100 Songs for 2018: Outtakes Day Four

OUTTAKES WEEK, DAY FOUR

We're down to the closest of the close calls now. I really like all of these songs and I'm honestly kinda surprised there wasn't room for more of them on 100 Songs for 2018.

(1) J Hus - "Dark Vader"

I'm a sucker for steel drums in everything, but especially here, and especially right at 1:42 when the beat evolves into a cross between "Under the Sea" and the theme from the Rugrats movie.

(2) Twin Shadow - "Brace"

To my ear, this is exactly, note-for-note, the same song as "Friends" by Francis and the Lights, and the fact that apparently no one else on the entire internet agrees with me makes me question my sanity.

(3) Charli XCX - "5 In The Morning"

Lindsay Zoladz wrote a great piece on Charli for The Ringer earlier this year, asking the counterintuitive but important question: Does pop music need to be, well, popular? Because Charli seemed to cement her iconic status in 2018 without putting out an album or even a single that really hit. So I guess the answer is 'no'?

Okay, let's go around the world ...

(4) San Mei - "Wonder"

Aussie Pop!

(5) Hinds - "The Club"

Spanish Rock!

(6) First Aid Kit - "Tender Offerings"

Swedish Folk!

That was fun. Back to the US ...

(7) Lucy Dacus - "Nonbeliever"

Dacus is 1/3 of boygenius, so in that sense her spot on every year-end list is secure, but Historian is a good record in its own right, and probably deserves more attention.

(8) The Sidekicks - "Don't Feel Like Dancing"

Every single time, just the slightest pang of disappointment that it's not "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" by Scissor Sisters.

(9) Teenage Wrist - "Chrome Neon Jesus"

"Shoegaze" is one of the hardest genres to define, so let's all take a minute to recalibrate: this is a shoegaze song.

(10) awakebutstillinbed - "Life"

SAN JOSEEEEEE! It is about time the South Bay had some good bands.

100 Songs for 2018: Outtakes Day Three (Pop)

OUTTAKES WEEK, DAY THREE

Let's talk about pop music!

(1) Cardi B - "I Like It" (feat. Bad Bunny and J Balvin)

Almost definitely the Song of the Summer (TM) 2018, and it's fun, but every time I hear it I just imagine an old man in a suit yelling into his phone, "Look, I don't care what you have to do, just get me another 'Despacito'!"

(2) Ariana Grande - "thank u, next"

I fully support Ariana's ascension to the throne of Biggest Pop Star in the World. Sweetner was a great album, and will be represented on 100 Songs for 2018. I think my lukewarm reaction to this one is that I almost never understand "one taught me love, one taught me patience, one taught me pain" memes on Twitter.

(3) CHVRCHES - "Miracle"

It's weird when your favorite bands don't want the same things you do. I want CHVRCHES to make music for small clubs and headphones. All of my favorite songs ("The Mother We Share," "We Sink," "Empty Threat") fall into that category. It's pretty obvious from Love is Dead, though, that CHVRCHES want to be massive. They want to headline festivals. "Miracle" is a festival song. It's the most popular single on the album, and it has that huge drop that every festival song has to have. And I saw them play it at Outside Lands this year, and yeah, it absolutely works in that context. But that's not really the CHVRCHES I want. I want them to play The Independent again. That's not going to happen.

(4) Years & Years - "Sanctify"

Years & Years make interesting music all their own, which is why it's disappointing that, on their biggest hit, they're trying so hard to be Justin Timberlake.

(5) Kendrick Lamar - "All The Stars" (feat. SZA)

Kinda sounds like it was written for Ellie Goulding and then repurposed for Black Panther. Which is fine, I guess.

(6) Ella Mai - "Boo'd Up"

Anytime The Singles Jukebox likes a song this much more than I do, I assume there's something wrong with me.

(7) Lady Gaga - "Shallow"

Is this in the all-time top five songs by a fictional artist? Having done very little research, I think my rankings would be:

(1) The Wonders - "That Thing You Do!" (That Thing You Do!)

(2) DJay - "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" (Hustle and Flow) (and "Whoop That Trick" is also awesome)

(3) Josie and the Pussycats - "3 Small Words" (Josie and the Pussycats)

(4) Ally - "Shallow" (A Star Is Born) (Side question: Whose album does this song wind up on? I can't imagine it fit on Ally's debut, this is probably a "Jackson Maine featuring Ally" production)

(5) MouseRat - "5,00 Candles in the Wind" (Parks & Recreation)

(If there was a full-length version of Driveshaft's "You All Everybody" from Lost, that would probably be #2 since it's such a shameless ripoff of Be Here Now-era Oasis)

[EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that I forgot about "Scotty Doesn't Know" from Eurotrip, which is an inexcusable oversight on my part.]

(8) Charli XCX - "1999" (feat. Troye Sivan)

Charli XCX was born in 1992. Troye Sivan was born in 1995. You kids know nothing about 1999. Stop appropriating my nostalgia!

At least Bowling for Soup had the decency to invent an age-appropriate protagonist for "1985".

(9) Anderson .Paak - "Tints" (feat. Kendrick Lamar)

Two of the most innovative artists in the world today join forces to make ... a pretty good Bruno Mars song.

(10) Little Mix - "Woman Like Me" (feat. Nicki Minaj)

I'm still a Little Mix fan, but wow LM5 is a terrible album. This is probably the best song on the album, and I'm not sure if it would be in the top ten on Glory Days.

100 Songs for 2018: Outtakes Day Two (Old Friends)

OUTTAKES WEEK, DAY TWO

Many years ago now, I was in a band. We were pretty good, and more importantly it was just a lot of fun to get together and play music every day. At the time, we were all big classic rock guys. Beatles. Stones. Led Zeppelin. Pink Floyd. We thought the best music in the world had been made in the 60’s and 70’s, and that nothing else would ever match it, and that this was just an objectively true fact, not up for debate.

We hated fads, and in the late-90’s it seemed like fads were everywhere, especially in music. Ska. Swing. Boy bands. Nu-metal. Personally, I was offended by the way these new fads would seem to roll off the assembly line, fully formed, and overnight I was supposed to be into this new thing. It especially didn’t make sense in music. We knew what the best music was. Why did we need anything else?

With that in mind, I wrote a song called “Everything’s New,” a waltz for twelve-string guitar. The chorus went like this:

Where will you go come tomorrow when everything’s new?

Changing again is the last thing that I wanna do

The song was … fine.

The core of our band stayed together over the years, but we had three different lead singers. The second was a guy named Eric. We both worked at TGI Friday’s. Eric was a little bit older than us, and much more self-assured. He was a practicing buddhist. He was almost definitely the coolest person I had met to that point in my life. 

When Eric joined the band, we played him all of our songs. He liked “Everything’s New,” but he was confused by the chorus. He didn’t get how teenagers in a rock band could possibly hold an opinion as conservative and reactionary as “change is bad.” He embraced change. He looked forward to change. He wanted change.

I stood up for my lyrics. At the time I really did believe that change was bad, at least when it came to music. We already had Dark Side of the Moon and Led Zeppelin IV. We were all set there. Was I really supposed to get super into Squirrel Nut Zippers and Cherry Poppin’ Daddies just so Gap could sell more khakis?

Eric’s point was more subtle. It was about acceptance. You are going to change. That’s not up to you. You can fight it, but you’re going to be fighting it your entire life, and you’re going to end up frustrated and exhausted and scared. So you’re going to change, and when you do change, feel good about it. This doesn’t mean you have to throw yourself into every fad. You definitely don’t have to reset your entire personality because of some new marketing campaign. But you do need to be open to new things, and ready to change when it feels right.

At the time, I wasn’t sold. I wasn’t ready. I get it now, but it took years.

I bring this up for two reasons. One, today’s post features bands that once featured prominently in past 100 Songs posts, but who didn’t make the cut this year. Did they change? Did I change? Did I change but they didn’t? Did they change but I didn't? For each, the answer is probably a little different. Whatever the answer, it’s okay. I have to keep telling myself this. It is no one’s fault that I don’t love the new songs from these bands as much as I love their older stuff. Not mine, and not theirs.

Two, the chorus for the Death Cab song included here is literally:

Followed me, followed me

(Please don't change)

(Stay) Followed me, followed me

(Stay the same)

I don’t know what they mean by it. They probably aren’t talking about musical fads. Death Cab has been making music for more than twenty years now, across nine albums. They’ve changed. That’s good. We should all be so lucky.

(1) Death Cab for Cutie - “Gold Rush”

(2) Generationals - “Beggars in the House of Plenty”

(3) Swearin’ - “Untitled (LA)”

(4) Waxahatchee - “Chapel of Pines”

(5) Kurt Vile - “One Trick Ponies”

(6) Titus Andronicus - “Above the Bodega (Local Business)”

(7) Frank Turner - “Be More Kind”

(8) The Jayhawks - “Everybody Knows”

(9) The Kooks - “No Pressure”

(10) DMA’s - “For Now”

100 Songs for 2018: Outtakes Day One (Albums of the Year)

OUTTAKES WEEK, DAY ONE

Green Day’s American Idiot came out on September 20, 2004, an unambiguous political manifesto from one of the biggest bands in the world. It hit #1 in nineteen countries, and eventually sold sixteen million copies (back when “sold” and “copies” were words that had meaning). It won the Grammy for Best Rock Album. It launched a Broadway musical.

And less than two months later, George W. Bush was re-elected. We’re still fighting his wars almost twenty years later. It’s unlikely that Donald Trump will get anywhere near Bush's body count, though he does seem to be trying. 

We’ve all decided that W. is a good guy now because he gave Michelle Obama a cough drop or whatever.

So who won, Green Day (and pretty much every other celebrity from the 2000-2008 time frame) or Bush?

***

Green Day’s failure isn’t unique. The hippies couldn’t beat Nixon. The punks couldn’t beat Thatcher.

It’s natural to view art through the lens of its particular political moment but, how can you do that objectively and not come to the conclusion that art is pretty much useless?

I bring this up because 2018 was a great year for music, and a terrible year for … honestly just about everything else. 

And, as we approach year-end retrospective season, I think a lot of very smart people are going to attempt to square that circle, either by championing artists who serve as the public face of the #resistance or by lionizing music’s power as a response to adversity, as if somehow great music is the one redeeming byproduct of our current hellworld.

But I don’t know, you guys … I just don’t think it works that way.

Kacey Musgraves released a brilliant album back in March, and nine months later we still have hundreds of kids locked in cages at the border. 

Janelle Monae finally perfected her futuristic utopian vision, and it has had no impact at all on the rate at which the polar ice caps are melting.

Robyn made her triumphant return from eight years in the extended-dance-remix wilderness, and the very next day a Nazi in Pittsburgh killed eleven people.

Well, yeah … what did you expect?

***

I've been obsessing more in 2018. My productive obsession is music. My destructive obsession is current events. 

• It's so easy to hear great new music every day. 
• It's so easy to learn horrible new things about the world every day. 

I need there to be a connection between those two sentences. As the world burns down around us, as the oceans rapidly acidify and slowly boil ... what is music supposed to do?

My 100 Songs for 2018 list comes out next Monday, and I've written thousands of words attempting to answer that question. Get ready. For now, though, we're still safely in Outtakes territory.

***

Artists are still making albums in 2018, and that surprises me, but it’s a pleasant surprise. We're taking some liberties with the word “album” (there are albums included here that are five, six, and seven songs long), but I like that. I'm glad artists are free to make the records they want to make, not come up with something that a major label could sell at the mall for $18.99 on CD. 

Here are my twenty favorite albums of the year, represented by a great song from each that didn't make the cut for 100 Songs for 2018. If you like what you hear, I strongly encourage you to dig deeper.

(1) Kacey Musgraves - “High Horse” (from Golden Hours)

(2) Boygenius - “Stay Down” (from Boygenius)

(3) Illuminati Hotties - “Paying Off The Happiness” (from Kiss Yr Frenemies)

(4) Bad Moves - “One Thing” (from Tell No One)

(5) Restorations - “St.” (from LP5000)

(6) Hatchie - “Bad Guy” (from Sugar & Spice)

(7) Pale Waves - “Kiss” (from My Mind Makes Noises)

(8) Janelle Monae - “Screwed” (from Dirty Computer)

(9) Antarctigo Vespucci - “Kimmy” (from Love In The Time Of E-Mail)

(10) Mitski - “Nobody” (from Be The Cowboy)

(11) Weller - “Boroughs” (from Weller)

(12) Robyn - “Ever Again” (from Honey)

(13) Christine and The Queens - “Damn, Dis-Moi” (from Chris)

(14) The Beths - “Whatever” (from Future Me Hates Me)

(15) The 1975 - “Inside Your Mind” (from A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships)

(16) Snail Mail - “Let’s Find An Out” (from Lush)

(17) Jake Shears - “Mississippi Delta (I’m Your Man)” (from Jake Shears)

(18) Spiritualized - “Here It Comes (The Road) Let’s Go” (from And Nothing Hurt)

(19) Ariana Grande - “Sweetener” (from Sweetener)

(20) Sidney Gish - “Not But For You, Bunny” (from No Dogs Allowed)