Stephen King's Entertainment Weekly column gives the horror master a place to unleash his cultural musings, which run the gamut from calling TV a wasteland ("all is not LOST"!) to calling for Jon Stewart to head up a US Department of Fun. It follows that EW also provides King safe harbor to pontificate on the year in music, which is fair enough given how masterfully Christine seduced Arnie with choice music selections, and how much ink King gave over to Roland's fascination with the "Hey Jude" jukebox in The Dark Towers (yep, King factored into our adolescence just a little). But for a man profferring his expertise on the new sounds of the day, Stephen's musical tastes seem to have ossified some. He writes in the 12/7 issue of EW (via MSNBC), "In truth, your Uncle Stevie was disappointed with this year's new music, very disappointed indeed, and his year-end list reflects that. I could only find seven albums I wanted to mention..." Only seven albums worth speaking of! Well that's OK, suppose it's better and more paper-saving than rattling off an all-inclusive annotated list of 101 or whatever. Economical. Cool. Let's have 'em:
07 Southern Culture On The Skids - Countrypolitan Favorites
06 John Fogerty - Revival
05 Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain
04 Lyle Lovett And His Large Band - It's Not Big It's Large
03 Mika - Life In Cartoon Motion
02 Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
01 Steve Earle - Washington Square Serenade
Fogerty, Lovett, Steve Earle, Ozzy. Ozzy? King calls Black Rain the "finest heavy metal record of the year; a true speaker-buster." Brandon, you need to YouSend him a copy of that Watain. Yes Stephen if these are the only records worth mentioning than this hasn't been a good year for music -- or really, your listening of it. But most puzzling of all, what happened to all that love for Easy Tiger? If Ryan's "the best North American singer-songwriter since Neil Young," and "there has never been a Ryan Adams record quite as strong and together as Easy Tiger" ... you must not have a very high opinion of Neil Young.
UPDATE: Having got our paws on a physical copy of the issue, Stephen tries to make amends with some mitigating language ("Might I add, while I'm at it, that I'm haunted ... by all the good stuff I may have missed?") and acknowledges there were at least 11more singles than albums that he dug. So a shot at redemption! But then he had to include Avril and James Blunt on it. The list of his Top 18 tracks after the jump.
18 "Radio Nowhere" - Bruce Springsteen
17 "1973" - James Blunt
16 "Nothing Changes Around Here" - The Thrills"
15 "Girlfriend" - Avril Lavigne
14 "Homo Erectus" - Ray Benson and Reckless Kelly
13 "Bring It On Home To Me" - Tab Benoit
12 "I'm Shipping Up To Boston" - Dropkick Murphys
11 "Radar Gun" - The Bottle Rockets
10 "Online" - Brad Paisley
09 "Same Mistake" - James Blunt
08 "Up In Indiana" - Lyle Lovett And His Large Band
07 "Right Moves" - Josh Ritter
06 "Wait For Love" - Josh Ritter
05 "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" - Miranda Lambert
04 "Jericho Road" - Steve Earle
03 "Get Your Biscuits In The Oven (And Your Buns In Bed)" - Kevin Fowler
02"Down The Road Tonight" - Hayes Carll
"Either Way" - Wilco
SK signs off: "This is as honest as I can be. So there. And let's hope next year is a little bit better."
