Quick Review: Amy

Amy Winehouse, gone way too soon, and the worst part is that her death didn't have to happen. Using never-before seen footage as well as interviews with people in her life (for better or worse), Amy documents her early life, career and, ultimately, her demise. And to see how so many people in her life used her, or otherwise utterly failed her -- her father, ex-husband and manager, in particular -- is heartbreaking. If there is such a thing as karma, they will someday, somehow pay for their transgressions. Her drug and alcohol abuse turned her from an incredibly talented singer-songwriter into a target for comedians and the paparazzi. I left the theater angry that we can no longer hear her voice. There should be a class for any young performers who are either attracting attention, on the verge of potential stardom or have gone the route of American Idol, The Voice, etc., and said class should consist almost entirely of this documentary. My grade: A.

My 2011 In Music

And now that we've moved into 2012, here's a look back at what I downloaded in 2011 -- some of it purchased, some of it, ummm, not -- and what ended up as the 25 most-played songs of my iTunes library.

There are only 271 new tracks in my iTunes since the beginning of 2011. That's down from 317 in 2010. Only 19 were Christmas songs, though, compared to 73 a year earlier. So if you take the holiday songs out of the mix, my musical acquisitions increased. However, a lot of those were downloads of individual songs. Part of the total also comes from a few artists I discovered through various means (such as Twitter or Facebook) who made albums available for free download:

Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover) - EP (he's funny on "Community" but he has definite skills in the hip-hop arena; he now has a full-length album out, but I haven't bought it yet)
Loco - No Shade (Mixtape)
Simon Curtis - 8Bit Heart
DISCO PUSHER - Now You Know How The Story Ends (also a mixtape)

Then there were the records released before 2011...

Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
Brandon Flowers - Flamingo
Mika - The Boy Who Knew Too Much
Cee Lo Green - The Lady Killer
RuPaul - Champion
various artists - Christmas Remixed-Holiday Classics Re-Grooved (my only "new" Christmas album)

So that leaves just four albums I got that were actually released in 2011: