The 100 best songs of the first decade of the 2000s (20-11)

(Click here for the whole list.)


20. Spoon — "The Beast and Dragon, Adored"




19. Radiohead — "How to Disappear Completely"




18. Rilo Kiley – "Does He Love You?"

(Live.)




17. Beyoncé (feat. Jay-Z) — "Crazy in Love"

Credit is also due to the Chi-Lites; the brass-section hook is sampled from their 1971 song "Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So)."




16. Björk – "Hidden Place"

A great introversion song. The build-up from the final verse ("Can I hide there too?") to the final chorus is quietly overwhelming. She gets so much feeling out of singing the words slightly off from the beat.




15. Regina Spektor – "Us"




14. Goldfrapp – "A&E"

When I said one of the criteria I used in deciding whether to include a song on the list was ...

Does the music have some sort of dramatic arc or development? (A bridge or other deviation from "verse/chorus/verse/chorus" is especially helpful.)

... this is one of the songs I had in mind. Wow!




13. The Flaming Lips — "Do You Realize??"

A song that gets great emotion out of stating simple facts, like: We're floating in space…




12. Frou Frou – "Let Go"

(Unplugged version by Imogen Heap, the singer of Frou Frou.)




11. Death Cab for Cutie – "I Will Follow You into the Dark"

The 100 best songs of the first decade of the 2000s (40-31)

(Click here for the whole list.)


40. Daniel Merriweather — "For Your Money"

Sean Lennon plays some nice guitar leads on this.




39. Faded Paper Figures — "North by North"

I love the male/female vocal harmonies in this song.




38. Polydream — "Hollywood"

(Full disclosure: I'm friends with them.)




37. Bat for Lashes — "Daniel"




36. Mika — "Grace Kelly"

And here's a solo unplugged live performance.




35. Grizzly Bear — "Two Weeks"




34. Sara Bareilles— "Love Song"

Here a few of the main questions I've asked myself in selecting the songs:

1) Is it capable of giving me chills? (Or: does it emotionally affect me?)

2) Is it capable of getting stuck in my head?

3) Do I enjoy listening to the singer's voice?

4) Does the music have some sort of dramatic arc or development? (A bridge or other deviation from "verse/chorus/verse/chorus" is especially helpful.)

5) Is there a sense of "inevitability" — that is, does each note seem to lead naturally to the next?

A song where I'd answer "Yes" to all those questions is probably a good contender for the list. A song where I'd answer "No" to most of those questions probably won't be on the list.

This song — which has a casually effervescent quality that reminds me of Paul McCartney — gets a "Yes" answer to all 5 questions.




33. Dntel — "(This Is) the Dream of Evan and Chan"

This song was created by the same lineup as The Postal Service.

Another blog, The Factual Opinion, ranked this the best song of the decade, saying:

The 2001 people imagined decades ago must have sounded like this--the electronic squall, the nearly overwhelming surge of drums, the drifting grasp on reality. ... 8 years on, “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan” sounds like a future that we still haven't caught up with.

The Factual Opinion quotes the line, "He then played every song from 1993," and says, "I always imagine that he’s talking about hearing every song from 1993, from 'Whoomp (There It Is)' to 'Mr. Jones.'" Although that's what the line would seem to literally mean, I always imagine that he's talking about Kurt Cobain in the last full year of his life, and "every song from 1993" means every one of his songs from 1993 — in other words, In Utero, Nirvana's last studio album. That's why (I imagine) Ben Gibbard wittily accentuates the next line, which I hear as a reference to Cobain's famously conflicted feelings about his own success: "The crowd applauded as he curtsied bashfully."




32. The New Pornographers — "The Laws Have Changed"

It's always fun to hear both A.C. Newman and Neko Case singing lead in the same song.




31. Camera Obscura — "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken"

When I listen to Camera Obscura, I imagine a band from the early '60s traveling through time to the '00s and trying to fit in.

Music Friday: 4 more covers

Continuing with the theme from last week, here are 4 more covers, each one followed by the original.

5. The Project (info) covers...



...Tchaikovsky.




6. Ben Gibbard (of Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie fame) covers...



...Michael Jackson.



7. Hanne Hukkelberg (blogged previously) covers...



...the Kinks.




8. M. Ward (featuring Zooey Deschanel) covers...



...Buddy Holly.

Buddy Holly, the original, immortal nerd rocker

"One of the main things about the Beatles is that we started out writing our own material. People these days take it for granted that you do, but nobody used to then. John and I started to write because of Buddy Holly. It was like, 'Wow! He writes and is a musician.'"

— Paul McCartney

"When I was 16 or 17 years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory [three days before he died] and I was three feet away from him, and he looked at me. And I just have some sort of feeling that he was — I don't know how or why — but I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way."

— Bob Dylan, on recording his album Time Out of Mind

Buddy Holly died 50 years ago. He was 22.

He got as close as anyone has to the essence of rock 'n' roll: saying a lot with the sparest of elements, and not caring if you seem like a bit of a fool as long as you say what you mean.

No one will ever do what he did again. He has many imitators, but no one can do it with that purity and innocence anymore; there are always added layers of irony or allusion.




Of the many originators of rock from the '50s, Buddy Holly had one of the most enduring voices. I'd rank him, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley in a class of their own. And no one else had so much potential cut off.




So let's listen to some of those who've carried on the 50-year heritage of simple nerd rock:

Talking Heads — "And She Was" …




They Might Be Giants — "Don't Let's Start" …




Camera Obscura — "Let's Get out of This Country" …




Weezer — "Buddy Holly" …




Death Cab for Cutie — "I Will Follow You into the Dark."




UPDATE: My mom (Ann Althouse) suggests another song.

Where are the rock stars of the 2000s?

There don't seem to be any, as Jon Fine explains in the video clip below:

If you think about rock music -- which was this incredible industry for, I don't know, 30 years -- rock 'n' roll hasn't really minted any kind of massive ... multi-platinum-selling pop-culture superstar since the '90s, I think. The last really big ones have all been hip-hop. The rock bands now that consistently sell platinum generally came from an earlier era -- they're like Green Day or U2. That top level is completely gone.

Now, what you have in its place is you have a much healthier ecosystem in terms of discovering music and finding music, and for that matter nurturing bands on a local level. You know, the indie circuit that I adored in the '80s ... it's a much more accepted thing, as opposed to back then, it was a little more of a secret-handshake thing. ...

There's kind of a cultural impoverishment at the top of the spectrum, but at the bottom, it's just ridiculously healthy.

I agree, especially if we're talking about not just album sales but "rock stars," with the emphasis not on rock but on star. In the '80s, for instance, you had Madonna, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and others, who didn't just sell tons of records but made a genuine cultural impact in their time.

Does anyone who made it big in this decade (and actually makes good music) even come close? Rufus Wainwright, Regina Spektor, Jenny Lewis (Rilo Kiley), Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service)? Arcade Fire, the White Stripes, the Strokes? Those may be some of my own personal celebrities of the moment, but I don't know how broadly they resonate out in the world.

As Fine suggests, this is a very different question from how good the music scene is overall. In my opinion, rock/pop/etc. music in the 2000s is probably better overall than in the '90s -- or, for that matter, the '80s or '70s. There's more great music available to me and you, but it's less likely to be made by household names.

Of course, the '60s is better than all those other decades, but we'll never get the opportunity to see so much rock innovation, right? The bands/artists around now are severely disadvantaged by not being able to invent any of the genres that have already been invented. At a certain point, doesn't rock have to run its course?




(Arcade Fire - "Wake Up.")


IN THE COMMENTS: Theories.