What's old is new

Looking back on this polyphonic decade, it occurs to me that a balanced top-twenty song list should provide sufficient evidence with which to induce the necessary qualities of the greatest song ever.

This hypothesis depends on two suppositions, namely (1) that my choices aren't misjudged, wanky, or overly personal, and (2) that there is enough fragmented greatness suspended in the aughties' technicolour musical spew to warrant this sort of treasure hunt.

No matter. Commence blog gimmick!

20
"Fell in Love with a Girl"
White Stripes


The greatest song ever should sing to the hopelessly in love and the brokenhearted, in equal parts

Which is why the songwriter must NEVER refer to his love and/or partner in the present tense. It's got to be "FELL in love with", not "I'm IN love with", dear god, but Jack would never do that (or if he did, she would come home late at night with a bottle of rye having just murdered the milk man, etc.) Plus, announcements of love are best couched in bawdy pre/post/neo rockism, guitars ajangle. As such, you can sing along drunkenly either way, with tears of joy or endless sorrow leaking into your drink.

The greatest song ever needs a chorus refrain in wordless syllables.

Here, the Stripes favour "nah nah nah", which is an excellent choice (thank you John L), but there are lots of options, eg. "bah bah bah" (thank you Joey R)

19
"Weak Become Heroes"

The Streets

The greatest song ever should lyrically span at least five years of life

Preferably such that the narrator jolts out of a sodden stupor mid-song to discover that "five years went by, I'm older". Exactly. But that same piano loops over and over. Good thing that loop evokes miles of extinct brit house vinyl, trampled smooth and shiny by legions on e's. Like many parts of life, if it weren't so infectious, we might wish for it to stop.

Perhaps one of the few grimies to produce some truly memorable lines, The Streets put most of this them in this early track, slightly before Mike Skinner got rich and boring. Including one of my all time favourites: "Imagine the world's leaders on pills. And imagine the morning after!"

18
"Tunnels"

Arcade Fire

The greatest song ever must be a bildungsroman

See above. Five years is a minimum. It's no musical accident that they slathered Funeral all over the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are. The sell with that film was that it was going to tell the coming-of-age story like they do in this song: tunnels between bedroom windows, crying parents, eloping into the forest. What I once thought of as a twerpy immature warble from Win Butler is sounding awfully good five years later. Must be getting old and whimsical about being young. More on that below.

17
"Ms. Jackson"

Outkast

There will be no more than two drum voices

This was not a good decade for drummers. Shiva-armed Carter Beauford and his bromancer Dave Matthews got trampled by the rockists and The Neptunes around 2003. Notable mentions like Battles' John Stanier get props from several young men in their twenties, but they otherwise get relegated to the back of the stage and studio, well away from any rainbow-legging groupies. It's not really fair. There is a true exception in a man called ?uest, and truly I love him, however it bears mentioning that he is basically the ONLY hip hop drummer that has ever existed as far as most people are aware, and furthermore, he is able to mime a turntable deck while adjusting his headgear. Sometimes an artist's greatness is eclipsed by his awesomeness.

So Ms. Jackson has a kick and a snare, and the two hits repeat alternately again and again (forever ever?), and Outkast jump around them like football players doing that training thing with the tires. It's tireless, possibly timeless, and lo, they're saying really reasonable things about dealing with the responsibility of parenthood after divorce. AND they're talking about Eryka Badu, and--did you know?--the child in question is alive and well and his name is Seven. Which resonates with me particularly well, as that is my name transliterated into Thai. Which is why this song is the 17th best song of the decade.

16
"Losing my Edge"

LCD Soundsystem

There will be whinging about getting old

Which is a natural counterpoint to the coming-of-age requirement (I said at least five years). The trick is to do it in such a self-deprecating and youth-positive way as to not come off as stogy, and James Murphy nails it with "they're actually really nice". Fuck, exactly! I could hate so much easier if they didn't seem like better evolved versions of our younger social selves. The internet is apparently making the kids more annoying in writing, yet more congenial in person. Oh, to have their bionic minds.

I suppose adding a requirement about an amazing synth beat is too obvious, but have you heard the start of this song lately? Go ahead and play it, it's up there. This song made me wiggle in my seat a lot in around 2005, and it's still doing it. Still got the edge! Just can't stand up too fast anymore.

There will be shout outs

In moderation, in moderation. But, if the whinging old people are correct that all song prototypes have been written and now are only reproduced, then clearly the least we can do is drop more bibliographical references. Especially vintage references, like The Sonics, who Murphy shouts out three times. Way to show your age.

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.