Everyone likes to make lists; its how we judge things against everything else.
While ranking will force a hierarchy, it is also as particular and biased as the writer or publication. But even if we can't agree on the order, end of the year lists are a great place to find out about all those things that got missed during the year due to limited time and resources. So, here's my "Top 10 Songs of 2010 I Found on Top 10 Lists of 2010". These are the best songs I could find on other best of lists that I hadn't already heard this year (at least I don't think I have). If you don't like my choices, I've provided my source to encourage everyone else to discover something they really love too.
10. How to Dress Well - "Decisions"
Album: Love Remains
I have no idea what they're saying in this song. But, I feel like this is the ending scene to a movie I really love but I haven't seen yet. I picture my eyes welling with tears while I struggle to hold them back out of some unnecessary masculine pride, even though the lifting harmonies and simplistic bass drum are calling to me to shed my misguided ideas about gender roles in an age when its okay for men to cry.
9. Caribou - "Odessa"
Album: Swim
Hauntingly hypnotic as any song about an abusive relationship and the struggle to break free as I've heard, "Odessa" is still eerily danceable and the repetition of the lyrics and music reinforce the idea of the recurring cycle of domestic violence.
8. Josh Ritter - "Rattling Locks"
Album: So Runs the World Away
Josh Ritter is a foundation you can build upon. Continually adding and subtracting from his sound, Ritter always manages to keep the whole in tact and produce some of the most consistently challenging and gratifying art. I use the term art deliberately, because Ritter's songs are good enough for that classification.
7. Das Racist - "hahahaha jk"
Album: Sit Down, Man
I don't know a lot about rap, I'm gonna be up front about that. But I know this song is good, no joking, cause they're not joking. Or, maybe they are joking?
6. The New Pornographers - "Crash Years"
Album: Together
The New Pornographers can do no wrong. I expect nothing but greatness from everything they do and never seem to be disappointed.
Canada wins again.
5. Local Natives - "World News"
Album: Gorilla Manor
Swelling with effervescent pop harmonies that maintain a carefree disconnect to the lyrical content of a song about our carefree disconnect to the atrocities we listen through on a daily basis but fail to connect emotionally to our own lives.
4. Sufjan Stevens - "Too Much"
Album: The Age of Adz
I shrugged this off when it came out as another concept side project (a la BQE), and was a little turned of by the hyper-production, especially after really loving the grandiose delicacy of the abandoned "States" project, but the vulnerability that made Michigan and Illinoise great still comes through the electronic haze.
3. Junip - "In Every Direction"
Album: Fields
The dark undertones and ethereal fuzz background contrast nicely with the idealism expressed in lyrics. Omnipotence has never had such a nice groove.
2. Buke and Gass - "Your Face Left Before You"
Album: Riposte
Inventing your own instruments gives you the creative control over your sound like no other, and with a buke (baritone ukulele) and gass (guitar bass) duo Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez reel you in and push you away with equal parts ferocity and sweetness.
Listen to the track on the band's myspace page.
1. Joanna Newsom - "Does Not Suffice"
Album: Have One on Me
Source: NPR, 'All Songs' Listeners Pick the Best Albums of 2010
Catchy like a new love and solemn like one lost, this song is heartbreakingly beautiful. Newsom's voice is sultry, aching and winsome. Her piano struggles to smile behind her, but does, realizing the levity in a love dissolved by words and actions that fails to reach the unrealistic expectations we set for each other.
*Disclaimer: Yes I know not all the sources are Top 10 lists (actually I don't think any are), but it works better as a title.
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