2008 as a summary

These days it is a bit useless to rank which years offered better music than others. Not only do you have to consider everyone's different tastes ("tastes"), but inevitably you have to take into account that describing music as "good" is entirely arbitrary. So sure, I despise Beyonce and Christina Aguilera, but the guy two feet away from me might very well think they are the most brilliant minxes to ever come in contact with Planet Earth. Despite the fact that this would force me to bash his head in with a Girls Aloud CD, I still ultimately have to respect that opinion ("opinion"). So, what does this have to do with summarizing 2008 in music? Not much, I'm afraid.

...

But the argument I'm trying to get at is it's rather impossible to compare one year's musical superiority to another. Back when I was a teenager, I thought 2002 was a rather incredible year. Kylie Minogue had gotten her big break in the US, all these cheesy dance songs by DJ Sammy, Ian Van Dahl, DJ Encore, and Lasgo were making waves, No Doubt had two great singles that year with "Hella Good" and "Underneath It All". In my opinion, quite a strong year. But that's just it- it's only my opinion.

So who's to go and say that 2008 wasn't the greatest year or wasn't the worst year? For my personal tastes, it was rather average save for a handful of brilliant moments. The new Girls Aloud album, for instance. Though I love it and will continue to worship them until they truly record something horrific enough to derail my affections ("Walk This Way" wasn't bad enough to do that?), I'll admit after having listened to the album for two months now, Out Of Control is not their best work yet. It's sparkled with some brilliant touches ("The Loving Kind", "Untouchable", "Miss You Bow Wow"), but as a whole it doesn't feel as adventurous, as edgy, as balls-to-the-walls.

THIS ISN'T A GIRLS ALOUD ALBUM REVIEW FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, but I think you get my point. The brilliant moments from 2008 were rather brilliant (Hot Chip, MGMT, Lykke Li, Goldfrapp, Kings of Leon, et cetera), but everything else - sort of ho hum. Even the shit songs weren't as amazingly shit as previous years (with the exception of Madonna). So musically, a rather stagnant year, which I suppose is fine considering everything else in the world went to bitter hell this year.