Brightest Young Things

Let's pretend you were in a secret Pakistani torture prison for this entire decade. Let's say you emerged this afternoon and got a job as an office temp in Bethesda. OK. I'd maintain that what would weird you out the most wouldn't be the black president, or the robot phones, or the flying cars--it would be the ubiquitous new layer of culture that everyone refers to all the time known as the iWeb. Being internet famous is no longer an epithet, it's a goal...and compared to Reality TV famous it's practically a knighthood. So little foundling, once you've settled down and determined that the Pakistani prison camp is not taking re-admits, watch these top ten best musical endeavors that blew up large this year.  

Watch and grow stranger, which is the new normal.

10. Autotune The News #3

Autotune is the sword of Damocles at this point in our millennium, crashing back and forth from horrifying to awesome over the face of the hysterical Republic, but this was surely the year when the horror became pure hilarious. It's like finally white people can do purposefully awkward raps without sounding totally off, FINALLY. Slather it on Allen Iverson, sprinkle some on Carl Sagan, use it to spice up a this brilliant videogame, bathe a viral Charlie in it, or slap/chop an infomercial with it and they might actually put it on TV! But only once jokesters stop merely editing and start participating will the joke go from amusing to mind-shattering hilarity...which is why Auto-tune was made not just for new, but for these ridiculous hipsters and their angry gorilla.

9. Attack Attack -- Stick Stickly

After last years debacle of a second place winner, Brokencyde, failed to follow up their life-destroying video with any kind of success or failure or anything, the iWebbs most curmudgeonly homophobes went looking for a new piece of faux-metal youth culture to despise and freak out over. And though they found it, the joke is clearly on them--a bunch of expert trolls presumably on a chan board promoted this horrifically cheesy but inventive new genre which mixes 90s dance beats and screamo, dubbing it "crabcore" after the sweet bizzle dance moves they do--and even though the song is really stupid, it's catchy-stupid, so the rockist hatred of the song has spawned enough popularity that it made the joke seem legit. There are other crabcore bands now (We Came As Romans, This Romantic Tragedy, Etc Etc [not a real name but it should be]) and soon they will be on hot 99.5 and Slayer will be in a McDonald's commercial. So suck it nurds!

8. Bangs- Let me take you to the movies
This doesn't need an explanation, it just rules.

7. Hey Wassup? --Shreds
The first time you see a Shredder video, you think, wow! These guys suck this bad live? Then they sing or do something totally weird and you realize you got MODED SON. At first they were just overdubbed guitars, but have developed into fuller songs with drums and lyrics, mainly (or entirely, it's hard to tell) the work of evil genius StSanders. This year they reached their fullest possible potential (so far) in the brand-new/unreleased Rolling Stones track Hey Wazzup?

6. Out of Body Experience
I really have no idea.

5. Los Colorados -- Hot N Cold
There are plenty of reinterpretations of pop songs posted on youtube, mostly by twee and talentless dorks who don't particularly enjoy or understand the craft of the Pop and yuck everything up in boogery sarcasm (minor exception being Pamplamoose who clearly love the Single Ladies and bring out the dicordant harmonies on the chorus well). But these Ukrainian gentleman manage to innocently love the shit out of this terrible song while simultaneously improving it 100%. (For bonus lols check out their song + Katy's video)

4. Pogo -- White Magic
Other video artists use existing audio tracks of footage to create songs (Top Gear, Obama vs Fly) but this guy uses incidental sounds from entire movies to craft weird ambient techno color wheels cut from narratives. Looks even better on yooouuutuuube.

3. Hard Place -- Sweet Raisin

Look I know I've freaked out about this before but you have to understand, she's still after me, somewhere. This is a... band? From...LA? Who is...possessed by Roman vengeance deities? It's complicated. Accept no half-arsed substitutes, it's still their party and they'll tear your flesh off if they want to. Happy Holidays!

2. Music Videos

Nowadays every v-necked guy in art school with a vimeo account is making weird animated music videos for obscure electro-indie songs. And the nominees for this category's contestants are: this guy, these dudes, this one, another, whatever, something else, and Eric Wareheim. The winners are, obviously, Radical Friend with both of their interactive sites for Black Moth Super Rainbow and Yeasayer. Of course, I can't embed those, so here's another Major Laser video with Andy Milonakis being a douchebag,

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/4946026[/vimeo]

2.1 Das Racist -- Combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell

This year's retard-rap earworm (do check out the band's other songs, which are actually quite clever, and contain more than 5 words.)

2.n+1 Incredibad -- On A Boat
This was the year of the triumph of Lonely Island. I know they made Jizz in My Pants and Dick in A Box and Lazy Sunday and all that in years past. But this year they completely took over Saturday Night Live, (on their entire last show of the season, this was far and away the best and most insane thing) and dropped a parody song so good it inspired a real life reenactment, which in my opinion is slight funnier than the original.
Therefore:

100. Thru You -- Kutiman

Some people lost their shit when this came out in the spring, and for good reason.The future will be full of communal artistic events just like this. There are already other projects reminiscent of the idea, but nothing has emerged yet as amazingly executed yet devastatingly simple as the idea of independently finding solo youtubes that fit together into a whole album's worth of beautiful songs. A lot of hopes were dashed this year, hopes held too high by folks who ought to know better. But ThruYou tells us there's no need to return to our insular little bunkers of mistrust and cynicism, there's a still a million potential energies in the wired and interconnected world, more than enough to make up for its failures and lies. ThruYou sings to us from Ohio to Jerusalem= I am New.

Previous Years in Internet Sonic Magic:
2007
2008

Previously in Misc/Awesome:

• 12/28: Terrible Boyfriend/ Girlfriend Generator.
• 12/1: The John Waters Advent Calendar-it starts today
• 11/28: It Chooses You: All I Want for Christmas is Everything from Miranda July's Pop-Up Shop
• 11/3: Things I'd Move to Minnesota For
• 9/6: PHOTOS: Maloof $$ Money Cup
• 9/2: PHOTOS: Chantilly Model Train Show
• 9/1: Libby's List: 5 Things I Want Right Now...
• 8/22: PHOTOS: Best Friends Day
• 8/10: PHOTOS: Lawn Mover Racing, Eastern Seaboard Regionals @ Bowles Farm
• 7/26: Special List: Things the BYGays Want Now That We Can Marry In DC (and NY!)