By: Ben Johnson
Every year I do this thing where I
take a look at major music publications’ year-end best albums list and slog
through each individual entry for as long as it takes to say literally one
thing I can think of to say, and every year it almost breaks me. None of these
lists needs to exist, nor for that matter do any of the items within these
lists as distinct branded entities separate from any other given “album” or
amount of music. By extension, my recounting of these lists is an inherently
pointless act, and worse, one which I can not be said to enjoy in the strictest
sense of the word “enjoy.”
Life is short and precious and as
full of edifying wonderment as it is full of soul-destroying distractions, and
Rolling Stone Magazine’s List Of Top 50 Albums of 2015 is a disastrous sinkhole
in our collective timeline. It should be left alone, steered well clear of, and
not dwelled upon for even one instant. And yet.
And yet, here we are with a thing
that other humans, if the poor deluded simpletons currently populating what’s
left of the publishing industry can even be called that, have somehow bothered
to accomplish. This list, in its way, is therefore as heroic as it is stupid.
It is an echo of the pointlessness and futility of a single human life, the
brave but ultimately pyrrhic struggle of existence itself. And so there is no
more noble calling than to make fun of these dumb fucking things, to voice the
cosmic Nelson Muntz, ha-haing into infinity, inwardly and outwardly.
They actually didn't do as hilariously bad a job of it this year as they have in years past, but that's more an indication of how low the bar is than how impressively they cleared it.
Seriously, though, get a load of
this shit:
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| Guess who lives here |
50.
Bomba Estereo – Amanecer
The YouTube comments for these songs are mostly
in Spanish, so I guess it’s legit. It sounds like some kind of 90’s-ass Massive
Attack/Luakabop hybrid to me, but I’m not here to tell some Columbian people
how their music should sound.
49. Bob Dylan - Shadows in the Night
A little while ago I was listening to
“Tombstone Blues” and it hit me like a ton of bricks and I thought, “Is this
it? Is my Dylan Is A God Phase finally happening?” And I decided that, yes,
surely my Dylan Is A God Phase is now underway. That was over ten days ago. I
have voluntarily listened to exactly zero Bob Dylan since then. In retrospect,
maybe that was it, and my full Dylan Is A God Phase lasted as long as it took
to listen to “Tombstone Blues” that one time. Anyway, I can confirm that this
album is one thousand year old Bob Dylan singing some one thousand year old Bob
Dylan songs that I guess one thousand year old Bob Dylan wrote.
48. Carly Rae Jepsen – Emotion
You want me to get really excited about Carly
Rae Jepsen? Trick me into listening to some 2015 Bob Dylan material first. It’s
like somebody just emptied some Pixy Stix into an iron lung. I feel like Mr.
Six dancing his ass off to Venga Boys before his arthritis flares up and he has
to be confined to a hospital bed for the rest of his short life.
47. James Taylor - Before This World
One time I got the chance to see James Taylor
play in an intimate ballroom setting, mere feet from where I was sitting, and
it was so boring I had an out of body experience. One of these songs is about,
I shit you not, owning a cabin in Montana. I didn’t really listen to it, but I’m
pretty sure he just sang “out in Montana, in the cabin that I own there, my self-absorbed
emotions about my numerous divorces are as real as the annuities and
high-dividend payouts my investment portfolio is currently piling into my
checking account.” I mean, I’m paraphrasing.
46. Rhiannon Giddens - Tomorrow Is My Turn
Sometimes, because apparently I am an old man
with trust issues, I’ll listen to my fully randomized entire collection of
mp3’s which I still cling to. I did this last night while fixing dinner, and a strident
female voice made me say “what on the face of the planet is this garbage?” and
drop what I was doing to walk wet-handed into the living room and skip the
current song. Turns out it was Joni Mitchell. So like, I’m sure Rhiannon
Giddens is great, but what they hell do you want me to say about it? I’m in the
kitchen garbaging Joni The Fuck Mitchell, so I can either tell the truth about
how this music makes me feel or lie and be supportive. Regardless, and here’s the
glorious and important fact of the matter: nobody asked me.
45.
Madonna - Rebel Heart
The only record store in the Chicago neighborhood
I used to live in was owned by this Madonna-obsessed middle aged dude who had
absolutely no idea how to run a record store. At least that’s how I saw it.
Maybe he’s a marketing genius who somehow stumbled upon the one segment of the
population willing to pay actual money for Barbara Streisand LP’s and
Eurythmics remix 12”es. Anyhow, business acumen aside, he’s a nice guy who I enjoyed
chatting up, and I remember feeling really depressed about how excited he was
for the new Madonna album and how incapable I was of even feigning enough
interest in it to hold down my minority stake in a brief exchange of small
talk.
44. Rae Sremmurd – SremmLife
I wish these two dudes had a song about owning
a cabin in Montana. That would be dope as fuck.
43. Selena Gomez – Revival
I can’t tell if this actually sucks or if it’s
just reminding me of my own mortality super hard. There will never be any new people
born older than Selena Gomez currently is, even though Selena Gomez is technically
still a zygote.
42. Bjork – Vulnicura
I wonder if Bjork’s inner voice sounds like
Bjork. Like when she’s trying to remember where she parked, is there a little
Bjork in there cooing “I think it’s ohn the thirrrrrhd floorrrrrr, cuz I
remehmbehr it was yellow-ooooh-ooooooh-oooh.”
41. Kamasi Washington - The Epic
I’m not going to cape too hard for
experimental/avant garde music, but to the extent that the pretentious stuff is
really necessary, its greatest function is making people sound like the
complete idiots they are when they try to sell us on Adele Lyrics As Important
Literature Of The Moment or whatever brand of academicized middlebrow horseshit
they’re currently peddling. You get to be like “oh yeah, but what about that
guy who arranged Kendrick Lamar’s album also releasing 9 hours of original
space jazz?” And then they go “hey, come on, this is about me and not you, I
mean Adele, this is about Adele.” And you go “wait a minute, people are cynical
dipshits” and the entire sordid physics of the world’s economic mechanisms open
in your brain like a blooming nightmare flower, and you get to just keep
walking down the street feeling like some kind of an extraterrestrial
missionary or something.
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| There's just no possible way that ALL lives matter, dude |
40. Songhoy Blues - Music in Exile
The most comforting thought I’ve had all day is that there’s a good chance these guys have never even heard of Donald Trump.
39. Muse – Drones
When I was first getting into rock music as a
preteen in the early 90’s, there was this shift between liking a vast majority
of the new music I heard and that no longer being the case. It made me feel sad
and confused and lonely as only a preteen can while running into blind alleys
of identity formation and looking down at your clothes and going “ew no, I feel
like a clown in these,” and every time I hear Muse it’s like rediscovering that
I still have access to those feelings. I do NOT appreciate it. I’m a grown man
in my late 30’s. I don’t have time for that shit.
38. Ashley Monroe - The Blade
Here’s the first of the contemporary country
albums I’ll be subjected to. I always have this impulse to be diplomatic about
not liking this stuff, because I know country music is an aspect of American
culture that is inseparable from our intentionally divisive class structure,
and I try my best to be a human ally and stay aware of my many intersectional
privileges as both a white hetero cis male AND as a person whose background has
afforded me an education and cultural and aesthetic values which may
justifiably be considered and scorned as “elite” by a majority of Americans.
But if there’s one thing 2015 is teaching us about the large, amorphous, and heterogeneous
segment of America that tends most to listen to and enjoy country music, it’s
that there’s not really a lot of public emphasis among that group on meeting
people halfway, listening to other points of view, and emerging with an
enlightened understanding of your fellow human’s struggles.
So: this sucks. If you like this, or anything
that sounds like it, you’re a pigfucking ignoramus who doesn’t deserve to be
alive. Your mind is garbage, and it’s a nesting ground for garbage, and I don’t
have time for you or your feelings.
If that makes me an elitist asshole, I guess
I’ll just have to patiently wait for you to explain my wrongness to me, kind of
like how you guys are doing a great job incorporating the three whole words of
information contained within the phrase “black lives matter” into your
worldview without getting all bent out of shape. Oh wait, opposite. Fuck you. I
hope President Trump turns your whole community of dirteating mutants into a
godforsaken nuclear wasteland run by a warlord water baron. You’ll deserve it.
Actually, “Winning Streak” is kind of peppy. I
mean, I got no actual beef with Ashley Monroe or her music. There’s plenty of
other shit I also don’t like.
37.
Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
This woman is great. I think we can all agree
on that. I’m not talking about the music, per se, although that’s pretty damn
good too. Just: this is an excellent example of a human being. I mean, come on.
How angry do we have to constantly be at each other when one of us is this? We’re gonna stomp
on, for example, this person at a
Donald Trump rally if they write the wrong thing on a sign? Really? That’s
necessary? What the fuck species am I even a member of right now?
36. Hop Along - Painted Shut
Well look at that, Rolling Stone’s Best of 2015
list has got me feeling some feelings. I wish this was like a Dire Straits
album I could just make fun of offhandedly. Instead it’s this collection of
brilliant Juliana Hatfieldesque female-fronted 90’s major label subsidiary indie
rock revivalist songs that openly and vulnerably explore how unfair life can
be, and I’m in no emotional state to handle it at the moment, or maybe ever.
35. Vince Staples - Summertime '06
Hey Ashley Monroe fans, this one’s for you.
34. Marilyn Manson - The Pale Emperor
Big fan of the opening couple of sentences of
the Marilyn Manson Wikipedia entry: “Marilyn Manson is an American rock band
from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Formed in 1989 by frontman Marilyn Manson and
Daisy Berkowitz, the group was originally named Marilyn Manson & the Spooky
Kids with their theatrical performances gathering a local cult following in the
early 1990s.” The following details pop out at me: Fort Lauderdale is a funny
and perfect place for Marilyn Manson to be from, “The Spooky Kids” is great,
and the idea that this musical act has been around long enough to rent a car
while only ever having made the music they’ve made. All of those details are
great. FYI, this dude is 46 years old.
33. Beach House - Depression Cherry
I just moved to Baltimore. People here don’t
give a fuck. They wear sweat pants in public, and smoke a ton of weed, and
everybody still gets laid. There’s not this sense of crowdedness or
competition. Everybody’s just here doing whatever, and nobody’s trying to make
anybody feel like a loser or a failure for waiting tables well into your 40’s.
It can feel like there’s no stakes, which is both a liberatingly accurate
appraisal of the actual stakes for most of the shit we spend our time worrying
about and an invitation to lifelong, roach-infested, poverty stricken, gun
violence accepting complacency. The most immediate upshot in terms of music is
I now, suddenly, have zero worries about whether or not I am liking the “wrong”
anything. So far, being in Baltimore makes me feel like a regular, natural man
in that regard.
Beach House is a good band. They make pretty
music that I like listening to, and I am allowed to like it, and I don’t have
to care about anything more complicated than that. Maybe nobody’s actually trying
to pull a fast one on anybody, and you can just be alive. This is kind of a new
thing for me. That’s not how it feels like in Chicago, where I just got done
with 14 years of tense striving and more or less gainful employment. We’ll see.
The next Beach House year-end list album commentary could easily be “get me out
of here, I can’t live like this.”
32. Jazmine Sullivan - Reality Show
Listening to this album makes me feel a little
more in tune to what it’s like to be a black woman, which is as revelatory for
me to experience as it is a dopey thing for me to say. Of course I’m fucking
nowhere near understanding even one minute of what it’s like to be a black
woman. I know that. I guess what I’m saying is this is so good it makes me want
to paint my toenails while watching an Angela Bassett movie, and that would be
a very unusual activity for me.
31. Leon Bridges - Coming Home
I’m glad there are 26 year old gospel kids from
Fort Worth on a soul revivalist kick. I’ve had some misgivings about soul
revival stuff, and I think it’s because there are such huge holes left by the
untimely deaths of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, and the untimely gritsing of Al
Green. The roadmap just has this gigantic Area 51 on it of what those dudes
would have gotten up to next, and reminding us of their greatness without
either approaching it or advancing it is maybe a little more bitter than sweet
to me. But I totally understand how tall of an order that is.
Maybe the real missing element is there’s just
no longer any such thing as studio and/or backing bands as good as Booker T.
& the M.G.’s or the Funk Brothers or the J.B.’s or the Wrecking Crew or the
Bar-Kays or the Meters or the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band or the T.S.U.
Toronadoes or the Skatalites, or whatever astronauts of yore explored the deep
inner space of how far in the pocket a group of musicians can get together. Those
great gunslinging mercenaries of sound may be a thing of the past, a casualty
of technology and modern economics. It’s individual producers now, and all you
have to do instead of paying eight people for their dedication is get one
perfectly mic’d snare hit into a sampler.
The best current bands are on late night talk
shows earning regular paychecks from doing intros and outros, or following rich
old fuckers like Keith Richards around, or doing commercial work, and if any of
them were creative geniuses they’d be working in the studio on their own and
raking in the dough on publishing like, I don’t know, Jon Brion? Whatever. I
walked myself out pretty far on this one.
30. Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Style
Dude, I wish I had a nice pithy fast joke here. What’s up with the food for thought on these, Rolling Stone? I thought you were supposed to be a walking talking clown corpse. More Marilyn Manson albums, please. Less actually good things like this. I’m not trying to write a novel here.
29. Joanna Newsom – Divers
I’m getting pretty tired of feeling like some
kind of illiterate subhuman for not being able to enjoy her utterly
impenetrable songwriting or get past her squeaky voice or impossibly baroque
arrangements. I already dropped out of grad school once this year, and it was
the right decision for me. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. You hear me, Joanna?
Have fun keeping the gate. I’m outta here.
28. Miguel – Wildheart
This guy had an album in 2012 that ended up on
all of these lists, and now here’s me being like “ugh, THIS guy again.” It
definitely says more about me than it does about the thing itself that I can
feel that way about giving something eleven minutes of my attention once every
three years, but it doesn’t say NOTHING about that thing either.
27. Eric Church - Mr. Misunderstood
Oh, are you Mr. Misunderstood, Eric Church? You
liked Jeff Tweedy even though you grew up in Appalachian North Carolina? Man,
how did you cope with that? Please write a song about it. If you can be a white
guy from the south singing a country song about feeling misunderstood in 2015,
that would sure be great. We could sure all benefit from hearing that. It would
help us all to understand the very serious and quite important plight of our
fellow Americans who find themselves stricken with feeling kind of weird
sometimes in between not ever being murdered by policemen. Why don’t you make
fun of a list of 50 albums while you’re at it, dude? That would be even more
creative.
26. Future - DS2
My life is not anywhere near difficult enough
for me to feel a constant need to pretend like I’m some kind of invulnerable
bulletproof baller, possessing of otherworldly constitution and appetite for
the consumption of vices and impervious to human emotions, floating
consequence-free through a violent world I’m the unapologetic master of. I’m
grateful for that. But I can’t shake the feeling that this shit is some kind of
tragic mandatory version of cosplay, not a real sustainable human way to live
and be. Future? This is fucking blues music. This shit is hundreds of years
old.
25. Darlene Love - Introducing Darlene Love
Darlene Love sang “He’s A Rebel,” so I’m sure
as shit not trying to get between her and whatever paychecks she’s pulling in
these days. I hope she gives away a whole bunch of CDs at the next PBS pledge
drive and enjoys a lucrative tour of America’s most prestigious “old people
sitting down in public” style music venues.
24. Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment – Surf
Fact: each track on this album is 45 minutes
long. It’s a sixteen album long album. Its runtime can only be measured in
geologic epochs. It’s that epic. That’s how visionary Chance the Rapper is. I
totally just phoned this one in, and you know what, fuck it. You’re welcome.
23. Mark Knopfler - Tracker
Holy shit, I was just kidding earlier about a
Dire Straits album. I swear, I had no idea. I feel like I accidentally wished
this whole thing into being. Sorry everybody.
22.
Florence + the Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
If you can make it all the way through this
without pausing to listen to “Surfin’ Bird” in order
to remind yourself that you actually like music, you’re a stronger person than
I am.
21. Chris Stapleton – Traveller
Fuck off, country. Seriously, fuck off whole
country.
20. Don Henley - Cass County
Especially fuck off guy from the Eagles doing a
wizened old music man faux country album with fucking Mick Jagger on it. Can’t
you afford to live in a retirement home staffed by nurses who will pretend to
give a shit about your music, or is that basically what Rolling Stone Magazine already
is, and I took a wrong turn and ended up here?
19. Kurt Vile - b'lieve i'm goin down...
I don’t spend a lot of time listening to Kurt
Vile, but I deeply appreciate his annual appearance on these lists. I feel like
a boxer getting his ass kicked who’s like “sweet, there’s the bell, now I get
to go sit on my little stool for a minute.”
18. Boz Scaggs - A Fool to Care
Production fact: very low in the mix of the
percussion tracks on each of these songs is the sound of a middle-aged dad’s
shitty Viagra balls slapping against the alcohol-soaked ass cheeks of a woman
he just met at the hotel bar.
17. Keith Richards - Crosseyed Heart
Keith Richards fact: Keith Richards’s rapper
name is Shitty Viagra Balls. Also his face is that too.
16. Jack U - SKrillex and Diplo Present Jack U
I’m prepared to refer to this, in writing, as
the “Hands down, the Best Album of the Year” if it means not having to listen
to it.
15. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear
This is that guy from Fleet Foxes doing grown
up adult contemporary songwriter stuff. There is no chair on earth comfortable
enough for me to sit though it.
14. Wilco - Star Wars
I’m not here to participate in blowing
additional smoke up Jeff Tweedy’s already fully sanctified ass, but this is a
great model for just exactly how few fucks an artist of this guy’s stature
should be giving at all times. Like Keith Richards called his album “Crosseyed
Heart,” like he’s trying to prove some bluesman-to-be-reckoned-with point, and
this thing is called “Star Wars” and just has some take it or leave it songs
buried in fuzz and recorded in what sounds like a single afternoon. How is Jeff
Tweedy acting like he’s got less to lose than Keith Richards in 2015?
13. Tame Impala – Currents
I had a job interview the other day, and the
subject of music came up, and the person interviewing me was ten years younger
than me and had never heard of the Flaming Lips, and my bones turned to dust
and my desiccated remains floated away on the breeze. The worst part is how
desperately I hope they get back to me. Tame Impala is fine. Everything’s fine.
It’s all JUST FINE.
12. Lana Del Rey – Honeymoon
I’m out of nice things to say about Lana Del
Ray or who’s the other one? All the other ones. I was starting to feel bad
about it, but this one YouTube video has 34 million hits. So she ain’t hurting.
11. Sleater-Kinney - No Cities To Love
SENT 5:02PM: “Kelly, I'm listening to the new
Sleater-Kinney album right now and I kind of wish I currently wasn't, is that
okay, am I an okay person? Do I deserve to be loved?”
RECEIVED 5:32PM: “Haha. My beloved wife shares
your same view on it, so yes.”
PHEWWWWWWWWWW. Phew.
10. Blur - The Magic Whip
Damon Albarn is probably the best looking 47
year old man alive, so it’s okay if you just totally don’t listen to any of his
music ever again. Sorry if that’s sexiest, A.K.A. prejudiced against sexy
people.
9. The Arcs - Yours, Dreamily
This is a super group with a dude from The
Black Keys and a dude from The Shins and Amy Winehouse’s producer and a Dap
King or two and one of them was also in TV on the Radio. This is like saying
“hooray for the music industry!” This is like if the I Heart Radio App was a
band playing a concert sponsored by a vodka. Like if this was the only music
that survived the human apocalypse, future alien archaeologists would somehow
be like “ehhhhh we get it.”
8. Various Artists - Hamilton: Original Broadway Soundtrack
I do not consider myself worthy of the
phenomenon, so all I can do is direct you to the great Tim Sniffen, a man I
know who has apparently seen
Hamilton.
7. Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free
“Isbell's
subjects are overworked and underprivileged – a bored police officer who kills
time pulling over women” – Rolling Stone describing why this is good.
How can you be overworked, bored, and killing
time all at once? That sounds like being underworked. How can you be
simultaneously underprivileged and capable of pulling over women at your own
random bored whim? This is a pretty good read on what’s going on in America in
2015, Rolling Stone. Really, really good work. Cool job, guys.
6. Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
This is much more high ranking than I would
have thought possible for something which avoids being so many awful things
Rolling Stone always loves, such as lowbrow pretentious, self-serious,
overdone, ubiquitous, well-branded, boring, being the product of an old and/or
already very famous person, obvious, charmless, and facile. To name a few.
5. The Weeknd - Beauty Behind the Madness
This is like some fucking copyright-cleared
“20TEENS MUSIC plays” scene soundtrack from a low budget period piece comedy
that savagely makes fun of right now. This is what Napoleon Basicbitchamite
dances to at the big talent show.
4. D'Angelo - Black Messiah
Everybody who talks about this album mentions
the fifteen years that lapsed between D’Angelo releases, and after slogging
though this whole list to get here, I totally get it. God damn is this ever
RIGHT ON TIME.
3. Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
If I may go meta for a second, I just briefly
had a cut/paste incident in which the words “Drake - If You're Reading This
It's Too Late” got replaced by “Napoleon Basicbitchamite,” and I thought that
worthy of sharing. Guys, look, I listen to Drake, but not, like, on purpose.
I’m getting more than enough Drake from atmospheric Drake exposure. Big fan of
all the memes, Drake! Keep memein’.
2. Adele – 25
The person who wrote this typed out each
letter. They typed out an A, and then a D, and then an E, and then an L, and
then another E. And then, you know, a bunch of other stuff too. That’s pretty
amazing. That’s like, that’s overkill, you guys.
1. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly
You know who is definitely not fucking around? Kendrick
Lamar. Even Rolling Stone is like “yeah, we can’t give it to Adele, and believe
us, we want to, we’re Rolling The Fuck Stone.”
