Denuo - denuology.com

No, we didn’t forget. Just some techincal difficulties adding it to Denuology over the holiday.

It’s our fifth year doing this and we’ve noticed a few things different this year: more dancing tunes, more hip hop, more saxophone solos (!), fewer female singers and waaay more profanity and sexually explicit lyrics. Not sure why but that’s how 2011 turned out. Before the list, here come the rules:

+ All songs are listed in reverse order because that is the only real way to do a list. Any of you with any sense of drama will listen to the whole thing from 100 slowly building up to number 1, at which point you will practically be bursting with excitement.

+ These are tracks, not necessarily singles. Covers qualify as well though I usually only include ones that are markedly different than the originals (and are good).

+ I only have one song per artist because the list is way cooler that way. Having 12 My Morning Jacket tracks in the Top 100 feels pretty anticlimactic. Everybody gets a shot this way.

+ They were all released in 2011on either an album or as a single. Sometimes the album came out last year but it was released as a single this year (or vice versa). That is a loophole I happily exploit.

+ If I’m wrong about the release date of something, blame Wikipedia, Amazon, and various music blogs.

Rather than put in links for every song this year, I’ve built out the list as playlists on both Rhapsody and Spotify. You can only find 85 of the songs on Rhapsody and 87 on Spotify. I’ve noted in the comments for each song which aren’t available on playlists and those have links. Or just jump around and pull them all up on YouTube. Whatever you do, the list takes about six hours all the way through so call in sick and enjoy!

Music and social media were surely destined to be together. Music is just way more fun when it’s shared. The perfect summary of this is the single best scene in the film High Fidelity. We love digging the same stuff, arguing over tastes, showing off just how musically savvy we are. Turntable is the first music site that gets this right and does High Fidelity one better: it kicks out that smug asshole behind the counter and puts the record decks in the hands of everyone. Play with Turntable a bit and you’ll soon realize this is a quantum leap forward in the quest to capture the real essence of being a music fan online.

It’s a quest that has been afoot since the web got 2.0’d and, in my opinion, can be split into 3 waves. Fan sites and MySpace helped change the game of music online in the first wave of social music sites. Suddenly there was a chance to comment on your favorite music with fellow fans, reach artists more directly and possibly even help shape who makes it big. Internet radio was just coming on the scene and you could easily hear programmers with much broader tastes than the evil overlords at Clear Channel Corp Inc. Radio looked like it was in trouble.

Here’s what I thought about Coachella this year, broken down into convenient list form:

TOP 5 ACTS AT COACHELLA 2011

1. Arcade Fire
2. Mumford & Sons
3. Cage the Elephant
4. Elbow
5. Ms. Lauryn Hill

As if there wasn’t enough to see as it was, Coachella went and added another tent this year. Unfortunately it’s yet more electronic acts – the one thing Coachella needs less of, not more. You’ll see that frustration show up in the heaping pile of DJs that reside at the bottom of my ratings. Other than that, I couldn’t be more excited for another year in the desert! Here first, a ratings key:

****  Do not miss this show

***    I really want to see this and will do everything I can

**      Would love to see but may get sidetracked by a churro

*        Let’s pretend these never happened

Dear Foursquare,

It is today, your  two year anniversary since becoming the belle of the ball at SXSW, that I write you this letter as someone who cares. I used to pull out my phone to check in and it was fun- beating others to it, trying to become mayor, showing off badges, explaining animatedly what you are. Now I’m a bit, well, embarrassed. I find myself checking in surreptitiously for fear of being judged. Just the other night I was at dinner with four other guys who at one time used your service. You should have seen the heaps of scorn thrown my way. “Really? You’re still using Foursqaure?” You would have thought I had pulled out a map and a few quarters for the pay phone the way they mocked. After the teasing and incredulous looks, the next question is always the same:

Why do you still even use it? What’s the point?

It’s a fair question.