Ciara — “Promise”

Released: 10.16.06 Peak: #11 Blame Janet Jackson. Her pedigree required her to feign autonomy on Control–would you want to be mistaken for Rebbie, never mind LaToya? Ever since, any R&B girlie desirous of a career rather than merely a hit has been compelled to prove herself more than the sum of her beats. But though [...]

Best Albums 2006 (1-5)

5. Beyoncé — B’Day Her Eminence owed us this, after the hits-plus-filler expedience of Dangerously in Love (What hits, I know! But what filler, I sigh…) and a reunion that undermined Destiny’s Child’s already wobbly foundations of sisterhood. Trim and concise, especially in its non-bloated un-”Deluxe” version, B’Day (till recently, a friend thought it was [...]

Robin Thicke — “Lost Without U”

Released: 10.3.06 Peak: #14 I suppose the decade’s second-greatest white R&B singer would serve as potentially disturbing fantasy fodder for women of a certain age, given that uncanny resemblance to his uncannily fatherly dad. But for 80s babies with no such baggage, RT offered a less hectic JT alternative. Not only is Robin less impressed [...]

Lily Allen — “LDN”

Released: 9.25.06 Peak: Did not chart A blithe rumination on both the effects of mood on perspective and the Potemkin-deep charms of gentrification, Allen’s first single sliced through the faux prosperity of the times with a cheery, cheeky irony. If the chin-up revenge fantasy “Smile” is a bubblier “Since U Been Gone,” kicking some slob [...]

Justin Timberlake feat. T.I. — “My Love”

Released: 9.12.06 Peak: #1 We now know that Michael Jackson will never stutter and coo his way across a Timbaland track, even if some future posthumous splicing creates that illusion. So at least the super-producer who began his career by extrapolating an entire rhythmic language from “Wanna Be Starting Something” found a sympatico collaborator in [...]

Unk feat. André 3000 & Jim Jones — “Walk It Out”

Released: 9.6.06 Peak: #10 Video maybe didn’t kill the rap star, but like MTV before it, YouTube destabilized and invigorated the contemporary popscape. The Chicken Noodle Soup, the Superman, the Aunt Jackie, the Lip Gloss–beginning in 2006, instructions abounded on how to jerk your body to a new breed of teenybopper crunk, as the new [...]

Best Albums 2006 (6-10)

10. Tom Waits — Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards Few cults have ever invited cynical commercial exploitation so greedily–completists would treasure the last few strands of Waits’ smoked-down butt-ends. So more power to him for refusing to slop together some half-assed rarities comp. Instead, misplaced old cuts are sorted in with enough new recordings and [...]

Dixie Chicks — “The Long Way Around”

  Released: 8.29.06 Peak: Did not chart It would have been poetic justice had the Dixie Chicks rebounded from their PR battle against the country music industry with their best music of their career. Instead they recorded their worst, and predictably enough, too, unless you still dream that great pop springs primarily from the wells [...]

Carrie Underwood — “Before He Cheats”

Released: 8.06 Peak: #6 American Idol has “given back” very little to the pop world it so brutally devastated. And if “Since U Been Gone” were mine to surrender, I’d gladly trade it in to erase that steroidal Star Search from our collective conscious. Why can’t a country so viscerally xenophobic ever develop a healthy [...]

Rich Boy feat. Polow da Don — “Throw Some D’s”

Released: 8.15.06 Peak: #6 In 2006, crack sales were low but crack nostalgia was high. Often, crack nostalgics seemed high themselves, touting some dim jabberjaw who’d landed a big-name producer as the future of the game, rationalizing drug-talk as metaphorically apt, or evasively spotlighting beat technique. As with any lame trend, a few exceptions (Clipse, [...]