My favorite songs of the decade
I’m not going to throw the word “best” around – when Rolling Stone declares that Radiohead’s electrosomnolent “Kid A” to be the best album of the decade, it’s time to retire the idea of telling people your favorite things are objectively better than things that you don’t like. The point of this list is that my taste is a bit different than most, and so many people haven’t heard many of these songs, and I’d like to share them with you. I’m also throwing out all the enumeration – that’s just made up nonsense to quantify subjective feelings that change frequently.
Infinity – by Merrick (2001)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR6ysmGa1ps[/youtube]
“We are all like astronauts, discovering infinity / Take my empty body and discover me, infinity”
Ears Ring – by Rainer Maria (2003)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkUfcrDeETY[/youtube]
“Strange how the ears ring / After a night of wrongdoing”
You! Me! Dancing! – by Los Campesinos! (2007)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj6SO_yKMe8[/youtube]
“And it’s sad that you think that we’re all just scenesters / And even if we were, it’s not the scene you’re thinking of”
Saline the Salt Lake Queen – by Rasputina (2004)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbRusHpUviM[/youtube]
“Oh Saline / Only seventeen / Swollen up with pride”
Apocalypse Please – by Muse (2004)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P3RZdMe75c[/youtube]
“Declare this an emergency / Come on and spread a sense of urgency”
Date With the Night- by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2003)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT1dlU2_Ub0[/youtube]
“Both thighs squeeze tight / CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE…”
Bury The Tooth Of The Hydra And A Skeleton Army Will Arise – by Schoolyard Heroes
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwO0DIrckFw[/youtube]
“These underhanded gestures I make / Do they help you sleep at night?”
Words – Kate Miller-Heidke (2007)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVxWtzYxIbw[/youtube]
“Do you think my personality is written in stone? / Are you positively certain that you know what you’ve been shown”
Gardenia – Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks (2008)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-64FTeOZvk[/youtube]
“So you got some curb appeal / But can you cook a 3 course meal / Or are you just a present waiting to be opened up and parceled out again”
Extraordinary Machine – Fiona Apple (2005)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MicrInh1_E[/youtube]
“Be kind to me, or treat me mean / I’ll make the most of it, I’m an extraordinary machine”
I Should’ve Known Better – by Nickel Creek (2002)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCQxD4zBICg[/youtube]
“Your love meant trouble from the day we met / You won every hand, I lost every bet”
I’m Impressed – by They Might Be Giants (2001)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CccPPDe2JU[/youtube]
“I admit, I’m impressed / When the tornado from the West crushes buildings, I’m impressed”
Grounds for Divorce – by Elbow (2008)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdmwHljfN4Q[/youtube]
“Mondays is for drinking to the seldom seen kid / I’ve been working on a cocktail called Grounds for Divorce”
This is precisely what a ‘best-of’ list should be–especially in a decade when there was really no dominant or definitive style. I’m a big Los Campesinos! fan, and I also like “Extraordinary Machine”.
Fans of Los Campesinos! will likely enjoy this great band as well. To quote Yogi Berra, “Their differences are similar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aiPuDjkyxk&feature=related
I will say different is accurate. That is okay, I would have some different ones that you may not have heard of.
Yeah, that’s the point. There was really no ‘movement’ around which people coalesced (American Idol doesn’t count, those aren’t fans of music, just fans of reality TV). No British Invasion, Motown, soul, punk, grunge, or anything that defined the decade’s best music.
Which, come to think of it, IS what defined the decade’s best music.
I guess ‘indy’ comes closest since it covers the DIY ethos, but that encompasses a wide array of musics, not one particular style.
The DIY ethos is the most notable musical trend of the decade – a trend not in terms of style but in delivery. The real winners of the decade are the artists that scored big thanks to YouTube, iTunes, and MySpace. Music labels languished, commercial radio spent the decade on life support, and MTV essentially quit the music business altogether. But music lives on and finds outlets on its own.
X, did you self-censor to avoid songs that were commercially successful, just to “keep it real” like the kids say?
U2 – Beautiful Day (2000)
Green Day – American Idiot (2004)
But I agree with you on the DIY aspect of it, especially since iPods, Pandora, etc. let us essentially create our own “radio” in a way mixtapes never could. How else could you explain a metalhead like me listening to Lily Allen, Silversun Pickups, Porcupine Tree and yet still have Muse in heavy rotation.
jesus of suburbia – green day
No, G Rex, there are lots of commercially successful songs I like, they just aren’t my absolute favorites of the decade. I could make a whole list of my favorite successful radio singles of the decade – probably including “Miss Independent”, “Fighter”, “Supermassive Black Hole”, “The Black Parade”, “Let’s Get It Started”, “Gold Digger”, “Fidelity”, “Number One Spot”, “Toxicity”, “Megalomaniac”, and “All These Things That I’ve Done”.
But the fact is that I don’t love any of those songs as much as I love the songs I listed above.
I did, however, mistakenly forget one song from my list:
Grounds for Divorce, by Elbow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdmwHljfN4Q
I’d better rectify this now.