My top 25 songs of 2011

I decided to make a top 25 songs of 2011 list after reading what felt like 100 other people's lists and discovering that absolutely no one had chosen anything by the Arctic Monkeys, who came out with the best album of the year as far as I'm concerned. So here's my list. 

25. Cass McCombs -- County Line

24. Metronomy -- The Bay

23. SBTRKT -- Wildfire

22. Blonds -- K.O.

21. Eleanor Friedberger -- My Mistakes

20. Jay-Z and Kanye West (ft. Frank Ocean) -- No Church in the Wild

19. Rostam -- Wood

18. Lana del Rey -- Video Games

17. Young Galaxy -- Cover Your Tracks

16. Sóley -- I'll Drown

15. Bedouin Soundclash (ft. Couer de Pirate) -- Brutal Hearts

14. Handsome Furs -- Bury Me Standing

13. The Weeknd -- High for This

12. Ms. Mr. -- Bones

11. Panda Su -- I Begin

10. Bon Iver -- Calgary

9. M83 -- Midnight City

8. Lupe Fiasco -- Lightwork

7. Florence + the Machine -- Shake it Out

6. Woodkid -- Iron

5. Air Review -- America's Son

4. Youth Lagoon -- Montana

3. Lupe Fiasco -- American Terrorist III

2. Alex Turner --Piledriver Waltz

1. Arctic Monkeys -- Suck it and See

What are your favorite songs of 2011? What am I missing?

Vindicated.

Over Memorial Day, N and I took a road trip, but that's not the point of this story.

We listened to and talked about a lot of music. One song that came up, as we were driving up Independence Pass between Leadville and Aspen, Colorado, was "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem. This is one of my favourite songs ever. Why?
1. I identify with the feelings in it a lot.
2. It employs a musical technique that I think of as "building", where the song starts off slow and fills the listener with anticipation for the payoff. And I'm a huge sucker for songs that do this.

Have a listen:

As we were driving up the pass, N and I got into an argument about whether or not that song actually employs the technique of "building" as he seems to think that the song carries on in exactly the same way throughout, presumably because he is actually deaf and/or has no appreciation for music. On the off-chance that you suffer from the same problem(s) and agree with him, I direct you to his blog, which has better pictures than mine. I'm sure you'll find a safe place there.

HOWEVER. Cue today, when he and I were reading a number of articles about our mutual obsession, the Arctic Monkeys, and their new album "Suck it and See", and he came upon this one, where lead singer Alex Turner explains each song on the new album. This is what Alex has to say about the last track on that album:

It’s a bit like '505’ – that tune on the second album, where it’s just two chords all the way through and we’d wanted to do a tune like that again for a while. There’s loads of good examples of that like that LCD Soundsystem 'All My Friends’ tune.

It’s just the two chords that build and build.