The Decade in News

The most important news story of the past decade doesn't concern a specific band or genre or trend. It's the story of how music news itself has changed. Think back to the turn of the millennium: How did you find out that your favorite band had a new album coming out? Sure, the few of us with fast enough internet connections might have read about it online, but it's more likely that you read about it in a magazine, saw a poster at your local record store, or maybe, maybe heard about it from MTV News. These days, that magazine has probably folded, your local record store is now a Best Buy, and MTV just wants to show you "Hills" spin-offs. You're going to find out about that album from a music news blog or site, or even from the band themselves, via their own web portal or Twitter. And you're probably going to end up hearing that album much, much sooner than the band intended, thanks to a leak.

As the decade progressed, music news got faster and more crowded. In 2000, the news section was just a side-note to the reviews and features on Pitchfork. By 2005, we posted new stories once a day. (We even took Fridays off!) In 2009, we're updating anywhere from 10 to 20 times a day-- not to mention posting often to our Twitter feed. Music news has also become less controlled, by labels and publicists as well as by the artists themselves. Wavves has a breakdown on stage in Barcelona? People halfway across the world will hear about it as it happens, and video will pop up the next morning. Kanye divebombs Taylor Swift at the VMAs? If you haven't posted about it within three minutes, you're too late. It's a small miracle that anyone can keep up.

So let's take a breather, and a look back: The Decade in News traces the ups and downs, zigs and zags that the music Pitchfork covers has taken over the past 10 years. From Britney to Bright Eyes, from the Strokes to Vampire Weekend, from Napster to the iPhone, it's all here. And it's enough to make any band that faded from the spotlight prior to the 2000s say, "God, I'm glad the internet didn't exist when we were around." --Amy Phillips

The Go-Betweens, MBV's Kevin Shields Return, With Friends

A pair of long-dormant indie rock originators returned to the music world in 2000. The hugely influential Australian indie pop group the Go-Betweens broke up in 1998, but they reunited in 2000 and released the gorgeous comeback LP The Friends of Rachel Worth. It featured contributions from all three members of Sleater-Kinney. Go-Betweens principals Robert Forster and Grant McLennan remained together long enough to release two more albums before McLennan died suddenly of a heart attack in 2006. Meanwhile, My Bloody Valentine leader Kevin Shields had largely faded from the spotlight since his band's post-Loveless dissolution. But in 2000, he made a quiet return (if anything Shields does can be called quiet), playing on and producing Primal Scream's XTRMNTR album and touring with the band. He later worked on Evil Heat, Primal Scream's follow-up, did some work on the Lost in Translation soundtrack, and eventually reunited MBV to play some of the loudest shows anyone had ever heard. --Tom Breihan

UKG Kicks Off the Garage Continuum

The garage continuum-- arguably the most dynamic and inventive new thread of music this decade-- is barely understood in the U.S. And, at its start at least, not often respected in many music circles. But what began as UK Garage/2-Step has gone on to mutate into grime, dubstep, and, recently, funky and wonky. UKG started simply enough, as an offshoot of speed garage, an amped-up version of drum'n'bass. Eventually, the sound became more feminized, taking cues from the then-ascendant world of U.S. R&B, often adding female vocals and stripping away half of the typical four beats in a measure (hence the name "2-Step," which it soon began to be called). The result maintained the robustness of jungle and married it to the futurism and minimalism of turn-of-the-millennium American chart music (think the work of producers like Timbaland or She'kspere). Considered stylish, even sophisticated, 2-Step in London soon moved from pirate radio into fashionable clubs, where it appealed to champagne-guzzling, well-dressed crowds. It's no wonder the sound quickly got darker, turning into grime. --Scott Plagenhoef

__Almost Famous, High Fidelity Take Music Dorks to Hollywood
__

Plenty separates William Miller, the hero of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, from Rob Gordon, the protagonist of Stephen Frears' High Fidelity. One's a teenager; one's an adult. One's a quiet and retiring type; one yammers endlessly at the camera. One has to babysit a stoned Billy Crudup, and one has to contend with a fired-up Jack Black. But both characters obsess endlessly over music, even to the detriment of their real-life relationships. Both pine inarticulately after girls. Both dress like herbs. In short, both are total music dorks. For one brief shining moment in 2000, Hollywood deemed people like us sufficiently fascinating enough to build a couple of big movies around. Interestingly, both characters end their story arcs learning that music is no substitute for real human interaction, something many of us still have yet to figure out nine years later. (Another 2000 movie protagonist, Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, actually does more music criticism than either, but he'd probably drop a chainsaw on you from the top of a staircase if you called him a dork.) --TB

__Melissa Etheridge Deems David Crosby Father Material
__

When singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge and her partner, filmmaker Julie Cypher, decided to have children, they went to the world's greatest sperm donor: the somehow still-alive folk-rocker David Crosby. Because when you think of whose DNA you want your baby to have, you're obviously going to settle on a guy who's overweight, balding, and had his liver replaced in 1994. In January 2000, when Etheridge revealed Crosby as the biological father of their two children, the sound of heads being scratched was deafening. --TB

__

D'Angelo Gives World Neo-Soul Masterpiece, Then Vanishes

The late-90s genre/trend with the unfortunate tag of "neo-soul" tended more toward inoffensively slick lifestyle music than anything that would've blown Curtis Mayfield's wig back. But when he recorded his sophomore album, virtuosic Virginia rasper D'Angelo hit on a miasmic, woozy groove that somehow sustained itself for an hour-plus without breaking character long enough for anything particularly radio-friendly to escape from the murk. Even when Method Man and Redman turned up on "Left & Right", they were there for funky texture, not fill-in-the-blank name value. Voodoo felt like a soft, sexy bomb dropped on the neo-soul landscape, and none of D'Angelo's competitors ever equaled it-- though Erykah Badu came close on the same year's Mama's Gun. But then D'Angelo disappeared almost completely, only contributing the odd guest vocal in the intervening years. He was arrested several times throughout the decade, as rumors of drug addiction swirled. There is still no Voodoo follow-up. --TB

__

Ryan Adams Goes Solo With Heartbreaker

Following the breakup of his band Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams released his first solo record, Heartbreaker, on the Chicago alt-country label Bloodshot. The emotionally devastating album seemed to herald the arrival of a serious talent. But Gold, Adams' 2001 major-label follow-up, was muddled and bloated by comparison, though it did gain Adams some mainstream traction, particularly thanks to the anthemic "New York, York", which took on an elegiac quality following 9/11. After that, Adams went on to have an exceedingly weird decade. He dated starlets, publicly tangled with rock critics, blogged incessantly, and released more music than any sane person should attempt. More recently, he married Mandy Moore and claimed he was quitting music, which didn't really happen. --TB

Eminem Brings an Army of Shadys to the VMAs

When Eminem dropped the joke-rap bomb "The Real Slim Shady" on MTV's Video Music Awards, the mob of bleach-headed clones he brought with him seemed to underscore the song's strongest lines: "There's a million of us just like me, who cuss like me, who just don't give a fuck like me." At the time, Em's stratospheric success seemed like a game-changer: A white rapper with a titanic crossover audience as well as actual skills and credibility and the ability to scare the piss out of parents. Commentators warned that white rappers could steal rap away from black America, that Em could be rap's Elvis. Em got away with lyrical murder (literally) while most critics gave him a pass on seriously repellent homophobic and misogynist lyrics because he delivered them with such force and inventiveness. When Eminem stepped onstage at the 2001 Grammys with Elton John, it seemed like a totally inadequate olive branch, and still we didn't care because dude was on such a roll. But Em's nearly Michael Jackson-level of dominance didn't last long. After the success of his Oscar-winning 2002 film-star turn 8 Mile, Em, once one of rap's most joyous word junkies, seemed to give up entirely, swapping out actual wit for fart jokes. Eventually, he disappeared for years while struggling with addiction. When the shock-rap comeback attempt Relapse appeared 2009, it felt like little more than an aftershock. --TB

Kid A Released, Debuts at #1

Based on the worldwide hyperbolic century-end praise for 1997's OK Computer, the anticipation for the Oxford band's follow-up was astronomical. Safe to say: it delivered. I remember waiting in line at a midnight sale (remember those?) at a local Wherehouse Music (and those?!)-- and I wasn't alone. Though the album traded in Pink Floyd-style epic rock for something more insular and outlandish-- blaring horns! Aphex blips! Thom Yorke's voice trapped in an icebox!-- it still zoomed to number one in several countries including the U.S., where it sold 207,000 copies in its first week. A true triumph of art and commerce, one of several this band would pull off over the next 10 years. --Ryan Dombal

• Doris Coley (singer, the Shirelles) - Aug. 2, 1941 - Feb. 4, 2000
• Christopher "Big Pun" Rios (rapper) - Nov. 9, 1971 - Feb. 7, 2000
• Jalacy "Screamin' Jay" Hawkins (blues shock-rocker) - Jul. 18, 1929 - Feb. 12, 2000
• Dennis Danell (bassist/guitarist, Social Distortion) - Jun. 24, 1961 - Feb. 29, 2000
• Ian Dury (pub/punk) - May 12, 1942 - Mar. 27, 2000
• Benjamin Orr (bassist and singer, the Cars) - Sep. 8, 1947 - Oct. 3, 2000
• Robert Earl "DJ Screw" Davis, Jr. (producer and DJ) - Jul. 20, 1971 - Nov. 16, 2000
• Kirsty MacColl (singer) - Oct. 10, 1959 - Dec. 18, 2000

Rock'n'Roll Not Dead Once Again

After being threatened to extinction by oh-so-terrible forces like pop and hip-hop and dance music, "real rock"-- you know, made by people that wrote their own songs, acted cool, sometimes wore synchronized outfits, and usually used "the" at the beginning of their band's names-- came roaring back. Or at least that was what certain corners of the music press wanted you to believe. As with any trend, there were groups that made it look like a justifiable musical movement (the Strokes, the White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and those that made it look like a media-inflated hype-a-thon (the Vines, the Hives). --RD

Damon Albarn Carves a Path Away From Blur

If Gorillaz was the only thing Damon Albarn did all decade, he'd still be a major player. The two records by the cartoon band dreamed up by Albarn and visual artist Jamie Hewlett not only wound up selling millions worldwide, but each went platinum in the U.S.-- something that you can't come close to saying about a Blur record. And yet Albarn's most important contribution to this decade's music isn't so much his and Hewlett's post-modern playful creation but Albarn's transformation into a sort of pan-global ambassador/everyman, a David Byrne of the 21st century. Whether collaborating with Malian artists, jacking Jamaican sounds, releasing an Afrobeat-inspired single with Blur, adopting North African atmospherics on that band's sole 2000s LP (Think Tank), or penning a Chinese opera, Albarn spent much of the decade in tune to just about everywhere but his homeland of England. It was an ironic career shift for a guy best known as a Britpop pioneer. For good measure, his best record of the decade probably was his lament for his crumbling home-- The Good Bad and the Queen, co-starring the Clash's Paul Simonon, the Verve's Simon Tong, and Nigerian drummer Tony Allen. Just don't call them a band; Damon doesn't like that for some reason. --SP

Electroclash Arrives With a Bang, Disappears Just as Quickly

Electroclash was the name of a New York City festival and a compilation, both curated by Larry Tee, a DJ who once had a hand in RuPaul's "Supermodel (You Better Work)". The genre that assumed its name took the icy, skeletal beats of early-80s electro and paired them with a proudly trashy, campy aesthetic. Scene kingpins Fischerspooner made no attempts to hide the lip-syncing in their elaborately theatrical live shows, and would-be stars like Peaches and Miss Kittin quickly made careers out of flatly intoning sexual come-ons and threats over 808 ticks. Originally based in New York, the scene went global almost immediately, as acts from Germany (Chicks on Speed, the International DeeJay Gigolo label), the Midwest (Felix da Housecat, Adult.), and England (Ladytron) carried the flag. As much press hysteria as electroclash generated, the entire fashion-dazed craze became a punchline before it was a year old. --TB

The Strokes: Internet Hype Pioneers

Photo by Cody Smyth

At this point, it's hard to remember what the music hype cycle was like before the internet. For one thing, it was slower. And it was defined by a solid wall between industry types-- who could set their agenda-- and fans. But at the beginning of the decade, with online chatter ramping up and leak culture becoming more and more prevalent, the space between "I saw this great new band open for so-and-so" and "I like their earlier stuff better" became almost non-existent. One of the first bands to run through this hyperdrive spin cycle was the Strokes, five privileged New Yorkers who came fully-formed: the look, the sound, the names, the songs, they had it all. Only a few months passed between the January 2001 release of their debut EP The Modern Age and the release of their first full-length, Is This It?, but in that time it seemed like they'd gone through a lifetime's worth of travails, expectations, and disappointments. Then the LP came out, and it killed. The hype was right. This time. --RD

At the Drive-In Break Up

After toiling in the underground for much of the 90s, Texas post-hardcore band At the Drive-In finally broke through with their 2000 album Relationship of Command and its blistering single "One Armed Scissor". Then they broke up. Huge bummer. The principals split into two bands: the disappointingly staid Sparta and the hysterically prog Mars Volta, who made never-ending, genre-bending music that would make Yes jealous. --RD

Björk Reinvents Oscar Fashion

Of course Björk did the Academy Awards her way. While she didn't win the Oscar for her song "I've Seen It All" from Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, the singer's swan dress was markedly more memorable than any trophy. (For the record, Bob Dylan won Best Original Song that year.) And while she showed off remarkable acting chops in her starring role in Dancer in the Dark, Björk didn't have any problems dismissing Hollywood. In fact, her only other acting credit of the decade (besides her ever-remarkable music videos) was for a role in partner Matthew Barney's art house epic, Drawing Restraint 9. Uncompromising comes in various shapes and sizes, and Björk has tried them all on. --RD

Joey Ramone Dies

Ramones frontman Joey Ramone never really changed his look or his sound too much throughout his three-decade career. He was a punk, plain and simple, a living embodiment of the fuck-you attitude that defined the genre and culture. But the Ramones didn't totally dismiss what came before them. They knew that rock'n'roll could be fun and put that same sense of goofball joy to the fore. Importantly, the Ramones represented more than a music style or uniformed appearance-- they represented great songwriting. At this point, bursts like "Blitzkreig Bop" and "I Wanna Be Sedated" are as ubiquitous and influential as any Beatles song. Joey's death from cancer was followed by bassist Dee Dee's a year later, and guitarist Johnny's in 2004. --RD

Weezer Return With The Green Album

Not long after dropping 1996's Pinkerton, Weezer faded into inactivity, widely thought to be washed-up post-grungers. Then a funny thing happened: indie kids and pre-eyeliner emo scenesters adopted Pinkerton as a lost classic, with songs like "El Scorcho" and "Pink Triangle" showing up with increasing frequency on mixtapes for lonely hearts. So when Weezer returned for a triumphant 2000 comeback tour, the world was ready. And then came the new album nobody thought Weezer would make. The cover art stoked anticipation even further, echoing Weezer's classic 1994 debut "Blue Album", but the end result was...just OK. It had a couple of decent songs, but it wasn't anywhere near the level of the band's first two albums. Sadly, "just OK" would prove to be Weezer 2.0's ceiling. --TB

__Jay-Z Feuds With Nas
__

At the New York radio station Hot 97's annual Summer Jam concert, Jay-Z brought Michael Jackson out on stage as a special guest. Then, somehow, he topped that. "The Takeover", the new song Jay debuted that night, was a brutal evisceration of Queens duo Mobb Deep, and it ended with this taunt: "You guys don't want it with Hov / Ask Nas, he don't want it with Hov." But Jay's fellow NYC rap titan did, in fact, want it with Hov. What followed was arguably the greatest rap beef of all time, two genuine icons at the peak of their powers just going nuts on each other. When Jay's album The Blueprint came out a few months later, it had a new verse, directed at Nasir Jones: "Had a spark when you started but now you're just garbage." Nas responded with the furious, splenetic return volley "Ether", a song so potent that its name has since become a verb: "You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan." Jay-Z responded with the freestyle "Super Ugly". And on it went until 2005, when the pair reconciled. Guest appearances on each others' records soon followed. In 2006, Jay, then president of Def Jam, signed Nas, thus making himself Nas's boss. So, uh, yeah, Jay-Z won. --TB

__

__Microhouse and the New Minimalism
__

In the 1990s, electronic music was mutating rapidly, spurred on by rapid changes in communication and technology (as well as journalists hoping to put their stamp on a new sound). New sub-genres seemed to spring up almost weekly, a trend that would continue in the 00s. One of the most enduring sounds in underground electronic music during this decade involved rhythms influenced by house but rendered in a lean, stripped-down setting with vast amounts of musical space. Inspired by 90s experiments by German artists like Basic Channel and Wolfgang Voigt's Studio 1, this music, exemplified early on by the work of Thomas Brinkmann and Luomo, was known for skeletal percussion often sourced from small glitches or bits of static and dub-influenced basslines. In the July 2001 issue of UK music magazine The Wire, writer (and later Pitchfork contributor) Philip Sherburne coined the name "microhouse" as an umbrella term for the developing aesthetic. The moniker proved unusually enduring as later artists like Ricardo Villalobos and Isolée took some of the basic ideas into new realms. --Mark Richardson

"This Is My Big Sister Meg": The White Stripes Go Overground

Photo by Autumn de Wilde

After toiling in Detroit's garage rock scene for four years, in July 2001, the White Stripes released their breakthrough album, White Blood Cells. Jack and Meg White used gimmickry to get noticed, relying on a cartoon aesthetic marked by peppermint-colored clothes and instruments, as well as a fabricated backstory claiming they were brother and sister (they were later revealed to be ex-spouses). But behind the cutesy photos and silly mythmaking was a batch of no-joke songs that offered plenty of sticking power. Meanwhile, music video visionary Michel Gondry's instantly iconic clip for "Fell in Love With a Girl" perfectly mirrored the band's combination of old-school charm and new-school finesse. --RD

__

Napster Shuts Down

In June 1999, a college student named Shawn Fanning created Napster, a file-sharing service that allowed users to upload and download music for free. Anyone with a fast internet connection-- at that time, college students in particular-- went nuts, gorging themselves on all of the mp3s their computers could handle. Within a few months, the RIAA started filing lawsuits, and Fanning briefly became tremendously famous. In April 2000, Metallica even sued the company for copyright infringement. But Napster was too good to last, and by summer 2001, the legal system had succeeded in getting Napster to shut down its servers, after just two years of wreaking havoc on the music business. Attempts to relaunch Napster as a pay service failed, though its latest incarnation, as a Best Buy-owned subscription service started in spring 2009, is still too young to assess. But the RIAA couldn't stop what Napster started, and harder-to-trace, decentralized sharing services soon took its place. Eight years after Napster's shutdown, the record industry is teetering on the brink of collapse, and we can in part both thank and blame Napster for that. --TB

Aaliyah Dies in Plane Crash

Aaliyah Dana Haughton, one of the greatest R&B singers of her generation, was just 22 when she died. She only had time to release three studio albums, but Aaliyah radiated a sense of mystery and an icy poise that very few stars have ever managed. Aaliyah was the ideal vessel for Timbaland's furthest-out production ideas on tracks like "We Need a Resolution" and "Try Again", simultaneously projecting a robotic cool and an emotional warmth. Just weeks after releasing her gorgeous self-titled album, Aaliyah finished filming the video for the single "Rock the Boat" and boarded a small, overloaded plane from the Bahamas to Florida. The plane crashed, and all nine people on board died. Aaliyah's death has been mourned by the hip-hop and R&B worlds ever since. --TB

9/11: The Musical Response

Pop reactions to the tragedy of September 11 were wide-ranging, with the best responding to the events with emotion and insight. Sleater-Kinney's "Far Way" and "Combat Rock"-- off 2002's staunchly political One Beat-- included jabs at Bush along with more personal lines like, "I look to the sky and ask it not to rain on my family tonight." Bright Eyes' Beethoven-quoting "Road to Joy" re-imagined emo posterboy Conor Oberst as a political firebrand in the spirit of early Bob Dylan as he mixed the personal and the topical with throat-popping incredulity. Outkast offered heavy sigh and a brave face on "The Whole World". Sampling troublemakers Cassetteboy's "Fly Me to New York" was a cruel joke, turning Frank Sinatra into a terrorist, and dancehall star Elephant Man managed to lament both customs hassles and a coming World War in "The Bombing". The most-loved reaction came from Bruce Springsteen, whose comeback album with the E Street Band, The Rising, balanced despair and hope in the aftermath of the attacks upon its release in July 2002. --RD

Wilco Stream Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Stoke the Album's Legend*
*

With the internet's influence on the music industry skyrocketing and the music industry's influence on the music industry plummeting, all anyone needed was a Cinderella tale to encompass everything about the change. Enter Wilco and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. After layoffs and bigwig switches left the band's label, Reprise, a shell of its former self, the new brass rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and gave Wilco the rights to the album. Then the band began streaming the challenging, brilliant album on their website, a full six months before its eventual release, and a week after 9/11-- an event songs like "Ashes of American Flags" seemed to eerily anticipate. Soon, Wilco signed to Nonesuch, a label which, like Reprise, is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. So, as the piercing and beautiful documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart would make clear, Warner ultimately paid for the same album twice. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot went on to top countless critics' lists and expand the band's fan base, proving that leaks may not be so bad-- and the old industry would have to own up to a more transparent standard in the new millennium. --RD

__The iPod Debuts, Changes the World
__

It's almost impossible to imagine now, but there was a time before iPods. Back then, people walked around listening to things called Walkmans and Discmans-- which were big and ugly and unreliable...eh, just forget it. The 2001 debut of the 5 GB (!) iPod marked a change in listening habits (people were no longer slaves to a single album or mix) and ushered in the ultimate digital revolution music tool. Of course, with each passing year, the sleek devices got smaller while their capacities skyrocketed. Your mom got one. Maybe even your grandma. And when Apple attached a phone and a tiny computer to the iPod in 2007, the game was officially over. Apple won. --RD

George Harrison R.I.P.

George Harrison succumbed to a fight with cancer, dying on November 29, 2001 in Los Angeles at the age of 58. Known as the "quiet Beatle," Harrison carried himself with dignity and grace even throughout the most tumultuous years of his band's career. Only 16 when he joined John Lennon and Paul McCartney's skiffle group, the Quarrymen, Harrison would eventually make an indelible mark on the Beatles' sound and cultural curiosity. Harrison's experimentation with drugs and interest in American music, shared with John Lennon, greatly colored the first directions the band made after its rock'n'roll and pop years-- Harrison's distinctive Rickenbacker guitar sound was one of the highlights of the band's middle period. He also made the band's earliest forays into political statements and his interest in Indian culture resulted in a study of the sitar and the Beatles' excursion to explore meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. After returning to the guitar in the late 1960s, Harrison continued to display his songwriting maturity and a smart mind for sociocultural concerns. Of course, his soundtrack work inspired the title of Oasis' "Wonderwall", which is arguably his greatest single achievement. Unless you're anyone in the world other than Noel Gallagher. --SP

Billy Corgan Forms Zwan

The Smashing Pumpkins played their last pre-reboot show in 2000, but Billy Corgan wasn't done. A year later, he formed Zwan, featuring fellow ex-Pumpkin Jimmy Chamberlin, as well as A Perfect Circle bassist Paz Lenchantin and a couple of very serious indie rock guitar-shredders: Matt Sweeney (Chavez), and David Pajo (Slint, Tortoise). Hopes were high, but 2003 debut album Mary Star of the Sea, while not terrible, fell well short of expectations. By the end of 2003, the band was done, and Corgan's long, strange trip through the rest of the decade had begun. --TB

• James Carr (soul singer) - Jun. 13, 1942 - Jan. 7, 2001
• John Fahey (guitarist) - Feb. 28, 1939 - Feb. 22, 2001
• "Papa" John Phillips (singer, the Mamas & the Papas) - Aug. 30, 1935 - Mar. 18, 2001
• John Lee Hooker (bluesman) - Aug. 22, 1917 - Jun. 21, 2001
• Chet Atkins (country guitarist, producer) - Jun. 20, 1924 - Jun. 30, 2001
• Anthony "Too Poetic" Berkeley (rapper, Gravediggaz) - Nov. 15, 1964 - Jul. 15, 2001
• Stuart Adamson (singer, guitarist, Big Country) - April 11, 1958 - Dec. 16, 2001

The Music Industry Sings the Praises of Reality Shows

Eventually it had to happen: Reality show craze meets music industry. Kickstarted by Simon Fuller in the UK, "Pop Idol" would spawn a host of other entries in the "Idol" franchise, plus other shows like "Popstars: The Rivals" and "X Factor". Ostensibly, the programs existed to give the people the power to make their own stars, but the pool of would-be singers were screened and pre-chosen, often fitting into pre-conceived notions of acceptable light entertainment. Let's face it, shows like this and competitive dancing programs are closer in spirit to sporting events for their viewers than they are music programs. So "Idol" created stars, but typically they were TV ones at heart, and short-lived as either musical forces or personalities-- as Tom Ewing said in his look at pop in this decade: "The triumphant coronation of a new winner is also the end of the narrative that made them." Rather than kingmaking, the "Idol" franchise was more evidence that the music industry this decade often broke new acts easiest when it worked with other, established industries-- see Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, and Rock Band. And for the strictly indie-inclined, see advertisements (Feist's iPod ad, among others), film (M.I.A., the Shins, etc.), TV (Death Cab for Cutie and other "O.C." guests.) In the end, reality shows gave us one truly great pop act (Girls Aloud), helped launch the career of another highly tolerated pop star (Kelly Clarkson), but weirdly had their greatest longterm U.S. success in rock (Daughtry) and country (Carrie Underwood). --SP

Mashups Clash Genres, Song Titles

The proliferation of MP3s and cheap audio software made it all too easy for open-eared listeners to fuck with genre conventions by throwing two songs together and seeing what happens. Coupled with the instant-nostalgia and novelty allure of WTF combos like the Strokes and Christina Aguilera, the Hives and TLC, and Kylie Minogue using New Order's "Blue Monday" to back her hit "Can't Get You Out of My Head" at a 2002 BRIT Awards performance, mashups turned into a veritable genre of their own. Producers like 2 Many DJs, Richard X, and Freelance Hellraiser helped popularize mashups, but the style found its generation-spanning touchstone with the Beatles/Jay-Z-flipping Grey Album courtesy of Danger Mouse in 2004, and its ADD-addled wunderkind with the sample-busting style of Girl Talk. While the instant pleasures of most mashups aren't built for longevity, they mirror today's shuffling listening habits with a wink and a pat on the back. --RD

Isobel Campbell Leaves Belle and Sebastian
Photo by Marisa Privitera

After a few years of internal friction and a bit of an identity crisis, Belle and Sebastian lost founding member, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist Isobel Campbell. The move turned out to be advantageous for all involved: The departure of Campbell-- two years after the departure of another key member, bassist Stuart David-- helped complete the band's transformation from a group of Glaswegian musicians charged with fleshing out the bedroom songs of leader Stuart Murdoch to a more democratized version of the same, with members fleshing out one another's projects as a committed, full-time enterprise. The remaining members soon went on to sign with the legendary Rough Trade, work with famed pop producer Trevor Horn, and-- after years of shying away from the press, refusing to release singles from their albums, and ragtagging it through many of their live shows-- emerged as a more traditional band, working within more typical music industry promotional and touring schedules and transforming themselves from one the world's best indie collectives into one of the world's best indie bands. (The ending of Murdoch and Campbell's longtime romantic relationship also gave us one of Belle and Sebastian's best songs of the decade, "I'm Waking Up to Us". Allegedly. Nobody involved has copped to that yet.) Campbell, too, had a happy ending, shrugging off the "twee" albatross that followed her even more closely than it did B&S and going on to make the best music of her career to date, most notably alongside former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan-- their Ballad of the Broken Seas was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Prize. --SP

The R. Kelly Sex Tape Fiasco

"Chicago police are investigating whether R&B superstar R. Kelly had sex with an underage girl and videotaped the illegal act," wrote Jim DeRogatis and Abdon M. Pallasch in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 8, 2002, breaking the story to the world. "The sex acts include intercourse, fellatio and urination." Six years later, on June 13, 2008, Kelly was found not guilty of child pornography charges. In between, the saga took several ugly turns and offered twists that could fill several "Trapped in the Closet" chapters. (The trial was delayed at different points due to Kelly's burst appendix and a judge's fall from a ladder). Meanwhile, Kelly continued to make some of his most memorable hits, forcing people to decide whether they could separate the man's music from his alleged crimes. --RD

The Rapture Teach the Indie Kids to Dance

The New York band the Rapture had been injecting their howlingly urgent postpunk clamor with disco beats for a few years, but the "House of Jealous Lovers" single, their first collaboration with the production duo DFA, was the moment the fusion really became complete. The cowbell anthem took hipster dance nights by storm in the summer of 2002. The dance-punk movement that followed brought bands like !!!, Out Hud, and Radio 4 to the ears of formerly rhythm-averse indie rockers, and its aftershocks could be felt in later trends like nu-rave and bloghouse. The Rapture's Echoes album came out in 2003 and proved that "House of Jealous Lovers" was no fluke. But it was the DFA who really prospered. Over the years, their eponymous label became one of the strongest dance labels going. And James Murphy, one half of the duo, found cult stardom fronting LCD Soundsystem, turning his cranky-elder musings into something sublime. --TB

Brooklyn Becomes the Epicenter of Indie

In the summer of 2002, Brooklyn was white-hot. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' freewheeling, libido-driven art-garage, Liars' spartan skronk-funk, and scene elders Les Savy Fav's theatrical hilarity, along with then-upstarts like TV on the Radio and Black Dice, made the 718 the most exciting neighborhood in indie rock. These bands didn't share much in common sonically; the biggest things they really had in common were a sense of apocalyptic hedonism and a zip code. Over the years, these bands became a big reason why nobody beyond trust-fund kids could afford a security deposit on a Williamsburg one-bedroom. --TB

Hockey, Bacon, Mounties... And Indie Rock

The release of Broken Social Scene's breakthrough LP, You Forgot It In People, didn't just launch a band or a scene or an entire strain of indie rock. It launched a whole country. It forced people to pay attention to Canada-- and especially Toronto-- as an independent powerhouse. In the middle of the decade, it seemed like every other Pitchfork review was somehow orbiting around the BSS axis, from Stars to Feist to Metric to Do Make Say Think and so on. Not to mention non-BSS-associated Canadians who were to follow, including Final Fantasy, Tokyo Police Club, Death From Above 1979, Crystal Castles, and some group called Arcade Fire. All of a sudden, "Canadian band" was anything but a pejorative. --RD

Jam Master Jay Gunned Down

Jason Mizell, better known as Jam Master Jay, was the DJ for Run-DMC, one of the first rap groups ever to achieve crossover success. Although Jay didn't rap, he was treated as an equal by his bandmates, Joseph "Run" Simmons and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, and in the public eye. Throughout the 1980s, Run-DMC broke boundaries and dominated the charts with hits like "My Adidas", "It's Tricky", and the Aerosmith collaboration "Walk This Way". By 2002, Run-DMC were doing well for themselves on the touring circuit, and Jay was mentoring an up-and-coming Queens rapper named 50 Cent. But one evening, as Jay worked in his Queens studio, a still-yet-unidentified person shot him and killed him, also shooting and wounding another man. In 2007, police arrested Ronald "Tenad" Washington, on suspicion of being an accomplice to Jam Master Jay's murder. --TB

__The Clash's Joe Strummer, R.I.P.
__

In the late 70s and early 80s, the Clash's Joe Strummer was arguably rock's most important voice: wrathful, impassioned, cosmopolitan, proletarian, even joyous. With his band, Strummer effectively turned punk rock from a thrilling youth-culture moment to a full-on movement, transforming its nihilism and negation into righteous rage. Even after the Clash broke up, Strummer cut an enormously likable figure, whether he was turning up in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train or leading his folk-punk band the Mescaleros. So when an undiagnosed heart defect killed Strummer at the age of 50, it was both a tragedy and a shock. Strummer always seemed too alive to die. --TB

• Zac Foley (bassist, EMF) - Dec. 9, 1970 - Jan. 3, 2002
• Dave Van Ronk (folk singer) - Jun. 30, 1936 - Feb. 10, 2002)
• Waylon Jennings (outlaw country singer) - Jun. 15, 1937 - Feb. 13, 2002
• Layne Staley (singer, Alice in Chains) - Aug. 22, 1967 - Apr. 5, 2002
• Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes (singer, TLC) - May 27, 1971 - Apr. 25, 2002
• Douglas Glenn "Dee Dee Ramone" Colvin (bassist, the Ramones) - Sep. 18, 1951 - Jun. 5, 2002
• John Entwistle (bassist, the Who) - Oct. 9, 1944 - Jun. 27, 2002
• Lonnie Donegan (skiffle musician) - Apr. 29, 1931 - Nov. 3, 2002
• Mary Hansen (singer and instrumentalist, Stereolab) - Nov. 1, 1966 - Dec. 9, 2002

Grime Bridges Hip-Hop Narrative and Next-Level Beatmaking

The addition of vocals to 2-Step was natural-- after all, toasting and big-upping the DJ were already a feature of pirate radio and live garage sets. So when production began to head in a darker direction, it made sense that grittier, hip-hop-like MCing would follow. Choppy, wobbly, almost seasick early grime basslines and rhythms created by East London producers such as Wiley and broadcast on pirate stations such as Rinse FM became an almost instant critical and underground sensation. Teenager Dizzee Rascal, grime's first star, won the 2003 Mercury Prize for his Boy in Da Corner album, while compilations like Run the Road quickly gathered many of the genre's early players under one roof. Alas, in-fighting among the genre's top names and commercial concessions to traditional R&B on early albums by artists like Ms. Dynamite, Roll Deep Crew, and Kano damaged or diluted the sound. In the end, this music made by and for upstart teenagers never found a route to pure overground success. --SP

Houston Rap Gets Its Moment

In 2003, Swisha House released its compilation The Day Hell Broke Loose 2, and introduced the world to the final version of Mike Jones's "Still Tippin'", though it took more than a year for that hazy, local-pride anthem to reach nationwide crossover hit status. In the wake of "Still Tippin'", Houston briefly emerged as rap's version of circa-1992 Seattle. This was possible because the scene had evolved in isolation for years, nurturing its own legends (Scarface, UGK, Z-Ro), rivalries (Northside vs. Southside), and cult classics (Paul Wall and Chamillionaire's brilliant but little-heard Get Ya Mind Correct). DJ Screw, the man who gave the city its slowed-down, woozy sense of space, died of a cough syrup overdose in 2000, but his psychedelic slow-thud style lived on. Once major label A&Rs started handing out contracts to half the city's rappers, though, Houston lost its sense of underdog purpose, and it never came to replace Atlanta as Southern rap's epicenter. --TB

50 Cent Turns Bulletholes Into Marketing Gold

At the 2003 VMAs, Chris Rock had an extended riff about how all anyone knew or cared about 50 Cent was the fact that he'd been shot nine times. And it's true: When 50's star was on the rise, it was impossible to talk about the man's music without mentioning the shooting that almost ended his life. Even weirder was how the shooting affected 50's music and helped him transcend regional boundaries. The bullet in his mouth, for instance, changed his delivery, giving a Southern-sounding slurry lisp to what had been a rangy New York mixtape-rapper bark. In many ways, though, 50 was a complete commercial package, marrying good looks and impeccable pop instincts to genuinely threatening gangster snarls that you had to take seriously because, after all, the guy issuing them had been shot nine times. Get Rich or Die Tryin', 50's hugely popular debut, combined indelible hooks with guttural gun-talk better than any album this decade. Millions upon millions of albums later, the fame went to 50's head, and he completely lost track of whatever people liked about him in the first place. When 50 lost his much-publicized 2007 release-date duel to Kanye West, it became painfully obvious that he'd played his shtick out. These days, 50 couldn't get us to care about him even if he got shot again. --TB

The Postal Service Delivers

The Postal Service's debut (and, so far, only) album, Give Up, arrived at the height of indie rock's flirtation with blips and bloops. Labels like Morr Music, Bpitch Control, and Plug Research, and artists such as Four Tet, M83, and Caribou (then Manitoba) stood on the cutting edge, but it was Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello's collaboration through the mail that brought lap-pop to the masses. Give Up became a runaway hit-- the biggest seller in Sub Pop's history since Nirvana's Bleach-- and Gibbard began his ascent to heartthrob status. An unintentionally hilarious biproduct of the band's success came in August 2003, when the Postal Service were served a cease and desist for copyright infringement by the actual U.S. Postal Service. The matter was resolved when Gibbard and Tamborello agreed to do promotion work for the USPS, including a performance at postmasters' conference in 2004. However, the friendship between the Postal Services didn't last forever: in early 2007, "Such Great Heights" turned up in a television commercial for gasp! UPS. --Amy Phillips

Liz Phair Sells Out

By the time Liz Phair released her fourth album, she was already far removed from the scrappy lo-fi of her classic debut, Exile in Guyville. The two albums she put out in between were plenty polished-- and plenty controversial-- but the blatant pop grab of 2003's Liz Phair raised hackles like few other records this decade. Between the partnership with Avril Lavigne producers the Matrix and the cougar-riffic lyrics, fans recoiled in horror at the spectacle of the onetime queen of indie shilling for the TRL masses. Pitchfork gave the album a 0.0; The New York Times called it "an embarrassing form of career suicide." Liz Phair was a modest commercial success, earning Phair slots on a Now That's What I Call Music! comp and on various chick flick soundtracks, but it certainly didn't catapult her to mainstream stardom. Phair's follow-up album, 2005's Somebody's Miracle, was also terrible, a mushy mess of adult contemporary coffeeshop crap, and it tanked. In 2008, she tried to earn back some goodwill by reissuing Exile in Guyville and playing the album in its entirety on tour. --AP

Three Exploding Hearts Die in Van Crash

The Exploding Hearts were a young Portland pop-punk band with a furiously fun debut album called Guitar Romantic to their credit. They had tons of promise, but three of the band's four members were tragically killed in when their tour van flipped over near Eugene, Oregon. Only guitarist Terry Six and manager Rachelle Ramos survived the crash. The next year, Six formed another band called the Nice Boys, and it's simply amazing that the guy still wants anything to do with music. --TB

__"The O.C." Brings Indie Rock to Teen TV
__

The modern era of indie rock television music licensing began with the trashtastic Fox television show "The O.C.". The high school soap opera featured a nerdy, neurotic Death Cab for Cutie fan as one of its main characters, a live music venue within the show that showcased the likes of Modest Mouse and the Walkmen, and a steady stream of wistful tunes soundtracking breakup scenes and what-does-it-all-mean? montages. "The O.C." ended in February 2007, but by fall 2007, its creators had moved their musical sensibilities over to the even more trashtastic CW show "Gossip Girl". With old-media means of marketing music losing ground faster and faster, a spot on the soundtrack to a popular TV show became more and more coveted. --AP

The Dismemberment Plan Break Up

After announcing their breakup and their goodbye tour on their website a few months before, these wordy post-punk flailers played their last show, at the 9:30 Club in their hometown of Washington, D.C. And then, true to their word, that was it, other than a 2007 reunion benefit show at the Black Cat. In their wake, the Plan left a great legacy: Four near-perfect albums, hundreds of deliriously fun live shows, too many gloriously drawn-out renditions of "OK Joke's Over" to count. And then came Travistan. Not everybody agreed that frontman Travis Morrison's 2004 solo debut deserved the 0.0 that Pitchfork laid on it, but the album did manage to disappoint just about everyone to some degree. Earlier this year, Morrison posted a note on his website announcing that he was retiring from music. --TB

Pixies Reunite

Legend has it that when Black Francis decided to break up the Pixies in 1993, he fired the rest of the band via fax machine. After an ending like that, you wouldn't think it possible for the beloved alt-rock originators to work together ever again. But the news of a reunion came down the pike in 2003, and the band embarked on reunion tours in 2004 and 2005 that drew rave reviews from just about everyone who saw them. Since that reunion, the band has gotten back together to tour occasionally, prepped a massive box set called Minotaur, and released exactly two new songs, the pretty great "Bam Thwok" and the Warren Zevon cover "Ain't That Pretty at All". --TB

__Johnny Cash, R.I.P.
__

It's worth watching director Mark Romanek's brutal video for Johnny Cash's "Hurt" once more. Like, right now. Quite easily one of the best music videos ever made, its juxtaposition of Cash's present (shaky, craggy, unquestionably old) with his past (strong, towering, seemingly without end) makes it as affecting as going through your own grandfather's photo album. Cash was America's badass, he could come from nowhere else. He was unstoppable until he wasn't. Johnny Cash's voice sounded like God's. Or maybe it was the other way around. --RD

Elliott Smith Dies

Photo by Paul Heartfield

The beloved fragile-voiced singer-songwriter had spent years battling addiction and depression when his girlfriend found him dead in their Los Angeles apartment of two stab wounds to the chest. L.A. police were never able to confirm that Smith actually committed suicide, but there's no real evidence of a murder. If Smith did, in fact, take his own life, he did it by just about the most horrific means imaginable. Since Smith's death, we've heard two albums of unreleased material, and rumor has it that there's a ton more out there somewhere. But even if we never hear another note of the man's work, the elegantly rendered confessionals he recorded are legacy enough for anyone. --TB

M.I.A. Releases "Galang", Worms Her Way Into Our Brains

Late in 2003, a white-label single from an unknown singer with a then-unGoogleable name started making the internet rounds. The song existed at some previously unexplored intersection of dancehall and electro and Southern rap, and the singer sounded like she could come from anywhere; we knew nothing about her. Eventually, details surfaced: She was a Sri Lankan-born London art student, she was friends with Elastica, and, yup, her father was a Tamil Tiger, a part of the violent Sri Lankan separatist movement. It was that last detail that everyone seized on, especially M.I.A. herself. She seemed to knowingly bait controversy, filling the "Galang" video with cartoon war imagery and naming her debut album Arular, after her father's code name. It was hard to tell exactly what she was saying with this stuff, but it made her impossible to forget. Years later, she's a star, but she's still as elusive as ever. --TB

Jack White Punches Von Bondies Dude, Breaks From Detroit

Though Jack White said his fabled beating of former friend and Von Bondies leader Jason Stollsteimer was exaggerated, the incident served as a pretty clear marker of the singer-guitarist breaking away from his Detroit roots in search of something more. He found it in the South, where he produced Loretta Lynn's comeback LP Van Lear Rose, and eventually settled down with both his home and his Third Man label. Detroit's garage scene imploded without its star attraction, but White embraced his star power with wit, reverence, and new interests like the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather.

Moral: There's no use in getting in a fight with Jack White. He will win. --RD

• Maurice Gibb (singer, the Bee Gees) - Dec. 22, 1949 - Jan. 12, 2003
• Hank Ballard (R&B singer) - Nov. 18, 1927 - Mar. 2, 2003
• Edwin Starr (soul singer) - Jan. 21, 1942 - Apr. 2, 2003
• Babatunde Olatunji (percussionist, bandleader) - Apr. 7, 1927 - Apr. 6, 2003
• Earl King (blues singer, guitarist) - Feb. 7, 1934 - Apr. 17, 2003
• Nina Simone (jazz singer, pianist, activist) - Feb. 21, 1933 - Apr. 21, 2003
• Noel Redding (bassist, the Jimi Hendrix Experience) - Dec. 25, 1945 - May 11, 2003
• June Carter Cash (singer, member of the Carter Sisters) - Jun. 23, 1929 - May 15, 2003
• Barry White (soul singer) - Sep. 12, 1942 - Jul. 4, 2003
• Sam Phillips (producer, founder of Sun Records) - Jan. 5, 1923 - Jul. 30, 2003
• Warren Zevon (singer/songwriter) - Jan. 24, 1947 - Sep. 7, 2003
• Bobby Hatfield (singer, the Righteous Brothers) - Aug. 10, 1940 - Nov. 5, 2003
• Arthur Conley (soul singer) - Jan. 4, 1946 - Nov. 17, 2003

Freak Folk Weirds Out the Normals

It's just like your parents' hippie folk, except not. There are drugs, acoustic guitars, and beards. But there are also harps, androgyny, and a sneaking sense that peace and love may not conquer after all. It unofficially kicked off in early 2004 when the Devendra Banhart-curated compilation The Golden Apples of the Sun featured Joanna Newsom, Iron and Wine, Antony, Espers, Vetiver, and freak folk godmother Vashti Bunyan all on one, scene-defining disc. (As a testament to the musical trend's cult nature, the 1,000-copy limited-edition release was only available via Arthur Magazine.) The genre would continue to expand as the decade progressed, with a handful of Finnish musicians, many centered about the label Fonal, producing excellent psych-folk. Eventually, like electroclash and dance-punk before it and nu-rave later, the sounds of freak-folk would simply become embedded in indie's DNA sans labels and smoothed out, going overground over the course of the second half of the decade via folk-leaning artists such as Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, and Fleet Foxes. --RD

Post-Punk Gets Its Due

Considering it took 15 years for punk to "finally break" in the U.S. in 1992 via Nirvana, it was only natural that post-punk would finally grip these shores another decade later. The genre originally combated punk's hard-line philosophies and genre clichés-- and the notion that rock had hit a dead end and 1977 was a Year Zero-- by melding rock with disparate genres like dub, funk, dance, and new wave. By the middle of the 2000s, its seemed like every new band had brushed up on bands like Joy Division, Television, and Gang of Four. The result was an onslaught that included Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, the Killers, Bloc Party, Futureheads, and Maxïmo Park. In the post-punk spirit, many of those bands have dabbled in different musical styles since-- including goth, epic rock, electro. --RD

Danger Mouse Releases The Grey Album

At the tail end of the mash-up trend, a relatively unknown Georgia producer named after a British cartoon character had a novel idea: a mixtape that combined the vocals from Jay-Z's fake retirement LP The Black Album with beats painstakingly constructed from uncleared samples of the Beatles' White Album. Danger Mouse's execution was almost as good as his concept, especially in the fusion of "December 4th" and "Mother Nature's Son", though anyone who claimed that it was better than the actual Black Album needs to spend more time with The Black Album. EMI shot themselves in the foot when their cease-and-desist letter became a news story, which then granted The Grey Album better publicity than money could buy, and the mixtape, originally pressed in a 3,000-copy promo run, became omnipresent online. EMI later dropped their case, and The Grey Album remains downloadable for free from Girl Talk's Illegal Art website. The whole affair, meanwhile, turned Danger Mouse into one of the most in-demand producers in the game, and a deluge of way-inferior DJs would mash Jay up with Pavement (The Slack Album), Weezer (The Black and Blue Album), and Metallica (The Double Black Album). --TB

Janet Jackson's Boob Shocks the World

At the end of 2004's MTV-produced Super Bowl halftime show, Justin Timberlake finished up "Rock Your Body" by ripping away half of Janet Jackson's futuristic fetish-wear bra thing, giving the entire universe a full half-second of unobstructed pierced celebrity tit. And then: total insanity. Everyone blamed everyone else, the FCC levied titanic fines wherever it could, and we got two years of totally bland boomer-fave halftime shows (until Prince totally kicked ass in 2007). Timberlake's career recovered nicely-- he even coined the phrase "wardrobe malfunction"-- but Jackson's never did, though this may or may not have something to do with Timberlake, unlike Jackson, going on to release actual good music. As usual, The Onion said it best: "U.S. Children Still Traumatized One Year After Seeing Partially Exposed Breast on TV". (Also: the Patriots won. Again.) --TB

Kanye West Drops College Dropout, New Hip-Hop Era Is Born

It's hard to believe now, but there was a time when it looked like The College Dropout would never even come out. Even after producing standouts like "Takeover" and "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" off Jay-Z's The Blueprint, Kanye West was a risky proposition, and his debut seemed destined to be another "delayed to infinity" cautionary tale. After all, he was "the first nigga with a Benz and a backpack," the guy who didn't see anything wrong with putting both Ludacris and Talib Kweli on his LP or switching from goofball sexism to insular self-examination to God with barely a breath in between. And after stealing "Slow Jamz" from Twista and Jamie Foxx with some black or white Mike Jackson talk, Dropout finally got the green light. He made post-gangster rap a universal concern; he hasn't looked back since. --RD

Dance Music Distributor EFA Shuts Down

Dance music only really works when DJs can get their hands on shiny black records. That became a lot harder when the German vinyl distributor EFA filed for bankruptcy, a move that had a deflating and almost decimating effect on the techno world. EFA's closure wreaked havoc on a number of dance labels. Chief among them was the German minimal techno label family Force Inc. (Force Tracks, Mille Plateaux, among others), which shut down soon after. --TB

__

__Ray Charles, R.I.P.
__

An impossibly broad term like "American music" could almost be defined as "the kind work that Ray Charles made," as his restless musical journey found him moving seamlessly between musical worlds in search of new forms of expression. Charles started off in the 1940s and early 50s cutting tough, hooky, and intense sides that helped to define the emerging music known as rhythm and blues. But by the early 60s, he was breaking ground in jazz, country, rock, and pop, with a special talent for breathing life into over-recorded standards. Charles' influence on singers and pianists of every stripe was immense, and he was a serial collaborator, dueting with everyone from jazz singer Betty Carter to Merle Haggard to Van Morrison while recording instrumental jazz with artists like the Modern Jazz Quartet vibraphonist Milt Jackson.  By the 80s and 90s, he was more of a pop culture presence-- remember those Diet Pepsi spots?-- than a popular recording artist, but his final studio album, the duet set Genius Loves Company, became his best-selling set ever when released two months after his death. He was 73. --MR

Lollapalooza Tour Sputters Out, Again

Lollapalooza, the Perry Farrell-spawned festival tour that helped introduce alt-rock to mainstream America, had gone dormant since 1997 when Farrell brought it back for a 2003 tour with a deeply awful lineup that paired the reunited Jane's Addiction with Audioslave, Incubus, and Jurassic 5. The next year, though, Farrell planned a tour that would stop for two days in each city it visited, and he built a truly impressive lineup that included Morrissey, the Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Wilco, PJ Harvey, Modest Mouse, TV on the Radio, the Killers, and Le Tigre. If Farell had pulled this tour off, it would've been incredible. But after poor ticket sales, Farrell announced that all dates on the tour had been cancelled. When Lolla returned in 2005, it was as a two-day festival in Chicago, not a tour. --TB

Zach Braff Changes the Shins' Life

Zach Braff, filling out forms in a waiting room, looks quizzically at Natalie Portman, who's in full pixie-sprite mode: "What are you listening to?" Portman: "The Shins. You know them?" Braff, looking weirdly disappointed: "No." Portman: "You gotta hear this one song. They'll change your life, I swear." A few seconds of cute chatter, and then cue "New Slang", along with doe-eyed stares. That scene, from Garden State, marked the unassuming Portland-via-Albuquerque band's ascension to next-generation mix-CD staple. It also became just about the most overused blog punchline of the decade. For longtime fans, it was simultaneously a delightful and appalling cinematic moment. "New Slang" is still a great song, but we'll never hear it the same way again. Thanks, Zach Braff. --TB

Dave Matthews Pollutes (Literally This Time)

Ever since their mid-90s rise to hacky-sack ubiquity, the Dave Matthews Band has been dumping metaphorical shit all over the American musical landscape. But one day in Chicago, that shit turned literal. Stefan Wohl, Matthews' tour bus driver, emptied the contents of the bus' septic tank over the Chicago River. Unfortunately, there happened to be an open-roofed tour boat crossing under the bridge at that exact moment, and its passengers got hit with 800 pounds of human waste. Wohl eventually pleaded guilty to reckless conduct and water pollution, but Matthews continues to get off scot free. (The passengers on the boat did sue the band, though.) --TB

__Vote for Change Tour Fails to Change the World
__

Remember when the fall 2004 Vote for Change tour, featuring Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket, and others, convinced everybody to vote for John Kerry, who was then elected President of the United States, and the next four years were full of nothing but peace, prosperity, and patriotism? Neither do we. --AP

Brian Wilson Finally Releases Smile

Axl Rose may have taken his time with Chinese Democracy, but the guy's got nothing on Brian Wilson, who finally released his opus Smile nearly four decades after starting it in 1966. And, unlike the bloated Guns N' Roses record, Smile was worth the insane wait. The return was one of many highlights in a banner decade for Wilson, relatively out of the woods after years of silence, sub-par material, and seclusion. He took the Beach Boys' masterwork Pet Sounds out on the road for fans old and new. And his hazy, harmony-laden influence was felt throughout indie music, from Panda Bear's layered compositions to the New Pornographers' vocal theatrics. Classic rock comeback wannabes-- take notes. --RD

Ashlee Simpson Lip-Syncs on "Saturday Night Live"

While it's no secret that backing vocal tracks are often used during TV tapings to augment a singer's voice, usually the backing vocals and the live vocals actually, you know, match up. That wasn't the case when Ashlee Simpson launched into her track "Autobiography" on "SNL" in 2004 and the pre-recorded "guide" track started playing another song entirely. It was an insanely embarrassing moment, but one that probably wouldn't have blown up completely without blogs, which turned the pop-star-being-a-pop-star calamity into a cringe-worthy dose of schadenfreude for millions. Neither her career nor U.S. teen-pop ever fully recovered. --RD

Legendary DJ John Peel Dies

When it came to BBC radio DJ John Peel, taste-making never seemed like a hunt for coolness or the next big thing. Even right before he passed at age 65 from a heart attack, his taste was an ever-evolving, open-eared journey. He never stopped listening, never sat back or exploited his god-like appointments on favorites from the Fall to the White Stripes. In a way, Peel's eclecticism-- everything from pop to metal to dancehall to techno to hip-hop showed up on his show over the years-- predicted today's increasingly genre-less musical environment, where shuffling reigns and crossovers are commonplace. The staggering list of artists who recorded in-studio Peel Sessions over the years-- everyone from Fleetwood Mac, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, T. Rex, David Bowie, Joy Divison, the Smiths, and R.E.M., to PJ Harvey, the Flaming Lips, Pavement, Belle and Sebastian, Aphex Twin, the Strokes, and Pulp-- is a testament to his ceaseless quest for fine sounds. --RD

Ol' Dirty Bastard Dies

On November 12, the reassembled Wu-Tang Clan played its first full-lineup show in a while, filling up New Jersey's cavernous Continental Airlines Arena. But Ol' Dirty Bastard, the crew's anarchic and frequently incarcerated soul, didn't make it to the show. An incensed Method Man fumed from the stage: "There's no one bigger than the Clan, and when you see Ol' Dirty Bastard, tell him that." The next afternoon, ODB, at work in a Manhattan recording studio, succumbed to a drug overdose, and the Wu-Tang Clan would never be whole again. --TB

Libertines Break Up; Doherty Attempts Rock Star Cliché Record

Charmingly shambolic British rockers the Libertines lived up to nearly every rock star cliché in existence during their stint as NME superstars in the early 00s. But it's hard to make that many headlines-- drugs! fights! hits!-- while staying together, so their 2004 breakup seemed like a fitting end to their tabloid tale. But, thanks to the exploits of singer Pete Doherty, it turned out to be more like the beginning. If Doherty wasn't being arrested on countless drug charges, he was in rehab or jail, or cavorting with Kate Moss on the cover of UK rags. The decade ended with less sensational headlines about a Doherty solo album and a likely Libertines reunion to go down next year. --RD

Diplo Turns International Tourism Into Party Music

Near the end of the year, Philly party DJ Diplo released two mixtapes that quickly became party staples. Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 was a collab with then-girlfriend M.I.A., and it introduced her to everyone who hadn't gotten around to downloading "Galang" and "Fire Fire" yet. Another, Favela on Blast, introduced American hipsters to the riotous Brazilian dance music called baile funk. On both mixes (and on 2003 Hollertronix hip-hop mix Never Scared, a collab with fellow Philly DJ Low Budget), Diplo proved himself to be an instinctive party starter with an open ear and a talent for getting affluent white kids to dance to music they'd never previously taken seriously. At Diplo's parties, Southern rap, 80s synth-pop, dancehall, house, and Baltimore club all interacted peacefully, and eventually it stopped being weird for indie kids to listen to this stuff. By the end of the decade, Diplo was walking the red carpet at the Grammys as co-producer of the Record of the Year-nominated "Paper Planes". More importantly, though, he'd had a seismic impact on hipster dance-party culture, pushing the status quo to something way beyond the Britpop and 80s college rock that had once dominated. --TB

• John McGeoch (guitarist, Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Public Image Ltd.) - May 28, 1955 - Mar. 4, 2004
• Jan Berry (singer, Jan and Dean) - Apr. 3, 1941 - Mar. 26, 2004
• Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (Jamaican producer) - Jan. 26, 1932 - May 5, 2004
• Elvin Jones (jazz drummer) - Sep. 9, 1927 - May 18, 2004
• Rick James (singer, multi-instrumentalist) - Feb. 1, 1948 - Aug. 6, 2004
• Johnny Ramone (guitarist, the Ramones) - Oct. 8, 1948 - Sep. 15, 2004
• "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott (guitarist, Pantera) - Aug. 20, 1966 - Dec. 8, 2004
• Jim "Son" Seals (blues musician) - Aug. 13, 1942 - Dec. 20, 2004

__Sweden: More Than a Bunch of Preternaturally Beautiful People
__

Before this decade, you'd be forgiven for thinking Sweden's pop music legacy began and ended with ABBA, the Cardigans, and Ace of Base. No more. The Nordic wonderland has been a fount of non-stop excellence in all sorts of forms over the last 10 years, from the post-Morrissey singer-songwriter-isms of Jens Lekman, Peter Bjorn and John, José González, and the Labrador Records crew to the soft-focus pop of the Concretes and El Perro Del Mar to hip-hop tinged vixens Robyn and Lykke Li to the coastal beats of the Tough Alliance, Air France, and Studio. Meanwhile, brother-sister duo the Knife pushed the Swedish sound into heretofore uncharted and beguiling territory with their hit "Heartbeats" and their haunted LP Silent Shout, which hit number one on Sweden's charts and our very own Top Albums of 2006 list. --RD

M.I.A., Annie, and Robyn Make Blog Pop Go Boom

Though it may seem like most music blogs pushed nothing but underground sounds like indie rock and French touch (plus tons of needless covers and remixes), the medium also helped launch a few acts that pushed the boundaries of chart pop-- and actually made a dent on charts worldwide. Among them were one-named Scandinavian stars Annie and Robyn, who infused their beat-based dance pop with plenty of wit and innovation. But the biggest blog-pop crossover was M.I.A., who first found fame on the web thanks to her Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape with producer Diplo. After a massive wave of acclaim buoyed her first album, Maya Arulpragasam broke through with her hit "Paper Planes", which was featured heavily in the trailer for Pineapple Express. Photos with Oprah, collaborations with Jay-Z and Kanye, and a spot on Time's Most Influential list followed. --RD

Blog Bands, For Better or For Worse

With the infinite possibilities offered by the explosion of the music blogosphere, and the opportunity to explore just about every genre under the sun, why not...just listen to stuff that sounds like all the bands you know you like already? As the internet tools with which to share music--and one's opinion of said music-- became easier to use, there came a retrenchment of a core indie sound. Most "blog bands" like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Cold War Kids, Tapes 'n Tapes, Voxtrot, Ghostland Observatory, White Denim, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Sound Team, Birdmonster, What Made Milwaukee Famous, and Anathallo offered immediate rock with clearly defined indie DNA, ready for people who wanted things new and now and newer and nower every single moment, but didn't want to stray too far from their comfort zones. (Beirut and Midlake, to name two, bucked the trend and enojyed their own clearly defined sound.) Much of this stuff was ultimately pretty blah, and when these groups often failed to deliver on follow-up records, the backlash came hard and fast, often from the same places that had championed these artists in the first place. Pitchfork certainly wasn't immune to this trend. --AP

Dubstep Darkens London Dancefloors

Shades of dubstep ran through the garage continuum since the late 1990s, but it wasn't until the middle of this decade that the sound coalesced into a movement. As far back as 2001, the London club Forward>>> began to focus on this darker, bass-heavy sounds, with its syncopated rhythms and minor-key melodies, but the term didn't become widely used until the next year. Most of the scene's early adopters-- Digital Mystikz, Benga, Skream-- are still making strong music, and by 2005, Kode9's Hyperdub became the preeminent dubstep imprint, eventually issuing records not only by its founder but also newer stars Burial, Darkstar, and Zomby. --SP

R. Kelly Brings Back the Operetta

Of course R. Kelly knows "Trapped in the Closet" is funny. The difference between the most innovative and insane R&B star of the decade and everyone else is that he will dare to take that chance. Yeah, he'll put out 22 surreal songs and videos with the same beat that follows a storyline that would satisfy a "Days of Our Lives" lifer. He'll make a song called "In the Kitchen" that could double as the world's raunchiest lesson in food metaphors. He'll do another one that's basically him arguing with a lady friend on the phone and call it "Real Talk". His outlandish behavior sometimes got the best of him, though, like when his tour with Jay-Z imploded apparently due to Kelly's negligence and paranoia. Still, more often than not, the singer's eccentricities continue to keep him relevant 16 years after his debut LP. --RD

Kidz Bop Takes on Modest Mouse

When Modest Mouse signed with Sony, it was weird. Nobody expected this twisty, culty Pacific Northwest indie band to put up Nickelback numbers. But when "Float On" became a flukey modern-rock radio hit, Sony's gamble actually paid off, and Isaac Brock and co. became something like rock stars. Every further sign of the band's crossover success seemed more surreal than the last. A platinum plaque for Good News for People Who Love Bad News? Sure. The contestants on "American Idol" belting out "Float On" in a car-commercial video, not even omitting the line about backing their car into a cop car? Why not? But "Float On" really reached its zenith with the release of Kidz Bop 7, as a mob of tykes chirped the song like it was "Since U Been Gone" or something. The weirdest thing about it was that it didn't really seem too weird by that point. --TB

Jay-Z Assumes Def Jam Presidency

If you need any proof that rap music is for the kids, just spend half an hour clicking around YouTube looking for the latest goofy dance crazes. So it's always interesting to see how rap greats adjust to getting older. Of any rapper this decade, Jay-Z probably had the most public and protracted struggle with age and respectability. Jay's stint as President of Def Jam was only the tip of the diamond-encrusted iceberg; he also famously ditched jerseys for button-ups, got married, kicked it with Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow, retired, unretired, and recorded American Gangster, an album that attempted to recapture the outlaw thrill of his younger years with a crack-sales narrative tied in with a Ridley Scott Movie. OutKast's Andre 3000, meanwhile, all but quit rap entirely, recording a hugely successful plastic funk album and then going on to take roles in terrible movies like Be Cool and Four Brothers. Eminem disappeared for years. Nelly might as well have. And Kanye West, who dressed like the Cosby cartoon version of a grumpy 40-year-old when we first met him, still finds ways to transition into Auto-Tuned fashion-plate pop-star insanity. --TB

Conor Oberst Leaves Emo Behind

Once upon a time, kids used to sing along to every word at a Bright Eyes concert as if it were a Dashboard Confessional concert. Back then, Conor Oberst was a prodigy singing his heart dry in impassioned and overwrought terms. But after the more accomplished, ambitious, and nuanced transitional 2002 album Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, Oberst made the indie equivalent of Justin Timberlake's transition from child star to adult artist with the double-wallop of I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, which showed off his new political perspective and studio prowess, respectively. Cementing his maturation, Oberst started phasing out his Bright Eyes moniker in favor of his given name with his 2008 LP simply titled Conor Oberst. --RD

__Crazy Frog and the Ringtone Invasion
__

Though people stopped buying music this decade, they did buy lots of cell phones. Tons. And nothing says "oh hey, let me look at my pretty new cell phone" like an obnoxious ring you can hear from the bathroom. Enter: The Ringtone Market, spearheaded by an extremely punch-able, gap-toothed cartoon frog covering "Axel F". Really. The novelty success of Crazy Frog led to non-animated artists trying to get in on music's hottest revenue stream. The result was so-called "ringtone rap" typified by repetitive synths, simple melody lines, and ear-worm hooks. While this trend led to many irritating, Soulja Boy-style interruptions, it found its apex with T.I.'s "What You Know", undoubtedly the most triumphant hip-hop ringtone ever made.
--RD

Michael Jackson Not Guilty of Child Molestation

Almost 20 months after he'd been arrested for sexually abusing an underage boy (an investigation launched after he'd been seen cuddling with the child and talking about sharing his bed with kids in an interview for the documentary "Living With Michael Jackson"), and five and a half months after the trial started, a jury of 12 found Michael Jackson innocent. But for the King of Pop, it was a pyrrhic victory. Humiliated and already convicted in the court of public opinion (there was testimony from several witnesses who claimed to have been sexually abused by, though their credibility was in question), Jackson's career as an entertainer and reputation as a public figure were in ruins. The second half the decade would not be a happy time for Jackson, and ended tragically. --MR

Pitchfork Curates Its First Music Festival

The Intonation Festival, which Pitchfork curated, brought the Decemberists, Broken Social Scene, Tortoise, and more to Chicago's Union Park. The next summer saw the launch of the Pitchfork Music Festival and, and not to toot our own horn too much, we've added a few new wrinkles every year since: a third stage, a third night, some Jumbotrons. Along the way, we've played host to the Flaming Lips, Spoon, Sonic Youth, Animal Collective, De La Soul, Public Enemy, the Hold Steady, Dinosaur Jr., Vampire Weekend, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, the reunited Os Mutantes, Yoko Ono, and more. If you came out to any of these, we hope you had as much fun as we did.  --TB

Billy Corgan Tries to Reform Smashing Pumpkins

On the same day as he released his solo album TheFutureEmbrace, Billy Corgan took out a full-page ad in two major Chicago newspapers announcing his intention to reform the Smashing Pumpkins. "I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams," Corgan wrote. But the only original Pumpkin who rejoined the band was drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Original guitarist James Iha told Rolling Stone that he hadn't spoken with Corgan in years. The eventual Smashing Pumpkins quasi-reunion tour was widely panned. --TB

Sufjan Stevens Conquers Illinois, Indie America
Photo by Denny Renshaw

Sufjan Stevens once claimed that he'd release an album for every one of our 50 states, but right now his total is holding steady at two. That's OK because Illinois, the second entry in Stevens' 50 States project, pegged him as a new kind of indie pop star, one as comfortable with literary and orchestral aspirations as he was with incandescent hooks. The sprawling and ambitious Illinois, Pitchfork's favorite album of 2005, wove in local-color details, serial-killer bio, and one 35-word song title, but it still came out sounding grand, epic, and universal. It's a measure of Stevens' talent and appeal that the overtly Christian themes that have always been a part of his music never stopped him from becoming a bona fide indie star. --TB

Lollapalooza Sets Up Shop in Chicago

Back in the 90s, the Brits had Glastonbury and Reading and all manner of huge, awesome multi-day festivals. But if Americans wanted to see PJ Harvey rock a stadium-sized crowd, we had to sit through the Verve Pipe at some haphazardly curated radio-station throwdown. But this decade, a number of multi-day festivals came to America. After Lollapalooza failed to resuscitate itself as a touring entity, it became a one-time-only two-day affair in 2005, with Weezer, Pixies, the Killers, and Widespread Panic topping the bill. The next year, it returned as a three-day fest and only got bigger from there. Meanwhile, California's Coachella fest, started in 1999, grew in size and importance. Other fests like Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, All Points West, Sasquatch, and our very own Pitchfork Music Festival began their runs. These days, if you're willing to commit to a full weekend of sunburned shoulders and sore knees, you can see half of your favorite bands in one location over one weekend, and that's a glorious thing. --TB

Young Jeezy and Clipse Take Crack-Rap Mainstream

Rappers have been talking about selling crack rocks on record almost since crack existed, and Raekwon turned the illicit profession into a hallucinatory masterpiece with 1995's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. But crack-rap found its greatest popular success with Young Jeezy's debut album Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101, an epic and apocalyptic hour-long stomp that could justifiably be accused of glamorizing Jeezy's former line of work. On two great albums and one classic mixtape, Virginia's Clipse used the job to showcase their haughty sneers and impeccable wordplay. And on 2004's Purple Haze, Cam'ron spun goofily absurdist tall tales about criminal life. At its best, crack-rap, like HBO's "The Wire", fearlessly plumbs the thrills and dangers and moral complications that come along when some kids' only realistic way of making money is to sell poison to their neighbors. At its worst, it's a depressing revel in other people's misery and a clear display that you can only find so many words to rhyme with "Pyrex". --TB

Green Day Cuts Off Lookout! Records

Founded by Larry Livermore in 1987, the Bay Area indie Lookout! Records introduced the world to bands like Operation Ivy, Screeching Weasel, the Mr. T Experience, Avail, and the Donnas. But when Green Day, the biggest band in the label's history, reclaimed the rights to their first two albums, the label faded into inactivity. Sales of those first two Green Day albums had essentially kept Lookout! afloat, but the label couldn't afford to pay the band their royalties, and Green Day finally took the albums back. When Lookout! laid off most of their employees in the immediate aftermath, Lookout! artists like Ted Leo and Mary Timony had to find new homes at other labels. --TB

"George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People"

With those seven words-- uttered during NBC's "A Concert for Katrina Relief" days after the hurricane ravaged New Orleans-- Kanye West went off script and voiced the confused, incensed words of millions. Not all of West's outspoken moments have been as courageous, but he offered a slight bit of relief to those struck by Katrina and its deplorable aftermath. Sidebar: Mike Myers never recovered. --RD

Antony Hegarty Wins Mercury Prize

Photo by Don Felix Cervantes

The transgender singer surprised many with his victory over the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, Coldplay, Bloc Party, and M.I.A., for the annual industry award given to the best album by a British or Irish artist. Not only was Antony merely a fraction as popular as some of his Mercury Prize peers, he was also not widely identified as British-- though UK-born, he spent most of his life in the U.S. The minor controversy was quickly forgotten, but it marked the major emergence of one of the most unique artists in recent memory. --RD

Arcade Fire Unfashionably Rocks "Fashion Rocks"

Nobody would ever mistake their quasi-Amish duds for Vogue material, but that didn't stop the Arcade Fire from stepping onstage at Conde Nast's "Fashion Rocks" concert to wail out a fervent rendition of "Wake Up" alongside David Bowie, whose wizened British drawl proved oddly perfect for the song. On the CBS telecast, cameras catch Heather Graham looking glassily amped. At that point, the Arcade Fire's soaring debut Funeral was just a year old, but the Montreal roarers had already made their mark. Forces weren't exactly aligned in the Arcade Fire's favor: They're not gorgeous, they don't carry themselves like gods on earth, and Funeral came into the world via indie label Merge. And yet the album struck enough chords that Neon Bible, the follow-up, would debut at #2 on the Billboard charts and the band would appear on magazine covers-- not because they're typical celebrities but because they made really powerful music that a lot of people liked. Sometimes things just work out like that. --TB

Sunn O))) Slow Metal to a Crawl

For years, bands like Melvins and Sleep have slowed Black Sabbath's primeval stomp into a staggered, resin-sticky thud; Sleep's 1999 album Jerusalem was one hour-long song. But with their album Black One, the hooded wizards in Sunn O))) turned metal into a sort of slow, ominous ambient roar, with things like riffs and melodies only barely flickering into existence for seconds at a time before the darkness swallowed them back up. Indeed, this decade saw a boom in doom, as bands like Isis, Boris, Jesu, and Nadja and labels like Southern Lord and Hydra Head eschewed blast beats for amniotic haze. --TB

Fiery Furnaces Team Up With Grandma

The Fiery Furnaces were always restless spirits, constantly reworking their sprawling prog-pop suites into unrecognizable configurations onstage. But with the release of Rehearsing My Choir, the Brooklyn-based brother-sister duo did something that no indie band could've or would've tried: They recorded an entire album with their grandmother, Olga Sarantos, whose narration formed the LP's backbone. After that, the Friedberger siblings pulled off crazy stunt after crazy stunt. Just this year, they've announced plans to cover their own album twice, turn their shows into health-care rallies, and release a silent album, including the sheet music but no actual recording and encouraging fans to play the songs themselves at shows. --TB

The First* Guitar Hero Game Is Released__
__*

The guitar will not die. While proponents of so-called "real" guitars-- strings, metal, wood-- may scoff at the plastic, multi-buttoned axes used in games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, there's no denying the shocking universality of these revamped axes. Guitar Hero not only brought karaoke-style dynamics (sans awful singing) to the living room, it reintroduced a generation to the classic guitar-rock gods of yore by-way-of repetition and cheeseball graphics. Whether interactive music games will create a new army of bands armed with hot-wired, string-less guitars blasting samples with each button push or usher in a new era of solo worship has yet to be seen. But these games are not going anywhere. Just ask the Beatles. --RD

• Karl Mueller (bassist, Soul Asylum) - Jul. 27, 1963 - Jun. 17, 2005
• Renaldo "Obie" Benson (singer, the Four Tops) - Jun. 14, 1937 - Jul. 1, 2005
• Luther Vandross (singer) - Apr. 20, 1951 - Jul. 1, 2005
• Robert Moog (inventor, electronic music pioneer) - May 23, 1934 - Aug. 21, 2005
• James "Little" Milton (blues musician) - Sep. 7, 1934 - Aug. 4, 2005
• R.L. Burnside (blues musician) - Nov. 23, 1926 - Sep. 1, 2005
• Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (blues musician) - Apr. 18, 1924 - Sep. 10, 2005
• Mana Nishiura (drummer, Shonen Knife) - Oct. 11, 1971 - Nov. 4, 2005
• Chris Whitley (blues musician) - Aug. 31, 1960 - Nov. 20, 2005
• Derek Bailey (avant-garde guitarist) - Jan. 29, 1930 - Dec. 25, 2005

Bruce Springsteen Is Cool Again

After a spotty 1990s, Bruce Springsteen returned to his lofty perch as classic rock's greatest live entertainer with some help from a reunited E Street Band. And just as the Boss became vital again, a whole new generation was eager to sing the praises of his untouchable 70s and early 80s run. Whether it was Arcade Fire copping that "Dancing in the Dark" beat for "Keep the Car Running", or Conor Oberst hearkening back to Springsteen's early, wordy, kitchen-sink epics, or the Killers trying to one-up the man with their stadium-sized "When You Were Young", or the Hold Steady and Gaslight Anthem trading in on E Street's massive riffs and blue collar sincerity, Bruce was back in a big way. And then he crotch-cam'd the Super Bowl, which was pretty amazing, too. --RD

Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen Jump on MySpace Wagon

Even with its unwieldy interface and graphic overload, MySpace remains a go-to for music fans looking for new music thanks to its for-dummies streaming player and friend-to-friend linkability. And while the "band MySpace page" is now de rigueur for new acts looking to be heard, this wasn't always the case. Two of the biggest MySpace successes-- Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen-- benefited from the site's unfiltered approach to music proliferation. Even though the Arctics claimed to have "no idea what MySpace was" when they started out, their fans did-- and those same followers posted the band's music, which led to a label deal, which led to their first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, becoming the fastest-selling debut LP in UK chart history. Meanwhile, Allen used her MySpace and to promote her songs as well as her out-sized personality with blog posts and pictures. And it wasn't long before she switched from posting candids of herself on the web to watching her mug show up on British tabloid covers week after week. --RD

J Dilla Dies

Stoner-rap legend Dilla had a rich and varied career, starting out working with the Pharcyde and A Tribe Called Quest before going on to work with everyone from D'Angelo and Erykah Badu to whatever knuckleheads happened to live down the street from him in Detroit. And he kept making music even as he was laid up in a hospital bed, dying from complications of lupus. Dilla made so much music, in fact, that we're still hearing new tracks from the man years after his death. And his production style, which chops tiny shards of jazz and soul and electro beyond all recognition and tosses them into a blunted, bass-heavy haze, has found acolytes in a stunning range of younger producers whose numbers include everyone from Flying Lotus to Black Milk to Javelin. --TB

Three 6 Mafia Win an Oscar

Three 6 Mafia weren't the first rappers to win an Oscar for Best Original Song; Eminem took the prize for "Lose Yourself" in 2003. But then, Em didn't show up to collect his; his bubbling, frizzy-haired co-writer Luis Resto collected in his stead. Also, he was a gigantic star. Three 6 Mafia had the better story and the bigger moment. The Memphis regional rap kingpins had forged their reputations over a decade and a half of churning out primordial fight music; they were not, let's say, likely crossover candidates. But they did write and produce "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp", one of the songs that Terrence Howard rapped in Hustle & Flow. And when Queen Latifah opened the envelope and read their name, they exploded at the podium, jumping up and down, laughing with joy, thanking Memphis and their mothers and George Clooney and Ludacris and everyone else they could think of. Host Jon Stewart: "That's how you accept an Oscar." --TB

Gnarls Barkley Bring "Crazy" to "Top of the Pops"

When the duo of Goodie Mob soul howler Cee-Lo and Beatles masher-upper Danger Mouse appeared on the British chart-show "Top of the Pops", rocking old-school airline uniforms with a backing band to match and performing a weirdly loungey version of "Crazy", it marked an auspicious chart-history occasion. "Crazy" was the first song to ascend to the top of the British charts without selling a single physical record, doing it all on downloads alone. This was the first time we'd really seen Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse on a stage together, but they'd been playing the internet game for months beforehand, dressing like movie icons in their press photos and generally cultivating an air of good-times absurdity. But "Crazy", their one indelible song, proved to be their moment, one of the few songs of the decade that everyone knows and everyone likes. Now here's hoping Cee-Lo gets back to rapping. --TB

Daft Punk Bust Out the Big Pyramid

Photo by Sung Kim

Artists at 2006's Coachella Festival included big names like Madonna, Depeche Mode, Franz Ferdinand, Tool, and Bloc Party, but all of them looked like puny little humans compared to Daft Punk's never-before-seen pyramid light show. For their first major U.S. show in nearly a decade, the French duo launched one of the most welcomed (and seizure-worthy) comebacks of the decade after underwhelming with their 2005 LP, Human After All. In their live absence, Daft Punk's brand of pop continued to infiltrate all genres by-way-of clubs and the web, so the awe-inspiring light show ignited an explosion that was set to blow. The Coachella gig's ecstatic reception led to a world tour that brought band-less dance music to the masses like never before. Kanye West's DP-sampling "Stronger"-- and LED-crazed Glow in the Dark tour-- cemented their status as go-to mainstream godfathers. --RD

Sonic Youth Rock "Gilmore Girls"

Sonic Youth had always enjoyed engaging with teengirl popular culture throughout their career, and the latter half of this decade brought many opportunities for the band to dip their toes in that realm. In the sixth season finale of the adored mother-daughter dramedy "Gilmore Girls", Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore appeared with daughter Coco performing "What a Waste" from their album Rather Ripped. In early 2009, Gordon partnered with cool-girl clothing company Urban Outfitters on a fashion line, and Moore teamed up with ex-Be Your Own Pet singer Jemina Pearl to cover the Ramones' "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" for the high school soap opera "Gossip Girl". In August 2009, it was announced that Sonic Youth would perform on "Gossip Girl", bringing their 1986 artrock classic "Starpower" to the teen fashionista jetset. --AP

__Girl Talk Becomes Mashup Messiah With Release of Night Ripper
__

Girl Talk's Night Ripper doesn't just have a billion non-cleared samples on it. It's got a billion non-cleared samples from artists that would never be on the same radio station: Young Jeezy, Genesis, Foo Fighters, Pixies. With the once-harsh lines between genres crumbling at an increasing pace due to file-sharing and the internet, Night Ripper sounded like an accurate representation of a "dream radio station" for the kids who grew up on both Jay-Z and Nirvana. And the fact that GT mastermind Greg Gillis remains a free and non-litigated man is a testament to the evolving notion of copyright. After years of stringent enforcement, Girl Talk's maximalist approach seemed like too much to handle-- even for copyright lawyers. --RD

Sleater-Kinney Break Up

Photo by John Clark

Their legend already secure, Portland ex-riot grrrl power trio Sleater-Kinney spent the decade's first half trying out new ideas, often to spectacular effect: sugar-rush girl-group pop on All Hands on the Bad One, personal-is-political firepower on One Beat, full-throated monolithic classic rock on The Woods. Through it all, they remained the single best live band on the face of the planet. When they took to their website to announce an "indefinite hiatus," you could almost hear the entire indie rock universe collectively groan. In the years since, Corin Tucker has has spent time at home with her kid and sung back-up for Eddie Vedder. Janet Weiss has played drums for Stephen Malkmus. Carrie Brownstein has maintained the truly entertaining and insightful NPR blog Monitor Mix. All worthwhile pursuits, for sure, but this band is sorely missed. --TB

Syd Barrett Dies

When the psych godfather died at age 60 from complications from diabetes, the passing felt like a mere footnote. Barrett spent most of the second half of his life in seclusion, and almost all of his essential material recorded with Pink Floyd and on his own took place in the 1960s. But that material holds up, and still inspires acts like Spiritualized and Deerhunter with its unhinged sense of anarchy and freedom. Barrett's story doubles as a cautionary tale, too, i.e., bad trips are real, and they can tip beautiful disorder over into nothingness. --RD

"Top of the Pops" Is Canceled

After more than 42 years of helping to both reflect and shape the British pop charts, the BBC cancelled the countdown show "Top of the Pops". For much of its run, TOTP only featured songs in the ascendency, which often made an appearance on the show a wonderful opportunity for emerging artists and songs. Its national audience helped to fix the images of many of rock's stars from the past four decades, from the Smiths to T. Rex to Oasis, providing a wide cross-section of the UK public with a view and listen to the often large variety of sounds jockeying for positions on the singles charts. --SP

Of Montreal Shills for Outback Steakhouse

Back in the day, zines like Maximumrocknroll would damn bands for playing shows with beer company sponsors. But in the new millennium, Athens Elephant 6 glam-poppers didn't lose cred even when Outback Steakhouse re-appropriated their "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)" with lyrics like "let's pretend we don't exist" replaced with "let's go Outback tonight." That moment remains emblematic of the decade when selling out became no big deal, when indie rock showed up in TV commercials with clockwork regularity. So we got the Shins big-upping McDonalds, the Unicorns repping Crayola, Joanna Newsom reduced to a Victoria's Secret jingle. After all, in an era when nobody buys records, how's a band supposed to get paid? --TB

Johnny Marr Joins Modest Mouse

Photo by Autumn DeWilde

It's easy to imagine the loopy grin that crossed Isaac Brock's face when he announced to Rolling Stone that the legendary Smiths guitarist had joined his band: "He's a full blown member of the band. It's really fuckin' nice." Marr's addition was organic and borne out of an extended collaboration; it wasn't some choreographed Big Moment. But even after the fluke runaway success of "Float On", this felt like Modest Mouse ascending to a new level. After spending a few years touring and recording with the band, Marr has now let his Modest Mouse duties lapse, instead helping out another younger band, the British all-brothers band the Cribs. And if he wants to spend the next couple of decades jumping from band to band as indie's greatest freelance gun, he's certainly earned it. --TB

Tower Records Dies

It was a surreal site: This gleaming superstore that, just a few weeks before, had been full of immaculately organized $16.99 CDs, with only a few discs haphazardly crammed on its racks, everything marked down to a dollar or two, with the remaining clerks barely bothering to swipe your credit card. That was the scene in the East Village's Tower Records a little while after the chain announced that it would liquidate and sell all its assets as quickly as possible. Blame downloading, or blame the inflated prices that always made them so tough to like in the first place. But toward the end of the decade, massive corporate music retailers like Virgin Megastore and Circuit City started dying in droves. Future generations might never see someone trying to sell them a Shakira CD on "sale" for $13.99. --TB

LCD Soundsystem Issue 45:33 for Nike

DFA producer and LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy has a contrarian streak. LCD Soundsystem, after all, debuted with "Losing My Edge", a single that essentially makes fun of its audience. And a few years later, Murphy put together 45:33, a continuous album-length piece for Nike, not exactly the coolest of clients. When I interviewed him shortly thereafter, Murphy told me that he took on the project essentially because it wasn't cool and because he wanted to see if he could do it. A weird idea, sure, but it worked. And a segment of the track eventually became the bedrock of the Sound of Silver track "Someone Great", still one of LCD's most gloriously gorgeous moments. Selling out, it would seem, can pay off in some unexpected ways. --TB

Kanye's Big Mouth Rears Its Head at EMA Awards

Just over a year after his famously unrehearsed George Bush put down helped make him a household name, another outburst got him a fresh batch of headlines. Though this time he wasn't speaking for a hurt nation as much as he was speaking for himself. After his mega-budget "Touch the Sky" video lost to Justice vs. Simian's decidedly-lower-budget "We Are Your Friends" at a European MTV Awards show, West crashed the stage, made a tipsy speech, and thoroughly embarrassed himself. The moment marked Kanye's sometimes troublesome evolution from self-conscious innovator to over-the-top ass. Thankfully, Kanye was able to quell his hubris enough to hire director So Me-- aka the dude he upstaged at the EMA's-- to helm one of his finest videos, "The Good Life", a year later. --RD

Joanna Newsom's Ys Caps Off a Year of Big Leaps

It's not like Joanna Newsom's 2004 debut The Milk-Eyed Mender was a safe album, exactly, but it did keep its scratchy-voiced erudite freak-folk in bite-sized packages. Ys, the follow-up, was another thing entirely: five sprawling, orchestral epic songs jammed with mythic motifs that refused to reveal themselves after god knows how many listens. And Newsom wasn't the only artist to leap into the ether and risk alienating her fans in 2006. Liars had already shaken off their dance-punk past for witchy drum-circle incantations, but Drum's Not Dead was the moment where they made good on their tribal aspirations, a messy monolith that gave off waves of hope and dread in equal measure. And the Knife's Silent Shout twisted the Swedish duo's dancepop into a perverted, evil throb and would up as Pitchfork's #1 album of the year. --TB

Clipse Finally Bring Hell

Like Wilco before them, Virginia rap duo the Clipse were stymied by major label turmoil and the dubious quest for hits this decade. But, unlike Jeff Tweedy and company, Clipse's label, Jive, wouldn't let them go. So while their proper follow-up to their beloved debut LP, Lord Willin', hung in the balance, the Thorton brothers released two mixtapes-- We Got It 4 Cheap Vols. 1 and 2-- that had them chomping up some of the biggest and best hip-hop beats of the day. The mixtape rebellion strategy drew attention and, after countless delays, Hell Hath No Fury was finally released. While the inventive and dark LP lived up to critical expectations, it didn't raise them to superstar status. But the record solidified their rabid base and, with pop hegemony splintering daily, a loyal cult may be more valuable than a fickle mass anyway. --RD

The Decemberists vs. Stephen Colbert: Fite!

The advent of fan video contests lead to very few actually great music videos, but it did lead to one of the silliest rock-on-TV moments of the decade. Comedy Central fake-pundit titan Stephen Colbert, angered by the similarity between his own contest and one run by the Decemberists, ended up inviting Decemberists guitarist Chris Funk onto his show for a guitar solo duel. ("I'm even giving you home-field advantage by having the contest in December," Colbert deadpanned.) With the help of WTF guest stars like Henry Kissinger, a pre-fall-from-grace Eliot Spitzer, and Peter Frampton, Colbert was victorious. This momentous occasion marked the start of a tight friendship between Colbert and indie rock bands, as the likes of Feist, Wilco, TV on the Radio, and the Flaming Lips appeared on "The Colbert Report" in the ensuing years. Colbert even had the Decemberists back on in 2009. But who won those video contests? Who cares? --AP

James Brown Dies

James Brown would be on a short list of the most-important musicians of the 20th century. In the mid 60s, Brown basically invented funk, violently switching pop music's focus from melody to rhythm. In so doing, he had a seismic effect on almost every great innovation that came after him: Disco, rap, postpunk, techno. And when an incredibly young Michael Jackson auditioned for Motown, he sang Brown's "I Got the Feelin'", performing an eerily precise version of Brown's trademark dance steps. That's not even getting into Brown's absurd showmanship, his ahead-of-his-time entrepreneurial insticts, his links to the Civil Rights movement, or the lurid and fascinating soap opera that his life eventually became. He was a truly singular force in music, and on Christmas Day, we finally lost him to heart failure. He was 73. --TB

• Bryan Harvey (singer, founder, House of Freaks) Apr. 27, 1956 - Jan. 1, 2006
• Lou Rawls (singer) Dec. 1, 1933 - Jan. 6, 2006
• Wilson Pickett (singer) Mar. 18, 1941 - Jan. 19, 2006
• Ali Farka Touré (singer and guitarist) - Oct. 31, 1936 - Mar. 7, 2006
• Buck Owns (singer and guitarist) Aug. 12, 1939 - Mar. 25, 2006
• Nikki Sudden (co-founder, Swell Maps) - Jul. 19, 1956 - Mar. 26, 2006
• Gene Pitney (singer, guitarist) - Feb. 17, 1940 - Apr. 5, 2006
• June Pointer (singer, the Pointer Sisters) - Nov. 30, 1953 - Apr. 11, 2006
• DeShaun "Proof" Holston (rapper, D12) - Oct. 2, 1973 - April 11, 2006
• Grant McLennan (co-founder, the Go-Betweens) - Feb. 12, 1958 - May 6, 2006
• Vince Welnick (keyboardist, Grateful Dead) Feb. 21, 1951 - Jun. 2, 2006
• Joseph Hill (singer, Culture) Jan. 22, 1949 - Aug. 19, 2006
• Arthur Lee (founder, Love) Mar. 7, 1945 - Aug. 3, 2006
• Jason DiEmilio (founder, Azusa Plane) 1970 - Nov. 1, 2006
• Ruth Brown (singer) Jan. 30, 1928 - Nov. 17, 2006
• Ahmet Ertegun (producer, label executive) - Jul. 31, 1923 - Dec. 12, 2006

It's Nu, It's Rave-y, It's Nu Rave

Glo sticks! Dance beats! Synthesizers! When several band emerged with sonic and visual signifiers creating a link back to the rave scene of the late 1980s and early 90s, it was only a matter of time before this largely British "nu" genre was coined. The onslaught was led by Klaxons, known for their neon clothes and tripped-out laser lights, whose debut LP, Myths of the Near Future, hit number two on the British charts the week it was released in January 2007. Other bands in on the trend included New Young Pony Club, Test Icicles, and Shitdisco-- even geek-chic dance group Hot Chip and Brazil's CSS got caught up in the craziness for a spell. But the revival scene may have also revived some bad trips, as it seemed to fizzle out quickly after its initial all-night (week?!) bender. --RD

Britney Spears' Many Meltdowns

With her smash 2004 hit "Toxic", it looked for a moment like Britney Spears had a shot to give Justin Timberlake a run for The Aughts' Most Accomplished 90s Teen Idol. Then, at the start of 2004, she had that quickie Vegas marriage (just as quickly annulled) with her childhood friend. Then she married dancer/aspiring rapper Kevin Federline after dating him for just a few months. Then there was that "You Know You're a Redneck If..." photo of her driving with her one-year-old son in her lap. Then she split with Federline in November 2006, and seriously spiraled from there, bottoming out when she shaved her head in February 2007 after a quick stint in rehab. A dazed, disoriented performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards did little to stem the bleeding. Seemingly every moment of her meltdown was caught by TMZ and its ilk, who turned Spears into a constant source of hits and sales, taking tabloid journalism to a frightening new low in the process. --RD

Blog House Gets the French Touch

After Daft Punk failed to follow up on the fizzy dance-pop success of 2001's Discovery, a slew of acts lined up to expand upon bits and pieces of that duo's filtered, synth-fueled house sound. French producers like Alan Braxe, Fred Falke, and Vitalic offered a stream of almost unconsciously danceable tracks that never wore out their extended mix running times. The sound coalesced with then-Daft Punk manager Pedro Winter's Ed Banger label and its marquee act, Justice-- another pair of French guys with ambition as big as their sonics. --RD

__The Balearic Revival
__

Blame it on global warming: in the second half of the decade a certain strand of electronic music started to get a whole lot beachier and all of a sudden we had to figure out how to spell "Balearic." In 2007, releases by bands like Sweden's Studio and the UK's A Mountain of One joined names from familiar from other contexts like Prins Thomas and Lindstrøm and upstarts like Hatchback/Sorcerer (aliases of producer Daniel Saxon Judd) and Air France in ushering in a revival of a sound that first made itself known at the party playground Ibiza, in the Balearic Islands. The music was cleanly recorded and featured lots of hand percussion and round, warm bass tones, and it was unafraid to throw in the sound of a crashing wave now and then. The music had a strange effect on people, and reverb-heavy acoustic guitar strums that hadn't been heard since early-80s Genesis suddenly started sounding pretty good. Was it sly re-appropriation or just a click away from a Global Chill trip-hop comp? We're still trying to figure it out, but at least we're relaxed while doing it. --MR

Nine Inch Nails Go Viral

Just when it looked like Trent Reznor was ready to join the 90s nostalgia heap, he spearheaded one of the most web-savvy (and intriguingly convoluted) marketing campaigns ever attempted with Year Zero. The promo push-- which involved mysterious viral videos, keychain hard drives left in restrooms, and mad scavenger hunts-- dovetailed artfully with the dystopian record, his best in nearly a decade. And in the last couple of years, Reznor has embraced the Internet even more, testing out self-release strategies and iPhone apps while allowing fans to get an unfiltered glimpse at their hero via Twitter and message board posts. Instead of fearing or rejecting the online realm, Reznor explored its possibilities and gained credibility in the process. --RD

Cam'ron Protects Serial Killers on "60 Minutes"

"If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me? No, I wouldn't call and tell anybody on him. But I'd probably move." That's Harlem rapper Cam'ron Giles answering Anderson Cooper in a 60 Minutes segment on the anti-police "Stop Snitching" movement. It's a ridiculous quote, that's rendered even more ridiculous when you realize he means it. But it was only one of many insane moments for the rapper this decade, in which he put out a classic album (Purple Haze), nurtured one of the strongest NYC hip-hop cliques since Wu-Tang Clan (the Diplomats), starred in and directed a hilariously awful gangster flick (Killa Season), was shot in his car, started a nonsensical beef with Jay-Z, and wrote a song about his troubles with irritable bowel syndrome that gave new meaning to the term "too much information." --RD

Wilco Sell In

By the time Wilco used songs from their Sky Blue Sky LP to promote Volkswagen automobiles, old-school notions of selling-out had been flipped on their head. Since most non-megastar bands could no longer rely on album sales to pay their way anymore, sponsorship, advertisements, and TV placements came off less like cred-killers than necessary evils. So subsequent art/commerce crossings from Matt and Kim (Mountain Dew), Sonic Youth (Starbucks), and the Walkmen (Saturn) weren't frowned upon as much as they would have been in an earlier era. "It's definitely a different world now," Matt and Kim's Matt Johnson told Pitchfork earlier this year. "You're not selling records so you have to be open to other opportunities." But there's still a limit: "I wouldn't foresee any Camel-sponsored tours," said Johnson. --RD

No Age and the Resurgence of Lo-Fi

In an age when every Mac laptop comes pre-installed with Garage Band, decent recording equipment is actually cheaper than guitars and drums, and it takes a special effort to bring back the sloppy tape-hiss aesthetic of ancestral indie. And yet on their debut LP Weirdo Rippers (actually a collection of EPs), L.A. dream-punk duo No Age found a way to sound as dizzy and immediate as the bands that inspired them. No Age were and are the linchpins for a scene centered around the L.A. all-ages space the Smell, which also incubated bands like HEALTH, Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda, and the Mae Shi. Developing in parallel were groups like Times New Viking, Vivian Girls, and Wavves, all of whom obscure their pop hooks under layer upon layer of nauseous distortion. --TB

__Boredoms' Cosmic 77 Boadrum Touches Down in Brooklyn
__

Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms believes in the power of numbers, and he took full advantage of the calendar convergence of July 7, 2007. In May 2007, Eye put out a call, seeking 77 drummers to participate in an event on July 7, 2007. The "band" eventually assembled included Andrew W.K., David Grubbs, Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt, and too many random noise-rock dudes from Williamsburg to mention, and the event, 77 Boadrum, took place at Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn at 7:07 p.m. Toms were pounded, cymbals were crashed, and, by all accounts, minds were blown, and the evening became what Jess Harvell called in his report "the stuff of dropped jaws, stolen breath, and 'damn, you shoulda been there' urban legend." A year later, on 8/8/08, those who missed it got another chance, when 88 Boadrum took place in Los Angeles, further solidifying the Boredoms' place as the godfathers of the 2000s psych-rock underground, able to make a couple of hours of barely-controlled sonic chaos seem like a party. --MR

__Will Oldham's Long and Winding Decade Brings Him to Kanye
__

Whatever else you might say about Will Oldham, the dude is on his own path. Nothing he does smacks of calculation. When on he showed up in a Kanye West video in the summer of 2007 with comedian Zach Galifianakis, it was pretty much just another day at the office for the indie rock enigma. He kicked off the decade by teaching Johnny Cash to sing "I Hear a Darkness", the title track of Oldham's brilliant 1999 album, for Cash's American III: Solitary Man. But he was just getting started as far as showing up in unexpected places. In addition to releasing five generally excellent albums under his Bonnie "Prince" Billy alias, he covered Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, and Devo on an album with Tortoise called The Brave and the Bold (no one knew whether to take it seriously), "covered" some of his favorite 90s tracks as Palace in new versions with a crack Nashville session band (Sings Greatest Palace Music), acted in indie films including Junebug (2005) and Old Joy (2006), and generally confounded expectations whenever he wasn't laying low or giving the occasional awkward interview. A month after the Kanye vid, he played a cop in the 15th episode of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closest, which once again made perfect sense. --MR

Feist Sells iPods; iPods Sell Feist

With the radio's influence on mainstream culture dwindling, Apple took over as big-deal music marketers with their striking, often-silhouetted iPod ads backed by everyone from U2 to Bob Dylan to Coldplay. The company also proved to be quite the tastemaker by highlighting less-known artists including Chairlift, the Ting Tings, and-- most famously-- Feist. The Canadian singer's iPod Nano spot highlighted her ingenious one-take video for "1234", which led to increasingly large venues and even a guest spot on "Sesame Street". The "1234" craze made the case for Apple's music industry takeover that much clearer; according to a report from this summer, a whopping 25 percent of all music purchases in the U.S. are now made via iTunes. --RD

Mastodon's Brent Hinds Gets Beat Up

The night after an improbable VMA performance granted Atlanta's Mastodon a few seconds of MTV screen time, guitarist Brent Hinds ended up in the hospital following a dust-up with System of a Down's Shavo Odadjian. According to various reports, a drunken Hinds attempted to pick a fight with Odadjian and a friend, and he ended up being treated for brain hemorrhaging, a broken nose, and two black eyes as a result. But that didn't stop the red-bearded, face-tatted Hinds from future rampages-- in 2008, he punched King Khan and split the garage rocker's lip after an Atlanta show. --TB

Radiohead Announce In Rainbows, Blow Up What's Left of Music Industry

"Hello everyone. Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days; We've called it In Rainbows. Love from us all." So wrote Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood on the band's website, heralding the surprise release of their seventh studio album. Which was news enough. But then there was the record's audacious pay-what-you-want plan, set out in part to prove that "people find music extremely valuable," according to Yorke. The move served as a symbolic stake through the heart of the old music industry, a lumbering body that increasingly seems too slow and set in its ways to survive the Internet age. Once again, big thinking from art-rock's biggest band paid off. --RD

Devendra Banhart Introduces Lindsay Lohan to Freak Folk

Photo by Lauren Dukoff

With his maxed-out beard, dippy lyrics about nature and love, and skewed summer-of-love jams, Devendra Banhart became the ambassador for things freaky and folkie. His music could be intimate and sincere, but his out-sized attention-seeking persona (he was often photographed in makeup and women's clothing) made for some incongruous tabloid fodder, too. Like when he gave Lindsay Lohan a mixtape with tracks by Captain Beefheart and Joanna Newsom. (La Lohan's harp 'n' washboard percussion LP is still pending, possibly.) And his brief romantic dalliance with clean-cut dream girl Natalie Portman gave hope to unwashed dudes worldwide. Hippies never die; they just get weirder. --RD

Police Shut Down OiNK

For a while there, the invite-only torrent-sharing network OiNK became a sort of music-piracy Facebook, with people actively lobbying their friends for invites and those lucky enough to be included constantly worrying if they were sharing enough songs. That little halcyon age ended, though, when British and Dutch police raided the service's founder's house and workplace and seized its servers. Eventually, site founder Alan Ellis was arrested and charged with conspiracy to defraud, his trial is pending. Several British OiNK users were also arrested and sentenced to fines and community service. --TB

Pimp C of UGK Dies

Pimp C, the visionary producer and funny, nihilistic twanger behind the Texas rap duo UGK, died in a Los Angeles hotel room when the prescription cough syrup he'd been drinking reacted badly with his sleep apnea, thus marking the tragic end of what had been a story of redemption. UGK spent the 90s building up a dedicated cult following in what was then a rap backwater, then seemed poised to blow at the decade's beginning after guesting on Jay-Z's monster smash "Big Pimpin'". But Pimp ended up spending half the decade in prison after violating his parole. Bun B, Pimp's rumbling, literary partner and foil in UGK, kept the group's name alive by going on a historic run of guest appearances around 2004, besting half the rappers in the South on their own tracks. When Pimp came home, UGK's legend had only grown, and the group set about making the sprawling and great double album Underground Kingz, which became UGK's first #1 album in August 2007. Four months later, Pimp C was dead. --TB

• Joe Hunter (pianist, the Funk Brothers) - Nov. 19, 1927 - Feb. 2, 2007
• Billy Henderson (singer, the Spinners) Aug. 9, 1939 to Feb. 6, 2007
• Brad Delp (singer, Boston) - Jun. 12, 1951 - Mar. 9, 2007
• Andrew Hill (pianist, bandleader) - Jun. 30, 1951 - Apr. 20, 2007
• San Fadyl (drummer, the Ladybug Transistor) - Apr. 26, 2007
• John Pyke (drummer, Ra Ra Riot) - June 2, 2007
• Max Roach (drummer, bandleader) - Jan. 10, 1934 - Aug. 16, 2007
• Luciano Pavarotti (tenor) - Oct. 12, 1935 - Sep. 6, 2007
• Bobby Byrd (singer, the JBs) - Aug. 15, 1934 - Sep. 12, 2007
• Kevin DuBrow (singer, Quiet Riot) - Oct. 29, 1955 - Nov. 19, 2007
• Ike Turner (multi-instrumentalist, bandleader) - Nov. 5, 1931 - Nov. 12, 2007
• Oscar Peterson (pianist, bandleader) - Aug. 15, 1925 - Dec. 23, 2007

My Morning Jacket's Next Generation Jamming

Photo by Sam Erickson

The Kentucky band led by the flying V-sporting Jim James transitioned from an atmosphere-heavy indie band to a major festival draw by playing marathon shows with many guitar solos. People love guitar solos. They moved to Dave Matthews' ATO label with 2003's It Still Moves and began to amass a Dave-like following with their brand of shaggy old-school rock. It all led up to their 2008 Bonnaroo festival appearance, a four-hour gig that featured appearances from Metallica's Kirk Hammett along with covers of everyone from James Brown to the Velvet Underground. Other acts like Animal Collective, Devendra Banhart, Ween, and Band of Horses, also managed to straddle the line between jam band popularity and indie credibility during the decade, two realms that once seemed mutually exclusive. --RD

Amy Winehouse's Rise and Fall

Amy Winehouse's tabloid exploits were well-documented-- the drinking, the drugs, the bouts with mental illness, worries over her physical health, the fights with her now-incarcerated husband Blake Fielder-Civil. It's hard to remember that, at first, the public signs of her problems were considered a breath of fresh air. At a time when celebrities seemed boring or well-coached or both, there was Winehouse heckling Bono at the Q Awards or appearing drunk yet oddly charming on UK game show "Never Mind the Buzzcocks". Hell, her breakthrough single responded with a resounding "no, no, no" to the need for "Rehab". Even better singles appeared-- "You Know I'm No Good", "Tears Dry on Their Own", "Love Is a Losing Game"-- and each of her TV performances became a white-knuckle viewing experience alternating between trainwreck and redemption, before she stepped far over the line from troubled to tragic. The British music industry quickly capitalized on Winehouse's popularity and embraced other neo-soul female singers, Adele and Duffy most notably, but the only worthy follow-up to Winehouse's second album is the one that has yet to appear: Winehouse's third. --SP

__Vampire Weekend Release Debut Album
__

Photo by Esther White

Seven years after the Strokes paved the way for Internet hype with their Lower East Side cool and quick 'n' snappy Lou Reed-y guitar-rock songs, Vampire Weekend picked up the torch with their Upper West Side preppiness and quick 'n' snappy Paul Simon-y guitar rock songs. By the time their debut album hit in January 2008, the khaki-loving four-piece were going through what seemed like their eighth or ninth hype/backlash cycle. But, like the Strokes before them, quality tunes triumphed over reactionary hate. The album debuted at number 17; a year later they were leading festival sing-alongs worldwide. --RD

Leonard Cohen Returns

Photo by Kathryn Yu

Proving that well-tailored suits and fedoras never really go out of style, deep-voiced bard of love and loss Leonard Cohen enjoyed surprising success over the last 10 years. His critically acclaimed world tour at the end of the decade was reportedly spurred on by financial difficulties, but its wake of awed audiences proved it to be much more than a cash in. Then there was the eventually suffocating ubiquity of his song "Hallelujah" in its many different forms. The most popular version-- the one that seemed to soundtrack every bittersweet moment in every TV show/movie at one point-- was Jeff Buckley's, but the track was reborn once again when dreadlocked "American Idol" stoner dude Jason Castro nailed it on the ratings-busting program in 2008. After the performance, Buckley's version shot to the top of the iTunes chart, proving that Cohen transcend eras, formats, and Simon Cowell. --RD

Scarlett Johansson Releases Tom Waits Covers Album

Famous Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson collaborates with TV on the Radio sonic architect Dave Sitek on a collection of Tom Waits covers? And it sounds like something 4AD forgot to put out in the mid-80s? Riiiight. What, are you going to tell me next that the chick from Elf and Yes Men has a respectable indie rock career as a Merge Records recording artist? Ha! Good one. --AP

Weezer Debut "Pork and Beans" Video

This little clip, which seems to cram in basically every YouTube celebrity ever, is emblematic of the wacky institution that nu-Weezer have become. These days, everything Rivers Cuomo does feels like a joke of some kind, even when it's delivered straight: Singing an ode to the U.S. men's soccer team, shooting a video at the Playboy Mansion, letting Dwight from "The Office" name the forthcoming Weezer album. For a band who once soundtracked a million suburban heartbreaks, this campiness feels like a new role, even if Weezer always had some inclinations toward silliness. At least they're doing the things that they wanna do. --TB

Barack the Vote

In 2008, the biggest rock star on the planet wasn't a rock star at all. It was Barack Obama. The candidate-turned-President brought everybody and their mom out of the woodwork and onto the campaign trail, with Obama rallies, benefits, and voter registration drives. Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z, Bob Dylan, Arcade Fire, and Wilco were just a sampling of the long list of artists who drummed up support for Obama. The Decemberists found themselves caught up in a minor controversy when they "opened" for Obama at a Portland, Oregon rally (some conservative commentators thought media coverage of the event assumed too much about Obama's popularity, and they suggested that the Decemberists were largely responsible for the crowd of 75,000), while the National's "Fake Empire" soundtracked an official campaign advertisement that blasted across JumboTrons before Obama's speeches at the Democratic National Convention and his victory party in Chicago on election night. Obama also inspired artistic responses from Common, Nas and Young Jeezy, the Mountain Goats, Ludacris, Kanye West, Big Boi and Mary J. Blige, Q-Tip, and many others. And then, of course, immediately upon Obama's election, world peace was achieved, enemies became friends, wolves lay down with lambs, and all pain and suffering came to an end. --AP

Sonic Youth Release Starbucks Compilation

Eternally beloved indie rock godparents Sonic Youth partnering with eternally despised corporate coffee behemoth Starbucks-- that's like Luke and Leia becoming crewmembers on the Death Star, isn't it? Sort of. Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon's rationales for partnering with the ubiquitous retailer were "Starbucks is the new record store, right?" and "Starbucks is less evil than [SY's former record label parent company] Universal," which are both kinda true. The celebrity-curated Sonic Youth compilation Hits Are for Squares landed in stores with a whimper rather than a bang. According to the band, Starbucks only manufactured a few hundred copies, and it has since become one of the most rare entries in their discography. --AP

My Bloody Valentine Reunite (For Real)

After being the subject of more unproven rumors than Bat Boy, the shoegaze band to end all shoegaze bands finally took the stage after a 16-year absence at London's Institute for Contemporary Arts on June 13, 2008. They could've royally blown it and people would still have lost their minds. But they didn't blow it. At all. In fact, the show and subsequent reunion tour reinforced the band's brilliance by pushing decibels past their breaking point and highlighting their small but brilliant catalogue of songs. The elusive comeback album is still missing, but that doesn't really seem so important after live closer "You Made Me Realise" pummels you into a knocked-out daze with 20 minutes of aural shrapnel. --RD

Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III Hits a Million

With Billboard numbers becoming a sorry testament to the music industry's sorrows by 2008, most people thought 50 Cent's 2005 LP The Massacre would be the last album ever to sell a million copies in a single week. And then came Lil Wayne. Tha Carter III's improbably impressive opening bow didn't mark an overall resurgence, though, because Wayne's effective self-promotion technique-- flooding the market with some of the most creative (and free) mixtapes hip-hop has ever heard-- is impossible to duplicate. --RD

Deerhunter's Bradford Cox Shares, Intentionally and Unintentionally

Throughout 2007 and early 2008, Deerhunter's Bradford Cox was a ubiquitous blogger. He posted new music, interacted with fans, discussed his favorite artists, and revealed excruciatingly intimate details of his life, even going so far as to chronicle his band's bowel movements. Eventually, Cox's online persona and Internet hijinks seemed as though they might eclipse Deerhunter's musical output. In August 2008, that threat became a reality when an unprotected folder full of unreleased material from the band, as well as demos for Cox's solo project Atlas Sound, leaked to the world. "I am a dumbass," Cox admitted in one of a series of handwringing comments, adding, "That does not excuse people from sifting through my garbage." It might have been a wake-up call: since that incident, Cox's online WTF's have slowed considerably. --AP

XXL Puts Blog-Rappers on Cover

With its "Freshman 10" issue, XXL magazine picked the guys who were supposed to be rap's future. Three variant covers screamed the names of dudes like Charles Hamilton, Asher Roth, Kid Cudi, Wale, B.O.B., and Mickey Factz, most of whom hadn't come close to officially releasing an album. Some of the rappers on these covers (B.O.B. and Wale, in particular) show enormous promise, and others (Kid Cudi and Asher Roth) have managed to record genuine hits since their moment in the sun. But most of the Freshman 10 are marked with a crippling self-awareness and an inability to quite get that rapping about the Internet is never, ever cool. Meanwhile, rap's biggest new story of 2009 is Gucci Mane, a guy who built up massive underground buzz the old-fashioned way (mixtapes, live shows, word of mouth, relentless grind) and who probably doesn't even know how to lobby a blog for approval. --TB

Guns N'Roses' Chinese Democracy Comes Out, Finally

Guns N' Roses released their last LP, the covers collection The Spaghetti Incident?, in 1993. After that, most of the band slowly left or was fired, until the only one standing was frontman Axl Rose. In the years since, Axl was supposedly hard at work on his epic masterpiece, Chinese Democracy, but the album's release was pushed back so many times that it became a thing of legend. Axl would occasionally remind the world that he existed: A track on the End of Days soundtrack, a bizarre mess of a surprise VMA performance. But nobody ever really expected Chinese Democracy to see the light of day. Then, after 15 years, the unthinkable happened: Chinese Democracy hit stores-- as a Best Buy exclusive, of all things. And... it was pretty lousy, sold far less than expected, and a few months later, most of us had forgotten that it ever existed. Biggest anticlimax in rock history? --TB

Kanye Crashes Back to Earth with 808s and Heartbreak

He went sky high, lived the good life, and then got a tragic dose of reality. Within the span of a few months in late 2007, Kanye West broke off a long engagement and was hit with the death of his mother, with whom he was very close, after she passed away during complications from cosmetic surgery. The album created after this turmoil, 808s and Heartbreak, wasn't part of Kanye's carefully calculated plan for pop domination, and it marked a break in his fairy tale ascendance. But even when he got down, he stayed up: though the record sounded like little he ever did before-- hello AutoTune!-- fans sympathized with his plight and made it a hit nonetheless. 808s reinforced this pop chameleon's restlessness, and made us wonder what's he has for us next. (Hello krautrock?) --RD

__Animal Collective Hype Gets Out of Hand
__

As 2008 ended, anticipation for the new Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, due in January 2009, reached a fever pitch. The new material that had been played during the lengthy tour for 2007's Strawberry Jam suggested that the next full-length would be more tuneful and accessible than anything the band had come before, and fans were ready for studio version. One glittering high-energy sing-along, "Brother Sport", leaked in November, and even Grizzly Bear's blog got a web sheriff beat-down for hosting the track. But this one glitch aside, the band and Domino were doing an unusual good job of keeping the material under wraps. The thirst for new music took a bizarre turn on December 17 when the website the Quietus received an email alleging to be from Brian "Geologist" Weitz of Animal Collective, urging them to spread the message that the band themselves wanted the record released. The note proved to be a hoax, but Weitz's email had indeed been hacked so that the illicit message could be sent, and the episode proved to be a weird sign of the times. Release dates certainly didn't mean what they once did, but the fact that fans were resorting to criminal activity to hear albums before they were legally available showed how deeply the desire for "new music now" ran for some. --MR

• Dave Day (singer, banjo player, the Monks) - Dec. 11, 1941 - Jan. 10, 2008
• Stephen "Static Major" Garrett (rapper, producer) - Nov. 11, 1974 - Feb. 25, 2008
• Buddy Miles (drummer) - Sep. 15, 1947 - Feb. 26, 2008
• Klaus Dinger (drummer, co-founder of Neu!) - Mar. 24, 1946 - Mar. 21, 2008
• Danny Federici (keyboardist, the E Street Band) - Jan. 23, 1950 - Apr. 17, 2008
• Bo Diddley (singer, guitarist) - Dec. 30, 1928 - June 2, 2008
• Isaac Hayes (singer, bandleader) - Aug. 20, 1942 - Aug. 10, 2008
• Jerry Reed (singer) - Mar. 20, 1937 - Sep. 1, 2008
• Richard Wright (keyboardist, singer, Pink Floyd) - Jul. 28, 1943 - Sep. 15, 2008
• Levi Stubbs (singer, the Four Tops) - Jun. 6, 1936 - Oct. 17, 2008
• Miriam Makeba (singer) - Mar. 4, 1932 - Nov. 10, 2008
• Mitch Mitchell (drummer, the Jimi Hendrix Experience) - Jul. 9, 1947 - Nov. 12, 2008
• Odetta (singer) - Dec. 31, 1930 - Dec. 2, 2008
• Freddie Hubbard (trumpet player) - Apr. 7, 1938 - Dec. 29, 2008

Flaming Lips Vs. Arcade Fire: Fite!

Shots fired! In a Rolling Stone interview, Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne had some harsh words for the Arcade Fire, the next generation in life-affirming alt-rock, alleging that they treated people "like shit": "They have good tunes, but they're pricks, so fuck 'em." On the AF's website, frontman Win Butler responded, saying that the Arcade Fire are not, in fact, pricks, and that Coyne doesn't really know them like that anyway: "I am not sure Wayne is the best judge (based on seeing us play at a couple of festivals) if we are righteous, kind and goodhearted people." A few months later, the great indie feud of '09 seemed to end when Coyne apologized, telling Entertainment Weekly that he felt "really bad about it," but subsequent comments found Coyne pointing out that it was just one man's opinion and that he was just saying what was on his mind. We may not have heard the last of this. --TB

M.I.A. Owns the Grammys

Photo by Kathryn Yu

At the 51st annual Grammy Awards, an extremely pregnant M.I.A., dressed like the world's flyest ladybug, strutted onstage to sing a few seconds of "Paper Planes" before sharing the stage with the four biggest rap stars in the world (that'd be Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, and T.I.), as they ran through a ferocious rendition of "Swagga Like Us", the summit meeting that Kanye had built from a sample of M.I.A.'s voice. This was the surreal culmination of Maya Arulpragasam's unlikely mainstream invasion. As early as spring 2008, Rihanna was covering "Paper Planes" in her opening set on Kanye's Glow in the Dark tour. But the song didn't quite explode until it soundtracked the trailer for the stoner comedy Pineapple Express. "Paper Planes" subsequently peaked at #4 on Billboard's Hot 100, and the terminally unhip Grammy folks, in a rare example of clear thinking, nominated it for Record of the Year. It didn't win, but that's the Grammys' problem, not Maya's. --TB

Touch and Go Shuts Down Distribution

In indie and punk, Touch and Go is about as beloved as an institution can get. Since its 1981 inception, the Chicago-based label helped introduce the world to Negative Approach, Big Black, Butthole Surfers, the Jesus Lizard, Urge Overkill, Girls Against Boys, Dirty Three, the Monorchid, Blonde Redhead, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and TV on the Radio, to name just a few. And as a distributor, Touch and Go worked closely with key independent labels like Merge, Kill Rock Stars, and Drag City. But none of that could stop Touch and Go from falling victim to the sharp changes in the music business. Earlier this year, the label announced that they'd shut down their distribution arm and would not be releasing any new music, a sad moment for indie rock and a tremendous blow to the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of independent music. --TB

Billy Corgan Goes to Washington

When Billy Corgan spoke to Congress, he wasn't talking up some pet charitable cause. Rather, he was defending the proposed Ticketmaster/LiveNation monster-merger, an enterprise made even sketchier by the fact that Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff is also Corgan's manager. But then, given Corgan's history this decade, the fact that he found himself in such a questionable situation wasn't so surprising. Over the past few years, Corgan has conducted himself like some combination of over-the-top movie villain and actual crazy person. The Smashing Pumpkins put out the awful Zeitgeist in 2007, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Since then, Corgan has unleashed endless rambling blog missives, soundtracked WWF spots, publicly squired dippy reality-show chick Tila Tequila, and hired a 19-year-old to replace departed Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Actually, that last one is sort of cool. --TB

Blender Shuts Down

When Blender magazine announced that they'd published their last issue, we lost one of America's biggest music magazines. A few months later, we lost another when Vibe shut down, though another company later bought that title and announced plans to relaunch it as a quarterly. Rolling Stone and Spin have suffered layoffs, beloved smaller magazines like Punk Planet and No Depression have had to shut down, and a few companies continue to snatch up alternative weeklies, crushing the spark of individuality from their pages. It's been a rough decade for the print any way you slice it, and music publications have had it extra hard. Like the troubled newspaper industry, they've suffered from nose-diving ad sales, ever-expanding media options, and the movement of the word online. So those who grew up with print and remember holding paper in their hands while reading about music are finding options seriously diminished. --TB

Brooklyn Art Pop Breaks Through

In the second half of the decade, the ubiquity of Brooklyn indie rock became such a cliché that it wasn't even worth making fun of anymore. There were so many bands, so many scenes, so much cross-pollination; if you were in an indie rock band with some experimental leanings, you packed it up and moved to Brooklyn-- end of story. With so much going on, eventually something had to break through to a broader public, and in 2009, three highly original and distinctive bands with Brooklyn roots found a wider audience at roughly the same time. Abetted by stellar reviews, good live shows, and the ambition to reach people, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, and Animal Collective (yeah, only one of them has lived in the borough for some time, but A.C. is Brooklyn down from way back) in 2009 all reached impressive levels of popularity for such quirky art-pop bands. All three played "Late Show With David Letterman" in 2009, for example. But the most striking example of arty indie's new commercial fortunes was the appearance of Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest in Billboard's Top 10 the week of its release. Sure, pop albums don't sell like they used to, but just moving 33,000 copies in one week of a record bearing the name Veckatimest is a sign that serious changes are afoot. --MR

__Phil Spector Found Guilty of Murder
__

Phil Spector created an entire widescreen style of recording music while making hits like the Ronettes' "Be My Baby". But his outlandish legend-- punctuated by odd tales of guns and violence-- increasingly encroached upon his musical legacy until it finally swallowed it all together when he was accused and eventually convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson. After a 2007 mistrial, the producer was found guilty of murder in the second degree on May 29, 2009-- currently 69 years old, he will not be eligible for parole until age 88. --RD

Dreams, Temperature, and Tape Hiss: A Genre Is Born

__
__

As the decade was ending, a new sound was reaching a critical mass of online hype. This music was home-recorded and cheap-sounding, but the approach, unlike lo-fi past, was much more sing-along pop than noisy punk. Lyrics talked about summertime, childhood memories, and varying states of consciousness, but it was sometimes hard to make them out through the warbly din. Musical antecedents were the radio-ready tunes of the Beach Boys and girl-groups with touches of 1980s new wave, Italo disco, shoegaze, and atmospheric 50s guitar instrumentals-- all sounds bleeding into each other thanks to the crude production. Combining these elements, artists like Neon Indian, Washed Out, Memory Tapes, Nite Jewel, Ducktails, and Toro Y Moi were taking the naïveté and focus on sensation of more recent Animal Collective, giving the music a near-danceable pulse, and setting their creations free to float through the indie blogosphere like a sleepy kid lolling in an innertube. Dream-beat? Glo-fi? Chillwave? The jury's still out, but it seems a safe bet that the best of this music will outlive whatever genre name is put to it. --MR

The King of Pop Passes

Michael Jackson had pretty much laid low ever since 2005, when he was acquitted of charges that he sexually abused a child. The lengthy court case was deeply humiliating for the already damaged superstar, and disclosures during the proceeding confirmed in public what people had long suspected: the guy at the very least had some seriously disturbing perceptions about appropriate behavior around children. So for a while after, he disappeared, at least as much as one of the most famous people in the world can: he decamped to Bahrain, avoiding fans and detractors alike, and didn't release any new music.

Given his distance from the public eye, it came as a surprise in March 2009 when it was announced that Jackson would be performing a series of shows-- first 10, later expanded to 50-- at London's O2 Arena, and would then retire. The shows sold out quickly, and there was speculation that Jackson wasn't in shape enough, either physically or mentally, to pull them off. "Will the shows happen?" was the Jackson drama of the moment on the morning of June 25, but then everything changed. Reports emerged that Jackson had collapsed, that he had suffered cardiac arrest, and then, unbelievably, that he had died.

Because he had been such a central figure in pop culture for 40 years, it was at first hard for people to wrap their heads around it. Michael Jackson dead? How? Two months later, after a global expression of grief (it seems likely that a pop star will never unite people again the way Jackson did) and a public memorial at the Staples Center, and the world had its answer: a toxic combination of prescription drugs including propofol, a powerful anesthetic used to put people under for surgery. The death was ruled a homicide. --MR

The Beatles Say Goodbye to the CD, Hello to Video Games

With the widely hyped release of their remastered catalog on CD, the first such treatment the records had received since their initially digital issue in 1987, the band most responsible for pushing the idea of the "rock LP" symbolically closed the door on the album-oriented format known as the compact disc. But while the reissues come with a whiff of death, the ultimate baby boomer band are simultaneously revitalizing their legacy with the interactive game The Beatles: Rock Band, which hit stores the same day. At press time, the Beatles remain the biggest holdouts in the music industry's current iTunes-led digital marketplace, as none of their music is legally available as downloads. Once that's finally sorted out, the only question left is one from the record geek peanut gallery: vinyl reissues, anyone? --RD

__Kurt Cobain and the Guitar Hero Flap
__

____When the Guitar Hero franchise blew up, think-pieces lauded Activision for reanimating a dead music industry. Maybe the game company took that talk a little too literally. When Guitar Hero 5 dropped, the game included Kurt Cobain as an "unlockable" avatar, which means that you can actually play as Cobain, forcing him to sing Bon Jovi and Billy Idol songs. The day after the game came out, a YouTube video of him doing just that made the rounds, and outrage predictably ensued. On her Twitter, Cobain widow Courtney Love protested the inclusion and claimed that she'd sue Activision, while ex-bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic issued a statement expressing dismay and asking Activision to re-lock the character. But Guitar Hero CEO Dan Rosensweig told NME that he'd secured rights to Cobain's image for this use, implying that he'd paid Love for it. More drama is expected.  --TB

Kanye West Doesn't Care About Taylor Swift

If there were an award for televised freakouts, Kanye West would win every time. But no Kanye Moment, with the possible exception of his post-Katrina Bush bash, incited public rage quite like the 2009 VMAs, when he told country starlet Taylor Swift, to her face, that Beyoncé deserved the award that she was in the process of accepting. Taylor reacted like Kanye had strangled her dog onstage, still looking shaken when Beyoncé inevitably brought her back out a couple of hours later. Kanye held back tears while apologizing on "The Jay Leno Show" the next night, which didn't stop two different presidents-- Barack Obama and former president Jimmy Carter-- from criticizing his actions. --TB

• Ron Asheton (guitarist, the Stooges) - Jul 17, 1948 - Jan. 6, 2009
• Charlie Cooper (co-founder, Telefon Tel Aviv) - Apr. 12, 1977 - Jan. 22, 2009
• John Martyn (singer, guitarist) - Sep. 11, 1948 - Jan. 29, 2009
• Max Neuhaus (sound artist) - Aug. 9, 1939 - Feb. 3, 2009
• Lux Interior (singer, the Cramps) - Oct. 21, 1946 - Feb. 4, 2009
• Jay Bennett (singer, multi-instrumentalist, Wilco) - Nov. 15, 1963 - May 24, 2009
• Koko Taylor (singer) - Sep. 28, 1928 - Jun. 3, 2009
• Jeff Hanson (singer, multi-instrumentalist) - Mar. 3, 1978 - Jun. 5, 2009
• Hugh Hopper (guitarist, the Soft Machine) - Apr. 29, 1945 - Jun. 7, 2009
• Clark Sabine (singer, Statehood) - Jun. 17, 2009
• Sky Saxon (singer, the Seeds) - Aug. 20, 1937 - Jun. 25, 2009
• Allen Klein (manager) - Dec. 18, 1931 - Jul. 4, 2009
• John Hughes (filmmaker) - Feb. 18, 1950 - Aug. 6, 2009
• Willy DeVille (singer, Mink DeVille) - Aug. 27, 1950 - Aug. 6, 2009
• Rashied Ali (drummer) - Jul. 1, 1935 - Aug. 12, 2009
• Les Paul (guitarist) - Jun. 9, 1915 - Aug. 13, 2009
• Jim Dickinson (producer) - Nov. 15, 1941 - Aug. 15, 2009
• Ellie Greenwich (songwriter) - Oct. 23, 1940 - Aug. 26 2009
• Jim Carroll (singer) - Aug. 1, 1949 - Sep. 11, 2009
• Mary Travers (singer, Peter, Paul and Mary) - Nov. 9, 1936 - Sep. 16, 2009