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Song of the Day #904: ‘Addicted to You’ – Shakira

Best Songs of 2010 – Honorable Mentions

In 2010, Shakira continued her impressive win streak, releasing Sale el Sol just a year after the irresistible She Wolf.

After the latter record’s club-heavy focus, Sale el Sol was a return to the Latin dance and pop sounds that highlighted the early years of her career.

In a weird way, the record reminds me of Beck’s Guero, in that it’s a mature and measured synthesis of styles dabbled in over the previous decade. Probably the first time that comparison has been made.

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Song of the Day #903: ‘Leave’ – V.V. Brown

Best Songs of 2010 – Honorable Mentions

One of the year’s happiest surprises was V.V. Brown’s vibrant, confident debut album Travelling Like the Light, a bright fusion of retro sounds and modern hip-hop.

The breakout song from that disc was ‘Shark in the Water,’ which I featured on the blog during my summer song series and which would probably represent the album here if I didn’t have a strict no-repeats rule.

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Song of the Day #902: ‘Tomorrow is a Long Time’ – Bob Dylan

Best Songs of 2010 – Honorable Mentions

I featured a lot of Bob Dylan on the blog this year, with my Dylan Weekends spanning from late January through October. Then Dylan returned the favor with a late year release, the latest in his Bootleg series.

The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (which is in my backlog of things to review) is a collection of early recordings Dylan made for the purposes of selling his songs for covers and selling his talents to major labels. The 2-disc set contains rough versions of such early classics as ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ‘Masters of War,’ ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,’ ‘The Times They Are A’Changin” and more.

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Song of the Day #901: ‘Martha’ – Rufus Wainwright

Best Songs of 2010 – Honorable Mentions

Rufus Wainwright released his most straight-forward and personal album this year. Titled All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu, it featured just vocals and piano on a series of ballads inspired by the illness of his mother (who died shortly before the album’s release).

It’s a touching and contemplative work, though it doesn’t represent what I love best about Wainwright. I’m drawn to his brash theatricality and the way he blends horns, strings, choirs, banjos, you name it, into his complex compositions. On this album he leaves his bag of tricks behind, which is effective in its own way but not as much fun.

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127 Hours

It’s hard to think of a movie in recent years with a bigger marketing problem than Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours. If you know anything at all about this film, you know it depicts the true story of an adventurer named Aron Ralston who finds himself pinned by a rock in a Utah canyon and has to cut off his own arm to escape.

So here’s a film that spends most of its running time with a single character at the bottom of a dimly lit canyon and builds to a horrific scene of self-amputation.

Good times!

But somehow 127 Hours is neither boring nor grueling — on the contrary, it’s one of the most exhilarating and life-affirming films I’ve seen in years.

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