Pantheon Songs

When you are heading east on Interstate 24 in Tennessee about twenty miles outside of Chattanooga, you will drive through a town named Kimball—a town that you can barely see because of the mountains that stand in the way. You will curve south before being redirected eastward by way of the Interstate’s brief heartbeat monitor-shaped path, and as you approach the low point of the road’s exhalation you will find the mountains split and fall apart like curtains and give way to Nickajack Lake. The scenery that unfolds here will probably never compare to driving on the Golden Gate Bridge on a summer night while the sun melts into its watery horizon line or through a snowy, sleepy New England town during the winter or seeing the Manhattan skyline from across the Hudson. I don’t think Ansel Adams ever took a picture here. But on a sunny afternoon driving through this stretch of I-24, when the weather cooperates, is really a gorgeous sight to soak in—mostly because it all sneaks up on you. And the things that sneak up on us, the things or places that unexpectedly make us happy, provide most of the motive power for our nostalgia.

Think of a vacation you took or a party you hosted or attended: the things you remember most fondly are probably the things that were unplanned or unexpected. (And they probably involve alcohol.) The same things goes for objects and things from your childhood: you’ve probably already forgotten about most of the toys you wanted for a birthday or Christmas—toys you thought you’d die if you didn’t get—but you can remember a banal knick-knack at a relative’s house or the color of the refrigerator in your childhood home not only with ease but with a momentarily intense reference if you were to see something similar in present day.

When I was in high school it was briefly en vogue for record companies to re-release classic albums on CDs made with 24 karat gold. I have no idea who came up with the idea to make them but they were marked up double as a result and people bought them, for a little while at least. So I’m walking through a Best Buy in 1991 or 1992 and I see Quadrophenia by The Who with a $49.99 sticker on it. There is no track listing on the back or anything; I don’t even realize that it’s the 24 karat deluxe edition. I just assume that it’s a non-box set definitive Best Of disc and that’s why it’s $50. (At this point, I only knew of the albums Who’s Next and Who Are You by name; I had no idea what Quadrophenia was.) I go home, crack open the CD and look at the track list… and it’s filled with song titles I’ve never heard of before. What the fuck? I spent $50 for two gold discs filled with songs that didn’t sound familiar at all? I listened to both discs over the course of a week while doing homework and playing video games and I wind up loving the album more than loving the discovery of Nevermind or Ten.

To this day, I wish I could buy that album again for the first time and listen to it while playing Joe Montana Sports Talk Football in my childhood family room.

Almost by default the piano corners the market on nostalgia in terms of sound. If I were to tell you to think of the Roaring ’20s you would probably think of stock footage of flappers and people dancing with a few seconds of ragtime-y piano playing laid on top. Think of something sad: a somber piano with the notes spaced apart. Think of life in the ’50s and early ’60s: images of jitterbugging teens dancing to a Jerry Lee Lewis type piano playing. Any montage worth its salt probably features a piano. The piano is a great go-to instrument for montages and nostalgia-creation because its sounds can provide the smoothest transition between notes. Guitars are great too, but pianos are better for songs to slow dance to at weddings, or something sad or tragic, or providing a soundtrack for birthing videos—the important Life Stuff. It’s no coincidence that one of greatest outros ever produced (“Layla”) includes a piano that dwarfs Eric Clapton on all counts.

The first time I heard “Clocks” was, not surprisingly, during an opening montage for a profile piece. (If memory serves, it was a pre-game piece on TJ Ford the year Texas went to the Final Four.) I had never heard of Coldplay at this point so I had no idea that the song in the piece was by an artist because I never heard Chris Martin’s vocals during the piece—I just assumed that it was some track that nameless studio musicians recorded at some point. I was over at my dad’s house fixing his laptop when the song came on and it kind of stopped me in my tracks in a dog-that-hears-a-funny-noise kind of way.

The piano on “Clocks” isn’t really that propulsive or towering. It’s clearly in the foreground but it doesn’t bully itself there. Rather, the notes that emanate from the piano take the auditory form of a film projector: moving in a circle, over and over, constantly producing a different image. To me, “Clocks” (and Led Zeppelin’s piano-free “The Rain Song”) is a song that can almost literally be worked in to any montage—be it an actual one that can be seen on a screen of some sort, or an internal one created by a daydream or imagination.

Which brings me back to Kimball TN and Nickajack Lake.

In 2004 I was driving through the aforementioned stretch of I-24 on my way to the suburbs of Atlanta to see if I could find a job in lieu of possibly relocating there. Every two hours or so I had to search the radio for new stations once the static became too much to handle from being too far out of range. Flipping through the stations a couple miles outside of Nickajack Lake I landed on one that was in the midst of playing “Clocks.” I recognized the piano and the melody instantly and I did The Radio Prayer a few times (“Pleasepleasepleaseplease tell me the name of this song, DJ”) and, verily, the Radio Gods did smile upon me: for the DJ did disclose the name of the song and the artist who hath created it. (I now ask that you turn your bibles to Corgan 12:27.)

At the 3:26 mark of the song is when everything slows down a bit and the piano is the only instrument playing briefly; the guitars, the drums, the keyboards, they all fall away like the mountains when the lake appears. It was at the following moments of the song, when the instruments all re-form and resume the melody at a volume higher than before which sets up Martin’s wistful lyrics of wanting to go home so perfectly, that I approached the point in which the mountains gave way to a lake. The timing was so perfect that it could never be duplicated again. It felt like being in a movie, the scenery unfolding itself in harmony with the music under the direction of an unknown and extraordinarily gifted cinematographer. It’s a moment forever burned into my memory; something unexpected that will always become nostalgic whenever I hear this song or drive through Tennessee.

Fairly or unfairly, Coldplay has been branded as a boring band. Additionally: Chris Martin is married to Gwyneth Paltrow, their albums always seem to sell great; they seem like they are U2-In-Waiting. Their sound is polished to the point that it seems kind of impossible to imagine Coldplay as a struggling band playing the 3:00am Tuesday show at a no-name club or bar. All of these things can conspire to make them easy targets because, hell, U2 is in fact a great band but their U2-ness can be boring at times.

Born out of the power struggle between Oasis and Radiohead, Coldplay arrived in 2000 after Radiohead had won the war with their single “Yellow” and if nothing else, they are arguably the best all-around British band of the millennium’s first decade regardless of what you think of their music. The ’00s saw plenty of shiny polished ballad-y songs that enjoyed a nice stretch of popularity, songs like “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol and “How to Save a Life” by The Fray and “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” by Five For Fighting; songs that are instant memory markers and nostalgic points of reference, especially if you happened to be young when any or all of those songs poured out of your speakers. “Clocks” is not only the best song within this sub-genre of modern ballad-like songs it is also one of the best sneaky songs in general. It’s the kind of song that will probably never appear high on a list of best songs of the past 10, 15, or 20 years but it is the kind of song that can introduce itself at a perfect moment and become part of your life’s soundtrack—be it while driving across a lake in Tennessee, or wherever else.

To this day, I wish I could drive across Nickajack Lake while this is playing for the first time again, with everything in sync like it was.

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Will people remember the name Michael Franti & Spearhead forty or fifty years from now? Maybe not. Will people remember the song “Say Hey (I Love You)” by its track name decades from now? The odds are probably pretty slim that they will. But I do think that people decades from now will recognize the song by its melody, kind of like how people nowadays probably wouldn’t know “Nobody But Me” by track name or who The Human Beinz were but they would probably know the song once they heard it.^[1] The primary reason why I think that “Say Hey (I Love You)” will have some staying power for decades to come, aside from the fact that it is quite infectious and addictive, is because it is a terrific summertime song. It is arguably one of the best summertime songs produced so far in this nascent century.

The best summertime music consists of songs that attach themselves like molecules to the very fabric of Summer, to the warm air that we all wait for and daydream about on cold January nights. Summer is the smell of chlorine. It is rolled-down windows and open convertible tops. (The convertibles, invariably, will either have a couple in their fifties, or older, driving around wearing faces of reserved enjoyment, or it will contain a packed co-ed assortment of young people with one or two people getting out of the backseat with the ease of a deer walking for the first time.) Summer is being surrounded by exposed, tanned skin. Skirts and dresses—solid-colored ones and brightly printed ones—are finally relieved of their probation from the back of the closet and appear in broad daylight once again. Summer is when music becomes part of the air, whether it be through speakers at a public (or backyard) pool or emanating from someone’s stereo in their backyard or garage. Summertime is the time of margaritas and Coronas-and-limes and, more recently, craft brews that use hints of honey or lemons or other fruits that make it feel as though you are drinking a lovely 85 degree day out of a 45 degree bottle (or pint glass). And last but not least, summertime is a time for those seasonal crushes and bouts of young love. I’m not talking about crushes that occur during or after college. I’m talking about the power that summer could have had on you when you were in junior high or high school—those times when seeing a guy or a girl riding a bike, or hanging out at a park or in front of a convenience store, was like a transcendent force on par with religious or philosophical enlightenment.

The summertime of your youth (most likely) plays out like a veritable montage of fun images and memories if you were to think back to it: lightning bugs in jars, going to the beach, going to a relative’s house who had a boat, and all that jazz. During junior high and high school my summers consisted of playing hours and hours of real sports (basketball and baseball)^[2] and virtual ones (Tecmo Bowl, Madden, NHL ’95). I spent countless hours at my grandparent’s house on Paw Paw Lake, most of which was spent playing table tennis or watching cable TV or playing canasta in the downstairs floor that included: snare drum light fixtures on the ceiling, a monstrous record player/radio/8-track player that lit up and looked like it belonged in a celebrity’s home, and a beautiful bar that combined old school craftsmanship with ’70′s-style sensibilities (the sides were red shag carpeted and the entrance to the liquor closet nearby had those hanging beads that could best be described as “hippie curtains,” even though my grandparents had no hippie tendencies whatsoever). The summers of my youth were also marked by those mornings and evenings in which the weather is so perfect that you feel like you are capable of doing anything that you want; that the Gods and Mother Nature gift-wrapped this day for you and you alone and it doesn’t matter if you lay or sit in the grass all day because it is the best day to do just that.

“Say Hey (I Love You)” is not my song. It was not released when I was in junior high or high school. There are no memories from my youth in which this song was playing in the foreground or the background.

But that’s not really the point.

The point is that this song is so loose and perfect and upbeat and wonderfully melodic and airy that it feels so natural to listen to it during the summer that I can’t help but to think of summers past. Franti sings at one point, “I don’t want to write a love song for the world/I just want to write a song about a boy and a girl.” If I may borrow his desire to set aside the macro in favor of the micro, I didn’t want to write a post about a song. I wanted to write a post about what a song can mean in purely peripheral terms, or how a song can make people think of something that is wholly separate from the original meaning. Life is a soundtrack and “Say Hey (I Love You)” is a perfect song to randomly appear in one while at the pool, or drinking a colorful drink at the beach, or hanging out with friends at a bar or on someone’s deck, or, if you are young, admiring a boy or a girl from a distance.

Writing about songs that were released last decade always makes me feel a little nervous because it’s always a tricky thing trying to attach significance to something that hasn’t fully aged yet (what if the song becomes devalued by the artist’s future musical endeavors?). But the tag line of this site is Songs That Define An Artist (And Modern Music) and I think it is fair to assume that this song will define Michael Franti, and that it also defines modern music because I think it is a song that both defines the decade of the ’00′s and modern mainstream reggae music.

It’s also a song that makes me think of the memories from summers past, and if it does the same for you—if it makes the cut for your overall soundtrack, or the soundtrack of your memories—then it probably goes without saying why this song should make this list, regardless of how it’s thought of decades from now.

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[1] And if you’re thinking to yourself Who the hell are The Human Beinz and what song is “Nobody But Me”? and you’re doubting whether you have ever heard that song, not to fret: you have most certainly heard this song before.

[2] My friend Mark and I would primarily play baseball with a wood bat and a tennis ball. (Sometimes we’d use a Wiffle bat and tennis ball.) Because it was mostly just the two of us who wanted to play baseball, we came up with a way to be able to play one-on-one baseball. His house sat on a corner, and his backyard was pretty oversized and long. Across the street from his house was our town’s sewage plant. (Yes, it smelled gruesome outside on really hot, humid days, thanks for asking.)

The rules:

— The catcher was replaced by a folding chair and if a pitch hit any part of the chair it was a strike
— No base running (we used ghost runners)
— Since there was no base running, hits were determined as such: any ball past you (but before hitting the line marked by a random bush) was a single; any ball past the random bush (but before the sidewalk) was a double; any ball past the beginning of the sidewalk (but before the street) was a triple; any ball that landed on the street (but before the fence to the sewage facility, which also included a parkway and sidewalk) was a home run; any ball hit over the sewage facility fence counted as an automatic grand slam, and if there were any ghost runners on base all of them scored plus four runs (so, if the bases were loaded and you hit it into the sewage facility plant it would be 8 runs; if no one was on base it was 4 runs). Here’s a very professionally made drawing of his house/baseball diamond which also includes the markers used to determine hits. (Picture is not to scale)
— If a ghost runner was on 2nd, a single would not score a run; it had to be a double that was hit (a single would only drive in a run if the ghost runner was on 3rd)

Hitting a ball over the sewage facility fence looked pretty realistic but it wound up being very difficult: there were trees in front of it that killed many potential automatic grand slams. One day, Mark absolutely murdered one of my pitches. As soon as he hit I knew that I had given up the first automatic grand slam, and to make matters worse: the bases were loaded. He was gonna get 8 runs. As I watched the flight of the ball and muttered FUCK! to myself numerous times, I prepared for the inevitable bragging that was to follow. Except… the ball hit a power line (those were in front of the sewage facility too) and it redirected the ball so that it fell harmlessly onto the street. He got 4 runs instead of 8. It was the stuff of legend, the way he fell down on the ground with an expression of You have got to be SHITTING me! and the way I celebrated having only given up a traditional grand slam instead of our new 8-run variety grand slam. Rick Reilly would’ve written an obvious and ham-fisted Sandlot-themed column about it if he were there that day. Neither one of us ever got close to hitting an automatic grand slam again.

I do not consider myself to be a master historian when it comes to psychedelic music, but I think I can hold my own up to a certain point. I worship at the altar of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. I think the Blues Magoos are tragically overlooked. I think Fenwyck’s “Mindrocker” has the capacity to make me feel high even though I am stone sober when I listen to it. And when I was younger (and high), I enjoyed listening to psychedelic music—I feel like I obtained a Blue or a Red belt throughout my training. Oh, the places you will go when you listen to The Byrds’ “Psychodrama City” or Van Morisson’s “Astral Weeks” or The Mothers of Invention’s “Hungry Freaks, Daddy” while you are high on some Kentucky homegrown weed and driving around with the windows down on a warm and moderately humid Summer night!

MGMT is a psychedelic band formed in Middletown, Connecticut in 2002 and founded by Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden when they both attended Wesleyan University.^[1] While most of us fell in love with the polished chaos and beauty of The Wall, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here, Goldwasser and VanWyngarden were more attracted to the sometimes-polished-but-mostly-raw treasures that are found on Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, and A Saucerful of Secrets. They identified more with the Atom Heart Mother cow than the Dark Side of the Moon prism.

To someone who maybe never delved into psychedelia or outright avoided it or who thinks that Sgt. Pepper’s represents the apex of psychedelic music or who thinks that Tom Petty and U2 now represent the back end of classic rock, psychedelic music probably seems like a tie-dyed trinket or curio; a relic from the drug-soaked ’60′s and ’70′s with little to no value with which to discover or revisit. And maybe that is true. Maybe it is best to listen to psychedelic music when cannabis or LSD or peyote or mescaline is your co-pilot.

There is, however, something to be said of the aesthetic of psychedelia because, again, to the disaffected it can all seem like a novelty or a niche—like hair metal or punk. But like any genre worth its salt, its master practitioners built a foundation that helped to showcase the successful elements of psychedelia, and to make it easier to sort through the artist’s and music who wanted to genuinely advance and build upon the genre and the artist’s who wanted to cash in quickly by scrounging together ephemeral crap that gave winking nods to getting high and/or tripping. Or to put it another way: just as it is wrongheaded to assume that all rock songs feature an electric guitar, it is equally wrongheaded to assume that all that’s required for the psychedelic label to be applied are some Middle Eastern instruments and lyrics delivered in a “Hey, man” locution and a patchouli-smelling guitar. Again, I am not encyclopedia of psychedelia but I think that the genre has some elements that make up a definitive aesthetic. Here are three elements that I think best represent the aesthetic of psychedelia, in no particular order (note: it is not required that all three of these elements be present, but at the very least one element has to be executed very strongly; ideally, the great psychedelic songs will have at least two of the elements executed at a high level).

Allusions To Childhood, Child-Like Things — One of the biggest disconnects between those who like/love psychedelia and those who want nothing to do with it is that the latter thinks that psychedelic music is some bullshit journey of trying to explore new worlds and open new doors in the most overwrought and simplistic way when in fact the opposite is in effect: “exploring new worlds” was just another way of saying “rebirth” which implies a sort of child-like wonderment at hallucinogenic-type experiences. It is no coincidence that nursery rhymes (or nursery rhyme-y lyrics) were so prevalent in much of the ’60′s psychedelic music. Psychedelia is a genre that is defined in part by revisiting the past rather than trying to solve the future. It’s like Psychology Rock.

Provide An Ocean Of Texture, Or At Least Make The Minimal Feel Like An Lake — A great example of the former is “Blank Frank” by Brian Eno, the seventh song on Eno’s debut album Here Come the Warm Jets, whereas an example of the latter would be “The Gnome” by Pink Floyd. “Blank Frank” assaults you and basically tries to transport you to another place right away. It uses a veritable arsenal of sounds to try to accomplish this. “The Gnome,” on the other hand sounds really trippy but there’s barely an army to be found; its genius is found in the arrangement. Taken separately, the whisper-singing tracks of Barrett and Waters would sound boring but laid down how they’re laid down on the track they represent another level of atmosphere.

Start With Opening Hook, Dismantle And Expand, Tie Everything Back Together By Revisiting Opening Hook — A good example of this is “2000 Man” by The Rolling Stones on their LSD-soaked album Their Satanic Majesties Request. The track starts out with a country-ish riff but then eventually deteriorates into an orgy of textures and shifts before circling back on its musical Ouroboros and resuming back to its original melody. Another good example is “Interstellar Overdrive,” another early Pink Floyd song that, during its dismantle-and-expand period, seemingly attempts to put you into space amongst the quasars and whatnot.

All of which leads me to MGMT’s “Time To Pretend,” a song that I think executes the first two elements perfectly. Musically, this song starts off with an intro that sounds like an electronic fire or a simulacrum of a bubbly or gaseous laboratory which leads into a synth-pop type beat, which leads into the foundational drum-heavy melody. At first listen it can sound like a modern dance track (the synth-pop beat helps facilitate this feel) but it is in fact a brilliantly full-bodied psychedelic number. Listen to how textured it is for being a song that features no discernible lead guitar.

Lyrically, the decision to title this song “Time To Pretend” while never using that phrase—rather, the phrase “fated to pretend” is used throughout—is, to me, a primary reason why this song fits the child-like category so well (in addition to the times that VanWyngarden sings about how he’ll miss his family and digging up worms, etc.). The differences between the phrases fated to pretend and time to pretend are subtle but complex, a hallmark of the psychedelic aesthetic (think “Eclipse” from Dark Side of the Moon): the former connotes an inability to consistently live within reality or within the present tense (i.e.–destiny steps in and corrals the person into a state of make-believe), the latter connotes an ability to control when make-believe can begin (i.e.–”Okay, it’s now time to pretend”). fated to pretend even hints at the idea of becoming a slave to make-believe. time to pretend, again, hints at scheduling and a conscious decision to begin the process. By using fated to pretend it seems representative of a childish inability to acknowledge reality (i.e.–”We wish that we could acknowledge what’s going on, but don’t you see that we’re fated to pretend?”).

It may seem like semantics (and maybe it ultimately is) but being fated to pretend seems like a better representation of the W. Bush ’00′s than time to pretend can convey. Add to this, that by titling the song “Time To Pretend” and including the synth-pop beat from time to time this track suggests an outward playfulness that obscures what the somewhat depressing subtext is really driving at. In a way, you can look at this song as the musical commentary on “Mission Accomplished!” and other totems of the facade of the W. Bush era; an era that seemed to be defined in part by consciously overlooking the obvious so as to better enjoy the borderless world of fantasy. The last lyrics of the song are “The models will have children, we’ll get a divorce/We’ll find some more models, everything must run its course/We’ll choke on our vomit and that will be the end/We were fated to pretend”—a pretty terrific metaphor (if you were so inclined to make it so) of the potential end result from the borderline profane propaganda that the W. Bush Administration and many large companies and business sectors were broadcasting throughout the ’00′s.

And if you prefer to just take this song as it is and leave out the desire to deconstruct its meaning and apply it to the atmosphere of the 2000′s that’s fine too. Listened to merely as a song it is brilliant all by itself as the end result of an arrangement of instruments. This is one of the best songs of the ’00′s and one of the best psychedelic songs of all time, regardless of how you want to look at it (and regardless of whether or not you are high when you listen to it).

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[1] Two things: the band’s name is pronounced M-G-M-T (but I prefer to call them Management), and since 2008, three other members have been added to the band: Matthew Asti, Will Berman, and James Richardson.

In terms of music that is flat out fun, electronic, simple, and bass-friendly, there is no one in my mind that can compete with Daft Punk over the last fifteen years. When Daft Punk is on their game they not only legitimize dance and electronic music as a genre, but their electronic creativity is just so damn fun to listen to. Case in point: “Digital Love”—I defy anyone to not enjoy this song, especially the break that begins at the 2:15 mark.

I bring up Daft Punk because the first time I heard “I Gotta Feeling” I had no idea who made it but my initial reaction was that it reminded me of the type of song that Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter would produce. When my wife told me that the song was by The Black Eyed Peas I thought to myself, “Finally, someone figured out how to make an American-ized Daft Punk song.”

I fully realize that, as someone who has previously written a 700+ word piece about Neutral Milk Hotel and devoted a volume of posts to Minutemen, I should possess some level of contempt towards The Black Eyed Peas; that I should view Fergie as some sort of modern day Nico who is infinitely more vapid and talentless, that will.i.am should be seen as a tool, that the band as a whole is something that transcends “disposable,” that the sins of their past (bringing Fergie into the group and, consequently, ditching their previous hip hop sound for something more mainstream) should cloud/taint their legacy. And if their entire catalog of music was awful I would probably subscribe to some of this thinking.

But I can’t do it—”I Gotta Feeling” is so perfect that it erases any desire to point out any shortcomings associated with the artists or their other art.^[1] Furthermore, “I Gotta Feeling” does not have as its grand aspiration a desire to be seen or categorized as Important; it’s a primer song, designed almost solely to get you prepped for a night out. Of course, its inherent un-lofty expectations could be seen by some as instant justification for it to not be a Pantheon-level song. To be sure, this will be the only song on this site that includes a liberal use of random celebratory expressions (Mazel tov!) and idioms (Drank!) but its quirkiness and commercial appeal should not disqualify it from critical praise.

Every year, every decade, and every era has its disposable pop music—its “one hit wonders” and general piffle, to borrow a word that one of my friends likes to use—and amongst that crop of songs and artists, a very small number of artists^[2] will emerge as the receivers of glowing endorsements and positive criticism. Typically, the praise will be rooted in how the artist possesses more than meets the eye, or that their image transcends something. (Example: Lady Gaga, whose bizarre fashions aren’t simply born out of a desire to look interesting—no, they are an editorial on the fragility of celebrity and of turning the nature of sexiness on its head. Or something.) Nothing can ever be just good, there has to be a reason why it is good and there has to be a way to assimilate it into the construct of “these times.”

With that said here is my positive criticism of “I Gotta Feeling” with a nod to trying to assimilate them into a statement about the 2000′s as a decade. Chuck Klosterman once wrote that the ’00′s was the era of Predictable Disillusionment. We convinced ourselves to be appalled that PEDs were rampant in organized sports; we were shocked to find that politicians lie (even, gasp, during wartime!); we celebrated the ubiquity and awesomeness of the Internet by bemoaning the life support state of the newspaper; we were stunned to find that an old Cape Cod in a metropolitan area wouldn’t always keep its $400,000 value in perpetuity. Add to all of this the divisiveness of what the media pushes out and you had a decade that could be summed up as “passionate ignorance.” And it could have become a time in which mainstream art finally suffered a death blow, a final stab to the carotid or aortic arteries.

Instead, the quality of mainstream art has probably gotten a little bit better, all things considered (especially w/r/t television). Times of social disjointedness usually translate to an uprising of great art, and while no one will ever try to convince you that the ’00′s were on par with the ’60′s, we did have our Zeitgeist moments (The Lord of the Rings movies, Lost, The Wire, De Stijl, The Corrections, books 4 through 7 of Harry Potter). And with these great works of art comes a trickle-down effect that affects things like pop songs—things that might be considered disposable—positively by osmosis.

And while it does not contain the raw energy of a “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)” “I Gotta Feeling” is like this generation’s version of that Beastie Boys single. Amidst a time of social change (AIDS, Reaganomics, Star Wars) and fears of impending technological innovations (cable TV, VCRs) that seemed so big as to cause our society to gradually destroy itself, we were reminded that we had a right to party. Fast forward 20 years and the same fears and conversations were still being had w/r/t new technology and the sitting Republican President.

And we were reminded, again, that sometimes a Saturday night is simply a good night to party, and to forget about the outside world every once in a while. This is one of the best party songs of the last ten years, and one that is sure to become a staple at weddings for years to come.

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[1] Or to put it another way: it’s kind of like how we overlook flawed logic and discrepancies in a sci-fi or superhero story that we like/love. (Why didn’t Glory just kill everything while looking for The Key? She would’ve eventually found it had she chosen to do that. I don’t know and I don’t care; the fifth season of Buffy is still the greatest season of television I’ve ever seen.)

[2] As of this writing, Lady Gaga is pretty much the darling of anyone who has a college degree in writing and a job in the music industry.

When asked on a podcast last year as to whether or not there was one artist that best represented the ’00′s as a decade, Slate television critic Troy Patterson said (without missing a beat) Beyoncé. Patterson then amended his thought later and suggested that the ’00′s just be renamed the Beyoncé’s.

Beyoncé pretty much owned the ’00′s, would anyone disagree? Between her meteoric rise with Destiny’s Child (of which the album Survivor, released in 2001, sold over 10 million copies), her co-star role in an Austin Powers movie, her 11 million+ copy selling debut Dangerously In Love, her relationship with Jay-Z, her Sasha Fierce record, and overall ubiquity, Beyoncé Knowles, if you were to pick one artist, was the face of music for the previous decade.^[1] The question is: which song best encapsulates the face of 2000′s pop (and, by proxy, does the best job of trying to encapsulate the 2000′s as a decade)?

One of the things about pop music—probably more so than any other genre—that can assimilate a casual listener and a veteran producer is the fact that the first thirty seconds or a minute of one song can not only make or break the song for you, but also, in some cases, the artist too. (It is unfair but true. The best example being Backstreet Boys: if you didn’t like the first minute of the first song that you heard by them, those gentlemen were never going to win you over.) So when you hear or read or see an interview with a music producer—whether it be a member of the old school or new school—and they say something like “I knew that this was a hit once we got into the studio” or “This had #1 single written on it once it was cut,” they aren’t lying. And all you have to do if you want to try to disprove it is listen to a satellite or Internet pop feed and realize how discriminating and snap judgmental you are after a minute has gone by.

You know how when athletes from the losing side of a playoff or championship game say something to the effect of “You just have to tip your cap to those guys today, they were unstoppable today” when speaking about the winning team’s performance? For me, the first time I heard “Crazy In Love” all I could do was just shrug my shoulders and tip my cap to Beyoncé. She made a killer pop song filled with larger than life horns, beats, and textures. I, like many others, was powerless to its sheen and polish.

This song also features Jay-Z on it, which may have helped boost its mainstream popularity by single- or double-digit percentage points but I am not really sure.^[2] What I do know is that this track is unstoppable if you like it. It starts with guns blazing and even when it lets up a little bit, the faux tribal beats and “oh oh oh oh”s will do everything they can to seduce you. I normally do not put much weight into end of decade Best Of lists but when Rolling Stone put “Crazy In Love” at #3 on their best songs of the ’00′s list I felt kind of insulted that Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” supplanted the rightful heir to the top spot on the list. But I digress.

“Crazy In Love” is not only Beyoncé’s masterpiece but in terms of an instantly accessible, larger than life pop song it is one of a handful of songs that could easily act as a reference point of the 2000′s for future generations. Just as we did when it was first released, future kids may listen to it and think to themselves, “Where are those horns sampled from? They sound familiar.” They may listen to it and think that it’s pretty crazy that Jay-Z and Beyoncé are still married, still defying the superstar odds. (Or, they may look at it and think that the couple’s doom was sealed shortly after this.)

In short, they may look back at it all and wonder if the ’00′s should’ve been called the ‘Beyoncé’s after all. Which is crazy, considering how quick and willing we were to anoint Britney the all-Everything at the beginning of the decade.

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[1] Sure, you could also maybe make a case for Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Eminem, Justin Timberlake, and Radiohead but, realistically, was there a huge pop star other than Beyoncé that consistently made good music over the course of the entire decade, and whose movie appearances were actually good, and whose popularity wasn’t predicated at any time on negative press or crazy story lines, and whose music could reach pretty much anyone? I say no.

[2] Jay-Z is one of the few artists alive today that makes me feel much older than I actually am, and this is because a) he is really popular and b) I have no idea why. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I have no idea why he’s popular like I would say about Journey or Michael Bolton back in the day, but as in I quite literally know nothing about his music. I know the song “99 Problems” and the song which samples the “it’s a hard knock life for us” chorus from Annie, but I could not tell you any other song titles (or album titles) of his. Which is why he makes me feel old: he and I are near the same age, and he’s been popular for about a decade and yet… I know practically nothing about him. I instantly feel like I’m 50 years old when people talk about his music.

A really great pop song with little to no flaws truly is like finding a diamond with no flaws. They really are rare. All too often there is one glaring flaw in good pop songs: the vocals are off; the beat either isn’t great to begin with or it loses something during a shift or at a bridge; it’s either too short or too long—something causes it to not be rated as high as it should be. But when the stars align on a pop song and all facets of it are as close to perfect as you can get, it is intoxicating. It makes you believe that all is right in the world. It reaffirms your faith in art.

Obviously, this is all bordering on hyperbole but there is a definite nugget of truth at its core. It is the reason why The Beatles and Madonna will always be seen as legends. It is the reason why the genius of Pet Sounds will be extolled for as long as humanly possible. And the reason is: it is really fucking hard to write a truly great, nearly perfect pop song. Because pop, almost by default is seen with a suspicious eye. Pop oftentimes resides in the domain of the mindless and the disposable, so when something like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” or “Like A Virgin” or “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is released it stops us in our tracks. All of the proverbial stars have aligned—the sound, the image of the artists, the catchiness; it all conspires to make us re-think the paradigm of Pop.

Now, I am not trying to compare Alicia Keys to The Beatles or Madonna or The Beach Boys per se but I am saying that “No One” is as close to pop perfection as I have heard in the last twenty years. I dare say that it is the best pop song by a female artist since… well, I can’t mention it now because it will be the focus of a future post on this site. I will just leave it at that I think it is one of the best pop songs of the last twenty years.

“No One” is a communion of modern sound (the beats and the music sans piano is perfect and comprised of an organically flawless production value) and classical pop (the lyrics—whether intentional or not—read like an homage to the Phil Spector or Brill Building school of songwriting).

And then there are the vocals.

The late ’90′s ushered in an almost masturbatory use of sustained vocals, led by Britney Spears’ and Christina Aguilera’s oftentimes unnecessary desire to string a long an “ooh” or “oh” or “yeah” to a point that all you heard were hills and valleys worth of range that signified nothing. And even though Christina was capable of belting out some notes that smacked of genuine passion and purpose, the copycats had already diluted the pool in the ’00′s when it came to that particular talent. On “No One” Alicia Keys makes use of some vocal sustain but it all seems to be purposeful, like this song had a definite feeling in mind. I hate to make comparisons across musical generations and genres (especially when it involves icons) but Keys’ vocals on this track—so perfect, as they alternate between strong and frail—reminds me of Ronnie Spector. Or, more specifically, it makes me think that this is what Ronnie Spector would sound like if she were born forty years later. Their vocals are in no way identical, but the way that Spector and Keys are able to evoke a kind of desperation in their voice on “Be My Baby” and “No One” respectively does have its similarities.^[1]

It will be interesting to see what history will make of Alicia Keys, as she certainly has the talent, image, and demeanor to become an artist who stays relevant for years to come. (I can see her releasing albums at a consistent rate, fostering a solid base of fans, and finding an unexpected hit here and there over the next two or three decades.) As it pertains to the 2000′s as a decade, you would be forgiven if her name is not the first (or fifth or twelfth) name you think of when trying to assimilate the music of that decade to a particular artist. But if there are any Music Gods at all, “No One” will be a song that lives on for a while. Because, for all of the social and musical shifts that occurred in the previous decade, this song—a solid, no frills, un-glitzy classic—can certainly work as a metaphor for what our desires were during those ten years: a desire for stability, a desire for a classically simple love song in a time of Flavor Of Love and “fair and balanced news.”

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[1] Again, they are not identical, but listen to how Spector’s vocals sound towards the end of “Be My Baby” and how Keys unleashes the “uh-uh-oh-oh-oh”s at the end of this song. Both have a raw power that any producer worth their salt would wish they could bottle up in reserves.

For the most part, I have not enjoyed the last fifteen years of rock music. There is too much emphasis on producing singles and not enough energy spent on making good, consistent albums. Music videos—which were once such an extraordinary side dish paired with a band or a song—are nowadays so banal and so thoroughly lacking in creativity, you almost cannot blame MTV and VH1 for outright abandoning them in favor of reality television programming.^[1] And it is nearly impossible to put into words what the negative residual effects have been on the quality of hit songs that are released due to 1) the de-regulation of radio in the mid-’90′s and 2) Britney Spears. The former is responsible the strangling of any truly varied terrestrial-based radio options; the latter is—however unfair—the face of the modern day factory-created pop star. Britney Spears begat Hannah Montana and The Jonas Brothers, and that almost borders on a war crime.

My own issues with rock music post-1996 aside, every now and then there are some singles that are released that restores my faith in today’s bands. And one of those songs is “Mr. Brightside.”

The second single from off of The Killers’ debut album Hot Fuss, “Mr. Brightside” is not only the best song that the band has produced, it is also one of the best mainstream rock songs of this decade. It is polished, it is catchy, it is everything you could want from a stadium rock anthem.

The opening riffs of Dave Keuning’s guitar—which, in the wrong hands, could have signalled the beginning of some questionable faux-punk track—instead give way to a solid foundation of which a jog-like beat allows lead singer Brandon Flowers to assume control of the song. Flowers’ vocals and keyboard are refreshingly polished and effortlessly blend into the song.

And it is Flowers who provides the fulcrum of the song. The range of his vocals when he needs to raise up is natural and fits like a glove around a song about voyeurism, whereas his keyboard provides a perfect background texture—you know that it is there, but it does not fight you to be heard.

Over the last decade, technology increased at such a high rate (while the cost of it only increased marginally) that recording studios and bands have access to a plethora of hi-tech bells and whistles, resulting in more polished-sounding singles. The problem with songs that are really polished is that polish is the fundamental nemesis of rock music. Sure, you have your exceptions like David Bowie or Dark Side Of The Moon but rock should be all about the flaws and the inherent rough edges that the sedimentary nature of country and blues brought into the fold so many decades ago.

But every once in a while a polished single can transcend its smooth edges and any unfair label such as Top 40 Rock. “Mr. Brightside,” despite the tendency of some to clump it in with songs from other vastly inferior bands, is a really outstanding single and a song I would nominate instantly as being one of the best songs of the aught years.

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[1] On second thought, I will blame those networks for my ennui with today’s music industry. The video for The Breeders’ “Cannonball” is more important (and more entertaining) than any show that revolves around who Bret Michaels will be receiving a Jack Daniels-induced hummer from. Call me old fashioned, I know.

Of all of the clichés and tenets associated with adolescence and Growing Up, “Be yourself” is the one that is the most preached and least practiced. It is actually very hard to be yourself around others, especially around people you do not know.

When applied to the music industry (or the entertainment industry in general), it is really hard to be yourself. The history of rock is littered with artists who have either outright faltered or second-guessed themselves into oblivion upon meeting with a healthy dose of success (see: Jefferson Airplane). The artists themselves and the producers and the critics and the fans all wind up being thrown into a vacuum perfectly built for overthinking and/or being consumed with attaining a new sound. The most admirable thing about The White Stripes is they appear to be absolutely comfortable with who they are. All Jack White does is play the guitar phenomenally while Meg White beats the drums in a most simplistic way. There is no flash, no explosions, no theatrics. No lyrics in which a night stand is a metaphor for the frailty of a relationship between co-dependents.

The White Stripes were already making a name for themselves before “Seven Nation Army” was released but this is the song that garnered them national attention on a much wider level. (They even became Conan O’Brien’s house band of sorts, being the sole musical guest for an entire week on Late Night after the release of Elephant.)

For a band that does not use a bass guitar in any of their songs “Seven Nation Army” starts out with what sounds like a bass guitar but it is in actuality an acoustic guitar run through a low octave pedal. But the star of the song is Jack’s electric riffs: highly-charged bursts that compliment perfectly Meg’s smashing cymbals. The song perfectly blends the feelings associated with garage rock and arena rock. It is a song about fighting back without ever hitting you over the head with anything. And the fuzzy solo that emanates from Jack’s guitar during the middle of the song is nothing less than stripped-down bliss; a reminder in the vain of Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix that one can perform a guitar solo without adhering to the same old tired script of “if you’re going to go for the higher chords, it has to be over the top.”

One would be hard-pressed not to include The White Stripes in the discussion of which bands are the definitive face of this decade. “Seven Nation Army,” with its addictive breaks and riffs and Jack White’s nicely flowing syllabic delivery of lyrics like “I’m going to Wichita/Far from this opera forevermore,” is not only a fantastically crafted rock song but it—perhaps unintentionally—also acts as a perfect apotheosis for this decade which, perversely, makes it a kind of perfect microcosm of this decade.

What I mean is that this decade can probably best be described as one in which we were, collectively, never ourselves. For whatever reason(s), we believed that the stock market would reach 30,000. That “day trader” was a title worth achieving. That spending $100 on dog costumes could be rationalized. That debt is sometimes better than liquidity. That houses never lose value. We bought into a lot of things that were fundamentally at odds to what we believed in beforehand and tried to pass it off as a new way of doing things (I am very much guilty of this as well).

Jack and Meg White could have fully bought in to the awesomeness that all of the critics heaped on to them after the release of White Blood Cells. They could have fallen hook, line, and sinker for an unearned genius label. Instead, they continued to just be themselves (“Don’t want to hear about it/Every single one’s got a story to tell”).

They made an album that played to their strengths, and a song that is arguably one of the best of the ’00′s.

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