Best Songs of 2010 – #10
OK, with the honorable mentions out of the way I now move on to my official top ten songs of 2010. I’ll count down ten through six this week and five through one next week, with an Elvis Costello weekend in between.
This list usually proves controversial so I’ll lay down the ground rules up front in hopes of preventing complaints down the road.
This is not a list of the best singles of the year… many of these songs were never released apart from the albums that contain them. This is not a list of songs that made a huge impact on radio or captured the cultural zeitgeist in 2010… I featured many of those tracks during my summer song series and that will have to do.
This is, very simply, a list of the songs released in 2010 that made the biggest impact on me for one reason or another. By default, most of them are culled from the albums I bought and listened to this year. No doubt there are songs out there I haven’t heard that would crack this list if given the chance, but that’s always the case with year-end lists and not something I’ll spend a lot of time worrying about now.
So, those disclaimers aside, I’m kicking off my top ten with a track from Tom Petty’s album Mojo, the blues rock opus he recorded with The Heartbreakers. Mojo is the best thing Petty’s done in years (since Wildflowers by my count) and ‘Running Man’s Bible’ is the song that really captured the spirit and attitude of the whole record.
This is ballsy, dirty garage rock driven by a chunky groove that won’t quit.
We’ve run it together
So many times
We’ve run it for money
We’ve run it for music
We’ve run it to pay for our innocent crimes
I took on my father and I’m still walkin’
Took on all comers in some shape or form
And I see with the eyes of somethin’ wounded
Somethin’ still standing after the storm
Here’s one to glory and survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the running man’s bible
I been next in line
I been next to nothin’
Been next to bystanders
Who shoulda said somethin’
It was not in my vision
It was not in my mind
To return from a mission
A man left behind
Here’s one to glory
And survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible
I don’t speak of the times I’ve nearly died
I don’t speak of out lastin’ those who are gone
Or the things I’ve done
I care not to remember
Or the desperate measures
That might have been wrong
Honey here’s one to glory
Here’s to bad weather
And all the hard things
We’ve been through together
Here’s to the golden rule and survival
And to stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible
Here’s one to glory and survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible
Meet Me In Montauk 