The very first song I listened to in the year 2000 was Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life". I was fourteen was in a transitional period in my music listening habits. I had already grown weary of "alternative" rock and had put aside my Korn and Limp Bizkit records, but didn't really have much of anything to fill that void. I was into the Smashing Pumpkins for quite a bit and still love Siamese Dream and Adore, but they weren't a musical force in my catalog. "Hard Knock Life" held no special significance aside from it being a song that I had just recently discovered and really enjoyed.
Over the course of the aughts the way I regard songs has come full circle. As I grew into being a teenager I began looking down on popular music, tossing it disdainfully aside. I moved away from rap music inexplicably, except for underground rap because it was talking about real issues, man. Slowly, as the decade progressed, I moved away from that narrow-minded viewpoint and, ironically, back to where I was in 1999. The first song I listened to in 2010 was "Swim" by Surfer Blood, a song that holds no special significance aside from it being a song that I've just recently discovered and really enjoy.
Making a list of the top fifty songs of the decade was difficult, so I limited myself to only picking one song per artist. This, obviously, left out a lot of great songs that would have most assuredly made the list under normal circumstances. But, in the interest of creating a list that was more interesting to read than fifty Radiohead and Modest Mouse tracks that came out in the aughts, I created that limitation.
Without further adieu, here is the first half of Racecar Brown's top fifty songs of the decade.
It's important to remember that American Idol's original purpose was to expose the hidden singing talent lurking in the United States and give that talent the record contract it, presumably, deserved. Now, of course, the show has become an ends in and of itself. But Kelly Clarkson (she won the first one, remember?) did what the show intended, even if she had to wiggle out of the notoriously awful American Idol record deal to do so.
"Since U Been Gone" is a big, communicative pop song that is most interesting in where it takes the traditional love song, particularly from a female point of view. It's like Christina Aguilera's "Stronger", but more subtle and, because of that, more poignant. It'd be a sing-a-long, but Clarkson's range is too dramatic, but the hook is so huge and memorable that people try anyway. Yes, the bridge cops the Yeah Yeah Yeahs bridge, but when a song is as winning as "Since U Been Gone", it simply doesn't matter.
King was the album that made T.I. one of rap's, well, kings. Something about his smooth and effortless delivery made repeated questions like "What you know about that?" and repeated requests like "Ride wit' me" reach some sort of strange profundity and his verbal skills were way beyond the "Rubberband Man" that made him famous.
Paper Trail wasn't as strong as King, coming off more as a stab for public forgiveness in the wake of his gun possession charges. "Whatever You Like" was the exception, excelling precisely because it wasn't trying to be anything. It was simply a terrific, provocative groove with Cliff Harris crooning more than rapping about sex and love, in either order. Less promiscuous than other songs of its type, but sexier for it, "Whatever You Like" was the first bedroom anthem for faithful couples, which takes some guts to write, but T.I. most assuredly pulled it off.
Adam Young, the dude behind Owl City, has gotten a lot of shit in 2009 for borrowing (to put it mildly) the sound and feel of the Postal Service. One thing lost in all the hoopla is, um, the Postal Service's actual music which, strangely, has not undergone the same kind of renaissance that you'd expect for how much they're being talked about in regards to Owl City.
It's a shame, as revisiting the music gives insight into why the fact that they may not be recording new music is really fucking disappointing. The singles, "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight", "We Will Become Silhouettes", and the achingly romantic "Such Great Heights" are the tracks from Give Up that get the press, but "Brand New Colony", built on Super Mario synths, Jimmy Tamberello's interesting rhythmic devices and a more interesting romantic sentiment than "Such Great Heights", was the real standout for my money, blooping and bleeping in a reserved way that made it all the more engaging.
There probably isn't a more ubiquitous introduction to a rap song this decade than the "it's your birthday" lines that open "In Da Club", but if that was the only notable part of 50's original party anthem, it wouldn't be nearly as worth remembering as it is. Curtis Jackson name drops Dre, Em and Xzibit in three consecutive lines, but never sounds like he's jock riding, brags about his newfound riches but still manages to sound humbled when he mentions that "they like me/I want 'em to love me like they love Pac."
Mike Elizondo co-produced the beat with Dr. Dre, and the collaboration works wonders. It's the first time in a long time that Dre's production sounded so vital and raw, and it worked to enhance 50's rugged drawl and laconic flow. Everything from 50 since Get Rich or Die Tryin' has been a disappointment because he's never tapped into the same frenetic energy that he had when he was spitting club classics like "In Da Club."
It's hard to remember, what with The BQE and Run Rabbit Run and all the hoopla about will-he-or-won't-he with the Fifty States project, but there was a time before Sufjan's indie music supremacy seemed preordained. A time that ended probably by the time a listener got to this track on his breakthrough album, Illinois.
"The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades" doesn't immediately set itself apart from the rest of Illinois, but in that extended coda, when the woodwinds swoop in and the church choirs entwine, with splashes of horns and bells and guitars, there's something beautifully unrelenting that, while perhaps not as immaculately orchestrated as "Chicago" or as simplistically powerful as "Casimir Pulsaski Day", relates the song's message of childhood innocence as well as anything in Sufjan's repertoire.
The titular character of Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy deals with a lot over the course of the album, from dreams of causing Armageddon to simple unrequited love. But probably the most harrowing story on the record isn't one that happens to the black sheep boy at all, but rather one he simply is told, the father-daughter abuse tale of "Black."
Wisely "Black" doesn't musically dwell on its difficult lyrical subject matter, instead a mid-tempo, tasteful alt-rock groove with swirling keyboards and crashing electric guitars. Will Sheff's impassioned vocal performance gives life to the lyrics which are both hauntingly vague - they never specify exactly what happened - and uncomfortably intense, like Sheff's reaction to hearing the story where he snarls "If I could tear his throat/Spill his blood between my jaws/And erase his name for good/Don't you know that I would?/Don't you realize I wouldn't pause?" It's a viciously honest take on how people are affected by the terrible actions that's stunningly real and depressingly accurate.
Arguably, you could say that the popularization of indie rock began with Modest Mouse's "Float On". Yeah, they had some songs in commercials before that, but "Float On" was everywhere, even American Idol for fuck's sake. A decade earlier they'd have been crucified for selling out, but what prevented it was that Isaac Brock and company never seemed to give a shit what anyone else thought. They were making their music, and if American Idol wanted to pay to use it, then they weren't going to say no.
This year Phoenix continued that trend. Their music was so instantly memorable and undeniably hummable, so toe-tapping and booty-shaking, that it was almost ready-made for commercial success. They may not have showed up on American Idol, but anyone who heard the syncopated bounce of the disco drums and chiming guitars of "Lisztomania" realized it was as full of bubblegum goodness as any Lady Gaga track this year, but with a depth that outshined many of their peers, both on the indie and pop sides.
It's hard to remember Jack White as anything other than the big fucking rock star of the aughts, but White went through two LPs with his ex-wife in the White Stripes before unleashing White Blood Cells an album that, along with the Strokes' Is This It? brought new blood to rock and roll in the new millennium, particularly "Fell in Love With a Girl" and it's insta-classic Lego music video.
There's something about those crunchy opening guitar chords that braces you for something spectacular. And what makes "Fell in Love With a Girl" just so good is how such a simple so can be so diverse. In a way it's the perfect four-chord punk song, a two-minute blast of visceral noise and energy. In another way it's the most concise pop song ever written, where the one big hook is simply repeated ad nauseam, but short enough where it's not boring. In yet another way, it's a concise boy-girl love song, read the title for fuck's sake. And it's the way that all those elements came together that gave Jack White the opportunity to be the massive rock star he is today.
"Stillness Is the Move" is probably the only song on Bitte Orca that was locked into a single time signature, but it was challenging in other ways, particularly the strange phrasing that lent the track an interesting difficulty that only accented the song's insatiable pop hooks. Then Solange Knowles, yes, Beyonce's sister, took a stab at the song, turning it into a rousing R&B party piece.
Granted, the strength of songwriting on Longstreth's original version meant that any even halfway decent cover would sound pretty great, but Knowles' cover didn't rely on those strengths and instead created some of her own, using the same sample Dr. Dre used for "Xxplosive" to create a similar, blunted beauty that accented "Stillness"' complicated and beautiful vocal lines.
The best music contains contradictions in one way or another. Sometimes the contradiction is simple and obvious, like when a song with sad lyrics is paired with happy music (or vice versa), or when a love song contains obvious allusions to the object of that love's infidelity. The contradiction in David Banner's "Cadillac on 22's" is less than obvious and, at first glance, seems nonsensical, but ultimately creates a fairly profound message of how Banner views life in his home state of Mississippi.
Musically, "Cadillac on 22's" is a acoustic ballad disguised as a rap song, with finger-plucked steel strings laying the bed for Banner's gruff vocal style. In the chorus Banner puts lines together that seem like they have no business with each other, but as he relates his feelings on the rural hood the reasoning unfurls. "I know these kids are listening," Banner says, "I know I'm here for a mission/But it's so hard to get 'em with 22 rims all glistenin'." Precariously but skillfully balancing religion, the ghetto, and ballin', "Cadillac on 22's" was a thinking man's crunk song from a gifted voice that eventually became disillusioned with his ability to get the kids without the ice. Sad.
Because pop albums are more about containing an abundance of singles than they are about the album as an art form itself, I'll forgive you if you don't remember that "Umbrella" was the first track on Rihanna's Good Girls Gone Bad, the album that made her a superstar. It's important to note, though, because of just how effectively it reintroduced an artist whose first toe in the waters of pop ubiquity were through a song that pretty much stole "Tainted Love."
The moment those off-kilter drums hit and Hov's min-verse opened "Umbrella" it was obvious that this was something a little different. That drumbeat is what drives the song, pounding with urgency and giving Rihanna's mid-range vocals more punch. Then that chorus hits, with those gentle synths and pizzicato strings, and even the weird vocal decisions ("Ella, ella, ella, ay"?) couldn't disguise the fact that was going to have some monster singles on it. All it took was a new start, a little slice of Shawn Carter, and a monstrous drumbeat.
The obvious: Justin Vernon's band broke up. He got his heart broken. He isolated himself in a Wisconsin cabin. He recorded For Emma, Forever Ago. He became the definitive singer/songwriter story of 2008. About every dude who ever had an important relationship go up in flames wished they could do the same. Peter Silberman of Antlers eventually accidentally does the same thing, just through an urban lens.
"Skinny Love" the best track on For Emma succeeds on such a high level because he doesn't allow himself the kind of wallowing that would mark this album being made by a less intelligent songwriter. The pain is there, but it's spat out like venom in that chorus, where you can hear Vernon's shout break a bit at the endings of, well, all his lines, but he goes at the next words like he didn't hear the same. This ability to overcome despite the pain was what made "Skinny Love" such an immense track.
The untimely death of three of the four members of Portland, Oregon band the Exploding Hearts was one of the least talked about musical tragedies of the decade. Prior to their death, the band released just one studio album, the manic Guitar Romantic, and it's a current tragedy that their deaths didn't spark the kind of attention that the album rightfully deserves.
"I'm a Pretender", the second track from that album, opens with a slippery, blues-y riff before morphing into a cavalcade stomp of guitars and pop hooks so strong that they should be as embedded in the national consciousness as "Eight Days a Week". It zips along at a breakneck pace, full of pop-punk energy but without the cheesy qualities that sank that genre after Dookie. "I'm a Pretender" is the sound of where that genre should have gone, somewhere more classic and more modern, helmed by a band that left long, long before its time.
Karen O was nominated for a Grammy this year, for her soundtrack contributions to the Spike Jonze-directed version of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. That doesn't seem so weird, really, but through the first seven tracks of her band's debut album Fever to Tell the idea that this band could bridge into the mainstream was almost comical.
"Maps" changed everything for Yeah Yeah Yeahs, from the very first seconds. The lack of distortion on that tremolo-picked intro and pounding toms changed the mood and tempo of the album so quickly that you might have cricked a bone in your hand opening up your Winamp to check and make sure this was the same band. And Karen O's vulnerable (!) vocal performance only confused things further. But the song touched something innately human, particularly when O notches the chorus up an octave and Nick Zimmer's guitars express musically what O expresses vocally. The lasting image of "Maps" will always be that rose-covered performance at the MTV Movie Awards, an offering that assured that Karen O and her band would probably be looking at possible Grammy nominations sometime soon.
It's been entirely too long since the last Outkast album, the massive double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below that featured one disc each for each Andre 3000 and Big Boi. Since, there's been talk of the group splitting up, tensions between the two members, and a new album in the works. It's almost weird to remember that what made Outkast so appealing initially was how fucking together the pair always sounded, how Big Boi's stunted flow played the perfect foil to Andre 3000's spastic, ADHD style, never more fully realized than on "B.O.B."
It's entirely appropriate that the video for "B.O.B." opens with Andre 3000 running through a bizarre miscolored world. Upon first listen it seems like the song itself is running entirely too fast; there's no way they can be handling such insane BPMs with such lackadaisical ease, right? And the futuristic electro-funk that would predict the aughts' biggest hip-hop production movement sounded how the video looked, all green roads and purple foliage, old school Cadillac hydraulics and strip clubs and church choirs coming together in a way that would reflect the genre-bending of the rest of the decade.
Modest Mouse has changed a lot over the course of the past decade. Entering the aughts they were one of indie music's most well-received groups, particularly on the heels of The Lonesome Crowded West, their 1997 album that essentially got them signed to a major label. There were worries that the major label jump would change the band and make them go pop. While, later, that sentiment would prove valid, their first major label release was more left-field than anything they had done prior (or since).
The Moon and Antarctica starts out in familiar Modest Mouse territory of course, but that all changed as soon as the morbid disco bass line and slinky slither of "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" hit. The song sounded like a dance hall track from hell, with the demonic double-tracked vocals and the incessant shouts that frantically asked, "does anybody know where a body could get away?" The answer, of course, was no. Listeners didn't even particularly want to, if staying meant more tracks like "Tiny Cities".
Elliott Smith's untimely death in 2003 occurred during the recording process of his last album, the posthumously released From A Basement On the Hill. The album was then completed by former Smith producer Rob Schnapf and his ex-girlfriend Joanna Bolme. It was important to finish the album, both for fans blindsided by Smith's death and for members of the family who wanted closure, but none of the songs that Schnapf and Bolme put together were as brutal and touching as the b-side of the final release that Elliott himself saw put out.
The Pretty (Ugly Before) 7" version is both musically and lyrically different, relying on a muted organ to drive its haunting melody before each of the choruses introduces a different humbled guitar melody. It's lyrically that the 7" version truly succeeds its album counterpart, as Elliott sounds less accusatory, instead opting to communicate a gentle, poetic defiance that more appropriately communicated who Elliott was to so many.
Change was, unfortunately, the Dismemberment Plan's last hurrah, an album that lived up to its name, showcasing a more subdued and morose D-Plan than any of their other records and only hinted at by tracks like "The Jitters" on their 1999 release Emergency & I. It should have been obvious, but the change of Travis Morrison into a "Sentimental Man" marked the subsequent breakup of the D.C. post-punk band, to the surprise and disappointment of many.
"Time Bomb" was the song on Change that straddled the two Dismemberment Plan camps, showcasing both a terrifying misery and the incessant energy and mind-boggling drumming that they grew their reputation on. Lyrically simply a sequence of equally sad and violent analogies the song ticks and explodes like its namesake, a burst of dark, nervous hyperactivity that should have told us that they weren't going to last. But "Time Bomb" was just too good to allow us to see the writing on the wall.
De La Soul is one of the rap groups from the genre's pre-gangsta rap heyday that has not only survived but actually and truly thrived. It could argued that they were better in the aughts than they were in any other decade, with neo-classics like AOI: Bionix and The Grind Date that renewed their careers and brought them a new fan base that would work back to the brilliance of 3 Feet High and Rising and De La Soul Is Dead.
Riding on slippery guitar riffs and simple boom-bap beat that could match anything on The College Dropout as pure ear candy, the title track to The Grind Date was lyrically equal parts incredibly unique rhymes (Did he really just rhyme "cuticles" with "pharmaceuticals"?) and spoken word street philosophy ("Like mama said, if you need five cents don't ask for three, ask for ten"). It showed just how far De La Soul had perfected their art; they could simply spill anecdotes about their bus-driving family members and listeners were more enthralled by that than what many of their contemporaries were polluting the radio waves with.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, selections were limited to one song per band. In some cases it was pretty difficult, but the decision was ultimately made by personal history with a song, or a particular life moment when that song was involved over others from the same group. But it was the selection of a Strokes song that caused the most grief. How do you choose from an album as brilliantly consistent as Is This It?
"Someday" got the nod for no other reason than the fact that it's the happiest song on the record. Where other tracks were full of sneering, intense energy packaged in more hooks than your average Hot 97 track, "Someday" was a shot of sunshine that couldn't be listened to without a goofy grin on your face even if you knew what Julian Casablancas was talking about when he said his "fears come in threes." On the chorus Casablancas insisted that the heads of those who wanted to stand by his side weren't right, but "Someday" itself proved him wrong.
The summer of 2009 featured a lot of bands trying to kick out the perfect summer jam. Mostly through the slew of beach-influnced surf melodies that began cropping up everywhere, with song titles so obvious they may have well just been called "Summer Beach Song". Sure, there were a variety of gems in this group, but the track that could most rightfully be considered the best summer song of 2009 had nothing to do with this trend, instead creeping into public consciousness through a Bacardi commercial that wisely used the song's terrific melodies as the crux of its advertisement.
That song was Matt & Kim's "Daylight", a three minute stab of ramshackle keys, stuttering drums and a vocal delivery so happy you can practically hear Matt smiling as he admits "In the daylight I don't pick up my phone." For all the groups trying to find something profound in beach anthems, it was a song about simple sunbeams that captured the spirit of the summer of 2009.
The Books are a group that often get unfairly lost in the shuffle. Their manner of creation is one of the most unique in music, a painstakingly intensive process of sorting through a massive catalog of samples and found sounds and creating occasional accompaniment. They've even recently expanded their creative process to include video in their live act, adding another layer of challenge to an already mind-bogglingly difficult process.
On their first album, Thought For Food they used vocal samples that were strictly spoken to create their moods, which made the 2:20 moment of "The Lemon of Pink", the opening title track of their second album, so surprising. It takes a certain talent to make a lone, hushed female singing voice, folksy in melody, slightly gravelly in tone and accompanied by lonely, open guitars, surprising, but the nature of the Books' sound was such that it reminded us of how affecting the human voice really should be.
The Decemberists are big ol' nerds. To write an album based on a Japanese folk tale or a rock opera including shape-shifters and forest queens, you kind of have to be. Even on their debut album, Castaways & Cutouts, they were singing tales of World War I legionnaires and 17th century child ghosts, the small precursors that would eventually grow into these full-bore musical geek outs.
Maybe that's why "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade" seems so special in the Decemberists' catalog. For the first time before and since Colin Meloy seemed less interested in opening our thesauruses than in creating an emotional affecting song. While the nerdiness made the group easy to write about it was a song like this that truly showcased the group's talents as songwriters; even when dealing with the mundane of a Northern California drive they could find the same emotionality as they did in songs that used the word "parapets."
I've avoided as much as I can cheating and using someone else's words to describe a song, but the truth of the matter is that no one will ever describe Xiu Xiu as well as Pitchfork's Brian Howe did in their songs of the decade list when he wrote "A good Xiu Xiu song is like someone vividly describing his pain. A great Xiu Xiu song is like someone actually hurting himself, right in front of you." It was the perfect summation of what Xiu Xiu has tried to be over the course of their career and is simply unfuckwithable.
"I Luv the Valley OH!" is one of those songs. Yes, it is over-the-top melodramatic and painfully angry and childish ("My behind is a beehive"?) and probably a cry for help but it's so naked and vulnerable and open that it's impossible not to get a little wide eyed when Jamie Stewart's unhinged vocal performance devolves into those creepy la las, starkly contrasting the track's pretty guitars, sliding bass line, and smartly mimicking the drum blasts that crop up every once in a while. Even if it's just a cry for help, you can't help but feel the need to. You'd feel like you were doing a disservice not to at least try.
From their very name it was obvious that ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead was going to be, well, big. Not big in the sense of success, but big in the sense of scope, the stakes that they would be playing with. Source Tags & Codes was about life, the universe and everything, framed in intentionally dark and overly poetic imagery, justified by the fact that their music demanded absolutely nothing less.
"Days of Being Wild"'s is everything about Source Tags & Codes boiled down into three and half minutes: visceral, loud, tortured, and more than a little pretentious. It didn't fucking matter. The punk chorus shouts, the slippery pre-chorus chord changes, and that coda all rocked so hard you didn't give a shit that someone was reading poetry over it or that they were whispering intentionally brokenly over the bridge. When the music tamed down on Worlds Apart we noticed the almost comical aspects of Trail of Dead's drama, but when the music is this face-melting, they could have been singing Sonny & Cher and we would have loved it.
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