Year-End Critics' Polls '07

xp

Well, that was part of Xgau's point -- that hearing the drama in Journey songs reminds Tony Soprano of being young too, and that's not enough. (And I say that as somebody who has defended Journey -- including reviews of four reissues in Rolling Stone last year -- as much as anybody. And somebody who still thinks "Don't Stop Believin'" is an even better single than either "O Superman" or "Start Me Up," though Xgau did present good arguments about why both of those '81 songs still matter, too.)

Yeah, I get that. I'm just being candid about the (somewhat flimsy) basis for my liking Journey.

I loved Journey ("Wheel in the Sky," etc.) when I was in junior high and hated them by high school -- any lingering "awwwww" moments I might have are all negated by watching my friend Amy dissolve into bitter tears every time Journey came on the radio because it reminded her of being dumped by this guy Danny. And Journey came on the radio, like, A LOT.

Not that that adds to the discourse at all. Just saying.

Hey, I was in High School when Journey was popular. My name is ''Danny.'' I knew an Amy in school.

I might have been the villian in your story, except for the fact that I couldn't get a date in High School if I waltzed into a women's prison with a fistful of furlows.

Well you had about as much chance with Amy as I did then! JOURNEY YOU COCKBLOCKING BASTARDS I HATE YOU, even though it probably wasn't your fault.

Much better memories of "Oh Sherry" though! That shouty opening!

"Our love....HOOOOOOOOOOOLDS ON!"

(And thanks for the comments upthread, all -- sorry, kept forgetting to check back in on this thread, it got busy here at work!)

I played this wedding recently, and these drunk 19 yr old girls bum-rushed the stage and started singing "Don't Stop Believin'"! I was not believin' it. It was fuckin' relevant.

I just think it's funny how post-Sopranos "Believin'" is being treated as if it wasn't an evergreen radio staple the whole time. it's not like "Tiny Dancer" or something where suddenly pop culture elevates it from minor hit status to one of the artist's most popular songs.

Tiny Dancer was a minor hit?

"don't stop believin" has long reached it's ironic saturation point in the 16-24 demo.

I'm not gonna reiterate the "Tiny Dancer" convo I just had in one of the Elton poll threads, but yeah, minor. Missed the top 40 in the US and didn't chart in the UK, right in the middle of EJ's first string of top 10 hits.

Hm. I wasn't defending the song, just culling my memory.

As to Don't Stop Belivin', J0rdan is exactly right. Some Journey songs -- that were, at the time -- loved unironically are now okay for the younger set who soak them in irony.

But that's just a cover: The songs are good (or maybe just very meat-and-potatoes satisfying), so it's easy to feign ironic love when there's real love in your heart.

Dudes, Journey were fuckin' GODS when I was in high school! And, like Matt, I loathed and detested them; hell, just the sight of one of their album covers was enough to send me into a righteous fit of indignation back then. Now, like most sane people, I dig "Don't Stop Believin'" as much as, oh..."Bette Davis Eyes," say. Great shit.

Hahah--this thread has gone through some damn strange tangents recently.

TS: Journey v. Panda Bear.

"Tiny Dancer," as a staple of AOR, is better-known now than many of the songs that placed before it on the pop charts. No one over the age of 35 needed to be reminded of that song...and that movie probably made as many people sick of it as "turned them on" to it whoa.

But yeah ultimately who cares.

Oh, what the hell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-RdAzkKlXY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip1zsUIosoA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOYOExbzv-8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXtub5JfyeQ

FITE!

^^^this = jn$ot right?

yar

aye wtf is happening to this thread.

Year-End Critics' Polls '07

Wait, so did the movie with "Tiny Dancer" in it come before or after Tim McGraw's cover version?

(And how do "Candle in the Wind" and "Come Sail Away" fit into this?)

x-post

I'm letting my kids fill out my singles ballot by the way. "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" will therefore be quite high on the list, as it deserves to be.

-- Dimension 5ive, Wednesday, 19 December 2007 16:35 (3 hours ago)

I missed that 30 Rock episode, but just checked out the video. Thanks. Matt, isn't your daughter getting Bat Mitzvahed soon?

"Tiny Dancer," as a staple of AOR, is better-known now than many of the songs that placed before it on the pop charts. No one over the age of 35 needed to be reminded of that song...and that movie probably made as many people sick of it as "turned them on" to it whoa.

But yeah ultimately who cares.

-- Dimension 5ive, Wednesday, December 19, 2007 3:01 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

maybe so. i'm too young to have been around for EJ's initial hit parade, obv, all i know is growing up I heard about a dozen of his songs constantly, and that wasn't one of 'em.

(xpost -- Tim McGraw covered "Tiny Dancer" 2 years after Almost Famous, I knew "Candle In The Wind" well before the Diana version, and I have no idea what "Come Sail Away" was supposedly revived by -- South Park?)

Back on track, I get Nick's point upthread about Person Pitch sounding flat, i.e., lacking dynamics. Seems like it should be similar to a Talk Talk album, where sounds float in from all points, but Panda Bear's disc sounds to me like everything is on one flat plane.

I'm not sure how to describe it more artfully than that. And (a) I like Person Pitch (not as the No. 1 disc of the year, but a lot) and (b) I often can't hear what Nick is talking about in terms of a disc or song's over-compression (a failing in me, not in his analysis).

My prediction still stands. A lot of critics are listening to dubstep. But not enough to get it in the top 10.

I'd take issue with this -- I'd say that in fact very, very few critics are listening to dubstep (or at least writing about it). *Referencing* the genre, eg knowing it exists, when writing about Burial doesn't count.

Why doesn't writing about Burial count?

I mean, Burial is dubstep, isn't it?

I think he means that mentioning the genre is not the same as knowing anything about it.

xpost to Steve: next fall! The countdown has begun!

In other news: JAZZ!

Just to add a little more to the Journey discussion, "Don't Stop Believin" was the unofficial theme song for the White Sox during and after their World Series run. So it got a lot of play in Chicago, well before the Sopranos episode.

And Blues! I just discovered Mississippi's Jimmy Duck Holmes-"Done Got Tired of Tryin'" on Geoff Himes' Baltimore City Paper ballot. I wonder if Himes does a different ballot for that Nashville weekly country thing he coordinates?

(Matt, my son was bar mitzvahed this past spring. Everything worked out great--Good luck)

I'd never even heard "Don't Stop Believin'" until it was used in Monster, when Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci dance to it at the roller rink. That movie came out soon after I stopped worrying about guilty pleasures and whether I could like things ironically or whatever, so I heard it as a fantastic song, just as I did with the Darkness's "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," which was released around the same time.

XP -- I don't know if some of these lists were printed or linked upthread, but I'd really like to read about the best jazz, blues and classical albums of the year. I know James Blood Ulmer released a good blues disc this year, but that's all I know about this year's crop of jazz, blues and classical releases.

And my daughter has 7 long years to go before her Bat Mitzvah!

ok jaymc that's pretty weird.

What part?

the not hearing that song until the movie Monster part.

And liking a song by The Darkness.

Oh. I have lots of blind spots, esp. when it comes to classic rock. Like the only reason I know "Carry on My Wayward Son" is because it's on the Girl Talk album.

^me too

Man. I mean, I would've figured you'd at least heard it through Anchorman.

Monster came out in 2003. Anchorman was 2004.

About the closest I've come to listening to a classic-rock radio station is WXRT, which is nominally AAA but plays older stuff, too. Except it's usually just canon fodder like the Beatles and Zeppelin and the Eagles and Tom Petty, nothing too prog or metal or dated-sounding arena-rock.

xpost Oh wait, do you mean Kansas or Journey? I don't remember what was in Anchorman.

Weird thing about "Tiny Dancer" for me is that I'm totally in the "demographic" for it (grew up loving Elton songs on the radio--AM radoio), but barely knew that song at all until Almost Famous--it did totally reach me through that movie, and continues to sound good.

As for Journey (this may relate to jaymc's experience), I was a highly opinionated Journey-hater in high school, but I never once actually listened to their music, and was not exposed to it much through the radio because by that time I wasn't listening to radio. I think the only way they could possibly reach me now is through some movie or TV show, but I didn't see the Sopranos.

I'll get back to you about dubstep--in, say, 15 years? (Actually, I do kind of like Burial.)

I was a highly opinionated Journey-hater in high school

Except I had no reason to hate Journey because very few suburban Chicago high schoolers in the early '90s were actually listening to Journey.

Burial's undoubtedly connected to dubstep, but it's hardly representative of the sound/scene in general -- in no small part because dubstep is much more club-oriented than Burial, whose music far better suits a home-listening environment. I realize that opposition is well worn and often really specious, but in this case I think it holds up. In any case, you can't really write about dubstep, as a genre and a scene, unless you are familiar with its history, its phases, its divergent tendencies, its dead ends, and I've seen few critics able to engage with it on those terms. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't write about Burial without a grounding in the history of dubstep -- hardly! But writing about Burial, referencing dubstep, and writing about dubstep are different things.

Artrocker
I mentioned the mag in a piece I wrote last year and they've kindly sent me issue ever since. In November it changed from a bi-weekly ("fortnightly") paper to a monthly glossy. A good 70% of the writing is godawful. I would have thought they'd have improved, since they've been publishing since 2001. Perhaps there's a high turnover of young writers who move on, perhaps to finish school. Their scope is narrow to a fault, but their focus is intentional. It's a sort of evangelical dedication to the UK scene of young emerging pop and rock bands. I agree that The Maccabees and Good Shoes put out great albums, and hopefully they'll get more exposure from this. The Editors album, however, was way better than Interpol's.

01. The Maccabees - Colour It In
02. Good Shoes - Think Before You Speak
03. Art Brut - It's A Bit Complicated
04. The Horrors - Strange House
05. Maximo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures
06. Shitdisco - Kingdom of Fear
07. Tiny Masters of Today - Bang Bang Boom Cake
08. Jakobinarina - The First Crusade
09. The Hives - The Black and White Album
10. Future of the Left - Curses
11. Liars
12. Acoustic Ladyland - Skinny Grin
13. Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future
14. Interpol - Our Love to Admire
15. The Violets - The Lost Pages
16. Mothers and the Addicts - Science Fiction Illustrated
17. Chow Chow - Colours and Lines
18. The Cribs - Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever
19. Untitled Musical Project
20. Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City

Best of the Rest
Kubichek - Not Enoughnight
Die! Die! Die!
The Young Knives - Are Dead...And Some
Poppy and the Jezebels - Follow Me Down
Dirty Projectors - Rise Above
Bearsuit - Oh:IO
The Scare - Chivalry

I think we can save the trouble of having this exchange about Burial and dubstep if we put a filter on all archived threads changing "Dizzee Rascal" to "Burial" and "grime" to "dubstep."

I used to listen to my older brother's copy of Madman Across the Water a lot in the 70s, so I knew all about "Tiny Dancer."

Burial, whose music far better suits a home-listening environment

Makes sense. I don't go to clubs, but I love Untrue in headphones.

Other dubstep clubbier? I guess I don't know the genre well enough to say. Would you say Skull Disco's Soundboy Punishments, which was also released in 2007, is clubbier than Untrue? I love both discs, BTW.

Hey Alex, thanks for the condescension. Please note that I'm not trying to make proscriptive *or* prescriptive arguments about dubstep. And even if Burial were the dubsteppiest of all the dubsteppers, there's still a difference between talking about one artist's work and being able to speak intelligently on a broader scene, trend, or sound.

I haven't been to a dubstep night since i went to FWD>> back in 2004 or so, but my general impression is that most dubstep is indeed clubbier (take that as you will).