The Best Songs of the 2000s: #102

#102: "Belleville Rendez-Vous" (2003) - -M-

An aural ode to one of the greatest guitarists ever from one of the greatest animation films ever (or at least of the past ten years), Benoit Charest's (music) and Sylvain Chomet's (words, and the film's director/animator) "Belleville Rendez-Vous" takes Django Reinhardt's gypsy jazz stylings (played here with some original fantastic fills by Thomas Dutronc), adds a heavy kickdrum thump, charismatic and stylized vocals & scatting by Mathieu Chedid (known famously around France and part of Europe as -M-), a kazoo, a paper-harmonica, and some sublimely silly scatalogical background lyrics, and makes an endlessy-inventive pop pastry, light on its feet, but ever so tasty. You could sing along even if you don't know the language (and the French original take flows so much smoother than the English version), and you could dance this in the home, in the street, and--with that insistent one-three thump, even in the clubs. Would have driven 'em wild there in the mid '30s, but it works just as well in this new millenium. Even Queen's "Bicycle Race" was never this much fun.