BEST MUSIC OF 2010- THE AGONY OF LIST MAKING

List making seems to be a universal response that we use to try and seek order in the randomness of life. Some lists order the mundane and the domestic. Others address deeper issues. The composition of such lists is thought to reflect on our personality and character, at least that’s what the more sensitive of us think. Below is a list of my 50 favourite songs of last year.

• Helicopter- Deer Hunter
• Fever Dreaming- No Age
• Spanish Sahara-Foals
• Living In America-Dom
• Answer To Yourself- Soft Pack
• Celestica- Crystal Castles
• Zebra- Beach House
• Power- Kanye West ft Dwele
• Infinity Guitars- Sleigh Bells
• Sun Hands- Local Natives
• Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)- Arcade Fire
• Slow- Twin Shadow
• Ambling Alp- Yeasayer
• Flash Delirium- MGMT
• Let’s Get Lost- Beck and Bat for Lashes
• All Of the Lights- Kanye West ft. everybody
• Stay Too Long- Plan B
• Solitude is Bliss- Tame Impala
• Weird Feelings- Male Bonding
• The Day- Curren$y (Ft Mos Def and Jay Electronica)
• Exhibit C- Jay Electronica
• Runaway-Kanye West ft Pusha T
• Shutterbug- Big Boi ft Cutty
• The High Road- Broken Bells
• I Can’t Write left Handed-The Roots and John Legend
• Juicy-r – Wait What
• Fuck You- Cee-Lo Green
• Odessa-Caribou
• Gonorrhea- Lil Wayne
• Troublemaker- The Koxx
• Haha Jk- Das Racist
• Everybody Knows- Kids of 88
• Me and the Devil- Gil Scott Heron
• Born Free- M.I.A
• We Want War- The New Puritans
• Young Blood-The Naked and Famous
• Round and Round-Ariel Pink
• All I Want- LCD Soundsystem
• Monster- Kanye West ft Justin Vernon, Rick Ross, Jay Z and Nicki Minaj.
• Go Outside-Cults
• The Girl and The Robot- Robyn ft Royksopp
• Giving Up The Gun- Vampire Weekend
• Nothing On We- Chiddy Bang
• Apply-Glasser
• Joker-Tron
• Cold War- Janelle Monae
• French! – Tyler the Creator ft Hodgy Beats
• Lil Freak-Usher ft Nicki Minaj
• Hard in Da Paint- Waka Flocka Flame ft Ciara
• Telephone- Lady Gaga ft Beyonce

Because lists such as these can be seen as insights into people, the compilation process takes careful consideration. First of all, how many of your guilty pleasures should make it? These are the songs that you love to hear or sing along to or accidentally leave on your iPOD so your wife finds them and plays them in the car all the time meaning that you can then tease her musical taste to the other passengers in the car while being able to enjoy the song without being the one who played it. Bit like having your cake and eating it to.The right number of these songs in the list is hard to define; a couple adds credibility to a list. It shows that you keep an open mind and will see greatness in music, even if it is mainstream trash that you wouldn’t usually touch. However, too many of these songs means you have moved away from being ironic to being wack. For example, Lady Gaga’s song is a guilty pleasure. Other years, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake and even Miley Cyrus would have appeared on my end of year list. Having a couple of these songs are essential to any good, end of year, list.

Guilty as charged

Then you have to consider the hipster vote. Hipsters are that strange breed of people who malign mainstream society and proclaim themselves as alternative, only to conform so strongly to their non-conformity that they end up being more conformist than the groups they set themselves apart from. Hipsters dress the same, speak the same, read the same books and listen to the same music. Hipsters hate other hipsters who make bands and then proceed to get famous. I imagine that this is why many hipsters hate Vampire Weekend. Another band of hipsters is Kids of 88, a New Zealand band that all hipsters hate. A New Zealand newspaper carried a review of the Kids of 88 debut album Sugarpills that famously consisted purely of the definition of placebo and the placebo effect “something of no intrinsic remedial value that is used to appease or reassure another”. Nothing irritates hipsters more than a band who apes their favourite hipster bands. Justin Bieber gets less vitriol than bands like Kids of 88, who admittedly should get some grief for being pretentious posers. If you don’t get a hipster favourite band, let’s say Animal Collective, prepare yourself for the look, a roll of the eyes, as if to say yes you I knew you wouldn’t get, you’re too straight to understand where they are coming from. They might then say ‘it’s not something that you get straight away” or “listen to it, you might get it in 5 years time”. A hipster would never concede to another hipster that they didn’t understand or get something that other hipsters do. I call this the Kid A effect. Kid A (a record I do like a lot but only after repeat listens) was so out there, so different from OK Computer or anything else in the Radiohead catalogue, that on first lesson, the honest reaction for most people would have been WTF. Hipsters, on the other hand, would have professed instant gratification, even though they don’t get it. In this parable, Kid A serves as the clothes the Emperor wears in the story the Emperor’s new clothes. A hipster saying that he didn’t get Kid A or another such album would be paramount to a rugby head expressing a love for ballet or being outed as an avid reader of Jane Austin.

Didn't get it? It's OK, just admit it.

Then there are your favourite artists to add. I’ve always had a soft spot for Lil Wayne. I’m standing by him even after the cough syrup addiction, the prison term, the ridiculous rock album. Even though his first release post-prison wasn’t great, at least it hinted that he was getting back to his best form. So, one of his songs gets on my list. Then, you have to consider when is too many too many. I have four Kanye songs on this list. This could look like blind devotion to an artist but I don’t care. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was easily my favourite album last year, so four tracks aren’t out of place appearing on the list.

Talented Douchebag.

Some of these songs I only like certain parts. Like the New Puritans song. Most of it is overwrought, sub-prog rock underneath cliche over-synthesized robotic chanting. But there is grittiness to the song, reminding me of the angry guitars from Massive Attack’s Mezzanine album, that I really dig. Likewise, Kanye’s Monster. It’s got a good beat, but Kanye’s verse has some real clunkers (pussy in a sarcophagus??). Even Jay Z’s 16 bars plumbs the depth with his declaration of love being his Achilles heel. But it’s all irrelevant when Nicki Minaj, she of guest appearance and mixtape fame, trumps everyone. By the end of her verse, she leaves a twisted and torn beat. “You could be the King but watch the Queen conquer.” I listen to that song just for her verse.

Lists like this reflect a change in taste. 15 years ago, if I had made a list like this, I would guess that about 70% of the tracks would have been grungy, guitar driven hard rock. This list hardly has a hard rock song on it. It’s dominated by indie bands and hip-hop. I have a bit of a weakness at the moment for brash but clever hip-hop like Waka Flocka Flame. Misogynist rhymes that I would dislike if Eminem dropped them, I like in other rappers. I think this is because I think Eminem is crazy enough to one day carry through with his rap fantasies (although Gucci Mane is pretty out there, with his ice-cream tat and all). Songs have acquired different meanings along the way, different associations. When I hear ‘Who Loves The Sun’ by the Velvet Underground, I think of Perfume by Patrick Suskind. When I listen to Trinity Root’s song Sense and Cents, I think of a book about Gallipoli I was reading when that album was on high rotate on my stereo. Other songs affect me in unexpected ways; maybe I’m just getting more emotional in my advancing years.

Compiling a list seems like an easy task but it can be tiring with so many things to consider……………………………………………………………………