Best Albums 2006 (11-15)

15. Prince — 3121 Like lotsa wunderkinds, Prince one-upped himself into a corner too soon and suffered for having fooled us into equating his relevance and his genius. But none of his ’90s albums were embarrassments, and maybe if he hadn’t been so bitchy about rap stealing his thunder he’d have noticed R&B sneaking back [...]

John Mayer — “Waiting on the World to Change”

Released: 8.1.06 Peak: #14 John Mayer is smarter than you think and dumber than he wishes. Mayer senses the complexity of those interpersonal relationships that pop necessarily simplifies, but each time he tries to add a thoughtful lyrical wrinkle to a commonplace he trips over his own dick. “Daughters” could have been an anodyne celebration [...]

New York Dolls — “Dance Like a Monkey”

Released: 7.25.06 Peak:  Did not chart When the three surviving members of the New York Dolls reunited for a festival appearance in 2004, their prime comeback moment had passed. Not that I could tell you when that might have been. The peak of Rock Is Back, a couple years earlier, with the Strokes and the [...]

The Roots — “Don’t Feel Right”

Released: 6.20.06 Peak:#48 [Hip-Hop/R&B Singles] “You Got Me” aside, the Roots have never been much of a singles band. For better or worse, their groove builds to full effect at album length–as you might expect of a drummer-helmed band, they guide their own rhythmic progress more effectively than the radio or iPod shuffle can integrate [...]

Taylor Swift — “Tim McGraw”

Released: 6.19.06 Peak: #40 Nostalgia is a disease we expect to afflict the aged. And so, not quite coincidentally, is country music. But nostalgia’s first wave arrives — and crashes down hard — in adolescence, with the initial awareness that things end instigating that preemptive mix of celebration and self-mourning you’ve surely seen in a [...]

Peter Bjorn and John — “Young Folks”

Released: 6.3.06 Peak: Did not chart That slightly off-pitch whistling you hear is the easy lilt of collegiate pop in all its preciously blinkered post-adolescent glory. Where too many of their peers merely embody that sensibility, though, Peter Bjorn and John expressed its mild but undeniable pleasures with a fair bit of insight. “All we [...]

Christina Aguilera — “Ain’t No Other Man”

Released: 6.3.06 Peak: #6 The more Christina Aguilera strives to mature as an artist, the more childlike she seems. Twenty-five and married when she cut “Ain’t No Other Man,” Aguilera nonetheless explodes with the naive enthusiasm of a teenage girl imagining how an orgasm will someday feel. And not self-consciously so either—that big bluesy growl [...]

Camera Obscura — “Lloyd I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken”

Released: 5.15. 06 Peak: Did not chart Great indie-rock bands grew scarcer as the decade wore on, yet great indie-rock singles grew slightly more abundant. That’s no paradox. The iPod era emphasized the importance of “tracks,” and the potential for licensing (to film, commercials, TV) ballooned as the indie kid massive came to envision itself [...]

Lupe Fiasco — “Kick, Push”

Released: 4.18.06 Peak: #78 There are better ways to dissipate your critical energies than by differentiating the “real” from the ersatz, whether you’re sorting through Americans or hip-hop. So far be it from me to consider the Midwest “realer” than either coast. But I will say that Chicago’s middling successful rappers more consistently pepper their [...]

Gnarls Barkley — “Crazy”

Released: 3.23.06 Peak: #2 There’s no more frustrating experience as a critic than to encounter a hugely popular work that you recognize as “good” but which denies you emotional access. There’s plenty of beloved pop that I despise but the appeal of which I recognize. There’s plenty of pop (beloved or otherwise) that I adore, [...]