Inability to Review or Predict
Some of my friends and acquaintances in this business of content production put out end of year lists of albums (Peter Suderman, and Matt Yglesias occur to me.) At my advanced age of twenty-five, I find this task impossible. Maybe four years ago I would have had some idea. Now, I find I don't have time to listen to that much new music. If I think about the albums I've listened to this year- I find that only a few were released this year: Easy Tiger (an e.p. technically) by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals was okay. Old Crow Medicine Show's album, Big Iron World was a constant companion on my long car trips and I find it came out last summer.
I only bought the Kanye West album, Graduation (which tops Peter's list), in the last week of the year and I like it. I was always delighted when "Stronger" came on the radio. I like "Flashing Lights" too. But the pleasures of this album are slightly diminished by a thought which was embryonic earlier in the decade when OutKast was at the top of the hip-hop charts, that this is "safe-for-whites" hip-hop. (More thoughts on that later)
Only a few years ago I was the first person I knew to buy The Shins first album, Oh Inverted World. Now, I can't say that I've listened to Arcade Fire, or St. Vincent. I've let my music magazine subscriptions expire, so I can barely even tell you what they are supposed to sound like. The two last things I remember as being "cool" (to me) when they came out were The Yeah Yeah Yeahs first album (haven't heard their others), and The White Stripes.
Film, likewise. I saw "The Lives of Others" this year - which makes Peter's list also - and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Technically it came out in 2006.
As we passed into 2008, it became time to print our predictions. I did this once before, and was only correct that in two predictions - that my writing would appear in a magazine, and that I would terribly wound and offend about 20% of the people I met.
As for political predictions, I have very few. I can make a case that Romney will win Iowa tomorrow and the nomination. I can make a case that Huckabee will win the nomination. Same with Clinton and Obama. But in January of '06 I predicted the Republicans would hold onto the Senate.
I will predict that the salutory effects of "the surge" will begin to end. The surge will have only made it possible for conservatives to blame our next Democrat president for losing Iraq, the way some people still blame Democrats for "losing" Vietnam. It will also have made the narrative of the war sufficiently unclear and prevent the political elites of our nation from drawing any meaningful lessons from Iraq.
Other than that I expect death will continue to end every human life and the Mets will make the playoffs this year.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Culture
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Reader Comments (4)
There's no excuse for that.
That good number of others in this case are white males. The percentages may well be declining but they are still hip-hop's biggest market force in terms of raw numbers.