Stuff I Should Have Liked

Not Prince Hamlet has a new tagline: "Global Media and Local Civitas for Faithful Life." We felt the need to sort of hone in on what we discuss here and what kind of conversation we want this to be, and these are the three things that constitute the heart of it: media, citizenship, and faith.

On media: as citizens of a media-saturated civitas, we are constantly urged to define ourselves in terms of the media that we consume. NPH has felt the pull to do this especially in the arena of music. We constantly feel as if we should like certain types of music or certain artists in order to be the kind of person we feel we ought to be. This definition gets worked out in community with others, people we both know and don't know who's musical expertise seems to contribute toward an ebullient life. "Maybe," we think, "if we listen to what they're listening to, we'll become as they are."

It's a sham, obviously. Lots of what they like just doesn't sit well. We try and try, but we can't make ourselves like it, and faking it just isn't an option. So, as people are compiling their "Best Of" lists for 2006, NPH offers his list of things we're now (this very minute) deleting from our hard drive, stuff we should have liked but just didn't. We're content to let it say whatever it will about who we are.

• Alejandro Escovedo, "The Boxing Mirror"
• Ben Kweller, "Sha Sha"
• Five for Fighting, "The Battle for Everything"
• Franz Ferdinand, "You Could Have It So Much Better"
• James Hunter, "People Gonna Talk"
• Joan Osborne, "Pretty Little Stranger"
• Joan Armatrading, "Lovers Speak"
• Kanye West, "Late Registration"
• Madeline Peyroux, "Careless Love" and "Half The Perfect World"
• My Morning Jacket, "Z"
• Rhymefest, "Blue Collar"

All music that, in the last 12 months, somebody told NPH he should get into. With apologies to those concerned, we tried.