The Top 100 Singles of 2000-04, Part One
This week, Pitchfork celebrates this era by selecting our 100 favorite singles of the past five years-- a group that includes everyone from a pair of French robot rockers and at least three former TV stars to about three dozen Southern hip-hop MCs and nearly four dozen groups of New Yorkers with guitars, all communicating unimpeachable wisdom: It's getting hot in here so take off all your clothes, shake it like a polaroid picture, move your feet and feel united, I'm like so what I'm drunk, fire in the disco, harder better faster stronger, the subway is a porno, fo sheezy my neezy, galang-a-lang-a-lang, ga-donk-a-donk-donk, uh oh uh oh uh oh oh-no-no, the sonics the sonics the sonics the sonics... What a time to be alive.
[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]
100: Fischerspooner"Emerge"
[International Deejay Gigolo; 2003]
Electroclash seemed like a great idea in late 2001; there was a reason for this, and that reason was "Emerge". Before we found out that Fischerspooner looked like Cirque du Soleil rejects in greasepaint and silver bodysuits-- when all we heard was that decadent, shiny bump-- Casey Spooner's mantra of "Feels good/ Looks good/ Sounds good, too/ Feels good, too" made perfect sense. "Emerge" announces its presence with a low drum boom and a gleaming, oscillating two-note synth riff. It builds and builds: tick-tock drum machines, ethereal synth flourishes, howling house divas. Spooner's eerily placid, arch, bitchy Euro-glam monotone floats above the track. The music holds back, not really kicking in until the song is nearly finished, slowly swirling up and up until that berserk climax when the computer shrieks and eats itself and the drums roil like jackhammers. If more electroclash had sounded like this, electroclash might still exist. --Tom Breihan
099: T.I.
"Rubber Band Man"
[Atlantic; 2004]
Ladies and gentleman, here he is: Nine in his right, 45 in his other hand, children's choir with the Master P "na na na"s on lock in his back pocket, and a hooptie calliope kicking off steam like a smoke machine-- all courtesy of David Banner. Even when he's talking about some heavy shit-- "My cousin used to tell me/ Take this shit a day at a time/ And told me Friday, died Sunday/ We a day in the ground"-- T.I. sells it to listeners the same way P.T. Barnum sold rubes on the mystery and wonder of the egress.
In fact, T.I.'s going that extra mile to make "Rubber Band Man" the Greatest Show On Earth, with multiple versions of himself stumbling over each other like clowns deliriously tumbling out of a Beetle. And, of course, there's no better way to win over a crowd than with Southern charm. T.I. effortlessly slides over syllables like a boy trying to barehand a greased pig, and everything out of his mouth-- be it shout-outs to homies all over or professing he's got the "soul of an old man"-- drips with an "aw, shucks" charm that's tough to resist. Come one, come all. --David Raposa
098: Fabolous
"Breathe"
[Desert Storm/Atlantic; 2004]
On Fabolous' "Breathe", knob-twiddling whiz Just Blaze gives Supertramp a post-Magnolia makeover, nipping and tucking "Crime of the Century" into appealingly harried falsetto exaltations. But x-out the onomatopoetic piano ripples/asthmatic gasps and Fabolous' asphyxiated a capella becomes a lung-drunk slow jam. The bland libretto is a gangsta's checklist of un-slick metaphors, but somewhere after the midway point the laidback Brooklyn emcee spits "I see 'em on the block when I passes/ Lookin' like they need oxygen mask-es" and that extra syllable feels so exceedingly Ogden Nash deft for its winded interlocution, casting a backward glance on the bazillion wheezy details before it. --Brandon Stosuy
097: White Stripes
"Seven Nation Army"
[XL; 2003]
This one's a uniter not a divider, agreed upon by both my redneck cousin (who is "proud to be an ugly American") and by my local guerilla gardener (converted from his skinhead ways upon hearing Oasis). Females reportedly dig this track despite its blustery man-drama about some stoic, cloudy, lone-hero quest. Just as Wilco's "Jesus, Etc." preemptively echoed elements of 9/11, this song presciently soundtracked Decision 04: the "seven nations" might as well be our coalition in Iraq, the people "taking their time right behind my back" could be how U.S. soldiers see the Halliburton contractors, and the line about the Queen of England and the hounds of hell = self explanatory. "I'm going to Wichita", presages Thomas Frank's incisive book about Kansas voting. (Though some exegesists believe it's a hundred-years-later comment on the political satire in The Wizard of Oz, as if the whole song were penned by a labor-movement-oriented Black Sabbath.) The end verse about "bleeding before the Lord" obviously anticipated the political impact of Mel Gibson's messiah-snuff flick. Oh well, whatever, nevermind, because THAT DUMB RIFF PERFECTLY OUTFORBODES THE DARTH VADER THEME MUSIC. If the Stripes can cross over with their punk brio intact, then Scout Niblett is probably the next Kylie Minogue. --William Bowers
096: Eminem
"The Real Slim Shady"
[Interscope; 2000]
Before "The Real Slim Shady", Eminem was just another successful (albeit white) rapper. He'd sold a lot of records, but he was a world away from the cover of Time or the Oscar acceptance podium. But when he said, "There's a million of us just like me/ Who cuss like me/ Who just don't give a fuck like me" over Dr. Dre's ADD cartoon bounce, all of a sudden it became truth-- which of course led to him being The Voice of a Generation and making a boring movie and churning out dark, ponderous, self-involved music. And so "The Real Slim Shady" would be one of our last glimpses at the Eminem who loved making music, who used his lightspeed nasal bleat to hammer sounds until he'd hit every last possible rhyming variation, whose gleefully dumb, goofy jokes were like presents to anyone listening to the radio. He may be a cultural institution now, but he still sounds like a rapper when this track plays. --Tom Breihan
095: Johnny Boy
"You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve"
[Vertigo; 2004]
It kicks off with a twinkling version of the "Be My Baby" drum break, the launching pad for a compact extravaganza that old gun-totin' Phil would have messed himself with pride over. "And I just can't help believin'/ Though believin' sees me cursed" they sing to start the buildup to the title refrain. On the way, there's a ghostly "woooooooo!" in the background and the drums kick it up a notch and we're off into some kind of stratosphere that sounds like every Christmas carol ever recorded all at once, only better. The glockenspiels are glockenspieling with glee, this dude is walloping his drums like they stole money from his mama, the melody spirals and climbs and you can't really tell what she's saying but who cares because-- Biff! Bang! Pow!-- we're flying even higher, borne on the trumpets of revolting angels into the ionosphere and saying "hello" to the satellites before coming back down into the last verse, replete with whooshing rocket noises and heavenly fanfare. The feeling by that point is hard to describe, so I'll just quote the final lyrics: "Yeah yeah! Yeah yeah! Yeah yeah! Yeah yeah!" --Joe Tangari
094: Basement Jaxx
"Where's Your Head At?"
[XL; 2001]
I don't know if it's those man-faced monkeys eating vinyl in the video, or that descending three-note synth line, but there's something about this track that's just beautifully evil and devious. The way the titular question is barked-- "WHERE'S! YOUR! HEAD! AT! AT! AT! AT!"-- is unnerving, and the mix of whiplash synth whines and round robin growling doesn't do much to settle me down.
Wes Craven (a filmmaker known for giving folks a bit of a fright, intentionally and otherwise) has said a film is scariest when the filmmaker has no scruples as to what they will and will not show on screen. The Jaxx are equally unscrupulous, as dayglo kitchen-sink works like Rooty can attest-- any and all genres are just dollops of color on a pallette to be applied liberally and shamelessly in ways that make Kindergarten finger painting look like works by Mark Rothko.
So, yeah, it's on Astralwerks, and it has a good beat, but it's infused and informed by so many other things that classifying "Where's Your Head At?" simply as "house" does the Jaxx a grave disservice. And this glorious piece of music-- a crowning achievement for most acts-- is just the Jaxx getting warmed up. Now that's scary. --David Raposa
093: Usher [ft. Ludacris and Lil Jon]
"Yeah"
[LaFace; 2004]
I gave in. After three years of cellphone ownership and scoffing at what I perceived to be a contemptible tributary of our culture's frivolous spending habits, I bought a ring tone, and this track was it. The telltale flute perk that rolls into the chorus made an irresistible MIDI rendering, and Lil' Jon's whizzing synth line sealed the deal. On an album full of great singles, "Yeah" was the catalyst. It's how Usher salvaged himself and gave a superfluous push to a man who was going places regardless. Like "Cry Me a River" before it, "Yeah" reprimanded us for our instinctual skepticism of teen idols. Now that we're a safe distance from the first-wave of late 90s boy bands and puerile sensations, I almost wish more artists would trigger incredulous responses of, "This... from him?" But that would only take the spotlight off Usher's talents. --Sam Ubl
092: Clipse
"Grindin'"
[Arista; 2002]
The Neptunes quietly blew the roof off with this one, a stripped-down stomp of syncopation-and-fingersnaps marching into a signature low-gravity melody that sounded like a popcorn maker on Mars. "The world is about to feel something they never felt before," Pharrell announced, followed by a chorus of silky "uh-ah"s and "woofs," making "Grindin'" possibly the most sensual track about drug-dealing ever produced. Like Pusha T said, "I'm the neighborhood pusha/ Call me subwoofer/ 'Cause I push 'base' like that, jack."
This was Clipse's first hit, with Pusha T and Malice justifying the dirt-life corner-hustle because, when you come from nothing, why quit a job that keeps you in Gucci Chuck Taylors? It glides along, tunnel-visioned, as though in the throes of a cocaine dream, from Pusha's intro verse to Malice's tantalizing picture of wealth: "Cocky, something that I just can't help/ 'Specially when them 20s is spinning like windmills/ And the ice 32 below minus the wind chill." Finally, Pusha clears away the dazzle and cuts to the grit: "Kids call me Mr. Sniffles/ Other hand on my nickel-plated whistle/ One eye closed, I'll hit you." There's no 'caine hustle without the streets; and when you're steady on the grind, the glitter gets ugly-- quick. --Julianne Shepherd
091: Cam'ron [ft. Juelz Santana]
"Hey Ma"
[Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam; 2003]
After two albums that garnered street buzz but didn't exactly put the Diplomats' Cam'ron over the top like Sly Stallone, he appeared in 2002 wielding a fresh contract with Roc-a-Fella and the ill-mannered "courtship" single "Hey Ma". Over a loping piano sampled from the Commodores' "Easy Like Sunday Morning", his Dipset cronie, Mr. Congeniality Juelz Santana, opens with a pick-up line to a club-going Mrs. Robinson. And though it's Cam's track, Santana steals the song with his inimitably charming/condescending game: "I'm 18 and live a crazy life/ Plus I tell you what the 80s like." In other words: "come home with me...even though you old."
Backhanded non-compliments are a Dipset crew forte, but because this is a fantasy of the boys' own composition, even Cam's skeptical ex-girlfriend lets him "hit, plus dome." It's amazing anyone in the Diplomats can get a date after this song-- but its ridorkulously simplistic chorus ("Hey ma." "What's up?" "Let's slide." "All right." "All right." "We gon' get it on tonight.") sounded terrific over summertime airwaves. To further prove Cam would most definitely go there with his impressively syntactical but jugheaded lyricism, the song following this one on Come Home With Me is a pained public service announcement on the perils of STDs. Cam'ron tracks are a lot like watching "Jackass"-- they're absurd and endlessly fascinating, especially if you could never try this at home. And "Hey Ma" set the stage for the purple street-worship Cam currently enjoys. --Julianne Shepherd
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[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]
090: Black Dice
"Cone Toaster" / "Endless Happiness"
[DFA; 2003]
With the fragmented art-thump of "Cone Toaster", Black Dice descended upon the nation's discotheques like a small swarm of bewildered locusts, forging their wary truce with the dancepunk minions. For the first few minutes of this epic track, the group is content to dodge about the outskirts of the throbbing beat with pixilated snatches of cymbal and guitar hammering out sparks upon microscopic anvils. As negotiations progress, live drums and dangerous splinters of guitar are allowed past the velvet ropes, and soon Black Dice are permitted to hit the clubs with free agent swagger before riding triumphantly out of town on a galloping crest of tom-toms.
On the flip, Boredoms' Yamatsuka Eye squeezes the panoramic seascapes of Beaches & Canyons' "Endless Happiness" down to their pearly essence, filling the perfumed air with trade-wind echoes and ocean-sized drums. As per their usual, Black Dice abandoned these templates before the wax had dried, leaving this single behind as yet another fascinating pair of outgrown, discarded wings. --Matthew Murphy
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089: Kanye West
"Through the Wire"
[Roc-A-Fella; 2003]
The song that announced Kanye's promotion from the liner notes to the marquee sounds endearingly homemade now that he's become a superstar, the product of bedridden rehab boredom and West's desperation to prove his MC talents. Obviously, Kanye spent the majority of his car accident recovery thinking up one-liners to describe the experience, as "Through the Wire" has more jokes and pop culture references than a standup routine-- mirth exacerbated by his unintentional Don Corleone impression. But like his converted poetry slam "All Falls Down", it'd all just be a list of clever phrases were it not for the music, as good a time-capsule entry as any for the sped-up soul sample craze West rode to the top. Here it's Chaka Khan put through the munchkinizer, and with a slight modification on the original song's words, she ends up offering rapturous commentary on the best party jam ever written about reconstructive facial surgery. --Rob Mitchum
088: TV on the Radio
"Staring at the Sun"
[Touch & Go; 2003]
TV on the Radio's rogue Young Liars EP made nary a misstep, but the song that rightly drew the most attention was "Staring at the Sun". Tunde Adebimpe's woolly, meditative cooing set the mood, foreboding something huge: a massive, industrial synth line, which-- like God, or a skyline-- humbled and inspired anyone who came near it. After "Staring at the Sun", Brooklyn was no longer avoidable. What had been just another estate in the Kingdom of Hip was suddenly a bastion of musical intrepidness. The song's hotwiring of Adebimpe's barbershop-lectern croon and a swollen synth pulse blew open the doors to the massive talent mining the post-9/11 boroughs for inspiration, where TV on the Radio are still at the helm, a year and a Shortlist Prize later. --Sam Ubl
087: Freelance Hellraiser
"A Stroke of Genius"
[White; 2001]
I can just imagine the reaction of folks getting sucker-punched by a non-Julian voice emerging from the Strokes' "Hard to Explain": "Oh my god! You got teenpop in my indie rock! How could you?" Well, you know, this thing we call technology is a wonderful negotiator. In a world where the regular means of musical consumption (radio, video, retail) strove to keep 'em segregated, the Internet casually broke down barriers with just a click of a button.
And in a world where the meticulous pop music essayed by Christina Aguilera was portrayed by a few cranks as The Enemy-- something that prevented hard-working, reputable, song-writing, instrument-playing Good Guys like the Strokes from realizing the fame and riches that is rightfully theirs-- it's nice to know someone was able to call "bullshit" on this tepid trumped-up war, and set it to music. No, the combination of the Strokes' music with Xtina's vocals from "Genie in a Bottle" isn't totally seamless-- the chorus doesn't gel so well with its accompaniment-- but that's OK. This isn't about two individual parts subsuming their individuality for the sake of conformity. This is about unity. This is about Freelance Hellraiser taking two great mutually exclusive tastes, and showing that they taste great together. This is about a brave handful of producers and musicians telling the 21st century, "No, walk this way." "A Stroke of Genie-us" didn't end the war by any means, but if there's a peace to be had in the future, this is where the olive branches took root. --David Raposa
086: Clinic
"Distortions"
[Domino; 2001]
Never has Clinic's VU influence been clearer than on this "Pale Blue Eyes" for an information century. The boys behind the masks pour a can of soul all over a clicky, programmed drum beat, Ade Blackburn's distinctive bleat sighing images yearning and disturbing through clenched teeth. "I want to know my body/ I want this out not in me" he pleads as a single note on a keyboard rises in support. "I've pictured you in coffins/ My baby in a coffin/ But I love it when you blink your eyes" says he in the most sweetly deranged way; it's gently melodic but there is a hint of malice in there somewhere.
The band is masterfully minimal-- an organ mirrored by a bass and that little clicking drum machine give the song all the backdrop it needs-- and the way the pace quickens at the end and the squealing clarinet spills across it like oil from Pollack's brush makes the pulse race like love. Clinic are best known for giving you a piece of their warped minds; here they offer a piece of their hearts. --Joe Tangari
085: The Arcade Fire
"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
[Merge; 2004]
A) The ideal attention-deficit tutorial for indie-rock's last twelve (ascendant) years, featuring equal dollops of piano, emo, retro, reverb, propulsiveness, epic panic, and stark murk. B) A magnet for haters afraid of music that inflates the moment, as if one's youth would be better spent in a hairshirt appreciating This Heat demos. C) The single that'd make Ken Jennings say to Alex Trebek, "What would happen if the Walkmen and Bright Eyes and Neutral Milk Hotel co-performed over an atmosphere-duel in the next room between Peter Buck and The Edge?" D) The most deserving recipient of Disney's oxymoron "instant classic" since the 8-track-shaped iPod case. E) A gourmet execution of a crucial dirge-boogie recipe: one scoop nostalgia, one scoop adolescence, one scoop melancholy, one scoop of cheeseless romance, and a pinch of grandiosity, hyperventilated for five minutes. F) The first song you heard by the most energizingly divisive, and biggest group (in terms of members and ripples) since Belle & Sebastian. G) Inspiration for hoping against hope that the band name refers to a burnt offering not of video game hubs but of arcades as they were known in the early twentieth century (the glass-and-steel, shop-speckled structures that led to modern malls); we don't need no water, and we're only pretending to miss our parents/virginity/neighborhood. --William Bowers
084: Dr. Dre
"Forgot About Dre"
[Interscope; 2000]
A summary, for those of y'all coming to the game late: Dre said, "fuck rap, you can have it back". Of course, the insult master also said, "if y'all don't like me, blow me," which is a pretty disappointing come back from the man who once said "fuck da police". Don't mind him, though-- he's been working his ass off to get out from under Death Row's shadow while simultaneously getting his own label (Aftermath) off the ground. And, to be honest, he's feeling a little slighted that everyone seems to have already forgotten about The Chronic and Snoop and NWA and, you know, the West Coast colossus known as G-funk.
Getting irked over that is justified. As far as Dre pitching a fit because folks are claiming he "turned pop"-- whatever. For one, it'd be easier to take an anti-pop stand on a track that doesn't feature Eminem Slim-Shadying like the rubbed-out love muffin of Bobcat Goldthwait and Police Academy's Michael Winslow. For another, getting all defensive over a smoothed-out set of synth strings and a plink-plank-plunk faux guitar isn't the best way to puff out your chest and show your dominance. It is, however, a great way to get attention. The best way for Dre to prove critics wrong is to do what he's been doing since the days of Compton and MC Ren-- change the game so folks don't know rap from pop, drop effortless beats like this every so often, team up with some folks that know how to spit, and just wait for the rest of the world to catch up. Despite what some of Dre's peers have said on record, it is possible to blow up, go pop, and still stay true to the streets-- it's hard to argue when cars have your tunes blasting out the back. You can fuck rap if you want, Dre, but you'll only screw yourself. -- David Raposa
083: Jay-Z [ft. UGK]
"Big Pimpin'"
[Mercury: 2000]
In 2005, the genius Jay-Z's ho-hustle persona/new-money flagrancy seems but a distant memory, now shadowed by his not-yet-cashed-in 401k and one savvy swoop up into Def Jam's boardroom. But at the turn of the century, "Big Pimpin'"-- with a "forever mackin'" Jay expressing his penchant for big chips and "throwaway" chicks, in a flow that flipped and smacked like a deck of playing cards-- was thee baller's anthem, the pinnacle of the egregious bling track, and a tres appropro introduction to the first four years of the G.W. Bush Administration.
It's snaked through by Timbaland's sly, smirking whistle-melody, and has radio-stock-upping guest verses from UGK's Bun B and Pimp C, on which they sounded careless and carefree-- like they had their feet up on the couch. After all, the rich man's lifestyle is the one without stress-- or at least, that's how it plays out on the yacht featured in the video. (You thought the chorus "Ri-i-i-i-ide" was about a car?!) ÔCourse, it was such a strong, swaggering track that Jay got tagged with the "big pimpin'" moniker for years afterwards, imbuing a complex dude with a mono-dimensional persona...but the media's pretty much over that now. --Julianne Shepherd
082: The Postal Service
"Such Great Heights"
[Sub Pop; 2003]
Love is wide-eyed, unaffectedly unironic, and comes with bitchin' retro-synth bleeps. That's a lesson Pitchfork was initially reluctant to learn, tripping over the hearts-in-your-eyes lyrics about matching freckles and perfectly aligned kisses that lay claim to Ben Gibbard's painstakingly beautiful melody. In hindsight, the progression from the perfectly cheesy yet beloved pop songs like the Lightning Seeds' early-90s "Pure" to the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" is so obvious, and the latest iteration is no less exuberant.
In a year in which Gibbard released a pair of well-received albums, "Such Great Heights" was his finest track-- thanks in part to collaborator and Dntel mastermind Jimmy Tamborello. If "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" introduced their indietronic mind meld, "Such Great Heights" distills it into its pop essence. --Marc Hogan
081: Kanye West
"Jesus Walks"
[Roc-A-Fella: 2004]
Religion and hip-hop get down like Flav and Brigette Nielsen. The two feuding lovers feign fisticuffs and trade high fives but despite any shortcomings, you'll find the church and the emcee curled up, spooning by the fireplace. When African-American churches abandoned the Gospels' social relevance for the mantle of political power, hip-hop picked up the reigns, birthing a generation of Adidas-tongued street activists. But then the jiggyism of the 90s made like Galactus, swallowing worlds of integrity and everything else.
But post-Blueprint anno domini, the Kanyefluenza hit and gave the Windy City Mighty Mouse an unprecedented cache. Behind the weight of "Through the Wire", "Slow Jamz", and "All Falls Down", The College Dropout moved crazy units, and "Jesus Walks" struck the FM dial. With earnest lines like "Lord, show me the way cuz the devil's trying to break me down" and a beat like a Shawshank two-step, "Jesus Walks" embodied the conflicted emcee caught between the Cross and Cavalli. So is it a true altar call or an advertisement for Jacob's studded Blue Ice Savior? That said, Ma$e and Kon should work out their internal conflicts before they pick up their pastor's robes from the dry cleaners. --Jamin Warren
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[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]
080: Liars
Fins to Make Us More Fish-Like EP
[Mute; 2002]
By the time their first album reached us, Liars had established themselves as unfiltered, incendiary, furious, cacophonous, barely-containable dance-punkers. But above all that, they wanted to subvert expectations. Liars are natural pranksters, and the Fins EP was-- along with the 30-minute track that closed their debut-- proof that the band was comfortable defying expectations. "Pillars Were Hollo and Filled With Candy So We Tore Them Down" foreshadows the creepy noise-chants (and the Halloween-esque themes) of We Were Wrong, So They Drowned while retaining bits of their former ESG funk and frantic delivery. The lurching "Everyday Is a Child With Teeth" borders on atonal. Their one concession to dancepunk is a cleaner recording of "Grown Men Don't Fall in the River, Just Like That," a snapshot of the band's former dynamics. With this single, Liars' plan of attack was explicitly laid out, meaning it was inscrutable. --Jason Crock
079: Gorillaz
"Clint Eastwood"
[Parlophone; 2001]
The most perverse thing about "Clint Eastwood" is that it doesn't quite need its whaa-whaa-whaa spaghetti-western sample (nor, consequently, the title "Clint Eastwood", since the sample provides the only tenuous connection between the song and the erstwhile mayor of Carmel, Calif.). God knows there's enough going on otherwise, even before Del the Funky Homosapien takes over with his vague oration: "The essence the basics/ Without it you make it/ Allow me to make this/ Childlike in nature." The story is simple to a fault: someone (Damon Albarn) had come across one of those elemental hooks ("Tom's Diner", the "Jaws" theme etc.) that appear to exist somewhere in nature, like ore, to be found rather than composed, and the rest of the gang did nothing to screw it up. It's hardly worth discussing the Gorillaz themselves-- a weak concept that would have made sense only if the members had the nerve to stay anonymous; suffice it to say that "Clint Eastwood" appears poised, and perhaps carefully positioned, to outlive the whole deal. --Michael Idov
078: Alan Braxe & Fred Falke
"Rubicon"
[Virgin; 2004]
While Paris' Alan Braxe and Fred Falke normally concern themselves with straight-up French house, the bloodline of one of their most popular tracks is a little more up for debate. Based around a swirl of insistent synths that squeal like car tires, "Rubicon" eschews the functional 4/4 glide of regular house for a more agitated, coked-up rhythm. Sounding like Jan Hammer by way of The Rex Club, it invokes the gaudy, glorious confidence of 80s cop show themes and comes out sounding positively triumphant. A definitive break from the normally gushy, effervescent timbres of French house, "Rubicon" is very much its own thing-- a surefooted ode to 80s American excess as refracted through a distinctly French sensibility. --Mark Pytlik
077: Talib Kweli
"Get By"
[Rawkus; 2003]
When Nina Simone passed on April 21, 2003, she left more than a half-century of spit and soul. Her wandering spirit still skips poles with ease and class. A month before her death in France, Simone embarked on another musical divergence, only this departure would transplant the sonorous vox behind the holy incantations of "Sinnerman" onto Kanye's galloping snare and John Legend's collapsing piano.
"Get By" is wrapped in the power of desperation. Already well-versed in the griot's exhortations, Brooklynite Talib Kweli revisits the storyteller ethic to weave a tale of real pain stripped of New York Post fanaticism. Painting vivid soliloquies that range from his grandmother's trials as a single mother to the tragedy of gangsterism, Kweli mated his socially responsible former self with his commercially viable necessity. The resulting irony was delicious. "Get By" had kids in the club screaming Nina Simone between sips of Grey Goose while teens at the prom high-stepped to the epilogues of the welfare state. Now that's some crazy shit. --Jamin Warren
076: Interpol
"Obstacle 1"
[Matador; 2003]
Despite harboring the infamous "Her stories are boring and stuff/ She's always calling my bluff" couplet (see also frenzied bellows of: "It's in the things that she puts in my hair!"), Interpol's "Obstacle 1" is a strange, thoughtful meditation on love and time, anchored by throbbing post-punk guitar and Paul Banks' deep, tottering vocals. Banks' slippery lyrics rub up against anxious, aggressive guitar bits (themselves engaged in prickly interplay, all ups and downs, highs and lows), creating a song as bewildering as it is engaging. In 2002, Interpol had to endure an entirely absurd amount of comparisons to Joy Division, but "Obstacle 1" proved that they were standing on their very own suit-clad legs: "Obstacle 1" is a dynamic, unpredictable, and wholly distinct triumph. --Amanda Petrusich
075: Radiohead
"There There"
[EMI; 2003]
Such is our love for Radiohead that "Creep", instead of haunting the band well into their sine-wave phase, has been-- in a rare show of fanboy magnanimity-- quietly dismissed as juvenilia. That's too bad, actually, because it contains more than a germ of the Radiohead to come. The song's biggest hook, for instance, was not the Explosive Chorus (a sad cliche by 1993) but the two terrifying string slaps that preceded it: A device so simple it had every guitarist in the world surprised how in the hell hadn't they thought of it first. On "There There", Radiohead manage to top themselves in the same department: the nervous center of the song is, unbelievably, a drum fill. You know which one: it ends the tune. Composed of two robotic, Dave Grohl-style snare rolls, three 16th-notes each, it sounds almost exactly like Greenwood's "Creep" figure; the rest of the song is so accomplished it's a yawn to describe-- a gorgeous vocal singing about a siren singing you to shipwreck (!), terrifically twisty changes, complicated yet totally lucid mix-- but it's this weird little self-salute reaching from 2003 to 1993 that makes it, well, perfect. --Michael Idov
074: Destiny's Child
"Say My Name"
[Sony; 2000]
The fact (1) that every man, woman, and child in America can sing the vocal hook from this song despite the fact (2) that the beat and bassline sequence underneath that hook is so deeply tricked out and bizarre (we're talking deliriously fast doubletime offset snare runs on top of wah guitar, Martian sleighbells, lite classical string stabs and acoustic fingerpicking, y'all) could be called a testament to the ideological triumph of Ms. Knowles and company's yummy vocal delivery over the icily brilliant formalism of Rodney Jerkins' programming, were it not for the fact (3) that both the singing and the programming are shot through with the exact same precision-tooled logic of control-freak paranoia. Which is why this is such a distinctly American anthem. Facts are facts. --Drew Daniel
073: Belle and Sebastian
I'm Waking Up to Us EP
[Jeepster; 2001]
On "I'm Waking Up to Us", Belle and Sebastian make manifest their long-latent adoration of Love's Forever Changes as Stuart Murdoch expertly channels Arthur Lee's sleepy-lidded romanticism. With the help of Mike Hurst (producer of such pop landmarks as Petula Clark's "Downtown"), the group slices a sliver of perfection from a lush confection of oboe, flute, and bassoon. And there's more homage paid on "I Love My Car", whereon Murdoch sings "I love my Carl/ I love my Brian, my Dennis, and my Al/ I could even find it in my head to love Mike Love" as the song's playful horns eventually join into a full-fledged Dixieland promenade. The closing "Marx and Engels" is the type of effortless piano-driven trifle that probably falls out of Murdoch's pockets when he's boarding the Metro, but packed alongside these companions it reflects a handsome glow. --Matthew Murphy
072: Luomo
"Tessio"
[Force Tracks; 2003]
Sneak preview time: Vocalcity unfortunately just missed our album list, but "Tessio" is a worthy avatar-- and one of the most debilitating tracks I have ever heard. Finnish tech-house producer Vladislav Delay initiated the Luomo project to examine his own bouts with love; he's very thorough, and his heart is quite deep. Over cold, fleshy clicks-- winter hands without gloves-- at one point a man and a woman sing in duet: "I'm trying to be all yours/ Although I ain't answering your calls/ Don't say, it's false/ I'm only following my thoughts." A bit feta-cheesy on their own, the lines teethe as "Tessio" grows longer, less fragmented, more cocksure in its purge. That's where the devastation lies: A lovesick purge is never 100%, and the only thing we can get over is that we will never get over. --Nick Sylvester
071: White Stripes
"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground"
[XL; 2002]
"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" opened the White Stripes' breakthrough White Blood Cells with the same whiff of amp feedback and lunkheaded distorted riffing that launched a thousand Estrus Crust Club singles, and for those first few seconds it certainly didn't appear that anything noteworthy was about to transpire. That impression changed permanently, however, the moment Jack and Meg casually wrapped their meat hooks around this song's burly chords and methodically ground them into powder. Despite all the ink that's been spilled on the White Stripes, Jack remains a drastically underrated lyricist, and this track contains his most subtle and evocative portrait of the lonesome disillusionment that accompanies a fading relationship. "Any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most," he cries, but these two barely needed a microphone for you to hear this powerhouse of a song coming down the hall. --Matthew Murphy
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[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]
070: M83
"Run Into Flowers"
[Mute; 2004]
"Run Into Flowers" wrenches so much beauty from artificial sources it makes me want to cry. Not because of how that beauty affects me directly but because the song makes it obvious that we're headed inexorably for a technological future where robots will be our masters and all of our jobs will be outsourced to microprocessors in Peru. What a bright, brilliant, beautiful future, though-- it turns out the robots actually like us and lavish us with libations and improved vibrating back massage technology. The song builds up from a base of rhythmically nattering electronic insects-- they live amongst the flowers one supposes-- and rises with big, oceanic swooshes of cymbal, and the vocals wait two minutes to finally arrive, delicately so as not to outshine the texture of the thing. The texture builds and builds, hissing devices mating with fluttering synth butterflies and melodic things bursting into full bloom in big, primary color swirls of ecstatic sound. Listening to it too loudly is like staring at the sun-- it overwhelms the senses and knocks you out with its density and brilliance. I recommend trying it. --Joe Tangari
069: The Darkness
"I Believe In a Thing Called Love"
[Atlantic; 2003]
Why was the Darkness' fourth UK single their first in the U.S.? Because, like some kind of magical zeitgeist-spackle, "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" filled an ugly hole in the states' Fall 2003 musical ceiling. Americans were ready to feel ambiguously excited about 1970s glam rock, 80s hair metal, and 90s hard-rock ballads again. Americans were ready to remember that crazy foreigners (such as Queen, AC/DC, and Def Leppard) were responsible for those genres' roots and peaks. Americans were ready to wonder if unironic fun was possible after so much self-conscious self-consciousness had permeated the national (self-) consciousness.
But mostly, Americans were ready for wonderfully brainless operatic pop (come on, this song's closest cousin is Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody") sprinkled with Slash-caliber axework, and maybe a Clash shuffle-strum during a one-drum-breakdown to guarantee a positive vibe. Stadium-melting six-strings have never been so amenable to dance remixes and crunk mash-ups (for further evidence of this tune's reach, consult Lemar's somewhat desexualized soul cover, complete with Marvin-Gaye-homaging stop-the-violence shout-outs). Just as the comedian Eddie Izzard wouldn't be half as funny if he weren't British, no band from the world's last remaining superpower could have pulled this song off. --William Bowers
068: Coldplay
"Clocks"
[Capitol; 2003]
When people talk shit on Coldplay, they call the band "lite rock" or "music for people who don't give a shit about music." But the thing that makes "Clocks" nearly perfect is its lightness: It's helium, lighter than air, floating upwards and hovering, disappearing into the atmosphere. The arrangement implies house music, swirling and climbing without ever locking into a 4/4 beat. It's not tied to anything on this earth: that tumbling, glistening piano, those surging otherworldly background synth chimes, that voice. Especially that voice. Chris Martin's elegantly, gorgeously meaningless angelic falsetto says more than his lyrics do ("Confusion never stops/ Closing walls and ticking clocks", whatever); it's sad and tired and hopeful and perfectly empty. It works like a comfort blanket; it may not solve any real problems, but it wraps you up and keeps you warm and tells you that everything's OK. --Tom Breihan
067: Panjabi MC [ft. Jay-Z]
"Mundian to Bach Ké (Beware of the Boys)"
[Sequence; 2003]
It's the centuries-old Indian folk music bhangra and David Hasselhoff's talking-car TV show Knight Rider-- together at last! Yeah, you might be laughing, but that's because you haven't heard the damn thing. The original version of this track (released five years before Jay-Z, and most of America, came around) hit it big on an international scale-- indeed, Mr. Carter caught wind of this track while clubbing in Switzlerland. The combination of that space-age Trans Am bass line and the dhol-- the double-barreled drum that makes bhangra bang-- is hard to resist, especially in conjunction with the impassioned hollering of the non-Hov vocals. The Indian lyrics expound on the song's title-- "Keep your head down and cover your face with a scarf/ Don't just give your love to anybody." So, of course, Jay's verse posits the man as the "black Brad Pitt," the P.I.M.P. Punjabi MC's trying to warn the ladies about. It's just another case of this song mixing oil and water to create pools full of beautiful vibrant colors. Forget R. Kelly-- this is the best of both worlds. --David Raposa
066: Sean Paul
"Like Glue"
[Atlantic; 2003]
When Sean Paul first broke through to U.S. listeners on the singles "Gimme the Light" and "Get Busy", his voice was a fiery robotic lockstep. The tracks were grim, stentorian dancefloor bangers, and his flow was just one element in the mix rather than the force at its center. But he's a revelation on "Like Glue", growling bleary-eyed hungover hangdog charm over warm, burbling electro soul. The track is simply gorgeous; the skidding organ riffs and walking bassline and humming synths gel perfectly into a wistful morning glow. Sean Paul may just be singing about how much he loves to fuck, but with that grinning baritone growl, he could be talking about chopping up old ladies and it would still sound like the prettiest little love song you ever heard. --Tom Breihan
065: Missy Elliott [ft. Ludacris]
"One Minute Man"
[Elektra; 2001]
"Get Ur Freak On" was the aesthetic manifesto, the statement of warped intent, the dizzy alien futuristic banger, the invitation to another universe. The first time you heard it, you knew the world was a completely different place. "One Minute Man" has a different purpose. It doesn't carry the burden of changing music; it's just a murder-hot club jam about dudes who blow it, and so it's free to be light and playful and frisky in ways that "Get Ur Freak On" couldn't be. Timbaland's science fiction sunburst lope leaves room Missy to layer creepy, sexy hooks on top of each other, harmonizing with herself with robotic, multitracked panache. And Ludacris stops by with possibly the best guest appearance of his entire career, clamping down on every syllable like a rabid pitbull, just bursting with horny joy: "Enough of tips and advice and thangs/ I'm big dog, having women seeing stripes and thangs/ They go to bed, start snoring, counting sheep and shit / They so wet that they body started leakin' shit!" Just nasty. --Tom Breihan
064: New Pornographers
"The Laws Have Changed"
[Matador; 2003]
When I hear this song, I picture a video that finds the group participating in some Frankie and Annette beach blanket bongo party with the radiant Neko Case in the oh-so-crucial Ann-Margaret role: Everyone's young and shiny, doing the mashed potato and the other 9,999 dances in demure bikinis and flattering swim trunks (with A.C. Newman, of course, wearing peroxide on his schnozz), kicking back with some dogs and pop, having a grand old time in the sun as the song's perpetual motion machine chugs along. Of course, the actual video for this song does have the dance moves down, and features a fair amount of sand, but-- in true rockin' indie fashion-- it's a dour "thoughtful" affair and doesn't actually bother featuring any of the band members on screen (excepting part-time Pornographer/fulltime Destroyer Dan Bejar as a mute bartender).
And, of course, a quick scan of the lyrics while listening to a report on the goings-on in the U.S. government can give one a bit of topical whiplash: "Pharaoh, all your methods have taught me is to/ Separate my blood from bone". But maybe it's not a song about de-evolution, but about revolution: "Alone in the chain, it remains to be seen how/ How well you can play when the pawn takes a queen now". Or maybe it's just about Neko Case putting her foot up the ass of a combustible pop song and kicking it into the stratosphere where it becomes the sun and Earth becomes its loving satellite until the next Big Bang. For the record, escape velocity is achieved at the point where Neko starts forming a line and the rest of the band turn into her doo-dooing Pips. Would any of you wallflowers care to join in? --David Raposa
063: Roots [ft. Cody Chestnutt]
"The Seed 2.0"
[MCA; 2002]
Under Statute 402.3 of the Critic's Code, we're required to mention in every piece about The Roots how they perform their own music and play their own instruments, so that everyone knows just how much more "authentic" they are than all those other hip-hop groups. "The Seed 2.0" might be the first time that's really been a relevant point, as it's their only single to really sound like it was made by a traditional band, a slinky remake of Chestnutt's ode to pollination. The Roots' take is more than just a fidelity upgrade; Black Thought's verses smooth out Chestnutt's unfortunate views on sexual relations, while ?uestlove whips up a tidy beat to keep that drunken guitar riff upright. All told, "The Seed" ends up being a photo-negative take on the rap-rock that scourged the century's early years, with hip-hop's house band showing the mongrel genre can be full of sensual swagger instead of Neanderthal catharsis. --Rob Mitchum
062: Spoon
"The Way We Get By"
[Merge; 2003]
Girls Can Tell catapulted Spoon from being an American Supergrass in the bad way (meaning: they were also-rans) to being an American Supergrass in the good way (meaning: they reliably delivered intense grit-pop). This one song from Kill the Moonlight would earn them such mainstream love-debris as a cellphone ringtone and a spot on a soundtrack to something called "The O.C." Unapologetic and unjudgmental, this brief bit of skeletal rock rubs Billy Joel piano-pop up against classic streetlife confessions by the Misfits, Cramps, Make-Up, and, yah, Supergrass. Even straight edge theologians are susceptible to humming along with this tune's drug-dropping and vague convictions. Like religion, though, the song uses simple repetition to achieve sneaky cognitive effects. When indie goes Broadway, expect this track to be featured in the revue, prior to intermission, as an enticement to stick around. --William Bowers
061: Justin Timberlake
"Like I Love You"
[Jive; 2002]
JT's first solo single didn't waste much time in setting up his career as a superstar. Of course, he had a lot of help: The Neptunes' track is one of their best and most distinctive, with muscle-bound funk drums, matador guitar and strategically placed synth blips. Timberlake, for his part, recognized that the world had been without a listenable Michael Jackson song for too long. You know, I really don't want to undersell him, but can you imagine what kind of mega-smash this song would have been had it actually been recorded by Jackson? Anyway, good for JT, good for the legacy of the boy bands, good for pop radio, good for the Neptunes, good for us. With any luck, Timberlake plays his cards this well in the second half of the decade. --Dominique Leone
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[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]
060: Electric Six
"Danger! High Voltage!"
[XL; 2003]
Oh god, how can I possibly sum up this song? Here, the dancing-about-architecture divide between music and words seems most unbridgeable, and the task of trying to convey all the silly fun, the unabashed disco-ness, the shameless sax solo, the way singer Dick Valentine punctuates a line with an exclamation of "lover!" seems daunting for a stuffy rock critic like myself...or maybe it's the bottle of wine I just drank while dancing around the room and asking the wife, "Don't you wanna know how I keep starting fires?!" This is the song that made me order a burrito from Taco Bell. Thankfully, Valentine and Jack "no recording equipment before 1963" White didn't make fun of disco-- they had fun with disco and proved that you could party anywhere...on the shores of the River Styx, at the Taco Bell, at the mall. --Stephen M. Deusner
059: The Flaming Lips
"Do You Realize??"
[Warner Bros.; 2002]
My inner cynic sure had fun with the first single from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. I found myself sitting in a graduate school class listening to a daily newspaper rock crit explicate the song's barely earned key changes as an adjunct professor compared the opening acoustic guitar to early Plastic Ono Band. Quoth my cynic: If Wilco was "dad rock," what did that make this once-cacophonous Oklahoma ensemble? What's lamer than appearing in an AOL commercial? Why was I here? Fortunately, I'd first heard the song during a dreamlike drive to a river near California's Sierra Nevada, and I could never again hear its joyful overproduction without visualizing that region's vivid, almost hyper-real hues. "Do You Realize??" offers childlike lyrics ("Do you realize/ Happiness makes you cry"), congregation-moving arrangements, and bold, Sharpie-on-a-tie-dye-shirt melodies. But unlike other tunes of its ilk, "Do You Realize??" can bring even the most hardened Wicker Park hipsters to tears. (Alas, I was only cool enough to live in Evanston.) Sure, its theme is shopworn, but so are love songs. Then again, this track is something of a love song to the here and now-- executed masterfully enough to send my inner cynic to an early hereafter. --Marc Hogan
058: Eminem
"Stan"
[Interscope; 2001]
Same old same old-- lightweight misanthropic potty-mouthed hip-hop artist known for controversially goofing on pop culture, social mores, and himself releases single that deals with a serious topic in an intelligent, harrowing fashion. Of course, that's all reductive garbage-- there's plenty of evidence prior to "Stan" of Slim Shady's wit and wisdom, and it's not as if this track is free of the button-pushing that poisons his more notorious work. That is, unless you don't consider the way Em disposes of Stan and his wife-to-be anything less than sensational. And let's not forget subverting Dido's tra-la-la chirp for some manipulative ironic counterpointing.
Also, Em isn't discovering the new world with this track-- there are plenty of examples of hip-hop shucking its jive for a more serious countenance (cf. um, almost all of it). So what separates "Stan" from other attempts is what separates Eminem, at his best, from the rest of the pack-- it's the flow of the narrative and, more importantly, it's Eminem's flow. It's Eminem detailed portrait of this desperate character whose obsession with a pop star leads to his death, and it's Eminem inhabiting this character's skin as if it's his own. Stan grows more angry and frantic with each passing moment that Em doesn't respond to his letters, and Em nails his pathetic, powerless desperation. It's a performance that turned out to be a grimly prophetic glimpse into what Eminem would become millions of records later-- a man forever trying to live up to, or leave behind, the pictures and songs of a man he adores and hates. --David Raposa
057: Le Tigre
"Deceptacon (DFA Remix)"
[DFA; 2002]
Eric Carr panned the poopflakes out of this song in 2002: "It puts the disco before the discussion...the DFA's remix of 'Deceptacon' sucks out all of the original's Joy Division-ish bassy goodness in favor of a simplistic funk pattern looped ad nauseam." Woof. Where to begin? That simplistic funk pattern-- the one with eight kinds of handclaps and dense synths and that sparse sub-bass thwok on the ones-- that "pattern" gave punkies a chance to actually dance, not that bullshit half-skank side-stepping they'd been doing for 20-plus to Wanna Buy A Bridge? Equally sympathetic to dance and punk, the DFA had found its signature remix sound here, and everyone from Junior Senior to Britney wanted a piece. Oh, and fuck all does the groove depoliticize the rhyme. Quite the opposite: Hannah's rant is still here, but with the bigger beat, she's less bratty, more compelling-- and hardly nauseous. --Nick Sylvester
056: The Hives
"Hate to Say I Told You So"
[Gearhead; 2002]
Whether or not the Hives are the best band in the world-- as they readily claim-- is unimportant; what's crucial is the fact that they play like they are. Riding the crest of the garage-rock wave behind the Strokes and the Vines (remember them?), the Hives set themselves apart from so many trend-jumping upstarts with this calling card, the deadliest WMD in their nuclear arsenal known as Vini Vidi Vicious. Nicholaus Arson's chugging guitar riff provides a perfect soundtrack for webslinging, and Howlin' Pelle Almqvist delivers a screaming stump speech full of campaign promises: "Gonna get through your head what the mystery man said...Gonna call all the shots, all the no's and the not's..." Not because he has to, but "because I wanna!" Ultimately, "Hate to Say I Told You So" not only lives up to the band's notorious self-proclamations (they titled a singles collection Your New Favorite Band), but spanks you for not believing them in the first place. --Stephen M. Deusner
055: Jürgen Paape
"So Weit Wie Noch Nie"
[Kompakt; 2002]
I've never been able to figure out what the hell is happening here. Scratchy vocal samples from what sounds like an ancient German cabaret record combined with a fiber-optic tech-house beat to make something that sounds neo-New Romantic. But then, maybe the latter quality is my own baggage. With the vaguely Nena-esque cast to the voice, the wordless vocal on the bridge (an almost unbearable heart-rending cry that deserves to echo forever inside some empty ballroom) evokes the soaring break on "99 Luftballons". At least, to these Yankee ears it does. Beyond the mysterious vocals and the weird threads stretching through several eras of pop, this song also has a surface beauty: Too slow to dance to, the icy music of "So Weit Wie Noch Nie" is designed to be admired from the outside, like an elegant and precise fetish object. --Mark Richardson
054: Animal Collective
"Who Could Win A Rabbit?"
[Fat Cat; 2004]
Put any kid of a certain age in the vicinity of a drum and he's going to start pounding on it with all his might: "Must...make...noise!" This innate biological reflex happens at a pre-conscious level and is thus not to be punished; if we're lucky, we hold on to some of that spirit and learn how to channel it at appropriate times, like when a club filled with people has paid money to watch you. When people describe Animal Collective as existing in relationship to childhood, this is what they're talking about: combining Boredoms' Joy of Noise with Langley Schools' Joy of Song. "Who Could Win a Rabbit" is the catchiest melody they've written but the real key to its appeal is that it ends so soon, dropping out just as it reaches it's peak. At that point all you can do is repeat. --Mark Richardson
053: Eminem
"Lose Yourself"
[Interscope; 2002]
Rewind: "Menime..."-- Barbra Streisand's eyebrows return to their natural level-- "...ot seog Racso eht dna"-- past the two full years of clutching trinkets on various podia, past the morning-zoo parodies, past the stilted, hagiographic 8 Mile itself-- did the same guy really direct Wonder Boys?-- and stop. There it is: less a rap song than a talking rocker, with its weirdly indie guitar figure, its dumbass fake-choir backup ("Opportunity!"), its Vegas piano. An odd, gangly composition, "Lose Yourself" towers over 2002 for one reason and one reason only: It contains Eminem's best rhyme scheme ever. Something in my throat still clenches up when the first verse kicks off in earnest: "Snap/ Back to reality." The barrage that follows-- 12 lines with each accented syllable rhyming throughout-- is the finest recorded demonstration of Em's method, one he had admittedly bit from Big Daddy Kane but which has been used, among others, by Ogden Nash and Joseph Brodsky. In the final verse, Eminem rhymes "next cypher" with "pied piper" with "amplified by the" with "my nine to" (five) with "right type of" (life) and finally "Mekhi Phifer" (the punchline doubling as a retroactive explanation for the entire scheme). Theoretically designed to uplift, the song instead leaves the listener winded, depleted, beat-- listening to it is the closest equivalent of losing a rap battle. --Michael Idov
052: New Pornographers
"Letter From an Occupant"
[Matador; 2000]
Perhaps the only song in my lifetime that could have appeared in Help!, "Letter From an Occupant" is an endlessly turning kaleidoscope, the same handful of chords falling together in progressively prettier combinations. The Lennon-MacCartney moment arrives when a seemingly unstoppable chorus is immediately, effortlessly one-upped by an even catchier whoo-ee-oo section. Neko Case's voice radiates such sheer delectation with each phoneme that it took me a week of shouting along to realize I wasn't singing any real words. Whatever the lyrics may have been, a tumble cycle in Neko's larynx turns them to sparkling doggerel: one dutiful online transcriber hears "Where the hell'd I send these you bought me" where another divines "Where the hell have the 70s brought me?" One line everyone seems to agree on: "This tune you'll be humming forever." --Michael Idov
051: Outkast
"So Fresh, So Clean"
[LaFace; 2001]
Eff a Southern drawl and a Teddy Pendergrass-- that stuff has built-in sex appeal. Try rounding first base with patty melts and Anne Frank, and then you got something to send to Penthouse. Then again, on top of this slip-dippin', disco-stringin' beat even wood-paneled sex-ed films could turn blue and run hot, so why not make things challenging? This dynamic duo's not so clean that they squeak, and their freshness is more like the stuff that gets mothers to reach out and touch someone with wooden spoons.
Indeed, Big Boi gets a bit rambunctious ("Might lick you like a lizard when I'm slizzard or sober"), and Andre lets all you fine ladies know that "the boy next door" (the one that loves who you are and who you ain't) "is a freak". However, when Dre dubs Outkast "the coolest motherfunkers on the planet," you have to recognize. After all, this is a duo that made leprechaun green overalls into haute couture, turned "stank" into a sweet-smelling verb, and sold the world on poot-tootin' Polaroid-shakin' indie pop a million times over. In light of those achievements, pitching some scatological afro-futuristic woo is like taking a nap. --David Raposa
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