My Favorite 100 Songs of the Aughts - #100

Starting today, I will begin breaking down my favorite 100 songs of the past decade. One song a day, for the next 100 days. Geez. That sounds like a lot. Anyhow, before I begin, I would like add a few "honorable mentions" to my previous list. After all, what's more Aught-ish than a relativistic "restriction" honored only when it's convenient for me? "100" was more of a suggestion anyway.

Honorable Mention:

Christian Falk, Robyn, Ola Salo - "Dream On"

The Shivers - "Beauty"

Junior Boys - "In the Morning"

Josh Rouse - "Rise"

Jamie Lidell - "Multiply"

High Places - "From Stardust to Sentience"

Fujiya & Miyagi - "Collarbone"

Cut Copy - "Strangers in the Wind"

Broken Social Scene "Cause=Time"

Friendly Fires - "Paris (Aeroplane Remix)"

Here goes nothing.

The Doves - "Pounding"

The Last Broadcast (2002)

Within this song's first twenty seconds, it's easy to grasp what Messrs. Williams and Goodwin might have been thinking (or hearing) when they settled on its title. With "Pounding", the beat is everything. It's just so insistent. Like a heart in a state of profound excitement, it just pounds and pounds and pounds and pounds.

2002's The Last Broadcast is the sound of a band swinging for the transatlantic fences. Even in these modern times, breaking the American market continues to be the principal metric by which British bands (and critics) gauge success and commercial cachet in the United States remains an all too palpable Maginot line separating the arrived from the still in transit. Despite the nascent, Coldplay/Radiohead-fueled anglophilia sweeping the American listening public in the early Aughts and their considerable stature in their native land, Doves somehow failed to break through.

While some likely feel the "O.C."-approved "Caught By the River" the more likely/appropriate candidate for the retrospective treatment, "Pounding" has always captivated me. As far as I'm concerned, this song has it all. Joshua Tree atmospherics. An anthemic chorus. A Springsteen-esque lyric teeming with the fierce, almost teenage, urgency of now ("Cause it's now or never" - A notion further reinforced by the stubborn, driving persistence of the beat). A beautifully understated melody. One of the greatest outros of the past ten years (when that arpeggiated guitar line and falsetto harmony burst forth at the four minute mark, the song veritably explodes like a million fireworks over Asbury Park). "Pounding" is meant to be heard in a speeding car on a very lonely highway preferably late at night, and, whether you drive on the left or the right hand side of the road, that's a sensation you can likely understand.

Watch the video here.

Next up? #99 - The Klaxons' "Golden Skans"