Music of the Weak: The 100 Greatest Songs of the Millennium (So Far) - #70-61

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

#90-81 – Jazz revisionism, shady fact-checking, Muppetized gangsta rap, and the no pussy blues.

#80-71 – A ragtag assembly of pop stars and other hate-able entities

70. Kylie Minogue – “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” (2001)

“Can’t Get You Out of My Head” has more in common with “Love is a Battlefield” than “Cry Me a River;” it doesn’t quite fit in with early 00’s pop because of it's classicist sheen. Most great pop music of the 00’s so far has some kind of a rough edge to it somewhere, whether it’s in Britney’s freaky orchestral electro-pop, a JT stalker fantasia, or Rich Harrison’s disarmingly off-kilter production for Beyoncé and Amerie. Each of those songs snakes around itself, so that you never quite know what’s coming next. You can’t get ahead of the music, so that even on the thirtieth or three-hundredth listen, there’s still an air of mystery about it. In that respect, Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” is old fashioned, verse-chorus-verse, bulletproof radio fodder. You couldn’t ask for a simpler musical framework to build around—the beat is a virtual conveyor belt of cosmic squelch, but it’s also dependable and relatively inflexible. There are some interesting switch-ups: By all rights, the verse, with its saccharine “la la la”s and repetition of the titular phrase, should be the chorus. The chorus—which provides a languid, assailing counter to the verse’s determined grind—should be the verse. But beyond that, it’s a bizarre song to have “represent[ed] an important change in the way that we thought about and selected our music,” as P4K writer Mark Pytlik claims it did in an article in 2004, if for no other reason than because it didn’t change anything about the way music was made. Ultimately, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” connects because of its formulaic nature, not in spite of it. In a decade full of ideas and innovations, it was evidence that sometimes all you need is a bulletproof melody to succeed.

69. Cut Copy – “Saturdays” (2004)

The best Daft Punk single of the 90’s was Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better with You.” The best Daft Punk single of the 00’s is Cut Copy’s “Saturdays,” which co-ops the syncopation trick from Discovery’s “Face to Face” (and, come to think of it, “Music Sounds Better with You”) and humanizes it the tiniest bit with a few hand claps. The refrain, “When I am looking for you/ I call your number but I can’t get through,” repeats throughout the song, and Cut Copy arrange some electronic blips to evoke the sound of electronic dialing (though it sounds more like an old internet start-up than anything else.) While Stardust was at least part of the fam, with Thomas Bangalter helping to man the boards, Cut Copy were merely imitators without even a tenuous connection to Daft Punk. Though they were four years and one album away from truly establishing themselves as artistic forces with 2008’s In Ghost Colours, Cut Copy show an immense amount of promise on “Saturdays,” creating a “Hanging on the Telephone” for the vocoder age. It’s a song lighter and more palatable than any single track off of Discovery, even if it’s nowhere near as innovative.

68. The Shins – “Kissing the Lipless” (2003)

It’s a testament to “Kissing the Lipless” that not much has been made about what a horrible song title it has. It’s as if The Shins felt there was some sort of buried profundity in that weird, funny image. They aimed for surrealism and unintentionally got dada. Of course, it’s a moot point, when “Kissing the Lipless” is one of the best rawk songs of the last decade, referencing classic rock without getting mired in (most) classic rock tropes; leaning toward indie and eyeing folk without ever settling on either; subverting their natural likability with abrasive falsetto and production nearly in the red. Structurally, the song builds steadily for the first minute and a half, then plateaus for the next minute in a flurry of unctuous screaming. For a band that helped kick-start a mid-00’s Beach Boys fascination in indie rock, The Shins sure weren’t afraid to get rowdy. Well, at least, not on this one song. Yet, the things that stick from “Kissing the Lipless” aren’t the song’s edgier aspects. You have to dig a little to notice those. What sticks is the urgency with which James Mercer pleads, “Called to see if your back was still aligned/ And your sheets are growing grass/ All in the corners of your bed,” getting away with his awkward phrasing and junior year symbolism because of the sheer clarity of his intention.

67. Das Racist – “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper Remix)” (2009)

Too soon to call this a classic? Maybe. Yet, much of “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” hints that it might be that rare novelty song with an appeal that lasts longer than a single season. There’s the drama of the two protagonists wandering around the same labyrinthine fast food chain restaurant on Jamaica Avenue and never finding each other, like two characters out of an Ionesco play. There’s tag lines galore—not only the obvious “I’m at the Pizza Hut!” “I’m at the Taco Bell!” “I’m at the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell!” But also the line, “I’m at the Pizza Hut/ I’ve got that pizza butt,” which could be the “I love you like a fat kid loves cake” of the next few years. Even the opening, nasal “Haaaa” deserves its own Budweiser commercial. And of course there’s the unspoken philosophical underpinnings of what it means to be both at the Pizza Hut and at the Taco Bell, as if time and space has bent in order for you to wash down your buffalo wings with a chalupa, as if the mere confluence of the two Yum! Brands franchises is some sort of a zen koan. Shit goes deep. Real deep.

66. The Blow – “Parentheses” (2006)

“When you’re holding me/ We’re like a pair of parentheses.” The central couplet of The Blow’s “Parentheses” is easily one of the most evocative images of the decade, swiftly conjuring both the lovers’ closeness and the distance between them. Pair that with the song’s tale of one half of the couple emotionally breaking down because of some unnamed thing he or she catches sight of in the deli aisle, and you have a funny and sad portrait of a relationship. While most examples of Khaela Maricich’s bedroom pop sound like exactly that, “Parentheses” doesn’t need that pesky adjective—it’s radio-friendly, and ready to go, even though it will probably never get anywhere near the airwaves. The electronic scribbles sound like bits of guitar tuning or computer malfeasance, but they only sound homemade upon close examination. In many ways, it’s exactly like her subject matter—shiny and airtight on the outside, but look closer and you start to see the delicate humanity.

65. Portishead – “Machine Gun” (2008)

When Portishead dropped its first album after an 11 year hiatus, no one could ever have expected that album to be Third. The Bristol trio tore down the signature sound they’d developed with mid-90’s touchstones Dummy and Portishead, and rebuilt it piece by piece from the ground up, ending up with a masterpiece of forward-thinking beatmaking while retaining the melancholia of their earlier work. “Machine Gun,” the album’s lead single and spirit animal, takes a simple idea and executes it masterfully. A duel between two fully-loaded drum machines, juxtaposed with Beth Gibbons’ calm, siren-like singing, “Machine Gun” jars where Portishead’s trip-hop works lulled and creeped, resulting in one of the biggest surprises of the last few years.

64. Squarepusher – “My Red Hot Car” (2001)

Why not fuck around with Two-Step/UK-garage? That must have been the thought running through Tom Jenkinson’s head as he composed “My Red Hot Car,” a subversive deconstruction of the short-lived microgenre. “My Red Hot Car” is well known for its sole decipherable lyric, “I want to fuck you with my red hot car,” but, as apt a lyrical choice as that is, the words are only used in Squarepusher’s composition as textures to be bent, tweaked, and obscured, along with all of the other musical elements. While the lyric, provides more than enough novelty to reel you in, the real show is how Squarepusher builds a simple two-step beat, and then spends the rest of the song trying to knock it off balance until he finally gives in all the way and pushes every button on his keyboard.

63. Neko Case – “The Needle Has Landed” (2006)

In the pantheon of great “If I had known then what I know now” songs, Neko Case’s “The Needle Has Landed” is a sleeper entry, tucked onto the back of her brilliant 2006 album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. The narrator plays through her self-effacing nostalgia like she’s spinning an old record—it’s almost as if she’s nostalgic for the feeling of nostalgia itself—and details her departure by Greyhound from the town she grew up in. Plenty of things keep her from returning to her former home—her own pride, her remorse, her ex’s exes—but she’d also rather just sit in traffic and mentally revisit her losses. Her conclusion to that central thought: “If I knew then what’s so obvious now/ You’d still be here, baby.” But she has no intention of doing anything to make things any different.

62. TV on the Radio – “Ambulance” (2004)

“Ambulance,” a lush album track at the center of TV on the Radio’s debut, helped spark a doo-wop trend in indie rock, but most of its antecedents miss out on what makes the song so special. Despite having some of the most twistedly romantic lyrics of recent memory—“I will be your accident if you will be my ambulance”—TV on the Radio recognize that the song’s power is its aesthetic, and proceed slowly and deliberately. The vocal loop, “dum-dum-dum dum-dum-dum dum-dum-dum daa-dum-dum,” repeats like a sample throughout the song, never crescendoing or softening, a constant. Vocalist Tunde Adebimpe slow-plays his hand, allowing the melodies and images to unfold slowly over the course of the five minute song, until they build to a heartbreaking climax: “Fall fast, fall free, fall with me.” It’s a patient, lovely song in a genre that typically thrives on impulsiveness, and it’s the type of move that brands TV on the Radio as one of the most pivotal artists of the decade.

61. Kanye West – “Flashing Lights (Feat. Dwele)” (2007)

“Flashing Lights” marks the point when Kanye West stopped looking toward the past for inspiration and started looking toward the future. Composed by West and Eric Hudson, the song sets a distinct new blueprint for non-sample-based rap music, fusing epic string section swells with techno that feels like rave music without actually being anything resembling rave music. By Graduation, Kanye had mostly stripped his rhymes down to “rhymes,” but “Flashing Lights” suits his new style so much that he could be the Saul Williams of bad fashion puns. It hardly matters that the next move was the genius/tranwreck AutoTune concerto 808s and Heartbreak, “Flashing Lights” revealed Kanye as a producer as nimble and innovative as the rap game has ever seen.

-Martin Brown, 2009

Comments

[Kenny Cather]

Kylie Minogue is some of the best guilty pleasure music *ever*! I'm always happy to dance to one of her tracks!

"Music Sounds Better With You" is *awesome*!!! I've always loved that song, but I am an unabashed Daft Punk fanboy....

Cold Copy - While "garbage" was too harsh a term to use, and never meant as an insult towards you, I don't understand the appeal with them. I'm hoping one day I may have that "a ha" moment that I have with certain groups, but it won't be today. I'll keep trying, though.

"Machine Gun" is one of the most amazing songs ever recorded. *Ever*. You perfectly explain why, too!

I haven't even thought of Squarepusher in years! Good call there!

Kanye West's Heartbreak and 808s (or vice versa, I get confused) is an album I keep going back to over and over. Flashing Lights is one of my least favorite songs on it, but yeah, it's very inventive.

[Chris Rice]

I'm finding this list to be quite fascinating, as much for what I disagree with, as what I actually agree with.
The fact that it's very US-centric and particualarly heavy on the hip-hop side accounts for a lot of that, and in a lot of cases I agree with the artist, but not that particular song.

I'm going to wait till it's finished before I weigh in on what I think's missing though, for obvious reasons.

I can't believe you think Music Sounds Better With You is better than Da Funk, though...
Oh, and that Squarepusher track - surely the point of it is that the lyric isn't Red Hot Car?

[Marty]

...Well, technically it *is* "Red Hot Car," it's just dangerously close to something else.

Anyway, I look forward to hearing what you think's missing. I think that if you (or anybody else) weren't disagreeing with stuff, I'd probably be doing something wrong.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Yeah, the Shins! A song I actually know, and even like! I consider this a victory.

[jason preu]

oh, wow, good call on 'parentheses'. that song needed some airplay. thank you for the reminder.