Top 100 Favorite Songs of the 2000's (Part XI)

Hi everybody,

Thanks for reading so far! I'm getting some great feedback, and I appreciate the comments on both the blog and Facebook. (And if I hadn't neglected Twitter like, six months ago, the links would be there too. Maybe it's time to resurrect.)

Today, I just want to address a few fun facts and some possible shortcomings of the list. It's nearly impossible to squeeze every great song over a ten-year period into a list of 100; my 80's list (which might see publication here in the future) had to be whittled down from about 750 to 500 before I was content with its placings.

So I guess that's my first apology: if you know me, I often joke that I don't listen to any music made after 1990. That's not entirely true, of course, but there's a reason why this list stands at only 100. First of all, like I explained earlier, this was possibly the most diverse decade in popular music history. Therefore, I couldn't quite wrap my head around all the different genres and styles that emerged.

I know that contemporary rap and R&B both get the shaft on this list. I know, I know. There's no Eminem, no Usher, no Nelly, no Kanye -- can we deny the impact of any of these artists over the last ten years? I've picked up on a few songs that could have cracked this list (Alicia Keys' "Fallin'," which was huge, along with her 2009 "Empire State Of Mind" with Jay-Z), but I'm still overall happy with the way it turned out.

The second thing is, when you make a list at the end of a decade, you're automatically shortchanging the end of that decade when it comes to the impact of an artist or song. If I were to remake this list in five years, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift would probably make it, and songs like Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" would have found their way to placement as well.

Which brings me to the first fact of today's post. Here is the year-by-year breakdown of songs on the list (and remember, it's by release year, which is why some songs that may turn out to be this year's biggest hits haven't even been considered yet)...

2000: 10 songs
2001: 9
2002: 14
2003: 5
2004: 11
2005: 10
2006: 13
2007: 15
2008: 11
2009: 2

So you can clearly see what I mean, some years skew the list more than others. This might also give you a little bit of a hint as to what the final 20 songs, the front end of the list, might look like. To help you out even more with that, here's a list of the top artists represented on the list...

Coldplay: 4 songs
Dave Matthews Band, Maroon 5, John Mayer, and Bruce Springsteen: 3 each
Many, many others: 2 songs (this includes both Ben Folds and Ben Lee, who have only one solo song each on the list but...well, I'll keep you guessing)

And that's that. As far as the actual quality of the music goes, I averaged each year's individual song placings together and the year with the "best" music is 2001, which yielded a mean ranking of #29. The only other years to shake out with an average placing of #50 or better were 2000 (#33) and 2006 (#43).

I should tell you, before I close out today's post, that cover songs were mostly ignored for this list. The only cover to make the cut actually leads off tomorrow's post, when we pick up at #20. What will it be? Stay tuned...

-- pl