Usually I compile a list of the "best albums" and the close of the year, but this time I ran into a problem, mainly, I didn't buy anything really new, and for that matter, not much indie (am I getting *gulp* old?). Still, I'll take a stab at it based on what little I've heard. (No particular order)
Speakerboxx/The Love Below, Outkast
Elephant, White Stripes
Electric Version, New Pornographers
Untitled, Robert Randolph and his Family Band
Night On My Side, Gemma Hayes
Rainy Day Music, Jayhawks
Love Is Hell Part 1, Ryan Adams
Failer, Kathleen Edwards
So... how about the best songs of 2003? (Again, no particular order)
- "Hey Ya!", Outkast. The catchiness of "Tighten Up." The blunt yet sensitive sexuality of Marvin Gaye. The soulfulness of Otis Redding. Post-gansta rap has suffered from excessive sampling of soul and funk music and the resulting disconnection from the historical essence of what makes a soul record. The endless bling-bling, the fast cars, the women... but where is the love, the heart, the necessary immediacy of modern rap? It seems to be moving through a hair metal phase, when rock music became a parody of itself and lost its significance. My point is that "Hey Ya!" has the love, the heart, the immediacy, built not on some fifteenth generation George Clinton drum track but upon the concept of a Stax/Volt record. Simple, catchy, immediate. Gimme some sugar, I am your neighbor....
- "Hurt," Johnny Cash. This song makes me take back every bad thing I've ever said about Trent Reznor. Cash's last four albums featured a lot of covers, but this is the only one he sounds like he owns, like he wrote it, like he's making up the words as he'ssinging it to June on her deathbed.
- "Amsterdam," Guster. They got a lot of press in the late 90s as an up-and-coming indie band, but their label (Sire) vanished in the AOLTimeWarnerVeryBigCorporationOfAmerica merger, so they fell off the music radar. After four years and a new record deal, they release this absolute gem of a pop song. For three minutes and thirty-seven seconds, they're everything that Buffalo Tom could have been if they'd fulfilled their potential.
- "Stacy's Mom," Fountains of Wayne. Outkast mimics Marvin Gaye, but Fountains of Wayne blatantly copies the first, eponymous Cars album. I smell plaigarism lawsuit. How does a band with an Oscar nomination for best song in 1997 gets a Grammy nod for best new artist... in 2003? (Honorable mention to "Hey Julie," their best song that's not a ripoff of "Best Friend's Girl.")
- "Eyes of Sarah Jane," Jayhawks. Given up for dead when Mark Olson bagged it after the classic Tomorrow The Green Grass, the Jayhawks took an album to find their bearings then released Rainy Day Music. "Eyes of Sarah Jane" may not be the best song on the disc, but it's classic, solid No Depression alt-country.
- "A Punchup at a Wedding," Radiohead. The one highlight on a disappointing album of art-rock noodling.
- "Gethsemane," Richard Thompson. After ten years of major-label mixed blessings, he decamps to the small label life and to a louder, edgier folk.
And now, the worst songs of 2003.
- "Bring Me To Life," Evanescence. (Here comes the hate mail.) Look, just because you hire Sarah Brightman's goth kid sister to see lead for your Nickelback-clone thrash band doesn't mean it's "new" or "edgy" or "different." You do know that Tori Amos' first album was all hair metal? If you've ever heard that album, you'd know why she dumped that idea and stayed with the piano. And what a discordant song this is -- she sings in one key, you rap in another! PICK ONE DAMN KEY!
- "Bad Day," REM. Don't get me wrong. I love REM. I have all their albums and about half their B-sides on CD. No REM, no Pixies... no Nirvana. But I really, truly wish they'd just hang it up, because they're starting to enter that Who/Eagles sort of realm, the "We're Touring Because You'll Pay Us Cash Money And We Need Another House In Marin" sort of band. That, to me, sucks. Glenn Frey said he didn't want to be 40 years old with a beer belly singing "Take It Easy," and now he's pushing 50 and charging 40 year olds with beer bellies $300 to hear him sing that song. Thus, "Bad Day" sounds very bittersweet to me. It's overdone caramel -- you go one second too long melting sugar and you have... something inedible.
- "Boys of Summer," the Ataris. Some cover songs are great and glorious rethinks of the original that bring the music and lyric deep into the realm of the covering artist, so much so that you find yourself wondering whether the original artist should have not gone forward in time, handed the words and music to the covering artist, and said, "It's yours, because my version is crap compared to your gold." This is not one of those songs. No, this is one of those covers that makes you want to thrash the idiot who suggested the idea. Don Henley's original is this melancholy lament of lost love and growing old. The Ataris version is a punk band who plays covers for $200/night at the local dive, a place where it doesn't matter how terrible the music sounds because the customers are too drunk to care.
- "Have You Forgotten?", Darryl Worley. No, I haven't, and I don't need your hokey annoying song to tell me that I'm not a good American for thinking we shouldn't have acted almost unilaterally. I also think that Toby frikkin' Keith's "Angry American" kicks the ever-lovin' bejeesus out of your craptacular patriotic treacle. He comes off as the arse-kickin' American who wants to put a boot up Bin Laden's behind, while you come off as whiny as the anti-war people you vilify. (And no, I haven't changed my opinion of Toby Keith, but I respect him a hell of a lot more that Darryl Crybaby Worley. At least Keith added something of merit to the conversation. You gotta respect someone who idolizes Willie Nelson and not the George-Alan-Vince-Randy standard country star template.)
Comments
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I hate the video for Stacy's Mom because they *stole* the idea from Fast Times at Ridgemont High (which, coincidentally had a Cars song playing during that scene), on TOP of the fact that the song is a poppy piece of crap.
And what a bummer that there are so FEW songs out there with the name Stacy (trust me, I've looked) and now it's *this*.And here-here regarding Outkast. "Hey Ya" makes me clean my house whether I want to or not. That's BIG.
Posted by: dayment | December 15, 2003 10:59 AM
