What a Fool Believes

40. Sandro Perri: “Changes” — Can a song get stoned? Yes. A song can get super-stoned.
39. The Strokes: “Taken for a Fool” — Comebacks are more often a letdown than a celebration. If your interviews in every major music mag are about how terrible the recording process was, don’t release the passable results and say, “It’ll be much better on the next one.” Give it all—like you’ve done with this track—or give it up.
38. Smith Westerns: “Weekend” — The kids are tuning in to those Thin Lizzy dual guitar harmonies. It’s not so much the ringing of a jailbreak as the end of third period, but it’s a nice enough release.
37. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: “Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now” — You can hire the big guns to help your ambitions to obtain the kind of Maximum Amplitude that Billy Corgan once had. You might be too timid and passive to get anywhere near those heights but the results will find you at a pleasant altitude.
36. Guided By Voices: “The Unsinkable Fats Domino” — Like riding a bike. Balancing a case of Miller Lite on the handlebars. While listening to a British Invasion mixtape on a Walkman. Then going off a jump to do a no footer. And landing with a wheel in a brat’s brain. Classic.
35. Lana Del Rey: “Video Games” — Unnerving and fascinating. My only viewing of the video showed me a desperation and vulnerability that left me unable to watch it again. Yet, the fact that it has that power keeps me around. Then there’s her potentially sculpted image. It may turn you off, the idea of plastics in someone so young, but you can’t blow it off because you’re left wondering if/why. Finally, and most importantly, is the music. Though it functions more as a piece of the puzzle than its answer, it’s still an interesting piece. A haunting ballad that seems to be a manifesto—transforming one’s self into an avatar for another—delivered in a tone that moves between vacancy, sarcasm, and helplessness. Like Lady Gaga, she’s a monster of pop craft and culture. However, Gaga is one that’s self-aware and calculated—meaning: not really a monster, just playing one—whereas Del Rey seems like a monster created by the Frankenstein of Internet Oversharing, too blinded by the stars to see what’s become, more a victim, like Shelley’s creature. Or am I being played? Maybe she’s calculated as well and making moves beyond Gaga. It’s too early to tell—this is her first single, after all—but I want to know. Like I said, unnerving and fascinating.
34. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks: “Forever 28” — SM twists “Mr. Blue Sky” into “Mr. Cloudy Sky”, offering up an account of a curmudgeon, self-aware but so set in his pessimistic ways that he can’t free himself from them, even with the sunny Jicks bounce shining upon him.
33. Tom Waits: “Hell Broke Luce” — I’m a Brawlers and Bastards Waits man. So “Hell Broke Luce”, with its martial beat like the Devil’s Army playing Pattycake, guitars alternately sawing and grinding, Tom barking a soldier’s things, and plenty of machine gun fire, is right up my alley.
32. The Weeknd: “What You Need” — House of Balloons and Thursday had me saying, “Stop whining so I can hear the music. Own your decadence or find a new affair.” This is the one track where I thought he did.
31. Adele: “Rolling in the Deep” — “Hey Ya!” and “Crazy” welcome you, “Rolling in the Deep”, to hits of the new millennium that no one can deny. You’ve done it with soul, the pain in those vocals conveying a depth that everyone knows.
30. James Blake: “Limit to Your Love” — There’s plenty of space on his self-titled for him to dub-step but it seems like he’d rather repeat doleful phrases alone with his piano. It works best here, where there’s the proper mix of both.
29. Women: “Bullfight” — If this is the last we hear from Women, who’ve been silent since their onstage blow out late last year, it’s a fitting final track. The title is an unwitting nod to that blow out, while the music, like that of their two albums, is dark and murky, building to something that’s cut off, leaving you wanting more.
28. Lady Gaga: “Heavy Metal Lover” — It seems like Gaga is thought of as an unconventional beauty minus the beauty. I think a lot of that has to do with how weird she can be. To me that’s just one of the reasons why she’s sexy. That weirdness, her attitude, how dirty she is (you’ve got both “I want your whiskey mouth all over my blonde south” and “Dirty pony I can’t wait to hose you down” in this song alone), and, yes, her physical beauty, all combine into one powerful and attractive lady. The seductive coo and throb of this track doesn’t hurt either.
27. Katy Perry: “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” — There is a sadness to this song: the tone of longing in the melodies; how the youthful quest for fun and distraction from boredom leads to repetition of fun and distraction, which leads back to boredom. I don’t know that Katy Perry interprets it that way—to her it’s probably just a celebration of teenage hijinx—but I do. To me it’s how last Friday night is always The Last Friday Night, how you can have many wild nights but the next wild night will never be like the last. … Sorry. Am I killing your buzz? Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing here either. Please return to your shots and your ménage à trois.
26. Drake: “Dreams Money Can Buy” — Now I could tell you that this is my favorite Drake song of the year—one that was inexplicably excluded from Take Care—because of the way the beat is constructed like a building during the verse—floors of ghostly backup vocals, reverbed and rewound samples, and drums—only to be leveled during the chorus and rebuilt the next verse. But that’s only partially true. The main reason is “And if the girl standin’ next to me got a fat aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasss [Pause] ThenI’llprobablygivehermynumber”. His delivery—how dreamy he comes across in the first half only to switch into a kind of “Duh, dude”-curtness in the second—never fails to entertain me.
25. The Soft Moon: “When It’s Over” — The parts of this track are simple: sing “Sail around the world / When it’s over” on repeat through the eye of an apocalyptic white squall of goth-pop noise. The sum is doomsday perfection.*
24. Burial: “Stolen Dog” — I think of Burial as a kind of mythic rebel figure existing in some kind of bombed-out, retro-futurist London. Think of NYC’s LES in the late-70s/early-80s but with endless showers of acid rain, loads of crime and grime, fizzling hologram bobbies, Buckingham Palace in a glittering, protective dome, the Thames rerouted to surround it, and Burial emerging from the shadows with a new transmission to awaken the masses.
23. Wilco: “I Might” — Before you label this “Indie Adult Contemporary” or “Dad Rock”, take in the line “You won’t set the kids on fire / Oh, but I might” and ask yourself if this is the kind of adult/dad you’re comforted by. Sure, he’s not literally going to light them up, but I bet he does figuratively with some Can and Neil Young records. It’s more like Dad rocks.
22. Mazzy Star: “Common Burn” — Remember in Demolition Man when John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) gets released from a deep freeze after decades imprisoned, and the unaged cop is just as much of a badass as he was before the ice, able to take down the juiced-up villain, Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes)? Think of Mazzy Star’s comeback single as a John Spartan. They’ve been reawakened with all of their elegant and dreamy powers still fully entact.
21. John Talabot: “Families (feat. Glasser)” — Glasser as Ariadne guiding you through the labyrinth with Talabot’s bouncy synth and loops the Minotaur who’s only chasing after you to dance.

*Technically 2010.