Rate 08: This year just gone: September 2008

Travis Barker and DJ AM survived a horrible plane crash; sadly, the rest of their party didn't.

Akon threw a fan off the stage, Bestival almost blew straight into the Solent and a church in Ohio predicted that Katy Perry would go straight to hell. But could Paul McCartney manage to negotiate the difficult waters of a Tel Aviv gig without resorting to trite cliches? No. Still, Ted Nugent promised he'd look after him if there was any trouble.

After a rotten year, British Airways finally did something to cheer everyone up by losing Pete Doherty's hat. Jon Anderson was a little annoyed at Yes going on tour without him and Jack White got all angry with Coca-Cola for playing the tune he'd written for James Bond on an advert. Bill Bailey finally tired of being part of Buzzcocks and MTV decided it had had enough of TRL.

James Hetfield was proud at being US military's torture music maker of choiuce. Annoyed that he was playing their music at all, John McCain got a cease-and-desist from Heart while Rage Against The Machine got police attention after annoying the RNC. Russell Brand's MTV awards mockery of absitinance pledges was, insisted the Silver Ring People actually a good thing for them, as a matter of fact. Perhaps a silver ring might stop George Michael from getting into trouble in toilets, although this time it was drugs, not sex, so maybe not.

Corey Taylor suggested that new music was mostly rubbish, but still required a chart recount to steal the US album list from The Game. Talking of number ones, Gordon Smart announced there was "a good chance" of Status Quo being number for Christmas. U2, though, won't be in contention - they're taking time to achieve greatness for their next album. Or, rather, Bono was off blogging for the FT.

Out Magazine listed the gayest albums ever - in the good, late 20th century sense of the word - but this would be of no interest to Cliff Richard and his former Priest friend. "I knew all along" announced Simon Cowell as Clay Aiken came out - well, yes, we all did, but that's not the point.

Not heeding the fuss that caused Yahoo and Microsoft to abandon the idea, WalMart tried to switch off its DRM server. Best Buy bought Napster, but at a deep discount

That's what the wrath of Danny Baker can do: download store Wippit folded. Virgin Radio became Absolute Radio instead, but they made sure neither of the listeners were confused. Virgin DJs JK and Joel quit, to spend more time fruitlessly pitching TV projects. Although given the arrival of Dave Pearce at 6Music, they probably shouldn't have ruled out a return to the BBC. Anyway, why would they want to appear on TV? Lisa Maffia did, and it turned out to be all made-up. George Lamb's interview style didn't make friends with Ray Davies.

After Noel Gallagher got pushed over on stage, fans started to get the ball rolling on vigilante justice before quietly letting it drop.