While I am thinking of new years, here are my favorite retrospective things -twitter's year in review and DJ Earworm's 'World Go Boom' remix of the 25 top songs of 2011, which is even more brilliant then usual.
I also liked this this interview where he talks about his process and the themes he's seen in this year's songs.
'. . pride and perseverance with songs like Firework and Born This Way that say, 'You're amazing,'" he says. And "the theme of sort of being screwed over and the various reactions to that," like when Ne-Yo sings "Give me everything tonight" and Adele croons about lost love. "I think about it as people's feelings of change and collective devastation."
Which is interesting because I'd been thinking that outside of country, we seem to not have many popular songs lately that are specifically reacting to current events and problems - I can find more from the 80s about factories closing and unemployment then I could looking through recent hits. I'd also noticed the popularity of what I think of as 'Heck yeah, I'm awesome' songs, and how even the 'go out and party' music seems more defiant then lighthearted. But it hadn't occurred to me that this might be coming from the same place.
