To The Left, To The Left. Songs 70-61 In The Box To The Left.

Okay, I’m now 40% of the way through this list and the excitement just keeps getting MORE AND MORE INTENSE because now we’re almost halfway through the countdown oh my god oh my god oh my god!!

I need sleep. Also, sorry about the absurd variety in the size of the pictures. I don’t feel like resizing them.

70. Lauryn Hill, Lose Myself (dunno how many plays–less than 184 though)

Possibly the strangest song to come out all year. As I write this, I’m listening to some whippersnapper play Lauryn Hill on a classic hip-hop radio show. But what happened after that one great album? After years of silence, a really difficult concert album, and rumors of religious zealotry and an impossibly strict work ethic, what does the former Fugee do for a comeback? She writes a ranty and fairly tuneless song about hopelessness, sings it like she’s fighting a migraine, puts it over a perky beat that was probably meant for Lily Allen, and releases it on the soundtrack to an animated movie about surfing penguins. CUH-RAZEE! Yet, somehow, also surprisingly cool.

69. Chumbawamba, Laughter In A Time Of War (dunno how many plays last week, but only 433 in the last 6 months so not many)

And speaking of people you didn’t think you’d ever hear from again, who knew that the band who gave soccer thugs the ultimate song to rock out to in 1997 would return a decade later with the best folk album of the year? Seriously! Released in the US late in 2006 by radical publishers AK Press, the sound of A Singsong And A Scrap is best described by the band themselves:

“The acoustic/acapella section of the band decided to expand into something much deeper and broader…started playing more shows, added accordion, wrote new songs and gradually morphed into a Metallicalike machine. Albeit a newfolk agitprop acoustic Metallica, with melodies, harmonies, and a sense of awareness of the world around us. And without an overbearing Scandinavian drummer, a oneriff guitarist and an expensive therapist at all group meetings.”

They’re a lot weirder than you might have thought. There’s even a Bollywood-inspired punk covers band side project. Check out their covers of Once In A Lifetime and Germ Free Adolescents on their Myspace.

68. Yeasayer, Sunrise (1410 plays last week)

One of the bigger blog-hype bands of the year, Brooklyn’s Yeasayer are catchy and percussive–hip enough to sound like a convert testifying at a Beck concert (if such a thing would be allowed), but poppy enough that it sounds more than a little like Say It Right by Nelly Furtado. There’s something about it that just screams “Not so great, actually!” But I don’t care; the percussion gets my hips a-swaying anyway.

67. Beyonce, Irreplaceable* (3749 plays last week)

(*This is the only thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube that has ads–for the History Channel, of all things–embedded in the video. So, be aware when you click.)

Girls lie. They get upset and they lie. Take Beyonce, for instance, and the chorus of Irreplaceable, the biggest hit of her hit-filled career. If she’s got another you coming over in a minute, why does she backtrack a second later and say she could have another you by tomorrow? Because she’s lying, that’s why! And she’s a big drama queen! This song’s great not so much for Beyonce’s vocals as for the clever lyrics, which apparently required six people to write, including four Norwegians. Good thing it’s such a likable song; it spent ten weeks at #1 on the pop chart, and also hit #1 on the R&B, adult contemporary, and club charts (not to mention #4 on the Latin chart) making it more or less impossible to avoid for all of last winter, spring, and half the summer.

66. Kissy Sell Out, Get Ready For The K Hole! (37 plays last week)

Is there ever something that you really know you shouldn’t like–something with lots of different elements that individually you think are really dumb–but for some reason you think the whole is just totally awesome? Well, a Technotronic 2 Unlimited* sample is definitely not the key to my heart, and neither is singing about drugs I’ve never done (and have no particular urge to do.) But this unbelievably dopey cautionary tale about getting slipped ketamine and waking up naked in a trash can just made me really fucking happy, every single time I heard it, since it first crossed my ears back in June.

(*Thanks, Maarten.)

65. Fall Out Boy, This Ain’t A Scene It’s An Arms Race (7498 plays last week)

Catchy little fucker, isn’t it? But does it bother anybody else that he doesn’t actually say Goddamn arms race–he’s saying Gah Dah Ahce Race? Those totally aren’t real words. But, you know, the kids seem to like it. Also, okay, but now that I’ve spent four hours watching people singing it on YouTube, WHAT THE HOTPOT is this girl saying in the chorus? (TWICE?!?!) Also, what kind of weird stage is this? And what does it mean in the comments when someone says “That style is for Koreans?”

Okay, now that I’m all worked up, on to number 64.

64. Sally Shapiro, He Keeps Me Alive (230 plays this week)

Sally Shapiro is an internet sensation, but aside from that I think it’s pretty safe to say that she is the polar opposite of Fall Out Boy i every way. After getting lots of buzz last year for I’ll Be By Your Side, her mega-fabulous debut single, enigmatic and possibly fictional Swedish chanteuse Sally Shapiro released her Disco Romance album, but the US version didn’t come out until almost a full year later. He Keeps Me Alive was one of three new tracks on the American version, as incentive for the 12 people that might want it and hadn’t downloaded it already. This delicate Italo disco number’s set to be a single early next year. It’s no I’ll Be By Your Side, but then again, not much is.

63. Future Clouds And Radar, Holy Janet Comes On Waves (6 plays last week)

Not many bands enter the world with a double album, but that’s what Future Clouds and Radar did with their neat little self-titled debut. Holy Janet Comes On Waves is a highlight, sounding like the love child of Robyn Hitchcock and Matthew Sweet, with just a touch of Robert Pollard’s fake British vocal stylings. There wasn’t a lot of good old-fashioned power-pop this year, but I really like what FC&R are doing, especially since they’re not afraid to get all orchestral or lo-fi if they feel like it.

62. Malcolm Middleton & Alan Bissett, The Rebel On His Own Tonight (27 plays this week)

I’ve been a fan of Arab Strap, at least in theory, since Philophobia, but I never listened to them as much as I have in the last year, now that they broke up. Speed Date, from their last album (and my #12 song of last year) is the single most-played song on my itunes at work, and I’ve been listening to their other albums pretty often, too. Malcolm Middleton, the half of the duo that didn’t sing, put out this third solo album this year, and this week he’s releasing a song called We’re All Going To Die, just in time for Christmas. But the best thing he did all year was a track with author Alan Bissett for the Ballads of the Book compilation, which paired Scottish musicians (Trashcan Sinatras and Vashti Bunyan, among others) with Scottish writers (like Ian Rankin and Alasdair Gray). The excellent Middleton/Bissett duet is funny, sad, a little drunk and a little crazy.

61. VHS Or Beta, Can’t Believe A Single Word (499 plays last week)

In a year that it was really cool to sound like Daft Punk, Kentucky’s VHS or Beta turned away from the Francophile leanings of their previous work and decided to all of a sudden make the kind of anthems that the Killers mistakenly decided to avoid making on their second album. It’s nothing special, in the grand scheme of things, but songs like Can’t Believe A Single Word have a kicky punch that’s a step above most of the dance-rock out there. It’s too bad their album got such undeservedly shitty reviews.