The following statements are true:
21st Century Breakdown is a great album.
21st Century Breakdown is a shitty album.
In creating the follow-up to American Idiot, Green Day made the respectably ambitious choice to go really big. They created another full-blown rock opera that follows a young couple named Christian and Gloria through life in the United States [...]

I love Chris Cornell. I think he’s one of the most capable singer/songwriters ever, and he was a driving force behind what was probably the greatest American rock band of all time; Soundgarden. These facts made it all the more heartbreaking when I realized I hated his new album so much, and that it would [...]

• PLEASANT SURPRISE •

Darius Rucker
Learn To Live
The odds were pretty stacked against me digging a Country album, no matter who was singing it. But solid songwriting and a great voice made this a no-brainer for the Pleasant Surprise award.
• MOST IMPROVED •

Kanye West
808s & Heartbreak
As I said in my review of this album, Kanye had [...]

When I first heard “Through The Wire” in 2003, I fell in love with it. The song itself was great, but the fact that Kanye recorded the song with his jaw wired shut 2 weeks after having his whole face smashed in and surgically reconstructed made it just that much cooler in my eyes. It [...]

I had a whole in-depth track-by-track review of the album written, but I scrapped it. When an album takes as long as this one, and gets talked about and over-analyzed as much as this one, it’s hard to get a clear perspective. The only way this album should be judged is by the sound it [...]

With very, very few exceptions, I can confidently say that I don’t like Country music. I recently came across some mention of Darius Rucker having the number one album on the Billboard Country charts. I was intrigued. I’m a huge fan of the first Hootie & the Blowfish album; Cracked Rear View. In fact, I [...]