Like a 2011 Annual, pasted with price reduction stickers and sitting forlornly in the bargain bin, my end of year list may have slightly missed its moment.
However as it’s the 7th year Ive engaged in this ludicrous pastime it’d be a shame to let it sit in “draft” status forever, even if it is the equivelent of being given a creme egg on halloween.
Someone once said that in the obsessive effort to try and hear everything, they’d managed to lose the joy of listening to anything. As my original 1000 song shortlist expanded rather than contracted through January I almost began to feel the same.
But these are 200 songs I absolutely adored in 2011. The order is a little suspect, and listening last night to a few between 100 and 150 almost had me tearing up the whole thing and starting again.
But “Best Of’s” are supposed to be individual, arbitrary, and of course hugely self indulgent. As an ex once said of the whole concept of having a music blog “why dont you just put up a picture of you blowing yourself“.
Visit the Music Like Dirt page on Facebook and let me know what tunes Ive criminally overlooked? Theres also Twitter or the comments section of this page.
You can watch/listen to a 200 song Youtube playlist featuring most of the top 200 (and a few excellent standins), I’ll possibly look into Spotify at some point.
There’s also a ZIP featuring some tracks.
Why do I feel like I need to apologise for putting Adele at No.1? The girl didn’t so much own 2011 as have it blindfolded, tied to the bed, and begging her to do as she please. Aside from the trifling matter of almost career ending throat surgery, Adele spent the year breaking records and hoovering up awards like cat hair. She even found herself a new fella, or album number 3 as he’s otherwise known.
And yet with success comes sneering. The Guardian declared her the leader of the New Bland, sitting astride a wave of beige pop that the paper somehow failed to notice during the preceding 40 years.
In January ’11 I saw Adele perform the song at a launch gig for the 21 album at Notting Hill’s Tabernacle. I’d not heard it before but instantly felt the same as I had when hearing her perform “Daydreamer” to a handful of people back in 2006 (my favourite track of that year).
“Don’t forget me, I beg,” – You haven’t really given me the chance, have you?
Please read The Quietus’s hilariously accurate critique of the lyrics to “Someone Like You” but while the article makes me chuckle I still think theres a no nonsense raw honesty to the lyrics. Back in January, she sang it barely a few feet from me accompanied by piano, lost in the words and by the end struggling to hold back the tears. Everyone present gave a huge gulp as it finished, breath taken by the beauty of both voice and words just as the audience at The Brits were later in the year (and by extension the 100 million viewers of that performance on Youtube).
HolyMoly who were also there summed it up better than i can, “Adele feels like an opened window on the sweaty bus of popular music. There’s no artifice, no bullshit“.
Not content with the ballad of the year Adele with a little help from Jamie XX, Heatwave and assorted MC’s also provided one of THE tunes of this years Notting Hill Carnival.
Adele – “Rolling In The Heat (The Heatwave Re-Fix)”
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Without doubt I have my moments of musical snobbery but sometimes you just have to admit the most popular may also actually be the best.
You see that limited edition DJ Only dub plate remix you got from a friend on an amusingly shaped USB stick, well let me break it to you softly, the woman who buys 3 CD’s a year exclusively from ASDA with her groceries, well this year her tunes were better than yours.
There were two or three tracks on Waits latest album that could easily have occupied this slot, particularly the joyous rockabilly stomp of “Get Lost”. In the end though the sheer ferocity, anger and inventiveness of “Hell Broke Luce” wins out.
Inspired in part by the story of Iraq vet Jeff Lucey who committed suicide on his return from the Gulf. To the sound of a military march Waits barks his fury as discordant percussion crashes around him, machine guns fire and The Stone’s Keith Richards draws thunderous riffs from his guitar.
LA Hip-Hop stalwarts Busdriver & Nocando have guested on each others records – notably Busdriver’s brilliant “Least Favourite Rapper” but Flash Bang Grenada (pronounced like the explosive, not the Caribbean island paradise) is their first and hopefully not last full length collaboration.
“If it was upto me everyone in the tea-party would be able to speak Farsi”
Busdriver packs more lyrical punch in one line than some do in entire careers, and “Perfect World” doesn’t disappoint. Listen to it on repeat to appreciative every quip filled couplet. The fact that it has the fattest squelchiest beat underneath doesn’t do any harm either.
Busdriver’s also back with his own new album too:
Speech Debelle wrote “Blaze Up A Fire” months before the English riots of 2011, but in the wake of them she felt compelled to release it as a free download in advance of her 2nd album.
Speech Debelle (read full statement):
“I feel it could give insight into the hearts and minds of some of the people that have taken part in, not only the peaceful marches for Mark Duggan in Tottenham and the Smiley Culture march for justice, but also I believe it speaks of the frustration of many young people who took part in the rioting and the consequent looting over London and areas of the UK. I am not attempting to condone, I’m attempting to be a voice of understanding.
It’s without doubt that what these young people have been doing is destructive and shameful….
These young people are not aliens dropped down from outer space on Friday night, they are our children….
Only people who cannot envision a positive future will take part in the destruction of their own community and if we acknowledge that, then we to ask the question why somebody so young feels they have so little to look forward to? I cannot allow myself to dehumanise these kids and see them as my enemy“.
LA’s Shlohmo has been turning out remixes to die for all year. His take on R&B colossus Drake’s “Marvin’s Room” is so laid back and soporific that putting it on a loop this morning transformed the hideous sweaty tumult of a London commute into something akin to chilling out in a floatation tank. Every shove, every bead of sweat, every disgruntled rustle of newspaper was nowt when given the unlikely soundtrack of Drake’s tale of 4 times a week sex and ill-advised hook ups with ex’s.
Shlohmo himself had this to say:
“I forgot i had this drake remix lyin around. this is seriously one of my fav songs of the year, if not ever. if youre one of those people that hates on pop music because you wear a backpack or smthing then plz chill out. try and appreciate shit even if u have to forget the context sometimes. good music is good music and u don’t have to front and pretend it’s below ur intellectual level“.
His remix of Burial’s “Shell Of Light” is if anything even better. Simply gobsmacking.
“been workin on this for the past few days. i just really couldn’t stop listening to the ending of “shell of light.” shit is so beautiful. so i did this so i could listen to it more. hope u like it ::)”
