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.
