Leave it to Jay-Z to create a catch phrase that summed up the country's mood.
After years of flash and hype selling as much in musical product as, you know, musical talent, 2006 was the year when the consumer demanded "show me what you got."
In music, as in politics, spin was no longer enough this year. Hype-dodging consumers wanted results, going for tried-and-true veterans such as Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan (who each had their first No. 1 album in decades this year) as opposed to buzzed-about newcomers Arctic Monkeys or gossipmongers Paris Hilton and Kevin Federline.
The album charts looked like they came from the '70s (Neil Young, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart) or the '80s (Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Red Hot Chili Peppers), not 2006.
Hang on, Boomers and Xers, there's no new groundswell of support for these acts. The main reasons for their new success are that young people are buying many fewer CDs. They are downloading them from a peer-to-peer service or downloading only the track they like from iTunes or simply logging into an artist's MySpace page to hear the song whenever they want, and the marketplace is so fragmented now that it's hard for any band from a sub-subgenre to get any sort of widespread traction. Brooklyn's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah may be the biggest thing in some small circles, but it is virtually unknown outside of them.
Even well-known artists had to prove themselves anew. Beyoncé, for example, didn't start showing the sort of long-term sales results she is used to until her fans got a load of "Irreplaceable," and many are still shocked by the huge drop-off in sales of Jay-Z's comeback album "Kingdom Come" (Roc-a-Fella) after its big - but not as big as expected - opening week.
This year, hip-hop has seen lots of albums debut in the Top 10 only to have sales evaporate in a matter of weeks. (Lloyd Banks' "Rotten Apple" [G-Unit/ Interscope] debuted at No. 3 and in less than two months had dropped to No. 170. Rockers Incubus set a new record, going from No. 1 to No. 37 in one week.) And the poor performances have led to much speculation and hand-wringing, culminating in Nas' recent "Hip- Hop Is Dead?" (Def Jam) album.
But it's not just hip-hop. The already fast pace of the music industry quickened in 2006, as YouTube and MySpace helped build fads rapidly - from Webstar's "Chicken Noodle Soup" dance to OK Go's synchronized treadmill-leaping - and then replaced them with something else just as rapidly. Subgenres like emo, led by Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco, have gone in and out and seen initial leaders, from Dashboard Confessional to Long Island's Taking Back Sunday and Brand New, dash off in new directions this year.
This turned out to be an unusual year in which artists who stuck to their guns and moved ambitiously forward reaped rewards. Mary J. Blige, who's been mining a middle ground between hip-hop and soul for years, dominated 2006 with her single "Be Without You" and her album "The Breakthrough" (Geffen), as her leading eight Grammy nods helped certify. 
The Dixie Chicks, who were shunned by country radio and had their CDs destroyed at rallies because of comments about President George W. Bush, refused to turn tail on their "Taking the Long Way" (OpenWide/Sony) disc. They sang about being ostracized and not only got the satisfaction of a hit and five Grammy nods, but also the pleasure of seeing most of the country speak up against the Iraq war.
Red Hot Chili Peppers shook off their p-funk slumber to craft the ambitious double album "Stadium Arcadium" (Warner Bros.), which was surprising in its scope and its virtuosity. My Chemical Romance also went for the unexpected with "The Black Parade" (Warner Bros.), which could end up becoming the world's first emo musical.
What the year's biggest successes had in common was the way they delivered the goods. Whether it was Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" or Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack," there was a sense that the interest was earned, that there was something worthy to back up the excitement.
This year, it seemed that memorable melodies and strong choruses were more important than why Britney Spears doesn't wear panties, why Lindsay Lohan can't spell or whether Madonna will adopt more African children.
Music buyers seemed to re- ject the frivolous. Of course, that could change. Spears is working on her comeback album.