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  • GG’s Look Back At 2010

    I can’t let Paul do all the work right? If you haven’t been following, Paul has put together an exhausting list of his top 100 songs of 2010. You can read his latest, which is Part Nine.

    My lists aren’t going to be exhaustive at all. In fact, they’ll be at most, five long.

    I loved looking back through my iTunes collection and remember all the stuff that I (and my kids) bought in 2010.

    Most Fun Album Of 2010

    3. Big Boi: Sir Lucious Left Foot… The Son Of Chico Dusty
    You know where artists are really killing it these days? Video games. Big Boi’s Shutterbug is all over the new NBA 2K video game and whenever it comes on, my kids and I start nodding our heads while getting ready to play some cyber hoops. Most of the new album is that fun. It’s video game fun.

    2. Bruno Mars: Doo-Wops & Hooligans
    I had this one on my radar from day one, but I was a bit apprehensive at listening to an entire album of his work. While it’s not going to grab you and make you think, it’s very charming and engaging. The dude just gets how to write music that people enjoy listening to. That’s the entire game right there.

    1. B.o.B.: B.o.B. Presents: The Adventures Of Bobby Ray
    I asked at least two people what they thought about this one before hitting that purchase button on iTunes. It became the most played record in my collection for 2010. Airplanes, part 2 with Eminem, Nothin’ On You, Magic, Past My Shades, and Don’t Let Me Fall would’ve all been on any kind of favorite songs of the year list had I considered to make one.

    Most Disappointing Album Of The Year

    3. Maroon 5: Hands All Over
    I’ve wondered if these guys would turn into a modern version of Huey Lewis & The News. I’d be totally fine with that. But there’s something missing. Like a wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Huey seemed to be in on the joke, while Adam Levine seems to take this stuff way too seriously. There are some fun songs on this album, but not enough.

    2. Christina Aguilera: Bionic
    I’m not quite sure what she was trying to do here. It’s kind of messy and all over the place. But I’ll give her a mulligan. She’s recently had a child and then divorced her husband, all while trying to do the music and movies thing. She’s quite ambitious, but not entirely bionic enough to succeed thus far based on this album and Burlesque feedback.

    1. Usher: Raymond Vs. Raymond
    Just when you thought this dude was growing up, he took a bad left turn somewhere at “Bieber Avenue”. Some of his little buddy Justin’s songs were more mature than the filth that sludges around this album. The guy is in his 30s now, has babies, and is whoring himself out all over this album. I guess that’s what happens to artists who panic when they start to lose the teeny bopper audience.

    Most Overrated Album Of The Year

    1. Eminem: Recovery
    There’s really only one album that fits the bill for me. Kanye’s new album is overrated to an extent and I’ll explain that in a bit, and I never fully got into Drake’s album even though it was well received, but this is the only album I bought all year long where I felt that the praise wasn’t all deserved. To be fair, this is Eminem’s best work in years. But in no way should he get free passes at this point in his career. For all the folks who say he’s back, I say that he’s still the same dude, but just with better direction this time.

    Favorite Songs Of The Year

    3. Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour): Jay-Z, Bono, The Edge, & Rihanna
    This song fell under the radar because of how early it came out in 2010, but also because it’s basically a song for charity. But it’s excellent. I’m not sure there was more star power on any song in 2010. But with that star power came an understanding about how to make it about the song and the purpose, which is why I think it works so well. Never before (at least to my ears) have Jay-Z and Bono been so understated.

    2. The Other Side: Bruno Mars, Cee Lo Green, and B.o.B.
    It’s the very last track on Mars’ debut album, and it also very well might be the best track on the album. Shame on me for not having purchased Cee Lo’s new album, but I was put off by his gimmicky single. But here you have three artists who brought it in 2010, working together to create a jam and a half.

    1. Enrique Iglesias featuring Pit Bull: I Like It
    Ok, I was just seeing who was paying attention. Here’s the real number 1.

    1. One In A Million: Ne-Yo
    The biggest heap of praise I can give this song is that it’s the best Michael Jackson-like song that I’ve heard from the recent batch of artists who owe their entire careers to MJ. It’s just too bad that Ne-Yo’s current album couldn’t bring the same fire as this.

    Favorite Albums Of The Year

    5. El DeBarge: Second Chance
    This came out late in the year, but if you want to hear straight up R&B the way they used to do it in the old days, this is where you go. There are a couple of guest rappers on it, including 50 Cent who is also featured on Michael Jackson’s posthumous work, but they don’t ruin it. El’s album is the R&B album of the year.

    (By the way, what does that say about 50’s career that two of his most memorable 2010 moments are bad verses on albums of artists who were hot like fire in the 80s?)

    4. The Black Keys: Brothers
    My man Big Money Mike hipped me to these guys, but it wasn’t until I read an article about Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney and their semi-dysfunctional relationship in Rolling Stone, did I decide to dig in. And I’m glad I did. Their music isn’t poppy enough for me to throw on for a long drive with the kids, but if you throw on your headphones and get lost in it, they’ll take you on quite the journey.

    3. B.o.B.: B.o.B. Presents: The Adventures Of Bobby Ray
    I think I’ve already said enough about this dude. Maybe I should run his PR.

    2. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
    Here’s where I’m going to get flack. I’m a Kanye fan. I’ve been with him from day one. His new album is pretty darn brilliant. But I think people are overlooking what he says because of how fantastic it sounds. The guy’s rhyme game is definitely improving. And when you hang out with Jay-Z, it should improve simply by osmosis right? What I don’t get about this album is that he’s talking about slapping and hurting women consciously and we’re giving him the ok to do it. I think dude definitely has major issues and needs to grow up.

    I get that it’s an act and that he’s playing a character, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

    All of that being said, it’s now my second favorite album of his, even with the issues I have with it. Late Registration will still get more play time on my iPod, but this will definitely have a long life. I get amped up every time I hear So Appalled.

    1. The Roots: How I Got Over
    The Roots are the most consistently good act in music. They were able to juggle their new gig of being Jimmy Fallon’s house band with creating new music that stayed true to their roots, which I think is the point. Maybe their new album should’ve been titled Bionic.

    Thanks for reading and have a happy, and safe start to 2011.

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 9: #20-11 “Plug me in and flip some switches…”

    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.

    V V Brown – Shark in the Water
    Uploaded by UniversalMusicGroup. – See the latest featured music videos.

    Only 10 left. Any guesses as to what they might be?

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 8: #30-21 “Louder than god’s revolver, and twice as shiny!”

    What better way to spend your blizzard? Part 8, baby!

    #30
    #30: “THE BEST OF TIMES” by SAGE FRANCIS.
    An intimate conversation between a man and his 13-year-old self. “Don’t listen to them when they tell you these are your best years… and when you think you got it all figured out and then everything collapses – trust me kid – it’s not the end of the world.” With Kanye West putting Bon Iver on his record, and The Roots collaborating with Dirty Projectors and sampling the Monsters of Folk, this was the year where hip hop and indie rock finally met on a Run DMC/Aerosmith type scale. But no one took that meeting to a greater extreme than Sage Francis who enlisted a pack of indie titans including Chris Walla, Mark Linkous, and Jason Lytle to concoct the “beats” for his latest album Li(f)e. Here, he’s accompanied by French avant-garde/post-rocker Yann Tiersen.

    #29
    #29: “ACAPELLA” by KELIS.
    It’s hard to imagine this is the same woman who sang “Milkshake” in 2003. Then again, it was hard to imagine the woman singing “Milkshake” was the same one who sang “I Hate You So Much Right Now!” in 1999. Which I suppose is the point of this song: People change when life changes. The life change here being, specifically, motherhood, which Kelis dramatizes in various guises in this gorgeous video. I especially love her jungle huntress and her desert wanderer personae. The sadly somewhat overlooked Flesh Tone, Kelis’s debut album for the will.i.am label, was a surprise gem of a dance pop record in year packed to overflowing with great dance pop records.

    #28
    #28: “SHE SAID” by PLAN B.
    I think this might just be my favorite video of the year. That jury has rhythm! Those bailiffs are funkayyy. And Plan B’s hyperspeed “defense testimony” at the song’s center is a perfect sonic counterpoint to his pleading blue eyed soul vocal everywhere else. And the strings! Holy sh*t, the strings! How is this guy not getting airplay here?

    #27
    #27: “IF WE EVER MEET AGAIN” by TIMBALAND featuring KATY PERRY.
    “What’s your name, whatcha drinkin’, I think I know what you’re thinkin’. Baby what’s your sign? Tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.” Just a great, fun pop duet to get stuck in your head for days, and, really, better than anything on Katy Perry’s (literally) cotton-candy scented album.

    #26
    #26: “DANCE IN THE DARK” by LADY GAGA.
    This is THE shoulda-been single from The Fame Monster. How this one got passed up for the immediately catchy but ultimately sorta lame “Alejandro” is just beyond me. “Tell ’em how you feel, girls.” Any song that can somehow mournfully-defiantly-joyfully link Judy Garland, Sylvia Plath, Marilyn Monroe, JonBenet Ramsey, Liberace, and Princess Di – and actually make absolute sense in the process – has to be some big flowery, exotic kind of awesome.

    #25
    #25: “YOU KNOW ME” by ROBBIE WILLIAMS.
    A great big ballad on the lifestyles of the rich, famous, and newly single. “I’ve been doing what I like, when I like, how I like. It’s joyless.” I love this song’s big arrangement, but I’d also love to hear it acapella with all those doo-wop-op-op background vocals.

    #24
    #24: “UN-THINKABLE (I’M READY)” by ALICIA KEYS.
    A dark atmospheric ballad of a forbidden affair’s “moment of honesty”, this song topped Billboard’s R&B charts for 12 weeks this summer, and was named Billboard’s #1 R&B song of the year. All for good reason. Given the Keys’ engagement to producer Swizz Beatz before his divorce was even final, the song has an autobiographical truth to it, but this gorgeous video puts the song in a social/historical context. Probably a good move.

    #23
    #23: “NA NA NA (NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA)” by MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE.
    Without question, my favorite song title of the year, even though I had to “fact-check” it to make sure I had the appropriate number of NAs. The song is as frantic and obnoxiously fun as its title: “Shut up and let me see your jazz hands!” You’ll also notice that the song racks up 3 bleeps in the first verse. The word there is “drugs”. We’ve apparently come a long way since Huey Lewis. They do also bleep out a spoken f-bomb during singer Gerard Way’s little mid-song monologue, but the actual swear word is covered by lazer shot sound effects.

    #22
    #22: “ALL THE LOVERS” by KYLIE MINOGUE.
    Probably the happiest sounding song of the year. Every time I hear it, it makes me smile. Every time I see the video, it makes me smile real big. Kylie’s Aphrodite is one great big adorable pop record that sounds like everything I loved about 1983. And how can you not love a video like this? A white horse on a city street. A white balloon elephant in the sky between the skyscrapers. And a great big Christmas tree of beautiful, copulating, near naked human flesh with Kylie Minogue on top. She swoons, the whole tower swoons, I swoon too.

    #21
    #21: “BUTTERFLY, BUTTERFLY (THE LAST HURRAH)” by A-HA.
    “These stained-glass wings could only take you so far…” Earlier this month, the trio that brought us “Take On Me” in the 80s (and many great – however neglected – singles since) played their last shows. a-ha is kaput. And with this song, they don’t wave good-bye so much as shrug off their 25+ years together.

    In the Top 20: There will be Kanye, I promise. (Or is that a threat?)