Mixtapes for Hookers

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.