Some Stuff We Liked in 2011 (Part 1 of 2)

Year-end music articles are one of my favorite things, when they're done well, which they almost never are. In theory, it's awesome learning about all sorts of incredible albums that cool people are really excited to describe to you! In practice, looking at this year's crop, it's mostly just a bunch of numbered lists with Adele and Watch The Throne on them. So, every year (starting last year, but still) we get together the most trustworthy music-listeners from the SA Forums, and we talk about albums and songs we really unironically like, maybe u will like them too!

First off, we have a mythical figure and a highly eligible bachelor, making his SA music-column debut: It's Wulgus!

Why Miranda Cosgrove's "Dancing Crazy" is THE BEST SONG AND VIDEO of 2011, BY WULGUS

Rebecca Black ain't shit. The only reason I'm even putting her in these sentences about Miranda Cosgrove is that both "Friday" and "Dancing Crazy" came out within 24 hours of one another this past March, and both videos involve a rowdy group of teens taking their convertible (all teens had convertibles in 2011) to a party at the local football field. Now that's just some reckless fun. But whereas Black's song became a meme or went viral or whatever people are saying about stupid internet stuff these days, Cosgrove's "Dancing" will be remembered fondly by cool sex-having people, fans of pop music, and drug & alcohol-free teenage dance-partygoers everywhere. I say "Dancing Crazy" is the best song of 2011, and if anyone disagrees they are welcome to come to my local Whole Foods and fight me.

Editor's Note: I know a lot of our readers hate pop music and won't ever give it a chance, so to make it more palatable to their hardcore, brutal tastes, I had Ian "BFM" Helm put together a dark, twisted reboot of the video's opening. Just imagine the whole thing is that way. u can ever change her name to "Miranda CosGRAVE" - GD

For those of you who missed 2011 entirely, here's a quick bullet point list of cool music shit that happened this year:

• I had a conversation about Lady Gaga with my grandma
• People with names like Sonny Moore and Aubrey Graham had extremely strong-selling albums for some probably stupid reason.
• The words "Bieber dubstep" became the most-searched phrase on the internet, from my computer.
• Speaking of dubstep, and of Ron Paul, because everyone is always speaking of Ron Paul, here's this.
• My ex-girlfriend, who I had to break up cause she wanted to have sex all the time, changed her name from Lizzy Grant to Lana Del Rey, loaded up her lips with some collagen and scored a big hit with her song "Video Games," presumably written about my completely socially acceptable addiction.
• Another cool group from the "indiecommercial superhyped bullshit enjoyed by the same white people who will tell you their opinion on OFWGKTA whenever rap music is brought up in the conversation" genre (possibly my favorite genre) is Cults. Check out this video where they use the tragedy of the Jonestown massacre for laughs!

Next up, WET BUTT! 'Wet butt is cool dude man, check him on tumblr @ tlgrmsiam' - Marc Bolan at a rap concert

Matana Roberts, COIN COIN Chapter One

This is a great album and here's why, check this out: this album is making a big splash in the jazzing world because it's one of the rare new jazz things to really tap into that really good jazz thing that was happening in the early 1970s that was all Tranes & tribes & avant-gardes and there were screams and chants and african percussions all on the same song sometimes and we only read about it now in big Soul Jazz books of cool record covers or we download it on the mediafire from the old blog. The group vocal part of this is straight out of some out of print Worlds Experience Orchestra album! Is that Matana screaming or is it Keiji Haino or is it me when they stopped showing the 90s on TV, you have to listen to find the answers

U.S. Girls, U.S. Girls on KRAAK

The lo-fi shit world of garbage is pretty cool sometimes but I'm glad that U.S. Girls got on this fucked up named label and stopped sounding like that world because now her echoing girl voice really pops out of your speakers. Now, she's out of the garbage world, and in the slick sounds land, sipping a cocktail with Mark McGrath (Sugar Ray, or S.Ray to the fans & me) and making really cool girl wail pop and live she sounds like Les Rallizes Denudes or somethin' it's wild

Food Pyramid, III

Hey did you know that Prince is from Minneapolis and that Minneapolis is the water city in some dumbass native american language, well you did huh, well then check this out: These guys are from there too and they make sweaty pits of space krautrock things (some of them have a sexy beat like a disco) and a guy in a home named Steve or something probably puts them on tapes and sends them around for money and this year they (Food Pyramid and "Steve") made a great tape together with the best forward moving psychedelic germany music since Dusseldorf threw in the Hitler towel

Juicy J, Blue Dream & Lean

If you don't like trap rap too much check out this 80 minute trap rap magnum opus by 40 year old Academy award winner Juicy J and these things on it: 1. Lots of variety! Sick smooth breaks from the Luger beats and even the Luger ones get weird one of them has like a weird prepared piano!! 2. Most beautiful trap rap love song ever written "Lucky Charm" ode to the special girl Juicy J found that also likes to smoke weed and say stuff about it 3. Cool refs to PS2 and cough syrup, that's one fine day off of 4th grade if you ask me 4. When he says the girl can't have the racks unless she picks that shit up off the floor it sounds like he's saying demands to his daughter for dinner time