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What topped Rolling Stone’s list?

Despite the challenges posed by the music blog world and sites like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone still remains a well-read publication, and it’s list of best albums and songs of the decade earned it some blog posts. Stereogum reprinted its lists, with the 100 best albums of the decade including some shockers—and some that were not too surprising.

What did they rank in the Top 10? Radiohead’s Kid A, which isn’t a huge surprise. A lot of lists included it at number one, or at least in the top five. But The Strokes Is This It? at number two, ahead of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? That’s pretty hard to believe. A lot of the other choices were on other top albums of the decade lists, including Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, Arcade Fire’s Funeral and even The White Stripes’ Elephant. But Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP? That’s a surprise for most hip-hop fans, for sure.

There top songs of the decade included a few left turns as well, but we were glad to see that “Hey Ya” was listed way high up there. Still a feel-good song, years after coming out.

Get concert tickets for these bands at StubHub.

Rihanna To Perform in Dubai on New Year’s Eve!

How will red hot singer Rihanna be celebrating New Year’s Eve? According to Hollyscoop.com, the “Russian Roulette” singer will be performing at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. Rihanna was reportedly offered $500,000 to perform at the Dubai New Year’s Eve party. Said a source to the New York Post, “She was supposed to perform back in May but she cancelled in the aftermath of the assault. This is a make-up date.”

A half a million dollars may seem like a lot to the average person (and it is!) but in the past several stars have received much more for performances! HollyScoop.com reports that George Michael was paid $2.6 million to perform just 13 songs for Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin, while Amy Winehouse received $1.6 million to perform for the girlfriend of Chelsea Football Club owner, billionaire Roman Abramovich, Daria “Dasha” Zhukova. The biggest check of all, however, was made out to the Rolling Stones, who were paid some $7.3 million to perform at the 60th birthday part of billionaire David Bonderman! I guess you can “always get what you want.”

If you can’t make it to Dubai for New Year’s Eve, head to StubHub for Rihanna tickets.

Spin publishes their 40 best albums of the year

So what topped the list for Spin in 2009? According to Stereogum, it’s lot of stuff that’s kind of predictable, and quite a lot that no one saw coming, either. Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion came in at number one, which is an interesting choice. It’s certainly one of the most unconventional albums of the year, with sounds that have boggled a lot of listeners’ minds. Many of those same listeners, though, were left more baffled than boggled.

More surprising was the number two, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ It’s Blitz! That record seemed to come out, attract plenty of hype from YYY fans, and then fade away. It’s a shame, because they’re one of the most talented rock bands still performing. It’s nice to see that album get the recognition it deserves.

Also in the underappreciated category: Number six, Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns. That album was rightly proclaimed great when it came out, but failed to capture much space on any lists. It seems like Spin was at least willing to give it some love.

A lot of the artists on their list are going to be on tour, so get concert tickets on StubHub.

Get Ready For Mariah’s New Year’s Eve Performance!

We are only a few days away from Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve performance at New York’s Madison Square Garden!  The diva will be celebrating the start of 2010 with a concert, and rumor has it that the songstress will be gathering up a group of famous celebrity friends to join her live onstage. Fanclub members were able to choose tickets first and the rest of the public quickly snapped up tickets to the event on Nov. 14.

Fans can expect to enjoy a large dose of some of Mariah’s greatest hits as well as some tunes from her latest work, Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel.  The record debuted at the No. 1 spot on the R&B charts during the month of November, and the album also spawned the popular platinum single, “Obsessed.”

Mariah Carey has always been a busy performer.  This popular diva will certainly rock the end of 2009…and the start of 2010 in style.  Get Mariah Carey tickets today from StubHub!

Best music lists: The Top 500 Tracks

How do you rate one song against another? Somehow, Pitchfork managed to do it, pitting hundreds upon hundreds of tracks against one another and whittling down the list until only 500 remained—in order of great to greatest. There was surely a lot of gnashing of teeth over how the list was compiled when it came out, but it’s still worth looking at. What’s highly debatable is whether Outkast’s “B.O.B.” belongs in the top spot—and it’s debatable only because “Hey Ya!” might be the better song. They’re both relentlessly catchy, and both performed the rare feat of being ubiquitous on the radio and ubiquitously loved by listeners when they came out. But “Hey Ya!” is an ebullient explosion, despite being about a painful break-up. It’s hard not to listen to that song without a smile coming to your face.

Other picks that might be controversial: M.I.A.‘s “Paper Planes” at number three. Like Outkast’s hits, it was universally loved, but doesn’t really welcome repeat visits. It’s still amazingly fun at parties, though.

After looking through the list, check StubHub for concert tickets to these groups.

Best music lists: Top 200 albums

For better or worse, Pitchfork is the arbiter of what’s cool and what’s not in the indie-rock world. With a massive undertaking of rating the best albums of the decade, they came up with 200 records that simply couldn’t be ignored. It’s a list you should peer through in full, but for our purposes, we’re just going through the top 10. Kid A tops the list, and it’s hard to argue it doesn’t at least belong in the top three (it’s easy to argue this if you don’t care for electronica as much). Arcade Fire’s brilliant Funeral came in number two, which was a pretty smart choice. That record really encapsulated a certain indie-rock sound in mid-decade, and will surely be a touchstone for younger listeners just developing their tastes.

The same goes for Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—but does it belong behind Daft Punk’s Discovery? Daft Punk definitely deserves to have an album high up on this list, but Discovery seems like it might be the wrong one. It offers up an interesting twist on the house music their known for, but it’s also sounds more slick and polished, and just generally a little less interesting.

In any case, peruse the list and look for concert tickets on StubHub.

Toby Keith and Carrie Underwood Top Billboard’s End-of-the-Decade List for Country

The Boot reports that Carrie Underwood and Toby Keith have emerged as two of Billboard’s Top Country Artists of the Decade. Due to a whopping seven No. 1 albums over the past 10 years, Toby Keith, who came onto the country music scene 15 years ago, has been hailed Billboard’s Country Artist of the Decade. Keith also has a number of No. 1 singles under his belt, such as “Beer for My Horses” (with Willie Nelson) and “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (Angry American).” Also in the Top Five are Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts and George Strait.

After winning American Idol in 2005, Carrie Underwood has become one of the most successful female country artists out there. Her debut album, Some Hearts, sold nearly seven million copies and yielded three No. 1 singles, including “Jesus Take the Wheel.” The newly-engaged Oklahoma native’s debut was named Billboard’s Top Country Album of the Decade. Read more about Billboard’s country honors at The Boot. Get your concert tickets at StubHub.

Beyonce Scheduled For Performance at the Grammy Awards

The musical lineup for the Grammy Awards is suddenly taking shape, with a variety of musicians providing their skills on the stage. Thus far, Beyonce, The Black Eyed Peas, Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum and Maxwell are a few of the artists scheduled to take the stage at the 52nd annual homage to recorded music. Beyonce is leading the pack with ten nominations, including one for Record of the Year and for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the song “Halo.”

Right behind Beyonce is Taylor Swift with eight award nods, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “You Belong to Me.” Maxwell and The Black Eyed Peas are each up for six awards, and Lady Antebellum received two nominations.

All of the musical excitement is scheduled to begin on Jan. 31 when the awards ceremony is set to take place in Los Angeles. You may not have tickets to the Grammys, but if you want to see your favorite performer live onstage, get Beyonce tickets today from StubHub.

What happened to indie this decade?

The start of the ‘90s saw the unprecedented embrace of alternative rock. Up until that point, what could be called indie music was kind of underground, but with the mainstream opening up to grunge, everyone seemed to be able to enjoy a bizarre record put out by a collective of artists in the Pacific Northwest.

In the past decade, argues a well-thought column in Pitchfork, that embrace has only widened. The things we consider indie—whether they’re a specific kind of rock or a twee sensibility—have leaked out into film, fashion and a whole lot more. In hindsight, it seems pretty natural that that would happen, but there was a lot of jockeying between fads and legitimate cultural shifts that shaped the indie landscape during that time. The column looks back over the past 10 years and finds a music scene where backlashes were rife, but never managed to push out the “trends”—they just got absorbed into other styles. Overall, you have to look back and remember that this was—and is—an exciting time in music.

There’s a lot of bands listed in the piece. Check StubHub for concert tickets and see if they’re touring.

Best music lists: Techno

While we covered a pretty awesome list of the best electronica of the decade yesterday, Pitchfork has another list that all beat-lovers should check out. This one focuses specifically on techno, and also only looks back at the year 2009. But the year was definitely a good one for those loving dance music, as the list proves. It’s actually a monthly column, but as an end of the year retrospective, it goes far in depth, looking at the positive (and not so positive) trends in the field. For techno, the more negative changes are that there’s a lot of trend following and not a whole lot of innovation. “Please, people,” says the writer, “stop lacing your tracks with spoken word recitations of the phrase ‘house music.’ We know what it is.”

That said, he points out that a lot of the year’s music betrays a lot of interesting mixing going on in genres. “A lot of it was American, and reflected a raw-but-refined fusion of two decades of sounds—Detroit techno-jazz, Chicago house minimalism, Berlin dub abstraction—into a kind of hissing, swirling, viscous funk.”

Check out the column, then see if StubHub has concert tickets for any of the artists mentioned.