Years ago my buddy Money Mike gave me a new CD by Mark Ronson. I loved it, and Mike’s instincts were right on the, err, money again.
Now this is going to be tough so follow along:
Mark is a Gen X guitarist , DJ and *amazing* producer. He produced most of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” album. He signed Wale to his label. He’s produced Adele and the Kaiser Chiefs, Christina Aguilera and Ghostface Killah. Mark is a genius producer who has worked with some of pop music’s best names and produced songs you’ve heard on the radio.
Years ago, there was another genius named Ronson: Mick Ronson. MIck was an even better guitarist. He was at David Bowie’s side for eight albums, including the Spiders from Mars phase. He played with Dylan and The Who. Mick Ronson is rock music royalty.
But Mick Ronson and Mark Ronson are NOT related. Mark, the guy born in the ’70s, is the stepson of another music legend: Mick Jones. Now Mick Jones of The Clash is music royalty too, with a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But before you scream, “Oh, I love The Clash” or “London Calling is my favorite album”, there were two British guys named Mick Jones playing lead guitar in famous bands. There’s Mick Jones of The Clash and Mick Jones of Foreigner. It’s the latter guy, Mick Jones of Foreigner, who is Mark Ronson’s step-father. And darn if Foreigner wasn’t a whole lot more successful than you might remember.
So let’s review:
Mick Ronson is an original guitar hero.
Mark Ronson is not his son.
Mick Jones is Mark Ronson’s step-father.
But not Mick Jones of The Clash.
Mick Jones of Foreigner is Mark Ronson’s step-father.
If you’ve got all that straight, or even if you didn’t, here is the hottest single in multiple countries: Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk, featuring Bruno Mars, a name that’s about as original as they come. Because you see, Bruno’s real name is Peter Hernandez, and no one would want to confuse him with one hit wonder Patrick Hernandez, who had a worldwide hit in 1979 with “Born to be Alive”.
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.
American listeners may not know the name (or they may confuse it with that of the late glam guitar icon Mick), but Mark Ronson was the producer behind one of the hottest musical messes of the last decade, Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black album, not to mention albums and tracks by an impressive cross-genre pantheon of artists as disparate as pop diva Christina Aguilera, British rockers Kaiser Chiefs, and rapper Wale. His signature sound rejected Autotune and all sorts of other sonic CGI in favor of gritty R&B horn sections (no samples please), real life drum sets, and actual singing. The results could be thrilling, but they could also come off sounding unbecomingly gimmicky – a hazard underlined by his 2007 collection of covers called Version. Though that record did yield his biggest hit yet – a cover of the Smiths’ classic “Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before” with Daniel Merriweather on vocals – it was not without a few spectacular duds, like his tedious take on Radiohead’s “Just”, which could only have been worse if he’d recruited Paul Anka or Pat Boone to deliver it.
For his latest album called Record Collection, he’s billing himself as Mark Ronson and the Business Intl. The record’s first single features guest rapper Q-Tip and singer Amanda Warner of the California techno-pop duo MNDR – it’s called “Bang Bang Bang” and re-embraces electronics, albeit in a similarly retro way, building a sleak 80s-inspired sci-fi dance epic out of the disassembled bits of the French children’s song “Alouette”. While as a producer Ronson has been storming the U.S. charts for the last ten years, he hasn’t had an American hit in his own right. This song, as groovy as it is (seriously, it’s been ages since Q-Tip has been this much fun) isn’t likely to change that. But it’s already a Top 10 hit overseas.
