Favorite Songs of 2007 & 2008 (So Far)

When I began my weekly year-by-year recaps of my favorite songs (as I lived through each year), it was 2007. Throughout that year, my primary source of popular music was 100.5/WHHZ “The Buzz”. Unfortunately, as 2008 began, this station altered its format to mimic its higher-powered competitor 103.7/WRUF. The result has been that the great independent/alternative bands that I had come to follow were completely cut off from broadcast radio in Gainesville. Fortunately, I was able to replace WHHZ with my Cox Communications digital radio, which they broadcast on my television (and which has three independent/alternative stations). Also, I discovered a great albeit faint Orlando station, 104.1/WTKS “Real Radio”, that I can play over the computer (when I actually have access to it). Still, it’s harder to hear my favorites from recent years.

Looking back on 2007, Muse’s beautiful, mysterious love song Star Light continued to be my favorite song of that year. They also came out with a more funky-sounding tune, Supermassive Black Hole. Green Day’s cover of John Lennon’s brutally true Working Class Hero was faithful and compelling. Depeche Mode, one of those enduring bands that keeps making comebacks, continued their latest with the catchy (and typically dreary) Suffer Well. Speaking of catchy, Beck, the master of pop hooks, had a winner in his Think I’m In Love. The Shins cryptically sang about a Phantom Limb, while Lili Allen just wanted to Smile. The Silversun Pickups had their breakthrough hit with Lazy Eye. The Plain White T’s crossed over into the mainstream charts with their sweet exhortation of love: Hey There Delilah. Toward year’s end, Linkin Park came out with another of their screaming and pounding forays into fit-pitching and self-examination (but I somehow love it): Bleed It Out, my favorite of theirs since 2003’s Faint and my #2 favorite of 2007. And my #3 top song of that year was the sinister-sounding Black Mirror by Arcade Fire.

2008 saw me undergoing something that happens to me from time to time: I “discovered” an act that I had previously considered unworthy of listening to. This time it was the White Stripes, creatively driven by Jack White (also the creative force in the band the Raconteurs). And the song that sparked this personal about-face was the outrageously played and sung Icky Thump, a tune that’s bound to become a long-time classic. Now I’m picking up stuff in White’s other works that I like as well. I could still pick up some good songs off of top-40 radio and the harder rock stations like Psycho by Puddle of Mudd, Love Song by Sara Bareilles, Ladies and Gentlemen by Saliva, Let It Die by the Foo Fighters, and Viva La Vida by Coldplay. And I managed to hear a few good indy/alternative artists as well. Beck continued cranking out likable, original songs with the relentless Timebomb. The band Rogue Wave’s Lake Michigan was one of the last good alternative songs I heard played on WHHZ before they abandoned good taste. Death Cab For Cutie’s I Will Possess Your Heart is very long and repetitive (both musically and lyrically), but its effect is not to bore but rather to entrance. And the emerging group MGMT had the significant and very disturbing song Time to Pretend. Here’s a list of my personal rankings so far in 2008:

1. Time to Pretend (MGMT)
2. Icky Thump (White Stripes)
3. Timebomb (Beck)
4. I Will Possess Your Heart (Death Cab for Cutie)
5. Psycho (Puddle of Mudd)