004)
5. 50 Cent, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003)
6. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
7. Nick Lowe, The Convincer (2001)
8. The Shins, Oh, Inverted World (2001)
9. Kanye West, The College Dropout (2004)
10. Cat Power, The Greatest (2006)

(Average is 2002.8, slightly on the fogy side.)

The next 10:

11. Webb Brothers, Maroon (2000)
12. Salif Keita, Moffou (2002)
13. Feist, The Reminder (2007)
14. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca (2009)
15. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand (2007)
16. Teenage Fanclub, Howdy! (2000)
17. White Stripes, White Blood Cells (2001)
18. Beyoncé, Dangerously in Love (2003)
19. Grandaddy, Sumday (2003)
20. Camille, Le Fil (2006)

Decade postmortem: 2007 and 2008

Having gone through a decade of old top 10s, I’ve been thinking about the two contrary motives involved in putting these things together. On one hand, the lists express personal tastes, more emotional than analytical. And since they are usually cranked out on deadline at the end of the year, they can be inexact, first-draft statements reflecting a moment in time; it’s like a postmortem temperature taken while the body is still warm. This gut-level impulse tends to favor more unpredictable, less popular picks: fanboy plugs, showoff-y picks, oppositional stances.

On the other hand, you’re making broad statements about the state of music, and there have to be real criteria for that judgment. Less impressively, critics want to look smart to other critics, and that means balancing a certain number of obscurities with a certain number of choices in common, which function as trade credentials. This is the more calculating approach, and it’s the mindset of collective editorial lists at magazines and websites. With the imprimatur of a publication, personal feelings are minimized (as is the blame for erroneous or lame picks), and these lists end up being more official and predictable, in line with the consensus; in fact, they establish consensus.

Neither approach is right or wrong; they work together. But looking back years later it’s hard to hold on to those random, contrarian choices, since the vibe you felt making them in the first place has probably faded, and the weeding process of history has rearranged the field. For example, from our point of view 10 years later, Kid A towers over the releases of 2000, but at the time it was somewhat more controversial: Pitchfork put it at No. 1 that year, but it was only No. 5 in Rolling Stone, behind Eminem, U2, D’Angelo, even Madonna’s Music.

What this means for me is that as I’ve revised my lists they have probably become more “correct” but also less interesting: fewer surprises, fewer argument-starters, less defiant advocacy. One of my favorites for 2008, for instance, was the Jonas Brothers, which caught me some shit. (Hi, Jake.) I can’t say now whether I was right or wrong about it because I haven’t listened in a year; that fact alone, however, is reason to edit that album out, since it can’t have been so great if after 12 months I don’t care.

But it’s also one of those self-correcting, conformist moments, an opportunity to replace an honest but risky lark with something safer, more familiar, “stronger.” At the same time, you’ve got to hold on to your individuality and avoid succumbing to the groupthink that can make so many of these lists tediously identical at the time they’re drawn up but then uselessly out of fashion once X number of years pass and nobody cares anymore about Northern State or Arrested Development. That, and the fact that you need to listen to lots and lots and lots of music, is why it’s hard to do this.

❧

That’s theory. Now for practice. Here’s my original list for 2007 (and original blurbs):

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Battles, Mirrored
5. Feist, The Reminder
6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
7. M.I.A., Kala
8. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
9. Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing
10. Radiohead, In Rainbows

Scorecard: Pretty right-on, I think. Dirty Projectors blew my mind in 2007, and I still like them now. Plant/Krauss is magnificent, and Spoon added another reason for being the best band of the decade. I’m moving Feist and M.I.A. up, bumping Battles down, and replacing Avril with Deerhoof, who deserve more credit than they’ve been getting at decade’s end. Otherwise not many changes. (Nos. 11 through 20 would include Black Lips, Yeasayer, Linda Thompson, Kanye, the Frames, Miranda Lambert and Nick Lowe. And Avril.)

Kind Reader, I present my revised list for 2007:

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Feist, The Reminder
5. M.I.A., Kala
6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
7. Battles, Mirrored
8. Radiohead, In Rainbows
9. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
10. Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity

❧

2008 is a little trickier for me. My original list (and blurbs):

1. Vampire Weekend
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
4. Metallica, Death Magnetic
5. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
6. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
8. Black Kids, Partie Traumatic
9. Jonas Brothers, A Little Bit Longer
10. Beach House, Devotion

Looking at this, Randy Newman now feels more like an 8 or a 9 than a 6, and Black Kids and the JoBros belong in the mid-teens. But what to replace them with? The records that didn’t make my original cut were:

• Al Green, who made a gorgeous, vibrant record with ?uestlove. Cut because Newman was more topical and exploratory, and I didn’t want two fogies.
  
• Jamey Johnson. Omitted as a reaction against critical groupthink, and because I’m just not a country guy. But it’s undeniable that this is a very strong record.
• Coldplay. Good, but it’s Coldplay.
• She & Him. Nice, but at the time it didn’t seem terribly significant. Still doesn’t, although it’s just as sweet.
• Lykke Li. Sort of the year’s Bjork/Feist/Regina/Fiona/Emiliana quirky-girl entry. Which “shouldn’t matter shouldn’t matter,” as Gwen would say. But it does matter because her album is not half as clever as anything by Bjork or Feist or Regina or Fiona or Emiliana.
  
• Nick Cave. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is great, but ... I dunno.
• Joe Jackson. Rain is as good as anything he did 25 or 30 years ago, but you’ve got the fogy problem again. What’s 2008 about it? Why could it not have been made in 1983 or 1992 or 2005?
• Magnetic Fields, Distortion. Another consensus choice, and despite a couple of fantaaaastic songs (“Drive On, Driver,” “California Girls”), it felt like a trifle.

Three more you see on every other list from 2008 are Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak, Fleet Foxes’ debut, and Tha Carter III. I still snooze thinking of Fleet Foxes, and don’t feel fully qualified to judge Lil Wayne. But Kanye’s Auto-Tune essay on isolation and misery was visionary; shoulda been in my list to begin with. He and Jamey Johnson make the cut.

So, 2008 revised:

1. Vampire Weekend
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Metallica, Death Magnetic
4. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
5. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
6. Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song
7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
8. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
9. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
10. Beach House, Devotion

❧

And that’s our show, folks! My 2009 list will be posted soon. Make that eventually. Well, pretty soon. Happy New Year!

Decade postmortem: 2004 and 2005

My original list for 2004:

1. Arcade Fire, Funeral
2. Franz Ferdinand, s/t
3. TV on the Radio, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
4. Kanye West, The College Dropout
5. Regina Spektor, Soviet Kitsch
6. Wolf Eyes, Burned Mind
7. Vietnam, The Concrete’s Always Grayer on the Other Side of the Street
8. Usher, Confessions
9. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Like Bad News
10. William Shatner, Has Been

In terms of how music is made and distributed, the early 2000s weren’t hugely different from the late ’90s. There were still megaplatinum albums (7.4 million for The Eminem Show in 2002, 6.5 million for Get Rich or Die Tryin’ in 2003), MTV still wielded the hitmaking wand, and the Internet was still more of a nuisance/question mark than the Third Horseman. (The iTunes store opened in 2003, to no small amount of skepticism.) But 2004 was the year things started to look truly transitional.

It was actually a good year for album sales. They went up 2 percent in 2004, after slipping the previous three years. Usher’s Confessions was tops with a remarkable 7.9 million. After sweeping the Grammys and moving 5.1 million copies of Come Away With Me in 2003, Norah Jones continued to sell by the truckload: another 3.8 million in 2004. What could be wrong, right?

In hindsight there were probably a million indicators of what would come, but here are two obvious ones: First, Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, a big flaming copyright violation released online with no label. It proved that this crazy new distribution model could actually work, and while the labels were used to challenges from the consumer/pirate side, this one came from an artist. Second, the Arcade Fire. They scaled the peaks of blog hype, but their sales were still peanuts by biz standards. Lesson: the days of plucking a Kurt Cobain out of indie-rock are over. Consequence: the indies dry up as a farm league and spin totally out of orbit.

❧

I think I was pretty dead-on with my list. Aside from a few position changes, the only change I want to make is to cut Vietnam, which made an impression on me at the time but hasn’t held; Joanna Newsom replaces it. Notes: Nix on The Grey Album, a curiosity that I never got much out of musically, although I recognize DM’s ingenuity. I’m also omitting U2, the Killers, Gwen Stefani, Interpol and Wilco for various reasons, the biggest that I don’t love the albums. And yes, the Shatner record is good!

What does all that biz analysis have to do with my favorites? Nothing. It’s just interesting.

So, 2004 revised:

1. Arcade Fire, Funeral
2. TV on the Radio, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
3. Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender
4. Kanye West, The College Dropout
5. Usher, Confessions
6. Franz Ferdinand, s/t
7. Regina Spektor, Soviet Kitsch
8. Wolf Eyes, Burned Mind
9. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Like Bad News
10. William Shatner, Has Been

❧

And now for 2005. I don’t have much more to say about the biz or the larger culture. It was the year in which, despite everything, George W. Bush was sworn in for a second term, having won a decisive majority. Maybe it’s appropriate, then, that the best album of the year was an uncompromising, politicized cry from the third world.

My original list:

1. M.I.A., Arular
2. The Frames, Burn the Maps
3. Sons and Daughters, The Repulsion Box
4. High on Fire, Blessed Black Wings
5. Kanye West, Late Registration
6. Decemberists, Picaresque
7. White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan
8. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
9. Keyshia Cole, The Way It Is
10. The Go! Team, Thunder, Lightning, Strike

I’m going to give myself the groupthink test on these — i.e., looking back after four years, which ones am I certain I was voting for out of love, and which might be the result of that invisible consensus peer pressure we were talking about earlier?

1. Not a chance. Loved it, listened over and over.
2. Nope. It didn’t even make Pazz and Jop.
3. Ditto.
4. Ditto, not that metal would make that list anyway.
5. Some groupthink is inevitable, but to my 2009 ears it still sounds completely solid. And it’s amazing just how much of a fully-formed star Kanye was right from the get-go. He had years of practice with Jay-Z, Twista, Jadakiss et al., but none of those guys had the gumption to look into a live network TV camera and say, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
6. Probably some, but it’s easy to forget how fresh the Decemberists sounded in the first half of the 2000s. Picaresque is what their major-label debut should have sounded like; as I’ve said elsewhere, it got stale pretty fast after this point.
   
7. Nah, check my other lists.
8. Probably. It is an excellent album, though, and I have no regrets about including it.
9. Nah, I fell for it all on my own. This one also didn’t make Pazz and Jop.
10. Yeah, makes me wince. What can I say, sometimes you make a bad call.

So that’s pretty good, I think, overall. I’m cutting the Go! Team, as you might guess, but otherwise leaving my list pretty much intact.

For me, the big contenders I had originally excluded are: My Morning Jacket’s Z, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, Feist’s Let It Die, Spoon’s Gimme Fiction, Teenage Fanclub’s Man-Made, Amadou & Mariam’s Dimanche à Bamako, Wolf Parade’s Apologies to the Queen Mary, Van Morrison’s Magic Time, Lee Ann Womack’s There’s More Where That Came From, Teddy Thompson’s Separate Ways and Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy.

Of those, the only ones I have unequivocal feelings about are My Morning Jacket, Wolf Parade and Okkervil River. And I think MMJ wins out. Sorry, Sufjan, your big breakthrough was beautiful but a little too precious for me. Sorry, Feist, Spoon and Teenage Fanclub, I love you guys, but your albums were flawed. Sorry, Amadou & Mariam, you handed Manu Chao the keys. Sorry, Teddy, I still think you can better. Sorry, Van and Lee Ann, you made gorgeous records but they feel lost in time.

So, 2005 revised:

1. M.I.A., Arular
2. The Frames, Burn the Maps
3. Kanye West, Late Registration
4. Keyshia Cole, The Way It Is
5. Sons and Daughters, The Repulsion Box
6. Decemberists, Picaresque
7. High on Fire, Blessed Black Wings
8. White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan
9. My Morning Jacket, Z
10. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine

M.I.A. ain’t giving up the Tamil cause

While she was in labor, barely a week ago, M.I.A. was getting criticized harshly by major newspapers (yes, this one too) for her Tamil sympathies, which are often simplistically equated with “glorification of terrorism.” The logic, apparently, is this: If you are a Tamil (as she is), and you sing about war (as she does), and if you evoke the images of that war (as she does, with tigers and tanks), and you don’t take a side (as she doesn’t), then you are guilty of taking the wrong side.

She fans the flames by claiming a Tamil “genocide,” which is inaccurate and irresponsible. But she has the right to sing what she wants to sing, and to call the world’s attention to the war that has been destroying her homeland for the better part of 30 years, taking 70,000 lives.

Did N.W.A. “glorify” gang violence with “Straight Outta Compton”? Did Charles Dickens “glorify” poverty and child labor in Oliver Twist? Intelligent people should be offended by these questions. Smart and politically engaged artists raise difficult questions and direct their audience’s attention to injustice and pain. Listen to her fucking music: she’s not glorifying anything and she’s no terrorist.

She responded to this most recent salvo of criticism with information to corroborate her point of view. On Friday — nine days after giving birth — she posted the following to her MySpace blog:

MORE INFO U MIGHT NOT BE GETTIG!

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23646844-details/London+Tamil+burns+himself+to+death+at+UN/article.do

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gzBXvGtbnWeSBlmcRNanP-B30SRQ

The first link is about a Tamil man who burned himself in front of a U.N. building Switzerland, with a note saying: “We Tamils, displaced and all over the world, loudly raised our problems and asked for help before (the) international community in your own language for three decades. But nothing happened.”

The second quotes Human Rights Watch in saying that the Sri Lankan government is indiscriminately “slaughtering” civilians in their attacks on the Tamil Tigers.

M.I.A. had a boy, went back to making mixtapes

From her MySpace blog:

T O F A N S F R I E N D S O N F A M I L Y . M Y B A B Y I S H E R E
HAPPY VALENTINES!

SUNDAY NITE I CA M E HOME FROM THE GRAMMY'S STILL IN THE MOOD TO PARTY , I COUDA EASILY GONE OUT BUT I WENT HOME INSEAD , LUCKY I DID!! COZ MY EARLY STAGE LABOUR KICKED IN AROUND 2 AM .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfndz8pW9WY

MY BABY WAS BORN WEDNESDAY , HE IS HEALTHY , FINE , BEAUTIFUL AND THE MOST AMZING THING EVER ON THIS PLANET, OF COURSE IM HIS MUM!!!

ME AND BABY ARE PUTTING OUR TOUR DATES FOR 2010 TOGETHER
AND MAKING MIX TAPES
AND FIGURING OUT A WAY TO BREAK OUT OF THE HOSPITAL !

HOPEFULLY THE WORLD IS BEEN TICKING ALONG AND I AINT MISSED MUCH!

C U SOON ,

AND MY BABY BOY SAYZ HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Queen Latifah on M.I.A.: ‘Some gangsta shit!’

Best quote that didn’t/couldn’t make it into print last night at the Grammys:

A source backstage texted me right after M.I.A.’s incredible nine-months-preggers performance with Jay-Z, T.I., Kanye West and Lil Wayne, saying that Queen Latifah was jumping up and down, saying “That’s some gangsta shit!”

And notice has now been served to all women in show business: your water better be damn well broke before you miss your next awards show!

Also, the critics respond to M.I.A.’s loss of the record of the year prize, which was one of the five that went to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss:

Yet another M.I.A. update: Stet Europe cancellation ... or is that just U.K.?

Despite what her record label says, M.I.A. told New York magazine’s Vulture blog that her European tour is definitely canceled, as she had announced from McCarren Pool on Friday. Or at least her “U.K. tour,” she said, allowing for a certain bullshit factor.

Her MySpace page has numerous European festival dates listed throughout June and July. No U.K. dates there, although she appears to have had at least two lined up: Dublin (which confirms that it’s canceled; also, that’s not the U.K.) and London (which as of this writing is still selling tickets.)

“My manager was supposed to cancel it yesterday,” M.I.A. told Vulture on Tuesday, “but he was watching football — don’t tell anyone — and he forgot.”

Whatever. I’m done with this. Anyone whose travel plans have been screwed up, I feel for you.

M.I.A. update: Nope, not canceling Europe, apparently

Last Friday, as noted here — and here and here and here — M.I.A. announced from the stage at McCarren Pool that she was canceling her European tour, and that McCarren would be her last show for her current album. That implied that she might not be playing Bonnaroo, as she is scheduled to do this Friday. No reason was given.

It took several days, but I’ve been told by label representatives that this is probably not true, and that all booked dates are presumably still on. Although as is somewhat standard with M.I.A., nobody seemed to know precisely what was going on.

See update, above.

M.I.A. cancels European tour?

M.I.A. announced from the stage at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn tonight that she was canceling her upcoming European tour, and that McCarren would be her last show “for this album” (I believe that’s what she said). That was news to me, and I don’t see anything about it online. In addition to a bunch of dates in Europe starting with the Sonar festival in Barcelona on June 21 (which still lists her on the program), her MySpace page still has her Bonnaroo appearance listed for June 13, and the Bonnaroo site has that too. (Also, I assume she’s not counting that $250-$7,500 benefit at MOMA on Tuesday.) I have made an inquiry with M.I.A.’s representatives and will post the response, but does anyone know what’s up?

A conversation with M.I.A.

For a profile I wrote in the Times, I interviewed Maya Arulpragasam, a.k.a. M.I.A., at her Brooklyn apartment one hot afternoon last July. It was a few days after the Siren Festival at Coney Island, and later that night she would play Studio B. The gimmick cooked up by me and Maya’s publicist was that I’d hang out while she prepared for the show: sewing her costumes, editing video, whatever.

Sometimes these tricks are journalistically useful. But this time I was grateful my worst-laid plans were scuttled in favor of real, gimmick-free conversation. (We did wander down the street a little, then she bought a slice of Oreo cookie cake and we plopped down on her couch. She keeps the a/c off — to make the air more Sri Lanka-like, I was told.) She filled up a tape and a half with thoughtful and candid discussion, with no attempt to evade or deliver safe, rehearsed responses.

The piece turned out well, but as often happens with talkative subjects, I was frustrated that so many of her words never made it into the story. But this is why God made blogs, right? So here are some excerpts. Now, M.I.A. has done plenty of entertaining, inflammatory interviews; there are no bombshells here, just room for her to expand on topics that interest her (and me). A note on the text: transcribing interviews is really tedious, and for the sake of time and sanity I usually sketch things out roughly and then return to check anything quoted. So I can’t guarantee that all of this is 100 percent verbatim — sorry, I’m not transcribing again unless someone pays me — but I can give my word that it’s pretty close.

❧
1. “My MUM can work with fucking Timbaland if she fucking had the right money”

[I asked about the imagery of war and terrorism on her first album, Arular, and whether she thought critics had erroneously characterized her as an advocate for the Tamil Tigers.]

It was really, really important for me to stress that at the time when I made Arular, that was what was going on in society right then and there. Every time you put the TV on, every station you tuned into, every picture, every headline in the newspaper, it was all related to that [i.e., post-9/11 warfare and violence]. And I think that when the world talks at you so aggressively, then you’ve got to talk back the same way. And it was important to spell things out. But on this record I feel like it’s political enough the fact that I get to make a second record — the fact that I’m even in the music game — the fact that I’m having the issues that I have — the fact that I even get questioned on who I am and what the fuck I’m doing here and shit like that — is enough. It’s still important to me but the battle I have now is also staying by creativity because that actually is also the only thing I have. It’s the only thing I do.

What happened with Timbaland?

I guess people expected me to sort of like move into this sort of pop sort of musician. I guess people expected me to make a Timbaland record and become like a — Timbaland wanted to work with me and I thought it was really amazing and flattering because he’s like my idol but by the time I wanted to make a record with Timbaland and got round to getting a visa and doing it, it was already too impossible. And I’d like opened this opened this can of worms somewhere else and I had to go and sort it out. I really felt like that. I just constantly felt like people were going to be a bit disappointed. In England that’s all I kept hearing, whether it was from the label, or I ran into this guy from the NME at a party when I was traveling — the only time anyone ever had anything to say to me it was like, “Wow, you’re working with Timbaland.” It’s like, my MUM can work with fucking Timbaland if she fucking had the right money. Why is it so special? Really, it’s just common sense in the music industry today. If you have the money and you have the checkbook anyone can make records with anyone great.

Well, Timbaland doesn’t work with just ANYONE.

Well, Paris Hilton had been there done that, done the rounds. By the time I got to America every fucking amazing producer I could have possibly gone to work with, Paris Hilton had already been there, which just so tainted me. There was just nothing I could do. So you know what? I went and worked with Blaqstarr because he was a bit untouched at that moment, and carried on my doing my thing elsewhere. Because it’s like, you know what? Me and Paris would deliver the same song, right? Because technically they always want me to sing about sex. And guess what? She has more time on her hands to sing about that shit than me. So I’m just going to go back and talk about the bootlegging going on now. [See below for more of Maya’s interest in the “hustle” of immigrants and the globalized black-market economy.] That was the idea. I felt a lot of disappointment that I didn’t make the whole record with Timbaland. But I thought, you know what? Maybe I’m the last of the — the only the thing that kept me going is that at least I was real. And at least 20 years from now even if I sell one record I can turn around to my kids and be like, I stood by something. So fuck it. Here’s a little table I made earlier. That kind of thing.

I wanted to work with Timbaland because I was curious. They only let me in like a month, [though she had well-known problems renewing her visa, Maya did obtain permission to enter the U.S. for a short time at the beginning of the Kala project] so I split that time. I did one week with Timbaland where I worked on his album and his song [“Come Around”], which now I have on mine. But at the time I really thought I was going to work on his stuff. He asked me to work on his record. And then I did a week with Danjahandz. And then the rest of the time I was with Blaqstarr. In Baltimore I stayed with Blaqstarr for a bit. He was in and out of jail. That was a long ongoing process to get like one song down. When I did “The Turn” I was with him on New Year’s Eve. We both got drunk. He took me out. And made me shoot a gun. It was New Year’s Eve. And then I got really drunk on tequilas, and that was when we made “The Turn.”

He made you shoot a gun?

Mm-hmm.

Where? What did you shoot at?

In the streets of Baltimore. Shot it in the air.

How did it feel?

It was New Year’s Eve. There was lots of fireworks going off and stuff. And also in Baltimore that’s just the way it is. Where Blaqstarr is and where they live and stuff, it’s like “The Wire.” It really is like “The Wire.” It was quite funny because they were like, “Wait, you want me to get the AK-47 out?” And I was like, “No thanks.”

2. Hustlin’

I’ve been thinking a lot about boats. In the beginning of the song [“Hussel”] there’s a bunch of boat pushers in India that we recorded. And it’s them chanting when they pull the boat into the water. And the rest of the song is supposed to sound like a bunch of refugees on the boat, drumming the beat out on the side of the boat. Or a barrel or something. It could be a person, it could be a bootleg CD. I don’t know. But it’s a survival thing.

It’s an American thing. I was thinking about it here. Everyone seems so obsessed with hustling and being on the grind and stuff like that. And maybe it was just the people that I met here and associated myself with. The hustling over here is different because it’s so lo-fi. People are still talking about importing dried fish or something. And that sentiment really goes right up to Jay-Z rapping about how he’s a businessman. And that is the norm in rap music, to talk about business and how you do business. It has been like that for the last 10 years, and if you look at the new scene that is the byproduct of that scene, which is like the hipster blipster scene, that’s the aspect they also draw from that culture, which is all like hustling and grinding. And “we the shit, we the best” ...

It bugs me when I go to Liberia and everyone has to live on, like, a dollar. When I drove past the Firestone village, the whole village — their lifestyle is based around Firestone. And you’re working like 24 hours a day, basically. Even when you have time off you don’t have enough finances to make it out of your Firestone village to go and experience anything. As a kid one of the things that I used to do that made me get to where I am, if I had a pound I’d go off and find new things and experiment and jump on a bus and go to a place I’ve never been before. Go to a party or something, go an exhibition or a museum. I’d just walk into things. I was just thinking about those kids in Africa at the Firestone place. You just spend all day trying to get a drop of rubber to trickle down the tree into this little bag. That process of the glue going down the tree is SO long, you have to dedicate your life to it. And Firestone knows that. They have to make people dedicate their lives to it in order to catch every drop that comes off the tree. And then when you get off and go home, by that time you’re on standby but you’ve only made like a dollar a day. What are you going to do with that money? When you think like that — They do hear 50 Cent, and they do aspire to the only music that they are getting from America, which is, “Every day I’m hustlin’, every day I’m hustlin’.” But it just doesn’t translate in the same way. And if you really are inspiring people to just get your hustle on in places like Africa, then shit, the only way forward is probably through corruption. It’s not like that’s inspiring anyone to think about the good will of the people or build any proper infrastructure or want to work in a hospital, or invent a cure for AIDS. That’s not the type of shit that you’d get from listening to a rap song from 50 Cent.

Is it the kind of thing you get from M.I.A.?

No, but if they listen to my shit what I would like them to get from it is that you can do it in one lifetime. You can do whatever you want. ’Cause I came from that Firestone hearth, and I didn’t know how to speak English, but I learnt it and I know it now. I’m just trying to kind of build some sort of bridge. [Gets up and walks around the apartment a bit. At this point her accent shifts slightly toward the posh.] I’m trying create a third place, somewhere in between the developed world and the developing world.

3. “Every story has two sides”

I went [to Liberia] just as a human being. I wanted to see what a country looks like after a war, what hope looks like. How you can actually rebuild, or what the process of rebuilding a country like that would look like. Just because I come from a place that has never seen the end of it. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Just to see that it was possible and to say, Look, I’d much rather side with somewhere that actually comes out of it and is optimistic and there is no war going on. And go and learn what I can. And I’d love to represent Sri Lanka. But there just has to be some — it’s so ongoing. It’s so tiring for me to even get my head around what’s going on in Sri Lanka.

It’s so bad. Nobody really talks about the people in Sri Lanka. I hate the fact that when you talk about Sri Lanka everything goes toward the two male kids, the two boys that won’t give up fighting. They’re just too proud to give in. Meanwhile the last thing I was hearing — the town I come from, Jaffna, it’s still got 400,000 people there. And [the army] surrounded it to smoke out Tigers from that area. They cut it off, the only part that connects you from north to south. Cut off import and export, letting people starve to death, letting the population shrink. It’s got nothing to do with the Tigers. As a government they should be better prepared and know their shit by now, or just negotiate and come to some terms. To keep it going like that where it’s always the civilians getting killed...

I don’t even know what it’s about anymore. I don’t even think they know what it’s about anymore. The Tigers use human beings and civilians as pawns as much as the government, but they both do it. Even the political setup and the political party — it has the same principle. They’re both really similar. You’re only as good as your enemy in some sense.

[I asked what she thinks of the Tigers’ methods, including “suicide vests” and conscripting children.]

I come from a place that it’s really hard when you ask me that question. Every one of those questions that you ask me, I know 20 other questions [that are about as bad]. How do you feel about a woman getting blown up with a grenade after like 20 army soldiers have raped her in front of her mother? To me to talk about things like that. That’s my point. Every story has two sides. And in Sri Lanka the way I lived and the way I grew up, I didn’t actually live with my dad. I didn’t have any connection to that whole side of it. But as a civilian growing up in a town in Sri Lanka, those are the only stories I knew.

To tell you the truth my fear did come from the government. They did come to my school, they did shoot through the window, they did set my school on fire, they did kill the people I knew. My next-door neighbor is in a wheelchair because he got caught in the crossfire. Those are the things that I know from my firsthand experience.

But the only stories I know about the Tamil Tigers are that, yeah, they take your money, they keep your house if you leave it for more than two years, then they take it over and it becomes Tiger property or whatever. They do it for survival. The stories you hear from them are not like exploitation of power. There’s exploitation of power stories [about the army and the government], which is the thing that strikes me the most. Because when you are supposed to go to the police or you go to the army to protect you from terrorism, and those people are committing the terrorist acts on people, that to me feels way more like you’re stuck in a nightmare than knowing that there are a bunch of crazy guys that are running around, knowing how brutal they are and this is what they do and you just have to avoid them. It makes me feel much safer than knowing the people that are on your side are going to do 10 times worse to you. That’s how I felt.

When I went back to Sri Lanka in 2001, the first time I went there after a few years, I sat on a bus and I got surrounded by like 10 policemen because I was a woman. I was so obviously from abroad: I had, like, streaks in my hair and wore lipstick, and I had jeans on. They all had big machine guns, and they completely surrounded me. When we were going on the bus, it was really rocky because the roads were bombed out and had huge craters, and every time the bus moved they’d all fall on me and they were all groping me and stuff. In front of my mum. And I was crying my eyes out, and my mum was like, ‘If you say anything they’ll only drag you off the bus into the woods, and they would do it to me as well.’ And they’re just like rapists, [unintelligible couple of words] killers. Because that’s what they do. It’s much better if you just let them fucking feel you up and grope you. I even had a letter from the Ministry of Defense. I had my passport, I had protection letters from the government of Sri Lanka. Even with all those letters they didn’t care. They still did that to me. And I was like ‘Wow, I could be a journalist. Would you still do this to me if I was a journalist?’ And they didn’t care.

Did you ask them that?

No, but I took my letter out and I said, ‘What if I was a journalist? I could go and easily report this.’ They just ignored me. They threw the passport back at me and they were like ‘Where’s United Kingdom?’ They didn’t know the difference between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and England. And then it made sense to me. Even the army soldiers, they’re 16-year-olds that the government’s recruiting. It’s not any fucking different with the Tamil Tigers: you’re getting 16-year-olds from villages, and you put them in a uniform and you station them in the jungle for 10 years. They never see women, they never get to go out. The only time they get to go out is when the army soldiers get a monthly pass to [name of a Sri Lankan city I can’t quite decipher] where there’s hookers, and they get to see prostitutes once a month free. But you go to the 16-year-old, ‘If you join the army we’ll give you free medical, free insurance, free this, free that’ — education or whatever — so everybody goes and joins. It’s like 2 million government soldiers to 10,000 Tamil Tigers. That’s the ratio. But that’s how many guns there are, 2,010,000 altogether. That’s the nature of Sri Lanka.

4. “Kala”

To me as a person, when I was going through this album I started believing that what my mom did is actually really big and really great, and 99 percent of the female population lives like that. Like, my mom’s really, really simple, really stripped down. She has survival instincts. And she sacrificed her life to keep three kids alive. She did whatever it took. She never settled with anyone else. She never thought about her own happiness. I was just thinking about single-parent families, their achievements, and how they spread knowledge and how they educate their kids. And what they do is just as powerful as an educated guy in politics that is trying to save the world. I felt like my dad didn’t find a way to do both, to be a good husband and a good leader. And that was something that I had to say. If it could segregate the two existences, then what my mother did is more important. She’s not educated past age 16.

Are you proud or disillusioned about your father?

At my age and where I am right now, I have more respect for men who can be achievers that can actually be good husbands and good fathers. To me that actually makes more sense. I want to know if Nelson Mandela was a good husband and a good father. Because from now on that’s how I want to judge a good man.

---

Download M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”: “Street Mix” with Bun B and Rich Boy, instrumental.

Best of 2007

ALBUMS

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above. Much has been said about the concept. And it’s brilliant. But what got me was how Dave Longstreth advanced the emerging indie-boys-discovering-Afropop minigenre. He rips up highlife and uses just what he wants — the sunny, melodic dance lines, the manic guitar counterpoint — which is exactly what he does with/to Black Flag and those Stockhausen-esque alien harmonies. Oh, and it kicks ass, too. (Example; Black Flag’s original.)

2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand. This seemed a potential trainwreck when I first learned of it, but it turned out to be a glorious surprise. Luxuriant and masterly, it’s the O Brother, Where Art Thou? of blues, country and rockabilly, with a center of gravity in the 1950s instead of the ’20s.

3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. I gave it a mixed review when it came out because the looser, jammier approach of latter-day Spoon seemed less compelling than the structure-mad minimalism of the Kill the Moonlight era. But I was wrong. This is Britt Daniel in magnificent command of sound and vision, and though it’s less compositionally compressed than before, not a single sound is wasted.

4. Battles, Mirrored. The nuttiest, tightest and most surprisingly danceable math(ish)-rock album of the year.

5. Feist, The Reminder. First impression: Sounds like Feist. Six months later: Pretty much a perfect archetype of what soft-rock can be in the ’00s, tasteful and grown-up but squarely in the indie idiom, not folk. That means its interests extend beyond the acoustic guitar, and the central emotional tone is mature vulnerability, not earnestness.

6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black. It was clear long before her Lohanization that Amy is a star. Back to Black is a broadly conceptualized, flawlessly executed vision of neo-soul, with big, hip-hop-y beats that could be samples were Amy and Mark Ronson — who deserves his share of credit — not in love with real, live sound. But listen again to the suicide note that is “Rehab”: she was fucked up way pre-Perez Hilton.

7. M.I.A., Kala. Actually my biggest disappointment. Ms. Arulpragasam made a very, very good album instead of another freakin’ unbelievable one. Her agitprop also threatens to get boring eventually. But I had the pleasure of interviewing her, and found her very willing to be challenged and debated on politics. A simple egotist/ideologue wouldn’t be.

8. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible. Second-biggest letdown, because three years ago they made a supreme statement of optimism and joy at a time when the ruling dogs were the Strokes, Modest Mouse, etc. Neon Bible is their apocalypse album, and it’s excellent. But it feels like 47 minutes in purgatory, which by definition isn’t exactly satisfying.

9. Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing. It’s the best pop record I heard this year. So fuck you.

10. Radiohead, In Rainbows. It’s a bad year when your top 10 includes three disappointments. This is a gorgeous, classic Radiohead album — how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! — but it doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about the band.

THE NEXT 13

The National, Boxer
Black Lips, Good Bad Not Evil
Linda Thompson, Versatile Heart
Beirut, The Flying Club Cup
Ryan Adams, Easy Tiger
Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam
St. Vincent, Marry Me
Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals
Kanye West, Graduation
Neil Young, Chrome Dreams II
White Stripes, Icky Thump
Essie Jain, We Made This Ourselves
Tegan & Sara, The Con

ALSO RECOMMENDED

Arctic Monkeys, Favourite Worst Nightmare
Nicole Atkins, Neptune City
Meg Baird, Dear Companion
Big A Little a, gAame
The Bird and the Bee, s/t
Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
Bonde do Rôle, With Lasers
Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity
Deerhunter, Cryptograms
Dinosaur Jr., Beyond
Julie Doiron, Woke Myself Up
Dolorean, You Can’t Win
Justine Electra, Soft Rock
Tim Fite, Over the Counter Culture
Frames, The Cost
Fratellis, Costello Music
Erik Friedlander, Block Ice & Propane
José González, In Our Nature
Jesca Hoop, Kismet
Jennifer Gentle, The Midnight Room
Jesu, Conqueror
Klaxons, Myths of the Near Future
Lavender Diamond, Imagine Our Love
Bettye LaVette, The Scene of the Crime
LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
Nick Lowe, At My Age
Nellie McKay, Obligatory Villagers
Nina Nastasia & Jim White, You Follow Me
No Age, Weirdo Rippers
Okkervil River, The Strange Names
Josh Ritter, The Historical Conquests Of
Shins, Wincing the Night Away
Elliott Smith, New Moon
Spanish Harlem Orchestra, United We Swing
Mavis Staples, We’ll Never Turn Back
Marnie Stern, In Advance of the Broken Arm
Richard Thompson, Sweet Warrior
Teddy Thompson, Up Front & Low Down
Ween, La Cucaracha
Tinariwen, Aman Iman
KT Tunstall, Drastic Fantastic
David Vandervelde, The Moonstation House Band
Voxtrot, s/t
Rufus Wainwright, Release the Stars
White Williams, Smoke
Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

REISSUES

Young Marble Giants, Colossal Youth
Betty Davis, Betty Davis/They Say I’m Different
Pylon, Gyrate

SINGLES

1. Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”
2. Rihanna feat. Jay-Z, “Umbrella”
3. Avril Lavigne, “Girlfriend”
4. Bonde do Rôle, “Gasolina”
5. Lil Mama, “Lip Gloss”
6. Robin Thicke, “Lost Without U”
7. M.I.A., “Boyz”
8. Fratellis, “Chelsea Dagger”
9. Spoon, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”
10. Grinderman, “No Pussy Blues”

HONORARY MENTIONS

Radiohead, “House of Cards”
Kanye West feat. Mos Def, ““Drunk and Hot Girls”
Bruce Springsteen, “Livin’ in the Future” (time travel theory here)

NOPE

Fall Out Boy
Architecture in Helsinki
I’m From Barcelona
Mos Def
Polyphonic Spree
Dean & Britta
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Sage Francis
Dntel

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Keyshia Cole
Rilo Kiley
Bjork

BLANK STARE

Levon Helm (he’s great and everything, but album is terrible, and gushy reviews are inexplicable)

REALLY, REALLY BUMMED OUT THAT I MISSED LIVE

Daft Punk

REALLY, REALLY GLAD I SAW LIVE

Dirty Projectors

TRULY IS THAT GOOD

Feist

SPECIAL CITATION FOR OPENING A PORTAL TO THE BORE-UNIVERSE FOR 77+ MINUTES

Boredoms, 77BOADRUM, Brooklyn, 7/7/07 (I was behind this guy, at position #69)

POOR THING

50 Cent

COOLEST TITLE

Tom Zé, Danç-Êh-Sá

DUMBEST TITLE

Radiohead, In Rainbows

BEST NEW BLOG BAND

Vampire Weekend

MOST OVERRATED NEW BLOG BAND

Black Kids

BEST USE OF ‘WOLF’ BY A CANADIAN INDIE BAND ...

AIDS Wolf

... AND WORST

Sea Wolf (because they’re from L.A.)

MOST PATHETIC KERFUFFLE

Fallout from Sasha Frere-Jones’s misguided essay on the whiteness of indie-rock. David Brooks should never write about music, with the possible exception of political allegories drawn from Marx Brothers musical numbers. As has been noted, Carl Wilson performed an excellent tear-down of Frere-Jones’s piece.

BIGGEST LIE

Live Earth. It had nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with Al Gore’s ego. Ever wonder why the musicians most outspoken about environmental issues — Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Radiohead, U2, even emissions-credit-buying Coldplay — were not involved?

WORST ALBUM OF 2007 (tie)

Prince, Planet Earth. Come on people, it sucks. And let’s all just admit it: he hasn’t done anything worthy since Diamonds and Pearls (’91) and nothing truly great since Lovesexy (’88). He’s awesome in concert and looks good and all, but please.

Jesse Malin, Glitter in the Gutter. Bruce, say it ain’t so.

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The year in live music.

Best of 2005

ALBUMS

1. M.I.A., Arular
2. Frames, Burn the Maps
3. Sons and Daughters, The Repulsion Box
4. High on Fire, Blessed Black Wings
5. Kanye West, Late Registration
6. Decemberists, Picaresque
7. White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan
8. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
9. Keyshia Cole, The Way It Is
10. Go! Team, Thunder, Lightning, Strike

THE NEXT 10

Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll
Keren Ann, Nolita
Feist, Let It Die
Spoon, Gimme Fiction
Teenage Fanclub, Man-Made
My Morning Jacket, Z
Magic Numbers, s/t
Kings of Leon, Aha Shake Heartbreak
A Band of Bees, Free the Bees

18 MORE

LCD Soundsystem, s/t
Lee Ann Womack, There’s More Where That Came From
Okkervil River, Black Sheep Boy
Teairra Mari, Roc-A-Fella Records Presents
Stars, Set Yourself on Fire
Amadou & Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako
Wolf Parade, Apologies to the Queen Mary
Van Morrison, Magic Time
V/A, Meridian 1970
Kraftwerk, Minimum-Maximum
Laura Veirs, Year of Meteors
Gruff Rhys, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth
Mastodon, Leviathan
Lightning Bolt, Hypermagic Mountain
Jenny Scheinman, 12 Songs
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Howl
Low, The Great Destroyer
Juan Maclean, Less Than Human

SINGLES

Mary Gauthier, “Mercy Now”
Lee Ann Womack, “I May Hate Myself in the Morning”
Gorillaz, “Feels Good Inc.”
Kanye West w/ Jamie Foxx, “Gold Digger”
Amerie, “1 Thing”
Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”
Weezer, “Beverly Hills”
Laura Veirs, “Galaxies”
R. Kelly, “Trapped in the Closet (Chapters 1-12)”
White Stripes, “My Doorbell”
Juelz Santana, “There It Go (The Whistle Song)”
Nickelback, “Photograph”
Brad Paisley, “Alcohol”
Keyshia Cole, “I Just Want It to Be Over”
Teairra Mari, “Make Her Feel Good”
Pussycat Dolls, “Don’t Cha”

REISSUES

Dungen, Ta Det Lungt
Herb Alpert series on Shout Factory
Numero series
V/A, Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows 1926-1937
Coltrane finds
Dinosaur Jr.
Terry Reid

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Pelican
Brazilian Girls
Boredoms
Bloc Party

DON’T CARE

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Mountain Goats
Hold Steady
Fiery Furnaces
50 Cent
Beck
Shakira (her music, anyway)
all “American Idol” alumni
Foo Fighters
Rolling Stones
Paul McCartney

BLANK STARE

Antony

WORST ALBUM COVER

Korn, See You on the Other Side

WORST SONG

Black Eyed Peas, “My Humps”

WORST ALBUM OF 2005

Bright Eyes, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn