First off, kudos to Igor's pick for the song of the year, which is mighty and righteous and heretofore unheard by me.
Second off, I want to play this game too. Thus my pick for 2009 song of the year, "Elephants" by Them Crooked Vultures. This here band is two-thirds scarequote-unscarequote supergroup - Josh Homme (Kyuss, QotSA, EoDM) + Dave Grohl (Scream, Probot, probably some others) - and one-third feisty newcomer by way of previously unknown commodity John Paul Jones. The album (which also surely has the cover art of the year - I mean, lookathatthing!) sounds to my ears like a less sludgy version of QotSA, which is actually very, very good even though I prize QotSA sludge above most other sounds. And while all the songs on this record are awesome, "Elephants" is just a goddamn showstopper - it took me weeks to finish listening to the whole album because once I heard this track it's all I wanted to hear. I could unleash a tsunami of adjectivism talking about what makes this song great, but fuck that - just listen to it.
Other recommendations (not necessarily from '09): Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and The Road; Doug Stanhope's new album From Across the Street, which crosses new thresholds of insightful depravity even for him; Will Ferrell's You're Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush; the Family Guy episode called "Big Man on Hippocampus," which premiered 1/3/10; and venison jerky, because it's delicious.
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