Li(z)stomania

[Boz]

Look, it's a long way 'til ODU on Saturday, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend all that time working.

So consider this your official "Thread to talk about all of the best/worst lists that always circulate at the end of the year."

I'll start with music, but I think we can have lists from all sorts of pop culture. Politics if you must, I suppose.

SPIN - 40 Best albums of 2009:
www.spin.com/gallery/40-best-albums-2009

I actually know the majority of these, which is strange for SPIN, as they always try to out-snob even the biggest music snobs.

I think #1 is a crime against humanity, but most of the rest of the top 10 I agree with.

Biggest controversy: No Muse. Are you kidding me? They are going to get inundated with hate mail for that one (which is probably why they did it). No sane person can tell me that Animal Collective put out better music than Muse, let alone 39 other bands.

Of the SPIN list, the following are my personal favorites from this year:

Julian Casablancas - Phrazes For The Young
(who would've thought 10 years ago that The Strokes would be far superior individually than they are as a band).

Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You
(Lily is brilliant. That is all.)

Japandroids - Post-Nothing
(Very garage-y and not quite there yet, but I see huge Smashing Pumkins-ish potential in this new band)

Florence & The Machine - Lungs
(Oh yes, she's got lungs....and she know how to use 'em.)

Girls - Album
(My snobby indie selection for this year, but it's really quite good)

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
(This may be a perfect album; at worst, like 99.27%)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
(actually, as an album, I don't know if this works for me; a bit hit or miss, IMO; but good God, when it hits, it REALLY hits)

Also for your consideration,

SPIN Top 20 Songs of 2009:
www.spin.com/articles/20-best-songs-2009

(These are all pretty good, but my favorites include Raindrops, Bulletproof, 11th Dimension, You Got The Love, and all of the Top Five except for Animal Collective).


Any and all other internal/external lists welcome.

(and I apologize for the punn-ish thread title)

[EasyEd]

I thought this was a thread about Liz Clarke.

[Jack]

Dec 16, 2009 10:30:28 GMT -5 Boz said:

(and I apologize for the punn-ish thread title)

'Salright Boz, I, for one, am not easily offended.

I don't have ton of time to get into the topic, but I find the folks at the AV Club make some very fine lists. I enjoyed their best of the Decade Stuff as well as their Best of 09. I find myself more drawn to their music criticism than their film criticism- both are clearly skewed toward the indie/foreign mindset, but I just have more time/energy to get into more obscure music vs. obscure movies- it's a lot easier for me to download and listen on my commute than it is for me to dedicate two hours plus to going to an arthouse film (much less convincing the lady that it will be worth her time too).

I agree on not understanding the love for Animal Collective, though.

[Deleted]

Dec 16, 2009 11:55:54 GMT -5 EasyEd said:

I thought this was a thread about Liz Clarke.

Since it was Boz, my money was on Liz Phair.

[Boz]

The thread title was an homage to Phoenix, who came out with one of the best albums of the year this year, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

On a related note, this is why I don't read Rolling Stone anymore. There is so much crap on this list, it's not even funny. And Kid A as number one?? You've got to be freaking kidding me. Why don't you just come out and announce "We're poseurs!" Oh wait. I think you just did.

www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31248017/100_best_albums_of_the_decade/44

[hoyaalf]

Greatest Loss to Popular Music:

#1- Lester William Polsfuss

[strummer8526]

I've been a big big fan of the SPIN lists since 2008 when my g/f's brother's band got the #20 song. She's also a GU alum, so there's a good Hoya connection there, too.

[Bando]

Best TV Shows of the Year (in no particular order, and only counting ones I've watched):

Mad Men
Community
Stargate Universe
Dollhouse
Glee
How I Met Your Mother

Biggest TV Disappointments of the Year (same rules):

V
FlashForward
The Office
The Prisoner

[TC]

How did Modern Family not make your list?

Best Shows of the Year:
Modern Family
Top Chef
How I Met Your Mother

Biggest Disappointments :
Saturday Night Live, especially the writing staff
FlashForward

Most Improved Show of the Year :
Parks and Recreation

[Boz]

I do not get Mad Men. I have never gotten Mad Men. I almost certainly will never get Mad Men.

I have to add one more thing here, and I know this is snarky but......

A morass of callowness littered with the refuse of immoderate minds, everywhere gross idiocies flailing in a mire of absurdity as flippant volleys of brainless rancor streak through the stench of ludicrous opinion, the Blue and Gray board rarely attracts my attention and never my contribution. But this time I must comment. Merriweather Post is far and away the year's best.

Yup, that sounds a lot like an Animal Collective fan to me.....

;D

[theexorcist]

I thought that this would be about Hungarian composers.

Best movies - The Hurt Locker, Up. Departures, which won the Award for Best Foreign Film this year, was really good, too.

Biggest disappointment - I've been a Simpsons fan for decades, but they really tanked this year - I couldn't get through half of the episodes. So very very disapponting.

[Boz]

Time to up the ante a little bit. After all, it's not just the end of the year, but the end of the decade.

So, here's one outlet's picks for:

Top 50 Movies of the Decade:
www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/11/50-best-movies-of-the-decade-2000-2009.html

To 50 Albums of the Decade:
www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/11/the-best-albums-of-the-decade.html

So, here's my critique of the album list (other than the fact that Animal Collective is on it, those freaks ): there is way too much "passing fame" on this list. To make a yearly list, it just has to be a good album. To be on a decades list, I think you need to have a little more staying power there. I think to be on a decade list, the album really has to be influential in some way. The Libertines, for example, despite their own quick flame-out, were tremendously influential. M.I.A or Amy Winehouse? Not so much.

Also, don't try so hard please. Yes, Spoon deserves a place on this list, but not "Kill The Moonlight." You might as well just hold up a sign saying "We're snobs, daring to be different." Moonlight is NOT Spoon's best work, it's just an excuse to say, "I knew them before Gimme Fiction came out."

Also, I love Beck thiiiiiiisssss muuuuccccchhhhh....but Sea Change sucked.

[Jack]

Dec 22, 2009 14:13:52 GMT -5 Boz said:

So, here's my critique of the album list (other than the fact that Animal Collective is on it, those freaks ): there is way too much "passing fame" on this list. To make a yearly list, it just has to be a good album. To be on a decades list, I think you need to have a little more staying power there. I think to be on a decade list, the album really has to be influential in some way. The Libertines, for example, despite their own quick flame-out, were tremendously influential. M.I.A or Amy Winehouse? Not so much.

Massive popularity and critical success have to count for something, right? Neither one is a particular favorite of mine, but M.I.A. and Amy Winehouse both seem to have those in spades. Saying whether something from 2005 or 2007 was influential or important is still a bit of an open question, too. It is basically impossible for anything that came out in 2009. M.I.A., for one, apparently inspired a whole lot of people to talk about swagger, so that's cool, right? Yes, I know that was from a different album.

[TC]

Ugh...both those lists are terrible. Finding Nemo and the Bourne movies didn't even make the top 50?

[Boz]

I think those things should definitely count. But I think you have to take into account more than that when considering a decade.

Do Amy Winehouse and M.I.A. belong on album of the year charts for their respective years? Damn right they do. I like both of them very much and they were popular for a span of time. But I think that's about it in both their cases.

(Admittedly, some might say people like Lily Allen or Kate Nash or, to a lesser extent, Duffy, used Amy Winehouse's footsteps, but I don't really think that's the case -- OK, maybe Duffy. )

In the case of M.I.A., I'd say that Santigold moved the bar a lot more than she did in similarly styled music. Both were popular, both were well received critically, so maybe that's just another judgment call on my part.

And I'd put MGMT ahead of all of them on a decade list, so I'm not excluding anything that hasn't been around for a long time.

Hell, I'd put Lady Sovereign ahead of them too.

[AustinHoya03]

Dec 22, 2009 14:13:52 GMT -5 Boz said:

Also, don't try so hard please. Yes, Spoon deserves a place on this list, but not "Kill The Moonlight." You might as well just hold up a sign saying "We're snobs, daring to be different." Moonlight is NOT Spoon's best work, it's just an excuse to say, "I knew them before Gimme Fiction came out."

Also, I love Beck thiiiiiiisssss muuuuccccchhhhh....but Sea Change sucked.

I agree with you on Kill the Moonlight (even though Small Stakes is one of the best opening tracks ever IMO), but the guys/gals who made this list seemed to be following a set formula. They've listed the "breakthrough" album for a lot of great bands of the decade. Gimme Fiction is indeed a better album (as is Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga), but KTM is >>>>>>>>> Girls Can Tell.

Same goes for the albums listed for DBT, The Hold Steady, and Death Cab for Cutie.

Personally, my number one album of the decade appears at #2 on Paste's list. And I've always thought #1 was way overrated.

[SFHoya99]

An album list is almost impossible -- too many, too much to taste. That one, in particular, screams of people not trying to pick the top 50 albums but trying to pick albums that will make them look cool.

But that movie list is atrocious. Aside from seeming like they pick the order of the fifty by something other than "best" -- time for a foreign flick, now a comedy, now a drama, now an indie and another foreign flick, etc -- just about one out of three are not very good movies.

[jerseyhoya34]

Here's what turned out to be a weird list - top 50 touring bands/artists of the decade: pollstar.com/blogs/news/archive/2009/12/18/702459.aspx

That Celine Dion is on the list anywhere, let alone #2, is a head scratcher.

[TC]

She had a 3-year 600-show, $100M Vegas contract. Not so surprising.