Mr Brightside Tattoo

Posté par leonardgraves1958
19 March, 2010

Mr Brightside Cover

The Best of the decade: A wrap up of the decade’s cultural highs and lows: The Top 10 pop culture trends | The Top 10 albums | The Top 10 Movies | The Top 10 TV shows
Top Ten Albums

1. A Rush of Blood To The Head, Coldplay: Coldplay is like a one-step recovery program for anyone who ever believed that good music couldn’t be emotional, sentimental or earnest. And here, the British hitmakers seemed to finally stop trying to be Radiohead and find the power in devastating piano melodies and anthemic singability. The Scientist wrecks me every time.

2. Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple: This wonderfully complex collection was more than a return to recording for the former ’90s singer/songwriter prodigy — it was a survivor’s story, since the album was delayed for two years before finally being remixed by producer Mike Elizondo. And it was worth the wait, from the dusky cabaret aspirations of the title track to the torchiness of O Sailor. Extraordinary, indeed.

3. Poses, Rufus Wainwright: Rufus’ later works Want One and Want Two and his Judy Garland tribute get more press these days, but 2001’s Poses was an early glimpse of his audacious cabaret act with proudly preening, deliciously bold declarations. Check out Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.

4. Who Is Jill Scott?, Jill Scott: Between becoming a standout on the poetry scene and a big-time actress (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Why Did I Get Married?) came this lush infusion of soul, jazz, spoken word and a smoothed-out Sunday brunch sound. Scott’s voice is big and beautiful, and the album oozes a sensual, sophisticated urbanity that will still take its rings off and scrap if you insult it.

5. Rockin’ The Suburbs, Ben Folds: The title could as well have been “Ben Folds Grows Up,” as the former lead singer of Ben Folds Five graduated from songs about adolescent angst and juvenile break-ups to … parental angst (Still Fighting It), confusing spiritual transformation (Not The Same) and the hilarious and dead-on title track about the comically imagined pain of being “male, middle-class and white.”

6. The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem: Maddening. Controversial. Violent. Bodacious. Inescapable. Unexpectedly elegiac. A classic.

7. Speakerboxx/The Love Below, OutKast: History makers don’t ask for a rule book, and that’s why this double album from Atlanta’s creatively loopy duo Andre 3000 and Big Boi is so effective — who says you can’t mash-up hip-hop, rap, rock, funk, jazz and Polaroid pictures? Of course you can! Ambition is a beautiful thing.

8. Hot Fuss, The Killers: For years, rock fans were stuck with rock stars who were too cool to admit they were rock stars. Not so with Las Vegas’ The Killers, led by a flamboyant Mormon named Brandon Flowers and buoyed by a heady rush of seemingly nonsensical lyrics (“I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier”) and breathlessly tawdry anthems (Mr. Brightside, Somebody Told Me).

9. Hello Starling, Josh Ritter: You know those movies where some hipster couple gets married in a barn or on a lake, and there’s a folky roots-rock band singing sweetly and hauntingly in the background? Idaho folky Ritter could star as the singer in every one of those movies, except you’d be so excited about his Dylanesque lyricism that you wouldn’t care about the rest of the movie.

10. Justified, Justin Timberlake: In which the former N*SYNC cutie pie finally proved that he was more than the sum of his boy band/Mickey Mouse Club pedigree. Instead, he was the perfect synthesis of blue-eyed soul, ’70s R&B and modern pop. And did I mention that he’s a pop star who can actually sing? No Pro-Tools needed!

Top Ten in Music

By Larry Aydlette

Note: The last 10 years could be called the “iPod decade” for music listeners. While I grew up in the album generation, online downloading has changed the way all of us listen to music. So, some on this list are albums, some individual songs.

1. The Beatles’ remastered studio albums, The Beatles. For the first time in the CD generation, the lads’ discs get the digital refurbishing they deserve. And the results are nothing less than breathtaking. As many have said, it’s like you’re sitting right in the Abbey Road studio.

2. Vertigo, U2. Uno, dos, tres… quatorce? The band’s buzziest, hard-rocking single since Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Turn it up, captain!

3. The Seldom Seen Kid, Elbow. Oddball lyrics of intimacy married to quirky, orchestral melodies. This is the U.K. band that you should have been listening to instead of the massively overrated Radiohead and Coldplay.

4. Crazy, Gnarls Barkley, and Fallin’, Alicia Keys. The smoothest R&B/pop singles of the decade.

5. Dashboard, Modest Mouse. It’s something about a song on a radio and a dashboard. All I know is that it rocks.

6. Diamonds From Sierra Leone, Kanye West. I wouldn’t want to go to an awards show with him, but there’s no denying his wicked talent, as this cinematic mashup of rap beats and Shirley Bassey’s Bond theme Diamonds Are Forever proves.

7. Man Of Constant Sorrow, The Soggy Bottom Boys. Whole country went apey over them because they sing into a can real good. Other country-flavored favorites: Hurt, Johnny Cash and American Saturday Night, Brad Paisley.

8. Things Have Changed, Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8 and Together Through Life, Bob Dylan. They call him the voice of the ’60s, but he didn’t do bad in the Oughts, either, from an Oscar-winning song to another brilliant collection of outtakes to his latest album with its era-defining anthem, It’s All Good. He even put out a nutso Christmas album. Bob is still the man.

9. Icky Thump, The White Stripes. The rock-blues band of the decade, and this disc melds all of Jack White’s strengths together, from blistering guitar-and-drum workouts to the hilarious vaudeville rocker Rag and Bone.

10. That Lucky Old Sun, Brian Wilson. I’ve called every one of his comeback albums brilliant, only to find that they don’t hold up over time. This song suite really does, especially his nostalgic ode, Southern California.

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