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THE BURN UNIT
The Year in Context
DAVID THORPE

We’re halfway through the whatever-you-call-‘ems, still riding out this years-long rock slump and waiting for our prince to come (not that Prince, obviously; he had his chance). Maybe our standards are too high. Maybe The Next Nirvana already came and went, and maybe it was Creed. Maybe this is as good as it gets, and maybe this is as good as it’s ever been. The year seems pretty flimsy now, but perhaps in a few decades, when Rob Thomas is revered as the greatest genius in the history of rock & roll, we’ll be kicking ourselves for our lack of insight.

As an arbitrary and largely worthless exercise in critical masturbation, I’ve taken it upon myself to compare 2005 to a half-century of other rock & roll hump-years. How shall we, the present, fare next to the majesty of the ages?

1955
It’s difficult to impugn the importance of a year that brought us Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” and Bill Haley’s “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” three singles without which we’d still be sitting by our hearths in smoking jackets listening to Perry Como’s Crushing Christmas Ennui Vol. 34. However, half a century of social change has rendered these hits quaint and irrelevant to most young music fans. Society was less permissive then, and flamboyant characters like Little Richard were forced to change their risqué butt lyrics like “Tutti frutti, good booty / If it don’t fit, don’t force it” to nonsensical, radio-friendly equivalents. Kids today have the luxury of nonsensical ass-songs that don’t have to pretend to not be about asses: “Mix your milk with my cocoa puff, milky, milky right.” Do you realize how many minds that would have blown in 1955? **** flying cars, the future is now.

Advantage: 2005. We enjoy butt-related freedoms that our forebears could only dream of.

1965
Shall any song in 2005 endure the weight of decades as well as the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” or Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”? Shall any album stand up as well as Rubber Soul? Probably not, but let’s not beat ourselves up over it. We might not have a Beatles or Stones equivalent, but in emo-pop hit-makers Fall Out Boy, we have found a modern equal to Herman’s Hermits. By my calculations, that’s better than nothing (by about 3 percent). Ah, who am I kidding? 1965 pitches an unmitigated no-hitter on our meager little year. Not only do we face the aforementioned Stones, Dylan and Beatles hotness, but ‘65 also claims “Unchained Melody,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” “I Got You Babe,” “Do You Believe in Magic,” “California Girls,” “My Girl,” and about a billion other Best Songs Ever. Hopeless.

Advantage: 1965. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

1975
A banner year for boorish “classic rock” radio, 1975 spawned some of the most ignominious rock hits in history: Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion,” KISS’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll All Night,” Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and The Who’s “Squeeze Box.” Pop had a miserable year as well; we may get moderately sick of “Hollaback Girl,” but imagine hearing Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” or Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You” five times a day. On the bright side, some great artists became deeply miserable, resulting in Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night. If it weren’t for their dolorous agony, the year might have been a total waste.

Advantage: 2005. A few good albums just could not undo the damage done by KISS.

1985
OK, lightning round:
• “Sugar We’re Going Down” vs. “Sugar Walls”: Sheena Easton, though aging gracefully, is way too old to be giving us boners. We’ll give it to the safely asexual Fall Out Boy.
• “We Belong Together” vs. “We Built This City”: Mariah wins by default; Starship is disqualified, since it technically does not count as music.
• “Gold Digger” vs. “Money for Nothing”: We’ll call it a tie. Both are boss in entirely different ways.
• “Since U Been Gone” vs. “Every Time You Go Away”: “Every Time” represents high-quality craftsmanship. Paul Young even took the time to spell out the word “you.”
• “Gold Digger” vs. “The Heat is On”: Glenn Frey burns Kanye to the ground on this one.
• “Wake Me Up When September Ends” vs. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”: Wham! wins by a country mile.

Advantage: 1985, based on cold, hard statistics.

1995
The center of the ‘90s both chronologically and artistically, ‘95 was the wobbly fulcrum separating the fecund early ‘90s from the barren late ‘90s. It was the year when most of the biggest acts of the decade released their mid-period albums: Wowee Zowee separated lo-fi Pavement from classic-rock Pavement; (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? was on the precipice between beloved Oasis and total **** Oasis; Maxinquaye was the plateau between Massive Attack Tricky and unlistenable weirdo Tricky. ‘95 was the boom before the bust, and it was a decent year for music. It defeats 2005 not merely on the strength of a gaggle of memorable LPs, but more importantly due to Real McCoy’s single “Come and Get Your Love,” which was recently named the best single of all time by a formal poll of the Dig staff.

Advantage: 1995 blocks out the present with an impenetrable Wonderwall.

And so, by a score of 2-3, the Year of Our Lord 2005 is narrowly defeated by the formidable foe that is history.