800 Words: Evan Listens to Rolling Stone's Top 50 Songs of 2012 - (31-50)

Before I wrote this post, I tried doing a mini-essay on Die Meistersinger which had the potential to turn into a 10,000-word monsterpost that I’ll be nowhere near finishing for the next few years. So to cool off, I decided to finish my mini-reviews of Rolling Stone’s top 50 songs of last year. As always, I am truly amazed by how efficiently popular culture allows me the chance to turn my brain off completely :).

31. Low Cut Connie - Boozophilia: Harmless, catchy, kind of fun in a I want to dance drunk next to 200 people way. I like the idea of a paean to the low-life hangout dives around America. Certainly a few cuts above generic pop with some interesting piano work. But both Rolling Stone and Christgau rave about these guys like they’re the best thing since Blues itself. If this is the best they can do, we’d better turn in our music card America.

32. Bruce Springsteen - We Take Care of Our Own: The Boss in Born in the U.S.A. mode, so much so that it can almost be heard as a sibling song. Bruce does irony, and does it well, but every time I hear one of his ironic songs it comes as a complete shock, and it takes me a few minutes to realize that I don’t have to re-examine everything I ever knew about life. On the surface, his ironic music sounds exactly like his sincere music. I don’t know whether this is because Springsteen has a complete lack of self-understanding or because he understands himself all too well. It’s extremely effective, but what it ultimately does is to undercut the exuberance and hope which so many of us gather from Bruce in sincere mode. But perhaps that’s the point, so either way, it just proves that The Boss is still boss (I can’t believe I wrote that phrase down...).

33. Miguel - Adorn: Two reviews. From Rolling Stone: “Up to the minute fresh, yet steeped in Soul Tradition.” From Youtube: "hey if it only takes him 2mins and 34 sec muuuust be good ;) :D lolololololol" - One of these reviews is correct.

34. Kendrick Lamar - Swimming Pools: I am kind of shocked to say that I liked this song. I mean, it’s not THAT good. But the alternate voice in which he ‘portrayed’ his conscience did make me laugh. I can do without most of the rest, but it least shows that this guy’s got talent.

35. Icona Pop - I Love It: Who’d thunk that “Euro-slut club jam” music would be this dumb? I could go on a rant about the fascist evil of pop dance music, but everybody reading this would know exactly what it would say.

36. Himanshu - Womyn: Well, it’s dumb, but it’s pretty funny. One youtube comment descirbed it as Mitch Hedburg reincarnated as a song. That pretty much sums it up. If you think Mitch Hedburg a genius rather than a mildly funny stoner, listen to this right away. I can pretend that I’ve ever said anything smarter about wome(y)n than anything here, but... well...

37. Muse - Madness: Prog Rock simplified. No amount of finely constructed music (and it really is) can cover for the fact that the lyrics are insipid in that way which makes you know that their writer thinks he’s brilliant (hey, it worked for Wagner...). Still, the music here is really, really good.

38. Teen - Better: If the girls from Girls made a girl-band... it would probably be more entertaining than this. I mean,... it’s not bad, in fact it’s slightly better than your average band with a label. It’s just not up to the extravagant claim of the song.  …And what the hell is it with indie bands and believing that putting a full chord on every sixteenth note generates energy?

39. Dwight Yoakam - A Heart Like Mine: I’m not sure when I’ve ever listened to a Dwight Yoakam song. This is, almost, exactly what I expected. Competent, but sentimental, overly sincere, and no more ulterior meanings or unexpected harmonies than the dullest-witted listener can understand. Songs for the lowest-common-denominator. Nice yodels, but I’ll stick with his old-country cousin Eugen.

40. Craig Finn - Rented Room: One of those songs that is not quite as dark or shocking or moving as it thinks it is. Drug addiction is terrible, this song isn’t. But it’s not exactly a moving depiction of it.

41. Danny Brown - Grown Up: It’s a dumb rap song that doubles as a smart one. I mean, it’s clearly a true rags to riches story with a morally neutral point of view as to whether he deserved his good fortune. Whether you like it depends on which side of the pillow you woke up...

42. Bear Hug - The 2 Bears: Even if this song didn’t sound like it was about pedophillia, it would be creepy as hell.

43. Tanlines - All of Me: One of the two most repeated lines in the song is ‘cut off emotions.’ Were there any?

44. The Wanted - Glad You Came: Apparently this is the Irish equivalent of the Jonas Brothers. But the Jonas Brothers never used accordions, nor did they talk so clearly in double entendres about teen sex. I guess that’s a good thing?...

45. Justin Bieber - Die in Your Arms: I’ve listened to perhaps one Justin Bieber song in all “these years.” It’s unfortunate to know that his music is exactly as annoying as the rest of his phenomenon. This is so unbelievably scripted and packaged for an exact demographic so as to be as noxious as carbon monoxide. Hopefully some pre-teen girl somewhere accidentally downloads a Heinrich Biber track and it changes her life forever.

46. Maroon 5 - Payphone: What must surely be a masterpiece of non-annoyingness in the history of a truly irritating pop group.

47. Superchunk - This Summer: Almost moving. It would appear that indie rock has matured to the point that it can ‘do’ nostalgia. I’m impressed. Not quite impressed enough, but still impressed.

48. Deadmau5 - The Veldt: Much has been made about the way this song was made (by the children, apparently...). But if songwriters are worried about the potential for crowdsourced songs to eclipse them, they can rest easy for a while. Songs by committee are usually a bad idea, but this song takes that idea to the next level, and is colossally terrible. If you saw the video that accompanies a 3-minute version of this song, you’d come away thinking it’s a bland song that accompanies a rather more interesting video. But if you sit through all 8 minutes, you’d be overjoyed that there are only two songs left in this list.

49. Kacey Musgrave - Merry Go’ Round: I’m shocked, stunned, and completely embarrassed. This song restores my faith that Country Music written after 1970 might be worth listening to. And it’s some 24 year old I’d have probably dismissed as another country music ditz before I’d ever heard the song. A masterpiece? Not quite, too much repetition, but this is damn good. Watch this girl.

50. Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe: It’s inescapable, and it just might pass for bland and non-annoying if we hadn’t heard it 50,000,000,000 times in the last year.

So, from these fifty, I’ll make my own list of what’s worth listening to:

Greatness:

1.Bob Dylan: Pay in Blood

2. Donald Fagen - Weather In My Head

3. Randy Newman - I’m Dreaming

Excellence:

1. Kacey Musgrave - Merry Go’ Round

2. Bruce Springsteen - We Take Care of Our Own

3. Fiona Apple - Hot Knife

Goodness:

1. Fun - Some Nights

2. Alabama Shakes - Hold On

3. Passion Pit - Take a Walk

4. Grimes - Oblivion (begrudgingly)

Virtuously Flawed:

Muse - Madness

Superchunk - This Summer

Leonard Cohen - Going Home

Himanshu - Womyn

Craig Finn - Rented Room

Kendrick Lamar - Swimming Pools

Teen - Better

BUT. The best song of 2012 clearly did not make this list at all. We all know what the real #1 song of the year is; the song which expresses the folly of our country, the spirit of the age,and mankind’s eternal longing for transcendence and pure being:

The Birthday Song (Thanks Ethan...):

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800 Words: Evan Listen's to Rolling Stones Top 50 Songs of 2012 - Part 2

13. Mumford & Sons - I Will Wait: Is there any band since Dave Matthews which has exhausted the good faith of music lovers more quickly? Every song is the same - pleasing, musical, with reasonably well crafted but bland lyrics, and so sincere that the oil of insincerity drips from their pores. If you heard any Mumford & Sons song in isolation, you’d be very happy with it and want to hear more. But Mumford & Sons is a formula that will be repeated hundreds of times before they’re over. Hearing a rock singer say that I will wait for you’ sort of seems like the acme of insincerity, and after a while, you don’t believe a word they sing.

14. The Vaccines - Teenage Icon: A punk band has the humility to realize they’re not that great. Would that it happened more often, but they’re absolutely right.

15. Usher - Climax: “Revolutionary Pop” eh? Let’s leave aside the stupefying modesty and simply ask: hasn’t popular music had enough fake revolutions for one century? I admire the effort to combine hip-hop with serious electronica, but this is the blandest and most milquetoast climax since Perry Como.

16. Van Halen - Stay Frosty: Gotta be honest, and I’m at least a little less ashamed by this than I should be... I didn’t even know Van Halen was still a band. This song perhaps explains why. Guitar work is nearly as good as I ever remember it being for them, but the song itself... What?

17. Kitty Pryde - Okay Cupid: Well... it’s original. Hipster-Hop? It’s not that hipsters don’t listen to hip-hop, but somehow, this is the whitest, most girl-power, most hipster hip-hop I’ve ever heard in my VAAAAAST experience of all those scenes. It’s still not particularly good, but at least it’s different.

18: Rolling Stones - Doom and Gloom: “How do the Rolling Stones have new songs?” - Ethan Tucker. It sounds like a bunch of 70-year-olds doing an impression of who they were when they were 20. It’s competent, but I don’t even care much for the Rolling Stones from their prime. This is sad.

19. Beach House - Other People: Well, they’re from Baltimore, so I better tread carefully here.... )(&*^*&^$&^%$ &*^% (&* ^(&* )(&^*&^$%*&$% (*&*&%$&^#$^# (*^&&^$&^$ $#$%^#%^$*&!

20. Leonard Cohen - Going Home: Is Leonard Cohen even a singer anymore? At this point, his songs are just hip-hop tracks that move at geriatric speeds. Much moreso than Bob Dylan, I find it almost impossible to judge Leonard Cohen when he sings his own music. The lyrics of this song are so much higher a level than anything here short of Dylan himself, but I find nearly any Leonard Cohen album impossible to listen to. It’s basically just a spoken word performance with a bad synthesizer and the kind of backup girls that sounded anachronistic by 1963. How can a musician so great be so terrible?

21. Donald Fagen - Weather In My Head: The guy from Steely Dan still has it... not that I ever knew he ever had it before. I’ve heard a Steely Dan song maybe twice in my life... But I’m going to start listening right away. Short of Dylan’s contribution, this is easily the greatest song on this list so far - and a song with far better music... Funk can apparently still be done in our time as well as any other. Thank god,... I was really beginning to believe my own worst stereotypes about non-classical music.

22. Skrilles - Bangarang: Well it does demand your attention... with all the endearingness of a spoiled kid on a sugar high. If this song were a kid, I’d slap it. If this is dubstep,...

23. Randy Newman - I’m Dreaming: My extremely uncool passion for Randy Newman is well documented. Yes, it doesn’t help to tell you that the smartest songwriter in America sounds like a mentally challenged asylum inmate, or that South Park, Family Guy, and Mad TV have all had a go at his extremely obvious flaws. But against that, I have to assert that this is a songwriter on an intellectual level - musically, poetically, thematically -  that no other songwriter of our time can approximate with more laughs and more pathos-per-bar than Dylan, Cohen, Neil Young, or Springsteen combined. Here is another great song from the greatest songwriter of our era who doesn’t write musicals, and I hope people begin to wake up to that before posterity washes him away.

24. Japandroids - The House that Heaven Built: This band’s got a great name. Otherwise, see the last sentence of #3.

25. Psy - Gangnam Style: “You have to listen to Gangnam Style? You don’t already have an opinion?” - Ethan Tucker ... My opinion can be found here.

26. The Lumineers - Ho Hey:  Risible and catchy for all the wrong reasons.

27. A$AP Rocky - Goldie: There will always people around to defend cynical rappers who create song after song of the ‘pimps and hos’ variety. They’ll tell us that it takes cleverness to make songs with such debased values and still make it interesting. What’s sad about this argument is that it’s absolutely right. Yes, it’s objectionable and kind of loathesome. It’s no less objectionable than the pre-packaged, airbrushed, over-produced music we get from everyone from Britney Spears to Justin Timberlake to Maroon 5 to (yes indeed) Lady Gaga. Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.

28. Grimes - Oblivion: Creepy. Very creepy. I’m tempted to leave it there but... the musical technique on display here is pretty astounding. Watch this one. She’s going to the stratosphere.

29. Grizzly Bear - Yet Again: Someone, somewhere, has no doubt that this song is very deep. Find these people, and kill them.

30. The Beach Boys - That’s Why God Made the Radio: God, what we lost with Brian Wilson’s nervous breakdown... No amount of drugs can diminish Wilson’s ear, but this is music by and for a group of people who still exist in a time that is long past. It makes you wonder what might have happened had Mozart or Schubert merely had a nervous breakdown instead of die young - would their older selves be washed up versions of their young years? Forever cranking out a tired copy of their youthful style long after the world moved on?

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800 Words: Evan Listens to Rolling Stone's Top 50 Songs of 2012 (part 1)

As I’ve gone further into the non-classical world, my taste for listening to it has soured a bit. The grass is always greener and all that...

I don’t regret the decision for a moment, I’ve met many many great musicians, some of whom I’m privileged enough to work with all the time. I have more fun playing music than I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve also sat through enough shit concerts to know that the great musicians I’ve met are the exceptions, not the rule. Watching some of this stuff was enough to blow apart some of my more flattering ideas about the non-classical world and its vitality. Yes, the vitality is still there, but that vitality is undeserved. Sometimes I think rock music is simply a racket for nerdy guys to get women to pay attention to them. They have my sympathy, but not when their results are at the music’s expense. I’ve heard a number of great bands, I’ve also heard bands to which I had to lie through my teeth if I met the musicians. We all make mistakes of judgement, and one of my less serious ones was that I attributed too much intelligence to the non-classical world’s innovations. Listen to Ligeti or Schnittke. The results may be too emotionally arid, but the intelligence required by a composer to assemble such music is still a google-plex more than that required by any other genre.

Don’t get me wrong, there is intelligence aplenty in the non-classical world, and occasionally more of it than we ever see on the side of the fence to which I hung for thirty years. When so many musicians gravitate to the ‘larger’ music world, their results will necessarily be better. Every musician, every artist, needs a community of peers with which they can discuss, experiment, support, compete, spar, and improve. But because there are so few classical composers in comparison to singer/songwriters and bands, will even the best classical composers of today have anywhere near the same chance for posterity as Bob Dylan and John Lennon (or even Kanye?).

There will always be shitty music of every stripe. I often wonder if there isn’t the exact same proportion of quality to shit in every artistic community, no matter how big or how small. The more terrible musicians there are, the more great musicians there will be to rise above them. I feel extremely lucky that I’ve met as many great musicians as I have in the last eighteen months. The results could have been so much worse...

The truth is that the classical world is a fairly good insurance policy against bad music - no one would want to listen to bad music a hundred years after it’s written (though some do). Unfortunately, being in the classical world requires sitting through many a terrible performance of great music - sometimes merely insipid, sometimes fully incompetent. Mother Nature always finds a way...

But after a year of going to a variety of shows in the Baltimore music scene, a few of which were truly great, a few more of which were truly awful, I find myself returning ever more to the music on which I grew up: the Brahmses, the Verdis, the Beethovens. There’s simply too much music I hear for which people clearly don’t give a shit about the quality, and when I get home, I need the musical equivalent of a cold shower. And that cold shower is the quality-controlled music of the ‘masters’, most of whose greatest music I have favorite recordings to listen on demand. The more shows I go to, the less I listen to what more is out there on today’s national and international music scenes, and the less sense I have of what music truly is today.

So in an attempt to get myself out of the ‘posterity box’, I’m listening to what Rolling Stone Magazine claimed were the 50 best songs of last year. Maybe I should have taken a different magazine, but it came up before Paste on the google search.   Perhaps last year’s achievements are already passe and forgotten. But it’s the best I’m gonna do for now.

1. Alabama Shakes - Hold On: It might be a great song, it might not. But I can honestly say that I think I could listen to this song quite a few times without ever getting tired of it. It’s optimistic, it’s hopeful, it’s the spiritual uplift what we all need more often. It’s the very best quality of soul with a country twist. I’m honestly moved by it. Brittany Howard’s voice is like a perfect melding of Otis Redding and Amy Winehouse. I’m not truly bowled over, but I’m definitely listening to more Alabama Shakes.

2. Taylor Swift - We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together:So THIS is the song with the oooooooohhhh’s that I keep hearing! Anyway, now that I’ve seen the music video, and really listened to the lyrics and the music, I can honestly see how this could be a fun song for when you want to turn your brain off. But the fact that this is one of the most successful singles of 2012 makes me fear for all humanity.

3. Passion Pit - Take a Walk: Well... it’s timely, it’s catchy, and it’s all too relatable for anybody in today’s America. With regard to craft, this is no work of genius, but it’s about as awesome as a truly mediocre pop song gets.  

4. Frank Ocean - Thinkin’ ‘Bout You: Professional sports and professional rap, perhaps the two most homophobic communities in celebrity culture, and both of which broke their most significant barriers in the last year. I’ve never listened to much else by Frank Ocean, though I’m assured he was of the gangsta variety until now. I can’t deny that it’s a moving, universal song. But I wonder if the milestone didn’t obscure its banality - the lyrics really are a little incoherent, and once you finally understand what he means, they’re kind of pedestrian. If we didn’t know Frank Ocean was coming out with this song, would this song be nearly as moving?

5. Neil Young with Crazy Horse - Ramada Inn: A two minute song squeezed into seventeen minutes. These guitar solos are just a fucking ego trip, as dumb as Wesley Willis (he of schizophrenic homeless fame) giving his instrumental demos a solo in the middle of his song. They don’t add anything to a song that is as far from Neil Young’s best as any song I’ve written myself. Who could even focus on the lyrics when there are so few of them between those agonizingly mellow guitar solos?

6. Kanye West (and guests) - Mercy: Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. I don’t dislike Kanye, anybody who doesn’t find either his music or his intense stupidity in all other areas entertaining is dumb, but anybody who takes him seriously is also dumb. But no matter what your feelings on Kanye, what the fuck is this song supposed to be except a mess? This is not a real song, it’s just the hip-hop equivalent of a composer’s note-noodling.

7. Bruce Springsteen - Rocky Ground: I can’t wait to listen to the rest of the album, which seems to have gotten as many raves as any other Springsteen album in the last twenty years. But this is standard Springsteen in redemption mode fair, and the hip-hop elements are the most interesting part of the song, but only because it doesn’t sound cliche by this point. Springsteen’s done the Redemption thing better in at least a dozen songs.

8. Jack White - Sixteen Saltines: Everything I’ve ever heard or seen about Jack White makes me want to punch him in the face. This is no exception.

9. Bob Dylan - Pay in Blood: A more charitable person than I would call this a flat-out masterpiece. But even I, a Dylan-skeptic, have to admit that this is kind of stunning. I find it difficult to proclaim someone who can only write two or three modes of song as the greatest songwriter of this or any other time. But when Dylan summons up the oracular pronouncements, he really does sound like an Old Testament Prophet. Musically, it’s just your token Dylan simplicity with a standard blues backup band. But this is one of the greatest songs Dylan has ever written, a full narrative about the people who make war, after which Dick Cheney might re-appear in your dreams as Hades Himself.

10. First Aid Kit - Emmylou: This is a thoroughly bland tribute to old school country music. That’s all I have to say.

11. Fun - Some Nights: Musically, this is the most ambitious of the first twelve, and it’s astonishing how much of their ambition they achieve. Like ‘Hold On’, this is another imperfect song that may be a great song even so. The lyrics are hardly memorable, in fact at points they're embarrassingly mawkish. But in the face of this kind of melancholy exuberance, does that matter?... probably a little...

12. Fiona Apple - Hot Knife: Musically this is almost perfect - though why does she allow  those “wrong” piano notes in the middle of those incredible rounds? It senselessly breaks the momentum. The sentiment of the lyrics is not particularly deep, though I like the line ‘like the creation of rhythm.’ This is a song about getting it on, and when you look like Fiona Apple, everybody wants to hear you sing about it.

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