The Rising is also the most self-consciously Significant of last year's records, which is both good and bad. Straining for Importance has sunk many a lesser album-- see, for example, Jerusalem and The Last DJ, but Springsteen mostly gets away with it. And, of course, the album is notable for catapulting Bruce Springsteen back into Working Class Hero status, which he'd come dangerously close to losing after the whole "41 Shots" thing-- it's interesting to recall that Springsteen was booed and derided by the police and their supporters in his last pre-9/11 appearance in New York. It's a funny world.

Other albums worth noting that came out last year? I wasn't really blown away by the whole "garage band" movement, but others thought highly of them. I enjoyed Solomon Burke's Don't Give Up On Me quite a bit, and also Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Rhett Miller's The Instigator is a wonderful bit of pop ephemera. I'm also kind of fond of OK Go, and Drunk Enough to Dance, as previously noted, but I wouldn't claim either as the best album of the year.

When it comes to books, matters are somewhat clearer, in that I have a list of everything I've read recently, and when I read it, but it doesn't really help with the whole publication date question. I'm almost positive that both Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon are really 2001 books, but they're probably the two best books I read last year. I'm less sure of The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, but I think that may be from 2001 as well.

The most enjoyable books I read last year that were published last year were probably The Apocalypse Door by James D. Macdonald and The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. The latter is probably Literary enough to be a reasonable pick for "book of the year," but then it's hard to pick against anything containing the sentence "Yeah, I'm a Knight of the Temple"...

Actually, I guess this shows the real reason why I dislike "best of" awards-- I'm not very good at settling on a winner...