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December 31, 2009

200 Songs of the Past Decade

Every year I make a list of my "top 50 CDs." I spend a lot of time fretting over all the music I've bought and downloaded every January through December, and then send out the list to a few other music nerds who won't find it too terribly pretentious or obsessive. Recently I was getting ready to do another list for 2009; I also started making a list of the top albums and songs of the past decade (starting from 2000 and ending with today, the last day of 2009). Here's my list of the 200 individual songs I figure I liked the most, for whatever reason, during this decade.

Note: to prevent having too many of a few bands who are especially dear to me, I made the rule that I could only include two songs by any particular artist. In addition, it was difficult for me to include songs by bands like, say, Stars of the Lid, since their albums tend to work more as entire instrumental pieces and rarely have standout individually structured "songs." So here it is:

Air, "Radio #1"
Air Formation, "Cold Morning"
Air France, "No Excuses"
Ellen Allien & Apparat, "Do Not Break"
Alpha, "Lipstick From the Asylum"
Tori Amos, "Taxi Ride"
And Also the Trees, "21 York Street"
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, "Relative Ways"
Animal Collective, "For Reverend Green"
Animal Collective, "My Girls"
Apparat, "Contradiction"
Apparat, "Arcadia"
Arcade Fire, "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
Arcade Fire, "In the Backseat"
Auburn Lull, "November's Long Shadows"
Band of Horses, "The Funeral"
Band of Horses, "No One's Gonna Love You"
Bark Psychosis, "Miss Abuse"
Bark Psychosis, "Inqb8tr"
Bat For Lashes, "Glass"
Battles, "Atlas"
The Bear Quartet, "Super Confidence"
Bed, "Plainfield"
Bed, "Polder One"
Belle & Sebastian, "I Fought In a War"
Belle & Sebastian, "If She Wants Me"
Bethany Curve, "Silver"
Bjork, "Undo"
Bjork, "Pagan Poetry"
Bloc Party, "Banquet"
Blonde Redhead, "Messenger"
Blonde Redhead, "Silently"
Blur, "Out of Time"
Boards of Canada, "Music Is Math"
Bon Iver, "Skinny Love"
Bracken, "Safe Safe Safe"
Broadcast, "Illumination"
Broken Social Scene, "7/4 (Shoreline)"
Broken Social Scene, "Lover's Spit"
The Brother Kite, "Never In Years"
Burial, "Archangel"
Burial, "Near Dark"
Kate Bush, "A Coral Room"
Camera Obscura, "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken"
Camera Obscura, "Country Mile"
The Cardigans, "Communication"
The Clientele, "I Can't Seem To Make You Mine"
Clinic, "Harmony"
Clinic, "The Equaliser"
Colder, "To the Music"
The Cure, "Bloodflowers"
Cut Copy, "Lights & Music"
Cyann & Ben, "Siren Song"
Cyann & Ben, "Words"
The Czars, "Drug"
The Czars, "Paint the Moon"
The Daysleepers, "Lightforms"
The Decemberists, "Shiny"
Deerhunter, "Like New"
Diskjokke, "Folk I Farta"
DJ Shadow, "Fixed Income"
Doves, "Catch the Sun"
Doves, "Words"
The Durutti Column, "Mello Part Two"
Editors, "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors"
Efterklang, "Prey and Predator"
Elbow, "Fugitive Motel"
Elbow, "Not a Job"
Engineers, "Let's Just See"
Epic45, "We Were Never Here"
Explosions In the Sky, "First Breath After Coma"
Faultline, "Bitter Kiss"
The Field, "Everyday"
Film School, "On and On"
Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal"
Paula Frazer, "We Met By the Love-Lies-Bleeding"
Fuck Buttons, "Surf Solar"
Gang Gang Dance, "House Jam"
Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy, "Elegy"
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man, "Mysteries"
Golden Boy with Miss Kittin, "Rippin Kittin"
Goldfrapp, "Clowns"
Grizzly Bear, "On a Neck, On a Spit"
Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks"
Grouper, "Disengaged"
Grouper, "Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping"
Guitar, "House Full of Time"
Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd, "Neil's Theme"
PJ Harvey, "Horses In My Dreams"
Hood, "They Removed All Traces That Anything Had Ever Happened Here"
Hood, "Still Rain Fell"
Jori Hulkkonen, "Lo-Fiction"
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, "According To Plan"
Interpol, "Obstacle 1"
Interpol, "Not Even Jail"
Iron & Wine, "Each Coming Night"
Isan, "Gunnera"
Jeniferever, "From Across the Sea"
JJ, "Ecstacy"
Evan Johansen, "Quiet & Still"
Jay-Jay Johanson, "Wonderful Combat"
Junior Boys, "Teach Me How to Fight"
Junior Boys, "In the Morning"
Keane, "This Is the Last Time"
The Killers, "Smile Like You Mean It"
Kleerup, "With Every Heartbeat"
Kleerup, "Longing For Lullabies"
The Knife, "Heartbeats"
The Knife, "Silent Shout"
Kraftwerk, "Aero Dynamik"
Ladytron, "Destroy Everything You Touch"
Ladytron, "White Light Generator"
Lali Puna, "Call 1-800 Fear"
Lamb, "What Sound"
Lansing-Dreiden, "A Line You Can Cross"
LCD Soundsystem, "All My Friends"
LCD Soundsystem, "Someone Great"
Lights Out Asia, "Psiu! Puxa!"
Lindstrom, "Where You Go I Go Too"
Low, "Embrace"
Low, "Shots & Ladders"
M83, "Run Into Flowers"
M83, "Don't Save Us From the Flames"
Magnet, "Everything's Perfect"
Mahogany, "Tesselation, Formerly Plateau One"
Mahogany, "Supervitesse"
Malory, "Take Me Down"
Mandalay, "Not Seventeen"
Mandalay, "Like Her"
Manual, "Summer Haze"
Maps, "To the Sky"
The Mary Onettes, "Pleasure Songs"
Maximo Park, "Apply Some Pressure"
Mew, "Am I Wry? No"
Mew, "Chinaberry Tree"
MGMT, "Time to Pretend"
MGMT, "Electric Feel"
Midlake, "Bandits"
Midlake, "Head Home"
Midwest Product, "Swamp"
Vinny Miller, "Breaking Out of Your Arms"
Milosh, "Couldn't Sleep"
Moderat, "Rusty Nails"
Modeselektor & Thom Yorke, "The White Flash"
Mogwai, "Ratts of the Capital"
Mogwai, "Travel Is Dangerous"
Mojave 3, "Bluebird of Happiness"
Moose, "Can't Get Enough of You"
Mum, "We Have a Map of the Piano"
Mum, "The Land Between Solar Systems"
Roisin Murphy, "Overpowered"
My Morning Jacket, "It Beats 4 U"
Nada Surf, "Inside of Love"
The National, "Mr. November"
The National, "Mistaken For Strangers"
The Notwist, "Consequence"
120 Days, "Sleepwalking"
Orbital, "Funny Break (One Is Enough)"
The Organ, "Brother"
Panda Bear, "Take Pills"
Panda Bear, "Bros"
Phoenix, "Too Young"
Phoenix, "1901"
Pitty Sing, "Bleeding Hearts"
Placebo, "Slave To the Wage"
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, "Polly Come Home"
Portishead, "The Rip"
Portishead, "Machine Gun"
The Presets, "This Boy's In Love"
The Radio Dept., "The Worst Taste In Music"
The Radio Dept., "Freddie and the Trojan Horse"
Radiohead, "Idioteque"
Radiohead, "All I Need"
Rogue Wave, "Lake Michigan"
The Rosebuds, "Boxcar"
The Rosebuds, "In the Backyard"
Royksopp, "What Else Is There?"
Saloon, "Girls Are the New Boys"
School of Seven Bells, "Half Asleep"
Ulrich Schnauss, "Gone Forever"
Ulrich Schnauss, "Blumenthal"
Shearwater, "Leviathan, Bound"
Shearwater, "Home Life"
Sigur Ros, "(untitled 8)"
Sigur Ros, "Saeglopur"
Solvent, "My Radio"
Stereolab, "The Man With 100 Cells"
Styrofoam, "Couches In Alleys"
Sway, "Fall"
Telefon Tel Aviv, "The Birds"
Tram, "Now We Can Get On With Our Own Lives"
Trentemoller, "Take Me Into Your Skin"
Trespassers William, "What of Me"
TV on the Radio, "Halfway Home"
The Twilight Sad, "That Summer At Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy"
Whirlaway, "Transport"
Wilderness, "Emergency"
Yeasayer, "2080"
Thom Yorke, "Harrowdown Hill"
The Zephyrs, "The Buildings Aren't Going Anywhere"
The Zephyrs, "Setting Sun"