Best Music of the Year

Top Albums of 2008

1. TV On The Radio Dear Science

What a year. Music in 2008 was more passionate and exciting than in any year this decade, and it seemed to crib from whatever was necessary - the 80's and early 90's came back in style with synthesizers everywhere, punk giutars roared back, and techno was safe for the radio. This year, I think we moved backwards to move forwards and wound up creating music that was wildly inventive - new in terms of scope and topic and even pushing sounds past what we thought we'd seen and heard.

I was already a TV On The Radio fan, but nothing the New York art-hard rock-punk-world-techno band had done before sounded anything like the furious guitars and calm vocals that open "Halfway Home," a song of dizzying ambivalence of death, comfort, confusion, and acceptance. The song is electrifying, but also magnificently warm and singable, in a way that even the band's best work hadn't been. That's true of the record as a whole - letting the rap giddiness of "Dancing Choose" eagerly beckon into love songs like "Family Tree," and letting each song be a profound bed of emotion and poetry. Music like this is astonishing in and of itself anyway, but the lyrics open Dear Science into a world you don't expect - a blazing, brave confrontation with meaning, passion, existence. By closing in the 1-2-3 punch of "Shout Me Out," "DLZ," and "Lover's Day," TV On The Radio shows excitement, fury, and love be one and the same, exist in the same breath. "Yes of course there are miracles," they conclude in "Day," "A lover that loves, that's one," before unleashing a filthy, beautiful song of sex and longing that makes explicit and raging all the passion that fuels questioning, love, and living. Dear Science longs for answers and then gives us some.

2. Q Tip The Renaissance

I can think of only one possible reason for The Renaissance not being near the top of every critic's top ten list this year - it's so fun and ebulliant from beginning to end that it just reminds of you of every other great Q Tip and Tribe Called Quest song ever made. That has to be it, because The Renaissance makes you feel high from the opening beat of "Johnny Is Dead" and makes you perfectly content to remain there until "Shaka" signs off with dramatic hope. Or maybe it just didn't sell that well.

The truth is rap and rock have a double standard in the way music critics talk about them. Rock can be totally irrelevant, the albums can be listened to by 15 people in Seattle or Williamsburg and still wind up on top of most critics best of the year lists, whereas rap albums have to have Lil Wayne's numbers to be considered relevant - ignoring mainstream rap in favor of less successful albums is tantamount to cultural illiteracy. Well, I dare you to listen to Lil Wayne's dully mediocre Tha Carter III then follow it up with The Rennaisance and tell me you like Wayne better. The Renaissance is so varied, wild, packed with guest stars (like "Life Is Better," featuring a Norah Jones vocal that plasters a smile permanently to your face), and exciting, it becomes a giddy, energizing force that doesn't even break between songs. The theatrics of "Shaka" are more than well deserved - by the end of The Renaissance, they're a curtain call earning a standing ovation.

3. Madonna Hard Candy

In a year in which the 80's infected absolutely everything from fashion and music in rock, pop, and R/B, it should make sense that the best neo-80's sound came from Madonna. It may be her 11th record, but Hard Candy tops a decade of Madonna at her Euro-techno finest. "Give It 2 Me" turns the worst synthesizer of 1988 into a propulsive club anthem and gives Kanye West his best moment of the year (seriously) in "Beat Goes On." It offers the promise of a "one stop candy shop" in the opening moments but allows ruminations on failed relationships that run from wrenching intimacy to furious resolve, often in the same song ("Miles Away," "Incredible"), and considering her year of divorce and custody tabloid mishegos, songs like "Voices" and "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You" allow a rather shocking bit of bruised intimacy into the Madonna fray. The truth is, since most indie music is obsessed with 80's synth and techno anyway, most indie bands would do themselves a favor analyzing what goes so right with Hard Candy - sure, it may have plenty of input from the biggest pop producers and stars in the business, but it's all Madonna, confessing and cracking a whip all over the dance floor, as only she can.

4. Eagles of Death Metal Heart On

What was once a joke band to keep Josh Hommes occupied between Queens of the Stone Age records wound up making an album of more humor and bravado than even Queens have been capable of in their last two records. Sure, the dufus-in-tight-pants schtick is in full effect in "Wannabe In LA" and "High Voltage" ("We're gettin' freaky in the shadows of the night," Hommes and Jesse Hughes sing), but there's also a rock sensibility that was only part of the show before on this record, and in "Heart On" or "Cheap Thrills," the record is so loud and exciting, you forget you're supposed to be laughing. That's because Heart On is the dufus-with-a-broken-heart EoDM album, and "Now I'm A Fool" makes a fairly convincing case for this. With all emotion, excitement, and humor intact, the finale, "I'm Your Torpedo," manages to be the loudest and most satisfying rock song of the year - and one that could have been made by no other band.

5. My Morning Jacket Evil Urges

MMJ deserve credit for expanding their sound from any recognizable alt-country genre exercise and indulging their instinct to free themselves from expectation, to engage in a few evil urges themselves. The results, like "Highly Suspicious" and "Evil Urges," sung in falsetto, are ridiculous and astonishing. The rock numbers like "I'm Amazed" and "Aluminum Park" are more infused with belief and passion than repeating another MMJ album would have allowed, and if it weren't for a few ponderous, supposed-to-be-deep clunkers in the middle, the excitement of "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Pt. 2" and "Smokin' From Shootin'" would have made this album legendary. As it is, we're lucky that this album reaches such astonishing highs, even if it isn't sustained.

6. Beck Modern Guilt

Beck caps his 2000's winning streak with an album that pushes his anxiety and techno instincts into a deadly standoff - "Orphans" sees Beck wrestling with his maker, "Volcano" sees him jumping into a volcano, and "Soul of a Man" has him waxing existential. Using Danger Mouse as his dance muse, Beck loses his way and, in 34 wise, concise minutes, helps us grapple with our own dual instincts to party and drink ourselves to death.

7. Kings of Leon Only By The Night

Following their instinct to get psychadelic and long, opened up on Because of the Times, Kings show what their best at - wild rockers like "Crawl" and "Manhattan" that allow for Caleb Followill's southern-mumbles voice to bury a hard-partying consciousness in great rock, and then set it free on glorious, sad jams like "Cold Desert."

8. MGMT Oracular Spectacular

Where Madonna got the 80's techno pop right, but for the indie version, MGMT is as great it comes. Subversive or no, "Time to Pretend" and "Kids" are party-friendly and just as fun in skinny jeans.

9. Jaymay Autumn Fallin'

The year's best singer-songwriter debut, this forgotten March release is a warm, well written, beautifully simple record of heartbreak, easing moments of excitement like "Grey or Blue" into daring, lovely Dylanesque rambles like "Sea Green, See Blue" and "You'd Rather Run."

10. Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It

There's plenty of R/B on the radio to steal its thunder, but by sounding older and more retro than everyone, Saadiq's way of seeing also sounds more seductive and wild.

Top Singles of 2008

1. "Disturbia" Rihanna

I didn't believe Rihanna was a real pop star until "Disturbia," a techno'd-out horror story that really is a song of feeling cut off and overwhelmed. Addicting and pulsating, "Disturbia" works because Rihanna's voice sounds more vulnerable and in control than any song she's done prior.

2. "Forever" Walter Meego

An indie-techno wonder that earns the power to say (through a voice-box, natch) "I can make you excited."

3. "Electric Feel" MGMT

The best of the MGMT techno-rock numbers, "Electric Feel" gets you sailing on its synth-flute beat and dorky charm.

4. "Paper Planes" M.I.A.

It takes a Tamil rebel and a chorus of gun shots to make the hustler anthem of the year. Santogold took much of MIA's wild-ethnic-superstar thunder this year, but "Paper Planes" proves why MIA's the real deal.

5. "So What" Pink

A kiss off like no other, if it weren't for its simple melody, and great techno chorus, this would just be another Stewart Smalley affirmation.

6. "Forever" Chris Brown

The techno R/B seduction anthem that everyone tried to make this year, Brown's "Forever" is the one you want to go home with.

7. "Keeps Gettin' Better" Christina Aguilera

Getting the 70's into the 80's dance party, Aguilera is dirrty and beautiful at once.

8. "A-Punk" Vampire Weekend

An indie rock guitar dance song that's like a festival-rock bounce anthem gone giddy.

9. "What U Got" Colby O'Donis featuring Akon

I'll take "What U Got" and its sexy curiosity over the balcony-humping "Love In This Club" at any dance party.

10. "Ready For The Floor" Hot Chip

Like "Electric Feel" performed by more sincere robots.

Top 10 Songs from Non-great albums

1. "Real Love" Lucinda Williams (from Little Honey)

2. "The Cheapest Key" Kathleen Edwards (from Asking For Flowers)

3. "Blue Ridge Mountains" Fleet Foxes (from Fleet Foxes)

4. "Strange Times" The Black Keys (from Attack and Release)

5. "Love Lockdown" Kanye West (from 808s and Heartbreaks)

6. "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" R.E.M. (from Accelerate)

7. "I'm A Lady" Santogold (from Santogold)

8. "2080" Yeasayer (from All Hour Symbols)

9. "Drunk With The Thought of You" Sheryl Crow (from Detours)

10. "Magick" Ryan Adams & The Cardinals (from Cardinology)