"Your love is what I prefer, what I deserve/ Is a man that makes me, then takes me/ And delivers me to destiny, to infinity and beyond"A craftier, more dishonest person would have gone back and altered the historical record, Winston Smith-style (or P. Diddy-style: "We Invented the Remix," after all). Yet all I can do is bemoan the fact that making lists having to do with 2008 before the year ends is an inherently disingenuous exercise, certain to lead to redactions, minor embarrassments, and mea culpas. So, first things first.
There was dearth of songs this year that demanded you hear them over and over again, excepting the Hold Steady's fantastic , propulsive (and apparently overlooked) "Stay Positive" and just about the whole damn Cut Copy album. Yet over the last two weeks, two songs have emerged that I feel an irresistible compulsion to play over and over again at deafening volumes. The first is T.I.'s "Live Your Life", an oceanic midtempo banger in the mold of 2006's nonpareil "What You Know" that sounds like the soundtrack to a 2008 highlight reel (look, there's Obama! Again!). With Rhianna co-staring (she does so much more than sing the hook here, more like John the Baptist, you know), T.I. acts like he isn't going to prison on federal weapons charges, but rather like he's showing 2008's enfant terrible Lil Wayne how to craft a real number one single. A truly bizarre c.f.: Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone."
The year's other probable future classic is Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" which is really a filed down, less psychotic version of last year's "Ring the Alarm" and all the better for it. In Dreamgirls, Beyonce played Diana Ross on film and now she's playing her on record. Not a rehash or an update so much as an evolutionary step forward, it's good to see someone listening to Motown for purposes other than straight plunder. Plus you have to love what might be the most goofy, straight up retarded music video of the year. YouTube isn't just a medium, it's an aesthetic.
And of course there's a ton of worthy albums that I omitted from my year end list because I'm not omniscient, but shouldn't be penalized just because I only have two ears. The Up-Runners:
Eat Skull - Sick to Death (Siltbreeze)
Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual (We Are Free)
Clipse - Road to Till the Casket Drops (mixtape)
Lil Wayne - The Drought Is Over Part 6 (mixtape)
Young Jeezy -The Recession (Def Jam)
T.I. - Paper Trail (Atlantic)
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue (Warner Bros.)
Wavves - Wavves (Woodsist)
Luomo - Convivial (Huume)
Stereo Image - S/T (Frog Man Jake)
Women - Women (Jagjaguwar)
Thee Oh Sees - The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In (Tomlab)
Tallest Man on Earth - Shallow Grave (Gravitation)
The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent (Castle)
Elvis Costello - Momofuku (Lost Highway)
Of course, the best record of 2008 that went unmentioned in my original countdown wasn't mentioned because it wasn't released in 2008. That would be The Ramones' Road to Ruin, which in their customary half-hour or so demonstrated the formal possibilities of rock and roll (the all-encompassing Christgauian definition) more fully than anything else that I heard this year. The best and most depressing evidence yet that things don't always have to get better (Wall Street takes second prize).
There was dearth of songs this year that demanded you hear them over and over again, excepting the Hold Steady's fantastic , propulsive (and apparently overlooked) "Stay Positive" and just about the whole damn Cut Copy album. Yet over the last two weeks, two songs have emerged that I feel an irresistible compulsion to play over and over again at deafening volumes. The first is T.I.'s "Live Your Life", an oceanic midtempo banger in the mold of 2006's nonpareil "What You Know" that sounds like the soundtrack to a 2008 highlight reel (look, there's Obama! Again!). With Rhianna co-staring (she does so much more than sing the hook here, more like John the Baptist, you know), T.I. acts like he isn't going to prison on federal weapons charges, but rather like he's showing 2008's enfant terrible Lil Wayne how to craft a real number one single. A truly bizarre c.f.: Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone."
The year's other probable future classic is Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" which is really a filed down, less psychotic version of last year's "Ring the Alarm" and all the better for it. In Dreamgirls, Beyonce played Diana Ross on film and now she's playing her on record. Not a rehash or an update so much as an evolutionary step forward, it's good to see someone listening to Motown for purposes other than straight plunder. Plus you have to love what might be the most goofy, straight up retarded music video of the year. YouTube isn't just a medium, it's an aesthetic.
And of course there's a ton of worthy albums that I omitted from my year end list because I'm not omniscient, but shouldn't be penalized just because I only have two ears. The Up-Runners:
Eat Skull - Sick to Death (Siltbreeze)
Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual (We Are Free)
Clipse - Road to Till the Casket Drops (mixtape)
Lil Wayne - The Drought Is Over Part 6 (mixtape)
Young Jeezy -The Recession (Def Jam)
T.I. - Paper Trail (Atlantic)
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue (Warner Bros.)
Wavves - Wavves (Woodsist)
Luomo - Convivial (Huume)
Stereo Image - S/T (Frog Man Jake)
Women - Women (Jagjaguwar)
Thee Oh Sees - The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In (Tomlab)
Tallest Man on Earth - Shallow Grave (Gravitation)
The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent (Castle)
Elvis Costello - Momofuku (Lost Highway)
Of course, the best record of 2008 that went unmentioned in my original countdown wasn't mentioned because it wasn't released in 2008. That would be The Ramones' Road to Ruin, which in their customary half-hour or so demonstrated the formal possibilities of rock and roll (the all-encompassing Christgauian definition) more fully than anything else that I heard this year. The best and most depressing evidence yet that things don't always have to get better (Wall Street takes second prize).
