Pitchfork's top 20 songs of the 00s is a bunch a' hooey
Beyonce? Seriously?
In addition to naming “Crazy in Love” (by Beyonce ft. Jay-Z) the fourth best song of the past decade, Pitchfork has completed the assemblage of a hodgepodge list of songs, allegedly the top 500 in the past decade, the top 20 of which seem to have been randomly selected by a lotto machine.
Crimes for your consideration:
-”Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley is ranked one place higher than “Hey Ya!”, by OutKast.
-Some chick named Annie, who doesn’t have red hair and a plucky dog, holds spot number 17 for a song called “Heartbeat.” I’m sure I’ve lost some hip cred by not knowing who she is, but based on the song sample, I don’t care to find out.
-Spot number 9 goes to Animal Collective for “My Girls.” The vocal part of this song contains approximately four notes. I understand the profundity of minimalism when applied with deft sensitivity, but if this is the ninth best song of the past ten years, why has Raffi’s beautifully simplistic remake of the children’s classic “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (2006) been excluded from the list?
-Will everyone who plays Rock Band please get over “Maps” already? It’s always been my least favorite song by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I think the reason people like it is that it’s one of the only YYY songs that the average person can sing. Try screaming your way through “Rich”, from the same album (Fever to Tell, 2003), or sighing your way through “Black Tongue” and its chorus of fake orgasms, and you’ll see that much of the Yeah’s best music is impossible to karaoke to if you’re not Karen O. Hence, the “Maps” popularity: easy vocals, easy guitar solo, and lyrics vague enough to mean something to anyone. Boring.
-Pitchfork’s number 1 spot goes to OutKast, for “B.O.B.”, a song that most people (especially people who read Pitchfork) haven’t heard until now.
I submit to you my list of the top 20 songs of the 2000s:
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1. “Hey Ya!” – OutKast
…It’s going to take me a long time to come up with 20 songs and rank them against each other. In fact, I would have run this post a lot sooner, but it’s been sitting in my draft folder for a couple weeks because I’m not sure I’ll ever come up with a satisfactory list of 20 songs. I’ll let you know if I ever get around to completing such a monumental task.
I love Pitchfork hate, and I agree with all of it, no matter the form it takes. And I like your top 20 and would probably agree with it.
Hey Ya was the jam of the 2000s.
Gin and Juice was the jam of the 1990s.
For some reason I want to declare Higher Love the jam of the ’80s.
Love Will Keep Us Together was the one for the ’70s.
These were not my favorite songs of each decade, but most of them were close. I just think they sort of embody what each decade’s pop was all about.
Yep. “Hey Ya!” is in a league of its own, at least in terms of popularity and decade-defining-ness, in my opinion. The whole album got me to pay serious attention to hip-hop/r&b for the first time. I’m almost ashamed to admit that, but better late than never, right?