One Year, 100 Albums: #87 The All-American Rejects - The All-American Rejects

The All-American Rejects The All-American Rejects, 2002

This is the album that was the achievement of everything that I, personally, hope for as a blogger.

My friend, suitemate, roommate, and Best Man Riley and I were going through free CD's that we'd gotten at MACRock (Mid Atlantic Conference) (It's a music weekend that happens in and near my college) (Or at least it WAS. I can't find a good website to link to, but there IS a twitter account for last year's event, so maybe they've just moved off of websites)

ANYWAYS

One of the CD's had two songs by a band called The All-American Rejects. So first of all, I loved the name right off the bat. But would the songs be good?

The first 15 seconds of "Swing Swing" proved to me that not only were the songs good, but I needed to get my hands on everything this band had to offer. Riley's reaction was the same. We found a couple of songs on....let's see, it would have been Limewire? Kazaa?

The album came out on 10/15/02, which was right around Riley's birthday, so I picked him up a copy and we listened to it and that was when the dream came true. This band that had a cool name and to good teaser songs, had made an album that DELIVERED on the promise of the teaser songs.

They would hit it big with "Swing Swing" and the album would be re-released on a major label in January, and the band would have more hits throughout the years, but I have always thought of this album, this band, as something we saw coming. Which is, of course, the dream of the ambitious blogger.

Here are the videos for two of the singles. Because they are representative of the kind of videos that all my favorite bands were making back then (see the Midtown entry for confirmation of this)

And here's the other song that was on that first sampler CD, along with "Swing Swing"

The All-American Rejects - Don't Leave Me

You can buy The All-American Rejects at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

Throwback Thursday: 2009

10. Pitbull - Hotel Room Service
9. Cobra Starship feauring Leighton Meester - Good Girls Go Bad
8. Keri Hilson featuring Kanye West and Ne-Yo - Knock You Down
7. Jay Sean featurin Lil Wayne - Down
6. Drake - Best I Ever Had
5. Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
4. Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me

Much like Katy Perry last week, what I'm throwing back to this week is the cuteness of Taylor Swift. Yeah, that's right. I think she's cute, too. This video is pretty fun even if it IS just a music video version of that joke in Not Another Teen Movie where the beautiful girl is hidden underneath "those GLASSES and that PONYTAIL! (Don't forget those paint-stained overalls!)" but it's a lot of fun.

3. Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Kanye West - Run This Town
2. Miley Cyrus - Party in the U.S.A.
1. The Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling

I also wanted to include this DJ Earworm mashup because it's the best on of all the mashups he's released for the top songs of the year since 2007. I think most of the songs in this post's top ten make an appearance, if not all of them.

Happy Fangs "Lion Inside You" Video

Cool new video by Happy Fangs (with Rebecca from My First Earthquake on vox) from their forthcoming debut eponymous EP. It's called "Lion Inside You"


CMJ premiered the video here, and if you go to that page, you can click on a link to their Soundcloud page and get the MP3 of the song for free.

I am so excited to hear this EP based on this song. It's so energetic and loud and fast and kinda silly. 

The Happy Fangs EP comes out on October 1.

One Year, 100 Albums: #88 Incubus - S.C.I.E.N.C.E.

Incubus S.C.I.E.N.C.E., 1997

I know. I was surprised too. It really seems to me that Make Yourself or Morning View are the more likely candidates to make the Incubus spot on this list. They're certainly more mature efforts.

But then I re-listened to this album yesterday. And it is just FANTASTIC.

A lot of the things I've read about this album talk about the blending of rap and rock and I suppose that's true, but more than that, I'd point out just how FUNKY it is. The bass parts on this are so fun. Probably the most enjoyable that I can think of right now.

The music is dynamic and energetic and funny!

So basically, funny and funky. More the latter than the former.

I bought this album on my first day visiting family in Colorado during the summer of 2001, having heard it, I suppose, from some friend or another in my senior year. Maybe I borrowed it from my friend Amber? That seems entirely possible.

There were two singles from this album. Here's a live video from 1998 (Great quality on this) of one of them:

And here is the other, one of my favorite songs on the album, if not one of my favorite songs of the band's entire career.

Incubus - New Skin

And as a bonus, just to prove that they could mellow out, here's the album's love song

Incubus - Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song)

You can buy S.C.I.E.N.C.E. at Amazon and Amazon MP3

Top Ten Tuesday: Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell Williams "Blurred Lines"

This TTT is going to feature more videos than usual (I was going to put an exact number, but, frankly, I haven't quite decided what all I'm including) because this has been a big controversial song this summer!

It has been the #1 song basically all summer and, at 11 weeks, has been #1 for twice as long as any other song this year. It's a big deal.

So first, the SFW (safe for work) version of the video:

And now, the NSFW (not safe for work) version (topless girls) which you have to imagine is most likely the "Way the Video Was Intended" version

And then, pretty much immediately, a "gender reversed" version was made, intended to show how exploitative the video is and how ridiculous it would be if the men were replaced with women and vice versa. But I like both versions.

Ok, so I'm not going to get into all of the hullabaloo that is happening with the Marvin Gaye lawsuit stuff. In fact, I think that we all need to sit back, relax, pick up our maracas and play along with this much less incendiary version.

New Countdown 17 Years in the Making!!

Capital Cities

Yes, this episode was a long time coming, but I think it's going to end up being one of my favorites. I hope it's one of yours, too!!!

Countdown #163

***Featuring***
Alanis Morissette
Atlas Genius
Bastille
Capital Cities
Fitz & the Tantrums
Grouplove
Imagine Dragons
Lorde
The Neighbourhood
New Politics
Tracy Bonham

One Year, 100 Albums: #89 No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom

No Doubt Tragic Kingdom, 1995

What else is there to say about this album? It's a classic, obviously. One of the many examples of "Musicians make better albums when they're angry" albums from the mid-90's that would lead to a number of disappointments with albums by those same bands in the late 90's/early 00's.

Tragic Kingdom was one of the first albums I went out an bought on my own. It had gotten overall good reviews in my mom's Focus on the Family newsletter so that was a point in it's favor (though a horrifying point looking back) and I had loved the video for Spiderwebs

Speak of the devil:

Another point in this album's favor is that someone played "Sunday Morning" during the dance that closed out Summer Camp probably in 1996. And there was a cute girl that was jumping all over the place to that song. So that helped. Here's that song and the song that leads into that song. Probably my favorite two songs on the album

No Doubt - Sixteen
No Doubt - Sunday Morning

And then there's the album itself. It's got just enough SoCal ska flavor to make it light and fun and just enough pop sensibility to make it commercially viable.

I saw someone on Reddit post a comment on someone else's post of "Sunday Morning" saying something to the effect of, "This is the best song on Tragic Kingdon. Oh, and please don't tell anyone I used to listen to Tragic Kingdom."

And I think it's sad to be ashamed to listen to such a fantastic album.

You can buy Tragic Kingdom pretty much anywhere. Like Amazon, Amazon MP3,  iTunes, or Best Buy.

Throwback Thursday: 2010

The beginning of the decade!!!

2010 was the year that I started my podcast!

10. Jason Derulo - Ridin' Solo
9. Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

Well, there have been Katy Perry songs on these Throwback Thursday posts for 2012, 2011, and now 2010. But we've reached my all-time favorite Katy Perry song (I will NOT be ashamed to say that I like many of the Katy Perry songs I've heard). I just like the simplicity of this song. Katy Perry seems fun.

8. Usher featuring Pitbull - DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love
7. Mike Posner - Cooler Than Me
6. B.o.B. featuring Hayley Williams - Airplanes
5. Enrique Iglesias featuring Pitbull - I Like It
4. Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg - California Gurls
3. Taylor Swift - Mine
2. Taio Cruz - Dynamite
1. Eminem featuring Rihanna - Love the Way You Lie

One Year, 100 Albums: #90 Carbon Leaf - Indian Summer

Carbon Leaf Indian Summer, 2004

This is an album that I am surprised made it to the list. It's one of those albums that subtly insinuated itself into my life through friends.

Carbon Leaf are a Virginia band that I had been hearing about for a while because they were getting really big but hadn't been signed to any label yet (this was a bigger deal back at the turn of the millennium than it is now) and they had a song "The Boxer" that I occasionally heard on the radio. It was good.

Then they released this album and came to play at my college. I'm not sure which happened first, but we went to the show and it was great and then my roommate Riley fell in love with this album.

When Riley falls in love with an album, everything reminds him of it, he plays it all the time and it's really kind of lovely :) So I got to know the album a little bit over the next couple of years when we lived in an apartment together.

And then we graduated, I moved in with my wife (at the time she held the rank of "fiancee") and got a job in the lab at a local Perdue chicken further processing plant (no gross slaughter smells, lots of yummy herbs and spices smells) and a guy I worked with in that lab ALSO was in love with this album. And also displayed this love by playing it over and over and over.

And so I think of those two jolly individuals when I hear this album.

But more than just the nostalgic context, it's a tight album. Each song is catchy and distinct. There are lots of fantastic images and singable choruses.

You might not have this one. You might not have even heard of it if you're out of the state. But you should give it a shot. I think you'll be pleased.

Here's a video of them recently performing the lead-off track.

And here is the song that, if all the other songs on the album where just static, would possibly still have landed this album on the list.

Carbon Leaf - One Prairie Outpost

You can pick up Indian Summer at Amazon, Amazon MP3, iTunes, and the band's web store

Top Ten Tuesday: Bruno Mars "Treasure"

Third single from the album Unorthodox Jukebox and Bruno Mars is sticking with the video style where the video looks like it was made in 1980 and only recently found on a VHS tape. The thing is, that style works PERFECTLY for the kind of songs that these videos are for. It's a throwback look for a throwback sound. And I can dig it.

New Countdown: James's Bonus Song Emporium!

Imagine Dragons

If you were looking for the nonsensical, seemingly random ravings of a madman, you're in the wrong place, bub! But if you want a podcast where sometimes we have more than 2 bonus songs, then step right in, my friend, have I got the podcast for you!!!

The weather is becoming increasingly fall-like and we're going to have to start to accept the fact that our summer anthem this year was a song about needing to put on a sweater because the weather is too chilly.....which I think we can all do. I'm really excited for some fall weather, actually.

Countdown #162

***Featuring***
Atlas Genius
Capital Cities
Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams
Fitz and the Tantrums
Grouplove
Imagine Dragons
Lorde
The Neighbourhood
New Politics
Radiohead

One Year, 100 Albums: #91 Desaparecidos - Read Music/Speak Spanish

Desaparecidos Read Music/Speak Spanish, 2002

When you hear about "Conor Oberst's punk band", I'm not sure you come up with the right image (or, like, sound image....what's a sound image called?). I really like Bright Eyes, but if you told me that there was a punk band led by the main guy behind Bright Eyes, I would be skeptical.

First, I would say that they're not a "punk" band. The sound they have is better categorized as "angry, political rock". And that might be splitting hairs, but they are hairs that need to be split.

Listening to Deseparecidos puts me in that bitter, angry, cynical mood that all good political music should put you in.

And it's LOUD. So loud, in fact, that I couldn't find any videos that weren't completely drowned out by the volume of the guitars and drums. Which is a good thing in a way, but in a "I want videos for these posts" way, it sucks.

So here are two songs that flow from one into the other on the album. The album is only 9 songs long, so this is like 22% of the album, right here.

Desaparecidos - Manana (which features one of my favorite intros/countoffs of all time)
Desaparecidos - Greater Omaha

You can by Read Music/Speak Spanish at Amazon, Amazon MP3, iTunes, and the Saddle Creek store

Throwback Thursday: 2011

Further and further into the past we go....

2011 is the year that my daughter was born!

10. Lady Gaga - The Edge of Glory
9. Britney Spears - I Wanna Go
8. Hot Chelle Rae - Tonight Tonight
7. Bad Meets Evil featuring Bruno Mars - Lighters


.

 I was planning on posting the Katy Perry song down at #2, but I watched the video for this and I'm just amazed I missed this song. It is beautiful AND tough in the exact way that I like Eminem to be. The chorus is catchy, the verses are elaborate and complicated, and the video ends on a gorgeous note that, sure, rips off Tangled a little bit, but imagine Eminem in Tangled. Royce da 5'9" has one of the most awkward names I've ever heard but I enjoyed his verse as well as I enjoyed Eminem's so I guess it doesn't matter.

6. Adele - Rolling in the Deep
5. Lil Wayne - How to Love
4. Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack, and Nayer - Give Me Everything
3. Nicki Minaj - Super Bass
2. Katy Perry - Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)
1. LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett and GoonRock - Party Rock Anthem

One Year, 100 Albums: #92 Rilo Kiley - Take Offs and Landings

Rilo Kiley Take Offs and Landings, 2001

My acquisition of this album is the result of two different girls telling me, in their own ways, that I HAD to listen to a song.

My friend Katy (I call her KT) IM'ed me when I was in my second year of college and she was in her first to tell me that I needed to listen to "We'll Never Sleep (God Knows We'll Try)" by this band, Rilo Kiley.

If you've ever told me I need to listen to something, you'll know that I usually say, "Awesome, thanks!" and then don't listen to it for 6 months. And then when I finally do, you receive a breathless email about how awesome the song is, and how mad I am at myself for not listening to it eariler.

That's pretty much what happened with KT. The song came up on shuffle one night and I thought, "Man, this is GORGEOUS".

In the interim between KT sending me the song and my actually listening to it, my girlfriend/ex-girlfriend at the time (it was complicated) made me a mix CD that had "Bulletproof" on it. Once again, it was this gorgeous song that I LOVED.

So, somehow I finally bought the album and realized that these are only two of the very lovely tracks on a very lovely album, but that the rest of the album rocked a little harder.

To this day, I put this one on when I need to be gently reassured and occasionally slapped in the face by the sweet voice of Jenny Lewis (who some people will know as being "the girl" from The Wizard).

It's a solid album that has aged VERY well.

Here's a video from a couple years ago of the band playing one of the centerpieces of the album

And here is what I consider the other centerpiece and the two songs I mentioned above. A veritable smorgasbord of Rilo Kiley goodness.

Rilo Kiley - Bulletproof
Rilo Kiley - We'll Never Sleep (God Knows We'll Try)
Rilo Kiley - Plane Crash in C

OH! This week is "Omaha Week" because both Rilo Kiley and the band that will be featured on Friday were, at some point in their careers, on Saddle Creek Records, based out of Omaha, Nebraska, near Bellevue, Nebraska where I spent several formative elementary school years!

You can purchase Take Offs and Landings at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes.

Top Ten Tuesday: Capital Cities "Safe and Sound"

Listeners to the podcast will recognize this one, which just entered the top ten (#9) this week. What a fun video! How come we can't have this kind of cross-style, impromptu dance competition in real life?

New Countdown, or, a Descent into Madness

Fitz and the Tantrums

Here's another episode where you hear me in various states of consciousness/fatigue. Which can either be a fun ride or a descent into madness....no, not the Muse song. :)

I'm really loving the songs on the countdowns of late. I hope you are too!

Countdown #161

***Featuring***
Atlas Genius
Capital Cities
Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams
Fitz and the Tantrums
Grouplove
Imagine Dragons
Lorde
The Neighbourhood
New Politics
Radiohead

One Year, 100 Albums: #93 Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique

Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique, 1989

This, like the Bad Religion album from the previous post, wasn't an album that I have specific memories about. I heard that it had a lot of samples on it and that it was a great album and that you couldn't make it today because it would be too costly (although my Dad and I recently had a discussion about how Kanye should remake it beat for beat, sample for sample, paying all the costs, just because it would be an ostentatious thing to do...) so I bought it.

And it is exactly as it was purported to be. Probably my favorite of the three Beastie Boys albums I've heard all the way through (the others being Hello Nasty and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two) and, perhaps more importantly, a departure from the bin that people had put them in (frat rap rock).

Here's the video for the first true song on the album, "Shake Your Rump"

And here's a wonderful video that someone made that breaks down the samples from "Shake Your Rump". It says that it's Part 1, but I haven't been able to find any subsequent videos. But maybe the massive popularity of this blog post and series will inspire him to do more!!

And here's one more for the road.

Beastie Boys - Shadrach

You can purchase Paul's Boutique at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

Throwback Thursday: 2012

So here's a new feature. It's going to be kind of like Top Ten Tuesday, but with TIME TRAVELLLLLLLLL

Each week I'll go one more year back into the past and feature one song from the top ten of that week in that year. Make sense? Great. We'll start off easy: 2012.

I'll put the Top 10 songs up and then just put the video and some thoughts about it under the song title where it appears on the list. Of course we'll do it Countdown style.

(Songs that have previously appeared in Top Ten Tuesdays will have links to those posts. This will be the only Throwback Thursday with something like that....I think.)

10. Pink - Blow Me (One Last Kiss)
9. Usher - Scream
8. David Guetta featuring Sia - Titanium
7. Rihanna - Where Have You Been
6. Gotye featuring Kimbra - Somebody That I Used To Know
5. Ellie Goulding - Lights

A pretty good pop song by a pretty good lookin' woman. Can't beat that. I like that this song is a weird kind of sugary sweet that is vastly different in flavor and texture than the song at, say, #1.

4. Flo Rida - Whistle
3. Maroon 5 featuring Wiz Khalifa - Payphone
2. Katy Perry - Wide Awake
1. Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe (the first song featured on Top Ten Tuesday!)

One Year, 100 Albums: #94 Bad Religion - Against the Grain

Bad Religion Against the Grain, 1990

This is an album of pretty unfiltered punk rock. Yeah, there's a shade of poppiness to the proceedings, but the messages and anger and loudness are there. Occasionally, even the speed is right.

Bad Religion is a band known for having "SAT words" in their songs and this album is chock full of them. I will be providing definitions for some of the ones contained in the songs below.

I picked this album because it is the most solid from start to finish. There are songs on other albums that I like far more, but this is one that I can put on and not hit the skip button once.

I couldn't find any good videos for songs from this album, so I'm just going to give you 4 songs.

Bad Religion - Turn On the Light
Bad Religion - Get Off
Bad Religion - Positive Aspect of Negative Thinking
Bad Religion - Entropy


VOCABULARY SECTION

Immolation (from "Turn On the Light") - To kill (oneself) by fire.
Rectilinear (from "Get Off") - moving in or forming a straight line
Endogenous (from "Positive Aspects of Negative Thinking") - produced or synthesized within the organism or system
Boltzmann (from "Entropy") - an Austrian physicist and philosopher whose greatest achievement was in the development of statistical mechanics, which explains and predicts how the properties of atoms (such as mass, charge, and structure) determine the physical properties of matter (such as viscosity, thermal conductivity, and diffusion).

You can purchase Against the Grain at Amazon, Amazon MP3, iTunes or the band's webstore

Top Ten Tuesday: Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams "Get Lucky"

Well, this is a song we know and love from the countdown, so it shouldn't be breaking any new ground in terms of what the song sounds like. I am almost positive that it was on the top ten of the Hot 100 before it was on the top ten of the Alternative Songs, so that's interesting. I don't think we need to go into another discussion about why this song is on the Alternative Songs chart. It's just one of life's unsolved mysteries.

OH! You will notice that this video is 2 minutes shorter than the version we've been hearing on the countdown. I wonder what effect that will have on your enjoyment of the song.

Monthly Poll: Beck - Mutations

So I want to focus a little more on these Alternative Album Grammy Winners that I'm playing for bonus songs on the Countdown. So I think, on the first Monday of every month, I'm going to do a little retrospective poll related to the album from the proceeding month.

July's album was Beck's Mutations.

Please answer the following questions in the comments section. (If you don't have an answer, feel free to skip the question)

1. What is your favorite track on Mutations

Cold Brains

Nobody's Fault But My Own

Lazy Flies

Canceled Check

We Live Again

Tropicalia

Dead Melodies

Bottle of Blues

O Maria

Sing it Again

Static

Diamond Bollocks (hidden track)

2. What is your favorite Beck album?

3. Which do you feel should have won the Grammy, if not Mutations:

• Tori Amos To Venus and Back
• Fatboy Slim You've Come a Long Way, Baby
• Moby Play
• Nine Inch Nails The Fragile

BONUS EPISODE: The Ten Highest Charting Songs (2010-2012)

The Black Keys

This was, by far, the easiest episode I've ever recorded. All hits. For a whole hour. This is a good one to put on for a friend who doesn't know about the podcast, or like, at a party? or something? It was a fun one.

The Ten Highest Charting Songs (2010-2012)

***Featuring***
The Black Keys
The Dirty Heads featuring Rome Ramirez
Foo Fighters
Foster the People
Gotye featuring Kimbra
Linkin Park
Mumford & Sons
Muse

Jay Z "Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film"

I'm so impressed with Jay Z's new album. And then I saw this. And the appreciation I have for him went through the roof.

All Time Hot 100 (Part 10) (aka The Final Countdown)

This is it, folks. I am VERY interested to see what this top 10 can possibly be. Will there be songs from this decade? Hmmm....let's find out.

10. The Beatles - Hey Jude (1968)

9. Debby Boone - You Light Up My Life (1977)

8. Olivia Newton-John - Physical (1981)

7. Los Del Rio - Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix) (1996)

6. The Black Keys - I Gotta Feeling (2009)

5. LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett & GoonRock - Party Rock Anthem (2011)

4. LeAnn Rimes - How Do I Live (1997)

3. Bobby Darin - Mack the Knife (1959)

2. Santana featuring Rob Thomas - Smooth (1999)

1. Chubby Checker - The Twist (1960, 1962)

Wow! I did NOT see that #1 coming! Amazing. Love it. What a twist!

One Year, 100 Albums - #95 Midtown - Living Well is the Best Revenge

Midtown Living Well is the Best Revenge, 2002

I found this album at the low-point of a post break-up sadness. I was in a music store in an outlet mall that, at the time, was two towns over, but which now is just down the road. I was with one of my best friends in the world and the title of the record leaped out at me like a beacon.

I had seen Midtown open for Blink-182 the previous summer. They introduced themselves as Guns 'n' Roses and played a fairly faithful cover of the beginning of "Sweet Child o' Mine"

But I didn't make the connection until later. All I knew in the outlet mall was that the album was on Drive-Thru Records (at the time, home of such perennial favorites as New Found Glory, Finch, The Starting Line, Rx Bandits, Something Corporate, The Early November, and Homegrown) and that I liked the title.

It's all the way down at #95, but if I told you that this album is, from start to finish, a textbook in early-2000's pop-punk, you'd have to believe me. For it is so. There are lots of tempo changes, anthemic choruses, and enough breaks for punk rock jumps to keep you airborne for what may be an unhealthy amount of time.

Here's a video that would occasionally play on MTVU probably my sophomore year:

And here's the song that kicks the whole thing off. Still one of my favorite pop-punk songs.

Midtown - Become What You Hate

You can buy Living Well is the Best Revenge at Amazon MP3 and iTunes

All Time Hot 100 (Part 9)

Yeah, I missed this post yesterday, but I'm getting it in before the final countdown this afternoon, so just CALM DOWN. :-D

20. Percy Faith - Theme From "A Summer Place" (1960)

19. Boyz II Men - I'll Make Love to You (1994)

18. Bryan Adams - (Everything I Do) I Do It For You (1991)

17. Jewel - You Were Meant For Me/Foolish Games (1997)

16. Rod Stewart - Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright) (1976)

15. Diana Ross & Lionel Richie - Endless Love (1981)

14. Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes (1981)

13. Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris - Yeah! (2004)

12. Toni Braxton - Un-Break My Heart (1996)

11. Mariah Carey - We Belong Together (2005)