SPIN Top 40 Of 2003

Really? I've been reading Charles Aaron's writing in SPIN since I was a young teen, and I always thought of him as being a super-white guy. I'm not even sure why - something about his writing makes me think of nerdy white grad students.

I always thought that Sasha Frere-Jones was a woman up until fairly recently.

Ouch.

39 The Jealous Sound "Kill Them With Kindness"
36 The Thrills "So Much For The City"
35 Brand New "Deja Entendu"
31 Spiritualized "Amazing Grace"
22 Pretty Girls Make Graves "The New Romance"
16 Blur "Think Tank"
11 Metallica "St. Anger"
07 Thursday "War All The Time"
Jane's Addiction "Just Because" (which I don't think I've ever heard)
19 T Rumschmiere "Monstertruckdriver"
12 The Donnas "Take It Off" (fine, but just another Donnas track, I thought -- was this actually a hit or something? I must've missed it.)

I like that Rumschmiere album myself, though damned if I could tell you what its "single" sounds like. Most pleasant surprise on both lists, I think, is Joe Budden. But where the hell are Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz, David Banner, Ying Yang Twins, the Youngbloodz, Turk and/or any Southern hip-hop at all beyond Outkast and Bubba Sparxx, in what was probably crunk's biggest and best year ever??? How odd.

I have nothing against AFI, who are kind of catchy in a goofy way.

Top 10 Reissues

10 The Moles "On The Street/Rare & Weird"
09 Television "Marquee Moon"
08 Aphex Twin "26 Mixes For Cash"
07 Miles Davis "The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions"
06 The Allman Brothers Band "Live At Fillmore East"
05 New Order "Retro"
04 Neil Young "On The Beach," "American Stars & Bars"
03 Talking Heads "Once In A Lifetime" (box set)
02 Bjork "Live Box"
01 Led Zeppelin "How The West Was Won"

Band of the Year: Coldplay

Revival of the Year: Women rock the main stage (Distillers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Donnas)

Trend of the Year: "Mainstreamo"

The Rest Of The Best

Eccentric Geniuses of the Year: Outkast

Video of the Year: Johnny Cash "Hurt"

Best Anti-Corporate Rant of the Year: Conor Oberst disses Clearchannel

Class-Action Suit of the Year: Fans sue Creed for sucking.

Movie of the Year: School of Rock

Live Band of the Year: Metallica

TV Show of the Year: Punk'd

DJ of the Year: You (iPod)

Most Desperate Grab For Relevance (Or: Weirdest Children's Book Promo: Madonna/Britney kiss at the MTV awards.

Surgical Footage of the Year: Jack White's broken finger.

Pet Rock of the Year: Friendster

Credibility Move of the Year: Justin Timberlake

Flops of the Year: Smash Mouth "Get The Picture," Robbie Williams "Escapology" (US sales only), Fischerspooner "#1," Everclear "Slow Motion Daydream," Live "Birds of Prey," Sugar Ray "In The Pursuit of Liesure," Third Eye Blind "Out of the Vein"

I think pretty much all of those singles are good songs, except for the couple I haven't heard.

Now, maybe this aren't THE BEST records of the year but that's not a bad batting average.

I think Pretty Girls Make Graves is the sellout emo punksters that bring the John Hughes soundtrack noise for Hot Topic kidz. That album grew on me alot.

Yeah, Chuck, it was their big hit -- video for it and all. They had a second single, but it didn't do much.

and, yeah, Nas, duh--I forgot about that. gimme a fucking break!

and the missy record only made the list cuz they EXPECTED to like it, which is lame.

on the whole the spin list didn't bother me. even though the blender one is better.

Oddly enough, it got good to great reviews in all the big mags (RS,Spin, & Blender), which I feel means that once again, rock crit has its oversized head placed up it's much more oversized ass waaaaaayyyyy too far.

I'm 3/4 through Andy Greenwald's book; it's terrific.

I just bought this issue cuz of the John Mayer/David Cross singles review thing and SPIN is so all over ILX's jock. They even did the Year In Fred Durst Craziness!

And Chuck is OTM re: The Avalanches. I found it incredibly hard to give a shit about any track for more than 10 seconds.

33 Lucinda Williams "World Without Tears"
30 Cat Power "You Are Free"
21 The Mars Volta "Deloused in the Crematorium"
16 Blur "Think Tank"
10 Radiohead "Hail to the Thief"
05 Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Fever To Tell"
01 The White Stripes "Elephant"

Cat's a little laconic for me, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs could have stood to wait until some more early-EP-quality material came along, but I like the others fine. I would love to hear the Spiritualized and the Outkast, but not too concerned about missing all the rest of it.

(As for being "dated," though, I dunno, I tend not to acknowledge that adjective. If music is good, it stays good. If it sucks, ditto.)

In related news: Hey, what ABOUT that "bootleg" fad, huh? Where the hell did THAT go??? (No worries; in seven years it'll be back again, and people will claim like always that it never happened before.)

The Avalanches' appeal to me isn't the "wow lookit all the samples" approach as it is the general "every genre can be pop" feel to it. It's just a great-flowing album where so many disparate pieces just seem to fit perfectly. And "serious" is the last word I would ever, ever consider when thinking about "Frontier Psychiatrist" or "Two Hearts in 3/4 Time".

Dan, "Frontier Psychiatrist" is like the everything-goes-haywire moment where every convention of the album gets ratcheted up to obsessively bombastic levels -- Since I Left You's "House of Blue Leaves" sequence. The rest of it's a lot subtler.

I totally adore "Two Hearts in 3/4 Time."