twentysongs

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! NUMBER ONE!

2012-01-12T06:51:00.001-08:00

The NUMBER ONE song in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 Best HitSongs Of 1956 is…

Elvis Presley and "Heartbreak Hotel!!!!!"

Otherwise known as the moment when rock’n’roll lost its virginity.

I like to think that Bill Haley never had sex. That he was a virgin all his life. Simply so that I don’t have to think about him doing it, and I’m pretty sure his wife would agree.

Elvis on the other hand. He was a guy who had sex. He was a guy who had a lot of sex. He was a guy so sure about his sex-supply that even whilst he’s singing a song of heartbreak, he’s letting the girls know where he’s going to be staying tonight.

Lock up your daughters… Elvis aint going to be lonely for long.

Also, I'd just like to say, that the dude on double bass, might just be my favorite standing-around-in-the-background dude of all time!

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!

No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.2!

2012-01-12T05:58:00.003-08:00

The Number Two song in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 Best HitSongs Of 1956 is…

The Platters and “The Great Pretender!”

Despite the presence of the short dude, who had the sad fortune to find himself wearing a suit several sizes too big for him, so that they could get a bulk discount (probably) there were few things in the world more sophisticated and stylish than The Platters.

And even the oversized and baggy tuxedo is made up for by the glamorous dressed that Zola got to wear. No other doo-wop group at the time got to wear glamorous dresses, although that might be because they were usually all men. Clearly The Platters were different.

They had poise. The kind of poise that white folks go to finishing school for. They had expensive sounding orchestras behind them. They had an incredible sense of loud-soft dynamics. The bit where Tony is going “what my Heart Can’t CONCEEEEAAAAAL!!!!!!”- and there’s great passion and “who-e-ohs” – and then suddenly it all falls to the ground, and Tony finds himself in the awkward position of admitting – “yes” – the unfortunate situation that he finds himself in, and that life truly sucks. These kinds of sudden and sometimes subtle shifts in mood happen frequently throughout “The Great Pretender” making it a true emotional rollercoaster ride of a tune.

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!
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No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.3!

2012-01-10T08:26:00.001-08:00

The Number Three song in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956 is…

Les Baxter and “The Poor People Of Paris!”

I think it’s time to get a bit cultural, don’t you?

As mentioned for our No.18 song, “The 1950s were a dreamy instrumental kind of decade. Dreamy instrumentals that pretended to be travel brochures from exotic lands across the sea… Europe. Asia. Africa.”

And Les Baxter was the undisputed king of this stuff. His albums – given such exciting B-grade movie titles as “Ritual Of The Savage”, “Tamboo!” and the rather sexual “Ports Of Pleasure” - traversed those corners of the Earth where you wouldn’t be surprised to find that you are drinking out of Dr Livingstone’s skull.

On two of his albums, he even travelled through space!

But nothing he did ever was ever quite as delightful, or managed to cram in so many ideas into far less than 3.20 seconds, than this tribute to the city of love. Whether whistling Casanovas, or mademoiselles skipping along the Seine with a baguette under their arm, there’s always something happening in “The People Of Paris”. Even a choir of ghosts turn up at one stage to sing “la la la”.

All of which makes “The Poor People Of Paris” the most delightfully quirky Number One of 1956.

Meanwhile in Britain, bless their cotton socks, they decided that they preferred this version, and sent this to Number One instead. Which just goes to show just how addictive that little tune is!

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!

No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.4!

2012-01-10T07:46:00.001-08:00

The Number Four song in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956 is…

“Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino!

Here is a song full of pure joy!

It’s the joy of a horny fat man who doesn’t get much action, remembering a time when he got some action, and putting it in his spank bank! And as you might therefore expect, the song feels one part romantic, to two parts a bit like Fats is being a little too over eager to fumble with the bra hooks and try to figure out how exactly people do apparently actually manage to have sex in a car.

Meanwhile the boppiest little boogie-woogie bass line boogie-woogies away, in an excitably nervous manner, and jittery hi-hat hisses, making the record sound far more energetic than a record so slow should probably sound.

It might not be the sound of rock’n’roll losing its virginity (that’s still to come), but it’s certainly the sound of it getting to second base (possibly even third!).

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!

No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.5!

2012-01-09T07:01:00.001-08:00

The Number Five … not song exactly, but Number Five record … in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956 is…

“Don’t Be Cruel” by Elvis Presley, with “Hound Dog” on the B-side!

That’s two of Elvis’ biggest classics on the one piece of wax! What a bargain!

First, here’s “Don’t Be Cruel”

Elvis had had girls screaming at him for a couple of years by now, and obviously he knows what they like and how to make them scream. Elvis goes “mmmmm” and they scream. Elvis stands frozen still for a second, and they scream. There’s a bit there where Elvis is doing nothing identifiably special, but still they scream then too.

Behind the scenes it appears that they’d figured out exactly how to create the perfect Elvis record to make girls scream as well. Not only is it full of the kind of “thankyouverymuch” styled low notes that made the women go wide, but it features the best looking man alive down on his feet and groveling. How could a girl resist?

“Hound Dog” on the other hand, is a completely different matter. It is the biggest full-frontal sexual assault of his career, so much so that even sans pelvic gyrations, it’s difficult to believe that it is actually just about a useless dog. Surely there must be some smutty innuendo. Perhaps, in Big Mama Thornton’s version she was singing about a good-for-nothing boyfriend, but dudes don’t sing songs like that. Elvis is truly just singing about a useless dog.

Quite why he felt the need to dry hump a microphone whilst singing about such a dog, I’m not entirely sure, but who am I to question the King?

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!

No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.6!

2012-01-09T06:28:00.001-08:00

The Number Six song in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956 is…

“Just Walking In The Rain” by Johnnie Ray!

About half a decade after Johnnie initially exploded as the biggest and most confusing enigma in pop – a gay man who cried whilst he sung, in a 1950s America where ever second man on television was a tough guy cowboy – and at a time when the whole crying shtick was getting a little old, Johnnie came back with a piece of pop, perfectly balanced between heartache and happiness.

It was a happy sounding tune – the whistling is almost jaunty! - from the depths of despair. It was a song written by two murderers and a serial rapist, which, after being recorded with all the wholesome cheesy good vibes that Columbia Records could throw at it, had been rendered into perfect whistling material for the busy little housewife at home. Pain, suffering and alienation - he’s walking in the cold and unpleasant rain, whilst people/society, in their warm dry comfy houses, looking out at him disapprovingly, judging him, condemning him, whilst he continues to walk alone in the never ending rain - all disguised as a radio jingle.

If this is not the perfect metaphor for angsty gay boy “nobody understands me” syndrome, I don’t know what is.

Frankie Laine really went on with his intros didn’t he? And why did he have to be so serious? Gosh!

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!

No.8!

No.7!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.7!

2012-01-09T06:10:00.001-08:00

The Number Seven song in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956 is…

“Tonight You Belong To Me” by Patience And Prudence!

Between this, and our No.8 hit (Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers), we can deduce that 1956 was an excellent year to be a kid, with plenty of role models singing songs they clearly didn’t understand. At least hopefully they didn’t understand it, since “Tonight You Belong To Me” is clearly about seducing an ex-boyfriend, who is going out with another. So either it’s all as sweet and innocent as it sounds, or else it’s the most delightfully subliminal attempt at making cheating sound cute ever recorded (which could, come to think of it, go along way to explaining the high rates of divorce amongst the Baby Boomer generation).

If it was just two little girls singing a song about having sex with an ex- that would be disturbing enough, but what gets Patience & Prudence so high on this list, is that it not only bet the previous candidate for Cutest Song Of All Time – which would have been Gayla Preevy’s 1953 hit “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas” – but leaves it in its cloudy little puffs of dust!

To put it another way, it made Teresa Brewer and Doris Day sound butch.

It is also possible that the entire cannon of twee indie pop would not exist without this song. Although, to be honest, it probably would.

This is kind of thing that can happen to you if you are the spoilt brat kids of Frank Sinatra’s pianist.

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!

No.8!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.8!

2012-01-08T08:00:00.001-08:00

The Number Eight song in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 BestHit Songs Of 1956 is…

“Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” by Frankie Lymon And The Teenagers!

Kids have always been bewildered by love. Mostly it is in a “ewww kissing” kind of manner, which later evolves into “Oh My God! You let him do WHAT?!!? That’s SOOOO GROSS!,” once they have been given “the talk” and understand the entire scope of the situation. Frankie Lymon was a little more mature about this, and turned it into pop philosophy of the very first order.

What does this tell us about the building blocks of pop? Are they so obvious, that even though Frankie most likely has little idea of the intricacies of love, he can plop a couple of cliches together, and wham bam! BIG HIT SINGLE!!! It’s unlikely that someone who was actually lamenting on the more inexplicable downsides of the human condition, - “why do fools fall in love?” – would follow it up with the happy-happy-joy-joy image of “why do birds sing so gay?” unless he was just wacking together a bunch of fail-safe lines from every song he’d ever heard.

But does this matter? Of course not! It just adds to the innocence and wonder of it all.

What Frankie lacks in terms of understanding the meaning of the words he is singing, and which he wrote himself, he makes up for in terms of his embrace of the happy jumpin’ jivin’ sounds of pop, and the clichés that make up the genre: gay birds singing, rain falling, hearts skipping beats… all of which induces the reaction, not of “ewww” but of “aaaaw.”

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.9!

2012-01-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

The Number Nine song in The OzHitztory Blog’s Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956 is…

“Sixteen Tonnes” by Tennessee “Ernie” Ford!

Everybody start clicking your fingers. Slowly.

Prior to the emergence of Johnny Cash on the scene the next year (who, in his breakthrough hit “Walk The Line” used a similarly bleak less-is-more arrangement to a similarly awesome effect) , Tennessee “Ernie”Ford was caught in a draw with Frank Sinatra for who was the most masculine tough guy in pop. And with this song – a hard working tough guy song if ever there was one - “Ernie” probably would have won too, if not for his tiny little and a touch dandy-ish Gomez Adams moustache.

Just how tough was “Ernie” in “Sixteen Tonnes.” Well he started working in a mine, ON THE DAY HE WAS BORN! He often killed people for the crime of not getting out of his way when he was walking down the street! So tough that he doesn’t need a whole gang of dudes carrying instruments to back him up. Just a bit of clicking of the fingers is (practically) all he needs, because tough guys don’t dance.

That’s some pretty serious bravado and myth making there.

And yet…

Despite being so tough, he still can’t beat “the man”.

That 1%. They’ll get you every time.

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.10!

2012-01-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

The Number Ten Song Of The OzHitztory Blog's Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956 is ...

Doris Day and "Whatever Will Be (Que Sera Sera)!!!

In a recent poll here at The OzHitztory Blog, on who was the greatest “girl singer” – as they said back then – of the 1950s, and against heady competition from the likes of Rosemary Clooney, Teresa Brewer, Joni James and Patti Page, Doris won in a landslide!

This is despite the fact that, for the first half of the decade, Doris had released nothing but rubbish (not to mention despite the fact that her name was Doris, arguably the worst name for a pop star). Addictive, impossible-to-look-away styled rubbish to be sure, but rubbish none the less. “Secret Love” from Calamity Jane put an end to that rubbish period, but it was “What Ever Will Be (Que Sera Sera)” – a song half nursery rhyme, half life-philosophy – that became her anthem, and a sweet dose of chirpy optimism in an uncertain world.

And given that the world is in a constant state of uncertainty, that pretty much makes it timeless!

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No. 12 -11

No.9!

No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.12 -11!

2012-01-06T07:10:00.001-08:00

12. Frank Sinatra – Love Is A Tender Trap

1956 was arguably Frank Sinatra’s best year. And this wasn’t even his best song from that year (I personally would go with “You Make Me Feel So Young” from “Songs For Swingin’ Lovers!”), but it’s the only song on this list, because … well… they didn’t release any singles from “Songs For Swingin’ Lovers.”

But similar to the tunes on “Songs For Swingin’ Lovers!”, it’s Frank doing what Frank did well… singing about love with a cynical swagger, as if it were something nice and exciting, and something that was bound to get him into trouble, but that’s life, so you might as well make a joke of it all.

He really did sing those kinds of songs well.

11. Gogi Grant – Wayward Wind

To explain the brilliance of this track, we have guest reviewer Trent B Davidson, who made this comment on a Facebook link to the initial blog post about this song (I should probably ask his permission but… ah he’ll be fine with it)…

“This one of my favorite songs of all time. I woke up in the middle night with the radio on and a minute later this song came on with the blaring French horn, the errie Ghostly backing vocals, the cowboy movie strings and the pounding miltary style rhythms... It blew my mind.”

I don’t think there is possibly a better way to discover this song, than waking up in the middle of the night, with this song on the radio, drifting across the room and into your ear drums. Is it real? It is just a dream? With a song such as this, you can never really be sure.

P.S. The suggested videos on YouTube for this song, range from the Andrews Sisters “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” to the opening theme song to The Lone Ranger. And somehow it seems relevant to both. You’d be hard pressed to find a song that runs the gambit of pop cultural references quite as much.

No. 20 - 16

No. 15-13

No.10!

No.9!

No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.15-13!

2012-01-06T06:57:00.001-08:00

15. Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps – Be Bop A Lula

Not the most exciting of the early rock’n’roll heroes. But certainly one of the most authentic. Gene did not contain one chromosome of show biz flash, and the rest of his gang was made up of the scruffiest looking ragamuffins in America, looking as though they came up with the line “Be Bop A Lula” because they weren’t educated enough to come up with actual words. Even if you concur to the “Awopbopaloopopalopbamboo School Of Rock’n’Roll Lyric Writing” where the only good rock’n’roll lyric is a nonsensical rock’n’roll lyric – according to which therefore “Be Bop A Lula” is pure poetry - it’s hard to be impressed by a song that rhymes “she’s my baby” with “I don’t mean maybe.”

So why is “Be Bop A Lula” on the Top 20 Best Hit Songs of1956 list?

Mostly I think it’s due to the bass players hair.

Look at that hair! I mean look at it!

Even if Gene Vincent And The Blue Caps made no other contribution to the evolution of rock’n’roll – and they did make other contributions, such as making it all look so easy that anyone could do it – then they should be congratulated for introducing the crucial importance of good hair into the rock’n’roll rule book.

14. The Four Lads – No Not Much

After establishing themselves with geographically informative novelty tunes such as “Istanbul (Not Constantipole)”, thus turning them into one of the biggest barber shop quartet groups of the 1954 Barber Shop Quartet Revolution, The Four Lads came back in 1956 with something a little bit unexpected… something actually good!

Maybe it wasn’t quite unexpected. They had after all taken some steps towards music that was listenable without being laughable with their ode to nostalgia “Moments To Remember” the year before. That tune was all very well and good. And it did include a spoken monologue.

But “No, Not Much” was something else. This time they use their humor – and particularly their sense of irony – not to teach the kids about geography, but to shower the object of their affection with more affection than most people can handle.

What does “like a ten cent soda doesn’t cost a dime” mean exactly?

13. Carl Perkins – Blue Suede Shoes

I think we can all agree, with the benefit of several decades of hindsight, that “Blue Suede Shoes” ‘ “Well it’s a one for the money/two for the show/ three to get ready/ now go cat go” are the all-time best lyrics with which to start a rock’n’roll song. Or in this case, a well-mannered and rather polite rockabilly party jam!

Songs about dancing had of course been around forever. As had songs about articles of clothing. Although the latter certainly became a topic that rock’n’rollers made their own.

I do not think however, that ever before, had a hit song been made about the danger that the former might inflict on the latter.

Which makes it a rather bizarre little song. Made even more bizarre by the fact that nobody actually wore blue suede shoes in the 1950s, because they were so ugly. But why should a song have to make sense… Elvis for example, was always best when singing songs that didn’t mean a hell of a lot, so when he covered it, the very next year: look out Carl, your version is cool and all, but … WOAH!

No. 20-16!

No. 12 -11

No.10!

No.9!

No.8!

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1956! No.20 - 16!

2012-01-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

No.7!

No.6!

No.5!

No.4!

No.3!

No.2!

NUMBER ONE!

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1955: NUMBER ONE! THE FOUR ACES - MR SANDMAN!!!

2011-07-10T04:44:00.001-07:00

(Highest Chart Position: Number ONE!)

And so our Top 20 of 1955, which started off with a Back To The Future reference, is concluded with a Back To The Future reference! Everything has come full circle! Isn’t it amazing! I would never have dreamt that it could turn out so fortuitously!

Bah, it goes all weird half way. That’s no fair.

Here’s the full version:

The back-up singing angels that drift in and out on white fluffy clouds! The way that each word is pronounced perfectly and politely. The way that they show their passion for correct and precise grammar by changing “two lips like roses and clover” to “two lips that look like roses and clover,” just in case anyone was in any confusion as to what they actually meant. Which displays a level of thoughtfulness absent in recording by most other pop groups.

Changing the lyrics, you say? … Well of course… since there is also another, only slightly less incredible version.

The Chordette’s version, which has, over the years, become considered as the definitive version, largely due to the cameo appearance of Mr. Sandman himself going “yeeeESSS?” which is sadly absent from The Four Aces version. There is also the little matter of the featuring of a lyric about Liberace, which The Four Aces version lacks, probably because they figured that the song was gay enough already.

Other than the regrettable absence of “yeeeESSS?” – and the lack of Liberace references - The Four Aces version is as perfect as 1950s pop gets.

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1955: No.2 The Penguins - Earth Angel

2011-07-09T05:55:00.001-07:00

(Highest Chart Position: No. 12)

There’s something so very innocent about “Earth Angel.” Perhaps because it is the sound of a teenage crush. Perhaps because it is the sound of 100% pure idealism.

Perhaps it’s the romantic in me, but I like to imagine that the song was written, not in order to be a hit or anything as cynical as that, but simply in order to impress some little cutie in the neighborhood. And then they sang it out of her window until her father came out to tell them to scram.

(Insert some nonsense ruminations about ”the tendency of teenage boys to create virtual pseudo religions about the girls they have a crush on” with some connection to the usage of “angel” imagery, here)

There’s even something so very innocent about the way it was recorded. In a garage. Can you say “authentic”?

Not to mention that it was pretty much the first hit single written by a bunch of almost teenagers (the oldest member of The Penguins had just turned 20) and inspired a mass movement of thousands of other kids - first black kids, and then everyone else - to start a doo-wop group in the late 1950s. All you needed was a couple of friends and a corner to sing on, and as long as one of your friends could sing bass, and another could sing falsetto, you had yourself a doo-wop group! You didn’t even need lessons.

That’s not just innocent. It’s delightful naïve. And that’s a beautiful thing.

THE REST OF THE TOP 20 OF 1955!

No. 20-16

No. 15-11

No. 10-6

No. 5

No. 4

No. 3

The Top 20 Best Hit Songs Of 1955: No.3 Bill Haley & His Comets - (We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock

2011-07-09T01:58:00.001-07:00

(Highest Chart Position: Number One!)

“1,2,3 o’clock, 4 o’clock rock”: the cry of youthful rebellion apparently. Or the cry of a kinda chubby guy with a stupid looking curl right in the middle of the forehead whose only goal in life was to get wholesome kids to do wholesome things on the dancefloor. The man and his band were simple people who just wanted to make super happy fun party music for people to dance to. They weren’t looking for any trouble. They weren’t looking to start a revolution. This can be seen by two facts:

(1) They named themselves after a three-centuries old astronomer. These rock’n’rollers had clearly been paying attention in school. All those years before.

(2) They use the word “glad rags” in the first verse. I mean, who, even in 1955, used the word “glad rags”? The phrase was already about a decade out of fashion, as can be demonstrated by the graph HERE! Interesting graph. It would appear that the phrase is actually more popular now than in 1955... who would have thought.

(Is there anything that Google does not know?)

And yet, pretty much by accident, the song changed the world.

Amazing.

THE REST OF THE TOP 20 OF 1955!

No. 20-16

No. 15-11

No. 10-6

No. 5

No. 4

The Top 20 Of The Top 20! 1955: No.4 Perez Prado - Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White

2011-07-07T04:27:00.001-07:00

(Highest Chart Position: Number One!)

In such a mambo friendly list as this is turning out to be, then obviously we need something that is actually proper mambo, not just featuring the word “mambo.” And what better than something by the inventor of the mambo himself, Perez Prado!

Most of his songs featured the word “mambo” in their titles: “The Fireman Mambo, “The Telephone Operators Mambo”, “The Taxi Drivers Mambo”, “The Filling Station Mambo”, “The Newsboy Mambo” and the “Mexico University Mambo.” Not to mention “Mambo No. 5.” Not that it mattered too much what the tunes were called since they featured few, if any, words other than the grunt of “UGH!”

“Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White” does not feature the word “mambo” in its title. This was a large creative leap for Perez.

Still no words other than “UGH!” though, but why do you need them when the trumpets are blasting so loudly that they occasionally have to sit down for a moment to catch their breath.

The bits where the trumpet slooowwws riiiighhht doooowwwwn, suspended in mid-air so that it sounds as though it is going to fall, but then somehow springs back up… Genius!

It was the first Number One single ever to come from the exotic land of Cuba. It was only natural then that Les Baxter, America’s leading proponent of music from lands and planets so exotic that they probably didn’t actually exist, would also give the tune a go. And whilst Perez’ version is a loud and sweaty thing targeted directly towards the mambo dance floor, Les does what he always does: throw everything into the mix and take us all on a magical mystery tour of his mind. The result is probably the cutest, and definitely the weirdest little hit record of 1955.

The Top 20 Of The Top 20! 1955: No. 5 Perry Como - Papa Loves Mambo

2011-07-06T06:36:00.001-07:00

(Highest Chart Position: No.3)

It’s another novelty song about mambo! Of the type for which 1955 is justifiably famous, as the novelty song writers of the world (of which there were many in 1955) discovered that not only did the mambo have an addictive rhythm, but it was such a fun word to say! And so the novelty song writers of the world racked their brains for the perfect lyric, the lyric that would most perfectly frame the word “mambo” and allow it reach its full potential as a fun word to say.

“Papa loves mambo/ mama loves mambo” was this lyric.

And Perry was the perfect man to sing such a ridiculous line, the only person in the world who could sing such a line total deadpan, with a sub-text of “can you believe the shit that they’ve got me to sing, ah at least it’s a job.” Nobody has ever said “wow!” and sounded as though they didn’t really mean it. In fact I should probably erase the exclamation mark from that last sentence. Although probably not the ironic quote marks.

As a celebration of the ridiculousness of the pop music industry, there are few more delightful moments.

The Top 20 Of The Top 20! 1955 No. 10-6

2011-07-05T07:51:00.001-07:00

10. Sammy Davis Jnr – Something’s Gotta Give

(Highest Chart Position: No.3)

Swinging was all about swagger. And few people had more swagger, had more self-confidence in his zillion talents than did Sammy. Which is made ever more impressive by he being a midget with a glass eye. When you are a midget with a glass eye and you are singing about being an “irresistible force”, well that’s just about as much swagger as the world can cope with!

9. Rosemary Clooney – Mambo Italiano

(Highest Chart Position: No.2)

1955 saw the world in the grips of a mambo craze. Everyone loved the mambo, and they expressed this love in the only way that people in the 1950s knew how: by singing novelty tunes about it! In this case, about the way a girl could go back to her home town, away from the hustle and bustle of modern day trends… and find that the modern day trends have arrived before her.

Ah the wonders of globalization!

This is, let’s face it, a stupid song. Full of nonsense lyrics that I practically need to go to Google Translate to understand, such as “try an enchilada with da fish a bac a lab”… um… “try an enchilada with a fish from a laboratory?” That can’t be right.

So why am I proclaiming its awesomeness?

Well clearly it’s a classic. The song returned to near the toppish end of the charts in the year 2000 wtih a Latino-house-disco flavor, and Lady Gaga has paid homage/ripped-off depending on your point of view (I’m leaning more towards homage myself) for the intro for “Americano” from “Born This Way.” That’s a lot of mileage for a little bit of nonsense.

8. Joni James – How Important Can It Be?

(Highest Chart Position: No.5)

Boyfriends in the 1950s were stupid creatures.

They were really into the virgin thing. And if you’d had a boyfriend previously… and your new boyfriend found out… things could get messy.

Here are some interesting statistics uncovered by market research of teenagers at the time: "20% of boys claimed that they would refuse to marry a girl who had petted another boy, and 37% of girls wouldn’t marry a boy who had petted before."

“How Important Can It Be?” is an oh-so-pretty time capsule of the social norms of the time, and a warning to teenage girl not to “pet” before you’ve got a ring on it, because your boyfriend is probably going to call you a slut.

Stupid boyfriend.

*rolls eyes*

Stupid Joni for actually apologizing and not just kicking his sorry ass to the curb.

*shakes head in disappointment*

But it’s oh-so-pretty.

And so is Joni.

7. The Four Aces – Love Is A Many Splendored Thing

(Highest Chart Position: No.3)

What an amazing world The Four Aces lived in! People were so in love with each other that they just had to shout it from the highest mountain top! So excited about it that you’d almost think that it was a new discovery… a new invention like television and REALLY BIG CARS!

Lots of people lived in this world in the 1950s but no one else quite took the emotion – the love of being in love – to the levels that The Four Aces did. It’s a wonder to watch them, a wonder to wonder just how much more gleeful these guys can become over the course of the tune. By the time they reach the final crescendo, and the tom drums roll, the gates of heaven are opening up, and the angels are fluttering down to Earth with their little bow and arrows, and it feels as though the world has been saved from the cynical clutches of divorce and bad relationships.

Such is the power of music.

6. Al Hibbler – Unchained Melody

(Highest Chart Position: Number ONE!)

Before there was Stevie Wonder, before there was Ray Charles, there was another awesome blind black dude with glasses. And coming into his Number One hit version “Unchained Melody” after decades of Idol/karaoke/Righteous Brothers versions is something of a revelation. This is not a song to be sung straight, it is not just a nice melody. It is unchained after all (okay, because of it was also the title of the movie, but I’m going with this…) and Al sings it as such, with the mood of the song, the way he sings each word, changing on virtually every note. Picking all the highlights would be exhausting. There’s a “to meeeeeee” bit that is gold. There’s this one time where he sings “love” and the Earth trembles with his bass. There’s the very determined manner in which he states where the lonely rivers flow “to the sea, to the sea!” There’s the slow motion “tooooooooo meeeeee” at the end, the “tooooooooo” of which is also quite bowl trembling.

There just aren’t enough awesome blind black dudes in pop music anymore.

The Top 20 Of The Top 20! 1955 No. 15-11

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15. Tony Bennett – Stranger In Paradise

(Highest Chart Position: Number ONE!)

Tony is a man full of happiness. Look at virtually any picture of the man and his face is so happy that his eyes have to squint. Sometimes when listening to him, it feels as though the emotion might swallow him whole. So when given a song full of words like “wonderland”, “starry eyed” and verbs such as “ascend”, combined with a very 1950s style infatuation with outer space in parts, suddenly Tony is in his own dreamy fantasy element.

And the way he sings “paradiiii-eeese” is pretty cool.

14. Sarah Vaughan – Make Yourself Comfortable

(Highest Chart Position: No.4)

Unlike the De Castro Sisters at No.18 (who were most likely 30-year old virgins at the time they recorded “Teach Me Tonight) it’s almost certain that Sarah Vaughan had indeed had sex. At least once. Possibly quite a few times. And she probably enjoyed it quite a bit.

Which helps make “Make Yourself Comfortable” the sexiest hit song of 1955! But it’s still 1955, and it’s still all very quaint. There’s lots of “hug a hug and kiss a kiss” for example. There’s a lot of bragging about the technical capabilities of the stereo system (it “changes automatically” apparently, which is always convenient when you are in the mood for a bit of lovin’). She uses the word “shoesy” (instead of “shoes”). At least I think she does. I had to rewind it a few times just to make sure, and I think that yes “shoesy” was actually the word she used. The mind boggles imagining what pet names this couple must have for each other.

It’s nice to know that at least someone in 1955 was having sex.

13. Slim Whitman – When I Grow Too Old To Dream

(Highest Chart Position: No.11)

What with his tendency to sing in slow motion, listening to Slim always has a kind of dreamy quality. The kind of thing that’s perfect to drift off to sleep to, whilst you let it wash over you. So when he actually sings a song about dreaming, then it’s something special, as first a plunking piano glides in over the airways, blending into a mournful violin, which in turns blends into a pensive humming solo…

The crackling on this particular YouTube video, which makes it sound as though you are driving down a country highway in the middle of the night with your radio not tuned in quite right, probably the way Slim wanted you to hear it: gives it even more of an other worldly quality.

Just don’t drift off to wonderland whilst you are driving.

12. Frankie Laine – Cool Water

(Highest Chart Position: No.6)

One of the rules of pop music in 1955, is that if you had a good song and you wanted to make it amazing, or alternatively if you had a rather terrible song and you wanted to make it listenable, then you gave a certain man a call. A man by the name of Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft. You may know him better as Tony The Tiger. His comically low baritone could turn any otherwise embarrassing pile of crap into novelty song gold!

“Cool Water” isn’t an embarrassing pile of crap. It’s a song of desperation and desolation, and hopefully, once you find your oasis, desalination. So just imagine what Thurl can do with this!

Then of course there’s Frankie himself, tearing the guts out of lines like “Dan can you see that big green tree?” with a passion that makes you wonder if he was genuinely dying of thirst and his life depended upon it.

11. Ella Fitzgerald – Lullaby Of Birdland

(Highest Chart Position: No. 18)

Is there anybody in the world who doesn’t like Ella Fitzgerald? She’s a hard person not to like. The way she’s looks rather dour, but sounds completely joyful. The way she looks so ordinary, but sounds so extraordinary. As though she’s a superhero of song with a secret identity.

So when you have such as superhero of song (I like the phrase so much I’m using it twice) singing a song so catchy that it could practically be a nursery rhyme, featuring nursery rhyme friendly lyrics about “weeping old willow(s)” then you just know you are in for something special.

The Top 20 Of The Top 20: 1955! No. 20-16

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It’s time for …… The Top 20 Best Songs that reached the Top 20 in Australia in 1955!

(as brought to you by my other music blog The OzHitztory Blog!)

It was the year when Martin Seamus McFly travelled 30 years back in time and invented rock’n’roll! What a year that was.

If your favorite song from 1955 isn’t included as part of this list then this must mean one of two things.

(1) It didn’t make the Australian Top 20 (this is somewhat on purpose, in order to avoid the rock and/or jazz snobbery that often infects lists such as this)

(2) It actually wasn’t very good, and you need to deal with that.

Unless it was “Finger Of Suspicion” by Dickie Valentine. That just missed out. If only he’d had a slightly less embarrassing name.

20. The De John Sisters – (My Baby Don’t Love Me) No More

(Highest Chart Position: No.18)

This song is sooo obnoxious and over the top irritating (all in a good way obviously) that it’s hard to believe that the De John Sisters were genuinely surprised that their baby dumped them. Some guys just can’t handle ladies when they are loud, and when they are threatening to “pick on you.” Guys back then were more used to girls being like the De Castro Sisters (see No.18).

It’s also hard to believe that they thought an umpaloompa band revival might actually be a good idea.

Although the matching outfits and waving hats look IS rather fetching.

I also like the way they sing the word “knockin’!”

19. Nat King Cole - Smile

(Highest Chart Position: No.5)

99% of photos ever taken of Nat King Cole feature him smiling. Usually in a cheeky manner. This is a fact (that I just made up). And the generous fellow that he was, Nat liked to encourage everyone else to smile around him. Although he appears to lack empathy with other people's genuine problems (problems that may not actually be solved with simply a smile), you can tell that his big heart is in the right place. So it’s difficult not to like him.

Particularly when he’s so damned smooth.

18. De Castro Sisters – Teach Me Tonight

(Highest Chart Position: No. 18)

The sound of sex 1950s style.

When heard through a 1950s prism, singing about sex essentially involves 30+ year old women singing about losing their virginity. In fact, at the time that the song is being sung, they are still virgins, it hasn’t happened yet, and they don’t appear to be entirely certain what it actually involves. If the line “one thing isn’t very clear my love/ should the teacher stand so near my love?” is any indication, they don’t even seem to be aware that it involves physical contact.

It is certainly a time capsule from a very different time.

17. Frank Sinatra – Learning The Blues

(Highest Chart Position: Number One!)

Certainly not Frank’s best song. Nor his best known song. Or his best charting song (although it was a Number One!) But… if you only have time in your life to hear one Frank Sinatra song, one song to get the gist of the kinds of songs he liked to sing and the way he liked to sing them, then perhaps this should be it.

It features pretty much everything you could ever want in a Sinatra song. The being draped over the end of a bar talking to the barman about his troubles. The world weary wisdom in all things related to love. The light at the end of the tunnel and certainty that one day you will come out victorious. His indebtedness to the African American musical tradition. The big “New York, New York” trumpet intro.

It’s all there in this one song.

16. Teresa Brewer – Let Me Go Lover

(Highest Chart Position: Number One!)

The perpetual teenager “Let Me Go Lover” sees Teresa feeling not very happy at all. And when teenagers are unhappy, they feel like it’s the end of the world, and they lock themselves in their bedrooms to have a big old cry. As such, this is one of the first attempts by the music industry to bottle teenage angst, and sell it back to the populace. And indeed it worked. By the end of this song if you don’t both hate her boyfriend and want to give Teresa a hug, then clearly you have no soul.

THE TOP 20 OF PRE-ROCK’N’ROLL POP No. ONE!

2011-03-15T04:58:00.000-07:00

AND THE NUMBER ONE BEST HIT SONG OF THE PRE-ROCK'N'ROLL ERA IS.... (drum roll)....

1. The Four Aces – Mr Sandman

From the same decade that gave the world probably more Christmas albums than any other (probably, it’s difficult to prove these things absolutely) comes “Mr. Sandman” a song in which a mystical creature, the subject of so many nursery rhymes and fairy tales, combines with the power of teenage hormones and a longing for love, to create a fluffy piece of perfect pop that no other song of the era can touch.

Specifically The Four Aces version, which, with its Technicolor “the hills are alive with the sound of music” opening, is so much better than The Chordettes version. Really it is. Even though history has smiled so much more kindly on The Chordettes. I blame feminist revisionists.

The Chordettes sound - in resorting to asking a mythological being for help with their love lives – like desperate middle aged women on their way to a Desperate & Dateless Ball (and besides, all that “bung, bung, bung, bung, bung”... is just annoying!). The Four Aces sound a bit more like the friendliest of game show hosts, not needily begging for affection – that would seem unmanly, and The Four Aces seem unmanly enough at the best of times – but charming putting themselves forward, selling themselves, as the best man for the “lonely nights are job” job. And when wearing tux’s like that, what girl could possibly say no?

But hey, you decide. Here’s The Four Aces:

Here’s The Chordettes:

THE TOP 20 OF PRE-ROCK’N’ROLL POP No. 5-2!

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5. Frank Sinatra – Young At Heart

You’re probably looking at this list now and thinking, “y’know, there really isn’t enough Frank Sinatra”, and you’d probably be right. The problem is, this being a list of hit singles and all, that most of Frank’s classics of the period – “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “You Make Me Feel So Young”, “Come Fly With Me”, or it you feel like being a purist about it “I Get Along Without You Very Well” – just weren’t released as singles.

Which leaves us with a bunch of singles that are swell but not equal to the draw dropping brilliance that justifies being included in this list. “I’m Walking Behind You” comes close, but “Love And Marriage” is just a little too cute, and cute Sinatra… that doesn’t really sit well does it.

Which leaves us with “Young At Heart”, his biggest chart hit ever in Australia, and a classic if ever there was one. The first in the long list of Sinatra songs about life and what it all means, songs that you can base your life on, but one where he sounds like a wide eyed Democrat voting optimist, instead of the grumble-bum Republican that he would later become in the “That’s Life” and “My Way” era.

4. Perry Como – Magic Moments

Perry Como was such a relaxed fellow, always seeming on the verge of nodding off, that it’s always entertaining to hear him do a boppy tune. There’s a certain adorable old uncle entertaining the kids-ness about it all. And in “Magic Moments” this is combined with the power of name-dropping every all-American activity of those long gone innocent times: hay rides! Sleigh rides! Halloween costumes! And the quaintness of a time when the primitive telecommunications infrastructure meant that a telephone call could tie up a line. And finally, it contains something that should be at the very top of any “things that there are not enough of in pop music these day” list: Whistling.

3. Johnnie Ray – Cry

Quite why Johnnie Ray isn’t quite a bit more of a pop icon that he is – if LastFM listening figures are anything to go by then he is only 5% as popular as Tony Bennett, 3% as popular as Dean Martin, 2% as popular as Nat “King” Cole and 0.5% as popular as Frank Sinatra, which just doesn’t quite seem fair – is a bit of a wonder. And his qualifications for being a pop icon are considerable: an impossibly depressed closeted homosexual (it was the 50s) with a giant hearing aid sticking out his ear for everyone to see, with arms flaying around, and songs that almost always appeared to end up in tears. A perfect icon surely for the angsty teenager in us all. If the title to this song isn’t enough of a give away then also note that his follow up single was called “The Little White Cloud That Cried”, possibly the most uber-sensitive new aged man song title ever concocted. Logically he should be blu-tacked up on every lonely teenagers bedroom between the James Dean and Morrissey posters (do kids stick up James Dean and Morrissey posters?) Instead all he gets is the opening line in “Come On Eileen.”

2. Les Paul & Mary Ford - How High The Moon

Pretty much the premier guitar god of the pre rock’n’roll era - there was admittedly not a lot by way of competition, at least not in the pop charts - it apparently wasn’t enough for Les Paul to be a guitar hero – and something of a guitar addict, the man did tend to love his guitar perhaps a little bit too much - he had to be a mad scientist as well, locking himself up in his home studio, experimenting with wacky hi-tech machinery in an attempt to create the “The New Sound”, basically involving playing 12 guitar overdubs all over the top of each other, and an awful lot of showing off. Then - because just because you are a mad scientist, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are evil - he found a nice wholesome gal called Mary to sing nice wholesome country tunes over the top. Meaning that regardless of whether you are into blistering guitar solos, or comely buxom preachers daughters, there’s something in “How High The Moon” for all of us.

Gosh, I wonder what Number One will be!

THE TOP 20 OF PRE-ROCK’N’ROLL POP No. 10-6

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Because everyone loves a good list, here we have the Top 20 Best Big Hit Songs Of The Pre-Rock’n’Roll Era! Some people call the Pre-Rock’n’Roll era the Traditional Pop Era. Basically it was a lighthearted period of time (from 1950 till around 1958, at about which time “pre rock’n’roll pop”, having managed to survive through three years of the rock’n’roll era, just shrugged it’s collective shoulders, decided to let the kids have their fun and retreated to Las Vegas), when naïve pop stars sung innocent pop songs that weren’t about sex or drugs and obviously weren’t about rock’n’roll because that didn’t even exist.

Specifically these are the Top 20 Best Songs that actually made the Top 20 in Australia. So before you complain about the lack of … I dunno… Big Joe Turner, Guitar Slim, Muddy Waters, or Big Mama Thornton, that is because nobody actually bought those records.

Instead they bought this stuff…

10. Les Baxter – The Poor People Of Paris

Upon listening to a song such as “Roll Over Beethoven” – either The Beatles or the Chuck Berry version – you might be tempted to think that the history of music goes like this: one minute there was classical music. The next there was ROCK’N’ROLL!!!!!!!! which came along in order to save the kids of the world from boredom.

“The Poor People Of Paris” demonstrates that that account of music history is absolutely correct! For “The Poor People Of Paris” is a jittery little piece of instrumental orchestral pop, that Mozart would feel proud to call his very own. It is as bustling as the Champs-Elysees and yet still as pretty as a beret wearing mademoiselle riding a bicycle. And it has a bit where it goes quiet and you think it’s the end, and then it comes back, louder and brighter than ever!!

9. Nat “King” Cole – Unforgettable

One of the truisms of pop music is that the simple songs are often the best. If we follow that rule to its logical conclusion then, “Unforgettable” must be one of the best songs ever written. Centred around a piano melody so simple that I reckon even I could play it, and filled with lyrics so sentimental that it is guaranteed to touch either the cockles of your heart, or your gag reflex, depending upon what mood you are in at the time. Only someone who clearly believed in the power of love, as Nat did, could instill it with the necessary warmth to make its sentimental sentiments so universal.

8. Nat “King” Cole – Somewhere Along The Way

That’s right, I’m making the call…. “Somewhere Along The Way” is a better song than “Unforgettable.” It’s smokier. Huskier. And, if I’m not contradicting myself, smoother at the same time. And full of love and tenderness. And affection. All of which is made all the more remarkable for being something of a break-up song. Admittedly a “it’s nobody’s fault, we just drifted apart” kind of break up song (as opposed to the usually more popular “I hate you so much right now” kind of break up song), but still it is a break up song and Nat’s still being nice about it, as was his way. Has there ever been a pop star that was nicer? I don’t think so.

7. Slim Whitman – Indian Love Call

Country music: the music of choice for truck drivers, particularly of the monster truck variety, rodeo enthusiasts and old guys sitting on porches, country music has always been the dominant soundtrack in times and places where men are men, and they carry guns. Why then was one of the biggest country music stars of the 1950s, an impeccably well dressed man with an immaculately groomed porno moustache, who liked nothing better to do than to yodel in a high voice.

And couldn’t Slim yodel!! Yes, he could, and “Indian Love Call” contains possibly the best use of yodeling in a pop song ever. The way that it echoes off the Grand Canyon walls at the beginning of the song is simply magical.

6. Frankie Laine - Jezabel

THIS is the kind of singer that real men like. Whereas Slim Whitman yodeled high and sensitive notes, Frankie Laine frowned a lot, and was serious, and sung deep baritone-heavy songs.

He was one of the more emotionally complex pop singers of the early 1950s as well, with records tended to involve Frankie singing in a dramatic and tortured manner to God, inanimate objects, and water fowl (in the particularly dramatic and much recommended “The Cry Of The Wild Goose”), asking them philosophical questions about the meaning of life. Most of the time these songs seemed to be set in the Wild West, which worked well since (a) it’s gave the producers a good excuse to bring a Mexican mariachi band into the studio, and everyone loves a good mariachi band, and (b) when you’re riding your horse through the desert all day you have a lot of time to ponder such things as the meaning of life. Obviously Frankie was a deep and tortured character, so when it comes time to sing a song about a woman breaking his heart, the woman turns out not to be just a woman, but some sort of Latino demon woman, ripping-his-heart-out-whilst-its-still-beating.

THE TOP 20 OF PRE-ROCK’N’ROLL POP No. 15-11

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Instead they bought this stuff…

15. Patti Page – Old Cape Cod

Also known as the “if you’re fond of sanddunes and salty air/ quaint little villages here and there” song. And who isn’t fond of sand dunes and salty air? And quaint little villages here and there? Clearly the answer to that is: no-one. It is, after all, something of a universal love. Probably no tourism campaign tune has ever been delivered with quite as much love and affection, and the understanding that sand dunes/salty air/ quaint little villages, is really all any of us really want in our lives! Brilliant!!!

14. Johnnie Ray – Just Walking In The Rain

Five years earlier Johnnie had been such a troubled homosexual young man that he couldn’t sing without crying. Couldn’t record a hit single without having a nervous breakdown in the studio. Who had a giant hearing aid jutting out of his ear. He seemed to have, one could say, some issues to deal with. By 1956, when he had this particular hit, Johnnie still seemed to have issues (there are good reasons for people looking at you Johnnie, since walking in the rain is not a particularly sensible thing to do (you could catch a cold). But at least he had perked up enough to whistle a jaunty tune!

13. Rosemary Clooney – Come On A My House

I don’t know about you but there just isn’t enough harpsichord in today’s pop music. And not enough fake Italian accents. And not enough double entendres about Christmas trees and pomegranates. It’s a pity really. A shame.

12. The Four Aces – Love Is A Many Splendid Thing

Love. It’s pretty good y’know. It is, for example, not just a splendid thing (which in itself is pretty good, splendid being something of a pretty awesome, and ultimately under used word), but a MANY SPLENDID THING. Which leaves us with the question, why The Four Aces version and not the Nat “King” Cole version? This can largely be explained by the fact that whilst Nat sings it “Love Is A Many Splendid Thing” (note please the lack of exclamation marks or all caps) the Four Aces do tend to get over exciting about the situation, and in a very game show host kind of way sing it “LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDID THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Which of course it is!

11. Dean Martin – Sway

Dean Martin was a drunken charmer par excellence, capable of going up to a hottie slurring a couple of sentences together and going off to the balcony with her, with the moonlight in her hair… as was the fashion at the time. In “Sway” we see Dean at the top of his charming powers, and like most charmers his power lies in his confidence, meaning that there is the slight suspicion that the reason that he is “swaying” is not because of the lady that he is with. It’s because he just caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and is stunned by how cool he looks. And probably because he’s drunk.

THE TOP 20 OF PRE-ROCK’N’ROLL POP No. 20-16

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Instead they bought this stuff…

20. Sammy Davis Jnr – Because Of You

Lists like this are essentially cheat sheets, short cuts for people to get a crash course in stuff that is good. So it is only appropriate that we should start this list with a bit of a cheat sheet in itself: a pop star singing a bizarre little record full of impersonations of other pop and movie stars. Only once you can recognize each of the pop stars Sammy impersonates, and understand at least half of the in-jokes, can you truly claim to be a 50s pop connoisseur

19. The Four Lads – Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

For being so incredibly educational. When I first heard this song (teenage years, They Might Be Giants version) I was not aware of the Istanbul/Constantinople connect (shame on me I know). I was especially surprised about the New York/New Amsterdam connection, and actually though they made it up. But it’s all true! Which is especially impressive since I am certain that no-one connected with the song had ever gone to Istanbul in their lives, and did all their research by watching “I Dream Of Jeanie” (not actually released at the time, but you know what I mean).

18. Teresa Brewer – Sweet Old Fashioned Girl

Any song that starts with the words “scoobidy-dooby-dum” has got to be amazing. Any song where the same phrase (that would be “scoobidy-dooby-dum”) is the primary refrain has got to be annoying. And “Sweet Old Fashioned Girl” is indeed both amazing and annoying! There’s the petulant screams, in which she occasional eats the microphone as if it was a lollipop. There’s the contrast between her insistence that she is a hip rock’n’roller, whilst slipping repeatedly into her actual self (“you’ll really dig the flavor of our bubblegum”). There’s the fact that she started off her career in the 1940s as a Shirley Temple wannabe, and the ten years later had evolved into a … well evolution is over-rated anyway.

17. The Ames Brothers – You You You

Obviously designed by masters in the art of getting teenage girls hearts a-flutter to achieve exactly that. Because the effect of having four constantly chirpy brothers all in love with YOU, all willing to submit to your every whim, like a gaggle of beau’s surround Scarlett O’Hara… with the possible exceptions of an icecream soda and a hula hoop, is there anything that a 1950s teenager could want more?

16. Joni James – How Important Can It Be?

A bit of an anomaly in the world of pre-rock’n’roll pop music, a time when potential mates were largely judged on whether or not they were “true”, with the implication that if you managed to find a yourself a dolly who had never been kissed before, then you should feel pretty damn proud of yourself. Joni questions such conservative logic, breaking down the sexual taboos of her time, and doing it in a suitably pre rock’n’roll way: with politeness and grace.

Top 200 Songs Of The Noughties No. 100 - 81!

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No. 100 The Ting Tings - Shut Up And Let Me Go

Somehow I have gathered this reputation as a Ting Tings fanatic (it’s never crossed your mind that such people might exist has it? Well the world is an amazing place). I was even greeted one time at Pony as “hey, it’s the Ting Tings guy”, which concerned me somewhat since I kind of think that the guy in the Tings Tings looks a bit like a douche (it’s the glasses). I also feel very bad about saying that because apparently he wears those glasses because of some sort of eye condition he has. Oops. If you are reading this then sorry Mr Tings Tings Guy. Would it make it up to you if I said that The Tings Tings are almost certainly the world’s most perfect pop group. There’s a whole boy girl thing going on (not that that’s totally original, although I’ve always thought of the Tings Tings as some kind of anti-White Stripes, think about it, cos the guy the emotional distant drummer and there’s a certain simplicity in their style and image and … I’m sure there’s other stuff too). And it’s the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums…

Most breakup songs, even those where it’s the girl (it’s always a girl. It’s almost like guys never do the dumping) that is claiming she’s off to have oh how many sorts of fun, sound sad or angry. “SUALMG” actually does sound gloriously happy, as if she’s about to walk right out the door, and straight into some other guys elses superior penis (or not, she’s obviously totally independent when it comes to this sort of thing)

Thing things (I promise I’ll never do that again) that make this break-up song so happily victorious (and victorious in general) include

(a) The disco guitar riff (even though P!nk used exactly the same guitar riff at exactly the same time for “Funhouse.”) because nothing spells adamant fun more than a disco guitar riff.
(b) Is there is any line better than “your not adorable/ I want something unignorable”
(c) Best use of the word “hey!” ever.

“Interesting” fact. There is a brand of sweet in Indonesia called Ting Ting. Not that much of a co-incidence so far, Ting Ting is a damn good name for a brand of sweets. Their slogan however is “it’s not a candy, not a biscuit.” What is it with Ting Ting’s and adamant declarations of what they are not? Amazing.

“Interesting” fact number two: according to YouTube statistic this song is huge in Mexico.

No.99 Franz Ferdinand - The Dark Of The Matinee

There are many crucial ingredients for pop greatness, most difficult to identify clearly, but one of these is clearly, charisma. The kind of charisma best demonstrated through lounge singing (or to be technical “crooning” – thank you Bing Crosby), or in this case, lounge singing as distilled through Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker, who have turned the art into less “interpretation” and more flopping of the hand, or in the case of Alex Karpanos (possibly the least Greek-looking person of all time) sexy eye-brow raising. This is particularly relevant when discussing the brilliance of “The Dark Of The Matinee” since Alex Kapranos demonstrates a good working knowledge of the us vs. them pop-politics that made these icons great, as he tries to pick up the girl of his fancy by discussing things they hate, and “hey let’s go wag school and make out at the movies”

Every verse is different, every verse has its own universe that it inhabits, and is kind of awesome…

The First Verse:… sexy. There is a blazer, one of the least revealing and therefore most mysterious pieces of clothing not have Islamic connotations. And then she “slips the nail under.” There’s no big dramatic stripping involved. The mystery is retained. There’s a lot of talk about “eyes.” Eyes are mysterious. All in all, a great verse for a song about high-school sexuality.

The Second Verse:… obligatory pop snobbery combined with nervousness. Is the girl worthy of (a) stalking, (b) hating stuff that you hate, because if “High Fidelity” taught us nothing… (actually it may have taught us the opposite, but the scene didn’t have Jack Black in it so I switched off…) and teaching us (is there nothing rock stars don’t know) that the most important thing we can do in life is “never be(ing) anything I hate,” and the secret to a happy life is “do(ing) the things you liiiikkkeee.” Gosh how simple.

The Third Verse: Years have passed, Alex is a big star, he’s been interviewed by Terry Wogan. It’s pretty much the highlight of verse, and no wonder. Terry is an icon. So for those who don’t know Terry Wogan British talk show host, famous having the best possible name for a British talk show host (in America they change their celebrities names into something more glamorous, in Britain they embrace them, and that is the fundamental difference between the two countries) and obviously deference and laughter, and curious fact, in Australia they decided not to release this a single because they figured no-one would understand who Terry Wogan was and they’d get confused. Disgraceful. I mean the man has been knighted. He used to do the commentary for Eurovision on SBS! What more can you want?

No. 98 Dizzee Rascal - Fix Up Look Sharp

Apparently he gots the big beat. It’s possible that he didn’t need to state so much obviousness. But sometimes you need to spell these things out.

Of course since this choon his pronunciation has improved immeasurably. No longer are we left wondering whether he is true to his grammar or his grandma. He seems like a lovely boy so I’m sure that it’s the second. Probably.

This is a big call, but I think it’s entirely probable that no-one has ever said “Oi!” with as much passion before. Or “ha haha ha” with as much passion before. Said anything with as much passion before. That’s probably the appeal of the man, that no matter what shit lyrics the kid is dribbling, he sounds as though he’s probably jumping around like a crazy person – it’s probable that he is the only person in the world capable of doing a song like “Bonkers” without straining something – talking like he’s on crack or something. The man probably even suffers from a sort of ADD. “You wouldn’t last an hour in my shoes” – mind going tik tok… “SHOES!” dude check out my shoes! –“they’re Air Force One.” Apparently that’s a type of Nike. This is the kind of shit you learn from listening to grime. Probably.

No. 97 Camera Obscura - Lloyd I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken

Camera Obscura are amazing. The bitter sweetness of everything they do is incredible enough, and requires a high level of dedication to classic pop-smith. But what is particularly incredible and takes even more dedication is Tracy-Anne’s facial expressions. It takes a lot of effort to look that sad all of the time (and Tracy-Anne’s facial expressions are so ridiculously sad that they are hilarious). Some people don’t appreciate this (which is sad in itself and probably makes Tracy-Anne feel even sadder). I had a friend actually say she was disappointed that Camera Obscura don’t seem more happy when they are playing gigs. She didn’t appreciate how hard it is to stay so sad, when the chord changes are so happy (assuming that chord changes can be happy in and of themselves, without reference to their context, which I think they can). It is hard to tell your friends that you want to stay home and do cross-stitch when the rhythm is so fun to dance to.

It might seem cruel (it is cruel) but sometimes pop stars just need to be sad in order to make us feel good (they are martyrs like that), and we should appreciate it when they do.

No. 96 Feist - Mushaboom

Talent. Extraordinary levels of talent. The kind of talent – actually being able to sing etc – that is usually associated with evil diva-like monsters singing way-too big power ballads. Feist uses her talent and she plays with it, writing here what might as well be a nursery rhyme for grown-ups. Childish melodies to songs about grown-up concerns such as having a house in country (kids aren’t so into that, because they country-side is booorrrrriiinnnnggggg) and utterly unrock’n’roll sentiments such as growing old, singing in a breezy and sexy manner, that regardless of your age, it’s just impossible too resist. No wonder there’s hardly a Canadian band that hasn’t managed to talk her into joining them. Talent, sexual allure, a warm personality and the ability to write the catchiest jingle since “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” A pretty girl with talent. That deserves mentioning.

No. 95 Peaches - Fuck The Pain Away

Read what I just wrote about Feist. Then turn it upside down. Peaches is pure evil and bad moods. I swear that when I saw her live once, she looked in the crowd, right at me, and looked into my soul, and she didn’t like me at all. I could just tell that she hated me. I was disappointed about this, since I always thought we could be good friends (not really, I mean can you imagine it?)

Pop stars have be singing about sex, since before your grandparents were doing it (an unpleasant thought perhaps, but this is a Peaches review so you’d better get used to having unpleasant thoughts). Usually it’s about having fun. With Peaches sex is more about daring people to do things that they might actually prefer not to do. Daring the boys of the world to find her sexy at all for one thing (then calling them pussies for not appreciating her crotch). “Two Guys For Every Girl” for example, might seem like a witty reversal of The Beach Boys, but it requires the leap of faith that a guy would want to have sex with Peaches even if he wasn’t required to go down on another first in order to seal the deal.

Whether – rather uncharacteristically - encouraging kids to “stay in school” (which must be some dirty metaphor that I just don’t understand) or making sex music that is more likely to ruin the mood, Peaches has made an enormous contribution to trying to lower the teenage pregnancy rate. And for that we should be grateful.

No. 94 PJ Harvey & Thom Yorke - This Mess We're In

PJ Harvey is a very serious artist. Thom Yorke is, of course, from Radiohead. They are very serious artists. Put them together and you can assume, just out of pure logic, that it will be something serious. Something technically good, hitting all the notes correctly, with probably insightful lyrics, and probably … kind of boring. Not fun.

One thing you wouldn’t expect is it to sound sexy. Well, from Polly perhaps you might expect it, but from Thom? Yet the beauty of the song is such that Thom can sing “night and day I dream of making love to you my baby” without an automatic reaction of “Yuk, bugger off you sleepy eyed git.” In fact, it’s probably the only enjoyable thing that Thom did the entire decade.

No. 93 Kanye West - Through The Wire

Hang out on music web-sites enough and you’ll sooner or later come across the opinion that Kanye changed the course of hip-hop forever, and killed off gangsta-rap, much in the way that Nirvana killed off hair metal.

It’s a big call, and I’ve often wondered if it is an entire accurate one (I’m pretty sure for example, that FloRida would still have gone Number One –twice! – in a non-Kanye world and it does somewhat require the ignoring that Outkast never happened). However, I’m about to make a bigger call.

If it weren’t for Kanye, Barack Obama would not now be President of the United States Of America.

Vibe with me on this one.

Imagine Kanye had never happened. That he died in the car crash in 2002. That 50 Cent was still the biggest rapper in the world. Imagine you are an undecided voter on election day 2008, in a respectable middle class suburb in a marginal state like Ohio or something. Imagine you turn on MTV as you are having your breakfast, and for once they are actually playing music. They are playing 50Cent and he’s boasting about what he be doing to some bitch-nigger-ho. Would that make you feel safe voting for a black man?

On the other hand, you wake up in the morning, turn on MTV, and you’ve got Kanye wearing Louis Vuitton and rapping about Jesus, and sure you might think he looks like a bit of a tosser, and but you’d at him and you’d think “nigger knows how to dress” and that would make you feel far more comfortable wouldn’t it?

In light of this, it’s a bit of a pity that Obama had to call Kanye a jackass, but that’s politics I guess.

If you need to know anything else about Kanye then “Through The Wire” pretty much explains his whole life story, in a funky 5 minute edited down version (he even sounds as though he just got out of the operating theatre his mouth all still fuddled up).

No. 92 Blonde Redhead - 23

Sometimes I wonder about beauty. Is it just the absence of ugliness. Or is it something else. An indefinable thing that gives everything around it a glow. That makes you feel unhappy that the rest of the world can not be that beautiful and perfect, the same way as apparently people are committing suicide at the moment out of frustration that the real world is not as perfect as Avatar. I know. People can be pathetic.

If people committed suicide because of this song on the other hand, then I would totally understand.

No. 91 Nelly - Hott In Herre

When he was good he was very very good (probably the best cheesy rap-star of his generation). When he was bad, well, then that was a “dilemma” (no Nelly, just because some hot chick moves across the road from you, it doesn’t actually mean you have to bone her. If it were Beyonce on the other hand…) and someone needs to tell him that just because PM Dawn can sample Spandau with awesome results it doesn’t mean everyone can.

And what’s the deal with your band-aid? I’m sure you’ve always wondered that as well, so here is the answer:

"Like I said, it's just another beautiful thing that you see that you touch a lot of people, man, you know? I also wear a lot of times when I'm doing national press or something like that, to where I think my little brother City Spud might see it, you know what I'm sayin', 'cause you know he lockdown right now. So I do it to where, you know what I'm sayin', to let him know that we holding it down for him, too, also."

Good thing his raps are a bit more eloquent.

Hell even if he just said “OOHHH!” that would be enough. Nobody says “OOHHH!” with feeling like Nelly.

To follow that up with “good gracious ass bodacious.” That is pure poetry. And it’s a good start. And that’s before he combines perfect logic – “it’s getting hot in here (or “herre” if you're (a) a purist and (b) not a stuffy English teacher) so take off all your clothes” – with the power of suggestion – “I am getting so hot I gonna take my clothes off”. Or does the best impersonation of a chick checking out her ass – to see if it’s getting big, like that’s even a problem! – of all time.

Yessir, when he was good, Nelly was very very good. I know I’m touched by the band-aid.

No. 90 The Streets - Dry Your Eyes

There’s a certain beauty in being pathetic. Can’t sing. Can’t rap. Can’t get decent reception on his phone. Doesn’t really have much of a way with words (“it’s shaking, my life is crashing before my eyes/ turn the palm of my hand up to face the skies/ wondering whether to have a burger or fries”). Can’t get a, keep a, chick.

Who would have thought that a guy who is such a loser can come up with something this touching. Because losers have feelings too, and although Mike is crying inside, he still talks like he always has. And that is, as though eloquence is some fancy word he’s never heard of.

“By pushin’ my hand away to my chest, from hers.” “I’m not gonna fuckin’ just leave it all now.” That fooking poetry innit. You know, I never meet anyone English without being slightly, and vaguely, disappointed. I keep on expecting them to talk like Mike. I’ve studied Mike’s work. I thought I knew how to speak Cockney. But they not like that. Not really. We all been had. Don’t really matter… cos this is a fookin choon!

No. 89 Outkast - Roses

Outkast.-.Roses.
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Usually Outkast did the kind of genre blurring songs that made you through your Beck records out in “and I thought you were awesome” styled disgust. “Roses” on the other hand was pure pop. Pure classic pop. Managing to combine Andre 3000 kind of quirky new-age philosophies – from his attempts to describe sex with spiritual metaphors – probably in order to make him sound like even more of a sex god than he would otherwise be – “send them a postcard from 3000 HARD!” - which fortunately there are none here the closest being the classic “real guys go for real down-to-Mars girls” – and “I’m so different now I’m doing kids cartoon theme songs” craziness, with Big Boi’s rather more typical hip-hop preoccupations, such as that a girl is just using you for your money “oh so you're one them freaks, get geeked at the sight of ATM receipts”, but that’s okay because your just using her for her body - “I wanna see ya support bra not support you”.

Combining both sides of the Outkast universe, and sounding like a classic the first time you heard it, - naming a girl in the song will do that for you, any girl called Caroline will wet herself, unless they find out that they are a stuck-up bitch (self realization is hard) even to the extent of having a nickname (or at least I’ve heard it before referred to as the “poo poo song” on at least one occasion) and if that isn’t a sign of a classic I don’t know what is. And of course nostalgic hip-hop songs about girls in high school always go down well.

And how good is the video, featuring both Paula Abdul (best thing she’s done since that song with the cat) and the lovable fat guy.

No. 88 50 Cent - In Da Club

In the video for “In Da Club”, Fidi is put through some hard core training in order to be the toughest, buffest, meanest, pecs-tiest rapper ever (somewhere in Queens LL Cool J, was crying to his mommy “I can’t knock him out mommy I just can’t”) after of course being operated on by Dr Dre (with Ice-T in a police drama couldn’t Dre have a starring role in Grey’s Anatomy?) and Eminem (which obviously was a big deal at the time) a rapper so hard-core that he don’t even give a fuck its not your birthday. Then there’s that whole being shot thing, like who the fuck hasn’t (actually the main difference between Fidi and Kanye is that Fidi was shot how many times - a few shells -, Kanye was in a car accident and he was even wearing a seat belt, totally not hard-core).

The whole thing is COLD. The beat is BORED. Fidi mumbles like he’s just on the corner mumbling to some social worker how every onez and the whole worldz against him (in the decade that’s past something must’ve happened, cos I can understand pretty much every word of his mumbling, the fact that you supposedly couldn’t being a big thing amongst the oldz at the time), kicking a pebble.

No. 87 Electric Six - Gay Bar

I wish I was a member of Electric Six. Other than the fact that it would instantly turn me into a rock god of Zeus like stature, writing songs would be so easy.

Here we have a run down of the amount of times the following words have appeared in Electric Six’s “Fire” album, which for some reason is not part of the rock cannon yet, which is very sad…

FIRE!!!!! -26
DANCE!!!!!! (and derivations there of) - 23
DEMONS!!!!! - 7
WAR!!!!! -6

Just combine any of those four words into a sentence, add a couple of demands to “COME ON!” and you’ve pretty much got three minutes of rock schlock that is a million more times funnier than The Darkness, if only because although tight pants and high voices are funny, suits and an overload of testosterone (Dick Valentine – best rock’n’roll name ever – doesn’t so much sing as chant as though he’s leading an army brigade, blowing a whistle and shouting in your face for having your shoes a little scuffed) is even funnier.

“Gay Bar” then is a bit more restrained than other Electric Six songs, since it only has two mentions of WAR! But any song that is reportedly used by red neck sport teams to freak out other red neck sport teams, deserves a football jersey of some kind (I’d suggest Collingwood).

No. 86 Amerie - 1 Thing

My jaw has dropped, I’m picking it up. It initially dropped five years ago. But it still happens from time to time. There are three reasons for this…

(1) The Beat. Or more specifically the million beats all happening at the same time. If only all drum solos were this thrilling.
(2) The fact that Amerie is HOT! Particularly in that “ding ding ding ding” bit. wooh!
(3) The Voice. I’ve put this last because actually sometimes I hear it and I go, aaah if only they gave this to Beyonce.

So really it’s about the beat (and the hotness). But what a beat! Well done to everyone involved.

No. 85 The Killers - Mr Brightside

The Killers, or at least Brandon Flowers (has anyone actually noticed the other members? Are there even any other members?) are/is a showman (some would call him a bit of a ponce and there is certainly much evidence to support such a claim - the "stop right now thank you very much" pose at 0.40 for just one of many examples). Very few performers have ever been so eager to please their audience and lap up the tsunami of admiration that is their due, with a pansy-like flick of the wrist, the kind of chin-raised pose that only old revolutionary leaders can convincingly pull off and put on t-shirts, the ability to produce pile epic chorus on top of epic chorus…

When I saw them at the Big Day Out… well I didn’t really see them, since I am short, and people are tall, but what I did see I shall never forget. In the entire crowd I do not think that there was a person who was not singing every lyric to every song at the top of their voices. It was a karaoke performance – or driving in a car singing along with the radio - by a cast of thousands (and I’m not just talking “Mr Brightside”, I’m talking singles and album cuts and everything!) and it was extraordinary and just… WOW!

“Mr Brightside” is a song designed specifically to please, from NOT rhyming sick with dick (an old trick – Kelis had already done it - but a goodie) to choruses that mean nothing “jealousy/ turning saints into the sea” (?!!!???!) but mostly the way he sounds genuinely peaved, when (for example) he states that he’s “just FINE!” - and as we all know when a girl says that it’s fine that means that you’re fucked, and the same probably goes for guys with names like Brandon Flowers – and even “I just can’t look it’s killing me” you can feel the pain behind the cliché. Through all this Brandon is prancing and pouncing about in his tribute to every indie anthem to lonely clumsiness (which is pretty much every indie anthem), and having a marvelous time.

No. 84 Jens Lekmen - Postcard To Nina

There are a million things to like about young Jens. Apparently, the example, in Sweden it’s the jocks that listen to The Smiths, not the nerds (imagine that), so what it a sensitive little teenage nerd to do? He becomes a closet fan of Euro-dance. And sings songs that make him sounds like a not-so-closet fan of Barry Manilow.

And speaking of people in the closet – how good was that segueway? – here is a song – that happens to have the best use of the phrase “out-of-office-auto reply” ever -
about a friend (who is a lesbian) who gets Jens to pretend to be her boyfriend in front of her scary Catholic German father. And these are just the kind of scrapes that you could imagine Jens to get in. Scrapes where the guy is just way too nice to say “You’ve got to be kidding. Fight your own fights bitch.” In other songs he tries to get to know his sister. How nice. In another he plays bingo (which rhymes with Ringo and Zingo, the later of which is a Swedish soft drink don't you know) tournament, in a song that is so much more fun that an actual bingo tournament. But then listening to Jens, and his songs that resemble few things more comedy routine as told on a Love Boat themed cruise ships, is so much more fun that most things. It’s likely that he was too sensitive to listen to The Smiths anyway.

No. 83 Kelly Clarkson - Since You've Been Gone

Is “Since You’ve Been Gone” the best karaoke song of all time? A matter that has been puzzling the KJ’s of the world. Here we now have the arguments for and against…

FOR: The bored verse one, perfect for eye rolling, blowing your emo fringe out of your eyes (perfect for both boys and girls) and other motions performed with the singular intention of acting blasé, as if you are indeed “so moving on.” The use of the word “so” in the chorus is particular genius, showing that she is in touch with timeless youth vernacular. Which of course brings us to the AWESOME CHORUS!!!!!

The CHORUS!!! The “yeah yeahs!!” The wave of release and attitude.

The bitter verse two.

The last minute, featuring Punch Number One of the …. Music Disappears, Chorus Blows Up, Music Appears Again Trick. Always a classy move. The Punch Number Two, which is not a key change it’s a … gosh I don’t know actual music theory or anything… but the bit where she goes up a bit. Then the “I’m okay, I’ve got it out of my system” ending.

Gosh, I almost feel like breaking up with my girlfriend just so I can sing this song again.

Also it’s a Max Martin song and he knows what he is doing.

AGAINST: Not a lot really, other than the fact that Summer Of ’69 already exists.

No. 82 Annie - Heartbeat

It was a good decade for songs called “Heartbeat”. It was a good decade for Scandinavians with songs called “Heartbeat.” It was a good decade for Scandinavians. Not a lot bad you can say about the noughties at all really.

Annie’s “Heartbeat” is all giddy butterflies and having a crush on a guy when she doesn’t even know his name. It’s about dancing. Feeling her heartbeat may or may not be an invitation for a grope. Such ingredients in a pop song offer the promise of something amazing. And “Heartbeat” is, because she manages to do something incredible, and not just the fact that she makes double denim look good. She turned whispering into a valid form of musical expression (with the bonus that you can hear her breathing in and out which is totally hot). It’s almost like the voice is in your head. It’s almost like dream bubble gum pop (Annie has such a love for bubblegum pop that I’m sure she does dream about it).

It is for this reason (her love of pop, not to mention the sophistication and the cute-ness – two characteristics that rarely go well with each other, but then we are comparing her to a generation of trashbags so expectations might low - with which she does what she does) that she has become the favourite pop star for Gen Xers who don’t want to let their pop dreams go just yet.

No. 81 Ben Kweller - Falling

Ben Kweller is your cool dope smoking loser friend from high school. And now he is 29. But he’s probably still in high school, because he just doesn’t want to leave, and doesn’t want to go out into the world and get a haircut and get a real job. He has, in other words, the “rock’n’roll” gene, and everything just comes naturally to him. itics have been waiting for Ben to grow up, but indications are that as he gets older, the songs are going to sound younger and younger – I suspect he may be having issues and a quarter life crisis – and I hope this continues. Growing up is not only over-rated but is opposed to the entire rock’n’roll, not to mention the slacker, lifestyle. I hope to see Ben Kweller one day, living in a retirement village, still calling everyone “dude” and still with the same giant mop on his head (and let me tell you, there are few rock stars that I would say that about). You see, he problem with rock’n’roll is that although its supposed to be about young people, its mostly made by not-so-young people singing about being young, and that’s kind of disturbing.

Bu Ben Kweller has that amazed about everything look that that kid in “Almost Famous” did, and “Falling” is him in “Tiny Dancer” mode. Put in on your next road-trip mix-tape/iPod playlist now.

Top 200 Songs Of The Noughties No. 120-101!

2010-02-21T06:32:00.000-08:00

No. 120 Chemical Brothers - Galvanize

By which time it was 2005 and everyone could be forgiven for thinking that the Brothers had run out of ideas (disappointing given that most of their songs were just one idea on a loop anyway) being as it was about half a decade after their last classic (pretty much any of the singles from “Surrender”), they produced one of the most exciting pieces of music of the decade.

Then they ran out of ideas again.

Any song with Q-Tip rapping in it is automatically awesomely playful and fun, even when sounding like he and The Brothers are planning to blow up the world, with an evil Chemical Brother (who I like to imagine as being Ed, aka the normal looking one, because those are the ones you need to watch) whispering in his ear to “Push The Button.” And just to enforce the global ramifications and seriousness of the track they have a Moroccan string instrumental riff perfect for a soundtrack for the War On Terror, and was therefore probably used by Coalition soldiers in tanks as they rode into battle, which given that Q-Tip is Islamic may or may not be weird, disturbing, ironic, a co-incidence or none of the above.

The amazing thing was that this was the Chemical Brothers, the duo whose fame was typically based on songs with one BIG HOOK, one catchy sloganeering lyric and a whole lot of cool sound effects. In short, they were masters of minimalism. Clearly, by 2005 they were feeling the pressure of Basement Jaxx’s zillion of “cramming every idea into one song” hits and had to prepare a defensive strike. And strike they did!

No. 119 The White Stripes - Hotel Yorba

When the White Stripes came out as part of the new rock revival it was an extremely exciting moment, and not only because it had been years – nay decades – since there had been such a joyful piece of music to have a hoe-down to (although to be honest, for folk not used to having a hoe-down, I always found it a little too fast). Sweet nibblets, there had hardly been a piece of music this joyful for decades, period. A world of childish laughter, innocence and simpler times, when people knew that they would look far better if they just limited their wardrobe to three colours, limited their music to two instruments, and limited their band to one giant ego, that they would look, sound and perform much better, whilst asking the question of where does art stop and cynical marketing campaigns begin (answer: they are pretty much the same thing, Jack realized this, so The White Stripes became the biggest band in the world - as long as you ignore nasty issues such as sales and chart success).

No. 118 Miley Cyrus - See You Again

Oh yes, you thought I was joking when I became a fan of Miley Cyrus in order to give her support against the powers of the “I Bet That This Sexy Potato Can Get More Fans Than Miley Cyrus” Facebook group (although I have to admit, it is a fairly sexy potato), but after watching the Hannah Montana movie twice now, I have a whole new appreciation for her effervescent nature, and infectious but slightly creepy smile and forehead which has the strange tendency to turn Klingon whenever she scrunches it (if not for the idiocy of all the other actors in the film… I mean COME ON! IT’S SO OBVIOUS WHO SHE IS!! EVEN THAT BRATTY LITTLE GIRL COULD FIGURE IT OUT!!!), and now I finally understand what “The Climb” is all about. I feel as though I’ve had a huge life lesson.

Meanwhile “See You Again” is an amazing piece of pop, primarily due to the chorus – featuring stutters, shout outs to her best friend Leslie (how must Leslie feel? Now everyone knows that she’s Miley Cyrus’ bestie, omg!), and references to her own little in-jokes from her own little-life. It doesn’t matter if Miley never comes back to Twitter or not. After “See You Again” we already feel like we know her anyway. And how many pop stars can you say that about? (okay, in this Twitter world we are living in, where I can find out that Ke$ha is proud that she invented five words last night, that Taylor Swift is in love with Sydney – pltth - and P!nk is about to have a nap, that level of intimacy with pop stars means quite a bit less than it did, but this was 2007, so it was quite revolutionary and ground breaking. I had only just gotten onto Myspace ).

No. 117 The Knife - Silent Shout

Whenever The Knife are not singing songs about one-night stands, turning them into the most exciting adventure ever in the process, their word was far darker, disturbing, and demented (creating as they did so much genres as death-gothic-trance and opera-techno), and not only due to the guy (whose name, Olof, even sounds as though it belongs to some kind of demon Viking) mumbling/singing like a demon possessing Karin’s soul.

Almost everything about “Silent Shout” is slightly off-kilteringly disturbing. The title being one of the most terrifying concepts that horror movies have ever produced. The bass line plods along in a manner that can best be described as foreboding. A pretty techno riff that mutates in front of your ears. This is the kind of thing that we should come to expect from a band that counts David Lynch amongst it’s key influences.

Final point: do not listen to this album before drifting off to sleep. Disturbing dreams, verging on nightmares may result.

No. 116 The Hold Steady - Your Little Hood Rat Friend

The general consensus about The Hold Steady, is that they are Bruce Springsteen revivalists. That’s close, but really, all I hear is Meatloaf (and I mean that as a compliment). It’s all “Paradise By The Dashboard Lights” but with literary pretentions.
The similarities are striking…

A portly and almost middle aged guy, singing about nothing but taking drugs and losing his virginity, and the general feeling that maybe they should get over their teenage years (when they were probably all geeks and had unrequited crushes on every girl in school, an experience which you never really get over). The “almost middle aged guy” thing is also interesting, since it makes this songs about teenage sex thing kind of sexy, but also kind of creepy, and also like an old guy reminiscing about his formative years, a bit like how “The Wonder Years” may have turned out if it had lasted a few more seasons and turned into “Dazed And Confused” in the seventh season. In the case of The Hold Steady this all has a certain religious undercurrent as well, as a nice dose of Catholic guilt get added into the mix, and religious metaphors for those you have read their Bibles galore.

Also despite Bruce’s desire to be a working class hero for us all, I’ve always felt that you can’t genuinely understand Bruce unless you are a factory worker living in a specific set of suburbs in New Jersey (probably around Newark). Hold Steady songs take place in Minneapolis, a far more every man and populist kind of city, but really – frequent references to the Mississippi in their songs not-withstanding – they could take place in any dead-end city or rural town full of dead-end kids, trying to score drugs and get laid in a car, whilst listening to a classic rock radio stations.

No. 115 - Snoop Dogg and Pharrel - Drop It Like It's Hot

Snoop Dogg (the artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg, but he decided to drop the “Doggy” in an attempt to be appreciated as a mature artist, which was only slightly more pointless that Johnny Farnham changing to John Farnham) has always been more of a cartoon character than an actual human being, which is why whenever he ends up in jail I find myself amazed. You mean he really does pop caps in nigga’s asses? You mean he really does pimp out hoes, and put candy up his nose? You mean he really does “wait on the Pizzle, the Dizzle and the Shizzle/ G's to the bizzack, now ladies here we gizzo.” Apparently he does…

Which begs the question. Do these words actually exist? And what is it exactly that they mean?

Urban dictionary to the rescue…

Pizzle: possibly a penis. Specifically a bull’s penis. Or possibly to urinate. Or possibly to try and pick up a girl.

Dizzle: apparently it can refer to anything starting with D. Useful.

Shizzle: which means to agree with something.

That lyric therefore means “waiting on the bull’s penis, who the fuck knows and I agree.”

And thus, African American culture remains a mystery to me.

No. 114 Santogold - LES Artistes

Santogold likes to write songs about herself. And how “the man” didn’t believe in her (and the things that she believes in, which for the most part is limited to herself). And how she is going to prove “the man” wrong. And when that happens wont “the man” look a little silly.

Thus every song she does – whether reggae-hip-hop-crunch banger, or here as a classy piece of guitar rock - is an anthem to self belief, and working hard to achieve your goals, and would in short be perfect as the backing music for a montage. It is a pity therefore that there just are many movies with montages in them anymore. Clearly a sad case of a pop star being born at the wrong time.

Thus “L.E.S. Artistes” should have a place in your “songs to listen to on the way to an important job interview” iPod playlist, since self-confidence is contagious and you never know, it may just work.

No. 113 Kimya Dawson - I Like Giants

“All girls feel too big sometimes regardless of their size”, except possibly Ellen Paige. That chick is a midget.

Whether singing about giants (for along time I didn’t realize that she was one, which was quite a surprise given that she sounds far more like primary school student), or attempting to talk lemmings from taking their own lives because they have so much more to live for, Kimya always tried to give the world a message of hope. She seems like the kind of person who likes to make presents for her friends, who wants the whole world to be her friend, and what better gift to give to the whole world than a message of hope. The kind of messages of hope that sensitive peace loving beatniks needed during the darkest days of Bush’s America. What they needed were simple songs sung really really quickly, asking simple little questions like “why can’t we all be nice to each other?” and “why are the terrorists trying to kill us? We are really nice people. All we want to do sit with our guitars on our laps and sing cute little songs.” So charming, yet so naïve. Never has a life philosophy been able to depicted so cutely, if so randomly.

No. 112 Art Brut - Emily Kane

As reminiscences of the more G-rated side of young love go, Art Brut’s “Emily Kane” is too adorable for words. That it’s sung by a guy who doesn’t so much sing as drunkenly slur (insert plea from your parents: “but he’s not even singing really” to which one can give the rebuke “but it’s an entire song of SPOKEN MONOLOGUE!!!!” And remember, if you say something in spoken monologue form, you really mean it) is all the more adorable. He never got over the girl, and now he’s an alcoholic. Heartless bitches, they have their uses, including inspiring awesome pop songs.

The best bits of the song include:

The bit where he’s goes “every girl that I’ve seen since/ looks just like you when I squint”

The most honorable reason possible for a band to hope of a pop songs success: “I hope this song, finds you fame/I want school kids on buses singing your name”

“10 years, 9 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, 5 seconds.” Take that Sinead O’Connor and your “seven hours and 15 days” nonsense.

As you can tell by these passages, "Emily Kane" is an anthem for the kind of guy whose definition of romance is to carry a flame for a girl that is probably married now, blah blah blah, and thinks that it would somehow be disloyal to her memory to fall in love with anyone else, because she's perfect, blah blah blah. The fact that the name Emily Kane, sounds so perfectly like a character from a Girl's Own story book, with the associations with prim and properness that that suggests, it just plain genius.

Met the guy who wrote it once. He seemed nice.

No. 111 MGMT - Time To Pretend

They surf through a black hole/vortex kind of thing! He rides on a giant kitten!! He shoots an evil crab-like creature with a magic arrow and bursts into millions of dolphins!!! And that’s just in the video!!!!

The song is even better.

MGMT are not just rock-stars. They are mystic superheroes. And they understand the rules of being superhero pop stars, which they have conveniently spelled out for us in this song, and quite frankly if they do not end up marrying models, breaking up with them when they get old, and choke on their own vomit, I shall be sorely disappointed.

They had a sound that more or less came from nowhere. Maybe a little bit of Flaming Lips you could dance to (and better looking) – sounding equally as much as “the secret of life, the universe and everything can be found inside this groove” whilst also celebrating decadence as much as any tune ever has. A bit of Animal Collective that was actually listenable. Amazing. That it may possibly have all bit a joke (that they started off as just a bunch of dickheads singing over the top of their iPods and writing songs to annoy people, and asked their record company to get Barack Obama to produce their record)… woah. New bands coming up take note. Annoying people = good strategy. It is, amongst other things, very punk. Also, Being Ironic = The Truth (backwards). This is the new rock’n’roll formula. Instead of three cords and the truth, we have a keyboard, a drum machine, and irony. Use these weapons wisely my children.

No. 110 Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes - Empire State Of Mind

The United States has struggled to get over 9-11. Iraq didn’t work. Afghanistan didn’t work. But in four and half minutes of chest-beating Jay-Z managed not only to return pride and self belief to New York, but to the United States, and the much of the entire world. According to YouTube statistics, this song is huge in such far-flung and exotic places as Bulgaria, Mongolia, Israel (possibly no surprise there) and Armenia. That is pretty amazing.

Apparently, “these streets will make you feel brand new/ big lights will inspire you”, that its possibly to tell a New Yorker simply by their attitude, and so many other reasons why “there’s no place in the world that can compare.” Don’t you want to live there now? Well you can’t because it’s too expensive, but you can, with this song, own a piece of New York (just as exciting as owning a piece of the Berlin Wall or other symbols of freedom and opportunity, to put in your iPod and take with you wherever you go, whenever you need it. Because we all need to be New Yorkers from time to time.

The only disappointing thing about the tune, is that such an anthem to epic-ness could have such a “ok the songs over now” sudden and un-epic ending.

No. 109 Louis XIV - Finding Out That True Love Is Blind

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO/HEAR THE SONG!!!

Songs where the guy is singing about how the girl is the only girl in the world from the might be nice and romantic, but if you want sexy, then you need a song in which the guy sounds like he’s collective participants for an orgy and is either not particularly fussy or else has a Noah’s ark view of “who we should get to join our orgy” except with only one of each instead of two, although I’m sure he wouldn’t mind two (or three or four, or maybe more). Assumedly, after describing the girls physically, “true love is blind” because you’re feeling them up and true love still apparently does have hands.

So of course this is the sleaziest dodgiest sub-genre of rock known to man: glam rock. Guys who themselves are “hiding them all up with make-up”, a beat only slightly less stompy and clap-along-able that Gary Glitter, are therefore to be expected. But pretty little piano notes, in a vain attempt to seem a least slightly romantic, at least for as long as it takes to get this orgy happening… it’d hate to be the one who has to do the laundry the next day.

No. 108 Spiller - Groovejet feat Sophie Ellis Bextor

The early 2000s were largely a follow up from the late 1990s (which hopefully shall be the most obvious statement I shall ever make, but am painfully aware that it probably wont be). In dance music terms this largely involved Euro-trash dancefloor anthems gradually watering down the Daft Punk formula. Fortunately the Europeans are a glamorous and sophisticated mob and the result was several summers of tunes that one could nicely hold a martini glass to whilst sailing on a yacht. Lovely. And this was the king of those tunes.

The sophisticated Europeans then found themselves in the unfortunate position of having to search the ranks of British trashbags to find one that was appropriately stylish, had the right kind of stand-off-ish cool (practiced during a stint as singer of a band of Elastica-lite/Sunday's wannabes, theaudience) and looked slightly like an alien. And didn’t Sophie do a wonderful job here, so good that lightglobes lit up at the record company that they had A STAR! After a decent enough start – “Murder On The Dancefloor” certainly stands as one of the better moments of British bubblegum in 2000s, perfectly again balancing her model stylishness with her inner trashbag - the moment Sophie announced the decades worst rhyme – “music gets the best of me/ but guess who gets the rest of me” – it was obvious that she would be forced to stumble through the remainder of the decade. A pity really.

This tune however was close to perfect. Little that happens in it – the pretty harp effect during the bridge, the 80s drum rolls happening sporadically, the guitar - had not previously happened in hundreds of cruisey French house records previously, so I think everyone could sense that the tune would end with a tribal drums solo cut short by some studio trickery. But in a genre that aims to be 99% sexy, “Groovejet” managed to get to 99.9%, in a genre that was usually just one lyric over and over again, “Groovejet” was an actual song! A song you could believe in, and ponder “good question. If this aint love, then WHY does it feel so good?”

No. 107 Mint Royale - Don't Falter

This song has a strange impact on some people. On the dancefloor it’s particularly sweet, when couples look up at each other and lip synch “and never miss a chance to kiss me”, the equal cute-ness of the concept that someone “call be officially mine.” Whilst the first verse, in which she pretty much admits she was an alcoholic trash bag before she found love, gives hope to everyone else, if only they could “risk (their) heart for love to find (them)”, a statement that seems so siple and so seductive and so the answer to everything, that I’m sure it has become someone’s life philosophy, simply based on this song. In almost every way, it’s a depiction of love so perfect that I’m sure it’s raised the expectations of thousands of couples that they can’t reach, and thus destroyed lives. It may have overdone it on the cuteness.

That it’s the most summery and childlike song this side of the Teletubbies (who I think were reaching their peak at about the same time, and thus may have been an influence) and perfect for shuffling your feet shyly to whilst on the dancefloor, and filled to be brim with “la la la’s”, and it’s easy to understand where this strange impact on some people comes from. It’s just a primal thing.

No. 106 Lady Sovereign - Love Me Or Hate Me

One of the standard go-to topics in hip-hop is songs about yourself, and how awesome you are. And as attention grabbing, introductions to yourself go, “Love Me Or Hate Me” is perfect (other than possibly the Genesis “I Can’t Dance” reference), as she ups the ante to the haterz, daring them not only to hate (which is easy) but to do something about it, and get her kicked out of her own country (which is infinitely more difficult due to the legal difficulties involved, and let’s face, what other country could they kick such a foul mouthed young lady to, who would take her?). I can imagine the hearing now, “well Your Honour… she’s got hairy armpits? She thinks that the plural of breast is breastiges? She kidnapped Sporty Spice and stole her identity (think about it, when was the last time you saw Sporty Spice huh)? She is a little too free with the sound effects in her songs? She belches into the microphone your honour… Dizzee is refusing to use the same mike… surely this all must count for something.” “The court rules against the prosecution only the grounds that Lady Sovereign’s single is good to crunk to.”

No. 105 Hot Chip - Over And Over

Hot Chip - Over and Over

JLMFR | MySpace Video

Hot Chip are a band that are so geeky it that hurts. So geeky that they belong in a special school. So geeky that I’m amazed they can even breathe, and should be kept away from heavy machinery, and anything they might accidently electrocute themselves with. What their parents were thinking letting them touch synthesizers I’ll never know.

This song was apparently an answer to a review of them that described them as new-age ambient music. So they went, “you think we’re easy listening… well listen too THIS!!!” as they launched something that I assume is therefore supposed to be their version of “Firestarter” or (insert your favourite hard-core industrial techno kind of song here). But this, a tune that squeaks far more than it booms, a song that combines the spelling out of k-i-s-s-i-n-g, s-e-x-i-n-g (rock’n’roll being the only career in which these guys would not still be virgins), c-a-s-i-o (because oh yeah, these guys love their synthesizers) was all they could come up with.

That’s embarrassing.

The Christmas chimes at the beginning of the song probably is not doing them any favors.

Clearly showing their hard-core toughness is a big thing for them. “The Warning”, a relaxing groovy song even by their standards features the boast “Hot Chip will break your legs/ snap off your head.” And to be honest with you, I am strangely terrified by this idea, if only because of the risk of getting geek germs.

It’s fair to say that there is no other band quite like them.

No. 104 Estelle feat Kanye West - American Boy

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Estelle Ft. Kanye West - American Boy sélectionné dans Musique et Clips

So smooth it drips like butter when its been left out in the sun for too long (sorry, worst metaphor ever, but IT’S TRUE!), Estelle has poise too spare, that she even sounds classy even though she’s practically begging the guy (let’s assume its Kanye, although he’s too busy talking himself up in his raps that it’s almost a brush-off.

“Kanye, I get the feeling that you didn’t write your rap specifically for this song. This song is American Boys. Couldn’t you rap about American boys?”

“No homo.”

“Yeah brother but you’re just rapping about yourself.”

“Yeah, but, that’s what we do. Americans just love to talk about themselves, because we are the shit. That’s the way we roll. And you don’t understand… There’s a lot of pressure in living up to being an “American Boy”, being so cool, being so well-dressed all the time. Sometimes I just want to go out in my trackies, but the paparazzi, they are always clicking away, so I have to wear this stupid fur coat. But if you insist, I’ll drop some rhymes featuring olde English… like the word “bespoke.” That’s a good word isn’t it? Anyway trust me, it works.”

And it does. We need to listen to Kanye more often. The man knows best.) to take her home to the States, whilst 99% of the song was probably written by jotting down place names from Google Earth, it doesn’t matter because she still sounds classy. Even when she’s singing “don’t like his baggy jeans but I might like what’s underneath them” – and you know what that’s about – she just sounds CLASSY.

No. 103 Darren Hanlon - Punk's Not Dead

Darren. Daz. Dazza. Bless’im, that witty little song writer, whose songs constantly verge on the edge between adorable, genius and just terrible, the precise location where all great song writers reside. Sometimes he slips. The song-long metaphor of “Falling Aeroplanes” where he makes a house out of a chorus and four verses, was particularly painful… “better off trying to catch falling aeroplanes.” What’s that all about? But then he’ll write a song like “There’s Not Enough Songs About Squash” in which he rhymes “peculiar” with “cardio vascular,” and suddenly you are back to praising the Lord for the glory of bad lines with awful rhymes.

“Punks Not Dead” is the apex of his art, combining a elemental knowledge of rock’n’roll history and sub-cultural stereotypes, with a lovely “everybody is actually very nice deep deep down” philosophy of life, filled with the kind of attention to detail that let’s you know that he really does know what living in a share house is all about (the recording being so lo-fi they may have even recorded it in the kitchen whilst secretly wondering when punk rock girl would do the dishes) Would he ever be able to top “I say 'A' for Abba /She says 'A' for Anarchy/ In the morning she says "Never mind the bollocks / Here's your cup of tea"? Would anyone?

No. 102 The Bees - Chicken Payback

Songs with funny dances in them have had an unfortunate history. For Exhibit A I would like to present “Agadoo” by Black Lace. But there are no set rules in pop, and despite this tune being sung by a bunch of Brits pretending to be inbred hillbillies (another sign that should be considered as bad) “Chicken Payback” is the exception that proves the rule. You can tell this the moment it starts, with that big intro, and by the time the band shouts “chicken” the dance floor is filled, and the awkwardness of no-one seeming to know how the “piggy” or the “camel” dance actually goes, begins, but no-one really cares because the party, with all of the animals getting down to the sound – a mixture of a groove made for go-go dancing, and super-catching guitar plonking – is going off! There’s not a lot else you can say about the song. Like “Don’t Falter” it’s mostly a primal thing, originating from our childlike urge to dance to silly sounding songs.

No. 101 Muscles - Ice Cream

I have a section out of the Faber Book Of Pop – which no self respecting pop writer should be without, or pop fan (you can borrow it after I’ve read it for the tenth time) – which says about (and in support or apology of…) techno music in the 90s (I warn you, this is slightly wordy) “Textless, it offers little to interpret in itself. Critics who like to engage with rock’n’roll as a surrogate form of literature are perhaps the most threatened by this anti-humanist noise, that seems closer to a power source… than any kind of poetry.” (to be slightly less wordy what they meant is that any genre where the most poetic lyric is “I’ve got the hots for you bobobobabababangbang” – which doesn’t even rhyme - is not one that makes it easy for critics to try and make sense of) Enter, therefore, and a decade or two too late, to provide us with “text” and explain the intricacies of the scene that vomited him out, is Muscles! It is possible of course that Muscles songs may not make perfect sense unless you live in Melbourne and have been to clickclick or any other Streetparty organized night at least once. You may be confused therefore about the connection between one inch badges and being dumped by an indie chick. Or maybe you are smart and can fill in the blanks yourself.

In “Ice Cream” the text that Muscles is providing, includes (a) the biggest issue amongst people hoping to party in Melbourne these days, that being “will I get stabbed on the train.” Can you imagine Tokyo Ghetto Pussy singing about that? Of course not. Muscles has his pulse on the big issues.

He even gives a solution which can be regarded as Text B – “ice cream is going to save the day.” That’s right! No more police out numbering drunken louts and people just walking along the streets on the street. Just give ice-cream to anyone who looks racist and they’ll stop beating up Indians.

And Text C, the ultimate catch phrase for anyone who actually does go out to dance and not to pick up chicks “I just wanna dance with my shirt off.”

But the most important lyric of all, and the one which shows that it text, just doesn’t matter at all. “Oooh Aaah.”

Nobody puts more power into their “oohs” and their “aaahs” than Muscles. That’s probably how he got his name.

The 90s revival probably began here. When was the last time you read a review that mentioned Tokyo Ghetto Pussy?

Top 200 Songs Of The Noughties No. 140-121!

2010-02-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

No. 140 Sugarbabes - Overload

A decade after they hit, lovers of girlie pop are still infatuated by the Sugababes – the out-pourings of grief, the taking to the streets, when Keisha, the longest lasting original member, left in 2009, was proof of this – and rightfully so, since they represented a concept utterly against the grain of the bubble-gum pop revolution that was unraveling all around them. I realize that it is impossible to tell Pete Waterman anything, but surely someone could have asked him “please, don’t do Steps. It’s a bad idea.” So while everyone else was competing on the “who can be the most hyper-active” scale, Sugababes discovered the power of containing motion, and restraining emotion. And whilst the US they were competing on “hot”, the Sugababes competed on “cold.”

This is perfectly demonstrated in this performance on Top Of The Pops, using their complete lack of excitement and movement to perfect effect, to the extent that after a minute of just sitting still on their chairs, they do something, simply to demonstrate that they aren’t actually in coma, and the crowd goes wild. Never before have so many people gotten so excited, about so little.* And it’s all totally deserved.

Madasun had a similar idea, but they didn’t take it to quite the same level. Their loss.

Is it just a co-incidence that we can trace the down-ward trajectory of the Sugababes with the up-up-upward trajectory of Rihanna, who has a similar “cold” and “expressionless” and “ice queen bitch” shtick? When competing on these terms, you can’t beat RiRi, and so, somehow, the Sugababes have transformed themselves into the Pussycat Dolls. You need to understand that this has been very upsetting for a lot of people. Something special, has been lost.

Special mention also needs to go to Groove Armada’s “Song For Mutya” – who I believe has been scientifically proven to be the greatest Sugababe of all - which is awesome, and even though it apparently wasn’t written as a dig at her Suga-replacement-babe (“that’s who has replaced me?/ what a dis”) it so should have been.

Groove_armada_feat_mutya_buena-song_4_mutya__out_of_control_
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* Possibly not actually true

No. 139 M83 - Graveyard Girl

M83 - Graveyard Girl
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Who I have taken to describing as “The Breakfast Club soundtrack if it had been done by Sonic Youth… with a synthesizer… trying to see just how much reverb can possibly be poured into a pop song”. Although, even in John Hughes collection of freaks, he probably wouldn’t have been able to write any character quite as messed up as this girl. The “basket case” doesn’t count. She hardly said anything.

But when this girl speaks, well it’s rent a messed-up teenager quote time. Just feel the layers of pain and meaning in the following lines…

“I'm fifteen years old
And I feel it's already too late to live.
Don't you?"

(I would like to point out that this is a spoken monologue. I believe that I have already discussed the intrinsic power of spoken monologues).

And this is right after she reveals that she wants to be a gravestone when she grows up.

Messed. Up.

No. 138 Los Compensinos - You! Me! Dancing!

The band of choice for kids who want to tear down the system and replace it with over-wordy pop culture references about rock snobbery, and the pride that comes from being the smartest kids at school (which with song titles like “We Are All Accelerated Readers” and “Please Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math”, and possibly the world’s only break-up song for grammar Nazis - “And for each correctly used apostrophe, I could feel my heart sink inside my chest in front of me” – when she falls for another guy, who is even more of a grammar Nazis than he is - they clearly have not yet gotten over) and the disillusionment that comes when you realize that that hype about the geeks ruling the world when they grow up may not actually apply to yourself. Then there is a song called “This Is How You Spell “Ha Ha Ha We Destroyed The Hopes And Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics” which is, I know, like wow, most gloriously pretentious song title of not just this decade, but any decade.

Thus Los Campensinos were the ultimate cult band of the decade, perfectly capturing the Us Vs. Them asthetic, where Us is a select group of people that they consider to be smart enough to bother with, and Them is pretty much everyone else, and in fact, pretty much everyone. Lyrical awesomeness jump out of their songs, each containing philosophies for rock snobs to live to, such as “four sweaty boys with guitars tell me nothing about my life” (see what they did there)

Then, just in case you didn't think they were music snobs enough, here is a song called "My Year In Lists"

It’s fortunate then, after all that literature and pain, that “You! Me! Dancing” is perfect dancefloor mayhem with cheer leader chants, and deliberations on simple things that could make this harsh world so much more friendly, such as why are there “only so many places you can guarantee getting a hug when you leave” and references to the joy of jumping in fountains, and thus utter bemusement of why everyone can not just be like they are, and wouldn’t that be a wonderful world.

No. 137 The Boy Least Likely To - Be Gentle With Me

By the artist also known as “the boy most likely to get beaten up at school” every second is designed to make the listener smile and go ‘aw”, from xylophone chimes, and the banjo twanging, the way his voice strains so cutely in the chorus, the fact that every time you think he can’t get anymore pathetic – such as being scared by fluttering insects – he does, the way he sums up the meaning of life in the couplet “If I wasn’t so happy/ I wouldn’t be so scared of dying” before going way over the top with the musical interlude, to levels of cuteness never seen before in pop music, not to mention the video which demonstrates the black shoes and white socks really don’t look as bad as Lady Sovereign says.

No. 136 The Teenagers - Homecoming

The brilliance of “Homecoming” is that it demonstrates that it is not only pop punkers and white boy rappers who like to indulge in fart jokes. Skinny-jean-wearing-indie-kids do to. Actually I suspect everybody does. Secretly.

And songs with Valley Girl accents doing Spoken Monologues! Clearly another guilty pleasure that everybody has.

Then there is the “being a noughties update to ‘Summer Nights’. And hasn’t the world changed since the fifties? Let us compare the relative lyrics sheets:
In the case of ‘Summer Nights’ it wasn’t all bowling in the arcade and drinking lemonade. I’ve always pondered on the lyric ‘got my suit damp’ for example. But it’s fair to say that the sexual associations were somewhat subtle by comparison, to… “on day two, I fucked her, and it was wild. She's such a slut." Which in itself is subtle in comparison to the chorus. All of which would not be as funny if it wasn’t walked through in a charming French accent. Which in itself wouldn’t be as funny if it wasn’t made obvious that he is supposed to be English.

If this was a movie, it would be a Z-Grade classic cherished for its utter awfulness.

No. 135 The Cool Kids - Black Mags

In these days of concern about global warming and reducing our carbon footprint, it is refreshing to see the hip-hop community – which has long been about big cars that do that bouncey thing at the back – doing their part, with The Cool Kids, a hip-hop crew that were proud of the fact that they ride bikes, and were so cool that they still picked up girls whilst doing so. More than that, it was a philosophy that appeared to stretch to the beats, which were used as sparingly as possible without sacrificing its dance-ability. Thus they were a band that you could listen to knowing that it was doing minimal damage to our precious Earth.

They weren’t just a one-novelty band either, constantly taking stances on important issues, usually the opposite stance than most other rap stars would take. Such as rapping about Sega, Cheerios and Batman belts. These are important issues and it is a service to the world that they are finally being paid attention to. Thank you Cool Kids.

No. 134 The International Noise Conspiracy - Up For Sale

They were Swedish, they wore matching suits, they rocked, but they were not The Hives. They were the International Noise Conspiracy, which was not only a great band name, but one which they put a lot of effort into actually living up to, bring Marxist Situationist philosophy and books too clever for normal people to understand – thus being less a band than an art project set to a toe tapping beat - to the masses, or at least those masses who like their garage rock. Which at the time was quite a huge number of consumers.

It’s fair to say that they put much more though into themselves than most bands do.

All of which was far more fun, and clever, and subversive and what-have-you that a million Rage Against The Machines, or John Butler just going on and on like he has the secret and you don’t. The International Noise Conspiracy made anarchy (assuming that they are promoting anarchy, I myself getting confused a bit by all these political labels that I don’t even know whose left and whose right anymore, but apparently it’s like a circle anyway and the ultra-left and ultra-right just meet together in a fury of paranoia) seem not only fun (the Sex Pistols had already done that) but incredibly, also an intellectually credible philosophy to out and rock for.

No. 133 Hot Hot Heat - Bandages

Whilst the Strokes were practicing their poses in front of the mirror and making sure that their faces were expressionless, up north in Canada Hot Hot Heat were doing their best to be the most energetic, most fun, most party friendly, rock band that had ever been. They may have achieved it too, if it weren’t for…. (see No. 132)

No. 132 Andrew W K - Party Hard

There are rock stars. And then there are ROCK STARS! And then there are morons.

That’s okay. Rock’n’roll isn’t about brains, which is lucky really given the famous photo shoot during which Andrew smashed his face with a brick. Attitudes to Andrew thus revolve more or less around whether you feel that that is just an incredibly awesome sacrifice to make for your art. Or whether you think he is a moron.

Legend has it that Andrew W K’s album is only about partying, and that there is the word party in every title. That would be awesome, but it’s not so. There is “It’s Time To Party” and “Party Til You Puke”, a song incredibly even more rockin’ than “Party Hard,” the kind of thing that makes you look in the mirror at yourself after you’ve listened to it, and, even if you haven’t been drinking, say to yourself “Dude, you’ve partied too much. Again.”

And then probably find yourself calling everyone “dude” for the rest of the week, for Andrew W K does have a strange effect on people, the fucking moron.

No. 131 Cat Power - He War

Oh what a classic tortured artist tale is Ms Power’s, perfect for a made-for-television Saturday afternoon movie. Troubled artist sings songs about other doomed and troubled artists, hides behind her piano, gets bored at her own gigs, decides she can’t be bothered going through the whole gig and walks off, and just generally hates everyone, and what is it that everybody wants with her? Can’t they just leave her alone with her amazing songs and her bottle of Jack? And then she finds some sort of redemption at the end, and it turns out okay.

“He War” also sounds like a struggle, between some distorted guitar strumming and some pretty piano tinkling, and Ms Power’s shouting “hey hey hey” over the top of it a lot in an attempt to bring them back together and be friends. It is a beautiful (yet also kind of ugly) thing.

No. 130 Johnny Boy - You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve

The Global Financial Crisis anthem of choice for all socialists, terrorists, and anyone else who has ever dreamt of the opportunity to stamp on the ashes of Western civilization, for everyone who has dreamt of the revolution coming simply so their boss will be the first against the wall, etc, for everyone who feels that when this does happen that they shall be standing around with a smug look on their faces because they only have one pair of shoes and those are Sweat Free. By combining this with addictive 60s reference points that have been scientifically proven to be impossible not to love (it is amazing how a simple “Be My Baby” drum beat intro can excite people still, and so instantly, and how a choir of go-go dancers going “ooh baby, oh baby” can do the same) it’s a song that can turn even the sweetest old granny into a terrorist. Whether or not the song is directly about Baby Boomers or not is uncertain, but it does seem likely, thereby also giving one a Generation X sense of being absolved and free from “messing the world up” styled guilt.

Osama bin Laden is probably singing it in his cave as we speak.

No. 129 Arcade Fire - Neighbourhood Number One (Tunnels) (Yeah! A Tunnel!)

The day I saw Arcade Fire, I – and everyone around me – thought that they were going to die. We were all in line to get up close to the band at the Big Day Out, to get into the inside of D-barrier (that was put up after a girl died at Limp Bizkit), and there was thousands of us, all squeezing through a tiny confined space. For an hour we were crushed against each other, so much that for at least half of it my feet were not touching the ground, stuck as I was between some dudes shoulder blade and another’s left nipple. My friend, disappeared into another niche between several other hot sweaty bodies, - “Cath!” I tried to scream, my hand reached out so they we wouldn’t be parted, telling myself over and over again that no-one has ever died on their way into the D-barrier.

Finally we came out into the open, where there was air we could breathe, and on the stage were a bunch of friendly looking Canadians dancing around with accordions and with violins and without a care in the world, dressed up as they were like the Amish, singing about a perfect world with no cars (like the Amish) and their upliftingness of their hymns, even when singing emo epics about pretty much every member of their family dying (which in itself is absolutely refreshing and quaint and full-to-the-brim with good old fashioned values, because rock stars are not really supposed to have family are they? Families to rock stars and like families to teenage girls: a source of perpetual embarrassment) and all of this made me believe that everything was okay, and that righteousness would save the world, smiting evil in its wake.

This, I hope you understand, is a metaphor.

The near-death experience whilst waiting in line at the Big Day Out is the harshness and uncaringness of our modern world (although the people who were suffocating me to death, did seem quite nice actually and not covered in Australian flags at all). And Arcade Fire, and the happiness they bring is… Arcade Fire, and the happiness they bring, even when (and being booky looking people that they are I’m sure that Arcade Fire would appreciate this comparison) they are conjuring up every teenage dysfunctional rebel that ever wandered through the pages of literature, form “Catcher In The Rye” to “A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius,” except that they do it with music and opera so melodramatic that I would gladly follow Win Butler (great name by the way) to his land where everyone is nice, and there is no pain. Canada.

To be continued…

No. 128 Regina Spektor - Fidelity

Crush-worthy for wide variety of reasons but mostly due to her refusal to sing American like an American (but, if Tatu are anything to go by, not like a Russian either) not singing when she could whisper, not use words that make sense, when she could sing words with nonsense, not singing it serious when she could sing it silly, singing about the Bible like someone who has read the whole thing and thought it was a good laugh, whilst also (according to Wikipedia) using something called a “glottal stop”, the definition of which is far less interesting than the sound of the word might lead you to suspect.

Most of these charms on display all over “Fidelity” one of the lightest, sunniest and bitter sweet (probably mostly skewed towards sweet) tunes you could ever dream up, and as a result, if you compared her with Vanessa Carlton, Sara Bareilles or any other girl of the decade who sat in front of their grand pianos writing “clever” songs, you’d have to say that Regina was…

No. 127 Of Montreal - The Past Is A Grotesque Animal

There are break-up songs, and there are break-up songs. There are break-up albums and break-up album. And there are beautiful love stories, including in this case one which begins at a music festival “discussing “The Story Of The Eye” by Georges Bataille.

So I read the “Story Of The Eye”, for research purposes and curiousity. Towards the end of the book a girl stuff a priests eye up her vagina. Not, I’m sure you’d agree the typical first-date book (I’d go as far as saying that I would have predicted this relationship would end badly from this very beginning, but then I’m conservative like that). You might expect therefore that when a couple that bonds over a book like this breaks up, it going to be messy. You might expect therefore that, if the guy had an artsy fartsy band, he might make one of the most messed up break-up albums of all time. An album full of songs like “She’s A Rejector” – although with far wankier names, like “Labyrinthian Romp” and “A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger” - with choruses like “there’s the girl that made me bitter/ wanna pay some other girl to just go up to her and hit her” and making it catchy enough to have it stick in your head and kind of disturb you for days.

“The Past Is A Grotesque Animal” however is a different creature. It will disturb you for weeks. As anything would that starts of sounding like the Cure covering the Doctor Who theme song, and then get’s even creepier, into the deepest darkest wells of self-pitying bad poetry.

Key points include:

• “The sun is out, it melts the snow that fell yesterday/ makes you wonder why it bothered.”
• “it’s like we weren’t made for this world/ although I wouldn’t want to meet someone who was” – which competes with M83’s “I’m 15 years old and already feel like it’s too late to live” as the most emo lyric of all time.
• “Let’s have some fun/let’s tear this shit apart/ let’s tear the fuckin’ house apart/ let’s tear our fucking bodies apart”
• “Sometimes I wonder if you’re mythologizing me like I do you.”
• “No matter where we are, we’re always touching by underground wire.”

Dude. No. Give up.

No. 126 Lil Wayne - Got Money (feat. T-Pain)

“The Carter”, the new documentary about Weezy, starts off with one of the most outrageous pieces of hyperbole in pop music writing “Every filmmaker should be so lucky to be granted a character as unique and compelling as Lil Wayne. You can’t write a character like Lil Wayne. He exists because God sometimes decides he wants to create something bizarre and amazing.”

Big call. It’s almost as if Wayne wrote it himself.

You might not be able to write a character like Lil Wayne, but you sure could draw him. As a comic superhero, with a magic potion he fondly refers to as “sizzurp”, and an Achilles heel of… well it’s difficult to identify what that might be for Wayne. Unless it’s pussy. He does seem to have a weakness for pussy.

In New Orleans the kids stick their ears to radio hear every rhyme he spits, so they can be the first in the playground with insults like “you like a bitch wit no ass/ you aint got shit” ‘cos what can the kids say back to that? They can’t say nothing. Try it, next time, instead of “your face…” cos that’s getting a bit old. This shit is like Shakespeare to them. And it looks like it’s like Shakespeare to himself to, because I don’t this I’ve ever seen anyone so pleased with himself by his witticisms, even if his witticism seems to centre around a line like “she wanna fuck Weezy/ she wanna rape Wayne” which is like, you know, not cool. Still, in an industry like hip-hop where everyone’s trying so hard to be hard, it’s nice to see a guy enjoying himself.

And T-Pain? Well the guy certainly knows how to use to Auto-Tune button to full effect, plus I want his hat.

I’d like to point out that Barack Obama has name-dropped Lil’Wayne at least twice (although it’s possible that he’s name-dropped Jay-Z slightly more) That’s got to count for something.

No. 125 Life Without Buildings - New Town

Amazing.

You can have your verse-chorus-verse song structure if you like. It has its place in the world. I prefer my songs to sound as though they dragged in some crazy homeless person from off the street, who had been sitting down rocking back and forth muttering to herself anyway, and gave her a slice of toast and a microphone, while they just jammed.

The way the song sneaks in, the way her voice just sneaks in with no fan-fare, the way she goes “I saw you today you were like a snob” as if it were the weirdest way for a person to act when faced with a crazy homeless person (and she does have the tendency to just not be able to let things go), the way she says “neato” as if it’s the best word in the world (which it may be), the way yelling out “looking in your eyes” as if she were about to tear them out, the way it falls away towards the end as if they are a little unfit and have to chill out and take a breather, and can you really blame them.

As I said. Amazing.

No. 124 Missy Elliot - Get Your Freak On

Is it still possible, in 2010, use the word Timbaland and “visionary producer” in the same sentence? In this post “Apologize” world we are living in, this is a relevant question, and one that even five years no-one would think they would have to ask.

Here is a non exhaustive list of guest artists on the man’s new album. Some are predictable like Justin Timberlake, and Nelly Furtado, because that’s what the man does. Some are slightly surprising like Katy Petty and Miley Cyrus and Shakira, but really they are not. The man has always liked his hoes. And bringing back OneRepublic for another shot is one thing, but THE FRAY? JET? (singing with JoJo? Aka the Miley that couldn’t!) NICKELBACK????? This is either terrifying, or evidence that the man is working in ways far too mysterious for us plebs to conceive. It’s a bit like how Missy totally destroyed any concept that she was a feminist warrior the moment she sang a song to her vagina, begging it to do good work, so that she could keep her man. It just seemed wrong.

It’s entirely possible that neither Missy or Timothy cares about your so-called rules about what’s cool and what’s not. Would – if he had asked – have people who-know-stuff had thought starting a song with “everybody’s gonna be dancing a little fucked up” spoken in Japanese would be a good idea? Probably not. And does Missy need anyone to tell her she’s equal to any man. HELL NO!!! Who need feminism when you are the biggest and best potty mouthed horny party-animal this side of EVA! Let’s give a quick run down of the super-sized party-jams that Missy brought her sass to, all in the space of maybe a year or two. There was “Pass That Dutch” in which she plays the role of a contagious virus, and very thoughtfully – as only an experienced party animal would think of – gives us a second in the middle to catch our breathe, in preparation for more partying. There was “4 My People” featuring probably the most gratuitous ecstasy references since “Ebenezor Goode”, during which she gets so high that she “licks your face.”(wtf!) There’s “Gossip Folks” probably the best “take that haterz” tune of all time, in which she answers “I heard the bitch got hit with three zebras and a monkey” with “Yo how bout you buff these pumas for 20 cents so your lights wont get cut off, you soggy breasts, cow stomachs” (never quite understood what that actually meant, but I’m sure it’s mean). And there was the madness of “Lose Control”, and "I'm Really Hot" and “We Run This”, a song so full up with goodness that when she hollers “THIS SHIT IS SICK!!!” it sounds as though she’s understating. “

And I haven’t even mentioned …

No. 123 Band Of Horses - No-one's Gonna Love You

Although the chiming guitars (possibly the best use of chiming guitars ever) and sincerity turned up to eleven vocal mannerisms and sensitive folk singer with a big beard looks, would beg for a “yes” vote, the question still needs to be asked, is “no-ones ever gonna love you more than I do” actually a nice and romantic thing to say, or is there a subtext of “so you better not dump me or else you’ll be lonely forever and end up a cat lady.” What does it say about me, that whilst listening to something so beautiful that I could possibly be pondering such a thing? Any normal person would just be swooning.

No. 122 Goldfrapp - Utopia

Goldfrapp have always been just a little stranger than your average band, with that certain quality that makes record companies use the world “kooky” a little to liberally in their press releases.

Who else would come up with the idea of the idea of mashing “Doctor and the Tardis” by the Timelords/The KLF (essentially the Dr Who theme with a glam rock beat) and Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, with a bit of Giorgio Moroder thrown in for extra trashiness, and make it sound so damned sexy?

Goldfrapp - Strict Machine
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But this isn’t about that song. This is about “Utopia”, which you know has to be good, because it is from an album that starts off with the most haunting whistle known to man, and continues in such a way that by the end of the first song alone, all of a sudden your chakras have found themselves balanced. Amazing.

And now finally I shall talk about “Utopia”, who epic beauty is not even undermined when you realized it contains lyrics like “fascist baby” and “I’m a super brain”, and is probably about breeding some Nazi master-race, because if only the German’s had propaganda like this instead of listening to Wagner, things may have ended up far differently.

No. 121 The Decemberists - 16 Military Wives

Although “International Talk Like A Pirate Day” was invented in 1995, it spent the first seven years of it’s existence being practiced by precisely two people, living in the same town, with all their mates thinking they were losers. It was therefore not technically all that international. It finally begun to take off in 2002, and a good thing too because the 2000s was that kind of decade (in the future, everybody will have their own wacky novelty holiday). A decade in which people constantly slipped into irritatingly antiquated phrases such as “jolly good ol’ chap”, and would end with a band like the Wild Beasts, who as far as I can tell are supposed to be a medieval funk band. Awesome!

The Decemberists became the patron saint of this kind of cravat wearing cultural phenomena, the kind of band who thought it was a good idea to write a ten minute song – nay epic – about a boy who spends his life tracking down the man who destroyed his mother, before coming face to face with him… INSIDE THE STOMACH OF A WHALE!! Yeah, I bet you didn’t see that coming did you?

“16 Military Wives” targets a far larger subject, one of the largest of all, - America – and does it in the catchiest manner imaginable, with a chorus of “la-di-da’s” and another chorus of trumpets.

Top 200 Songs Of The Noughties No. 160-141

2010-01-25T08:03:00.000-08:00

No. 160 Rilo Kiley - Portions For Foxes

Oh Jenny Lewis. Is it her bangs? Or is it her seductive accents that sounds as though she was brought up by her uncle and auntie on a farm in Nebraska and only ever has sex in a haystack after a good old fashion hoe-down? Popular opinion has it that it is her bangs, but it’s a close call.

“Portions For Foxes” glimpse inside the world of good looking people (and girls with bangs) “The talking leads to touching/ and the touching leads to sex/ and then there is no mystery left”. Although that feels slightly presumptive, when you are Jenny Lewis, I guess these things just happen. Trouble. Trouble happens. Life must be so complicated for good looking people. They just can’t seem to say no. Their life is a soap opera. And this is a soap opera inside a song.

No. 159 Britney Spears - Toxic

Britney Spears: Toxic
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Going down in history as the most non-Jay Z cameo featuring “allowed to admit that you like it” bubble-gum pop song of the decade. The song has universal appeal. They did a poll asking people all over the world – including, I am led to believe, goat herders in Tajikistan – and this came second (for the record Queen’s “We Are The Champions” was Number One, both of which suggest that best of lists in rock magazines don’t mean shit). This may be because of the vaguely ethnic gypsy violins, and spaghetti western guitar twang, a palette of pop so rich and complex that isn’t seen very often, by Britney, by anyone. Pretty much every pop star has a moment when they try to cram as much into a song as they can, make a masterpiece, make their “Sgt Peppers”, - for Madonna it was “Like A Prayer” for example, an acid house pop song with a Gospel choir - and this is Britney’s.

This is as far as I got on this review until I found myself in a taxi with my flatmate Teigan, Matt Kav, and Petit (who shall remain quiet for the remainder of this review, which is quite a rare thing for Petit to be).

I asked Teigan if he’d like to be the guest reviewer for this song, writing about its genius. He stuttered a bit but was generally speechless. Matt Kav started on a story about an Indian guy at his work who was generally straightlaced until this song came on, at which time he turned into a party animal, thus demonstrating its universal appeal.

Our Indian taxi driver remain quiet on this point.

But it reminded me about an experience I had when I was riding a bus through the desert scrub of Rajasthan, and a teenage boy started a conversation by asking me who Britney Spears was (he’d been reading about her in newspaper but DIDN’T KNOW). I was first amazed, then at turns, appalled and somewhat refreshed by the fact that there is, somewhere in the world, a land with no Britney. And that is a beautiful thing. Because there are still lands in the world who will have the opportunity to hear this song and get excited all over again.

No. 158 The Big Pink - Dominos

The kind of instantly addictive “indie classics” that the nineties were filled to the brim with, but people just don’t do anymore – you know, like that “woo hoo” song, and that other “woo hoo” song – but with a beat so big that you’d think it was a Jay-Z track ( and with significantly more echo than in your average song), and capable of making any guy feel like a stud (“these girls fall like dominos”) all of which makes the song an easy song to get ultra-excited about, once also making it easy to demonstrate your ultra-excitement (you just shout out “these girls fall like dominos!!!” and you are there).

No. 157 Bomfunk MCs - Freestyler

“Wasn’t it just an advertisement for Sony?” I heard some douche bag ask the other day. I rolled my eyes, cursed Jon Safran, and said “No, it was the most freaky song ever to hit Number One, mixing drum and bass with the best slide guitar intro to a song this side of Texas’ “I Don’t Want A Lover”, the stuttering/scratching “f-f-f-f-freestyler” is just genius, the way he goes “YEEEAAAH!!!” is even more genius, the way you can not walk along the street listening to this song, without swaggering along like the kid in the video (try it, I dare you, it is physically impossible), and you know what… they aren’t even free-styling… that’s totally post-modern… or ironic… or something.”

Although if they were freestyling, that would at least forgive them for some of the worst lyrics of the decade, the top two being “will your heart go on, like Celine Dion, Karma Chameleon.” – La Bouche in the 90s had quoted Boyz II Men in their raps, but Celine and Culture Club in the same rhyme? Genius! – and “who the fuck is Alice, is she from Buckingham Palace.”

But that’s what I love about Scandinavians. Their English is shit, so you can rely on them to come up with such genius lines. Genuis = Stupidity that is brilliance backwards.

No. 156 The Blow - Parenthesis

Note: best use of karaoke in a music video ever.

I was given The Blow album – “Paper Televsion”, go get it. It’s awesome. If you need some sort of movie reference to understand the kind of world view that informs it, I’d like to point out that Michel Gondry’s film “The Science Of Sleep” did involve a television studio made out of cardboard – as a present, which is the perfect way to be exposed to a band like The Blow. Just people sharing wonderful things with other – assumedly specially chosen and wonderful – people. The album sounds less like a commercial product and more like a little piece of craft to be sold at Rose Street Markets, not so much for monetary gain, but so that they can receive the glow that can only be found by seeing people smile and being told “dude, you make some cool shit.” Cool shit like feminist philosophy, as seen in “Pile Of Gold” a song about sexual economics, complete with bad economics puns (of which there are surprisingly many).

Cool shit, like twee little folk songs over the top of funky beats, even if those beats sound as though they sample the drumming of a toy soldier.

“Parentheses” is the best of these songs, the kind of song you just want to cuddle, just to demonstrate how much you like it. A song where not only is the imagery impossibly cute and clever – writing songs about punctuation and grammar long before Vampire Weekend, although obviously, not so obscurely – but is a perfect depiction of perfect love. What says love more than understanding when your partner, for reasons that no sane person could possibly understand, starts crying in the middle of a deli?

No. 155 The Strokes - New York City Cops

2001 : Rock’n’roll needed a leader to save it. Despite frequent claims of its demise from grumpy old men, rock’n’roll is only rarely in such a dire position. Rock’n’roll actually sounded as though it was either in a coma (Christian rock bands like Creed and Lifehouse were topping the charts) or alternatively deserved to die (Limp Bizkit). The kids were looking for a leader, to lead them out of the wilderness. They probably would have been content with anyone, as long as it wasn’t Fred Durst. That they got The Strokes was just a bonus. A band that, at the time anyway, appeared to be entirely unable to write a bad riff, and resist chucking several of these riffs into every song, but more importantly had Julian Casablancas, a man who could sound bored and excited all at once, with a slightly distorted voice that many in the biz would consider bad mic technique, but Jules wouldn’t care because he’s rebellious like that, and through this managing to achieve the always admirable being awesome without appearing to try. Most people, when faced with a microphone in front of their face, succumb to the pressure to be entertaining. It takes a lot of effort to resist that urge and instead sound half-asleep. But apparently this is what you have to do in order to save rock’n’roll.

It wasn’t all good of course. Having the epicenter of the rock universe, a sullen guy who sulked in the corner with his hands in his pockets, convinced a generation of rockers to do the same, as if “I don’t dance” was an admirable political statement. It also convinced a generation of rockers that a couple of Rolling Stones album, a Velvet Underground best of and one Iggy Pop song was sufficient musical education to start a band.

Now, I’m a little uncertain over whether the kids in America know this song, since it was taken off “Is This It” in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, in a moment of New York solidarity (being the best city in the world, New Yorkers seem to go for solidarity a lot), that did kind of reduce their attempts at claiming the much coveted crown of being “the bad boys of rock,” which they were competing heavily for with classic moves such as smoking on stage and engaging in staring competitions with the audience.

Anyway, this, America, is what you were missing out on…

(a) The Intro – featuring Julian going “oh”, backtracking, apologizing, “I meant OH!”, backtracking again, all of which is kind of confusing, and a little bit weird, but actually kind of charming.
(b) A typically awesome Strokes chorus
(c) A typically awesome Strokes guitar solo
(d) A typical Julian being band leader moment, when he goes “stop” and a little drum solo ensures.
(e) Just simply one of the best songs they ever did.

Quite harmless really. But also quite incredible

No. 154 Tegan & Sara - Take Me Anywhere

Dear The Veronicas,

I love you, but THIS is how you do the whole lesbian sisters thing properly. Hint: it doesn’t necessarily mean you are lesbian with EACH OTHER. Because that’s just a little bit weird.

Whether Tegan & Sara’s self-doubt/hatred/however is in anyway attached to their lesbianism is difficult to say - certainly their sexuality seems to form a far greater portion of their public image than probably any other band (their always entertaining, and often “classic” banter/song intros almost always seem to end up in some kind of lesbian joke) – but, like the Pet Shop Boys before they officially came out, the pain that runs through their songs is certainly informed by the tension of being an outsider.

They write about self-hatred (it’s entirely possible that you are meant to hate them for lines like “look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t find me attractive”, even though that line is adequately balance by others such as “I feel like I wouldn’t like me if I met me”, a line of universal appeal) making “Take Me Anywhere” a spectacular celebration of acceptance, despite obvious emotional issues and bi-polar suffering, in a world in which the perfect declaration of love is simply not being embarrassed by your partner’s presence.

It’s also just incredibly catchy, and not just radio friendly, but grabbing that radio and giving it a little grope. And sorry Veronica’s but I kind of went off topic there for a little bit, I was supposed to be giving you career advice. How about getting matching emo/Rihanna haircuts and stop looking like junkies?

No. 153 Florence & The Machine - Kiss With A Fist

Florence is awesome isn’t she? Striding over the pop landscape with her sturdy legs. Photos usually featuring her strutting around like some all-powerful witch. And featuring a lot of her sturdy legs. She does have the sometimes annoying tendency to switch the whimsy-meter up to Kate Bush, which is interesting in its way: why, in this era of hi-techinity do we still run to embrace singers due to their seemingly high potential of being wiccans?

As reasons for Florence being No. 153 go, I realize that this is so far not too convincing. On the other hand, despite my initial oh-no-not-another-Kate-Bush-clone concerns, Florence has won me over since primal screams are always more exciting when the rock’n’roll back beat makes the mystical easier to dance to.

“Kiss With A Fist” is the most perfect Florence moment – although her version of house-classic “You’ve Got The Love” comes close – largely due to the switching down of the whimsy meter, and the switch up of just plain fun rock’n’roll, the possession-of-balls-ness and the slightly disturbing props to mutually consensual domestic violence. Never – or a least not for a long time – has sexual politics been so much fun.

No.152 Ben Lee - Gamble Everything For Love

Although I may never buy another Ben Lee album again – he’s like the new-age hippy that you meet at parties who tries to convince you that clouds are made of fairy floss, which is charming at the time, but if he sent you a friend request, you’d probably reject it -but there is something so heartbreaking beautiful about the whole of “Awake Is The New Sleep” thing, the whole breaking up with Claire Daines thing (because who hasn’t dreamt of being in a situation where breaking up with Claire Daines might be something that happens to them), the whole ending up in a Taoist Healing Centre, where, to quote the liner notes, they taught him “nothing – what it is and how to get there”(???) helped him “make contact with the Divine Secrets of the Universe.”

When already ego-maniacal kids find religion, then it is time to look out! They start to talk about love, and how it’s like really, really, important, possibly (probably, definitely) the most important thing in the world. A nice philosophy. It might be nice if you put in a song.

See also “We’re All In This Together”, a song which proved that I know nothing about the Australian record buying public, since when it was played at the end of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games I predicted it would go Number One. I thought that the zeitgeist might be in step with a song that claimed that “I’m made of atoms/ your name of atoms/ we’re all in this together.” It did nothing.

See also “Begin”, the epic in which Ben naively attempts to make friends with everyone in New York.

And see also “Catch My Disease”, even though it was pointed out that complaining that you don’t get any radio airplay, and containing this complaint within the song, is the best way to ensure that your song will be the most played song on Australian radio. The man is cynical like that.

That's probably enough Ben Lee for one day.

No. 151 Kylie Minogue - Slow

Much better than the rather-overrated “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” (even that “Blue Monday” version which was kind of obvious. Not like “Work It/Love Will Tear Us Apart” or ‘Jolene/Eple”. Those were moments of pure mashed up genius) and many many times more sexier.

It’s also the kind of song that I think only an Australian could convincibly do. Only some-one who has spent days on end not being able to move because it is just too damned hot (if she needs an excuse as to why this wasn’t a big hit in the US – it only got to No.91 - she could criticize the record company for releasing it in the middle of winter) could make a song quite like this. As the video shows, this is a song for getting skin cancer to.

It is also quite possibly the sexiest thing that Kylie has ever made, and in that it has an incredible amount of competition. Even if you take out her heavy breathing, that is all over the track, it’s still sexy. When the groove drops out, when the chorus begins – that’s sexy (it’s also the opposite of what normal songs do). Even when she gratuitously promotes her album by groaning it’s title – “Body Language” – it’s sexy.

No. 150 Matt & Kim - Daylight

Annoying for so many reasons. Matt has, it has to be said, a really annoying voice (of which he is suitably proud). Any song that is mostly made up of a handful of notes repeated over and over again, has got something big against it at the get-go. And they are such an annoyingly cute couple. I have an idea for a drinking game! Watch the video, and skull every time they gaze adorably at each other. This is how you get faceless in just 2:53 minutes.

So why this is my preferred song for waking up to in the morning and getting pumped to face the day (especially given that I have stuff to do, and they, judging by this tune, do not)? There’s the whole Day = Possibility formula. There’s the whole Awesomeness = Little Things formula (“slip and slide on subway grates / these shoes are poor mans ice skates” thus showing us how to have fun in New York on a very tight budget). There’s Kim, just seeming to bang everything in sight, and seeming to have more fun doing so than one would think appropriate.

Matt and Kim. They give us hope, and I wish I was them.

No. 149 Mystikal - Shake Ur Ass

There was a time, when the world of hip-hop seemed to be a competition of who could do a combination the best James Brown impersonation and be the most in-your-face obnoxious. There was Mystikal, Ludacris (who I kept on mixing up with each other... ok judge me), Busta Rhymes (at a push) and the greatest party animal of them all, Fatman Scoop, with his “if you got a $50 bill put your hands up!” They were materialistic times. And good times for partying.

With the Neptunes providing one of their hookiest less-is-more grooves, Mystikal spouting crazy shit like a preacher on crack with rabies, fitting more words into each verse than the human brain can possibly handle at once, but which are most probably sexy, (I say probably because who the hell really knows what “you better stick a head on that there crawfish” means exactly) just so long as lines like “came here with my dick in my hand / Don't make me leave here with my foot in yo ass,” is the kind of thing that makes you want to “ride that dick like she makin a baby.” What you need to understand, before you get all moral and judgemental on Mystikal’s ass is that this is the highest example of what will go down in history as amongst the finest forms of human expression, the supreme inventiveness of the hip-hop community in relation to describing (a) women’s bits and (b) what their man bit can do to woman’s bits for mutual benefit.

No. 148 Kings Of Leon - The Bucket

I was going to have “Sex On Fire” here, which is an addictive and epic anthem, or as a German backpacker once rather aggressively pointed out to me, is a “FUCKING CHOON!!!!!” Some people say that “Sex On Fire” was only a hit because it has sex in the title, but really the break-down is about parts, the sexual tension in the guitar riff, the sexual tension in Caleb’s (clearly the boy was born to front a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band) vocals in the verses, and the release during the bigger than big – everyone in the arena shout along, “Living On A Prayer” big – chorus. It is truly a “FUCKING CHOON!!!!”

But in finding myself in conversations where the success of the song is insisted as being a good reason for hating it on principle, I have backed down and gone with “The Bucket” which has the kind of intro guitar riff that pretty much guarantees excitement when on the indie dance floor, and the kind of incomprehensible chorus that I have spent half a decade trying to decipher (as if out in the sticks they don’t understand rule of pop number one: you can mumble during the verses, but at least try a little diction during the chorus). I have therefore invested a significant portion of my drunken nights analyzing this song, and do thus have an emotional attachment to it, and still I have failed to translate “eighty bowding stowrr dolden fallin ho” into anything approximating actual words (although I was beginning to suspect it may be Welsh).

I will now reveal for you all, what the words are, according at least to the appropriately titled “Cowboy Lyrics” website:

“Eighteen Balding Star/ Golden Falling Hard” (AZ Lyrics claims it is “falling heart”, others say “fallen heart” and so the mystery continues, as of course does the now even bigger mystery of what that could possibly mean).

But honestly, the inclusion of Kings Of Leon is not necessarily due to fanboy-ness (I grew up in the country and left it as soon as I could, so my attitude to KOL is similar to my attitude to “Dazed and Confused”. This was my youth and young manhood, I don’t need to re-live it), but just a realization that I do need at least one token radio-friendly mega-band in this list, and I really wasn’t in the mood for Coldplay (although they have had some reasonably awesome moments themselves) and have been spending much of the decade getting as much distance between myself and Snow Patrol as possible.

No. 147 Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

If – as has been suggested by some folk – the level of awesomeness of a song can be judged by the number of times it has been covered, and the range of artists that have done the covering, you’ve got to be impressed by a song that has been covered by both the Sugababes (pretty damned sexy) and Tom Jones (but is there anything the man wont cover), and for very good reason. Reaching across concepts both timeless – dancing as an opportunity for the use of cute pick-up lines – and instantly dated as an 80s kids infatuation with Duran Duran, whilst doing a damn fine job at conveying the sensation and politics of “banging tunes and DJ sets”, making sex sound cute by referring to it as “naughtiness”, and featuring classy rhymes such as “dancefloor” with “romance or”, which is all just classic pop song writing of the highest order.

If it were just the song writing that would be exciting enough. But what is particularly exciting about “Dancefloor” is just how excited and energetic the band sounds, particularly during that intro when not an atom of disaffected youth can be detected, and which as an attention-grabbing “we are the Arctic Monkey’s and we have a crappy name (although it’s not really as bad as people kept bang with a bang-going on about it. The Test Icicles though. That was a bad name.) but we are actually pretty rad” intros goes is enough in itself to justify the “OMG this is the best British band since the Beatles” hype that they were buried in (and which really was kind of ridiculous wasn’t it?). And then that bit, when the intro racket drops away to reveal the groove… that was absolute genius.

Brill stuff

No. 146 Girls - Lust For Life

Quick history of this band for anyone joining the world of Girls for the first time: the “main guy” was brought up in a cult (a real cult full of evil twisted people, not a fake happy cult like the Polyphonic Spree) before managing to escape and discovering rock’n’roll, San Francisco and drugs (there has got to be a movie in that!). Fortunately along the way he didn’t learn how to sing, because his bad Elvis Costello impersonation is just perfect for the kind of half self-pitying but half life-affirming battle against the odds tunes that the Girls album specializes in. Songs in which girls are always breaking up with him, and it’s kind of clear the reason why, since he has the emotional maturity of a teenage nerd (not his fault of course, you try being brought up in a cult and then have a functioning adult relationship), constantly getting crushes on perfect strangers (ok, I’m speculating here) knowing that it’s going to end badly, but just going in a punishing himself anyway. The kind of guy that, if you are a girl, and he starts talking to you, you an never be sure whether he is being sweet, or has the potential to turn into an obsessed and psychopathic stalker. There’s a fine line between the two.

All this may make him a terrible choice for a boyfriend, but the perfect choice for a rock star in this crazy mixed up shallow world. So go find a nice park somewhere, have a picnic, get out your Frisbee, and turn this – both the feel good and the “feel sorry for yourself” hit of the summer – up loud.

No. 145 Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance

The word of pop has always had a place or two for shy people, who when put up on a stage suddenly seem incredible, if sometimes still a little awkward (this will probably look like way too big a jump of reason, but clearly its part of the reason for the success of Susan Boyle), and Lykke Li fits the bill perfectly, pronouncing “dance” in the Adelaide instead of the Melbourne way (as is the only proper way to pronounce it), demonstrating that there is sexiness in shyness, debating with Shakira about the intrinsic honesty of hips, and creating possibly the least danceable song about dancing ever written, just one so happy that kind of want to (more so than the kind of songs that sound as though they are forcing you onto the dancefloor). Maybe you can shuffle, but that’s about it.

Part of this is because she has Bjorn Yttling from Peter, Bjorn and John – a man who asks questions such as why would anyone use a drum, when they can use woodblocks, tambourine and maracas? Why would anyone use a guitar, when you can use a kazoo? Clearly primary school music lessons had a big effect upon him – producing, trying in his own little way to be the Timberland of twee. Good luck with that Bjorn.

No. 144 Midnight Juggernaughts - Tombstone

For many, the Australian Government apologizing to the Aborigines for the Stolen Generation, was the biggest relief of the decade. No longer would we have to face questions about whether we were racist or not whenever we found ourselves trying to pick up a backpacker (that was the great white hope anyway. I don’t think it worked).

For others, the biggest relief of the decade was when we realized that that we were not entirely useless at creating dance music. This had been a thorn in our side for decades. Collette. That stupid Jack-jack-jackie song. Groove Terminator. Sonic Animation. Any Madison Avenue song other than “Don’t Call Me Baby” (that was a bit of a classic). We just couldn’t get it right. Another thing that European backpackers – who obviously knew all about dance music – could tease us for.

Somewhere in the middle of the decade we finally figured it out. I mentioned the “pink bogan” phenomena before, but it was such a focal point of Australian culture in the 2000s that it deserves a second mention. I’m sure that Midnight Juggernaughts, the Presets and Cut Copy (who will not be on this list, since they sound so serious and bored that I’m sure they’ve never partied in their life, no matter how much they write songs about it) all had the same epiphany one day whilst walking down Chapel Street. Surely, they thought, they looked at each, and smiled, realizing that they were all thinking the same thing, if these douches can wear tight pink t-shirts… then THESE ARE OUR GUYS!!

So, whilst Franz Ferdinand were writing songs to make girls dance, Midnight Juggernaughts managed the far more challenging proposition of writing songs, that would inspire bogans to put their Australian flags to the side and stop picking on Asians for a moment, and get down on the dancefloor. They achieved this partially through riffs as simple and addictive as AC/DC’s, partially through videos that looked like Ed Hardy t-shirts, and partially through beats that you could dance to even when your muscles are getting in the way.

It was a proud moment for us all.

No. 153 The Mountain Goats - This Year

Proving once again, that singers will nasally voices and catchy songs are amongst the most amazing thing in pop. As are simple but big piano chord intros.

Other amazing things in pop, of which there are simply not enough include songs written in the first person of a broken down car, songs containing words like ‘cavalcade’, singers who sound really really angry for unknowable reasons, songs which contain moments of Hebrew solidarity, and New Years anthems with less emphasis on the partying and more emphasis on the pessimism. It’s always good to lower your goals. Much more achievable.

They also do an adorable version of “The Sign” by Ace Of Base.

No. 152 The Libertines - Can't Stand Me Now

So as you know, rock’n’roll – sticky carpet, vomit, sweaty arm pits and lots of hair spray – was back in the noughties (Strokes, White Stripes, yknow….) In the UK, where the myth is as important as the music, just having bands repeating the old clichés in their music, was not enough. They had to repeat the old clichés in their everyday lives.

The drugged-out rock star dating the hot model cliché. Which enabled the girls of the world to discover that they actually did care about Kate Moss, even if she had been responsible for most of their body image issues and the anorexia when they were teenagers. The media went crazy, particularly the paparazzi segment, leading to annoying moments such as gossip columnists going on and on about how much of a bad influence Pete Doherty was and why the hell was it that Kate put up with it all, before finishing off with “why is he even famous anyway?”

This is why.

This is a song with three different hooks, each would have been entirely adequate enough for it’s own song, all in the first 50 seconds! Just to show how many hooks they have, it’s a case of “nah stuff that one, let’s do that one” – the kind of ADD that you can only get with copious amounts of drugs – and that’s even before they give the best Morrissey impersonation of the decade.

That’s class. Of a sort.

No. 141 El Perro del Mar - God Knows

El Perro del Mar, defined two, not entirely mutually exclusive concepts during the noughties, and defined them better than anyone.

The first was European sophistication – the kind of sophistication that made me feel sure she was French (even though the band name is Spanish for –according to Wikipedia – the incredibly unsophisticated, and you'll never guess in a million years, “The Dog From The Sea”) and rode around on a bicycle all day eating that long crusty bread - which was particularly impressive given that her real name was Sarah Assbring, and feel free to chuckle now if you like. Turned out she was Swedish, just like pretty much everyone else.

The other is just being plain depressing, and in a constant state of “being dumped.” There are some pop stars who are sad, and you want to hug them (see Lykke Li). There are others that when they call you, you just don’t answer the phone because you know that they are just going to go on and on (oh this is so pathetic) and on… and worse! Their lives are going to continue to be an unwatchable car crash, because you know, you just know, that they are going to try and get back with the guy, and that’s never going to go well, and then they will call you, and … (maybe, "The Dog From The Sea" wasn't such an inappropriate name after all, all soggy and pathetic)

Emos stood back and gaze (jaws agape) in awe, in respect for a master.

The Top 200 Songs Of The 2000s - Numbers 200 - 181!

2010-01-16T17:48:00.001-08:00

What a decade it has been. We have come a long way. Sometimes it may not feel like this, but we have. This is a decade that began with a homophobic chain saw-welding bigot as the biggest pop star in the world. It ends with a lady, who may or may not actually be a lady, as the biggest pop star in the world. Surely that is some kind of progress.

At the very least, it guarantees an exciting story arc.

And so, in the spirit of celebrating awesomeness, and to prove that the 2000s were the best decade in music since the 90s, I know present to you, the Top 200 songs of the 2000s

No.200 - Pretty Girls Make Graves - Speakers Push The Air

Well what do you know? The first song in our probably-longer-than-it-needs-to-be-but-really-it-does-need-to-be-this-long-due-to-the-shear-level-of-awesomeness chart, in which I shall be discussing songs that I like, and that you should like too, is a song about liking songs! What’s more it’s a song about liking songs from the past, although since these kids sound very much like kids, the time they are being nostalgic about may indeed have been just last week. It’s a bit like “Old Time Rock’n’Roll”, except more optimistic, since there’s no suggestion that everything has been done, and everything in the future will suck. That “one definitive moment” could happen again next week! There is something extraordinarily exciting about that possibility. The world. It has potential.

And I know you are probably thinking that putting a song about liking songs at the beginning of a list of songs that I like, is 100% pre-meditated and therefore not much of a co-incidence at all. You can think that if you like… but you’d be WRONG! This song has been scientifically proven to be the definitive 200^th best song of the decade!

No. 199 Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It!)

Since I am now an uncle, the most terrible “oh no I’m getting old” moment from the decade, I decided that I now have the earned right of all uncles to make the most out of a bad situation and make bad jokes. So, when I bought my nephew a stuffed babooshka doll, which happened to have a bell (which is close enough to a ring really) in it, I wrote, in the Christmas card. “I hope you like it. I did. That’s why I put a ring in it. Lol.”

Yes, I apologize, I did write the “lol.” I even believed, in my heart of hearts, that it was lol worthy.

My sister however did not get the reference, and so I found myself shocked, appalled (her husband didn’t even get the reference, and he is a music teacher. What do they pay him for?), and then rather chuffed at my still-being-down-with-the-kids-ness. Not that it would have been possible to escape from this song. Here for example is a sample of my friends statuses on Facebook this year that have referenced this tune.

“I really like the pizza I had for dinner. Should I put a ring on it?”
“Bess doesn’t like it so she aint ever gonna put a ring on it.”
“If Jew like it then Jew shoulda put a ring on it” (I'm not certain about what context this was in)

Not to mention the Facebook Group “Petition to Change the "Like" Option to "Put a ring on it", although with 109 members, the chances of success are looking slim at the moment.

“Single Ladies” stands as being the second most overused pop cultural reference of the decade, beaten only by “Vote For Pedro” t-shirts, and surely that deserves being featured on such a list as this.

No. 198 The Ravonettes - That Great Love Sound

How to make an awesome record in two easy steps:

Step One: write an amazing, impossibly catchy song. Something that sounds like a 60s girl group.

Step Two: try to destroy the song with walls of guitar noise that sound like strangling babies, and replacing the sense of sweetness and light of a 60s girl group with a creepy punk rock snarl.

Innocence being corrupted by sin. It works every time.

It also helps if you make the song sound like a protest chant proclaiming the power of rock’n’roll, and young love, and the close relationship between the two concepts. Choruses like this made me want to grab a placard and march down the street defending the power of the rock.

No. 197 Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye

The scientific precision of “Lazy Eye”, perfectly designed for maximum dramatic impact is something to behold, even more impressive than their key marketing strategy which appeared to be based on getting “the kids” to send mp3’s to their friends in order to discuss whether the singer was a guy or a girl. Given the presence of a beard on his face, this should not have too long or detailed a discussion, and it must say something about the twisted world we live in, that it appeared to go down a treat (YouTube discussions still seem to revolve around the topic).

Creating such dramatic impact required much planning, and I always suspected, the use of PowerPoint to storyboard the whole thing. It just so happens that I have a sourced a copy of the story boarding process, and remember this is an exclusive.
No. 196 Sahara Hotnights - Alright Alright (Here's My Fist Where's The Fight?)

This entry shall be subtitled “Girls With Guitars And Is There Anything Sexier” (“Yes! Girls With G-Strings And Guitars” – Sisqo Ed) (“But Sisqo… Guitars Have G-Strings! – Pedantic Ed) (“Perfect!” – Sisqo Ed) (That section actually made more sense when I originally wrote it, and was considering putting Sisqo’s “The Thong Song” at No. 197. Then I had another listen to it and realized that for all the awesomeness contained in his hyperbolic excitement over g-strings it was actually kind of shit)

It is also an attempt to determine the all important question, which had a bigger influence on the popularity of pop music in the 2000s: The “Is This Is” album by the Strokes, or the Josie and the Pussycats movie, both of which came out in 2001. The idea of a bunch of naïve rock girls going up against the evil record company empire, combined with the Strokes appearing out of nowhere to “save rock’n’roll” or something, led to a mass light-bulb-on-top-of-head moment around the world. Send the memo to everyone: “chick rock is in, and you’d better look out because they are going to kick your arse!”

No. 195 Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me

I, like much of the rest of the civilized world, got a bit obsessed with the whole Kanye/VMA monologue thing, and in keeping with the great art of procrastinization, found myself reading all the comments to the news story, and along with the “Kanye is a jackass’ comments, such as “Always knew this guy was a twat. Typical rapper, it's all me me me me with those fools.” (I like the “fools” bit. It’s very Coolio) there were the ones saying “nice one Kanye, you’ve turned her into a mega-star,” by people who had never heard of Taylor before.

As a general rule, people who haven’t heard of artists who have had big Number One singles (okay only two weeks at No.1, but eleven weeks at No.2, so we are talking about a pretty big hit here), should probably keep quiet about pop music. Taylor was already a megastar, loved by millions of teenage redneck girls (and, if YouTube viewing statistics are anything to go by, a disturbing number of middle age men) who love her genuineness, that she is actually what she appears to be, that her naïve country ditzyness and constant pep even in the face of the insurmountable odds as represented by short skirts, is 100% real. That she actually believes that a prince shall come and rescue her on a white horse. By which I mean not such metaphorically, but literally. There is something kind of appealing about buying into the dream to that extent. It shall be exciting to watch the dream crash and the consequent crumble into drug addiction over the rest of her career.

And then of course, there is her nose...

No. 194 Elliott Smith - Son Of Sam

Elliot. Did he kill himself or was he stabbed? One would assume the former given (a) there was no sign of forced entry (b) he was a pretty depressed kind of guy, and (c) apparently stabbing yourself in the heart like that is not as difficult as you might think (although apparently it REALLY HURTS).

But the deciding factor I think is (d) he sounds like such a nice guy on record that its impossible to imagine anyone wanting to murder him. Even here, where he is singing about a serial killer, it’s the most relaxing and just plain “nice” voice in pop. And that thing he does, with the piano and the guitar chiming together in the intro. That little bit there is EXTREMELY nice.

All in all, it’s very nice.

No. 193 Marina and the Diamonds - Obsessions

When Marina & The Diamonds appeared on “the scene” early in 2009, critics compared her to Kate Nash. Musicians always get peeved at being compared to anything, so she said "Because OOPS! I have a vagina and a keyboard!!!! WE SO SIMILAR!" and the critics went all I’m-sorry-I-didn’t realize-we-were-being-sexist and went and had a long look in the mirror and found that David Lee Roth was right and that they did look like Elvis Costello.

The thing is though that in addition to a vagina and a keyboard, Marina also has a remarkably Kate Nash-y ear for a rent a quote put down. In place of "yeah, intelligent input, darlin', why don't you just have another beer then?" put “one minute I’m a little sweet heart the next you are an absolute creep.” In place of “Oh, my gosh, I cannot be bothered with this,” put “just choose something, Something, SOMETHING!” as she spends an entire verse trying to decide which crackers to buy in the supermarket -Marina’s holding onto the crackers in their foundation? - the kind of attention to the details of everyday life that usually only disturbed comedians deal in. “So crackers… what’s the deal with them?”

Even if she never does another song quite this great, she would have still managed to justify the level of obsession that she inspire through this one.

No. 192 Sons and Daughters - Taste The Last Girl

It took me a long time to realize that they weren’t singing “too much indie,” (this says a lot about both the quality of the radio reception I received where I was living at the time and my inability to decipher lyrics whilst drunk in indie nightclubs. I still don’t know what Kings Of Leon are singing in “The Bucket”, I could check but that often ruins things) which I thought might be a wonderful piece of self-analysis by the band. You may feel like that at the end of this list. Or you may feel there wasn’t enough. And so the suspense builds.

There is no suspense in this song though. It’s knows exactly what it wants and it grabs you in a non-too-subtle way (people seem to be using the phrase “ball-grabber” to describe a song or album that really grabs their attention lately, and I am prepared to proclaim this song as a “ball-grabber” just to go along with the trend). It’s essentially a Texas hoe-down as done by a bunch of Scots with attitude, which bangs you over the head with the hoe- , grabs you and keeps you there for the whole thrilling song all the time wondering what “a genuine boy with a guilty smile” actually means.

No. 191 Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend

I am prepared to risk the complete stripping of any last vestiges of credibility I may have in order to defend this song. Never let it be said that I shy away from humiliation.

It pretty much stands as the greatest piece of marketing of the decade. It all began during a late night focus group session at RCA.

“We have a problem. The anti-Britney shtick is beginning to wear off. And P!nk seems to own that market now anyway. We need a new angle. So tell us … what is the first word that comes to mind when I mention Avril Lavigne?”
“Hate”
“Must… kill.”
“Technically, that’s two words. Mmm I think we can work with this.” Talks on speaker phone. “Jodie, can you get me the guys from song-writing. We need them to write a song that will make people hate Avril even more.”

Genius!

And you, the market, fell for it! Suckers.

That’s reason Number One…

The second reason is that in just a handful of minutes it manages to capture everything that I love and everything that I hate about “kids these days.” Actually she pretty much manages to do it in the space of just five seconds… “I think you know I’m damn precious/ and hell yeah I’m the motherfucking princess.” Brilliant. Elsewhere she demonstrates the generations excellent problem solving abilities.

The Problem : I don’t like your girlfriend. I think you need a new one.

What to do? Time for a light-bulb moment. *ting!*

The Solution: I could be your girlfriend!

So obvious, yet so proactive.

No. 190 Sia - The Girl You Lost To Cocaine

In “Buttons” Sia sings “I’m losing my marbles”, which probably stands as the most stating-of-the-obvious line of the decade. Which begs the questions… just how loopy is Sia?

I decided to ask my friend Olivia, expert of all things Sia, and she referred me to where I really should have gone in the first place. Her Twitter feed!

Here is her Bio: “i am sia, i was born from the bumhole of a unicorn named steve.”

On Christmas Day she decided to share with the world “just drove past a frothy poop pond.”

A week earlier: “today i dribbled through the face hole onto the floor while i got a massage.”

And a couple of days later: “omg i made the us magazine worst dressed list sandwiched between padma and cher. i can die now. my work here is done.” That is not so much crazy actually, as an entirely viable goal in life.

Reports are also coming in of an incident in a full Melbourne elevator, when she announced “okay, now we all have to fart at once!”

Thus demonstrating that it is the people that we would try as hard as we can to avoid in real life that make the best pop stars!

This is what you get for going out with a girl with a moustache.

No. 189 The Thrills - Big Sur

In the long tradition of rock stars pretending to be things that they obviously are not – Lily Allen being a chav, Tatu being lesbians, David Bowie being an alien – one of the more subtle examples were the Thrills, an Irish band deciding that they want to be a Beach Boys cover band performing in “The OC.” I am a big fan of this tradition.

One tradition that I am not a fan of is that of bands that are not American singing songs about how obsessed with American culture they are. Or Americans singing about Hollywood and California and how wacky it all is (Madonna and Red Hot Chilli Peppers I’m looking at you). The Thrills get away with it though because they are clearly on the verge of being clinically obsessed. Their other moment of pop glory, asked the question everyone has always wondered “Whatever Happened To Corey Haim?” whilst leaving open the other question of “which Corey was that one exactly?” So these are guys who grew up on eighties teen movies, and realizing that they were never going to get over it, decided that it was their life goal to live it out themselves. They took action. I approve of that and I hope that all the band members ended up with a girlfriend who looks good in a bikini.

No. 188 Calvin Harris - Colours

Calvin Harris is the kind of pop star we have been promised for a while. The kind of pop star that those experts who talk about the democratization of production and distribution (making songs on your laptop in your bedroom, making YouTube videos on your laptop in your bedroom) were supposed to produce as “the kids” searched for pop stars that they could follow on Twitter. A pop star that was breaking down the fine barrier between pop stardom and talentless people making videos of themselves. A pop star whose most recognizable feature was a pair of glasses that looked as though he probably made them himself. Or his Mum did. Or his Grandmum. He was the kind that would make YouTube videos of himself talking to his laptop in a hotel room (such is the glamour of being a pop star in the noughties) often about opening jars of jam (long story, look it up for yourself).

A pop god, in short, that was ONE. OF. US. Only better.

As a side-effect of all this being a barrier-busting icon of the new pop economy, Calvin can obviously afford to be picky with girls. Did you notice that of all the girls in “The Girls” that he fancied, there was not one Goth girl. Nor was there an emo girl? No of course not. He just kicked them to the curb, saying “what’s the deal with the blackness?” Except he would have done it politely, and with a good deal more charm.

No. 187 Punjabi MC - Mundian To Bach Ke (but NOT the version with Jay-Z)

The Indian Tourism Board has been congratulated over the decade for the brilliance of its “Incredible India” advertising campaign, involving since seductive sights as camels walking past the Taj Mahal, and lots and lots of colour.

They need not have bothered.

This song, with its sitary thing clanging away (which is apparently called a tumbi, exotic instrument fans), it’s outsourced and futuristic KnightRider sample, and some dude going “wwwoooowwwrrrrggghhh” in the background whenever the chorus kicks in, the clash of the exotic and the familiar, the traditional and the modern, was far more intoxicating that anything any tourism board could have come up with.

By the end of the decade, India proper (Punjabi MC was a British Indian) had produced exactly zero global pop stars, but the Pussycat Dolls had gone to Number One. And so the crazy cosmic dance continues.

No. 186 Asobi Seksu - Thursday

It’s been a surprisingly good decade for shoe-gazing (has it been a good decade for shoes? I’m not such a connoisseur of shoes, so please let me know) particularly given that was a originally a scene that died about two days after it was created in 1991. The secret of it’s revival and good fortune? A reversal of its emotional outlook. Whereas shoe-gazing was created especially for the gloomy cloudy weather of England, the fuzzy guitar sounds gave its listeners something to wrap aroundhem and keep warm, the Americans have found that if you inject it with sunshine, magic will appear!

It also seems to help if you have a Japanese singer. Such a singer will automatically possess the rare twee gene, plus have a voice that is subservient enough to fade like a lost-girl into the wall of feedback, an attribute necessary in making the most dreamy of dream-pop. And Asobi Seksu certainly are the most dreamy of dream-pop.

The Pains Of Being Pure Of Heart may have made the perfect Asian-girl-fronting-a-shoe –gazing-band-album of all time in 2009, but they never quite reached these heights.

No. 185 Sally Shapiro - Jackie Jackie

In a decade in which music went off into little genre-clashing niches, it was only a matter of time before indie-disco would turn into twee-disco. It was a great idea – bad poetry and insecure soul searching by shy people being recreated in the most kitsch of technicolour splendor – but it didn’t really take off. A pity. Particularly since this song at least, did its bad poetry and soul searching in spoken monologue form. If there was one thing that the noughties did not have enough of it was spoken monologues. Monologues are awesome. When you do a monologue people know that you mean it:

Why do I always end up
In situations that are bad for me?
How come I don't fall in love
With normal people?
And why don't normal people
Fall in love with me?
I don't think I'm that strange

And on she goes, making feeling sorry for yourself sound so adorable to a disco beat. See Soko’s “I’ll Kill Her” for much the same thing, but without a disco beat, and with much more malice.

No. 184 We Are Scientists - After Hours

In the constant back and forth of pop history between the United States and the United Kingdom, the noughties have been a good decade for American bands who want to be English. Hell, these guys even named their 2005 hit “The Great Escape” after a Blur song. How Anglophile is that?

According to Wikipedia this song is about death. It is painfully obvious that this is not the case. It is painfully obvious it is about going to Pony, because you think that you have a chance with this girl, but you need only one more hour, a couple of more drinks and a bit of dancing to seal the deal. Given the unfavourable male/female ratio at Pony however, this is what is known as “a bad idea.”

The band is also led by a guy who is so ridiculously good looking and charming with his angular haircut that everyone who may have hated him for singing stuff like “if you want to use my body then go for it” in previous hits – there is certainly something about We Are Scientists that suggests picking up girls in dingy nightclubs, as if their very name were a pick up line to impress geeky girls – would have cheered at his comeuppance getting in the video, which I can’t embed because the record company is being a dumbass, but of course you can just click here.

So here they are on Letterman.

No. 183 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth

Of the many trends that have impacted on band names in the noughties - the “The” bands of the early half of the decade, the animal themed bands at the end, the growing tendency to use $ signs and lolcat speak – one trend that split people into two camps was the overuse of the exclamation mark. It had been done before – Wham!, Frente! – but in the noughties it when so far as to pop up where it didn’t belong, in the middle of words, not to mention give the world a band entirely made up of this one single form of punctuation (!!!). Some of these bands were exciting enough to justify the ! (the Go! Team for example), some were probably jumping on the bandwagon (P!nk) and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! seemed like a strange choice, since they were wanky art student types who did not, quite frankly, seem particularly excited about stuff.

Their music however was exciting, and “The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth” inspired more celebratory “woo!”s when it was played in the dingy indie clubs of this world, than most other songs,starting with an intro that screamed out “hey, you know this song”, the adorable “be-yu ey-yu” guitar hook, the generally superior jangly guitar throughout, and most of all, the most brilliant impersonation of the drunken slur of a redneck hillbilly. And if the popularity of Kings Of Leon has taught us anything, it is that we all love impersonations of the drunken slur of a redneck hillbilly.

No. 182 Uffie - Hot Chick

Uffie. She may in fact, on paper at least, be even easier to hate than Avril. Spoilt little rich girl, moves to Paris and pretty much accidently becomes a pop star, with an image largely based on being spoilt and better than you, because let’s face it, someone needs to tell you, you suck.

Sample Uffie lyric (from “Dismissed”) “get off your couch get a fucking life instead of staying on internet dissing us. All you got is your mom bringing your fucking cookies to your computer. Try to get a fucking life!” In this song she allows sleazeballs to buy her drinks, and then disappear before they try to stick their tongues down her throat. We’ll play.

It took three years for the mainstream to finally co-opt it, and give us the most brilliant Number One of the year, with Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” Which is exciting, not only because of its own inherent awesomeness, but because it’s finally put the required candle underneath Uffie’s ass to actually, you know, release probably the longest anticipated album of all time (“Chinese Democracy” doesn’t count because I don’t think anyone actually wanted that released, since it meant that we’d actually have to listen to it instead of making jokes).

No. 181 Alphabeat - Fascination

For those of you have somehow managed to avoid the genius that is “Glee” (and why would you ever do such a thing? Why would you want to avoid something that can so easily make you happy?) “Fascination” provides much the same thrill as seeing a bunch of school kids jumping around to effervescent and tacky pop songs. This is what happens when the Glee kids graduate, discover a mutual joy of Bucks Fizz records and decide to take over the world, which indeed is how I am hoping that the series shall actually end.

If pop is a religion – and to some people it is - and these guys are like the crazy old guy with the placard saying “repent! The end is night!” – and they would say it with exclamation marks as well! They would be happy about this, since they know that once the apocalypse comes, everyone would be living in Alphabeat land. In Alphabeat land, boys and girls live in perfect harmony, singing pop songs together all day. Previous Scandinavian groups had realized the power of duets as the greatest form of pure pop expression, and Alphabeat follow in this tradition. Not that it’s a real duet. It’s not a girl and a guy arguing. It’s not them making up. It’s not them telling each other that they’ll love each other forever. Instead they are singing together, because if there is one thing that both boys and girls can agree upon in this crazy mixed up world, it is the irresistibleness of a song with lots of “woah-ohs” in it.

All of this reaches it’s climax with the “word is on your lips” “say the word” section in the middle, where the cute couple-ness of the boy/girl love in, reaches get-a-room dimensions, thus creating one of the greatest single pop moments of the decade.