5 Best Songs of 2010

2010 was a pretty good year for music, and as promised, I'm reprising my "Top 5 Songs" and in lieu of the Grammys. Without further ado ...


5. Eminem (Ft. Rihanna) - "Love The Way You Lie"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uelHwf8o7_U

Welcome back, Marshall Mathers.
Eminem once rhymed that the world feels empty without him, and I gotta say he's right. "Recovery" was a better album than "Relapse" in my opinion. Eminem is a different person now than he was in the late 90s and early Aughts, so to wait around for more songs like those is just a waste of time. Younger Eminem was probably better than Mature Eminem, but I think he's made peace with the things that made him so shockingly edgy and profane, and so his music was sure to change.
I think he's the best rapper of his generation, and I've always thought he was fantastic. This song is full of the volcanic anger and hunger for a second chance at making things right that made his earlier work so tremendous.

4. The National - "Bloodbuzz Ohio"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfySK7CLEEg&feature=player_embedded#at=16

I remember the first time I heard The National. It was freshman year, a time of awakening both of self and of music. The National sounded like nothing I had ever heard before, Matt Berninger's tender baritone reciting words of unmistakeable meaning (isn't that refreshing?), a collection of skilled musicians (they all have advanced degrees in music), a confidence it what kind of band they are instead of just one with a lot of skill but no sense of direction.
The rub lies in what they actually are, or at least in what their songs are meant to accomplish. Their songs are about white collar numbness, about the moment when your youthful hopefulness realizes it's been sold empty promises, about coming to terms that there are some problems age and wisdom will never solve.
"Bloodbuzz Ohio" is no different, and it's one of The National's best efforts. We get the notion of a failed relationship, one in which the fact it was your fault is clear. Whether you messed it up somehow or you got stuck with someone you didn't love any more, time is terrible in how it only allows you to remember the times when it was good when you take stock of why you were the reason it ended. No matter your reasons at the time, second guessing is always easier when it was you who made the choice. It's worse when you grow to think of a place and that person in the same way.
John Greenleaf Whittier wrote: "Of all the sad words to flow from tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been."

3. Mumford and Sons - "The Cave"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KkUeRPjc-Y

If you haven't ridden with your friends with the windows down, blaring "Little Lion Man" and trying to scream the lyrics over the speakers and sounds of the freeway, well then what in the world have you been waiting for!?
"The Cave", on the other hand, is the best song of their seminal album and earns that acclaim in more ways that one. The lyrics, song beautifully by Marcus Mumford, are better than most poetry these days. The rhythm makes you want to get up and stomp out a dance or go sprinting into the day (either are appropriate). The banjo just shreds. There's a banjo for goodness sakes!
This young band's star shines brighter than most.

2. Temper Trap - "Sweet Disposition"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C8e7nNLZNs

I know, I know. "Sweet Disposition" was loosed upon planet Earth in 2008, but it took two years before it truly made its way to the States. And did it ever. I think I lost count of how many movies, TV shows, and commercials felt compelled to use this tune. It is as awesome as it was ubiquitous, and that's hard to attain. (I'm looking at you, Lady Antebellum. I guess just being ubiquitous will win you a Grammy since actually being awesome has apparently become optional.)
There's absolutely not one misstep in this entire track. Dougy Mandagi's falsetto lifts us up into somewhere in the stratosphere, and it's then that we realize that the lyrics could just as easily be about a man deceiving himself into thinking his "young blood" will let him never surrender as it is about a young man with lightning flowing through his veins. The dueling drums and bass are what truly drive the song from start to finish, and it's rare that the rhythm section is the poison and not the needle. It's also a nearly foolproof indication that you're listening to a band of musicians, instead of performers.
As glorious as it is, I've often wondered if the band has realized they'll probably never write a more perfect song.

1. Arcade Fire - "We Used to Wait"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nTjn1yJp0w

I still know many people who have never even heard of Arcade Fire, and I guess that's understandable. Their debut album, "Funeral," of a few years ago was probably the best debut album of the past 15 years. Nonetheless, it came in the midst of the indie rock explosion, and while it was certainly a primary player in that movement, many other worthy indie albums were taking up air time and ear space.
And then came this year's "The Suburbs." It won't win album of the year at the Grammys, but make no mistake, "The Suburbs" is the best of them all. True to the album's concept (and Arcade Fire's overarching theme), "We Used to Wait" is about suffocating in suburban sprawl, somewhere in between the grandeur of the city and the allure of the wilderness.
The repetitively tapping piano creates a building crescendo that Win Butler's perfectly thin voice matches step for step until they both explode into drums and oooo's telling us "we used wait."
Butler tells us that sometimes what we waited for never came, that we end up just stuck moving through the days. Our lives can seem to change fast when we aren't ready, and probably in spite or ourselves. Because the tragic part is most of the waiting on something was only made possible by the catalyst that was our own failure to put the lives we longed for into motion, to send the letters we wrote.
If you haven't listened to this band, you're only doing yourself a disservice. Because if they didn't announce themselves before, consider this album their formal greeting. They're here to stay.