The D Man's Top Twenty Albums of 2008

In a watershed political year, it is significant to note that few, if any, political records captured the public imagination. Indeed, the first four records on my list are largely acoustic-based classics that would ring true in any political era. The best artists of 2008 understood that great music, albeit universal, strikes the deepest chords among the personal, the intimate, the everyday.

Far too much is made of the political landscape in which a certain song or album is created and produced. Reviews filled with tag-lines such as the Reagan years are all too common—and often meaningless.* But with the usual suspects doing most of the music criticism, there is rarely a hard look at the Establishment, and music’s reaction to or interplay with it, when their guy is in office. They would have us believe that during certain four and eight-year stretches, music with a political bent or influence all but disappears. Then again, Jimmy Carter did bring us disco, so maybe that is exactly what happens.

For every example of a great album allegedly motivated by the policies of whoever happened to occupy the White House—and there are few—dozens of popular counterexamples refute any real creative advantage for the politically-minded artist with an ax to grind against the Oval Office. U2’s magnanimous sonic exploration of America’s vastness and potential, The Joshua Tree, was released during Reagan’s not so open-ended stance with the Soviets. Radiohead’s OK Computer, filled with “the end is near” dread, was produced during the height of the permissive Clinton years. And the twenty-first century has seen the release of dozens of decidedly personal (and apolitical) albums during a time that, we’re now told, is somehow the worst eight-year political run in American history. (See For Emma, Forever Ago, In Rainbows, Illinois, Ghosts of the Great Highway, Sea Change, etc.). In hindsight, many will be surprised to learn that Kid A, this decade’s post-modern masterpiece, was actually released when we still thought Al Gore might be president. So it goes.

The point is this: politics rarely makes for great music. At least in the specific, stump-speech sense. One has to go to #11 on my list to find a great political album—TV On The Radio’s Dear Science—and even it sounds more like a heady party record. So hopefully the absence of “yes we can” anthems will not dissuade you from checking out the fine records below. Great musicians flourish under any sitting president—independent, striking, and rarely beholden to special interest groups.

*If The D Man reads one more article about Springsteen’s depiction of Reagan-era America, I may have to actually buy Nebraska so the Gipper can rest in peace.

**As always, I include the following disclaimer: Due to limited funds (and time), I was unable to purchase some albums that would likely have been somewhere on this list. The albums on this list are all ones I actually own and have listened to repeatedly.