Stop the presses! You’re sick of year-end lists, right? Especially since the year is over, right? WRONG! Here’s my top 25 albums of 2011, with silly write-ups for each one. Drink it in, listen to music, let it be, etc.
Year-End Musings Part 2: Why Arcade Fire is Our U2
“And the Grammy goes to… ‘The Sssssssssuburbs!’ Arcade Fire!”
I’m sitting in an apartment in the Upper West Side, covering the Grammys for the first time as a reporter. I’m furiously writing notes, or a news story, or notes that will later be turned into a news story, when Barbra Streisand lets the words slither out of her mouth. The room is packed with journalists – most of whom have loved Arcade Fire for years, and all of who think the odds-on favorite to win the 2011 Grammy for Album of the Year, Lady Antebellum, is about as exciting as a particularly humdrum root canal – and when Streisand (God, it’s so awesome that it was Streisand) gets to the “r” in “Suburbs,” the room explodes.
We can’t believe our eyes. We’ve all lived through Steely Dan beating “Kid A,” and that Ray Charles tribute album beating “The College Dropout,” but an upset in OUR favor? Never saw it coming. And the award goes to Arcade Fire, those Canadian lads who made “Funeral” only a few years ago and made everyone who knew that it existed feel so much cooler than everyone who had never heard of them! Remember when Win Butler was on the cover of Spin with Bruce Springsteen? Shit, man, the Boss never won an Album of the Year Grammy!
My coworkers are high-fiving and texting their in-the-know friends as the 18 members of Arcade Fire breathlessly hurry through an acceptance speech. I watch as they stomp over to the performance section of the stage (how were all of the instruments still set up, ready to be played?) and launch into a triumphant version of “The Suburbs’” wall-shaking money shot, “Ready To Start.” And in that 90-second pocket of time before the credits to the Grammys telecast started rolling, Arcade Fire becomes U2.
Filed under Essays, Year-End 2011
Year-End Musings Part 1: The Brilliance of Diddy-Dirty Money
I wanted to start this blog with a series of long-form essays toasting 2011 in pop music. Over the next two weeks, I’ll be dissecting some of my favorite albums of the year, a few of the biggest musical disappointments of 2011, the most powerful (and inscrutable) music videos, and so on.
Today (Dec. 12), we start with one of the biggest surprises of the year that doubles as a celebration of my favorite single of 2011. Please leave comments, or don’t, if you don’t want to. I don’t care.
(I care.)
I want to take a time machine back to 2007 so I can have the following conversation with my past self:
“Hey, 2007 Jason!”
“What? Who are you? How’d you get in?”
“I’m the 2011 version of you. Can’t you see? I look exactly like you, only without that ridiculous beard!”
“Oh. Hey?”
“Hey, I’m sorry to bother you, but I wanted to let you know something shocking. I see you’re making your ‘Albums of the Year’ list, like you spend most of your time doing. ‘Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’ is number one, and ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ is number two, right?”
“Yeah. For now, but it might change.”
“No, it won’t. So yeah, you’re pretty into the indie rock thing.”
“Well… sure!”
Filed under Essays, Year-End 2011
WELCOME
So here’s my new blog. Are you ready for it? You seem ready. Let’s go!
In short, I’m a writer for Billboard.com, and a New Jersey guy who moved to New York in mid-2010. The world is vast and goofy, and I’m trying to figure shit out. Until then, I’ll write about pop culture!
The name of this blog is a reference to the Clipse mixtape series “We Got It 4 Cheap.” Listen to the best song on “We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2″ here.
You can find my daily news reporting here, and you can find a collection of my personal clips here. This blog is a forum for some of my non-professional writing, because hey why not I LURVE writing! I’ll be posting long-form essays, some fiction, maybe some cool videos that I like and would post to a Tumblr if I even had a Tumblr.
Feel free to leave comments. I love comments! Maybe… I’ll respond to yours? No promises!
Filed under Uncategorized
