Defining a year, good and bad

From electronically enhanced vocals to a “peanut butter pudding surprise,” The Times’ pop music staff reflects on the genre’s 25 most memorable moments of 2008.

Most influential new sound

If there was any one definitive tone of 2008, it was not a genre, instrument or voice. It was a $400 pitch-correction plug-in from software company Antares that lends a robotic tang to vocals. Auto-Tune burst into mainstream consciousness courtesy of T-Pain; now, you can’t get through two songs on Power 106 without it. Auto-Tune makes a voice sound expansive, uncanny and lonely. Quite a metaphor as the record business burns, no?

-- August Brown

Best excuse to invest in a fancy stereo

In the opening moments of “Folie a Deux,” Fall Out Boy announces, “Nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy.” With left-turn melodies, multipart harmonies and a Cheap Trick-like knack for hooks, the band crafted one of the more exuberant, zany rock ‘n’ roll albums of the year.

-- Todd Martens

Best teasing out of a metaphor

How many times has a lover tenderized his pitch by using the word “baby”? In Robin Thicke’s funky seduction “You’re My Baby,” he goes all the way with it, using the language of early parenthood to celebrate an utterly absorbing bond. It’s weird, but it works.

-- Ann Powers

Best news on TV

If you haven’t tuned into the Sundance Channel series “Spectacle,” find it. Elvis Costello is the ultra-informed, congenial, sometimes provocative host, giving guests such as Elton John the time, respect and knowledge to explore music in a way that hasn’t been seen for what feels like eons.

-- Randy Lewis

Unlikeliest display of rock ‘n’ roll heart

For the most part, Jolie Holland’s albums have felt a lot like holiday china. You’re really glad it’s there, but it’s so lovely, it’s difficult to pull it out very often. That all changed with “The Living and the Dead,” an album in which Holland scuffed up her beautiful blend of smoky jazz and folk with flinty rock guitar and moodiness.

-- Chris Barton

Best rebound

Britney Spears would seem to be the comeback pop female of choice, but let’s face it: She had MTV championing her every move. Also, when Britney appears half-naked in a magazine, it’s marketing. When Miley Cyrus does so, it’s a S-C-A-N-D-A-L. But Cyrus recovered quite nicely with the largely fast and spry “Breakout.”

-- Todd Martens

Best near-death concert experience

My Bloody Valentine at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was outstanding, but specifically the 15-odd minutes of single-toned afterburner thrust that was “You Made Me Realise” brought things home with an astonishingly physical touch.

-- Chris Barton

Best song with a crazy recorder solo

Dido’s first instrument was the recorder, and on the song “Grafton Street,” a chronicle of her beloved father’s last days, she plays it with the ferocity Ian Anderson applied to his flute in Jethro Tull.

-- Ann Powers

Most annoying and interesting record

Just the fact that one of the band’s vocalists goes by the name Yoni Wolf is reason enough to approach Why? with care, yet there was something compelling about its record “Alopecia,” even with the often grating, too-much-information half-raps.

-- Chris Barton

Best U.K. No. 1 that didn’t flood the U.S.

The Ting Tings seemed poised to break here, coming out of SXSW with buzz and an iTunes commercial. They’re not exactly an unknown entity, but the spunky single “That’s Not My Name” hasn’t become the inescapable hit on these shores as it has overseas.

-- Todd Martens

Band most likely to get critics arguing

Fleet Foxes, the twee-est phenomenon since Sufjan Stevens, entranced many music lovers, but others find the band’s medievalist take on Laurel Canyon hippie pop unbearably cloying. Me, I was convinced when I saw the band play near its hometown of Seattle last summer. Three thousand hushed and reverent listeners can’t be wrong.

-- Ann Powers

Best tear-jerker about scrapbooking

“Today is my birthday, and all that I want is to dig through this big box of pictures in my kitchen till the daylight’s gone,” sings Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles in the ballad “Very Last Country Song.” She’s giving voice to a middle-aged woman reflecting on her life, something all too rare in pop.

-- Ann Powers

Best video that needs to become a Wes Anderson film

No matter how you feel about Vampire Weekend, the video for “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” has got all the makings. The plot is “goth girl goes to preppy party; catches guy singing to prom queen,” which Anderson could surely find a way to over-direct. Choice lines can be taken from the song: “Can you stay up to see the dawn in the colors of Benetton?” And hey, just use the band’s name for a title -- vampires are all the rage.

-- Margaret Wappler

Most jaw-dropping country show

Jypsi, a band built around sisters Lillie Mae, Scarlett and Amber-Dawn Rische and their brother Frank, put out a debut album with bluegrass-inspired harmonies. But it didn’t remotely prepare Stagecoach audiences for the band’s electrifying live act.

-- Randy Lewis

Most inspiring politico

Politicians generally warrant songs only when they’ve done something irascible, like start a war or clamp down on pot dispensaries. But Barack Obama inspired quite a few bangers. Nas’ “Black President” probably tops the list, followed by Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige, Common, Don Omar, Cocoa Tea, Mavado and scads more. Our fave is the Lady Tigra’s “First Black First Lady,” a funky, funny R&B; retelling of the Obamas’ courtship.

-- August Brown

Best major label(s)

With album sales dropping, it’s nice to see at least two major labels -- Capitol/Emi and Interscope -- get their old-school hustle on (for certain artists, anyway). Capitol/EMI gets the nod for breaking Katy Perry, while Interscope should be given credit for not giving up on Lady Gaga.

-- Charlie Amter

Best mention of a ring tone in a lyric

The Replacements’ “Answering Machine” is in need of an update. Los Campesinos! tried to modernize things with “It’s Never That Easy Though, Is It? (Song for the Other Kurt),” stomping into the chorus with this refrain: “I’m calling you again on your telephone, and all I ever get is another stupid ring tone.” -- Todd Martens

Best title to predict listener reaction

My Morning Jacket seriously overreached with the album “Evil Urges,” but never more so on the falsetto-funk goof “Highly Suspicious.” At least I hope it was a goof -- there’s never a good reason to write a song whose recurring lyrical theme is “peanut butter pudding surprise.”

-- Chris Barton

Best channeling of Nina Simone’s spirit

Who can’t wait for the full-length from Antony and the Johnsons, the sublime gender-bending performer and his group, coming late this winter? An EP, “Another World,” had to satisfy fans in 2008. The best track was the haunting blues of “Shake That Devil.”

-- Ann Powers

Best awards show performance

Kanye West knows how to entertain. His neon-lighted take on “Stronger” with Daft Punk at the Grammy Awards pumped life into a program that had superstars singing with dead musicians. And only the most hardened cynics couldn’t be moved by his tribute to his recently passed mother with “Hey Mama.”

-- Todd Martens

Best animated video

For those who have recently thought about getting a tattoo, Tim Fite is here to save you. His video for “Big Mistake” is delightfully cute yet slightly melancholic as it presents the imagined history of a grandpa who just happens to be peg-legged. And who may or may not have been attacked by bumblebees and sharks. Oh, and he may have also survived bombardment from an army of feral cats.

-- Todd Martens

Best new concert experience

Forget shows, think seance. Or more precisely, tribal euphoria. At the El Rey, Dan Deacon pummeled the senses with serotonin-flooding synths, manic beats from two drummers, psychedelic video and activities for the audience. Gang Gang Dance and Boredoms led “88 BoaDrum,” a symphony performed by 88 drummers in New York and in L.A. (at the La Brea Tar Pits).

-- Margaret Wappler

Best musicians turned bloggers

The biggest testament to Kanye West’s star power was that he made avant-garde architecture buffs out of Top 40 hip-hop kids with his blog. The same goes for Courtney Love, whose war on Ryan Adams, Lily Allen, shopping carts and punctuation littered the fields of MySpace with defeated foes, and for John Mayer, who redeemed “Your Body Is a Wonderland” by live-blogging himself baking a cake. Yet the BMOC had to be Mobb Deep’s Prodigy, who’s documenting his three-year jail term for Vibe. It’s easily the most entertaining writing to emerge from the clink since Solzhenitsyn.

-- August Brown

Best doc to capture an artist’s mood

Cellist-producer Arthur Russell was an Iowa-raised, New York club-hopping perfectionist who bent disco beats into glass-smooth compositions. Matt Wolf’s documentary, “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell,” uses heartbreaking interviews and evocative stagings of scenes from Russell’s life to capture the spirit of this musical seeker who died of AIDS complications in 1992.

-- Margaret Wappler

Best trend we are hoping continues

Big bands in small clubs: Jane’s Addiction at El Cid, the Cure at the Troubadour, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at Safari Sam’s, Beck at the Echo and so on. More please in 2009.

-- Charlie Amter