Best Singles of 2007

Rating: Not reviewed


1. "All My Friends" – LCD Soundsystem/Franz Ferdinand/The Main Drag/John Cale
LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy channels the teenage wasteland of The Who's "Baba O'Reilly" for an epic about a generation slouching toward middle age in "All My Friends." The beat is afire as the high-hat ticks away the seconds in quadruple time from quarter-life to midlife to end of life. The rhythm is propulsive, but the sense of late-night nostalgia, regret and melancholy is palpable in lines like, "You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan and the next five years trying to be with your friends again / You're talking 45 turns just as fast as you can / Yeah, you know it gets tired, but it's better when we pretend / It comes apart."

To cement its classic status, the song has already been the subject of numerous covers: Franz Ferdinand turns the song into an indie rager that won't go silently into that good night, John Cale one-ups Murphy's turn away from hipster irony toward genuine emotion and The Main Drag builds up the anthem toward a spine-tingling, violin-laden catharsis. But it's Murphy who truly sets the controls for the heart of the sun ("one of the ways that we show our age," he sings) and takes the listener straight on until morning.

2. "Intervention" – Arcade Fire
The Arcade Fire's latest bit of rabble-rousing in the tradition of "The Funeral's" "Rebellion," "Intervention" takes down organized religion and the Bush administration in one fell swoop. Lines like "Working for the church / While your family dies / You take what they give you / And you keep it inside" address wealthy churches that fail to help the communities they preach to as much as it attacks the soldiers let down by inept strategies and policies in Iraq. The stirring organ that opens the track adds to the feeling this is a gospel song for those demanding change.

3. "Umbrella" – Rihanna
The refrain of "ella, ella, ay, ay, ay" was easily mocked as "Umbrella" made its way toward being the most ubiquitous song of the year. Yet the jokes could do nothing to diminish the strange power of Rihanna's pop masterpiece and its extraordinarily moving sentiment of through-better-or-worse devotion and her metaphorical offering of shelter from the storm.

4. "Objects of My Affection" – Peter Bjorn and John
"Objects of My Affection" opens Peter Bjorn and John's 2006 album "Writer's Block," but it feels as much like a summation as an opening salvo. The song charges along in six-eight time with walls of guitars, snare and whistling filling the soundscape. Peter is preparing to give someone a "try," but he's also contemplating who he was when he first moved to a new city and before he met her. "And the question is, 'Was I more alive / Then than I am now?' / I happily have to disagree; / I laugh more often now, I cry more often now, / I am more me." There have been few truer statements about what it truly means to be in love.

5. "International Player's Anthem (I Choose You)" – UGK
"International Player's Anthem" is a polygamist marriage of Southern rap couples UGK (Pimp C and Bun B), Outkast (Andre 3000 and Big Boi) and Three 6 Mafia (Juicy J and DJ Paul), and the marriage was sadly a till-death affair after UGK's Pimp C was found dead in a Hollywood hotel room. The remnant of that holy union, set to Willie Hutch's "I Choose You," is a glorious depiction of romances that range from true love to messy divorces to pimps and hoes.

6. "Bros" – Panda Bear
Panda Bear's incandescent "Bros" gently ingratiates itself with the listener over the course of 12-and-a-half minutes until it becomes a sort of religious experience, a prayer both to the music deity and to those pop gods Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, Lee "Scratch" Perry, the Happy Mondays and Spiritualized. Despite its mammoth length, "Bros" unfurls unassumingly with drum loops, a modest melody that samples 1960s English instrumental group The Tornados and, later, Cat Stevens and Panda Bear's vocals echoing amidst the sound effects of cars and subways passing and children and grown men crying. Meanwhile the lyrics astutely and sensitively detail a troubled "bromance" of sorts between two friends (hopefully not Panda Bear and Animal Collective bandmate Avey Tare) as Panda Bear sings, "I mean no offense / But grow up / Can't you just grow up? / When are you going to / Give it your own go?" The song isn't a fight between friends so much as it is a stern push forward.

7. "Keeping the Car Running" – Arcade Fire
"Keep the Car Running" wisely keeps the motive behind Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler's need to escape obscure, making it at once an intimate tale about fleeing abusive parents, a failed marriage, a heist gone wrong or even a country gone awry. The flight may be by car, but this song gallops, making the mandolin, a kick drum and an old piano surprising instruments of freedom.

8. "Someone Great" – LCD Soundsystem
The life ("I miss the way we used to argue / Locked in your basement") and sudden death ("To tell the truth I saw it coming / The way you were breathing") of a mistress are detailed with painful specificity in LCD Soundsystem's electro-eulogy "Someone Great." Synthesizers wailing, "lovely weather" and coffee that "isn't even bitter" (not to mention his wife's attendance at the funeral, at which she's shocked to discover the mistress is "even human") beleaguer James Murphy's attempts to grieve and move on. Murphy's infidelity is depicted compassionately and his lover (the "someone great") is even more subversively regarded with kindness. "It keeps coming 'til the day it stops," Murphy laments as he confronts his own mortality, but he still has "songs to be finished," saving him for the moment.

9. "D.A.N.C.E." – Justice
Justice's "D.A.N.C.E." lyrically unfolds as a brief history of some of Michael Jackson's greatest hits, referencing "ABC," "Dancing Machine," "Beat It," "PYT," "Black or White" and "Working Day and Night" with panache. The MJ shout-outs make the use of a children's chorus for the vocals a little uncomfortable. They also add to the song's effortless charm. The chant of "Do the D-A-N-C-E" almost achieves purity in its simplicity.

10. "All I Need" – Radiohead
"All I Need" ranks beside The Police's "Every Breath You Take" as one of pop music's most misunderstood "love" songs. Like The Police's stalker anthem, Radiohead's "All I Need" is a song that details the obsession of a man whose adored is either unaware of or blithely ignores his affections: "I am an animal trapped in your hot car," Thom Yorke sings, "I am a moth who just wants to share your light." Yorke's disregarded lover recognizes his position, but he still declares "You're all I need" with conviction, leading to one of Radiohead's most stirring finale's since "Let Down." Yorke's emotional cry of "It's all right / It's all wrong" shows how unreciprocated love is sometimes more intensely felt than love consummated.

11. "Fireworks" – Animal Collective
12. "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" – Of Montreal
13. "No Cars Go" – Arcade Fire
14. "Dashboard" – Modest Mouse
15. "Upgrade U" – Lil' Wayne/Beyonce
16. "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" – Spoon
17. "1 2 3 4" – Feist
18. "What Goes Around…/…Comes Around (Interlude)" – Justin Timberlake
19. "2080" – Yeasayer
20. "Beautiful Life" – Gui Boratto
21. "You! Me! Dancing!" – Los Campesinos!
22. "Roc Boys (And the Winner Is…)" – Jay-Z
23. "Fake Empire" – The National
24. "Cold Days from the Birdhouse" – The Twilight Sad
25. "Heart of Hearts" – !!!
26. "Mistaken for Strangers" – The National
27. "Everyday" – The Field
28. "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance" – The Black Kids
29. "Paper Planes (Remix)" (feat. Bun B and Rich Boy) – M.I.A.
30. "Can't Tell Me Nothing" – Kanye West
31. "North American Scum" – LCD Soundsystem
32. "Sad Song" – Au Revoir Simone
33. "Reckoner" – Radiohead
34. "Ignorant Shit" (feat. Beanie Sigel) – Jay-Z
35. "A Postcard to Nina" – Jens Lekman
36. "A Paw in My Face" – The Field
37. "I Believe" – Simian Mobile Disco
38. "House of Cards" – Radiohead
39. "Pussyole (Oldskool)" – Dizzee Rascal
40. "I Rock" – Cool Kids
41. "Lip Gloss" – Lil Mama
42. "The Good Life" (feat. T-Pain) – Kanye West
43. "That Summer, At Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy" – The Twilight Sad
44. "Sons of Cain" – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
45. "I'm Not Gonna Cry" – Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
46. "Heatherwood" – Deerhunter
47. "On Call" – Kings of Leon
48. "The Underdog" – Spoon
49. "Jimmy" – M.I.A.
50. "Stronger" – Kanye West
51. "The Heinrich Maneuver" – Interpol
52. "Golden Skans" – The Klaxons
53. "Take Me to the Riot" – Stars
54. "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" – Radiohead
55. "Time to Pretend" – MGMT
56. "Flashing Lights" – Kanye West
57. "We Takin' Over" (feat. T.I., Rick Ross, Akon, Birdman, Fat Joe and Lil Wayne) – DJ Khaled
58. "Read My Mind" – The Killers
59. "Pogo" – Digitalism
60. "Back to Black" – Amy Winehouse
61. "No Pussy Blues" – Grinderman
62. "Katrina" – The Black Lips
63. "I'm a Flirt (Remix)" (feat. T.I. and T-Pain) – R. Kelly/"I'm a Flirt (Shoreline)" (R. Kelly vs. Broken Social Scene) – ABX
64. "Rise Above" – The Dirty Projectors
65. "The Crystal Cat" – Dan Deacon
66. "I Feel Like Dying" – Lil' Wayne
67. "Four Winds" – Bright Eyes
68. "Boyz" – M.I.A.
69. "Fall From a Height" – The Honeydrips
70. "All Through the Night" – Escort
71. "88" – Cool Kids
72. "Bluebells" – Patrick Wolf
73. "Tbtf" – Kevin Drew
74. "Stop Me" (feat. Daniel Merriweather) – Mark Ronson
75. "I'm Not There" – Sonic Youth
76. "Almost Ready" – Dinosaur Jr.
77. "Backed Out on the…" – Kevin Drew
78. "Melody Day" – Caribou
79. "Like New" – Deerhunter
80. "Deserter" – Matthew Dear
81. "23" – Blonde Redhead
82. "Neck Escaper" – No Age
83. "Watch My Feet" – Dude 'N Nem
84. "Like a Boy" – Ciara
85. "Heartbroken" (feat. Jodie Aysha) – T2
86. "Black Like Me" – Spoon
87. "Silly Crimes" – The Tough Alliance
88. "Wash Off" – Deerhunter
89. "Archangel" – Burial
90. "Wham City" – Dan Deacon
91. "To the East" – Electrelane
92. "Born on the FM Waves of the Heart" – Against Me!
93. "I Get Money" – 50 Cent
94. "None Shall Pass" – Aesop Rock
95. "I Get Around" – Dragonette/"I Get Around (Van She Vocal Mix)" – Dragonette
96. "Teenage Lust!" – Times New Viking
97. "Myriad Harbour" – The New Pornographers
98. "Now, Now" – St. Vincent
99. "Grip Like a Vice" – The Go! Team
100. "Gimme More" – Britney Spears

Posted Monday, December 31, 2007

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/music.features/best.singles.2007