'08's Music to Love More Than Music

A few days ago I was listening through my list of favorite albums this year with my friend Alicia, and I found myself skipping through albums, not being able to focus on one album for more than a few songs. I think that the best way to tell if you really do like an album is to play it for someone else, because that way you're putting in your vote of confidence for it and essentially letting your friend know how good your taste in music is. A cause for self reflection, if anything. Well I was finding that these albums that I had set aside to remember at the end of the year just weren't cutting it for me anymore. Whatever the reason, I began to think that, despite what I had previously though, 2008 might not have been that great of a year for music.

Not willing to accept this, I complied the list of 2008 albums that I have heard and went through each one, trying to remember how I felt about them all. I found myself getting to certain albums and exclaiming with joyous surprise that, yes, there was good 2008 music! I had simply forgotten them or, more likely, I heard the albums and thought to myself they were so good that I would remember them come the end of the year, and I simply forgot to put them in my list of best albums. Foolish Luke!

Well shoot folks, I don't mean to drag this introductory statement on too long, but I just needed to say that yes, 2008 was a good year for music, even if it was a tricky year. There were a lot of albums that I didn't notice very many others taking note of, there were a lot of people taking note of albums that were actually released last year, and there were people who were fooled by the theatrics or marketing skills of artists who have, in the past, actually given us good albums, but this year gave us ... unpleasing albums. At least, that's what I think. And that's what this blog is about, right, my thoughts?

Like last year, you'll find my list broken up into 4 different sections: Like (), Love (<), Love More (<3), and Love More Than Music (<3>), with, at the end, a post declaring my favorite album of the year. I do it this way because I feel like I'm not qualified enough to talk about how good an album is, but I darn well know how I feel about an album. To quote Tao Lin "People who seriously use the word 'best' are probably more capable of unsarcastic anger and hatred, because they believe some things are actually 'better' than other thing ... A list called 'The ten best books ever written' is like a list called 'the five best colors ever.' Except that the list about books is seriously, and like 80% of people accept that. 80% of people would never accept a list called 'The five best colors" seriously." (ANP Quarterly, #10, pg. 3).

There will be some minor adjustments to how the posts will be released, and how they're set up, but it will still be similar to last year. I think I scaled back on the amount of albums I'll be talking about, but that's because I just didn't have as much time this year as I did last year. But the list, I hope, will be just as diverse.

Pt.1 will soon be on it's way :)