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  • 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?)

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 7: #40-31 “Put your palms to the ceiling like yes, yes…”

    Here comes the Top 40!

    #40
    #40: “THE HIGH ROAD” by BROKEN BELLS.
    “The dawn to end all nights. That’s all we hoped it was…” For whatever reason, that line always gives me a shiver. I’m not even sure I know what it means, but it sounds amazing, doesn’t it? The video’s pretty amazing too… a sort of dream-walking odyssey perfectly tuned to the song’s dark, mysterious atmosphere.

    #39
    #39: “WRITTEN IN REVERSE” by SPOON.
    I’ve had a love/indifference thing going with Spoon for about the last 10 years. It’s been about 90% indifference and 10% love. But when it’s love, it’s really really big love. For example: this song. I love singing along with this song. I love the primal disregard of pitch. I love yelling at drivers in my rear view mirror at clogged intersections: “I’m not standing here! No, I’m! Not standing here!”

    #38
    #38 (TIE): “PARACHUTE” by CHERYL COLE / “PARACHUTE” by INGRID MICHAELSON.
    Formerly of the British girl-group Girls Aloud, Cheryl Cole released her debut solo album late last year. This dramatic take on a track Ingrid Michaelson wrote (but didn’t record) became a hit in the UK earlier this year.

    #38
    And then Ingrid put out her own version of the song. Sorta like Michael Bolton did with that Laura Branigan song in the 80s. Only not disgusting. “How am I supposed to live without you…” Oh my gawd. We should have known Michael Bolton would be nothing but trouble when we saw his writing credit on that Laura Branigan 45. What were we thinking?

    #37
    #37. “WHITE NIGHT” by THE POSTELLES.
    Not that I wish the band ill, but this is one of those debut singles that comes so close to pop perfection that you (almost) know they will only disappoint you in the future. I (almost) want them to be a one-hit-wonder, because I know they’d be awesome at that. This song also features my favorite call-and-response moment of the year. Oh, and I think you can probably still download this for free directly from the Postelles.

    #36
    #36: “I’M A PILOT” by FANFARLO.
    I imagine Fanfarlo is what Arcade Fire would sound like if Arcade Fire were as obsessed with Tigermilk as they are with The River. They write songs that sound simultaneously huge and modest – sweeping and, at the same time, specific. Also, even though albums are sort of on the wane these days and so such things are becoming less relevant, “I’m a Pilot” is a great album opener in the tradition of great album openers.

    #35
    #35: “O.N.E.” by YEASAYER.
    What I like most about this video is that the dancing is exactly what I would like to believe I look like when I’m dancing to this in my basement and nobody can see. What I like second most is that the fictional musical instruments the band plays in the video look exactly like what I imagine the real musical instruments would look like based on the sounds they make. What I like least about this song is that it will be forever linked in my brain as the song I was listening to when someone rear-ended my brand new car two weeks after I’d bought it. Urgh.

    #34
    #34: “A MORE PERFECT UNION” by TITUS ANDRONICUS.
    I would like to believe that this is the stuff of Chris Christie’s nightmares. A little bit of Bruce Springsteen. A little Billy Bragg. A little Bright Eyes, a little Replacements, a little Thin Lizzy. A little Abraham Lincoln, a little William Lloyd Garrison. And a great big joyful noise. This video edits the song down significantly from its 7 minute album version. That version is well worth hearing, but you get the gist of it here.

    #33
    #33: “DANCE FLOOR” by THE APPLES IN STEREO.
    Probably the most adorably unpretty band in the world right now (and yes, I do have a small crush on Robert Schneider – I mean, come on, who wouldn’t?), The Apples in stereo take us on a journey through space, time, analog synth technology and aging hipster fashion. Elijah Wood isn’t just making a cameo here. He has his own record label, and The Apples in Stereo were the first band he signed to it.

    #32
    #32: “WE, MYSELF, AND I” by SHAD.
    Of Rwandan descent, born in Kenya, straight outta London, Ontario comes Mr. Shadrach Kabango (just call him Shad), who financed his first album with money he won the old fashioned way – at a radio station talent contest. On his first two albums, Shad delivers rhymes that go from goofy to poignant over old school R&B samples, but this song, from his latest record TSOL is a stormy, confrontational rocker. And the award for the Best Use of the Word “Yes” in Song goes to…

    #31
    #31: “MY BEST THEORY” by JIMMY EAT WORLD.
    This band generally releases new albums about three years apart, and those long intervals give us time to forget why they were ever a big deal. And then the new album comes, with a single like this – all sweat-drenched urgency – and you remember: Oh yeah, they’re just a great band. As far as the video goes, well who knows what’s going on there, and the lyrics are vague enough to be either profound or banal. It doesn’t matter though. Whatever it’s all supposed to be about, that part where you “feel the air rush out!” sounds exactly like what it’s saying.

    In the next installment: A dance diva on motherhood and a rapper on puberty.