Hand in Unlovable Hand

	Mendoza Line - Catch A Collapsing Star
	Found at skreemr.com

5. The Mendoza Line - Catch a Collapsing Star

Brooklyn/Athens, Georgia indie rock group and one-time married couple The Mendoza Line released nine albums since 1997 to very little notice or acclaim, possibly because dumb and dancey trumped resigned and literary all decade. In 2007, the self-fulfilling prophecy that baseball fans will recognize in the band's name finally came true, as both the band and the marriage broke up. I'm not sure if "Collapsing Star"'s full-throated cry of "it's our limitations that make us what we are" endorses gracefully accepting defeat or just rages against the dying light, but I know the line just keeps ringing truer. The song recounts the ups and downs of a relationship that's doomed to fail, beginning with romantic vacations speaking "in riddles no one got" but knowing "it was always ever gonna end the same." But the song is just written in character, right? Maybe so, but when Shannon McArdle gorgeously sings "no one's sorrier than I am," you just can't help but believe her.

4. Geto Boys- G-Code

Warning: In this blurb be Wire spoilers.

Not to get too Omar Little up in this blog, but a man's gotta have a code. Scarface is secretly the greatest rapper of all time, with a voice that's somehow both booming and elegiac. In "G-Code" he explains his personal code, and incidentally makes my favorite rap song of the decade (not the best, mind you, just my favorite). It shouldn't be that surprising, considering Scarface and the Geto Boys made the best rap song of the last decade (again, not my favorite, but the best.) His code is all about hating snitches worse than Stringer Bell does, which for the record is morally questionable (The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle explains my feelings about this song better than I can, as usual). But as much as that pure floor banger of a chorus celebrates never talking to police, the verses lay out the toll the drug war has taken on ghetto communities with David Simonesque specificity. Besides, better alive and streetwise than headed to heaven hanging with 'Pac (and D'Angelo and Stringer and Bodie and Wallace, too).




3. Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley - Welcome to Jamrock

Ok, so we have here yet another ode to the problems of your hometown, but unlike those ones about Winnipeg and Tacoma and the Deep South (see above), you can dance to this one. You can also wildly gesticulate while making various truth-telling prophet poses when this song comes on, so it's versatile. Marley fils attacks the Jamaican education system, its lying politicians, and best of all the American tourists who "pose like dat man Chuck Norris". "Welcome to Jamrock" breaks hearts, wrecks dance-floors, and afflicts the wicked.

2. R. Kelly - Ignition (Remix)

R. Kelly had a decade filled with, for lack of a better word, superlatives. He made the best autotune song this decade, the best twelve part R&B opera that featured a midget and subtly preached acceptance of homosexuality this decade, and inspired the funniest Chappelle parody song this decade too. With the help of some very highly paid lawyers, he came up with the "you can insert all kinds of celebrities into sex tapes with Photoshop" defense, beating out even Dick Cheney turning the Vice-Presidency into a new branch of government as the most absurd yet successful legal argument of the decade (incidentally, the Slate article about the Kelly trial is definitely the most entertaining legal article I read this decade.) "Ignition" itself inspired my favorite piece of music criticism in yonks, John Darnielle's message board thread about the 100 Reasons Why "Ignition - Remix" Is So Damned Great. Read it, because it will probably explain why I love this song more accurately than I will.

The moral of the R. Kelly story is, if nothing else, this: if you're going to videotape yourself peeing on a fourteen-year-old girl, you had better make an absolutely fucking fantastic comeback song. "Ignition" floats by on a cotton candy melody and a lovely vocal, which go a long way in letting R. get away with some of the most clever and absurd lyrics ever committed to record. Kelly uses a form of simile so literal it's practically its own form of poetry ("there was food everywhere/ as if the party was catered" or, "the way you do the things you do/ reminds me of my Lexus Coupe". Why was there food everywhere? What exactly is the similarity between the girl and the car? Music poses more questions than answers, friends). Another mind-boggler is the line "It's like Murder She Wrote/ once I get you out them clothes". Is this a reference to Kelly's perverse desire to see Angela Lansbury naked? Or is it another way of saying "that's all she wrote"? Or is it a shout-out to Chaka Demus, whose soft dancehall sound is an undeniable inspiration for "Ignition"? I guess I just have to embrace the mystery like the Coen Brothers.

"Ignition" is an ode an endless Saturday night, using the joyful repetition of "bounce bounce bounce bounce" or the insouciance of "but so what I'm drunk" to recreate that universal experience. It's impossible to feel sad while listening to this song, which is more than I can say for my top choice.



1. Radiohead - Dystopian Rhapsody

Thom Yorke captured the prevailing tenor of the decade with this stirring eulogy that laceratingly criticized the British response to the 9/11 attacks ("beep boop beep/ my eyes looks weird/ Tony Blair/ has a stupid beard.") "Dystopian Rhapsody" is the lead single of the album In Snowjobs, which was sold with a revolutionary twist: Radiohead actually paid online listeners to download the albums. Millions took the Snowjob Challenge, expensively proving once and for all that in this internet age, people like free money. But when one voice captivates a generation's emotional response to millennial techno-dread with lines like "alienation mastication/ beep boop beep/ big sheep blows/ the little sheep" the response is understandable. The experience and emotions tied to listening to "Dystopian Rhapsody" are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax. Was there a better song recorded this decade? In fact, there was one.




1. Tracy Jordan - Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

Over a Jazze Pha beat that can only be describes as, for lack of a more accurate word, banging, Tracy Jordan catalogues the sacrifices inherent in becoming a man while vividly describing a "rocking werewolf zoo at Temple Beth-Emmanuel." While working late on his haftorah, Tracy is interrupted by a wolfman describing the other clan he needs to join ("tomorrow you will stand at the bimah and pray/ but tonight let's gaze at the moon and bay.") "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah " includes a tribute to the simple joy of circumcision jokes, a meta nod at novelty song conventions ("I don't think the premise of this song can sustain itself for that long") and a shout-out to his manager Harvey Lemmings for teaching him "all these Jewish words." Who knew that the African-American star of such movies as Who Dat Ninja? or Black Cop White Cop would write the song that best captured the Jewish-American experience this decade? No song better described both the agony and the ecstasy of a boy becoming a man, and of a man becoming a wooooooolf. Mazel Tov.






1. The Mountain Goats - No Children

	The Mountain Goats - No Children
	Found at skreemr.com

Ok, enough with the self-parody. I've been lucky enough to have had a relationship that just about spanned this decade, with a sweet and surly blonde girl who doesn't like anything, and after a drawn out process of elimination, we arrived at "No Children" as Our Song (my original suggestion of "Got Your Money" was shouted down). It somehow works, maybe because songs (or relationships) that last can't be built on trite or goopy foundations. Of course, if you click on that link above, you will see we aren't the only ones who've formed a personal connection to the song - it's the one skinny indie song that everyone knows all the words to. From the War And Peace of first lines ("I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us") to the big cathartic bang of "and I hope I never get sober,", "No Children" celebrates the freeing power of disillusionment. It's a litany of hope - hope for terrible things to occur, sure, but nobody ever said that the audacity of hope was always positive. How can John Darnielle sound so gleeful while singing "I hope I lie/ and tell everyone you were a good wife"? This is the song that I most often forced my friends to listen to Clockwork Orange-style (the aforementioned "Trapped in the Closet" was definitely number two), an experience that one day they will appreciate, even if they haven't explicitly thanked me for it as of yet. The most hateful song of this decade was also its most joyful. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself. And I'm out.