SONGS OF THE DECADE #55 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] Spoon - The Underdog (2007) Spoon was a pop band that was only a flop on a major label because the band was too good in an era when major labels were trained to underestimate people's intelligence. A decade later, they were selling out concert halls as fast as Nirvana, but unlike Nirvana, who were underdogs in their day, they were doing so on an independent label. All those forces were in ... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #58 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] Sleater-Kinney - What's Mine is Yours (2005) What's Mine Is Yours - Sleater... While the boys were reducing their shirt sizes from small to extra small, and when the conquest of cool suddenly became an arms race that ignored real music entirely, many of the best female rock bands were asking the world a pretty grave question: if a girl shreds on guitar harder than anyone else in rock, and ... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #56 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] Tom Waits - Road To Peace (2006) Road to Peace - Tom Waits The bleakest, most depressing, so-sad-you-don't-even-want-to-talk-about-it political crisis in the world has known has never had one thing it truly needs: a great blues song to match. Tom Waits, whose greatest strength is his informed unpredictability, took a risk in an unprecedentedly one-sided American debate to start with the... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #57 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] Sonic Youth - Sympathy for the Strawberry (2002) Sympathy For The Strawberry - ... For those that thought that a 90s lens was the weirdest decade to evaluate a band like Sonic Youth, allow me to introduce you to the 2000s. What do you do with a band in its third decade, with millions of albums sold, a continuously prolific output whose members are all in their late 40s and early 50s, but ... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #59 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] Animal Collective - Lion in a Coma (2009) Lion In A Coma - Animal Collec... "My Girls" took off because it was "transcendent," even if it was slow, and turgid, and not really anything at all resembling the pop masterpiece it was hyped to be. "Lion in a Coma" is the real highlight of Animal Collective's best album to date, featuring the kind of wild energy and variety that a freak folk ba... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #60 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Me and Mia (2004) Me And Mia - Ted Leo & The Pha... One formula for a great pop song has always been the following: focus on a specific theme, make the lyrics vague enough so that it won't be time sensitive, and have music that matches the lyrics. Ted Leo may have written the best sincere indie anthem since "Waiting Room" with "Me & Mia," a song, th... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #61 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] The Fratellis - Chelsea Dagger (2006) Chelsea Dagger - The Fratellis "Chelsea Dagger" was the closest thing this decade got to "Song 2." The decade's best drinking song that moonlights as a sex romp and a post-punk revival spoof (if only Franz Ferdinand could swipe a Peter Hook bassline so carelessly), "Chelsea Dagger" was a hybrid of XTC and T-Rex under the guise of a slight Queens of ... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #62 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) (2004) Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - Ar... Perhaps more than any other song this decade, the first track off The Arcade Fire's debut Funeral proved that you didn't need an enormous budget to provide an impossibly epic sound. At the same time the Majors were trying to pitch Sum 41 as a generational voice, The Arcade Fire showed an entire generation... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #63 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] The Dead Weather - Hang You From the Heavens (2009)  Hang You From The Heavens - Th... Before the decade began, Allison Mosshart and Jack White were in the exact same position: garage rock brats looking for any house party that would have them. As garage rock revival began to dominate America in the beginning of the decade, and as America began to embrace a British-style of boom and ... Read Full Story

SONGS OF THE DECADE #64 [For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List] Marnie Stern - Transformer (2008) Here I was ready to heap on the praise to Marnie Stern—that she's the best female guitarist of all time, one of the most creative songwriters of the past decade, a hallmark of creativity, yada yada—and before I could get into full rock critic mode, I heard Marnie pleading, "I cannot be all these things to you." It's one thing to be as creative as Marnie Ster... Read Full Story