Sometimes, my wife tells me that I don't use all my abilities to the best of my abilities often enough, that I should use my talents to make more money for the family. I've been married ten years now, and I've finally realized she's right. You see, I have two college degrees. I hava BS in English education, and I use that to make money from August to May; for June and July, though, I should be using my other degree to make money. What degree is that, praytell? I, thankyouverymuch, have a PhD in Amassing Collections of Disposable Popular Cultural Artifacts, specializing in Ones That No Other Thirty-Seven-Year-Old Adult Should Still Care About Enough To Spend Large Amounts Of Money On. A subset of that specializtion lies in American Popular Music of the Rock and Soul Era. I've had this degree for years, and I've never profited from it; well, since I'm now nearing forty, I think it's about time to do so. How do I plan to make my first million with my PhD? I'm going to blog. Then, I'm going to collect these blog posts in book form, sell it to the highest bidding publishing company, and just sit back (like I'm doing now) and reap the monetary awards and critical accolades. See, honey?
My first collection will be of what I think are the 333* Best Pop Songs of the 2000s. What makes me think I'm expert enough to know this? Why, if you don't believe me, you can just come on up to the house and take a gander at my Ph.D (see previous paragraph) hanging on the wall. I will issue a small disclaimer: I haven't heard every song released in the past eight years...but I'm pretty darn close! So, if you happen, by the time I'm finished with this bloglist about September of next year, to not notice a song you think deserves to be on this list, realize that yes, I've probably heard it, and that yes, you're wrong.
A note on my rationale: my list pertains to Western, mainly American, popular music—primarily because Jim Morrison said, "the West is the best," and I'm a strict Morrisonian. Though I’m slowly making inroads into other forms of Western music (classical, jazz, gospel, praise, electronic, etc...), I don’t feel confident enough that most of those cats know what they're doing enough to make great records. My list skews more heavily towards rock than any other single genre, but that's because, hey, I'm a rocker. And I rock. And so should my list.
I'm going to start this list today with #333, and I'll continue adding one song a day for the rest of the week, but I'll rest on the weekend (if God gets one day a week off, then, Hell, I should get at least two). If all goes according to plan, then I should post my #1 record sometime in October of '09. What happens to all the great songs that will be released between now and then? Well, at the end of '09, I'll post an appendix to the list, listing (and briefly discussing) those songs. So, any song released from this Tuesday, July 15 until December 2009 will not appear on this original list.
Ready to get started? Good. Let's.
NOTES * - 333 was a number I picked for two reasons: I liked its repetitive nature, and I guessed that there wouldn't be too many more great songs than three hundred. I've since discovered I was wrong on the latter. I've expanded the list to 500, and I could expand to 700 easily and 1,000 with another month or two of research. (12/31/09)
NOTES * - 333 was a number I picked for two reasons: I liked its repetitive nature, and I guessed that there wouldn't be too many more great songs than three hundred. I've since discovered I was wrong on the latter. I've expanded the list to 500, and I could expand to 700 easily and 1,000 with another month or two of research. (12/31/09)
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1 comment:
That's nice dear, but could you please come up and change the baby's diaper?
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