The Top Songs of the Decade

Yeah, Stan's a fucking masterpiece

p.s. we should be together too

 

Time To Pretend is a great song, but Kids is the MGMT track that should be WAY up there.

 

And Electric Feel has an argument too. Too bad the rest of the album plummets from there.

 

Is this a list of top songs or top released singles?

RS's top song was Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." Not my favorite song on the album (Smiley Faces rules), but it's hard to argue with the thought that Crazy transcended all sorts of genre lines. EVERYONE liked that track. It played on all sorts of formats -- rock, top 40, hip-hop, adult contemporary.

 

I'd say any song either released itself or on an album released in the 2000s. The whole single concept got murkier as the decade went on. Though they should at least have gotten some airplay or decent iTunes sales, else we could flood the chart with obscurities from favorite bands.

 

I know a lot of people loved Lose Yourself, I thought 8 Mile was a much better track.

 

The album is indeed a bit...how do you say...uneven.

 

RE: Stan

I've written some of this before on here, but Stan is one of the few rap songs Orwell or Poe would have loved. It's a brilliant deconstruction of fame, how artists influence the people who listen to their music, it poses the question (but does not provide an answer) as to whether or not we should care about how people confuse "storytelling" with "reality," and it uses the shift of first-person narration to belittle most people's small-minded lack of understanding that -- just like fiction writers -- rappers can write in the voice of a character to make a point, and that "Eminem" is not necessarily "Marshall Mathers." It's a bit like Jonathan Safran Foer naming his main character in "Everything Is Illuminated" Jonathan Safran Foer. There are three different narrators in the course of single song. There is the fan who sings the first three verses (his desperation growing as the song builds to a boil), there is Marshall Mathers who sings the final verse (make us realize the artist cared all along, he just didn't respond as quickly as the fan wanted), and there is Eminem, who crafted the entire song as a fable. He's playing himself, and making us AWARE of the fact that he's playing himself. There is even a dig at how the media blames music for the violent acts people commit, and at the end, Eminem the artist (the person who wrote the song) uses Eminem the character (the person singing the final verse) to ask if this is a real concern or not. It dawns on him that it might be. And instead of an easy answer, what we're left with is "Damn." The song ends. The fact that the song was written, in part, as a fuck you to music critics, and was then critically adored, makes it even more brilliant. Throw in the fact that he heard that Dido track -- a song about happiness and love -- and was able to hear loneliness and heartache in the riff, and it's a powerful deconstruction of just how close the line between a healthy obsession and an unhealthy obsession is.

Eminem has written a lot of shit in his day, a lot of commercial pap that is disposable and dumb, but Stan could have been written by Robert Browning. To imply that people think it's good simply because the "happy rapper is writing about some glum stuff to switch things up" is like saying Moby Dick is about whales or Ulysses is about taking a dump.

 

Others receiving votes: No Cars Go, Arcade Fire; 1901, Phoenix; Kings and Queens, 30 Seconds To Mars; Are You Gonna Be My Girl, JET; Smile Like You Mean It, The Killers; Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk, Rufus Wainwright; I Should Get Up, Teddy Thompson; Your English is Good, Tokyo Police Club; They Can’t Buy The Sunshine, Turin Brakes; Jackson Square, Mason Jennings; Where’s Your Head At?, Basement Jaxx

50. Rainy Monday, Shiny Toy Guns
49. One Month Off, Bloc Party
48. Grey Street, Dave Matthews Band
47. Wake The Sun, The Matches
46. Who We Be, DMX
45. Such Great Heights, Postal Service
44. Hey There Delilah, Plain White T’s
43. Neighborhood #3 (Power’s Out), Arcade Fire
42. I’m Outta Time, Oasis
41. I’m Stupid (Don’t Worry About Me), Prime STH
40. 99 Problems, Jay-Z
39. Dani California, Red Hot Chili Peppers
38. Seven Nation Army, White Stripes
37. Fine Again, Seether
36. Jesus Walks, Kayne West
35. The Hardest Part, Ryan Adams and The Cardinals
34. Countdown, Jupiter One
33. I’m Real, J-Lo/Ja Rule
32. Like a Vibration, The Whigs
31. Uprising, Muse (which is on its 11th week atop the Billboard Alternative Songs chart – and it still has its bullet)
30. 12:51, The Strokes
29. The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance, Vampire Weekend
28. Let Me In, Hot Hot Heat
27. Wish You Were Here, Incubus
26. Shine On, JET
25. I Miss You, Blink 182
24. The Country Life, The Silver Seas
23. Time to Pretend, MGMT
22. No One’s Gonna Love You, Band of Horses
21. November Blue, Avett Brothers
20. Read My Mind, The Killers
19. Don’t You Evah, Spoon
18. Intervention, Arcade Fire
17. Lost Cause, Beck
16. Run, Snow Patrol
15. Ocean Breathes Salty, Modest Mouse
14. A-Punk, Vampire Weekend
13. Everybody’s Changing, Keane
12. Kids, MGMT
11. The ’59 Sound, Gaslight Anthem

THE TOP TEN​

10. Girl in the War, Josh Ritter – Drippingly gorgeous and sad thing that pretty much has to be on everyone’s list somewhere if they’ve heard it. Sparse and frustrating and absolutely perfect if Dylan felt like covering something.
9. Satellite, Guster – A great, spacey song about unrequited love. Distant vocals give a nice, isolated feel to it. Pretty sweet-ass video, too.
8. Lazy Eye, Silversun Pickups – Some of the best guitar work you’ll hear among current-era modern/indie and one of the best instrumental outros in years.
7. Sometime Around Midnight, The Airborne Toxic Event – OK, fine, it got overplayed earlier this year. And the lead singer kinda looks like he should be convincing Winona Ryder to kill girls named Heather. It’s still a well-constructed yet simple song about the complex feelings a simple encounter can enable, and it builds to its overwhelmed climax in well-proportioned degrees.
6. Somewhere Only We Know, Keane – Why aren’t these guys bigger? A terribly sweet thing with apporiately-soaring vocals about last-ditch escape to that you hold most dear. “This could be the end of everything,” indeed.
5. Clocks, Coldplay – Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how you know I’m gay. This is still piano-driven alternative rock at its most complete.
4. Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife, Drive-By Truckers – Stretching the boundaries I set forth, since this probably didn’t get that much radio play, but the whole being in Richmond when this shit went down thrusts this already good song into the stratosphere for me. Teeming with emotion, a tempest in a 3-minute teacup.
3. Stan, Eminem/Dido – I could draw up a shit-tier explanation as to why I like this song, but my man Double Down has it on lockdown way better than anything my simple ass could conjure up.
2. Rebellion (Lies), Arcade Fire – I swear unto the heavens, I could listen to the last 1:20 of this song on an eight-hour loop. If I kill myself, this might be the song I do it to.
1. Starlight, Muse – Unless it’s this one. Completely nails the sense of loss and yearning. For most people, it’s a chick or dude. For me, it’s a career. According to iTunes, I listened to this thing 834 times this year. I think I like it.

Gawd, what a load of self-absorbed, ornate shit. This seemed like a much better idea when I sat down.

 

The album falls off a cliff after the first five songs.

This.

And I like the idea of putting some indie/personal favorites on a list. Well, like Meat just did ... good stuff, man. Nothing wrong with introducing someone to a song they've maybe never heard.

 

DD, I can honestly say I just heard this song for the first time about a minute ago (sorry, I do not listen to popular music), and you can say lyrically it is great. I will not argue that.

As far as musically great? I cannot say that. It's a cover song with a different beat while he is rapping. I am not saying his is not a good song, but to call it song of the decade would mean it sits with the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the other classics.

Did he take the time to blend a guitar with a drum with a bass? Did he take the effort to figure out a time signature change in the middle of the song? Did he harmonize anything?

I'm sorry, this song cannot go shoulder to shoulder with Sympathy for the Devil.

 

Which wasn't released in this decade. Different era, different rules. Can either go shoulder to shoulder with West End Blues? Irrelevant. Quibble about what decade produced better music (for what it's worth, I think it's almost impossible to fairly judge the current wave of music in a historical context because we're still living in it and it clouds our judgment), but it's not really the point to say a song can't be the best of this decade because it might not be the best of the 70s.