It’s been almost a year since The Frisky/Reverse Cowgirl blogger Susannah Breslin launched Letters From Johns, and she’s about to bring it to a close. So if you’re a john and you’ve got something to say, you only have until Saturday to get your letter posted. And on January 14th she’ll also be closing up Letters From Working Girls, the blog where ladies of the evening get to write to johns. I e-mailed her a few months ago to ask whether she’d be amenable to a letter from a working boy, and she said she would. (She actually started her response with, “Oh, you rentboys,” and then said that she got queries like mine all the time but that none of the boys ever followed through. Which, you know, I did nothing to rectify. But then I’m the worst person ever at submitting things that don’t come with strict deadlines…)
Anyway, get on it. Time’s a-wasting.
Here they are, my 101 favorite songs of the year… Some of them you probably know, a lot of them you probably don’t. This year a full quarter of the songs came from outside the US and UK, with entries from fifteen countries in six different languages.
101. Claire Diterzi, Zubrowka
100. Martina Topley-Bird, Valentine
99. Peter Moren, Le Petit Coeur
98. Lisa, Drole de Creepie
97. Vampire Weekend, Ottoman
96. The Notwist, Where In This World?
95. Cannonball Jane, Crush On You
94. Ashlee Simpson, Boys
93. TV On The Radio, Love Dog
92. Amanda Palmer, Oasis
91. Estelle, Come Over (featuring Sean Paul)
90. The Rosebuds, Cape Fear
89. Clinic, Free Not Free
88. Tindersticks, Boobar Come Back To Me
87. Ravage! Ravage!, Substance
86. Ipso Facto, Six and Three Quarters
85. Dragonette, The Boys
84. Flo Rida, Low
83. The School, I Want You Back
82. Paula Abdul, Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow
81. Euros Childs, Farm Hand Murder
80. Brian Eno and David Byrne, Strange Overtones
79. Von Hayes, Mr. Guts
78. Bjork, Nattura
77. Klee, Zwei Herzen
76. Antony and the Johnsons, Another World
75. The Research, I Think She’s The One I Love
74. Finger Eleven, Paralyser
73. The Chap, Fun and Interesting
72. New Kids On The Block, Full Service
71. Hercules and Love Affair, Blind
70. Andrew WK, McLaughlin Groove
69. Jazmine Sullivan, Bust Your Windows
68. Kalomoira, Secret Combination
67. Chris Brown, Forever
66. Marianne Faithfull, Black Coffee
65. Vivian Girls, Tell The World
64. Duffy, Rain On Your Parade
63. Dengue Fever, Mr. Orange
62. Malcolm Middleton, Stay
61. Britney Spears, Womanizer
60. TI, Whatever You Like
59. Neon Neon, Raquel
58. Amadou and Mariam, Sabali
57. Sneaky Sound System, UFO
56. Tall Firs, Hairdo
55. Late of the Pier, Heartbeat
54. NERD, Everyone Nose
53. Fergie, Clumsy
52. Heather Nova, Ride
51. Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Thou Shalt Always Kill
50. The Ian Carey Project, Get Shaky
49. GIRLS (nyc), And If You Go
48. Baustelle, Charlie fa surf
47. Fall Out Boy, I Don’t Care
46. Silje Nes, Searching, White
45. Lady GaGa, Boys Boys Boys
44. Last Shadow Puppets, My Mistakes Were Made For You
43. The Breeders, German Studies
42. Girls Aloud, Can’t Speak French
41. Manda Rin, DNA
40. Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer
39. Miley Cyrus, See You Again
38. These New Puritans, Elvis
37. Sam Phillips, Don’t Do Anything
36. Crystal Castles, Vanished
35. The Indelicates, America
34. Does It Offend You Yeah?, Dawn of the Dead
33. Rainbow Arabia, Omar K
32. Alec Empire, New Man
31. Scary Mansion, Sorry We Took All Your Money
30. Sarah Connor, Under My Skin
29. The Courteeners, That Kiss
28. Scarlett Johansson, A Town With No Cheer
27. Rihanna, Don’t Stop The Music
26. Cloetta Paris, Broken Heart Tango
25. Ting Tings, Shut Up And Let Me Go
24. Il Genio, Pop Porno
23. Ne-Yo, Closer
22. Erykah Badu, The Healer
21. Bloc Party, Talons
20. Alizee, Fifty-Sixty (David Rubato Version)
19. The Long Blondes, Guilt
18. Beyonce, SIngle Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
17. Lil Mama, Shawty Get Loose
16. Beach House, Gila
15. Lykke Li, Breaking It Up
14. Solange, T.O.N.Y.
13. Dizzee Rascal featuring Calvin Harris and Chrome, Dance Wiv Me
12. The Raveonettes, Blush
11. Ladytron, Ghosts
10. Alphabeat, Boyfriend (Pete Hammond Remix)
9. Karina Pasian, 16 @ War
8. Annie, I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me
7. Yelle, Je Veux Te Voir
6. Danity Kane, Damaged*
5. Rihanna, Disturbia
4. The Magnetic Fields, Drive On Driver
3. Portishead, The Rip
2. Santogold, I’m A Lady
1. The Kills, Last Day of Magic
I’m giving in to all the pointlessness. I’ve signed up for Twitter.
Since I’ve semi-declared 2009 to be the Year of Austerity, I figured I should spend less time painting the town red and more time informing my friends and relatives about everything I do, all day long, even if all I do is already well-documented in my Facebook status and I don’t really do that much of note to begin with.
But you can follow me here, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Filed under: lists, music | Tags: 2k8, alphabeat, annie, danity kane, karina pasian, portishead, rihanna, santogold, the kills, the magnetic fields, yelle
Okay, finally, here we are: The Top 10. This is a very poppy list, although I can’t figure out whether or not that relates to The Pop Chart, my weekly Top 40 Radio Show. I don’t know if it does, because I started that show in September and I’d heard all ten of these songs by August. (Actually, I’d heard nine of them by June.) Also, I only just realized that all ten of these songs feature female vocalists. Crazy!
Anyway, on with the countdown:
10. Alphabeat, Boyfriend (Pete Hammond Remix)
When Alphabeat first broke in the summer of ’07, I really didn’t get the big whoop. 10000 Nigfhts of Thunder was a fun song, but Fascination and whatever other one I heard just sounded sorta blah. It wasn’t until I read this blog post (which I’ve already linked to once this week) that I figured it out.
Oh. My. Goodness.
The original’s pretty good,but the remix is like the best Stock Aitken Waterman song ever. It’s better than the Reynold Girls!And, since my discovery of the song coincided with the start of The Pop Chart, I played it approximately 3,872,267,362 times, and never once tired of it. At work, at home, while running, while quitting my job. It was basically my theme song for the fall.
9. Karina Pasian, 16 @ War
16 @ War, a song about the perils of being a teenaged girl, could have been pedantic and cloying; instead, Pasian, a sixteen-year old Dominican-American, turned the track into a really beautiful song about day-to-day problems with boys and peer pressure. I wouldn’t call it inspirational (thank God), but I would call it inspiring. Unfortunately, the debut single by Dominican-American R&B singer Karina Pasian didn’t really catch on with radio, though Pasian did get a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary R&B album. Hopefully we’ll be hearing a lot more from her in the future.
8. Annie, I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me
Oh, Annie. How I love you so. Especially when your songs have breakdowns towards the end, with lyrics like “ringy dingy dingy ding ding ding.”
The Norwegian singer’s second album sort of redefines the idea of a sophomore slump–her label decided not to release it after it had already leaked–though the songs were just as good as on her much-ballyhooed debut. The Norwgian singer’s only official release this year, I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me sounds a lot like Chewing Gum, it’s true. But then, Chewing Gum is one of the best songs of the decade, so I don’t really see that as a flaw.
7. Yelle, Je Veux Te Voir
Sampling 20 Fingers’ Short Dick Man, French singer Yelle made a big splash in 2008 with Je Veux Te Voir, a two-year old single that got a proper worldwide release back in February. An angry song aimed chauvinist rapper Cuizinier, the song’s so absurdly catchy that Yelle quickly became the darling of the American Apparel leg warmers set. And, you know, they promptly forgot her, too, because that’s how they roll. But whatever, this song still makes me dance around like a loon and pretend like my six years of French classes weren’t a complete waste.
6. Danity Kane, Damaged*
For all the reasons not to like Danity Kane–their name, say, or the fact that you can’t tell any of them apart, or the way they dress, or maybe memories of that terrible song about being in the car and driving slow–there’s at least one reason to like them: this delightful pop confection. It’s wonderful. I heard it every time I got in my car for a week and loved every second of it, not knowing who sang it until I Googled the lyrics later on. So, I admitted to myself that the then-quintet have some redeeming qualities after all. Or one, anyway. I haven’t heard the whole Welcome To The Dollhouse album, though; something tells me this song might just be a particularly great fluke.
[*And why the heck isn't the video on Youtube?! Although I'm glad I found the one I did...]
5. Rihanna, Disturbia
So, if you can’t tell, my real choice for album of the year was the mixtape I posted here back in June. ScarJo, Karina, Annie and Sophie all came out winners on this list. And then there was Disturbia. Since I like to pretend that record companies don’t scam fans by releasing “deluxe editions” of albums, I’ll call this a non-album single, not a Good Girl Gone Bad bonus trac. That I can get around my one-song-per-album rule and put this in the top five. Named after a Shia LeBoeuf vehicle, the song has Rihanna belting lines like “Put on your brakelights, here, in the city of wonder!” and “I feel like a monster!” It doesn’t make any sense, and it shouldn’t work, but it does, somehow, proving that the ubiquitous Barbadian can really do no wrong.*
[*Well, when it comes to pop and dance songs anyway. She doesn't really have the voice for melodramatic ballads. Take A Bow was her first song to annoy me. And I understand people's gripes with Unfaithful, too, although I thought that song was okay until I heard it for the 3400000th time.]
4. The Magnetic Fields, Drive On Driver
I think I’ve talked about this song here before, and how I always imagine that the person singing it looks like Fred Flintstone’s Uncle Tex, a little guy with a big hat and a giant moustache.
It’s my favorite song on the Magnetic Fields’ great Distortion album, and I’d call it one of Stephin Merritt’s all-time greatest compositions, right up there with I Can’t Touch You Anymore and Kissing Things and All You Ever Do Is Walk Away. And it makes me a little bit verklempt every time Shirley Simms’ twangily says to Randy, her driver: “Take me to the airport, I need to be extremely far away.”
3. Portishead, The Rip
From the very first time I heard this song I was blown away by how lovely it is. Starting off with gentle guitars and ending with farty synth noises, Though I initially thought it was about drugs, Beth Gibbons’ mournful singing about white horses could be about lots of things, really, including death. But with the feelings of tenderness and the darkness going away, this might be the most bleakly optimistic song since Judy Garland first sang Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.
2. Santogold, I’m A Lady
Not to be a Repetitive Reginald, but it was really hard for me to pick a favorite track off Santogold’s self-titled debut, especially because it’s so stylistic all over the place and so very poppy. I’m A Lady wasn’t a single, and it’s towards the end of the album so it took me a while to notice it at first, and I guess I’m not the only one. According to last.fm, it’s the least played song on her album by several thousand listens over the past six months. Maybe people don’t respond to the slightly indecipherable chorus. It’s the melody that really wins me over, though, and the way she pronounces the word lady. I’m also partial tso the way it’s sort of set up like a Nancy and Lee song, with the country-ish verses and some mopey man named Trouble Andrew* guest-talking towards the end.
[*I guess he's some sort of hipster skater person, according to the internet, or possibly a hipster snowboard person. He looks really annoying, but I like this song.]
1. The Kills, Last Day of Magic
In 2006, I was all about The Knife, and they topped my year-end song list and album list and concert list. In 2007 it was MIA, no question, also topping all three lists. 2008 was a little trickier. For one thing, The Kills definitely didn’t put on the best concert of the year, though I’m at a loss right now to think of who might have. (HEALTH were really good in April; I also saw Burt Jansch this year, and a new incarnation of The Homosexuals. I feel like that’s about it, though, unless you count The Valerie Project at Boston’s MFA.) And, though I love the Kills’ Midnight Boom album and this song in particular, I’m going to say that this song isn’t as good as Marble House or Paper Planes. And on another day Portishead or Beach House orErykah Badu might have topped my album list, and any one of my top six or seven songs could have been #1 here. Which is a testament, I’d say, to how much really excellent music came out this year, even if none of it was as good as the instant classics released in other years.
But.
What a breakup song!! With just the first two lines, “We’re two parties/two parties ending,” Alison Mosshart’s already painted a vivid picture of two people too wrapped up in their own hedonism to work together. But it’s not quite The Days of Wine and Roses, either; Mosshart’s angry, and wants to go out with a bang. “I’ll be the man with the broom,” she says, “if you’ll be the guts in the room.” It’s perfect, really, concise and edgy and beautiful.
Filed under: lists, music | Tags: 2k8, alizee, beach house, beyonce, dizzee rascal, ladytron, lil mama, lykke li, sloange, the long blondes, the raveonettes
Okay, first off I’m going to say I was wrong about getting through this list today. I won’t go into too many details about why, except to say that overindulging on Christmas dinner and then going out last night left me rather indisposed for most of today. (It probably didn’t help that Christmas dinner was mainly gnocchi alfredo with a mashed potato side.)
I hope all of your Christmases were swellegant and that Santa was kind to you. The presents I got were sort of all over the place: one aunt, oddly, bought me The 300 DVD and making-of book. I’m not sure why, since I’m sort of known in my family for being the one that only watches, I don’t know, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and movies like that. Unless my aunt’s finally accepted the gay thing and thought I’d like to watch Gerard Butler running around in his underpants for extended periods of time. (She’s… not wrong, if that’s the case.)
Anyway, here’s my favorite songs of the year, part nine:
20. Alizee, Fifty-Sixty (David Rubato Version)
The original version of French singer Alizee’s Fifty-Sixty was extremely poppy and retro, sounding like the theme song for an animated series made in 1986 or so. It’s no Moi…Lolita but it’s catchy. The David Rubato remix, on the other hand, is awesome, slowing everything down to a honeyed pace so Alizee’s vocals sound as oddly articulated as Jane Birkin’s used to. Bonus points for using the excellent Bat For Lashes video concept without totally ripping it off.
19. The Long Blondes, Guilt
Speaking of excellent video concepts, the clip for this song made it into the first film festival I ever curated. Of course, it’s a video all about stylish people in stylish outfits walking stylish dogs, and I was co-organizing the festival as part of a dog fashion event, so it was something of a no-brainer to include it, but still.
Guilt is also a very good song. Obviously I was quite taken with the Long Blondes early singles, but their glitzier second (and, sadly, final) album had a number of really excellent tracks on it too, this being chief among them.
18. Beyonce, SIngle Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
Or, the twink anthem of 2008. While I thought both of Beyonce’s first two albums were majorly flawed, nothing prepared me for how amazingly crappy I Am…Sasha Fierce is. That said, Beyonce’s always been a singles artist, appearing on this year-end chart nine times since 2000, including the songs with Destiny’s Child. And Single Ladies is a hot single, right up there with Ring The Alarm and Naughty Girl, though sadly it’s the only really great song on her otherwise dreary, dreary third album.
17. Lil Mama, Shawty Get Loose
It was hard for me to pick a favorite track off Lil Mama’s debut album, which finally appeared in stores ten frigging months after Lipgloss hit radio. Eventually I decided on Shawty Get Loose because a) it features dreamy Chris Brown; b) T-Pain is on it and he’s not autotuned!, and c) it’s fun. Really, really fun. And the world is a much worse place for the fact that this wasn’t a hit.
16. Beach House, Gila
Like Lil Mama, Beach House put out a record this year that was so full of excellent songs that I just sort of randomly picked one for this list. With a title stretched to about ten syllables, Gila’s one of the Baltimore duo’s catchier songs, though it still sounds like it was recorded at some kind of weird hippie funeral rite.
15. Lykke Li, Breaking It Up
Lykke Li’s popularity mystified me for a long time, mainly because unimaginative reviewers kept comparing her to the alarmingly overrated Robyn. Any similarities they have–like gender or country of origin or popularity with blog-reading types–doesn’t come across in the music; I know not everyone agrees with me on this one, but Robyn beats you over the head with her hairdo and talk-rapping, Lykke Li is all muted trumpets and spoken interludes. It’s like comparing Fergie to Kate Bush. Breaking It Up is Lykke’s liveliest song, featuring vocal distortion and a bunch of kids singing backup. It holds up well in a rockier live version, but I prefer the quiet stylings of the original. Although the video was totally ridiculous, and more suited for, I don’t know, a Paris Hilton song.
14. Solange, T.O.N.Y.
On a recent Circuit City run I picked up Sol-Angel and the Hadley Street Dreams, which is a totally freaking awesome album. Of course it’s being sabotaged by the label because, you know, God forbid any attention be taken away from Sashyonce. But it’s wonderful soul music, with three fantastic singles (I chose this one ultimately because of the wonderfully Nouvelle Vague-ish video, which takes a turn for the unexpected in the third quarter.) On top of that, there’s not a bad album track, and the whole thing is very cohesive considering everybody and their brother was involved in making it. (Mark Ronson AND Boards of Canada were involved, people.)
13. Dizzee Rascal featuring Calvin Harris and Chrome, Dance Wiv Me
I always thought Calvin Harris was kind of a twat. I still do, really, but this is the second time he’s shown up on the countdown if you count Dragonette covering him back at #91. Dance Wiv Me is wonderful in a lot of ways, not the least of which is that it’s a stand-alone single, which never happens ever these days. Also, there’s the excellent chorus and the re-emergence of Dizzee Rascal, who sort of fell off my radar after Fix Up, Look Sharp.
12. The Raveonettes, Blush
Though I’ve been a fan of the Raveonettes from the get-go, I really don’t think they’ve reached their full potential until this year. Lust Lust Lust is so many leaps and bounds better than their first two full-lengths. And one of the best songs is Blush, the most recent single, which combines longing guitars and borderline wimpy vocals with a really pretty melody and a lot of fuzz. Sure, that could describe almost everything they’ve ever done, but this song is pure heaven (as evidenced by the Atonement fanvid I’ve linked to above.)
11. Ladytron, Ghosts
For some reason I never bought Ladytron’s Velocifero album, even though I totally loved all the singles on it. Ghosts, yet another song from the Mixtapes For Summer that I posted back in June, is still my favorite. The album version is typically great Ladytron, with Helen Marnie singing all detached-like over the Liverpool quarter’s idea of spaghetti Western music; but I’m equally fond of the Modwheelmod remix which, like the Alizee remix back at #20, slows the song down in order to pretty it up.
30. Sarah Connor, Under My Skin
German pop singer Sarah Connor has had lots of hits in her native land, almost all of which are really dreadful ballads. Her sole American hit, 2004′s Bounce, was an exception, but even that awkward yet fun track can’t compare to Under My Skin, a Pussycat Dolls-like song that, unlike recent PCD output, is neither ear-piercing nor terrible. (Seriously, I Hate This Part makes my ears hurt, even at a low volume.) Anyway, Connor’s not terribly original, but when I’m listening to songs like this innovation’s not necessarily an issue.
29. The Courteeners, That Kiss
UK group The Courteeners sort of passed me by until the recent release of That Kiss, a lovely ballad of the Richard Hawley variety that manages to mix schmaltz and standard Britpop vocals and not be totally embarrassing about it. It ended up being one of my favorite singles towards the end of the year.
28. Scarlett Johansson, A Town With No Cheer
Critically reviled, ScarJo’s collection of Tom Waits covers was actually pretty okay; the Bowie collaboration Falling Down didn’t wow me the way it should have, but A Town With No Cheer was downright beautiful, with Johansson’s dirge-like vocals resting atop a funereal backing track produced by TV On the Radio’s Dave Sitek. I don’t know why people hated this album as much as they did, except to say that people are apparently afraid of an actress who can sing songs that aren’t about, say, the perils of being a female celebrity.
27. Rihanna, Don’t Stop The Music
A year and a half ago I would have laughed if you told me that the best song on Rihanna’s third album was a Michael Jackson-sampling club anthem. I mean, the sample part wouldn’t have surprised me, because Rihanna’s career is largely built around samples of things from the eighties (or, on occasion, samples of Orgy covers of things from the eighties.) But Don’t Stop The Music is so very dancy and not R&B-like at all; while I don’t normally go for anything this clubby, the sound worked really well when paired with Rihanna’s thin voice.
26. Cloetta Paris, Broken Heart Tango
Speaking of thin voices, I was also pretty glad this year to come across Swedish duo Cloetta Paris. Riding the same wave of Italo disco revival as Sally Shapiro and the like, they released Secret Eyes, their debut album, back in April. The title track was very appealing, but I think I prefer Broken Heart Tango, one of those whispery dance tracks that I only wish I’d ever hear when I go out at night.
25. Ting Tings, Shut Up And Let Me Go
I have no idea why Blonde Lady Ting Ting and her partner, Douchy Aviators Ting Ting, elicit such polarizing opinions. But regardless, this song is wonderful. Since I don’t really watch TV, I had no idea it appeared in an iPod commercial until months later, when I was trying to figure out how a little hipster duo from the UK got nominated for an MTV award.
That’s Not My Name was the first track I heard, but the (much shorter) Shut Up And Let Me Go is more vampy and more fun, the kind of song I’d slink around to in twenties-style dresses while smoking and dramatically waving my arms around. You know, hypothetically. If I were a lady.
24. Il Genio, Pop Porno
If 2008 was the year of anything, it was the year of boy-girl duos. (See Crystal Castles and the Kills, as well as songs #25 and #26 on the countdown.) One of my favorites was Milanese duo Il Genio, who debuted this year with restrained electro-pop that sounded a little similar to all the Italo disco, with some difference. For one, singer Alessandra Contini doesn’t have the voice of a small child and, unlike any other Italo singers I can think of, she actually sings in Italian.
23. Ne-Yo, Closer
While I haven’t really gotten excited about any non-Chris Brown male R&B singers since like 1994, Ne-Yo actually managed to win me over this year. Closer didn’t really stand out much at first, except in the sense that it was on the radio a lot and I woke up to it every morning for about two months. But the thing that really made me love this song was seeing him perform it on Ellen; he didn’t sing the chorus at all and did some fancy dancing instead. Pretty classy, especially for a guy who managed to get heavy airplay on hip-hop radio. Which is not a classy place.
22. Erykah Badu, The Healer
Damn, that’s a bassline. If you like the cars that go boom you could do worse than to put on this track, which could make your jalopy and your bones both rattle until they break. It was hard for me to pick a favorite track from Badu’s wonderfully batshit New Amerykah album, but The Healer stands out because, like her earliest hits, it finds a groove and works it for a long time until you’re basically entranced.
21. Bloc Party, Talons
After the very, very, very, very, very disappointing Mercury, I had little hope for Bloc Party’s third album. But then came Talons, all angry paranoia and doom, and I knew they were back. While Intimacy’s not a great album, I can appreciate what they were going for, even with Mercury. (Though why anybody thought that should have been the first single is beyond me.) But Talons is the best song. The marching-army drums and lyrics about sluts and diseases coming in the mail build with an apocalyptic fervor that’s unmatched on the rest of the album and stands right up there with Banquet and Flux as one of their career bests.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Today: eli manning penis, “terry richardson” naked, hookers.com, they call me herb, parts of womanizer sounds like an old so, hookers .com, “von hayes” “evident eyelid”, anthony swofford escape and evasion, alicia keys drunk, jean val jean porn, mixtape for hookers, crystal castles, muffin gaga, skopje hookers, “von hayes” and “evident eyelid”, madonna mixed tapes, the fame red wine, is there anyway to retrieve old posts fr
Yesterday: hung nerd,terry richardson naked, housekeeping hookers, songs about hookers, albumless mcr songs, “the brains” “money changes everything”, average looking guy, kate moss naked, www.evilangel.com, hookers.com, famous hookers, fucking-hookers.com members, lady gaga muffin, eli manning no shirt, the singer of the republica, muffin + lady gaga
40. Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer
Sophie Ellis-Bextor put this Freemasons-produced on her Myspace back in June, but her new album’s been pushed back to next summer, annoyingly. Her frosty dance-pop just keeps getting better and better, and this song was like soothing aloe on all this summer’s nasty sunburns.
39. Miley Cyrus, See You Again
One of my least favorite moments of the year was drunkenly stumbling into a methy and overly-lit gay bar and watching a bunch of old dudes with crackthroat singing and dancing along when this song came on. It almost turned me off Miley’s crush-worthy song altogether, though I can’t get over how much I love the chorus and Cyrus’ Lohan-like delivery (which is a little crackthroaty in its own teenaged way, come to think of it.)
38. These New Puritans, Elvis
England’s These New Puritans are teenagers, too, but the kind that are pale and pimply and into World of Warcraft. Their debut album, Beat Pyramid, was all about numerology, and the Fall-like single Elvis was all paranoia and religious fervor. Which might sound terrible, I guess, but it’s not; singer Jack Barnett’s got a really magnetic earnestness, like Kele Okereke or even somebody like David Bazan.
37. Sam Phillips, Don’t Do Anything
Almost twenty years into her secular career, the artist once marketed as the Christian Cyndi Lauper has made a really surly record, the first since her divorce from producer T-Bone Burnett. Don’t Do Anything’s title track is my favorite, a bittersweet pop song buried in guitar noise that could have been a little Eeyore-ish. Phillips, though, is talented and keeps everything poppy, and this ranks among her best pop songs, right up there with 1989′s What You Don’t Want To Hear and 1994′s sorta-hit I Need Love.
36. Crystal Castles, Vanished
Based on Van She’s Sex City (but also sounding a lot like the instrumental middle bit of Do They Know It’s Christmas?), this song belied Crystal Castles’ image as hipster gross-out attention whores and went for something warmer.
35. The Indelicates, America
“I find myself agreeing with Bill O’Reilly more than the left,” snorts Simon Indelicate on America, a single from his group’s debut album. Them’s fighting words, of course, but at least somebody’s got an opinion on something. Sounding like a cross between Magazine and a Broadway musical, snotty Simon and ex-Pipette Julia do their best to piss you off, but sound so damned likable that it only half-works.
34. Does It Offend You Yeah?, Dawn of the Dead
Everybody hated DIOYY?, and while I admit that their name’s really stupid I also think that Dawn of the Dead was basically the only song I liked all year on modern rock radio. Well, besides Paper Planes, but still. This song’s really awesome, all moody guitars and tropical percussion, and I really don’t know why it got such awful reviews everywhere.
33. Rainbow Arabia, Omar K
Why are these two people wearing desert garb? And what the hell is this lady singing about? Who cares? A dance hit from an alternate universe where microtonal keyboards could inspire spastic flailing, Omar K was the first I heard of LA duo Rainbow Arabia. Enthusiasts of middle-eastern music, the husband-wife duo will hopefully be putting out a full-length soon to follow up their delightful The Basta EP.
32. Alec Empire, New Man
A far cry from the digital hardcore movement that put sexy Mr Empire on the map, New Man is a brooding dance track about blood and mirrors and hearts and dying with love that has “Youtube Twilight fan video material” written all over it, though nobody seems to have figured that out yet. And not that they’re similar, really, but this might have replaced Atari Teenage Riot’s Destroy 2000 Years of Culture as my favorite Alec Empire song.
31. Scary Mansion, Sorry We Took All Your Money
Cat Power’s Jukebox album wasn’t as terrible as everybody made out, but it was nice that Brooklyn artist Leah Hayes was there to fill the quiet/paranoid/slightly-crazed gap that Chan Marshall left open a few years ago. Sorry We Took All Your Money isn’t quite representative of the album as a whole, but it is the song I went back to the most, a fast-ish piano number reminiscent of Cross Bones Style or Nude As The News.
Sorry, no time for pictures to accompany the list today, so you’ll have to do without terrible formatting and thumbnails ganked from bands’ Myspaces.* Had to drop the boyfriend at the airport this morning and now I need to do some Christmas shopping. Yay.
[*UPDATE: There's pictures now! After looking at last year's list I decided going the last.fm route was a lot more aesthetically pleasing than the Myspace thumbnails, though three of these 10 artists didn't have pictures big enough to match.]
50. The Ian Carey Project, Get Shaky
Though I normally can’t abide house music, there’s something about this Baltimore DJ’s clubby anthem that makes me ridiculously happy. I think it’s the Knife-like vocals, though I like the word shaky as the object of a command, too. (I’m sure there’s a grammatical term for this, and that I had to learn that term in seventh grade, but right now I can’t think of what the hell it would possibly be called.)
49. GIRLS (nyc), And If You Go
Two bands named Girls emerged this year: a San Francisco group that I’ve never heard, but who ended up on Pitchfork’s Songs of the Year list, and the New York duo who made this song, a gloomy sort of love song that sounded just right in the year that the Jesus and Mary Chain reformed and Raveonettes finally put out their first great full-length.
48. Baustelle, Charlie fa surf
I came across Baustelle while researching a radio show I was doing for St Joseph’s day. A bunch of Italian indie bloggers declared them the greatest thing since sliced foccaccia and I can see why. While most of the music to come out of my (great grandparents’) mother country are on the dated and ersatz side, Baustelle’s indie-pop sounds at least like it was aware of Western culture since about 2000. Sadly, though, I only know Italian cuss words and so the only lyrics I can make out are ‘baseball’ and ‘surf’ and ‘skate’ and ‘filma di porno.’
47. Fall Out Boy, I Don’t Care
Though I thought FOB were a bunch of jerky douchebags when they first appeared, I’ve since come to accept them, and, periodically, rock out like a nine-year old to some of their songs. I Don’t Care took the pounding guitars that made Pink and Katy Perry so annoying this year and made them into a dopey but awesome rock track. Despite myself, I even like how dorky Patrick Stump sounds when he sings the line about the guitar screaming like a fascist. And, semi-relatedly, I briefly entertained thoughts about banging Pete Wentz the other day after reading about his Howard Stern appearance. (Though I doubt I could ever enjoy myself sleeping with him, since I’d probably spend the whole time thinking about ShleeSimp and/or her creepy father.)
46. Silje Nes, Searching, White
My favorite track on Norwegian Silje Nes’ debut album is the most unusual; while most of the album is about cooing and tiny sounds taking up vast planes of space, Searching, White is two minutes of noise, all droning and kicky drums and pretty but indecipherable vocals. It sounds like like a club track written by Hope Sandoval.
45. Lady GaGa, Boys Boys Boys
My favorite track on GaGa’s debut The Fame is also the poppiest, in the old-school sense. Behaving like a bad girl (and demanding eggs in the morning, bless her heart) can’t stop GaGa from singing like it’s 1989. Seriously, American pop radio hasn’t had melodies like this (barring certain Gwen Stefani singles and Nelly Furtado album tracks) in almost two decades. And while Poker Face eventually grew on me, it doesn’t come close to Boys Boys Boys in terms of poppy goodness.
44. Last Shadow Puppets, My Mistakes Were Made For You
I’ll take Vanity Side Projects I Didn’t Think Would Be Good At All But Which Sound Like Odessey And Oracle and Thankfully Not Like The Overrated Arctic Monkeys for $400, Alex. It was hard for me to pick a favorite track from The Age of the Understatement, a solid album of moody, sixties-inspired pop songs from one Arctic Monkey and one Little Flame. Eventually I went for this one, but probably because it’s the most recent single and the one I’ve heard the most lately.
43. The Breeders, German Studies
I never got the Breeders album that came out last spring, though my roommate did and I heard him playing it during the earlier months of this year. I love pretty much everything the Breeders do, but the track that really stood out for me featured Kim Deal singing in German. It sounded about as natural as those old Spanish Pixies songs, but it doesn’t matter because it’s so darn catchy.
42. Girls Aloud, Can’t Speak French
Unlike Kim Deal, Girls Aloud are freely willing to admit that they sing best en anglais. This song went on for about thirty seconds too long, I think; there’s only so many times a chorus should be repeated, and it’s slightly less than 5000, thank you. Still, it was one of the big hits of last winter (for me, anyway) and I liked it a lot more than The Promise, the only track I’d heard from Out of Control before I started making this list.
41. Manda Rin, DNA
“Gimme action and drama,” went a 1999 Bis hit. “Give me 80s Madonna.”
I’ve tried to explain this before, so sorry if I’m being repetitive, but DNA is what Madonna should be doing right now. Former Bis frontwoman Manda Rin makes cute, poppy, optimistic dance-rock; this song and Guilty Pleasure could have made perfect Madonna singles. If Hard Candy sounded like this song I would have been all over it; instead, I had to settle for an album whose best track was the clunky and awkward Give It 2 Me.
Filed under: heterosexuals, lists, music, starfucking | Tags: 2k8, gruff rhys, late of the pier, sage francis, tall firs, ti
I went to bed somewhat tipsy last night after yet another Christmas party, but my body clock for whatever reason thought it would be fun to wake me up at 4 AM. So, now it’s about five in the morning and I’m in a cold kitchen writing in my blog when I should be sleeping in a warm bed. But regardless, here’s 10 more of my favorite songs of the year:
60. TI, Whatever You Like
Though TI was the celebrity I had the most dirty fantasies about this year,* I actually wasn’t so into his Paper Trail album. I mean, when a dreamy pile of hot hot man does a duet with Rihanna and leaves me feeling sort of meh things can’t be right, can they? Still, Whatever You Like was a pretty cool song, though I can’t help thinking about it in this incarnation. And thankfully, it bears no relation to the Nicole Scherzinger song of the same title, on which TI guest rapped on last year.
[*About which more later.]
59. Neon Neon, Raquel
Neon Neon’s album Stainless Style isn’t aging well for me. Initially I thought half of it (Rachel, I Lust U, Belfast, I Told Her on Alderaan…) was awesome and half of it (the song about sweatshops, the Sean Na Na guest appearance) was grody and awful. Now I’m not really into any of it, with the exception of I Lust U and this song, which contains the hilarious Bedazzled-referencing line “Oh Raquel, you fill me with interia. Yes you do!”
58. Amadou and Mariam, Sabali
As a general rule I’m not into any kind of world music at all, and I can’t say I’m familiar with (or interested in) the music of Mali enough to have a strong opinion about fifty-something blind couple Amadou and Mariam. But I will say that this Damon Albarn-produced song was weird enough–with super-high singing at the beginning and then just talking during the second half, and keyboard bits that sound lifted from PBS kids programming–that I listened to it a lot anyway.
57. Sneaky Sound System, UFO
This song is older than I thought–it came out in Australia over a year-and-a-half ago–but I only discovered it a month or two ago when it was released as a single in the UK. While they’ve yet to make a dent in America the way Cut Copy or the Presets did, Sneaky Sound System made one of the better electro jams to come out recently, in that sort of Dragonette/New Young Pony Club way where you like their songs but feel like you’d probably want to slit your wrists if you ever had to hang out with them.
56. Tall Firs, Hairdo
Things I have weaknesses for: a) Thurston Moore’s totally neglected Trees Outside The Academy album; b) any song with the word hairdo in it (ie. Hobart Paving, I’m A Slut, Karma Police, Inbetweener, etc.) c) the word bangin’, when applied to women by nerdy men who should know better. Naturally then, I loved this song, a very Trees Outside The Academy-esque number (released on Moore’s Ecstatic Peace album) where the Brooklyn trio repeatedly say both “hairdo” and “you’ve got a bangin’ sister.” Really, I should have probably put this one higher up on the list, though their pleasant Too Old To Die Young album came out nine months ago and I associate it with the distant past (ie. my awful old job) and almost forgot it came out this year.
55. Late of the Pier, Heartbeat
Late of the Pier’s Fantasy Black Channel, along with the Solange album, is at the top of my list of things to buy as soon as I’m less broke. I only know the English quartet’s singles, and not even all of those. Heartbeat’s my current favorite, a jerky tune with sweet guitars and Gang of Four-style talk-singing. I’m not sure what this song’s about–a heartbeat? a vicar? a lime?–but I wish I did, if that makes any sense.
54. NERD, Everyone Nose
Okay, so this song was more entertaining eight to ten months ago. But whatever. Just because the follow-up wasn’t so hot doesn’t mean this song wasn’t stupidly fun (and funny) when it was first released.
53. Fergie, Clumsy
Originally released in September of ’07, I didn’t actually hear this song until much, much later, probably because my ears were probably clogged with blood from one too many listens of Fergie’s Big Girls Don’t Cry,* which is still possibly the Worst Song of the Bush Era. Clumsy, on the other hand, was breezy and fun, sampling both Little Richard and Deee-Lite and turning one of Fergie’s worst attributes (her lack of singing voice and tendency to sound like metal objects being crushed together) into a wonderfully noisy chorus, with the Ferg’s voice blown out beyond reason and the sample persistently reminding you that the girl can’t help it.
[*By which I mean one listen.]
52. Heather Nova, Ride
Heather Nova hasn’t graced one of my year-end countdowns since her commercial breaktrhough in 1995. I actually threw her Oyster album on recently while I was cleaning my kitchen and surprised myself by still loving and knowing the words to every song (though my CD did skip a lot during Truth and Bone, which I thought was always the best one.)
Anyway, I read an interesting review of her new album on Wears The Trousers and found Ride streaming on her website. It’s a ballad, totally out of step with the year 2008 but quite lovely nonetheless, albeit in a slightly embarrassing way. I didn’t realize how much I liked it that first day until I walked away from the computer and left the stream of that one song looping for almost an hour before I thought to put something else on.
51. Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Thou Shalt Always Kill
I first heard this at the end of last year when the wonderfully grumpy Ed Slota listed it as his fifth favorite song of 2007. Like many things on his list, Thou Shalt Always Kill was unfamiliar to me and, annoyingly, unreleased in the US. Well, fast forward nine months, and suddenly uberhunk Sage Francis is releasing DlSvSP’s Angles album on his Providence-based Strange Famous label. It’s a good album in a very British way, with, you know, dry wit and Radiohead and Dizzee Rascal samples. It might be a bit epic for too many repeated listens, though Thou Shalt Always Kill–which features lots of important wisdom, ie. “Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry”–hasn’t gotten any less funny in the year since I’ve first heard it.
