Head to Head:
The best songs for the summer? Can't it all just be LFO? I heard they think it's fly when girls stop by for the summer. Do you remember?
Dominick Mayer: It's hard for me to get an exact handle on how to define my most essential summer songs. I'm not going to go with my favorite songs about that time of year, because that list would consist of LFO's "Summer Girls" on a loop. Nor will I use songs about girls as a whole; though my summers, like any young man who watched Garden State far too much as a teenager, often concerned them. Reason is, those would just be depressing (read: written by Tim Kasher) songs, and if I've learned anything in life, it's what Thomas Jefferson once said: "Bitches are bitches, and the trouble with bitches is that bitches always be talkin'".* So I'm going to just look at the top five songs that I can throw on at any time of the year and will immediately whisk me away to a warmer and more sweaty (I'm extremely Italian) place.
*I don't think Thomas Jefferson said that.
1) "1979" - Smashing Pumpkins: For my money, this is the official anthem of driving a car around the suburbs in the middle of the night with the windows rolled down.
2) "No Comply" - Bouncing Souls: Really, anything off How I Spent My Summer Vacation is appropriate here, but I'll go with this one.
3) "Good Ol' Fashioned Nightmare" - Matt & Kim: I can't dance for shit, but I'll be damned if this doesn't make me want to two-step my way up the sidewalk anytime I hear it.
4) "So Long, Astoria" - The Ataris: I'll argue there's not a more effective song to take you back to being ten years old. Plus, it's basically about The Goonies, which to this day I can still follow line for line, from memory.
5) "Kim & Jessie" - M83: Because sometimes, not always, but sometimes, I like to feel like I'm in an '80s teen movie.
Ryan Peters: Dominick is a brave, brave man; I mean, I already knew that: I remember the time he and I were walking along a partially frozen pond in December and I stumbled when a dead branch gave way beneath my feet and the bag of Starburst Jellybeans I was eating went flying out of my hand and landed on the pond surface and Dominick immediately walked out over the thin ice to get them, and then he got back and I said, "What the hell, man? They're just jellybeans," and he said that Starburst Jellybeans were "really good" and "totally better than Jelly Bellies" and he was completely right, because they are good and Jelly Bellies suck by comparison. Yeah, I remember that. It was pretty goddamn brave.
But so is picking songs from any time period for this list -- that takes some gall. I'm an obsessive playlist-maker. I have three different playlists on my iTunes just to listen to while I'm in the shower (all of which are just the same song, Bobby Darin's "Splish Splash," on repeat). So, choosing 5 songs from any time would be incredibly difficult, and I'd end up just listing a lot of Neil Diamond. So, I'm going to try to pick five songs that have come out within the past five years.
1) "Thank You" - Jay-Z: The best song from Hova's latest album is something I do actually listen to most mornings. A great, brassy beat punctuated by hand-claps makes it the perfect track to roll the windows down to in the morning.
2) "Countdown" - Phoenix: In their year-end issue of 2009, RollingStone featured an interview with Phoenix in which the band was asked if they knew they were writing "one of the best pop songs of the decade" when they were recording "Lisztomania." This boggles mind my mind because from the first moment that I heard Phoenix's fantastic disc, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, I thought that "Countdown" was the standout track. If anything should go on a list for best pop songs, this is it.
3) "Ambling Alp" - Yeasayer: Take one listen. It'll be in your head all day. Oh, and you won't mind.
4) Tie: "Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur" - Sigur Ros / "Winner" - Jamie Foxx ft. Justin Timberlake /T.I.: The Sigur Ros song is just flat-out excellent, especially the last two minutes, in which it builds to a huge climax. That's what she said (are we all still saying this?). I picked "Winner" because you're going to hear it everywhere for the next month, and don't try to deny that it's incredibly catchy. Just go with it. I've heard that T.I.P. is highly respectable.
5) "Sequestered in Memphis" - The Hold Steady: You can pick any song by The Hold Steady, mostly because they work perfectly in the summer or the winter. This is just the one that's been in my head lately.
Posted by Ryan Peters, Ryan Peters on May 13, 2010 @ 12:00 am
