so i had a definitive answer for this. my favorite album and song of the year. then a couple of things happened. i had that revelation a few days ago about the streets. also, i listened to the explosion, a band which seems to have the exact right kind of music (fast, upbeat, incredibly good punk/pop/rock) for my mood right now. so these two discoveries have me questioning my original selections. gotta stay strong though, right?

here we go.

ALBUMS

honorable mention:
dj danger mouse's grey album - remember when this cd came out and blew up all over the mainstream and everything for like 30 seconds? it spawned about 500000 imitation "black album" remixes as well as a whole scene of djs trying to mix two seemingly different bands together (thad just sent me a mix of closer and come together which was surprisingly good). i love this cd. i can listen to it over and over and over. yeah its good stuff.

green day's american idiot - where the hell did this come from? majestic, visionary politi-punk music from GREEN DAY? GREEN DAY? are you kidding me? and once you get past the initial shock of green day being impressive, you see that the songs hold up on their own anyways. quite impressive, especially for a band we all wrote off about 4 years ago.

kanye west's the college dropout - sweet beats. smoove look. incredible songs. shoo-in winner if he didn't have all that filler skit crap. someone needs to re-release it without all that skit crap. that'd be incredible. i'm just getting excited thinking about it now. maybe i'll go do that tonight.

other honorable mentions go to the explosion and the streets, as mentioned above. air - talkie walkie and eminiem - encore should get shout-outs as well. oh, and the soundtrack to garden state. that soundtrack is pretty good, but it isn't really an album. speaking of non-albums, another shout out goes to the nirvana box set, which would have won (i had a "winner" paragraph written out and everything) but its soooo not in the running. it's a fucking box set!

winner:
talib kweli's beautiful struggle - why? well, choosing a rap album is a shock value move, i'll admit. but then again, this is what rap should be, in my opinion. incredible samples and beats. no fluff skits. incredible lyrics that make you say "oh shit that was tight" even if you don't know what those words mean. just very tight and amazing. this is one of the few rap albums i'll never get tired of, and since it is more recent (i'm doing the oscar thing where nothing from february (see: grey album) has a chance to win) it gets the nod.

i wish i could listen to these albums at work now. i need to make sure to load em on my mp3 player for the trip to jersey.

do we want to get into my favorite song of the year now? basically we're going to go through each of the albums i named above, put on my favorite track and see which one wins. i think. well, actually i won't draw it out as much. songs aren't as important as the overarching album i think. songs are great for the radio and stuff, but albums are the actual art. so what i'll do is leave all that long talk and posturing to the albums, and just cut to it for song.

so my song of the year, without any further ado, is "jesus of suburbia" by green day.

if you've listened to this song, you probably already knew that. and if you haven't listened to the song, i suggest you go and do that now.