The Year Blogs Got Lame, Business Got Hip and Nostalgia Was King

Regardless, this notion of youthful conservatism is borne out by a wide array of contemporary musicmakers. These artists spent '06 yearning for a simpler, pre-Beatles/Dylan age. The formalist camp looked to Tin Pan Alley, Brill Building pop and the slightly more outré sound of early R&B. Take James Hunter's People Gonna Talk, which sounds like it was recorded by Sam Cooke in 1959. Or listen to the bummed-out "ba-ba-bas" of Swedish chanteuse Sarah Assbring (a.k.a. El Perro Del Mar), whose songs borrow from Phil Spector–era girl groups. Or the wide-screen near-yodel of Richard Hawley, whose Mercury Prize–nominated Cole's Corner borrows from Roy Orbison's grandiose romanticism. Even established artists such as OutKast and Christina Aguilera got into the act with their new albums — the former with a pastiche of styles and sounds from the '30s, Xtina with an update on the early Atlantic Records vibe.

More peculiar still were artists whose modern music belied old-fashioned attitudes. Sufjan Stevens' five-CD box set Songs for Christmas is dominated by Christian traditionals like "Silent Night," "Amazing Grace" and "Joy to the World," which sit comfortably alongside his sharp, modernist originals. Much creepier was the stealthy moralism of the Killers' Sam's Town. Its lead single, "Bones," sounds like U2 and Springsteen's Americana-tinged arena rock. But when the narrator asks, "Don't you wanna come with me? Don't you wanna feel my bones on your bones?" an "angel" suggests, "Wait till tomorrow, you'll be fine." Holy cold shower, Batman!

These backward glances are certainly more profound than Tony Bennett's superstar duets, or Barry Manilow's disc of midcentury American songs. (Both were foisted upon us by Sony last year.) These younger artists seem to be cribbing an entire psychological POV from a half century ago. It's as if our most conspicuously talented artists, troubled by the culture at large, would like to reimagine an America that was never muddied by upsetting rainbows — no oral sex at sleepovers, no Aquarian daydreams. (OutKast's fable, Idlewild, represented a Southern past devoid of lynchings — and damn near devoid of white people.) How will this trend play out? Does this indicate a newfound idealism among "the kids" or an embrace of '50s-style conformity?

The Death of Monoculture:While artists spent 2006 romanticizing America's past, literate pop fans mourned those who once chronicled it: In December, longtime New Yorker  writer George W.S. Trow died at age 63. His modest fame came from the essay "Within the Context of No Context," which railed against television. (He called it "the force of no-history.") In November, first-generation pop crit Ellen Willis, 64, died of lung cancer. And this past summer, the entire arts journalism community was riveted by the Village Voice's dismissal of Willis' former boyfriend, Robert Christgau, also 64. This self-proclaimed "dean of American rock critics" was fired "for taste." Christgau later ignited a small scandal by granting an interview to PopMatters.com, in which he made a surprising confession: "When I grew up, there was a monoculture. Everybody listened to the same music on the radio. I miss monoculture. [Italics mine.] I think it's good for people to have a shared experience."