Current mood:	nauseated
Current music:	typing and people on their phones
Entry tags:	music:year-end

it made sense last night
The hangover. Oh god, the hangover. Bud Lite is the ambrosia of Satan. So awful and terrible and no good. It doesn't even taste good. I'm pretty sure I was dead at some point early this morning and they sent me back just to make me suffer. Oh. Did I mention the pain?

Anyway. The pain makes me no good for work, of which there is barely any, anyway. So, that means I foolishly log into lj from work so I can go crazy with the year end shit. Mmmmm...New Year's.

First, my very very favorite part of the end of the year, the best albums. I've been working on this list for weeks. I've reordered the final ten several times. I've compared and consulted every major magazine top ten and that leads to the following disclaimer obversations.

*My list does not contain what is apparently universally regarded as the best album of the year, The White Stripes' Elephant, because I don't enjoy the White Stripes and I didn't even listen to the album.

*This list also does not include Radiohead's Hail to the Thief even though I did actually listen to it, perhaps twice. After listening, my opinion was the same as it was before and I believe it was "mmmm...that album came with some real pretty swag."

*Several magazine's have included Justified on their lists. I think perhaps it came out in the UK in 2003, which would explain some of these inclusions. Other people are clearly trying to jump on a bandwagon they wanted no part of last year.

*There were some great albums this year. This was a much more difficult list to make than last year's because I had so many more to choose from. Of course, part of that is simply that I had more ability to buy music this year. Still.

Okay, so on to

*OutKast -- Speakerboxx/The Love Below: Dre's album is a funked-up sexy slide through a commitment-phobe's nightmares and fantasies that never seems to put it's feet on the ground, while Big Boi's is earthy, blazing booty music for your mind. It's like they had to split up so we could understand why they work together. Air and earth, water and fire. That whole thing about something being greater than the sum of it's parts doesn't apply here because OutKast adds up to exactly what it should and this album is a show and tell of why that is. Last night we were listening to The Love Below and saying "ice cold" a lot instead of "cool" and T said "you realize that Andre3000 just now made up five better words and we're all just lame now." And that's exactly how it should be. Ahead of their time with every album and it's not exactly that the world moves too slowly, because no one's actually expecting us to catch up. It's like those 50's-era visions of what the year 2000 would be like, with hover cars and life on Mars and all that. It's not true, but it should be 'cause it's so cool. That's how I think of OutKast's music. Everyone loves it, but no one ever really tries to copy it, because no one thinks they could. And they're probably right. [Favorite tracks: Dre, "Stink" because it sets so many great insults to music and "Dracula's Wedding" which, of all the commitment-phobia on the album, this is the most playful and compelling; Big Boi, "Knowing" has some kick-ass rhymes and phrasing that blows my mind and "Church", I don't know, the beat, the idea, the irony. I love it.]

*Lucinda Williams -- World Without Tears: This album is slow and painful, with all these incredible moments of clarity dropped in when you least expect them. I was obsessed with it, listened to nothing else for at least a month and just couldn't get the stories she was telling out of my head. She talks about sex and love in a feisty, honest and insightful way. You listen to this and you want to go out and live this powerful, passionate life. The album tells you upfront that that life is gonna hurt like a bitch more often than not, but it makes it seem worth it. [Favorite tracks: "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings" is so Paul Westerberg, but yet still very much her own and every line strikes me as deeply true and "World Without Tears" with it's pretty melody and pained list of lessons learned.]

*50 Cent -- Get Rich or Die Tryin': I think the idea of blowing up over night was invented for 50. He's like the fucking Pandora of hiphop. The gods all got together and brought gifts to create the perfect rapper. The gangsta's brought the cred, the bullet holes, the will to survive at any cost; the hiphop dons gave the bling, the women, the cars. The dirty south people gave him that drawl and a feel for a party, the west coast (as personified by Dre, of course) provided that signature funk groove and impeccable production. New York gave the attitude and the sense of humor. Even the hated Ja Rule-style senstive thugs bring in the romance and accompanying insecurities. Add Eminem's penchant for self-confession at just the right moment, crossover appeal and some of his sense of drama and poof. A sensation. And the thing is, it's also a really really solid album, from the party jams to the love songs to the true life cautionary tales. "Like a fat kid loves cake." Come on. Perfect. [Favorite tracks: "Many Men (Wish Death)" has probably my favorite opening of any rap song in ages and the line about "blood in my eyes and I can't see" gives me shivers. "P.I.M.P", if only for the outro.]

*Jay-Z -- The Black Album: From new stud to old master. It's the musical equivilent of planning your own funeral and deciding how you'll be remembered. Not that I'm completely sold on the retirement angle, but I really do think he wants to. Every song boasts over and over about how great Hova is, he's the best of all time and I believe him when he tells me he's got nothing more to say. He talks about the same things, he's still infused with arrogance and swagger-- he knows he's the best in the game and how he knows is because he says so. But everything's also touched with this sense of ending, of that not being enough anymore. He talks about not getting credit for his smarts and there's this image in my mind of the guy in the club with the bottles and the flashy car outside and all he wants to do is sit down and tell you the important things, but you're never really listening, just staring wide-eyed and nodding and he's getting tired of it. If leaving is the only way to make people hear what he's trying to say under all that bling, then that's what he's gonna do and damn will we miss him when he's gone. [Favorite tracks: "December 4th" is self-aggrandizing legend-making autobiography at it's best and "99 Problems" reminds me why I will always love Rick Rubin best of all.]

* The Roots -- Phrenology: Before this album, I loved the Roots and I respected the Roots and there were some songs that really got me, but in general there was something missing in the albums. This one, though, it really clicked. All the songs are solid. The radio station interludes between songs works and enhances the music rather than distracting the listener as so many interludes on hiphop albums do. The musicality of the Roots is always present, but here it has an accessability I've never found before and I happen to think that's a good thing. In this case, at least, it's a sign of growth, not selling out. [Favorite tracks: "Sacrifice" should be trite, but ends up sincere and sticks in my head and "The Seed 2.0" is possibly the strangest song ever, but it works and the growling determination on "I'll call him rock and roll" gets me every damn time.]

*Belle & Sebastian -- Dear Catastrophe Waitress: Sweet and playful bouncy pop gets no better than this. So cute, but it stops short of being too precious by undercutting it with wit. The songs seem delicate, but when you really listen, there's a lot to hang onto and shake around. I'm looking for adjectives for it and I keep bouncing between charming, pretty and clever. So, it's all of those things, too. Mostly, the album just makes me smile, even the small dips into darker places and melancholy and that's worth a lot. [Favorite tracks: "If She Wants Me" brings me joy even when I can't decide if it's happy or sad or neither and "Mike Piazza, New York Catcher" is a absolutely lovely song that manages to work in the line "mike piazza, new york catcher, are you straight or are you gay" and that needs no further explanation.]

*Bubba Sparxxx -- Deliverance: Timbaland's been sitting on these bluegrass and country samples and riffs for years, just waiting for the perfect moment to use them, I'm sure of it. Each twang-filled beat and drawling hook is more surprising than the next and Bubba's voice and laid-back Southern pride hold it all together. I can't imagine anyone making such countrified hiphop and making it work, but this stuff bounces and brawls and even gets introspective. It's so much better than Bubba's last album that it's hard for me to understand how he got from there to here. And really, getting somwhere is what this album is about-- the place that you call home, the journey you have to take to get there and the things you learn about yourself along the way. I'm pretty sure there's not a more classic theme than that, especially in Southern music and lit. [Favorite tracks: "Deliverance", like any good title track, manages to sum up the themes of the entire album in one song and "Hootnanny" which has an incredible sense of humor and wordplay and yes, Justin Timberlake's gorgeous "oooooh"s.]

*My Morning Jacket -- It Still Moves: To keep with the Southern theme, this album is also about sifting through some classic motifs and sounds and making something new with what works. Jim James's voice is constantly calling at you from this tunnel of reverb (the whole album was recorded in a silo) and his lyrics aren't exactly about anything, but the songs are. This is an album that's about the sound and all the interesting techniques-- technical, musical, vocal-- are just a part of that, serving the larger goal of creating a living, breathing sound that actually takes up space in the air next to you. [Favorite tracks: "I Will Sing You Songs" such a pleasing title and mission statement and "Just One Thing" was so incredible live that I get to remember the concert every time I listen.]

*blink-182 -- self-titled: It sounds exactly like blink-182. It sounds nothing like blink-182. And then there's a Cure song and a strange spiralling instrumental thrown in for kicks. Admittedly, I've always thought that blink were better musicians then they were given credit for, but I also think they didn't maybe care as much as they did this time, or not in the same way. This album feels like something that belongs to someone. You can tell they spent time together, in that house pouring out all this music and pounding it into the right shapes. They're wearing their influences all over the music and revamping everything they've ever done from a new perspective. The songs still telling the same story, it just makes you listen differently. [Favorite tracks: "I Miss You" sounds to me the most like the older blink stuff with this new twist and "Always" just hits me in a way I can't exactly describe.]

*And the ten spot is where I drop everything else I couldn't fit on the list. Blur -- Think Tank (Damon reinvents music one more time and I think it might be "ethnic punk rock with a melody and a dance beat" but I've given up trying to figure him out), Beyonce -- Dangerously in Love (the ballads need some work, but the uptempo numbers shake and slither into your brain) Kelis -- Tasty (been waiting forever for this and it more than meets expectations), Ryan Adams -- Rock N Roll (didn't expect to like, did, still can't make the name go backwards on my computer), Jane's Addiction -- Strays (never thought they'd make it work plus age and minus heroin, but the thing is, they can't be what they were and they don't try, something too few reunited bands ever learn).

And if you made it through that, you get a cookie.





*"Hey Ya" -- OutKast: Wesley Clark knows they'll make you shake it like a Polaroid picture and my mom knows that ice-cold is what's cooler that cool and yet still, it's hip. How does he do that? I think it's the funky pants.

*"Crazy In Love" -- Beyonce ft. Jay-Z: Incredible single to launch a solo career. I actually didn't get sick of this song, I shook my ass and I learned that the best fur, it's chinchilla.

*"Cry Me A River" -- Justin Timberlake: I've heard so many different incarnations of this song-- creepy, amused, angry, sad, dirty, hesitant and full-on assault-- that I can't always remember what it sounded like the first time I heard it, but it doesn't matter because it always sounds amazing.

*"The Scientist" -- Coldplay: Everyone can feel like this song is really and truly about them and isn't that what pop music's supposed to be about?

*"Frontin'" -- Pharrell Williams ft. Jay-Z: A thug's love song that sounds like the best come on should-- utterly sincere and like a complete lie at the same time.



Wow. That took awhile. But such fun. Music, how I love thee. And my hangover has subsided a little, which I suppose is attributable less to time and more to the bottle of watermelon ice Gatorade I went out to buy at lunch.

Okay, it's kind of out of place in this post, but I already filled it out and I don't want to make a separate post, so here's the

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2003?

Gotta second that other chick and say that if told I would spend an entire summer composing a love ballad story about Trace, I would have told them to get off the KMart crack. I never had anything at all against Trace, I kinda liked him, liked to see him in fic but I certainly didn't think I'd find him compelling enough to write about, nor was I a Trace/Justin fan. And then boom, suddenly there's this short dirty boy smoking not ten feet away and you just have to go with it.

I also wrote trickyfish, which frankly if someone had told me last winter that I was gonna do that, I'd have taken the blue pill and gone right back into a trickyfish-less computer-controlled oblivion instead. Actually, if that could be arranged... But, no, co-writing is always satisfying in a whole different way than things you write alone and I'm still proud of that Lance.

What's your favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest.

Instinctive first answer is the Trace. It was so much fun to write and don't even think we're kidding when we say we'd keep writing it forever if it were possible. I still think it's a fucking solid story, too. And the number of inside jokes wrapped up in that, plus the experience of reading it out loud to k8 at 2 am after a Justin Timberlake show. Man, it's such fun. And any time I reread it, I get to experience all that all over again.

Other contenders include the Cookbook story, because I had a lot of fun tailoring that to what I thought maggie would like and really working on a Justin characterization I enjoyed. "nothing that I could see" because I had never wrtten chris/jc before and I'm really proud of how it turned out even if it wasn't at all the most popular.

The most popular would be either the lambs au or "but in the quiet". I love the au and it makes me happy (as you know if you've ever been forced to take the k8 and Katie AU Tour of Boston) but I wrote most of that in 2002. "BitQ", I like. A lot, even, but it didn't come out exactly as I'd hoped and didn't get the beta-ing I really would have liked for it to have, so it's not something I look back on with incredible fondness.


Did you take any writing risks this year? (See above for unexpected pairings, etc.) What did you learn from them?

I wrote a couple pairings I'd never written and liked how they turned out. I did a lot more with JC than I ever had before and that was really rewarding. I tried out a lot of structures/concepts that I'd been playing with-- circular with last lines that repeat as first lines, using graphics in the story, the main character not talking at all, the roadtrip layout-- and some of them worked, some of them didn't and some worked, but not the way I thought they would.


Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?

Most pressingly, I want to finish the two bday fics I'm late in finishing.

Then, I want to finish up all the WIPs on my harddrive that are worth finishing. There's an au and a timbertrick thing in particular.

I want to try out some new fandoms.

I want to do some more cowriting, some of which is already planned and anything else that comes up.

I have about six or seven structure things and a few titles playing in my brain that need a story, so I want to find those.

And that's about it, I think. Mostly, I feel like I haven't written much at all in months and when I did it was harder than it should be, so I'd like to find my groove again and I think that's gonna be about trying as many new things as possible, so I'm open. Hey, I'll even write trickyfish again if that's what it takes.



And now I'm really and truly finished. Oh, my. I have to be here another hour. Or maybe not really, as ze D is gone and hot admin!D just left for the day. Perhaps I'll ask La A if she has anything for me to do and then blow this popstand. It looks nice out and maybe the fresh air will help clear the fumes out of my head.