Another Reason To Hate The Holidays

I realize that it's trite and cliché to bash the holiday season, and I usually refrain from doing so. I've learned to compromise with most holiday situations. I'll wear my iPod while shopping for gifts, lest I hear the same holiday music piped into Macy's that I hear all day on Lite FM and all night on ads for department stores and car companies. I've also accepted the cheerful wishes of "happy holidays" from strangers because, well, you know you're becoming a cynical shell of a human being when friendly gestures cause you annoyance. I've even accepted those gigantic inflatable snowmen and globes that pop up all over my neighborhood, rendering the streets into something like gigantic Toys R Us aisles.

But there are still certain things about the season that bother me immensely.

For one, I fear change. The end of the year has, since childhood, always loaded me with a sense of dread. Cable channels will all recap the year gone by with fast-paced, tightly edited montages and quirky commentary. I'll think about all those months that flew by, months I spent sitting at my office desk when I could have been out romping in the fields. I'll think of all the whirling weekends and the bleary, hungover Sundays and a tinge of nostalgia rises inside. Then there's the specter of the year ahead. Cold, distant 2008, what have you in store for me? This could be the year I finally get food poisoning from undercooked shellfish. This could be the year that I meet Bo Jackson, my childhood sports idol, at a crowded bar. Anything could happen. I find it terrifying.

And then there are those pesky year-end lists. The Best Music Of 2007, The Best Movies Of 2007, and so on. They were once intriguing, tracing way back to when maybe Spin or Time or MTV had them, and I was too young to really know better than to follow what was foisted on me by commercial radio. Back in, say, 1992, it was a Best Of list that told me Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted had been released. Otherwise, I would surely have been oblivious to the group until later years.

But it seems that in these roaring years of internet growth, along with the proliferation of Facebook pages and Livejournals and blogs come seemingly millions of Best Of lists. Everyone has an opinion, and I respect that. That doesn't mean some of them can't escape reproach, however.

For example, there is the phenomenon of the Uber-Hipster Year End List. I find these while perusing sites like Pitchfork or any other supposed purveyor of music cool. It betrays the desperate act of ironically including awful popular music into a Best Of context to gain some perception of diversity and "ear to the ground" credibility. I had only gone through a few such lists this year before I became disgusted with the disingenuity of them--I mean come on, you really think Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" and Britney Spears' Blackout were two of the most impressive musical outings of the year? You, of the neo-folk, garage-influenced, post-punk revival band? I don't think so, buddy.

Equally infuriating are the lists that include incredibly obscure and decidedly awful albums. It's fine to like some out-there or under-represented artists or genres. One of the best acts I heard this year was Bag Raiders, a dance music group from Sydney, virtually unknown outside of the U.K. and Australia. But again, when you litter your Top 10 with Czech Ambient solo work, a compilation of Icelandic found recordings and a Brazilian Cock Rock/Baile Funk fusion outfit, I'm going to assume you're stacking the deck. What, you can't admit you like Interpol? It's okay, we'll still understand that you have varied and eclectic tastes.

Speaking of Interpol, I've noticed a rather disturbing disparity between the number of records released after summer and those before when it comes to appearances on critics' collections of favorites. I fear there might be a degree of amnesia that coincides with the holidays. For every mention of M.I.A. (who put out a terrific record, don't get me wrong) and Radiohead, I'm not seeing any mention of Bloc Party, Klaxons, Lily Allen or Modest Mouse. All had impressive outings, with A Weekend In The City being my personal favorite.

It makes me wonder if record labels should start re-thinking their release schedules. I might be paranoid but it seems like some latter-year albums might be overshadowed by all of these year-end retrospectives. Lupe Fiasco, for example, drops one of the more brilliant hip-hop records in history on December 18th, The Cool. Seeing such an intelligent and sonically rich contribution overshadowed would certainly make my Worst of 2007 list.