The 99 Best Songs of 2009

Okay.  So, late last year, I spent all day putting together a list of my 75 favorite songs of 2008, complete with mp3s of *rare live versions* of many of the songs and links to videos on YouTube of the songs being played live.  And again, it's not like I really care about how many page views this blog gets, but it's a bit of a sobering deal when a list you've slaved over gets fewer hits than a picture of Grimace saying "Fuck Tim".  I mean c'mon now, people.

So, needless to say, this list took less work than that.  How much less, you ask?  Enough that I'm not even going to finish this intr

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1.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Zero" -- Yup, it's clicheed.  In fact, one could question the point of maintaining still yet another crappy blog tagging It's Blitz as Album of the Year and "Zero" as the year's finest song.  While we're on the subject, one could probably also question the utility of playing Baseball Stars for like 17 straight hours. But then again one should probably just get off my case. 

2.) The Crocodiles - "I Wanna Kill" -- Posing + Preening + Hilariously bad lyrics + THE GREATEST CHORUS IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC EVER.

3.) Boston Spaceships - "How Wrong You Are" - This is the best *new* song Robert Pollard has written since "The Best of Jill Hives" in 2003.  Yes, there have been some good-to-great songs since then, but many of them ("Go For the Exit," "Be It Not for the Serpentine Rain Dodger," "Accidental Texas Who," etc.) are gussied-up versions of stuff he came up with forever ago.  Not so this one.  As if you care.

4.) Pissed Jeans - "False Jesii pt. 2" -- If I were to begin regularly dancing in a manner befitting this song, the world would have many, many more falling chandeliers.

5.) Jay Reatard - "There Is No Sun" -- Mr. Reatard slows it down, throws on some strings, and winds up with what sounds like "Don't Stop Now"'s misanthropic cousin. 

6.) Smith Westerns - "My Heart" -- These lo-fi kiddies' finest song.  Awesome guitar lick at the end kills me every time. 

7.) The Thermals - "Bottom of the Sea" -- This song has a simplicity to awesomeness ratio of 1.

8.) A Place to Bury Strangers - "Ego Death" -- If you've seen APTBS at any point over the last two years you've probably seen them open their set with this (I always thought it was called "Gimme Acid").  Oliver Ackerman sounds like Peter Murphy on this one. 

9.) Baroness - "The Gnashing" -- Sounds a lot like Torche's "Across the Shields," a/k/a '08's second best song.

10.) Wolfmother - "Far Away" -- Let me see your cigarette lighters!  

11.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Skeletons"

12.) The Raveonettes - "Bang"

13.) Kylesa - "Unknown Awareness"

14.) Big Business - "The Drift"

15.) Crippled Black Phoenix - "200 Tons of Bad Luck"

16.) Kylesa - "To Walk Alone"

17.) Fuck Buttons - "Olympians"

18.) Crippled Black Phoenix - "Rise Up and Fight"

19.) The Thermals - "How We Fade"

20.) Pelican - "What We All Come to Need"

21.) Heartless Bastards - "The Mountain"

22.) The Antlers - "Two"

23.) The Thermals - "When I Died"

24.) Death - "Politicians In My Eyes"

25.) Fever Ray - "Triangle Walks"

26.) A Place to Bury Strangers - "In Your Heart" (Cereal Spiller remix)

27.) Atlas Sound (ft. Laetitia Sader) - "Quick Canal"

28.) Built to Spill - "Oh Yeah"

29.) BOAT - "Interstate 5"

30.) The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "The Tenure Itch"

31.) The Crocodiles - "Sleeping With the Lord"

32.) Built to Spill - "Things Fall Apart"

33.) Crippled Black Phoenix - "444"

34.) The Raveonettes - "Wine"

35.) King Khan & BBQ Show - "Anala"

36.) Baroness - "Swollen and Halo"

37.) Dan Deacon - "Red F"

38.) The Raveonettes - "Break Up Girls!"

39.) A Place to Bury Strangers - "Keep Slipping Away"

40.) Russian Circles - "Malko"

41.) Kylesa - "Scapegoat"

42.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Runaway"

43.) Built to Spill - "Done"

44.) Crippled Black Phoenix - "A Hymn for a Lost Soul"

45.) Oxford Collapse - "Search Party"

46.) Goes Cube - "I Hold Grudges"

47.) King Khan & BBQ - "I'll Be Loving You"

48.) Julian Plenti - "Only If You Run"

49.) The Thermals - "I Let it Go"

50.) The Crocodiles - "Summer of Hate"

51.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Little Shadow"

52.) Smith Westerns - "Tonight"

53.) Red Fang - "Whales and Leeches"

54.) The Raveonettes - "Suicide"

55.) A Place to Bury Strangers - "Dead Beat"

56.) Julian Plenti - "Games for Days"

57.) The Thermals - "You Dissolve"

58.) Heartless Bastards - "Witchy Poo"

59.) Goes Cube - "Saab Sonnet"

60.) Cheeseburger - "Commin' Home"

61.) Fuck Buttons - "The Lisbon Maru"

62.) Your Nature - "Sands"

63.) Pissed Jeans - "Half Idiot"

64.) Dead Mellotron - "I Hate the Way Things Are"

65.) The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "Young Adult Friction"

66.) Sian Alice Group - "Close to the Ground"

67.) White Denim - "All Consolation"

68.) Them Crooked Vultures - "Elephants"

69.) Maximo Park - "The Kids Are Sick Again"

70.) Fever Ray - "If I Had a Heart"

71.) Wolfmother - "Caroline"

72.) Melvins (remixed by John Duncan) - "AAHHH"

73.) Pissed Jeans - "Dream Smotherer"

74.) Seventh Void - "Heaven is Gone"

75.) Fuck Buttons - "Surf Solar"

76.) Alice in Chains - "A Looking in View"

77.) Goes Cube - "Bluest Sky"

78.) Times New Viking - "Those Days"

79.) White Denim - "Sex Prayer"

80.) Dex Romweber Duo - "Picture"

81.) Wolfmother - "Back Round"

82.) Boston Spaceships - "A Good Circuitry Soldier"

83.) Portishead - "Chase the Tear"

84.) Dinosaur Jr. - "Oceans in the Way"

85.) LiveFastDie - "Amputated"

86.) A Place to Bury Strangers - "I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart"

87.) Wolfmother - "California Queen"

88.) Franz Ferdinand - "Ulysses"

89.) The Dead Weather - "I Cut Like a Buffalo"

90.) Heartless Bastards - "Sway"

91.) Crippled Black Phoenix - "Burnt Reynolds"

92.) Baroness - "A Horse Called Golgotha"

93.) O'Death - "Mongoloid"

94.) LiveFastDie - "Camero Shit the Bed"

95.) Goes Cube - "The Only Daughter"

96.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Hysteric"

97.) Dead Mellotron - "I Woke Up"

98.) The Dead Weather - "60 Feet Tall"

99.) Jay Reatard - "It Ain't Gonna Save Me"

Comments

[rivmink]

hey tuddy muddy
i think you and i are gonna have to take that yyy's shit to the mat. really no. 1#? UGGGGG.

mink

[beaf]

hate hate hate song lists

but Grizzly Bear - 2 weeks is prob song of the year for me....

after that i really liked My Girls and Brothersport by Anco (yea obvious thx)

after that i liked pretty much every song on thermals...and bottom of the sea is probs the best -- you nailed that one

the antlers song is good, loved the first raves single, i like this franz nicolay song - hey dad..also his song jeff penalty is pretty fun too

the first track on the dan deacon record is great...the atlas sound song w/ the chick is good...

neon indian had some good songs

meh got nothin...hate song lists

[beaf]

oh yea i also loved while you wait for the others w/ michael mcdonald