The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #179

#179: "With You" (2008) - Chris Brown

Happy Valentines Day, Penny. This one goes out to you.

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The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #180

#180: "Dancing on Our Graves" (2007) - The Cave Singers

Ladies and gentlement, from Seattle, Washington, I present to you the Cave Singers. Tonight, they'll be performing their new freak folk song "Dancing on Our Graves." The lineup for this song goes like this: Derek Fudesco on vocals & tambourine/maraca; Pete Quirk on acoustic guitar; and Marty Lund on washboard and kickdrum.

Washboard?

Yes, washboard.

How's 'bout the drummer? Who's on the drum set?

Nobody.

How's 'bout the bass? Who's playing bass?

Nobody.

No one on drums? No one on bass? Man, this is just some more of you drag-rump, peace/love/flower, bleeding-heart liberal stuff, ain't it? It's gon' put me to sleep, ain't it?

If it does put you to sleep, you'll have nightmares.

Why? 'Cause they say graves in the title?

No, 'cause Fudesco sounds like his soul's being tortured, his frayed tenor reflecting someone on the run from the tortures of the damned within and without, seeking solace in sex and warmth of a lover who may be damned as well; and 'cause Quirk's synchopated picking evokes images of sins that dance around our spirits, never leaving, always threatening; and 'cause Lund's bum bum bum bum and scratch scratch scratch reminds that the Devil--real or figurative, it's up to you--is not only right on our tails, but he's gaining; and 'cause the record ends cold, with a hard thump, which means that maybe not even our lover's embrace can save us from the abyss, 'cause it's just arrived, right behind us, and it's just grabbed our shoulder.

Well, why you playin' it again if it scares you so much?

'Cause if I immediately re-play the record, then I won't have to turn 'round and face the end.

Okay, uh, that's a little morbid. Why I wanna listen to something like that?

'Cause it sounds like nothing else on this list. And we better play it now, 'cause tomorrow's Friday the 13th, and though superstition ain't the way, there's still no way in Hell I'm playing this one tomorrow. Might as well face the devil before he's prepared for me.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #181

#181: "Galang" (2005) - M.I.A.

We move from retro-sixties to retro-eighties, as M.I.A.'s producer drop all sorts of Casio-tone, video-game sound effects (I think a couple are from the Atari game Frogger) and beats, and then he just lets M.I.A. rap and sing and dance all over it, her rapping style as retro as the music is, but what's not retro is her mixture of culture and language, her melding of the East and the West (not Eastside American rapping and Westside American rapping, no), using every ounce of energy she's got into making her version of hip-hop a truly international language. And she comes pretty close, 'cause folks, it don't take much multilingualism to be able to sing "galangalangalanga," and that's part of her point, and it's a point that's fun to make. Go ahead. Try it. Sing it. You'll see what she means. And why she's an important voice, and why pop music is, too.

M.I.A. - Galang
by hushhush112

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #182

#182: "Jerk It Out" (2002) - The Caesars

I gotta admit: I didn't hear this one (and most others didn't, either) until it appeared on on iPod commercial; so, say all you want about selling out, but if it weren't for the Swedish band The Caesars selling out to Steve Jobs, then most of the world would have never heard this song (ad nauseum by now, as it's been featured all over the place since), and most likely The Caesars wouldn't have been able to continue their recording career...though eventually, it probably won't add up to much (except for the fact that, oh, these musicians can have a roof over their heads, a meal in their bellies, and money for medicine for a little bit longer) as far as their legacy is concerned, because they'll probably never top this one. I've heard most of their other songs, and none come near it (in terms of quality or popularity).

What makes the song great is it's synth-organ, its sound coming straight from the mid-to-late sixties garage/punk era, the post-British Invasion era of Western rock and roll, the psychedelic scene, where much more often than not, the organ took precedence over the guitar (e.g. "96 Tears," "Liar, Liar," "She's About a Mover," "Double Shot of My Baby's Love," "Dirty Water," etc...) by carrying the melody and giving the record its feel. The synth-organ domintates "Jerk It Out": the song opens with it, the main riff is played on it, and it gives the song a bit of a paranoid, drugged out edge without ever bogging down into any purple haze. It's also immediately identifiable: it's one of the catchiest organ riffs of all time.

The song would work well as an instrumental (and it still would have made this chart that way, too), but the vocal (and vocal production) and lyric add a bit of sexual mystique to it. It's not always easy to decipher what singer Cesar Vidal (sounding a bit like Oasis' Noel Gallagher) is saying, but on the chorus he's clear, and then the music stops for him to sing the song's title. What does "jerk it out" mean anyway? Well, the first guess would be masturbation. Easy enough, right? Of course, it could mean preparation for urination, or it could mean preparation for intercourse, or it could mean flashing someone, or it could just be a metaphor for letting one's self go, letting off steam, letting it all hang out (as the Hombres would say). Vidal, in the song, never really spells it out, and so we're left to wonder while the organ keeps us pumping along.

Yrp -jerk it out-
by luluetcompagnie

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #183

#183: "Dreaming of You" (2002) - The Coral

Opening with one of the best bass lines of the past decade, "Dreaming of You" immediately ups the ante by laying down a sweet counter-melody (counter not to the bass line, but to the primary melody of the vocals) from Nick Powers' organ, and then the rest of the band comes in, the guitars playing a rhythm that ping pongs around the bass line, and the drummer holds down the fort. Later, we get the Roger McGuinne-seque guitar solo accompanied by vibes, and we get the baritone sax adding to the rhythm, and in the midst of it all, we get an adept British blue-eyed soul singer singing about...masturbation?

Yeah, I think so. But don't worry, the lyric's not too trashy on the surface, and, for the most part, it doesn't get in the way of the one of the best white-boy grooves this side of Spoon. The background vocals tip the sound back about forty years, as they sound like Jay and the Americans, but then again, even Jay and the Americans never struck a groove like this.