January 01, 2007

MUSIC: Best of 2006

I'm much more a song person than an album person -- I'll take a perfect 3-minute song over almost any 50-minute album anyday -- but I did enjoy these albums this year:

Solomon Burke, Nashville
The Ditty Bops, Moon Over the Freeway
The Essex Green, Cannibal Sea
Raul Malo, You're Only Lonely
Audra McDonald, Build a Bridge
Willie Nelson, You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker
original off-Broadway cast, I Love You Because
Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs, Under the Covers, Vol. 1
The Weepies, Say I Am You
The Wood Brothers, Ways Not to Lose

And these are the songs -- some from the above albums, some not; a few from '05 releases that I didn't catch up with until this year -- that had me hitting the REPLAY button during '06:

Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminal Starvation League, "Sticky Chemical"
The Boy Least Likely To, "Faith"
Chris Brown, "Waiting for Caroline"
Jonathan Coulton, "Code Monkey"
Kris Delmhorst, "Since You Went Away"
The Essex Green, "Rue de Lis"
Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
Paul Kelly & the Stormwater Boys w/Kasey Chambers, "You're Learning"
Raul Malo, "Feels Like Home"
Audra McDonald, "Bein' Green"
Lynn Miles, "Love Sweet Love"
Texas Lightning, "Waterloo"
Ben Vaughn, "Too Happy"
The Weepies, "Painting by Chagall"
The Wood Brothers, "One More Day"
Weird Al Yankovic & Kate Winslet, "I Need a Nap"
Chris Young, "Drinkin' Me Lonely"

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