The Top 20 Singles of 2004 Jan 11 '05    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music The Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1 by The Prodigy From $11 Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 The Bottom Line The Top 20 Singles of 2004... what else can I say? Although at heart I consider myself an album guy, I like to think I can appreciate the art-form of the three minute pop track as well. There were some fantastic singles this year, some of which were actually popular (gasp!) and many of which were not. That is, at least not popular to the masses: the indie community seems to be the most welcoming hostel for artists that are shunned for whatever reason, and like the Mennonites who took in Benedict Spinoza when he was exiled from Holland for heresy, they do not judge based on unimportant characteristics (how's that for an obscure reference!). As I stressed in my review of the top albums of the year, what matters is the Q U A L I T Y of the music and not who, what, or where it came from, or how it came into being. I guess ‘when’ sorta matters though: after all, this is the top singles of 2004. With that said, here's a list of what I perceived as the best singles of the year. To specify, these might not all actually be singles in the sense that they were released as such, but I consider a single simply to be a song that gets any form of distributed popularity. So, for example, "Territorial P!ssings" by Nirvana off Nevermind I consider a single in this sense, because it is popular enough in its own regard to stand on its own. Unlike albums, there we’re a hell of a lot of singles I didn’t hear this year that were supposed to be killer, but what can ya do, eh? Here are what I heard as the best 20 singles the year 2004 had to offer. In no particular order too. 1. "Take Me Out" - Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand Like who didn't see this one coming? This song was huge this year, getting tons of airplay as well as leading the charge for the album's onslaught of singles in Britain (five off an album of eleven, I believe). Did I mention how enduring it is? Despite the overplay, this remained a fantastic song. Every time I heard those determined guitars and that pump-up drumbeat supporting Alex Kapranos's vocals ("So if you're lonely... you know I'm here waiting for you...") come on the radio when I was stuck in traffic, I would always crank the volume and open the windows so everyone in listening range could bask in the glory of Franz Ferdinand's premier single. Actually, I'd do this so loudly that people would get so pumped up they'd throw things at me and start yelling! Of course, I was rocking out so hard that when I never noticed when I'd get hit with something, and the music was so loud I couldn't hear a word they said. I'm sure they were just yelling, "YEEEEAHHHHHH! PARTAY!!! This song rules!" Now THAT is being pumped up. Uhh, anyways, the song is just one of the best damn pop tracks ever. EVER. The breakdown in the middle was probably one of the most musically daring things I've ever heard, but it pays off gloriously. This is a song that, in twenty years, I can see being just as popular as it is now. 2. "Float On" - Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News This and "Take Me Out" are probably the most widely celebrated songs of the year. Everyone and their mothers all agree that these two excellent tracks are top-5 material. And you know what? They're right. Although lead singer/philosopher of religion Issac Brock's unpredictable vocal bursts can be irritating at first, eventually they become inseparable from the superb music. And besides, they make the main verse ("We'll all float on okay...") all the more soothing and anthemic at the end of the song. Yah, like most Modest Mouse fans, I'm a little upset that the new album is moving away from the likes of The Moon and Antarctica and Lonesome Crowded West, but this single might be the best song they've ever done. Catchy, emotional, and made with a gripping beat, there is no doubt that "Float On" is one of the best songs of 2004. 3. "Irish Blood, English Heart" - Morrissey, You Are the Quarry The new Morrissey album was basically adult contemporary (albeit pretty good, unlike most of the genre) except for this song, which ROCKS as hard as a Morrissey song can. Granted, that's not that much, but seeing Morrissey (sort of) return to form is reason for celebration. This song reminds me a lot of the Smiths's (duh) "The Queen Is Dead", where the music is so forceful and driving that Morrissey doesn't even have to really sing a melody to get his lyrics across. He does though, and that makes it all the more effective: when he crys out "...and spit upon the name of Oliver Cromwell", you wish you knew who Oliver Cromwell was so you could do the same (I actually do know who the Lord Protector is, so don't bother posting comments to remove my ignorance). Anyways, the song never really got that much airplay and stuff, but whenever I heard it I'd rock ala Franz Ferdinand. And yes, I'd invoke my best Morrissey croon to sing along with that kickass chorus. 4. "99 Problems" - Jay-Z, The Black Album The third (!) single off Jay-Z's swan song final album, produced by legend Rick Rubin and catchy as hell. Over the past year, Jay-Z has failed miserably at retiring: a massive and problimatic tour with R. Kelly accompanied by a (horrible) collaboration record happened; his Collison Course record with Linkin Park has been massively successful, uniting the genres of rap and rock for the first time since Limp Bizkit lost any and all credibility, as well as future potential for, with the Results May Very monstrosity, and slipped from the spotlight in one of the most satisfying career downturns in music history. Also, a slew of remix albums cropped up using the songs of The Black Album, no doubt inspired by DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, from the PCs of dream DJs everywhere in the form of The Black and Blue Album (Weezer and Jay-Z), The Double Black Album (Metallica and Jay-Z), and others. Forget Puff Daddy: Jay-Z is the one who "doesn't even know how to stop". How can you possibly fail at retirement? To succeed, all you have to do is nothing! And, just recently, he's been named the president/CEO of Def Jam... now THAT would be a fun office party to attend. Oh, yah, did I mention the song is really good? 5. "Neighbourhood #3(Power out)" - the Arcade Fire, Funeral ROCK! This is the sort of song you want to listen to as you just RUN... run anywhere, as fast as you can. It fills you with so much energy that Superman wouldn't stand a chance in a fistfight if you have this playing on your headphones. After all, Win Butler does sing "I went out to pick a fight..." in the song. Dem's fightin' words! The electric guitars are filled with power, the vocals with romantic desperation and yearning, and the glockenspiel (if that's what it is, and how it's spelt) with confusion. How they manage to make the glockenspiel communicate confusion is spectacular, but the really beauty is in how that throbbing beat unites the multitude of instruments. Such a good song. 6. “Sh!t Scheisse Merde” - !!!, Louden Up Now The centerpiece of !!!’s newest album, “Me and Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard”, was released last year, so it can’t qualify for inclusion in this year’s list. However, there’s a surplus of good songs off the new album to make up for its absence, and “Sh!t Schiesse Merde” (parts one and two) is just one of them, along with “Pardon My Freedom” and “Hello? Is This Thing On?” This song is one of the coolest songs ever. If you listen to it while you’re walking, you’ll start strutting and pimp-walking without even noticing. Miles Davis may have given birth to the cool, but !!! is definitely somewhere down the family tree, keeping the tradition alive. The first part of the song is dominated by New York attitude with paranoid and serious disco-funk, while Nic Offer mutters memorable lines like “any of you squares know where I can get a joint around here?” and “What did George Bush say when he met Tony Blair?... You act like you can, I’ll act like I can, we’ll both stay rich”. Groovy. The second part however evolves into a sparse and whispered dance floor anthem, a great track to groove along with simply because it’s so quiet. Both parts work excellently apart, but are best when listened to as one song. 7. “Imagine” – Dizzee Rascal, Showtime Man, Dizzee Rascal’s cover of the John Lennon classic is SWEEET! OMG LOL!!!11 Don’t let the name fool you: Dizzee didn’t commit the same blasphemy that A Perfect Circle did this year. Where John was imagining about a world void of religion, war, and strife, Dizzee is simply imagining about getting the hell out of the ghetto – apparently, there’s “so much drama in the L.D.N., it’s kinda hard tryin’ to find legal money to spend”. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but it’s just weird hearing someone represent “the big U.K.” This song has one of the most emotional rap beats ever made. The synth strings and whistles are used astoundingly tastefully, and that they don’t sound cheesy is an accomplishment unto itself. The beat alone makes the song worthy, but Dizzee’s rap is key as well, as he spouts thought-provoking lines about life in the British ghetto. This is sort of like his version of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Sky’s the Limit”, if that will help. But much more British… and, well, better. Dizzee Rascal is set to take the world by storm: hell, he was even selected to appear on the remake of the good-will classic “Do They Know It’s Christmas Time?” to benefit a cause that I’m sure has to do with Africa. This must be the level of this guy’s popularity in Britain: he’s right alongside Bono, Radiohead, and Coldplay in what is bound to be one of the best-selling tracks of the year, and room was made for him specifically, because there was no rap verse in the original. If this isn’t a sign of budding stardom, I don’t know what is. 8. “America: F*ck Yeah” – Trey Parker & Matt Stone, Team America: World Police OST These two modern-day Jonathan Swifts perceive pop culture so well that their spoofing is not only effective, but good. Proof: the South Park Movie OST was nominated for an Oscar based on musical merit. “America: F*ck Yeah” sounds exactly like you’d expect it to with a title like that: lame heavy metal from the 80s charged with synth, and trite lyrics like “Freedom is the only way” and “Terrorists your game is through, ‘cuz now you have to answer to America – F*ck yeah!” They go on to call out a list of things that merit a “F*ck yeah!”, such as “books”, “slavery”, and “Taco Bell”. Who ever knew patriot rock can be so much fun! Consider John Ashcroft’s smash hit single, “Let the Eagle Soar”, (see it at http://www.cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/25/ashcroft.sings.wbtv.med.html), which is a brilliant tribute to this glorious nation “that’s far too young to die”. Actually, you can even “see it in her eyes”! Wow! I don’t know about you, but I watch this I feel embiggened; I feel like supporting the troops harder and more intensely than I did before. In opposition to stupidity such as this that proves fact is stranger than fiction, awful both in music and message, the whole soundtrack of “Team America: World Police” is a godsend for cynics like me. It is focused, relevant, and undeniably poignant. This satire is so good that I’m sure homophobic rednecks actually chant along with the song if it (ever) comes on the radio, believing that “porno” and “Wal-mart” deserve a good ol’ “f*ck yeah!” Politics aside, is the song catchy, fun, and rockin’? F*ck yeah! 9. “Memory Lane” – Elliot Smith, From a Basement on the Hill I had to think a lot about not including Elliot Smith’s posthumous release on my top ten albums list. After all, it’s a phenomenal record filled with quality material. Overall, it didn’t make the cut because it wasn’t as unified as it could be (ie. it sounds like a record of his final recordings compiled by friends and musical compatriots), and it only sounds half finished. Who’d have thunk, eh? Anyways, the big upside about the album is that some of the songs individually surpass the rest, and rise to the ranks of being considered among the best of the year. Out of these, “Memory Lane” is my favourite: a two minute acoustic head-bobber that showcases his talent as a songwriter, lyricist, and guitar player. It’s too bad he had to stab himself IN THE HEART. That sort of sucks any of the potential fun one can have with this recordings. Granted, this is Elliot Smith we’re talking about, and despite the Beatles-similarities these songs aren’t really engineered to have fun to. Elliot Smith is for people who are sitting alone in their room in a “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” complex, itching to go out and live but unable to open the door and leave the house. However, “Memory Lane” is about as close as it gets to a fun-and-happy (borderline goofy) track, though, and is an excellent little ditty because of it. 10. “Rapp Snitch Kniches” – MF Doom, Mm… Food? Besides having the best album title of the year, MF Doom also has some of the most genuinely enjoyable rap beats that cry out for a return to the golden age (1987 - 1993). The energetic and soulful guitar riff along with the 80s hip-hop drum beat are striking and unique, and act as a magnificent backdrop for MF Doom to spit a couple lines about something or other. Yah, I don’t even really care what he raps about… apparently a rapper named Mr. Fantastic guest stars on it. Meh, who cares? I’m too caught up in that beat. I don’t know; maybe I’m biased. MF Doom is determined to relive rap’s golden age, even though Alonzo and Eve have already been exiled from rap’s garden of Eden. We’re in the wasteland now… Lil’ Flip, Lil’ John, Lil’ Bow-wow, Lil Wayne… need I say a lil’ more? Like Doom, I long for the Daisy Age and the days when it took a nation of millions to hold Public Enemy back. Now it seems all it takes is a couple of dudes and a paycheck. But, that doesn’t change the potency of this song, and his whole album. Mm… Food? is filled of everything that hip-hop needs nowadays: humour, optimism, discipline, creativity, and most of all, talent. 11. “Can’t Stand Me Now” – The Libertines, The Libertines Rocking right out of the gates, “Can’t Stand Me Now” is a phenomenal song for moshing – but in a happy way, where you don’t punch each other in the face and stuff. This is made for moshing for the joy of music. And what joy! This song is about the band breaking up. Yay! How did they make this song? As soon as you get Pete Doherty and Carl Barat in the same studio together, I would expect Pete to drunkenly start a fight, break 10,000 pounds worth of equipment, leave and get arrested somewhere for possession of crack cocaine, and call Carl to bail him out. Sound like I’m exaggerating? Pete broke into Carl’s apartment and stole things, and Carl himself posted bail for him. Yet somehow they are able to cooperatively make a song about how they want to beat the sh!t out of each other. The song rocks, simply put, and feels energetically melancholic. It’s a spectacular song, but even more so considering Carl and Pete’s vitriolic relationship. Those crazy Brits! It’s worth it to pay attention to the lyrics in the second verse: “Have we enough to keep it together, or do we just keep on pretending and hope our luck is never ending?” So far, these boys have had never ending luck. I have my doubts, but let’s hope they keep it together for the sake of making more songs as good as “Can’t Stand Me Now”. 12. “Like Toy Soldiers” – Eminem, Encore Although an awful album overall, Encore’s high points reminisce of The Marshall Mathers LP in quality and form. “Like Toy Soldiers” is the highest of these points (for the record, the others are “Yellow Brick Road”, “Mockingbird”, and I don’t want to admit it but “Just Lose It”), and uses the sweet hook from Martika’s “Toy Soldiers” to create a musical landscape which Eminem emotionally purges himself over. Not that this is new: it seems Eminem nowadays only has two types of songs, the first being goofy toilet-humour tracks and the second tortured-celebrity type tracks. This is certainly in the second camp as he reflects about Benzino’s unprovoked and lame-@ss campaign to destroy the Great White Hope (“Now the owner of it [the Source magazine] has got a grudge against me for nothing? Well f*ck it, that motherf*cker can get it too, f*ck him then”). If you don’t know who he is, Benzino is in the truest sense of the word a wannabe. Desperate to be a popular rapper in today’s MTV culture, he burrowed into the worst cliches of gangsta rap, and mounted an ill-fated campaign to destroy Eminem for some reason. And his music is very, very bad: it’s not even amusingly cliched like No Limit or Cash Money releases. It’s absolutely forgettable, and it would be brought up as exhibit A were someone to attempt to prove that rap music officially sucked. Whenever I try and convince my anti-rap friends that there is some good stuff out there, they just say “Benzino”, and I can’t reply: their argument is stronger than mine. Deltron, MF Doom, Jay-Z, N.W.A., De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and goddamn Public Enemy! All these fantastic rap acts are negated by the horror that is Benzino. Do you agree? Listen to “Like Toy Soldiers” – Eminem lays out the facts for all to see, while pointing out the obvious stupidity of Benzino’s tomfoolery. And it doesn’t hurt that the beat is really, really good too. 13. “Narc” – Interpol, Antics As I already stated in the album review, Antics is just sorta weird. I don’t know why, but it is just an indefinable album. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad though, not at all. “Narc” is just one of the fantastic songs on it. It opens with an all-too-predictable Interpol-ish guitar riff, but where it goes from there is interesting. There is so much yearning in the main verses and resignation in the ending that it’s surprising to think that it all came originally from that math-rock riff. If you HAVEN’T already heard the song though, none of that probably matters. What does matters is that it’s a really super song, but beware! It will probably float in one ear and out the other on first listen (at least it did for me on my first, like, ten), but after that it starts to shine. My favourite track off Antics, “Narc” is definitely worth checking out. 14. “An Open Letter To NYC” – Beastie Boys, To The 5 Burroughs The new Beastie Boys album was a return to rap for them. Before that, they had always been their own weird entity, neither rap nor rock nor anything, really. They were just always the Beastie Boys. This is the most Paul’s Botique they’ve been since the 1989 sample clinic. Although the slick, polished production more resembles Hello Nasty, To The 5 Burroughs doesn’t have the sci-fi mumbojumbo or the wacky Biz Markie-influenced experimentation. It’s all rap here – and it’s all good rap. Yes, “Ch-Check It Out” is a groovy and successful track, but I really think it’s success is more due to other things than its musical merit. Have you ever actually listened to it? That is, when it’s not accompanied by the overwhelming mania of its video? I think the general enthusiasm that people have for the Beastie Boys when they come out with new stuff (only once every three or four years) is enough to boost sales of whatever the hell they choose to release as the single. “Ch-Check It Out” isn’t that good: entertaining background music, that is all. “An Open Letter To NYC” is sick, on the other hand. The Boys’s hometown homage is menacing and captivating – a song that makes everyone feel like a New Yorker for the second time in the last five years. And the Boys even address the politically-charged disaster: “Since 9/11 we’re still livin’, and lovin’ life we’ve been given… New York I know a lot has changed, 2 towers down but you’re still in the game….” It sounds reassuring coming out of the Boys’s mouths, even hopeful. I wonder if it would sound the same if this was made after Bush was re-elected? 15. “Jesus Walks” – Kanye West, College Dropout It’s not even the best single on the album (“All Falls Down”, “Spaceship”), but “Jesus Walks” is such an original single that it deserves recognition above the others. After all, Kanye’s right: this is the only time you’ll ever hear a song about Jesus being played in the club. It also best displays the love-hate relationship that music fans should have with Kanye West. He is an excellent producer that makes great songs, and half the time is an excellent MC. This is an example of him as an excellent MC rapping over an excellent beat. The other half the time, he is an indulgent producer (ahem, “The New Workout Plan”?) and a stupid MC, taking up bizarre causes (the ordeal that is “School Spirit” and its many skits) and sometimes slumping into simple thugisms. Kanye seems destined to fall into the same trap Nas did, and is only sort of recovering from now. See, Nas with his debut album Illmatic set a precedent: best rookie rap album EVER. And then he degenerated into mindless thug rap, and yet we kept listening because we knew buried somewhere in that big fur coat was a gifted MC. See, Kanye has just released his Illmatic; we know he’s capable of being sick. However, we also know he’s capable of being lazy and misguided. Let’s hope he doesn’t give way, and that his sophomore release is not an It Was Written. 16. “Blinded By The Lights” – The Streets, A Grand Don’t Come for Free An anthem for people who feel paranoid and claustrophobic when in a club, and get sh!tfaced to endure their surroundings. The beat is distant – music to match slow moving lasers, one could say – and cold, manufacturing creepy vibes from the get go. However, the real brilliance of the record is Mike Skinner’s role playing. Maybe the first time text messaging has been used in a song, Skinner raps “Menu, write message, so where are you and Simone? Send message, Dan’s number, where have they gone?”. He is alone and lonely in the masses of party people, and then the drugs kick in: “Maybe I shouldn’t have done the second one, I feel all fidgety and warm”. Not only is the song pivotal to the grand scheme of Skinner’s plot, but the concept of a club track condemning clubs is wonderfully ironic. Of course, this condemnation isn’t absolute – after all, it’s the Streets we’re talking about – but it identifies with two themes that everybody deals with from time to time: a) feeling alone or isolated in a crowd full of people and b) doing drugs to forget that feeling. Yep, two themes that everybody knows about. 17. “Diabolic Scheme” – The Hives, Tyrannosaurus Hives Pelle Almqvist has more than imitated Iggy Pop for this track. As I said in my top 10 albums of 2004, he channels his goddamn spirit from the Raw Power days. The song is scathing and scorching, reeling from Pelle’s astounding vocal performance and the horror film string section that scratches its way through the song. It’s also cool to hear that creepy voice repeat the words “diabolic scheme”, like a shadowy figure in a back alley. With all of this going on, there has to be a guitar solo as well, right? Booyah. You don’t even have to ask. The Hives do what they do better than anyone else, and that thing is rocking so tight and quick that you don’t even know what hits you. Although most critics celebrate the Hives, it seems to be lip service mostly considering I examined a multitude of top ten lists and saw the most recent face-rocking record of theirs missing for 2004. It’s too bad; the Hives are an astoundingly strong, creative, and high quality band, and if you consider how fun and funny they are, they deserve to be held in the highest esteems by both critics and the public. 18. “Shame” – PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her Although I never really got into the album as a whole, Uh Huh Her (however the hell you pronounce that) had some super tracks. “Shame” was the finest: its subdued drums and rock guitar provided the perfect background for brooding Polly Jean to lament that “shame is the shadow of love”. If the guitars were turned up a little, they might resemble a bass-heavy Loveless outtake, but Harvey’s vocal performance is unmistakable. Her vocals – half-feminist screamer, half-wounded sparrow – jump from note to note dexterously, leaning against the music for emotional support. Overall, the song is a deep and dark journal entry put to matching music, but it hits ya heavy, which is something Harvey has always been able to do. A fantastic song for people writhing in agony. 19. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” – Wilco, A Ghost Is Born Wilco’s strength always resides in the album as a whole, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t make decent singles. Consider “Jesus Etc.” and “Heavy Metal Drummer” off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: flawless. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” can cuddle right up to those two, like a little baby brother of perfection that’s accomplishments are always overshadowed. In this way it is a lesser track; lengthwise, though, it’s much, much longer. “Spiders” runs a solid ten minutes, structured around an immediately likable synth-drum beat. On top of that there’s a “European Son”-esque guitar solo, some stadium-rockin’ power chord parts, and cryptic lyrics like “Spiders are singing in the salty breeze, Spiders are filling out tax returns”. It never loses steam throughout the full ten minutes, building up and falling down, all while those synth-drums keep rolling along. Although I heard from somewhere the live version of this song is much better, if that’s the case, then the live version must be the best song of the year because the studio cut is pretty sweet too. 20. “Toxic” – Britney Spears, In The Zone Before one stones me to death, one must realize the following: Britney Spears is entirely contingent to the quality of this song. It could be her, or it could be another pop diva: it could be William Hung, and this would still be one of the best dance tracks of the year. It doesn’t matter – this song is all about the beat. Producers Bloodshy & Avant deserve all the credit here, coupled with the Stockholm Session Strings. Although I’m sure that they’d say Britney was “totally awesome” to work with, they’re not kidding anyone: the producers were the brains andand the brawn behind this success. It’s just a shame that Britney is the one that unduly receives credit for this accomplishment (An Amazon review of the single: “PEOPLE LIKE CHRISTINA, KYLIE AND EVEN MADONNA PRAY AT HER FEET, FOR THEY LONG TO RELEASE A SONG AS GREAT AS THIS. SHE IS TRULY THE QUEEN OF POP!!!”). Sigh… That’s it, folks. Twenty singles that rocked this year, through and through. You may seem a couple glaring omissions, and this is because a) I didn’t hear it in time (I only heard the Scissor Sisters “Comfortably Numb” after I was done the list, but it’ll get a complementary number twentyone in my books) or b) the hype surpassed the single’s quality to the max (“Vertigo”). Anyways, if you’ve heard some of these singles I listed then you’ll know what I’m talking about, but if not, then they’re worth checking. ‘Till next time.

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