The JayTunes Jam

Entertainment Weekly provided a list of the top downloaded singles of 2009.  Here they are:

1. Boom Boom Pow by The Black Eyed Peas
2. Poker Face by Lady Gaga
3. Just Dance by Lady Gaga
4. Right Round by Flo Rida
5. I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas
6. Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) by Beyonce
7. Gives You Hell by The All-American Rejects
8. Love Story by Taylor Swift
9. Heartless by Kanye West
10. I’m Yours by Jason Mraz

I downloaded exactly one of these songs and (as you may have guessed) it’s #10.  How depressing.  I do like Beyonce, however, and enjoyed the rendition of #6 on Glee.  Having recently chaperoned a high school dance I can appreciate the appeal of Lady Gaga and BEP (especially #5), but I don’t really get how a crappy remake of a crappy Dead or Alive song makes #4.  Number 7 is actually a decent tune, but the title isn’t all that appealing.  Taylor Swift is overrated and Kanye West just isn’t my scene (other than a little “Gold Digger” once in a while).  I hope I’m not totally shut out of the Top 10 in 2010!

For those of you following the Jam via feed, I just added Dave Matthews as my artist of the month for March 2010.  I really liked his first two albums and acoustic work with Tim Reynolds.  Here are my favorite songs of his:

• Ants Marching
• Crash Into Me
• Everyday
• Recently
• Satellite
• So Much to Say
• Stay (Wasting Time)
• What Would You Say
• Where Are You Going
• You and Me

Did I get any wrong?  Leave a comment to let me know.  Also, please check out my other song selections for March 2010 from Never Shout Never, Richard Julian, Iron & Wine, Todd Rundgren, and Alicia Keys.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!  I know it’s kind of a contrived holiday, but at least we should get some good music out of it.  Here are my Top 10 You and I/You and Me Songs:

• Why Don’t You and I by Santana with Chad Kroeger
• You and I by Michael Buble
• You and I by Ingrid Michaelson
• You and I by Eddie Rabbit and Crystal Gayle
• You and I by Wilco
• You and I Both by Jason Mraz
• You and Me by Lifehouse
• You and Me by Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds (Live and Acoustic)
• You and Me by Neil Young
• You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

They aren’t all classics, but there are definitely some good tunes here.  The last one is from the movie “Swingers”, which is such a money movie it doesn’t even know it.  The Eddie Rabbit song is pretty cheesy, but I remember having the sheet music for piano, so I had to include it. 

Did I miss any good ones? 

Click here for links to listen or download on iTunes.

For those of you following the Jam via feed, I just added Natalie Merchant (with and without 10,000 Maniacs) as my artist of the month for February 2010.  Here are my favorite songs of hers:

• Candy Everybody Wants
• Hey Jack Kerouac
• Jealousy
• Kind and Generous
• Like the Weather
• These Are Days
• Trouble Me
• Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key (with Billy Bragg & Wilco)
• What’s the Matter Here
• Wonder

Did I get any wrong?  Leave a comment to let me know.  Also, please check out my song selections for February 2010 from Train, Bayside, Monsters of Folk, The Bills, and Barenaked Ladies.

 You have to love the classic rock songs that go on and on.  Here’s my list of the Top 10 Epic Rock Songs:

• American Pie (8:33)
• Blinded by the Light (7:07)
• Bohemian Rhapsody (5:55)
• Champagne Supernova (7:28)
• Hotel California (6:30)
• Living for the City (7:25)
• The Pretender (6:39)
• Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (7:35)
• Stairway to Heaven (8:02)
• Tiny Dancer (6:18)

I originally was going to limit this list to songs over six minutes long, but that would have meant excluding “Bohemian Rhapsody” and I just couldn’t do it.  Other candidates that narrowly missed the cut included “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meat Loaf, “Fanfare for the Common Man” or “Trilogy” by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or “Who Are You” by The Who, ”Aja” or “Deacon Blues” by Steely Dan, and “Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits.  What do you think?  Did I miss any?  Rock on and leave a comment to let me know.

I was just counting my music lists and realized that my last list was my 100th!  I now have 45 Top 10 Lists from my favorite artists, 43 Top 10 Lists of various subjects/words, and 12 Top 20 Lists of  my favorite songs by year or groups of years.  It’s been a fun ride and one that I hope continues.  Which one do you like best?  Leave a comment to let me know and keep checking back for more lists!

Here’s another Top 10 list based on a word: “moment.”  

• At This Moment by Billy Vera and the Beaters
• Hanging By a Moment by Lifehouse
• Hank Senior Moment by John Gorka
• Heat of the Moment by Asia
• Leave a Tender Moment Alone by Billy Joel
• Living in the Moment by Mason Jennings
• A Moment Like This by Kelly Clarkson
• Moment of Forgiveness by Indigo Girls
• Stuck in a Moment by U2
• This Magic Moment by Jay and the Americans

The Indigo Girls and Mason Jennings songs are in regular rotation on my iPod, Asia and Billy Vera were in my cassette player in the 80s, and (of course) special recognition has to go out to any song performed by a Jay! 

To listen or download songs, check out the complete list here.

What do you think?  Did I miss your favorite?  Leave a comment to let me know.

For those of you following the Jam on RSS, I just added Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits as my artists of the month for January 2010.  Here, in my opinion, are their best 10 songs:

• Money for Nothing
• My Parties
• On Every Street
• Romeo and Juliet
• Sailing to Philadelphia
• So Far Away
• Sultans of Swing
• There’ll Be Some Changes Made (with Chet Atkins)
• Ticket to Heaven
• Walk of Life

What do you think?  Did I miss your favorite?  Leave a comment to let me know.

This was a tough task.  Over the past 10 years, I have selected 160 of my favorite songs.  How was I supposed to whittle them down to my Top 10?  Sure, there were a couple artists in there that I rarely listen to anymore (Macy Gray, The New Pornographers, Yolanda Adams), but I still enjoy almost all of them.  I decided to limit myself to one song from each artist and tried to guess what I still might be listening to 10 years from now.  Here’s what I came up with:

• Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts
• Breakable by Ingrid Michaelson
• Daughters by John Mayer
• Fireflies by Owl City
• Gracie by Ben Folds
• I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow by Soggy Bottom Boys
• I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From by Kings of Convenience
• Irreplaceable by Beyonce
• The Remedy by Jason Mraz
• Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day

Narrowly missing the cut (in no particular order) were Short Skirt, Long Jacket by Cake, Stacy’s Mom by Fountains of Wayne, Juliet by LMNT, 100 Years by Five for Fighting, This Love by Maroon 5, Let Em Run by The Bills, Save the Last Dance for Me by Michael Buble, Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton, Turpentine by Brandi Carlisle, and The Man Who Can’t Be Moved by The Script.

What do you think?  What were your favorites?   Leave a comment and let me know.

To see the lists from which I selected these songs, see the Yearly Favorites list in the JayTunes Archives.

Still building to the end of the current decade…

The 1990s saw a large portion of my discretionary income go into CDs and stereo equipment.  My musical tastes also expanded from pop into folk, a cappella, alternative, and funk.  Here are my top 10 songs of the 1990s:

• Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants
• Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) by Us3
• Crash Into Me by Dave Matthews Band
• Eye of the Hurricane by David Wilcox
• F.N.T by Semisonic
• Love on a Farmboy’s Wages by XTC
• More Than Words by Extreme
• Soul with a Capital S by Tower of Power
• Two Princes by Spin Doctors
• You Don’t Treat Me No Good by Sonia Dada

Narrowly missing the cut were “Brian Wilson” by Barenaked Ladies, “But Anyway” by Blues Traveler, “I Only Wanna Be With You” by Hootie and the Blowfish, “Stand” by R.E.M., “Veronica” by Elvis Costello, “Walking on Broken Glass” by Annie Lennox, and “The Wood Song” by Indigo Girls.  What’s on your list?  Do we have any samesies?  Leave a comment and let me know!

To see the songs from which I chose, check out these “Best of” lists: 1989 – 1992, 1993 – 1996, and 1997 – 1999.