Pop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The following ten singles saturated the Top 40--or what passes for hit-oriented radio in this topsy-turvy musical climate--while proving that accessibility doesn't necessarily preclude creativity.
Sure, 2008 may be done, but the list-making still continues... This year, five contributors to the Dallas Observer's music section were asked to participate in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics'
poll, which compiles the lists of hundreds of music critics across the
country into one massive, hopefully conclusive, aggregate list. Over
the last couple of days, we've been posting various excerpts of their
choices for the best of '08.After
the jump, Pete Freedman's favorite records an
John Legend Nokia Live January 22, 2009 Better than: Letting the bartender mix your cocktail with Pepsi products. Having learned a hard lesson in traffic jams the last time I went to Grand Prairie's Nokia Theatre, I took MacArthur to the venue, to discover the streets were flowing free and clear. I knew the price tag on John Legend's show was a tad steep, but this guy has the cross-cultural appeal of Beyonce--and women love him. So where the heck were the mobs?
Estelle, Solange House of BluesMarch 9, 2009Better than: Catching up on the TV shows backlogged on my DVR.As someone who admittedly knows very little about Solange's singing career, I just have to say: The girl gives it her all. Her black-suited, shaggy-haired band played a particularly funky rendition of the theme to "Shaft" as Sol-Angel and her Hadley St. Dreams showed off their soul-sista dresses and Motown-era choreography. The Queens were out in full effect, too, some of them following Sola
