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Last year, Stephen King could only pick seven albums that he liked from the year’s offerings, but 2008 has apparently been kinder to King’s ears: Not only was he moved to pick a full top 10, he placed two albums—Buckcherry’s Black Butterfly and the Pretenders’ Break Up The Concrete—at No. 1. Whoa, don’t get too crazy now!
THE GOOD: Hey, I liked that Al Green album too.
THE BAD: The gallisticle (my new term for those pageview-inflating lists that are presented as galleries: feel free to pass it along!) is peppered with “dancing about architecture” punnery and “aw, gosh, EW, you don’t have to give me space in your mag” bloviation like the following: “Of all the things I write about for EW, pop music’s the hardest, because a columnist doesn’t get paid for saying, ‘I dunno, I just like it.’ But can I really explain why I love ‘I Kissed a Girl’ by Katy Perry and would be delighted never to hear Taylor Swift’s ‘You’re Not Sorry’ again? No. All I can say is that I find ‘the taste of her cherry ChapStick’ in ‘Girl’ entrancingly sexy, while everything about ‘You’re Not Sorry’… makes me sorry.” That’s the sort of wordplay that gets Uncle Stevie the big bucks! Suck it, layoff victims!
THE WHAAA? “This is as dense and allusive as James Joyce’s Ulysses, only you can dance to it.” Guess what copyright-busting PC user he said that about? Somewhere, some dude who gets paid to write about rock full-time (well, at least most of the time in this economy) is sobbing for not having thought of the Joyce allusion first.
1. Buckcherry, Black Butterfly / The Pretenders, Break Up The Concrete
2. AC/DC, Black Ice
3. James McMurtry, Just Us Kids
4. Girl Talk, Feed The Animals
5. Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal
6. Coldplay, Viva La Vida
7. Al Green, Lay It Down
8. Lindsey Buckingham, Gift Of Screws
9. Randy Newman, Harps And Angels
10. James, Hey Ma
Stephen King’s Top 10 [EW via Stark Online]
giving 2 albums one spot as an excuse to fit 11 albums into a top 10 is such a scam (unless it’s a poll, and 2 albums are tied for last).
Man, do I hate gallisticles. Just give me the whole damn list already, stupid internet.
@Chris N.: you can’t spell ‘gallisticle’ without ‘gall,’ amirite?
There’s three good albums on that list (Buckcherry, AC/DC, Coldplay). I don’t count Feed The Animals as an “album” (and no I don’t want to debate it), and I thought the Al Green disc was tame and mediocre.
@Al Shipley: Especially when you include Buckcherry.
I will agree that Buckcherry’s cover of Anything, Anything is a work of genius, but Black Butterfly? Crap butterfly more like it, some sub-Nickeback not-even-as-entertaining as-Hinder slice of 3rd generation fake grunge. I could barely get through it once.
Every time King says “your Uncle Stevie” in that worthless column of his, the “bad touch” warning lights come on.
I got concerned that more than one person had commented on Buckcherry being an okay choice for the list until I realized it’s “go batshit crazy out of your head and make obscene claims” Monday. I was worried, though.
Why don’t they dump King and just syndicate Larry King’s column from the Life section of USA Today? It’s pretty much the same thing.
@Audif Jackson Winters III: Yikes, I searched to see if King was still doing that column, and discovered that he stopped … 7 years ago.
@Audif Jackson Winters III: i heard somewhere that larry king is blogging now!
Fuck that… I wanna know what Tom Clancy is listening to these days…
For my money, you just can’t beat shoestrings for keeping your shoes on … Cyd Charisse had the greatest gams in showbiz, and I don’t care what you say about it … Any kind of pickles are OK, but dill pickles are my favorite pickles of all … What ever happened to Anthony Zerbe? …
Fleet Foxes=Nicholas Sparks?
I’ll take Andy Rooney to block.
@Clevertrousers: Wanna bet Toby Keith tops that list? And no ties allowed there.
They should have Stephanie Meyer do a column instead, so she can talk about her hot topic taste in music and why Linkin Park rocks.
I just can’t believe he listens to James.
@Nicolars: Check yourself, son. You’re rocking with a Grade A Twilight fanboy up in this piece.
As for Stephen King, I don’t know about his musical tastes or whatnot, but OG brings it hard with the printed word. Thirty years later, The Stand still comes with the quickness.
Grandpa?
It won’t make me read Stephen King for music tips, but 5-9 are all pretty good picks. I’m just disappointed to see one more list without Raphael Saadiq on it.
Wow, yeah, whenever King takes up the topic of music in EW, it’s more cringe-worthy than anything he’s ever written in any horror novel.