I look forward to seeing how many critics inexplicably elect to rail against war in Iraq as their "logical preface" to a comment about . . . oh, I don't know—Shakira's new Pepsi commercial. I was similarly fascinated last fall, when many writers took time out from complaining about the state of FM radio to insist that the recently deceased Paul Wellstone had been akin to their father.
Chuck Klosterman
Manhattan
My favorite single of the year was "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne, my favorite show is Gilmore Girls, and my favorite member of the Axis of Evil used to be North Korea, but now it is so totally Iran. I know that's kind of weird because everyone thinks Iran is the "shy one" and it never goes out or gets on TV (wassup wit dat), but I love Iran because it's the as-yet-non-proliferating alleged terrorist client-state that understands me the best.
Jon Dolan
Manhattan
This Could Only Happen to a Few of You: Wondering aloud with Suroosh Alvi, the Pakistani third of the Vice empire, how his recently signed artists would do in America. "You think the Streets could blow up in the States?" would have had a different connotation if us two bearded brown boys were discussing this in, say, a diner in Georgia on our way to, say, Florida.
Joseph Patel
Manhattan
I'm sorry, but Pink does not know the first fucking thing about World War III.
Douglas Wolk
Long Island City, New York
White, southern, quasi-Republican, church-going, sports-addled, Gap-wearing, SUV-driving, middle-aged heterosexual breeder of hopefully more of my kind. I want to pay less in taxes and for the life of me I can't think of one reason why we shouldn't blow Saddam Hussein off the map. On the other hand, I recycle whenever possible and think the latest Sleater-Kinney album just kicks ass. So, you know, go figure.
Werner Trieschmann
Little Rock, Arkansas
In 2002 I found myself gravitating to established artists whose work had more substance than the frivolous fluff emanating from the more youthful corners of the commercial market. Escapist entertainment did not in any way fill the bill this year. I wanted serious, thoughtful perspective on a planet gone berserk.
Parke Puterbaugh
Greensboro, North Carolina
The unshakable tandem of impending doom and omnipresent despair that dogged me every step of the way in 2002 made me crave music that was brutal, direct, raw, sardonic, and out of fashion. And it made me despise pomo mindgame ingroup Mensa music even more than usual—not a responsible use of gifts—and just fucking pity the cash 'n' ass obsessions of most hip hop.
Phil Overeem
Columbia, Missouri
2001 was too high-concept for me. I'm glad I could go back to being my normal old self in 2002. Aspirations narcotized, worldview patronized, sense of decorum vandalized, emotional problems sanitized, deep-seated apathy deified, sexual desires personified, and eardrums pulverized by what's really important in the world: pop music!
J.R. Nelson
Chicago, Illinois
No. 1's brought some normalcy to the lunacy. Eminem and Missy Elliot, especially. The attitude: Fuck the world's wars, what about the war inside my head and our backyards, not to mention that funny feeling in my pants.
Enrique Lavin
Elizabeth, New Jersey
2002 was the Year of the Summer Anthem—songs dominated by themes of wealth, power, status, and sex, agitated by basslines that elevate blood pressure and lyrics that give parents fits. Economic recovery never came but Cam'ron, Big Tymers, Clipse, N.O.R.E, Nelly, and the rest offered welcome three-minute respites from our lives.
Todd Inoue
San Jose, California
Kinda wondering what I was affirming, if anything, voting Nelly's Kool & the Gang/Benny Hill pastiche the best song of the year as we teeter like Weebles on the edge of mutually assured destruction.
Jess Harvell
Olympia, Washington
For years music critics have been trying to paint a happy face on conservative politics, shrugging that at least they would inspire pointedly political lyrics. Well, 2002 pretty much put paid to that theory. So maybe there aren't many good rhymes for "Ashcroft." Maybe it is more commercially savvy to mourn the losses of 9/11 than to bemoan the warmongering and civil rights encroachments that followed. But really—couldn't we have come up with a better rallying cry for 2002 than "It's getting hot in here/So take off all your clothes"?
J.D. Considine
Toronto, Ontario
Rock & roll moment of the year: the antiwar march in D.C., 10/26/02, feet exhausted from trudging, ears exhausted from a full day of "the people united will never be defeated," and suddenly hearing the chant go up from the crowd, right up ahead of me: "It's getting hot in herre! I'm burning too much oil! I am getting so hot! I wanna start a world war!" I almost wept for joy, no shit. Nelly in 2004!
Rob Sheffield
Brooklyn, New York
2manydjs.com on clearances: "we couldn't get the rights to 'eye of the tiger' 'cause bush jr. used it during his election-campaign and survivor were so pissed off that they won't let anyone use it anymore for anything."
Rickey Wright
Seattle, Washington
A Canadian liquor corporation, a German industrialist, and the 75 Rock fortress are suffering huge losses on a global scale. Major labels, victims of their desire for total domination, lie shivering in ailing chainstore fronts, naked beneath the filthy blankets of America's economic ruination.
Tim Haslett
Cambridge, Massachusetts
I didn't get around to buying 1975 or whatever it's called. War's coming, recession at least, and wouldn't I feel just that decimal stupider for having clicked on the Bob icon one more time, and thereby never (faithfully following my budget to the crash) having heard the Owls?
Don Allred
Prattville, Alabama
Sweden: Socialism rocks.
Ryan DeGama
Calgary, Alberta
"Let cool heads prevail," runs the refrain of the day, as if a smooth surrender of the Palestinians might be negotiated under the influence of Gil Evans and marijuana. Yet somehow Senegal's Orchestra Baobab make peace and calm feel like flip sides of the same old record. Their revived Havana-on-the-Savannah hypno-grooves are the world music of Joe Strummer's heaven: mournful reggae-rumbas, spooky surf guitar.
Peter S. Scholtes
Minneapolis, Minnesota
RIP Joe Strummer and George Harrison, who both agreed that war sucks and injustice is unacceptable.
Tom Cheyney
Los Angeles, California
Public Enemy's appearance at the House of Blues in West Hollywood was by far the best—the angriest and most relevant and scathing—punk rock show of the year. There's something chillingly funny about the way Flavor Flav rails, "He's the son of a bad, bad man." And the heavy metal drop "What Good Is a Bomb?" really is a good question these days.
Falling James
Los Angeles, California
In the Mekons' "Take His Name in Vain," voices drift in and out like lopsided rounds, one moment declarative and self-accusatory, the next imperative and pissy-defiant. Someone sings "suck, suck" like a teenager's joke, or the dictum of a 226-year-old vampire, or empire. And then there's the chorus: "When we say we've had enough/We know we really want more/Everyday is a battle/How we still love the war."
George Yatchisin
Santa Barbara, California
One Beat delivers the same roller-coaster drop I felt while blasting the Pixies' "Wave of Mutilation" as the first Gulf War started. Whoops, here we go again.
Mark Zepezauer
Tucson, Arizona
The real comeback style wasn't rock but country, a profoundly conservative genre far better suited to meet the needs of a wounded nation. Country is bound to home and hearth even when rebelling, born to bear clichˇs with grace, to soothe with tradition even when tearing up the honky-tonk.
Franklin Soults
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Alan Jackson's report that he doesn't know the difference between Iraq and Iran is less a callow boast of know-nothingism than a candid statement of the limits of knowledge. After two weeks of the WTC on CNN, how much did any of us know in the face of all that death?
Michael Tatum
Chicago, Illinois
Please don't infer anything about my stance on foreign relations from my vote for Toby Keith—though since Toby was the real Slim Shady this year, feel free to infer something about my stance on sanctimonious Wilco and Springsteen tedium.
Chuck Eddy
Brooklyn, New York
The commonplace that Springsteen was "back when we need him" begged the question of which "we." Did I dream the edgy aid-in-comfort to police brutality victims in "American Skin" and the solace to AIDS in "Streets of Philadelphia"?
Adam McGovern
Mount Tabor, New Jersey
Even though Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was recorded back when we still had a constitution, it speaks more to America in the aftermath of 9/11 than any of the explicit reactions to The Bad Thing That Happened. Somebody was trying to break our heart, that's for sure.
Mark Zepezauer
Tucson, Arizona
Wilco? You're kidding, right? This is the masterpiece that is our soundtrack to a world under siege? Lemme see. The White Album, There's a Riot Goin' On, Never Mind the Bollocks, Nation of Millions, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot! Um, okay. You're right. We probably deserve it.
Scott Seward
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jay-Z's "A Dream" cuts "World Trade" from Biggie's sampled "Juicy" verse—"time to get paid/ blow up like the"—audibly and awkwardly. So it's my favorite 9/11 song. I know everyone has emotions and shit, but what I really want to hear is the stutter, the confused lapse of speech and moment of silence that comes from knowing something fucked up has happened, but not knowing what's OK to say and what's not OK.
Josh Kortbein
St. Paul, Minnesota
As a boast in the form of ungrounded proclamation of a backlash-to-come, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Our Time" is practically hip-hop. It would be a great song even if it were just about stardom, or jealousy and envy in general: if we can just believe everyone hates us for how great and popular we are, it insinuates sexily, well then, that proves we're great and popular. You recognize the logic, right? The only profound musical response to 9/11 so far.
Jane Dark
Berkeley, California
The music buzzing just below pop's surface—Electroclash, post-punk, and other collisions of fashion, art, rock, and Manhattan fabulousness—sounded as if it grew in Ground Zero's very ashes.
Bret McCabe
Baltimore, Maryland
As a lapsed Unitarian and Quaker state o' mind symp, should I pray for our brave kids overseas who are trapped in a world they never made? Do you realize that they have been in the dirt and mountains so long that the whole Electroclash movement has probably passed them by? Ah, but they no doubt get letters from home. "Dear Johnny, mother and I are so proud of you. Hope you are well in Kabul. By the by, you'll be happy to know that Mr. Larry Tee is starting his world tour with Chicks on Speed and Peaches . . . "
Scott Seward
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The blind rush of the administration (in collab with the dual terrors of Enron-Acenture and 9/11ś) has effected a disconnect between our populist big-ups to Justin/Christina's sex-positivity, say, and pregnant Louisiana teens, or minority college hopefuls, or staging-area-bound armies of one. For we who've imagined Thinking Pink as a subversive way to see red or wink sub-rosa, I'm afraid it's brick-throwing time.
Laura Sinagra
Manhattan
My favorite video of the year is "Fast Paced Paul," by Paul Wellstone for Senate, a 30-second ad from the 1990 campaign of our departed grassroots maverick. Student-produced and self-consciously low-budget, grainy and giddy and naive, it begins with Wellstone reminding us "I don't have six million dollars like my opponent so I'll have to talk fast," then sends him sprinting through a pastiche of populist images weaving together a vision of the coming community. Today it seems prophetic. It's a Richard Linklater production buzzing by with the sugar rush joy of an early Pavement single. Wellstone was the first '60s radical to hold major political office, but his aesthetic was '90s alt-slack, a Lou Barlow-like mistrust of glossy ease and Teflon grandstanding. And his grassroots spirit got crushed by the same scourge that knocked the indie dream off the block—the same tidal wave that brought welfare reform and the Telecommunication Act of 1996.
Jon Dolan
Manhattan
None of this stuff actually makes me want to go out and march against a war (or wars) which I think will be obscene, confusing, and inevitable, but I'd never say that music distracts me from the world, because nothing has the power to do that. Music does keep me from falling into bad faith with glints of the sublime, the unconditional, draws out emotions I can't bear to let myself feel on an everyday basis, and this is good.
Michael Daddino
Manhattan
I bet somebody's making the best album ever right now, but if nobody's alive to hear it, so what? I want to live long enough for Em1nem: 30 #1 Hits. I want to hear "Hot in Herre" on oldies radio. I want to play One Beat for my grandkids and tell them that it's exactly what the fall of 2002 was like—feeling dirty uncle Sam breathing on us, desperately shaking a tail for peace and love, trying to melt confusion down into sex.
Douglas Wolk
Long Island City, New York
