Songs 50-41 Say Yes When They Oughtta Say No

Okay, we’re up to the top fifty. If you’d like to listen along without having to click on the videos, you can hear me count down from #50 to #26 on my radio show. Although, you know, that might kill the suspense of the next two installments of the list.

50. Diddy featuring Keyshia Cole, Last Night (1651 or so plays last week)

When this came out I mistakenly assumed that finally, after years and years of annoying me, the Black Eyed Peas had finally come out with a decent song. Turns out it was Diddy. Oops! Aside from Keyshia Cole’s batshit “baby baby baby” wailing, the song’s most notable for the production, which features pianos, Papa Don’t Preach strings, and addictive coughing drumbeats.

49. Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham, The Sun Is Still Sunny (57 or so plays last week)

Dean Wareham, the master songwriter behind Galaxie 500 and Luna, is a man whose nipples I never thought I’d see on the internet. Britta Phillips was the singing voice of Jem. They’re married. Also they make beautiful, dippy indie folk songs. The Sun Is Still Sunny, the highlight of their Back Numbers record, ambles along in a luscious haze, with Wareham singing about an orchestra in his suitcase and Phillips using the expression “chicken today and feathers tomorrow.”

48. Ashley Tisdale, Be Good To Me (646 plays last week)

I might be an old fart, but I say bubbly teenpop was a lot better around the turn of the millennium than it is today.Genie In A Bottle-era Christina Aguilera could whoop the hell out of JoJo any day. There. I just had to get that off my chest. Anyway. Ashley Tisdale, the Laura Dern of Disney starlets, put out her debut album this year, and Disney didn’t even bother to make a real video for it. It sounds like it should have come out eight years ago, and maybe it’s that anachronism that made me like it so much.

47. Kylie Minogue, 2 Hearts (5229 plays last week)

After a fight with breast cancer, a disease that I’m sure you’re all aware of by now, The Little Australian That Could returned at the top of her game with 2 Hearts, a vampy stomper that’s a far cry from the anemic pop that made up most of Body Language. Love the whirring noises, the awesome woo-woo backup vocals and the video, which features glittering skull microphones and, if I’m not mistaken, a certain famous guitarist playing keyboards.

46. Dragonette, I Get Around (839 plays last week)

Like the New Young Pont Club, Dragonette started making trashy dance-pop in Toronto. Both groups hit it big this year, and both of them got me through many a dull workday. In the end, though, I prefer Dragonette’s guitar-oriented sound, probably because I feel like the band realize how silly they are and run with it rather than just taking cheap shots at douchy hipsters, which is what some bands (including lots of hipsters) end up doing. Does that make sense? They’re in on their own joke, and it’s a good one. But, more importantly, I Get Around is a fun song (even though it’s not about a Winnebago the way I thought it was for months and months.)

45. Richard Hawley, Tonight The Streets Are Ours (424 plays last week)

One of the great lost classics of Britpop is the Longpigs’ 1996 The Sun Is Often Out, and for those twelve songs the band’s former singer Richard Hawley is forever A-OK in my book. This year he put out his fifth solo album, Lady’s Bridge, a shimmering pop record in the vein of a more sincere Divine Comedy or Scott Walker. Tonight The Streets Are Ours, the first single, is an instant classic, slick but unpretentious pop with soaring strings, chimes, and a great chorus and bridge that make you want to take to the streets dancing. (I can’t say I understand the silly video, though. If anybody can try to explain it, leave your ideas in the comments section.)

44. Sondre Lerche, John Let Me Go (352 plays last week)

I wrote about Sondre Lerche and this song kind of extensively a couple of weeks ago, so I’ll keep this brief: This song is really cool. The end.

43. Gwen Stefani, 4 In The Morning (3237 plays last week)

You know how some clothing designers will make a couple of ridiculous pieces for their runway shows in order to get attention, but make really well-crafted and wearable pieces the other 364 days of the year? That’s a lot like Gwen Stefami. I don’t mean L.A.M.B. I’m taking about her albums. For every flashy Hollaback Girl or Wind It Up, there’s an equally great Tony Kanal production like Cool (on her first album) or 4 In The Morning (on The Sweet Escape). It’ll probably be forgotten by radio listeners in about four months and then hit your local Stop and Shop shortly after that, but it’s a great mid-tempo ballad that’s not actually a ballad at all. I love the way GStef manages to make the sort of pop songs that haven’t been popular since 1988 without sounding like it’s 1988.

(nb: note about my Adam Levine comment the other day–maybe he’s not getting ready for a solo career; apparently Universal just lives in a strange grammatical universe where it makes sense to describe things with sentences like this one: “music video by Gwen Stefani performing 4 In The Morning with G. Stefani, T. Kanal”)

42. Patrick Wolf, The Magic Position (3157 plays last week–way more than I’d have guessed)

Patrick Wolf, hero to young boys everywhere, is kind of ugly, has really annoying hair, and wears clothes that could have come from Gwen Stefani’s Salvation Army pile. Luckily, though, I live in the US, where hardly anybody knows who he is and I can listen to his music without ever having to look at or watch him. The Magic Position album, like his previous first album, Lycanthropy,* is a mixed bag, with borderline dreadful compositions sharing space with wonderful numbers like this one.

(*I never heard Wind In The Wires, his second CD, and forgot it existed until an alert reader just reminded me.)

41. Bedouin Soundclash, 12:59 Lullaby (347 plays last week)

I don’t feel cheesy about my love of a certain Ashley Tisdale song, embarrassed by championing Chumbawamba in 2007, or even remotely ashamed when I blast Shirley Bassey’s version of Get This Party Started at work. But boy, do I feel like a big cornball when this song comes on. Some combination of the melody and Jay Malinowski’s croaky vocals makes me totally willing to ignore the fact that this is basically a love song for stinky Hacky Sack enthusiasts. 12:59 Lullaby is similar to the equally corny patchouli-infused cover of Over The Rainbow that became a hit in TV commercials about ten years after Israel Kamakawiwoʻole died, but instead of a morbidly obese Hawaiian the song comes from a bunch of fratty-looking white guys whose bio includes the words “Canadian” “reggae” AND “soul.” (It’s really the soul part that gets me, I guess, since I have to admit I don’t hate all white Canadian reggae.)