This is stupid.

I don't know anything about 2007. I don't think I was present for any of it, in the sense of an awareness of the culture. This is an egoist's best of 2007 list; a list of the best things I discovered in the last year. This entry will be a little bit about music. Maybe the next one will be about books. This one isn't.

Music
Édith Piaf
I cannot say enough about Édith Piaf. Sure, I'd heard of her before this year and, sure, I had even obsessively listened to La Marseillaise, but she's more than that. She's, well, she's Édith fucking Piaf. You must listen to Milord while dancing extravagantly around your home in the post-shower nude. It's wonderful. And sing along where you can (just the badadadadadada... and the "MAY WE DANCE").
Turns out that I can say enough about Édith Piaf.
She's wonderful.

Erik Satie
I'll be the first person to say that classical music's gods are too revered, too discussed, too venerated, and oddly limited. Maybe they're great. I'm not a musician and my measure of music is not expert in any way at all. I'm a layman, maybe not the layest man, but pretty well laid and if the music doesn't do something to me, it can basically be dismissed. Erik Satie jams his demented fingers into the hole of my discontent and probes. There's something more to him, something more personal than the other composers. It's abrupt (not Bartók abrupt, but still), but soothing; it takes note of all of life's horrors and accepts them. For his ubiquitous Trois Gymnopedie (in which you can hear almost everything Philip Glass ever wrote), for his Gnossienne(s), and even for his more conventional Je te Veux, Satie gets a mention here.

On The Sunny Side of the Street
I love to compare covers of a song by a variety of artists and this (along with As Time Goes By and La Vie en Rose) has been one a favorite. Another wonderful song to play in the morning. Especially, Louis Armstrong's version with the extended trumpet introduction. The first notes just explode the fuck out of my shitty laptop speakers and then, a minute and forty seconds later, his big honeyed voice comes rolling out and it just gets better and better. A tip of the hat to versions by Benny Goodman (with Peggy Lee) and to Count Basie (with Ella Fitzgerald). Both are mellow and wonderful, but they don't quite have the smooth ecstasy that Armstrong and his trumpet can produce. Sinatra's isn't so bad either.
If I never had a dime, I'd be rich as Rockefeller, indeed.

Joy Division
Hats off to Olga, who has played Joy Division in my vicinity for years. Still, it wasn't until I heard Dead Souls that I realized that the band is greater than their epically shitty song, Love Will Tear Us Apart. I hate that damn song. Dead Souls, however, and She's Lost Control (and All of This for You, and No Love Lost)just remind me of the Velvet Underground (sometimes) and the Kinks (sort of) and maybe the Clash (a little). I guess what they remind me of is good music. With a British accent. That kicks your ass.

Summation
My favorite artists of the year are dead, I heard them all before this year, and I have nothing interesting to say about them.

This post is stupid and doesn't make any sense.

Addendum
Another notable artist that I only discovered in November of this year is Wanda Jackson. Her country songs are the kind of treacly girl-country crap that makes me vomit slightly into my mouth, but her rockabilly songs (she recorded covers of Carl Perkins' Honey, Don't and Hard-Headed Woman, and also Money, Honey and slew of others) are the best shit. Her sweet country-lass voice gets all throaty and raw and she sings with all feral grace of a drunk amphetamine junky. With all her hair and teeth. And also, wearing pants.