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

Hi all,

A somewhat shorter entry tonight for all you snowbound folk. If you're just joining us now, take time tonight to go back and read some previous entries of the countdown -- we are now down to the final five songs, two of which I am revealing in this post.

Well, no use stalling any more...let's get to it:


5. Aerosmith, "Jaded" [2001]

You're thinkin' so complicated/I've had it all up to here/But it's so overrated/Love and hate it, wouldn't trade it

Yeah, I know. Aerosmith is the last pure rock band represented on this list, and there's no way this is the best pure rock song of the decade. There's no way it's close to even being Aerosmith's best song. I could list ten better songs off the top of my head, and more if you gave me a few minutes. But that's neither here nor there.

You know, sometimes you remember a song for what it meant in the context of your life, as opposed to how good it actually is. "Jaded" came out at the end of my eighth-grade year, and I've routinely latched onto songs at certain transition points: the New Radicals' "You Get What You Give" when I started middle school, the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" when I started college. Let's be serious here, "Jaded" did benefit from extensive exposure. Aerosmith's last Top Ten hit, the boys famously performed it (in a really strange Britney Spears-and-N*SYNC medley) at halftime of Super Bowl XXXV.

And to reiterate, this is when I was a budding young drummer for the Valleyview Middle School Vikings. I went down to my basement, sat down at the kit and played the two-bar intro to "Jaded" more times than I can ever possibly remember, in the first few months after the song came out. (And then, proceeded to sing the opening guitar lick and ALL of Steven Tyler's vocals at the top of my lungs with no harmonic accompaniment.) I will say this -- even at their advanced age, it was one of Aerosmith's most tuneful songs. The melody is great, and the bridge brings the song right over the top...you can forgive Joe Perry's cliched, watery guitar solo if you so choose.

In any case, "Jaded" is here, on my list, at number five. It might not have made anyone else's favorite 100 songs, or 500 songs, or 2,000 songs, of this decade. But it's on my list, and I'm damn proud of that.


4. The Bens, "Bruised" [2004]

I went because you said you'd be there/A box of candy, smoke in your hair/When I didn't know, I didn't care/But now I know

If you ever find yourself at The College of New Jersey, and you can get over to Kendall Hall amidst all the habitual construction, and you finagle your way down to the basement, and then only if you walk around the entire perimeter of the building and get to the front door of the WTSR studios, AND if someone is in the on-air booth AND you are a pre-approved acquaintance of aforementioned someone, you might get a chance to peruse the "B" section of the station's back wall. And even after all that, you might miss the slim cardboard cover of The Bens' only release, an EP which saw a limited release of only 3,500 copies in January 2004. IF you have the good fortune to find it, you must have a programmable CD player, or else you'll have to get through the first three tracks, a bit of studio chatter, and a false start before you even hear the first proper notes of "Bruised." But I promise you, it's all worth it.

The Bens, of course, were a one-off collaboration between indie singer-songwriters Ben Folds, Ben Kweller and Ben Lee, the first and last of whom have already been represented on this list by solo offerings. The "supergroup's" self-titled EP was recorded during a mutual gathering and short Australian tour, and subsequently unleashed upon the world. And boy, am I glad it was.

"Bruised" begins with a lightly strummed acoustic guitar (a Folds sacrilege, save for the severely underrated "Emaline" from Naked Baby Photos) before Ben F. comes in with the keyboards. He's also doing the lead vocal for this one, and depending on where you can find the instrumentation information for this CD and whether or not you choose to believe it, he's playing the guitar and drums as well. Messrs. Kweller and Lee seem to take a back seat on this one, which is fine because this is just so clearly a Ben Folds song from beginning to end. (In fact, if the scenario I proposed to you in paragraph #1 seems too daunting, you can pick up a copy of Folds' 2006 compilation album supersunnyspeedgraphic: the lp, on which Ben F. reclaims the song for himself and does some ever-so-slight remixing.)

Lyrically, the song is profoundly provocative. Most of Ben Folds' songs deal with love leaving someone bruised (usually him) in one way or another, but this particular composition strips away the snarky attitude of stuff like "Gone" and "Song For The Dumped." What's left is a sensitive, desperate plea for reconciliation over three-quarters of the song, capped finally by the ultimate Folds diss: "Like I care." The song then builds around a chorus of wordless background vocals before crashing down just like Folds' emotionally exhausted protagonist.


And so I, too, am exhausted after expounding the virtues of the #4 and #5 songs on my list. Tomorrow, an entire entry devoted to song #3, an autobiographical track dealing with a celebrity custody battle. What will it be? Stay tuned...

-- pl