Best Albums of the Year: 5-1

5. Kanye West - Late Registration
People used to make albums like this all the time. They'd make a bunch of really great songs, make videos for some, attend MTV award shows, win awards, and laugh their way to the bank. Great bands used to do this. So in a year when the music sites I looked at were concerned that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were totally overhyped because people were talking about them so much their album had sold 20,000 copies, when I couldn't even tell you what the Billboard top ten looked like let alone say if I've ever heard of any of the people, it was great to understand at least one mainstream act. Sure it suffers playing it front to back, but that's missing the point. This is a singles album if there ever was one. And taken one at a time it's stunning feat. "Heart em Say", "Touch the Sky", "Gold Digger", "Drive Slow", "Diamonds From Sierra Leone", "Addiction", "We Major", and "Gone". Yes, the skits suck, the song with Brandy is crap, but has any album tried for so much and been so consistanly good this year? And he even says literate things once in a while.

4. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
I found this album in the middle of the summer when I was still living in Indianapolis and waiting for something to happen. I was happy, living with my girlfriend, drinking with friends, riding my girls bike around town. But I always knew I'd be leaving for something different, for New York, for a life unknown. And then I found these crazy guys from Brooklyn who made a pop-speckled indie-rock where every song was great and made me think of what was to come. And they seemed to egg me on, letting me know what I could expect. How could I deny some band that made a song like "In This Home on Ice" which was so obviously tailored personally for me? My Bloody Valetine guitars? The beat from 1979? Vocalist that sounds like David Bowie? You bet. It even has a great bridge. That I still can't discern a thing the man says probably has added to their mystique for me. They seem so effortless, yet so completley in control.

3. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
I didn't understand Wolf Parade until I saw them in concert. Blake and I had convinced ourselves that we had to see this band, because we liked the album and they were getting a lot of press and we hadn't really seen many bands this year. I was expecting a beer in hand, hanging out in the middle watching the kids have their fun. Then we walk in, see no one there, and walk straight to the front, realize we are very early, and stake out the best spot in the house. I had convinced myself that I was over rock n roll, being really for the young, and something to look back on fondly when I was still in college. After moshing to my third Strokes concert in as many years, meeting them backstage, shaking Julian's hand, and generally hanging out with them, I figured nothing was ever going to be the same. I had reached the pinnacle. But then I realized that Wolf Parade had two lead singers, that they were both good, and that they competed on stage, trying to out-do the other one. And it was stunning. Afterwards, I was able to hear that battle on and I fell in love with how on edge the entire album felt, how every moment was ready to spill over unto another song. Like CYHSY, this album is empty of filler, but unlike those smiling folks of Brooklyn, this beast has a dangerous edge. I am not dead to rock n roll any longer.

2. Bright Eyes - I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
It's not something I'm bragging about, but most of my friends are fairly liberal. I'm not sure if something predisposed to people who like great music, who are generally nice, or those that are just poor, but most of my friends share my beliefs. The war was wrong. Bush is incompetent. I only know three people in the armed services, all of them did not have any experience in Iraq. Two of them I went to high school with, and the other is a friend of my girlfriend's. I haven't talked to any of them in a year. The only person I know to have died in Iraq was a guy that I played football with in elementary school before he moved away. His name was Eric Hillenburg and we were friends. Here is what the paper said:
Lance Corporal Eric Hillenburg, 21, Indianapolis. Shot to death two days before Christmas during the Fallujah campaign. Two other members of his unit were also killed. His father is pastor of Hope Baptist Church just north of Ben Davis High School.

This war does not affect me in the slightest bit outside the deep political debates I have with other like minded people over pints of beer. The thought that we are at war is almost absurd for me to comprehend as I walk to work in Manhattan where the largest terrorist attack in North America occurred just four years ago and where they expect horribly bad things to happen at any second.

Here is my rationale while in the subway: White people are not going to blow me up. Black people aren't going to blow me up. All people who speak Spanish are cool. If there is a baby in the carriage I am good. Large boxes are fine if a sweaty man who doesn't speak english is carrying it. All women are fine. Rants about Jesus are fine. All Jewish people are fine. People with backpacks and cameras are just tourists as long as they look lost. People with ipods obviously love life. That includes all game modules. That leaves about one person every couple of days that I see, which really isn't that bad. I'm usually too tired to care. Really, I am unaffected.

I never really listened to Bright Eyes until this album came out. It wasn't that I didn't like what they did, I just hadn't listened. So when Austin continued to play them over and over in his room and on his guitar, I decided to give it a shot. And I liked it. He sort of had that Ryan-Adams thing going on. Hell, he even had Emmylou Harris. But everything changed when I moved to New York. Suddenly all of the lyrics started to make sense. In "Train Under Water" I could visualize the L Train that goes from the village in Manhattan, under the East River, to Brooklyn. I've taken that train, it is a whole foot wider in the middle than the 6, which is what I'm stuck on most of the time.

Something makes sense in the village. It really does. I want to live there so badly because nothing matters in the outside world. You can survive there, read news about there, and live in a world outside the public conciousness. There are no wars in the village. Republicans sure as hell don't go there unless they are on tour buses. And that's what I want. I want to forget the war. I want to forget the economy. I want to forget about the Mid-west hicks of my youth, the obsession with money, the 2.5 kids in surburbia going to soccer games, and eating macdonalds. But I don't live there. While I share the same island, I am far away. But I can listen to this album and feel it.

The most profound line I've heard this year occurs 3:31 into "Landlocked Blues". "We made love on the living room floor/with noise in the background from a televised war." Nothing has so accurately described the repulsion to violence, the complete disconnection from reality, and the only way we have of coping. If there was an album that best described this year, it would have to be this one.

1. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
So Bright Eyes best describes the year, Kanye has the best singles, Wolf Parade reaffirmed my love of rock, and CYHSY were just great. So what is left? I don't really know. This is such an understated triumph, such an easy album to completely forget about, that sometimes I just had to listen to it and remember why. Beacuse there is nothing quite like this album. And believe me, I've been searching for it. From the earliest moments of my childhood I expressed an interest to leave the Mid-West, to move to the big city and out of a town that had smaller population than the very small college I attended. And nothing had made any sense. All the bands I was listening to were talking about things I didn't fully understand, and didn't experience on a daily basis. All the authors I read had left the mid-west. And here comes Sufjan talking about sexually confusing bible studies and about feeling helplessness staring at roads that stretch on into the horizon, away from home and eventually to two different coasts.
I needed this album more than any of the rest of these albums, that's why. That's why I listened to this album more than any album this year, why it is the album of my summer, of my fall and of the past month. It has identified a part of myself I didn't fully understand and was searching for. It's the piano in "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, IL", it's the high falsetto in "John Wayne Gacy", and all of the marvelous "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Step Mother!" Never has an album sounded so Mid-West, so humble yet expansive. So grounded and exhaultent at the same time.

Best Albums of the Year: 10-6

10. Animal Collective - Feels
What, seriously, makes a good Animal Collective song? Is it the part where they chant in unison or when they play songs without choruses? Sung Tongs was played so much last year in our apartment that it was almost impossible to know really where that album began and ended because I think some song from that album was always in the airwaves. And it was great. Why? No idea. So I worried that this wasn't going to be as cherished as that one, because, well, I still couldn't figure out why I liked the last one and given this monster, it sure wasn't going to be easy to know. Luckily the moment I knew that this album was going to be great was after about three plays Blake and I subconsciously added our sound effects, little "ohhss" and "ekkks". It happened unintentionally and we both looked at each other afterwards, and knew. That's it.

9. Spoon - Gimmie Fiction
Spoon are fine. They are okay. The lead singer has a decent voice. Yeah, "I Turn My Camera" is catchy. And I admire that the song "I Summon You" has a strange tie to someone that works at DePauw, but there is no way to prove that. It's cool that they strip their music down to the bare essentials. Actually, "Sister Jack" is kind of catchy, too. But it's a little too straightforward to be great. Good tambourine, though. There really isn't any filler, actually. It's a good album to have on. Every once in awhile. Occasionally. From time to time. When you're doing something else...like needing to kill time. Walking to class. Walking to work. Riding in the subway. Studying. Reading. Hanging out with friends. Dancing. Actually, is there a bad time to have this album? I mean I don't love it but it has been on my playlist for 10 months. And come to think about it, "I Turn My Camera On" is kind of perfect. So is "Sister Jack". And the first two songs. And some at the end...JESUS STOP!! Why can't I stop talking about this album?

8. Danger Doom - The Mouse and the Mask
For some reason this was the hardest album to write about. Do you talk about the great production? MF Doom's flow? Do you apologize for admitting that you actually just really like the skits? How do you say that after 8 hours at work this album always makes the ride home funny? I mean, nothing here approaches to oddball genius of Madvillany, but that's not really the point. It's just the way all three elements (production, rapping, skits) are seamlessly sewn together to create the tightest rap album of the year. Not the best, but there isn't a seam showing in this project.
P.S. I'm waiting for the Meatwad side project.

7. Ryan Adams - 29
This album ruined my list. I was going to cop out and have a Ryan Adams slot where I threw all of his albums in one spot and just said good job on not fucking up this year. But they were so different that even when I attempted to chop them up into "my greatest hits of ryan adams 2005" (because the man needs an editor) it didn't make sense. And then I listened to 29 on repeat for about four days. I don't know if this album is going to age well. His albums are notoriously hard to gauge. Love is Hell kind of did if you chopped off 6 of the tracks; Rock n' Roll definitely did not. But I had the most genuine musical moment with this record in the cold winds of 72nd Street where I broke into tears in the middle of a crosswalk because of his voice. I haven't experienced such emotion from any of my top 25 albums, nor with any album in many years. It was something in his voice, the well written lyrics, the way the piano comes in perfectly in "Strawberry Wine". Cold Roses was pleasant and Jacksonville City Nights was great fun, but this exists as something else entirely.
It's at 7 because like everything he's ever done it's padded with at least four average songs. And when there are only 9 songs that is kind of a problem. And I'm scared that my enthusiasm is going to wane because I just got this album a week ago. Hell, it isn't even officially released. But the first four songs achieve a greatness that he hasn't achieved since Heartbreaker.

6. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll
"No more songs about sex and drugs and rock & roll it’s boring"
With the White Stripes making mediocre albums, the Strokes making bad ones, and my old favorite Billy Corgan making some truly horrible shit, my favorite music is made by Mid-west expats who play modern folk music. I live in New York.
"I’m considering a move to LA (he’s considering a move to LA)"
And so after years of playing electric guitar and swearing my undying love for ear-splitting distortion, I've starting spouting out comments about songs in the vain of "this contains the essence of American music" and "what this song really needs is more banjo".
"He no longer listens to A-sides/He made me a tape of bootlegs and B-sides"
And here Art Brut come playing very basic rock n roll with sarcastic lyrics that makes me laugh continuously, all the time, without fail.
"I’ve seen her naked twice, I’ve seen her naked twice!"
And I want to say that this is just hipster shit and that their rock skills are nothing compared to what I usually listen to. It's just pub rock with a guy sounding really English over it all talking about things he hates. But...
"Sweet Jesus, my heart/Is beating faster and faster"
...everytime I laugh. Sure the critiques on Modern Art and bands that sound like the Velvet Underground are clever, but really I just stick around to hear him say witty things at the ends of the songs. And I think Art Brut really say a lot about where I am right now in my life. I'm okay with my life as a sham, with having no discernible future career path, with eating grand meals with wine every night, and am enjoying it way too much. But it's just so hard to accurately say why...wait...oh yeah...I don't care.
"Stay off the crack"

Best Albums of the Year: 15-11

15. The Decemberists - Picaresque
I would have never given the Decemberists the time of day had Austin not played them continuously senior year and performed "Eli, the Barrowboy" with Beth and left everyone speechless. English folk songs by exceedingly literate Oregon white guys? Really? I’m all for being touched on a metaphysical level, but I studied for 8 hours a day, and all that was playing was that LCD “Beat Connection”. My snobbery obscured the fact that this album took you on pirate expeditions with the Spanish. And then I was sold. But it's the obscene number of touching ballads that pushes this excellent album over the top. "The Engine Driver", "The Bagman's Gambit", "From My Own True Love (Lost At Sea)", and the aforementioned "Eli, The Barrowboy" rank as perfect late night postcards to nights spent trying for so much more.

14. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have it so Much Better
Basically just a concept album about not fucking up your sophomore album, I'm not sure if any band worked as hard as the Franz did on this album. Remarkably complex, the intros give way to completely different songs before popping back up as the bridge. Furious high-hat drumming patterns rampage before slowing to Led Zepplin stomps. "The Fallen" alone morphs three or four times before lead singer Alex Kapranos tries to spit out every line he can possibly think of. There are even three good acoustic songs. Still it's the manic energy of "Do You Want To" and all that riled up sexual energy that shows the Franz Ferdinand will always occupy the sex-starved-lust-obsessed place in most of our hearts.

13. M.I.A. - Arular
All of the implied political messages don't mean shit when you're drinking free stella from a plastic cup in the middle of central park dancing for two solid hours with your two roommates and four beautiful Spaniards who just bought the beer with everyone dancing because Mathangi Arulpragasam is fucking getting down in her tight spandex and an over-sized fluorescent colored shirt looking liked she watched I love the 80's from a Sri Lankan bunker and the whole crowd chants along to Galang "yahhh yahhh heyyyyyyyyy" and you think it couldn't get any better and then you look behind you who is sitting behind you watching sex and violence unfold in front of your eyes on this Manhattan summer day? Salman Rushdie. Fucking cool guy. Me dancing for two hours? Well, I mean I guess I didn't dance the whole time, wait, hold on, "yahhh yahhh heyyyyyyyyy". Sorry, what?


12. Gorillaz - Demon Days
Where their debut drifted seemingly for whatever idea happened to be laid out on the digital table, this one looks like the cartoons were actually present at committee meetings and the large black dude got pissed that he hadn’t rapped enough, and the gnarly english looking guy said “na, ya no this is my band”, and the black dude said “fuck that I’m going to clobber your fucking head”. And so the other two guys just decided that they should write “Dare” and dance the contest off. The english dude lost because his fucking shoes were untied. But the two made up and made "Feel Good, Inc" and lo the best song of the year was made.

11. Ryan Adams - Jacksonville City Nights
If Adams is a pastiche artist then this is by far his most convincing facade. Liberated by the need to actually worry about crafting a hit single, this album just rumbles through the cliched country characters Ryan secretly wants to be if he'd ever move out of the East Village. And where Cold Roses could bore you to death if actually tried to listen to the whole thing, this one keeps it to a manageable one album with more than half of the songs worth an extra spin. "The End" is the most moving song he's made since the Suicide Handbook. "Hard Way to Fall" sees him starry-eyed for the first time since, well...Gold. But it's the completely over the top "My Heart is Broken" with its Nashville Strings and completely ridiculous lyrics that set my southern Indiana heart aglow and reminded me why I ever gave a fuck about Adams in the first place. And why I still look for some sort of salvation to my confused rural upbringing.

Best Albums of the Year: 20-16

20. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
"Banquet" was my little secret in 2004, when I first caught them on one of the 100 music channels I had in my expat flat in London. My little secret became excessive mentioning of an unknown band to friends when "Little Thoughts" arrived with it's bright colored lego-block looking video and that moment where the drummer freaked out at the end. I was crowning them with BEST NEW BAND like it was 2001 and the Strokes still made great albums. This atmospheric grey-washed album was not the hook-laden release I had predicted, and instead took time to sort out. It's mostly worth it. "So Here We Are" and "Blue Light" prove the band isn't one dimensional. But while that's all well in good, it's the manic moments when the drummer is pounding like the only song he's ever head is "Teenage Riot" that kept me listening.

19. My Morning Jacket - Z
It begins with that pulsing bass before the effortless moan fills the chorus and makes life a wonderful place. But what sets this release apart is the wide-screen scope of its ambition. That was particularly striking during a year when the intimate was treasured. Quirky eccentrics should be valued, but that should not automatically crown someone as having musical integrity. Just because you spend all day in a homemade studio does not mean you craft great albums. Here is an album that was made in a real studio, and an expensive one at that. And it's a rush to hear a band so dangerously close to greatness firing off Flaming Lips send-offs like "What a Man" and demented minor key guitar freak-outs like "It Beats For You" in absolute fidelity.

18.The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
This was my cruising album last summer. Let me rephrase. This was my bike riding around Indianapolis cruising album. On a girls bike. That was too small. I'd like to say that this concept album of lost souls in a dead end town had something to do with my bike riding adventures when I really didn't have a job beyond grading ISTEP tests for junior high kids in Kentucky and my only worries were what Abby and I were having for dinner and whether or not I was going to go to Austin's to have some whisky and listen to Tom Waits. But my memories are probably just mere nostalgia for warm weather. The ride to his house took about 15 minutes and took me from the tree lined canal, around an obscene number of war memorials, and then up multilaned Delaware, to the semi-shady/cool-new-part-of-town where Austin lived. And for some reason the classic rock underpinning these tales and the husky crooner sounded great to the pumping of my overly-long legs. While the characters in the mini-rock soap opera worrying about overdoses and salvation, I just worried about large cars and flat tires.

17. Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Background
Cute Paul is the most embarrassing Beatle to claim as your favorite. While this is might be due to his being a "smug, charmless fuck” as pitchfork so eloquently said, it’s mostly because he’s made 20 or so bad albums that I’ve never wanted to listen to. Each passing year I’ve had to feel even more ashamed of liking the guy that wrote “Hey Jude” and “Penny Lane”. I have to endure the millions who claim that George Harrison was the integral part to the Beatles’ destiny because, you know, he was cool.
Chaos and Creation in the Background isn’t the long lost classic that I want Paul to write, there are no hits here, nor anything that will replace his Beatles contributions. Instead it’s weather-worn collection that feels like a lost treasure trove of b-sides lovingly stashed in a dresser drawer, taken out and shown to those he really cares about. “Jenny Wren” and and “How Kind of You”, like his excellent “Vanilla Sky” released two years ago, appear so accidental, that it shows how natural McCartney’s genius really is when he decides to use it.

16. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
To most outside the innner indie-rock crtique circle, which oddly includes me though I've been reviewing albums for over 5 years, our first introduction to LCD Soundsystem was through Pitchfork's remarkable Best Singles of 2000-2004. Judged against those three singles ("Beat Connection", "Losing My Edge", and "Yeah") this album can seem almost quaint. Most of the epic dance freakouts are gone, replaced by small fragments with an almost insular focus. "Too Much Love" continues the basic beat principles of their best songs, but "Never as Tired as When I'm Waking Up" slows things down to a Pink Floyd stroll. "Movement" furious three minutes rush by like punk. The songs don't flow well into each other, but taken individually, as the album most be heard, they become something of small wonders of musical knowledge. And it doesn't hurt that those three singles are included in the bonus disc.

Best Albums of the Year: 25-21

With the prevlance of music sites offering multiple views of the scene things have officially gone insane. Take into account allmusic, pitchfork, cokemachineglow, stylus, the guardian, nme, q magazine, village voice, and the onion, and the number of "good" albums stretches into one a day. To even keep up with the recommended albums at Pitchfork would mean you'd probably have to quit your job and huddle in a bunker with some headphones. Tellingly, my original list stretched over forty. Many of those were cut because I just honestly hadn't had time to listen to them enough. Great albums require the time to listen to them. This list doesn't really tell you much about the year, as that was too big to possibly encompass. These really tell a better story about me. And I had it all this year, good and bad, heartbreaking and heartfilled. So consider this more a mix-tape, except only really Cameron Crowe does that anymore. So here is what fits on my ipod.

25.The Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever
Introduced by one of the happiest xylophones ever clonked, this album maintains the “I’m just a very happy person right now” for most of its 37 minutes. Of course its not that simple, I’m sure there is much heart here. But when you make a song called “Monsters” and fill it with a banjo, tambourine, and what sounds like a casio keyboard, no matter how dedicated you sing, I’m still going to bop my head back and worth when I’m in the subway. Or maybe just move my foot back and forth. Or when the subway is really crowded I usually just smile. And that's a very hard thing to accomplish most days.


24. Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering
Out of time doesn’t even begin to describe this drifting, haunting album. More subdued than even Nick Drake’s first two orchestrated albums, Lookaftering feels motherly and timeless, like old children’s stories. Sweet and eccentric, her voice never reaches dramatic heights, though it does feel oddly religious. And during I time when I haven't been feeling much of that, I needed this album.


23. Deadly Snakes - Porcella
I don’t know who the Deadly Snakes are or what they are trying to accomplish. Nearly every track could have been made by a completely different band with a completely different singer. One moment they are doing gloomy atmospheric blues on “High Prices Going Down” with some rumbly old man clanking on toy piano like he's going to soothe my soul. Then the giddy “Gore Veil” complete with mellotron and a completely different singer who sounds like Lou Reed just appears and we are going to Penny Lane. I’m confused. I’m lost. Did I mention he sounds like Lou Reed? When he used to kind of sing...and write pop songs.


22. Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Having heard both versions, I have to say I enjoy the stripped down “official” release because it doesn’t try and swamp every single second with strings, oboes, and other instruments I've never heard of before. “Not About Love” is allowed to breath at the beginning, before big stomping guitars stop the break-neak backbeat. New song “Parting Gift” solo piano opens up the middle of the album. But we’ll be honest. The reason this album played constantly on my ipod were the two Jon Brion produced tracks that were left. Closing track “Waltz (Better than Fine)” was my anthem of inactivity during my past relationship troubles. But it’s the stunning opener “Extraordinary Machine” that meant the most. The creeping bass and that wonderful, wonderful bell that clanged at the most perfect part every time. Yes, yes, I am an extraordinary machine. I could sing along with that.

21. Wilco - Kicking Television
I dearly missed poor Jay Bennett, the frazzled, balding tower-of-a-man that lead them through the wilderness of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and never found an inopportune moment to place a synthesizer. His presence was sorely missed on A Ghost is Born. Instead of hiding the huge gaping hole in their sound, they accentuated it like a bad sore. That certainly gave a different character to the record, one that they hadn’t explored before. But live they just sounded like they were missing something.
Well, the hole is gone. New guitarist, Nels Cline, who was apparently raised on a steady diet of Jazz scales, rips through every memorable guitar line and adds new heft. It’s thrilling hearing the band have so much fun with Summerteeth standout “A Shot in the Arm” as well as the ending to “Ashes of American Flags” where Cline goes berserk. But the real reason this live CD is so important is the way it sheds new light on A Ghost is Born. Even "Handshake Drugs" which has appeared on two previous Wilco recordings (More like the Moon, A Ghost is Born) sounds alive and brilliant. Simply, the ghosts are gone, and these songs have never sounded better.

Just listened to....

The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth



Yeah, it sucks.

A small tear now please for the decline of my favorite band of the millennium. It was wonderful boys.

snow days, sick days

It apparently snowed today, but I stayed wrapped up in a blanket because I felt sick. but here are some pictures of what it looked like in New York on Sunday. enjoy.



This is what it looked like when I awoke at 4 because my apartment's radiator was shaking and whirring around.

the rest of the pictures are me just rambling around central park.

Humiliating Loves

Austin dropped the bomb last night with his excellent list of songs that started his obsession with music. This is an embarresing collection of songs, but I guess that's the point. We start listening to music because it finds us off guard and we don't know how to handle it except listen to it constantly. It leads to higher points, but it's what gets us there. This list kind of shook me, because by tracing these songs, this shows people a little too much of me. But it's fun nonetheless.

10. Lucus with the Lid Off - Lucus
Most people can laugh easily at the first CD they ever bought. It's usually either nostalgic (Green Day) or telling of where they were at there time in life (Boyz II Men). They were undoubtedly popular albums that many people had bought and can relate to. But yep, this was mine. Those scratching their heads need not worry, not only was this a one hit wonder, but it wasn't even a big one. It's a rap song that I heard on MTV, with a great video directed by Michel Gondry. My mom was pissed that I had bought a rap album instead of something nice for a christian band. But I think it's telling that I was drawn to something that I knew wasn't that popular because I enjoyed it. The fact that it uses a bad jazz sample which makes it sound like Mambo #5, Lucas can't rap, and that I lost the CD within a year tend to show that I had much to learn.
Led to: spending hours online searching for new music.

9. 1st of the Month - Bone Thugs in Harmony
I was into rap because of Jeremy Bickers. He had a collection that was staggaring for a person in 7th grade. Two towers, 150 CDs, of nothing but the most ridiculously obsene rap music that has been commmitted to tape. All parental advisory. We were good friends, so I’d go over to his house and he’d play the most ridiculously vulgar rap singles. This is the one that I remember listening to the most. It was that moment when I realized that there was something more out there to life than what was on the radio station and I wanted to see what was there. And the girls fucking loved this song. We'd be at parties and all the girls that I loved would be rapping all out, and I wanted to be with them.
Led to: Eventually led to my realzation that Jay had maximum flow.

8. Stay (I Missed You) - Lisa Loeb
So on one side I was listening to the most vulgar rap imaginable because I liked girls and on the other I was listening to the most feminine pop single of the day. This was my jam with my mom. I bought the tape single and I'd pop it into our toyota Previa and sing loud. And I think my mom humored me because I wasn't listening to rap. I wasn't quite sure what other people thought about this song, so whenever other people were in the car I'd have to think carefully if they would make fun of me or not. For those prevliged enough to hear it this began my nervous habit of getting really offended if people don’t like the songs I liked.
Led to: bands with melody like the Beach Boys

7. Bad - Michael Jackson
Someday it's going to come out that Michael Jackson is actually really into witch craft and in the early eighties came up with a magic potion to lure kids to him. Because I loved Michael Jackson and I loved this song. I remember him dancing in the subway. I remember dancing to his tape. In fact, the first time I ever knew that I loved music was with Michael Jackson. For some reason, all those bible school songs had forgotten the pelvic thrusts and the spine tingling yelps. That the potion runs out is apparently the price that Michael had to pay when he sold his soul to the devil, and is the easiest way to explain why he doesn't make good music anymore.

6. Swallowed - Bush
Sixten Stone was fine and all, but the first album I was ever terribly excited about before it came out was Bush's second album, Razorblade Suitcase. I remember telling Adam Brown in 8th grade that this was the best song ever made and that Razorblade Suitcase was going to rock the world. That it didn't is easy to see now. My moment of awaking, however, had more to do with my seeing Bush in concert and in the midddle of them completely fucking up this song experincing a vision from god, and lo he said: "Bush sucks, listen to Nirvana." And I did.
Led to: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and downloading albums six months before they actually came out.

5. Where It’s At - Beck
My dad loved Beck. It’s the only time in my entire life that I’ve played a song and he’s gone out of his way to tell me how much he likes it. "Who is that? That's great." This came right after I had started listening to the Smashing Pumpkins and had gotten rid of everything that didn't have really, really loud guitars. I was getting experimental. This song began my collapse into music journalism, of which I still read hours of daily. I suddenly realized that the critics were right, that Beck was awesome, and if they liked this, maybe they were right about other bands.
As well, this began the point in my life when people thought I was “getting weird”.
Led to: Pavement, Velvet Underground, R.E.M., Indie rock in general.

4. Wonderwall - Oasis
Mark Smith loved Oasis so I did, too. As the de facto bully of elementary school and junior high, I figured it would be good to have him as a friend instead of an enemy. And in the middle of listening to rap songs, we'd play this song. So even though Wonderwall is just a pop song played by a clumsy band with a punk rock singer, I was able to listen to it and feel no shame. Sometimes you need someone to let you know something is okay, and Mark did that for me. That I still listen to Oasis is entirelly my own fault.
Led to: an excessive amount of Oasis and The Beatles, pop songs drenched in whimsy, The Rolling Stones, Blur, reading the NME.

3. When I Come Around - Green Day
I'm not really sure what else there is to say about this song, except this is my first rock record. That without this album I probably would have never stopped listening to bad rap music. That I would have always followed what other people told me to listen to. To the seasoned punk establish meant Green Day might haved seemed a tad too lame, but to a disaffected junior high kid they signaled the beginning of independence. Bless you sirs.
led to: liking rock music, hating rap music

2. Waterfalls - TLC
It's obvsiouly very hard to talk about this song, and I hope no one that doesn't know me well is reading this, because I am embarrassed. In trying to chronicle where my tastes have come from, I feel like I've told too much. I started listening to the radio towards the end of elementary school, when all the rest of my friends could have cared less. And I remember the exact moment I heard this song (Hanover College basketball camp with my friend Chris Phillips). Every obsession I've had with music has been based in a small way with the way I treated this song, as a relic with arguing over, debating over, and worth holding on to. That the song hasn't held up, that I no longer ever listen to it, that I actually kind of hate this song, can't disminish its initial impact on me. I started listening because of this song.
led to: a full hard drive

1. 1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
So in the middle of me listening to bad grunge, bad rap, and Lisa Loeb came this song. And nothing was really ever the same. Green Day might have gutted my rap collection, but this song was the reason that I stopped listening to bad rock. Why I became a music snob in Junior High. Why? Well, just because this is the greatest fucking song.

I’m not going to lie. I’m pissed Austin put this at number one, because this is my song. I'm fairly sure that this song distorted my entire perception of life, because I was forever disappointed that beautiful girls in junior high and high school never wanted to skip out on a party with me and jump into a pool. But I'll blame that more on the excellent video than the song.

All songs afterward were judged in relation to this song, and it's an impossibly high bar to set. I could really go on about this song forever because it means that much, but this list is already too long. But like all great loves, I didn’t search for my favorite song. It came to me.
Led to: More, more, and more Smashing Pumpkins. Obsession with excellent music leading directly to Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, and the music that I'm currently listening to.