Best of 2011: Songs from December

LP - Into the Wild
Don't be fooled by the uke-laden opening. It really starts rocking when you get into it.  Then you may recognize this song from the "Accessories" Citibank commercial where the woman puts her points toward the "rock she really had in mind."  It's a little weird to see a big bank, which let's just all admit is inherently evil, sell an ideal that counters popular patterns of female consumption.  Wait, she means climbing shoes! Instead of buying a diamond and fitting snugly into a stereotype, she climbs a big, freakin' mountain.  The new American dream in consumerism may not be to merely consume, but to experience.  (I bet they're calling them adventurcations now, but I feel a little sick every time I type a portmanteau.) As a left-wing, commie, socialist, hippie, conglomeration of derogatory terms I get called, I have to admit, the only way I could love this commercial more is if the voiceover said, "my girlfriend and I were thinking of going on vacation." Now, I try not to publicly make statements about a person's sexuality unless they do so openly, and I really don't know that much about LP except that she just signed to Warner Bros and is working on her debut album. So I'll just say that she has a pretty solid lesbian following. And every time the camera opens into that aerial shot, and LP's voice comes screeching in with, "Somebody left the gate open," I want to climb a big, freakin' mountain too. I hope somebody leaves my gate open. (That's not a euphemism.)

PS. If you go to her website, you can get a free download of this live recording.



The Black Keys - Tighten Up / Unknown Brother
I was a little late jumping onto the Black Keys bandwagon, but here I am.  Just about the time they released El Camino, I was putting "Tighten Up" and "Unknown Brother" on repeat.  I've listened to a lot of their music in the last month, but these are the only two songs that I've really fallen for. Though, after listening to the depress-fest that is "Unknown Brother"--Those jingle bells are really deceiving--"Tighten Up" is my favorite. When it came time to chose between which song to include on the list, I went with the one with the best video.



GROUPLOVE - Tongue Tied
If you've seen the new iPod Touch commercial featuring this New York based-band, you've probably walked around for hours afterwards singing, "Take me to your best friend's house. I loved you then; I love you now."



Gotye - Somebody I Used to Know
This song barely made the list.  I heard it in passing a few weeks ago, but didn't really like it.  Then I heard a great cover and had to compare.  Now, two days later, I can't stop listening. The combination of passionate voices in harmony and lyrics like "You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness" and "Now and then, I think of all the times you screwed me over." It's a great breakup song.  Everyone knows the feeling of moving someone you once really loved into the "somebody I used to know" category.  Really, I'm pretty sure I wrote this song first, at least five times.




Ingrid Michaelson - Parachute / Parachute / Ghost / Somebody I Used to Know/ Every Single Song
I. Love. Ingrid. I love pretty much every single song she does. I had listened to Parachute a lot, but sometimes songs come back to you and touch you in a way that they never did before.  I really like the video too.  There was a huge backlash against it.  Apparently, a vocal portion of her fanbase (of which I am a member) thought the video "wasn't her," whatever the hell that means.  So she shot a new one that's more of an homage to New York than what happens if you take too much cold medicine and fall asleep reading The Little Prince.  Ingrid has a new album coming out next month, which is why I didn't already include the first single Ghost. More on that later.

And here's where a few covers come in. First, there's Ingrid's own cover of Gotye's song, then there's British popstar Cheryl Cole's cover of Parachute, which she took to the top of the UK charts. If you thought Ingrid's video was weird...at least it didn't have Flamenco dancers wearing their suspenders weirdly and gowns stolen from Oxbridge undergraduates.



Kensington - Let Go
You can't really sit still when this Dutch band gets going.  It doesn't matter that the entire chorus just repeats the contradictory lines, "We gotta let go. We gotta let go. We gotta hold on. We gotta hold on. We gotta let go" because it's so damn peppy.

Rounding up December has been pretty difficult because most of my favorite songs of the year, I started listening to (or listening to more) in December.  Like "Into the Wild," "Let Go" is packed full of energy, and they'd probably make my top 5 of the year. I'll be listening to both of these songs on repeat well into 2012.