Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.
It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.
BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco exploded, the Piano Man's deeply unhip 1978 breakthrough proved that top-shelf Broadway/Brill Building songwriting could still sell - and, occasionally, rock. "Scenes From an Itali
Photo by Michael Alan GoldbergOver the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.
Two
young blondes with toothy smiles and hard-core work ethics, Taylor
Swift and Carrie Underwood, helped country expand its fan base in these
years of shrinking music sales. Meanwhile, Kenny Chesney, Rascal
Flatts, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and George
Strait
Church of Misery
Houses of the Unholy
(Rise Above/Metal Blade)
The Japanese knack for musical mimicry reaches a new peak on the latest by Church of Misery, which sounds so much like the best hard-rock album from 1975 (or 1985) (or 1995) that listeners can be excused for checking their calendar while it's playing. The band's been around in one configuration or another for fourteen years, and in this case, experience counts. On tracks such as the crazed/brutal opener "Padrino," the scorche
