This may have some slightly unorthodox formatting in terms of tracks listed per post but that's just the way I'm playing it baby, and writing the introductions in the style of a smug oaf.
24. Frank Ocean - Bad Religion (From Channel Orange)
Blah blah blah bisexual man in a very homophobic and heteronormative subculture, blah blah blah alternative R&B bleat moan bleat overstate him at this early point in his career, compare him to Prince or Stevie Wonder at a shockingly early point in his career because he's black. That's basically the formula for people writing about Frank Ocean. Yes, it's great that a non-stereotypical man can come out of the closet, yes it's great he doesn't define himself by his sexuality even if the people bending over backwards to show how liberal they are are defining him by it not his incredible talent. Yes it's great that the racist idea that black people are more homophobic than white people is being exposed as the cowardly lie it is, but let's not damn him by comparing him to talents he's not had time to reach yet or focus on what gets him off.
Fact is Channel Orange is a great album and as with The Weeknd it's hard for me to pick just one track off it, so I won't, but this one is my joint favourite off the album with Pyramids, the one I'll write up later. It's just as ambitious in it's own way as that 10 minute epic but what it reminds me of more than any of the obvious reference points is late 60's Scott Walker, if Scott was informed by hip hop and R&B not Brel and Brecht. This is a story song that could possibly be autobiographical that builds, with swooning strings, and fits some ideas that're pretty subversive for the genre he's working in into an irresistible pop song. Just as singing about brothels (Next), Big Louise and a song from the point of view of a rich man's toyboy (Thanks For Chicago Mr James) was more than a lot of Scott's audience would be used to at the time, in a genre where men sing about women even if they are gay (Luther Vandross) and if God enters the equation it's standard Godfearing the Lord is my Shepherd stuff this is pretty subversive stuff. Check the pronouns - "I can never make him love me" is something not heard often sung by a male R&B singer.
Now I've fallen into the same trap I complained others do but I never said I was a great writer. What's important is the gender or sexuality of the singer and the way they're singing it is irrelevant to this song. This song could be performed by Antony Hegarty, or Tracey Thorn, or Nina Simone (same as Antony I guess), any great singer could perform this in any style and it's be a great song. The melody line when he sings "Unrequited love, for me it's nothing but a one man cult" is indescribable, soaring and why this is in the list, and I'm a sucker for handclaps (no hetero). I'm starting to think you and me are a lot alike.
I just can't wait to hear Frank's Symphony or Damn. Damn.
23. Edwyn Collins - 20 Years Too Late (from Dr Syntax)
When Edwyn Collins released the Dr Syntax album it went largely ignored, but if it came out now it'd be held up as one of the albums of the year, any year it was released in. Not only has he had the accident which raises anyone's stature among the press vultures (and he still doesn't get the credit he deserves), but it's an album where he does the now very trendy thing of mixing post-punk and indie influence up with various kinds of soul music with some beats that wouldn't be out of place on, well, Channel Orange. Collins spits on those fashionista ideas of what music it is and isn't acceptable to draw influence from at that time.
I heard it this year and thought "This is a masterpiece". There's not a bad track on it but this one stands out for the sheer insanity, moving from a guitar intro that wouldn't be out of place on a Fleetwood Mac album to Edwyn rapping over a hip hop beat, funk bass and Chic-meets-folk guitar riffing then growling out the chorus. You can almost understand why the proscriptive landscape of the music press didn't pick up on this - surely he should've been making an unplugged album or having a midlife crisis and calling in some hotshot producer to do this, not making this MODERN sounding album on his own.
Quoth Mark E Smith (who's also appeared on an Edwyn Collins track), He is not appreciated.
22. Azaelia Banks ft. Lazy Jay - 212
See, pop music doesn't HAVE to be dull and conservative. This is an irresistible pop rap gem that gets me doing a strange sat down dance as I replay it as I write this entry and charted in spite or because of the way it gets the line "I guess that cunt getting eaten" stuck in your head. Over and over again. As if to counter decades of hip hop homophobia, a lot of this year's great hip hop has been by LGBT artists in a way that hasn't really happened before, and not in the fake "getting off with girls to get guys interested" Nicki Minaj style between this, Zebra Katz, Angel Haze, Nykki Blanco and Le1f among others. That makes sense - hip hop was supposed to be the voice of the downtrodden and now it's become part of the status quo, there's not much danger in sticking to the sexist gay hating (but secretly hiring rentboys) party line of the rich elites is there?
Now this isn't a voice for the voiceless moment either but as with the Frank Ocean entry I've fell into discussing the artist and society and not the track which is just something that's good for getting people dancing in a club or at a party or writing a blog entry very few people will read about your favourite tracks of the year. There's a lot of cliches in this, the high-pass filter "soar" preceding the chorus, the stop you in your tracks key change, the "introducing dubstep influences" trope so common to pop hip hop at the moment, but the strength of this track is that it's only after it's finished I start dissecting it. When it's on I just think "Yeah, I guess it probably is getting eaten". It makes me want to hear it again, too.
At the time of finishing this list she's got in trouble for writing stupid homophobic shit on Twitter, then even more problematically saying that faggot doesn't mean gay but "a man who acts feminine" to which I have to say - what's wrong with being feminine, love, (some) women are great!
21. Zebra Katz ft Njena Reddd Foxx - Ima Read
Now, I go from complaining about misogyny elsewhere to praising a song where every other word is bitch. Yeah, and I don't apologise because it's catchy as a cold. There are a few other reasons too - one of them is because there are two people rapping on this one, and one of them is a woman. It's also left pretty gender neutral, as by this point bitch is a pretty gender neutral insult and especially in the context of hip hop. If it was "dyke" then I don't care how catchy it is or even if it was made by lesbians, it'd probably make me uneasy. Maybe it'd still get in the list because it made me uneasy.
Enough bitching about the word bitch. This track shows you very clearly how you can do more with less - it's just two voices and a very basic drum machine beat but it's catchy as hell. If you're a DJ this is great for you, even I could fill a floor with this and mix it into something else. Your average listener doesn't care about that stuff and they've got the right idea, but this further demonstrates my point that it's not about genres it's about mood. Because there's another record in my list a million miles away from this but using the same ingredients - Cut Hands Has The Solution by Whitehouse. Similar use of violent imagery, it just so happens that the mood of this is a kind of mordant joy whereas the Whitehouse track just makes you want to tunnel to escape.
The Moment in this track that made me fall in love with it - Njena Foxx's delivery, as if having an epiphany of "I don't like that bitch". I'm not going to go into the vogue/ballroom routes of the song because I don't know enough about them. Suffice to say this is really good. The video is also pretty excellent.
Bitch.
20. Xiu Xiu - Honey Suckle (from Always)
I love Xiu Xiu and the more Xiu Xiu I hear the more I fall in love with them. I love Jamie Stewart's voice, the frightened, panicky, verge of tears way he often sings annoyed me first time I heard them but gradually I got used to it, and went from tolerating it to finding that his voice and his way of writing has an effect on me that no one else has. I could say he sounds like a mixture of Antony Hegarty and Morrissey if he wasn't a daft racist, or he sounds like Robert Smith looking down the barrel of a gun but what he sounds like is a mixture of Jamie Stewart and Jamie Stewart. There's a strength in his voice that's not apparently obvious but it's there. Here it interlinks with the equally beautiful voice of Angela Seo, who wrote the track. Apparently this is her first foray into songwriting, which is pretty phenomenal.
Now onto the song itself, which is something you could imagine The Xx doing but somehow the way Xiu Xiu do it is a lot better, and more affecting. While The Xx are great and all there's a studied detachment and even when they sing of heartbreak you know they'll get over it. They're too cool, their model looks and the fact they're The Xx mean they'll ensnare someone else soon. The two voices on this Xiu Xiu track are both beautiful voices but neither of them are cool or trying too hard, they're very expressive and fragile and for me that makes them far cooler. It's a wonderful life, Jamie Stewart. It was a toss-up between this track and I Luv Abortion, but I went with the poppier one because that's the mood I was in at the time.
19. Dubstar - Stars
How this band haven't been rediscovered in a time where it's permissible for indie bands to listen to music outside of the indie ghetto again I don't know, as lots of people are making things that sound like this (but aren't as good). Again it's fairly minimal, not many bells and whistles just some pretty synths, a looped drumbeat, a bit of New Ordery guitar here and there and a catchy bassline setting the stage for a good vocal performance. This most definitely still sounds fresh (in both the old hip hop speak sense and as in it sounds new), and will endure a thousand listens.
18. Lindsey Buckingham - That's The Way Love Goes
I'm not sure I want to meet a person who is unmoved by this and doesn't have a really good reason for disliking it. You know when people babble on in an old-fogeyish way about "perfect pop"? Well this is the real deal. The verses are just multi-tracked Lindsey vocals and some of his guitar waterfalls - there's simply no other way for me of describing those arpeggios, they're like rivers flowing by or rain falling, there's something liquid about them. Then the chorus is the kind of stadium rock piledriver that'd turn me off if done by anyone who isn't a former member of Fleetwood Mac or Manic Street Preachers. His voice, with the same yearning embedded in it as all the best singers, brings another dimension to lyrics which otherwise are the stuff of every other lovesong - "I'd like to take your pain away/I'd like to take your shame away". Basically, the guy's really good and I predict big things for the lad in future.
17. Scott Walker - The Day the "Conducator" Died (from Bish Bosch)
Obviously I love Scott Walker. It's in my blood. But I think that as well as missing the dark humour in his work, too many people miss that the trilogy of Tilt - The Drift - Bish Bosch isn't that much different from his work prior to that. It's just that he's singing in a slightly higher register. His songwriting is still flawless - this song has a hook, in the "Nobody waited for fire" section. Shorter and more uptempo it could be a Roy Orbison song - this register of his voice sounds like Orbison, and it's uncanny - one of the best singers to grace the planet so effortlessly sounding like another.
It's hard to pick a highlight from a track like Bish Bosch but just as Farmer In The City is my favourite song from Tilt as it's a perverted mirror image of his opulent 60's material, this is my favourite for the same reason. I could've picked Epizootics, the first I heard of which parts are properly catchy and which suggests he could make a great dance record or I could've picked the first track, the sonic extremity of which sounds like a poppier Whitehouse, but this is a beautiful thing about a less than beautiful subject. Just as Farmer In The City was nominally about the death of Pasolini, this is another song about a violent death but in this case as in Clara on The Drift or the Eichmann trial referencing The Cockfighter on Tilt, The Day the "Conducator" Died centres around the death of a dictator. More specifically the key motif is the execution by firing squad of Nicolae Ceaușescu. It ends with a snatch of Jingle Bells, features a guitar sound you wouldn't be surprised to hear on a Justin Broadrick record, and it's chilling and beautiful.
Ultimately, though, it's still pop music, as all good music is. By no means all pop music is good music, but all good music is pop music. It sticks in your head, and inspires you to create or cry or laugh or break things. That's what it does. Don't let anyone tell you this is "difficult" music, because it's really not. Difficult to beat, though.
16. Gilbere Forte feat. Raak - Black Chukkas
This is full of making cliches interesting - the churning dubstep/d'n'b inflected beat, the odd bit of stutter-effect on the vocals, an Autotune semi-spoken chorus. There's a bit that could be knowing or could be accidental where the riff from Pretty Vacant is briefly played by a very early 90's rave sounding synth. It doesn't matter. It's very catchy, and refuses to dislodge itself from my head.
15. SBTRKT ft. Little Dragon - Wildfire (Remix feat. Drake)
Yeah, I was behind on this and the whole post-dubstep thing but this really worked for me as did SBTRKT in general. I've picked the remix with Drake not because I love the Drake but because it's a bit longer and gives us more of the infectious bassline and drum beat behind Drake praising himself in his customarily monotone way - it's not a terrible verse, but the best bit is when his "Yeah, that'll do" self congratulatory laugh overlaps with Little Dragon's voice coming in. This isn't that different formulawise to the Dubstar pick further up the page, really. Like all the other tracks I've picked, it's infectious and it's not overly busy but there's quite a lot going on. Enough that you'll pick up new things after a few listens - replaying it again for the purpose of this, I heard a buried string-patch I never really noticed at first.
14. Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl
"That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighbourhood - I've got news for you, she is!"
As the global becomes local and the local becomes global Kathleen Hanna really is the queen of the neighbourhood, and this is the song that started my (figurative, I don't want to get lynched by the Beastie Boys) love affair with her and her work. Basically there's something great by every project she's been involved with, and if pop music wasn't still such a boys club she'd get all the reverence bestowed upon Ian McKaye and Henry Rollins. Ian Mckaye's a particularly good parallel - there's the same switch between straight up punk (Bikini Kill/Minor Threat) to something artier, more collaborative and more FUN (Le Tigre/Fugazi). They're both people who've stayed true to their original intent, and long may they continue to do so.
Oh, the song - it's catchy as hell, it means something, there's a few hooks that sink into you and then there's that other intangible "Yes, this is one of those songs for me" factor. It's concise and it's another perfect pop song.
24. Frank Ocean - Bad Religion (From Channel Orange)
Blah blah blah bisexual man in a very homophobic and heteronormative subculture, blah blah blah alternative R&B bleat moan bleat overstate him at this early point in his career, compare him to Prince or Stevie Wonder at a shockingly early point in his career because he's black. That's basically the formula for people writing about Frank Ocean. Yes, it's great that a non-stereotypical man can come out of the closet, yes it's great he doesn't define himself by his sexuality even if the people bending over backwards to show how liberal they are are defining him by it not his incredible talent. Yes it's great that the racist idea that black people are more homophobic than white people is being exposed as the cowardly lie it is, but let's not damn him by comparing him to talents he's not had time to reach yet or focus on what gets him off.
Fact is Channel Orange is a great album and as with The Weeknd it's hard for me to pick just one track off it, so I won't, but this one is my joint favourite off the album with Pyramids, the one I'll write up later. It's just as ambitious in it's own way as that 10 minute epic but what it reminds me of more than any of the obvious reference points is late 60's Scott Walker, if Scott was informed by hip hop and R&B not Brel and Brecht. This is a story song that could possibly be autobiographical that builds, with swooning strings, and fits some ideas that're pretty subversive for the genre he's working in into an irresistible pop song. Just as singing about brothels (Next), Big Louise and a song from the point of view of a rich man's toyboy (Thanks For Chicago Mr James) was more than a lot of Scott's audience would be used to at the time, in a genre where men sing about women even if they are gay (Luther Vandross) and if God enters the equation it's standard Godfearing the Lord is my Shepherd stuff this is pretty subversive stuff. Check the pronouns - "I can never make him love me" is something not heard often sung by a male R&B singer.
Now I've fallen into the same trap I complained others do but I never said I was a great writer. What's important is the gender or sexuality of the singer and the way they're singing it is irrelevant to this song. This song could be performed by Antony Hegarty, or Tracey Thorn, or Nina Simone (same as Antony I guess), any great singer could perform this in any style and it's be a great song. The melody line when he sings "Unrequited love, for me it's nothing but a one man cult" is indescribable, soaring and why this is in the list, and I'm a sucker for handclaps (no hetero). I'm starting to think you and me are a lot alike.
I just can't wait to hear Frank's Symphony or Damn. Damn.
23. Edwyn Collins - 20 Years Too Late (from Dr Syntax)
When Edwyn Collins released the Dr Syntax album it went largely ignored, but if it came out now it'd be held up as one of the albums of the year, any year it was released in. Not only has he had the accident which raises anyone's stature among the press vultures (and he still doesn't get the credit he deserves), but it's an album where he does the now very trendy thing of mixing post-punk and indie influence up with various kinds of soul music with some beats that wouldn't be out of place on, well, Channel Orange. Collins spits on those fashionista ideas of what music it is and isn't acceptable to draw influence from at that time.
I heard it this year and thought "This is a masterpiece". There's not a bad track on it but this one stands out for the sheer insanity, moving from a guitar intro that wouldn't be out of place on a Fleetwood Mac album to Edwyn rapping over a hip hop beat, funk bass and Chic-meets-folk guitar riffing then growling out the chorus. You can almost understand why the proscriptive landscape of the music press didn't pick up on this - surely he should've been making an unplugged album or having a midlife crisis and calling in some hotshot producer to do this, not making this MODERN sounding album on his own.
Quoth Mark E Smith (who's also appeared on an Edwyn Collins track), He is not appreciated.
22. Azaelia Banks ft. Lazy Jay - 212
See, pop music doesn't HAVE to be dull and conservative. This is an irresistible pop rap gem that gets me doing a strange sat down dance as I replay it as I write this entry and charted in spite or because of the way it gets the line "I guess that cunt getting eaten" stuck in your head. Over and over again. As if to counter decades of hip hop homophobia, a lot of this year's great hip hop has been by LGBT artists in a way that hasn't really happened before, and not in the fake "getting off with girls to get guys interested" Nicki Minaj style between this, Zebra Katz, Angel Haze, Nykki Blanco and Le1f among others. That makes sense - hip hop was supposed to be the voice of the downtrodden and now it's become part of the status quo, there's not much danger in sticking to the sexist gay hating (but secretly hiring rentboys) party line of the rich elites is there?
Now this isn't a voice for the voiceless moment either but as with the Frank Ocean entry I've fell into discussing the artist and society and not the track which is just something that's good for getting people dancing in a club or at a party or writing a blog entry very few people will read about your favourite tracks of the year. There's a lot of cliches in this, the high-pass filter "soar" preceding the chorus, the stop you in your tracks key change, the "introducing dubstep influences" trope so common to pop hip hop at the moment, but the strength of this track is that it's only after it's finished I start dissecting it. When it's on I just think "Yeah, I guess it probably is getting eaten". It makes me want to hear it again, too.
At the time of finishing this list she's got in trouble for writing stupid homophobic shit on Twitter, then even more problematically saying that faggot doesn't mean gay but "a man who acts feminine" to which I have to say - what's wrong with being feminine, love, (some) women are great!
21. Zebra Katz ft Njena Reddd Foxx - Ima Read
Now, I go from complaining about misogyny elsewhere to praising a song where every other word is bitch. Yeah, and I don't apologise because it's catchy as a cold. There are a few other reasons too - one of them is because there are two people rapping on this one, and one of them is a woman. It's also left pretty gender neutral, as by this point bitch is a pretty gender neutral insult and especially in the context of hip hop. If it was "dyke" then I don't care how catchy it is or even if it was made by lesbians, it'd probably make me uneasy. Maybe it'd still get in the list because it made me uneasy.
Enough bitching about the word bitch. This track shows you very clearly how you can do more with less - it's just two voices and a very basic drum machine beat but it's catchy as hell. If you're a DJ this is great for you, even I could fill a floor with this and mix it into something else. Your average listener doesn't care about that stuff and they've got the right idea, but this further demonstrates my point that it's not about genres it's about mood. Because there's another record in my list a million miles away from this but using the same ingredients - Cut Hands Has The Solution by Whitehouse. Similar use of violent imagery, it just so happens that the mood of this is a kind of mordant joy whereas the Whitehouse track just makes you want to tunnel to escape.
The Moment in this track that made me fall in love with it - Njena Foxx's delivery, as if having an epiphany of "I don't like that bitch". I'm not going to go into the vogue/ballroom routes of the song because I don't know enough about them. Suffice to say this is really good. The video is also pretty excellent.
Bitch.
20. Xiu Xiu - Honey Suckle (from Always)
I love Xiu Xiu and the more Xiu Xiu I hear the more I fall in love with them. I love Jamie Stewart's voice, the frightened, panicky, verge of tears way he often sings annoyed me first time I heard them but gradually I got used to it, and went from tolerating it to finding that his voice and his way of writing has an effect on me that no one else has. I could say he sounds like a mixture of Antony Hegarty and Morrissey if he wasn't a daft racist, or he sounds like Robert Smith looking down the barrel of a gun but what he sounds like is a mixture of Jamie Stewart and Jamie Stewart. There's a strength in his voice that's not apparently obvious but it's there. Here it interlinks with the equally beautiful voice of Angela Seo, who wrote the track. Apparently this is her first foray into songwriting, which is pretty phenomenal.
Now onto the song itself, which is something you could imagine The Xx doing but somehow the way Xiu Xiu do it is a lot better, and more affecting. While The Xx are great and all there's a studied detachment and even when they sing of heartbreak you know they'll get over it. They're too cool, their model looks and the fact they're The Xx mean they'll ensnare someone else soon. The two voices on this Xiu Xiu track are both beautiful voices but neither of them are cool or trying too hard, they're very expressive and fragile and for me that makes them far cooler. It's a wonderful life, Jamie Stewart. It was a toss-up between this track and I Luv Abortion, but I went with the poppier one because that's the mood I was in at the time.
19. Dubstar - Stars
How this band haven't been rediscovered in a time where it's permissible for indie bands to listen to music outside of the indie ghetto again I don't know, as lots of people are making things that sound like this (but aren't as good). Again it's fairly minimal, not many bells and whistles just some pretty synths, a looped drumbeat, a bit of New Ordery guitar here and there and a catchy bassline setting the stage for a good vocal performance. This most definitely still sounds fresh (in both the old hip hop speak sense and as in it sounds new), and will endure a thousand listens.
18. Lindsey Buckingham - That's The Way Love Goes
I'm not sure I want to meet a person who is unmoved by this and doesn't have a really good reason for disliking it. You know when people babble on in an old-fogeyish way about "perfect pop"? Well this is the real deal. The verses are just multi-tracked Lindsey vocals and some of his guitar waterfalls - there's simply no other way for me of describing those arpeggios, they're like rivers flowing by or rain falling, there's something liquid about them. Then the chorus is the kind of stadium rock piledriver that'd turn me off if done by anyone who isn't a former member of Fleetwood Mac or Manic Street Preachers. His voice, with the same yearning embedded in it as all the best singers, brings another dimension to lyrics which otherwise are the stuff of every other lovesong - "I'd like to take your pain away/I'd like to take your shame away". Basically, the guy's really good and I predict big things for the lad in future.
17. Scott Walker - The Day the "Conducator" Died (from Bish Bosch)
Obviously I love Scott Walker. It's in my blood. But I think that as well as missing the dark humour in his work, too many people miss that the trilogy of Tilt - The Drift - Bish Bosch isn't that much different from his work prior to that. It's just that he's singing in a slightly higher register. His songwriting is still flawless - this song has a hook, in the "Nobody waited for fire" section. Shorter and more uptempo it could be a Roy Orbison song - this register of his voice sounds like Orbison, and it's uncanny - one of the best singers to grace the planet so effortlessly sounding like another.
It's hard to pick a highlight from a track like Bish Bosch but just as Farmer In The City is my favourite song from Tilt as it's a perverted mirror image of his opulent 60's material, this is my favourite for the same reason. I could've picked Epizootics, the first I heard of which parts are properly catchy and which suggests he could make a great dance record or I could've picked the first track, the sonic extremity of which sounds like a poppier Whitehouse, but this is a beautiful thing about a less than beautiful subject. Just as Farmer In The City was nominally about the death of Pasolini, this is another song about a violent death but in this case as in Clara on The Drift or the Eichmann trial referencing The Cockfighter on Tilt, The Day the "Conducator" Died centres around the death of a dictator. More specifically the key motif is the execution by firing squad of Nicolae Ceaușescu. It ends with a snatch of Jingle Bells, features a guitar sound you wouldn't be surprised to hear on a Justin Broadrick record, and it's chilling and beautiful.
Ultimately, though, it's still pop music, as all good music is. By no means all pop music is good music, but all good music is pop music. It sticks in your head, and inspires you to create or cry or laugh or break things. That's what it does. Don't let anyone tell you this is "difficult" music, because it's really not. Difficult to beat, though.
16. Gilbere Forte feat. Raak - Black Chukkas
This is full of making cliches interesting - the churning dubstep/d'n'b inflected beat, the odd bit of stutter-effect on the vocals, an Autotune semi-spoken chorus. There's a bit that could be knowing or could be accidental where the riff from Pretty Vacant is briefly played by a very early 90's rave sounding synth. It doesn't matter. It's very catchy, and refuses to dislodge itself from my head.
15. SBTRKT ft. Little Dragon - Wildfire (Remix feat. Drake)
Yeah, I was behind on this and the whole post-dubstep thing but this really worked for me as did SBTRKT in general. I've picked the remix with Drake not because I love the Drake but because it's a bit longer and gives us more of the infectious bassline and drum beat behind Drake praising himself in his customarily monotone way - it's not a terrible verse, but the best bit is when his "Yeah, that'll do" self congratulatory laugh overlaps with Little Dragon's voice coming in. This isn't that different formulawise to the Dubstar pick further up the page, really. Like all the other tracks I've picked, it's infectious and it's not overly busy but there's quite a lot going on. Enough that you'll pick up new things after a few listens - replaying it again for the purpose of this, I heard a buried string-patch I never really noticed at first.
14. Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl
"That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighbourhood - I've got news for you, she is!"
As the global becomes local and the local becomes global Kathleen Hanna really is the queen of the neighbourhood, and this is the song that started my (figurative, I don't want to get lynched by the Beastie Boys) love affair with her and her work. Basically there's something great by every project she's been involved with, and if pop music wasn't still such a boys club she'd get all the reverence bestowed upon Ian McKaye and Henry Rollins. Ian Mckaye's a particularly good parallel - there's the same switch between straight up punk (Bikini Kill/Minor Threat) to something artier, more collaborative and more FUN (Le Tigre/Fugazi). They're both people who've stayed true to their original intent, and long may they continue to do so.
Oh, the song - it's catchy as hell, it means something, there's a few hooks that sink into you and then there's that other intangible "Yes, this is one of those songs for me" factor. It's concise and it's another perfect pop song.
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