The Jack White “Where The Fuck Is The Fucking Bass” Award For The Pretty Great Song That Would Be An All-Time Classic If It Had A Fucking Bass Line goes to “Stillness Is The Move” by Dirty Projectors. Because, damn, just imagine this song with a thumping bass groove to counter those airy vocals and the great guitar hook. It needs BASS.1

On the bright side, there is a llama in the video.

The N’Sync Memorial Award For Shameless Use Of Pop Formulae goes to “Evacuate the Dancefloor” by Cascada, a song that so bluntly says “this is going to be a hit dance single” – complete with slightly incongruous use of rap as a bridge – that they probably should have just called it that, but despite all that it is still a really great dance song. (As Paul O’Brien once said of another Cascada song, “By thirty seconds in, it’s as subtle as a brick to the face. And then, at the one minute mark, it reaches for a second brick.”)

This song also wins the “most likely to get used multiple times on So You Think You Can Dance in multiple genres” award.

The U2 Brand Award For Best U2 Song By U2 goes to “Magnificent” by U2 and Blackberry.

The Fuck You Your Hyped Song Is Shit And I Am Not Embedding A Youtube For It Award goes to “So Fine” by Telepathe (sounds like every hipster cliche rolled up into one terrible synthesized ball) AND “Happy Up Here” by Royksopp (the techno-pop equivalent of wallpaper) AND “Blame It” by Jamie Foxx (T-Pain: See what you have wrought? Curl up in a ball and die, T-Pain. Curl up in a ball and die).

The Award For Having The Sake Of An Award So I Can Mention The Song Award goes to “One Day” by The Juan Maclean.

The Hip-Hop Is Not Dead Despite What You Might Think Award goes to “ABCs” by K’naan. His flow is sick, and although I haven’t given the new Mos Def a listen yet I’m willing to call Troubadour the best hip-hop album of the year unless Common manages to sneak out his next album before the year ends, in which case there will be a big rhyme-fight IN MY DREAMS.

The Whitest Person In Dance Music Award goes to Ilan Kidron of the Potbelleez, seen here in “Trouble Trouble.”

His attempts to be cool at the rave here are whiter than Jean-Claude Van Damme showing off his moves in the video for “Straight To My Feet” by Hammer and Deion Sanders, the previous standard-bearer for white people trying to get down in the whitest possible way. Which is a shame, because in every other respect the Potbelleez are goddamned fantastic.

The Kelly Clarkson “Idol Sings Song That Is Actually Very Good” Award goes to “Battlefield” by Jordin Sparks. It takes about forty seconds for the song to hit greatness. And it’s really annoying that it is a great song, because, seriously. Jordin Sparks.2 Karmically, Jordin Sparks is owed nothing more than inoffensive pap a la your Duffs or Cyrusses or your Jonii. It’s not like she wrote this or anything; some songwriter thought “hey, get someone with good pipes to sing “A BATTLEFIELD” over and over again and it will be amazing for reasons no one can adequately explain,” and they were right.

Fuck, why does that song have to be so goddamn good?

The Thank God The Best Song Of The Year So Far Has Nothing To Do With Jordin Sparks Award goes to “Moth’s Wings” by Passion Pit. “Sleepyhead” is getting all the hype and play, but this one is better: anthemic and ambitious and sweeping and just great.

1. How low can it go? Only a brother knows. [↩]
2. File under: annoying purity ring bullshit. [↩]

On this Tuesday I bring you the most delicious of internet meats: animated beat poetry.

The Cat Piano

If you aren’t familiar with Nick Cave, well, once you have recovered from the resultant therapy and been re-introduced to society, let me say only this: the man can make a kazoo sound badass.