Most Played: #23 - The Replacements, "I Will Dare"

In this feature, I'm going to examine the Top 25 most played songs on my iTunes as of February, 3, 2011, starting with number 25 and working my way up to 1, and talk about what I love about the song and why I keep coming back to it. If this feature goes on for a long time, which I'm sure it will, I'll make note of new additions and subtractions from my most played list.

"I Will Dare," is the first track off the Replacements' landmark Let It Be record, one of my favorite albums of all time. Though The Replacements specialized in a ragged blend of Punk and late-70s Hard Rock and were infamous for their drunken, unhinged live performances, "I Will Dare" smoothes out the tears and frays for a jangly Rickenbacher guitar riff, courtesy of R.E.M.'s Peter Buck (a man whose guitar helped define the College Rock scene of the early 80s). Though I love the bouncy, New Wave backbeat and bluegrass-y guitar solo, the most memorable contribution to "I Will Dare" is courtesy of frontman/songwriter Paul Westerberg, who belts the simple lyrics with a convincing passion and provides the jaunty number with a desperate overtone, and plays some mandolin for good measure.

Why do I keep coming back? Two main reasons: 1) "I Will Dare" can sometimes feel like Westerberg and Buck ran an experiment to see how many melodic and catchy guitar lines they could fit into the song's 3 minute runtime. By the end of the song, Buck, Westerberg and guitarist Bob Stinson perfect a complex three man weave, climaxing in Buck's bubbly, chromatic final stroke. 2) The subtle shift from the major key verse to the minor chorus, imbuing a sweetness to Westerberg's coarse desperation.

New Music: The Strokes - Under Cover of Darkness

We're all still stinging from the loss of the White Stripes, but maybe the 21st Century's other greatest garage band can cheer us up a bit. "Under Cover of Darkness," is the best Strokes' song I've heard since 2004's "12:51," featuring the sinewy guitar lines and economical solos endemic to the Strokes' best tracks, like "Someday" or "Last Nite," and a trademark ragged vocal by Julian Casablancas. It looks like these guys are trying to reclaim the belt for Best Band in NYC, and if this single is representative of the quality of the rest of the album (out March 22nd, 40 DAYS!), it will be hard to stop them.

(via The Strokes' official website)

Most Played: #24 - Souls of Mischief, "'93 til Infinity" (46 Plays)

In this feature, I'm going to examine the Top 25 most played songs on my iTunes as of February, 3, 2011, starting with number 25 and working my way up to 1, and talk about what I love about the song and why I keep coming back to it. If this feature goes on for a long time, which I'm sure it will, I'll make note of new additions and subtractions from my most played list.

Ooooooh, that beat. This is how they chill? Count me in. "'93 'Til Infinity" is perfect kick back music, it's languid synths cooking up Summer even during the year's darkest days. Opio, A-Plus, Tajai and Phesto switch off spitting rapidfire, intricately worded rhymes, bragging about how their chill is better than your chill.

Reasons I Keep Playing It:

- That little scratchy siren sound that goes off at the beginning of each bar.

- The way Tajai rhymes "digits," "Bridget," "midget," "dig it," "swig it" and "frigid" in the first verse.

- This bar: "Greenbacks and stacks/Don't even ask/Who got the fat sacks/We can max/Pumpin phat tracks/Exachangin facts about impacts"

- The sound off of all the Hieroglyphics in the outro

- The twinkling keyboard during the chorus

Most Played: #25 - Dinosaur Jr, "Start Choppin'" (46 Plays)

In this feature, I'm going to examine the Top 25 most played songs on my iTunes as of February, 3, 2011, starting with number 25 and working my way up to 1, and talk about what I love about the song and why I keep coming back to it. If this feature goes on for a long time, which I'm sure it will, I'll make note of new additions and subtractions from my most played list.

On "Start Choppin'," J Mascis sheds his slacker persona and embraces his true status as an Indie Guitar God. Freed from the avant-garde leanings of former songwriting partner Lou Barlow, Mascis strips most of the noise and distortion away from the track, bringing Mascis' screaming solos to the forefront. "Start Choppin'" is one of the ear-friendliest songs by early-period Dinosaur Jr., but stands out on its own as the band's best straight-up rocker.

Reasons I keep playing it:

- The way Mascis stretches his normally restrained voice into a falsetto on the word "bye!"

- A sneaky guitar riff that starts off soft, but is unleashed by a monstrous power chord at the start of the first chorus

- Not one, but two amazing guitar solos. I probably prefer the first one, if only because it's slightly more melodic.

Next up: "'93 'Til Infinity" by Souls of Mischief

Pop Check-Up: I Need the (old) Doctor

This week, Dr. Dre officially released the second single from Detox, "I Need a Doctor (ft. Eminem & Skylar Grey)," currently sitting at number one on the iTunes most downloaded chart. "I Need a Doctor," produced by Alex da Kid (pictured, the man behind "Airplanes" and "Love the Way You Lie"), is an unfortunately generic, Recovery-esque pop-rap song meant to blow up the charts, but lacking the FUNK of every single other song Dr. Dre ever recorded. Detox's release date has been pushed back for years, supposedly because of his perfectionism and artistic vision. Now, it's entirely possible that "I Need a Doctor" is a cheap commercial ploy, meant to build up his pop credentials for a generation that might actually have forgotten about Dre. "Kush," the first single from Detox, is a solid track, which doesn't aim for the top of the charts, but shares the "let's party" ethos at the center of all of Dre's previous solo releases. It's possible that Detox won't feature any other songs as mainstream as "I Need a Doctor," but this raises some concern.

I understand where Dr. Dre is coming from. Dr. Dre's other two albums were generation-defining Hip-Hop classics. 1992's The Chronic, possibly the most influential Hip-Hop album of all time, introduced the world to G-Funk and brought melody and a fun, laid-back approach to gangster life and Hip-Hop. By 1993, Dre ruled Hip-Hop and his production defined the West Coast sound. 2001 proved that Dre's melodic and rich production would not be rendered obsolete by a new decade and new trends. "I Need a Doctor" is troubling because, for the first time, Dr. Dre is outsourcing production, possibly signaling that he's lost his touch, or that he doesn't believe that his style of production could carry a multi-platinum album. The point is: the greatest producer in the history of rap, a man who is always ahead of the curve, may have lost his fastball. Here's hoping I'm wrong.

Lil Wayne - "Green & Yellow"

(via nahright)

Lil Wayne dropped a Super Bowl themed freestyle of "Black & Yellow," the most freestyled-on beat since Weezy's own "A Milli." He says it's not a dis song, but his reference to "Cheese Whiz" (Cheese Wiz?) in the chorus begs to differ. I'm really not sure when Weezy became a Packers fan (last year, unsurprisingly, he was all about the Saints), but he does a pretty good job on the track, especially in the second verse when he subverts Taylor Gang to refer to a score on Pittsburgh CB Ike Taylor.

"We knocked the Eagles and the Falcons and the Bears off/Now we bout to cut Troy Polamalu hair off!"

R.I.P. White Stripes

The best rock band of a generation called it quits today, presumably so Jack White can have time to start five more bands. The White Stripes were raw, in a way that most blues-based rock bands wish they could be. The Black Keys, though possibly tighter musically, lack the stomp and lyrical punch of the Stripes in their prime. White Blood Cells is probably my favorite of their albums, but they all have some great songs. Though people maligned Meg White for her child-like form of drumming, Jack and Meg had real chemistry that brought out the best in Jack, focusing and fine-tuning his songwriting to match her simplistic thump. The world just lost a great band. Sad day.