I copy good ideas.

So, the Something to Talk About blog on this very site (look to your right), posted their 25 most listened to songs of the year. So I got lazy, and decided to do the exact same thing. Only my iTunes got leveled around June, so I decided to go with the just as great Last.fm, which reminds me that the best song of all time is Kool and the Gang's "Summer Madness". Which they are still right.

Anyways, here's the list, complete with nice explanations as to why I loved such music in 2008. I'd also like to note that I'm not huge on repetition, I tend to get bored with most anything after a few listens. Also, this is overall, not taking into account the year of the music itself, which already explains #1. So that might explain a few of these.

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cheated Hearts - 26
I find that around one month a year, for the past five years or so, I think Karen O is the best rock vocalist of her time. She tends to bring a lot of elements into one package: unabashed sex appeal (in that odd "she looks strange" sort of way), bravado, and a sense of her being in pure control. Though, I think I end up not knowing what I'm talking about, as the best songs from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are when they're their most vulnerable, like "Maps" and "Cheated Hearts".

2. Panda Bear - Take Pills - 23
This is the best anti-drug song Brian Wilson never recorded. Panda Bear IS 60s Brian Wilson, and he more or less said what Wilson probably should have done in his life, which is to not take pills because he didn't need them.

3. White Williams - New Violence - 22
This is really dancey. I don't think White Williams had any gargantuan ideas with "New Violence", except that he wanted to make a truly modern retro dance song. And it worked!

4. Metallica - All Nightmare Long - 21
I think I'm one of exactly sixteen metalheads who didn't get bored with Death Magnetic after early November, but this is probably the most well-built up of the album's monster tracks, and the one that is easily the most interesting, I find.

5. Radiohead - Bodysnatchers - 19
I'm not going to be one of those people who continues to extol the good virtues of In Rainbows, but it's a good record that really helps if you're in the "Radiohead mood." (I.E. If you feel in the mood for slightly dreary, slightly incomprehensible music.)

6. Metallica - The Unforgiven III - 17
This is the second best of the three "Unforgiven" tracks, and the third different definition Metallica gives of what makes someone "unforgiven", which is guess here means that you're going around in circles on a boat.

7. Beck - Chemtrails - 17
I think everyone slept on Modern Guilt, and there was a decent reason for it, as it was a bit too short and a good record that never touched great. Still "Chemtrails" is one of the more intriguing songs Beck's done in the last five years, probably matching up -- but not eclipsing -- "E-Pro" in its awesome simplicity.

8. Panda Bear - Bros - 17
This is 1960s Brian Wilson on an acid trip...well, more of an acid trip, which is funny because Panda Bear seems to really not like drugs.

9. Panda Bear - Comfy In Nautica - 16
This is the opener to Person Pitch, and it really gives you what you're in for on the onset. A lot of noise repeated over and over into something that manages to turn into a well-structured song, and proves that all of these electronic acts trying to pass on just doing sloppy noise and saying it's music should maybe look at Panda Bear's records.

10. Ladytron - I'm Not Scared - 16
I didn't realize the shift into dark gothic electronica until right now. Ladytron's got a little bit of a noise mix with NIN, oddly, and I think anyone that appreciates "Discipline" will notice the massive similarities between NIN and Ladytron's work, especially the one this track comes off of, the album Velocifero.

11. Nine Inch Nails - Discipline - 16
This year, Nine Inch Nails gave away a whole album for free, a 10-track record called The Slip. It subsequently was pretty throwaway for the most part, but "Discipline" was a pretty killer song, and the fact that this song is currently available for free means that you'd be silly to at least not take advantage of it.

12. Caribou - Sandy - 16
Caribou is one of the few acts in music that I perceive as making beautiful music, because they pretty well do. But this doesn't really explain why they're great, or why a Canadian electronic artist is a fine musician. Ah well. You'll just have to figure that out for yourself.

13. Beck - Profanity Prayers - 15
This was also a simple song on Modern Guilt that worked in spades. And any chorus that asks who will answer profanity prayers, which I guess is making fun of religion or Beck being goofy, is a thumbs up for me.

14. !!! - Sweet Life - 15
I listened to this song constantly last year. For some reason, I thought Nic Offer was on to some brilliance when he did a chorus that consists of exactly four letters. Which in fairness, it's still a brilliant idea. And this song totally talks about the vapidity of institutions like high school. Or something. I think I just like that the chorus feels like an explosion of sound.

15. Fujiya & Miyagi - Transparent Things - 15
I couldn't tell you much about why I enjoy this band, either. After all, their best two songs ("Ankle Injuries", "Collarbone") have almost nursery rhyme levels of rhyming. So it must be the guitars. Yeah, that will work as a reason for now.

16. The Bronx - False Alarm - 15
This year was the year that I realized that I secretly love punk rock. After being buried by crappy efforts from Green Day and a lot of other pop-punk acts that take their cues from Green Day (All-American Rejects, Taking Back Sunday, etc.), I managed to get a hold of Against Me's 2007 release New Wave. Despite the fact that it's their "sellout" record, it's exact what a "smart" punk record should be. And then there's The Bronx who, along with Tennessee's Jay Reatard, knows how to make a song that rocks but has pop sensibilities.

17. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow - 15
You wanna know why this is one of the greatest rock songs of all time? Pipe organ. And plus, they have cred. They made the label spend nearly a million dollars to record the album this track came from, the early 90s classic Loveless. And then I mention for kicks and jollies that this label, Britain's Creation Records, neared on bankruptcy when this album sold poorly, but were bailed out by this new group called Oasis.

18. Caribou - Desiree - 14
As with the previous Caribou song, this is so well composed, but here there's a wonderful buildup that sort of...well...it explodes midway through the song. And it's gorgeous.

19. TV on the Radio - Crying - 14
TV on the Radio managed to make a happier album with the same bleak subject matter. Or I guess it's bleak subject matter since everyone seems to think that Return to Cookie Mountain was the fear of the "Bush Years" in record form. Anyways, this song adds a lot of funk, as Dear Science as a whole adds a lot more nuances that really make songs better, like the 60s surfer pop chant that surrounds "Halfway Home".

20. White Williams - Violator - 14
Also really dancey. But in a more laid back and cool way. White Williams and his randomness and love of the 1980s is just lovely.

21. Caribou - Sundialing - 13
This runs at a nice click. It's one of the few six-minute songs I heard this year that didn't bore me to tears.

22. TV on the Radio - Dancing Choose - 13
This is again one of the inspired choices of TVOTR. They are amazingly successful at their experiments to the point that I almost forget how much I didn't really care for the second half of Return to Cookie Mountain and most of Desperate Youth... Here, Tunde's acting like Michael Stipe in 1987...which is that he's sort of rapping, but he's really just quickly talking. And it works to a tee.

23. Islands - Creeper - 13
While I think I grew cold on Arm's Way late in the year, this is still easily the best indie pop song related to a murderer in quite some time. (The last one was Sufjan Stevens' mega depressing "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.")

24. The New Pornographers - Use It - 12
Okay, this is my chance. The New Pornographers are the best of the two Canadian indie supergroups. (For those lost, it is them and Broken Social Scene. For those still lost, BSS spawned Feist and Kevin Drew. For those who are still lost, you probably didn't read most of this anyway.) "Use It" is the songwriting creation of Carl Newman, who writes amazing old school pop songs that just happen to be filtered out through about ten different people. Even weirder, I'm not partial to his stuff as A.C. Newman, as it's not like his stuff in New Pornographers.

25. Liars - Plaster Casts of Everything - 12
"Plaster" is easily the best metal song that no one will ever classify as metal, probably because 98% of Liars' fanbase hates metal.

Yes, this wasted way too much of my life.