Music of the Weak: The 100 Greatest Songs of the Millennium (So Far) - #90-81

PREVIOUSLY: #100-91 - Introductions, yacht rock, epic narratives, Elvis tributes, and one-man Canadian supergroups.

90. The Juan MacLean – “Give Me Every Little Thing” (2003)

DFA Records is a bit like 3rd grade drama club—everybody gets a moment to shine. The Juan MacLean, one of the label’s original signees, has had to wait more than half a decade for its time at the front of the stage, but 2009 could legitimately be called the group’s breakthrough year. After releasing the gargantuan “Happy House” single last spring, John MacLean followed up with a series of dope remixes and a killer second album, The Future Will Come, currently cementing him as the label’s most ubiquitous artist by far. Of course, it was only a matter of time. Early single “Give Me Every Little Thing,” which was tucked onto the back-end of The Rapture’s follow-up to “House of Jealous Lovers,” reveals The Juan MacLean’s long-standing ability to add ambient squelch to house music and somehow make it equal pop. Half of the song’s success can be attributed to its bottomless classic rock riff of a synth line; the other half to the deadpan male/female party chanting of the titular phrase—but it’s MacLean’s unwavering confidence in making such a straightforward pop move, especially in contrast to fellow early-DFA-ers LCD Soundsystem’s sarcasm and The Rapture’s abrasiveness, that marked him as an emerging star simply waiting for his share of the spotlight.

89. The Tallest Man on Earth – “The Gardener” (2008)

In film and literature, a work of art usually leaps from “good” to “great” when it aspires to a level of archetype. Obviously, something like Pan’s Labyrinth gets there by employing mythological devices and a fairy tale’s knack for metaphor. But the resolutely mundane work of, say, Horton Foote reaches that same level of universality by digging deep into his characters’ fragile psychology. In music, it’s no different. Songs that “stand the test of time” tend to be the ones that dig deeper, that go bigger, that possess an uncommon ambition—whether or not we consciously acknowledge it while we listen.

On paper, The Tallest Man on Earth’s Shallow Grave comes off as an overtly Bob Dylan-aping album, lost amongst the glut of folk-indebted singer/songwriter music of the last half-decade. But Swedish musician Kristian Matsson is operating at that same level of archetype from which “great” music is born. “The Gardener,” Shallow Grave’s standout track, jangles with such ferociousness that you could imagine Matsson’s fingers chewing through the wood on his acoustic guitar. The lyrics aim for a certain level of absurdity—Matsson’s gardener “built a steamboat in a meadow/ Cos [he’s] forgotten how to sail”—but that rhythmic propulsion frames the song with an undying urgency, one that adds to the mythology of Matsson’s chosen moniker. Everything is done to “stay the tallest man in your eyes, babe.”

88. Madlib – “Please Set Me at Ease (Feat. M.E.D.)” (2003)

When the record books close for the decade, the smart money is on Madlib as the most prolific artist of the aughts. Madlib or, like, John Frusciante. More impressively, as enormous as his body of work is, there are few artists who can fuck with Madlib on a level of consistency—so much so that his catalogue runs so deep and so rich that even the Oxnard-born producer’s biggest fans are constantly stumbling upon undiscovered gems of his. Shades of Blue, released juuust before Madlib reached his pop cultural tipping point with Madvillain and his J Dilla collab, Champion Sound, quietly arrived during a summer notable for its music’s exuberance—“Crazy in Love,” Dizzee Rascal, and D-D-Don’t Stop the Beat all loomed large at the time. Shades of Blue, on the other hand, found Madlib creating a chill counterpoint by playfully reworking numbers from Blue Note Records’ catalogue. With “Please Set Me at Ease,” he spots the hidden groove in a languid Bobbie Humphry tune, and turns it into a funk-dappled platform for frequent cohort M.E.D.’s lovelorn rhyming. Listening to Madlib’s version of “Please Set Me at Ease” next to Humphrey’s, it’s immediately evident how much reinvention went into the remix, and what a genius the dude is. By the time he hits the coda, which turns the song uptempo with a breakbeat not unlike the one at the end of The Roots’ “You Got Me,” he’s made a case for himself as a jazz musician as much as a rap producer.

87. Bran Van 3000 – “Astounded (Feat. Curtis Mayfield)” (2001)

Bran Van 3000 recorded Curtis Mayfield’s vocals for “Astounded” shortly before the singer’s death in 1999. The resulting song could have turned out to be a rote exercise, if the Quebec-based collective had been religiously beholden to the legend’s legacy of socially-conscious funk.

Instead, they lovingly constructed a backdrop of lush dance music around Mayfield’s vocal performance, using Mayfield’s early 70’s work as inspiration for an orchestral, post-disco composition—a warm, organic sound that stood in contrast to the heavy electronics that dominated the dance music of the early 2000s, in the hands of groups like Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk. The music had to be light enough to showcase Mayfield’s tremulous vocals, and flexible enough to set up for the explosive two minutes of pure salsa music that close the song. Bran Van 3000 miraculously pull it off, and, in doing so, turn Mayfield’s final recording into a fitting eulogy for one of the greatest artists of the previous millennium—playful, surprising, and, as Mayfield sings, “I just want to love you/ I just want to cry,” deeply moving.

86. Theophilus London – “Cold Pillow” (2009)

With extremely varying levels of success and seriousness, MCs the likes of Kanye West and Ghostface Killah keep jumping ship from rap to R&B. In the wake of this somewhat unsettling phase, Theophilus London’s This Charming Mixtape is something of a revelation, as he skirts frequently and seamlessly between the two. The production by Jesse Boykins III takes its musical inspiration from early synth pop and Italo disco along the lines of Kano’s “I’m Ready”, but with a deliberate increase in space and low end, “Cold Pillow” creates a momentum that belies its tepid BPMs. For his part, London alternates between rapping that isn’t quite rapping on the verses, and singing that wouldn’t sound out of place in a TV on the Radio song on the choruses. Much more Ghostface than Kanye, London isn’t exactly tuneful, and he doesn’t enlist any machinations to help him get more so, but his performance on “Cold Pillow” is simple, straightforward, and riveting. London spends most of This Charming Mixtape reworking touchstones like Amadou & Miriam’s “Sabali” or reclaiming bits of pop culture detritus like Sister Act II, and all that makes it one of the best albums of the year, but when he rocks a strictly original creation like “Cold Pillow,” London could take the Pepsi challenge with just about any hip-hop soul of the decade.

85. Res – “Golden Boys” (2001)

Santi White’s debut album as Santogold was, in fact, 7 years removed from her first big artistic success, as the writer and executive producer behind How I Do, the debut (and only) album by Philadelphian chanteuse Res. One of the most underrated albums of the decade, it’s easy to understand why How I Do wasn’t a bigger hit, despite lead single “Golden Boys” hitting heavy rotation on VH1. White was way ahead of her time; her songwriting needed the current musical landscape in order to thrive. How I Do sounds eerily prescient today, a genre-hopping exploration of contemporary soul that takes its melodic cues more from indie rock than pop. The opening syncopated drum beat of “Golden Boys” fits in resolutely with the UK Garage that was coming up at the time, while the twangy, vaguely Eastern instrumentation has an eye toward Timbaland’s pop influence. But White’s most profound impact comes with her effect on Res’s vocal inflections, which tend to bend downward at the exact moment most other wannabe divas would attempt to soar. The effect gives Res a certain iciness, which allows her to dismantle the “prince of all the magazines” in her sites as the target of the song (who may or may not have been an actual famous dude), declaring, “We know the truth about you,” with a detached cool.

84. The Whitest Boy Alive – “Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)” (2008)

There are a handful of songwriting tricks that can almost always be relied upon to juice up a song’s emotional impact (and Bruce Springsteen knows every one of them)—the long slow/soft intro followed by a blistering, heavy guitar riff; the moment where all of the instruments drop away except for the drums, and after a moment the vocals kick in; the a cappella harmonizing. For Fred Falke, on his remix of The Whitest Boy Alive’s “Golden Cage,” it’s the meltdown in the middle of the song, where everything slows down and the lyrics are extended and emphasized—and, good god, is it masterful in his hands. Erland Øye’s original is lovely—if tepid—skeletal indie disco. Falke cranks the tempo, doubles the running time, and composes a bonkers synth arrangement that manages to be understated and overstated at the same time. He turns “Golden Cage” into actual, full-blown disco—none of this “indie” shit about it. Øye sings, “Yes, of course I miss you and I miss you bad,” and, when the music drops away at the halfway mark, you can almost hear the “wait for iiiiitt” before he follows up with “But I also felt this way when I was still with you.” Then the beat drops back in, and it’s a knockout. Springsteen would be proud.

83. Dizzee Rascal – “Fix Up, Look Sharp” (2003)

Dizzee Rascal doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot to Billy Squier’s “Big Beat” on “Fix Up, Look Sharp,” but his use of the song speaks volumes. “Big Beat” was an early hip-hop sampling staple, notably used in Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” and UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” among others, and included on the 9th volume of Ultimate Breaks and Beats. “Fix Up, Look Sharp” draws a ton of parallels between the then nascent genre of UK Grime and the golden age of rap music (which may have been a little bit of overkill, since those parallels were pretty self-evident). Yet Dizzee’s flow is full-on 21st century, like Ludacris with a thick East London dialect to replace his Southern lilt. Especially for an 18-year-old kid with an album named Boy in Da Corner that featured a bunch of introspective songs cobbled together from scraps of Nintendo game soundtracks, “Fix Up, Look Sharp” arrived completely stadium-ready—a trick Dizzee might have learned by observing Run-DMC, if they hadn’t peaked only a year after he was born. If anything, “Fix Up, Look Sharp” taught some of our rap luminaries a thing or two—Jay-Z dropped the “Big Beat”-sampling “99 Problems” a couple of months after its release.

82. M.O.P. – “Ante Up” (2000)

Not only is “Ante Up” one of the most resolutely terrifying songs of recent years, it also has the strange distinction of inspiring one of the cuddliest viral videos of the decade, in which Bert and Ernie replace Lil’ Fame and Billy Danze as the ones advocating stifling, yapping, and kidnapping fools. (Jesus, that clip never gets old.) M.O.P. is so ripe for muppetization because “Ante Up” is so far over the top. Practically every line is a call to violence, and most of the lines are only three or four lines long—“Hand over the ring,” “Gimme the fuckin’ watch,” “Fuck you your honor.” Do you know how many four word lines you can pack into a four minute song? Yet, Fame and Danze transcend the typical gangster steez based on sheer enthusiasm—these guys are repping for petty theft with the squealy joy of an 11-year-old girl repping for My Little Pony—which makes their horrific intentions ridiculously endearing.

81. Grinderman – “No Pussy Blues” (2007)

What do you make of “No Pussy Blues” beginning with the sound of a typewriter? According to perhaps the greatest Wikipedia factoid ever, “When asked during an interview whether the song had a deeper meaning, Nick Cave replied, ‘No, it's just about not getting any pussy.’” But, then, what’s that typewriter about? Is the song a flashback? Is it an allusion to Nick Cave’s antiquated mating habits? Is Grinderman subtly creating a dystopian alternate universe like David Fincher did in Se7en by decorating the police station with phonographs? Are they blogging? Whatever the case, that typewriter makes the song, as Cave, Warren Ellis, and company, escalate from that acoustic key-punching to the peals of feedback-ridden electric guitar representing a 50-year-old’s angst. Cave narrates with a short story writer’s clarity and specificity. As he goes about trying to bed the girl he spots in the crowd, every attempt to seduce turns into a punch line. Yet, the mantra he repeats in the song’s opening seconds is, “I must above all things love myself.” So he charges into each attempt with unwavering brio. In real life, he’d be sleazy as hell. In “No Pussy Blues,” he’s our unflappable hero. It’s complicated.

-Martin Brown, 2009

Comments

[Tucker Stone]

That Bert and Ernie thing is one of those "why we have the internet" memes that really never will get old.

[Sean Witzke]

I'm really surprised the last two aren't higher, this is gonna be a hell of a list.

On "Astounded" - I remember watching an interview with the main Bran Van guy and he said that the Curtis stuff wasn't newly recorded. He had talked to them about working in the future, but that song is the result of letting them rummage through his attic where they found like 30 demos of "Move on Up" and they used one to write "Astounded" (I might be getting this wrong, as it was 8 years ago).

[david brothers]

Ante Up is like Grindin-- one of those songs that never gets old.

I almost prefer the remix, though. It's not that it's technically better or anything. It's just that it was probably the last truly great Busta Rhymes song.

[Marty]

Sean - Man, I hope so. I think it's pretty rockin, but you can't account for taste. There's a 65% chance there will be a "WHat? ______ above Grinderman?" next week.

Re: Bran Van 3000. You know, it serves me right for doing my research on the internet. I'd seen both explanations, but chose to believe the more romantic one. Curtis Mayfield is too new an obsession for me to not straight-out recognize "Move On Up," shamefully. (Though I'm sure I put two-and-two together at one point, and then forgot.)

David - I will still rep for the awesomeness of "Don't Touch Me (Throw the Water on 'Em)," even though few others seem to share my enthusiasm *cough* Tucker *cough*

[Chris Jones]

Man, I am so out of the loop when it comes to songs from this century. I've only heard three so far-the Grinderman one that my indie friend showed me, that Snoop Dog one that was inescapable because I was in middle school at the time, and the Theophilous London one-because you guys had covered it before.

There are some really specific songs I'm hoping come up later on. I'll have to check some of this other business out for sure, though.

[Mr. Rendón]

It's probably due to my listening to music in the car, but I never noticed the typewriter before. It makes total sense though as I see the song as a kind of gonzo essay. And I always assumed "I must above all things love myself" repeated over and over was a mantra as he...ahem...relieved his "blues."

And thanks for clearing up the Res tip for me. I'm just glad no one snatched up a "How I Do" track for a beer ad.

[Kenny Cather]

"these guys are repping for petty theft with the squealy joy of an 11-year-old girl repping for My Little Pony"

YES!!! Best analogy ever!! That song is still so freaking tough even today! Although I agree with David, the remix is better because it's the last great Busta appearance.

I never realized it was Santogold behind Res!! I had met both women years ago and Res gave me a copy of her album. I ended up turning a lot of my friends on to it. I never understood how she didn't become huge.

The Bran Van 3000 thing was new to me, but I'll have to check it out because Curtis Mayfield was awesome!

And yeah, Madlib is the bestest! I was just spinning some old Lootpack the other day.... Shades of Blue is one of my favorite albums, too! He and DOOM really are the two best people to ever work with each other.

[Jones, one of the Jones boys]

Bran Van and Madlib on the list? Props, sir, props.

[Zebtron A. Rama]

Madlib the Bad Kid!