The only Top Ten that matters

1. Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy (live, Top of the Pops)": Back when I watched TOTP they had Robson and Jerome on week after week. This year they had Lily Allen and this, in which Cap'n Cee-Lo turns out to be one of the great singers of our time. (You'd think I'd have suspected this earlier, but no.) So of course it's now that the Beeb cancels the show.
2. Dixie Chicks, "The Long Way Around": All that you can leave behind (only you can't really, it comes after you), or, Go North, Young Women! Would've been #1 if it had any politics in it.
3. Kocani Orkestar, "Siki Siki Baba": Where have I heard this before -- is it in a movie? Or maybe it just sounds inevitable, with its simple melismatic ooaahs not quite echoed by busy horns.
4. Wussy, "Airborne": The three chords are in ascending order: they never take off, but neither do they crash, which would at least be a resolution: they just make futile take-off attempt after attempt. Meanwhile, the couple both sing "Why in the world I hung around it's hard to say".
5. T-K.A.S.H., "How to Get Ass": This half-black, half-Pnoi associate of the Coup knows this song's more likely to get himself ass, as in assassinated, than the Prez. The track doesn't constitute treason, but I wouldn't like to be his lawyer.
6. Nelly Furtado, "Maneater": Doesn't her very existence signify enough? Well, no, but who needs meaning when you've got Timbaland?
7. Cham, "Ghetto Story": Keeping it neoreal. I need to find the remix with Akon, since it inspired the best writing about an individual song I've read this year.
8. Built to Spill, "Goin' Against Your Mind": Another attempt at a "Like a Hurricane", or maybe that should be a "Marquee Moon". Normal people can wait for the next live album; fans will eat this up.
9. Wussy, "Motorcycle": Because a careful escape isn't an escape at all.
10. E-40, "Tell Me When to Go": I've been waiting two years for an unstupid version of "Drop It Like It's Hot". This isn't it, but to its credit, it's stupid in a fun way.

Ten more: Christina Aguilera, "Ain't No Other Man"; The All-American Rejects, "Move Along"; Anthony Braxton, "Waltz for Debbie" and "Green Dolphin Street"; Beirut, "After the Curtain"; Camera Obscura, "If Looks Could Kill"; Nelly Furtado, "Promiscuous"; Jolie Holland, "Sascha"; The Little Willies, "Love Me"; Wussy, "Yellow Cotton Dress".