The following is a list of the best songs the summer has to offer. From top 40 hits to newly-released but half-gotten cuts, the Daily collects the best tracks that have been floating around for the past couple of months for your perfect summer mixtape.
1. LCD Soundsystem - "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House"
Kicking off the mixtape with a barbaric yawp is LCD Soundsystem's "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House." A song that will have your insecure hipster friend cataloging obscure musical allusions in seconds flat (They cribbed that bassline from the Fall! Those are Suicide's synths!), "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" unmasks the earnestness lurking behind the same friend's sneering music-geek facade with a tale of the French duo playing a set for ecstatic dorks. Did I mention there's a cowbell?
2. Amerie - "1 Thing"
Amerie's "1 Thing" is one of the more schizophrenic outings to rise to the top of the charts in recent memory. On the one hand, the song's clipped guitar notes and cascade of drum kit rattles sound like nostalgia for a lively, soulful past. On the other, Amerie's trilling, layered vocals remind listeners that this is no simple genre exercise but a foward-thinking - albeit backward-looking - pop gem.
3. Ciara ft. Ludacris - "Oh"
Another hit, but this one is as free from nostalgia as it is evacuated of warmth. Cut from the same block of ice as Usher's "Yeah" or even Kraftwerk's robot jams, "Oh" sounds as if it was recorded in a cave and then slowed down to an icicle's drip. Ludacris phoned in his verse from the other end of the cavern, but it only adds to the song's languid charm. The thought that people might actually be dancing to this, or - even better - grinding to it in slow motion, will get me through those hot summer months.
4. M.I.A. - "Sunshowers"
Believe the hype: critical-darling, genre-defier and next-big-thing M.I.A. is as good as everyone says she is. If you're still not sold, listen to "Sunshowers" on repeat until its wobbly cartoon noises imprint themselves onto the folds of your brain. But don't take it too lightly: a tale told by a Sri Lankan refugee whose separatist father had to flee the country that invented suicide bombings, "Sunshowers" entangles itself in the sound and fury of 21st century politics and doesn't escape unscathed.
5. Lady Sovereign - "Random"
Played on pirate radio and weaned on England's pseudo-hip-hop grime culture, Sovereign is one of many shining beacons in a burgeoning movement that is indebted to everything from dancehall to post-punk. She's also 5'1", white and a teenager: all things that you wouldn't expect from the author of a song that has the audacity to send up Ludacris and Lil' John. This, plus the fact that "Random" includes a chorus that sounds like it was lifted from a miniaturized Bollywood musical, makes it the best hip-hop-song-that's-not-a-real-hip-song song of the year.
6. New Order - "Waiting For the Sirens' Call"
New Order's latest album - from which this is the title track - consists largely of well-trod territory and already broken ground. Never mind: "Waiting For the Sirens' Call" will remind you why New Order are the greatest pop band ever. Incorporating everything from schmaltzy strings to emotive choruses to a hook that could catch the stone deaf, "Sirens' Call" might even stop you from putting on a better New Order song.
7. The Futureheads - "Hounds of Love"
According to conventional wisdom, the Futureheads are an a cappella group stuck in a rock band's body. The truth is they're both. Making use of the plaintive "ooh-oohs" of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" (which I always took as her approximation of barking, although I could be wrong), the Futureheads make a past classic their own.
8. Beck - "Girl"
Beck sounds even more aged and cracked on his latest album, "Guero," than he did on previous releases like "Mutations" or "Sea Change." "Girl," which is "Guero"'s second single, might be a return to Beck's cut-and-paste Dadaist roots, but it's hardly a rise to renewed relevancy; instead, it's a sad recapitulation of a better past. Why include it on the mixtape? Because it reminds me of a time when indie rock was made by snide assholes who wrote impenetrable lyrics and cryptic music, and not by tousled artistes who puke their precious feelings all over the "Garden State" soundtrack. More songs about Scientology and serial killers, please!
9. Kelly Clarkson - "Since U Been Gone"
"Since U Been Gone" is the sound of every 16 year old white kid transcribing their scribbled journal into song. Unfortunately for them, the robots that write Kelly Clarkson's music kicked their collective ass. Does it matter? Nothing matters when Kelly lays on that chorus; it's the marriage of Ashlee Simpson's faux-rage and fabled garage band sincerity. Idle Americans everywhere must be wondering whether this is authentic manufactured pop or the reverse.
10. Scritti Politti - "Hegemony"
Scritti Politti is not a new band, nor is "Hegemony" a new song. However, "Early," the album that includes "Hegemony," is a new collection of old songs by Scritti, all of which are worth hearing and loving. Page 672 of my official rock critic's manual tells me that, like the Beatles or Virgil, an artist is supposed to begin with throwaway pop before moving on to real art. Starting with the art and topping it with the pop, Scritti Politti took the opposite path. The band began as a socialist collective in a squalid flat, writing scraping post-punk anthems with a decidedly Marxist tilt before abandoning dour Das Kapital for melodic New Romantic sheen. "Hegemony" falls somewhere in the middle of this dialectic: part love-song, part capitalist critique.
