But wait, there’s more! Of course there were runners-up — twenty, as a matter of fact — that, depending on the time of day or the way the sun streams through a window, could have made this top 15 (+1). And now to put my obsessive-compulsiveness to rest.
My Favorite Songs of 2009:
1. Mos Def,...
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Author Archive
The Runners-Up!
My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 1. Mos Def, “Quiet Dog” (2009).
1. Mos Def, “Quiet Dog”
- From the 2009 album The Ecstatic (Lala link).
- Official website.
Mos Def’s latest album, The Ecstatic – with a cover featuring a cropped still from Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, one of the greatest American movies of the last four decades – has been described as his best since Black...
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My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 2. The Sea and Cake, “On a Letter” (2008).
2. The Sea and Cake, “On a Letter”
- From the 2008 album Car Alarm (Amazon mp3 link).
- Official website.
I’ve loved the band The Sea and Cake for a long time now, but don’t ask me which of their albums I like the best. They’re a bit of a blur, quite frankly, and not because...
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My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 3. Pinback, “Loro” (1999).
3. Pinback, “Loro”
- Official website.
- From the 1999 album Pinback.
Hmmm. I suppose I can continue writing about why it’s so much easier to write about movies than it is to write about music: for the former, the lazy, fallback option is to simply answer the question “So, what is the movie about?” (And yet:...
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My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 4. Quantic and his Combo Bárbaro, “Linda Morena” (2009).
3. Quantic and his Combo Bárbaro, “Linda Morena”
- From the 2009 album Tradition in Transition.
- Official website
The closer I get to the top songs, the more ineffable they become; it’s as if the sheer pleasure of the listening experience as such robs you of wordsmithing faculties. (I think it’s why I prefer writing about...
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My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 5. Passion Pit, “Folds in Your Hands” (2009).
5. Passion Pit, “Folds in Your Hands”
- From the 2009 album Manners.
- Official website.
My other favorite album of 2009, Passion Pit’s Manners, dropped like, I don’t know, some sugarcoated candy-flavored meteor from heaven. My friend Laurel claims (I paraphrase here) that it’s “typical Wily Filipino music”, which I take to mean that “it features...
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My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 6. Ximena Sariñana, “Vidas Paralelas” (2008).
6. Ximena Sariñana, “Vidas Paralelas”
- from the 2008 album Mediocre.
- Official website.
Sigh – two years of Spanish classes in college have sadly failed me for this song, but my lack of comprehension hasn’t stopped me from loving it anyway. (Parallel lives – I got that, at least, but I never did figure out the...
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My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 7. Thomas Tantrum, “Work It” (2008).
7. Thomas Tantrum, “Work It” (2008)
- Official website.
- From the 2008 album Thomas Tantrum.
From the best album I heard in 2009 – though it’s actually a photo-finish with Song #5 – comes the sassy, saucy, quirky “Work It” – words that should never be used in a dating profile, but are eminently applicable to Thomas...
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My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me” (1968).
8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me”
- Official website.
- From the 1968 album Odessey and Oracle (Amazon mp3 link).
I fell in love with the Zombies only a few years ago – to think I’d lived so long without ever really hearing them, “She’s Not There” notwithstanding! — and it’s a relationship that...
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My 15 (+1) Favorite Songs of 2009: 9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat” (2009).
9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat”
- Official website.
- From the 2009 album Changing Horses.
Surely Ben Kweller had been threatening to do this from the start. For almost every power-pop slacker anthem he writes, particularly on his first solo album after the Radish days, Sha Sha, there was an unabashed bid for piano-based singer-songwriter greatness, placing...
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