2009: The Year in Music

Most of us have already put a final nail in the coffin of last year, but let’s take one last look back at the final year of the aughts before moving on to the new decade. Considering that I just finished the Fifty Years of Great Music series (and the JPP staff already offered its own Top 10 of the year), simply revisiting the best songs and albums that 2009 had to offer would be repetitive (and in so little time, what else can I say that I haven’t already?). So instead, let’s try and figure out how this last year progressed (and regressed) the state of popular music on pop culture and beyond. While there’s no doubt plenty ahead that you probably wish that you could simply forget forever, some things are tough to shake and, yes, some should be remembered for their impact, import, greatness or tragedy. To refresh your memory of the best, worst and weirdest things that happened in music during 2009, read on.


MOST EGREGIOUSLY CONFOUNDING PHENOMENON: Susan Boyle
Yes, she has a pretty good voice, and the potential was there for a heartwarming story. But she became famous for being frumpy and released an album of cover songs that tallied millions of pre-orders (the most Amazon has ever had). It sold more copies between January and December of last year than any other album…and it was released at the end of November! Boyle deserved neither the widespread infatuation nor the vicious backlash; this one’s on us, people. Another damn “Macarena” to stain our culture…

BEST REUNION: Blur
Sunny Day Real Estate was pretty cool, too, and Pavement should be getting their due come September, but Blur was the reunion that (I hope) most were salivating over, and they delivered in the short term. Based on all of the (shaky, blurry, no pun intended) video evidence—and there are plenty of videos to be found online—Blur’s live performances this past summer were great. Even though the reunion is apparently over and they have no plans to record again, who wasn’t pleased to hear from them again before they all became dinosaurs?



WORST REUNION: Creed
The reunion that no one wanted. But wait: it’s not a reunion. According to Scott Stapp, it’s a “renewing and a rebirth.” Here’s praying with arms wide open for another run-in with 311.

INTERNET HYPE GONE TERRIBLY WRONG: “I Love College” by Asher Roth
Is there a more indicative song/video of the collapse of youth’s integrity? Sure, my kind didn’t have much back when I was in college either, but this song just set a whole new kind of low. And it had to be sub-moronic and irritating to the ears? Yeesh.

BIGGEST EXPLOSION: Lady Gaga
Say what you will of the new pop flavor of the year, but even though The Fame was released in August of 2008, she was barely a blip beyond the pop-crazy crowd as 2009 commenced. Twelve months later, she’s everywhere with smash hit after smash hit, famously bizarre fashion choices, (intentionally?) plastic and gab rag-feeding behavior, and fame and fans beyond most artists’ wildest dreams. Will the flavor stick around or is she just a passing fad? Remains to be seen, but right now she’s sitting comfortably at the top.

BIGGEST PLUMMET: Chris Brown
Considering how shrugworthy he was as a performing artist to begin with, he would have had to have fallen far to “win” this. He obliged by treating Rihanna like a piñata. The previously Brown-cordial public responded by rightfully jeering him mercilessly, branding him a thug, mocking the sight of him performing his community service, and mostly ignoring his recent album Graffiti (about 160,000 copies sold so far compared to more than 3 million of 2007’s Exclusive). Critic Jim DeRogatis summed it up as such: “Sometimes, great art is made by reprehensible human beings, and squaring the two is enormously difficult. Thankfully, that problem isn’t nearly as thorny when reprehensible human beings make art that is thoroughly mediocre and at times just garbage.” Kanye West infamously upstaged and embarrassed a young woman this past year, but at least he never punched one repeatedly in the face. Goodbye, Chris Brown, please don’t come back.

COOLEST ODDBALL TRIUMPH: Flaming Lips Takes Oklahoma
The Flaming Lips had one of the best albums of last year in the noisy, brash and adventurous Embryonic, but their big coup came over Oklahoma’s uptight government officials who tried to block the band’s song “Do You Realize??” from becoming the state’s official rock song after it earned more than fifty percent of a public vote with ten different nominees (a landslide, no matter how you look at it). In the end, justice upheld, and the wonderfully weird Lips have an honor that almost no one else can claim. As for the other songs synonymous with the Sooner State, take that, Rodgers and Hammerstein.

MOST SHOCKING MURDER TRIAL GUILTY VERDICT: Phil Spector
Not so much that he was found guilty after all the hoopla (and all the hair), but more about the fact that it’s Phil Spector, one of the most famous and acclaimed music producers in history.

LEAST SHOCKING MURDER TRIAL GUILTY VERDICT: C-Murder
This is why more rappers should just perform under their birth names.

MOST LUDICROUS LAWSUIT: RIAA sues Minnesota woman for $1.92 million over 24 songs
$1.92 million? Are you kidding me? That’s about $80,000 per song. And most of them weren’t even good songs—three each by Gloria Estefan and No Doubt? Really? At least this time the plaintiff wasn’t a nineteen-year-old girl in need of a transplant like when they sued Ciaro Sauro in 2008 for sharing ten songs online. Wow, nearly brought down the industry. What a cold-hearted, islet cell-deprived bitch. This time, the RIAA nailed a Native American mother of four from Brainerd, MN. Ah, sweet, deserving justice…

BEST COMEBACK: Michael Jackson
Would the This Is It concert series have provided the King of Pop with an actual comeback? Difficult to say, though I’m leaning towards the negative end. When Jackson was alive, he was all too easy to ridicule, dismiss or even accuse of heinous crimes; even his outspoken faithful flock of fans came across as weirdos with blinders on. But in death, Jackson managed the unthinkable—he was once again crowned one of the great entertainers in music history. Suddenly, everyone started playing his music all over again, the behind-the-scenes documentary This Is It grossed more than $71 million (a record for a documentary film), and even saw sales spikes of albums already comfortably in the multi-multi-(how many multis?)-platinum zone. At the beginning of the year, he was a freakshow, fodder for the tabloids, a tarnished star, and a warning to all of the illusion of fame. But now that he’s gone, the music and performance overshadow all of his scandals, and probably always will.

WORST COMEBACK: Grandmaster Flash
I would have put Creed here without a second thought, but can you really call it a miffed comeback if no one was asking for it in the first place? Then again, can you call this one a comeback since no one paid attention? In a year of lousy hip hop albums (to my knowledge, only Raekwon and Mos Def managed anything worth hearing again and again), The Bridge: Concept of a Culture was probably the worst I heard. Twenty-one years is a long time for a genre icon to wait before delivering another worthwhile album; we’re still waiting.

FUNNIEST ARTIST-TO-ARTIST SLAM: Bono calls Chris Martin a “wanker”
Yeah, the beef between Wayne Coyne and Win Butler was kinda funny. The back-and-forth feuding in the Nathan Williams (Wavves)/Jared Silley (Black Lips) tiff was amusing, too. And two presidents slamming Kanye West is just hysterical (though Obama and Carter aren’t recording artists). But nothing defeats defender of world rights, arena rock, sunglasses and ego, Bono, calling out Chris Martin by saying he’s a “wanker,” “completely dysfunctional character,” and “cretin.” But he also admits that Martin is a terrific melodist, right up there with Ray Davies and Paul McCartney. He also compared Martin’s talent as a melodist to Noel Gallagher—in this group, does anyone else find the target slightly less deserving then another? Well, that just makes it funnier.

MOST SHOCKING BREAKUP: Nine Inch Nails stop touring
Does this really count? Band breakups can be disappointing or disheartening, but are any of them really that shocking? This one kind of was because, well, Nine Inch Nails was a one-man group (with rotating tour members who come and go). Why would Trent Reznor put the Nine Inch Nails moniker out to pasture? Dwindling quality, sales and interest or was it Reznor’s increasingly erratic (and humorous) behavior with a series of stunts including a hilarious April Fools Joke that promised a team-up with Timbaland and a song called “Even Closer” featuring Justin Timberlake, paradoxical (or just contradictory) message board announcements, and entertaining if ultimately silly Twitter posts? Or was he just sick of that pretty hate music machine? Either way, while Reznor will no doubt continue writing and recording music, the thought that we’ll never get to hear the NIN classics on stage ever again is truly disheartening (and, yes, a little shocking).

LEAST SHOCKING BREAKUP: Noel Gallagher leaves Oasis
Met with a collective shrug by even their long-time fans (and other band members).

BEST BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST: Girls
Of course, there can always be argument about any declarative statement of best/worst/etc., but another argument is waiting for the very notion of this kind of up-and-comer: what the hell qualifies as a breakthrough? The field of great new artists extends to dozens of deserving acts from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart to the xx (which I would have picked hands down if more than a select few know about them yet). Not too many more know about Girls, the San Francisco-based psych-jangle-rock band with heavy doses of harmony and shoegaze and a singer (Christopher Owens) who sounds like he’s impersonating Elvis Costello, but the average music fan at least has them plotted in the fringe. For those out of the loop, may I suggest checking out the video for “Hellhole Ratrace” below? Looking for “Girls” on search engines will confound the hell out of you; looking up their debut LP, Album, will be no easier.



WORST BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST: Kid Cudi
It would have been easy to go with Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift (if ’09 was her breakthrough or if that actually happened a year or two ago) or even smaller acts like Wavves or Florence + the Machine, but considering that the only worthwhile elements of Man on the Moon were the occasionally solid hooks and production tricks (rarely pulled off by Cudi himself), it’s the fact that his lyrics and presence are so bland and forgettable—thereby making him the least impressive factor in his breakthrough—that he probably deserves the dishonor more than anyone else. If it weren’t for the Yeezy connection, would anyone have bought this album at all? At least Swift impresses her target audience, which, wider than it oughta be, should be enough for now. Nevertheless, while the field of gruesome newcomers was much more bloated than the lineup of actual suddenly shining stars, we can be thankful that there didn’t seem to be any fresh faces out there that truly rankled the populace (radio saturation sins notwithstanding). 

MOST OVERPLAYED SONG: “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon
Believe it or not, while I didn’t like Only by the Night, I didn’t hate this song when I first heard it. By the twentieth time, I was really starting to get sick of it. By the two-hundredth, I wanted to throttle Caleb Followil to death. That nasally whine of his that serves as a vocal hook makes me grind my teeth today every time I hear it. I heard the song up to seven times in an eight hour block at work day after day after day. It became an inside joke with a co-worker about how obnoxiously frequently it was recycled. How bad? When the radio traded up and played “Sex on Fire” (at heart, an even worse song), it was like a cool, cleansing shower. “Boom Boom Pow,” “LoveGame,” “Good Girls Gone Bad,” “Party in the USA,” “Right Round”—all thoroughly worse songs, but I managed to avoid them for the most part, but not friggin’ “Use Somebody.” Even All-American Rejects’ noxious “Gives You Hell,” which also got spun at least five times a day for weeks on end, faded much faster than “Use Somebody.” I thought Kings of Leon was a thoroughly mediocre rock band before 2009; thanks to “Use Somebody,” I think I just might hate them.

WORST ALBUM: Hot Mess by Cobra Starship
There’s no point in countering with a “Best Album” since you can read about it here, but something must be said for the bottom of the barrel. Granted, having gone out of my way to not listen to numerous contenders for this “crown of shit” (The Black Eyed Peas’ The E.N.D., Volume 4: Songs in the Key of Love & Hate from Puddle of Mudd, the Miley Cyrus EP, etc.), there could certainly be worse stuff out there, but I’m not sure if anything could be as heinous as Hot Mess. It’s not simply bad for badness sake, it’s evil and shameless about it. They ride their candy-coated superficiality all the way to the finish line, flaunting pop music’s worst trends right in your face, and even bring in someone from Gossip Girl to sing a verse or two. Treating it as a joke proves they know better, but when the joke is this cruel, the “merry prankster” adage fades really fast. It’s the music equivalent of Transformers. To those who’ve missed it so far, you are warned; to those who haven’t been so fortunate, you are pitied.

BEST TREND OF 2009: Indies climbing high on the charts
Thank you, blogosphere, for making it possible for small-time bands to debut albums to strong numbers amongst all the middling heavyweights. Back in January, albums from Andrew Bird, Animal Collective and Bon Iver (an EP, no less) all managed to land in the Top 20 with strong openings. Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest made it all the way to No. 8. Neko Case impressed even more by debuting at No. 3. Silversun Pickups performed strongly as well, several holdovers from 2008 stuck around for solid runs (including Fleet Foxes, the Ting Tings and Vampire Weekend), and Phoenix practically became household names thanks to appearances on a variety of late night shows (including SNL). And speaking of household names, major artists like Prince, Pearl Jam and Kiss are all finding success releasing their stuff on independent labels (Pearl Jam even scored their first No. 1 album in thirteen years when Backspacer shifted more than 200,000 units its first week). Of course, most of these are in the major-indie flock—independent labels that still have healthy promotional budgets—but it's still heartening to know that the underdogs can still triumph.

WORST TREND OF 2009: Utter f-cking disappointment
Disappointment was the most prevalent feeling in regards to long-awaited albums getting a release in ’09. There were some pleasant surprises, like the accessible new edge to groups like Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective, and a return to form from Super Furry Animals. And there were plenty of great albums to obsess over, but it was nearly impossible to find an album from a major artist that wasn’t mediocre (and often much worse). Eminem, U2, Jay-Z, Green Day, India.Arie, Bruce Springsteen, Snoop Dogg…the list is endless of artists with high-profile releases that landed with a thud. Plus, the Jonas Brothers and Nickelback are apparently still together and ready to keep sucking into the next decade. So very disappointing…

REST IN PEACE
As it is with any year, the world lost a number of great and talented figures in pop music. They include Ron Asheton (The Stooges), Estelle Bennett (Ronettes), Dewey Martin (Buffalo Springfield), Dickie Peterson (Blue Cheer), Kelly Groucutt (Electric Light Orchestra), Jay Bennett (Wilco), Lux Interior (The Cramps), Andy Hughes (The Orb), Billy Powell (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Randy Cain (The Delfonics), Bob Fogle (The Ventures), James “The Rev” Sullivan (Avenged Sevenfold), Mary Travers (Peter, Paul and Mary), blues legend Koko Taylor, experimental guitarist Jack Rose, Les Paul, DJ AM, Motown musician and former Funk Brother Uriel Jones, and, of course, the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. To all of these artists and the hundreds more, their inspiration, influence, and contributions will not be forgotten, and they will be missed.