The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #149

#149: "Portions for Foxes" (2004) - Rilo Kiley

Back when this song first dropped, (as it never really hit, not the mainstream anyway) someone called it "the indie-pop song of the summer." Indie-pop? This song? Puh-lease. This is a rock and roll song all the way. Listen to the chorus, to the guitars ripping those power chords, to the drummer flaying the cymbals, to singer Jenny Lewis trying her best to control her inner Pat Benetar. The verses might be pop, but they're only pop for the purpose of rising action, for the sake of dynamics. All the filigree work on guitar is just icing. Courtney Love only wishes she could have written a rock song this fine this decade.

The lyrics are as astute an observation on sex and lonliness and forgiveness as anything Elvis Costello or Roy Orbison or Don Henley ever wrote. When's the last time you heard a pop-rock song by a girl about a cheating lothario that didn't condemn the man?* As much as I've always hated the way that some girls (some meaning all) always fawned over the bad news, I understood. I didn't like it ('cause I wasn't bad news), but it certainly made sense. The fact that it made sense made it even worse, I believe. Dunno. I'm not at that stage anymore (thank goodness). I remember it well, though, and everytime I think about it, and the old seething jealous and envy rile themselves up again, I need to try to think of this song so that I can understand and sympathize, just like Lewis does here.

NOTES

*Probably the last time I've heard a woman praise a less-than-heroic man was Sheryl Crow in "Strong Enough," but the early '60s girl groups did so quite often.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #150

#150: "Can't Get You Out of My Head" (2002) - Kylie Minogue

What Minogue says in the title is what I have to say about this song. Everything else is pure eroticism.

The Countdown Capsule, Part IV: 200-151

Past the half-way mark, now!

#200: "Underneath Your Clothes" - Shakira
#199: "Things Have Changed" - Bob Dylan
#198: "Piece of Me" - Britney Spears
#197: "List of Demands (Reparations)" - Saul Williams
#196: "You Know I'm No Good" - Amy Winehouse featuring Ghostface Killah
#195: "What's Your Fantasy" - Ludacris
#194: "A Woman" - JJ Grey & Mofro
#193: "Since I Left You" - The Avalanches
#192: "Country Grammar" - Nelly
#191: "Stutter" - Joe
#190: "Don't Cha" - Pussycat Dolls & Busta Rhymes
#189: "Don't Matter" - Akon
#188: "Pon de Replay" - Rihanna
#187: "Comeback (Light Therapy)" - Josh Rouse
#186: "Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)" - UGK featuring OutKast
#185: "Idlewild Blue (Don'tchu Worry 'Bout Me)" - OutKast
#184: "Hash Pipe" - Weezer
#183: "Dreaming of You" - The Coral
#182: "Jerk It Out" - Caesars
#181: "Galang" - M.I.A.
#180: "Dancing on Our Graves" - The Cave Singers
#179: "With You" - Chris Brown
#178: "Black Girl" - The Paybacks
#177: "Yeah Baby" - The Fondas
#176: "Dani California" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
#175: "Which of the Two of Us Is Gonna Burn This House Down" - The Star Spangles
#174: "Grace Kelly" - Mika
#173: "Dashboard" - Modest Mouse
#172: "The Underdog" - Spoon
#171: "Oops!...I Did It Again" - Britney Spears
#170: "Inside of Me" - Starlight Mints
#169: "What Goes Around.../...Comes Around" - Justin Timberlake
#168: "That's How I Got to Memphis" - Solomon Burke
#167: "Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down" - R.L. Burnside
#166: "Done Got Old" - Buddy Guy
#165: "Look What All You Got" - Buddy Guy
#164: "I Want You to Want Me" - The Holmes Brothers
#163: "Would You Go With Me" - Josh Turner
#162: "Like Water into Wine" - Gretchen Peters
#161: "Turn My TV On" - Van Hunt
#160: "Irreplaceable" - Beyonce
#159: "Good Luck" - Basement Jaxx
#158: "1 Thing" - Amerie featuring Eve
#157: "Shake It Fast" - Mystikal
#156: "Beautiful" - Flickerstick
#155: "Beautiful" - Christina Aguilera
#154: "Ex-Guru" - The Fiery Furnaces
#153: "The Blues Are Still Blue" b/w "Sukie in the Graveyard" - Belle & Sebastian
#152: "N.Y. Doll" - Robyn Hitchcock
#151: "Young Folks" - Peter Bjorn & John


The capsule list from 201-249 can be found here.
The capsule list from 250-300 can be found here.
The capsule list from 301-333 can be found here.

#150 will be posted later tonight, 'cause it's my birthday, and I'm going to party like it's...well, like it's just another day. But still!

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #151

#151: "Young Folks" (2007) - Peter Bjorn & John

Upon hearing the line in the chorus that sings, "We don't care about the old folks," my son replied, "Dad! That's disrespectful! I don't want to listen to that song anymore. And you shouldn't either!"

My wife looked at me, smiling (and a bit smug, I think), and I started to argue with him, but I soon said, "You know what, son: you're right." I turned it off, and he said thanks.

And then I heard him humming the tune. I backed him up by whistling, just like they do in the song. And he never said anything else about it.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #152

#152: "N.Y. Doll" (2006) - Robyn Hitchcock

One of the difficulties I had in formulating this list was differentiating between songs I liked and songs I thought were great. Those two terms are not always synonymous. I can think right off hand of about three dozen-or-so songs that I liked that didn't make this list because, when I listened to them again, I could find no reason for greatness, no reason I liked 'em other than the fact that they were catchy or silly, and I thought this list--if I was being serious about it--should reflect artists (singers, bands, songwriters, producers, etc...) who--whether they meant to or not--accomplished something noteworthy in their recording of their songs. On the other hand, I've placed songs on here that just don't touch me or shake me or rock me on a visceral level, though I can recognize their importance or influence or originality or artistry*. Though they're not on this list (one reason for this should be obvious), I feel this latter way about the New York Dolls.

The Dolls were punk progenitors. They recorded their first album of glam-rock (mixed w/R&B covers) in 1973, recorded one more album, then split, never recording another studio album together again...not with all the original members, that is. Guitarist Johnny Thunders died in 1991, and bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane died of lieukemia in 2004. Their influence spread wide and deep, as they inspired the Sex Pistols, Blondie, the Talking Heads, the Ramones, Kiss, Motley Crue, and many others. As important as their music is, I've just never been able to feel it on a gut level, not like I have with, say, the Sex Pistols, Blondie, the Talking Heads, etc....I can appreciate the artistry in their music, though, as can Robyn Hitchcock.

Hitchcock--an old punk/New Wave guy himself, co-founding the Soft Boys in the late '70s--has been recording his literate, idiosyncratic (at times whimsical, at times satirical, often both) pop/rock songs for over twenty-five years, and he's never cut a more emotionally-affective record than this one, "N.Y. Doll," a tribute to Arthur Kane. After the Dolls split in '74, Kane jumped from band to band, turned to the bottle too often, and became an alcoholic, living much of his life in poverty. In the late '80s, he--while drunk--jumped through a plate-glass window and landed two stories below, messing his body up royally, incurring nerve damage from which he never completely recoverd. He then turned to God and lived the rest of his days as a Mormon librarian in Los Angeles.

In this song, Hitchcock sings first person from Kane's perspective, and it's that narrative trope that allows Hitchcock to comment upon Kane's life (his punk career, his alcoholism, his near death, and his Christian conversion) without seeming pedantic, and it also allows him to touch upon life's mutability without resorting to sentimentality. Hitchcock also alludes to the power that art and religion can have to uplift, but that ultimately, neither will save, and that we're all doomed to die, that the inevitable will come, and there's nothing religion nor art may do to change that. Life may not end, but we will, individually, and the universe cares not. That's a depressing thought, and thus the song's a downer--at first. Hitchcock uses some haunting vocal techniques to reflect the sadness of the lyric, as his breathiness and his dip into sotto voce come across rather ghostly, as if Kane's spirit came out of repose to softly and matter-of-factly describe his lot in life. It's an effective technique; it's distancing, and this distancing makes the song all the sadder, for if Kane doesn't even seem to think his life important, then who will?

Hitchcock will. He wrote and recorded and published the song so that Arthur Kane's name will never be forgotten by those who have heard this song, and I've listed and discussed and published this review for the same reasons. Death will come for us all one day, and we'll go gentle or we'll go kicking and screaming, but we'll go with her nonetheless. Worse than this is the fact that not too long after (say, at best for most of us, 150 years), no one will be around to remember us anymore, and before two-hundred years roll 'round, no one will be around to even remember the tales our descendants told of us. If we're fortunate, though, someone as respectful and sympathetic and intelligent and talented as Robyn Hitchcock will pass through this world and take a long look and say that we--as he--were one in a million.

NOTES

*I don't consider myself a fraud for including these (latter) songs, for it's not as if I dislike them; it's just that if I want to take my writing here seriously, then--as a critic--I have to be able to recognize greatness, whether I love it or not. That's why you won't see, let's say, "Yahhh!"** by Soulja Boy Tell'Em on this list, though I just listed Mystikal's "Shake It Fast" earlier this week. If given a choice, I'd prefer to listen to the former, though I recognize that the latter one is a better record in many different ways (though not all).

**"Yahhh!", at times, is brilliant, and it's fun, and it's funny, but overall, methinks, it's just too dumb and too repetitive and too irritating for me to include here, as I can't listen to it repeatedly without getting annoyed. It's an obnoxious song. Purposely so, though.

The Tournament of Metal

Calico, my rock band, has decided to host The Tournament of Metal, and we decided to host it here (mainly because setting up these polls on Facebook proved too difficult), on my blog, because I'm the drummer, and I rock. The bands in the tournament do, too. Or they did.

The Tournament of Metal consists of over 350 songs released between and among 1980* and 1992** by heavy metal, hair/glam/pop metal, speed metal, power metal, thrash metal, and hard rock bands (or bands who were marketed as such) . All you have to do is look over at the sidebar on the right and vote on as many different song choices as you desire. Vote early, and vote often.
This first round, we whittle down the list to what's essential in each band's oeuvre. Next round, we'll pit band against band, like against like, hair metal against hair metal, speed metal against speed metal, etc....In the third round, we'll stage dive, throwing one type of metal song into the pit with another, and we'll continue that way until it's all over.

When is that? Oh, I'm no mathmatician,*** but the end will arrive sometime near the end of June.

Why so long? With over 350 songs in the tournament, it's not feasible to list over 175 battles at one time; therefore, we've quartered the list, and the first round should finish in four weeks, with the second round finishing in two weeks, and each subsequent round should take a week each, and with eight rounds, that puts around the last week of June when the champion song is crowned.

Why is my band, Calico, sponsoring this tournament? Three-fifths of our members are heavy metal fans and have been since youth,**** and we just wanted to throw our Dio demon horns in the air as a salute to those who rocked, if only for a brief bit.

Once again, vote! This week's list o' metal songs (from bands falling alphabetically A through D) will only last...uh...a week. Next week, another eighty/one-hundred songs will be pitted against one another, so vote now, and don't miss your chance, 'cause if--say--the Bulletboys' lame cover of the O'Jays' "For the Love of Money" tops the B'boys deliciously-raunchy hit "Smooth Up in Ya," then don't come crying to me.

We'd like to give one last ROCK! before we leave, and that's to Shane Woodard Hardy, for without him, this list might never have seen the light of the computer screen.

So get your one way ticket to midnight, people. Call it heavy metal.

NOTES

*Yeah, I know, heavy metal didn't start in 1980; however, 1980 was when heavy metal finally made a huge sales dent in the American market with the debut and incredible success of AC/DC's Back in Black album, making it much safer for metalheads from Philadelphia, Mississippi to Fargo, North Dakota to come out of the closet with their heads banging.

**Yeah, I know, heavy metal didn't officially end in 1992, but that was it's last gasp, and grunge officially dethroned metal, as marked by Nirvana's seminal album Nevermind reaching #1 on the Billboard album charts.

***Why do English teachers teach English? 'Cause they can't do math.

****Yeah, I know, three-fifths of a band does not unanimity make, but it does make majority, and since the other two of our five either play triangle or play stool, then we three kings of metal rule the rock shed.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #153

#153: "The Blues Are Still Blue" b/w "Sukie in the Graveyard" (both 2006) - Belle and Sebastian

Belle & Sebastian are quite possibly the best British melodists since the Beatles, but more about B&S later. Let's talk about the Beatles. Among their many musical accomplishments, the Beatles released more hit B-sides than any other musical act in history, so many that some historians began (subsequently) calling them "Double A"-side singles. Okay...that's enough about the Beatles, 'cause they're done. The 45" single is, too...in a way.

For all intents and purposes, the 45" single died sometime in the mid-80s. The Walkman and boom boxes and tapedeck car components became affordable to the masses, and since these were much easier to transport than a record player, vinyl took a huge hit, so much so that were it not for a few recording artists and a cult of aestheticists and club DJs, it would have--like the eight-track tape--died completely.

Still, the "single" did not completely disappear when wax did, though, as cassette singles (cassingles) were produced. These cassingles, though, didn't last long. Retailer profit margin wasn't anywhere near as great as it was for an album-length cassette, and--in order to sustain production viability--prices for cassingles rose, and the audience for cassingles shrunk, as consumers couldn't see spending four dollars for two songs, only one of which they wanted; therefore, rather than tie up limited shelf space with low profit-margin product that didn't sell well, retailers stopped ordering cassingles, and then record companies stopped producing them, and then CDs came along, and then the mp3, and then Napster, and then iTunes, and then we get what we have now: afforable single recordings. It took about twenty years for them to return, but return they did, and I'm glad, as without them, I wouldn't have this list.

The one thing missing from most singles these days, though, is the B-side. It's not completely gone, as artists/record companies will often release B-side type material in a digital EP (extended play single) format, but these B releases don't sell well because the audience doesn't have to get them in order to get the A side; thus, most B-side material isn't heard except by artists' hardcore fans. Mostly, this is regrettable, as though--typically--B sides weren't as catchy as A sides, they were usually quirkier, more experimental, and every now and then a real gem appeared.

This is the case with these two songs by Belle & Sebastian. "The Blues Are Still Blue" is an insanely catchy tune, a ditty that's as hook-laden as a commercial jingle. It's the A side: brighter mood, catchier melody, less sordid/morbid subject matter. It's not all fluff, though; it's just breezier.



The B side--"Sukie in the Graveyard"--is a funny narrative song--whose melody is almost as catchy as the A side--about a pubescent girl who strikes out on her own, grows up quickly yet remains realistically optimistic and fiercely independent, teaching the art-school snobs a thing or two about practical life and the soul and the necessary comprises that many must make to succeed in this world.

Belle & Sebastian never seemed to have to make these compromises. They've been playing their own version of pop-rock with an independent sensibility, a penchant for literate lyrics, an ear for the hook, a quick-witted mind, and the strongest rhythmic sense of any indie band (perhaps Spoon notwithstanding) of the past fifteen years. Here, they present us with a proud, peculiar protagonist who understands the dichotomy of art and commerce, yielding to no one who would squash her will, much like the band itself.

I must confess, though: these two were never released as a double-sided single. "The Blues Are Still Blue" was released as a single, but--since this was 2006 not 1986--it had no B side. If it did, though, I'm sure it would have been "Sukie in the Graveyard," and I'm sure that one would have charted as well. We all live in a musical world of make-believe at times, and this time it's my turn, for after a week off for Spring Break, it's back to school today, and I need all the make believe I can get. Reality's hard enough as it is.