Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2008

Os editores e colaboradores do Pitchfork também também elegeram as 100 melhores faixas de 2008. Confira os detalhes no Pitchfork.


01: Hercules and Love Affair - "Blind" [DFA/Mute]

2008 was a weird year for dance singles. With a few notable exceptions, techno basically spent it on snooze, electro sounded limp and uninspired, and house failed to build on French touch with much of anything fresh. Indie rock did a pretty decent job of integrating dance music into the full-band aesthetic, while a few mainstream cheesemongers helped make up some of those losses (the otherwise awful Sam Sparro scored with "Black & Gold", and it says a lot that one of the year's best dance tracks -- "Pjanoo" -- came from Eric fucking Prydz), but it was hardly robust. Disco, however, avoided that malaise. While tracks from Aeroplane, Chaz Jankel, and Sally Shapiro (with Lindstrøm) helped maintain its profile, this cut from New York's Andy Butler was its undoubted high point. And thanks to its sturdy rhythm, infectious horn section, rumbling bassline, and an appropriately vampy vocal turn from Antony Hegarty (whose full-bodied belt, as it turns out, is perfectly suited for disco divadom), "Blind" cut across all sections and tastes. Between this, Cut Copy, and last year's singles winner, LCD Soundsystem, producer Tim Goldsworthy might want to think about having his mixing desk bronzed. --Mark Pytlik


02: Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal" [Sub Pop]

Back in January, "White Winter Hymnal" was an intriguing and inviting introduction to the Seattle quintet, when they had just ridden a wave of MySpace success and signed with local label Sub Pop. Nearly a year later, it remains their perfect, triumphant moment, even after they've opened for Blitzen Trapper and Wilco, headlined their own tours to ever-larger audiences, and invaded the lower rungs of the Billboard album charts. Just over two minutes long, the song contains every element that would make their Sun Giant EP and self-titled full-length debut so entrancing: the intricate vocal arrangements highlighting their evocative harmonies, the way Sklyer Skjelset's clean guitar lines shadow Robin Pecknold's wordless vocals, the Edward Gorey imagery of the lyrics, the heartbeat tattoo of the floor tom. Its meaning may remain unclear even after so many listens-- something about the passage of seasons, which seems apt-- but its spell remains as strong as ever. --Stephen M. Deusner


03: Hot Chip - "Ready for the Floor" [EMI]

When you first found out that a song called "Ready for the Floor" would be on the new Hot Chip album, it was already playing in your head, even before you actually heard the thing. But for me at least, it didn't turn out to be quite what I expected. Instead of a commanding call to shake it, "Ready for the Floor", while still a brilliant dance tune, turned out to be reserved and kind of sweet. But it's also hugely confident and quite possibly the best pure pop tune in the band's catalog. Consisting of several distinct hooks daisy-chained together, any one of which could conceivably be built out into a genius song of its own, "Ready for the Floor" has the strange effect of blurring lines between verse, bridge, and chorus. It moves from "Oh yeah, here's this great section" to "Ah, right, now it's that great section" to "You're my number one guy!" Even after a kajillion plays, it never got old. Songwriters of the future, take note. --Mark Richardson


04: Santogold - "L.E.S. Artistes" [Downtown]

With a synth-freaked production from Switch and echo-drenched patois, Santi White had to know her debut single, "Creator", would unleash a deluge of M.I.A. comparisons that could potentially dominate all discussion of her work from here on out. However, the upside to being saddled with that recurring reference point is that it freed her up to mine other sources with less critical scrutiny. In the case of her fantastic follow-up single "L.E.S. Artistes", she imagines what Tegan and Sara's "Walking With a Ghost" would've sounded like had it been covered by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs instead of the White Stripes-- and, in the process, she fashions her self-titled album with an opening mission statement that effectively establishes her genre-hopping, poptimist approach by attacking narrow-minded indie insularity from within.

White's singular résumé-- former punk-rock singer, one-time major-label A&R rep, and current song-doctor to the stars-- lends her a unique perspective to analyze Lower East Side scensterism, and her lyrics ("I'm trying to build a wall," "I don't need no one else") could be read as both a declaration of independence or a critique on the exclusionary politics that come with it. But that ambiguity is crucial to the song's success: In giving the middle-finger to the too-cool-for-school set, White ended up giving them a new favorite song to belt out in hipster hangouts around the world. --Stuart Berman


05: M83 - "Kim & Jessie" [Mute]

Even though M83's Anthony Gonzalez had already downshifted from making muscular, wall-of-synth workout records to barely there, ambient piano doodles, few people anticipated his next direction. Steeped in equal parts old school 4AD and vintage Thompson Twins, 2008's Saturdays = Youth was one of those rare albums branded with the 80s tag that, crazily, actually sounded like the 80s. With its apocalyptic electric drum hits, keening synths, icily detached vocals, and volcanic chorus, "Kim & Jessie" not only ranked as the album's best song, but also combined with the similarly convincing "Graveyard Girl" to make one of the year's most potent 1-2 punches. If you heard this in a John Hughes film, you wouldn't even flinch. --Mark Pytlik


06: Deerhunter - "Nothing Ever Happened" [Kranky/4AD]

Delayed gratification, meet instant pleasure. After Cryptograms' exquisite perversity, first Microcastle single "Nothing Ever Happened" was like the moment in the film A Hard Day's Night where the Beatles finally escape into the sun. All the usual Deerhunter signatures are there: Neu!-like propulsion, Sonic Youth-style iridescence, airy vocals, lyrics about dreaming. But the delay pedals and gloomy noise-murk are gone, replaced with festival-ready crowd-pleasers. Big dumb hooks! Guitar solos! Finger-tapping! It's the Deerhunter song you play for people who don't think they like Deerhunter. After the huge chorus hits twice in the first two minutes, the next three-plus promise a third chorus so convincingly you probably won't mind when it never, um, happens-- "Waiting for something, for nothing," Bradford Cox observes pointedly. Gangly guy gets most of the attention, but bassist Josh Fauver, guitarist Lockett Pundt, and co-founder/drummer Moses Archuleta (now joined live by guitarist Whitney Petty) are all co-equals on this one; hell, Fauver wrote most of it. --Marc Hogan


07: Cut Copy - "Hearts on Fire" [Modular/Interscope]

"There's something in the air tonight, a feeling that you have that could change your life," Dan Whitford sighs, just as a glimmering cloud of synth-beeps coalesces into a twerked-up house beat. Whitford never really specifies what that feeling that you've got that could change your life might be, and he doesn't have to; the track's starry-eyed pound does all the talking for him. "Hearts on Fire" is a love song, or maybe a crush song, or maybe a song about your hand brushing some girl's hand in a crowded club. This is a classic synth-pop jam, almost exactly the sort of classic synth-pop jam New Order used to churn out on the regular. And we've heard all this stuff before: those droll detuned guitars, those giddy club-diva whoops, those faraway sax-tootles. But we've rarely heard all this stuff click together into such a perfect machine of instant sugar-rush giddiness-- even from New Order. --Tom Breihan


08: Air France - "Collapsing at Your Doorstep" [Sincerely Yours]

"If you have anything in you, anything unique, what others might term as originality, it will come through whatever the component parts used in your future Number One are made up from," the KLF write in The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way. Air France threw a "Beach Party" on last year's #89 track, quoting Lisa Stansfield's "All Around the World". On "Collapsing at Your Doorstep", from this year's No Way Down EP, the Swedish duo create a fantasy island out of bird chirps, tropical percussion, strings, a little kid's voice (also sampled this year by should-be-beloved dubstep producer Zomby), and two other little kids' voices (from the 1980s TV show "Beauty and the Beast"). The results are as warm and transportive as the new West Coast sound of Gothenburg neighbors Studio, but also as catchy and wistfully innocent as the punk-minded pop of Sincerely Yours chiefs the Tough Alliance. Sort of like a dream? No. Better. --Marc Hogan


09: Portishead - "Machine Gun" [Island]

Listening to "Machine Gun" was one of the most purely satisfying physical experiences of 2008. I can't even count the number of times I let it batter me in the car at a volume that will undoubtedly prevent me from being able to hear my grandkids in 50 years. The music (if you can call it that) lives up to its title for sheer mechanistic repetitive punishment, while holed inside the barrage a wounded, despairing Beth Gibbons confesses her spiritual abandonment, the soulless determinism of the beats matching her own feelings of existential futility. --Joshua Love


10: Estelle [ft. Kanye West] - "American Boy" [Homeschool/Atlantic]

Young British singer Estelle struck gold with her first international single, which proved to be the perfect pre-summer hit. The velveteen quality of her personable, laid-back vocals synched brilliantly with Kanye West's on-top-form cameo appearance, and the deceptive simplicity of the music with its clubby electro vibe offered an open platform for Estelle's distinctive voice to take center stage. Refreshingly playful and uplifting, "American Boy" is an unpretentious and breezy party track that hit the right notes on both sides of the pond. --Mia Clarke

* Aos poucos, vou colocando os links abaixo...

11 David Byrne and Brian Eno - "Strange Overtones"
12 Cut Copy - "Out There on the Ice"
13 Kanye West - "Flashing Lights"
14 Lil Wayne - "A Milli"
15 Amadou and Mariam - "Sabali"
16 The Mae Shi - "Run to Your Grave"
17 Wiley - "Wearing My Rolex"
18 Women - "Black Rice"
19 Vivian Girls - "Where Do You Run To"
20 The Juan MacLean - "Happy House"
21 Hercules and Love Affair - "Hercules' Theme"
22 Santogold - "Lights Out"
23 Beyoncé - "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"
24 Gang Gang Dance - "House Jam"
25 The Hold Steady - "Constructive Summer"
26 The Walkmen - "In the New Year"
27 T.I. - "No Matter What"
28 No Age - "Eraser"
29 Vampire Weekend - "M79"
30 MGMT - "Time to Pretend"
31 Aeroplane [ft. Kathy Diamond] - "Whispers"
32 Crystal Castles - "Untrust Us"
33 Animal Collective - "Street Flash"
34 Fuck Buttons - "Sweet Love for Planet Earth"
35 Shearwater - "The Snow Leopard"
36 Arthur Russell - "I Couldn't Say It to Your Face"
37 Big Boi [ft. Raekwon and André 3000] - "Royal Flush"
38 TV on the Radio - "DLZ"
39 Kanye West - "Love Lockdown"
40 T.I. [ft. Rihanna] - "Live Your Life"
41 No Age - "Sleeper Hold"
42 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!"
43 Kelley Polar - "Entropy Reigns (In the Celestial City)"
44 Hot Chip - "One Pure Thought"
45 Antony and the Johnsons - "Shake That Devil"
46 M83 - "Graveyard Girl"
47 Alphabeat - "Fascination"
48 Spiritualized - "Soul on Fire"
49 Jay Reatard - "Always Wanting More"
50 Invisible Conga People - "Cable Dazed"
51 TV on the Radio - "Golden Age"
52 Ricardo Villalobos - "Enfants (Chants)"
53 Be Your Own Pet - "Becky"
54 Lykke Li - "Little Bit"
55 Usher (Feat. Young Jeezy) - "Love in This Club"
56 Vampire Weekend - "Oxford Comma"
57 High Places - "From Stardust to Sentience"
58 Annie - "I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me"
59 The Dodos - "Fools"
60 Crystal Castles - "Courtship Dating"
61 Q-Tip - "Gettin' Up"
62 The Tough Alliance - "Lucky"
63 The Very Best - "Kamphopo"
64 The Whitest Boy Alive - "Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)"
65 Max Tundra - "Which Song"
66 Lykke Li - "Dance, Dance, Dance"
67 Young Jeezy (Feat. Kanye West) - "Put On"
68 Four Tet - "Ribbons"
69 Portishead - "The Rip"
70 Rihanna - "Don't Stop the Music"
71 Sigur Rós - "Gobbledigook"
72 Fleet Foxes - "Blue Ridge Mountains"
73 Goldfrapp - "A&E"
74 Wale - "The Kramer"
75 Little Boots - "Stuck on Repeat"
76 Justice - "DVNO (Radio Edit)"
77 Telepathe - "I Can't Stand It"
78 Frightened Rabbit - "The Modern Leper"
79 Ida Maria - "Oh My God"
80 The Bug (Feat. Warrior Queen) - "Poison Dart"
81 Love Is All - "Wishing Well"
82 Solange - "Sandcastle Disco"
83 Titus Andronicus - "Upon Viewing Brueghel's 'Landscape With the Fall of Icarus'"
84 Beach House - "Gila"
85 Osborne - "16th Stage"
86 Los Campesinos! - "Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks"
87 The Veronicas - "Untouched"
88 Low Motion Disco - "Things Are Gonna Get Easier"
89 Ponytail - "Celebrate the Body Electric (It Came From an Angel)"
90 Sic Alps - "Message From the Law"
91 Jamie Lidell - "All I Wanna Do"
92 Born Ruffians - "I Need a Life (Four Tet Remix)"
93 Atlas Sound - "River Card"
94 WHY? - "Fatalist Palmistry"
95 Friendly Fires (Feat. Au Revoir Simone) - "Paris (Aeroplane Remix)"
96 Empire of the Sun - "Walking on a Dream"
97 Buraka Som Sistema (Feat. M.I.A. and DJ Znobia) - "Sound of Kuduro"
98 The Magnetic Fields - "The Nun's Litany"
99 Final Fantasy - "The Butcher"
100 Girls - "Hellhole Ratrace"

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