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  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 6: #50-41 “You came to celebrate, I came to cerebrate…”

    And the countdown marches on…

    #50
    #50: “YOU MUST BE OUT OF YOUR MIND” by THE MAGNETIC FIELDS.
    You have to love a guy unafraid to rhyme “on your knees, yeah” with “anesthesia”. A great song about not letting bygones be bygones sung in Stephen Merritt’s strangely incisive Eeyore deadpan. After releasing a their feedback heavy 2008 album Distortion, the Magnetic Fields returned with Realism the stripped-down acoustic yin to its predecessor’s clanging yang.

    #49
    #49: “THE SKY’S THE LIMIT” by JASON DERULO.
    Petty thievery never sounds so good as when Mister Desrouleaux swipes the essence of “Flashdance… What a Feeling” from Irene Cara. The best reinvention of an 80s soundtrack anthem this year. Which is not to say that the Black-Eyed Peas provided any competition with their insufferable “The Time (The Dirty Bit)”. Also: this song contains my favorite instance of the word “shawty”.

    #48
    #48: “TRIPPIN’ DOWN THE FREEWAY” by WEEZER.
    Although the song is about the persistence of a romantic relationship (and a woman’s awesome “Shirley Applebee” look) against all odds (and all guys named Kevin Green), it could be just as much about Weezer and their fans…
    I loved Weezer from the very start, but since their 1996 album Pinkerton, I’ve run hot and cold with them, and in the last few years, I’ve completely written them off (or thought I had). But they always manage somehow to re-justify their existence and re-justify my love. Example: This damn song. Gawd, I love it. It’s been in heavy rotation on my iPod all year. It made me love the band again. It also made me want to google Shirley Applebee. And then, once I did, it made me love the song and the band even more. Weezer and I are gonna be okay.

    #47
    #47: “ALL NIGHT LONG” by ALEXANDRA BURKE featuring PITBULL.
    The fifth season winner of Simon Cowell’s UK (soon to be US) singing competition The X-Factor, Alexandra Burke throws a wild house party. Although I like this version fine, the Pitbull-less version that appears on Burke’s debut album Overcome has a better build-up and you don’t miss the obligatory rap break at all.

    #46
    #46: “TELEPHONE” by LADY GAGA & BEYONCE.
    Before there was a video for this song, it was just a funny little song about not wanting take calls from a stupid boyfriend when you’re out dancing. I love the video, but it sort of overshadows a lot of what was fun about the song to begin with. Although it does give us some very quotable lines. “Once you kill the cow…”

    #45
    #45: “MARCHIN’ ON” by ONEREPUBLIC.
    “For those days we felt like a mistake, for those times when love’s what we hate, somehow, we keep marchin’ on.” This is a great song to listen to after you’ve spent most of an otherwise pleasant evening arguing about who’s more underappreciated and throwing Tupperware lids at each other.

    #44
    #44: “GRENADE” by BRUNO MARS.
    The guy who wrote “F*ck You” for Cee-Lo Green goes all Christ-like (with a piano instead of a cross) for the video for the second single from his debut album Doo Wops and Hooligans. Awesome lyric: “Tell the devil I said ‘Hey’ when you get back to where you’re from…” Ouch. Also, I love – LOVE – the drums in this song.

    #43
    #43: “BREAK YOUR HEART” by TAIO CRUZ.
    This song is all about its middle eight. If this were a countdown of songs I most loved singing along with, this song’s bridge (“Yeah! And I know karma’s gonna get me back for bein’ so cold…”) would be, like, #7. I deliberately chose the original sans-Ludacris version of the song because I think Ludacris distracts us from the super-awesome middle eight.

    #42
    #42: “THE FIRE” by THE ROOTS featuring JOHN LEGEND.
    Like the rest of their amazing album How I Got Over, “The Fire” is tenaciously, apocalyptically soulful. The video has some disturbing imagery, but despite its ambitions, it’s too incoherent to really work.

    #41
    #41: “CREDIBLE THREATS” by THE ONE AM RADIO.
    A nice little song about contemplating all of the possible demises that await us on a day-to-day basis. Things like turbulent airplanes, shuddering L-trains, and sudden floods of brakelights on I-5. Oh, and foreigners. This is also my favorite choreography of the year. The video was also released in a 3D version. And the 45rpm vinyl version of the single came with a set of 3D glasses and a download card for both the song (in various versions) and the 3D video for it.

    In the next installment: Because “one’s not enough”, an unbroken tie…

  • 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