Previous: #100 to #76, #75 to #51, and #50 to #26.
25. "Where'd All the Time Go?" by Dr. Dog (2010)
Early in the decade, I was driving to La Salle with XPN on the car radio (aux cord must've been busted), and this song came on. I knew it was Dr. Dog, but I didn't know anything else. Those hypnotic key riffs stayed in my brains for years, buried, until I finally got around to checking out Shame, Shame. I heard the riff again, and it was like someone snapped their fingers and I came out of a fog, not really sure what I had been up to the past few years.
24. "Bamboo Bones" by Against Me! (2010)
"Bamboo Bones" was Willow's first song, so that probably has a lot to do with it (Martha's first song was all the way back at #55, who says parents don't have favorites I guess!!!). But don't discount the song because of that; I wouldn't've picked it in the first place if it wasn't a badass song. It's about staying true to yourself and standing up for what you believe in—you don't have to be my infant daughter to appreciate such a message.
23. "Bloodbuzz Ohio" by the National (2010)
There were better albums from the National this decade (spoilers), but there was no song that encapsulated everything that makes the signature National sound more so than "Bloodbuzz Ohio." It starts with the pounding drums, and they don't stop. One single note rises above the fray, to set the mood. Berninger's booming baritone dives in. The band is bashing away in unison. A climax is reached. Bliss is obtained.
22. "Drinkin' Days" by Pkew Pkew Pkew (2019)
At the beginning of the decade, this chorus could've been a rallying cry; at the end of the decade, it's an epitaph: "There's a hole in my heart 'bout the size of a bottle, and I like to fill it every day."
21. "Impossible Soul" by Sufjan Stevens (2010)
It's quite possible that the middle section of this song (from around the 13-minute mark to around the 20-minute mark) is the best song of the decade. Or would've been, if it was its own song. It's possibly that it might be my favorite song of all time. Or would've been, and so on. I'm not sure. There's the Sufjan maximalism at its finest, but there's also the immortal dual truism of: "In the wrong life, everything is chance," and "In the right life, it's a miracle." Over the past ten years, I've tried to see the world in this way, as a miracle instead of just some random fucking things that occur. I've failed in so many fucking ways, but I've tried. Always ready to remind me, this song has been here for quite a while (literally—it's a half hour long).
20. "One Trick Ponies" by Kurt Vile (2018)
I was at a wedding a few weeks ago. I could only stick around for three hours tops, with a one-week-old at home. Couldn't drink that much either, same reason. Still, those three hours went by in a blink of an eye. That always happens when I'm with my boys from the old neighborhood. Kurt Vile sings his anthem to old friends here, and it shakes my bones in the same way that catching up and shooting the shit with those guys does.
19. "Boys in the Better Land" by Fontaines D.C. (2019)
There are old advertisements that you can see at the Guinness factory in Dublin—A slogan for the beer used to be "Guinness for Strength." While that's not literally true, and the American Medical Association might have some firm words to say about it, it's definitely true in a figurative sense. Who among us hasn't felt their strongest with a good shine on? There are moments when you just feel fucking invincible. I have felt that before. I feel it too when I hear this song. I feel unstoppable.
18. "Little of Your Love" by Haim (2017)
There's a moment toward the end of the video for this song, during the rapturous Paul Thomas Anderson-directed dance sequence, where Este Haim breaks the fourth wall and winks at us, the audience. That wink contains universes. It's a wink that says, "Calm down, we're just having fun here, it's not that serious." No one was more successful while seeming like they didn't give a shit this decade than Haim.
17. "Dimed Out" by Titus Andronicus (2015)
An inverse of the previous blurb: No band seemed to take themselves more seriously than Titus Andronicus this decade. Seriously, "Dimed Out" is near the halfway point of a 30-song rock opera about mental illness personified by an evil doppelganger. And yet, here's this song, just an absolute fucking ripper, all full of snarls and snare rolls. That they could seem to have so much fun amidst the theatrics does a good job in reminding us that Titus could walk and chew gum at the same fucking time.
16. "To Know Your Mission" by Jens Lekman (2017)
Something I'm realizing as I grow older, looking back and looking forward, is that just having even an infinitesimal grip on what the fuck you're supposed to do in this fucking life is an absolute gift. Like, imagine how easy it would be to grow up knowing exactly who you are and what you want to do with your life? I cannot imagine, but it's a subject I'm infinitely curious about. Of course, leave it to Jens Lekman to capture all this in a goddamn song that also name-drops Chumbawamba.
15. "Down Down the Deep River" by Okkervil River (2013)
You might get the wrong impression if you just listen to the music, because this is a big bright pop song. Listen to the lyrics, and you'll find that it's really about a childhood friend drowning, and all the trauma that comes with that. But maybe it's not the wrong impression after all—there are notes of hope throughout the song too, an understanding that we've withstood the worst, and so what else can life possibly throw at us?
14. "Younger Us" by Japandroids (2012)
I spent some time in a couple movie interviews this year talking about the idea of "toxic nostalgia," i.e. whether thinking back to the past could ever harm our present. It's absolutely something I struggle with sometimes. In that regard, of fucking course "Younger Us" is one of my favorite songs of the decade, because it gives me a reason to be nostalgic again—"Gimme that night you were already in bed, said 'fuck it' / got up to drink with me instead" is one of the best lines of all time.
But so it was pretty interesting to read Brian King (guitar/vocals) talk about the purpose of the song. It's interesting because it seems to play into the idea of "toxic nostalgia."
"All of our friends that were around us were getting married, and having kids, and buying houses and getting these sort of jobs, and following on these paths, and there was this sort of... we didn’t come from a place where all of our friends played in bands, we were the only people that did that. We didn’t know anyone that played music or was interested in these sorts of things. Everyone had these, sort of, textbook lives. And 'Younger Us' was kind of this rallying behind watching your friends get pressured into lives that you were unsure they wanted and they were unsure they wanted."So in King's mind, some of his friends are miserable because they have kids instead of being able to go out and get fucked up. On a certain level, I totally how someone could assume that. King was in his late 20s when he said this about the song. Who doesn't feel this way when you're getting older and shit is changing? But so, I guess my point about this song is that, yes, it would be really bad to try to make "Younger Us" a reality. I don't try. I don't want to. But I can still appreciate the song as a window into a time when I did... if that makes sense.
13. "Queen of Hearts" by Fucked Up (2011)
In every musical, there is an opening number in which the characters and the world at large are introduced to the audience. Everything is good, because this is before the incident and the rising action. Usually, those numbers involve a little less throat-shredding than "Queen of Hearts," Fucked Up's introduction to their grand and batshit punk rock opera, David Comes to Life. Here, our characters enter from stage left, bomb a lightbulb factory, and fall in love. These sorts of introductions are usually my favorite parts of a theatrical production, because they brim with excitement about what's to come. There really isn't much music out there that gets me as excited as "Queen of Hearts."
12. "God in Chicago" by Craig Finn (2017)
It's tempting to call this more of a story than a song, but that wouldn't give "God in Chicago" enough credit. It's talk-singing, for sure, but Finn makes the wonderful lyrics sound musical anyway through diction alone. An example: "Went from St. Paul to Cicero in my Chevrolet that didn’t have any radio / Had a boombox in the back seat that was running on batteries." It's more than what's written, it's how he says it.
But damn, okay, this is powerful performance by Craig Finn with his pen. With his slice-of-life, in media res narrative about selling a duffel bag of drugs, Finn proves himself one of the great writers of our time. He's given us enough great music at this point that I'd be okay if he took a little break to write the Next Great American Novel.
11. "Fear and Trembling" by Gang of Youths (2018)
You don't have to know philosophy to appreciate this song. I'm literally just reading Wikipedia about Fear and Trembling, the Søren Kierkegaard philosophical work, right now. It's a little too heavy for my feeble brain—basically making a point about having to make a "leap of faith" in order to believe in God, because if you try to use logic and reason, you're gonna go crazy (like Abraham when he was ordered to kill his own son)?! It's gonna take me longer than the six minutes and two seconds of "Fear and Trembling" to get a grip on it. Thankfully, like I said, that's all extracurricular reading. If you want, just sit back and listen to the boozy, Bruce-y bombast, and enjoy.
10. "Swan Dive" by Waxahatchee (2013)
This is by far the sparsest song in the Top 25, and it is Waxahatchee's masterpiece. She is probably getting better as an artist—2017's Out in the Storm is her best work yet—but she will never make a song that rips my heart out in the same specific way that "Swan Dive" does. It's a song about how we cling to each other because we're all sad together, even if that makes things complicated. It's a painful song, and Katie Crutchfield is somehow able to capture all that pain in every single "ooooh ooooh" after each verse. She is incredible.
9. "Four Score and Seven" by Titus Andronicus (2010)
I probably heard an advance copy of this song in January 2010, and so the very first lyric that impacted me this decade was "This is a war we can't win." After all the highs and lows that the 2010s brought, I can't think of a better way to have begun. There's not much we can do to make a large impact in the world, so let's do what we can with each small battle, and maybe have some fun while we're at it. I sure hope it's not really "us against them," because I want to think that we're all in this together, but Titus probably spits unfortunate truth.
8. "Total Football" by Parquet Courts (2018)
Sure, it feels good to yell "Fuck Tom Brady!" as an Eagles fan, but Parquet Courts are making a much bigger point that than. Tom Brady isn't just some cheating shitbag robot; he is also the epitome of the "every man for himself" doctrine that has so fucked our country. And yeah, to get really into the weeds, we need to talk about soccer here—"total football" is the soccer strategy that there are no assigned positions, and that every man on the pitch should play whatever role is required of him in that specific moment of the game.
But this song isn't actually about soccer either, just as it's not actually about a Super Bowl-stealing football deflater. We apply the general concept of total football to the real world, and realize that everyone needs to work together to fight the common enemy (hey Titus Andronicus, maybe it really is "us against them"). That's where the line "Have your hurt caucasian feelings left you so distraught?" comes in—all these white blue collar workers have conniption fits when a black athlete takes a knee for his rights, but they are blinded to the fact that they want the same thing!
The bottom line is that this is the straight-up coolest socialist anthem of all time. And yes, okay, fine... it does feel so fucking good to yell "FUCK TOM BRADY!"
7. "DVP" by PUP (2016)
"DVP" stands for "Don Valley Parkway," a highway that runs through PUP's city of Toronto. If it's anything like Philly's I-76 West, there's always traffic, and you feel like a fucking loser every time you get jammed on it. Clearly, that's a metaphor for how PUP feels sometimes, how I feel sometimes, how we all feel sometimes. It's when you feel like your life is shit and you're feeling so low and then you drink a bunch of beers to try to feel better and all that ends up doing is driving the wedge even further. Like pretty much every song on this list, that's a sad way to describe an impossibly fun punk song.
6. "Simple Song" by the Shins (2012)
This is a song blurb that's just begging for a glib "it's not that simple" tagline. But I'm not gonna do it! I'm not going to sing the praises of the theatrical production of the whole thing, the towering guitar noodling, the epic scope, the haunting backing vocals, the thundering Janet Weiss drums rolling into a chorus that feels like it could explode at any minute, and then after explaining all that, say some stupid bullshit like, "doesn't sound simple to me!" I refuse!
5. "Sunday Candy" by Nico Segal & the Social Experiment (2015)
Here's an unfortunate truth that all Chance the Rapper fans will have to swallow eventually—a scrappy, unfailingly positive attitude is a good fit for a up-and-comer, but turns smug on someone successful. So let "Sunday Candy" stand as the final song that Chance ever raps before he is stamped as permanently insufferable.
That's all besides the point, I just wanted to get my licks in. My point is that this is an amazing fucking song. More so than Chance's delightfully humble raps about his grandmother, we have the production to thank. It's imbued with classic high school theater energy (see the video), all busy beats and heated horns. Not to mention Jamila Woods' irreplaceable turn as the female foil.
Look, I'm definitely not one of those guys who thinks that rap is too dirty to enjoy, and that's why I like a song from a nice young man rapping about his grandma and church. That's fucking stupid—give me a Danny Brown verse about having anal in a Burger King bathroom any fucking day of the week. But "Sunday Candy" is so fucking catchy and heartwarming and wholesome, that I can't help but love it. Who ever dared say anything bad about Chance the Rapper?
4. "Waitress" by Hop Along (2015)
I've talked a lot about what a black hole Frances Quinlan's voice is, how it's so dense and otherworldly that we'll all be sucked in eventually. I don't know what I'd do if I ever ran into them at Love City Brewing. What does a peasant say in the face of a god?
That's why it's kind of funny that this song—Hop Along's best, and one of the best songs of all time—is about Quinlan themself feeling small, when they were waitressing and someone who didn't like them walked in. It's almost impossible to square in my mind how Frances Quinlan could ever feel small when they sound so much goddamn larger than life on tape.
As always, shout out to the band, who somehow match the vocals peak for peak. As always, shout out to my favorite band from Philly. As always, shout out to "Waitress," in all its crackling glory.
3. "Stay Useless" by Cloud Nothings (2012)
There are probably a few interpretations of the line "I need time to stay useless," though the distinctions between each are slim. Maybe Dylan Baldi is saying that if time doesn't exist, then we can live in this moment forever. Maybe it's a fear of the future. Maybe time is moving too fast. Maybe he feels stuck, and thinks that removing himself from all boundaries, including time itself, would help. I dunno. This all sounds pretty vague.
Regardless of whether I can adequately explain it or not, something about the conviction in which Baldi pleads his case to time speaks to me on some unreachable level. Sometimes the time gets away from me. I'll blink and it's a fucking decade later. Sometimes I need a hardass punk song to beat the reminder into my brain.
2. "Casey" by the Menzingers (2012)
"Casey," of course, is a love song, but not how you think. "Casey" isn't a person, it's a figment of the past. Our protagonist finds himself lost in memories of getting drunk with an old friend, way back when. And there's a concession that he's ready to go back to that "old place we found" at any time, the bags are packed, just say the word.
"I bet I sound like a broken record." Me and you both, brother. I don't know in how many different ways I can explain this to you guys—the songs that speak to the pain of losing the past are the songs that are going to wallop me the hardest. Call it "toxic nostalgia," whatever. "Casey" doesn't make me want to pack my bags and go back to how it used to be, because I'm over that. But it's a song that acknowledges that the feeling is still buried deep in there, because let's be real, it really was "so much easier."
So yeah, "Casey" is a love song. But the singer isn't talking about a girl named Casey. He's talking about that special pocket of a youth that is irredeemably lost forever. You can love it and be okay that you lost it. Here I am.
1. "4th of July, Philadelphia (SANDY)" by Cymbals Eat Guitars (2016)
In this story, our hero arrives in Port Richmond, depressed and struggling to find meaning in life—how can there be meaning to this life when there are theoretical parallel universes out there? Anyway, he gets into a van in front of the IGA with a friend of a friend, and this dude drives through Kenso and fucks up some random family's fireworks display. Said friend of friend gets his ass beat by a scary uncle with a baseball bat, right in front of our hero, whose depression finally lifts—something about the Kensington side street beatdown convinces him that this is the life that matters, and that it's worth giving a shit. And that feeling lasts for a little bit, anyway. Like all moments of clarity, it eventually fades.
I have been to plenty of Kensington side streets, but never to start a fight; I have been to the Port Richmond Pep Boys but memorable nights have never started there; I have knocked over Roman Candles, but it was always in jest. There is nothing specific in this story that I can point to and relate to.
But "4th of July, Philadelphia" is my favorite song of the decade because it comes closest to capturing that very specific can't-miss feeling that the very best nights contain. Certain times in your life, you feel like you reach a whole different higher plane of consciousness. Sometimes, it happens randomly, and sometimes it happens when something insane happens, and you feel like this can't possibly be real life, but it is. These are the nights that we tell as stories years later, in other words.
This scuzzy little lo-fi punk rock tune ably captures that feeling that is almost indescribable otherwise. The magic is ineffable, but I feel it when I hear that drop into the chorus: "HOW MANY UNIVERSES / AM I ALIVE AND DEAD IN?" I get to carry that feeling around in my pocket because of Cymbals Eat Guitars. That's why this is the best song, because it's about the best feeling, and it gives me back that best feeling on the days I really need it.
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