Greatest Songs of 2009, #15 to #11
15. "Day and Night (Crookers Remix)" by Kid Cudi
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkSq2Zn2XoY[/youtube]
14. "Boom Boom Pow" by Black Eyed Peas
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m48GqaOz90[/youtube]
"Black Eyed Peas singles tend to walk a tightrope between catchy and annoying. Depending on your point of view, and probably how many times you've heard them, the likes of 'My Humps' and 'Shut Up' are either irresistible party tunes or the hip-pop equivalent of swine flu: infectious enough to begin with, but ultimately pretty horrid. 'Boom Boom Pow', their first single since Fergie and will.i.am released solo albums, looks likely to continue this trend. It's a fairly ridiculous robopop stomper featuring no real chorus, 808s & Heartbreaks-style beats, lashings of Auto-Tune, techno synths that arrive half-way through and this vintage diss from Fergie: "I'm so 3008, you're so 2000 and late." It may well become grating, but frankly who cares? Right now this just sounds cracking." (Digital Spy)
13. "My Girls" by Animal Collective
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zol2MJf6XNE[/youtube]
"...nothing goes better with sweaty dancefloor gyrations than sex and love and ladies, themes that carry two of Merriweather’s best tracks, “My Girls”...a loose-limbed jumping jack of a fem-positive pop song that sounds somewhere between Eno and Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and The Spice Girls’ Spiceworld. It’s a musical chigger that burrows deep and won’t leave." (Paste Magazine)
12. "Wilco (The Song)" by Wilco
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsNqxTEniNI[/youtube]
"Wilco's seventh studio album is a triumph of determined simplicity by a band that has been running from the obvious for most of this decade. The title is the giveaway. So is the opening gag, 'Wilco (The Song),' with its rattling-bones guitar and singer-boss Jeff Tweedy's assurance, sung like pillow talk, that his combo is good for all that ails you: 'Do you dabble in depression?/Is someone twisting a knife in your back?...Wilco will love you, baby.'" (Rolling Stone)
11. "I and Love and You" by Avett Brothers
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj8HDe5M-Jo[/youtube]
"North Carolina trio Avett Brothers once sounded like Appalachian Beatles: chirpy harmonies over effervescent acoustic guitar, banjo and upright bass. They've gotten moodier in recent years, and for their major-label debut, producer Rick Rubin has turned the group into a lush chamber-folk outfit. I and Love and You is packed with complex, piano-based beauties. 'They say, 'Don't take your business to the big time,'' sing the Avetts to any doubters, adding, 'I bought us tickets there.'" (Rolling Stone)