Top Ten Songs of 2011 – #8
Childish Gambino’s full-length debut, Camp, is the best rap album I’ve heard in years.
Donald Glover is a gifted rapper and an even more gifted lyricist, spitting hilarious, often thought-provoking, rhymes over meaty beats that belie the lack of star power behind the production.
Top Ten Songs of 2011 – #9
Miranda Lambert’s Four the Record is my favorite album of 2011, so it might seem weird that its only song on my top ten countdown is sitting at #9.
But I think the album’s overall strength and consistency keeps it from having the sort of standout track that places higher on a list like this. I could have easily chosen the compelling ‘Mama’s Broken Heart,’ the aching ‘Look at Miss Ohio,’ the old-school ‘Same Old You’ or any of a dozen other songs to represent this great record.
Top Ten Songs of 2011 – #10
If I had to pick one word to describe singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, it would be ‘endearing.’
She has an endearing personality, as she demonstrated in her adorable stint as a judge on The Sing-Off.
She makes endearing videos, such as the one for today’s SOTD, in which she hides herself until the last few frames and instead depicts gleeful lip-synching by Ben Folds, Adam Levine, Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles and others.
In yesterday’s post, I described the second half of Paul Simon’s You’re the One as “sleepy” and it’s true that it is more languid and less accessible than the album’s first half.
But sometimes it’s those slow-growers that wind up having the most impact in the long run. Such is the case with a lovely song titled ‘Señorita With a Necklace of Tears.’
Three years after the Capeman debacle, Paul Simon released his first proper studio album in ten years, 2000’s You’re the One. This album is easily overlooked when considering the span of Simon’s career but every time I revisit it, I’m reminded how strong it is.
Frequent commenter Dana hit the nail on the head in describing this album the last time I featured it. He said it is reminiscent of Hearts and Bones but without matching that album’s highest points, and that the first half of the record is extremely good with the second half a bit on the sleepy side.
