Singles:

Video Phone:
I am spending the year at an evangelical anglican residence. I am flipping through channels, with some people in the common room. Video Phone comes on, and people walk into the room. At the beginning, it is me and this dude named Dave, at the end of 4 minutes there are 20 people. They are aroused, isolated, confused, broken, and horny beyond belief. I remain unconvinced of Gaga's genius, but anything that introduces the other while getting Sony to pay for it must mean something.

Heads Will Roll
The ambition is part of the charm, and how it works as video, as spectacle, as costume, how the gothic (think Siouxise Sioux but also think Melmoth the Wandered) is lightened with camp horror. The sophistication of the work as a pop object is made problematic by the extraordinary sophiscation of it as a song--as a musical object.

Run This Town
Rhianna's vocals are more interesting here then they are in the entire album she released this year. Her ego, unabated and unattached, overwhelms both Jay-Z and Kanye, which allows for her own voice, which is one of the goals of femminism, and one of the goals of pop. She achieved that goal best thisyear.

StarStrukk
Sex is complicated, and straight boys have never quite figured out how to fuck for liberation. Let's give 'em a hand for trying. Plus, it has the best chorus to dance to in half a decade.

Ray Fever--When I Grow Up
Atmospheric, moody, slightly annoying in that Bjork way, a major earworm that prevented me from dismissing it.

John Mayer--Who Says.
The tabloid personae enjambs with some amount of emotional rawness, and although the whole fame weakens me with ennui is such a cliche, the Laurel Canyon vibe of this makes it better then the sum of its parts. This was the single that convinced me there was something there beyond whiny.

Camp Out
While we wait for Courtney Love to get her shit together, and produce something as brilliant as Mono, this aussie dyke will tell us what we are missing. Optimisic song about crumbling, inspirational song about falling, with guitars that surge with the grace that happens in the dark with strange bodies--earnest without being obnoxious.

If You Seek Amy
The single entendre has a long history as blues argot, which may place Brit-Brit as more historically minded then we give her credit for. That said, what is interesting here is not the lyrics, or picking apart the meta (yes, it is about Paris Hilton; yes, the line "does she take a peice of lime for the drink i'm buying is more effective of a diss then registers on paper). What is interesting is how unhinged it is, over stuffed with robots, with vocal effects, with snycopated rhythms, with chesire cat laughing--the mania of the song (maybe literal mania) abstracts beyond any use function. If Blackout was baroque, this is Rococo.

Corb Lund: Corb continues to add to the narratives of classic country--as the last album worked through new soilder songs and new horse songs, this one has farm songs and card songs. This is the card song, and it is about betting on home and therefore need to bet from going away. Aside from the world weariness, the sadness of the vocals, the perfect guitar work, there is a processing of the domestic and local over the international. He lives in Alberta, which is losing money and people, and where the money is disappearing, and where the recession is hard. Best song about the disaster of imminent poverty.

Surf Solar.
Noise. Dance. Attack. Noise. Dance. Attack.

Hang Over OST.
The movie was funny, and hated it's characters. That they thought they were being harder, more butch, more difficult then they really were was part of the joke. From the opening with Danzig, to the queering of Elvis via El Vez, the construction of that joke was told mostly through the music.

Phil Kline:
Sacred Harp singing breeds with Elizabethan ecclestical chanting, and gives birth to tape loops. Holy because of how impure it is.

The Mountain Goats:
I spent the year doing theology work, though I have a problematic and deeply ambiguous relationship with Christ/God. All of my feelings, of loneliness, and desire, of home-seeking, and of scapegoating, of living with the texts, and wanting to destroy the texts are here. Most important theological work of the last decade. We should play it over the loud speakers at the next Lambreth, and JD should get a private audience with the Pope.

Alaisdair Roberts
Because of the hurdy gurdy. It makes me want to make sure that every new release of the decade features the hurdy gurdy--and yes, that includes Adam Lambert.

Marvellous Boys/Ghana
One of the miracles of living in the age of digital recordings is that there is no need to crate dig. These well curated selctions of african pop talk more about disapora, race, the liquidity of texts, and the claiming/reclaiming of culture and history then most--but that is besides the point, they are the party records of the year.

Nellie McKay
Earnestness is the new irony, and Doris Day knew that in the 50s. Wry, reworking/reclaiming of a lost voice is completely decimated by her version of the Black Hills of Daktoa, the loneliest version of a cowboy ballad since Rufus worked all of the homoerotic tension of Brokeback into The Maker Makes.

Mastadon:
Does it make me a hyprocrite that i love the insane back story and guitar wank on this one, but hate it on Rush, or do i just perfer to be slapped rather then seduced?

Lily Allen--Because who hasn't been fucked up and 22, though she makes more money then you, the feelings are the same.

Lyle Lovett
Could be replaced with Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, or Steve Earle, though Lovett has a better band, and has wider influences. There is something to be said about the solid, workman like desires to release an album that is polished, well constructed, warm, and functional. I wish to sound as consistent as he does at his age.