The 10 songs I played most on iTunes/iPod in 2007

I make no claim that these are the best 10 songs of the year. They are merely the ones I played most frequently on my iPod and on iTunes since the start of last year.

Since the bottom four songs have the same play count, the most recently played song gets the highest rating and the least recently played song is ranked lowest. Arbitrary rules rule!

Remember: I'm sharing my music, thus baring my soul, to the Internets. Be kind with your replies.


10. "Hands Held High" by Linkin Park (35 plays) -- With Chester Bennington taking a seat for most, if not all, of this track, Mike Shinoda's empassioned anti-war anthem unfolds over military drums and a church organ. "Amen," indeed.


9. "Stronger" by Kanye West (35 plays) -- I'm kind of surprised that this and not "Can't Tell Me Nothing" is the Kanye track that cracked my Top 10, but it's the more accessible of the two. Plus, I'll never look at a Klondike bar the same way again.


8. "What Goes Around...Comes Around" by Justin Timberlake (35 plays) -- At first I perceived this song as a mere sequel to "Cry Me A River." But it might just be the "Godfather: Part II" to "River." Casting a scorching Scarlett Jo in the video doesn't hurt the case, either.


7. "Lithium" by Evanescence (35 plays) -- "The Open Door" is somewhat of a disappointing sophomore album, but emotionally charged tracks like "Lithium" and the surprisingly soulful "Good Enough" are enough reason to pick it up. Or download it. Or whatever.


6. "Makes Me Wonder" by Maroon 5 (36 plays) -- I was as tired of "She Will Be Loved" as everyone else in America, but it's hard to resist this upbeat break-up song, well-placed expletives included.


5. "Say It Right" by Nelly Furtado (38 plays) -- No bridge, a bare-bones structure and a simple, repetitive melody. Few producers outside of Timbaland could have the ingenuity to pull this one off so brilliantly.


4. "You Don't Know How It Feels" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (39 plays) -- Remember, this list isn't confined to songs released recently. This lethargic, harmonica-infused track came out in 1994, but resonated with me in '07. I'm generally a happy person, but there's something about the way Petty preaches "You don't know how it feels/To be meeeee" that punches me in the gut.


3. "Give It To Me" by Timbaland f. Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake (45 plays) -- In what's basically a glossy, glorified dis record, Nelly, Tim and JT talk about their supremacy on the charts. A bold move considering the potential for it to bomb, but a rousing success because they walked the talk.


2. "Proximity" by Alex Nackman (47 plays) -- The elder son of one of my coworkers, Nackman laments about long-distance relationships in this track from his "Sunrise Falls" album. Featured in the background of both "The Hills" and "The Real World," its narrative style is enhanced by lush harmonies and a simple yet profound piano riff. And then there's the bridge, which still gives me chills.


1. "LoveStoned/I Think She Knows Interlude" by Justin Timberlake (48 plays) -- Long before this was released as a single, this was my favorite track off Timberlake's "FutureSex LoveSounds" album. I'd often catch myself singing the bass line and wondering what kind of drink comes in a yellow bottle. Then Timbaland had to go and make a great song better by changing its shape entirely with the "I Think She Knows Interlude." Wow.

Apparently, Timbaland and Justin Timberlake have more of an influence on my life than I realized. Is this a good thing? Discuss.

The Name Game

Here are this week's thoughts on the monikers of bands, albums and song titles, independent of the quality of their music.

*****

Fort Minor, The Rising Tied - This album name's a pun, for sure, but one that isn't easily interpreted. I'm still trying to figure out if the idea of "Rising Tied" is either ingeniously complicated or merely selected out of a continued desire to misspell. After all, Mike Shinoda is in a group called Linkin Park. But I'll give Shinoda the benefit of the doubt because he rules.

The Rising Tied's name grade: B+

*****

Butch Walker, Bethamphetamine (Pretty Pretty) - This song title would be an A+, except for the fact that someone dumbed it down with the parentheses. We smart folk appreciate the first word of the title, but I wasn't exactly shocked when I heard Jessica Simpson butcher it during a Top 40 countdown on Sirius. Just stick with the "Pretty Pretty" part, Jessica. That's what you do best.

Bethamphetamine (Pretty Pretty)'s name grade: A
Jessica Simpson's name grade: D

*****

A Plus D, Decepta-Freak-On - At first, I thought, "Wow, they're trying way too hard to come up with a clever song title, albeit one that borrows a theme from my favorite childhood cartoon." Then I realized that the song was a mash-up of Le Tigre's Decepticon and Missy Elliott's Get UR Freak On. Add the task of grading an artist whose name is A Plus D on an A to F scale, and we've got a complicated scenario.

Decepticon's name grade: A
Get UR Freak On's name grade: A-
Decepta-Freak-On's name grade: B-
A Plus D's name grade: B- (the middle grade between A+ and D)

*****

FlamBey, The Flamerous Life - Hooray for FlamBey/For making my day/With the best and worst name/In hip-hop histor-ay/Hip-hop FlamBey!

FlamBey's name grade: A+ and F
The Flamerous Life's name grade: A+ and F

Strangers in the night wanna be my lover

By now, many of you Top 40 music enthusiasts have probably heard the bizarre collaboration between rapper DMC (of RUN DMC fame) and songstress Sarah McLachlan (of Lilith Fair fame) for a cover of Harry Chapin's AM Gold classic "Cat's In The Cradle" (of Ugly Kid Joe infamy). The song's fine, I guess. The only real disappointment is that they didn't call themselves DMc-Lachlan for the single.

But how'd they get together? Secret Santa drawing?

Or did they invent the coolest new way to brainstorm collaborations just a few months before I did?

1. Go to your iTunes library (or comparable music program), click the shuffle button, then press play.

2. List the first two artists, who will become the collaborators, then the third artist and that artist's third song, which will become the covered song. No cheating allowed, but you can skip an artist if you've used that artist in an earlier example. If the song you land already involves a collaboration, count them as one artist and find another to pair them with.

Here's an example, using the aforementioned song as inspiration:
DMC & Sarah McLachlan cover Harry Chapin's "Cat's In The Cradle"

3. When you're done, pick the song you'd most and least want to hear as well as the one you think would be the funniest.

Here we go!

1. Cherry Poppin' Daddies & Jars Of Clay cover R.E.M.'s "South Central Rain"
2. Lenny Kravitz & Abba cover Sting and Eric Clapton's "It's Probably Me"
3. The Muppets & No Doubt cover The Crystal Method's "Cherry Twist"
4. Randy Newman & Frank Sinatra cover La Bouche's "Be My Lover"
5. Stone Temple Pilots & Propellerheads cover Radiohead's "High And Dry"
6. Boston College Acoustics & Brian Setzer Orchestra cover Richard Wagner's "Flight Of The Valkeries"
7. The Beatles & Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach cover Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall"
8. Linkin Park and Jay-Z & Wesley Willis cover Foo Fighters' "My Hero"
9. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers & Smash Mouth cover Train's "Ramble On" (already a cover of the Led Zeppelin song)
10. Boston & Dave Matthews Band cover Fiona Apple's "Shadowboxer"

Song I'd most want to hear: I think the STP/Propellerheads version of "High And Dry" would be genuinely awesome.

Song I'd least want to hear: Lenny Kravitz and Abba singing "It's Probably Me." Because they'd be right. (Honorable mention goes to Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Jars Of Clay, which might be polar opposites on the sexual repression spectrum.)

Funniest song: Although the idea of Linkin Park, Jay-Z and Wesley Willis singing the Foo song would be phenomenal ("There goes my hero, you [bleepin'] jerk!"); and because the idea of The Muppets and No Doubt working together seems just a little too likely to happen; I'll have to choose the comedic gold of That Guy from "Toy Story" and Ol' Blue Eyes singing "Be My Lover." Can't you just picture Sinatra lilting the "Ya-dah-dah-dee-da-DAH-dah-dah" part?

OK, your turn. Curious to see what you got.

All the way to the top of my charts

I've downloaded exactly 3,500 songs to my iPod since August 2004. One feature I am completely obsessed with is the iTunes Play Count, which I believe can be the ultimate indicator of what my favorite music is. Numbers don't lie, do they?

So with 15 months of music activity recorded, what are my Top 5 most played songs as of Nov. 23?

-=-=-=-=-
MOST-PLAYED SONGS SINCE AUG. 2004

"Wonderwall" by Ryan Adams - 44 times
"Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane - 37 times
"Broken" by Seether featuring Amy Lee - 36 times
"Ride" by The Vines - 36 times
"The Widow" by The Mars Volta - 32 times
-=-=-=-=-

Hmm. Not exactly the artists I anticipated at the top of my list. In fact, I bought all these songs as singles on iTunes. In addition, they are the only songs I have by these artists, unless you count Amy Lee as a part of Evanescence.

So, I got to thinking. What's the best indicator of overall achievement? I went to my "10-Time All-Stars" Smart Playlist -- which includes only songs I've played at least 10 times -- and I counted the number of unique songs by a single artist. The results appear to be much more reflective of my overall favorites in the last 15 months:

-=-=-=-=-
NUMBER OF SONGS PLAYED 10+ TIMES SINCE AUG. 2004

Stone Temple Pilots - 15
Linkin Park* - 14
U2 - 12
Sting - 10
Foo Fighters, INXS - 7
The Beatles, The Killers - 6
Alicia Keys, Audioslave, Green Day, Led Zeppelin, The Police - 5

*Not including 4 tracks from Linkin Park/Jay-Z's "Collision Course" album.
-=-=-=-=-

Notable omissions of artists I consider myself a fan of: Garbage, The Bravery, Billy Joel, Radiohead, Eminem, Evanescence, Jay-Z, Coldplay, R.E.M., AC/DC. I'm guessing these I've listened to these artists more in years prior to owning an iPod.

Backstage at Live 8

Here's a very cool behind-the-scenes look at this weekend's Live 8 show, with insight about a possible Linkin Park-Kanye West collaboration, everyone worshipping Paul McCartney and the largest backstage posse belonging to, um, Bill Gates.

Here's one nugget that I find particularly amusing: One fan in the VIP section was obviously at Live 8 more for the politics than the music. Soon after one of rock's most successful groups had performed, he said, "Bon Jovi? Who cares about him? I want to see Reverend Al [Sharpton]."

I'm not sure whose side I'm on in that one.

I think MTV and VH1 did a nice job with their coverage, all things considered. They spent too much time explaining what it was about (versus showing the music) and strangely showed the same footage simultaneously on both networks, but some of my favorite highlights -- among the songs I actually witnessed -- were U2's "Beautiful Day," Linkin Park/Jay-Z's "Numb/Encore" and Green Day's cover of Queen's "We Are The Champions." Another super awesome highlight was Sting's "Driven To Tears" -- SO cool. You gotta love the old-school, obscure Police songs. Or at least I do.

Things I wish I had seen: The U2-McCartney "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," Pink Floyd's set and the London finale. And the awkward Madonna-Elton John encounter, if there was one, after this highly publicized spat.