So after three weeks of counting down, here lies the final 25 songs on my top 200 of the 2000s countdown.
I’ve had so much fun doing this - going down various memory lanes as I endlessly tinkered. I’ll reiterate that in the end, the list means nothing more than 200 tokens of my past ten years, and is not meant as any true sonic evaluation of the 2000s. These final 25 songs represent a wide variety of things, from some of the catchiest pop songs ever created and thus the primary soundtrack to most moments that at the time didn’t seem to really matter (aka those taking place at the gym or, post-2002, on homosexual-infused dance floors), to songs that clearly became anthems for certain points in my life and thus can instantly bring me back to people, places and things that have come and gone over the past ten years.
Fascinatingly enough, while my future best of 2000s list for television and film are likely to include maybe 1 or 2 Canadian entries out of 200 (“Degrassi: The Next Generation” for TV, “Away From Her,” “The Fast Runner” and maybe “C.R.A.Z.Y.” for film), this list was stacked to the nines with my fellow Canucks. Six of the top twenty-five are care of Canadians, and while I’m too lazy to do a full-on count, I’d guess a good quarter of the top 200 is as well. I just wanted to note that for no reason other than national pride in popular culture is an extreme rarity for me and I needed to express it.
Anyway… I cannot count the times I’ve moved around this list but I think I’m pretty happy with what’s finally here. Even if 13 of the top 25 come from a two year period: 2003-2004 (years that are intensely over-represented on the list in general). I don’t know what that means, really. It could simply be more to-my-liking music was created in those years… or that, being 19 and 20 years old, they were the years I was most impressionable. I’ll also easily give 2003 and 2004 the distinctions of being very least favourite years of the past decade, so perhaps overdramatics and angst equal stronger relationships with song? Whatever the case, I suggest to anyone to a similar re-tracking of their past decade in music because - I know this sounds overdramatic in itself - but I found it to be a really therapeutic and reflective exercise… More than any other medium-to-human relationship, I reckon music can tell us the tales of our own lives. Mine, most certainly in a nutshell, is after the jump.
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Listomania continues, but this time its on the main indieWIRE site. Check out my rundown of the worst Oscar snubs of the past decade here.
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