Friday, November 20, 2009

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

(Click here for the whole list.)

40. Decoder Ring - Fractions




39. The Dresden Dolls - Good Day




38. Andrew Bird - A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left




37. Tori Amos - A Sorta Fairytale




36. OutKast - Ms. Jackson

Yes, there is a rap song on the list, though you might not have expected it from the blogger who wrote this post!




35. My Brightest Diamond - Inside a Boy





34. Mika - Grace Kelly

And here's a solo unplugged live performance.




33. John Mayer - Daughters

I couldn't stand this song when I first heard it (playing in a convenience store). It was just too earnestly tear-jerking, with eye-rollingly gendered lyrics. Later on, for some reason, I suddenly found it perfectly effective.




32. 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 famous diffidence toward his own success: "The crowd applauded as he curtsied bashfully."




31. Polydream - Hollywood

Click here to play the mp3. (Authorized by the band.)

(Full disclosure: I'm friends with these guys.)

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