Albums:
LCD Soundsystem:

The Grind, the sadness, and the exhaustion, the tale end of a party city told in the language they would understand, splits the difference between the qaulaade and coke camps of disco. Through all of that, it provides enough material for the build up, the dance floor, and the come down afterwards.

Britney Spears:
This is her breakdown record, like Judy at Carnegie Hall, like Lou Reed and Berlin, like Bowie during Low...the only problem with the analogy, is that this one is so dissociative and they were hyper aware, her voice is lost perilously in noise, production effects, and chaos. There is a too easy metaphor there, and when you reach for it, yr heart breaks with the brittleness of it.

Rufus and Judy:
There is something delicate in the negotiations between boys and their divas, and what could have been a cold and ironic joke, becomes one of the great interpretive texts. I keep thinking of his reading of When Yr Smiling and Judy's, there is something there, in the ignoring the realism for a sunny optimism that is so desperate, and so oddly political--Rufus unpacks (to use Obama's phrase) the audacity of hope, only buying it as far as it is functional--a lesson we need to absorb.

Spring Awakening:
The wise crack is that Broadway is always ten years behind, but who knew that a washed up out pop star could create a time warp (Goethe, Wiemar, Elvis, Fosse, Kurt Cobain) so strange and so sexually exciting--proving that adolescent angst is always universal.)

Mavis Staples:
I wonder what Richard Dawkins thinks of this?

Horse Soilder! Horse Soilder!
A Edmonton Boy, used to be a punk and is now a cowboy--he is as ambiguous, dark, and historical as ever, but this time with songs about the Contras (or America as covert empire) and Brigham Young (about what it means to believe and to fuck in a theocracy). I doubt he is known outside of Canada, which is a shame, because he makes anthems every American should internalise.

Jay-Z
The only way to go forward is to move backwards, into spectacle and historcizing, more of a useful history on gangster and celebrity then that incredibly dull 3 hour Jesse James movie that came out a bit earlier, but to the same aims.

Taylor Swift:
There is something refreshing in 18 year olds singing about 18 year old things--like sneaking around, or the longing of adolescent desire, and that she does it in a crystalline soprano that reminds me of early Dolly, makes this the most exciting debut in years.

Singles:
Paper Plane:
Kala was a disappointment, but this song made me love her voice again--that was why Piracy Funds Terrorism and Arular were so important, not the politics, the violence, the geography, but her flow, her skills as an instrument.

Mother of Pearl:
A po-faced, post ironic novelty song about feminism, redone as a Ed Sullivan ready cabaret jazz joint. Think Stephen Colbert's run for president in South Carolina, but redone by Ti Grace Atkinson.

Rehab:
Entirely for the discourse outside the text.

Hey There Deliah:
Oddly misogynst, and mopey in the worst of the straight boy ways, but i found it moving, and i sang it for three months this summer--which must have meant something.

Penny in the Slot
Gorgeous brouge, Paul Auster reference that was shockingly unpretentious, and he couldn't really sing--but the Silver Jews always told me that all his favourite singers couldn't sing, and I agree.

Lip Gloss--Lil Mama
Similar to Taylor Swift--the pure pleasure, the radical changes that can occur when costumes move or make up is applied, the gendered deconstruction of drag, or glitter or pen and pixel or krumping or all of that, but done by the cutest 14 year old girl who wants to retain being 14. Also saved the painfully earnest Avril.

Big Wheel
Tori comes back from the pixies, who taught her how to shake.

One Inch Badge Pin
3 AM, drunk after a good night dancing, but not quite pulling, you need an anthem you can scream loudly and quite out of tune--that used to be Pushing Drugs, Now its this.

Going To A Town:
He is theatrical and melancholy enough that he should narrate every western nations tragedies. I would kill for him to record something deep and witty about the concept of Eurabia for example.