Filed under: Features
In which ten bands or artists seriously get under my skin over the past year, I write about them on this site, and at least one person takes it extremely personal, commenting something along the lines of, “But hey, what do you expect from someone who places bullshit like Pig Destroyer at the top of his 2007 favorites list?” (Hint: it’s already happened.)
 |
The Just Because You Pour Syrup on Shit Don’t Make It Pancakes Award goes to Kanye West, whose third full-length Graduation (2007) can’t disguise the fact that dude still can’t write sixteen bars without a lame fashion reference or his gargantuan ego irritating the piss out of me, despite an abundance of slick keyboards and studio-wizard production tricks. |
| The winner of the Pop Song That A Four-Year-Old Could Bang Out on His Casio Award goes to Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks,” for which the term “replay value” has absolutely no meaning, and should be sending the Pet Shop Boys‘ lawyers into a frenzy. And for Christ’s sake, put a comma in your name already, douches. |  |
 |
The No. Oh, God, no. Where’s the remote? Mute. Mute! MUTE! Award goes to Feist, who has prevented me from enjoying a stress-free evening in front of the television ever since her trite sorority-pop single “1, 2, 3, 4″ has been featured on that god damn iPod Nano commercial for the past month. |
| The “Do You Think the Bass Is Taking Away from the Vocal? Just Take Down the Bass and Bring Up the Vocal” Award goes to Beirut, whose music, despite some decent arrangements and instrumentation, reaffirms my preference for the shrieks of a cat being burned alive over Zach Condon’s painfully melodramatic caterwauling drowning out the mix. |  |
 |
The Your Inflated Grandiosity Still Can’t Hide Your Laughably Weak Songwriting Award goes to none other than The Arcade Fire, a tangent I don’t even want to go down right now. By the way, what’s with that Napoleon Dynamite-looking dude? |
| The I Genuinely Have No Idea Why Someone - Anyone - Would Want to Listen to Your Music Award is given to Lily Allen, whose inexplicable popularity has cost me more than a few precious hours of sleep. |  |
 |
The unanimous winner of the Let’s Just Tattoo the Words “Betty Ford” on Your Forehead and Get It Over With Already Award goes to none other than Amy Winehouse, an artist I actually thought was kinda hip and classy at one point in time. (shudders) |
| The “Ehh,” Accompanied by a Shrug of the Shoulders Award goes to Radiohead, who apparently released a record titled In Rainbows (2007) this past year (do you guys know anything about this?), and which has been the catalyst behind several hostile emails asking me why I haven’t covered it on the site. |  |
 |
The You Know, I Don’t Mean to Be Harsh, But Your Voice Makes Me Feel Like Someone Is Scraping the Enamel Off My Teeth with a Bread Knife Award goes to Jolie Holland, rightful heiress to Joanna Newsome’s throne as far as sheer vocal terror factor is concerned. |
| And finally, the winner of the coveted Floodwatchmusic’s Worst Band of 2007 Award goes to The Shout Out Louds, a short-bus collective of Swedes whose uninspired, horribly derivative slop couldn’t even hold a candle to Robert Smith’s worst musical experiments. |  |
Here are some other best-ofs from the audioblog fam:
Check out the consistently-stellar Audiversity’s Top Albums of ‘07 (Part One, Part Two). There are a lot more metal selections than I would have expected, which was pleasantly surprising.
Noz presents his annual Best Rap 2007 over at Cocaine Blunts.
Chilly Jay Chill and Professor Drew LeDrew of Destination: Out offer up their 2007 favorites and rediscoveries.
Christopher over at Fuck I Look Like? posts his favorite songs of 2007, with vids.
Geek Down’s Joseph went nuts with the year-end lists this year, and all are excellent drops. Check out his favorite albums, live shows, older introductions, and loose ends.
Cosmo Lee presents his hilarious Top 10 Metal Holiday Gifts over at Invisible Oranges.
Doctor Zeus hosts his own Annual End-of-Year Hate-Off Spectacular, which is pretty much a must-read. Check out his Radio Raheem-styled Part One (the hate) and Part Two (the love).
Jeff Weiss has been killing it with his 50 (!) Best Albums of 2007. Be nice to the sponsors.
Lastly, here’s another monstrous Top 50; this time it’s Dart Adams’ favorite hip hop albums of 2007 over at Poisonous Paragraphs.
I’m still anticipating something from Dan Love, Aaron and the crew from Metal Lungies, and Travis over at WYDU.
And that should just about do it for 2007. As always, thanks for reading, and have a swimmingly good New Year’s. See you in ‘08.
20 Comments so far
Leave a comment
Flood:
What’s worse–Lilly Allen’s god-awful bangs that makes her head look like a perfect square ala Kordell Stewart or Amy Winehouse’s “Cabin Boy” inspired tattooes?
Great list, my friend. Outright hilarious.
Comment by Zilla Rocca 12.21.07 @Even when I disagree with you in reality, I agree in principle. This is a great list. I’m surprised no one called The Shout Out Louds out sooner. I saw them live once. It’s like seeing a Cure cover band that tries in vain to do originals.
I like Beirut though. As Bizzy Bone once said “even thugz cry.” I’m reasonably sure that doesn’t invoke me in any way shape or form, just thought I’d throw it out there for posterity.
Comment by Jeff 12.21.07 @Aaron - Different strokes, you know. I’ll be checking in regularly for something from you guys.
Zilla - That Kordell Stewart image had me laughing out loud.
Jeff - I think Beirut is a good band and I applaud them for doing something different, but dude’s voice does not sit well with me at all. I find it unlistenable, actually.
Comment by floodwatch 12.21.07 @Wait, are you telling me that Peter Bjorn & John are three people and not two. Is this common knowledge? Did I miss the memo? How did I not know this? Oh wait, I’m strictly a hip hop fan. Carry on.
I like “Young Folks” by the way….Does that make me the blogger equivalent of Jay-Z liking Coldplay and Fall Out Boy?
Comment by DocZeusX 12.21.07 @That was fuckin’ hilarious…I’m also a bit ashamed because you can find both Feist and Lily Allen’s albums on my iTunes, both with a scary amount of plays.
I am also a bit perturbed by the fact that someone has beaten me to the punch and knocked up Lily Allen…and Jessica Alba…and JamieLynn Spears.
Joanna Newsome and Jolie Holland were the reason ball gags were invented.
One.
Comment by Dart_Adams 12.21.07 @Hilarious! I can concur with your assessments on everyone I’ve heard (that–thankfully?–excludes Peter Bjorn and John, Beirut and Jolie Holland). I saw the Shout Out Louds live too, 3 years ago, and that sort of ramshackle indie-jangle nonsense makes me vomit now. The Radiohead blurb made me LOL. This was great, you should hate more often.
Comment by Joseph 12.21.07 @BTW: Joanna Newsome: irritating or MOST irritating?
Why did everyone like that shit?
Great lists all around, Flood. So nice to see someone not just parroting received wisdom and all that twaddle. Also somewhat refreshing to find someone to disagree with (Arcade, Beirut — not that both don’t deserve to be taken down a peg.)
Thanks too for the Dest:Out shout:out. One small favor: due to a technical glitch, we had to change our best-of link; it’s now: http://destination-out.com/?p=160. Would you please make the change? Heading off to check out your other recs.
Comment by LeDrew 12.21.07 @Have a good holiday and new year!
(I JUST got around to torrenting In Rainbows. I completely share your “Eh”)
Comment by Chris 12.22.07 @is that a saggy eyelid or are you just in a miserably “eh - accompanied with a shrug of the shoulders” type band?
oh look ma, i’m a serious recording artist with a wispy voice and surely i have a kinda quirky way of life… and i can count to four…
woopty fucking do. these trite overly trite ‘modern’ rock bands / solo artist make me yawn.
maybe, i’m just outta touch… just like that awesome hall and oates song.
oates is a GOD.
Comment by duff 12.22.07 @I had a dream that Feist would no longer exist in 2008, but I’m fairly sure that unless I intervene, she will. The most terrifying aspect is that even if “1 2 3 4″ vanishes off the face of the earth, Apple will find the next most cloying song to play to death.
I agree with you on the Radiohead record. I’ve never been a huge fan, but it seems to have garnered almost automatic inclusion in far too many year-end lists.
Comment by Sebastian 12.23.07 @I’m glad someone finally called Kanye out for what is a mediocre record. Definitely not as good as his last 2 and for that matter not that great in general- there are a fair share of BAD songs unlike other records.
2007 was pretty shitty but check out my blog I countdown the best rap albums from 10 years ago, just to mix it up…
Comment by LAndon 12.24.07 @Dare I venture into this world of great comments? umm yes.
not that i’m in support of the “Feist-iness” of late 2007, I do want to bring up the point that she’s been a part of Broken Social Scene… a band that actually made MUSIC! Maybe she only contributed all the crappy ideas… i don’t know… hard to tell.
oh and Oates can be a God, but if you don’t have that Hall point of ref… just another dude.
Comment by enjinear 12.24.07 @Flood,
My top ten of the year now up, although somewhat impotent with a Rae cut from 03 that I had assumed was a leak for Cuban Linx II… you can imagine the anal blogging tendencies with blogging taking over with that one.
Still, peep it!
Hope you have been enjoyig the festive season.
Peace,
Dan
Comment by Dan Love 12.28.07 @Wonderful list. Any time you want to beat up Kanye and Arcade Fire, I’ll come over to help. But I still think Amy Winehouse is talented…as long as I avoid seeing pictures of her.
Comment by Invisible Oranges 01.03.08 @Hey Flood, our best of ‘07 is up and it’s a monster. Go check it, I think you’d be proud.
Comment by AaronM 01.04.08 @Feist Hate? f*ck she’s better than Tegan & Sara.
Swann
ps Amy Winehouse looks like what Death™ leaves in the toilet
Comment by Swann 01.05.08 @Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Gah, I loved that Shout Out Louds record!
Comment by AaronM 12.21.07 @Seriously though, I did. I’m aware it’s highly derivative of the Cure but I just really liked it.
I loved their last album too.
But we all know where you’re at with indie rock :)
Thanks for the ML drop, we should have a list together soon…hopefully.