i (heart) these songs

by A.M. 180 on Thu, 2009/01/01 - 4:20am Post to Twitter

download all the pretty songs in a zip file:
A.M. 180: top 30 tracks of 2008

get them while they’re hot
(or, you know, before they get deleted)

30 Jeremy Jay - “Beautiful Rebel”
And so my list begins with a sigh. “Beautiful Rebel” is ghostly and reverent, and I love how important the actual words sound, like an incantation, or a summoner’s song.

29 Kelley Polar - “Entropy Reigns (in the Celestial City)”
One of the first things that I end up thinking about as I consider these songs is which songs from last year would be their matches. For example, is “Closer” this year’s “Don’t Stop the Music”? Is “Oops (Oh My)” this year’s ”Heartbroken”? “Entropy Reigns” feels like a sister to Don Cash’s “2k7” because they both manage this weird balance of humor and dead serious disco, which some could confuse for cheesiness, but is actually mind-blowing awesomeness. Not to be confused with coolly ironic hipster disco. “Entropy Reigns” has that fundamentally uncool edge.

28 Estelle - “American Boy” (feat. Kanye West)
Estelle et Kanye’s chart topper is warm and electric, with just the right amount of breeze. It’s one of the inescapable hits of this year that is actually, undeniably great. (My love/hate affair with Kanye continues, apparently. Mr. West, self-declared purveyor of champion sounds, has the honour of appearing on this list twice.)

27 Cadence Weapon - “Juliann Wilding”
I already sorta raved about Afterparty Babies earlier this year, so I’ll just link back to what I said before. Yes, this track starts off with the line: “Have you ever done coke off a book?” (sigh) but it ends up a surprisingly funny and sincere love story of sorts. I was also just thinking that it’s pretty rare that you hear a young man devoting a song to a young woman that he is not interested in objectifying and/or trying to get with. It’s sort of a unique subject that is missing from popular music, hip-hop or otherwise.

26 Blank Dogs - “Setting Fire to Your House”
Some days I just like the idea of watching my house burn to the ground. I expect there would be something cathartic and all-encompassing about it, kind of like this song.

25 Atlas Sound - “Holiday”
Bradford Cox’s hypnotic zombie pop makes me melt. “Holiday” is one of his best. There are few artists who can so succinctly express the tragedy of the human condition as this man can.

24 The Knux - “Cappuccino (Remix)”
I heard the remix before I heard the original, so that might have influenced my personal preference for it, as it was my first love. “Cappuccino (Remix)” is probably the most fun hip-hop track I heard this year. Krispy and Rah are two brothers with dense, whimsical flows that are about as out-of-place in 2008 as they are impressive. “Cappuccino” has that throwback appeal, for sure, and it goes down real smooth, like chocolate milk.

23 Thunderheist - “Jerk It”
Thunderheist had me at “Yeah.” Self-explanatory.

22 Kanye West - “Paranoid” (feat. Mr. Hudson)
#1 champion sound redux. A lot of good things have been said about 808’s & Heartbreak, most of it undeserved. Despite being one of the most underwhelming albums I heard this year, it had a couple of good songs, “Paranoid” being the best of them. It’s also the most hopeful, despite the impending break-up that the song seems to be about. It gives it a bit of a bittersweet quality that I’ll always have a soft spot for. When Kanye sings the hook “You worry ‘bout the wrong things / the wrong things” it’s one of the few moments on the album that feels real.

21 MGMT - “Electric Feel”

…"shock me like an electric eel/turn me on with your electric feel" is one particularly bad couplet that somehow works, quite possibly due to the shimmering waves of keyboards and the exemplary bassline.

Well, yes. But let’s not forget the “Ooh, girl”s and “Baby girl”s.

20 Flying Lotus - “Parisian Goldfish”
Flying Lotus was one of the cases this year where it was very difficult to pick just one song for inclusion on this list. But I did it. It was one of the few times this year where I enjoyed an album as a whole far more than any single track. While I’m on the subject, the others were Wale’s The Mixtape About Nothing, Evangelicals’ The Evening Descends, Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, DJ /Rupture’s Uproot, Blank Dogs’ On Two Sides, Atlas Sound’s Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, Times New Viking’s Rip It Off, and Department of Eagles’ In Ear Park. Flying Lotus’ Los Angeles was the greatest of the bunch, though, and “Parisian Goldfish” is so insane that there was no way I could leave it off my top 30.

19 Kid Cudi - “Day ‘N’ Nite (Crookers Remix)”
At my current job I’ve been keeping track of the songs that, when they come on over the stereo, cause everyone to get down. There were a couple this year, but none quite as fun as “Day ‘N’ Nite”. While the original is pretty good in its own right, the Crookers remix eclipsed it so completely that it became the mix. I expect we’ll be hearing its epic breakdown playing in the most unexpected places for a long time.

18 Katy Perry - “Hot N Cold”
As someone who has spent some time in gender studies and is actually interested in, say, equality for women and gays et. al, there are days when Katy Perry just feels like a big fat slap in the face. And certainly she is that; but I’m willing to concede that she might be a few other things as well, and on the subject of “Hot N Cold”, there really hasn’t been a song quite like it since Avril dropped “Complicated” on us back in 2002—at least not one that was this catchy. Someday, when I have ten pages to outline how a woman that was immediately so repelling to me ended up on my year-end list, I’ll explain this one.

17 Black Milk - “Give the Drummer Sum”
Black Milk snuck up on me this year and released one of my favourite rap albums of 2008. “Give the Drummer Sum”, and it’s ridiculous beat, is nothing short of inspired. I still don’t quite understand how it works so well. But it does.

16 Cut Copy - “Hearts On Fire”
I was really into songs about fire this year. For some reason, fire has this way of making everything seem more intense. I don’t know why “Out There On The Ice” is getting all the love; “Hearts On Fire” is the far better jam.

15 The Kills - “Last Day of Magic”
Each time I listen to this track, there’s this tangible sense of disappointment at its abrupt end, because I always feel like its whirlwind of guitars and scorched vocal riff should go on forever … or at least a little bit longer.

14 El Perro Del Mar - “Somebody’s Baby”
This is my “happy song”. I talked about it a bit over here back in February.

13 Grizzly Bear - “While You Wait for the Others”
(‘Morning Becomes Eclectic’ radio version)
I don’t know what else to say other than that it’s gorgeous and intimate, with a wonderful sense of space, and a huge step above anything else I’ve heard from these guys.

12 Hud Mo - “Ooops (Oh My)” [Tweet feat. Missy Elliott]
I never heard “Oops” back when it was just another amazing Timbaland production, so there’s that; but seriously, this de/reconstructed beat is just sick. Also, I love the ideas of losing control over your own body, and this sort of disassociating from oneself and observing yourself from the outside, that gets played around with here. When Tweet sings “I looked over to the left” it sends shivers down my spine.

11 Crystal Castles vs HEALTH - “Crimewave”
“Crimewave” is a track that became synonymous with 2008 for me. When you go out to the club, there are almost no songs that will sound this good booming out of the speakers and putting cracks in the walls.

10 The Bug - “Poison Dart” (feat. Warrior Queen)
On a sonic scale, “Poison Dart” reminds me of Dave Sitek’s remix of “Panic In Babylon” from a few years back, except possibly scarier. And it’s quite an accomplishment to craft anything that inspires awesome terror on par with a Lee Perry track.

09 Kidz In the Hall - "Drivin’ Down the Block (El-P Remix)"
Another track with an apocalyptic makeover, courtesy of El-P. Underground explosions, blaring sirens, and a swirling synth vortex for the win.

08 Deerhunter - “Nothing Ever Happened”
When I listen to my current favourite album of 2008, most days “Nothing Ever Happened” is the track that gets me the most pumped. I love every fibre of it, from each harsh consonant sound out of the guy’s mouth, down to every last drum fill.

07 Ne-Yo - “Closer”
Each time I hear “Closer”, I find some other reason why it’s brilliant. Go listen to it ten times in succession and then thank me. Looking back at pop music in 2008, given the choice, I’d pick Year of the Gentleman over Year of the Vocoder any day.

06 Destroyer - “Shooting Rockets (From the Desk of Night’s Ape)”
“Shooting Rockets” is a beautiful nightmare as enigmatic as it’s title. I wont say any more than I’ve already said, other than that Dan Bejar’s masterful ability with words is terrifying. In “Shooting Rockets” the fantastical combines with the ordinary in a way that is unsettling and profound.

05 Hercules & Love Affair - “Blind” (feat. Antony Hegarty)
In many ways, Hercules & Love Affair’s epic “Blind” feels like the song of 2008. It’s probably one of the first songs I heard in 2008, and here it is still vying for a top spot on my year-end list, which, considering how fickle I am, gives some idea of how great it is.

04 Q-Tip - “Gettin’ Up”
"Move / Renaissance Rap" strikes me at the more impressive track, but “Gettin’ Up” is so so comfortable. It’s like ice cream and sunshine, except you can never have too much of it.

03 Chad VanGaalen - “City of Electric Light”
There are so many songs on Soft Airplane that I love, but “City of Electric Light” is the song that I can’t shake. I think it’s because VanGaalen has this knack for finding the transcendent in the most mundane things, and in “City of Electric Light” his vision seems so singular and focused. I don’t know how he discovers these connections, or if he just creates them; either way, it feels like magic. It’s essentially a chorus the repeats until it takes on a strange, otherworldly significance.

02 Santogold - “Lights Out”
This is how you write the perfect pop song. As I said earlier this year, it really does not get any better than this. Each time I replay it it’s still the greatest thing ever.

01 Aeroplane feat. Kathy Diamond - “Whispers”
And of course I save the best for last, when my brain is too tired to think of what to say about it. My number one song of 2008 is an irresistible disco anthem that stretches out into infinity. It’s one of the most graceful and immaculate dance tracks I’ve heard in my short lifetime. Kathy Diamond’s fierce, hypnotic vocals are so good they leave me speechless. Just like the relationship that Miss Diamond is singing about, this baby has to end eventually; but for those seven minutes, it feels endless.