Video Kiddos 2020 #7: Wisdom "Whole Lotta"

Midnight mass 2020 was pretty much exactly like this video except with a lot more crowdsurfing (and covid germs). But as far as we can tell, literally every other church event not yet captured on film occurs within the first 2:30 of this video. One of DaBaby's Top 5 so far. (Literally half of this video is a boring credit scroll or else it would have placed higher.)

"Video Kiddos 2020" Starts Now

Like we said earlier, the resources for hot videos were not as on point throughout 2020 as in previous years. We will need to locate some new ones for 2021.

Despite the dreadful circumstances of the world at large, we know amazing art still gets created everyday. People are still making both great music and great music videos. The problem was not creativity, but rather the worlds of promotion and distribution, both shriveling at an alarming rate.

While we know video quality is not necesarily a reflection on the state of rock music, great rock videos just didn't want us to find them throughout 2020. Again, hiphop seemed to rule the world of music videos, although only a handful felt worthy of any sort of modern canon for the new decade.

We recognize that this was not the easiest year for distributing art or music, nor was it an era that made it easy to collaborate on promotion. It was also a year packed from end to end with far more important world events that may have pulled many artists away from their craft. But still, we held onto some hope that a few of our favorite bands might find ways to get creative and utilize the world of streaming video resources.

We caught a handful of streaming concerts-from-home throughout 2020, and we're happy to report that a few of these got surprisingly weird and interesting. But we're also not sure if those count as music videos. Perhaps they should count, but some of them were only shown once and were never saved or made available for streaming, suggesting that these were intended as true concert-from-home experiences.

So we're left with the official and unofficial promo clips. We wrote down a few that we remembered from the past year that had some striking images. They're not all great, but we needed some bonus clips to write about before getting into the Top 10. So here they are:

---

Mariah Carey "Underneath The Stars"

Go figure that we're kicking this off with a Mariah Carey video from 1996.

Watching this now, "Underneath The Stars" could feasibly timestamp the swan song of Mariah's "wholesome" era. The video originally intended to close Daydream's album cycle circa Spring '96 but was delayed due to the enormous success of "Always Be My Baby." We're guessing Tommy Motolla (or someone) eventually decided to shelve the video and prioritize the sessions for Butterfly -- the record which ultimately marked the arrival moment of her horny-makeover rebrand and eventual divorce from Motolla, complete with a "balls deep in Derek Jeter" announcement.

Flash forward to 2012: Mariah declared "Underneath The Stars" her lost video. A few years later, it was restored and then finally released to Vevo in November 2020. At least one blog placed it as their #1 video of the year, which only really makes sense when accounting for its mythic trajectory. The video would have been deemed as somewhat unremarkable and a huge marketing misstep had it been released 24 years ago as planned. But in the context of 2020, its miraculous exhumation feels sent from God himself.

---

MonoNeon & Madlib "Fallin' (Instrumental)"

It actually scares us that we were somewhat attracted to THIS specific color palate throughout 2020. The classic couch quilt makes an appearance here. It's weird how so many of this year's videos reflect the exact circumstances of our own lives.

---

2 Chainz f/ Ty Dolla Sign & Lil Duval "Can't Go For That"

It took a few years, but 2 Chainz has officially evolved into one of the most tasteful video artists of hiphop's modern era, alongside DaBaby and Young Thug. "Can't Go For That" has a great set up, but then we expected some extra narrative to resolve the conflict. But either way, the aesthetic won us over. And bonus props to the masked drummer.

---

Protomartyr "Processed By The Boys"

MTVZ played this one a lot in 2020, and we're still kind of unsure what they're going for. Definitely weird, surreal, and kind of confusing, it reflects a universe where low budget TV shows somehow get approved for on-air programming despite lacking any point or purpose. We're not sure if the cable access of the '90s nor the low budget public television of the '80s ever showed eventless purposeless people on TV just for the sake of filling time on the schedule. Even the worst of these shows typically include something resembling a message or theme. Like, we cannot at all imagine what the dialog on this hypothetical TV show could potentially resemble. But maybe that is the point? In either case, "Processed By The Boys" somewhat aesthetically reminded us of that one Chavez video, enough that we added it to our list of videos that we think Beavis and Butthead should watch when the show gets rebooted, which we know won't make any difference, but we can always hope.

Hope: The only real drug we have left.

---

The Strokes "Bad Decisions"

Not really sure why this is partially shown in 4:3 or why the filters seem intended to evoke suburban '70s aesthetic since The Strokes are all '80s babies who did not exist in the '70s (except for possibly Cassablancas, the eldest of The Strokes).

---

Lil Yachty, Drake, and DaBaby f/ Drake "Oprah's Bank Account"

The still images captured our attention, and we're fans of all three contributing artists. Oprah is played by Lil Yachty who interviews two rappers on her hit talk show. Not a bad idea. Decent concept. What could go wrong?

#1 Perhaps this video was doomed from the start since the song lacks a hook or any production elements that some might consider fun-sounding.

#2 We're pretty sure this video is shooting for "funny." So then, why were the extras in the audience cast as millennial cusp babes? Wouldn't it have been 1000x more interesting if they got the same Karen boomers who would typically fill up the audience on Oprah?

#3 We're unsure why this needed to be 9 minutes long, or why its final 20 seconds feature not only an immense credit scroll but also a blooper reel. The song is interrupted not once but TWICE with badly written joyless plodding 3-minute sketches. Just play the damn song.

If he really wanted to, Tyler the Creator could effortlessly nail this genre of video. We're also fans of everyone involved in "Oprah's Bank Account," which makes the experience all the more frustrating. DaBaby taints his previously flawless videography; Drake removes any doubt of his entirely nonexistant comedic acting chops. Somebody should get fired for this one.

BIG CHUNGUS 2019: #60 - 41

Last page with blurbs. The other two are just memes and songs.

We don't remember how this was found but it's in reference to some other blog...

| Follow "BIG CHUNGUS 2019" on Spotify |

| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |

| All 100 Songs |
60. Wicca Phase Springs Eternal “I Fell” / Code Orange “Let Me In”
As Bray Wyatt seized responsibility to turn up the horrorcore to 11 and usher his re-brand as The Fiend, he realized his previous entrance from The Jesus and Mary Chain would not be easy to follow. Wisely selected, Code Orange surpassed all expectations with bludgeoning grace. But our favorite between these two might be Darby Allin's "I Fell," arguably the best Marilyn Manson jam of the 2010s (fake Manson or otherwise). In the highly unlikely event of Darby and Fiend facing each other in the ring, we'd sadly place 4 to 5 odds in favor of The Fiend, although an upset would not disappoint.



59. Blood Incantation “Inner Paths (To Outer Space)”
Blood Incantation's "Great Gig In The Sky," the growing meditative mid-LP noise crusher. In Jayson Greene's review, he quotes the band saying it was “improvised 'on psychedelics over a period of several months' [evolving] entirely in unexpected leaps, dissolving into synthesizer washes and backmasked guitars and then plunging ahead, again, stirring up the primordial ooze."


58. Young Guv “Patterns Prevail”
Me and the boys.



57. Maren Morris “Girl”
Without hyperbole, our hopes for the Hero follow up were higher than Obama's cocaine blunts on a sunny Sunday 4:20. This means the hopes were very high. Criminally underrated (as was the case with far too many 2010s LPs), Hero is a rare "11 songs 11 singles" record that happened maybe once-per-year in the 2010s. In the meantime, we pretended "The Middle" didn't suck and maintained optimism. Now that she has an actual hit, this could potentially lead to huge crossover jams. We're gonna give Maren benefit of the doubt here. She's talented enough to write another Hero, so it must be the label's fault. "Can you make these songs suck more?" The power ballad title track sadly ended up as Girl's best song, eventually spinning on a 2-3 day loop in our brain-chemical-controlled playlist, so that should count for something. ("The Bones" is also fine and would have placed in the 101-200 range.)


56. Jute Gyte “Dissected Grace”



55. Ariana Grande f/ Social House “Boyfriend”
Time once again to reiterate how many years since summer radio drives didn't suck. Since we recall Summer 2013 so fondly, we're guessing it might have been the last decent summer for Top 40. It was the summer of "#Beautiful" and "The Way," Mariah Carey's final summer song and Ariana Grande's breakthrough single. We're guessing Mariah's diva/narcissist tendencies might prevent any officially cosigned "passing of the torch" moment, but Ariana Grande's singles have filled the void ever since, peaking in 2018 with "No Tears Left To Cry." Thank U Next dropped so quickly afterwards, leaving the summer radio landscape wide open. Social House saw their opportunity to capitalize with an obvious "Thank U Next" ripoff, and thank the good lord they did. We needed it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SRxBTtspYM

54. (Sandy) Alex G “Gretel”


53. Purple Mountains “All My Happiness Is Gone”


52. Carly Rae Jepsen “I’ll Be Your Girl”
Hot challenge: Locate the true 3/4 waltzes of chart hits. Apparently, Ed Sheeran had a huge hit about two years ago with a song called "Perfect" that was the 15th biggest song of the decade. We love "Kiss From A Rose" and "Iris." We do not love Edwin McCain or Lifehouse. An old Paramore single called "The Only Exception" came up.

Question: What do all of these tracks have in common? The answer: Despite Google's insistence, none of these are true waltzes. They're all played in a slow 6/8 emphasizing kick on the 1 and snare on the 2 -- a less challenging time signature to market and sell to the shmaltz-core wedding-ballad demographic. Both a true waltz and decidedly non-shmaltz, "I'll Be Your Girl" uses the odd timing to hint an overtone of endearing awkwardness. A long time ago in the midst of Weezer's 6/8-heavy Pinkerton era, "No Other One" became their lone true waltz - equally endearing and awkward, but way clumsier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqBGjbpzpl4

51. CZ Wang and Neo Image f/ Separated At Birth “Just Off Wave”



50. MGMT “In The Afternoon”
Faint / Up against your way-hail / Through the thick and thayl / You will wait untay-hayl


49. Vertical Scratchers “Song of Earth”



48. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib “Crime Pays”



47. Nudie Mag “Please Be The One”



46. Palehound “Urban Drip”
Fun game: Sing Steve Lacy's "Playground" replacing the word "Playground" for "Palehound." Lemme tell ya somethin: this thing works. (Note: We have never tried this.)

Part of us is hoping that we never figure out the mysteriously specific but hard-to-place production reference in "Urban Drip." It's definitely from a singer-songwriter late-'60s or '70s, ie, Wings, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, etc. Whatever it is, we haven't heard any other band nail it with as much conviction in the past 3 or 4 decades of music. Serious skillz to pay the billz.


45. Fury “Angels Over Berlin”


44. Desert Sessions “Something You Can’t See”
Scissor Sisters dude sings this one. We forget which one he is. Pretty sure we liked this better than Like Clockwork or Villians. We're curious to know, what exactly are the 11 or 12 people involved in this project so busy with? What was preventing them from carving out an extra week or two so that the first Desert Sessions record since 2003 didn't have to be 7-and-a-half songs long? Where's the love? Can they do another one of these ASAP?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8XIOz5E5ug

43. Maneka “Time In the Barrel”
Maneka has played "Time In The Barrel" live only once, at their album release show last July. Can they bring it back? No one minds that the one little part sounds like "Drain You." In fact, the jam holds up, especially the free noise section in the middle. A Rick and Morty reference regarding cancel-culture may or may not have influenced the song title and lyrics, although we had trouble locating a more specific origin. No disrespect to Jim Croce. Meanwhile, Bojack (the character, not the show) got sentenced to some literal-ass barrel time, with Princess Carolyn erroneously theorizing that "people forget." [Kobe rant redacted.] Yeah anyway... Maneka! Great band! Serious bangers! Open up the pit!


42. DaBaby “BOP”



41. Hatchie “Without A Blush” / Hatchie “Unwanted Guest”




| Follow "BIG CHUNGUS 2019" on Spotify |

| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |

| All 100 Songs |

BIG CHUNGUS 2019: #40 - 21

| Follow "BIG CHUNGUS 2019" on Spotify |

| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |

| All 100 Songs |
There were once many fish in the sea of record labels. Between the early '60s and the early '00s, lots of hits charted year after year. Among the career artists, there were these things called "one hit wonders" where an artist or band would chart only once with their signature song. These existed alongside "one album wonders," a slightly longer event when an artist or band would ride a wave of chart-hit momentum that lasted roughly one-and-a-half album cycles. And throughout this span of history, one hit wonders and one album wonders could co-exist alongside career artists, generating an excitingly varied rotation of radio formats that prominently featured new music, i.e. Top 40, hiphop, and modern rock.

Today, the only remaining fish in the sea are Sony, Warner, and Universal. These are the big ones who consumed or crushed the smaller fishies. Consolidation has no use for "one hit" or "one album." Radio consolidation complies by staying in their lane, never deviating for sounds that veer outside the incessantly vanilla stream. This machine maintains 100% control over painfully slow moving chart rotation and rejection of anything even slightly edgy. It's this structure that purposely prevents another Beatles- or Nirvana-moment from happening ever again, in favor of Billboard's myriad record-breaking streaks that typically define eras with the least mainstream spontaneity or creativity.

The three labels also love that "OK boomer" can so effectively dismiss anyone questioning the status quo. Are you negatively critiquing something new? You must be old and out of touch.

Consider that fans of new music actually want to enjoy new stuff. No one becomes a hater by choice. Only a masochist would turn on the radio in hopes of discovering something they hate. Music fans crave new sounds. They want excitement and fun to return to the worlds of charting hiphop, R&B, pop, and rock music while patiently awaiting true curation alternatives beyond Pitchfork, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, SiriusXMU, All Songs Considered, or the myriad of Spotify playlists continuing to push capitalism-indie, market-tested millennial whoops, and boardroom-approved Arcade Fire derivatives.

A long time ago, we heard John Peel describe his radio show (paraphrased) as "a combination stuff you think people will like with stuff you know people will like." And we think that's a good philosophy for how to throw together the Big Chungas -- ordering the "best of 2019" in method that feels like the best possible recommendations for wide appeal. But aside from this, the mix intentionally ranges from artists with million dollar PR to self-funded unsigned Bandcamp releases, and everything in between. It seems like the most solid method for getting people to notice the lesser known artists in between the ones they already recognize. For whatever reason, this has remained our entirely arbitrary methodology since this blog's inception.

Today, we continue offering this alternative to anyone who wants it. We know you're out there.

Buy local. Support unsigned bands. Support independent music. Especially now!

Proudly presenting yet another 20 of the biggest of the big chungus of 2019. Two months late, as usual. Non-garbage edition:

40. Spellling “Under The Sun”


39. Davila 666 “Huesos Viejos”


38. Curse Word “Pivot”


37. Carly Rae Jepsen “Automatically In Love”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15n1DoNJMJU

36. Tyler The Creator “New Magic Wand”


35. Riot City “Livin’ Fast”



34. Kim Gordon "Air Bnb"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jhhzy7vr8A

33. The Good Ones featuring Nels Cline "Where Did You Go Wrong, My Love"


32. Big Cheese “Write-Off”



31. Sikka Rymes "Shake Ya Body (Pumpy Riddim)"


30. Lil B “Get That Money Based Freestyle”
2019 will be remembered as the only year when rap/country hybrids didn't make eardrums bleed. [The] latest and possibly final submission to this narrow 5-6 song canon arrived a few weeks ago from none other than Lil B The Based God, deep in his Hunchback of BasedGod mixtape.

Our prediction from last October seems solid; Lil B may have locked the thread, despite multiple headlines attempting to brand various garbage as The "Old Town Road of 2020" when they really should be searching for "Old Town Road's answer to Ice Ice Baby." It doesn't have to be good - just fun and wacky and catchy with cross-generation appeal. In this respect, "Get That Money Based Freestyle" is more like "Old Town Road's answer to Just A Friend."


29. Cement Shoes “Unite the Right in Hell”
Detonate the vest.



28. DaBaby “VIBEZ"
"My bad."



27. Wolf Whistle “Lawnmower Man”



26. ShittyBoyz “Game Breaker”

Pipe Bomb Annotated on RapGenius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvSGfBKLbbg

25. Grimes “My Name Is Dark (Art Mix)”
The hot takes are in. Mostly plagiarized from the pod.
• "This is what it sounds like to have Elon Musk cum inside of you. BNM."
• Before tracking vocals, it's typically best practice to remove Kenny McCormick's jacket. Maybe she forgot.
• Self-described under the oddly apt "ethereal nu-metal" descriptor, it's not a huge stretch to imagine Grimes' vocals swapped for Jonathan Davis', complete with the breakbeat from "Make Me Bad" or "Falling Away From Me" layered with optional record scratching.
• Long removed from 4-band bills at Great Scott or Shea Stadium, her memories of these shows were surgically removed along with the area of her cornea that used to process the color blue.
• If she was striving for "apocalyptic," mission accomplished, and not a moment too soon. We don't really care about her earlier songs at all. Stick to nu-metal.


24. Steve Lacy "Playground"
This would've been a lock for Top 20 had Steve Lacy remembered to write and record an ending. The bridge builds some nice momentum, and then the song just ends? That's it? Anyway, let's talk about the positive side to crack. What about the good side? We're making this up as we go: The four points on the funk-spectrum are Cocaine, Weed, Satan, and Jesus. Wicked Witch is Satanik Cocaine Funk; Parliament Funkadelic is on the opposite end, the Jesus Weed Funk. We need to hear more of Steve Lacy's Grammy Nominated Apollo XXI (released in tandem with his 21st Apollo journey). If "Playground" is any indication, its x,y axis rests around 3,2 (or Weed,Neutral).


23. Fury “Vacation”
No big surprise: The #1 rock radio song of the 2010s was not by Imagine Dragons nor Portugal The Man, but in fact it was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - a song from motherfucking nineteen-ninety-one. Loud rock bands like Fury and Windhand understand the power of that huge Jack Endino sound - the one that made Nevermind such a classic - and accordingly pulled him aboard to handle sound engineering duties. "Vacation" is right. We need a vacation from iHeart's glockenspiel-heavy version of "rock."

By the way, the top 5 rock radio songs of the 2010s also included "Man In A Box," "Come As You Are," "Plush" and "Even Flow." No glaring suggestions here. None at all, unless radio programmers and promoters want to continue ignoring how hard these statistics are screaming in their faces: Rock radio listeners want actual rock music. They crave a true alternative playlisting format pulling at least SOME of their rotation from labels like Run For Cover, Anti-, Relapse, Epitaph, Fat Possum, Triple B, Exploding In Sound, and the like. Substituting Spotify spins as market research is clearly not working. Bands as good as Fury should be fucking huge. How much longer will this era fuel Boomers and Gen X'ers complaints about how "rock is dead" while none of them have heard bands like Fury? Are they basing this entirely off the Andrew Bird soundalikes from the Target commercials?


22. Palehound “Bullshit”



21. Big Thief “Not”
We had a lot of fun this past Fall seeing so many "guitar solos are bad" poptimists publicly losing their shit over the long version of "Not." Now THAT'S how you play an anti-solo, arranged to arrive at the correct moment for the perfect length with all the dopeness one should expect from all those "wrong" notes. It's one of those infrequent moments from the past few years of music that zoomers and millennials didn't realize they wanted or needed, arguably expressing just as much without lyrics as Adrienne Lenker could gather throughout the song's first section, and securing a lock for the highest placement just outside our Top 20. (Yes, there's a 4-minute edit with no solo. Maybe their management suggested this to ensure more scrobbles, but otherwise it's unclear why this exists.)


| Follow "BIG CHUNGUS 2019" on Spotify |

| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |

| All 100 Songs |

BIG CHUNGUS 2019: #20 - 1

| Follow "BIG CHUNGUS 2019" on Spotify |

| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |

| All 100 Songs |
Hey, we're back. We didn't expect to have time to finish this before the summer, but now here we are. Great to be here, trapped just like everyone reading this with all the time in the world. We couldn't imagine a better way to spend what would have been SXSW week - the 8-day span when everyday is a holiday that only exists on Twitter and Instagram, ie Mar10 Day, 311 Day, Pi Day, Austin 3:16 Day, and of course Irish Carbomb Day. We forgot the others.

On that note, we'd like to proudly present the biggest of the big chungus of 2019, aka the 20 best songs from 2019 to wash your hands to.


20. Otoboke Beaver “Datsu. Hikage No Onna”
This is the one that goes "I hate a-youuuu". Some people need to hear that they're hated.

The Japan Times Q&A quoted in their Pitchfork review outs the band as non-feminists with apolitical lyrical intentions, a revelation that only accentuates the authenticity saturating their proudly feminine, working class lyrical and musical themes. Their motivation is the art itself without adherence to a calculated Western-marketing strategy. Nonchalantly: "I just wrote about how I’m pissed off at my boyfriend; nothing bigger." That scream tho. Nothing bigger? Really?


19. The Chats “Identity Theft”
Is the world prepared for technological armageddon? The digital dark age? Literal #breaktheinternet? One day we'll wake up, and it's all gone. Where's my Spotify? Where's my tweets? Where's my HelloFresh? The stock market commits suicide on live TV. The fires begin. Nuclear explosions in the distance. Watch yourself melt. Watch your friends melt. Watch your family melt. Watch net neutrality melt. Watch Bitcoin melt. Watch Google melt. Watch reddit melt. Watch clickbait melt. Watch paywalls melt. Watch your follower count melt. Watch the blue checkmarks melt. Watch ad revenue melt. Sorry we forgot to follow back. If it makes any difference, it's all been merely a blip in the history of time as we await the sun's engulfing of all we'll ever know.


18. Curse Word “Big Fingers”
17. Maneka “Never Nowhere”
We'd like to dedicate this entry to the "leanback" dude and his seriously big fingers. // Two jams of pure fire arriving via "homies of the blog;" in the past, we've blurbed of musical acquaintances in a similar manner who may or may not have Googled themselves (or their band name), discovered this blog, figured out who we are, and rightfully placed us into the "garbage asshole" category for tapping into our strangest ambien-induced auditory responses, most of which we don't remember writing due to light amnesia. // "Big Fingers" tends to loop in our heads for days; this was especially true last Fall thanks in no small part to its intense fiery combustion, straightforward uncryptic lyrics, and creepingly earwormy angular riffs. // The growing pensive energy in "Never Nowhere" downshifts into 3rd gear, climbing and brewing. Meeting an unexpected wild acceleration, the halfway checkpoint goes full throttle. Vin Diesel howls in excitement; The Rock just smirks in preparation for layin' the smackdown. // This is why it's probably uncomfortable when getting into the "conflict of interest" portions of the big chungus of 2019. Why did Maneka's jam initiate this big budget visual? In a similar brainwave, we're certain the music licensing for the Marvel cinematic universe botched what could have been their only perfect sync by neglecting Pinback's "From Nothing To Nowhere." Maybe we should pivot to vlogging YouTube montages instead of giving away our music video concepts for free.



16. Glitterer “Destiny”
We would like to dedicate #16 to Crispin Glover whose birthday is April 20th which means that his birthday will be happening for a whole month in 2020 since this will be the only year when 4/20 is a month-long celebration. In an interview in 2011, Back to the Future co-star Michael J. Fox said, "Crispin isn't crazy, just excitable." Crispin is your density; "Destiny" represents a confluence of production references, namely (Sandy) Alex G and Arthur Rizk, affiliate of Red Death, Power Trip, and Code Orange. This might help explain how Glitterer gets a free pass as one of those 8 or 9 non-hardcore bands lucky enough to join multiple hardcore touring packages (ie Young Guv, Tony Molina, Nudie Mag, Lil Ugly Mane, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal). Speaking of back-in-time, "Destiny" clocks in around 2:20-ish, placing it among the project's lengthiest and most realized jams.


15. DaBaby f/ Offset “Baby Sitter”
When Baby Yoda catches DaBaby fucking DaBabysitter.



14. Three Knee Deep “Devil’s Playground”
"Time to break the law / In the name of gettin' paid." Can't argue with that.


13. Tyler The Creator “What’s Good”
Igor >>> Flower Boy. Don't @.



12. Nilufer Yanya “In Your Head”
An immediate infectious summer jam, "In Your Head" also arrived equipped with a titular reminder of the exact spot where it got firmly stuck for six entire weeks. Whoever said it sounds like young Sade fronting Pavement was half-correct. Again, we're nearly a decade since Yuck, and poptimists simply can't get it through their thick fucking heads that electric guitars existed before or after the '90s. It's like they refuse to accept that any halfway-loud guitar-based verse-chorus rock music has any identity within the 2010s, that it all must be derivative of a bygone era. Seriously, listen to that snare drum tone, and find us the '90s band that sounds like this. They don't exist. We'll accept "young Sade fronting some moderately rockin' Sub Pop band from 2012-2015." Sure, that works fine.


11. Nudie Mag “She’s A Star”
A colossal wave of Weezer-worship bands felt unavoidable in the wake of Nada Surf's "Popular" and Nerf Herder's "Van Halen." Sure enough, 1998 marked a post-Pinkerton explosion highlighted by Ozma's classic Songs of Audible Trucks and Cars CDR release. Whether we like it or not, each passing year adds another 99 records to this pile, typically ranging from bland to lackluster and shipped to college radio from promoters with an apparently unlimited supply of "RIYL Weezer" stickers. And each year, the debris of bland unjustly buries one or two genuinely great and often unheard releases. One of these was Supermilk's crushing Rare Delusions EP, reimagining the path Matt Sharp & Damon Albarn might have forged had Rentals and Blur continued collaborating.

And then there was Nudie Mag's stellar 3-song demo tape, a preview for their 2020 LP. Their approach differs from most we've encountered in the past 20 years since it might be the first to correctly match and frequently surpass Pat Wilson's intensely ferocious snare-drum attack between Return Of The Rentals and Pinkerton, pounding a heightened sense of urgency into their sugary hooks. "I think astrology is bullshit / Nothing ever aligns / For some goddamn reason I’m stuck here still reading the signs in the sky." This lyric stood out, initially implying a helpless surrender against the birth-chart and Zodiac-shaming fads of the late-2010s.


10. Holy Serpent “Marijuana Trench”
Full disclosure: This is a lie. The actual #10 is "For No One," the "penultimate" track appearing before "Marijuana Trench" on Holy Serpent's Endless LP. We decided to put "Marijuana Trench" instead because it's a truly outstanding song title, but the jam to hear is "For No One," a much better song about bloodshot dragons ripping mad gravs of bong and exhaling the smoke of the gods. No need to light the flame with a lighter because dragons literally breathe fire and don't really require one aside "for kicks" aka the novelty of the human lighter. Don't believe that Hollywood bullshit; Dragons only know how to fly in slow motion, and they do participate in ganja. "You son of a bitch; I'm in." Also "penultimate" is one of those words that inarticulate people overuse to sound smart.


09. Hatchie “Obsessed”
There might be some lyrical tricks that went over our heads, but we hear "Obsessed" as a decorative shrine. Inherently innocent by design, childhood obsessions are more fun than we realize until decades later, after confronted with weightier concerns. "Obsessed" marks yet another great example of an unheralded album highlight thanks to the same clueless poptimist music writers who preferred the singles without a guitar track. Between her earlier, frostier Soundcloud singles and the subsequent bloom springing from 2019's Keepsake LP, one might say "I gotta give it to Hatchie; yaknow, she really represented; she stepped it up" in a manner not dissimilar from the judges of the great Iron Mic freestyle battle of 2003. After we incorrectly assumed Keepsake and "Obsessed" would dominate most of 2019's big name end-of-year lists, Paste curiously chose it for their 10 Best Shoegaze Records of the year despite its decidedly heavier dreampop influences, fusing a patchwork of earwormy hooks, dance grooves, and delicate '80s nostalgia.


08. Danny Brown “Combat”
Maybe it's just us and the other gen-x/millennial cusps, but perception through the space time continuum grew exponentially more fucked since right around the release of We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, not-so-coincidentally the first major album release within the 48 hours following the 2016 election of Doctor Professor -- an eternity ago, yet also uncomfortably recent. Three years later, "Combat" highlights uknowhatimsayin¿ -- arguably the LP under Q-Tip's direction that most closely resembles Tribe's imaginary 2019 follow-up, complete with Danny Brown's best uncanny impressions of Phife flowing into a few key insertions of Q-Tip and Consequence. DB's arguably more relevant now than ever, and his lol-bombs never quit: "I die for this shit like Elvis," "Got more pills than the Olsen twins."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br6JqvHGn3g

07. Young Guv “Every Flower I See”
Name one flower in this picture.



06. Denzel Curry “Ricky”
Ricky was a young boy. He had a heart of stone. He walked the streets a soldier. "I have two things to carry, one is the recycles bag and other is the little trash bag. We basically go around and people have their recycles out and they freak out, 'Hey, what are you doing, taking my recycles?' and it's like 'Hey, it's at the curb. We own it, not you.' Apparently there's a bit of a smell because of the recycles and there's fucking bees and hornets and wasps and shit everywhere." Ricky is covered in garbage juice because of the recycles. Fuckin way she goes.


05. Big Thief “UFOF”
Speaking of redundancy, here comes Big Thief again rounding out their unprecedented 4-for-4: "Masterpiece" was our #17 in 2016, "Mythological Beauty" was our #7 in 2017, solo jam "Symbol" placed #9 in 2018, and now "UFOF" at #5 is their highest placement, arguably the hottest jam throughout their 4 LPs. As far as late decade dopeness is concerned, no one else in the light-indie/SiriusXMU/NPR spectrum can match or surpass the consistency of Big Thief's lead singles. The only real downside is that we no longer have anything noteworthy to say about this band that hasn't already been said on this blog or elsewhere.


04. Sedona “More Love”
In 2008, literally every album review of M83's Saturdays = Youth compared "Kim and Jessie" to Molly Ringwald movies. Each subsequent year, a handful of acclaimed artists made equally bland attempts to raise the '80s nostalgia bar. The poptimist boners peaked in the wake of 1989's superficial resemblance of the actual summer '89, stealing thunder from E•MO•TION's botched promo campaign. As the decade progressed, it felt like indie-filmmakers understood the nuances of '80s aesthetic with more clarity than pop producers; take Turbo Kid for example, premiering at Sundance just a few months after 1989. It's a type of nostalgic art that's so painfully detailed that it's almost difficult to tell whether it's a genuine artifact of the era. This is also the case with "More Love," a song that Paula Abdul should probably cover for her unwarrented 2020s comeback. As Sedona's prior Soundcloud tracks stride towards the present, "More Love" marks her current apex of correctly nuanced vocal inflections and structural mastery, leaving us in heated anticipation of her foreshadowed follow-up EP.


03. Kevin Krauter “Pretty Boy”
Our #3 entry is dedicated to the great Slavoj Žižek, our official 2019 "Hunk Of The Year" and probably of the decade.

May God bless whoever was responsible for sneaking Kevin Krauter's soulful and pensive earworm "Pretty Boy" smack in the center of VICE's "Top 100 Tracks of 2019" at #50. We wish we could say this playlist was anything but infuriatingly tedious, but at least the immediate dopeness of "Pretty Boy" made the journey more than worth the effort. We're considering "Pretty Boy" for a coveted entry near the top of our 2010s Rubber Soul-core canon alongside Homeshake's "Heat," Good Morning's "Warned You," and probably something by Mac Demarco.


02. DaBaby “Suge”
What a revelation: I just signed a deal at the mall. Young Baby Jesus CEO was just a regular at the local food court in uptown North Carolina when Interscope's A&R execs finally tracked him down. They ask, "Excuse me sir, are you DaBaby?" as they hand over a record label contract, a fancy ink pen, and one-million dollars in cash. This scenario might have seemed feasible if these were "Suge's" actual lyrics, which they are not. In recent interviews, his frequent shout outs to the late great Rick James did not seem especially suspect until the inevitable Nardwuar Q&A raised the possibility that they might be uncle and nephew. If that's the case, we're guessing DaBaby has an extended family network of a few hundred cousins (and he still won't follow them back on Instagram).


01. Beak> “Life Goes On” / Beak> "We Can Go"
Congrats to Beak> on earning their distinction as the only artist who twice placed as our Album Of The Year who then would later also receive Track(s) of the year. Apologies for the tie, but the two jams feel so thematically and texturally unified with this specific moment in history. Back in 2012, the similarly eerie "Eggdog" felt like it was slowly panning over vast Martian landscapes. Today, these same sonic textures can be applied just as easily to our own Earthly globe. Where did our hope go? The eerie marchiness of "Life Goes On" and the bleak grooves of "We Can Go" might perfectly soundtrack the close of a decade that opened with so much optimism and closed two steps removed from a dystopian hellscape, vastly magnifying public awareness of the lack of possibilities inherent within our own existentialism.

How many good summers do we have left? What is life after COVID-19? Does music go on? How many more "best tracks of the year" lists will ever happen in the history of the world? How much longer until the next pandemic? Forget making it through the decade; what's stopping another one of these from happening before the end of 2020? Even after COVID-19 is eventually controlled, life will then go on despite Brexit, despite the Syrian conflict, despite the stronghold of capitalism, despite Greenland melting away. We're "stuck indoors," but realistically, weren't we always stuck indoors? The mind's eye slowly pans towards our very own planet and this wonderous moment in history that we're experiencing. What a time to be "alive." See you in hell.



| Follow "BIG CHUNGUS 2019" on Spotify |

| 100 - 81 || 80 - 61 || 60 - 41 || 40 - 21 || 20 - 1 |

| All 100 Songs |