"Always" by Erasure

I remember hearing this song for the first time. It must've been my freshmen year and I thought, "what the hell is this." It was weird and kooky sounding... like Duran Duran on laughing gas.

I just remember it made me happy and over the next few months it continued to as I heard everyday on it's slow climb and stay into Top 40 radio.

Today the song still makes happy and I hear Erasure's influence in the music I write and new artists I admire (Little Boots, Marina, Frankmusik, Lily Allen, etc.). There is a quirky melodic Britishness to Erasure that makes their music and influence hard to refuse.

"Surf's Up" The Beach Boys

This might be, what I consider to be, the greatest song ever written. There... I said it. So obviously I could write pages about this song, but for the moment I'll limit myself to these few words.

The Beach Boys are the most misunderstood, yet equally celebrated, band in the history of music; and this song encapsulates all of that. This was to be the closing song of Brian Wilson's epic 1967 song cycle "SMiLE".... we think. A version of smile was released in 2004 had "Surf's Up" as the finale of side 1. Regardless, the song is a subtle epic. Not as sonically obvious as "A Day In The Life" by the Beatles, but just as obscure and beautiful.

The Brian Wilson "solo" version that appears on the Beach Boys box set is nothing more than perfect. These are best lyrics ever written in this country as far as I am concerned. Both sad, hopeful, and though written in 1967, very prophetic of a young country that still has much to deal with.

"February Air" by LIGHTS

It used to be that the hipster music crowd would call you a sell out if your song was used in a commercial. The irony to me always being that all a music video does is promote your album...so it's little more than a commercial; but I digress.

I heard LIGHTS in the in an Old Navy commercial a couple of years ago and fell in love with her. Her music is poppy. airy, colorful. Like Vanessa Carlton with synthesizers. She looks and sounds like a little elecropop pixie...like Tinkerbell with a Macbook & Garageband.

"February Air" is one a few songs I ALWAYS play twice in row when I play it. The opening synth line is one of my favorites ever. I love the words. They are sparse and perfectly fill in the spaces they need. "I know your face like the back of my hand" is just a pretty lyric.

Thank you Old Navy.

"They Don't Know" by Tracey Ullman

Boy, I played this 45 (yes kids...as in a little black record) to death when I was 5 or 6. I remember my mom playing and it and me loving it.

It's fascinating to me how what we like as kids still has relevance in what we like today, whether we realize it our not. I mean, I was pretty ate up with "quirky girl" pop music when I was a kid (Cyndi Lauper, Tracey Ullman, Rosanne Cash, 60's Girl Groups, etc.); and now here it is 25 years later and I adore Little Boots, Ellie Goulding, Lily Allen, and Nelly Furtado, etc. (Nelly Furtado is still quirky... don't let her newfound sexiness and success fool you.)

"They Don't Know" is a gem of a song. It was written by Kirsty MacColl, who is one of the great unsung British voices of female driven pop music. She had little success in America before her tragic death, but her music is definitely worth investigating... as she defies time and genre. She was also married to none other than 'superproducer' Steve Lillywhite... for what it's worth.

You get a little taste of that in Ms. Ullman's cover of the song. One of first BIG music crushes for sure. She is pretty adorable in this video.

"Stop Crying Your Heart Out" by Leona Lewis

Noel Gallagher is the best songwriter of his generation. That is all. I have thought that for a long time, but sometimes a little time has to set in so you can view someones work in context. Now that Oasis has dissolved I think it is a fair time to start analyzing his work against the greats (The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, Blur, The Kinks, Burt Bachrach, etc.). What I have discovered is that I would put Noel Gallagher's 25 best songs up against these aforementioned greats... and I think he's better.

"Stop Crying Your Heart Out" was the song that made me realize that my admiation/worship of Noel Gallagher for the past 15 years of my life warranted. I'm not somebody who seeks validation for my views or opinions, but when I heard Leona Lewis cover this song on X-Factor & her album; I knew that Noel Gallagher was one of the greats.

I mean, he has been telling that us he was one of the greats for years.

"Loosen Your Hold" by SOUTH

"Release or be caught...if this be the right thing/Look what the tide brings in"

South should be huge...that is all. But alas, some bands are with the tides of popularity and some bands are not. South has always been somewhere in-between, but usually, just south of what is popular at the moment.

This song off of With The Tides is simply fantastic. Actually, the whole album is fantastic, but tis is one of my favorite songs EVER. The first time I heard it I actually felt guilty for liking Keane, Aqualung, and the like. I felt guilty because it doesn't seem fair to me that some bands rise to such prominence whilst others get swept out to sea.

If you see a motif forming around direction (SOUTH) and water (With the Tides) then you get the drift of my not so subtle metaphor. South is a little band with a big sound that got swept away in the tsunami of popular music.

They are an island unto themselves and if you are invited visit if you like such music. "Loosen your hold...and look what the tide brings in."

"See You Again" by Little Boots

Sometimes pop music lets you down. It doesn't mean too and you really shouldn't expect so much from it. But alas, you do and hopes pop-pop-pop, like the very bubble gum such music is.

I am currently obsessed (O B S E S S E D) with British artist Little Boots... so much so that I haven't even been able to write about her yet. Towards the end of last year I became aware of her YouTube channel and I got hooked on her.

I'm not going to ramble about her right now, I'm just going to say that I was super-stoked to see her in Chicago in May, but today she canceled. Do I still lover her? Hell yes. Am I disappointed? Absolutely.

But hey... anyone who covers Miley with such studied delight has got to be great... I can't wait to her again. Rather sometime.

"Clear Spot" by The Pernice Brothers

Maybe it's something about spring, but I play this song a lot every year about his time. It has a "Here Come The Sun" vibe about it that makes me anxiously anticipate the warm weather. It doesn't hurt that this song was featured on quite possibly one of my favorite shows of all-time the Gilmore Girls; which for some reason is a 'springy'/fall show for me.

The Pernice Brothers, themselves, have a spring/fall sound to me. "Clear Spot", for instance, isn't sunny enough to have a summer sound and some of their other work has a chamber-pop feel that isn't quite cold enough to be winter. Yes, I base a lot of listening, watching. and reading likes around weather. It's just something I do

If Brian Wilson had grown up in Massachusetts one thinks he might've written a slice of pop as good as "Clear Spot." Happy spring.

"We'll Live & Die In These Towns" by The Enemy

Goosebumps. That is what I got the first time I heard this song...and what I have gotten the 1000 times I have played it since.

There is a hopeful resignation I had never heard before in this song that both made me smile and want to die all at the same time. I think everyone both wants to stay where they are from and move away. There is a safety is staying and the idea of something new if you leave.

The Enemy are great. They might be part the last gasp of guitar driven 'indie' Brit-pop that we get for awhile. There is a shift going on in the music world and that makes this song ever more poignant.

See, in England especially, there is a working class element to bands like The Jam, Oasis, The Manic Street Preachers, etc. You can trace its roots to the Beatles & go from there. There is a desperation to make your life better by starting a band and maybe getting a little success... maybe getting of Top of the Pops. But that is fading. I am not sad about it per se (at least not right now) because the current creative movement of pop music is partially a reaction to two decades of working class hope and manufactured pop music.

"We'll Live & Die In These Towns" might as well just be an anthem to what indie-rock in Britain was. The times they are-a-changing. It'll be interesting to see what place classic guitar bands have in the near future.

"10,000 Nights" by Alphabeat

Some songs just make you happy. Today I felt myself starting to get in a bad mood and I didn't want to be. I searched quickly through my iTunes and came to Alphabeat. I absolutely adore Alphabeat. They make me happy almost instantly.

I came upon them a couple years ago and must say that This Is Alphabeat has become a goto favorite album. They are just fun. No pretense. No fakeness. They exude and embody everything I love about pop music. I like them the first time I heard this song. It was that fast with no questions asked.

On my other blog (versechourusfade.blogspot.com) I wrote an essay about Cyndi Lauper and what she means to me as a music fan. I think that is why I love Alphabeat so much. They buy into that "WannaHaveFun" aesthetic without coming across like they are trying too hard. They remind a little of being a kid and dancing around to Cyndi Lauper, but they are still very much of the now while having their moments of homage.

The boy/girl vocal thing works well for them and shines in "10,ooo Nights" which I put up there among the best pop songs I've heard in along time. Plus Anders (the guy) & Stine (the girl) are just adorable. I have nothing else to say.

Anders & Stine came through again today. Crisis averted. Thank you Alphabeat.

"California Dreaming" by The Carpenters

Growing up my mom played a lot of Carpenters. Over the course of this blog there are easily a half-dozen songs I could talk about, but the one that has me recently is their cover of "California Dreaming".

See, for me, I have always loved the California Mythology in pop-music. There is the breezy, sunny, "California Girls" aesthetic that we were sold in a lot of west coast pop; but the flip-side of that culture has produced some of the most melancholy and beautiful music written in this country. Every high has its low I suppose.

The Carpenters fit beautifully into the aforementioned bi-polar soundscape and their cover of "California Dreaming" is a sometimes overlooked gem. The song is equal parts haunting and hopeful; taking it a much different direction than the wistful folk song the Mamas & the Papas put down on tape.

"Mellow Version of 'Anyway'" by Dynamite Hack

Sometimes the best songs come from the weirdest places. Dynamite Hack was a punky-rock band that rose to semi-fame with a cover of "Boyz In The Hood". That particular song was clever, but the novelty wore off quickly. Apparently it wore quickly for lots of people, because their record Superfast was a constant mainstay in the clearance section of the book & cd store I worked at for three years.

Occasionally we would go through and just get rid of cd's that had gone unsold out of clearance for 6 months. As a music nerd these culled cd's were often given to me. That is how I wound up this disk.

One day out of boredom I was going through the stacks of cd's I has accumulated and I put Superfast in the player. Surprisingly a couple of songs were ok. One of those was the 'original' version of "Anyway". I call it the original, because at the the end of the cd I noticed there was a hidden track. With nothing to lose I waited for it.

What emerged was simply one of the best things I had ever heard. Like a lost Ben Folds song sung by Kay Hanley (Google her), this song came pouring out of my speakers. The song is sung by Emily Morris, lead singer Mark Morris', sister. Why she never made an album...who knows; but actually who cares. This one hidden track on a 5 year old cd was probably my most played song of 2005. And it's a song I still go back to for inspiration when I am writing music. It's just really pretty. I'm not sure if it it's supposed to be ironic or some kinda band "in-joke", but all I know is it gives me goosebumps. It's real.

If I ever assemble a Nuggets collection of lost gems from my generation "Boyz In The Hood" won't be on it, but the "Mellow Version of 'Anyway" most definitely will.

"Breathe Your Name" Sixpence None the Richer

I don't like to bring religion into pop music, but sometimes it brings itself. That being said, I know this song is about God and I realize that Sixpence is a Christian band. I also realize that I'm not "religious", but that doesn't change the fact that this is one of my favorite songs... ever.

I love Leigh Nash, the lead singer of Sixpence. Her voice is one those "pixie above the noise" voices that you either love or hate. I love it, obviously; it just makes me happy because it sounds full of hope. The lyrics are both overt and subversive at the same time; which I like. I have no problem with that because my favorite band is the Manic Street Preachers who both overtly & subversively sing about socialism...but even non-socialists like their music. A good song is a good song and you can get bogged down with the details sometimes.

I once joked that if God himself, could personally promise me, that I could write songs this good if I believed more then my faith might be stronger... and I think that says it all.

"Starry Eyed" by Ellie Goulding

I have been obsessing over one Ellie Goulding for a few weeks now; ever since I heard her on my PopJustice channel on Last.fm. Then I heard her sing on a Passion Pit Remix of 'Sleepyhead' and I was sold. I pretty much fell in love with that.

Her music is right on some weird border of poppy-quirky-folky-electronica. She is basically great. This quote sums her up, "I like simplicity, which is why I am not afraid of pop, or dance music. I just look for the hook, the centre. And it can be the words or the melody...just the one thing that can relate to everyone.

She is part of this ongoing British Popster Gal movement which has been full of original voices and might go down as my favorite movement in pop history. It could've only happened at his place in time...this moment in history. Pop singers are in the unique position of creating their persona on the internet and then controlling every facet of that persona. It's been fascinating to watch pop music get promoted to art again... for the first time since the 80's.

This song signals some of the best of what's to come.