It’s customary to start year-end lists by chewing some fat about how making them is strange and difficult work, and in general, I find that these intros can be exceedingly skippable. Everyone knows that album rankings are subjective (even when they’re created on behalf of a publication or website), and no one needs to be reminded that the list maker didn’t listen — and couldn’t have listened, of course! — to every single thing that came out in the preceding 12 months. You don’t share Santa Claus’ knack for bending the space-time continuum. Understood. But before I get to my Top 10 albums, I would like to share a quick story about how I came up with my list, and how Beyoncé helped me find meaning in this whole strange and difficult exercise.
Lorde
Lorde
Lorde’s cover of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” — one of the more intriguing tracks on the now-streamable Catching Fire soundtrack — caught the Internet’s gaze this week, popping up on countless music blogs, Twitter feeds and Tumblr dashboards. You might even say it caught fi…
No wait! Come back!
I’m sorry, I know that was a terrible pun. Can we start over? Let’s start over.
Lorde’s cover of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” — one of the more intriguing tracks on the now-streamable Catching Fire soundtrack — caught the Internet’s gaze this week, popping up on countless music blogs, Twitter feeds and Tumblr dashboards. And while I usually try to avoid adding to coverage gluts like this one, I want to make a quick point about Lorde’s effort and why I’ve found it to be so exceptional.
Lorde
So fantasy football is back.
Yay.
Oh, how I’ve missed the delightful mix of illusory agency and total helplessness that comes with trying to guess which NFL players are going to perform well each week. Oh, how I longed for the ineffectual rage that builds up when an offensive coordinator pretends one of your running backs doesn’t exist, or when one of your receivers is used as a decoy for, like, an entire season. And who can resist those paralyzing conflicts of interest that arise when your fantasy team would benefit if certain members of your actual team did poorly?
Yes, fantasy football is back in all its frustrating, time-sucking glory (I swear a Fall Line Fest post is coming at some point), and I just had the pleasure of watching both my teams go down in flames in week two. But I’m trying to take a more detached, zen-like approach this year, and I have the perfect theme song for my long-overdue attitudinal shift.
You Hear That 