{"id":28877,"date":"2016-04-17T22:47:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T22:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/?page_id=28877"},"modified":"2016-04-17T22:47:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T22:47:27","slug":"the-pop-of-king-ear-candy-2004-the-year-in-music","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/king-family\/columns-king-uit-entertainment-weekly\/the-pop-of-king-ear-candy-2004-the-year-in-music\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pop of King: Ear Candy \/ 2004: The Year in Music"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"kingcolumn\"<\/a>Compiling a year-end \u201cbest-of\u201d list is a tradition for most critics, but it has also become something of a tradition to adopt a tone of lofty, humorous disdain while offering them (I think of this style as New York Times Modern). \u201cWhat a very silly thing to be doing,\u201d the critic seems to be saying, \u201cbut if you want to waste your time\u2014here\u2019s my list.\u201d
\nYou won\u2019t find that attitude here. I love end-of-the-year lists (although I have a tendency to avoid the ill-tempered 10 Worst bitchfests). I love them so much in fact that it\u2019s going to take me three whole columns to elucidate my own favorites.
\nI\u2019m starting with the best music I heard in 2004, and I haven\u2019t bothered overmuch with whether or not the music in question appeared after January 1: \u201cA foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.\u201d I think Vanilla Ice said that.
\nAnd I begin where I always do, by saying that I still miss Marvin Gaye and still wish someone would release a single as danceable as KC & the Sunshine Band\u2019s \u201cThat\u2019s the Way (I Like It).\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the way I liked it in the year now drawing to a close:
\nThe prodigiously talented Eminem delivered two great tracks, one sacred and one profane\u2014\u201cMosh\u201d and \u201cJust Lose It.\u201d If any two songs have ever done a better job of marking the two ends of hip-hop\u2019s playing field, I don\u2019t know what they are. Some critics have spanked \u201cJust Lose It\u201d for its silliness (the song\u2019s high point is a fart noise). My response: That\u2019s right, fool, it\u2019s silly. Now you silly too. \u201cMosh\u201d is angry and adult. That doesn\u2019t make it better than \u201cJust Lose It,\u201d just different. The two together show how much running room hip-hop affords a fleet-footed lyricist. Em takes advantage. Good for him.
\nLoretta Lynn\u2019s Van Lear Rose was the best country album I heard this year (especially the kickin\u2019 \u201cHave Mercy\u201d), but the best country singles could be found on the radio: \u201cSuds in the Bucket,\u201d by Sara Evans; \u201cSave a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),\u201d by Big & Rich; and \u201cEarthbound,\u201d by the incomparable Rodney Crowell.
\nBefore I move on to my idea of the best albums of the year, I want to mention two more indi-vidual tracks. The best pop single of 2004\u2014no doubt in my mind\u2014was \u201cI Believe in a Thing Called Love\u201d by the Darkness. I have no idea where this group comes from; judging from the lead singer\u2019s weird, drilling falsetto, Mars might be a good guess. That voice may not be for the long haul, but on this single it mates perfectly with the fuzz-tone snarl of the rhythm guitar and the song\u2019s lyric, which is the ideal expression of adolescent ecstasy: \u201cGod, you\u2019re touching me!\u201d The album (Permission to Land) is sorta ordinary, but that one song is for the (teen)ages.
\nThe other track comes from the recent John Lennon album Acoustic. Halfway through a fairly mediocre grab bag of musty artifacts assembled by Yoko Ono, slotted between a tame rendition of \u201cThe Luck of the Irish\u201d and a muttered fragment of \u201cWoman is the Nigger of the World,\u201d comes a scari-fying version of \u201cJohn Sinclair\u201d that made the hair stand up on the nape of my neck. You listen to this and all at once understand that Lennon was a great deal more than the cool Beatle; he was very likely the essential Beatle.
\nAnd the best albums I heard this year, with no apologies (and no fake boredom):
\n(6) Mojo Box, by Southern Culture on the Skids. Thundering garage rock with a twist of the lip. Is that twist a grin or a sneer? You decide.
\n(5) Tonight Alright, by Spiderbait. Just great rip-ass, back-draft rock & roll. Check out the Bait\u2019s insane cover of Ram Jam\u2019s \u201cBlack Betty.\u201d If Clay Aiken tried to sing like this, he\u2019d catch on fire.
\n(4) Live in Aught-Three, by James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards. The best live rock al-bum of the year. Generous, at more than 70 minutes, and not a single bad track, although \u201cChoctaw Bingo\u201d is still the standout.
\n(3) The Revolution Starts… Now, by Steve Earle. Earle is one of the best songwriters currently working the American pop-music scene, and this album\u2014written and recorded at full gallop\u2014is fiery and funny. Earle understands both working-class dreams and the working-class demons that sometimes lead ordinary Joes and Janes to ruin. And if that sounds like a country song, don\u2019t be fooled. This re-cord rocks.
\n(2) Ollabelle, by Ollabelle. This is gospel music for people who ordinarily don\u2019t listen to gospel. Not a bad track on the record, but nothing released in the last 12 months can match the joy and exu-berance of \u201cBefore This Time.\u201d
\n(1) American Idiot, by Green Day. Not just the best album of the year, but one of the best to be released in the entire rock era. There has never been a record so sweet and meaningful that is also so… damn… LOUD. American Idiot succeeds on every level. Green Day has created a rock & roll mas-terpiece of far greater ambition than Tommy. I\u2019ve played the spots off this sucker, and every time I listen to it I can barely believe how good it is.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Compiling a year-end \u201cbest-of\u201d list is a tradition for most critics, but it has also become something of a tradition to adopt a tone of lofty, humorous disdain while offering them (I think of this style as New York Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4585,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-28877","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28886,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28877\/revisions\/28886"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}