Top 12 Albums, early list, 2007

[koganbot]

Here are my top 12 albums as of November 7.

1. Aly & A.J. Insomniatic
2. Miranda Lambert Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
3. Britney Spears Blackout
4. A-Trak Dirty South Dance
5. Kelly Clarkson My December
6. The Veronicas Hook Me Up
7. Ashley Monroe Satisfied
8. Ashley Tisdale Headstrong
9. Gogol Bordello Super Taranta!
10. Jordan Pruitt No Ordinary Girl
11. Travis Tritt The Storm
12. Gretchen Wilson One Of The Boys

Other contenders would be:

A.R.E. Weapons Modern Mayhem
John Anderson Easy Money
Blake Shelton Pure BS
The Sirens More Is More

I'm not hearing a lot of full albums this year, but I've got a viable top ten/twelve anyway. Order is provisional, the only albs sure to be standing at P&J time being Insomniatic and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. (The Aly & A.J. and the Miranda Lambert are the Pats and the Colts of LPs. The rest are barely in their league. So Britney would be the Packers [like, what the fuck's s/he doing (here)?]. Kelly'd be Pittsburgh, A-Trak the Titans.) I'm listing 12 in case I jettison the two Ashleys. Monroe's alb hasn't been released and may never be; Tisdale's I only heard a couple times last February and what I remember is superb for five tracks, then good to lousy after that, but the five might carry it over (three of those five are singles, all three ace). Ashley M's got a strong Dolly/Lee Ann voice that she goes cute with, with girly Jewelishness too; I haven't decided if she's too much or just right, wish the radio would give her a shot. A-Trak is a dance mixer-and-masher on great hip-hop material. Tritt's a blue-eyed blues and soul guy who found his career in country, has often been disappointingly weak, given his great growly pipes; but this time the mush songs are good ones, like Michael Bolton if Bolton had been good, and the searing, burning blues rockers sear and burn.

Not many guys on the list. Must be the much-ballyhooed crisis of masculinity.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Tisdale really suffers from methods of pop consumption these days: even five years ago we would've heard her first big hit, loved it without ever needing to think about her lack of character; after a few months had elapsed we'd have the second; and so on. Like Holly Valance or someone. And I probably wouldn't have gone near the album, and my relationship to her music would be nicely uncomplicated. But hearing the album first...I love love love at least four songs off it, but the thought "my GOD she's boring" still rises in my mind.

You've seen my potential list, it isn't changing but Lady Saw and Will Saul are making late-season rushes towards it.

Why and how is it that CHRIS SODDING MARTIN provides one of the best moments on the Kanye album? "Fireworks at Lake Michigan..."

[koganbot]

I don't know if I've spent more than twenty minutes total listening to Coldplay, but that track Chris Martin cowrote for Nelly Furtado last year was really nice too. Guess he's a subject for further research. I haven't heard "Fireworks on Lake Michigan," yet. (I lived in Chicago over the summer of 1975, so I might have seen fireworks at Lake Michigan, on July 4, though honestly I don't remember.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah it was, as was the track he wrote for Jamelia ('See It In A Boy's Eyes' - it'll be on youtube if you haven't heard it), as was the Brandy song which sampled 'Clocks', as was the Brandy song where she sang about being miserable and listening to Coldplay. I'm just surprised that Chris Martin himself, with his horrid voice, is so amazing on this track - it's called 'Homecoming', it's just the line "fireworks at Lake Michigan" which gets me.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

(I have listened to a lot of actual Coldplay and it's all draedful and/or dull.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Sufjan Stevens steals "Clocks," Chris Martin hits him right back with Lake Michigan!