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As I continue to toboggan into fuddy-duddiness, jettisoning both ambition and pretension in a desperate attempt to keep moving, to avoid temporarily the inevitable valley of Kelvinic Zero, some things become clearer. Though I am a son and a father, a husband and a brother, I am essentially alone on this journey; the only person to whom this outcome matters, whether or not I freeze in place with a coating of Metamucil and Nostalgia, is me. I want my daily struggle to wrench meaning from the void to seem epic, yet my fate is at least as mundane as 6 billion others and probably more mundane than most. Facilitate the morning and evening routines of my boys, and in between, buy the groceries, play some guitar, cook some meals, and wonder how the hell I got here. I glance at the obituaries and wonder how mine will read, but the reality is, if I died tonight, or next year, or in 30 years, it wouldn't change the fact that my death won't be newsworthy, because it's for damn sure that my life isn't. If I have learned helplessness, it's only because it has been beaten into me, failure after failure. I can hope my family will mourn my passing; beyond that, few will notice and fewer still will pause and remember.
Of course, there is freedom in being this insignificant. I can care about what I choose, write (or not write) about what interests me, savor the complexity of every Cheezy Poof. Which brings me to my ongoing, if stumbling, project to catalog my favorite and least favorite songs of the Aughties. Now up, 2001.
Favorite Songs - Honorable Mention
Incubus - "Drive"
I'm surprised I like this song as much as I do, what with the vapid "wocka-wocka" turntable scratching, but it really does soar in the chorus.
Black Crowes - "Soul Singing"
Could stand to be a little less repetitive, but the funky energy of the music and the happy glow of the lyrics work well together.
Rufus Wainwright - "California"
Featuring the immortal line "And my new grandma, Bea Arthur". And about as rockin' of song as Rufus ever does.
Jimmy Eat World - "The Middle"
Sort of Green Day Lite, with propulsive energy and major key melody, but with encouraging rather than apocalyptic lyrics.
Ben Folds - "Rockin the Suburbs"
Sort of a theme song for me. And what a great, squeezing the last bit of toothpaste of the tube, keyboard sound.
Eddie From Ohio - "Quick" (sorry, no link)
Easily the best song I know of about General Relativity.
Least Favorite Songs of 2001 - Honorable Mention (
no links because anyone still reading this is my friend and I need to keep the friends I have)Nickelback - "How You Remind Me"
Do we really need Diet Metallica, complete with the "growl of soulful sincerity" and 4/4 plodding like a Megatherium in the throes of caffeine withdrawl?
Five For Fighting - "Superman (It's not easy)"
Millionaire rock stars should never whine about how hard they have it, even metaphorically.
Lee Ann Womack - "I Hope You Dance"
Admirable sentiments, delivered overdramatically and smothered in schmaltz.
Sugar Ray - "When It's Over"
When it's over, I am grateful that I can go months without hearing another singer this dreadfully out of tune.
Now that I've dealt with the worst songs of 2000, I'm going to turn my attention to my favorite songs from that year. In no particular order:
Barenaked Ladies - "Too Little Too Late"
I love the crunch of Ed's guitar at the start, the melodic counterpoint of Jim's bass throughout, how Tyler's drums snap so cleanly, the handclaps in the chorus, and Kevin's subtle keyboard colorings. But all of this great musicianship is just supporting the genius songcraft of Steven and Ed, how the verses stretch out into an unresolved major 2nd then land hard on the tonic for the chorus, the way the second bridge extends the structure of the first bridge, and all the internal rhymes. Probably my second favorite BNL song, after "Life, in a Nutshell".
Martin Sexton - "Hallelujah"
Not the Leonard Cohen song, as famously covered by John Cale or Jeff Buckley, but a rather different, yet quite good original composition by Sexton. Here's where the brilliant pairing of keyboardist David Sancious and bassist Tony Levin really pays off, with a glorious, gospel-organ in the intro and then the thundering bass entering soon thereafter. Chills, every time. And Martin's multi-tracked chorus of himself at the end also gives goosebumps. Sadly, there's no video I know of showing this band in action on this song, but the link above is Martin doing it by himself, and he is a riveting solo performer.
XTC - "We're All Light"
The last great XTC song, the end of an amazing string by Andy and Colin. From where I sit, Andy Partridge is one of the giants of 20th century songwriting, and this one is another seemingly effortless masterpiece. Lyrically, this kind of takes off from Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" and the whole "we are stardust" thing, but in a typically playful and erudite fashion. In fact, I like what one You Tube commenter wrote about this song, saying that it would be a likely choice for Stephen Hawking if he ever did Karaoke.
The New Pornographers - "Letter From an Occupant"
The first great New Pornographers song, the beginning of an amazing string by A.C. Newman, Neko Case and all the rest. From where I sit, Carl Newman is one of the giants of 21st century songwriting. Doesn't quite achieve the uncanny combination of melody and power that some of the later masterpieces have, but still a seriously great song and preview of even greater things to come.
BR549 - "Little Ramona (Gone Hillbilly Nuts)"
Sweet, nouveau honky-tonk cousin of Nick Lowe's "I Knew the Bride". Just a simple, silly, fun song, the kind that turn out to be surprisingly hard to do. The link is to a post-BR549-breakup performance by the singer and songwriter, the auteur if you will, Chuck Mead.
The Weakerthans - "Aside"
I didn't know about these guys in 2000, but I sure know about them know. Another great Canadian band (see BNL and NP above) that rocks out strongly and propulsively without forgetting about melody and charm. Neat trick. And a fabulous song that deserves to be better known. So I'm spreading the word.
Soggy Bottom Boys (aka Dan Tyminsky, Pat Enright, and Harley Allen) - "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow"
Driven by Tyminski's sui generis blues/bluegrass/dawg music/downright Jimmy Pagean acoustic guitar, this is way too good to be just a movie song.
I must apologize, for I have led you astray. In my cluttered and fevered mind, I was sure that the song I hated the most from 2000 was on this list. It is not, although its companion song on a CD single is. And together, these 2 songs represent a key development in a process I call "ego supernova", when the self-regard of a public figure becomes so massive that it can no longer be contained by the normal bounds of propriety. The result is an explosion of pure vanity, a song of self so narcissistic as to make Walt Whitman seem like Gerard Manley Hopkins.
But, you say, there's no U2 song on this list? No, I'm not talking about Paul Hewson, aka Bono. His ego went supernova a long time ago. Nor is it Madonna, who legend tells us, was not so much born, as sprung full-grown, like Athena, from the brow of Og Mandino. And I'm not talking about Carlos Santana, whose self-image has expanded even as his guitar skills have atrophied, from once incendiary brief solos to non-stop aimless noodling in the background of dentist office music.
As probably some of you have figured out by now, the arrogance eminence I am referring to is Gordon Sumner, aka Sting. And the song I hate the most from 2000 is "Desert Rose". Why do I hate this relatively inoffensive slice of pseudo-world pop music? Let me count the ways.
1) 4 words. "Ya leil ya leil", which Sting sings as a kind of punctuation at the end of every other line in the song. What do they mean? According to one source (scroll down), they mean "Oh night, oh night", which might be evocative the first couple times you hear it, but by repetition #16, let's just say the only thing they're evoking in me is annoyance bordering on anger.
2) The "Arabic affectation" hiccup Sting does in the middle of the aforementioned 4 words. All 16 times.
3) I don't know who Cheb Mami is, but his maximum melisma co-singing on this song makes Mariah Carey seem like a model of vocal restraint.
4) 2 notes do not make a melody.
As for the Sting song actually on the list, "Brand New Day", let's just take a quick lyrical look at the moment Sting jumps the shark of self-deprecation:I'm the rhythm in your tune
I'm the sun and you're the moon
I'm a bat and you're the cave
You're the beach and I'm the wave
I’m the plow and you’re the land
You're the glove and I'm the hand
I'm the train and you're the station
I'm a flagpole to your nation - yeah
and if that wasn't bad enough, he turns right around and jumps again:I'm the present to your future
You're the wound and I’m the suture
You're the magnet to my pole
I'm the devil in your soul
You're the pupil I'm the teacher
You're the church and I'm the preacher
You're the flower I'm the rain
You're the tunnel I'm the train
Look, I understand these lyrics may have been written in a somewhat playful, tongue-in-cheek spirit. And that the Matrix meets The Greatest Story Ever Told video may also be parody. But to me, it all seems like a creepy manifestation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. And I can't believe Stevie Wonder played harmonica on it.
There's no benefit to looking for the worst songs of any given year. You have no chance of being thorough or definitive; for every "Come Sail Away" or "We Built This City" you are already disconsolately aware of, there's no doubt an album cut by A Taste of Honey or Christopher Cross that is worse. As an example, over 4 years ago, on my first blog, I asked for nominations for the worst cover song of all time. Most of the nominees were well-known and conventionally bad; such as Club Nouveau's ("We be jammin'") pseudo-reggae-synth-cheese-in-a-can version of Bill Wither's "Lean on Me". But one anonymous commenter pointed me toward Kevin Rowland's (former lead yelper of Dexy's Midnight Runners) manure-bombing of "Thunder Road" (I link only from a misplaced sense of journalistic integrity. For Zarquon's sake, don't listen to it. I heard it once and I'm still having nightmares about burned-out mopeds and poorly-tuned banjos. At the time, I remember writing something along the lines of "It reminds me of the escape scene in The Shawshank Redemption, except after crawling through the sewer line, it's like Andy DuFresne had to swim across a lake of caproic acid, dry off in a turkey barn, slide face-first through a cavern filled with bat guano and finally emerge, not as an wealthy beach bum in Mexico, but as the guy who picks out the undigested coffee beans in a Kopi Luwak roastery."), thankfully unreleased due to a lack of permission from Bruce Springsteen. This has got to be not only the worst cover ever, but also the most terrible act of music ever committed by a human, right? But the fact is, you don't know. For all you know, maybe Michael Bolton and Kid Rock have an Everly Brothers tribute CD in the can, with a version of "All I Have to Do Is Dream". That could be worse, couldn't it?
My point is this, if you go looking for shit, you will find it. To anti-paraphrase Annie Dillard, "the world is in fact planted in shit." The top hits of 2000 list is jam-packed with such nuggets. Let's classify them shall we:
A) Shitty songs I've never heard, but just from the title and/or artist, I know they're shitty.
14. "Thong Song" - Sisqo (I submit it is a metaphysical and creative impossibility to write a decent song called "Thong Song".)
24. "Get It On Tonite" - Montell Jordan (Montell, sure, pop music is almost always driven by Dionysian urges, but songs work best when the carnal is in playful yet antagonsitic balance with the intellectual. To be fair, I haven't heard this, but my guess is it's the aural equivalent of male wasps humping orchid stamens.)
31. "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely" - Backstreet Boys (I really should check this out if only for the comic possibilities, because the juxtaposition of phony "urban street cred" that was the Backstreet Boys raison d'merde with the faux "sensitivity" that this title suggests indicates a inauthenticity eruption of Vanilla Ice-an proportions. Please tell me this song features a spoken word interlude starting with, "Girl..." or even better, "Oh, girl...")
68. "Shake Ya Ass" - Mystikal (Do I really need to explain?)
B) Plain downright shitty songs.
11. "Higher" - Creed (Is there a more cynical band in the world than Creed? Maybe Metallica, but there sure aren't many. Creed's formula is to mash up 2 bands I like, Stone Temple Pilots and Jars of Clay, and somehow create something I can't stand, but that is wildly effective at vacuuming up the discretionary income of Christian and Christian-sympathizing youth.)
28. "That's the Way It Is" - Celine Dion (In a more normal year, this would be the front-runner for shittiest song of the year, given the fake uplift of the lyrics, the cheesy simplicity of the music, the no-expenses-spared production that ends up sounding like a rejected auto-background setting on a First Act keyboard, the "gospel" choir ("Quick, this track is supposed to be inspiring, but it sounds flatter than a tortilla at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Get me some African-Canadian women to sing back-up!") and the always annoying and ever-annunciating voice of Celine. But something worse is coming, from a surprising source.)
36. "With Arms Wide Open" - Creed (Sllllllluuuuuuurrrrrrrggggggllllllllllhhhhhhhh.)
C) Truly shitty song with a surprisingly good cover version that somehow redeems said shitty song, at least partially.
55. "Oops!...I Did It Again" - Britney Spears (Until I watched the video just now, I didn't really appreciate the vast and complete crappiness of this song. Britney's voice was processed so much for this song, it should carry an FDA warning, and the ticky-tacky rhythm track makes the Celine Dion song above sound like Funkadelic. Which makes it even more astounding what Richard Thompson, with the help of Debra Dobkin, did with this song, as found here. This was part of Richard's 1000 Years of Popular Music project. He claims that, "taken out of context, this is a pretty nice song," but I think you would need some pretty heavy duty mathematics to calculate the levels of tongue-in-cheekedness involved with this cover. Yet it is clearly a great improvement.)
Up next - this worst song of 2000, which is on this list. Feel free to guess in the comments.
A year-and-a-half ago, I saw Crowded House up in DC. This was the second time I'd seen Crowded House and both times have been memorable. The first time I saw them was in 1994 in Nashville and is memorable for many reasons, most importantly as my first date with Rosie, now my wife. But it was also the first show Crowded House played after drummer Paul Hester (rest in peace, Paul) left the group for the last time, which meant that the drummer for Sheryl Crow (the opening act) did double duty that night. He did a remarkable job filling in, especially considering the short notice he must have had. Probably many casual fans didn't even notice, but I remember bassist Nick Seymour camped out by the drum set all night, whenever possible yelling cues to the replacement drummer.
Back to last year. The DC show was astounding, reinforcing my belief that Neil Finn is among the best songwriters in the world, as well as a compelling singer and talented multi-instrumentalist. And with Mark Hart (keyboards) and Matt Sherrod (drums) joining Nick Seymour, Crowded House has become one of the more interesting bands around, rivaling Wilco for versatility, and the ability to go the full range between tender subtlety and shambolic rocking out. For 2.5 hours, they kept playing great song after great song, and didn't even come close to emptying the well. Ridiculously good.
I tell you that to tell you this. The best song I heard that night wasn't by Crowded House and wasn't written by Neil Finn. It was by opening act Don McGlashan, another singer/songwrtiter from New Zealand. At the time, I didn't know his stuff, so I didn't know this song, but the first time I heard it, I knew it was a frosting-on-the-beater sweet, perfect pop confection. I didn't know what is was called, but based upon what I remembered from the lyics, I knew it had to be something like "Just How Lucky" or "Boyfriend". However, it wasn't on any of his albums. OK, fine, it will no doubt be on the next album, released toward the end of 2008. Except it wasn't. Why? Why was he sitting on this spectacular song? Maybe he was saving it for the 7 Worlds Collide project, where Neil Finn invited a bunch of his friends, including Don, members of Wilco and Radiohead, Johnny Marr, K.T. Tunstall, etc., to New Zealand to record a 2 CD set to benefit Oxfam. That's not going to be released in the U.S. until the end of September, but the track lists have been released, and it's not on there either. Crap.
How will I ever hear this song again? I kept looking, on YouTube, on his website, prowling through Crowded House forums, and found nothing, although in these forums I discovered I wasn't the only person smitten with this particular song. Then I found it here, on bootlegs made from Crowded House's 2 shows in LA on the same tour.
Then, since Don hasn't chosen to share this masterpiece with the rest of the world, I decided to record my own version of it. As always, click on the mp3 player below to listen. Thanks.
Just as I suspected, my initial excavations into the 2000 polycarbonate layer have been unsatisfying. Nothing on Steve Earle's Transcendental Blues or Paul Simon's You're the One really grabbed me, especially compared to their earlier masterpieces, such as "Devil's Right Hand" or "You Can Call Me Al", respectively. Flying Saucer Blues contains only one song ("Coulda Woulda Shoulda") I was willing to put on my "Best of Peter Case" iTunes playlist and though I haven't yet made a "Best of John Hiatt" playlist, I suspect only a couple of songs from Crossing Muddy Waters (the title track and "Before I Go") would be under consideration. This disappoints me, because I really wanted to like this CD; it was almost all acoustic with no drums, much like most of my recorded output, and featured a couple of brilliant musicians, Davey Faragher (initially from Cracker, now with Elvis Costello) on bass and David Immergluck (initially with Camper Van Beethoven, long-time member of Counting Crows) on 12-string, slide guitar and mandolin. Ultimately, the sound was great, the playing was tasty, but all for a pretty mediocre bunch of songs on Hiatt's part. He has a tendency to get into a mid-tempo, 4/4, I-IV-V-vi rut and the songs on this album kept returning to that pattern like swallows to Capistrano, or like Dick Cheney to Malebolge.
Things weren't much better as I listened to more CDs and dug a little deeper into iTunes. It really does seem like 2000 was not a very good year for the kind of music I like. In the end, I came up with only 7 unequivocally great songs, one great but lyrically flawed song and the following honorable mentions:
1. Peter Case - "Coulda Shoulda Woulda" (can't find it on the intertubes, sorry)
2. John Hiatt - "Crossing Muddy Waters" (see above)
3. Pearl Jam - "Light Years" (dark yet poppy)
4. XTC - "Playground" (also dark and poppy) (also not on You Tube)
5. Billy Bragg and Wilco - "Airline to Heaven"
6. and 7. Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals - "Steal My Kisses" (rips off Prince's "Alphabet Street") and "Burn to Shine"
8. and 9. Foo Fighters - "Learn to Fly" and "Next Year" (both fine songs, but not as urgent as my favorites by these guys)
10., 11. and 12. Martin Sexton - "Angeline", "Faith on the Table" and "Things You Do To Me" (from what now appears to be my favorite album of 2000, Wonder Bar, featuring the glorious pairing of keyboard master David Sancious (from the early days of the E Street Band) and bass god Tony Levin (from basically everybody, but in my mind, especially Peter Gabriel)
I'll come back to the great ones later this week, but before that, I want to take a look at some of the really bad ones next, including what I think will be a couple of surprises.
Finally, worse sideburns, Steve Earle circa 1996 or Ben Harper circa 2000? Discuss.
As a recovering scientist, I know the millenium really didn't start until January 1, 2001. Nevertheless, there is something very satisfying about the 0-9 decade approach. As a failed music critic and blogger whose sporadicity is rivaled only by that of proton decay, I know any attempt on my part to come up with a list of best (and worst) songs of the 2000-2009 decade will be like a Chinese platform diver, leaving no ripples in the pool. But as a music fan with a disorganized iPod and a sense that he's missing out on something, such an exercise might prove to be helpful.
But how, you might ask? If my goal were to pontificate definitively on all music released over the last 9.75 years and counting, then perhaps I might want to consider upping my dose of Clozapine. But if my goal is to apply a moderately systematic approach to finding the music from the last few years that makes me happy (or alternatively makes me unhappy enough to write about in a humorous fashion), then maybe that moves it into the realm of the possible, or as Paul Simon memorably wrote and sang, "the cross is in the ballpark." As such, my first step will be to do a little polycarbonate archeology, going through my CD collection looking for things released in 2000. Here's my initial list:Barenaked Ladies - Maroon
Peter Case - Flying Saucer Blues
Steve Earle - Transcendental Blues
John Hiatt - Crossing Muddy Waters
O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack
Martin Sexton - Wonder Bar
Paul Simon - You're the One
XTC - Wasp Star
New Pornographers - Mass Romantic
Now we start to see why this project is so important. This is frankly an underwhelming list, featuring some of my least favorite albums by some of my favorite artists. Off the top of my head, there's not a transcendentally great song anywhere in the bunch. Hence the nagging suspicion that I've missed something. Let's dig further shall we. How about the biggest hit songs of 2000, as found here? Oh, yeah, that's why I stopped listening to whatever they call Top 40 radio these days. At least half of these songs are unfamiliar to me. Not much promising material here, although this list does give me a few ideas about bad-song venting options. Where else to look? I just found this complilation of various best album lists at Metacritics; although I'm more interested in songs than in albums, it's given me some places to look (OutKast, Radiohead) for great songs I'd missed along the way or forgotten about.
Finally, maybe you can help me. You probably don't have nearly the spare time I do, nor are you likely to be as retentive about music as I am, but if you happen to know any great songs, or truly awful songs, from 2000 that you think I should know about, please pass them along. Thanks.
