100 Songs for 2017: Outtakes Week (Day Five)

My 100 Songs for 2017 list comes out December 11! It’s … coming along nicely, I think. Regardless, between now and then, we’re shining the spotlight on some deserving songs that didn’t make the cut.

This is it. These are the Final Cuts. 100 Songs for 2017 comes out Monday. Thanks for reading.

Sofi Tukker - "Best Friend"

The final final cut. It's a good song. Maybe someday I'll be able to think of it as something other than an iPhone commercial, but today is not that day.

Bully - "Running"

The second-to-final cut, and it could not be more different than "Best Friend." Minimal production, ragged, frenzied, desperate. But it gets me. Planning to go see Bully at GAMH in February and I have no doubt they put on a vicious live show.

Foxygen - "On Lankershim"

Half "Tiny Dancer," half "Return of the Grievous Angel," and if you don't think that sounds wonderful then I feel bad for you.

The Front Bottoms - "Vacation Town"

You should never fact-check anything. There's a scene in 30 Rock where Liz is describing a romantic encounter to Jack and she says - or at I thought she said - "I gave him front bottom." So, whenever this band's name came up, in any context, I would invariably reply, "Good lord, Lemon, that's your worst quadrant!" Because I'm hilarious.

Turns out she really said "I gave him top front." Whatever, misquoting it all year made me happy.

Radiator Hospital - "Pastoral Radio Hit"

It's not catchy in the same sense as a Top 40 pop song, but there will be times I'll just find myself humming, "I've been in your head, been on your mind" even though I haven't even listened to this recently. It's low-key catchy, which I admit sounds like an oxymoron.

Sun Airway - "All In"

One review of this track mentioned its "saturated tropi-synths," which is just a reminder that music writing is just a contest to see who can invent the most new words.

Waxahatchee - "Never Been Wrong"

Waxahatchee showed up on the "Two Songs Rule" Outtakes post back on Monday, but ... whoops. Turns out there wasn't enough room for two songs from Out in the Storm, which is a shame, because it's so consistently excellent.

Thunder Jackson - "Guilty Party"

Look, I'm not complaining. I love NME wholeheartedly. I'm not accusing them of anything. But like 15% of their articles are absolutely written by publicists. Look at this:



A neutral observer did not write that. If they're going to keep the hyperbole turned up that high, they'd better be right, and on this one they are.

Broken Social Scene - "Skyline"

"Skyline" good, "Shoreline" still better.

Niki & The Dove - "Sushi King"

Always try to find room for Swedish weirdos on the list, but this year they fell just short.

100 Songs for 2017: Outtakes Week (Day Four)

My 100 Songs for 2017 list comes out December 11! It’s … coming along nicely, I think. Regardless, between now and then, we’re shining the spotlight on some deserving songs that didn’t make the cut.

If it's Thursday, it must time to abandon the pretext of grouping these songs into theme posts. We're just talking about the Final Cuts now. Today and tomorrow are emotional because, once I include a song in one of these Outtakes posts, I can't have a last-minute change of heart and sneak it back onto the list. This is goodbye, Final Cuts.

DREAMCAR - "All of the Dead Girls"

DREAMCAR is Davey from AFI with all of the non-Gwen members of No Doubt, and they sound exactly like you're imagining they do. Which is to say, not as good as either AFI or No Doubt, but still pretty good.

YUNGBLUD - "I Love You, Will You Marry Me"

I have a soft spot for obnoxious British teenagers that I absolutely do not have for Americans. I mean, look at this guy:

He's 19! He likes rock, but he also likes hip hop! He's aware of The Specials! And yet ... it's really good.

Rex Orange County - "Edition"

Since that Bon Iver song about the Ace came out last year, this is the best song of 2017 about a hotel I stayed at in 2017. I do not expect anyone to win this award in 2018, but I'm willing to be surprised.

Ratboys - "Elvis is in the Freezer"

This is a song about a dead cat. It destroys me. I'm just warning you now. It's really good, and I appreciate it, but it's never going to make 100 Songs for 2017 because I do not enjoy listening to it. Even though it's really good.

(If it were about a dog, it wouldn't even make the Outtakes. I would take active steps to avoid any contact with it.)

I feel like I need to disclose this because there are absolutely songs about dead humans on 100 Songs for 2017, and apparently that doesn't bother me. I might be a sociopath.

Liyv - "Weeknight"

As Matthew Perpetua pointed out on Fluxblog, the chopped vocal section sounds like she's saying "I want a kitty cat, I want a kitten," and once you've had that thought, it's hard to take the rest of the song seriously.

Future Islands - "Ran"
Perfume Genius - "Slip Away"

Grouping these two together as standard-bearers (along with Spoon) in the category of "bands I really should love but just don't." I have many friends with great taste who love both of them. They constantly show up in the "Recommended If You Like" listings for other favorites of mine. And yet ... neither one really hits for me. I like them. But somehow that doesn't seem like enough.

CamelPhat - "Cola"

Every time I check in on the UK music scene (which, let's be honest, I pretty much just mean NME or Radio One), there is always one of these electro house tracks near the top of the charts, and it's a fun novelty because this would never sell in the US. And I wonder, if I lived over there, if I would immediately get sick of songs like this, and I wonder if I just like this because I have no frame of reference for it. I guess what I'm saying is that I probably have to move to London to put this to rest once and for all.

Francis and the Lights - "May I Have This Dance" (Remix f/ Chance the Rapper)

It's a remix, with a proper 2017 release, so it's eligible, but this is just a 2016 song for me. There really isn't enough new material here for me to reconsider it (sorry Chance).

Cam'ron - "10,000 Miles"

Two of my favorite things in the world are (a) Cam rapping over super-cheesy samples, and (b) "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton. But, it turns out my love of both of those things does have limits.

100 Songs for 2017: Outtakes Week (Day Three)

My 100 Songs for 2017 list comes out December 11! It’s … coming along nicely, I think. Regardless, between now and then, we’re shining the spotlight on some deserving songs that didn’t make the cut.

Today, we check in on some old friends, artists who have featured prominently on previous 100 Songs lists, but find themselves on the outside looking in this year. Every year, these kinds of cuts make me feel weirdly guilty for two reasons.

First, I feel like I'm being ungrateful to the artists themselves. Objectively I understand that it's not like Stuart Murdoch is going to read this and get offended that neither of the Belle and Sebastian singles released this year made the list, but I still feel like I need to include some kind of disclaimer: Stuart, I love you. B&S's entire catalog is incredible. Push Barman to Open Old Wounds could be some other band's entire career, and that's your b-sides compilation. Anyway, it starts to get too involved at that point.

Second, I feel like I owe a duty of disclosure to the readers of this site. It's not really important to me that you hear the specific songs we're discussing today, but it is important to me that you're aware of these artists. So yeah, if you don't love "Somewhere Up There," that's fine, but Gossamer is a really important album for me, and "Moth's Wings" and "Little Secret" and ... if hearing this song that I think is merely okay piques your interest in songs that I love, I feel like I'm obligated to spread the gospel.

As a compromise, then, let's talk about them in an Outtakes post. And let's shout out something awesome from the band's back catalog to offset the fact that most of these blurbs are kinda negative.

The Killers - "The Man"

I don't think we give The Killers enough credit for their versatility. They burst onto the scene as the Vegas chapter of the New York rock revival, in the cold Joy Division/Television mold of The Strokes and Interpol. Two years later, they returned with Sam's Town, which is nothing if not a Springsteen homage. If you Google "The Killers sound like" the first two auto-fill options are The Cure and The Cars, which is amazing because those bands sound nothing like each other and yet The Killers have, at various times, kinda sounded like both of them. In 2017, they're basically Duran Duran. I have no idea how that's possible.

• But remember "When You Were Young"?

The Shins - "Name for You"

It makes me sound like a crazy person, because I can't really explain it, but in the chorus, when the lead vocal sings "They've got a name for you, girl / What's in a name?" the backing vocal just sings "blah blah blah blah" and it just infuriates me in a really visceral way. I hate the way the line is delivered (too forceful, almost sarcastic), I hate the way the backing vocals are mixed (way too loud), it honestly ruins the entire song for me. And I really have no idea why.

• But remember "Phantom Limb"?

Belle & Sebastian - "We Were Beautiful"

Seeing B&S at The Independent the night before their Outside Lands show was one of my favorite musical experiences of the year. Their live show has such a massive amount of energy and optimism and just flat-out happiness and it bothers me that every person I hung out with in college just knows them as "some old sad bastard music" because of that one line in High Fidelity.

• But remember "Lazy Line Painter Jane"?

Passion Pit - "Somewhere Up There"

I've called myself a huge Passion Pit fan before, but the facts kinda point in the other direction. Earlier this year, before the album was available on Spotify, Michael Angelakos offered free advance copies to fans who retweeted some science thing and, honestly, I couldn't be bothered. If I am a Passion Pit fan, I am a massively ungrateful Passion Pit fan. (Even now, I'm too lazy to find out what that science thing was all about.)

• But remember "Moth's Wings"?

Purity Ring - "Asido"

I feel like reality has really caught up to Purity Ring's vision of a cold, terrifying future defined by formless but vaguely metallic unease, and I'm really interested to see how this impacts their artistic direction.

• But remember "Ungirthed"?

Cut Copy - "Standing in the Middle of the Field"

Played some of these songs for Ilana last night to get her opinion on them, and we got about five seconds into this one and she dismissively said, "It sounds like 'Under the Sea.'" Not sure I agree with that assessment, but I can't think of anything else to say about this one, so there you go.

• But remember "Out There On The Ice"?

Frank Turner - "There She Is"

Every artist who releases a greatest hits album (remember those?) feels the need to include one new song among the beloved classics. And that one new song is ... always disappointing.

• But remember "Losing Days"?

Ryan Adams - "To Be Without You"

Heartbreaker and Gold were a massive part of the soundtrack of my life for my first two years of college, but now when I hear a Ryan Adams song, I just think, "I wonder if this is about Mandy Moore."

• But remember "Nuclear"?

Conor Oberst - "Napalm"

This is Bob Dylan-y, even by Conor Oberst standards. So ... it's really Bob Dylan-y.

• But remember "Take It Easy (Love Nothing)"?

Shout Out Louds - "Porcelain"

Ilana said this sounds like "Don't Fear the Reaper," which might be giving it too much credit. It's "Don't Fear the Reaper" without the cowbell or the chorus.

• But remember "You Are Dreaming"?

San Fermin - "Asleep on the Train"

Even the recent past is a foreign country. "Sonsick" was my Song of the Year in 2013 - four years ago - and it already seems like a decision made by a complete stranger.

• But remember "Sonsick"?

The Rural Alberta Advantage - "Beacon Hill"

Put on a great show at Bottom of the Hill earlier this year, including a stripped down encore performed from the middle of the audience. Unfairly penalized a little bit here because "White Lights," the clear standout from The Wild, already made my list as a single last year.

• But remember "Runners in the Night"?

100 Songs for 2017: Outtakes Week (Day Two)

My 100 Songs for 2017 list comes out December 11! It’s … maybe a little closer to being finished than it was yesterday. So, I guess a week from now we’ll both be surprised by what I think the best songs of the year are. Regardless, between now and then, we’re shining the spotlight on some deserving songs that didn’t make the cut.

Today, we check in on pop music, which ...

So yeah, I’m not going to come in here screaming, “HEY! LISTEN TO ME! I DO NOT GET POST MALONE! LIKE, AT ALL! THIS IS AWFUL! WHY DOES ANYONE LIKE THIS?!?” I’m sure the kids have their reasons.

Instead, let’s talk about some pop songs I thought were pretty good.

Kygo - “It Ain’t Me” (featuring Selena Gomez)

This is maybe the most Avicii song ever written, even though Avicii himself wasn't involved. (Kygo is Norwegian, so maybe it's a pan-Scandinavian thing.)

Selena Gomez is great on this, which is something I found myself saying surprisingly often in 2017. Pop stardom is all about the long game, but it's amazing to me that I would be more excited about a new Selena Gomez song than I would be about a new Ellie Goulding song, or a new Lady Gaga song, or even a new Taylor Swift song (not that we didn't just get a bunch of those but, spoiler alert, none of them are going to be on 100 Songs for 2017). 

Last point: There's a lyrical ambiguity here and I need to get to the bottom of it. The lines in question are "I had a dream / we were back to seventeen / summer nights and libertines / never growing up"

The word "libertines" is lower-case there, conveying the general definition of the word - free thinking, rebellious, existing outside the norms of society. And that fits, I guess.

Commenters on the lyric site Genius, though, think this is a reference to the band The Libertines:

The Libertines (a) are one of my favorite bands of all time, and (b) have absolutely not been culturally relevant in any way since 2004.

If this song is about Selena Gomez and her friends sitting around listening to, like, "Can't Stand Me Now," it completely changes the way I feel about this song. If that's the case, it should absolutely be in my top 100.

The Wikipedia page for this song has a hundred and twenty-seven citations, and yet fails to address this.

Lorde - “Green Light”

NME's Song of the Year, and if you want a preview of my list ... there's going to be a lot of overlap with NME ("Green Light" notwithstanding).

I can't quite put my finger on why, but I think it would like it better if someone else did it.

Calvin Harris - “Slide” (featuring Frank Ocean, Migos)

Stereogum's Song of the Summer, which is high praise.

DJ Khaled - “I’m the One” (featuring Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper, Quavo, Lil Wayne)

Those Snapchat videos where Khaled is lost at sea on a Jetski are still the best thing he's ever done, but this beat has to be in the conversation. Other great things about this song: Khaled's ad-libs (nothing new, but always a treat), whatever effect he put on Bieber's vocals. Cons include: pretty much the rest of it.

For the first forty-five seconds, this is one of my favorite songs of the year. The problem is that it's almost five minutes long.

Migos - “Bad and Boujee” (featuring Lil Uzi Vert)

As you may have noticed, every single male public figure is a horrible monster. On that spectrum, Migos' homophobia is maybe a ways down the list, but it's still disappointing. 

I'm not going to tell you how to process art made by terrible people, because I don't know myself (and, given the pace of news, I'm sure we will soon learn something terrible about one of the artists on 100 Songs for 2017). I just know it makes songs like this a lot less fun.

Khalid - “Young Dumb & Broke”

There's a fun leftist dissertation on how we got from "Young, Wild & Free" in 2011 to "Young Dumb & Broke" in 2017. No war but class war, kids.

Liam Payne - “Strip that Down” (featuring Quavo)

Despite the existence of a music video that suggests otherwise, I refuse to believe that Liam Payne and Quavo have ever met in real life.

Look at this obvious photoshop:

Nope, these two people live in different fictional universes. This is some kind of weird fan fiction where Harry Potter and Marlo from The Wire are friends.

Bleachers - “Hate That You Know Me”

Hot Take: This is better than any of the songs Jack Antonoff wrote for Reputation. And it has Carly Rae Jepsen on backing vocals. In the years between albums, we have to be thankful for whatever CRJ we can get.

Sigala - “Came Here For Love” (featuring Ella Eyre)

This is a perfectly pleasant if ultimately forgettable song, but I put it on the list so I could bring your attention to the video, which is stunning. It takes places in a splashy Day-Glo town that I assumed had to be some kind of post-production visual effect:

Nope, turns out this is a real place in Mexico. You can just go there and, I assume, ride unicorns as public transit. Maybe you're not interested in living inside a sixties acid trip cartoon but, I gotta say, I'm intrigued.

Selena Gomez x Marshmello - “Wolves”

Like I said, I think I'm a Selena Gomez fan now. She's a good singer, and I don't really know what her contribution to the songwriting process is but, at the very least, she picks good songs. 2017 has really been a voyage of self-discovery.

100 Songs for 2017: Outtakes Week (Day One)

My 100 Songs for 2017 list comes out December 11! And, to be honest, it’s not even close to being finished. So, I guess a week from now we’ll both be surprised by what I think the best songs of the year are. Regardless, between now and then, we’re shining the spotlight on some deserving songs that didn’t make the cut.

Today, we mourn victims of the Two Song Rule. As long-time readers may remember (as none of you, in fact, remember), 100 Songs for 2008 featured five Los Campesinos! songs. And sure, Hold On Now, Youngster is a classic, but that is just too many songs by any one artist on a year-end list. So, eventually I realized the error of my ways and instituted the Two Song Rule, which is exactly what it sounds like. These artists just had too many good songs this year.

Haim - “Found It In Silence”

The first Haim single came out in 2012, and Days Are Gone came out in 2013, which isn’t really that long ago … but man it feels like a different lifetime. It seemed like Haim were content to embark on a new life as professional celebrities, on a permanent vacation with Taylor Swift and her army of models. And if they had, who could blame them? I think I’d mostly given up on the idea of another good Haim album, so with that background, 2017's Something to Tell You sounds even better.

Generationals - “Mythical”

I have no idea what Generationals are up to. They have so many new songs out that I got into a somewhat involved argument in a Portland bookstore about whether or not they actually put a proper album out this year. (They did not, just five singles.) Maybe they’re just a digital singles band now. There isn’t really a reason for artists to release traditional albums anymore, so who knows? Anyway, all five of those singles are varying degrees of great, and “Mythical” has the minor honor of being my third favorite.

Phoebe Bridgers - “Would You Rather”

You know when you’re watching a commercial and you see an actor who exists somewhere on the fringes of your memory and you spend the entire thirty seconds trying to figure out where you know him from and then eventually your wife figures out that it’s the guy who played Doug Hitler on Happy Endings and by that time the commercial is over and you didn’t catch whether you were supposed to buy a phone or a Lexus or what? That’s what Conor Oberst’s guest vocal on this song feels like.

Anyway, Stranger in the Alps is a great album.

Worriers - “Not Your Type”

Calling Worriers a slightly softer version of Against Me! might sound like faint praise, but Laura Jane Grace produced their previous album, so I think they’d still appreciate the compliment.

I have never said the name of this band to someone who didn’t think I was trying to say the word “warriors” but inexplicably failing.

Alvvays - “Plimsoll Punks”

Another band where I have no idea how you actually say their name. I come out somewhere in the neighborhood of Dracula saying the word “always,” which I'm sure is wrong.

Bummed that I missed their show at the Fillmore earlier this year (a) because they are great and I bet they put on a fantastic live show, and (b) because they might have started the show with a hearty “Hello, San Francisco, we are Alvvays!” and then I would know how to say it.

White Reaper - “Tell Me”

White Reaper have been touring pretty much non-stop for all of 2017, but for some reason they refuse to play San Francisco. But they did play CalJam. And if you don’t know what CalJam is, well, I didn’t either. Turns out it’s a one-day music festival near San Bernardino … which includes a water park. I know. You just realized every music festival you’ve ever been to was terrible because it didn’t have a water park.

Waxahatchee - “Silver”

I’m pretty sure I’ve had tickets to see Waxahatchee on three separate occasions, and I’ve never been able to go. I don’t really have a joke or a comment here, that just makes me really sad.

Wolf Alice - “Beautifully Unconventional”

My Love is Cool came out in 2015, but I didn’t really listen to it until 2016. Since my only platform for expressing opinions is year-end lists, I don’t feel like I really got a chance to breathlessly describe how great it is. It’s really great.

Anyway, Wolf Alice is back in 2017 with Visions of a Life, and when 100 Songs for 2017 comes out we’ll talk about how great that is. For now, though … please go listen to My Love is Cool.

Pale Waves - “New Year’s Eve”

As far as I can tell, Pale Waves have three songs that they have released in any recorded format. Two of them are on 100 Songs for 2017. This is the third. I know it’s a small sample size, but with a batting average like that I think we have no choice but to agree that Pale Waves are the greatest band in the history of the world.

Alex Lahey - “I Love You Like a Brother”

I know you have fifteen different holiday parties scheduled for December 9, and I know you’re already pulling your hair out trying to figure out if you should just pick one, or make an appearance at several, and if so in which order, and who you’ll offend if you don’t go to theirs, and …

Just skip it and see Alex Lahey at Bottom of the Hill with me. I promise it will be better than any of that.

MUNA - “Crying on the Bathroom Floor”

This is the most Robyn-sounding of MUNA’s songs (the verses especially) which always means you’ve come to the right place.

Japandroids - “Arc of Bar”

Literally no song should ever be more than seven minutes long, and if Japandroids keep messing with synths like this I’m pretty sure they will eventually slip over into Spinal Tap Jazz Odyssey level self-parody, and yet … it works.

Kesha - “Praying”

Going to be Song of the Year on the greatest music website in the world, The Singles Jukebox, so that should be some consolation for Kesha here.

Cracking myself up imagining going back in time and finding 2009 Aaron right after he heard “Tik Tok” for the first time and telling him a day would come when he would be having a hard time deciding which two Kesha songs he should put on his year-end best-of list. We’ve come so far.

(To be fair, “Tik Tok” is still terrible.)