Friday
Kurt Vile 'Smoke Ring for My Halo'
Marvin Gaye What's Going On [40th Anniversary Edition]
Instead of releasing "What's Going On" that fall, Motown put out the Gaye compilation Super Hits, which depicts its clean-shaven star as a cartoon superhero flying through the air and fixing a radio tower as a buxom damsel perilously hangs from his shoulder. But Gaye wanted nothing more than to blow up that gleaming image of himself-- now in his early 30s, he would accept nothing but complete control over his art. And if Motown wasn't going to release his first self-produced song, he wasn't going to make music for Motown. Gaye sat idle for months until his label, desperate to put out something-- anything-- from its biggest solo star, finally eked the single out under Gordy's nose on January 21, 1971. It was an instant success, hitting No. 2 on the pop charts and, perhaps more importantly for Gaye, giving him a win in his constant battle with Gordy, who couldn't deny a smash. Five months later, Marvin Gaye released his full-grown symphony to God, What's Going On, with little resistance.
Forty years of ubiquity have made the title track commonplace, so it's easy to forget that the song was the "most avant-garde hit Motown ever had," according to Ben Edmonds' thorough album history What's Going On: Marvin Gaye and the Last Days of the Motown Sound. With this album, Gaye wished to sidestep the sound that made him and others famous during Motown's untouchable 60s run, trading in that trademark big, bright beat for laid-back grooves inspired by Duke Ellington, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, and Santana. And not only was the album a coming-out party for Gaye as a producer and songwriter, he found his signature voice-- soft, floating, airy-- on What's Going On, too. "I felt like I'd finally learned to sing," he told biographer David Ritz. "I'd been studying the microphone for a dozen years, and I suddenly saw what I'd been doing wrong. I'd been singing too loud." The record and its creative revelations led to his stunning 70s auteur period, which birthed three more classics: 1973's Let's Get It On, 1976's I Want You, and 1978's Here, My Dear. Yet What's Going On still stands tallest, making this 40th anniversary, 2CD/LP edition more of a welcome reminder than just another eulogy to baby-boomer culture.
Much has been made of What's Going On's political bent, and it's true that the music was partially inspired by Marvin's brother Frankie, who had come back from a three-year tour of Vietnam, along with troublingly violent episodes like the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kent State shootings that saw four students killed by national guardsmen. Songs like peace-espousing title track and "What's Happening Brother", which finds Gaye expressing a war veteran's helplessness upon returning home, show Marvin's dismay toward his country and government. But this album isn't just a protest time capsule. Far from it. Gaye's disappointment isn't just societal, it's personal as well. During this period, the singer had lost his duet partner and dear friend, Tammi Terrell, and his marriage to Gordy's sister Anna was violently breaking down, and he was being tailed by the IRS for unpaid back taxes. His resulting depression is evident throughout; What's Going On isn't a fiery album filled with timely sloganeering. Part of its long-lasting appeal involves an element of true-to-life resignation. "Who's willing to try to save a world/ That's destined to die," he sings on "Save the Children", pinpointing an American melancholia-- a mix of world-saving power and funereal inevitability-- that endures today.
But the album doesn't wallow, either. It hums and glides on the effortless, multi-tracked Marvins that swoop through the stereo spectrum like ghosts. Gaye's signature vocal ad libs started here and have endured through R&B and hip-hop ever since. His marijuana-soaked delivery, along with the album's mutating, percussion-fueled rhythms, majestic strings, and jazzy horns, give the affair levity. Perhaps this smooth front also has to do with the fact that Gaye was "hardly an activist in the traditional sense," according to Edmonds. While his Vietnam-battered brother was an emotional catalyst, Gaye had neglected to send him one letter during his army stint. And though he was certainly aware of the Detroit race riot that left 43 people dead in 1967, he viewed the sad display on TV from his cushy home on the outskirts of town. Not to say Gaye didn't wholeheartedly believe in the progressive observations found on What's Going On, but his relative distance from his subjects allows him to fly over top of them, providing a healing pulse to the disarray below.
For an album as timeless as this one, reissue bonus material can provide worthy footnotes to the main article. Probably thanks to the last decade's vinyl resurgence, this 40th anniversary edition immediately sets itself apart from 2001's 30th anniversary release by presenting its iconic cover in a glorious 12"x12" square. The package's lone LP features the more straightforward, early Detroit mix of the album, while the final, L.A. mix is relegated to a CD. For die-hards, the most alluring part of the package may be the second compact disc, which features 18 mostly instrumental demos recorded in Gaye's post-What's Going On honeymoon period, when his vast artistic ambitions and abilities were being embraced by the greater public. These somewhat experimental demos-- deep, in-the-pocket funk in the vein of Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Jimi Hendrix-- clearly laid the groundwork for much of his subsequent 70s material. Though he doesn't sing on most of these tracks, it's exciting to hear him get loose as keyboardist and band leader.
Just as What's Going On marked the emergence of Marvin Gaye as an all-in-one talent, it also signaled the decline of Motown's reign. It's tempting to simply side with Gaye in his battles with the label that raised him and play into the auteur myth. But it's more complicated than that. Without his tutelage at Motown, first as a session player then as a singer, Gaye wouldn't have been able to conceive a work like this. The help of Motown backing band the Funk Brothers-- credited in the What's Going On liner notes after years of anonymity-- was also essential. Before he was shot and killed by his own father at age 44 in 1984, Gaye was afforded the schooling of America's finest pop academy and then the freedom to flourish and act on his own whims afterward. His 70s brilliance is unfathomable without his 60s pop triumphs. And What's Going On is the turning point, the moment when he was able to bypass his selfishness and self-destructiveness in the name of God, peace, love. It's a nice dream. One that he knew was too good to last. "Mercy, mercy me," he pleaded calmly, desperately.
GIRLS:"Father,Son,Holy Ghost"
The first listen to Father, Son, Holy Ghost brings with it an almost eerie sense of familiarity, like these are songs you've been hearing your whole life even when you can't place them, and it's sometimes startling just how specific the references can be. The opening "Honey Bunny" has a shuffling beat and riff that is close to Paul Simon's "Kodachrome"; "Love Like a River" has a verse structure, chord changes, and tinkling piano arrangement almost identical to the Beatles' "Oh! Darlin", which was itself a direct rip of songs like "Blueberry Hill". "Magic" has bouncy sunshine pop chords that bring to mind something from a Have a Nice Day comp, "Die" has almost the same melody as Deep Purple's "Highway Star". The arrangements throughout have whirring organ, guitar fills, solos, flutes, and backing vocals borrowed from classic rock and placed exactly where you would expect them to be. And tying it all together is the production from Doug Boehm and the band, which sounds "old" simply because it sounds so incredibly good. This is one of the best-sounding rock records in years, redolent of a time when there was more money to spend in getting the basic tracks perfect, better ears to figure out which microphone should be used and precisely where it should be placed, and no pressure to make the mix ultra-hot for digitally-driven radio.
But if Father were merely an exceptionally recorded album built on obvious nods to the past, it wouldn't add up to much. Instead, the record comes alive with color and personality largely thanks to Girls' singer and songwriter Christopher Owens. He has a preternatural gift for turning clichés into into deeply affecting songs, and as they jump from one style to the next, from delicate acoustic balladry to noisy rave-ups, Owens' voice and point of view ground the record and make it distinctive. He is the center. As long as he is writing and singing, no matter what else is going on and being referenced, the music will be utterly his.
A lot of that is up to the timbre of his voice. On Album, Owens often had the pinched, clogged-sinus tone of Elvis Costello without the sneer, but here his vocals are warmer and softer, often bringing to mind the whispery tone of Elliott Smith. It's a testament to the care of the recording that even when he seems to be cooing into the microphone while the sometimes-thick arrangements grow around him, every word is clear and in balance. His voice exhibits both weariness and innocence and manages to convey hope and despair in equal measure. It also has an androgynous quality that fits the themes of Girls' music.
Owens' songs often seem to have an undefined and undirected desire for love and sex and friendship that exists outside of any one idea of sexuality. It's about feelings first, and the object of them second; who or what the singer wants is less important than the fact that the yearning is there, and it's unfulfilled, and that hurts. The lack of specificity can give Owens' songs a narcissistic slant, but it feels most like the self-obsession of early childhood, where lines between the self and the outside world aren't clear. "I can see so much clearer when I just close my eyes," he sings at one point, and it feels like the work of someone who has done a lot of thinking in the dark.
Indeed, so much about Owens' lyrical outlook, from how he uses shopworn imagery to the disarming simplicity of his declarations, conveys the sense of a child feeling around, discovering for the first time things we all found and absorbed years ago. So when he sings "My love is like a river/ She just keeps on rolling on" and "Lay my burden down by the river's edge" in "Love Like a River", it sounds like someone starting from the simplest conventions of the pop song and working inward to see if life actually functions the way that the songs tell us it does. Not since Jonathan Richman has there been a songwriter so willing to convey honest and deep feelings through the most basic pop syntax, and Owens also shares Richman's desire to use familiar song forms to get these essential messages across.
On Album, it was easy to hear the words and focus on Owens' backstory, which included being raised in a cult whose belief system contributed to the premature death of his brother. But these songs feel too essential and relatable to connect it to Owens' life alone. It's more about what we make of it as listeners and less about the damage of his early years. There's also a layer of awareness in his delivery, and he's able to tweak his own naïvteté in interesting ways. On the opening song, "Honey Bunny", he sings about how his mother loved and accepted him and told him that "everything will be all right" and then follows by saying, "I need a woman who loves me! me! me! me!"
This lyrical simplicity shouldn't obscure the fact that these are sharply constructed songs that take unusual turns. One of Girls' specialities is their willingness to go completely over the top but somehow keep us right there with them. Early single "Vomit" is one such epic, folding in soulful organ and the kind of wailing gospel-like vocals that signified "authenticity" when the Stones and Floyd ruled the world; but, with Owens' wounded voice in the middle of it all, even this bombastic song feels personal and even intimate. "Just a Song" begins with a gorgeously basic nylon string guitar figure and slowly drifts into a whispered refrain that stretches endlessly, Owens intoning, "Love, it's just a song," in his softest way as flutes swirl around him. He seems to be slipping into a widening hole that's half oceanic bliss and half fade-out death, and that combination nods to Spiritualized, an influence that was there on Album and is sometimes present here, particularly in the way Girls don't shy away from repetition and mix sonic decadence with wide-eyed spiritual yearning.
The largest canvas of all stretches across "Forgiveness", the eight-minute song that serves as the album's emotionally exhausting peak. It builds slowly and winds around in circles as Owens offers homilies about love and fear and redemption, and then it explodes into a melodic and moving guitar solo that releases the considerable tension. It's a big moment on an album that has so many they're almost hard to pick out, and it also happens to contain some of Owens' most straightforward writing: "You'll have to forgive me brother/ You'll have to forgive me sister/ And I'll have to forgive you if we're ever going to move on/ No one's going to find any answers/ If you're looking in the dark/ And looking for a reason to give up." He's right, but while there's nothing remotely new here, somehow the way Owens sings these words makes it feel like we're hearing them for the first time too.
Thursday
EMA
Formerly of California's nerve-fraying, positive-feedback crew Gowns, Erika M. Anderson finds more catharsis on her first solo release, Past Lives Martyred Saints. Her shambolic, breathless, damaged, nakedly confessional poetry is a drugged-out fever dream; a dizzying trip amplified when her voice is struggling to compete with suffocating drones and prismatic guitar noise.
Wednesday
Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson
A deluxe edition of Serge Gainsbourg’s 1971 masterpiece, Histoire de Melody Nelson, will be released on November 7 and is set to feature unreleased material including alternate takes and a new DVD documentary.
Histoire de Melody Nelson will be available as a Super Deluxe 2CD/2LP/DVD Limited Edition, a Deluxe Edition (2CD/DVD) and a Vinyl Picture Edition.
A film based on Histoire de Melody Nelson (entitled Melody) was made for French TV in 1971 and was directed by Jean Christophe Averty. It stars Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in the lead roles. And here it is!Tuesday
Smith Westerns:"Dye it Blonde"
Smith Westerns have cleaned up nicely. Just over a year ago, the Chicago foursome were of the strictly "lo-fi" persuasion, stirring up hot, filthy garage-rock candy out of Marc Bolan and Beatles signifiers. It was youthful music in feeling and sound-- their noisy full-length debut was recorded while they were still in high school-- but the remarkable hooks buried therein were clear enough to land them on the increasingly stacked Fat Possum roster. And suddenly, they had a studio budget the likes of which they definitely hadn't enjoyed before. Though the leap is audibly huge, Dye It Blonde's many successes aren't wholly the result of its gilded production values and ambition. This band was able to furnish first-class melodies from the beginning. Now they've grown along with their resources.
You can hear the progress right away in "Imagine, Pt. 3", a song originally released as part of a split 7" in April 2010. Sped up here just a touch, it's also been re-outfitted with a far creamier set of synths and guitars. The way the latter seem to clasp hands during the coda is particularly breathtaking, frontman Cullen Omori and guitarist Max Kakacek letting their individual lines mate rather than duel. While the melodic foundation was already sturdy throughout, here, what once sounded ragged in stretches is now plush-upholstered from start to finish. Every single piece of Dye It Blonde is similarly decadent, whether it's the sweet whine of semi-titular closer "Dye the World" or the twilight jangle of "End of the Night".
In an interview not long after the album's completion, Omori noted that this otherwise new set of songs was influenced by 90s Britpop luminaries like Oasis, Teenage Fanclub, and Suede. All are present sonically and spiritually, be it in brash tones, melodic IQ or the sheer scope of these recordings. Where a Smith Westerns hook may have once sounded like another fuzzy member of the Nuggets family/genus, it now unfolds like crane-shot, mainstage festival fare. "Still New" for example floats some phasered guitar interplay before Kakacek rips a hole across the chest of the song with a woozy line so big it essentially serves as a chorus. Like "Weekend", whose central, hair-flipping lick also hugs all its parts together perfectly, the song just sounds so drunk-- drunk on love, drunk on heavy petting, drunk on drink, or maybe just drunk on a some combination of the above. In song, it all depends on the lean of Omori's voice and the whip of his chord changes, the curves of his brother Cameron's bass lines.
That moony/beery-eyed feel bleeds through every corridor of this album and in turn forms a crystalline expression of what moves this band. Their use of the studio in augmenting that never goes overboard, though: this music still retains the innately psychedelic, lamplit, tongue-kissed sense of atmosphere that set it apart. There's perhaps no better instance of all that than "All Die Young", the album's centerpiece. It's a ballad turned hymn whose grand, tumbling scale and "Oh Yoko"-indebted outro celebration are peaks on an album rich in them. In its closing moments, Omori sings what sounds like, "Love is lovely when you are young." They were convincing before, but now they seem like experts.
You can hear the progress right away in "Imagine, Pt. 3", a song originally released as part of a split 7" in April 2010. Sped up here just a touch, it's also been re-outfitted with a far creamier set of synths and guitars. The way the latter seem to clasp hands during the coda is particularly breathtaking, frontman Cullen Omori and guitarist Max Kakacek letting their individual lines mate rather than duel. While the melodic foundation was already sturdy throughout, here, what once sounded ragged in stretches is now plush-upholstered from start to finish. Every single piece of Dye It Blonde is similarly decadent, whether it's the sweet whine of semi-titular closer "Dye the World" or the twilight jangle of "End of the Night".
In an interview not long after the album's completion, Omori noted that this otherwise new set of songs was influenced by 90s Britpop luminaries like Oasis, Teenage Fanclub, and Suede. All are present sonically and spiritually, be it in brash tones, melodic IQ or the sheer scope of these recordings. Where a Smith Westerns hook may have once sounded like another fuzzy member of the Nuggets family/genus, it now unfolds like crane-shot, mainstage festival fare. "Still New" for example floats some phasered guitar interplay before Kakacek rips a hole across the chest of the song with a woozy line so big it essentially serves as a chorus. Like "Weekend", whose central, hair-flipping lick also hugs all its parts together perfectly, the song just sounds so drunk-- drunk on love, drunk on heavy petting, drunk on drink, or maybe just drunk on a some combination of the above. In song, it all depends on the lean of Omori's voice and the whip of his chord changes, the curves of his brother Cameron's bass lines.
That moony/beery-eyed feel bleeds through every corridor of this album and in turn forms a crystalline expression of what moves this band. Their use of the studio in augmenting that never goes overboard, though: this music still retains the innately psychedelic, lamplit, tongue-kissed sense of atmosphere that set it apart. There's perhaps no better instance of all that than "All Die Young", the album's centerpiece. It's a ballad turned hymn whose grand, tumbling scale and "Oh Yoko"-indebted outro celebration are peaks on an album rich in them. In its closing moments, Omori sings what sounds like, "Love is lovely when you are young." They were convincing before, but now they seem like experts.
Eminem: Prescription drug Ambien ‘wiped out five years of my life’
The rapper also says that the sedative contributed to a four year long stretch of writer’s block. Eminem says that the pills were ‘wiping out brain cells’. He added:
…a lot of my memory is gone. I don't know if you've ever taken Ambien, but it's kind of a memory-eraser. That shit wiped out five years of my life. People will tell me stories, and it's like, "I did that?" I saw myself doing this thing on [television network] BET recently, and I was like, "When was that?"
In the interview with Rolling Stone, Eminem said that he kept some of his writing from that period and that: “It fucking creeps me out. Letters all down the page – it was like my hand weighed 400 pounds. I have all that shit in a box in my closet. As a reminder that I don't ever want to go back.”
During the peak of his drug addiction, he revealed that he was taking up to 60 Valium and 30 Vicodin pills a day. In 2007, he overdosed on methadone. “The doctors told me I'd done the equivalent of four bags of heroin,” says Eminem. “They said I was about two hours from dying.”The ‘Recovery’ artist revealed that Elton John was one of the people who helped him to overcome his addictions. “He usually calls me once a week to check on me, just to make sure I'm on the up-and-up,” says Eminem. “He was actually one of the first people I called when I wanted to get clean.”
Sonic Youth
"I Love You Golden Blue"
Throughout the band's major label heyday in the '90s, Gordon and Moore's lyrics didn't dive into topics of domesticity or romance — Gordon opted to write lyrics with a feminist bent ("Shoot," "Little Trouble Girl," "Panty Lies"), while Moore's tunes grew increasingly fixed on the political ("Youth Against Fascism"), the musical ("Theresa's Sound World," "Screaming Skull"), or the straight-up inscrutable ("Starfield Road"). That changed on 2004's Sonic Nurse, particularly with Gordon's devastating ballad "I Love You Golden Blue." This remains one of her most aching and confessional tunes ever — not to mention one of the band's most haunting and gorgeous. Over drizzling guitars and drummer Steve Shelley's delicate pitter-patter, she whispers about missing a long-lost lover's presence — and losing the will the hang on. "I can't find the time," she coos. "I love you, Golden Blue, I miss you." It's hard not to think that cracks in Gordon and Moore's relationship began to show around this time.
Throughout the band's major label heyday in the '90s, Gordon and Moore's lyrics didn't dive into topics of domesticity or romance — Gordon opted to write lyrics with a feminist bent ("Shoot," "Little Trouble Girl," "Panty Lies"), while Moore's tunes grew increasingly fixed on the political ("Youth Against Fascism"), the musical ("Theresa's Sound World," "Screaming Skull"), or the straight-up inscrutable ("Starfield Road"). That changed on 2004's Sonic Nurse, particularly with Gordon's devastating ballad "I Love You Golden Blue." This remains one of her most aching and confessional tunes ever — not to mention one of the band's most haunting and gorgeous. Over drizzling guitars and drummer Steve Shelley's delicate pitter-patter, she whispers about missing a long-lost lover's presence — and losing the will the hang on. "I can't find the time," she coos. "I love you, Golden Blue, I miss you." It's hard not to think that cracks in Gordon and Moore's relationship began to show around this time.
Monday
Review of the day
Feist
'Metals'
Polishing
the Apple: The high priestess of artful
pop chanteuses invites us
to bask in her subtle glow
Is any of this bad? Of course not. Breezy pop is wonderful; Grey's Anatomy is a fine show. Feist's breakout, 2007's The Reminder, remains both a very lovely album and a bellwether -- the Nevermind of iRock. The only bummer now would be if a certain elder stateswoman returned to the house she helped build (shooing away the raccoons who've since moved in) and became caught between two worlds -- the clever, confident pop she's known for and something graver, darker, more serious -- and didn't comfortably inhabit either. Indeed, that could bum a few folks out.
But that's not what happens here. The refreshing new Feist record, Metals, opens like a processional: drums thump, guitars ring out, and she belts the album's first, definitive line -- "'Speak plain,' he said." And that's before the horns arrive, the strings, the backing vocals -- it's exactly like the beginning of The Lion King (sort of). That initial thrill persists through "Graveyard," a slow-building tune featuring the album's best hook, stridently sung by a multitracked chorus of Feists: "Wooahhh / Bring them all back to life."
"Caught a Long Wind" is a smoky, understated nod to Lena Horne, "A Commotion" is a careering wink to TV on the Radio, complete with a bunch of dudes discordantly chanting in the middle. "The Undiscovered First" mines a similar vein: tempestuous, capering. Sweetly soporific jams abound here, from "Bittersweet Melodies" to the brazenly Iron & Wine-y "Cicadas and Gulls."
Taken individually, each song is as sturdy as oak -- the guitars have a magnesium shimmer, and every instrument seems bathed in its own spotlight, especially Feist's vocals, which feel like they're being whispered directly into your ear (admit it: you'd buy an album called Feist Blows Out Birthday Candles). The production is so refined the album occasionally creaks, which is not to imply it sounds old-timey, but simply that there's a craftsman's attention to detail.
And yet Metals lacks a certain cohesive magic, despite being recorded in Big Sur by Feist's usual coterie (Mocky, Chilly Gonzales). Even with its sonic detours -- the slightly nutty percussion, a lot of general yelling -- the record feels a bit monochromatic, like a just-fun-enough surrey ride whose background keeps repeating.
That's a shame. Leslie Feist herself is so wonderfully, yes, plainspoken that you really root for her, especially now that the market's saturated with chanteuses (sorry) who have clearly studied her playbook: misty crooning, light-on-your-feet phrasing. But Metals' lyrical sentiments never go for simply soothing, like this epitaph: "When you comfort me / It doesn't bring me comfort, actually." Those new voices could learn a thing or two from Feist's balance of nuance and forthrightness, even if Metals isn't the keenest example of that alchemy.
Bon Iver
Bon Iver
Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)On his 2008 debut For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon delivered spare, emotionally-charged folk tunes that chronicled a messy break-up. The album earned him no shortage of fans — most notably, Kanye West, who featured the elusive Wisconsin-based singer on last year's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. On his second set, Vernon has upped the ante and expanded his circle to include ace session whizzes like pedal-steel player Greg Leisz. Once again, Vernon scores big by cultivating enchanted atmosphere, gorgeous melodies, unique textures, and beautiful singing. And his idiosyncratic gift for lyric-writing only adds to the album's sonic mysteries. "Armour let it through/Borne the arboretic truth you kept posing"? It's the kind of couplet that would trip up even the most accomplished of Joyce scholars.
Smith Westerns
NME‘s 150 Best Tracks Of The Past 15 Years
The list is heavy on the Brit-rock that NME understandably favors, and the weird time-frame (1996 to 2011) means there’s a wide breadth of stuff to choose from. Radiohead figures heavily on the list, with five songs placing and “Paranoid Android” appearing in the top spot. And it’s fun to see a few of the past NME faves who didn’t quite pan out, like the Coral and Mystery Jets, showing up. (The Vines, sadly, have apparently been erased from history.)
As with any list of this type, there’s plenty to quibble with. No way does Coldplay’s “Clocks” deserve to be all the way down at #148. I can’t believe that anyone, even a British person, would call “Empire State Of Mind” the best rap song of the past 15 years. And the placement of Blink-182′s “What’s My Age Again?” directly above LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” feels like NME‘s attempt to make fun of all of us. Still, it’s hard to complain about much of what made it into the top 20, and the list is long enough that it gives some shine to a few underappreciated classics: Wu-Tang Clan’s “Gravel Pit”! Hole’s “Celebrity Skin”! The Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”! (Whatever, that song is great. Stop hating.) Check the full list below, and let us know what you thought of it in the comments section.
150 Manic Street Preachers – “Australia”
149 Crystal Castles – “Crimewave”
148 Coldplay – “Clocks”
147 Morrissey – “First Of The Gang To Die”
146 Laura Marling – “My Manic And I”
145 Fever Ray – “If I Had A Heart”
144 The Killers – “Human”
143 Oasis – “The Hindu Times”
142 Foals – “Hummer”
141 Gorillaz – “Clint Eastwood”
140 Arctic Monkeys – “A Certain Romance”
139 Coldplay – “Yellow”
138 Bat For Lashes – “What’s A Girl To Do?”
137 Doves – “There Goes The Fear”
136 Kelis – “Milkshake”
135 Kelly Clarkson – “Since U Been Gone”
134 Antony & The Johnsons – “Hope There’s Someone”
133 The Strokes – “Under Cover Of Darkness”
132 Daft Punk – “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”
131 Radiohead – “Pyramid Song”
130 Belle And Sebastian – “The Boy With The Arab Strap”
129 The Strokes – “Reptilia”
128 Hercules And Love Affair – “Blind”
127 En Vogue – “Don’t Let Go (Love)”
126 Hole – “Celebrity Skin”
125 Klaxons – “Atlantis To Interzone”
124 Supergrass – “Pumping On Your Stereo”
123 Glasvegas – “Daddy’s Gone”
122 Mercury Rev – “Goddess On A Highway”
121 Santogold -“LES Artistes”
120 Pulp – “This Is Hardcore”
119 Aaliyah & Timbaland – “We Need A Resolution”
118 LCD Soundsystem – “All My Friends”
117 Blink-182 – “What’s My Age Again?”
116 Wu-Tang Clan – “Gravel Pit”
115 Kings Of Leon – “Charmer”
114 Primal Scream – “Accelerator”
113 At The Drive-In – “One Armed Scissor”
112 Cee Lo Green – “Fuck You”
111 The Spice Girls – “Wannabe”
110 Sebastien Tellier – “La Ritournelle”
109 Ultrasound – “Stay Young”
108 Kasabian – “Club Foot”
107 Radiohead – “No Surprises”
106 Radiohead – “Let Down”
105 Cornershop – “Brimful Of Asha (Fatboy Slim Remix)”
104 Lily Allen – “Smile”
103 Lady Gaga – “Poker Face”
102 Art Brut – “Formed A Band”
101 The Horrors – “Sea Within A Sea”
100 Mystery Jets – “Two Doors Down”
99 MGMT – “Kids”
98 The Cribs – “Men’s Needs”
97 Klaxons – “Golden Skans”
96 The Horrors – “Sheena Is A Parasite”
95 The Knife – “Heartbeats”
94 CSS – “Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above”
93 Radiohead – “Reckoner”
92 Peter Bjorn & John – “Young Folks”
91 Animal Collective – “My Girls”
90 Yeasayer – “O.N.E.”
89 The Futureheads – “Hounds Of Love”
88 Jeff Buckley – “Everybody Here Wants You”
87 The Streets – “Dry Your Eyes”
86 The Rapture – “House Of Jealous Lovers”
85 The Coral – “Dreaming Of You”
84 The Hives – “Hate To Say I Told You So”
83 Kylie Minogue – “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”
82 Queens Of The Stone Age – “Feel Good Hit Of The Summer”
81 Outkast – “Ms. Jackson”
80 Eminem – “The Real Slim Shady”
79 Blur – “Song 2”
78 The Verve – “The Drugs Don’t Work”
77 Oasis – “D’You Know What I Mean?”
76 Beck – “Where It’s At”
75 Manic Street Preachers – “A Design For Life”
74 Muse – “Supermassive Black Hole”
73 Blur – “Out Of Time”
72 The Big Pink – “Dominos”
71 The Libertines – “Don’t Look Back Into The Sun”
70 M.I.A. – “XXXO”
69 Kanye West – “Jesus Walks”
68 Liars – “Scarecrows On A Killer Slant”
67 Ian Brown – “F.E.A.R.”
66 Super Furry Animals – “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck”
65 Kasabian – “Fire”
64 La Roux – “In For The Kill”
63 Rihanna – “Umbrella”
62 Vampire Weekend – “A-Punk”
61 Arcade Fire – “Keep The Car Running”
60 The Drums – “Let’s Go Surfing”
59 Dizzee Rascal – “Bonkers”
58 Destiny’s Child – “Say My Name”
57 Eminem – “Lose Yourself”
56 The Killers – “All These Things That I’ve Done”
55 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
54 Battles – “Atlas”
53 Kanye West – “Monster”
52 The Prodigy – “Firestarter”
51 Sugababes – “Overload”
50 The Chemical Brothers – “Hey Boy Hey Girl”
49 Best Coast – “Boyfriend”
48 Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
47 Friendly Fires – “Paris”
46 TV On The Radio – “Wolf Like Me”
45 Primal Scream – “Swastika Eyes”
44 Muse – “Nights Of Cydonia”
43 Mumford And Sons – “Little Lion Man”
42 Aphex Twin – “Come To Daddy”
41 Elbow – “One Day Like This”
40 LCD Soundsystem – “Losing My Edge”
39 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Zero”
38 Kings Of Leon – “The Bucket”
37 Coldplay – “The Scientist”
36 The Strokes – “Hard To Explain”
35 Johnny Cash – “Hurt”
34 Gossip – “Standing In The Way Of Control”
33 Florence & The Machine – “Dog Days Are Over”
32 Gnarls Barkley – “Crazy”
31 The Walkmen – “The Rat”
30 Robyn – “With Every Heartbeat”
29 Crystal Castles – “Alice Practice”
28 the xx – “Islands”
27 Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out”
26 The Libertines – “Can’t Stand Me Now”
25 Dizzee Rascal – “Fix Up, Look Sharp”
24 Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
23 The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”
22 Arcade Fire – “Wake Up”
21 Daft Punk – “Around The World”
20 Bloc Party – “Banquet”
19 Justice Vs. Simian – “We Are Your Friends”
18 Queens Of The Stone Age – “No One Knows”
17 Missy Elliott – “Get Ur Freak On”
16 Beyoncé – “Crazy In Love”
15 M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”
14 Foals – “Spanish Sahara”
13 Jay-Z & Alica Keys – “Empire State Of Mind”
12 MGMT – “Time To Pretend”
11 Arctic Monkeys – “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor”
10 The Libertines – “Time For Heroes”
09 The Verve – “Bitter Sweet Symphony”
08 Amy Winehouse – “Rehab”
07 Hot Chip – “Over And Over”
06 The White Stripes – “Fell In Love With A Girl”
05 The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
04 The Strokes – “Last Nite”
03 OutKast – “Hey Ya!”
02 Arcade Fire – “Rebellion (Lies)”
01 Radiohead – “Paranoid Androi
