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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Music

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 5: #60-51 “Is it a sin to love too much?”

    The Top Ten of the Bottom Half:

    #60
    #60: “DYNAMITE” by TAIO CRUZ.
    Every time I hear a Taio Cruz song, I feel like I’ve just looked into the eyes of the Borg. Resistance – violent resistance even – may be the thinking person’s natural reaction to a song like this. But against Taio Cruz, resistance truly is futile. Just give in already. Don’t make this harder on yourself than it needs to be. Ayo. Time to let go.

    #59
    #59: “HERE LIES LOVE” by DAVID BYRNE & FATBOY SLIM featuring FLORENCE WELCH.
    That would be the Florence of Florence + the Machine, singing the glorious title song of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s glorious song cycle on the life of Imelda Marcos, the Phillipines’ own Evita. The title is taken from Imelda Marcos’s epitaph. The album features an impressive roster of women (and Steve Earle) singing one or two songs each, portraying different characters and different aspects and ages of Imelda on her journey from simple country girl with a dream to the world’s most famous shoe collector. Incidentally, David Byrne went out of his way not to make any references to the famous shoe collection in any of the album’s two dozen songs.

    #58
    #58: “JUST THE WAY YOU ARE” by BRUNO MARS.
    I see me drivin’ round town with this song I love, and I’m like, f*ck yeah. Any current R&B or pop artist who can count The Students and The Flamingos among his influences is all right in my book. The fact that Bruno Mars has a sweet face, a sweet voice, an awesome 50s hairdo, and a weakness for singalong melodies just makes me love him that much more (and hope that Las Vegas cocaine possession thing really was just a one time bit of nouveau-pop-star hooliganism).

    #57
    #57. “HANDS TIED” by TONI BRAXTON.
    My favorite Toni Braxton ballad since “Un-break My Heart”. Unfortunately, the rest of her latest album “Pulse” is pretty weak.

    #56
    #56: “SMOKE A LITTLE SMOKE” by ERIC CHURCH.
    In which the rising country star confronts one of life’s greatest dilemmas. Namely: “Go, get her back” vs. “Find my stash”. I think Eric’s vote goes to stash-finding.

    #55
    #55: “CLUB CAN’T HANDLE ME” by FLO RIDA featuring DAVID GUETTA.
    I think that right now Flo Rida is the leading manufacturer of three minute guilty pleasures. I hate – HATE – that I love his music. But the joy in this song is absolutely relentless. I should never listen to this in the car. When he says “Put your hands up!”, I feel this automatic need to comply. It’s, like, the law.

    #54
    #54: “CARRY OUT” by TIMBALAND featuring JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE.
    “Do you like it well done ’cause I do it well…” You may want to check the nutrition facts on this one. It has a dangerously high double-entrendre-per-second count.

    #53
    #53: “SECRETS” by ONEREPUBLIC.
    From Timbaland to Timbaland’s apprentice, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder. For as “everywhere” as his songs are, Ryan Tedder should really be a bigger star in his own right. Still, it’s nice to know that an actual band that plays actual instruments and stuff still has a place on Top 40 radio. Not to mention movie soundtracks and TV commercials.

    #52
    #52: “RAISE YOUR GLASS” by P!NK.
    Oh my gosh. Seriously. Where was P-exclamation point-nk 20 years ago when I needed her most? Back when I was a loud, nitty-gritty, dirty little freak who was too school for cool? This little manifesto comes from P!NK’s just-released greatest hits album. And really, 10 years ago when you first heard “There You Go”, did you think that this was an artist you’d still be caring about in 2010?

    #51
    #51: “HEAVEN AND EARTH” by BLITZEN TRAPPER.
    My favorite version of this song is the one where I’m listening to it in my car really late one hot July night after picking my son up from school after his band trip. “Your life is like a bolt of lightning seen across the sky so high and clean…” This is one of my favorite lyrics of the year, and I love the way the lines of the verses spiral out of each other. This is probably the most meditative track on the Portland OR band’s latest album Destroyer of the Void which sounds like a cross between Wilco (circa 2004) and Electric Light Orchestra (circa 1974).

    Coming up in the next installment: We march. We trip. We run away.

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 4: #70-61 “We’re singing out of tune, but I still want to sing with you…”

    The best songs of 2010 according to me. Part, the fourth:

    #70
    #70: “I NEED A DOLLAR” by ALOE BLACC.
    The title pretty much covers it. What I think I love most about this song is that it sounds like it could have been written in the 1930s, but it’s very clearly about now. The L.A.-based rapper went full-tilt retro-soul for his latest album Good Things, which includes a horned-up (as in brass) cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.” “I Need a Dollar” first found a big audience via the HBO Series How to Make It In America. And just looking at the song lists for the show’s episodes is enough to make me miss HBO.

    #69
    #69: “GOD AND SATAN” by BIFFY CLYRO.
    In which the under-rated (at least here in the U.S.) Scottish band invokes both the light and dark sides of the cosmos in contemplating the mechanics of a complicated relationship. It’s also just a sweet, sorta sad song. “When the seesaw snaps and splinters in two, don’t come crying to me. I’ll only see your good side, and believe it’s a miracle.”

    #68
    #68: “MY OWN SINKING SHIP” by GOOD OLD WAR.
    Three guys, a guitar, and an accordion = a tiny slice of folk-rock heaven. From the group’s self-titled sophomore album. The Philly trio cites CS&N as a primary influence, and you can see why here. I love lead singer Keith Goodwin’s dance moves in the later verses. I think he stole them from me.

    #67
    #67: “BANG BANG BANG” by MARK RONSON & THE BUSINESS INTL.
    Mark Ronson is the producer who re-introduced live horns to Top 40 radio a couple years ago via Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black album. Here, sidekicked by rapper Q-Tip (looking sharp!) and MNDR’s Amanda Warner, he re-invents the French-Canadian folk song “Alouette” with Hasselhoffian swagger and the cutting edge audio-visual technology of 1982. A song about plucking skylark feathers turns into a rejection of authoritarian lies and greed. Sweet!

    #66
    #66: “HANG WITH ME” by ROBYN.
    Implausibly, some of this year’s smartest music was dance pop, and the smartest, best dance pop this year came from Sweden’s own Robin Carlsson, or Robyn. And I would love to hang with Robyn, but I’d almost certainly fall recklessly, headlessly in love with her. Robyn coulda been a Britney. She scored an international hit as a teenager with a Max Martin song, but in the years since, has released new music only sporadically. She formed her own label a couple years ago and this year put out Body Talk Pts. 1-3, not just the best dance pop record(s) of the year, but maybe the year’s best album period, Kanye be damned. I love this song’s intimacy. It’s as genuine as it is unexpected.

    #65
    #65: “AMERICAN SATURDAY NIGHT” by BRAD PAISLEY.
    Toby Keith talks about the USA shoving a boot up the ass of the rest of the world. Brad Paisley talks about America as a curated collection of the rest of the world’s most awesome things. Like Amstel Light and the Beatles.

    #64
    #64: “DO YOU LOVE ME?” by GUSTER.
    From the Massachusetts trio’s perfectly titled sixth studio album Easy Wonderful, maybe the best non-Christmas-song Christmas song ever. Dooooo-do-do-do. Doot Doot d-do d-do. Dooooo-do-do-do. Doot Doot d-do d-do. Ding Dong Ding Dong. Guster: Making dorky cool since the mid-90s.

    #63
    #63: “RIDE” by NAPPY ROOTS.
    From The Pursuit of Nappyness, their second album since returning from a five year mid-decade recording hiatus. “Can’t let their friends know they’re not doing good, so you lay low, focus on your kids, and hope somebody remembers something that you did…” A lot of hip-hop is driven by people who’ve never had it, and who’ll do anything to get it. Here’s a song by a group that had it once, has since lost it, and is now re-evaluating. Economists say that the recession ended sometime in 2009. For hip-hop, it’s just arrived.

    #62
    #62: “CRASH YEARS” by THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS.
    There’s a video for this song, and it’s nice enough, but you don’t get to see the band – this very big band – rocking this song out in it they way they do here. I love the big sound of the toms. I love the cello/bass line (which get stuck in my head for days on end). Also: LIVE WHISTLING. “Tonight will be an open mic!”

    #61
    #61: “HEARTBEAT SONG” by THE FUTUREHEADS.
    “It’s like a cartwheel in my head but my legs are made of lead…” Their lyrics are fun, their melodies are catchy, their stage presence is nerdy, and their tempos are often frantic. Although on their earlier albums they demonstrated a knack for arty vocal arrangements and stranger song structures, on their fourth album The Chaos, they show that they can do the whole straightforward power-pop thing pretty damn well too.

    In the next installment: Smoking, drinking, clubbing, and double-entendre-laden not-so-fine dining

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 3: #80-71 “You’re a big old wuss if you don’t jump in…””

    Huzzah! The third installment!

    #80
    #80: “WATER” by BRAD PAISLEY.
    “Grab your swimming trunks, ice up that old Igloo, and drive until the map turns blue…” All I really need, this time of year, is to not be driving home in an ugly snowstorm with this Brad Paisley song stuck in my head. Don’t get me wrong – I love this song. But in the middle of this Wisconsin blizzard, it hurts.

    #79
    #79: “FOR THE SUMMER” by RAY LaMONTAGNE & THE PARIAH DOGS.
    This is the point in the road trip where it dawns on you that you’re never going to actually get to your where you’re going no matter how long you keep driving, so you pull off to the shoulder and have yourself a good cry. Until that State Trooper stops by and tells you to move along. At which point you, y’know, move along.

    #78
    #78: “LITTLE WHITE CHURCH” by LITTLE BIG TOWN.
    This is exactly what I would expect an Alabama weddin’ would look like. Huzzah for the gleeful perpetuation of stereotypes by the stereotyped. (Did I mention my huge collection of Broadway cast albums? It’s HUGE. It’s bigger than Cher, even.) Also: If you squint your eyes real hard, Little Big Town looks exactly like ABBA.

    #77
    #77: “SHINE A LIGHT” by McFLY featuring TAIO CRUZ.
    Still teenagers when their debut album hit #1 in the UK in 2004, McFly were a boy band more Bay City Rollers than Backstreet Boys, their songs owing more to Big Star and the Beatles than Max Martin and Dr. Luke. Things have changed. Their latest, co-written with reigning king of android pop Taio Cruz (who guests here on vocals) sounds more like a bid to become the UK’s answer to Maroon 5. And it’s awesome. And the video has lots of shiny stuff.

    #76
    #76: “DO-WAH-DOO” by KATE NASH.
    The retro-pop lament of the nice girl. Literate and lonely, she holds no illusions about that “other” girl that all the boys think is so sweet. “Everybody thinks that she’s a lady. But I don’t. I think that girl’s shady.” Boys can be so dumb. First of all: Hurray for in-flight choreography! But wait – so Kate’s crushing on a boy who’s a flight attendant? Err… okay.

    #75
    #75: “ONE LIFE STAND” by HOT CHIP.
    This is a band I should have loved from the start – five dorky British guys with synthesizers and an abiding devotion to the music of Devo – but they didn’t win me over until the release of their 5th album earlier this year. This is the title track from that album One Life Stand. And of all the LPs I picked up this year, it’s probably the one that’s logged the most mileage on my turntable: a collection of sincerely dorky and supremely dance-able songs about marriage and family.

    Hot Chip – One Life Stand
    Uploaded by EMI_Music. – See the latest featured music videos.

    #74
    #74: “PRAYIN’” by PLAN B.
    The provocative British rapper transformed himself into an old-school soul singer for his latest album, an operatic R&B concept record about love, betrayal, crime and punishment. And he put some amazing visuals out to go along with it. The album’s called The Defamation of Strickland Banks, and Plan B has talked about putting together a feature film around it, building it out of the videos for the album’s songs. And from what I’ve seen so far, Plan B’s videos kick the asses of Ne-Yo’s and Kanye’s latest excursions into grandiose short-filmmaking.

    #73
    #73: “THE HOUSE THAT BUILT ME” by MIRANDA LAMBERT.
    “If I could just come in, I swear I’ll leave… won’t take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.” Another fine country tearjerker.

    #72
    #72: “NIGHT & DAY” by CHIEF.
    The sound of the band Chief falls roughly halfway between Eagles and the Church (just down the block from Fleet Foxes), 70s-style arena rock melodies, layers upon layers of guitars and other strings, and gorgeous four-part harmonies. The video’s great too, a sort of baroque dinner theater cabaret (with stylized stage violence!)

    #71
    #71: “BETTER THAN TODAY” by KYLIE MINOGUE.
    For the third single from her awesome latest album Aphrodite, the international superstar songstress comes down with a severe case of Pac Man Fever. And it’s drivin’ me crazy. Also, I’m going out of my mind. (In a good way.)

    Next time around: The recession comes to hip-hop. And R&B. And indie rock.