Thus, their follow up album Need You Now was expected to include the same musical precision while increasing the lyrical complexity, in both syntax and theme. Unfortunately, the latter expectation is unfulfilled. Although most songs are pleasant to listen to, the majority do not venture beyond simple lyrics, some consisting of remarkably similar words. The most satisfying exception is the title song “Need You Now” which includes delicate chord progressions over beautiful harmonies. Telling the story of an obsessive lover,  the song’s melody and guitar sections is reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac.

Despite the strength of the one song, Lady Antebellum’s second album leaves much to be desired.

Album Gems:

“Need You Now”

The supergroup charity single is also interesting. On the one hand, there are classics like “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “We Are the World”, anthems that defined the eighties and promoted hunger awareness and AIDS awareness in Africa, respectively. One the other hand, there are some songs that are so bad they do a disservice to the cause being promoted. Listen to the 2001 remake of “What’s Going On” and the only thing you’ll notice is that Fred Durst was once popular. Listen to it again and you’ll realize why he isn’t popular; he actually rapped “But everyone wanna live/Don`t nobody really want to die/You feeling me right?” Unfortunately, “We Are the World: 25 for Haiti” will not be remembered as fondly as the original and will serve as an example of everything that was wrong with music in the first decade of the new millennium (Yes, I know we’re in decade two, but it’s two months in. I’m rounding down).

The original - and still the best

First, there is no need for a will.i.am-penned hip-hop breakdown. The song is an unmanageable eight minutes in length. Charity single or not, there are only so many times that we can be told that we are the world and the children before it gets redundant. The hip-hop breakdown at the end of the song creates two problems. The first is that it artificially lengthens the song past an acceptable level. The second is that it allows for people that have no business being on this record a chance to sing. The guy featured on the latest Jay-Z single, Swizz Beatz, and the guy that has one song that I like to play at parties, Iyaz, close a song that features the legendary Tony Bennett and the outstanding Celine Dion. What a joke.

Second, the decision to shun everyone from the original record is asinine. The opening line, which was sung by the indelible Lionel Richie, a man already famous for his work with The Commodores and his solo career, is sung now by teen flavor of the month Justin Bieber (who at press time had less Facebook fans than a random onion ring). In the most egregious of sins, the legendary Bob Dylan is replaced by an auto-tuned Lil Wayne.

And that’s the third, and most important, problem: the use of auto-tune. I’ve already written about how auto-tune kills the emotion of a song and “We Are the World: 25 for Haiti” proves this fact true once again. When Wyclef Jean sings in Creole, you can hear the pain in his voice as he laments the utter destruction of his homeland. When T-Pain then auto-tunes some nonsense, the emotion is gone and the personal connection to the devastation in Haiti vanishes. For a charity single to work well, the audience needs to believe that the artists care about the tragedy and are thus pouring their feelings into this song. Auto-tune makes it impossible for an audience to believe that is true.

If you want to donate to the relief effort in Haiti, text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10. More money will go there and you won’t have to waste eight minutes of your life listening to such an awful song.

Ringo’s best work has come from collaborative efforts, and Y Not is another example of successful collaboration. The album opens with the powerful “Fill in the Blanks”, which features Joe Walsh of The Eagles on guitar. Paul McCartney is featured throughout the album as well, playing bass on “Peace Dream” and performing a duet with Ringo on “Walk With You.” In these tracks, Ringo’s vocal ability is enhanced…with a little help from his friends.  In the other tracks, Ringo shows his versatility, transitioning from driving rock on “The Other Side of Liverpool” to the softer tones of “Time”.

In all, Y Not is a familiar journey with Ringo Starr. It certainly won’t be album of the year, but it certainly is an enjoyable listen.

Yes, that statement has strong implications. Much like the NBA trying to find the next Michael Jordan, the comparison to The Beatles’ 1967 album means that greatness necessarily was present in the album. Indeed, Radiohead’s 2000 effort displays a bold vision of musical experimentation and a triumphant defiance of accepted music convention, making it a clear choice for album of the decade.

The risks in this album are enormous but ultimately paid off in the end. Forgoing the rock melodies that made their previous album, OK Computer, a dramatic success, Radiohead embraces the unconventional in Kid A. The album opens with “Everything In Its Right Place”, a mixture of piano and computer sounds, with nonsensically minimal lyrics (e.g. “Yesterday I woke up sucking on a lemon”). But, what the lyrics lack in sense, the music makes up for with power and feeling. Never has there been such a deeply meaningful connection between listener and instruments. The complex rhythms and progressions allow for the listener to become lost in the depravity that is the focus of “Everything In Its Right Place”.

This experimentation continues throughout the album, particularly in songs such as “The National Anthem” and “Idioteque”. It is this experimentation that makes Kid A so unique. At the turn of the millennium, the prevailing trends in music were boy band pop, conventional rock, and the resurrection of rap. Radiohead broke with the prevailing trends in this album. While they could have created another rock album in the vein of OK Computer and it still would have been a hit, the group created one of the most uniquely intricate albums ever.

This defiant experimentation is what should be expected from music as a serious art form. A truly great artist will push past convention and create a masterpiece that will be remembered for generations. There are only a few such artists in any given time. This decade, the one who exemplified that spirit the most was Radiohead.

The Best of the Rest

Honorable Mentions:

• The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem (2000): There has never been, and never will be, a rapper as incendiary as Eminem. In his sophomore effort, Eminem intertwines the struggles of fame with the frustration of the state of popular music at the turn of the millennium. Equal parts comedy (“The Real Slim Shady”) and raw drama (“The Way I Am”), The Marshall Mathers LP, set the standard for rap in the 21^st century that hasn’t been met yet.
• Chinese Democracy, Guns ‘N Roses (2008): The album that is to music what Duke Nuke’em Forever is to videogames (often delayed, G’NR started writing material for the album in 1996 and started recording in 1998). Axl Rose’s magnum opus rocks and it rocks hard, recalling days when rock made no apologies for itself. Fans of power vocals, heavy guitar riffs, and audio clips of Martin Luther King, Jr. speeches (in “Madagascar”) will enjoy this throwback to the days of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. For the sheer magnitude of the project alone, Chinese Democracy deserves some recognition. Thankfully, the music itself is a great listen.
• Paper Trail, T.I. (2008): Recorded as he was anticipating trial and sentencing on weapons charges, T.I. provided the decade’s party anthem (“Live Your Life”) while appearing equally contrite and non-remorseful for legal woes. A deep display of human emotion and the best collaborative rap effort of the decade (“Swagga Like Us”) make Paper Trail and easy recommendation.
• Speakerboxx/The Love Below, OutKast (2004): The Grammy for Album of the Year went to this double album, and for once the Academy got it right. Each disc has a unique focus: Big Boi’s Speakerboxx is a traditional southern rap album, while Andre 3000’s The Love Below explores the ways which hip-hop, funk, and R&B come together. Each stand alone on its own merits, but combined make for one enjoyable listening experience.

The discussion doesn’t end here. Respond to Matt in the comments or on twitter (www.twitter.com/lamagnam or www.twitter.com/entertainium). The next installment of The Best of the Decade will run on Sunday, November 29^th with television in review.

(As an aside, what are we going to call this decade? There’s no convenient numbering system like the eighties or nineties. Do we go with the aughts? The Robert Parrishes? The one with the global financial crisis?)

So, to get you ready for our end-of-the-decade feature, I thought it would be helpful to list some of the events that happened this decade in music:

• Out of the fourteen members of the “Big 3” boy bands of the 1990’s, only one, Justin Timberlake, had any success after the dissolution of the group.
  • That number jumps to two if you count Drew Lachey winning Dancing with the Stars.
  • It jumps to three if you count Nick Lachey marrying Jessica Simpson and chronicling their life on the short-lived reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica.
  • And it jumps to four if you count Nick Carter’s even-shorter-lived reality TV series House of Carters, which featured such memorable moments as the time Nick and Aaron fought over such pressing topics as dating Paris Hilton and the no music after 12 o’clock rule (NSFW-language):

• The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, in an effort to rectify past mistakes of not giving Grammys to Led Zeppelin and Steely Dan when they were relevant music groups, showed its age and awarded Grammys for Album of the Year to Steely Dan in 2001 and Robert Plant (and Allison Krauss) in 2009. In arguably the two best years for music in the decade, two aging representatives for the deification of classic rock were given awards instead of Radiohead or Eminem in 2001 or Coldplay, Lil Wayne, or Radiohead (again!) in 2009.

• In a shocker, the general public complained that the music from this decade sucked. This opinion was a direct contrast to the music of the nineties, which people said was…nevermind, people thought music then sucked as well (and in the eighties, seventies, sixties, fifties…). For audiences reading Entertainium in 2020, get ready for the Nick Jonas Grammy Award for Album of the Year! Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

No guitar licks and references to "Cousin Dupree" here

• Speaking of Nick Jonas, the Jonas Brothers go from playing an anti-drug concert at my high school in 2005 to playing at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade the very next year. This is honestly the biggest music story of the decade. They went from basically booed off of a high school auditorium stage to fame, fortune, and a hilarious South Park parody.
  • By the way, I personally think that their music is awful. If I ever change this opinion, feel free to try and to do to me what those guys in Project Mayhem attempted to do when Edward Norton was trying to expose what the true purpose of the project was.
• And as a summation of music in the decade, here is the list of the top 20 best-selling music acts of the decade: http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/chart_watch/34074/chart-watch-extra-the-top-20-album-sellers-of-the-2000s
  • Interesting facts supporting the “this decade sucked” theory: The Beatles, which had not released any new material in this decade, were the number-two act of the decade. Most of this was due to the release of 1, a compilation of number 1 hits that moved over 11 million units and set a precedent for every musician to come out with a number 1 hits collection (see Elv1s: 30 #1 Hits, Michael Jackson: Number Ones, Rocket Man – Number Ones, Number 1’s Stevie Wonder, and Conway Twitty- Number 1’s).
    • As an aside on the “Number Ones” phenomenon, there are only a few artists (namely The Beatles and Elvis) that the criterion allows a greatest hits collection that encompasses their entire career. Stevie’s collection leaves out some hits from the sixties and eighties and Elton John’s collection doesn’t have “Levon”. Most egregiously, Jackson’s collection includes nothing before Off the Wall except for a re-release of “Ben”, completely ignoring his work with The Jackson 5, the Jacksons, and his solo work for Motown (but, at least it has “Earth Song” and “One More Chance”!)
    

    Not Included: "ABC", "I Want You Back", or, the biggest omission of them all, the song from Free Willy.

***

So, what is Entertainium’s end of the decade feature? Every Sunday, we will have a decade in review primer to get you ready for Tuesday- the day where we reveal the best of the decade in music, movies, television, and video games.

Here’s the schedule:

• Music: Primer 11/22 (today!), Album of the decade 11/24
• Television: Primer 11/29, Program of the decade 12/1
• Video Games: Primer 12/6, Game of the decade 12/8
• Movies: Primer 12/13, Film of the decade 12/15

This feature will bring an exciting conclusion to the decade and we hope that you continue reading our site through the end of this decade and the start of the next!

“The Best of the Decade” feature will be Matt’s primary focus on Entertainium until the end of the year. Follow him on twitter at www.twitter.com/lamagnam

In the epic that is 21^st century rap music, the siren’s song isn’t performed by mythological creatures, but rather by computers. Auto-tune, a pitch correction technology used in pop music, has enchanted the rap world as multiple artists have used the technology to create a distorted vocalization for their songs. These artists include Kanye West, who released 808s and Heartbreak, an entire album of auto-tuned tracks, and T-Pain, a man who has more performances as a featured artist than a solo artist. By all accounts, these artists are successful. The RIAA certified 808s as a platinum album (over one million sales) and T-Pain won a Grammy Award for best rap song.

Yet, even with all of the success that auto-tuning artists have achieved, auto-tune is a negative for the rap industry. First, it takes the emotion out of a form of music that has relied on emotion to make great music. No one listens to rap music for intricate three-part harmonies. Rather, the cadence is more important to the success or failure of a rap song than the pitch. For proof of this assertion, we’ll compare two songs by Lil Wayne, the self-proclaimed “best rapper alive”: “Ride 4 My N*****” from the underground mix-tape Da Drought 3 and “Prom Queen” from the forthcoming album Rebirth (videos NSFW):

In “Ride”, the listener understands the raw emotion with which Lil Wayne raps. He clearly demonstrates loyalty to his friends and ferocity to his enemies. Wayne’s tenacity convinces the listener that, for him, the sky is truly the limit. His bravado and swagger are the main features of the record and add emphasis to the rap’s lyrics. The bravado and swagger disappear from Wayne’s voice in “Prom Queen”. The auto-tune effect makes his voice sound generic and stale. His lyrics, instead of being explosive, sound like the desperate moaning of an emo teenager. The auto-tuned music fails to inspire the listener to do anything other than change the dial on his radio station.

Additionally, the proliferation of auto-tune caused the performance aspect of rap music to be forgotten. T-Pain performed at my college last year and the only people who enjoyed the show did so because they enjoy unintentional comedy (this fine writer included). No one enjoyed the show on its artistic merit because it had none. Every song sounded exactly like its CD counterpart. Because of the auto-tuned nature of his music, I could have had the same experience listening to his songs on my iPod and pretending that I was seeing him live.

One rapper is beginning to fight against the auto-tuned madness that has plagued the airwaves. Jay-Z’s newest single, “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)”, addresses the rise of the technology how it has worsened the quality of rap music.  He raps, “I know we facing a recession/But the music y’all making going make it the great depression/All y’all lack aggression/Put your skirt back down, grow a set man.” By doing so, he is issuing a challenge to all of today’s rappers: create quality music without the aid of auto-tune. He understands that today’s auto-tuned music is inferior to the music that preceded it. He wants to continue the evolution of rap music and ensure that it does not stagnate.

Unfortunately, it seems like the music industry has ignored Jay-Z’s call. The past two songs to hold the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart have featured heavy use of auto-tune. However, in contrast to the rappers that have used auto-tune, the artists behind those two songs were The Black Eyed Peas, an R&B group. Groups such as The Peas and artists like Akon have used auto-tune effectively. Because they are singers at heart, the use of this technology doesn’t hinder their music. Hopefully, rappers will listen to Jay-Z and leave the auto-tune where it belongs: in the hands of the R&B musicians. If rappers resist the siren’s auto-tune temptation then we can all enjoy quality, emotional, rap.

Additionally, this man can use auto-tune whenever he wants: