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

‘Black Mirror’ video site

Pretty neat site just launched by the Arcade Fire. It’s an interactive video for the song “Black Mirror” (the domain, rorrimkcalb.com, is the title spelled backwards*). Interactive in the sense that as you watch you can toggle six audio channels: (1) lead vocal, (2) echoey percussion, (3) echoey bass, (4) echoey piano, (5) echoey, Davich Lynch-y backup vocals, and (6) strings. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that before, and it’s revealing. Video’s good too.

---

* I guess the “sleazy NYC sex” people beat them to the punch on blackmirror.com.

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.

---

The year in live music.

Best of 2004

ALBUMS

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

THE NEXT 10

Mr. Airplane Man, C’mon DJ
Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender
Devendra Banhart, Rejoicing in the Hands
Liars, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
Mosquitos, Sunshine Barato
Bang on a Can Meets Kyaw Kyaw Naing
Nick Cave, Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
Tom Waits, Real Gone
Futureheads, s/t
Hot Snakes, Audit in Progress

26 MORE

Cucumbers, All Things to You
Tilly and the Wall, Wild Like Children
Caetano Veloso, A Foreign Sound
Blonde Redhead, Misery Is a Butterfly
Comets on Fire, Blue Cathedral
Laura Veirs, Carbon Glacier
Faun Fables, Family Album
Mouthus, s/t
Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill
PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her
Walkmen, Bows + Arrows
Bright Eyes/Neva Dinova, One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels
The Divine Comedy, Absent Friends
Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days
Division of Laura Lee, Das Not Compute
On Air Library, s/t
John Cale, HoboSapiens
Black Dice, Creature Comforts
Pink Grease, This Is for Real
Blood Brothers, Crimes
Chingy, Powerballin’
Beastie Boys, To the 5 Boroughs
Danger Mouse & Jemini, Ghetto Pop Life
Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse
Hem, Eveningland
v/a, Lif Up Yuh Leg an Trample

REISSUES

Brian Eno (8 albums)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly soundtrack
Eccentric Soul series on Numero

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Hives
Mos Def
Magnetic Fields
Sondre Lerche
Air
Destiny’s Child
Secret Machines
Wilco
Northern State
Talib Kweli
Mooney Suzuki
Le Tigre

DON’T CARE

Morrissey
Scissor Sisters
Jadakiss
Libertines
Jet
Drive-By Truckers
Courtney Love
Prince
Polyphonic Spree
Rufus Wainwright

BLANK STARE

The Streets
Velvet Revolver

WORST ALBUM OF 2004

Mick Jagger and Dave Stewart, Alfie: Music From the Motion Picture

EX POST FACTO

Apparently I didn’t make a list of singles for 2004.