Veepgasms, candy bars, yeah.

15
"Hope there's Someone"
Antony & the Johnsons


The greatest song ever will not permit pausing or skipping

Should this song come up on your ipod and you don't want to/can't handle hearing it, you have approximately 10 seconds to do so. Otherwise it is flatly impossible. It would be like getting up and leaving a wedding, funeral or 50th anniversary. So be careful when you play it.

14
"Archangel"

Burial

The greatest song ever will cite the past and flip the script

Last one wasn't too precious? Ok, check this out: the greatest work a sample can do is to speak as a memory in a new and different context. Turns out Burial samples the minor R&B hit "One Wish" by one Ray J--a syrupy love parade probably best played whilst making a mini me . Pulled through Burial's autotune, cut to ribbons and tied around the stuttering two-step, the vocals are echos of some happier past, fuzzy and diffused through liquor and time. Bad breakup, sad black & white English coffee shop man? Memories of a fonder time seem to sting today: the smooth Ray J croons turn to ice over whatever cold lonely street Burial is walking down. Turn up that collar.

13
"Livin' your Life"

T.I. feat. Rihanna

Truisms must be sung like pearls of wisdom

Girl Talk and his kin will remind us to toss nods in the general direction of all the heads that gave us the great crunk moments of this decade: the "heeeeeeys", the "hoooooooos", the "ay yay yay yay yay yays". But Just Blaze and T.I. were the ones to distill those chestnuts (of questionable moral content) into a universally agreeable aphorism, bursting with glittery triumph. "Carpe diem" comes off as a surprisingly fresh idea when listening to this carousal (as does "T.I. thinks highly of himself"). Everyone is celebrating: Rhianna; T.I.; all the "heeeeeey" dudes in the background; the pillow-jowled Numa Numa kid on Youtube. Of course, it is to that precocious lad and a few Moldovans named O-Zone where credit is due. How could a sample from the decade's greatest viral video (besides Yule Burn) not translate into a chart topper?

Note to self: start writing power pop ballad "Eatin' your Greens", featuring music sampled from Keyboard Cat.

12
"The Commander Thinks Aloud"

The Long Winters

The refrain must contain an easily-sung affirmative monosyllable

The Grunge era owes a lot to the word "yeah": it's a generally agreeable sentiment; it can function as a stand-in for any number of complex concepts; it can be ported easily to other languages and it repeats well (among my honourable mentions is a band that has three of them in their name). The Long Winters employs liberal "yeah"-use in this song, to great effect. Mind you, technically theirs is more of a "yeeeeaaaaaiii". Some may hear this as pretentious or a sign of impaired motor functions, but I like to think that John Roderick has boiled the word down to a prehistoric war-cry: a wail/affirmation of feeling. "Life is like a crashing spaceship; important things seem more important if sung very slowly. Yeeeeaaaaaiii". Can you not help but concur?

11
"Ambulance"

TV on the Radio

At least one musical trope of yesteryear will be born anew

Cheerleader chants, angelic church choirs, barbershop quartets. What will we recycle next? Every time a musician repurposes an old trick instead of just tossing it away into a landfill, Al Gore gets a petit mort. Not only did TVOTR have the gall to bring back barbershop with balls: fuzzy, huggable Kyp Malone spends most of the whole album wailing away in an upper falsetto that would make most sopranos reflexively cover their groins. Playfully derivative, full of space and delicious, this music is the Coffee Crisp of indie rock.