Sunday, December 24, 2006

Ten Best Albums of 2006?

The surprising thing is that I've actually listened to (and enjoyed) three of these. That hasn't been the case for years.



CLASSICS ROCK: THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2006 By DAN AQUILANTE - New York Post Online Edition: Seven

RECORDS are dead and the iPod is king, but old-fashioned, full-length albums are still going strong. Americans bought more than 456 million CDs this year, even as digital music services such as iTunes racked up 480 million single-track sales.

But digital competition has upped the ante for quality music. Savvy artists - from newcomers like England's Arctic Monkeys to vets like Pearl Jam - understood they couldn't afford to pad their albums with filler when the public can download the best and leave the rest.

Fittingly, the year's most notable releases came from established artists - some as fresh as Christina Aguilera, others as wizened as Bob Dylan - who reminded us why they count with sterling, rather than platinum, albums.




powered by performancing firefox

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps a commentary on the maturing tastes of the NY POST reviewer? I must admit, while never liking the Red Hot Chili Peppers' music much (they're among the Runners-Up), I have extra-musical reason to dislike them, as they collectively were involved in a sexual-molestation misdemeanor against an acquaintance of mine, which had the upshot of putting the lead singer in jail for a day of a week's sentence, and a civil suit settled to allow her and her family to purchase their domicile outright (as well as discovering a string of such incidents previously that had been bribed into hushing).

My own best album of 2006 is a 2002 release I've been slow to catch up with (hey, if Stephen King can get away with this)...Jawbox's MY SCRAPBOOK OF FATAL ACCIDENTS. An assembly of BBC Peel Sessions, unreleased tracks, concert performances and uncollected anthology contributions by DC's best punk band.

Looking forward to picking the Springsteen/Seeger...and do like a number of the others listed here.

Gonna do your own 10-best films, Bill? I imagine an X-best books might be problematic...

Unknown said...

Unfortunately my film attendance dropped of dramatically this year, so a 10 Best List is highly unlikely.

The three albums on the list I've heard are the more mature ones, for sure: the Cash, the Springsteen, and the Dylan. I liked all of them, though I wasn't bowled over by them, except for maybe the Cash.

Anonymous said...

I was betting it wasn't the Nelly Furtado.

My favorites are not close to anything on the list, though the Springsteen is OK.