Mark Linkous from Sparklehorse died this weekend, and initial reports gave his age only as being "in his forties." Caryn Ganz, who broke the news late Saturday for Rolling Stone, told me that Linkous' publicist/manager, Shelby Meade, told her his age "wasn't released."

Entertainment Weekly went with a very similar formulation to Ganz's: "Linkous, who was in his forties but whose exact age is unknown," Missy Schwartz wrote. The information replicated itself.

Linkous' Wikipedia page says he was born in 1962. I'm not good enough at figuring out when that got added, but it also says he was born in Arlington and narrowly avoided a career in coal-mining, so maybe that's not important. The New York Times reported he was 47; Ben Sisario, who wrote the item, says he "found his DOB on public records, and I also got it from the police."I don't know where Ben Sisario, who wrote the item, got that. I've e-mailed him, and I'll update when he replies.

I went on Nexis this morning and found out Mark Linkous was born in Sept. 1962. When I e-mailed Meade to ask her why so many people reported such a vague age for her client, she wrote back: "Andrew he was 47."

What kind of megastar makes her own tech support calls? The kind that aggressively keeps shit real, apparently. In an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A. explains how a three-hour phone call with Verizon led to "I'm Down Like Your Internet Connection," a track from her forthcoming follow-up to Kala. And in a very Nicholas Kristof move, the ranking hip-hop globalist outsourced backing vocals to real live Filipino Verizon employees:

“I was having issues with my cable and wireless, and I was on the phone [with tech support] for three hours, and I thought, ‘Maybe this needs to be part of my music, could you just learn these lyrics and sing it down the phone to me?’ Ten phone calls later, I have Internet that sticks and a song.”

Below the jump, a few suggestions for other household tribulations ripe for the M.I.A. treatment:

• "I'm Unhinged Like This Broke-Ass Bathroom Cabinet" (background vocals: Brazilian lumberjacks)
• "My Lyrics Are Unfiltered Like the Water in My Roommate's Brita" (background vocals: reservoir workers in Sri Lanka)
• "I'm Over You Like the Thin Layer of Dust on My TiVo" (background vocals: cast of Monsoon Wedding)
• "I'mma Break It Down Like a Billy Bookcase" (background vocals: random Swedish people)
• "I'm Sprung Like That Leak in the Ceiling" (background vocals: Joe the Plumber)

Further suggestions welcome in the comments.

Related: M.I.A. releases new video, "There's Space For Ol Dat I See," via Twitter, thus confusing the Fader.

- So! My girlfriend and I are driving to Florida at the end of the month, and we have this guide book, which she says is "poorly written and full of bad puns." I agree! That said: A 14-hour drive, even if spread over two days, is pretty soul-crushing, and we'd like to see some cool stuff along the way. Cultural tourists, where should we stop? We like regional culinary specialties, funny signs, and homes of dead authors. Close proximity to I-95 is preferred.

- Yesterday, Maura Judkis updated Arts Desk on how the D.C. delegation fared at Miami's Art Basel. To get a sense of what sold (and for how much, and to Val Kilmer) at this year's fair, check out this slide show from New York's Vulture blog.

- Perhaps the Jawbox performance on Jimmy Fallon left you thirsty for more reunited Dischord acts. Good news then! D.C. hardcore veterans Scream's show at the Black Cat is now on the mainstage, which means it's no longer sold out. (It's the original lineup, so no Dave Grohl.)

- This video of the Manhattan Bridge might be even more terrifying than loose roof panels in the National Gallery. (Hat tip: Kottke.)

- An endorsement! The new Blisspop blog launched last month, and has turned me on to a ton of good music, mostly from local artists and DJs. It has also reminded me of some things I had hoped to forget.

- Song of the day! A Sunny Day in Glasgow's lovely cover of "Game of Pricks" by Guided by Voices:

The Philly sextet plays tonight at the Red and the Black. (More on this later today!)

Have a great day! Come to our Tweetup tonight! Follow me on Twitter!

The results?

"In the end, Animal Collective edged out every other artist for both Best Album and Best Song. Artists like Grizzly Bear, The Decemberists and Neko Case weren't far behind. One thing was clear: that 2009 has been one of the strongest years for new music in recent memory."

MP3 tracks accompany the list for Best Songs of 2009 (so far), in case you're not up to speed with what's cool.

About that last point: Did ASC mean new music or new artists? The former is redundant; you can't poll Best of 2009 (so far) using music released prior to 2009. And the latter is simply untrue. Bob Dylan, U2, Conor Oberst, Animal Collective, Neko Case, Grizzly Bear, The Decemberists–which of these is a new band? I took the remark to mean that the field is flatter, the world more fair, but I think that's kind of naive: The Internet is just as good as FM radio and MTV at promoting some bands above all others and keeping them up there for a while.

Jonah Weiner has a piece up at Slate explaining the recent deaths of Vibe and Blender and layoffs at Spin and Rolling Stone. He serves his argument in three parts: 1.) "There are fewer superstars, and the same musicians show up on every magazine cover"; 2.) "Music mags have less to offer music lovers, and music lovers need them less than ever anyway"; 3.) "Music magazines were an early version of social networking. But now there's this thing called "social networking"..."

Point no. 2 deals much more plainly on the topic of critic access (see: watermarks), with one strange deviation. Weiner writes:

"It's a valid point that the professional critic still wields an aura of authority rare in the cacophonous world of online music, but between taste-making blogs and ever-smarter music-recommendation algorithms like Apple Genius and Pandora, the critic's importance is being whittled down."

Except, that's not a valid point. It feels good, sounds good, etc., but labels don't see "us" as authoritative and readers are often able to form their opinions, thanks to leaks and album streaming, before we're able to tell them what's what. (That NPR is using its readers to determine a best-of list is a great example of this. This used to be a privilege of music critics.)

Also, smaller point: The essence of a cacophony is that you can't tell one voice from another. I really think that's happening.

I've suspected this Stone of rolling downhill for a couple years now (when Beck's "Modern Guilt" engenders the same critical acclaim as the Jonas Brothers' "A Little Bit Longer," one questions Jann Wenner's editorial prowess). But the magazine's ranking of the top 50 albums of the past year was the nail in my subscription's coffin; 2008 seems to have forced Rolling Stone's critical condition into just that.

Number one is TV on the Radio's "Dear Science," a solid, if predictable, choice. Having no real gripes with that one, I turn the page to find Dylan's dusty bootlegs "Tell Tale Signs" stealing Lil Wayne's #2 position. Neither new nor revelatory (nor objectively musically "good," if such a thing exists), the Dylan album seems out of place on this list. What's more, British divas Coldplay clock in at #7, while refreshing and revered eponymous debut of Ivy-punk/Afro-pop darlings Vampire Weekend rounds out the top ten.

These are but minor and (by now) expected disappointments from Rolling Stone. And for the most part, I can live with the flaws and false praise until I get to numbers 39 (Taylor Swift, "Fearless"), 40 (Jonas Brothers, "A Little Bit Longer"), and 41 (AC/DC, "Black Ice"). Teen queens Swift and the Jonas Brothers not only beat out time-addled Aussies AC/DC, but the trinity takes precedence over David Byrne and Brian Eno's collaboration "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." Eclectic, fresh and always creatively relevant, Byrne and Eno's work is everything that trinity is not – heck, everything Dylan's bootlegs, at #2, are not (there's a reason Dylan is just now releasing those cataloged cash cows).

So that I may let my frustration with Rolling Stone's list rest in peace, I've rearranged their top 10 of their 50 "Best" Albums of 2008:

1. Vampire Weekend, "Vampire Weekend"

2. Lil Wayne, "Tha Carter III"

3. Beck, "Modern Guilt"

4. David Byrne & Brian Eno, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

5. TV on the Radio, "Dear Science"

7. No Age, "Nouns"

8. Fleet Foxes, "Fleet Foxes"

9. The Magnetic Fields, "Distortion"

10. Girl Talk, "Feed the Animals"

A belated answer key to our Rolling Stone: Parse that Platitude contest!

• There is a difference between people who sing and those who take that voice to another, otherworldly place, who create a euphoria within themselves. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Elvis Presley
  
• You know a force from heaven. You know something that God made. And [blank] is a gift from God. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Aretha Franklin
  
• There’s a lot going on in [blank]’s voice. A lot of pain, a lot of life but, most of all, a lot of strength. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Etta James
  
• [Blank]’s unhinged aggression presaged punk rock. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Jim Morrison
  
• I can’t compare [blank]’s voice to anything — [blank] had such an unusual breadth of influences, from Sonic Youth to Edith Piaf. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Jeff Buckley
  

Commenter "Elisabetta" wins for accuracy, with a 20% accuracy rate. Commenter "Dean Steve" wins for most original entry, with an 80% humor rate.

Winners entitled to free copy of City Paper, redeemable at any of our many distribution hubs across the greater D.C. metro area.

This week, Rolling Stone fronts a totally definitive list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. (Previous totally definitive lists include the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest songs of all time, and THE 100 IMMORTALS. But that's just scratching the surface.)

Besides the inherent arbitrariness of the exercise and the fact that most casual listeners could write these lists in their sleep—along with the celebrity-penned panegyrics that accompany them—what tends to bum me out about these things is the complacency involved. You dredge up a ream of archival photos, solicit a lot of free content from celebs who want to align themselves with the legacy of a given "immortal," and publish with maximum fanfare. Plus, to dig the entire list on the web, the reader has to click through ONE HUNDRED TIMES. (Surely this'll crack the totally definitive list of the "100 greatest ways to phone it in while increasing pageviews...of all time.") I mean, sheesh, at least Blender maintains a bit of irony about the whole list motif.

Still, the celeb encomia have their moments. Below are a few of the purpler, more platitudinous moments of pop pedantry. See if you can guess to which vocal titan each one corresponds.

(I'll post answers on Friday. Or you can cheat by giving pageviews to the Stone. Either way.)

• There is a difference between people who sing and those who take that voice to another, otherworldly place, who create a euphoria within themselves.
• You know a force from heaven. You know something that God made. And [blank] is a gift from God.
• There's a lot going on in [blank]'s voice. A lot of pain, a lot of life but, most of all, a lot of strength.
• [Blank]'s unhinged aggression presaged punk rock.
• I can't compare [blank]'s voice to anything — [blank] had such an unusual breadth of influences, from Sonic Youth to Edith Piaf.

***

UPDATE ~10:30 a.m., 12/8/08: We have winners. Answers posted here!