Last week popular whipping boy/actual good source for music info Pitchfork released their list of the Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s. Sucks to be you if you're releasing an album between now and December! Anyway, I compiled a playlist of the Top 20, some of which I was familiar with, some not, and present now to you, a breathless public, my Extremely Interesting Take on their Top 20.
(P.S. Some of the links are to iMeem, and they work for me, but if they don't work for you, let me know or look it up on Youtube or something.)
20. The Walkmen, "The Rat"
Starting off with a bang. I remember this song appearing with a noisy racket and generally putting the Walkmen on the map, even though they had done some cool stuff before. If you like this, hang on to it, because it's one of the few more-or-less pure "rock" songs on this list. Not my favorite Walkmen song (that would be either "We've Been Had" or "Louisiana"), but a great song nonetheless.
19. R. Kelly, "Ignition (Remix)"
I've never been a huge R. Kelly fan, but this is undeniably catchy. Naturally, it's about sex. The chorus reminds me a little of Bone Thugs N Harmony, for some reason. Anyway, I'm in no position to evaluate the positioning of this song, given how unfamiliar I am with R. Kelly's oeuvre or, indeed, R&B in general.
18. Hercules and Love Affair, "Blind"
Also something I would never normally listen to. One of the things I like about this exercise is being forced out of my usual box and listening to stuff I'd never usually hear. Anyway, yeah, nouveau disco. It's fine as far as it goes, I guess. Vocals by Antony Hegarty of indie darlings Antony & the Johnsons.
17. Annie, "Heartbeat"
Pretty much everything on the list that I wasn't familiar with or wouldn't normally listen to I could at least appreciate (like "Blind," above), but I'm not getting this one. To me, it's a middling, nothing-really-special dance-pop song. I don't get it. She's kinda cute, though.
16. The Rapture, "House of Jealous Lovers"
When a rock critic says something is "angular" (and they all do, a lot), this is what they're talking about. Jittery, pulsing guitars, yelping vocals, prototypical dance-punk. A lot of bands tried to sound like this after it came out.
15. The Knife, "Heartbeats"
Like a lot of other people, I gather, I heard the Jose Gonzalez acoustic cover of this song before the original. In fact, I think I came across it first in this Sony commercial (which is pretty amazing in its own right). ANYWAY, I maintained originally that I didn't like The Knife original very much, but it's grown on me. I think it started when I heard it in an underground (literally, below ground) nightclub in Limerick, Ireland, at like 3 in the morning. It just seemed right. It's good.
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