Entry One Hundred Sixty-Three.
Wednesday, 2013.01.02, 12:09 PM CST.
My pick for album of the year 2012...
Current Mood:  Cautiously optimistic.
Current Scent:  Catalyst by Halston.

To be frank, I was sick of 2012.  It wasn't a great year for me, actually... but I won't sit here and whine about the details right now.

So, happy new year, everybody.  2013 had better be better.  I know I'm probably going to be under a surgeon's scalpel sometime early this year, and that'll be a hoot.  (To satiate your curiosity, it'll be a fairly routine sinus-related surgery... but it will potentially change my life for the better.  I might also get my nose changed to match that of Jennifer Love Hewitt, but probably not.)

I want this year to be SO MUCH better than last year.  I've got some obstacles to face, some of which I can't discuss here, but I'm going to do my best to tackle them and move ahead.

My main new year's resolution is this:  I resolve to do more DJ performances this year than I have for the last few years.  Aside from my family, friends, and God, there are few things that I love more than DJing.  It has been a passion of mine for almost a quarter of a century.

I'm going to get out there and DJ more often.  Not ALL the time; I still need time to dedicate to my family and my "day job."  However, I'm not getting any younger.  I want to get a lot more gigs in before I finally shuffle off this mortal coil.

Anyway...  Here's my choice for album of the year, 2012.  It'll shock some of you, I'm quite sure.

MY ALBUM OF THE YEAR, 2012:  LANA DEL REY'S BORN TO DIE.

On January 1st of this year, I was checking out YouTube videos and I happened upon a link to a video for a new song called "Born To Die" by an unfamiliar artist named Lana Del Rey.  The stillframe for the video made her look a bit like Kristen Bauer Van Straten from TV's True Blood, which certainly didn't hurt.

So, I clicked on the video, and I was treated to a shockingly good song.

The video was a bit cheesy overall (in a bit of a dark/grindhousey kind of way), but that song immediately got stuck in my head.  It wasn't like any other pop track that I'd heard in a while; I really dug the swelling classical strings, and her voice - a little nasally, a little gravelly, but really nice - was definitely not what was commonly being churned out of the world of pop music these days.

I quickly tracked down the videos for "Blue Jeans" and "Video Games," loving them both ("Video Games" moved me to tears the first time I saw it), and I knew I would be purchasing the full Born To Die album as soon as it was released.  I did a bit more research on Del Rey; it surprised me that she was in her mid-20s (she looked older in the "Born To Die" video), and I found it amusing that she described herself as a "gangsta Nancy Sinatra."  Indeed, after reading that, I realized that her musical style was a bit like that of Nancy Sinatra - far from perfect, but appealing.  There was a somewhat nostalgic note to her voice and her presentation - a bit trashy, but not over-the-top campy.

The album was released at the end of January, and I was very impressed.  Some of the songs were, from a lyrical standpoint, absolute crap - "National Anthem," for instance - but made up for it by being insanely catchy.  Others were great lyrically and musically, like the super-addictive "Radio," "Dark Paradise," and my personal favourite on the album, "Summertime Sadness."  There were two real "dog tracks" on the album:  the dreary "Carmen" and the dreadfully boring "Million Dollar Man."  However, the good outweighed the bad in a big way.

Del Rey caught some flak from critics after two absolutely terrible live performances on "Saturday Night Live" - seriously awful stuff there.  Other clips of her live performances have been pretty tragic as well.  She also had a lot of detractors who said that her music career had been funded by her excessively wealthy father (an accusation she has denied).

Despite all of that, I thought the album was great.  Was she just better in the studio?  Did it take a massive production effort to make her sound so good on the official recordings?  Whoever was responsible - Del Rey herself and/or her production team - the work paid off.

It will likely be a controversial decision, but there you go:  Born To Die is my album of the year for 2012.

More soon!

Badger