If I had made this today only, you know, different because I would be making it today, I'd put Ghostface at #6. This is only one among many instabilities in my list caused by my having to make it on the basis of shallow relationships with the records that stuck to me in some way.

I notice that #6 (and it could well move up) is not enough to change the number of points I would have given it on a Pazz and Jop ballot, but given some more time I'll become indecisive about whether I might like it more than the Madvillain or De La records. Yes, I am comparing it to the other rap records above it. This doesn't bar it from settling into one of the top two spots - but the fact that among the records I've heard in the past year, the Junior Boys and the Sonic Youth are more sonically isolated (partly because I just haven't been looking at anything else like them, whether they're especially unique or not) from anything else on the list, means that it's easier to make confident list-pronouncements about them. I'm forced to make finer distinctions between these three rap records and so am less confident about doing so. I suppose in that way my list, all the way down, is in order of decreasing confidence of how much I like the records. It's for a similar reason that a handful of more commercially-inclined rap records I liked ended up bunched together (down past ten, sadly) in a list I didn't share.

I suppose it's clear that the different numbers of points I assigned indicate different levels at which my confidence stratified - four of them.

It's been years since I listened to Mahler's seventh. I'm surprised it sounds so familiar. It's not as if I ever really got it down.

Jesus, the first movement is still going? It's 23:25 on my Boulez / Cleveland Orchestra recording.

I got that broken link directly from him and so I'm going to leave it that way. Hmph.

He sez the same songs as everyone under the sun, but I'm happy to see Nick's 2004 lists.

(I say the same songs as everyone under the sun, too. In keeping with the character of 'same songs as everyone under the sun' and all.)

But the end of the review of Dirty is brilliant: 'And when Kim warns you not to touch her breasts, the possibility that she's an uptight chick never crosses your mind.' That had not occurred to us.

Another with this best since Daydream Nation stuff. That's a hard enough thing to sort out from most people, who are variously up or down on different albums from over the years, but notice that as far as his ratings go, Christgau is more or less with me and my undying acceptance of everything. (Note, not: I am with him.) What would it mean for someone who thinks that and has rated their records as he has to say 'best since Daydream Nation'? But he's not even saying that. It's 'by most standards their best since Daydream Nation', which is even weirder. 'Most' would probably quibble endlessly about it, though there certainly were people that said things like that last year. So is it then a claim about what the best would be by the standards most people profess (implicitly or explicitly), whether they can see it or not?

Fitting that this jab at NPR and ilk - which the very astute and kind David Penner called me out for when he first read it - should be on the same page as the remark about the Youngblood Brass Band previously linked to. On the divider in the record store: 'NPR darlings'. I tried to rise above.

Hm. I finally found it. I didn't like it. I'm wary of listening to it again. I'm listening to Prince right now. Why stop listening to Prince? Ever?

I'm glad that I remembered to seek out 'I'm Like a Bird' when I got an iPod; I wouldn't have if it weren't for this. It must be one of the most sumptuously produced records of the past five years; I know that's standard for radio pop, but more than most anything current I listen to it just drips with money. It's too bad 'nattering' as a word has such poor connotations because Furtado stakes out some fucking territory which got even better (and less coherent, which I suppose is to say, and therefore less coherent) later; check out the 'Get Ur Freak On' remix on the Tomb Raider soundtrack from 2001. She kills it. And probably loosens Missy up a bit more, if you can imagine.

But I still feel like I just walked into the wrong store or something when I play 'Bird'.