ATTN: Hipsters. It's Over For You (The 2010 Year in Review)

Contrary to what you might've read everywhere else on the internet, almost NO GOOD MUSIC WAS RELEASED in 2010. Actually, quite a bit of good came out of the "avante-garde" scene (to make a huge genre generalization), which was sort of the 'story' of music criticism this year. Will we be hearing Columbus Discount artists in Jamba Juice in 2012? No, because I truly believe this widespread 'appreciation' of 'difficult' music is a fad brought on by the utter lack of good pop music being made anymore. Seriously, the health of pop music in general can be monitored with every new Weezer release. Some twisted irony that is - they're still relevant!

It turns out all of my predictions for this year were wrong, too. The Beach Fossils album came and went without a peep due to a glut of sound-alike bands (that I previously did not know about) who also released records. I guess they're gonna break up and get marketing jobs now. Neither Chairlift or the Magic Wands released anything, although I'm still waiting with a half chub for that Chairlift record in '11.

So what was good on the pop side of life this year? Not Hip Hop. The Disney trifecta of Roscoe, Drake, and Rick Ross teamed up to make this the worst year for radio rap since... I don't know when. Ever? Kanye, of course, kept tricking white kids into think he's an artist and black kids into thinking he's the next Puffy. Wrong! Puffy developed artists much better than he, e.g. B.I.G, Ma$e, The LOX, Lil' Kim. Real shit. Kanye: we here at TNRR think you're a gauche, middle-class imposter. The Man Who Would Be King, my nizzle. Step off. You made some good beats for Jay, that's it. I know Drew downloads your albums stat when they come out, but I took one look at your 30 minute video and said "Fuck Outta Here". Quincy Jones has my back, natch.

Anyway, as far as rock goes, only 2 things made in the last 365 held my attention. First, Wild Nothing's Chinatown gets my vote as Single Of The Year:

The 'if-New-Order-were-a-shoegaze-band' (or is it the Furs?) sound is instantly fresh, and it perfectly distills the Chillwave trend into a memorable three minutes. We'll still be listening to this song in 2020. The album it comes from, Gemini, is pretty strong, too.

My other favorite thing is a little band called Seapony. This quiet gem drifted into my ears a couple months back and I find myself returning to it whenever I get too bummed out reading Year End Best Of lists (none of which mentioned them)

Honorable mention goes to Best Coast, I guess. I saw them at Hopscotch and it was really the only moment during the whole thing I enjoyed. Here's their cover of the famous Lesley Gore hit, and although it came out last year, I'm including it because it's fuckin' timeless:

Local Heroes award goes to Raleigh OG's Future Islands. I heard this song In The Fall back in March and it was one those rare moments of being blown away. A lot had to do with the smoke & light show, but still. It marked (for me at least) their coming of age. They're a national band now. So hats off to them. I still remember what you told me about porn and RPGs at my house, though, William!

So that's pretty much it for pop (I'm not going to focus on the surfeit of good 'difficult' music this year, put out most prolifically by labels like Olde English Spelling Bee, because it's not really for everyone, and there's simply too much of it). The rest was an army of me-too hipsters treading the same old territory (Beach House, Deerhunter, Girls, Liars, Wavves, bands with names like the aforementioned). Who cares about that shit? Pitchfork, obviously. If you want to be bored out of your mind, check out their year end list. Unlike years past, I actually tried listening to everything on their list, and it only made me more depressed. Most of that shit everyone will have completely forgotten about in 5 years, even Pitchfork themselves! See that's what so funny about these felchers... they just endorse popular opinion, and a lot of what they tell you to like, they don't even like! Listen to your heart folks and USE YOUR HEAD.

Finally, this is a farewell for The Truth, for now. I'm gonna be way too busy this semester trying to graduate and transition into the "real world" to publish incisive and hard-hitting posts (ha-ha) on here. I expect I'll return in approx. 6 months. Until then, our other contributers are gonna have to pick up the slack (I'm looking at you, Scotty!). So, to say sayonara, here's "Never Ending" sung by Connie Francis. If anyone can find me an mp3 of the original version used in the rad movie Flight of the Phoenix, hook it up!