Best of 2008

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES—FOR REALS.

People seem to love this silly list, but every year I tend to get the same two primary responses. My music nerd friends (aka music writers) tend to respond with things like “How dare you exclude that amazing folk record from the Netherlands!” and/or “How dare you not include more rap music! ” while my non-music nerd friends respond with something like “Once again, I’ve never heard of anything on your list.” As a semi-respectable music journalist, there are lots of records that probably should be on my list and aren’t, but in the end I just choose the records and songs that got the most face time around my home office (as evidenced by the number of plays in my iTunes). So, even though I could easily list about 100 records that I genuinely liked in 2008 (this was a great year for music, don’t let anyone tell you differently!), here are the 40 albums that I listened to the most.

TOP 40 RECORDS OF 2008

1. Fleet Foxes // Fleet Foxes
2. Beach House // Devotion
3. Deerhunter // Microcastle
4. High Places // High Places
5. Fuck Buttons // Street Horrrsing
6. Portishead // Third
7. Department of Eagles // In Ear Park
8. No Age // Nouns
9. Lykke Li // Youth Novels
10. My Morning Jacket // Evil Urges
11. M83 // Saturdays = Youth
12. Gang Gang Dance // St. Dymphna
13. Abe Vigoda // Skeleton
14. Crystal Stilts // Alight of Night
15. Glass Candy // B/E/A/T/B/O/X
16. The Breeders // Mountain Battles
17. Dungen // 4
18. Kasai Allstars // In the 7th Moon…
19. Averkiou // Throwing Sparks
20. Emmylou Harris // All I Intended to Be
21. The New Year // The New Year
22. Women // Women
23. School of Seven Bells // Alpinisms
24. Cat Power // Jukebox
25. Growing // All the Way
26. Atlas Sound // Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
27. Stephen Malkmus // Real Emotional Trash
28. Vivian Girls // Vivian Girls
29. Ponytail // Ice Cream Spiritual
30. The Dodos // Visiter
31. Vampire Weekend // Vampire Weekend
32. Hercules and Love Affair // Hercules and Love Affair
33. The Duke Spirit // Neptune
34. R.E.M. // Accelerate
35. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy // Lie Down in the Light
36. Blank Dogs // On Both Sides
37. Girl Talk // Feed the Animals
38. Juana Molina // Un Dia
39. Goldfrapp // Seventh Tree
40. Silver Jews // Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea

TOP 10 SONGS OF 2008

Again, these are the songs that I listened to the most obsessively this year—usually on the subway, while dancing around my kitchen, or sitting contemplatively at my desk wondering what I’ve done with my life.

1. “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” // Fleet Foxes
2. “House Jam” // Gang Gang Dance
3. “The Storm” // High Places
4. “Sweet Love for Planet Earth” // Fuck Buttons
5. “Used to be” // Beach House
6. “Thank You Too!” // My Morning Jacket
7. “Song to Bobby” // Cat Power
8. “Grinding Halt” // The Muslims (covering The Cure)
9. “Night of Joy” // The Breeders
10. “Planet Health” // Chairlift

TOP 10 LIVE SHOWS OF 2008

1. My Bloody Valentine // ATP Festival (September 21)
2. Girl Talk // All Points West Festival (August 9)
3. Dagon // Remains (July 27)
4. Fleet Foxes // Webster Hall (March 29)
5. Cat Power // All Points West Festival (August 10)
6. Crystal Stilts (at 4am!) // Webster Hall (Oct 20)
7. Gang Gang Dance // Santos (Oct 24)
8. Abe Vigoda // Matthew Schnipper’s Apartment (July 13)
9. The Cure // Madison Square Garden (June 20)
10. The Breeders // McCarren Pool (July 13)

WORST SONG OF 2008

“I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry

I usually don’t like to be a hater and I almost never write about things that I don’t genuinely like or find interesting. I’m really of the opinion that there’s enough snarky, mean-spirited, hyper-critical bullshit floating around out in the world and I don’t really need to add to it. Still, I feel strongly compelled to write about my dislike of this song. Even though I kind of enjoy the fact that this track managed to mortify lots of right-wing conservatives across the country (always a good thing), I can’t help but imagine this song being played on an endless loop at really depressing strip clubs or serving as the soundtrack at awful sports bars while drunk college girls sloppily make out with each other as a means of impressing drunk fraternity guys. So gross. Is there anything more tacky than fake lesbianism? Just be areal lesbian or knock it off. Also, if this song had been called “I Kissed A Boy” instead and featured a handsome male pop singer “experimenting” with kissing another man, it would not only have been a huge flop, people would have literally run away screaming.

TOP 5 REISSUED RECORDS IN 2008

1. New Order // Power, Corruption &  Lies (the Factory years)
2. Senor Coconut // El Baile Aleman
3. Dennis Wilson // Pacific Ocean Blue
4. Pavement // Brighten the Corners – Nicene Creedence Edition
5. Aphex Twin // Selected Ambient Works 85-92

TOP 5 SONGS THAT MADE ME WISH I WERE A REALLY GOOD DANCER IN 2008

1. Day ‘N Nite (Crookers Remix) – Kid Cudi
2. “Waters of Nazareth” // Justice
3. “You’ve Changed” // Lauren Flax
4. “Shake A Fist” // Hot Chip
5. “I Seen Beyonce at Burger King” // Cazwell

TOP 20 MOVIES OF 2008

This one is always tough, since there are so many important movies that I just haven’t had time to see yet (even though I’ve somehow managed to see Step Up 2 at least three times this year), so here are the movies that I actually saw and that brought me the most happiness (or perhaps made me cry) in 2008.

1. Happy Go Lucky
2. Let the Right One In
3. Wendy & Lucy
4. Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell
5. Man on Wire
6. Slumdog Millionaire
7. Wall-E
8. The Fall
9. Frozen River
10. Tearoom
11. Frost / Nixon
12. Frontiers
13. The Dark Knight
14. The Signal
15. Donkey Punch
16. The Edge of Heaven
17. My Winnipeg
18. Synecdoche, New York
19. Funny Games
20. Vicky Cristina Barcelona

WORST MOVIE OF 2008

The Happening—directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Again, not to be a hater, but the awfulness of this movie really defies comprehension. I mean, everyone knows that I LOVE horror movies and tend to be very, very forgiving of even the worst scary movies, but this movie features Mark Wahlberg running FROM THE WIND. Seriously, it features people trying to flee in terror from the very air that they are breathing by closing windows and slamming doors. Not scary. Plus, Betty Buckley (aka Miss Collins in Carrie !!) is trotted out for a very thankless role as an inexplicably crazy person who serves no real purpose in the movie whatsoever. I couldn’t stop thinking about this movie for days simply because it is so stunningly awful. This is one of those times when something is so dumb and such a waste of human effort that it actually made me angry to watch it (this also happens when I accidentally see The Hills or The Real Housewives of Orange County, but those TV shows might actually be smarter than The Happening).

TOP 20 BOOKS OF 2008

I’m realizing more and more that, as I get older, I tend to just re-read books that I already own instead of buying new ones, which makes putting this list together somewhat difficult. But since I can only re-read The White Album and Sharon Olds’ first two books of poems a certain finite number of times in any given year, here are the other books that I read and loved this year (and were actually pubiished in 2008).

1. Livability: Stories (fiction) by Jon Raymond
2. Mythtym (nonfiction/art) compiled and edited by Trinie Dalton
3. How the Dead Dream (fiction) by Lydia Millet
4. Watching the Spring Festival (poems) by Frank Bidart
5. Black Postcards (memoir) by Dean Wareham
6. Atmospheric Disturbances (fiction) by Rivka Galchen
7. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories (fiction) by Steven Millhauser
8. Elegy: Poems by Mary Jo Bang
9. My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry by Jack Spicer
10. Big Box Reuse (nonfiction) by Julia Christensen
11. Get Your War On: The Definitive Account of the War on Terror, 2001-2008 by David Rees
12. In the Time of Assignments (poems) by Douglas Martin
13. We Disappear by Scott Heim
14. Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems by Mark Doty
15. X-Ray: See Through the World Around You (photographs) by Nick Veasey
16. We Are Experienced (photography) by Danielle Leavitt
17. Pictures at a Revolution: Five movies and the birth of the new Hollywood (nonfiction) by Mark Harris
18. Sway (fiction) by Zachary Lazar
19. Sleeveface: Be the Vinyl (photography)by Carl Morris & John Rostron
20. My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge (poems) by Paul Guest

TOP 10 FAVORITE INTERVIEWS OF 2008

I have to say—despite the crumbling economy wreaking a small amount of havoc on my professional and financial life—I had the opportunity to do a lot of amazing work in 2008. Looking back on all the people I interviewed and had the good fortune to write about, I am reminded of what a great career I have. All of these people helped make my job as a journalist even more awesome in 2008.

1. Patti Smith (for V Magazine)
2. Lykke Li (for The FADER)
3. MGMT (for Interview Magazine)
4. High Places (for The FADER)
5. Genesis P-Orridge (for OUT Magazine)
6. Lizzi Bougatsos (for Interview Magazine)
7. Kelley Deal (for New York Times Magazine)
8. Conor Oberst (for VMan Magazine)
9. Estelle (for The FADER)
10. Blank Dogs (for The FADER)

Five Randomly Amazing Things that Happened in 2008

1. Going to Sweden to chase Lykke Li. Eating lots of authentic Swedish meatballs in Stockholm.
2. Trevor & ASL’s wedding in Kansas City. (Sharing a room with Teeter Sperber, finding love while traveling for 24 hours with Jen Krakow, and making lots of people in fancy wedding outfits dance their asses off while DJing the reception)
3. Going to the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival and having a total nerdfest bro-down with the Stereogum staff (and totally finding drugs on the ground!)
4. Taping a “Best of 2008” music special for LOGO. Hair and makeup? Yes, please.
5. Staying up until 5am to watch insanely spectacular vogueing in Hell’s Kitchen with Julianne Shepherd and Krisanne Johnson. (Awesome until Julianne later breaks her arm on the way home -- House of FADER realness!)

FAVORITE MOMENT OF 2008

NOVEMBER 4th.

Not only was this my 34th birthday, it also happened to be election day. The running joke beforehand was that this would either be the best birthday ever or, depending on how the election panned out, absolutely the most depressing. Luckily it turned out to be the former. Not only was this arguably the best and most fun birthday of my life—I was at Heathers (my favorite bar, staffed by my favorite people) surrounded by a variety of my best NYC friends and family—OBAMA WON THE ELECTION. I can’t remember very many times when I’ve witnessed a room full (and I mean FULL) of people collectively losing their shit so completely. It was genuinely one of the of the happiest, most exciting nights I’ve ever had in New York City. I went home drunk, loaded with gifts, reeking of champagne, feeling strangely optimistic (strange for me, anyway) and not at all bummed out about being another year older. FUCK YES!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

xo xo xo COLE