They call me hell. They call me Summery.

[dennis_obell]

Here’s the rundown of the songs on the 2009 Summer mix, from indie-rock to kings of pop.

Even in the Summer of Malaise - in which we've lost countless jobs and at least one pop legend (and in which I found myself momentarily bloodless) - we can be healed by a collection of catchy pop songs.

Friends, I hereby bring you hope, love, peace, dopey lyrics, fat beats and gobs of Auto-Tune.

Since I posted the full download of Summer 2009 late last week (friendslocked post; e-mail me if you can’t follow the link), at least 11 of you have downloaded it. How do I know? Because Rapidshare now caps the number of downloads of each link at 10. My first link expired early this week, and thanks to a heads-up from a locked-out friend, I reposted it. Please keep pinging me, here or in the other LJ post, if you have the same problem, and I’ll keep renewing the link.

For those who are new to my little annual project: the Summer series - started in 1997, back in the days of actual mixtapes - is a collection of catchy and very current songs intended to capture the pop Zeitgeist at midyear. As I explain every year, this is my parallel-universe idea of a Top 40 pop station - one blind to genre and far wider-ranging than terrestrial or even web radio would play. But my Summer selections are not too left-field or challenging; even the hipsterish indie tunes I choose are hook-fests that have had some kind of buzzy impact on mainstream culture. In my world, a catchy Dirty Projectors song is just as much a “hit” as one by Lady GaGa.

In general, 2009 has been a weird, disjointed year for pop hits. The actual pop charts have been dominated by such regrettable acts as the Black Eyed Peas and Flo Rida; and many of the most irresistible hooks I’ve been hearing this year come from acts you’d be more likely to hear in an East Village Starbucks than on the radio. Also, according to no less an authority than Jay-Z, these are the waning days of the Auto-Tune sound, which has dominated R&B/hip-hop for about three years now; I suppose if I were trying to stay ahead of the curve, I’d avoid Auto-Tune like the plague, but instead three songs here are awash in it (including one song that makes fun of it).

Let’s run down the selections, shall we?

• “Kids,” MGMT - I’ve had a tradition of leading off these mixes with an emerging rock act whose big hit had a long, slow climb up the alternative charts, such as 2003’s “Seven Nation Army,” 2004’s “Float On” and 2005’s “Mr. Brightside.” But “Kids,” the biggest hit by hipster duo MGMT, is one of the slowest-building rock-radio hits of this decade: first recorded back in 2004, while they were finishing school at Wesleyan, it was rereleased on an indie EP in 2005 and then on their debut full-length album Oracular Spectacular in late 2007; finally, in late 2008, Sony selected it as the third single from the album, whose singles “Time to Pretend” and “Electric Feel” had already dominated Williamsburg block parties last summer. After a half-year climb, “Kids” peaked in the Top 10 of the Billboard Modern Rock chart this April, and it’s still knocking around the list as we speak. I include it here to fulfill its years-long destiny as a summer anthem; it even kicks off with what sounds like a gang of preadolescents cawing to each other like seagulls.
  
  
• “Best I Ever Had,” Drake - The fastest-emerging hip-hop star of 2009, this alumnus of - seriously - the Canadian teen soap Degrassi: The Next Generation hasn’t even released his debut album yet and is already getting the kind of buzz that preceded 50 Cent’s major-label debut in 2003. “Best” is No. 1 on the R&B/hip-Hop chart right now and No. 2 on the Hot 100, stuck behind the dominant Black Eyed Peas (whose existence I have chosen to ignore on this mix). In this summer in which Jay-Z is proclaiming the death of Auto-Tune, “Best I Ever Had” sort of represents its culmination, along with Jamie Foxx’s smash “Blame It” this past winter: a heavily digitized but fairly traditional smoove-B love jam that’s a little more girl-friendly than T-Pain’s stripper odes. Mostly, I find the song’s hook irresistibly brain-sticky.
  
  
• “I Do Not Hook Up,” Kelly Clarkson - I consider this second single from Clarkson’s chart-topping comeback album a kind of penance by a couple of women who have annoyed me deeply in recent months: Katy Perry, she of last summer’s crap anthem “I Kissed a Girl”; and Kara DioGuardi, a sometimes-decent producer and songwriter who turned out to be an annoying, strident, music-history-challenged judge on this year’s American Idol. Amazingly, these two dimwits cowrote this single, which Clarkson sells brilliantly with her typical powerhouse vocals. On the Hot 100, this all-around excellent single peaked below the Top 20, which is undeserved for Clarkson but probably some kind of karma for Perry and DioGuardi.
  
  
• “1901,” Phoenix - Remember in the ’90s how Winona Ryder was the alt-rock black widow, dating a string of cutie-boy frontmen (Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner, Beck, Pete Yorn, Ryan Adams) and giving bad juju to their careers? Maybe Sofia Coppola is her polar opposite: a similar starfucker who brings her boyfriends good luck. Earlier this decade she upped the profile of her ex-husband Spike Jonze, and this year no one’s gotten luckier than Phoenix frontman and Coppola babydaddy Thomas Mars, whose formerly-obscure-in-America band got a plum Saturday Night Live gig this spring thanks (apparently) entirely to the SC connection. Thing is, the band kinda deserved the U.S. boost, as their snappy, smart album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is pretty great and widely expected to make most critics’ year-end Top 10 lists. This song is the lead single and catchiest track, but the whole album is as enjoyable as a bag of Sour Patch Kids.
  
  
• “Paranoid,” Kanye West feat. Mr. Hudson - What was that about Auto-Tune dying? Like a lot of late singles from Kanye’s albums - they always break big but fizzle out after two or three hits - this song isn’t doing much on radio but was supported by a slick video starring a post-Chris Brown-incident Rihanna (looking fine, I am happy to report). Honestly, much as I love this ’80s synth-pop homage, the obvious single of the year for Kanye is the ubiquitous “Heartless,” which, with its many earnest covers by earnest white people, is emerging as 2009’s “Crazy.” But “Heartless” is so chilly and wintry, and from the moment I heard 808s and Heartbreak last year I pegged the thumping “Paranoid” as the only summery song on that frigid, Depeche Mode-y album.
  
  
• “Stillness Is the Move,” Dirty Projectors - Now this is my jam. It’s natural to be wary of overhyped indie acts with willfully obtuse names and hipster-approved albums, and this shape-shifting collective led by nonsinging mastermind (and fellow Yalie) Dave Longstreth is an obvious candidate. Imagine my shock when I heard this single, one of the best pieces of white-girl R&B I’ve heard in years - it’s like half of Williamsburg decided to record an homage to Timbaland and somehow succeeded. This might be my favorite track on here, because it’s so unexpected. Watch the llama-rific and truly bizarre video, which the rabble at YouTube have been panning but which only makes me love the song more. I kind of have a geek-crush on lead singer Amber Coffman, who looks like she should be behind the counter at a Cold Stone Creamery, not singing like a black girl while wearing Star Wars robes.
  
  
• “People Got a Lotta Nerve,” Neko Case - This is the second time I’ve featured Case on one of these compilations, the first being her lead vocal on the New Pornographers’ 2003 single “The Laws Have Changed.” Since then she’s become something of an Americana/NPR/Starbucks/Amazon mainstay, but I like her better than her reputation - she writes good songs, has that fearless, brassy voice, and is a total riot in interviews and onstage. This song is one of the breeziest things she’s ever done; normally, on her solo stuff, I tend to prefer her when she’s a little tormented and torchy (e.g., “Deep Red Bells,” “Hold on, Hold on”). But this is so jangly, it’s practically an homage to vintage ’80s R.E.M.
  
  
• “Know Your Enemy,” Green Day - We just saw these guys on bradamant’s birthday last week. In a “100 and Single” column a few months ago, I called this chart-topping rock hit “classicist, if not classic.” That doesn’t make it ineffective. What I kind of love about Green Day is they unabashedly have a shtick, and they’re not afraid to milk it in a million tiny variations. And this track is one of the tiniest permutations to their sound possible - you could throw three of their older songs in a blender and come up with this. But the brute force of the thing just works. I also love that it sounds great segueing into…
  
  
• “LoveGame,” Lady GaGa - I’ve had really mixed feelings about this poseur since she appeared, and I still say she’s a Maya Rudolph “Deep House Dish” character come to life. But I’m not above admitting I like some of her hits, and not including her in this mix-about-2009 would’ve been an act of willful denial on my part. (Again, I feel no such qualms about the Peas.) But what song to include? In the end I settled on this, because it’s her big hot-weather hit, but it was kind of a close call. As with Kanye and “Heartless,” her “Poker Face” has kind of gone viral, inspiring unlikely covers and hanging around the charts even longer than her winter club-rat hit “Just Dance” did. But I went with “LoveGame” anyway. For the record, I edited out the song-opening chant of her dopey “wanna take a ride on your disco stick” line, which she says enough during the song as it is. Besides, her “HUH!” about 10 seconds in is one of the song’s best hooks.
  
  
• “Zero,” The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - I've included a song by these downtown-New York scenesters each time they’ve released an album - so, thrice so far (“Maps” in 2003 and “Cheated Hearts” in 2006 before this). But this is probably the summeriest, shimmeriest single they’ve released yet, which makes it a natural. I feel like Karen O et al. have finally embraced their destiny as a 21st-century Blondie, combining the art-damaged vibe they always had with a dance-rock sound that suits them remarkably well.
  
  
• “Panic Switch,” Silversun Pickups - Their second appearance on a Summer disc, after the late-breaking 2007 hit “Lazy Eye.” Their second album isn’t as good as their first (typical), but they sure aren’t giving up that Smashing Pumpkins-for-the-’00s sound yet; lead singer Brian Aubert sounds more like Billy Corgan every day. “Panic Switch” was the SPs’ first Alternative chart No. 1 late this spring, which is kind of amazing considering they’re still on the tiny independent label Dangerbird, and the Alt chart is an all-radio list that’s hard to top without heavy promotion. The irony: aforementioned hipster bands Phoenix and Dirty Projectors are on bigger labels (V2 and Domino, respectively) than these guys. Goes to show it’s hard to know who the real “indie” bands are.
  
  
• “That’s Not My Name,” The Ting Tings - Second straight summer I’m including a song by these Brits, and I really wouldn’t have guessed that a year ago. But like “Kids,” this is a song that keeps coming back from the dead. It was a hit in England and across Europe early last summer, and at year’s end, despite it not really making a splash at U.S. radio, a bunch of American critics named it one of the best singles of 2008. Since December, it’s debuted on the Hot 100 three separate times, and finally, last week (thanks in part to airplay from, no joke, Radio Disney), it became an official U.S. Top 40 hit. Cheeky, sassy, and seemingly simplistic, the song will plague you once you’ve heard it a couple of times. This is not an unpleasant sensation.
  
  
• “No You Girls,” Franz Ferdinand - On my radar screen this year, these guys have gone sorta on, then off, then on again. (I guess you could say that’s how things have been in general for Franz F. since they broke five years ago.) Their third album was generally acclaimed last winter, and then after a decent launch nobody was talking about it much going into the spring. But this song kept quietly moving up the rock radio charts, finally peaking in the Top 10 about a month ago. I doubt they’ll ever record a song as great as “Take Me Out” again, but this comes closest of anything they’ve released recently to reclaiming that danceable-rock vibe they patented in ’04.
  
  
• “Knock You Down,” Keri Hilson featuring Kanye West and Ne-Yo - Not exactly a household name yet, Hilson is probably very familiar if you were listening to the radio in the summer and fall of 2007. She’s the breathy, ethereal voice on Timbaland’s squonky smash “The Way I Are” - which I featured on Summer 2007, so weirdly, this is my second time including her. I also seem to have a trend going with songs that feature Kanye raps in the middle, after “American Boy” last summer, but this track sounds more like a Ne-Yo type of song than a ‘Ye track. It peaked at No. 2 on the charts a few weeks ago, stuck behind…yes, the Black Eyed Peas. Sensing a trend?
  
  
• “Feel Good Drag,” Anberlin - I almost always include at least one totally square, meat-and potatoes rock track, and this song basically attached itself to my brain. These guys have a word-of-mouth reputation as (eek!) a Christian rock band, but they’re less dumb than Creed and not overtly Jesusy in a Faith Plus One way; I assume Anberlin are about as “Christian” as Evanescence were when they launched six years ago. Anyway, as I discussed in my column a few weeks ago, this is probably going to end up the No. 1 rock radio hit of the year, for the simple reason of longevity: it’s still in the Alternative Top 10 after more than 40 weeks on the charts, and months after it topped the list. It’s easy to be snobby about songs like “Feel Good Drag” until you find yourself turning them up on the radio.
  
  
• “Help I’m Alive,” Metric - And the Silversun Pickups think they’ve got it tough! Try scaling the charts with a self-released album, and doing it on rock radio when you’re fronted by a woman. Amazingly, this song by the Emily Haines-led Metric has scraped the Alternative Top 20 despite appearing on the band’s own “Metric Music International” label (a larger Canadian label, Last Gang Records, is helping to promote the single but is even tinier in the U.S. than the label pushing the Pickups). Fantasies, Metric’s album, is one of the better things I’ve heard this year, dreamy but rocking in an early-‘90s Lush sort of way.
  
  
• “She Wolf,” Shakira - Possibly the dopiest song on here - which is saying something, after Lady GaGa and her disco stick - the latest from the Colombian pop goddess is at least a little less stupid than 2006’s “Hips Don’t Lie,” to which I also, embarrassingly, succumbed. I agree with my Idolator editor Maura Johnston that the disco-revival sound suits Shakira well, and that some of the goofiest things about this song (the “Ah-wooo!” wolf howls, the use of words like “lycanthropy”) are also what make it. This is the third time I’ve put Shakira on a Summer mix - after “Whenever, Wherever” in ’02 and “Hips” in ’06 - and my one regret is that I didn’t include her best single of the decade, “La Tortura,” on my ’05 mix; that song smokes anything else she’s recorded since she broke in the late ‘90s as Latin America’s answer to Alanis Morrisette.
  
  
• “Use Somebody,” Kings of Leon - Love them or hate them, you can’t say the Followill brothers haven’t earned their late-breaking U.S. fame. Huge in England for half a decade, these Tennessee boys couldn’t get arrested in America until their current (fourth) album, which has now spawned two big radio hits - this one and “Sex on Fire” - and is adding a third at rock radio right now. I would’ve thought the song with “Sex” in the title would’ve been the one to cross the Kings over to Top 40 radio, but this second single is the one doing the trick, I guess because it’s sort of a ballad? My jaw dropped when I heard Z100 playing it next to Katy Perry a couple of weeks ago.
  
  
• “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked,” Ida Maria - This is the silliest, and catchiest, song by one of the most critically acclaimed new acts of the year, a Norwegian rock goddess in the making. She’s got her rock-girl stage presence down: I saw her open for Glasvegas a few months ago (I was mainly there to see her; didn’t stay for the bulk of the headliner), and she stumbled around the stage half-drunk and complaining about her PMS, which the crowd loved. The whole album, Fortress Round My Heart, is pretty great, and “Oh My God” is actually the better single (with a killer, deceptively simple video); but “…Naked” is her first radio hit in the States (No. 30 Alternative) and, lyrically, about as summery as it gets.
  
  
• “I’m on a Boat,” the Lonely Island featuring T-Pain - Past Summer mixes have closed with such laugh riots as “Fuck Her Gently,” “My United States of Whatever,” “America, Fuck Yeah” and…ahem, a certain nonexistent Kurt Cobain track last year. (I guess the recent release of this popular mashup makes my 2008 joke seem prescient.) Anyway, this Lonely Island tune was a natural. I still say “Dick in a Box” is the funniest thing Andy Samberg will ever record, but he gets points on this one for satirizing the T-Pain sound while involving T-Pain himself, and spoofing ghetto-fabulous hip-hop (and Jay-Z) all at once.
  
  
• Summer 2009 bonus track - Actually, let’s close with this instead, shall we? For this year, it just feels more apropos. Did I say that Dirty Projectors track was my favorite of the mix? Scratch that. This song beats everything here, and pretty much every pop single recorded since the dawn of time.