December 22, 2010

Is This The Worst Song Of the Year?

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The Village Voice just put up its list of the 20 worst songs of 2010, and…it’s pretty compelling. Trade Martin’s impeccably named “We’ve Got to Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero” is #17; Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” clocks in at #1:

There is less soul in the entirety of Train than in the palest single member of Collective Soul. “Hey, Soul Sister” is soul for people who refer to peanut butter and jelly as “soul food.” It makes the California Raisins look like the second coming of Sly and the Family Stone. It’s so white, Sarah Palin just named it her running mate for 2012.

Snap, crackle, and pow!

Anyway, having spent a quarter of the year driving around aimlessly in a car, I feel somewhat qualified to offer my opinion on the horrible sounds that came from FM radio. So here’s one they missed: “Way Out Here,” by Josh Thompson. Thompson mixes the mandatory checklist of a pop country hit—truck, truck being fixed, truck with girl standing next to it, yeoman farmers, yeoman farmers with trucks—with an aggressive “Real American” streak; unlike other kinds of people who shall remain nameless, Thompson croons, “We won’t take a dime if we ain’t earned it.” With apologies to Train, if any song of 2010 were to be Sarah Palin’s running mate, it’d be this one.

So is it worse than “Hey, Soul Sister”? You be the judge:

Not to be an insufferable fact-checker or anything, but what’s up with the flag in this video? It’s got the requisite 50 stars, so why does it look like it survived Washington’s Crossing?

Update: South African rappers—and friends-of-the-blog—Die Antwoord check in at #10. Check out their Riff interview with Michael Mechanic from back in October.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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