Just like every other snooty white person, I spent last Sunday getting psyched for the return of Mad Men. And just like every other snooty white person, I was shocked shocked by Megan’s performance of the Gillian Hill classic, “Zou Bisou Bisou.” Take a look at this scandalous behavior, in case you’re our one follower who doesn’t watch Mad Men:
As one YouTube commenter stated, this scene was filled with even more tension than the third season’s infamous “lawnmower scene” (if you don’t know what I’m referring to there, I sure as hell won’t ruin that surprise). Whether or not you agree with it, you have to admit that this scene will probably become the most rewatched section of Mad Men this season… for a variety of reasons. Yé-yé is due for a comeback, ya know? I’ve watched it far too many times to count already, but that might be because I have a strange penchant for attractive women singing songs as the Clash at Demonhead scene from Scott Pilgrim demonstrated (don’t worry, I promise this post has a point beyond me airing my strange laundry).
That point being, as soon as the episode was finished, I hurried to YouTube to watch it again. And again. And somehow, between the related video recommendations and the A.V. Club’s comment section, I found myself stuck in the YouTube vortex, planted on the spot watching video after video until finally I found myself watching an episode of “Cooking with Coolio.”
Figuring out exactly how I got to that point is a bit like tracking one of those drunken conversations people have in hallways during parties in college: you start out talking about the something inane like whether or not the last season of Lost was any good (it wasn’t) and end up discussing the fact that there’s an enormous black hole at the center of the Milky Way. There’s a way to track this progression (with the YouTube vortex, it’s as easy as pushing the “Back” button a few times to retrace your steps), but there’s something much more enjoyable about letting it progress to the point of absurdity, where there is no comprehensible reason for you to be watching the hype man behind Coolio repeating everything he says (except LOUDER!), but you can’t imagine it happening any other way.
I suppose there’s something more substantial to be said about our generation and our reduced attention spans; I’m sure people could talk about how spending hours watching covers of R. Kelly’s “Ignition” and then discussing them on various forums is demonstrative of the encroaching end times. But I’d rather end with a YouTube Adventure that takes advantage of the idea of the “Recommended Video” in an ingenious way. So set aside an hour or two and see how deep the rabbit hole goes:
Hello faithful readers/people who saw this post pop up on Twitter!
This is the first of what I’m hoping will be many articles that chronicle my descent into the strange strange world of Japanese popular culture. If all goes as planned, you should be able to track the gradual degradation of my sanity through the increasingly manic nature of each entry. But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself just yet. I’ve barely even begun!
I think I had been in Japan for about four hours before I first heard about AKB48, the mythic pop group that dominates the cultural consciousness here. “If your students ever ask you what music you like, just say either The Beatles, Michael Jackson, or AKB48. Everyone knows them. Everyone.”
Wiser words have never been spoken. Right away, the first person I met in my town asked me what famous current Japanese people I knew, and after saying the traditional “Ken Watanabe, Hayao Miyazaki, and Ichiro” response, I decided to go for broke: “and also AKB48.” He lost it. “YOU KNOW AKB48? すごいですね!* Everyone loves them here.” Even in this tiny inaka town (there are about 5000 people living here, we have no real public transport to speak of, and some families don’t have full-fledged internet), AKB48 had made its mark.
Really, AKB48 has achieved a type of pop culture saturation that is unrivalled by any western musician. Sure, Adele’s music is pretty inescapable (I like “Rolling in the Deep” just as much as the next person, but did I really need to hear it at least once every hour this past summer?) and Lady Gaga has one of the most recognizable faces on the planet (even if it was decked out in a beard of insects to make a statement about the treatment of transgendered people), but do either of them have their own store in the Japanese equivalent of Times Square? Can you name a pop performer who puts on a show every.single.day (I’m excluding Broadway talent simply because most of them aren’t household names. Sorry, theater nerds.)? Does any contemporary artist have three different TV shows that air every week? AKB48 has become ubiquitous in Japanese culture, a real J-Pop juggernaut (J-Poppernaut?) that dominates the airwaves, both radial and televisual. Even adults can’t get enough of those crazy dancing and singing girls.
So what exactly is AKB48, you ask? It is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the “Largest Pop Group on Earth.” And this title is well-earned.
I refuse to post the original music video of this song. Go look it up yourself!
There are currently 54 members of the main group with 23 extra trainees/understudies waiting in the wings, if the group’s website is to be believed (I worry something was lost in translation on it, as the numbers don’t quite add up with the Wikipedia numbers, but oh well). Originally, the “48” part of their name represented the forty-eight members of the group, but because of their insane popularity, membership was expanded while their name, which had already become a recognizable brand throughout the country, stayed the same, rendering the number meaningless. As a result, there’s no real sense of individuality or specialness within the group. Granted, the main group is split into three different mini-teams (Teams A, K, and B, of course! And the trainees make up the unfortunately bland “Team 4,” clearly getting the short end of the spirit stick.) and each of these mini-teams has its own captain, but as far as I can tell, there is no real distinction amongst the members. They are all part of this pop monstrosity together. In case you need any further evidence of the interchangeability of the team members, the group routinely holds contests to determine who will be the lead singers on AKB’s next single. What sort of contest, you ask? Rock, Paper, Scissors (I could seriously write another article detailing the prevalence of that game as a problem-solving method in this country. It’s everywhere. I imagine business negotiations using it.).
Here’s the winner of a recent Jan-Ken-Po tournament, reacting in a completely normal way.
I honestly can’t imagine a starker contrast to the western conception of the pop star. American culture in particular tends to celebrate the power of the exceptional individual. We attach ourselves to the narrative of these people, we become invested in their lives, we buy gossip magazines chronicling their upskirts, sexploitations, and prostitute-purchasing misadventures. We want to learn about how Taylor Swift, Adele, or Katy Perry took a bad break-up and turned it into a best-selling single or how Lady Gaga was once the quiet girl at the back of her NYU class before becoming the meat-wearing, in-egg-living monolith we know today. We want to hear about the strength and determination of these people because that is what we as a society tend to value. We believe that if we were to work as hard as these people, we too could attain financial success and cultural ubiquity. It’s the inevitable extrapolation of the American Dream, where a person can make millions by working hard at something they love to do.
Even during the 90s, the glory days of boy bands and pop girl groups, you still got a sense of the individuals in the group. Sure, they did all the same synchronized moves and no one really had solo songs in the group, but you still got a sense of their individual personalities. This sense, the idea that one of them was the “bad boy” or the “sporty” one or the “artistic one,” made each member basically irreplaceable. I’m not particularly well-versed in the history of boy bands (middle school was the height of my “only movie soundtracks and scores” phase. Sooooo awkward.), but I can’t think of a group that actually replaced a single member, much less multiples, and retained their popularity. And as my friend Karina, card-carrying feminist and noted Angela Carter reader, pointed out to me, “with the Backstreet Boys, per se, everyone knew each one of the members’ names and image… You could get a poster of Nick Carter or A.J. or Brian [by themselves],” simultaneously raising a very good point on the nature of the 90s boy band and demonstrating far more knowledge of the B.B. (did they ever call themselves that?) than I could ever hope to have. This is the reason why these members could eventually work towards solo careers. Not everyone turned out to be Justin Timberlake, who seems to have thrown pop stardom away in favor of starring in mostly tepid movies and occasionally revitalizing SNL, but at least they all had a shot at it.
AKB48, on the other hand, emphasizes the power of the collective and the replaceable nature of its team members. Can you not keep up with the group’s hectic schedule (and these girls do work their asses off. Daily performances, three TV shows, and studio recording is part of the everyday routine)? Are you injured? Are you just getting old and losing your popularity? The group has Team 4 to fall back on. At any point in time, they can pull you out and pop in a replacement like a fresh battery. No one is essential. When I ask students who their favorite member of AKB48 is, they either respond with a laundry list of names or simply say which team they prefer, unless I speak to a student who really knows their AKB48. Consequently, whenever students ask me who I like, I usually respond with, “They have names?”
Once you get past the INSANE introduction, the name of this song translates to “Ponytail and Scrunchie.” Seriously.
Now, there are, as always, exceptions to this idea of faceless anonymity. When the group was first conceived, there was an online petition to get a waitress named Mariko Shinoda who worked at Akihabara Theater (later renamed the AKB Theater) an audition for the group. She was successful and became one of the group’s most popular members. She has since gone on to become a singer, actress, model, and television host (seriously?! Japan works its celebrities so hard!). She proved that it is possible to differentiate yourself from the herd, it’s just incredibly difficult.
But there are also incidents of intense strangeness that reiterate just how replaceable the members are. Last year, the group’s manager announced that a new member named Aimi Eguchi would be joining them.
Here she is, boys! Here she is, world!
After stoking the fires of fandom with news about this incredible new member (including a featured article/portrait in the skeezy Japanese magazine, Weekly Playboy), it was finally revealed that she didn’t actually exist. In a real life example of that boring Al Pacino movie that I somehow ended up seeing twice (ugh), it turned out that Aimi Eguchi was actually a CGI composite of several different AKB48 members created to sell candy for the Ezaki Glico Company, the makers of Pocky (!!!). The company was able to pick and choose which parts of which members were most attractive and bring them together to form the “perfect” pop idol (Mariko Shinoda’s mouth was actually selected. Good for her.). No single member (or even real person) was deemed attractive or good enough to represent this candy company.
The truth comes out.
And on top of all this, Japan seems to be collectively jumping on the bandwagon. There are AKB48 branches/sister groups sprouting up in cities all over Japan. There’s SKE48 (centered in Nagoya), NMB48 (based in Osaka),HKT48 (from Fukuoka), and SDN48 (also from Tokyo, but this is the “Adults Only” group). My students told me which of these groups is the most attractive as well (a word of advice: SKE48 is great, but stay away from HKT48. They are かわくない!**). But much like the Indiana Jones movies, nothing compares to the original. There’s no sense of AKB48 slowing down. In fact, it was recently announced that the group is going to have its very own anime released sometime this year, ensuring that they will burrow even further into the Japanese consciousness, like that weird robot thing from The Matrix that climbed into Keanu Reeves’s belly button. And given the fact that they can continually replace the old members (via a delightfully euphemistic “graduation ceremony”), producer Yasushi Akimoto may have created a pop culture perpetual motion device, one that can adapt to the times and change its image without people fully realizing it, simply because it has no identity of its own.
Their first single. They were so young and innocent then. They still are, but they aren’t the same girls.
*－すごいですね！- A common Japanese usually translated as “Isn’t that amazing?!”
**－かわくない！- “They are not cute,” which is about as cruel as the Japanese get.
-Kyle
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Post-script: If it sounds like I’m going to spend my time with these articles dumping on Japanese culture, I apologize. That’s not my intention at all. I love Japanese culture. Why else would I be here? I don’t even hate AKB48. I find elements of the group (notably their portrayal of sexuality) to be very troubling, but I also find them to be a fascinating reflection of the Japanese mentality. Also, “Heavy Rotation” (the first video I posted in this article) is a real catchy pop song. Seriously. Listen to it and try to not get it stuck in your head.
My life has been tracked by Bruce Springsteen. Imagine my mental and spiritual development as Sophia from The Walking Dead and Bruce as Deryl (or whatever bastardization of Darryl it is): I left prints and fragments of my childhood scattered around in a forest, and while every other band talked about how many carrots were left or why the other child in the party is allowed to walk around unsupervised, Bruce was out looking for me. He was out on that hill; he was staring out into the night; he was making a promise that he would meet me in a dream of this hard land. I imputed some beat American stoic philosophy from his records: there’s a darkness on the edge of town, but if you turn up your radio, I’ll save my love for you. There ain’t much cover with no one running by your side. Every Mighty Max drop-forge-hit on the snare, every galloping bass line, every lion’s howl of a Big Man saxophone solo gave me a second more of a glimpse of the promised land. Waiting for me to finish the Deryl metaphor? Too late: I’ve abandoned it, but I do not end up a zombie in the barn; I have not wasted half my life dealing with a veterinarian named Herschel.
TL;DR: Bruce is important to me. Thus, when he releases new records, I get anxious: what if they suck? U2 had good records, but everything they’ve released in fifteen years has been asinine drivel that makes me wonder who really wrote The Joshua Tree. Bruce has sidestepped most of the aging star inflation and collapse, though the quality of his songwriting has taken serious hits. Working on a Dream was rough to digest; a nine-minute album opener with an A-A-A-A rhyme scheme is a stretch for any amount of artistic capital. I don’t think I really enjoy any of the songs on the album besides ‘The Wrestler,” and it’s sad that the tribute to Danny Federici is pretty unlistenable. Magic had a few killer tracks but also hosts some of my least favorite Bruce traxxx ever (namely “Gypsy Biker” and the title track). The Rising is easily the best of his late career stuff, but still loses some sheen because of the awful production. I like to hear the full band, not just Bruce and Steve on guitar.
Given all this, I was pretty skeptical when Wrecking Ball was announced. Most of the big guns in the band have crossed the border: Federici in 2008, Clarence Clemons in 2011. Of course, the E Street band has always been a bit of a rotating cast— bosses extraordinaire David Sancious, Ernest “Boom” Carter, and Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez all played on seminal Bruce tracks (see everything on The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle and most tracks on Born to Run) but now do jazz fusion or something. However, when two founding members die, it’s tough to imagine any album attaining the brilliance that full-band records like Darkness or The River emanate. Their ghosts hang like the fog on some Asbury Park beach, waiting in the wings for the Valhalla E Street reunion at the end of it all; Bruce is left to figure out a sound as impactful as his legends without his sidearm heroes.
The Boss has always been a crafty player, though. At the 1999 VMAs, when essentially no one in the audience knew who Bruce Springsteen was, he got on stage with the Wallflowers and consumed the stage in presence and power; watching the video makes you feel bad for Jakob Dylan (not really, though). For Wrecking Ball, Bruce does not confront the ghosts of Danny and the Big Man; instead, he channels their bodhisattva essence and populates the record with requiems for E Streets past, culminating in jazz-funeral waltz-with-mes down Broadway that mend no faults of late career Bruce and instead erect the E street temple in eternal rock. The title track, though written for the demolition of the original Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands and allegedly told from the building’s perspective, issues a bold challenge to any Springsteen heirs apparent: bring on your wrecking ball. The earth-shaking E Street band has more and better records than you do; their B-side collections make your A-game look like paupers’ pittances. “If you think it’s your time / then step to the line / and bring on your wrecking ball.”
The flip side is that ghosts are still ghosts: dreary, occasionally frightening spectres that never really look quite like the loved living things that became such hollow shades. The band disillusioned with Reaganomics on albums like The River and the Bruce twisted to darkness on Nebraska emerge through the album’s vehemently populist shots at the vices of capitalism. “Johnny 99” stalks “Easy Money,” although his impact is muted by some pretty horrid songwriting (“You put out the dog / I’ll put out the cat”); “Stolen Car” sees its coda in “Swallowed Up.” The former, a bleak River number, ends “But I ride by night and I travel in fear / That in this darkness I will disappear;” the latter’s narrator awakes in darkness and attests that he has “disappeared from this world.” “Death to My Hometown” calls out the Born in the USA album closer “My Hometown” and laments the structured-debt pillaging carried out by “greedy thieves.” “We Take Care of Our Own” takes the same harrowing-realization-satire that BITUSA’s title track made famous: Bruce wants to say we don’t really take care of our own. He’s less subtle here than thirty years ago, so the message loses some bite. Rounding out the Scrooge-at -his-gravestone gloom on the tracks are “This Depression” and “Jack of all Trades,” slow-jam rejects from The Rising with the 9/11 loss swapped for unemployment lament.
It wouldn’t be E Street, though, if the ghosts were all cold and deathly. The sidewalk-bright warmth roars through on “Wrecking Ball” and the cover of “American Land;” ‘We Are Alive” retreads the groove from “My Best Was Never Good Enough” from The Ghost of Tom Joad to “fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.” ‘Wrecking Ball” even has some funny little cues from “Born to Run” with all the “whoa-oh-ohs” at the end. “Rocky Ground” channels The Rising’s E Street taken to church from “My City of Ruins,” and while the track doesn’t have enough muscle, instead sporting hired-hand vocals, samples, and a not terrible but totally ridiculous rap, it still feels redemptive to hear Minister Bruce sing “there’s a new day coming.”
And of course, no ghost could be as big as that of the Big Man: on the best song he’s written in fifteen years, Bruce calls Clemons down from the cosmos on “Land of Hope and Dreams” to deliver a brief a cappella intro and two heart-bursting signature solos. There are even some organ sweeps peppered throughout the track, so memories of Danny light up the boardwalk a few more times. The 808s are gimmicky and totally unnecessary (that goes for the whole album) and they should have kept Bruce’s incendiary guitar solo from the Live in NYC version, but the track loses none of its teary-eyed torches-together greatness.
All told, Wrecking Ball breaks even. Its ham-fisted appeals to the working man are forgiven because the songs that truly resonate on an E Street level transcend their faults and peak at curvature-of-the-earth levels. I strongly recommend the title track, “Death to My Hometown,” and “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
Whenever I get my email newsletter from The FADER (yes, I’ve literally tried EVERYTHING now), I find that I always tend to click through to articles written by Haverford alum Duncan Cooper… without even thinking about it. I guess it might be true what they say about the apple and the tree. Anyway, thanks to this little article, I think I may have made an ACTUAL musical discovery (and luckily enough, the band’s on tumblr!). Pop culture, Haverford… seemed relevant.
Last Wednesday evening, after a long French lunch, I went to the Grand Théâtre in Angers for a night of vocal jazz. You know, away from all the fliers. Anyway, I don’t have much to say about the show; technically, it was quite good - amazing, even - but I don’t know enough about jazz as a style to really say. Really, I want to talk about everything but the show.
Possibly one of the best reasons to come to Europe is that there’s a lot of old stuff here - older than anything you might find back home in the US (except for some faint cultural memories that we’ve been trying to stamp out for centuries and maybe some trees). The Grand Théâtre, while not ancient, still encloses a bit of the past. Sitting in the third balcony, I could practically change the diapers of the cherubs painted on the ceiling… but only if I wanted to risk a four-story vertical drop to the orchestra. Vertigo aside, I was happier in the balcony where I could admire the chandelier as a neighbor, rather than imagine and re-imagine movie scenes where some clever person cuts the chandelier rope.
At theaters like this one, I always feel like I need to know how to behave, and all other (pop) cultural knowledge is practically irrelevant. Maybe that’s why I like going to the theatre. Perhaps it’s the pull of tradition and propriety that creates a sweeping tidal force at the end of a performance; I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that I have never ceased to be creeped out by the slow and inevitable metamorphasis of a round of applause from a roar of enthusiastic clapping to a singular rhythm, as if we had been invited to participate in an audience clap for a song no one could hear.
I should also probably mention that, when invited to sing along with the group, everyone in the theater sang on key… and caught onto the melody very quickly. So, really, it could just be that the French, as a culture, are more attuned (haha) to music, more attentive to detail. It could just be that they’re better listeners, and it’s only natural to hear the rhythm of your neighbor’s clapping and catch on. So, I don’t know, maybe we, as Americans, don’t really hear music in the same way.
What’s the best way to show musician’s you care, anyway?
- Thea
P.S. That was my subtle way of demanding how to tell Seal that he can cry on my shoulder.
‘Bout time, eh? Sorry about the ridiculously long hiatus, folks. At least it wasn’t a “Third Season of Avatar: The Last Airbender“-esque hiatus. I guess it was closer to a “mid-third season of Lost” hiatus. More irritating than ridiculously lengthy.
So, in the spirit of the New Year, new beginnings, and, as Lucille Bluth would say, “a whole new set of lies,” I’m going to kick off this post by saying that I plan on regularly contributing to good ol’ Omni (as his friends call him). No longer will I sit idly by and let my important thoughts on popular culture simply waste away in my noggin. Instead, I’m going to get back in the habit (just like Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act II!!!) of actually posting here. Look forward to it!
Now, here’s a list of the things I hope to accomplish pop culturally in the next year. Nothing like setting goals that are both totally attainable and conducive to my lazy desires.
1) Breaking Bad- I know, I know. It’s pretty damn embarrassing that I still haven’t watched this. For some reason, the prospect of starting a new TV show is often so daunting to me that I can’t muster the energy to get the ball rolling. This show in particular never held any interest for me, despite that fact that every critic/snooty television viewer has been singing its praises since it started. It stars the dad from Malcolm in the Middle. Do you really expect me to take this seriously? But finally, after four years of unending fervor, I’m finally taking the plunge. Locking it down. Starting it up. This final bit needs more unnecessarily mixed metaphors.
Edit: Just finished the second episode of first season. This show owns me now. So glad I have no idea what’s going to happen in it.
2) Saga- Hooray! Brian K. Vaughn is finally writing comics again!!! The man behind Y: The Last Man and The Runaways took a ton of time off to go be some kinda big-shot television writer (that’s where the real glory is, after all). And while I would argue that his stint on Lost was the absolute peak of the show (late season 3 to the end of season 5), the comic world has missed him dearly. BUT, he’s coming back and his new project looks awesome. The guy himself described it as Star Wars meets Game of Thrones, so it’s not like he’s setting the bar particularly high for himself. Now if only I could figure out how to get issues mailed to Japan.
3) Prometheus- Yes, yes. We all know The Dark Knight Rises is supposed to be the high point of summer movie fare. But between Bane’s imitation of the “Little Charlie’s Pizza Machine” (congrats to the three people who understand that reference) and that ridiculous moment in the trailer with the stadium and the guy outrunning the explosions and the bad CGI and questionable physics and the whole “that was probably supposed to be really impressive, but it just looks stupid,” not to mention the fact that apparently Gotham’s football is just the Pittsburgh Steelers (come on Christopher Nolan! You didn’t even change their uniforms?!?), let’s just say that I’m tempering my expectations for that one. HOWEVER, holy crap, Prometheus looks awesome. I mean, look at it! Even if it doesn’t end up in the sci-fi pantheon like Alien/Aliens (which it’s clearly related to. I see you, Space Jockey chair), at least it’ll put a good sci-fi horror movie back in theaters. I just need to find a theater that will actually screen it in English. That’s actually more challenging than you might think.
4) Stand-up Comedy- If you’re not Louis C.K. or Patton Oswalt and you’re a stand-up comedian, odds are I have no clue who you are. This is another horribly embarassing pop culture blindspot I have that I’m intent on fixing. Any and all suggestions would be welcome (as long as they aren’t Dane Cook. That dude sucks.).
5) Japanese Pop Culture- As some followers of the blog know, I am currently teaching English in Japan. Pop culture here is as insane as we in the west think it is, if not moreso. Between the 8 different iterations of the 48-member girl pop group located throughout the country, the manga character whose superpower is ripping off parts of his face and feeding it to people, and whatever the hell this is, it is definitely… intriguing. And I want to know more about it. Expect some updates as I delve into this pop culture niche and subsequently lose my connection to reality.
Okay, that wasn’t so hard. I can definitely see this becoming a routine. In the mean time, if you feel so inclined, dear reader, post your pop culture resolutions so that I can blatantly steal them and claim them as my own.
As the dawn of the New Year is typically a time for us to lie to ourselves a bit, I figured I would spend my sick-morning working on the first of what I’m sure will be MANY fine contributions to Omnivosaurus Rex in 2012 (why does that number ring a bell?).
So here is my postcard to you from France. You, Walker, and also you, our reading public, whoever you may be at this point.
Since postcards don’t typically have that much space for text, and since Walker loves best-of lists, and since I love lists in general (almost as much as I love foreshadowing), here is a list of the top five ways how, in the last few months of 2011, my time in France has made me a better consumer of pop culture:
5. My friend, in a bout of homesickness, discovered the bluegrass covers playlist on 8tracks.com, and I subsequently discovered the entire website. (8tracks > spotify, in my opinion.)
4. You can buy tickets to basically anything in FNAC. “Oh, I’m just passing by to browse the books…” BAM! Tickets to the next show at the Chabada.
3. France loves fliers. Paperwaste be damned. At LIT-rally any public place in Angers, you can pick up leaflets with information about next week’s new film releases (and timetables), upcoming shows, free events.
2. Speaking of which, I can get into almost anything for free here… either because it is free or because I am under 26. (Suddenly being underage is a good thing?)
1. Facebook lists: more useful than google reader and twitter lists. I’ve become so paranoid about being out of the loop in France that I’ve liked, friended, whathaveyou’d every venue and organization in Angers that has a significant facebook presence… and can now read all their updates in one convenient place. Frankly, I’m a fan of pretty much all the recent additions to facebook.
So, things are going mighty well here in sunny France. Hope you’ve missed me as much as I’ve been missing you. Keep up the good work, Mr. Walker. I’ll be around.
Alright, with minimal ado, here are my ten (or eleven) favorite albums I heard in 2011. I listened to a hell of a lot this year, making this list harder to compile than usual. I spent the whole damn year in the car, driving to job interviews, commuting to work, checking out apartments of various quality. In a year of life-changing transitions, music becomes even more important to me, as a constant keeping me sane no matter how unpredictable and scary life becomes.
Unlike last year, when Janelle Monae released one of my favorite albums of all time, The ArchAndroid, there isn’t one thing that stands out as a clear, number one favorite, so these are presented in no particular order. A lot of these were surprises, some by artists that I was totally unaware of before this year. Perhaps even more surprising is that veteran bands could still surprise me. Wilco’s eighth LP, and The Roots’ thirteenth LP turned out to be some of the most exciting, vital stuff they’ve ever come out with. I’ve always been of the mindset that bands tend to start strong and keep making music with diminishing returns over the years. Maybe as a young person, I was misled by the clearly incorrect notion that young bands are where innovation and change comes from, but those veteran bands showed that sometimes change comes from a bunch of amazing, aging musicians competing against their past selves to prove that they still have that same spark.
Anyway, here’s the list. It’s obviously subjective, which is why I would love to hear anyone else’s top ten and discover music I might have missed. But these are the albums from 2011 that stick with me, that told a journey, that contained those moments that make you drop whatever you’re doing and simply marvel. I hope you give these a listen and enjoy them too - my spotify playlist, featuring many favorite tracks from the year, is available here for your sampling pleasure.
Let’s dive in!
Honorable Mention: Deerhoof - Deerhoof vs. Evil
This one didn’t quite make the top ten because it’s essentially just Deerhoof doing its usual weird thing, without anything particularly new or earth-shattering. It was, however, done extremely well, with some of their most accessible, hooky songs to date, without sacrificing any of their uniqueness. “Behold a Marvel in the Darkness,” one standout, seems to be some sort of superhero anthem mixed with wistful love song. Strange, and outstanding.
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The Top Ten
Cults - Cults
Cults is a deceptive album, hiding dark, introspective lyrics under sunshine and catchy melodies. My love for Brill-Building/Girl-Group pop songs certainly means I was predisposed to like this album, but the duo doesn’t just lift tried-and-true chord progressions - it adds a unique spin and a refreshing darkness. It’s a lot more Shangri-Las than Shirelles. All of the songs are well-crafted little gems, simple but perfect, and the songs, from opening cut “Abducted” on, deal with a lot of the more unpleasant, unseemly aspects of modern life. “Never Heal Myself,” a bouncy ode to a wounded psyche, toes that line well, but it’s the massive late-album anthem “You Know What I Mean” that fully explores that back-and-forth dynamic between poppy feel-goodery and moody introspection. It sounds like that juxtaposition would be awkward or gimmicky, but instead, the album is a sort of escapist fantasy, about keeping up an old-fashioned, optimistic attitude even in a world where it’s increasingly hard to buy into that idealism.
The Roots - Undun
This one showed up late in the year and just blew me away. It’s wildly ambitious, not only telling a narrative story but doing it chronologically backwards. The hooks throughout are massive, particularly the guest spots by neo-soul singers like Bilal. And it’s risky in the best way, ending with a bizarre art-jazz, Sufjan Stevens-infused four-part suite. Not bad for an ensemble with not only twelve previous LPs, but a day job as Jimmy Fallon’s house band. But, as with all of the Roots’ albums, it’s really ?uestlove’s party. Just listen to that drum fill that kicks in to start “The Other Side,” or his wild free-form soloing in that closing suite. I’ve read a description of The Band’s Levon Helm as “the only drummer who can make you cry,” but clearly that was from someone who never heard ?uestlove. The drumming on the album pushes everything forward with a propulsive, insistent rhythm. He’s now reached the level where his beats are indistinguishable from the classic soul hip-hop artists used to sample. He’s simply amazing, and so is the whole album.
Smith Westerns - Dye it Blonde
Here’s a classic snotty-kids-with-guitars band who just does it right. What elevates it to another level, for me, are the little touches that make some of the tracks sound like outtakes from George Harrison’s solo catalog. There’s a seventies-inspired scuzziness to the guitar lines, and artfully deployed piano lines, that evokes that post-Beatles psychedelic era. Opening track “Weekend” sets the tone well, the first of many songs that starts off one way and evolves in unexpected ways as the song goes on. Every song on this album is a small little journey, starting with an already-strong melody and developing it in new directions. There’s a restlessness there that fits their youthful persona - they seemingly have too many ideas to let a song just stay in one mood. Tracks like “Smile” show that the best is yet to come, that even when tackling heavier, slower material, the band shows that same kind of adventurousness. Of everything I heard this year, this band is the one with the most potential. I can’t wait to hear what they come up with next.
Mayer Hawthorne - How Do You Do?
Mayer Hawthorne is a nerdy white guy from Detroit who happens to be able to do a killer Curtis Mayfield impression. It’s always tricky territory when someone tries to revive classic soul sounds devoid of their political and racial context, but what lets Mayer Hawthorne dodge that thorny territory is that his second album is really a meditation on his relationship with the music he loves. It’s classic soul filtered through his life, through hip-hop, through Detroit’s subsequent collapse, dealing with the legacy of Motown instead of just pretending nothing post-Motown ever happened. Beyond my heady, pretentious views, it’s an undeniably fun album, full of great jams ideal for singing along loudly in the car. “You Called Me” might be one of the most joyful tracks of the year, but “The Walk” is the best kind of groovy. The album strikes a good balance between more serious tracks and the kind of retro-soul party jams that get the crowd moving.
Mister Heavenly - Out of Love
Mister Heavenly made an album so weird and idiosyncratic that they had to invent a new term to describe it: “doom-wop.” It sounds like a mix of hard-edged indie rock and old-school doo-wop, a combination that only these collaborators could come up with. The band includes members of The Unicorns and Man Man, and though you might think that the idiosyncratic visions of those two groups wouldn’t mesh well, they find a very interesting middle ground. Some of the songs echo the past, but with a twist, as in the case of “I Am a Hologram,” but tracks like “Pineapple Girl” or “Reggae Pie” evolve into something else entirely. It’s a great-sounding album, with an unbelievably high energy level. It honestly sounds like it could fall apart into chaos at any point, but never quite does, and that’s the mark of something special. A great surprise.
The Go! Team - Rolling Blackouts
There’s a reason my first real article for this blog was a glowing review of this album. The Go! Team throws every element imaginable into a blender and what comes out the other side sounds like an unholy blend of old educational videos, cheerleader chants, and out-of-control marching bands. It’s schizophrenic at times, changing radically between moods, but it’s never boring, and never goes where you expect. The best thing about this album, in particular, is the way it appropriates definitively un-cool genres of music and embraces their weirdness. “Super Triangle” sounds like something you would hear while watching a laserdisc in high school, while “Yosemite Theme” could pass for something piping through ancient speakers at a National Park. That willingness to experiment, to draw from even the least hip, least explored corners of functional music, makes this band so much fun, and the album is wall-to-wall insanity.
Wilco - The Whole Love
Wilco had honestly nothing to prove at this point, but this album makes a definitive statement that this is still a band that matters, a band that will push themselves to create something unique and amazing. When “Art of Almost,” already an amazing track, kicks back in after most bands would have ended it, you know that the band is swinging for the fences. It’s a great-sounding record, the first release by their self-run label, and every instrument has a phenomenal quality. You can listen all the way through the album focused just on the bass, or drums, or the keyboards, and have an equally rewarding, totally different experience each time. This is a band where any one of the members could be fronting their own band, but they combine their talents in an amazing way. Jeff Tweedy’s songwriting is at it’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot best, oblique lyrics and all. By the time you get through the last song, an extended take where you actually hear the band in the process of learning the song, it’s hard not to be floored. It’s a document of an amazing group of musicians at the peak of their ability.
tUnE-YarDs - W H O K I L L
I didn’t quite get this one at first, but it’s definitely one where listening to a song a few times reveals interesting layers. The way the songs are constructed, a weird wall-of-sound involving seemingly endless variations of Merrill Garbus’ singing piled on top of each other, is a great showcase for the potential of the human voice to create beautiful, strange sounds. I’ll admit that as a very non-political person, the clearly political content of this album went way over my head (she hates the police I guess?) but I don’t think understanding her points is necessary to appreciating her sound, a mix of afro-beat, a cappella, and quirky indie-girl pop. Many of those things can be disastrous if done wrong, as can the ukulele, but she somehow puts it all together magnificently. An amazing piece of work, and something I predict will be one of the more influential albums to come out. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking - nothing sounds quite like this, and I want more!
Dum Dum Girls - Only in Dreams
This one makes the list entirely on the merit of two songs, embodying opposite ends of the musical spectrum. Opening cut “Always Looking” is a rollicking explosion of punky energy, mixing Kristen Gundren’s high-octane vocals, cool backup singing, and kick-ass guitar lines. Later in the album, you get “Coming Down,” an emotional peak I didn’t know this band was capable of hitting, culminating in one long, haunting note sustained by Gundren as the band smashes away melodramatically. Clearly, the glue holding together these disparate halves is Gundren’s powerhouse of a voice, but the point is that this album contained some of the best straight-ahead rockers and some of the best ballads I heard all year, all over the course of one album. Something for everyone! Seriously great stuff.
Beyonce - 4
Oh, Beyonce. You are fantastic. Let’s run this down: opening track “1+1” kicks off a run of some knockout power ballads, some of the best Beyonce’s ever done. But what makes the album truly astounding is the sequence of tracks my friend affectionately refers to as “the killer three” - “Love On Top,” followed by “Countdown,” then “End of Time.” All three are unbelievable jams. “Love on Top” is an incredible piece of retro-soul bliss that changes keys seemingly just to highlight how undaunted Beyonce is by any challenge. “Countdown,” one of the weirdest pieces of mainstream pop all year, uses a marching band and incomprehensible lyrics about a “bouf” effectively to create something that this white boy can describe only as “bumpin.” Finally, underappreciated gem “End of Time” alternates between funky brass and a powerful blast of vocals. Those three, in sequence, combine to form an unstoppable block of incredible invention, catchiness, and soul, and they are easily my most listened-to tracks of the year. Beyonce, with this album, proves that something immensely popular can still be innovating, bold, esoteric, experimental, and just straight-up great music. 4 is Beyonce’s best album, and gives me hope that mainstream music can still be amazing.
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Alright, that’s too much of me! Please, please, please feel free to agree, disagree, debate, or suggest alternatives. I do this to share my favorites with my friends, and I want them to do the same so I can discover more music, especially stuff I’ve overlooked.
