Pitchfork

I don't do guilty pleasures. I like what I like. That's that. But I have noticed that there are songs I like that none of my friends do, and I mean none. Here they are:

1. Vanessa Williams: "Save the Best for Last"
I think this is a really good ballad. Ballads are terrible these days. There's no melody. People like N'Sync have these bombastic emo-thons but no tunes. It's pathetic. But this is very tuneful and I like that. The lyrics are well-written and it's a very good, pre-rock style singing performance. Finally, it's got that ridiculous THX-Dolby bass that makes your sphincter loosen in movie theaters. I love that! I hear she's a complete psycho maniac. I guess that's why Rick Fox's hair is falling out.

2. Avril Lavigne: "Complicated"
I'll tell you who likes this song, too: Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie. We don't have, like, a secret Avril Club or anything; she's completely uninteresting to me. That song "Sk8r Boi" is such crap. As I recall, Sk8r Bois (if we must refer to them so) got laid like you wouldn't believe. Am I wrong? Weren't they complete booty magnets? If the song was called "Model UN Boi" or "Trekkie Boi" then I'd be feeling her.

3. Phil Collins: "Against All Odds"
See #1. Also see #2-- B-Dog is also a big Phil fan.

4. Lynyrd Skynyrd: "Sweet Home Alabama"
I love this band's sound. The guitar playing is so good. Their producer described them as a "Swiss watch" because their arrangements were so carefully thought out. I agree. As for the lyrical content... the thing about the South is that it's all based on the rise they get out of others. If no one gave a shit if the stars and bars were ever flown anywhere, it would just kind of fall down and die, but there's such an aggressive loser culture down here that as long as people disapprove of their actions, they'll feel like they're accomplishing something. That stuff about Neil Young is very much in that vein. They only feel alive if "defending" the "honor" of the south from outsiders-- even if it's eccentric Canadian songwriters that really couldn't care less about the South. Otherwise, they're slumped in a easy chair with a beer in a trailer, depressed and wondering if they should go kick the dog. This song captures that vibe real well.

5. Lou Reed: "Metal Machine Music"
I think it's relaxing, like those devices that emit white noise to lull you to sleep.

6. Dashboard Confessional: "Screaming Infidelities"
What is wrong with this song? It really nails the talking-jag, contradictory, maniacal love ways of your average young person pretty well. I'd have loved to drop that "making out" lyric trick in a chorus. People need to get over their Dashboard Confessional issues. I'm in a happy, adult relationship now, but this song totally makes me pine for the days of crying my eyes out about getting dumped by a girl and then going to party that night and hooking up with someone else (probably, since I went to a small college, one of her friends.) Ah, amnesiac youth. Now I'm all consistent and shit. What a drag.

7. American Music Club: Mercury
Actually, I have a few friends that like this, but none of them were one of those weird American Music Club people. They were just civilians who, like me, found this to be the only listenable thing AMC did. AMC People (a scary bunch) really preferred their AMC without any pleasing qualities whatsoever, and they certainly didn't want to be able to tell the songs apart. Mercury was my first AMC CD and I thought it was incredible, and then I went back through their catalog and I was like... what is this shit? All their partisans said this early stuff was the good stuff but this is just, like, rock, with a singer that sounds totally out of place in a rock band. They really needed Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, that's for sure.

8. Paul Simon: The Rhythm of the Saints
Actually, I don't think people really dislike this. People dis this out of habit, but don't remember why. Something about... carpetbagging? They can't remember. Well, what's still there ten years later is songwriting of astonishing precision and accuracy. Paul Simon really started to kick ass when he just dealt with the fact that he can't rock and he's a Jew in an office with a piano, just like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and the Gershwins, but on this document, he veered remarkably near Leonard Cohen existential stillness. The language is ridiculous in its clarity. It was pretty shocking after the I'm-over-my-divorce party of Graceland. Maybe it was because he was running out of ideas for songs, who knows? That'll do it to you. Anyways, the smashing, disconnected Brazilian percussion behind him doesn't really sound "good", but it is "great", like the production on Prince records. He sounds like he's talking while half-watching a documentary on samba. It's perfect.

And, in the middle of the record, the song that Blake Schwartzenbach is going to spend the rest of his life trying to write: "She Moves On". It always kills me, every time I hear it. (It's okay, Blake, I'm still trying to write "Once in a Lifetime.") Finally, let me just say that I cannot front on dudes that are pushing 50 or 60 and whose new records aren't the best ever. Bruce, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Bowie, Sting-- even the Stones and Paul McCartney. They dropped the bomb, some of them several times over. They've earned everything, including the right to make goopy CDs for their wives. Somehow we have the idea that it's better to grow old like John Fahey-- that if you're gonna repeat yourself, you should at least have the good taste to be alcoholic and friends with Sonic Youth. Whatever. I'm gonna go buy some David Bowie bonds right now.

9. A Tribe Called Quest: The Love Movement
I didn't think I liked this for a long time. The conventional wisdom was that it was terrible, that they should stop, that they phoned it in. But then a friend whose musical judgement I really respect had an interesting observation: that "phoned-in" records are really interesting. He likes what he calls the "haunted house" quality, when clearly no one was really mentally involved. I re-listened to it with that in mind and found it really rewarding. Some of it is just lazy bullshit, but there's a real melancholy and emptiness to the record that's also interesting given the whole "love" theme of the record. You get the picture of three old friends that are just tired of arguing and arguing and want to put a good face on it as they go out.

10. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones: "Someday I Suppose"
An INCREDIBLE song. You will never tell me otherwise. Man. The way that he builds up with this Rollins/motivational-talk verse about adversity and crisis, and then in the big anthemic chorus he's like, man, I don't know if I'd sink or swim... I'd cover this in a second. I have no time for people who babble on about how they "like ska, but the old stuff, blue beat records." Oh, fuck off. Go listen to some dub and pretend you find hours of bass and echo "interesting". The Toasters, Bim Skala Bim, The Slackers, Eastern Standard Time, The Checkered Cabs, and many others have done worthy work in the last fifteen years.