When I did my Winter music preview, it resolved around us getting three new Ryan Adams albums this year. Ooops. Dude got #MeToo-ed and the first album has been indefinitely delayed. Granted this did not come to much of a surprise because, c'mon, we have known Adams has been a douche for quite a long time now. The first story I ever remember of him was that he once stopped a concert and refused to continue until a dude who shouted "Play Summer of '69" was kicked out. And there are a lot of stories of this guy being an unhinged mess. I remember an article for Jenny Lewis's last album (not the one being released tomorrow) which Adams produced songs for and I came away from this thinking, wow, this guy is bat-shirt crazy. Kind of makes me wonder why anyone get close to this guy in the first place. Oh well. There is still plenty of new music coming our way this spring. Here is what I will at the very least give a spin on Spotify. You can pre-order on Amazon by clicking on the title. Click the artist's name to be taken to their iTunes page.
Last decade, Ryan Adams released an album every year except the last, as well as three in 2005 and one of those was even a double albym. So only putting out six albums this decade seems a little slow for the singer. And that includes a full Taylor Swift cover album in the vein of The Smiths and what he called "a fully-realized sci-fi metal concept album." I am not sure which one of those was more absurd. Adams is leaving this decade with a bang by claiming he will again be releasing three albums in a calendar year. There seems to be a few more notable albums being released early this year as the music industries is changing. Usually the winter was dead foe new music aside from some up and coming artists (this winter sees two debut albums I am looking forward to be Maggie Rogers and Jade Bird). They labels used to save all the big names for the fall to get that Black Friday money but I do wonder as we switch from buying to streaming if getting music out for the summer will become the bigger priority. Here are the albums I will at least give a spin to on Spotify. Click on the album title to pre-order on Amazon and click the artist name to be taken to their iTunes page.
2016 sucked. Massively. We lost too many people who shaped my childhood to named. I have not been as ashamed of my Best Songs of the year’s list since 1999. Music was so bad last year; somehow Justin Beiber landed a Best Album nomination. Really, since music was so bad last year and so many great artists, died, the Grammy’s this year should just be a three hour tribute show. In some years, Leon Russell or Leonard Cohan would have gotten a lengthy tribute but they may just get stuffed in the In Memorium package this year as neither are in the top five this year (and that is not even counting David Bowie or Glen Frye who were paid tribute at last year’s ceremony). Oh yeah, and we also witnessed the worst presidential election in my lifetime, probably ever. Also as hit musical Hamilton taught us, at least no one is participation in duels. Instead we had dudes bragging about the size of his penis at a televised debate, bragging about being able to molest women, claiming political opponent’s father was involved in the JFK assassination, openly admitted to wanting to have sex with his daughter, promising to lock up his political opponents, and siding with Russia over our CIA. And that is just the guy that won. But as the great philosopher Adam Duritz one said, there is reason to believe that this year will be better than the last. So with that said, here are seven things to look forward to in 2017.
7. Obligatory Superhero Movie Mention: Superhero movies have been a mainstay on my Most Anticipated lists for a while now but honestly I am getting a bit worn out. I have had the Batman v. Superman blu-ray sitting on my desk for about a month now unopened, and I am two movies behind on the Marvel movies. Basically I did not watch one Superhero movie that was released in 2016. I am sure I will eventually and it may not happen this year, but eventually I am sure I will get around to watching Logan (March 3), Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (May 5), Wonder Woman (June 2), Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 7), Thor: Ragnorok (November 3), and Justice League (November 17). And really, you might as well put Star Wars: Episode VIII (December 15) in this category too.
6. Kong: Skull Island (March 10), The Mummy (June 9): Superhero’s are no longer the only films getting their own cinematic universes, now other movie studios are getting in on the action. Kong: Skull island takes place in the same universe as 2014’s Godzilla. Although that is a pretty limited universe because it is just the two large mutant animals that will not even appear on screen together until 2020. As lackluster the concept is, it is a pretty impressive cast: Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Goodman. Universal is getting a bit more ambitious, rebooting the very first shared cinematic universe with its monster movies, first up, The Mummy. If all goes well, there will also be movies featuring Frankenstein's monster (starring Javier Bardem), Count Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man (starring Johnny Depp), and Bride of Frankenstein.
5. A Few Good Men Live!(?): Hiding at the bottom of NBC’s press release for their upfronts last year was one line about adapting the Aaron Sorkin play, a break from their string of live musicals. Supposedly it was coming “early 2017.” Well here we are in early 2017 and I have not heard anything about it since. NBC.com does have a page for it and it just says, “coming soon.” Hopefully they are just making sure they are getting it right and not just quietly forgotten about it because I am much more interested in it than the Jennifer Lopez starring Bye Bye Birdie.
4. The Ends of Orphan Black and Pretty Little Liars: Two show on the opposite of the quality spectrum are ending this year. After introducing one of the more adventurous ideas in television history, Orphan Black will be coming to a close. Here is hoping there is an Alison spin-off into a bad CBS sitcom. Then there is Pretty Little Liars which stretched a murder mystery further than any show before. I long ago lost track of how many different A’s there have been. And yet, I was never able to stop watching.
3. Prisoner - Ryan Adams (February 17): In the first decade of this century, Ryan Adams put out ten albums, this decade he has only put out two proper albums and none since 2014 (obviously I am not counting his Taylor Swift cover album a “proper” album. After his output last decade, three years is a long time sso hopefully he has a lot of great tunes lined up and no Rihanna covers.
2. Powerless (February 2) – The last couple years saw multiple superhero shows hit the small screen but this current season will only see one network superhero show, and that does not even star someone with powers, hence the title. (Do not fret traditional funny book fans, Legion premieres next week on FX, the ongoing Netflix shows, and ABC has already greenlighted Inhumans to premiere this fall as well as the return of Young Justice to some yet announced channel or possibly streaming service). Instead the show will follow incurrence agents living in a superhero world that sees city blocks destroyed regularly. I cannot wait to not watch this show when it gets demoted to The CW in the fall.
Recently Jenny Lewis gave an interview with Grantland but the star of the podcast was not Lewis herself or even the interviewer Andy Greenwald, it was instead Ryan Adams who produced most of her new album The Voyager (you can download it on on iTunes). The interview started off in earnest with Lewis uncomfortably recounting the demise of her band Riley Kilo and her struggles with insomnia (ironically one of the better curse for insomnia may actually be hearing other people talking about insomnia) but the interview really picked up when Lewis started talking about working with Ryan at it Pax Am studio in Los Angeles.
As a long time fan of Adams I know the guy can be eccentric, this is a guy who started off his first solo album with an “argument with David Rawlings concerning Morrisey” and famously stopped a concert and would not continue until a fan who requested Summer Of '69 was removed from the building. In her interview told tales of how Adams refused to listen to playback (nor would let Lewis do the same) and when he told her to scream like John Lennon as he was leaving the studio for the day. This culminated with Adams adamantly telling Lewis to go home and write Wonderwall. The thing is I came away from the interview much more excited for Ryan’s upcoming self titled album coming out next month than the new Lewis album which came out this week.
That is not to say there is nothing worth checking out on The Voyager and it is hard not to see if Adams’ unorthodox recording techniques paid off. At first listen, The Voyager sound more upbeat and less folksy than her two previous solo albums and subsequent listens you can definitely tell the tracks where Adams contributes guitar like at the end of She’s Not Me. Slippery Stone even sounds like it could be an opening riff to an Adams song. It may actually be easier to pick out the non-Adams tracks for instance Just One of the Guys produced by Beck (yes that is him on backing vocals, the most overt indie-pop song which veers into annoyingly catchy with the oo-oo’s punctuated throughout the song. The better pop song may actually be the album opener Head Underwater.
The album closes with the title track which is also the song that came out of the Wonderwall request. It is an acoustic based ballad with strings, but that is as close to Wonderwall as her song gets (Lewis does point out in the interview if she could have written a Wonderwall she already would have done it). Nor does she find a way to scream like Lennon on the song as requested. It is the most different song on the album and actually does a good job wrapping up the album. Now I need to turn my attention for the release of the Ryan Adams album to see if there are any Wonderwalls or John Lennon screams. Okay, thinking about it, that would kin of make it li9ke every Ryan Adams album, one of which actually had a Wonderwall cover.
If you interested in buying any of the albums below, click on the album title to go to Amazon and the artist name to download it in iTunes. Also check out my original album reviews in the link under the album where for those I reviewed.
There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I thought I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.
If Schrodinger's Cat means that something can be alive and dead at the same time, is there a corollary that a song can be simultaneously the greatest and worst song ever made. If so: ladies and gentlemen, the latest Toby Keith song.
Ryan Adams was the most prolific singer of the last decade releasing ten albums, even doing so by taking 2009 off. Actually, aside from three albums worth of leftovers, it has been three years since Adams has released new material. In that time, Ryan married Mandy Moore putting some worry that the songwriter who makes the greatest extremely depressing songs in modern times may become too happy.
For those drawn to Adam’s music by his sad sap side, despite his newlywed status, his new album Ashes and Fire may not hit the lowest lows as albums like Cold Roses or 29 do, but the new album is filled with plenty of sad songs to help mend your broken heart (or break it in more pieces depending what you expect to get out of listing to sad songs). And if these types of songs are your favorites, skip straight to Save Me which will have your forgiving him for making you wait three years for his latest batch of depressingly sad songs. And sure the marriage may have given him a more positive outlook on life, I Love You but I Don’t Know What to Say manages to be heartbreaking and beautifully uplifting at the same time.
The other big change in-between record was Ryan broke with frequent collaborators The Cardinals who played on four of his last five albums. Without his backing band on the album, Ashes and Fire maybe his most sparse album yet with most songs featuring Ryan on guitar, some drums and the occasional piano courtesy of Norah Jones who also does some backing vocals on the album. Aside from his usual depression songs, the standout tracks are the two that open the album when Adams goes back to his alt-country roots for Dirty Rain and the title track. After such a long layoff, Ashes and Fire is a nice return and I look forward for Ryan Adams to get back to his regular recording schedule and his next album which presumably be out sometime before Christmas.
Ryan Adams went on an amazing streak during the 00’s releasing an album a year for the first five years then three alone in 2005, all of them managed to be at the very least good. We are currently in his slow period where he has only released four albums in the last six years, with another set to drop next month. Though all of his albums are solid, his first two solo records stand out above the rest with his sophomore outing Gold being, well, the gold standard and this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.
The album starts off with New York, New York, an ode to a city that was about to change forever, the music video featuring a still intact city skyline was filmed on September 7th 2001. Even though it was recorded months before the attacks, the song became a fitting tribute to the city and its strengths and even without the sentimentality of its release date, New York, New York remains Adams’ best song to date.
Ryan puts the alt in his country on the next song where he breaks out his harmonica for Firecracker, a hoedown for the rock set. Adams mellows out for Answering Bell with his buddy Adam Duretz on backing vocals. Further in the album, Enemy Fire is just straight ahead rock and roll with a tinge of punk. Gold is still Ryan Adams’s most diverse album stylistically and definitely makes for a better listening experience, especially at a full seventy minute album.
But let’s face it; nobody does depressingly sad songs better than Ryan Adams and you can finally break out the Prozac for the fourth track, the drink alone anthem La Cienega Just Smiled. And you really cannot get more pretentious than a balled named Sylvia Plath. Then right around the time Gold hits its halfway point, Adams breaks out the epic almost ten minute Nobody Girl that could have gone on for a half an hour and I do not think any fan would complain.
If there is one depressingly sad song that stands above the rest is When the Stars Go Blue (which has almost become a standard thanks to the cover by The Corrs and Bono). The song should be near the top of every breakup playlist from now until eternity where your heartbreaks with every crack in the singer’s voice. It has been a while since Ryan dams has written any new material (by his standards) but I am sure we will hear more songs like this when Ashes & Fire comes out.
Some say we will look back at the 00’s as the decade when the full length album died, and for the most part they will be right. Sure albums will never go away as long as there are people stupid enough to plop down ten dollars for an album with only a good song or two. But the album as an event has long passed. In this instant gratification day and age, we just want to get to the three minutes of musical joy instead of having to spend a whole album digesting an album. I cannot remember one album I sat around with a bunch of friends last decade dissecting it with friends like I did back in the ninties (granted this may be an age thing).
So my list of the 100 Greatest Albums of the 00’s is less about a cohesive album (which there were very few of in the 00’s) than just a collection of twelve good to great songs. I’m sure there can be griping of albums I left out, but when compiling a list of albums for consideration, I only included albums I actual spent money on (or had someone else buy for me, with the obvious exception of two albums on the list), and when it comes down to it, if I didn’t even bother to drop ten dollars (or even less at discount prices), it is not something worthy of my list anyway. Here is how my list broke down by the numbers.
Artists with Multiple Albums
Dave Matthews (Band) – 5
Jack Johnson – 4
John Mayer (Trio) – 4
Ryan Adams (and the Cardinals) - 4
Alicia Keys – 3
Coldplay – 3
Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley) – 3
Kanye West – 3
Michelle Branch (The Wreckers) – 3
The Roots – 3
U2 - 3
Tomorrow
April 12
May 3
Heard it in a Past Life - 
Don't Feed the Pop Monster - 
Wednesdays - Ryan Adams
![Terror Alert Level: Elevated [YELLOW]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-iVFV0hXCTSYP16K_V0Rrxp3GqFrtBIJKeTUyQ2LpxZQ9XKHFj6QGtqqa7oxhLadLV8vUj8R84AftD8IKUSfN0u_u0CYDtJwhrpCPN2DBWquAIDv0jbVlhZL0mDFKlPKluGyxw/s400/small_elevated.png)
on my 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
![Terror Alert Level: High [ORANGE]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhebDZ0qqwOVKMZj7oFSUe8Hm3ax54U9Hp1fThJPgiddTyzcdwx_5SV6E3b7hkKyxbaDiym4COmUXT2YJnsKCUjBHI_a2xZtNoY7qFQRslP5AGO5gLkJwn2ZbO0wIF80ycbKrgPPA/s400/small_high.png)
on my 
comes out.
1. 
10. 
20. 
30. 
40. 
50. 
60. 
70. 
80. 
90.