Gossip is the new pornography

For me, 2008 was a disappointing year overall for music. Not because I was disappointed with the output – compiling this end of year mix CD was pretty easy and there were another 10 good songs I left off but shouldn’t have. No, it was disappointing because so many bands I really like had decided to split up. Locally, The Cops, The Young Sportsmen, The Trucks and Ms. Led all played or will play their final shows in 2008 or early 2009. Nationally, the biggest voids left between the spaces my earbuds occupy were by The Long Blondes and Be Your Own Pet (the latter produced my favorite album of the year).

Maybe there was, as The Stranger’s Dave Segal put it, a “Vampire Foxes on the Radio(head) hivemindgroupthink”. I was never taken by Fleet Foxes – although tried my hardest to not take part in a backlash or denigrate the people that appreciated the folk-y, multi-part harmonies.

There were some interesting storylines that critics advanced throughout the year, with varying degrees of success. Rolling Stone tried to argue that the long-time-in-the-making Guns n’ Roses album Chinese Democracy was actually quite good but that meme never took hold. Metacritic’s composite of critics’ scores ranked it slightly better than James Taylor’s collection of recordings of other people’s songs and the same as the latest All-American Rejects record. Yet, I my most pleasant surprise was a record from a band I remember from my childhood whose time in between albums consumed my entire teenage years and all but a few months of my twenties. That was not GnR but The B-52s, who either found a fountain of youth during that time or found a way to actually stop aging.

The critic Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times wrote an essay arguing that critics were turning towards poptimism and away from rockism earlier in the year and it probably is. Part of that is due to the disintegration of newspapers and the dearth of paying jobs for critics and writers; if your readership and editors are demanding that you cover TI or “American Idol” then Deerhunter or Fuck Buttons are going to have to be pushed out. Maybe the most telling example of the year where the line between mainstream and “indie” or “alternative” was blurred to me was when The Stranger opened up a shitstorm by offering free tickets to an upcoming Britney Spears concert. I sided with the alt-weekly rag as I support the idea of giving Britney tickets away in general and to me in particular.

To me, though, being a poptimist means finding joy both in the mainstream song that is sung by passengers on busses out of key and comes on the radio every few minutes and in the well-written song played in a club to a room of twelve people. Rock and roll remains to me what the great critic Robert Christgau called “my favorite waste of time”. And maybe that is what it is. I don’t know if I have any clout or credibility (although most publicists return my e-mails and I did have a vote in the Village Voice’s Pazz and Jop survey this year) but that isn’t what makes this worthwhile. The most unexpected surprise for me was being asked to cover of Montreal’s tour stop in Seattle at the last minute and being blown away by the spectacle of the evening. I have also gotten several e-mails from small, local bands thanking me for writing just one sentence or paragraph about their band – there isn’t one or the other that is preferable.

There may no longer be a song or album that captivates an entire collective body (although in 2008 Britney, Coldplay and Lil Wayne gave it their best shot). For every person who says they like something, there is invariably going to be fifteen people to say that sucks or is lame. It may seem amplified in the blogosphere but good music is like what former Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart said obscenity, that he may not be able to define it but knows it when he sees it.

Taste is, of course, subjective. Anyone who says what they like is good and what you like is bad is full of shit. My favorite musical moments are not trying to “break” a hot new band before they are eaten up by the hype machine but when someone says to me “I actually really like that song” and the only possible response is “so do I.”

Top songs of 2008 mix:

1. I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me - Annie

2. The Kelly Affair - Be Your Own Pet

3. Womanizer - Britney Spears

4. Transformer - Marnie Stern

5. Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend

6. A Milli - Lil Wayne

7. Alice Practice - Crystal Castles

8. LES Artistes - Santogold

9. Fascination - Alphabeat

10. That’s Not My Name - The Ting Tings

11. The Fear - Lily Allen

12. Mercy - Duffy

13. Funplex - The B-52s

14. Jockin’ Jay-Z - Jay-Z

15. 4 AM is the New Midnight - The Marches

16. I’m Good, I’m Gone - Lykke Li

17. You and I - Ingrid Michaelson

18. My Year in Lists - Los Campesinos!

19. Wild Eyes - Vivian Girls

20. Starlett Johansson - The Teenagers

21. Gilt Complex - Sons & Daughters

22. Cape Fear - The Rosebuds

23. Oh My God - Ida Maria

24. Aly, Walk With Me - The Raveonettes