OK, let's just go ahead and shock this monkey while I've still got some momentum. So remember how when I got to Candy Hearts, I mentioned that it wouldn't be the only case of bands having two songs on this list back-to-back? Bayside, anyone? (Don't mind if I do).
10. Bayside - "Mary"
From the band's fine Vacancy album. I'm not sure who Mary was, other than a friend who just might have been a house-bound shut-in (a goal I'm getting closer and closer to achieving for myself), but our good friend Mr. Raneri made a great song out of her. Mary kind of reminds me of a friend of mine. I suspect she deserved better (out of life, not out of the song).
9. Metal Mother - "Prism"
A great track by a virtually unknown band from L.A. I have to credit my old friends at WUSB for turning me on to this one. I don't remember whose show I heard it on, but I doubt I would ever have been aware of it otherwise. It's a mid-tempo electronic rock ballad with a fine female lead vocal.
8. Eisley - "A Song for the Birds"
Overall I didn't love the 2017 I'm Only Dreaming album as much as previous Eisley LPs. I really missed sisters Chauntelle and Stacy backing Sherri DuPree up on vocals. Having said that, though, when Sherri and husband Max Bemis work together there is a magic that happens. (Check out their side project Perma if you don't believe me). And this is just a great, nicely structured pop rock song.
7. 888 - "Critical Mistakes"
888 is an alternative electro band from Denver, CO. This is a terrific track about regretting the bigger things you messed up on in life. (And the video, which the band collaborated on with The Forgiveness Project, a UK-based charity group focused on forgiveness and alternatives to revenge, is an emotional gut punch. Forgiveness is a theme that will be touched on again in my #1 song.)
6. The Decemberists - "Make You Better"
This is probably the best track The Decemberists have ever released. It's a slow, slightly creepy, love song full of emptiness and yearning. Kudos to these guys for being the third band to have two entries on this list.
5. Bad Lip Reading - "Carl Poppa"
What can you say about a decade where my fifth favorite song is by an anonymous Los Angeles producer who puts together video clips on YouTube that make fun of popular films, television shows, political figures and athletes by doing hilariously incorrect lip reads. This song features Carl Grimes of The Walking Dead and a host of singing zombies rapping to ridiculous effect. It's surprisingly catchy. Because he flows! La Jiggy Jar Jar Doo!
4. Jeremy Gilchrist - "Letter From the 21st"
This track is a musical love letter by Gilchrist, an anti-folker who has lived all up and down the East Coast of the U.S., to the next century, where he sends his well wishes that they do things better than we did. It's a quiet and beautiful song.
3. Gary Numan - "My Name Is Ruin"
Gary Numan, the man who is best known for the eighties hit "Cars", has taken to making very Trent-Reznor-influenced industrial rock these days. The little girl with the big voice singing backup on this track is his (then) 11-year-old daughter Persia. This song was a bit of an eye opener to me, as I never realized Numan was capable of making this kind of music.
2. Nightwish - "The Greatest Show On Earth"
This 24-minute track is probably the most exciting piece of music I've heard in decades. It hearkens back to the great extended progressive rock classics of the seventies, such as "Thick As a Brick", or "Close to the Edge". It combines metal, goth, uilleann pipes and operatic female vocals. Lead singer Floor Jensen is magnificent here in her first LP as the lead singer of this much-respected Finnish symphonic metal band. Watch one of the live videos of this one to get some sense of the elation of the crowd hearing this performed in person, and then for bonus points, watch the cover version put together by a twenty-something woman named Fernanda Alba that brings together young musicians from all over the globe to collaborate on a song that they obviously all adore.
1. Antigone Rising - "My Town"
Nothing could have beat out the drama of Nightwish track above except for the simple sincerity and beauty of this country-rock track. I like songs about how much life sucks as much as anyone, but this is about how it doesn't have to suck when people get it right. ("In my town/We give second chances/We're hopeless romantics like that"). I don't know if Sea Cliff, NY is really this idyllic, but I want to believe it is. The Henderson sisters have been making great music for decades now, and singer Nini Camps has taken their work to a whole other level. Bless them all for this treasure of a song. It is a fully worthy #1 Song of the Decade.
So that's my list. Hope you liked it. We did get a bit of a variety of genres here, which was nice. For a YouTube playlist, in reverse order, of all 30 songs, click on Long Island Music Guy Top 30 Songs of the 2010s.
See you soon.
