The Decade In Pop

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My enormous Pitchfork piece on "The Decade In Pop" is up: http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/7703-the-decade-in-pop/

Spotify playlist to go with it here: http://open.spotify.com/user/freakytrigger/playlist/6cudPLlniOyOrpX5M5Dnnz

Comments

[koganbot]

Yeah, I was referring to the lyrics on the Rodney, but the music didn't grab me nearly as much as his previous music did either, though I don't think that was owing to stylistic choices so much as not pulling the music for best impact (not that I've got anything useful to say about where the music goes wrong for me). I certainly didn't think the music was bad. Did like the song where he goes fishing and meets the G.I. on leave. And "worst 15 minutes of my life" does make me smile when I think of it.

I myself referred to Toby's "That's Not How It Is" as "quiet storm" in my "Quiet Desert Storm" piece. I think even as I was writing my post it was unraveling in my mind, but I decided to keep it anyway and let you come along and contradict it. I do remember on one of my country ballot comments making a crack about LeAnn and Faith roaming the world while Toby tended the home fires, but then LeAnn and Faith were the ones beaten down for it, so this doesn't exactly help my thesis.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Well, Toby's certainly got songs where he doesn't tend to the home fires, or maybe he tends to fires in somebody else's home ("Stays In Mexico," "Time For Me To Ride," "Brand New Bow," "Who's Your Daddy" -- as I said in my Voice piece last year, for a supposedly happily married guy, he's certainly not afraid of one-night-stand songs), and there's also guys like Dierks Bentley whose whole persona is about roaming the road and not staying tied to one place. So again (which I guess you're sort of acknowledging), the dichotomy's not as simple as one might think.