Loading ...What were the 80 most important musical recordings, artists, trends, events, and performances of 2008? What were the eight things this year that broke our hearts—or, at least, our ears? We’re happy to announce 80 ‘08 (and Heartbreak), Idolator’s year-end overview. The list is below the jump.
Archive for December, 2008
My Own Private 2008: Hey, There Were Actually Some Really Good Parts!
Wed Dec 31 2008 by Maura
When 2008 started, I was sure it was going to be awesome. “It’s going to be two-thousand-great,” I told anyone who would listen, ignoring the various signs (MTV ringing in the New Year with Tila Tequila, hints of economic collapse, etc.) that things wouldn’t exactly go as planned. Or even be much good at all. But at least there was music to help the seemingly endless parade of bad news plod along a bit more jauntily, right?
THE GOOD: Getting back into R & B full-throttle thanks to Ne-Yo, Erykah Badu, Estelle, and Solange; Ida Maria’s twitchy “Oh My God,” which I am going to try and have every person I know hear at least once over the course of the coming months; Prince and Jarvis Cocker owning gigantic open spaces; Ne-Yo turning girls into goo.
THE BAD: You don’t want to hear about the bad aspects of my 2008. (And honestly, typing a blow-by-blow out would just depress me all over again.) So instead I’ll note that I often hate making lists because even though they’re supposed to be overviews, they’re inevitably of the specific moment at which the list was made, which means that completely worthy entrants will get slighted, or pushed out by space limitations, etc. Here’s a “sorry” to Black Mountain’s In The Future, the Air Miami demos that were reissued by Teen Beat, Panic At The Disco’s Pretty. Odd., Deastro’s “The Shaded Forests,” The Academy Is…’s Fast Times At Barrington High, Jazmine Sullivan’s “Bust Your Windows,” and the Robin Thicke record that was mysteriously forgotten about by everyone.
THE WHAAAA? Before August, if you had said that I would have put Billy Joel on any list that didn’t count down the reasons my ninth-grade social studies class was completely absurd (hi there, three-day lesson on “We Didn’t Start The Fire”), I would have laughed so, so hard. And yet, his show at Shea Stadium was totally solid, not only because of his undeniable showmanship but for the ways it stoked my nostalgia about growing up on Long Island.
2008: In Memoriam
Wed Dec 31 2008 by andybetablog
“There are so many little dyings that it doesn’t matter which of them is death,” wrote esteemed poet/ author Kenneth Patchen. Yet the accrual of such dying over the course of a calendar year belies such “little”ness. As we nudge into the 21st century, the luminaries of the previous one begin to wane, the architects and innovators of prime American music forms: blues, jazz, folk, rock. The obituary page for 2008 may not feature so many marquee names, but the crucial people behind the stage—the gurus, the producers, the poster artists, the record executives, the session men—all continued to vanish as well.
We lost studio drummers like Earl Palmer and guitarist Robert Ward, Phil Spector’s engineer Phil Levine, jazz photographer William Claxton, Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black, Thelonious Monk saxophonist Johnny Griffin. Number groups diminished by one, be they the Count Five, the Four Tops, the Dave Clark Five, or the Kingston Trio. Here are a few of the folks-–some well-known, some never heard of— whose work and influence created a great resonance here and whose efforts will hopefully continue to reverberate in the generations to come.
No. 2: Lil Wayne Is All Things To All People
Wed Dec 31 2008 by Michaelangelo Matos
What didn’t Lil Wayne do this year? Well, he didn’t run for president, but that’s about all. He played guitar (badly). He launched a champagne brand, because when we think of Lil Wayne imbibing something, it’s champagne. (Additionally, many Americans listen to Wayne’s music while they drink champagne, too.) OK, he had some E as well. (And he got arrested again, that time with guns.) He got remixed a bunch of times. He didn’t die. His “Daddy” gave him a million dollars in cash. The American people gave him a million record sales. He inspired one of the best music essays anyone wrote all year. He kept showing up in Blender. He moonlighted on other people’s records. And he made the absolute knock-’em-dead single of 2008—which, depending on who you ask, is either “Lollipop” or, if they’re me, is “A Milli.”
One More List Before We Go: The Top 12 Idolator Posts Of 2008
Wed Dec 31 2008 by Maura
As you may have gathered, I’m raring to close the book on 2008, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t run down some of the site’s highlights during what was a pretty dreary year overall. After the jump, behold a pretty subjective top 12 of the year (thanks to our technological limbo I can’t run any sort of numbers, but I think this list accurately captures the best moments we’ve had during a long slog of a year). And of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank all of you for coming back, reading, commenting, and pointing out when I get shit wrong (which is too often). If you think I got this list wrong, feel free to abuse me with compliments in the comments section!
Heartbreak No. 8: John Rich Shills For The Republican Party
Wed Dec 31 2008 by xhuxk
No. 4: “Guitar Hero” And “Rock Band” Prove That Anyone Can Play (Plastic) Guitar
Wed Dec 31 2008 by Mike Barthel
They may not save the music industry, but this year rhythm games opened up new possibilities for how people interact with music. As game designer Jesse Fuchs has pointed out, Harmonix (which originally developed Guitar Hero, and created Rock Band) put out far more inventive games earlier. But since the GH/RB model has proven to be a hit, it appeared that we were stuck with a simple six-button interface that didn’t allow players to fiddle with the music itself awfully much.
No. 5: Erykah Badu, “New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)”
Wed Dec 31 2008 by Jess Harvell
As Idolator vets may remember, my mother has been a hardcore R&B fanatic through every format change, from the days of worn Philly International vinyl to the CD-Rs of mod urban radio hits that she now forces me to provide like a soul-slinging street dealer. At heart she’s a classicist, but she’s also an Erykah Badu fan, one who enjoys the odd, slo-mo stoner funk of Worldwide Underground as much as the comfy, terra cognita qualities of Baduizm. For me, my mom’s thumbs-up for New Amerykah cemented Badu’s near-singular status as a boundary-buster you can still spin for your history-minded elders—and underlined how rare such figures are in any 21st-century pop genre.
No. 6: Prince Thinks You’re So Very Special
Wed Dec 31 2008 by Maura
Prince got added to the Coachella bill some 15 days before the desert festival was slated to kick off, a move that was simultaneously totally awesome and slightly reeking of desperation. Ticket sales for the 2008 installment of the fest had been rumored to be a bit soft (a rumor that was borne out by the tumbleweeds skipping across the Empire Polo Field during Jack Johnson’s Friday-closing set), and apparently Prince commanded a lot of cash to help goose the Saturday-night till. “So what?” you might ask. “He’s Prince. He’s worth it.” I wholeheartedly agree, but at the same time, I can’t help but wonder if his set—which included a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” that made Thom Yorke a bit snitty—broke the festival (and maybe even the US festival circuit) in a way, kind of like his precipitation-inducing Super Bowl halftime show of 2007.
