Against Me! — “Thrash Unreal”

Released: 10.10.07 Peak: #11 [Modern Rock] “Thrash Unreal” calls bullshit on every promise of transcendence that rock music has ever made. Then it jams those lies so hard that they ring momentarily true. Like a harsher version of Bowling for Soup’s “1985,” or a more secular and less sentimental distillation of the Hold Steady’s oeuvre, [...]

The-Dream — “Falsetto”

Released: 9.28.07 Peak: #30 The shadow of R. Kelly loomed large over the ’00s. As prison threatened to subtract the lewd master from the R&B game, Terius Nash emerged among the friendlier pretenders to the throne–The-Dream may not boast Kells’ physical gifts, but his taste in kink is less ludicrous. Which ain’t to say vanilla: [...]

Flo Rida feat. T-Pain — “Low”

Released: 9.16.07 Peak: # 1 Pretend all that you want that Autotune-bashing hasn’t become more irritating than Autotune itself could ever be, but T-Pain has been a force for good in contemporary R&B. And among his better deeds was the rehabilitation of this modestly talented member of DJ Khaled’s circle. “Low” is, at the very [...]

Best Albums 2007 (11-15)

15. Marnie Stern — In Advance of the Broken Arm Stern yelps great and shreds great and Zack Hill drums great. But what renders her clamor brilliant rather than adept is novelty appeal rather than chops–not that she dares to be great but that she dares to grate–and if you think that’s a dis you’re [...]

Miley Cyrus — “See You Again”

Released: 12.19.07 Peak: #10 Jane Dark in late 2007: “We have yet to hear a good song from Hannah Montana, but won’t be surprised when we do. It’s like getting a good Christmas present from your uncle who works in Silicon Valley: he’s clueless, but he’s got pockets full of money and friends full of [...]

Tegan and Sara — “Back in Your Head”

Released: 7.24.07 Peak: Did not chart   Pop songs feed upon relationships in crisis. Conflicts entertain, after all, and extreme emotions snugly fit into the catchiest tunes. But everyday life with another person has subtler difficulties than many songwriters acknowledge–I mean, if your world is all fucking around or throwing furniture or neighbors’ brooms banging [...]

Feist — “1234″

Released: 7.15.07 Peak: #8 God knows there have been times I’ve wished Leslie Feist’s voice crisper, warmer, jauntier. “Mushaboom” was the ideal showcase for her upscale bohemian flirtiness, right down to its self-descriptive title; her carelessly re-named take on Bee Gees’ “Love You Inside Out” blurred away the song’s edges at the expense of its [...]

Paramore — “Misery Business”

Released: 7.15.07 Peak: #26 Teenage girls clearly deserve a better fount for their inchoate rage than Hayley Williams. She squanders no empathy when belting out her prerogatives, which, on “Misery Business,” range from objectifying pretty boys to pissing off pretty girls. Here’s pop-punk crammed into a VH-1 reality show template, with sexily unhinged women tussling [...]

My Chemical Romance — “Teenagers”

Released: 7.9.07 Peak: #67 As the ideal consumer, the teenager is the sole mass-produced entity that is absolutely essential to capitalism as we know it. As a human being, though, the teenager is irreducible surplus, and our essential economic problem is how to keep teenagers consuming as much as possible without letting them enter the [...]

Keyshia Cole feat. Missy Elliott & Lil Kim — “Let It Go”

Released: 6.19.07 Peak: #7 In its quiet way, “Let It Go” is among Missy’s most confident creations. Few producers would have risked sampling “Juicy Fruit” a decade after “Juicy” claimed those distinctive synth waves and skittering beat for all time, and fewer still would have pulled it off. Rather than banking on a younger generation’s [...]