10. “My Girls” – Animal Collective: When millions of people were losing their jobs/homes/lots of money, Panda Bear sang “I don’t care for fancy things…I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls”—maybe that’s just a coincidence. After making a really weird album about hallucinogenic drugs, Animal Collective surprised everybody and made a [...]

20. “No One Knows” – Queens of the Stone Age: One of the stoner rock head-bangers of the decade, Songs for the Deaf brings out the darkest guitar tones perhaps in the entire Queens of the Stone Age catalog. The stand out track “No One Knows”, a tempo shifting up and down roller coaster brings [...]

30. “Skinny Love” – Bon Iver: In 2007, Justin Vernon emerged from the Wisconsin wilderness with a large beard and a cathartic album packed with emotion and falsetto. Perhaps the greatest example of these characteristics is the song “Skinny Love.” The song moves through a simple arrangement of a rhythmically strummed guitar, percussions that amounts [...]

40. “Kim & Jessie” – M83: Are Kim and Jessie two choreographed roller skaters like the girls in the music video, or did Anthony Gonzalez have someone else in mind? Saturated in 80’s schmaltz, “Kim & Jessie” from M83′s phenomenal Saturdays = Youth is the perfect song to sing into a hairbrush while dancing alone [...]

These are just some of our thoughts on the songs we chose, so feel free to tell us how you feel! Here it goes… 50. “The Hand That Feeds” – Nine Inch Nails: “Will you bite the hand that feeds you?” asks Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor as the band cranks through one of [...]