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Top 25 Most-Played Songs of 2013

| xeyeti

Another year, another reset of the play count on my iPod.  Let’s see what songs I couldn’t get out of my head in 2013, shall we?

25. Iron & Wine, “Hard Times Come Again No More” (15 plays): One of the few songs I haven’t been able to find through legitimate means in many, many years, it’s a damn fine cover of an old tune from the Civil War era. If Iron & Wine were making whole albums as good as this one song, I wouldn’t have found Ghost on Ghost so boring.

24. R.E.M., “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” (16 plays): I will admit, I listened to this song about ten times last week when I drove to Rockville and bought a new guitar. Yes, I’m a nerd.

23. Tom Waits, “Long Way Home” (17 plays): It’s strange, but I first came to this song by way of the Norah Jones cover of it. I still have a particular fondness for that version, though Tom’s is pretty damn good, too.

22. The National, “You’ve Done it Again, Virginia” (19 plays): One of the few songs by the National I can almost sing (damn, his voice is low!) and actually play on the guitar.

21. Crosby, Stills, and Nash, “Southern Cross” (19 plays): I absolutely, 100% non-ironically love this song. It’s kind of the best.

20. The Rolling Stones, “Moonlight Mile” (20 plays): Because every playlist should include at least one song about heroin use? I dunno.

19. Owen Danoff, “Never Been Kissed” (20 plays): I backed this guy’s Kickstarter back in the summer, and I’m really excited for the full-length debut from him.

18. fun., “Some Nights (iTunes Session)” (20 plays): There are ways in which this version is superior to the original studio version, mostly because it hasn’t been autotuned to crap.

17. Placebo, “Every You Every Me” (21 Plays): You know what I didn’t listen to much in the ’90s? Nineties music. Know what I listen to quite a bit now? Nineties music. Go figure.

16. The National, “Afraid of Everyone” (21 plays): Even a few years after the fact, High Violet continues to surprise me and offer new, interesting things I missed the first time around. I dig this song a hell of a lot.

15. Colin Hay, “Beautiful World” (21 plays): I like acoustic songs about how life is, on the whole, kinda good. This one just makes me feel happy.

14. Alexi Murdoch, “All My Days” (21 plays): Yes, it’s that one song from that one commercial. Yes, that’s how I found the song. No, I don’t care how unhip that makes me. I enjoy what I enjoy, I guess.

13. XTC, “Stupidly Happy” (22 plays): As I mentioned on Twitter some time ago, if this song doesn’t make you feel that way, then I just don’t think we can be friends.

12. The Riveras, “California Sun” (22 plays): I happen to absolutely love surf music. And this song. Especially this song. It’s a great end-of-the-summer song.

11. The Clash, “Train in Vain (Stand by Me)” (22 plays): It’s the Clash. Do I really need to elaborate?

10. The Avett Brothers, “Shame” (23 plays): I figured this one out on the guitar and love singing it, even if that bridge is weird and kinda throws me off every time.

9. Wilco, “Summer Teeth” (25 plays): I’m half-convinced this song is about a serial killer, but I can’t prove it. Or a schizophrenic suffering from visual hallucinations. One of those two things is going on in this song, and it’s this huge slap of cognitive dissonance when it’s such a sunny, peppy tune.

8. Dave Edmunds, “I Hear You Knocking” (25 plays): I’m a sucker for this song and its guitar riff. English blues-rock at its best, I say.

7. Rilo Kiley, “Silver Lining” (27 plays): I know Under the Black Light wasn’t the greatest Rilo Kiley album, and I know the guitar riff is ripped almost note for note from “My Sweet Lord,” but I love this song.

6. Neil Young & the Stray Gators, “Bad Fog of Loneliness” (27 plays): Over the summer, I read the 33 1/3 book on the recording of Neil Young’s Harvest. In many ways, the book was awful, especially since the guy writing it didn’t even seem to like the album, but it did bring this song to my attention, so I guess the whole thing wasn’t so bad.

5. Young Dubliners, “Last House on the Street” (29 plays): A band my uncle used to be in played this song at gigs all the time when I was in college, and it took me years to track the damn thing down. Turns out, it’s not available digitally, but you can still find a used copy of the EP it was originally released on over at Amazon for, like, two bucks. Worth it.

4. Dan Auerbach, “Trouble Weighs a Ton” (29 plays): I think this song was on last year’s list, but I’m way too lazy to actually check. It’s still a damn fine song, regardless.

3. Churchill, “Ark in a Flood” (29 plays): My brother introduced me to this band. They feature a mandolin quite prominently in their otherwise fairly straightforward pop-rock songs.

2. Andrew Bird, “Orpheus Looks Back” (32 plays): Andrew Bird has quickly become one of my absolute favorite musicians. This song is a perfect example of why.

1. Golden Smog, “Until You Came Along” (36 plays): And here we arrive at the song I listened to more than any other in 2013. It’s a fun sing-along, and there’s nothing better than cruising down the highway with the windows open and the radio blaring a song like this at high volume.

So, what did you all listen to in 2013?

Top 25 Most-Played Songs of 2012

| xeyeti

Another year, another bunch of songs I listened to over and over and over again on my iPod. As per usual, I’ll hit the ol’ reset button on the iPod after posting this list, making it possible for new songs to reign supreme in 2013.

25. Moxy Fruvous, “Boo Time” (23 plays): This was one of my favorite bands in college, and I still (obviously) enjoy putting their songs in playlists or just listening to entire albums. The album this particular gem is off of, You Will Go to the Moon, is fun and serious and silly and touching and everything else, all at the same time.

24. Dr. Dog, “Lonesome” (23 plays): I dunno how iTunes decides what song is in what position when they’ve all got the same number of plays, but it decided to put this one in at number 24. I love the dobro part (it sounds like a dobro. Might just be a regular acoustic, but I dunno).

23. Better Than Ezra, “At the Stars: (23 plays): Another of the 23 Plays Club, this one a classic (can I use that word for a song that came out during my lifetime?) from a quintessential ’90s band.

22. Paul McCartney, “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” (24 plays): This is one of those songs I just love singing along to. I defy you to listen to it and not bounce along merrily. You can’t do it.

21. Mumford & Sons, “Little Lion Man” (24 plays): I tend to think of these guys as “Dave Matthews with a banjo,” ’cause that’s all I hear when this guy sings. And now you’ll hear it, too, and you won’t be able to un-hear it.

20. Led Zeppelin, “Hey Hey What Can I Do” (24 plays): I’ve always liked the folky side of Zeppelin, when they bust out the acoustics and get a little more down-home. This just happens to be one of the best “my woman ain’t no good” songs out there, and it’s fun to play on the guitar (even if I can’t hit the high notes like Robert Plant).

19. Charlie Sexton, “Regular Grind” (24 plays): The Dylan guitarist and near-legendary session man from Austin is something of a perennial favorite of mine, and this is one of the best songs off of the excellent Cruel and Gentle Things. Isn’t it about time he did a new solo album?

18. Bruce Springsteen, “Two Faces” (24 plays): I feel like Springsteen’s late ’80s/early ’90s albums are rather unfairly maligned. There’s some great songs on them (and some crap, too, to be quite honest), and though they definitely suffer from the production style of the time, you can find some stuff worth listening to. “Two Faces” is such a song: heartfelt, sad, a little bit angry, but with a great organ solo in the outro.

17. Richard Thompson, “Beeswing” (25 plays): Just a beautiful, sad song. The live version is even better than the original studio recording.

16. fun., “Some Nights” (25 plays): What? I’m allowed to like things that are popular sometimes, even if I think most of the rest of the album is absolute rubbish.

15. Woodkid, “Iron” (26 plays): I like it exclusively for its use in the trailer for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. Don’t judge me.

14. John Fullbright, “Satan and St. Paul” (26 plays): Probably my favorite song off of his first studio album, From the Ground Up, which you might recall was one of my favorite albums of the year.

13. Deer Tick, “Easy” (26 plays): A holdover from last year’s list, when it was #1 with a bullet, this song still held me captivated for a good chunk of the year. It’s just a damn good song, and pretty sinister.

12. The National, “Ashamed of the Story I Told” (28 plays): An amazing cover of an old Polaris song, one of those rare instances where the cover truly surpasses the original.

11. The Wallflowers, “Sugarfoot” (30 plays): Say what you will about the Wallflowers debut album (and believe me, I know it was a flawed effort), this song is just awesome and clearly firing on all cylinders.

10. Of Monsters and Men, “Little Talks” (31 plays): I was amazed how much I actually ended up liking their full-length album when it came out this past year. Much stronger than I’d thought it would be, even if I did forget and leave it off my end of the year list.

9. The Gaslight Anthem, “Stay Lucky” (31 plays): The disappointment that was Handwritten drove me back to American Slang and this particular track, which I always have to listen to more than once when it comes up on rotation.

8. First Aid Kit, “The Lion’s Roar” (31 plays): The title track from their debut album (which I did remember to include on my list of albums for 2012) is just a masterclass in how to do awesome Americana. I’m rather in awe of these two (barely out of their?) teens from some cold country in northern Europe.

7. Dan Auerbach, “My Last Mistake” (32 plays): I think next year I may have to disqualify songs that were in the previous year’s list, ’cause otherwise you end up with nothing new to say about a song other than, “Yes, it’s still awesome, what do you want?”

6. The Black Keys, “Sinister Kid” (32 plays): I think it’s all down to the “Uhn!” that starts the song. I could care less what happens after a start like that, so it’s just gravy that the rest of the song is so damn awesome.

5. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Hometown Blues” (33 plays): One of the best Tom Petty songs you probably don’t even know. It’s off their debut album from way back in the ’70s, and obviously gets overshadowed by hits like “American Girl” or “Breakdown,” but it’s just a damn fun song.

4. Josh Ritter, “Girl in the War” (33 plays): A beautiful, melancholic tune about loss and war and fighting for what is important to you. It’s a very moving song, really.

3. Josh Ritter, “See Me Through” (36 plays): A great acoustic number from Ritter’s 2012 EP “Bringing in the Darlings” (if more of So Runs the World Away had sounded like this, I’d have liked it a lot more). I could sit and listen to the chorus of this song for days.

2. Gin Blossoms, “Pieces of the Night” (36 plays): Look, I’m not proud. I know the #2 song on my list is a Gin Blossoms song. About drinking so heavily the night before that you don’t remember jack squat the morning after. I realize all this, okay? I’m not proud of it, but I own up to it, at least.

1. Old 97s, “Champaign, Illinois” (38 plays): It’s an authorized rewrite of Dylan’s “Desolation Row,” only replaced that song’s sense of sadness and desperation with a kick-ass yowl and beefed-up alt-country rhythm and lyrics about Illinois and being on the road. And the chorus is just perfect.

So, there you have it: the twenty-five songs I listened to the most in the year 2012. Thoughts? Favorites? What did you keep hitting repeat on this past year?