Don't give a hoot about what you think

[dennis_obell]

A few words about my latest Summer mix, now in its 12th year!

Scene 1: I'm home a couple of Sundays ago, editing and mixing songs while bradamant talks with her mom on the phone. I've got headphones on and have kinda forgotten they're still talking, when suddenly, I'm tapped on the shoulder. I remove the 'phones to see my wife handing me the telephone: "She wants to know where the Summer mix is."

Scene 2: Friday night, I'm chilling at home when my cell phone starts buzzing madly. I flip it on to find multiple messages from prettykate, who is out with obifu and drunk. Message 1: "I am slightly buzzed on a strong mojito, but its not water i need - IT'S A MOLANPHY SUMMER MIX. Give it up!" A little over an hour later: "My drunk ass expects MOLANPHY MOX...I mean MOLANPHY MIX. Omg so many hispters..."

And here I thought I could low-key it this year.

I mean, I tried last year: I never posted anything about Summer 2007 - here, or on my largely defunct blog, or even on Idolator, my big-blog home. I just burned copies for bradamant and her mom, maybe a couple of friends and coworkers, and that was it. Well, I thought, I guess that fad has passed. But I heard complaints! "Hey, did you do a Summer mix this year?" "Do you not love us anymore?" And so on.

Both of the demanding acquaintances mentioned above have since received burned CDs of Summer 2008, complete with jewel case and color artwork. But part of the reason I haven't been circulating so many CDs lately is the realization that virtually everyone I know, even my parents and mother-in-law, has an iPod now. What's the point of burning discs and printing covers?

So, for the first time, I am making the mix available for friends to download. If you are LJ-friends with me and are logged in, go here for the appropriate link.

At least a couple of Summer fans have told me they enjoyed the post where I "explained" the songs. I'm running to catch a plane with bradamant later this afternoon, the start of our two-week Croatia trip. But let's do this:

• “Viva la Vida,” Coldplay - Their first No. 1 American hit, propelled on the charts by that gorgeous Apple ad. Kind of a comeback after the snoozy third album in 2005, and it has that triumphal sound that works nicely on the radio. I should be sick of this song by now, and somehow I'm not. Guess that makes me gay.
  
  
• “American Boy,” Estelle (feat. Kanye West) - The runner-up in Idolator's "2008 Summer Jam" poll, and although I've been grooving to it for months, it just broke into the U.S. Top 20 last week. I've said plenty about this song here before. It's not a masterpiece or anything, but it's got a breezy-soul sound that Brits like Estelle just seem to do best these days. I edited the Kanye rap down to the best bits.
  
  
• “Pork and Beans,” Weezer - Until last week, the No. 1 modern-rock song in America, and given its 11 weeks on top of that chart it's arguably the whiny-guitars hit of the summer. I haven't gotten much mileage out of the "Red Album," and this song is too cute by half, but it's a better first single off a Weezer album than "Beverly Hills." Or at least, it doesn't make me feel dirty listening to it.
  
  
• “I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You,” Black Kids - One of the two most blog-debated, widely reviled indie-rock bands of the year, and I've included both. (We'll get to Vampire Weekend later.) I have already been informed by bradamant that this is the most annoying song on here, but I love how this African-American dude from Florida sings just like Robert Smith (and, by the way, produced a catchier Cure-esque pop song than Smith has recently). This song's more than a year old, but their major-label album just came out in July, with an improved mix of this song produced by Suede's Bernard Butler. So that's included here.
  
  
• “Going On,” Gnarls Barkley - With no "Crazy" on it, their second album has underperformed on the charts, but I actually think it's a better, more cohesive album. And this one of the two best songs on there (the other being "Who's Gonna Save My Soul"), combining Cee-Lo's post-Motown soul vibe with Danger Mouse's ethereal spaghetti-western atmospherics. Interesting video, too.
  
  
• “Gunpowder & Lead,” Miranda Lambert - The token country song, but I really do love this. It's also Lambert's first song to really penetrate the Nashville establishment - it just went Top 10 on country radio last week - after all the praise she received from big-city critics for her two albums. It's easy to see why red states picked up on this: it's a revenge tale/murder ballad/drunken confessional, which never totally goes out of style.
  
  
• “I Will Possess Your Heart,” Death Cab for Cutie - The main line in the chorus ("You've gotta spend some time, love...") gets repeated so much, it feels like there's not much going on here, but this song is kinda like the character singing it: insidious. I went from passively liking it to loving it over three months. The version on DCFC's new CD (their first No. 1 album!) is eight minutes and change, but the four-minute radio edit I'm using is really tight and emphasizes the best aspects of the song.
  
  
• “Cry for You,” September - Trashy Swede-pop that my local Top 40 station is playing from time to time, and I'm kind of mad for it, even if it is basically a Night at the Roxbury-level dance thumper. I found out this was actually a hit in Europe almost three years ago, and it topped the U.S. dance chart more than two years ago. But apparently the U.S. label still thinks it's a potential hit, because the single edit is getting a push this year. You can't keep catchy Swedish pop down.
  
  
• “Lights Out,” Santogold - The simplest, sweetest song on a very eclectic, hard-to-define album that will probably end up in my top five for the year, I'm playing it so much. It kind of sneaked up on me - I liked it from the first time I heard it, with mild reservations, but it's grown addictive. It hits a retro-'80s sweet spot for me, because Santi White seems to understand what New Wave albums actually sounded like (dry, synthetic). I described this song in somebody's blog the other day as "like Gwen Stefani warping back to 1983 and recording an actual '80s record instead of an '80s reinterpretation."
  
  
• “See You Again,” Miley Cyrus - I'm such a dunce: last winter, I must've heard this song a half-dozen times before realizing who it was, which is funny since she mentions herself in the chorus. So far, everyone I've given this mix to has sheepishly confessed that this is one of their favorite songs. The production is near-flawless (love the part toward the end where they bring the drums back in), and it's just a well-written fizzy pop song. Cyrus has a new album out where she makes the final move out of Hannah Montana, but for my money this is still her best mainstream crossover tune.
  
  
• “4 Minutes,” Madonna (feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland) - My fellow critics at Idolator shat all over this song, but I don't think it's all that bad, and it stuck around the Top 10 forever despite everyone making fun of Madge for being desperate for a comeback. Yeah, Timbaland's imitating himself, but it's a sticky hook, and Timberlake sings well here. BTW, and only because I keep getting asked this: no, it's not from a movie, despite the lyrics about saving the world. And no, I don't know what they're talking about.
  
  
• “Mercy,” Duffy - Lazy critics keep comparing this blond Brit chickadee to Dusty Springfield, but she's really the new Lulu: helium-voiced, a little honky, pixieish, brassy (not soulful like Dusty). If she's still around in a few years, Duffy could do a Bond theme, easy. What I like about this song is everything swirling around her voice: the opening bassline, which crosses "Stand By Me" with De La Soul's "A Little Bit of Soap"; the old-school '60s keyboards a la "96 Tears"; and another layer of chewy '80s keyboards a la Prince or New Order. They're marketing this like it's "retro," but it's actually pretty high-tech in a way.
  
  
• “Homecoming,” Kanye West featuring Chris Martin - I still don't get why this song wasn't a smash - that hook! Rappers are climbing all over each other to get the Coldplay dude to play on their records (Chris Martin leads the pantheon, alongside Phil Collins, of Pasty Brits That Black People Weirdly Love), but Kanye was smart enough to get Martin to not only sing but also write a little, sample-free piano hook for him. And it plays through the whole song like a sample, but it sounds just a little more organic. Anyway, maybe West had just worn out his welcome by the time this was picked as, like, the fifth single from Graduation, but this to me is a hit.
  
  
• “Shut Up and Let Me Go,” The Ting Tings - Continues the tradition of songs I put on these mixes that I discovered via iPod ads. It did chart in America (the act is British), but it didn't do that well because it's kind of a hard song to play on the radio - there's such a thing as too perky. I was playing this on the office stereo a couple of weeks ago, and my coworker compared it to a cheerleader chant a la Toni Basil's "Mickey." "And I should hate it," she said, "but now I can't get it out of my head." I assume this is good?
  
  
• “A Milli,” Lil Wayne - Not including something by him, in the Summer of Weezy, would be folly. I never cared much for "Lollipop," which always struck me as just slightly less stupid than Fitty's "Candy Shop." But this I like, and I'm almost surprised it's a hit. The sample is everywhere on the mixtape circuit, but beyond that it's little more than Lil Wayne rapping, doing that whispery-growly thing he does. It's not about much of anything except him getting rich, but there are all these clever bits of alliteration in some of the verses. Favorite: "...I’d like for you to pay me by the hour/And I’d rather be pushing flowers/Than to be in the penn, sharing showers."
  
  
• “Oxford Comma,” Vampire Weekend - Yeah, they're privileged upper-Manhattan honkies. Yeah, they ripped off bits of their sound from Paul Simon. Yeah, and I don't really give a crap. This isn't even the catchiest song on the album - that would be the late-winter minor hit "A-Punk" - but they dropped this as the summer single for a reason: it's got a wafty Haircut 100 vibe. Oh, and I love the fact that the first line in the verse has an F-bomb in it, especially coming right after the Lil Wayne song that has surprisingly few.
  
  
• “Paper Planes,” M.I.A. - A song from late last summer that, thanks to trailers for the latest Apatow movie, is suddenly a U.S. Top 40 hit. (Details here.) Plus, it was a summery-sounding song in the first place, so the delay kind of makes sense after all this time. It's nice when a little major-media exposure gives a deserving song the audience it should have had in the first place.
  
  
• “One Pure Thought,” Hot Chip - The best single from the latest album from one of my favorite current bands, who are so geeky they make LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy look macho. I love how these guys play full-band rock that has the repetition and brain hum of a deejay/turntable act. The "won't be on my way" hook in this song sounds almost horribly repetitive until you listen closely and realize that they switch it up and build the backing sound in small ways as it repeats.
  
  
• “Disturbia,” Rihanna - The most recent pop hit here, rising into the Top Five just this week. It's madly catchy, and it's also the (somewhat) rare song where the best hook isn't the opening bit (the "Bum-bum-be-dum" part) or the chorus; it's the build-up to the chorus, the part where she goes into a high minor key for the lines that go, "Put on your brake lights/We're in the city of wonder/Ain't gonna play nice/Watch out, you might just go under." Had that stuck in my head for days. Oh, and as with the Madonna song: it's not related to a movie. Or Shia LaBeouf, far as I know.
  
  
• “Let It Die,” Foo Fighters - The song that evicted Weezer from No. 1 on the modern-rock chart, and the third big radio hit from Grohl's latest album. And the one I like best. "The Pretender" was the massive hit from the record last fall/winter, but it kind of bored me. This one has more of a classic Pixies quiet-loud structure, which I'm always a total sucker for.
  
  
• “The Rip,” Portishead - The weirdest song here, from an album that, mark my words, will probably walk away with wins in all the critics' polls in December-January. It's hard to isolate one song on the Portishead album, because you kind of have to experience it as a total piece. But this was the single, and the acoustic guitar and cycling synth line make it totally different from anything Portishead has released before. Great video, too.
  
  
• “More Than a Feeling,” Kurt Cobain - This is a true rarity, and an odd song to close a Summer mix with, but given my background with the artist in question, I had to close with it. It's revealing to hear this, more than 20 years after it was first recorded, and I don't think anyone suspected it would ever be unearthed after all this time. You really have to hear it to appreciate it: here's a video on YouTube someone put together. I think you'll find it...mesmerizing.