Friday Mixtape Special Edition: Best of 2006 (Part 1)
jamie on December 8th, 2006
Last week, I took a look back at my picks for the best tracks of 2005, minus James Blunt- who got a whole lotta those Grammy noms this week- leave it to the Grammy awards to be so far behind. Anyway, this week's mixtape kicks off my Best of 2006 list. Counting backwards from 50, I'll post 15 this Friday, 15 next week, and the top 20 the week following. A couple notes about the list:
- Only songs posted in a Friday Mixtape were eligible - there are some really great tracks that for one reason or another didn't get posted in a mixtape.
- To make a much room as possible on the lsit or additional artists, I've tried to list each artist only once, ranked by their highest scoring track. The list started at a few hundred tracks, with many artists adding more than one track to the list.
- I change my mind all the time- so by next week, the order of this list would have changed. It's just the way I am- some days I like a song more than others.
Right, let's take a look at the first 15 tracks:
36 - Apathy (Bloc Party sample) - Banquet Remix
37 - Kasabian - Empire
38 - Guillemots - Made Up Love Song #43
39 - Phoenix - Long Distance Call
40 - Band Of Horses - The Funeral
41 - Larrikin Love - Happy As Annie
42 - Smoosh - Find A Way
43 - Razorlight - America
44 - Primal Scream - Country Girls
45 - Matt The Electrician - My Dog
46 - Matt Wertz - Carolina
47 - Jose Gonzales - Teardrop (Massive Attack cover)
48 - Umbrellas - The City Lights
49 - Gomez - How We Operate
50 - Donavon Frankenreiter - Lovely Day
DJ Green Lantern, Mike Shinoda, and Apathy came together to remix Bloc Party's Banquet, which gets a bit cheesy- but the beats are great, and "I pistol whip Tony and fuck Meadows Soprano always just made me laugh. Smoosh really impressed me with their second album this year, Free To Stay. For barely teen-aged musicians, it's an amazing album. Also, I've known of Matt The Electrician for a couple years now, but never really got into any of his songs- until a friend pointed me to his myspace page to listen to My Dog, and I've really grown to like the song since. It's got a great narrative, and a bit of social commentary to it as well. The Jose Gonzalez cover of Massive Attack's Teardrop (know to 90% of the world as "the House MD theme") got a lot of spins on my ipod this year- it just kept creeping into mixes here and there. Anyways, those were just a few thoughts on the tracks at the bottom of the top 50 this year. Take a listen for yourself, and come back next friday for the next set!
Squirrelfood.net Best of 2006 [50-35] (one weekend only)
About the image: in keeping with the "Best of 2006" theme, I picked a photo of my beloved Chelsea footballers claiming the Premiership trophy this year…looking forward to seeing this scene again next year!
Sia, whose Breathe Me made tracks this year is working on a new album- and a preview of this track is available online for a limited time from PopJustice.com.
Warren Hill found one of those one-in-a-million yard sale deals: an exceptionally rare pressing of The Velvet Underground's first record. He is currently auctioning off the rare find on eBay.
