On my personal Tolerability Index, the radio format (I dare not call it a “musical genre”) known as “smooth jazz” generally falls somewhere between Sarah Palin’s Alaska and gnawing my own arm off. But last year, I discovered that Billboard actually compiles a weekly Jazz songs chart and every now and then, I give it a look. And it’s not just the curiosity of someone expecting to be repulsed: As it turns out, Sade landed three tracks from her latest album in the year-end Jazz chart, and Wake Up!, the great collaboration between John Legend and The Roots (and friends) has also landed a few hits on the chart.
But my curiosity isn’t entirely pure either. As Sunset Boulevard‘s Joe Gillis might have said, sometimes it’s fun to see how bad bad music can be. And so, every now and then, when I have nothing better to do than watch the Chiefs lose the last game of the regular season, I arm myself with a few titles from the Jazz chart’s upper reaches and head on over to YouTube. The results are predictable. Lots of alto and soprano saxophones and wooshy textures. Lots of clips from The Weather Channel where the songs are used as soundtracks for seven-day forecasts and temperatures for cities around the country.
Mindi Abair’s ”In Hi-Fi Stereo”Recently, I noticed that saxophonist Mindi Abair had a new album out. Now, Mindi Abair’s a name I actually know, although I can’t honestly count myself as a fan. Here’s the deal: for several years, I shared office space and a boombox with a crusty old man who kept a copy of the 1966 edition of the company’s employee handbook in his desk. For a while, there was only one radio station he could tolerate – a Wisconsin Public Radio station that played classical music until it was time from Terry Gross. I didn’t mind that. But then, a smooth jazz station was launched in Madison, and we started listening to that a lot. It wasn’t all bad. They played Steely Dan. But they were also really hot for a hottie sax-blower named Mindi Abair and they played her songs all the time. Despite that fact, there’s not a single Mindi Abair melody I could hum for you. Her music was entirely forgettable, and as a result, I’d forgotten it – entirely.
So when I saw Mindi Abair’s name on the charts, I thought, y’know, why not give it a try, and see what it does for me? The song I checked out was called “Be Beautiful”, and I actually found myself – well – sort of – gulp – liking it. It had a nice, understated groove that felt organic and live even if it wasn’t terribly distinctive. The sax solo was fine and tasteful – though, admittedly, still a sax solo – and it was tempered by a soulful vocal chorus that felt made-up-on-the-spot which made the whole song feel a lot more intimate and real than (I suspected) it deserves to feel. More recently, another song from the same album – it’s called In Hi-Fi Stereoand the cover art shows Abair spending some quality time with her vintage vinyl collection and portable turntable – has started showing up on the charts, and this one’s even better.
The new one’s called “Get Right” and it features vocalist Ryan Collins, who bears more than a passing vocal resemblance to John Legend. The song, too, sounds like something John Legend would record. It’s got an immediate retro soul groove, driven by electric piano, a stylin’ horn section, and a great singalong chorus. Abair’s sax doesn’t even show up in the spotlight until halfway through, and even then, she cedes the floor to Collins after a brief solo, choosing, in essence, to be featured artist on a song where she’s credited as the lead – an act of both confidence and restraint that demands applause. Give the song a listen here:
Before I head into my Top 10 songs of the year, here’s a recap of the previous 90. Click the links to see the blocks of videos and commentary for each group of ten:
#10#10: “WAIT TILL YOU SEE MY SMILE” by ALICIA KEYS.
It’s not often that a record as heavy on ballads as Alcia Keys’s fourth album is turns out to also be a fabulously exciting listen. But The Element of Freedom is, and this song, though regrettably not promoted as a single, is, to me, the album’s beating heart. It’s soft and understated in a way that Keys has never really been before, and that understatement is perfectly matched to the song’s theme of finding inner strength to face external opposition. It’s got a gorgeous build; and it feels like the deep breath you might take before jumping out of an airplane.
#9#9: “HAPPINESS” by ALEXIS JORDAN (with DEADMAU5).
18-year-old Alexis Jordan seemed poised to become a footnote to a pop-cultural footnote when she was eliminated from America’s Got Talent four years ago. And in another time, she probably would have. But now there’s YouTube. And Alexis Jordan has been nothing if not a prolific poster of videos of herself singing the day’s hit parade on the YouTube. Eventually, someone had to notice. But her debut single is way better than anyone might have expected based on the story of her career so far. Here, she takes an existing techno-rave song – “Brazil (2nd Edit)” by Canadian dj deadmau5 – and sings a sweet teenybopper song all over the top of it. A musical marriage made in the aisles of Old Navy.
#8#8: “ONE IN A MILLION” by NE-YO. Libra Scale, the fourth album by R&B singer-songwriter-producer Ne-Yo sounds like everything a new Michael Jackson album should and would sound like in the best of all parallel universes. And it also sounds like the album Ne-Yo has dreamed of making since he first decided to be a performer. It’s sweet, stylish, sexy; and it has a great sense of humor too. It’s also got a narrative storyline about three guys who are given superpowers with the caveat that by accepting them, they can never fall in love. Michael would have been proud. The narrative structure isn’t new for Ne-Yo though. The first time I ever heard of him, he was opening for John Legend (when John Legend was touring Get Lifted), and his set was an adorable one-man play about trying-and-failing-and-trying-again to get the girl. Libra Scale is that little stage act’s apotheosis.
#7#7: “ON TO THE NEXT ONE” by JAY-Z + SWIZZ BEATZ.
In which Jay-Z not-so-politely refuses to participate in any kind of – what do you call it? – oh yeah: recession. Jay-Z is and promises to remain a hip hop stimulus package unto himself. Yes, it’s true that he also released, simultaneously with this song, a single called “Young Forever” which was essentially a remake of a beloved 80s synthpop song by the German group Alphaville, and yes, you’d think that I would have fallen hard for that, and yes, I admit the sheet amount of nasty language in this song makes me cringe some, but I find every other thing about it highly addictive. And the video: who knew Jay-Z was a closet Goth (with an enthusiasm for basketball and Damien Hirst?)
#6#6: “SOLDIER OF LOVE” by SADE.
A new album by Sade? Enough said, really.
#5#5: “WAITING FOR THE END” by LINKIN PARK.
“I know what it takes to move on. I know how it feels to lie. All I want to do is trade this life for something new, holding on to what I haven’t got.” I never expected to fall as deeply in love with a Linkin Park album as much as I have with their latest, A Thousand Suns, a sort of concept record inspired by, of all things, the creation of teh atomic bomb. They had me at the Oppenheimer quotes that open the record. It must be my thing for post-apocalyptic fiction. At any rate, I love this song. “The hardest part of ending is starting again.”
#4#4: “FUCK YOU” by CEE-LO GREEN.
It’s every great bubblegum song from the 60s and 70s wrapped up in one great big four letter word. Is it gimmicky? Abso-effing-lutely. But it’s also deeply catchy and tremendously good-natured in the way that Top 40 pop rarely is these days. No surprise, really, with Bruno Mars on board as a co-writer. And the whole “Life Stages of the Lady Killer” video is, y’know, kinda heartwarming.
#3#3: “SHAME” by ROBBIE WILLIAMS & GARY BARLOW.
Imagine Justin Timberlake and JC Chassez getting together 20 years after “Bye Bye Bye” to hash things in sweet, folky harmonies. “Shame” is the story of the greatest boy band bromance ever speculated about. The song was the single released in conjunction with Robbie’s recent solo greatest hits retrospective, and it was released right as Robbie set his solo career aside to re-join his old pal Gary, and the rest of the 90s-era British boy band Take That. The video, which finds the two singing the song at a country bar karaoke night, plays on all the stereotypes about boy bands, and gets enticingly Brokebackish toward the end. Will it go there? It… just… might… (FTR… they’re both openly straight, even though most of the men in their audiences aren’t.)
#2#2: “DANCING ON MY OWN” by ROBYN.
High, double-edged drama in the wake of a bitter break-up. On one hand, here’s Robyn surreptitiously spying (err… stalking?) her ex with his new girl at the club. On the other, here’s Robyn dancing in the face of his rejection. Is it a moment of devastating weakness, or a moment of defiant strength? “I just came to say good-bye. I’m in the corner watching you kiss her.” That part where the beat drops out as she starts into the final chorus is just gut-wrenching. It’s the centerpiece of my favorite album of the year.
#1#1: “POWER” by KANYE WEST.
This year, Kanye West has become to hip-hop and maybe even popular music in general what Sarah Palin has become to politics. His is a presence to which attention must be paid. Always. Like Palin, he’s mastered the art of the provocatively self-serving tweet. Like Palin, he has a knack for saying really dumb things in really public ways. And like Palin, he is impervious to the valid criticisms and well-deserved attacks from the many many many many people for whom the mere mention of his name causes cringing, growling and gnashing of teeth. He revels in the outrage directed his way – “screams from the haters, got a nice ring to it” – and rather than defend himself against media missiles, he grabs a hold of them and turns them into weapons of offense. He’s almost certainly a narcissist, but he’s done what most narcissists fail to do – he’s made himself an object of our own sympathetic admiration. This year (and last), Kanye West has said and done things to make a fool of himself. But this year, he also made one of the year’s best and most fascinating records in the form of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Deal with that, you can almost hear Sarah – I mean Kanye – say, with an obnoxiously self-satisfied wink.
“Power” was the first song to be released from the album, arriving almost half a year before the album itself, and it’s a toweringly tacky piece of self-aggrandizement – a sonic pyramid of tribal chants and handclaps, mushroom cloud basslines, and arena-rock guitar heroism (and yes, that King Crimson sample) – but tucked into it, right at the end is this challenge: “Do you have the power to let power go?” Early in the song, he likens himself to a superhero, but like Superman, by the end of the song, he seems to come to understand that in order to experience life and love on any kind of real level – to be a real person, and not just a really wealthy, powerful man who can get himself all the “light-skinned girls” he wants – he has to give up his superpowers and concede some level of weakness, vulnerability, mortality. “This’ll be a beautiful death,” he sings, and instead of flying like Superman, he’s “dropping out the window, letting everything go.”
In a year when we saw firsthand, repeatedly, how the petulant whims of a single Senator could hold up progress on even the most popular and uncontroversial of legislative initiatives, West’s “Power” feels, strangely (since it’s coming from West), like a refreshingly sincere confessional on the moral limits of self-indulgence, from someone who seems to live life at the extremes of self-indulgence. Well played, Mr. West.
And that is all! This has been a great year for music, and it was painful tying to even make a list of “only” 100 great songs. Let’s hope 2011 can be even half as awesome. Happy New Year, folks! This is Paul’s Inner Casey Kasem signing off. Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for your beers.
We’re heading into the home stretch. Only the best of the best are left. Well, here’s the second best of the best:
#20#20: “I AM NOT A ROBOT” by MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS.
A sweet reassurance from one non-robot to another: “You’re vulnerable, you’re vulnerable… You are not a robot.” And: “Guess what? I am not a robot.” Which, in the age of Autotune, is probably a necessary clarification.
#19#19: “WE USED TO WAIT” by ARCADE FIRE.
It was about this time last year that I finally did it – I got rid of my CD of Arcade Fire’s album Funeral, and put the proceeds towards purchasing a CD I might actually listen to. Like the reissue of Altered Images’ Happy Birthday. And then I got a facebook message from a friend. It was a link to a site where through the wonder of Googlemaps and internet pop-up windows, you could put the house where you grew up (or any other house you knew the street address for) into an interactive video experience set to this Arcade Fire song. Well, I’m no big fan of Arcade Fire – seriously, I’ve tried! – but I love me some googlemaps and I found “thewildernessdowntown” a most fascinating toy, and in the process of playing and re-playing and re-playing the “video” – Hey, what’s the address for the Culver’s on Main Street?” – I ended up falling in love with the actual song. Go figure.
#18#18: “I FEEL BETTER” by HOT CHIP.
Hot Chip is not a boy band, but they are played by one on TV, at least they are in this video. (The real Hot Chip appears in the audience, and they get zapped to oblivion at the 3:25 mark of this hilariously confounding video.) The YouTube comment section on this is pretty fun. My favorite comment comes courtesy of ImGodly4U: “Wtf? 4 gay guys singing. Then voldemort shows up and has a dance off, blasts them in the face with his shoop da whoop thing. and then Gnarles Barkly comes and blows shit up? This video is amazing…” Video aside, this is a strangely moving, deeply emotional song – strange in the sense that it’s got an irresistibly skippity dance beat, and it’s AutoTuned like crazy, but it’s all about the guts of a vital relationship at a vulnerable moment. I love the long notes and the halting melody. It’s the highlight of an album full of highlights.
#17#17: “ONLY PRETTIER” by MIRANDA LAMBERT.
“Let’s shake hands and reach across those party lines…” A perfect song for this past election season. I love the song’s raucous stomp, but Miranda’s delivery of lines like “I don’t have to be hateful, I can just say ‘bless your heart’” is what makes the song for me. It has the bite of a Palin/Pelosi girlfight.
#16#16: “FEMBOT” by ROBYN.
“Once you gone tech, you ain’t never goin’ back…” The Swedish pop goddess (err… “scientifically advanced hot mama”) lists her specifications, runs her diagnostics, and does a little demo/infomercial for the people. Check out those automatic booty applications! Also, this fembot has some crazy internal rhymes. But actually one of my favorite things about this song is how it feels at first like a novelty – and it is superfun, as evidenced by this live performance – but how it also relates to and heightens the themes of the rest of the Body Talk album(s). Here she sings that her “system’s in mint condition”. Later on, she promises to “love you like [she’s] indestructible”, suggesting a few emotional scratches and dents. I’ve already said it, but I’ll say it again: isn’t it wonderful that one of the most emotionally powerful and intimate and smart records of the year is a dance pop album?
#15#15: “THIS TOO SHALL PASS” by OK GO.
I’m not posting the video for this. Either of them. Because, frankly, you’ve already seen it (them both). A lot. In making clever, born-to-be-viral music videos, this nerdy little band from Chicago has found a way to compensate for their, frankly, not very special songs… But this song IS special. And I love seeing the band play it live, and their live arrangements of this song are often as cleverly sweet as their videos for it. My personal favorite was their glorious appearance on the Colbert Report earlier this year, with Stephen leading his audience in a (unexpectedly) deeply uplifting, flag-waving singalong. Sadly, I can’t find that video anywhere on line. Ah well. I can’t keep letting that bring me down, so here’s a delicate take from a radio appearance. The song loses none of it’s sweetness in this translation. If anything, it’s child-like sing-song optimism is heightened.
#14#14: “ALORS ON DANSE” by STROMAE.
Stromae is 25-year-old Rwandan-Belgian producer Paul van Haver. He derives his stage name from a slice and dice of the word “maestro”, and scored one of the biggest hits in all of the world (except the U.S.) this year with this exotic dance ode to the ennui of the young urban professional. Stromae does have one big fan in the U.S. (besides me): Kanye West, who released a remix of this song this fall featuring himself rapping all over it. His debut album Cheese has given us three more singles – all pretty wonderful, including the amazing “Te Quiero” – but this “Alors on Danse” has cast a pretty long shadow. For 2011, I’m crossing my fingers that Stromae is no one hit wonder.
#13#13: “NO OTHER ONE” by TAIO CRUZ.
I love this song’s decidedly mixed signal. The lyrics are a decisive statement of commitment: “I don’t need to ever exchange / I don’t need to ever replace / I’m not going any damn place” – but they’re set to the sound of an air-raid siren and frenzied laser-fighter synth arpeggios. The second verse marriage proposal sounds like an action sequence from a Michael Bay film! Yeah! Explosions!
This song was released late last year in Europe as the follow-up to Cruz’s “Break Your Heart” which had already been a huge hit there. “No Other One” flopped, but it makes a nice answer song to “Break Your Heart”. Lyrically, “Break Your Heart” was all about fooling around and making his girl jealous, but musically, it’s fun and steady. “No Other One” is settling down for good, but it sounds like a Eurodisco warzone.
#12#12: “RUNAWAY” by KANYE WEST feat. PUSHA T.
Beyonce may have ceded time from her own acceptance speech to let Taylor Swift finish hers, but Kanye still gave himself the last word. 20 years from now, “Innocent” will still be song Taylor wrote about Kanye for the VMAs. But the song Kanye unveiled that same night buries the “Imma Let You Finish” moment – just by matching and then out-outraging the outrage that was directed at him, West made a beautiful monument to everything people hate about him. I also have to say, this song could easily have been a novelty (this is becoming a theme), but with that weird, brooding coda, it becomes almost symphonic. He’s not just sampling King Crimson on his latest record – he’s actually listening to King Crimson records and taking lessons on sonics and scale from them. (Also: Kudos to Kanye for hooking up artist Vanessa Beecroft (most famous for her “installations” of stationary, uniformed humans) to handle art direction for this video: Gorgeous.
#11#11: “SHARK IN THE WATER” by V.V. BROWN.
She’s got a bouffant just like Bruno Mars and a similar penchant for 21st Century updates of 50s and 60s pop music styles. This song takes a sunny strummy, playful verse and drives it straight into one fierce-ass chorus. With horns! This was THE song of my Summer of ‘010. My kids are still going to be waking up to nightmares of this song (and me singing along to it) in 2036.
