40. TV On The Radio, “Halfway Home” (2008)
This song feels so deliberately and fussily constructed that it’s kind of funny to say it thrives on energy and emotion, and yet…here we are. As much as I love the constant guitar drone or the mechanic handclaps, it was the ephiphanous first line of the chorus that knocked the wind out of me the very first time I heard it, and it still does.
find it on Dear Science
39. Menomena, “Muscle N Flo” (2007)
Pop song craftsmen the world over know the first rule of A Hook That Won’t Leave Your Head: use an everyday phrase, or at least something that has everyday applications. Now, I don’t think that Menomena had pop stardom in mind when they wrote “Muscle N Flo”, but they nailed that perfect-for-the-moment pop phrasing with “In the morning I stumble my way toward the mirror”. Not many mornings when that doesn’t run through my head.
That’s the hook, but the true genius moment begins at 2:22: a baptizing swell of organ and then “Come lay down your head upon my chest.” It’s that precious and rare moment of absolute surrender to higher powers, of total overwhelming beauty. If you think that’s overstatement, then we’re clearly not hearing the same thing.
find it on Friend and Foe
38. The Dandy Warhols, “Bohemian Like You” (2000)
There’s a pretty heavy emotional toll that personal history research like this list takes. You have to go back over a decades worth of memories and feelings and try to dust them off and see if you can tell what they are or if they even make any sense. Like: who was it in my life that had the theory that every song needed to have something that you can yell out? Was it a friend that I’m still in touch with or an ex-girlfriend or an coworker at one of the five jobs I’ve had this decade? It was someone somewhere, but damn if I can remember who it is.
Anyway, whoever it is must LOVE this song. It’s pretty much, like, the best yelling song ever. Sure it’s catchy and funny and a blast to sing along with and being in a sweaty club and singing/not singing “I like you” to someone you could really like or possibly just alcoholically like, but it all gets wiped out with the self-pleasuring, obliterating party yell of “WOO!”
find it on Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
37. Missy Elliott, “Pass That Dutch” (2003)
Only Missy Elliott could make such a scorching club track so cartoony, and only Timbaland could make such a silly song so menacingly hot. This beat made it into a pretty good number of this decade’s chart hits, but it never sounded nearly as good as it does here: the constant handclaps moving the song along while the one-note bassline provides the heat. Fun and fire defined.
find it on Pass That Dutch
36. Camera Obscura, “Happy New Year” (2002)
“Happy New Year, you’re my only vice” is on my lips every January first, but this song is in my head on a lot more days of the year. The beautiful melody, the shy vocals, the back-and-forth “do you have to”/”yes I do” at the end have never staled. I’m sure that Camera Obscura’s softness is a turnoff to a lot of people, but it’s just right to me: a musical definition of “lovely”.
find it on Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi
35. Mclusky, “To Hell With Good Intentions” (2002)
Usually, I don’t miss having more loud music in my collection, but it’s when I hear songs like “To Hell With Good Intentions” that I wish hard that I could get more intelligent guides to quality volume. This song is more Pixies-loud than punk-loud, but it’s still a pure and simple shot of adrenaline, with a harsh and sparse bass, one of the greatest muted distorted guitar hits this side of “Creep”, and a wicked and weird sense of humor. Sing it.
find it on Mclusky do Dallas
34. Jens Lekman, “The Opposite Of Hallelujah” (2007)
It’s probably pretty clear by now that I have a better-than-average tolerance for twee, but Jens Lekman can test even me. I never could get into it until I heard this one: a song as right as standard-issue indiepop can get. There’s that crisp 00s production again, a perfect complement to the raised-note chorus and it’s fully satisfying resolution, “you don’t know what I’m going through.” I thought I was mostly done with indiepop by 2007, but this song proved me very, gratefully wrong.
find it on Night Falls Over Kortedala
33. The Streets, “Fit But You Know It” (2004)
Funny songs don’t usually last long after the joke’s worn off, but the appeal stays when the joke has insight. “Fit But You Know It” is about last-word brilliant on being hot for someone that you act like you never wanted when it’s clear you never even had a chance. The constant lusting and then denying never loses its luster after tons of listens.
It’s also a party cut from the highest shelf. Yes yes oh yay.
find it on A Grand Don’t Come For Free
32. Loney Dear, “I Am John” (2007)
“Unrelenting” is a word usually reserved for metal reviews and not quiet falsetto songs by Swedish tweepoppers, but unrelenting is exactly what the vocals are here. They come so rapidfire that every line almost tumbles on top of the next, and it’s really only the break in the middle that allows a gasp of air. By the final repeats of “I’ve got a feeling for you and we danced for so long, I want your arms around me like lovers do, and I’m never gonna let you down”, the song has built to an incredible climax. It’s a sound that’s a lot like other indiepop and yet unlike anything else.
“I told you, ‘Never gonna let you down, but I will always let you down.”
find it on Loney, Noir
31. Barcelona, “Studio Hair Gel” (2000)
It’s totally impossible to be objective about a band that was made up of four close friends of mine, three of which I was also working with while the band was together. It’s not just that you’re partial to the creations of your friends, but there’s a surprise that goes along with loving your friend’s art and knowing that you don’t just have to
pretend to love it that lifts the love to even higher levels.
But even when I step back as much as I can to look at this song (among the many brilliant Barcelona tracks), it still feels like a world-beater. It’s a simple verse-chorus, verse-chorus, but the hook buries deep, set as it is to the perfect indiepop dance rhythm. Whether I love this song or just love my friends, I don’t know, and I don’t really care.
find it on Zero One Infinity
30. Junior Senior, “Can I Get Get Get” (2007)
Silliness, dumb fun and bubblegum. This is about as effervescent as pop–indie or otherwise–got this decade, and it was never anything other than a joy, obliterating any bad feeling the second it came on. “Why not?!” never failed to make me laugh, the chorus never failed to make me dance, and this song never failed to make anything and everything better.
find it on Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
29. Kleenex Girl Wonder, “Why I Write Such Good Songs” (2000)
If this list was was Top Songs That Should Have Been Top Ten Hits But Weren’t, this would be the number one, easily. The first time I heard this track, my friend Ivan played it for me in his office (oh, the easy dot-com days), and when it got to the title line–”you chose me and you were wrong and that’s why I write such good songs”–I almost fell over, I was so blown away by the genius of the line. And from when I’ve played it for other people, that experience of loving it immediately is universal.
find it on After Mathematics
28. Animal Collective, “My Girls” (2009)
It’s hard to resist the temptation to call out Animal Collective’s move towards poppier sounds on
Merriweather Post Pavilion, but it seems logical to me. It’s not like they were any strangers to hooks before 2009, and it makes plenty of sense that they would find that focus as they went along. Their art is perfectly realized here, making sense of all their noise, the head-thrusting beats and primal yells.
find it on Merriweather Post Pavilion
27. Lykke Li, “Hanging High” (2008)
It’s a challenge writing about a hundred songs and not feel like some words are being repeated to ridiculous levels. I’m both tempted and terrified to make a word cloud of this list and seeing how huge the words “amazing” and “perfect” would be.
Slightly smaller but still huge would be the word “fragile”. There’s something about singers that sound physically and emotionally broken, barely being able to lift up their voices to sing, that just crumbles me in the best possible way.
“Hanging High” is the apex of that sound. The chorus here is about as breakable as songs come. Somehow the backing vocals make the lead sound even more lonely, and if there’s a line that sounds as sad as “I’m back where I started at, you know I’m a little lost”, I can’t think of it. A song I love, though I often have to force myself to stop listening to it when I realize that I’m feeling sad for no other reason than repeated plays.
find it on Youth Novels
26. Kelly Hogan, “I’ll Go To My Grave Loving You” (2001)
Kelly Hogan is mostly known as Neko Case’s secret weapon: the backing vocalist with the pitch-perfect pipes whose own material never quite matched her voice. It was all enjoyable enough–a collection of good country covers and decent but unmemorable originals–but it was a little bit stiff, and felt almost slightly uncomfortable.
But her version of the Statler Brother’s “I’ll Go To My Grave Loving You” is as inspired as anything that her boss Neko did, and stands as one of the most brilliant covers I’ve ever heard. The vibratoed guitar is so sparse that there seems to be ages between each pluck, letting Kelly Hogan draw out every line into as strong a promise of devotion as you’ll ever hear.
find it on Because It Feel Good
25. Beyoncé, “Single Ladies” (2008)
I always felt like “Crazy In Love” was a song of diminishing returns: a great pop song that after a few dozen listens made me feeling like I wanted more from it. But I never wanted anything more from “Single Ladies”. A brilliant beat and one of the great call-and-response hooks ever make it the pop single of the decade, and one that still sounds exciting and fresh even after a year of every-pop-culture-corner saturation.
Also: it’s hard to separate this song from the amazing video that John Legend shot after the concert at the Lincoln Memorial before the inauguration, seeing Obama make the “Single Ladies” hand wave two days before he’s sworn in as president.
find it on I Am…Sasha Fierce
24. Joanna Newsom, “Sadie” (2004)
Joanna Newsom’s polarizing voice takes absolutely no time announcing itself in “Sadie”, shrieking the title line that dares only the brave to keep going. I have to admit that I couldn’t cross that line the first few times. I could hear that the songwriting was strong, but I just wasn’t sure I really had the stamina to go through six minutes of that voice.
It’s one of those times when perseverance paid off, and in a huge way. The songwriting isn’t just “strong” here: it’s a monument to melody, arrangement and phrasing. It’s six minutes filled with pockets of devastating beauty that nearly knock the wind out of me every time I hear them.
- 2:35 “This is not my tune…but it’s mine to use”
- 3:09 “Stretched on a hoop where I stitched this adage: ‘Bless our house and its heart so savage’”
- 4:30 “And I’ll tell you tomorrow, ‘Oh, Sadie…go on home now’”
- 5:15 After a gorgeous, ascending harp trill comes the killer: “So dig up your bone, exhume your pinecone, Sadie”
23. Sprites, “Do It Yourself” (2002)
Barcelona’s breakup was a tough to take, even though they’d only been at it for three years and the reasons for the end were understandable. I was excited that Jason Korzen decided to keep writing as Sprites, but I have to say that I was pretty underwhelmed at first, thinking that Barcelona’s synths were better suited to Jay’s songs than the Lucksmiths-influenced Sprites.
After a while, though, I realized that it was the opposite. “Do It Yourself” is perfectly wrapped in the dry sound of acoustic guitars and brushed snares, giving it a warmth and sincerity that can be missed with machines. Of course, with hooks and sentiments as great as “Never start a band with a best friend, never shake hands, never make plans”, it almost doesn’t matter what the backing is.
One of the greatest thrills of the decade was getting to play guitar with Sprites. I’ve been lucky that the bands I’ve played with have made music that I’ve really loved, but this was different: this was me not only getting to play with friends, but getting to play this, one of my alltime favorite songs.
find it on Starling, Spiders, Tiger and Sprites
22. Belle & Sebastian, “There’s Too Much Love” (2000)
It’s easy to romanticize the creative side of music and imagine it as a world where you’re crafting the perfect sound song after song, but the reality is more that you’re chasing what you have in your head, constantly frustrated that it never turns out as you imagine it.
I don’t know if Stuart Murdoch (and company) consider “There’s Too Much Love” as a realization of their ambitions, but as someone who spent 1997-2000 in absolute love with Belle & Sebastian, this song feels like a crystallization of everything they attempted up to that point. The Spector-esque strings, the meeting of shy indie with confident musicianship, and the final realization of full love instead of searching cynicism all seem like the logical sum of everything B&S did in their first five years.
find it on Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like a Peasant
21. LCD Soundsystem, “All My Friends” (2007)
In the fall of 2001, I turned 30, and everything philosophical that come along with the thirties were a huge part of my decade. I felt free from the expectations growing up that adulthood had to be a certain way, and I finally started learning from my mistakes and ease up on the angst. But I also realized how odd aging it was, and watched it change me and everything around me in ways I figured would never happen.
James Murphy’s weathered words were messages of absolute enlightenment to me: the awkwardness of the music geek who’s become too conscious of being older than everyone else at the shows and clubs (“when you’re drunk and the kids look impossibly tan, you think over and over, ‘Hey, I’m finally dead’”), and the simple, strange reflections (“You spent the first five years trying to get with the plan, and the next five years trying to be with your friends again”).
The New Order-style guitar and the slow vocal build are foundations for a song that sings about the weariness of the philosophies of aging without actually singing them out.
find it on Sound Of Silver
Photo: My sister Mary, Bar Italia, London, Spring 2004.
