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Music

Posted by Ed and Lois

Critics gang up on the world of music, (USA Today)

This year, we decided to try for a consensus. Well, getting Edna Gundersen, Steve Jones, Elysa Gardner, Brian Mansfield and Ken Barnes to agree on anything made threading that proverbial camel through the eye of a needle seem like a breeze in comparison. But the result, we think, provides a varied, intriguing and occasionally provocative look at the past year.

USA TODAY album of the year

U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Gundersen labeled it U2’s best album; others on the panel weren’t quite as laudatory, but it did garner the most mentions. Also rock album of the year.

The rest of the top 10

2. Alison Krauss & Union Station, Lonely Runs Both Ways (best country album)

3. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose

4. Green Day, American Idiot

5. Kanye West, The College Dropout (best rap album)

6. Brian Wilson, Smile

7. Prince, Musicology (best R&B album)

8. Elvis Costello & The Attractions, The Delivery Man (best singer/songwriter album)

9. Patty Griffin, The Impossible Dream

10. Usher, Confessions

Best live performer

Prince, who sold the most concert tickets in 2004. Madonna’s higher prices earned her the top concert gross (not to be confused with top gross concert, which was — at least according to the FCC — Janet at the Super Bowl).

Best dead performer

Jerry Garcia. The Grateful Dead guitarist hasn’t been alive since 1995 but managed to release three major live collections of solo work this year.

Best comeback

Brian Wilson.Smile, which might have been the best pop album of 1967, is many people’s choice for best pop album of 2004.

Lowering of standards

Rod Stewart. One album sleepwalking through the Great American Songbook is a misdemeanor; three is approaching capital-crime territory.

Best reissue

The Clash, London Calling. Classic 1980 album now fleshed out with DVD and demos.

Worst reissue

The Beatles, The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1. Cheap and flimsy replica of the inferior, truncated and sonically doctored albums delivered to U.S. fans in the mid-‘60s who weren’t aware they were being shortchanged.

Full Post:http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/reviews/2004-12-27-critics-music_x.htm