During a pause in the sensational Musicology shows this year, Prince would throw himself on a sofa and open up a copy of Rolling Stone - with his own face on the cover. Twenty years on from Purple Rain, the Purple One was again front page news - this time by swearing he was never again playing his hits on stage. In the process he reminded us just how extraordinary he was in the first place. Plenty of funk fans were happy to party again like it was 1985.

In hopes of repeating Gladiator's success, Hollywood went back to the loincloth and breastplate era that sparked such epic treats as the `50s classic, Ben Hur. In Troy, Brad Pitt was an Achilles who had just crawled out of a tanning booth. In Alexander, Colin Farrell quit raising hell long enough to conquer the world. Perhaps the most chilling costuming was in Passion of the Christ; it's not every set that includes a crown of thorns and a cross.

There's nothing like an old song to lend a new voice authenticity - which is why Christina Aguilera has been wailing "At Last" since 2001. At first listen, Joss Stone seemed like some old soul who had been rescued from obscurity after a lifetime of heartbreak. In fact, the voice behind a steamy cover of the White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl" and the Isley Brothers' "For the Love of You" was a teenager from England.

This year's presidential election was a timely reminder that the Vietnam War was never really over. Even a junior high social studies class could figure out the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. But when John Kerry made his 1960s military service central to his campaign - "Reporting for duty," anyone? - he left himself open to a sneak attack from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who alleged his war record was all smoke and Agent Orange.

One day the `80s pop-rock heroes were in limbo, the next they were selling out a summer-long tour that found their crazed canon being ravishingly revitalized. Whodathunkit? From their Coachella kick-off to a mid-November gig in Milwaukee, they've wowed the zealots and made new fans - sold a few legal bootlegs of the shows, too. The best part was the "aw-shucks" vibe the band members gave off when they found they were big box office. The same can't be said for Duran Duran's return.

The year's most ingenious film hung on the premise that you could wipe your ex-lovers from your memory. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry asked a salient question about romance in 2004: what if you changed your mind midstream? Jim Carrey courted a lifetime of deja vu by erasing blue-haired Kate Winslet from his cortex, and along with the audience, got lost doing mental acrobatics in a funhouse of forgetting.

The Darkness rode their leotard jumpsuits into American hearts by pretending never to have heard an album recorded after Aerosmith's 'Toys in the Attic.' No one could quite tell if leader Justin Hawkins, with his falsetto channeling Queen's Freddie Mercury, was serious or not. But there was nothing funny about the explosive riffs of "I Believe in a Thing Called Love." Somewhere Angus Young is wiping his eyes with his old school tie.