More trouble than Trouble Man

10. Drive-By Truckers - Outfit

Jason Isbell, the third songwriter on the Drive-By Truckers' loaded batting order, made the best Springsteen song of the decade with "Outfit". Written in the voice of his working-class house painter dad, the song intersperses details of the compromises that the father made for his family with advice for his musician son. The advice ranges from the sly ("don't worry about losing your accent/ a southern man tells better jokes") to the heartbreakingly quotidian ("call home on your sister's birthday") to the linguistic ("don't call what you're wearing an outfit"), from mockery of rock star pretension ("don't sing with a fake British accent") to words to live by ("don't act like your family's a joke"). But unlike all those other songs about the singers' parents and their hard knock lives, the songs doesn't sentimentalize blue collar life. The most resonant piece of advice of all is "Don't let me catch you in Kendale with a bucket of wealthy man's paint." An absolutely killer guitar solo drives the point home: always remember where you came from, but try like hell to escape it.

9. Dizzee Rascal - Fix Up Look Sharp

For all the critical blather about grime mid-decade, I always saw Dizzee Rascal's bombshell of a debut album Boy in Da Corner as just some good old-fashioned rap music, albeit with a completely new sound, accent, and set of slang. "Fix up look sharp" is only (only?) two and a half minutes of glorious braggadocio about fake MC's, "staying true to your grammar" (school?), and what will happen to those who dare to step to him. He even raps over the same bonkers Billy Squier break that Run-DMC used in 1985, though for some reason their version doesn't make me want to stomp around like Godzilla (I'm pretty sure I accidentally injured people when this song came on at the Marble Arch). The vocals do verge on incomprehensibility, leading to a thorough mangling of the lyrics by internet sites. Britishisms like "Flushing MCs down the loo" or slightly outdated references like "best to act like Forrest Gump, best to run," are challenging to the internet world, though "Fix Up" is responsible for my favorite misheard lyric of the decade. I was convinced avowed Kurt Cobain fan Dizzee was threatening that suckers would get "their head split like Nirvana", though of course he was just talking about banana splits. I suppose when a song has given you so much joy, it's churlish to complain about a lack of tasteless Kurt jokes.



8. Missy Elliott - Work It

Probably the hardest decision I had to make while writing this list was which Missy song to choose. "Get Ur Freak On" is Timbaland's finest work and a contender for beat of the decade, a sleek little marvel of modern sound engineering with a bhangra twist. But "Work It" is just so darn likable. Besides also boasting a killer faux-old school Timbo beat, it's the sound of Missy Elliott putting it all together and rapping her badonkadonkdonk off in the process, reinventing the art of onomatopoeia to coin (or popularize) various terms for various female body parts. Missy's not exactly the first female rapper to brag about her sexual prowess, but she is definitely the first to brag about using Belvedere goggles to get action. On this song, she is likable, witty, creative, and (dare I say it) sexy. I hope she marries me.



7. T.I. - Rubber Band Man

"But these folks looking at me like they don't know who I is!" Tell 'em, Tip. "Rubber Band Man" is the breakout single of rap's best new star, a charismatic yet introspective Georgian with a marvelous inflection-fused drawl of a voice. T.I. wedded classic hip-hop lyricism to the visceral Southern rap that dominated charts all decade, giving fresh perspective to classic rap tropes like selling drugs as a day job, internal battles with your own wilder and less mature alter ego, and regrets for a lifetime of doing wrong (I knew I'd find a way to sneak in multiple T.I. songs). On "Rubber Band Man", T.I. rides David Banner's triumphant production job, comparing himself to the Taliban (in 2004!), positing the rubber band as a potent symbol of the attempt to escape from poverty, but conceding his ambition is just "tryna staying alive/ living how I say in my rhymes." Aren't we all?

6. Johnny Cash - One

Yeah, yeah, I'm picking a fucking U2 song, and one that was already overplayed by open mic dudes fifteen years ago at that. Johnny Cash spent the last stage of a long and glorious career turning songs by acts I never really cared about (NIN, Depeche Mode, U2) into little miracles of pain and longing. At that point he could have probably recorded, say, Britney's "Toxic" and turned it into a sobering meditation on mortality and life's hard choices. I still have no idea what "One" is about, or why Bono cares whether I've come here to play Jesus to the lepers in my head. All I know is that if you click on that link above, Johnny Cash's cover will become your sixth favorite song of the decade too.