The music pundits from on high have spoken, and it seems to be unanimous that the best twelve songs of 2010 can be found HERE. All other differing attempts at ranking the year's best songs have been exercises of futility, disgraceful and simply wrong.
December can really bring out the snob in some of us (myself not excluded) when it comes to these year-end lists. "You ranked Arcade Fire higher than Caribou? That's not obvious at all! Is Bruce Springsteen up there, too? And you don't even have Deerhunter on there? Tell me, did you get to September and just stop listening to music altogether? Was your lobotomy expensive?"
For my last playlist of 2010 I hoped to add a little objectivity into my shamelessly subjective list of the year's best songs.
One of the things that always seems to be missing in "Top X" lists is the element of time. These lists don't have the lonely optimism of late winter or the careless excitement of summer. They don't make you think of that first warm day driving with your windows down in March or the few days you took off work or school in October. So much of the magic that comes from a good song has to do with timing, the perfect words and the perfect mood at the perfect moment.
Let's flip through our calendars one last time before we toast to the new year. Here's a song from each month of the past year of our Lord, 2010.
January:
Beach House - Norway
February: Local Natives - Warning Sign
March: Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside
April: Mynabirds - We Made A Mountain
May: The National - Terrible Love
June: Andrew Bird - The Twistable, Turnable Man Returns
July: Best Coast - Crazy For You
August: Arcade Fire - Modern Man
September: Jenny & Johnny - Big Wave
October: Warpaint - Baby
November: Girls - Heartbreaker
December: Daft Punk - Derezzed
(HAPPY NEW YEAR)
Iron and Wine - Tree By the River
take that Rolling Stone
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