I used to have a thing about my musical tastes. I so desperately wanted them to be cool, or at the very least be something that only a handful of people were privy to. (I was tempted to say ‘hip’ instead of ‘privy,’ but you can’t spell ‘hipster’ without ‘hip,’ and God knows I’m not hip enough to be a hipster.) My friend Kathi, she has obscenely cool taste in music. I’m surprised she’s friends with me, since I surely bring her cool factor down by a good 20 points.

Then a couple of years ago, I realized – who the hell cares? A great song is a great song, and it doesn’t really matter how popular – or unpopular – it is. I can’t tell you how freeing that was, and I have a very well-known blogger to thank for it. When she admitted to me in private how much she enjoyed a band at Lollapalooza, only to dismiss them a few days later in her column, I realized that it was completely pointless to pander to hipster elitism. You’re being dishonest with yourself, and the hipsters are only going to turn on you in the end, anyway.

So I turned a blind eye to what was a pop song versus what was a “pop” song, as it were, and realizing that there was no distinction between the two made everything soooooo much easier. So here we are in 2009, and as part of our recap of the best music the decade had to offer, I have to try to apply this whole revisionist history viewpoint to the entire decade, which is no mean feat, to say the least. It therefore makes sense that assembling one big-ass list of songs will look like the work of someone with multiple personalities, so instead they are cut up into bite-sized lists for easier consumption, with YouTube links for the uninitiated.

Top 10 Modern Rock Songs of the 2000s
10. “Do You Want To,” Franz Ferdinand
“Take Me Out” was the bigger hit, but this song swings like Austin Powers in the jungle. Nice riff on “My Sharona” in the break, too.

9. “Galvanize,” Chemical Brothers
Push the button; shake that booty.

8. “The Bleeding Heart Show,” The New Pornographers
What the world needs now, is more hey la, hey la’s.

7. “Sometime Around Midnight,” Airborne Toxic Event
Suck it, Pitchfork. These guys are good. You’re just too far up your own asses to admit it.

6. “American Idiot,” Green Day
The only sad thing about this song is that Joey Ramone didn’t live long enough to hear it.

5. “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” Arctic Monkeys
I love the way these guys riff on Duran Duran lyrics, and then act as if they made it all up themselves. As the old adage says, talent borrows, but genius steals. And for the record, we don’t care for sand, either.

4. “Chelsea Dagger,” The Fratellis
Best drunken barroom chorus since “Tubthumping.”

3. “Laura,” Scissor Sisters
For all the progress that was made this decade in terms of hip hop and black culture becoming more accepted on pop radio, it appears that the gays still have a long road ahead of them. Pity.

2. “Never Miss a Beat,” Kaiser Chiefs
They opened their set at Lollapalooza with this. The only other band to grab me by the throat like that with their opening song is, well, My #1…

1. “Knights of Cydonia,” Muse
September 11, 2006, Columbus, Ohio. Muse opens their set with this song, blows the roof off the place.

Top 10 Pop Songs of the 2000s
10. “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” Kylie Minogue
Proof that even the most alt of alt rockers love Kylie: The Flaming Lips covered this song.

9. “Drops of Jupiter,” Train
They did a great job recreating the Elton John sound. Too bad they didn’t have Bernie Taupin write the lyrics. Fried chicken? Ugh.

8. “Music,” Madonna
I watched this song take one of those sports bars that has basketball courts and bowling alleys, and turn every one of its patrons into dancing fools.

7. “Is It Any Wonder?,” Keane
Dogged by some for its similarity to U2, but when was the last time U2 wrote something this bouncy?

6. “Shut Up and Let Me Go,” The Ting Tings
I’ll shut up, Katie, but there’s no way I’m letting you go.

5. “Chasing Pavements,” Adele
It took two Grammy wins for this song to finally crack the Top 40. (*shakes head in disbelief*)

4. “Hey Ya,” Outkast
Andre 3000 finally picks up a guitar to write a song, and this, THIS, is the first thing that comes out. Mother, fucker.

3. “Crazy,” Gnarls Barkley
When my mom comes home from a trip to see my brother on the east coast and tells me about a song she heard by a band whose name is similar to some celebrity or other, I know that said celebrity knockoff band has struck a chord.

2. “99 Problems,” Jay-Z
“You crazy for this one, Rick!” Actually, Jay-Z, you have it the other way around. You crazy if you make this song with anyone other than Rick Rubin.

1. “Umbrella,” Rihanna
It was at least a year before I made the effort to find out what the hubub was about this damn “Umbrella” song. And then I heard it. Holy shit, this song pisses genius.

Big in the UK
7. “LDN,” Lily Allen
No guy wants to hear his ex tell the world what a lousy lover he is, but is there a man alive that doesn’t want a shot at Lily Allen?

6. “Nearer Than Heaven,” Delays
My favorite new musical expression of the decade: skyscraper, used to describe a song with soaring melodies. And this puppy’s the Empire State Building.

5. “Boyfriend,” Alphabeat
That this album didn’t even see the light of day in the States shows just how myopic our views of pop music have become.

4. “Digital Love,” Daft Punk
Keytar!

3. “Plug It In,” Basement Jaxx featuring J.C. Chasez
Come on, bang that head in the chorus. You know you want to.

2. “Never Be Lonely,” The Feeling
B-b-b-baby, this song is c-c-c-crazy catchy.

1. “Kids,” Robbie Williams & Kylie Minogue
Another song I thought had a shot at cracking the US charts. Funky verses, slammin’ choruses, what’s not to love? Robbie Williams, apparently. He never gained the traction here that other UK singers did. Strange.

Best Pop Songs You Never Heard
Of course, you probably have heard most of these songs, but I didn’t have another category to place them in, so they’re going here instead.

“Nice,” Duran Duran
Easily the band’s best song since “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone.” Anyone who likes Rio but has since given up on the band, go listen to this at once.

“I Believe She’s Lying,” Jon Brion
Los Angeles’ resident mad genius of pop finally gets his 1997 album Meaningless released in early 2001. Power pop fans proceed to lose their minds. And can you blame them? Listen to that drum track. It’s like the piano solo to “In My Life,” gone drum ‘n bass.

“Mine and Yours,” David Mead
If the video I linked to is any indicator, this was a big hit with the Japanese karaoke crowd. Go figure.

“She’s Got My Number,” Semisonic
Where an otherwise straightforward pop band goes off the deep end into delicious, melancholy strangeness. One of my bigger interview thrills was getting to tell Dan Wilson how much I loved this song.

“My Name Is Love,” Rob Dickinson
Catherine Wheel singer turns down the distortion, ramps up the harmonies. Again, the word ‘skyscraper’ comes to mind.

“Can We Still Be Friends?,” Mandy Moore
Dan Wilson reference #2: he sings backing vocals on this shockingly good Todd Rundgren cover. People have scoffed at the notion of Ryan Adams marrying someone like Mandy. Not me.

“io (This Time Around),” Helen Stellar
Let it not be said that nothing good came from “Elizabethtown,” as it introduced me to this beautifully spacey song.

“Buildings and Mountains,” Republic Tigers
Truly a band out of time, which is exactly why I love them. I wonder if the reason A-ha is breaking up is because they heard this song and thought, “Damn, they do us better than we do.”

“The End of the World,” Gin Blossoms
Most bands that take 11 years between albums come back as a pale imitation of their former selves, but the Gin Blossoms’ 2006 album Major Lodge Victory was a damn fine little record. This one appeals to my not-so-inner Beatlemaniac.

“Fragile,” Kerli
This Estonian princess is an odd little bird, but that’s what I like about her. This ballad closes her debut album with quite the quiet storm.

“Road to Recovery,” Midnight Juggernauts
Another band whose lack of success has me scratching my head. It’s the best dance album Peter Murphy never made, or the best rock album Daft Punk never made, one of the two. Or both.

My sincere apologies to the following bands, who also deserve mention:
Divine Comedy, Noisettes, Pet Shop Boys, Doves, Rialto, Beck, White Stripes, Rufus Wainwright, Kenna, Mylo, Pete Yorn, Apples in Stereo, Hard-Fi, The Thorns, Rock Kills Kid, The Hours, Derek Webb, Glen Hansard, Aimee Mann, Kirsty MacColl, Gorillaz, Air, Charlotte Sometimes, Mika, Def Leppard, Coldplay, Chicane, Elastica, XTC, and about 50 others.

The fact of the matter is this: by the time you read this, I will have reviewed a sum total of only nine albums which were released in 2008. It’s a little sad, really. Once upon a time, the only thing I wrote about was music, and now it’s been relegated to a distant second place. Not that I don’t love how much my gig as a TV critic has taken off in recent years, but do I miss the days when I would listen to music all the live long day? You bet. (Ed. note: So do I.) But although I no longer have the time to sit down, absorb an album, and write a lengthy treatise about it, that’s not to say that I’m not still paying attention to my favorite artists and what they’re doing these days…and once in a blue moon, I even dare to fall in love with a new artist. You will definitely, however, see a trend toward the folks to whose music has been making me happy quite a few years now. It’s true: I’m old, I’m set in my ways, and if it doesn’t sound familiar, then, frankly, I just can’t be bothered. Good thing, then, that several of my all-time favorite artists came through for me in 2008.

1. Elvis Costello and the Imposters: Momofuku
After several not-bad albums, Elvis finally comes through and produces his first full-fledged classic in quite some time. Whether it’s because he’s been energized by the Imposters (two former Attractions and an ex-Cracker member) or enthused about having a vocal supergroup providing backing vocals (Jenny Lewis, Johnathan Rice, Dave Scher, and Jonathan Wilson), the end result is the most enjoyable EC effort in ages, and it only gets better with each listen.

2. The Fireman: Electric Arguments
There’s a very good chance that I’ll be called out for giving this record too much credit too soon, given that, as I type this sentence, my review hasn’t even gone live on the site yet, but I’m going out on a limb and listing it in my #2 spot nonetheless. It’s always easy for me to slot a Paul McCartney release in my top 10, but, really, this is a fascinating album that finds Sir Paul in a loose and freewheeling form that we haven’t heard from him in decades. I’ve spun it a dozen times in less than a month, and I foresee many more in the future.

3. Brent Cash: How Will I Know if I’m Awake
There are several surprising things about Brent Cash and his debut album. For one thing, despite how it sounds, it was not recorded in the 1960s during the height of the sunshine pop era. For another, although it was released on a label best known for putting albums by the Pearlfishers, Cash is not from Scotland but, rather, from Athens, GA. But, really, what’s most important about How Will I Know if I’m Awake is that it’s a beautifully breezy concoction of pop tunes that blends the best bits of Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Webb, and any other classic ‘60s tunesmith you care to mention.

4. Coldplay: Viva la Vida
Fuck you guys, I like Coldplay. Maybe I wouldn’t if I actually listened to the radio and had heard the title track of this record played to death, but I didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, Chris Martin writes some damned fine pop tunes, and as long as Coldplay keeps recording them, I’ll probably keep buying them.

5. Panic at the Disco: Pretty. Odd.
I know I’m not the only one on the Bullz-Eye staff to have been blindsided by just how good this record was. Who would thought a bunch of guys who were big enough tools to stick an exclamation point in the middle of their band’s name had it in them to put together a modern-day approximation of Queen? (Okay, so it’s not a precise translation, but, hey, it’s better than the album that the real Queen put out this year.) “Nine in the Afternoon” was the single to beat this year, and the rest of the album comes surprisingly close to living up to that song’s potential.

6. The Cure: 4:13 Dream
No, it’s not the best Cure album you’ve ever heard, but it borrows a lot of bits from a lot of really good Cure albums. As a result, the feeling of familiarity makes for a very comfortable listen.

7. R.E.M.: Accelerate
No, it’s not the best R.E.M. album you’ve ever heard. But it’s the best R.E.M. album in a hell of a long time.

8. Lindsey Buckingham: Gift of Screws
For whatever reason, I just never cottoned to Lindsey’s last record, Under the Skin, but I’m sure the biggest issue was that I was really looking for another Out of the Cradle. While Gift of Screws might not hit those lofty heights, it certainly came a heck of a lot closer.

9. Jack McManus: Either Side of Midnight
Throw me a comparison to Ben Folds, Billy Joel, and Elton John, and you’ll have my attention every time. As soon as I heard Jack McManus’s single, “Bang on the Piano,” I was hooked, and the rest of the record – including the title cut and “You Think I Don’t Care” – is just as much piano-pumping fun.

10. Asia: Phoenix / Journey: Revelation
Our man Jeff Giles said it best when he first put on “Never Walk Away,” the opening song from Journey’s first album to feature the band’s new lead singer, Arnel Pineda: “I think I can feel my hair trying to feather itself as I listen to this.” Similarly, my own follicles were trying to form a mullet upon my spinning “Never Again,” the first track on the first Asia album to feature all four original members in almost 25 years. Even if neither album was necessarily 100% genius, there was so much good-natured enthusiasm packed into both records to make them some of the most enjoyable listening this year.

Say what you will about how eMusic isn’t the deal it used to be, but I never have any problem finding enough great new music to use on my credits each month. It might not be quite as user-friendly as iTunes, but it’s getting closer all the time.

1. ABC: Traffic
I’m probably more fond of this record than anything else that I downloaded from the site because I listened to it incessantly in the weeks leading up to my attending the Regeneration tour, but it’s still a very solid outing from Martin Fry and company.

2. The Last Shadow Puppets: The Age of Understatement
I didn’t know anything about Martin Kane from the Rascals (UK), but that’s okay, because all I really needed to know about this band is that it also featured Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. This’ll hold me over nicely ‘til the next Monkeys record.

3. The Snoopy Lads: A Ruby in Blue
Not that Marc Almond isn’t still recording (because he is, thank you very much), but if he wasn’t, then the Snoopy Lads would be your next best bet for slinky synth-pop goodness. Shame about the name, though.

4. Ladyhawke Ladyhawke
eMusic sold me on this one by the pull quote on the download page for the album: “Nervy New Zealander offers a dozen-plus rewrites of ‘Bette Davis Eyes.’ And, yes, that’s a good thing.” It sure is. There’s early-‘80s girl-pop goodness galore here.

5. Sparks: Exotic Creatures of the Deep
Okay, I admit it: I got into Sparks because Morrissey likes them. But then when I realized that they also wrote a song that Siouxise and the Banshees had covered (“This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us”), I figured it was the icing on the cake. I don’t know where this album stands in the overall pantheon of Sparks albums. I just know it has a track entitled “I Can’t Believe You Would Fall for All the Crap in This Song,” and that’s good enough for me.

1. “Goodbye Mr. A,” The Hoosiers
2. “Wow,” Kylie Minogue
3. “What’s Victoria’s Secret?,” Rick Springfield
4. “Pretty Amazing Grace,” Neil Diamond
5. “Spiralling,” Keane
6. “I Keep Faith,” Billy Bragg
7. “Oranges and Apples,” Trash Can Sinatras
8. “Stamp Your Feet,” Donna Summer
9. “Fascination,” Alphabeat
10. “Sensual Seduction,” Snoop Dogg

Bauhaus: Going Away White
True, they hadn’t recorded together as a band since 1983’s Burning from the Inside, but given that they’d successfully managed to reunite and tour throughout most of 2005 and 2006, hopes were high that they were older, wiser, and able to put together one last classic album. They were not.

The Pete Best Band: Haymans Green
When I started hearing reports about what a pleasure Haymans Green was, I had to check it out, and I was not disappointed. You will not be surprised to hear that it’s pointedly Beatle-esque in its sound, and, okay, maybe my expectations were low, but I really enjoyed it. Who would’ve thought that the drummer who got kicked out of the Beatles would produce a better album this year than the one who replaced him?