Best of 2004: Songs #10-6

Okay, it's about damn time I wrapped up this whole "Best of 2004" thing I was doing. It's probably a pretty good idea to finish it off soon since it's ... um... almost 2006! Sheesh! I've never slacked this much on a story feature ever! I think it's just too difficult, trying to come up with enough to say about each song to make it worthy of a whole post.

So here I am, throwing in the towel, kinda. I'm going to blast out the next five all in this here post -- numbers 10 down to 6. Ready? Here we go!

10. If You Knew by Neko Case, from The Tigers Have Spoken: A great original song from Neko about the kind of woman she isn't. I loved that when I saw her live, she said if this was her in the song, she'd definitely not be this accomodating to a guy who's head has been turned. Great soulful, sad song. Classic country sound.

9. Soulful Shade of Blue by Neko Case, from The Tigers Have Spoken: If you thought If You Knew was soulful country, let this one slap you around the face a couple of times. This is a Buffy Sainte-Marie song, made Neko's own. Buffy's lyrics are amazing, and Neko's singing quite frankly just blows me away. Dang I love this song.

8. Sadie's Song by Adrienne Young, from Plow To the End of the Row: I love the rediscovery of old songs through new eyes. This is a new song about the namesake of the murder ballad, Little Sadie. I heard that song mostly from Doc Watson, and I think I remember somewhere that he was the main person to repopularize it. Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott do one helluva good version on their Real Time album too. Anyway, Adrienne's song won her the Chris Austin songwriting contest at Merlefest a couple of years ago.

7. Portions For Foxes by Rilo Kiley, from More Adventurous: This is the first song I ever from Rilo Kiley. I was driving home from work one night very late, and they were playing this on WKNC. I called the station to ask who it was, and immediately bought it on the iTunes Music Store when I got home. "And the talking leads to touching, then the touching leads to sex... and then there is no mystery left... and it's bad news, I don't blame you... I do the same thing, I get lonely too..."

6. I Didn't Mind It All/Hey Ya by Roman Candle, from A Brief Introduction (EP): Either one of these songs could be high up in the best of 2004 list, but together on one track they make #6. The first song is a Skip Matheny original, very very damn bluesy, with possibly the greatest single line in a love song ever -- "The woman I love, you know she looked me right in the eye... and said 'I'll have all your children if you get me a coffee and a piece of pie' and I said 'fine...'" Funny, sweet, quite agreeable. And "Hey Ya" is a light-hearted remake of the Outkast superhit that's well worth listening to. It's an acoustic version, much slower, but still rockin'. (And for the record, I love the original too. I didn't get the completely suffocating radio carpet bomb, so I never got sick of it.)

Man, it's odd how much your tastes change from the beginning of the year to the end of it. I disagree with myself a little on some of these picks, now that I've had almost an entire year to listen to them and give them more context. But still, all these songs rock, it's just the ordering that might give a little were I to do it all over again.