Year-End Bullshit: Top 25 Songs of the Year

All right, let's get down to it. 2007: the year of the 7+ minute song...?

25. The Arcade Fire - "Keep the Car Running"

I can understand if someone stopped caring about the Arcade Fire when they got all Bruce Springsteen-y this year, but they nailed the "Dancer in the Dark" vibe with this one. The obvious highlight from "Neon Bible".

24. Kelly Clarkson - "Never Again"

Ridiculously underrated single; look, you can bitch that it doesn't stack up against "Since U Been Gone", but most songs don't. "Never Again" is a worthy sequel; give props to that operatic bridge, please.

23. Bone Thugs N Harmony ft. Akon - "I Tried"

Another great Bone Thugs single with Akon finally understanding what it means to be understated. That piano intro, that line "I'm havin' a hard time... stayin' on track, man"... we all need more Bone Thugs in our lives.

22. Los Campesinos! - "You! Me! Dancing!"

Not the best song ever, but a damn fun one. In a year where Architecture in Helsinki sucked as a whole, Los Campesinos! filled the niche well.

21. Justice - "D.A.N.C.E."

A lot of people have said a lot of things about this song, but the thing that always makes me gravitate toward it is how unashamedly good-natured it is. Not a hint of malice on this dance floor, ladies and gents.

20. Fall Out Boy - "Thnks Fr The Mmrs"

The sound of a band becoming masters of their own domain? Maybe. Punk-ass video aside, this single is the sound of FOB executing everything well, and making the hard-earned seem effortless.

19. UGK - "International Player's Anthem (I Choose You)"

Hip-hop in "classic" mode, but maybe it feels so retro just because it blows the rest of commercial radio-rap (MIMS, Souljah Boy) the fuck away. At least Pimp C bestowed this upon the world before leaving it.

18. Lil Mama - "Lip Gloss"

Proof of the theory that, if you've got some explosive percussion, a female snarl, and conviction to whatever you're rambling about, you can make ANYTHING sound cool. ...Watchu know bout me?

17. Feist - "1,2,3,4"

Like "Float On" and "Crazy", a crossover hit that absolutely deserved it. Unstoppable chorus + illogical counting = boat load of fun; wonder when Feist will fade back into obscurity!

16. Kanye West - "Can't Tell Me Nothing"

A definite grower, this song works much better as a "Graduation" album track than a single, probably because it's so brooding and narcissistic. But that's Kanye, in all his insecure glory. Brutal honesty.

15. Burial - "Archangel"

It's a ghost of a song, really. Distorted vocals and barely-there beats make great singles nowadays? But this is both disturbingly personal and vaguely anonymous at the same time, and captures everything great about "Untrue". "Tell me I belong," indeed.

14. Spoon - "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb"

Motown now consists of a skinny white boy gyrating and spitting out words in a sandpaper voice. That's okay. All swagger and cola fizz, Britt Daniel and co. basically master an entirely different genre of music in a tad over three minutes.

13. Jay-Z - "Roc Boys (And the Winner Is...)"

No, "American Gangster" is still overrated and a conceptual mess, but this is Hov's best banger since maybe "The Blueprint" era. The horns are admittedly tremendous, but it works because Jay spits fire and makes a case that he's still relevant.

12. The National - "Brainy"

"Boxer"'s most near-perfect song is a (surprise!) muted one, with gentle woodwinds hidden by hair-trigger drumming. It's like a lot of other songs on the album, but here, everything comes together in a combination so sleek and modest you'll be shocked how much you love it.

11. Rilo Kiley - "Silver Lining"

There is nothing overly special about "Silver Lining": instrumentation's kinda plain, and Jenny Lewis' vocals and lyrics are unremarkable. Good thing the track's got hooks out the wazoo. It's just a well-written single, really, and wrings every last drop of excitement out of a time-worn arrangement.

10. LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends"

It's always difficult for me to give props to James Murphy. The guy makes self-effacing, conceited music, and although this is not his tortured masterpiece, it comes damn close. The piano hook somehow becomes more thrilling through repetition, and the lyrics try to cut to the bone, and mostly succeed. I don't think it will hold up as well as everybody else does, but right now it's pulse-racing.

9. Spoon - "Don't You Evah"

Every inch of this song bleeds calculated joy. The wah-wah guitar solo, the snap-pop cymbals, the handclaps -- dear God, those fucking handclaps -- and Britt Daniel's boxstep voice, which pierces so many sound bytes that it eventually circles back on itself. To suggest a minor alteration to the song is to pull at a thread that could unravel its very fabric; it's like a theorem you couldn't disprove if you wanted to.

8. Battles - "Atlas"

I don't feel capable of handling this song. No. Analyzing "Atlas" is not meant to be easy, because much of its effect is meant to be unspoken. The drive of this song is primal; it beats down upon you, grinding you with proggy delight until you have to just shut the fuck up and groove. The fact that the lyrics are a goopy, chipmunk-y mess is irrelevant; this stuff is too soul-shattering for the brain to process.

7. Animal Collective - "Fireworks"

If "Strawberry Jam" finds AC at their most accessible (but still weird), "Fireworks" is their most emotionally coherent song to date. Avey Tare's usually obtuse songwriting buckles down and goes straight toward the heartstrings, and luckily, he's got the explosive arrangements to double its effect. Animal Collective is an inconsistent band, but this proves that they can be the Decade's Best Band, like so many believe them to be.

6. DJ Khaled featuring Everyone, "We Takin' Over"

The best hip-hop summit since "Slow Jamz", this rap wrecking crew was relentless in declaring its no-bullshit mission statement. Face it, hip-hop is becoming devoid of stars, and this joint effort is impressive if only for the assurance injected into every word. Yeah, Weezy became a hero, but that was a foregone conclusion. Simply put, if these 6 dudes DID take over, and MIMS was eliminated forever, I'd be okay with that.

5. The Twilight Sad - "Cold Days From the Birdhouse"

I want U2, or a band like U2 (I only said U2 because of the accent), a band that's been around forever and still commands dinosaur-packed arenas, to write an anthem with as much intensity and craftsmanship as this. A band like The Twilight Sad -- and I admit, I'm not a big fan of their album -- wastes this song playing in front of 100 people; this is meant for grander scales. Huge clobber follows soothing passage like it's no big deal, if only because the atmosphere's as big as a blimp before a single cymbal crashes. The Twilight Sad need to get huge, if only so this song can be played in front of thousands, where it belongs to be heard.

4. R. Kelly - "I'm A Flirt (Remix)"

And this year, a long-assumed quality was confirmed to be truth: R. Kelly is made of butter. His sole purpose in the world of music (supposedly) is to try to make a single hott enough that, by association with it, he will melt. "I'm A Flirt (Remix)" is so hott that, by the time Robert confirms himself to be a "a dog on the prowl", T.I. looks pretty and slings some relationship advice, T-Pain orgasms in vocoder, and R. comes back with some "IT'S.... THE... REEEE-MIX!" shit... oh look, R. Kelly has become a puddle on the floor, a calorie-loaded liquid that's optimal for pouring over popcorn or naked ladies. You can lock this man up, but he'd be too slippery anyway.

3. Fall Out Boy - "The Take Over, The Break's Over"

As we are undoubtedly in the middle of the nasal-voiced rock era, it's tricky to define something as legitimately good, instead of good when compared to the other dreck in its genre. Fall Out Boy proved themselves the former this year, thanks in no small part to this song, which can only be described as a magnificently produced pop song. This is the grace of heaven a band like this should not have in them: split-second vocal overlaps, bouncing guitars, barely noticeable piano twinkles, claps that might as well be boxing punches to the gut. The ringleader is Patrick Stump, tortured bastard, warbling nonsense lyrics and keeping the rest of his competitors in a whiny headlock. Dudes are for real.

2. Lil Wayne - "Back On My Grizzy"

The mere notion that Lil Wayne would bury a song that resembles actual flames in the middle of disc 2 of his mammoth mixtape suggests two distinct things: 1. he doesn't give a fuck about sequencing, because it's a MIXTAPE, and 2. Weezy captures fire in the studio so frequently that he can afford to spread that shit throughout 29 tracks. It's comparable to the rest of his output, of course, but "Back On My Grizzy" is the most crystallized illustration of Lil Wayne absolutely SLAYING shit: the beat, the art of freestyling, his competitors, an entire genre of music, etc. The three separate crescendoes are ineffable beauty, both slowing words down to bullet-time and speeding up the mind until it simply cannot handle a flow this filthy. It's the song that convinced me to give Weezy F. Baby the crown.

1. Frog Eyes - "Bushels"

A lot of the songs on this list are better-made songs than "Bushels", probably. Bands like Spoon and Battles operate on meticulousness, and rely on deliberate timing and expected shifts to weave their stories. Frog Eyes, for better or worse, do not do any of these things, and seem to operate instead on the last batch of adrenaline in Carey Mercer's writhing body. "Bushels" is not an nifty little sugar rush, but a rickety roller coaster ride, where the car can fall off the tracks at any given loops. There are breakdowns, build-ups, whispers that become shouts, phrases repeated endless times, and instruments that rough up the song like big bullies with jagged teeth; it's exhausting stuff, really. It's also the most emotional, honest music I have heard all year. When the line "When am I ever gonna feel the sting of your sun?" staggers out of Mercer's mouth, statues could be expected to crumble into weeping messes. When the chorus of ghosts return, the music races back, and Mercer goes batshit over the word "home", it's like the solution to every problem in the world has been found. It's about a band laying everything out on the table, squeezing every drop of themselves into nine minutes and thirteen seconds. They succeed.