Tied for tenth on Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll of 2011’s best songs is ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ by Foster the People.
I am far more aware of this song than I am familiar with it. I’ve read a lot about it, but I can’t say that I’ve heard it in its entirety more than once or twice. But that’s not a reflection on the song, which I find incredibly catchy.
Over the next two weeks I’ll feature the top ten songs on Village Voice’s annual Pazz & Jop poll that have not appeared on this blog already.
I love this poll because it appeals to my inner stats geek — the one who, when he had more time, used to aggregate my family members’ top ten movie lists into one master top ten list based on a complicated points system.
Pazz & Jop is the same thing done for music and on a much larger scale — 700 music lovers (mostly professional critics, I assume, though can it be that 700 people are employed as music critics in this economy?) ranked their favorite 2011 albums and songs and all those lists were combined into a master list of over 2,000 songs and 2,000 albums.
When a random dip into 10,515 songs turns up a track from Madman Across the Water, arguably Elton John’s best album, something is going right.
In addition to the apocalyptically awesome title track, this album features ‘Tiny Dancer’ and ‘Levon’ — that trio alone qualifies it for the pantheon. I’ll admit I’m not as familiar with the other six tracks, including today’s SOTD.
Random Weekends continue with a track from Ben Jelen’s 2004 debut album, Give it All Away. This is one of those records that you can find, without fail, in the $1.99 cutout bin of any shopping mall record store. No doubt that’s how it wound up in my shelf.
I don’t think I’ve ever listened to Give it All Away all the way through, or if I have it made too little an impression to stick with me even as a vague memory. Opening track ‘Come On’ was a minor hit but even that song doesn’t feel very familiar.
The first rap album that became essential listening for me was Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP. Before that I enjoyed and appreciated certain rap songs but had never heard a complete rap album that held my interest.
But the Marshall Mathers LP, which exploded into the cultural consciousness amid cries of outrage and arguments over censorship and freedom of expression, was a fully formed masterpiece of anger, pain and dark humor.
