Shake It Like a Polaroid Picture

Wow, for a change i have the computer all to myself. (The trouble with holidays is that everybody's at home and bored and wants to check their email every 15 minutes.) So of course what's the first thing i do? Research on what music to download... by comparing various "best of 2003" lists on the web.

Waitaminute, hold on -- Britney Spears got married? Geez, why do i even care? I guess i just didn't believe it at first... it just doesn't seem right. Don't ask me why.

Let's get back to the music survey, shall we? Well, Pitchfork Media names Outkast's "Hey Ya" as the #1 single of '03:

"Hey Ya" broke-through, crossed-over, or whatever Billboard term you want to use, like no other chart-topping song since "When Doves Cry". Every race, nation, age, creed, musician, and political party adores the song. Black and white. Jews and Palestinians. Muskrats and snakes. Thurston and Mandy Moore. They all got down. You can approach pop music as cynically as your indieness mandates, but "Hey Ya" is a monument to the idea that a really fucking great song will blow up because it's really fucking great. -- Pitchfork Media

I love that song too... But whoa, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake are top 2 and 3 respectively, if you can believe it.

Meanwhile, Spin Online puts 50 Cent's "In Da Club" in the top slot -- "Fiddy should pray five times a day to the West (a.k.a. Dr. Dre) for blessing him with a beat so irresistibly sultry." Outkast only takes 4th place, but Eminem's no. 2. (It's a playa-heavy list: Five of the top six singles are hip-hop.)

What's this, the Year of Hip-Hop? That's what Salon suggests: "During the week of Oct. 4, the top 10 singles on the Billboard chart were, for the first time, all by black artists."

(If you ask me, they have Eminem to thank for this... black rappers came back with a vengeance after seeing a white boy take the hip-hop heavyweight belt in '02. They were motivated to prove themselves. You think?)

Rolling Stone's list isn't out yet, so i don't know if that venerable institution has a playa on top too. However, they've picked Coldplay to be Band of the Year, so i guess rock doesn't get an all-over ass-whuppin after all. (Though i bet it'd be easy to whup Chris Martin, don't you?)

As for that other Chris -- you know, Mr. Screaming Infidelities -- not a mention of him anywhere yet. Though i'm still surfing around.

[Edit: Update on the best singles lists. My favorite so far is this one from TinyMixTapes. It's got Ryan Adams, Maroon 5, Teenage Fanclub, and the Afghan Whigs in it. Okay, it's not exactly up-to-date, but cool list.]

I'm still compiling my own best music list, but in the meantime... what are your favorite songs from 2003? (Not just radio singles, give me your top mp3s.)