It Surrounds Everything: Russ's Best Records of 2011

2011's coming to a close, and it was an absolutely brilliant year for music, a year that I had a handful of records actually attach themselves to me in ways that formed new permanent favorites. Compiling ten albums that had serious meaning to me in 2011 and ranking them, though, was difficult as hell: who can say if the revelation at the gym had to one upbeat record is more or less impactful then the solving of an existential crises brought about by wandering the streets to another? 

Regardless, the iPod playcount and the amount I've talked about these albums cannot and do not lie: here's my top 10 favorite records of 2011. Sorry, Jay-Z and Kanye, but having that one good song on Watch The Throne does not a top-10 record make. And +10 to Kate Bush for fucking a snowman, -20 for so much of that record being boring. Special mention goes to John Maus who has an album that's literally number 11 of my top 10, sorry bro, part and parcel to making a list is leaving things off a list. Apologies if there's some overlap between here and there...actually, no, no apologies. This is what I loved and felt and breathed in 2011's music. 

#10:

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Just call up I'm drinkin'

I guess, all things considered, we should be worried about Drake. He's lost, he's lonely in room full of money and girls and so blurred out that he can't see anything. He's smiling through the pain, but barely, and then we get this:

Three solid minutes of total self-hurt and apathy. 

I can tell, I can tell, I can tell certain people don’t like me no more
New shit don’t excite me no more
Guess they don’t really make ‘em like me no more

Uh, you can look me in my eyes and see I aint myself

Cause if ya what I created than I hate myself

But still, let them girls in,
And tell em all leave their cell phones on the table where we see ‘em
I’m all day with it man, AM to the PM

Drake can't even trust the light-skinned model girls that they let in during "Fancy". If, on "Marvin's Room", he was just calling because the girls were just leaving, here he doesn't even trust the phones. He's living in his own personal "The Wire" of fame.

And then our beloved The Weeknd took it a step further

Taking the chorus from "I'm on one" to "I popped one", The Weeknd's take on "Trust Issues" is an addled, drug-damaged and damn-right scary love song, with a creepy child-like female Greek chorus answering all questions with "I do, I do, I do". It's very possible that all parties involved just need a little sleep and everything will be better, but it's equally possible that, in this bleak Candian landscape (now apparently referred to as OVOXO), everything is just broken. If that's the case, I'll gladly watch them walk on glass to keep these beautiful, painful sounds coming.