TBT #71: 5 songs in 2005

I’m going to do another Top 10 Films list this year, of course, but it probably won’t get written until early-to-mid January. I’ve seen a good chunk of the more notable films (most recently: King Kong, The Baxter, Broken Flowers, Saving Face) but there are still a few I feel obligated to see before I start making any sort of definitive list. (Brokeback Mountain, North Country, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and some other stuff I am forgetting) I can’t just crank these lists out, obviously, not when my past lists have been so influential and revered. Just look at what the critics have said about my past top 10 film lists:

• “In Good Company receives an honourable mention? That’s only because Scarlett Johansson was in it, right?” raves Jeremy Patterson (2004)
• Jack Kentala was moved to write “Heh, it makes sense that you find Elephant ridiculously pretentious — after all, it did win the Palme d’Or at Cannes[!]” (2003)
• “Uh, 8 Mile? Hello?” - Luke Adams (2002)

And I can’t wait to see the kind of response the 2005 list gets. Set your internet web browsers to their ready positions. Or something. You know what I mean. Keep them warmed up, metaphorically. So that when the list is posted you will be able to read it immediately. Like, if your web browser was a horse and my Best Films of 2005 list was a small calf and you, the reader, were a cowboy fond of cattle wrangling, you would want to make sure to keep your horse well fed so that, when the time comes, you will be able to wrangle the cattle with your lasso. The lasso is also symbolic, I guess. Let’s say it represents… freedom.

Due to the overwhelming success of the film list, I have decided this year to also do a list of my favourite songs of 2005. Some critics may charge that I have stolen this idea from the ridiculously successful and pervasive sportsdenblog but, really, that’s bullshit. I don’t even visit much less READ the ridiculously successful and pervasive sportsdenblog, and neither do any critics, for that matter. This is totally an original idea that I just came up with. I remember because it came to me in a dream wherein I was a struggling university student with confusing ideas about love and life (dreams are so crazy!). In the dream I was trying to figure out how to best quantify some things that had happened in 2005. At first I thought about arranging them using a ven diagram or 3D pie chart. But later I came up with a list. And then I looked down and my shoes were gone and replaced with chocolate cake. Then I fell down a mineshaft and woke up in sheer terror.

So click below to read my list! I’ll also be providing links to all of these songs, if you need that kind of extra incentive. But you shouldn’t because, seriously: it’s a list. They’re cool.

(Update from the future: I took the links down, because crazy RENT fans were downloading the song like there was no tomorrow!)

Matt Elliott’s Top 5 Songs of 2005, 2005 edition

Honourable Mention: James Blunt - You’re Beautiful

You are all suckers. I have decided to make this list of five songs six songs long. And I do so not only because that is such delightful phrasing. In truth, James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” is such a terrible, overwrought, dumbly simplistic and goddamned whiny track that I am, in fact, ordering you to dislike it. This is not a mini-review that says “this song is bad because…”; it is a direct command that says “this song is terrible and you should not like it!” That said, is there any song in recent memory with such surprising use of the word fuck? I mean, seriously, I only downloaded it because its frequent radio play had led to it getting stuck in my head like so many others have in the past. And possibly because I am pretty sure Mr. Blunt stole the idea behind this song from a silly story I once wrote. (or perhaps several stories — I went through a weird phase) But giving the song a quick listen shocked the hell out of me, because there it was: fuck.

Seriously, this is a soft rock song. This song is played on radio stations with names that contain the word “Soft”. Or the word “EZ” which, I know, is not an actual word, but it’s derived from one. James Blunt is on the same level as a million other artists whose songs seem to hinge entirely on the lucky coincidence that literally DOZENS of things can rhyme with the word “you”. And also “eyes.” But there it is, right in the middle of the song, sure to confound any number of confused people who were so charmed by that nice young boy singing about the girl on the train:

Yeah, she caught my eye / As we walked on by / She could see from my face that I was / fucking high

It just seems so out of place, you know? I appreciate that.

Number Five: Goodbye Love - Rent (The Movie) Cast

I know my previous comments on Rent came off as kind of negative and I still stand by them, mostly. But damned if I could get some of those songs about AIDS and relationships and more AIDS out of my head when all was said and done. Having (somewhat shamefully) searched out the movie soundtrack, I have to add to my list of criticisms of the film the cutting of the full version of this song (and “Halloween” before it) from the movie. Seriously, it makes the whole thing more SENSICAL. The song is so packed with plot-points that I appreciate it solely for that. Everyone is mad! Then sad! Then MAD again! Then regretful! Then hopeful! There are so many things going on in this song that listening to it is like playing Jezzball but with EMOTION and sweeping, profound statements flying everywhere instead of balls.

In my remake of RENT this song is exactly the same except there is an extra character hanging out the whole time just reacting to everything that’s said with hoots and hollers and shouted comments. When Mark is like “Perhaps it’s because I’m the one of us to survive!” he’d be like “Oh snap!”

Number Four: For Real - Okkervil River

This song is so gross. It is about a guy drinking blood, I think. And I don’t even think it is in the Christian sense, where it is not real blood, but rather crappy wine masquerading as blood as part of some weird ceremony intended to piss off the Romans, who hate cannibals. No, he is singing about real blood. He is quite explicit about that. But, man, if you can ignore that connotation than this is just an awesome song. It is like you are being hit in the face during the chorus, only the singer is not hitting you with his fists or with a crowbar or a mallet or a broken off antenna from a car: he is hitting you with his WORDS! It’s like: You really want to see what matters most to me! PUNCH! Just take a real short drive! Punch Punch Punch! This song satisfies my need to be in a street fight! Which is good, because were I in an actual street fight I would probably be killed when my opponent kicked me repeatedly in the head, while I futilely tried to rip an antenna off a car to use as a weapon. Because I think it would be a good weapon. If only it wasn’t stuck on there so well.

Number Three: Whatshername (Susanna Hoffs) - Dean Gray

Dean Gray (like “Green Day” but reversed!) is the pseudonym of a bunch of people who released the mash-up album “American Edit” onto the internet about a month ago. It only lasted about a week before it was taken down due to threat of lawsuit. As such the tracks may now be hard to find. But I’m going to host this one, anyway, in the hopes that I WILL be sued and thus bring international attention to myself and this website, perhaps the website most deserving of national attention since that one where that guy was all “I kiss you!” That guy was hilarious. In any case, while the whole mashed-up — a term that refers to taking two songs, mixing them together, releasing the final product onto the internet to widespread critical acclaim, and then getting sued, sometimes twice — album is pretty good, this song really sticks out. Combining some Green Day track I have never heard of with the Bengal’s “Manic Monday” is a stroke of genius. And then they manage to work in a SURPRISE cameo by another great song at the end. And it all fits together quite nicely! Other fans of the albums have pointed to Ashanti’s Letterbomb as a better track, due to its greater level of cohesiveness. But those people are dorks who insist on nitpicking a fucking mash-up album. This is the best track because Manic Monday is an awesome song we can all find ourselves in! I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes my Mondays are a little bit manic.

Number Two: Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song - Jens Lekman

I am not sure how I’m surprised to pronounce the name Jens (I like to think it’s “Jeans”) but I sure do know how to pronounce the word “Awesome.” And that is what Jens is. He is kind of like Sufjan Stevens but wackier, singing about meeting girls at anti-war protests and the f-word. And despite the weird subject matter, it is all very very pretty. The highlight of his really great album “Oh you’re so silent Jens” (Give it a few plays to grow on you) is the trio of tracks devoted to Rocky Dennis. Rocky was, for those of you who have led sad and empty lives, the character played by Eric Stoltz in the film Mask, which also starred Cher, a young Laura Dern as a blind girl and a bunch of hilarious bikers. The premise of the film is great, and here it is: Rocky Dennis is hideously deformed! A bunch of things happen relating to that, the best of which is that Laura Dern, who is blind and thus immune to his gross deformities, falls in love with him at summer camp. He teaches her how to “see” colours with different foods. It’s a scene that has to be seen, as I am not sure it’s at all describable, explicable or even coherent. He has her touch a block of ice and is like “This is blue!” and she’s like “Oh shit! It IS blue! I understand colours!” And then they make out.

In any case, no one has ever, to my knowledge, recorded a song about Rocky Dennis, much less THREE songs. But Jens Lekman did it! This is the first, and best, of the three, because it is so sad and silly and kind of recaps the whole love story. He misses the blind girl! Because summer camp is over. It is so sad. You know why Mask is so popular with nerdy twentysomethings? It is because when you are a 14-year-old kid with bad hair and acne, watching a guy with a face like those Easter Island statues get Laura Dern is fucking inspiring, even if she IS blind and probably has a flawed understanding of colours now.

Number One: Poison Oak - Bright Eyes

Screw you. Up until now, I think I have been pretty goddamn unpredictable! It is not my fault that the rather brilliant “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning” came out early in 2005. And it is not my fault Conor Oberst is almost-sorta-kind mainstream at this point, heralded as perhaps the new Dashboard Confessional, at least as far as artists producing lyrics tailor-made for those livejournal posts where you just can’t find WORDS to express the hurt you felt after Tammy, who had seemed so eager at the Winter Semi-Formal, refused to sit with you at lunch the next day. And then she TOTALLY wrote you a note in Math class explaining that she thinks you’re so sweet but just not the kind of guy she thinks she should be with right now. And it’s the last part that sticks with you, because what does THAT mean? “Right now”. Does that mean MAYBE she’ll be with me later? Because I think I love her. I think she’s the one for me. Maybe if I rent that movie where Jessica Alba is a surfer she will come over and watch it with me while I play with her bra strap and stare nervously at her knee.

“Poison Oak” is an awesome song, regardless. It has everything I look for in a song! It has a) strong, possibly evocative lyrics, b) a slow build to a WILD AND LOUD crescendo!, c) Female backing vocals (and the girl sounds so pretty), d) a weird story where some girl screws over a guy and commits some crimes and then leaves for Mexico, but he loves her anyway.

I don’t think I ever loved you more / then when you turned away / when you slammed the door / when you stole the car / and drove towards Mexico / and you wrote bad cheques / just to fill your arm / I was young enough / I still believed in war

The great thing about Oberst is how much he has matured as an artist. He started recording when he was in his early, early teens, to the point where his early Commander Venus tracks are still high-pitched and girly. And, being a young, angsty, hormones-raging teen (though I doubt he was the type to love Mask), he wrote a lot about love, and lost love, and missing love, and the reality of love, and the sadness of losing love, and the lovely loveliness of a love that loves love beyond its love and further still. And of course he still does, but now he tells elaborate stories where love is merely an element in a grand tapestry of drug-use, sex, obsession, perversion and running the fuck away. And I appreciate that, because I have made a similar transition.

And that’s all five. Please feel free to let me know any thoughts or comments you might have, particularly if those comments are along the lines of “How did you forget THIS song?” I love those the best.

Chriiiiistmas,
Matt