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Top 10 Albums, Singles, and Music Videos of 2003

This year, the music biz continued to wage war against P2P file-sharing by suing its own customers.

Top 10 Albums, Singles, and Music Videos of 2003

It was a year of acronyms: non-existent WMD, PR-stunt POWs, 99-cent MP3s, a 50-cent P.I.M.P. (okay, so we’re reaching here), and both the U.S.A. and the RIAA went from victims to villains. Just as Bush dropped his B.O.B., the music biz dropped a bomb of its own, continuing to wage war against P2P file-sharing by suing its own customers. Sales were down for the fourth straight year, so what better way to encourage kids to buy your low-quality, high-priced product, right? Universal Music did drop their CD prices by 25%, a smart move for a corporate monster that dominates over 30% of the market, but few others have followed suit…yet. Liz Phair and Jewel sold out (with good-to-excellent results), while Madonna, the queen of commerce herself, made her most self-lacerating, least accessible album to date. Oh, how the times (and the rules) have changed. Divas who once ruled the charts were nowhere to be found: Mariah’s shoulda-been comeback single, a bombastic cover of Def Leppard’s “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak,” didn’t break any hearts (or charts), and, sadly, the Annie Lennox revival produced no music videos. There were no visible trends, unless you count hip-hop’s ongoing dominance of the singles charts (music might be the only industry where you’re more likely to reach the top if you’re black) and big music stars with penchants for small children (sorry, we couldn’t resist). Last year’s teen pop starlets seem to be faring better on the small screen (Jessica Simpson) and the silver screen (Mandy Moore), or, if you’re Hilary Duff, the small screen, the big screen, and the Billboard charts. Turns out “garage rock” and “electroclash” are great buzz terms for magazine covers but they’ve yet to live up to their respective hypes. So what was good about 2003? What follows is our, um, 50 cents. Remember: Tuna is fish, not chicken.


ALBUMS


Top 10 Albums, Singles, and Music Videos of 2003

1. Damien Rice, O

When a rather nondescript promotional copy of Ireland-born singer-songwriter Damien Rice’s debut, O, arrived in my mailbox sometime during the first half of 2003, I felt instantly compelled to place it in my 5-disc changer rather than on top of my leaning tower of To Be Listened To. It had been years since I’d had an all-out physical response to an album, and O delivered the goods. The album plays out like a Shakespearean love tragedy (though its title is presumably culled from Pauline Reage’s The Story of O, and not the bard’s own Othello). Rice and angelic guest vocalist Lisa Hannigan duet as lovers, at first singing of a love that isn’t bashful, but private and intimate and filled with discovery. While the first half of O bristles with the anticipation of newfound love, its latter half finds that love crumbling and even calls its very existence into question. Rice houses his Grecian drama in tidy, form-fitting folk structures reminiscent of the great singer-songwriters of the 1970s. His melodies are timeless and familiar, yet they land where you least expect them to.


2. Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man, Out of Season

It’s been several years since the one-two punch of Portishead’s Dummy and the group’s equally astonishing self-titled follow-up, so it’s difficult to imagine what a new record by the Bristol natives might sound like after all this time. Perhaps the answer lies in Out of Season, the solo album from the trip-hop trio’s head mistress Beth Gibbons. Geoff Barrow may have been Portishead’s sonic backbone, but Gibbons provided the humanity, the heart, the soul and the softly wrenching sorrow. As versatile as Gibbons’s vocal is, you won’t find her wailing in the sinister Portishead style, and she rarely draws on the killer-kitten coquettishness of Dummy. Instead, Gibbons’s folk and jazz influences float skillfully to the surface. With the help of Paul Webb, bassist of ’80s band Talk Talk, and Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley, Gibbons has created an album as subtly rich and rewarding as any Portishead release.


3. Kenna, New Sacred Cow

Kenna’s debut album, New Sacred Cow, landed on the desks of music journalists across the country way back in early 2002. Then signed to Fred Durst’s Flawless imprint, Kenna, who hails from Virginia Beach by way of Cleveland and Ethiopia, struggled to get the album in stores after its dark lead single, “Hell Bent,” arrived and exited quietly. Eventually the album was released in 2003 via Columbia Records. Recorded in 1999 with Chad Hugo of the Neptunes, New Sacred Cow still sounds as fresh as ever in ’03. The album has a decidedly retro quality, drawing on the ’80s synth-pop/new wave of bands like Depeche Mode and Soft Cell, but it never imitates any one artist in particular. Instead, it captures the essence of an era while remaining firmly planted in the present and, more importantly, residing somewhere in the future.


4. Goldfrapp, Black Cherry

In the early ’80s, disco splintered off into dance-pop and house, but the newest incarnations of electronic music seem to have forgotten one vital element: the hook. On her second album with Will Gregory, Allison Goldfrapp made the seamless transition from trip-hop lounge chanteuse to disco siren. Just as the duo’s debut, Felt Mountain, was a masterful concoction of elegant melodies and spooky theatrics, Black Cherry combines the belching electronic synth chords and dramatic strings of Disco with bursts of melodic color and simple yet ominous lyrics. Goldfrapp have successfully channeled Blondie and Donna Summer (as well as their former dewy selves) to create a collection of soothing techno ballads and custom-made club tracks that draw you in and, more importantly, hook you.

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5. André 3000, The Love Below

To Big Boi’s socially-charged yin is Dre’s horny yang. If Speakerboxxx hints at the pop-friendly funkadelic stylings of Prince, Dre’s The Love Below fully channels his purple majesty’s libido, not to mention his sometimes-sexy, sometimes-irksome falsetto. “Love in War” is Dre’s response to Big Boi’s “War,” while “Vibrate,” a sly ode to masturbation disguised as a pro-environmental ditty (“Mother Earth is dying and we continue to fuck her to death…The future is in your hand”), suggests that the cure for loneliness and despair can be found in the battery-operated self-massager in your top drawer. Whether he’s imagining his two-timing girlfriend crashing into a ditch while applying make-up in the car or re-imagining Cupid as a gun-toting thug on “Happy Valentine’s Day,” humor is key to the success of Dre’s half of OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. While the album probably should have been whittled down to the best of both discs, Dre not only trumped his pal, he made the most subversive and inventive hip-hop album of the year.


6. Carla Werner, Departure

It’s truly startling how much of an impact the late Jeff Buckley’s music has had on an entire generation of musicians, most of whom are still scribbling song lyrics in science notebooks and building fresh calluses on their fingertips. Even more impressive is his widespread geographic appeal; his music has reached the ears of European followers like Travis, Coldplay and Starsailor as well as a growing number of female singer-songwriters like New Zealand’s Carla Werner. Werner’s debut, Departure, draws on a multitude of influences that range from Zepplin to Kate Bush to, of course, Buckley, and even hints at her country music roots. Werner, though, is not a mime. Departure resounds with the purity and ingenuity of a seasoned original, with just a touch of earnest self-deprecation. It’s not unusual for artists to be expert spectators, but Werner is a remarkable kind of sponge: what she absorbs seems to drip out in strikingly unique forms.


7. Teitur, Poetry & Aeroplanes

Emotionally engaging, ornately arranged and expertly sweetened with shades of optimism, Teitur’s solo debut, Poetry & Aeroplanes, plays like a sonic postcard from a nomadic artist. Teitur, who hails from Denmark’s remote Faroe Islands (nestled somewhere between Iceland and Scotland), grew up loving American pop music, and his own songs—embellished with organs, strings and the like—are plainly informed by early influences such as James Taylor and Suzanne Vega. Veteran Rupert Hine’s production is lush, yet more importantly, intimate. By album’s end, it’s difficult not to forget that Poetry & Aeroplanes was created under such lovelorn conditions and that, perhaps, Teitur’s creative home is one of such (seemingly) emotional deficiency.


8. Postal Service, Give Up

Give Up, the debut album from the Postal Service (the mail-order side project of Death Cab for Cutie’s Benjamin Gibbard and Dntel mastermind Jimmy Tamborello), is an arresting fusion of emo indie-rock musings and DIY laptop electronica. Call it smart pop, or semi-intelligent dance music. The album alternates between dazzling, revelatory out-of-body love songs and universally eco-aware ruminations on the state of the world, the binding thread being Gibbard’s often potent stream-of-consciousness and bright, jangly guitars and Tamborello’s infectious ambient house beats, faux strings and video-game bleeps. Whether it’s love or the world’s problems, Gibbard, despite what he says, seems incapable of “giving up.” Like on Death Cab’s equally stunning Transatlanticism, he ardently builds castles in the sky because, like he says on the album’s first single, “Such Great Heights,” everything looks perfect from far away.

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9. Alicia Keys, The Diary of Alicia Keys

Once you realize there’s nothing new about neo-soul, it’s easier to appreciate the music for what it is and what it honors, rather than what it’s supposed to represent in the current not-so-grand scheme of R&B music. Perhaps that’s why the arrival of Alicia Keys’s 2001 debut Songs in A Minor—though slightly overrated amidst all the anti-pop excitement—seemed like such a vibrant beam of light, and perhaps that’s why her sophomore effort, The Diary of Alicia Keys, will undoubtedly prompt slightly overblown expectations. But the fact of the matter is, Diary builds on the promise of Songs in A Minor and, in many ways, trumps that album’s achievements. Though there’s nothing as immediate as “Fallin’,” or anything as empowering as “A Woman’s Worth,” the album is a deft mix of street and class. Sonically, Diary Of Alicia Keys is like the younger sibling of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, rummaging through her older sister’s vintage record collection and discovering what modern R&B has been missing all this time.


10. Missy Elliott, This Is Not a Test!

An artist as prolific as Missy Elliott is bound to stumble. This Is Not a Test!, her third album in as many years, pales in comparison to the steely, futuristic club thump of 2001’s Miss E…So Addictive and the warm, old-school vibe of Under Construction, but even Elliott’s missteps are infinitely more graceful than most of her contemporaries’ slam-dunks. In many ways, Elliott and longtime producer Timbaland can only be outdone by themselves, and Timbo, as always, saves his best beats for his lady, who never fails to bring them to sweating, heaving—if not cartoonish—life. Though the album doesn’t live up to (or hardly addresses) its war-meets-blaxploitation cover art, Elliott comes off like the Maya Angelou of hip-hop, waxing poetic on the state of the genre and sounding like a 21st century post-feminist on tracks like “Toyz” and “Let Me Fix My Weave.” In the end, it’s all about sloppy sex, self-gratification, and good hairpieces. And in times of war and exploitation, that’s what truly matters.


SINGLES AND MUSIC VIDEOS


Top 10 Albums, Singles, and Music Videos of 2003

1. Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z, “Crazy In Love”

Beyoncé Knowles’s first solo outing, last year’s soundtrack cut “Work It Out,” a post-disco/funk work-out that positioned the curvy bottle blonde as an MTV generation Tina Turner, wasn’t exactly a smash, but it hinted at what was to come. Enter “Crazy In Love”: Armed with a horn-y Chi-Lites sample, several pairs of hot-pants and some neon Barbie Doll pumps (not to mention that voice, which puts Mariah to shame—almost), the lead single from Beyoncé’s debut album was hands-down the song of the summer and easily the best single of the year. The bootylicious video, directed by newcomer Jake Nava—who went on to direct the baby-oil-logged follow-up “Baby Boy” and Kelis’s “Milkshake” (see #6 below)—pairs the singer with thug-toy Jay-Z, who seemingly blows up Beyoncé’s car…while she’s still in it. Beyoncé rises from the flames like a pimped-out phoenix and closes out the clip with some inventive runway-inspired choreography in the hottest alleyway I’ve never seen. Beyoncé is allowed more room to experiment vocally on Dangerously In Love, the best mainstream R&B album this year, exploring softer registers and lathering on the coquettish persona that was only hinted at in her work with D.C. Added guilty pleasure points for a sexed-up, promo-only [insert sad face] redo of 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” (see #7).


2. Madonna, “American Life” (Director’s Cut)

The sad sequence of headlines went something like this: February 14, 2003, “Madonna Defends Her Violent ‘American Life’ Video”; March 28, 2003, “Madonna Edits Controversial ‘American Life’ Video”; and, just two days later, “Madonna Yanks Controversial ‘American Life’ Video.” Sure, she’s made better videos, and she’s caused bigger controversies, but to release “American Life” during the lynch-mob mentality of Bush’s war on Iraq would have required bigger balls than even Madonna has, and she knew it. The video, directed by Jonas Akerlund, juxtaposes images of war with the most capitalistic, materialistic, and seemingly superficial industry in the world: fashion. Models dressed in military garb and gas masks (one male model sports a half-shirt that reads “Fashion Victim”) and three Middle Eastern children strut down a runway while Madonna and her troupe of decidedly unconventional beauties prepare for their fashion terrorism in a backstage restroom. Madonna carves “Protect Me” on the partition of a stall, giving the otherwise militant proceedings a sense of desperate humanity, before she and her disciples engage in some fiercely aggressive choreography (intercut with images of a detonated atom bomb), and crash the fashion show and pummel the photographers with an industrial-strength water hose. Madonna may have never actually been on the frontlines of a battlefield, but she’s been spotted in the front row of more than a few fashion shows. It’s this hypocrisy that makes the video so damn intriguing. It’s the same contradiction that runs through the “American Life” song itself: the Material Girl is denouncing material things? You mean she was being ironic back in 1985? Madonna’s made it clear she’s not anti-American, just pro-peace: The new Madonna writes morality tales for infants, not bomb-making manuals for infidels. Disappointing for sure. In a time when most pop singers are too afraid to stand for much of anything at all, seeing the most famous woman in the world pull a grenade pin out with her teeth and toss the bomb into Bush’s lap (the typical, Madonna-style twist is that the grenade is actually a lighter, the moral being, presumably, that something destructive can be turned into something useful) is nothing short of explosive.

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3. Queens of the Stone Age, “Go with the Flow”

“We collide and divide, go swimming and trailblaze into the sunset,” Queens Of The Stone Age bassist Nick Oliveri told MTV earlier this year. That more or less describes “Go with the Flow,” the award-winning video clip directed by visual artist collective Shynola. Inspired by the bold comic book images of Frank Miller’s “Sin City,” “Go with the Flow” is a combination of live action and rotoscopic animation (the kind made famous in a-Ha’s “Take on Me”). Silhouettes of the band barreling down a desert highway in the back of a pick-up truck toward a rival gang of “skulls” are juxtaposed with a blood red sky and overtly sexual metaphors (including a slow-motion collision that results in an explosion of animated sperm cells and a squirting slurpee).


4. Sigur Rós, “Vaka (Untitled #1)”

Unveiled at the Sundance Film Festival in January, this Floria Sigismondi-directed clip won the Best Video trophy at the 2003 MTV Europe Awards (evidence alone that America has a long way to go—no offense, Missy). The video opens with the sullen faces of grade school children being inspected before rushing outside for recess. Donned in gas masks (a quaint new pop-culture fixture in the wake of recent chemical warfare advances—see #2 above), the children play as if the scorched, red sky and falling ash are everyday occurrences (frighteningly, in Sigismondi’s post-apocalyptic creation, they are). Because it was released just prior to the U.S.-led war on Iraq, the video has been criticized for being propagandistic, even manipulative—a symbolic dead white dove is seen rotting in the ash early on in the clip. In the end, though, the powerful “Untitled #1” (a.k.a. “Vaka”), from last year’s ( ), adds another notch to Sigur Rós’s impressive video belt and is easily Sigismondi’s most evocative work to date.


5. Jewel, “Intuition”

If the definition of “selling out” is changing your music to sell records, then Jewel has been guilty of the charge since her first album, a folk collection of coffeehouse recordings that were completely re-recorded for radio consideration. Jewel’s fourth album, 0304, may have disappointed some of the singer’s fans and confused much of the public, but the album presents one of the most startling—yet oddly fitting—transformations in pop history. In many ways, Jewel is simply fulfilling her destiny: she’s become the pop tart her critics have accused her of being from the very start. But just one look at the cheeky music video for the hit “Intuition” and it’s clear she’s in on the joke. “Jewel’s music sounds much better now that she’s dancing!” reads a fake TRL crawl. What’s more, if you’re going to sell out, at least do it with an infectious pop song like “Intuition.” She urges us to follow our hearts but then taunts, “Sell your sin/Just cash in.” And that’s exactly what Jewel did: you could hear the French accordion of “Intuition” in a commercial for a razor of the same name all year long. Ah, the sweet smell of contradiction.


6. Kelis, “Milkshake”

Though her second album wasn’t even released in the U.S., Kelis scored an instant hit with “Milkshake,” the lead single from her new album Tasty. Written and produced by te Neptunes, the kitschy, metaphor-heavy track (Kelis espouses the virtues of concocting the perfect blend of sweet and spicy) features the duo’s standard minimalist beats, grinding bassline and a barely-there “la la la la la” pre-chorus. Kelis’s pseudo-rap hook is downright irresistible: she knows she’s got what brings the boys to the yard. Jake Nava’s sexy video interpretation, set in an old-fashioned diner and featuring a cameo by Kelis’s beau Nas as a short-order cook, is all freshly-baked buns and dancing waitresses with two cherries on top.

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7. 50 Cent, “In Da Club”

And the award for best gunshot-wound-to-the-face slur goes to Eminem protégé 50 Cent, who owned the charts with “In Da Club,” the lead single from his debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (a fixture in the Top 10 of the albums chart all year long). Add to that his successful G-Unit side project and 50 Cent owned hip-hop in ’03. Hey, 50: Here’s hoping your son won’t outgrow his mini-bulletproof vest before you get a chance to cash that next royalty check.


8. Fischerspooner, “Emerge”

The electroclash boom wasn’t so much an explosion as it was—well, for lack of a classier metaphor—a fart, a burp, a blip on the landscape of popular music, and Fischerspooner’s “Emerge” was its theme song. Okay, so that doesn’t exactly sound very appealing, but when VH1 uses your song in their promo commercials you must be doing something right, right? Referencing ’80s synth-pop, Eno-esque soundscapes and Giorgio Moroder basslines, “Emerge” is a sonic retro feast.


9. No Doubt, “It’s My Life”

The 1930s film noir-inspired clip for No Doubt’s “It’s My Life” finds Gwen Stefani doing her best impersonation Jean Harlow (whom Stefani portrays in the upcoming biopic The Aviator). In the video, Stefani plays a femme fatale who’s on trial for killing off her three lovers one by one. Like “Don’t Speak” before it, the David LaChapelle-directed clip could be a comment on Gwen’s impending band-killing solo career. Culled from No Doubt’s greatest hits collection (get it? Gwen plays a hit-woman), the band’s cover of the 1984 Talk Talk hit is given some additional pop-cult allusion thanks to a “Billie Jean”-style rhythm section.

Sal Cinquemani

Sal Cinquemani is the co-founder and co-editor of Slant Magazine. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Village Voice, and others. He is also an award-winning screenwriter/director and festival programmer.

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