After a season mostly consisting of tense meandering punctuated by brief moments of inexplicable action, we finally got a Mad Men season finale (“Shut the Door. Have a Seat.”) that justified just about everything that came before it this season. If you haven’t watched it yet, probably based to stop reading now, since there’ll probably be spoilers, although the actual result of the action really isn’t as important as the scene episode itself, which is quite possibly the best of the series to date. But throughout the episode, which largely focused on the demise of Don and Betty’s marriage (as well as a concurrent plot about Don and the other bigwigs at Sterling Cooper plotting their escape from the company before it gets sold again), I was reminded of another classic TV episode from this decade–”Whitecaps,” the season four finale of The Sopranos, which saw Carmela and Tony Soprano part ways for the first time.

The similarities between the two shows have always been striking to me–not entirely coincidental, since Matt Weiner was so heavily involved in both shows–especially in the protagonist and his wife. Tony and Don were hardly carbon copies of each other, but certainly cut from the same cloth–family men in an often shady industry who regularly indulged in narcissism and infidelity. Meanwhile, Carmela and Betty were both housewives who learned to live with a certain number of their husband’s known dalliances, but eventually reached a tipping point where they decided it was time for a clean break. “Whitecaps” and “Shut the Door” were both season finales that saw the tension bubbling under (and occasionally over) the surface in each relationships come entirely to the forefront, with transfixing and often devastating results. (In the most direct parallel, the final break in both relationships came with Betty/Carmela insisting “I don’t love you anymore,” although in Med Men that line actually came in the penultimate episode).

Of course, only one episode can go down as the greatest breakup episode in 00s television. Which one shall it be? Break it down, one time.

Heartbreaking Moment of Decision: In neither episode to we really know that things are over over at first. (Well, we sort of do by the season finale in Mad Men, so I’m going to have to go back to the final scene in the penultimate episode for this particular challenge–consider it a lead-in). Betty was more than a little put out after uncovering Don’s web of lies about his past life (which, by the way, is evidence exhibit #156A why one should never keep a treasure trove of damning documents and memorabilia in one’s own home), but appeared to maybe sorta semi-forgive him after he broke down in tears in his explanation, and then stayed strong for her throughout the whole mess with the Kennedy and Ruby assassinations. But something was clearly gone from her eyes–credit the occasionally-maligned January Jones for doing a good job selling this–and when she came down with the “I don’t love you anymore” bombshell, we knew it was definitely over.

It was a different story entirely with Carmela in “Whitecaps.” Not only had she seemingly forgiven Tony his indiscretions, she had just been positively swept away with his purchase of a family summer home by the seaside (“Anthony Soprano, you are full of surprises,” she wistfully rhapsodized). It was only later in the episode, when Tony’s old mistress called his house to rat him out to Carm for his new mistress, that she started throwing his golf clubs out the window. The emotional violence that followed was all the more crushing because we had just seen their relationship–always a far richer and more compelling one than Betty and Don’s to begin with–reach a new apex. To see it fall so hard and so fast…well, we didn’t really want to believe it was over either. There’s no contest here.

Winner: The Sopranos

Discovery of Wife’s Maybe-Affair: Neither Tony nor Don knew of their wives’ growing affections for different men in their lives over the course of the season, before springing their grounds for divorce on them. Carmela had been engaged in an epic romance of longing glances with Tony’s Italian-imported muscle man, Furio Giunta, and although she never even came close to consummating it–Furio contemplated killing Tony and inheriting Carmela, Scarface-style, but made the more pragmatic decision to just move back overseas instead–the glee she took in informing Tony about her wandering thoughts, and his subsequent facial transformation, was one of the episode’s more indelible moments. Meanwhile, when Don heard about Betty’s push-and-pull tango with government advisor Henry Francis from a gossipy Roger while drinking, and I couldn’t even remember if he was just learning about this, or had heard before and just didn’t care that much. Whatever, another easy one.

Winner: The Sopranos

Telling the Kids: I’m not sure if we ever actually see Carmela or Tony telling Meadow and AJ about their impending split, but I remember a teary Meadow talking with Carmela about how she always thought she was better than her friends with divorced parents, and how she wasn’t looking forward to having to split time between them on the holidays. It felt like a pretty honest reaction, and I remember it being one of the more affecting parts of the episode. But this was a huge strength of “Shut the Door,” as Don and Betty engage in a subtle battle of agendas while informing Sally and Bobby about Don moving out, Don trying to leave the door open for his return and Betty trying to emphasize as best she can the finality of the situation. Meanwhile, Sally’s expression of betrayal at Don’s breaking of his “I will always come home” promise (which sounded like a risky guarantee to make even as he was making it ten or so episodes ago), “You say things you don’t mean, and you can’t just do that”…yeah, it’s a litlte bit of a too-easy summation of Don’s character, but it hits home nonetheless.

Winner: Mad Men

Moment of Near-Violence. This is pretty directly tied to the “Discovery of Maybe-Affair” section, as this revelation so incenses both Don and Tony that they come as close to physically striking their spouses as they do in the entire show run. It’s more jarring to see from Don, not necessarily a violent person by nature (although one who certainly doesn’t mind getting a little physical with the ladies, as Bobbie Barrett’s vagina will attest), grab Betty with a look of abject malice and inform her “You’re a whore. You know that??” Despite his cheating, his occasional manipulation of his employees, and his man-of-his-time prejudices (his “You people” sneer at Sal for rejecting Lee Gardner Jr.’s advances, despite obviously being gay, was pretty harsh), Don basically seems like an OK guy, especially considered in contrast with some of his particularly reactionary peers. Nearly beating Betty is as close as his character may ever come to genuine unlikability.

That said, it still can’t quite complete with the hugeness of the moment when Tony nearly comes to blows with Carmela. Unlike Don, Tony does not basically seem like an OK guy, and over the course of four seasons of the show, we’d seen him do enough unscrupulous, conscienceless shit that no low or him would seem particularly out of the question. As Carmela begins to taunt him with the news of her wordless affair with Furio, anything seems possible–hell, he might even kill her if he reds out for long enough without coming to his senses. As he wound up for a punch, the entire character hung in the balance of that moment–we could get past, if not necessarily forgive, Tony for doing a lot of fucked-up things, but if he beat up Carmela, there would be no going back. At the moment of truth, he pulled back and punched a hole in the wall instead–maybe something of a cop-out for the show, but still arguably the most intense split-second in all of The Sopranos. (Although I’ll never believe that it’s even half as easy to actually punch a whole in the wall as Tony made it seem).

Winner: The Sopranos

Concurrent Side-Plot: An underrated part of “Whitecaps” (well, I’m not sure who I actually think is rating these things, but it probably would be underrated if people bothered to rate it) is the ongoing dispute that Tony has with the real estate agent that sold him the summer house, since he decides to rescind on his purchase after the fall-out with Carmela, and the agent doesn’t want to give him back his deposit. The ensuing battle of wills–mostly consisting of Tony blasting Dean Martin live albums from his boat towards the agent’s beach house to bully him into submission–adds much, much-needed levity to the episode. The side-plot in “Shut the Door,” though, is almost as compelling as Don and Betty’s split, with Don, Roger and Bert scheming to start anew while gutting Sterling-Cooper in the process, and gradually getting most of the show’s other principals in on the act as well. As Don’s home life crumbles, his little office coup serves to show that his S-C cronies are probably closer to being his real family, or at least the family he needs and/or deserves. It’s a fun little subterfuge, besides.

Winner: Mad Men

Where Do We Go From Here Ending. “Shut the Door” ends with Don in his new office/hotel room, calling Betty and essentially admitting defeat in his (really fairly half-hearted) fight to keep their relationship together, as well as taking back his threats to take the kids and leave her penniless. “I hope you get what you’ve always wanted,” he offers to her, and that’s just about that–the books appear to be closed on Don and Betty, as she and Henry jet off to Reno and he re-focuses all his energy back into his work. With the “Whitecaps” finale, things couldn’t have been much more open-ended, as Tony reluctantly moves out of the Soprano mansion, tells his kids to be good to their mother, but leaves with a kind of “I’ll be back” hitch in his goodbyes. The episode doesn’t even end with Tony and Carm, but rather with T’s continued harrassment of the agent, whose wife begs him to give in, and who ultimately seems to conclude that you just can’t fight New Jersey Sanitation. Neither ending really stands out ahead of the other, and without knowing what’s to come with Mad Men, it’s basically impossible to make a ruling anyway.

Winner: Draw

Yeah, it was a hell of a Mad Men episode, but in the end, there’s still no fucking with The Sopranos in its prime, and “Whitecaps” was as good as the show–or any TV drama this decade, really–ever got.

ULTIMATE VICTOR: “Whitecaps,” The Sopranos

Over the final months of our fine decade, Intensities in Ten Suburbs will be sending the Naughty Oughties out in style with a series of essays devoted to the top 100 songs of the decade–the ones we will most remember as we look back fondly on this period of pop music years down the road. The archives can be found here. If you want to argue about the order, you can’t, because we’re not totally sure what the qualifications are either. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy.

Perhaps the greatest testament to Radiohead’s excellence and stature in the rock cannon has been how little fun they’ve become to talk about. Like no other band since maybe The Beatles, serious music listeners (and by serious I guess I mean “willing to discuss it ad nauseum over the internet”) have debated the finer points of the Radiohead discography, mythos and just about everything else to do with them to the point where someone bringing them up in conversation now elicits something of a shudder. (Of course, that didn’t stop me from devoting an entire week to talking about them before the release of In Rainbows two years ago–that’s just the kind of selflessness you get here at Intensities in Ten Suburbs). Radiohead’s greatness has become ridiculously close to just being assumed at this point, and much of that has to do with Kid A–their 2000 artistic left-turn that solidified their status as the most critically beloved band of the last 20 years.

You know the deal behind Kid A already, but I’ll recap. Three years after OK Computer, the post-alt-rock classic that catapulted them into the discussion of the best bands in the world, Radiohead eschewed the guitar virtuosity that had once defined them in favor of things like drum machines, ambient synth soundscapes and just general knob-twiddling. It should have been a commercial disaster, especially with the band now shunning things like music videos and traditional promo tactics, but thanks to the band’s constantly ballooning cult and crit rep, as well as an unofficially sanctioned leak of the album online (hello 21st Century) to build the hype to a fever pitch, Kid A debuted at #1 on the US charts and had certain critics speaking in tongues. Overall reception was initially mixed–many old-school fans were thrown for a loop by the lack of rawk–but in time, just about everyone seemed to come  around to Kid A, recognizing it as the daring, cohesive and stunning masterpiece that it was, and eventually building it to the consensus Album of the Decade, a status that has yet to be convincingly unseated by anyone else.

Of course this is all about an album, and you would be within your right to mention that this is actually supposed to be a songs list. Fair enough–the main reason for the lengthy Kid A preamble is that for possibly one of the last times in rock history, you absolutely can’t talk about the songs on Kid A without talking about the album itself. In the iTunes era, it’s become rarer and rarer (and will only get moreso) for albums to feel like too much more than mere collections of songs–or maybe it’s not the albums that have changed, but just the way we listen to them, it’s hard to tell. Either way, it’s unlikely we’ll get too many albums like this again, where the flow and structure feel absolutely crucial to the maximization of each of the songs’ potential–a dying cliche, but one that rings true none here nonetheless. But all that said, there is a song on the album that continues to stand out for me, which would be an absolute stone classic even if it showed up as a Hail to the Thief b-side–”Idioteque,” possibly my favorite-ever Radiohead song, and one that perfectly exemplified just why Kid A shone so brightly.

The most tiresome debate that emerged about Kid A over the years was whether or not the album was legitimately innovative, or merely adventurous by North American Indie Rock standards. People would point out how much it borrowed from 90s IDM pioneers like Aphex Twin and Autechre, art-rock heroes like Can and Brian Eno, even old-school proggers like Pink Floyd and King Crimson. All true, yes, but this: I have never heard another song like “Idiotheque” in my life. Not that it sounds so mind-blowingly weird or new or anything–just the opposite, in fact: It sounds like a great, great, great pop song, just one built with different elements (skittering drum loop, tonal synth sample, multi-tracked vocals) than we were used to from Radiohead or any of their 90s UK peers. In a way it presaged the laptop pop movement that would simmer in the electronic underground for much of the decade, but it still sounds more muscular, more adrenalized, more sheerly undeniable than any other bleeps + hooks combinations that would follow over the course of the decade.

To me, the key was always the sample. I’ve spent some time on this blog professing my love for producers that create brilliant hooks out of obscure and/or unlikely sources, but what Radiohead pulled off with “Idioteque” puts even Just Blaze and Jay Dee to shame. Ever heard of American electronic composer Paul Lansky? Yeah, me neither. Ever listened to his twenty-minute computer-music epic “Mild und Leise“? Yeah, I doubt I ever would have quite gotten around to that one myself. Lucky for us that Radiohead did, then–they took a pattern of four chords from about the one-minute mark of the piece (which never appears again for the rest of the song, by the way) and built the “Idioteque” hook around it. It’s impossible to understate how inspired a sample choice this was–the pattern is just about everything you could want from an electronic hook, shimmering and vibrant and a little haunting. “I really like what they did with the sample,” Lansky has since proffered. “It is quite imaginative and inventive.” (No kidding).

Radiohead did the hook a tremendous favor by building such an amazing beat around it as well. It’s hard to explain just what it is about the skittering drum pattern that makes it so compelling–the way the thumping faux-bass drum juxtaposes with the crisp airiness of the faux-snare, the way it glitches and bubbles at just the right times, up to the way it reverses on itself brilliantly on the song’s bridge. It’s at once incredibly tense and thoroughly satisfying, a glorious creation that would have ensured that even as an instrumental, the song would’ve been an obvious keeper. But Thom Yorke’s vocals are still critical to the song’s success, his hand-tremblingly anxious rants in the verses (“Who’s in the bunker? Who’s in the bunker?” “Ice coming, ice age coming!” “This is really happening!”) giving way to the (defeated?) relief of the chorus (“Here I’m alive / Everything all of the time”). The way the harmonies on the vocals in the chorus reflect against the harmonies of the chords in the hook…you just don’t find musical epiphanies like that every day.

Songs like “Idioteque”, and other Kid A tracks like “Everything in Its Right Place” and “The National Anthem” introduced a generation of music fans–budding indie kids, arty metalheads, stoners-in-training–to whole new universes of possibility in music. Whether they then continued on that path into the new and unusual or decided to go back to the Shins and/or Incubus is mostly unclear (I did a little bit of both, I suppose), but that it even gave those disparate groups of listeners something weird and different and cool to rally behind is something worth celebrating. Radiohead never made an artistic deviation quite so radical again for the rest of the decade, but they kept the flame burning with a series of good to great albums, and memorably attempted a coup of the music industry by releasing 2007 album In Rainbows online for fan-optional payment, a move which may turn out to be more enduring than just about anything they did this decade musically (or just a “Man, Remember When?” laugh ten years down the line, who knows).

But I’m getting ridiculously sick of talking about Radiohead. Just go listen to the song again or something.

(Have any thoughts or remembrances of this song? Want to correct our lyrics or call us out for relying too much on Wikipedia? Please feel free to leave a comment here, or (gulp) Tweet us about it at twitter.com/intensities. Your input is lusted after and appreciated.)

The List So Far (Now With Links!):

100. Green Day – “Jesus of Suburbia”
99. The Ying Yang Twins – “Wait (The Whisper Song)”
98. Crazytown – “Butterfly”
97. Taylor Swift – “Teardrops on My Guitar”
96. The Fray – “Over My Head (Cable Car)”
95. Fergie – “Fergalicious”
94. Lidstrom – “I Feel Space”
93. Chevelle – “Send the Pain Below”
92. T-Pain f/ Yung Joc – “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)”
91. The Arctic Monkeys – “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”
90. Cassie – “Me & U”
89. Nelly Furtado – “Maneater”
88. Mike Jones f/ Slim Thug & Paul Wall – “Still Tippin’”
87. Bat for Lashes – “Daniel”
86. The Darkness – “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”
85. Dynamite Hack – “Boyz n the Hood”
84. DJ Khaled f/ T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman, Lil’ Wayne & Akon – “We Takin’ Over”
83. Matchbox20 – “Bent”
82. The Game f/ 50 Cent – “Hate It or Love It”
81. 311 – “Amber”
80. 3 Doors Down – “Krptonite”
79. Nas – “Made You Look”
78. Royksopp – “Eple”
77. The Pussycat Dolls – “Don’t Cha”
76. DMX – “Party Up (Up in Here)”
75. Junior Senior – “Move Your Feet”
74. Twista f/ Kanye West & Jamie Foxx – “Slow Jamz”
73. The Streets – “Weak Become Heroes”
72. Jimmy Eat World – “The Middle”
71. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
70. Snoop Dogg f/ Pharrell – “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
69. Alice DeeJay – “Better Off Alone”
68. Xiu Xiu – “I Luv the Valley OH!”
67. Incubus – “Stellar”
66. Mariah Carey – “We Belong Together”
65. Andrew W.K. – “Party Hard”
64. Jurgen Paape – “So Weit Wie Noch Nie”
63. Taking Back Sunday – “MakeDamnSure”
62. Kid Cudi – “Day n Nite”
61. Paramore – “That’s What You Get”
60. System of a Down – “Toxicity”
59. dNTEL f/ Ben Gibbard – “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”
58. Three 6 Mafia f/ 8Ball & MJG – “Stay Fly”
57. Good Charlotte – “The Anthem”
56. The Lonely Island – “Lazy Sunday”
55. Darude – “Sandstorm“
54. Yellowcard – “Ocean Avenue”
53. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
52. Luomo – “Tessio“
51. Blink-182 – “Stay Together For the Kids”
50. My Chemical Romance – “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)“
49. Freelance Hellraiser – “A Stroke of Genius”
48. Daft Punk – “Digital Love”
47. Snow Patrol – “Chasing Cars“
46. Sean Paul – “Like Glue”
45. Ludacris – “Stand Up”
44. Britney Spears – “Toxic”
43. Kings of Leon – “Sex on Fire“
42. Jennifer Lopez f/ Ja Rule – “I’m Real (Remix)”
41. Lifehouse – “Hanging By a Moment”
40. Plain White T’s – “Hey There Delilah”
39. MGMT – “Kids”
38. Gym Class Heroes f/ Patrick Stump – “Cupid’s Chokehold”
37. Franz Ferdinand – “Do You Want To”
36. Kylie Minogue – “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”
35. Vertical Horizon – “Everything You Want”
34. The White Stripes – “Fell in Love With a Girl”
33. Jay-Z – “Takeover”
32. Maroon 5 – “This Love”
31. Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
30. M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”
29. Timbaland f/ OneRepublic – “Apologize”
28. Beyonce f/ Jay-Z – “Crazy in Love”
27. Coldplay – “Yellow”
26. Lil’ Wayne – “A Milli”
25. Shaggy f/ Ricardo “RikRok” Ducent – “It Wasn’t Me“
24. The Strokes  – “Last Night”
23. Kelly Clarkson – “Since U Been Gone”
22. Radiohead – “Idioteque”

Over the final months of our fine decade, Intensities in Ten Suburbs will be sending the Naughty Oughties out in style with a series of essays devoted to the top 100 songs of the decade–the ones we will most remember as we look back fondly on this period of pop music years down the road. The archives can be found here. If you want to argue about the order, you can’t, because we’re not totally sure what the qualifications are either. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy.

And the award for “Most Unexpectedly Beloved Song of the Naughty Oughties” goes to… Nobody could’ve expected this happening at the time. After winning the inaugural season of American Idol, it seemed like singing treacly ballads like the medicore ”A Moment Like This” and lukewarm teen-pop blasts like the abhorrent “Miss Independent” would be the definition of Clarkson’s post-Idol career–a career of pre-teen heroism and Adult Contemporary ownage, without ever really crossing over to any other audience of significance.  Even her first single off 2004’s Breakaway was the plodding, feel-good title track, which I actually kind of liked, but hardly probed any sort of new ground for Ms. Clarkson.  We never saw “Since U Been Gone” coming–a song which even in its use of the slangy “U” instead of “You” showed more rebellion and attitude than Clarkson had in her entire career up to that point. (Unless you considered From Justin to Kelly an act of revolution, which I guess would be fairly arguable).

Everyone liked “Since U Been Gone.” OK, not everyone–I’m sure at least one person reading this perked up at that last sentence and now can’t wait to get to the end of this article to voice their dissneting opinion. Let me spare you the time and effort: Yes, I’m sure there were a decent number of people out there who couldn’t stand the song. But with no other song this decade did I hear so many unexpected people come out in support of it–the kind where people at first only hesitantly suggest their support of it, “You know, I kind of like that Kelly Clarkson” song, until they find that enough people feel similarly that soon enough they’re screaming along to it on the radio at the top of their lungs. It was good enough to completely change the public perception of Clarkson’s career, single-handedly transforming her from Reality TV Pawn to Serious Pop Artist.

The funniest thing about “Since U Been Gone,” for me was a conversation that I had about a month before the song started to become popular. My friend had gone through some falling out with a guy she’d been seeing, but rather than acting sad or angry about it, she just seemed frustrated and irritated that the guy apparently thought he could do better than her. She wondered aloud if there was a song that vocalized her feelings, one with a “What were you possibly thinking breaking up with me? I’m way more awesome than you are!” message. I racked my brain but couldn’t really think of anything. The song didn’t exist yet. Then all of a sudden, “Since U Been Gone.” Never in my life has a song so specifically filled a pre-existing void in pop music.

Of course, it wasn’t a perfect fit. The final message of “Since U Been Gone” is less “What were you thinking? I rule!” and more “What was I thinking? You suck!” But the thing that kept it from just being the latest cheesy kiss-off girl-power song, a Max Martin-produced “I Will Survive,” is that same sense of incredulity that Clarkson expresses about the whole situation. She’s not screaming for vengeance, she’s not trying to teach anyone a lesson, she just seems kind of amused and mildly irritated about what an idiot she used to be for dating this guy, and what an idiot this guy is for leaving her. “You had your chance, you blew it.” That simple. It’s one of the most well-adjusted break-up songs in the history of pop music, really.

Tune was good, too–and surprisingly hard-nosed for a previously all-too-eager-to-please little pixie like Clarkson. Indie rock fans came around to it about as quickly as anyone, mostly for two very specific reasons–the opening guitar line kinda made it sound like an Interpol song, and the breakdown section was instantly reminiscent of a similar section in The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” (so much so that enterprising underground hero Ted Leo even memorably combined the two songs in a live cover medley). It’s hard to say if either or both of these recalls were intended purposefully–you’d have to ask Martin and Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, I guess–but they were both nice musical touches, and they gave the song the sort of edge, however slight, needed to convince non-Top 40 audiences to give the song a chance.

And once they did, they were treated to one of the more expertly-assembled pop songs of our time. One of my favorite things about “Since U Been Gone” has always been the first line: “Here’s the thing–we started out friends.” Jumping in with the “Here’s the thing” intro drops you right into the action, like Kelly’s just sat you down to have a very meaningful conversation with you about this specific epiphany of hers. She teases at the chorus throughout the verses–”Yeah, yeah, since you been gone”–maybe making you think that that’s all there is to it, before jumping in full blast on the chorus. And I mean full-blast. “Since U Been Gone” uses the quiet-loud thing as expertly (and unsubtly) as any band of the grunge era did in their prime, but the chorus is more than explosive and exuberant enough to earn the obviousness of the formula. It works especially well after the second verse, where Kelly starts to drift back dangerously close to regret and self-pity (“How come I never hear you say / I just wanna be with you? / I guess you never felt that way…”), but then the chorus comes back to interrupt her train of thought and snap her back into reality: “But SINCE YOU BEEN GO-OOOONNNE!!! / I CAN BREATHE FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!“

“Since U Been Gone” ended up being extremely empowering for Clarkson’s career on the whole–maybe a little too empowering, since in her resulting success, she made the perhaps-unwise move of turning her back on Clive Davis, Simon Fuller and the rest of the powers that be that had launched her to stardom, deciding that she was now artist enough to make the kind of album she really wanted. Unfortunately, My December kind of tanked, Clarkson’s ensuing megatour was a disaster, and Kells went crawling back to her old friends. The lesson: We were pleased as punch with Nu Kelly and all, but only if the songs all kind of sounded like “Since U Been Gone.” (Unsurprisingly, her 2009 comeback single, “My Life Would Suck Without You,” sounded a whole lot like SUBG, except without any of the charm and with the biggest 180-degree attitude adjustment since Destiny’s Child came out with the disturbingly subservient “Cater 2 U“).

If nothing else, “Since U Been Gone” provided all the validation that American Idol would ever need as one of the legitimately dominant forces in 00s pop music. Before SUBG, all the songs that Idol contestants released after appearing on the show were unimpressive efforts whose limited pop success was mostly just a byproduct of the show’s enormity (with the possible exception of Clay Aiken’s superbly creepy “Invisible,” likely the only Hollow Man-inspired Top 40 hit of the Naughty Oughties). After SUBG, the ex-Idolator could now just as viable a pop star outside of the show, as Chris Daughtry, Jordin Sparks and Taylor Hicks (well…maybe not so much Taylor Hicks) have all gone on to prove. They all owe Kelly Clarkson a big ol’ thank you note for blowing that door open with her indie-rock-laced statement of post-relationship superiority.

(Have any thoughts or remembrances of this song? Want to correct our lyrics or call us out for relying too much on Wikipedia? Please feel free to leave a comment here, or (gulp) Tweet us about it at twitter.com/intensities. Your input is lusted after and appreciated.)

The List So Far (Now With Links!):

100. Green Day – “Jesus of Suburbia”
99. The Ying Yang Twins – “Wait (The Whisper Song)”
98. Crazytown – “Butterfly”
97. Taylor Swift – “Teardrops on My Guitar”
96. The Fray – “Over My Head (Cable Car)”
95. Fergie – “Fergalicious”
94. Lidstrom – “I Feel Space”
93. Chevelle – “Send the Pain Below”
92. T-Pain f/ Yung Joc – “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)”
91. The Arctic Monkeys – “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”
90. Cassie – “Me & U”
89. Nelly Furtado – “Maneater”
88. Mike Jones f/ Slim Thug & Paul Wall – “Still Tippin’”
87. Bat for Lashes – “Daniel”
86. The Darkness – “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”
85. Dynamite Hack – “Boyz n the Hood”
84. DJ Khaled f/ T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman, Lil’ Wayne & Akon – “We Takin’ Over”
83. Matchbox20 – “Bent”
82. The Game f/ 50 Cent – “Hate It or Love It”
81. 311 – “Amber”
80. 3 Doors Down – “Krptonite”
79. Nas – “Made You Look”
78. Royksopp – “Eple”
77. The Pussycat Dolls – “Don’t Cha”
76. DMX – “Party Up (Up in Here)”
75. Junior Senior – “Move Your Feet”
74. Twista f/ Kanye West & Jamie Foxx – “Slow Jamz”
73. The Streets – “Weak Become Heroes”
72. Jimmy Eat World – “The Middle”
71. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
70. Snoop Dogg f/ Pharrell – “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
69. Alice DeeJay – “Better Off Alone”
68. Xiu Xiu – “I Luv the Valley OH!”
67. Incubus – “Stellar”
66. Mariah Carey – “We Belong Together”
65. Andrew W.K. – “Party Hard”
64. Jurgen Paape – “So Weit Wie Noch Nie”
63. Taking Back Sunday – “MakeDamnSure”
62. Kid Cudi – “Day n Nite”
61. Paramore – “That’s What You Get”
60. System of a Down – “Toxicity”
59. dNTEL f/ Ben Gibbard – “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”
58. Three 6 Mafia f/ 8Ball & MJG – “Stay Fly”
57. Good Charlotte – “The Anthem”
56. The Lonely Island – “Lazy Sunday”
55. Darude – “Sandstorm“
54. Yellowcard – “Ocean Avenue”
53. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
52. Luomo – “Tessio“
51. Blink-182 – “Stay Together For the Kids”
50. My Chemical Romance – “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)“
49. Freelance Hellraiser – “A Stroke of Genius”
48. Daft Punk – “Digital Love”
47. Snow Patrol – “Chasing Cars“
46. Sean Paul – “Like Glue”
45. Ludacris – “Stand Up”
44. Britney Spears – “Toxic”
43. Kings of Leon – “Sex on Fire“
42. Jennifer Lopez f/ Ja Rule – “I’m Real (Remix)”
41. Lifehouse – “Hanging By a Moment”
40. Plain White T’s – “Hey There Delilah”
39. MGMT – “Kids”
38. Gym Class Heroes f/ Patrick Stump – “Cupid’s Chokehold”
37. Franz Ferdinand – “Do You Want To”
36. Kylie Minogue – “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”
35. Vertical Horizon – “Everything You Want”
34. The White Stripes – “Fell in Love With a Girl”
33. Jay-Z – “Takeover”
32. Maroon 5 – “This Love”
31. Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
30. M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”
29. Timbaland f/ OneRepublic – “Apologize”
28. Beyonce f/ Jay-Z – “Crazy in Love”
27. Coldplay – “Yellow”
26. Lil’ Wayne – “A Milli”
25. Shaggy f/ Ricardo “RikRok” Ducent – “It Wasn’t Me“
24. The Strokes  – “Last Night”
23. Kelly Clarkson – “Since U Been Gone”

The Philadelphia Phillies lost the World Series tonight. They fell to the New York Yankees in convincing, albeit not embarrassing, fashion, getting closed out in a Game Six in The Bronx. It’s fairly unfortuante, very sad, and maybe a little disappointing, but the tragedy of the situation has long passed. The Yankees did Phillies fans a mild favor by putting the game out of reach fairly early–getting the game to 7-1 by the fifth inning, and at least saving us the heartbreaking late-game histrionics that have come to characterize Phillies losses of late. You could argue that the series was over even before that, with closer Brad Lidge failing to hold a late Phillies rally to tie Game Four in Philadelphia, after which point the Yankees went up 3-1, unlikely to drop three straight (and two in their own ballpark). For those of us with even slightly pragmatic tendencies, the result here was not a surprise.

Personally, I was very well prepared to deal with this loss, just because I’m still getting over my relief that the Phillies won Game Five. To me, that was an important game to win, regardless of whether they eventually won the series or not, mostly for the following reasons:

1. Taking the series to six games at least meant that they made it a longer series for the Yankees than the Rays did for them last year.
2. Winning that game would mean the Yankees would get to celebrate in Philadelphia, having won all three games at Citizens Bank Park, no less.
3. My Yankee fan co-worker smugly predicted a Yankees win in five from the get, and he would’ve been insufferable all off-season if he’d gotten it exactly right.

Still, I could’ve handled the loss–just not the way they were gearing up to lose it. Up 8-2 in the 8th inning, the pitching staff proceeded to give up four runs and let the tying run get to the plate (Mark Teixeira, regular-season AL home-run leader), before makeshift-closer Ryan Madson struck him out to seal the win. I don’t recall ever being so angry at the people on my television. If they had blown that game, I would have crawled under my covers and stayed there, comatose, for about a month. After living through that, I knew I could handle a Game Six loss with relative ease.

And ultimately, it’s hard not to feel that the best team won this series. I felt pretty strongly that the Phillies were the best team in the NL this year, and I felt pretty confident they’d end up with the pennant–as confident as you can feel about the relative crapshoot of the MLB playoffs, anyway–but the Yankees…well, they’re good. The Phillies’ lineup is ridiculously strong, but even there, tiny holes can be found. The leadoff guys don’t have great OBPs. The back of the lineup is relatively weak. The bench isn’t great. There’s no real reliable rotation anchor behind the #1 starter (Or there was, before the #2 turned out to be such a head case), and there’s no real shut-down lineup in the bullpen (Or there was, before the closer turned out to be such a head case…again). The Yankees, though? What’s the worst thing you can say about that team? That they don’t have a good fourth outfielder? That their back-up catcher doesn’t hit for power? It’s almost unfair.

Actually, scratch that–it’s the definition of unfair. Now, I’m not one of those guys that hems and haws about the Yankees shelling out more money than everyone else in the league–that’s the way baseball works, and so be it–and especially not with the Phils going over the 100 million mark themselves, a number that the likes of the Marlins and Athletics can only dream of. But the difference in finances between the two teams (209 mil for the Yanks this year, 111 mil for the Phils) is still somewhat staggering. With that kind of money going into an opposing team, you basically need something to go wrong for them–injuries, or clubhouse drama, or a prized signing who doesn’t pan out–to be able to play on their level. And minus a season-ending injury to Xavier Nady (Yeah, Xavier Nady, remember him?) early in the year, and the general failure of Chien-Ming Wang (Yeah, Chien-Ming Wang, remember him?) to return to form, everything went right for the Yanks this year. Sabathia, Burnett and Teixeira all justified their contracts. Jeter, Posada and Matsui had bounce-back years. Swisher turned out to be a nice pickup. A-Rod returned from off-season surgery and off-season drama to resume his position as one of the game’s elite, and even developed a clutch streak in the process. Even Pettitte and Rivera put off the ravages of time one more year. Were the Phillies a great team? Absolutely. Could they have beaten the Yankees had a few breaks gone their way? It’s the playoffs, anything can happen. Am I saying the Yankees don’t deserve their World Series? No, they used their resources well this year, and means + execution generally = success. But I’m not going to lose too much sleep over losing to a team that far ahead of the pack, where almost everything went right for them–hell, they should win.

And you know what? Even without the ring, this season was a humongous success for the Phillies. Going back-to-back would’ve been amazing, but this is baseball–only one or two teams in an entire generation get to go back-to-back, and simply making the World Series two years in a row qualifies the team as something of a mini-dynasty. I feel the Phillies did baseball a huge service this year by A) Proving that last year’s winning team wasn’t a fluke, and B) Giving the league its first World Series in at least four or five years where it really feels like the best two teams were the ones that made it. Everyone loves underdogs in sports, and so do I, but every once in a while, you want to feel like the playoff system is credible enough that at least some of the time, the right two teams get in, and the right one wins. (And if you still think the Cardinals were better than the Phillies this year because they had two good hitters and two good pitchers..well, I just don’t know what to tell you).

Besides that, I enjoyed rooting for this team more than last year’s. There’s nothing like a championship season certainly, but there’s a swagger in cheering on returning champs that I found absolutely intoxicating–like the Phillies were finally playing with the big boys. The atmosphere surrounding the team was incalculably different, too, from the sellout string at CBP and the presence of fanbases in opposing ballparks, to the fact that not only was the team a buyer at the trade deadline, they made probably the biggest deal of the season by landing one of the best pitchers in baseball (and barely giving up anything in return). The Phillies were now one of baseball’s bullies, the kind of team that inspired “____ SUCKS!!” chants in rival ballparks and seething jealousy from the league’s have-nots. Seeing five of our guys on the All-Star Team–including the entire fucking outfield–I’m sorry, that’s just one of the coolest experiences you can enjoy as a sports fan. Even last year, that would’ve seemed somewhat absurd.

And just in terms of the people, I also preferred this team to last year’s. Pat Burrell, my least favorite guy on that ‘08 team but a big middle-of-the-lineup guy, was replaced in left field with Raul Ibanez, and within about a month of hitting homers, making big catches, and melting us with his penetrating stare, Rauuuuuuul made us feel like Pat the Bat had been off the team for about a decade. Cole Hamels, always something of a pretty boy who felt too big for the city, saw his status in the rotation erode, as Pedro Martinez gave us tantalizing glimpses of how amazing he must’ve been to follow in his prime (even at 75% of what he once was, dude was simply electric), and J.A. Happ gave us hope for the future of the staff on the way to a likely Rookie of the Year award. And Cliff Lee…well, let’s just say that I can’t believe we’re lucky enough to get another year with the guy. With the minor exception of a painful week or two in June, this team was an absolute pleasure to root for all season, from the insane come-from-behind win against Atlanta in the opening series, through the 22-run game in Cincinnati, Jamie’s one-hitter in Florida, and right up to Chase going deep five times in the Series. It’s a special team, and one we should get at least a couple more quality years out of before folding up the tent.

So yeah, it would’ve been nice to win it all, and it’s certainly going to take a couple of days to get over (especially living in New York, where the celebrating of the Bad Guys Winning will be thoroughly unavoidable). But I shed no tears for the loss–this was one time when just getting there was pretty great in itself. I love this team and I can’t wait to do it all again next year. Now, how about those 76ers?

Over the final months of our fine decade, Intensities in Ten Suburbs will be sending the Naughty Oughties out in style with a series of essays devoted to the top 100 songs of the decade–the ones we will most remember as we look back fondly on this period of pop music years down the road. The archives can be found here. If you want to argue about the order, you can’t, because we’re not totally sure what the qualifications are either. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy.

In October 2001, I was old enough that I had started to read Pitchfork, but not quite old enough to have a good understanding of the concept of pre-release hype. So when the site gave The Strokes’ Is This It? a 9.1 rating with a review that basically came to the conclusion of “this album isn’t going to change the world like everybody thinks, but it’s a damn fine rock record,” my reaction was actually “Wow, this album was suppposed to change the world?” This was the first I’d heard not only of The Strokes, but the entire New York neo-garage scene, and the supposedly burgeoning New Rock Revolution, a term that I don’t think actually came into vogue until a few months and mediocre Hives singles later. My mind had been blown for the first time that decade by Radiohead’s Kid A, but that album didn’t feel like it was part of anything bigger than itself. If there really was some sort of revolution on the horizon, I was pretty damn excited to get in–for the first time in my conscious music-listening career–on the ground floor of it.

Of course, Pitchfork was basically right, a fact that became abundantly clear from the first time I actually heard The Strokes. I saw the video for “Last Nite” on late-night TV, and after I got over my shock and excitement over seeing these supposed underground superstars being featured in such a mainstream institution, I was somewhat underwhelmed at the song itself. I didn’t dislike it or anything, I just really didn’t get what all the hype was about–it was a pretty standard rock song, one which I felt I’d heard in parts in about a dozen other songs before. (Never mind that if a Pitchfork review hadn’t told me that there was such hype to begin with, I just would have been relieved it was anything but a Nickelback or Creed video). It wasn’t until a friend of mine actually brought over Is This It? to listen to, and I got to hear in its proper context–as the ‘Fork had said itself, just a collection of great, great rock songs–that I actually noticed what a kickin’ tune “Last Nite” actually was. (And in the meantime, I learned a valuable lesson about judging albums based on misconceptions that other people told me that I should have).

“Last Nite” is almost instantly irresistible, simply be the virtue of the fact that it plays off of two of the greatest motifs of the last 50 years of pop music–the “You Can’t Hurry Love” bass line, and the “American Girl” drumbeat. They’re sort of hard to describe without a mind, but you can trust me that you know both, and you’ve heard them in dozens of songs over the course of pop history (the latter can be heard in variations in songs like The Cure’s “Close to Me” and Escape Club’s “Wild West,” while the former is in everything from Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” to Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” and Wham!s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”). The “American Girl” beat is even augmented by the song’s intro, which introduces an instrument at a time and reaches a sort of early climax before the lyrics even begin, just like “Girl” did. Using these two highly time-honored musical conceits, “Last Nite” automatically places itself in a proud rock / pop tradition, and you’d have to be instantly smitten with a song that used such a combination.

Besides that, as already noted, there’s really not all that much to the song. The lyrics are mostly negligible–I’ve never given them more then a second’s thought, though I’d assume that they probably have something to do with a one-night stand, as 95% of Strokes songs appear to be about the actions leading up to, partaking in, and quickly departing from one-night stands. (Though I’m not exactly sure how, if at all, the line “Spaceships, they won’t understand” would fit into that). But it was breezy, it was fun, and singer Julian Casablancas had the most ably sleazy and fun-to-imitate drawl of any rock band in ages. It was the kind of rock / pop song that was appealing in such a basic, musically fundamental way that although you never really got an urge to listen to it, its presence not only never became tiresome, but was never less than completely welcome. If you put “Last Nite” on in a bar–the ideal setting for the overwhelming majority of Strokes songs anyway–in any point over the last five years, it would’ve brought a smile to my face, which is less than easy to do for a song that I’ve heard as many times as I’ve heard that one.

If there was anything new or revolutionary about The Strokes, it was entirely a matter of attitude. I mentioned Creed and Nickelback earlier in the post, and while they were hardly the only two popular rock bands in late 2001 (and Creed might have even been in between albums at that point, if I remember correctly), from someone who wasn’t listening to much mainstream radio at the time, it felt like that was all that was on the radio. (Well, them and Blink-182, who I would eventually realize wasn’t such a bad thing, but had little taste for at the time). The Strokes were different just because they felt grungy and unpretentious, they wrote simple songs that weren’t overbearing, and they made almost laughably straightforward clips like the one for “Last Night,” a live clip where the only action to speak of were the random insertion of clips of a world map and a tic-tac-toe board, the chain reaction of falling microphones caused by Fabrizio Moretti drumming on one stand during a fill, and Casablancas drunkenly stumbling into his bandmates while they try to conceal their irritation with his buffoonery. (Needless to say, the “Last Night” clip was one of the decade’s instant classics).

The Strokes made some albums after Is This It?, for which Real Fans will try to make arguments about in some way being progressions from their debut, while the rest of us find one or two semi-notable songs, get the rest confused with each other, and become progressively less excited with each new release. Meanwhile, after a fun nine months in the spotlight (and a semi-notable Battle of the Bands at the 2002 VMAs), the New Rock Revolution the Strokes supposedly helped spearhead died out without ever reaching anywhere near the influence of the post-Nirvana boom, as some critics predicted (I quickly also learned to take everything UK pubs like Q and NME said about new bands with several grains of salt). You could say The Strokes’ career was ultimately something of a disappointment, but if so, that’s the fault of anyone who tried to cast them as anything more than a refreshing change of pace for modern rock, not theirs. I shed no tears for The Strokes’ career–just doing what they did, they were still one of the key bands of the decade–and ultimately, I quote Ryan Schrieber from that damn P-Fork review:  “The Strokes are not deities. Nor are they “brilliant,” “awe-inspiring,” or “genius.” They’re a rock band, plain and simple. And if you go into this [band/song/]album expecting nothing more than that, you’ll probably be pretty pleased.”

(Have any thoughts or remembrances of this song? Want to correct our lyrics or call us out for relying too much on Wikipedia? Please feel free to leave a comment here, or (gulp) Tweet us about it at twitter.com/intensities. Your input is lusted after and appreciated.)

The List So Far (Now With Links!):

100. Green Day – “Jesus of Suburbia”
99. The Ying Yang Twins – “Wait (The Whisper Song)”
98. Crazytown – “Butterfly”
97. Taylor Swift – “Teardrops on My Guitar”
96. The Fray – “Over My Head (Cable Car)”
95. Fergie – “Fergalicious”
94. Lidstrom – “I Feel Space”
93. Chevelle – “Send the Pain Below”
92. T-Pain f/ Yung Joc – “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)”
91. The Arctic Monkeys – “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”
90. Cassie – “Me & U”
89. Nelly Furtado – “Maneater”
88. Mike Jones f/ Slim Thug & Paul Wall – “Still Tippin’”
87. Bat for Lashes – “Daniel”
86. The Darkness – “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”
85. Dynamite Hack – “Boyz n the Hood”
84. DJ Khaled f/ T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman, Lil’ Wayne & Akon – “We Takin’ Over”
83. Matchbox20 – “Bent”
82. The Game f/ 50 Cent – “Hate It or Love It”
81. 311 – “Amber”
80. 3 Doors Down – “Krptonite”
79. Nas – “Made You Look”
78. Royksopp – “Eple”
77. The Pussycat Dolls – “Don’t Cha”
76. DMX – “Party Up (Up in Here)”
75. Junior Senior – “Move Your Feet”
74. Twista f/ Kanye West & Jamie Foxx – “Slow Jamz”
73. The Streets – “Weak Become Heroes”
72. Jimmy Eat World – “The Middle”
71. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
70. Snoop Dogg f/ Pharrell – “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
69. Alice DeeJay – “Better Off Alone”
68. Xiu Xiu – “I Luv the Valley OH!”
67. Incubus – “Stellar”
66. Mariah Carey – “We Belong Together”
65. Andrew W.K. – “Party Hard”
64. Jurgen Paape – “So Weit Wie Noch Nie”
63. Taking Back Sunday – “MakeDamnSure”
62. Kid Cudi – “Day n Nite”
61. Paramore – “That’s What You Get”
60. System of a Down – “Toxicity”
59. dNTEL f/ Ben Gibbard – “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”
58. Three 6 Mafia f/ 8Ball & MJG – “Stay Fly”
57. Good Charlotte – “The Anthem”
56. The Lonely Island – “Lazy Sunday”
55. Darude – “Sandstorm“
54. Yellowcard – “Ocean Avenue”
53. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
52. Luomo – “Tessio“
51. Blink-182 – “Stay Together For the Kids”
50. My Chemical Romance – “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)“
49. Freelance Hellraiser – “A Stroke of Genius”
48. Daft Punk – “Digital Love”
47. Snow Patrol – “Chasing Cars“
46. Sean Paul – “Like Glue”
45. Ludacris – “Stand Up”
44. Britney Spears – “Toxic”
43. Kings of Leon – “Sex on Fire“
42. Jennifer Lopez f/ Ja Rule – “I’m Real (Remix)”
41. Lifehouse – “Hanging By a Moment”
40. Plain White T’s – “Hey There Delilah”
39. MGMT – “Kids”
38. Gym Class Heroes f/ Patrick Stump – “Cupid’s Chokehold”
37. Franz Ferdinand – “Do You Want To”
36. Kylie Minogue – “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”
35. Vertical Horizon – “Everything You Want”
34. The White Stripes – “Fell in Love With a Girl”
33. Jay-Z – “Takeover”
32. Maroon 5 – “This Love”
31. Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
30. M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”
29. Timbaland f/ OneRepublic – “Apologize”
28. Beyonce f/ Jay-Z – “Crazy in Love”
27. Coldplay – “Yellow”
26. Lil’ Wayne – “A Milli”
25. Shaggy f/ Ricardo “RikRok” Ducent – “It Wasn’t Me“
24. The Strokes  – “Last Night”

I apologize for the dearth of posting lately–it’s been a crazy-demanding week pop culture-wise recently. What with the NBA season starting, the World Series going on, Halloween looming (I ended up going as a member of NWA–worked OK, though my friends gave me deserved amounts of shit for being suckered into buying a $50 fake chain at a costume store) and new books by Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons being released (the only two writers I really care enough about to actively seek out new material, coming out with books within a week of each other–what are the odds), things like writing, sleeping, and pursuing social contact during daylight hours fall predictably by the wayside. Perhaps most time-consuming of all, though, is the new release of DJ Hero–Activision’s latest entry in the ever-expanding rhythmic synchronization video game market. This one, as you may have seen in the (not terribly illuminating) commercials, uses a turntable instead of a guitar or drum set, and asks you to fake-mix pairs of songs, using a crossfader, effects dial, and a prop record for scratching.

First and foremost, I’ve already played for about ten-twelve total hours since buying it (I’d have logged about twice that under optimal circumstances, but these are trying times), and it both seems like A) There’s still a decent amount of new material I’ve yet to cover and B) I still enjoy playing it a good deal. By those qualifications alone, the game is already something of a success, even given its fairly hefty pricetag (I paid over $110 for it, I think, and I was terrified I’d play it a couple times, be none too impressed and spend the rest of my week kicking myself for shelling out that kind of money for something so useless–but who was I kidding, really? I’d probably just have wasted it on Halloween anyway). The most important question, as with all these type of games, is this–despite your most logical, grounded-in-reality instincts, when it’s at its peak, does it make you feel in your heart of hearts like you’re actually a superstar DJ killing it in front of a sold-out club crowd? The answer is yes–in spurts, at the least.

The primary difference between DJ Hero and the Rock Band series–besides the controller, anyway–is that in this game, you’re just synthesizing two previously-existing songs, instead of (feeling like) you’re actually creating the music yourself. That’s not a problem, necessarily, though it certainly means that you’re not likely to feel like you’re learning any valuable skill in actually playing the instrument–especially since, despite the mixing between two records in the game, it’s only a single turntable on the controller (maybe they’re saving the double-deck for the sequel). But since you’re not actually playing anything but the entire songs, the enjoyment of playing the game is more dependent than ever on the quality of the songs/mixes selected. Many of them are good, often surprisingly so–pairs I never would’ve thought to be successful, like Masta Ace’s “Born to Roll” and Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff,” 50 Cent’s “Disco Inferno” and David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” Classics IV’s “Spooky” and Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain” end up being some of my favorites. But when it’s awkward–like the mixes with Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” and Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back”–it’s not much fun at all.

Luckily, the hits outnumber the misses, and the game gets more enjoyable as it gets harder–having to do more with the controller (and sometimes you have to think three or four steps at a time) just makes it a more engaging experience. Pulling off a complicated break section is just as rewarding a feeling as nailing a tricky guitar solo or a tough drum fill, and some of the gameplay elements they implemented–like the filtering with the effects dial and the “rewind” option made available when you get 50 in a row–just are very physically and aurally rewarding on a basic, almost kiddie level. The scratching can be a little cumbersome, and your arm definitely gets exhausted after a while, but they basically got the controller about as perfect as they could have for a game like this. (The DJs of the world have showed their support for the game, some even appearing in the VG itself–which is unfortunate when it comes to Grandmaster Flash’s grating delivery of the gameplay tutorials, but is pretty cool when you get to actually play as Daft Punk).

I have two main grievances with the game so far. One is that it seems like multi-player with this is going to be more difficult than it has been since the first Guitar Hero game–since you need to have two of those controllers to have two people play at the same time ( and then only two), unless you also have a guitar and are playing one of the dozen or so songs in the game with a guitar part. I feel like there must have been a way to sneak in a vocal option in there somewhere–if not yet, I guarantee there will be in a future installment. The MC/DJ combo is just too good an idea for a game like this to stay dormant forever. The real most annoying thing, though? You can’t fail out of a song. Not that I particularly like failing, but it casts a pall on some dubious in-game performances of mine, and eventually you start to lose that sense of accomplishment of actually having beat it (which, granted, is minimal…but this is still a video game, and I don’t want to beat it just by virtue of having sat through it). It feels patronizing, almost downright Un-American to play a video game where it’s impossible to lose. No good, and I’m not sure what the logic is.

In some respects the game is still pretty raw, more notable for its promise than its immediate delivery. But clearly, there’s a new strain of music video game to be had here in some respect, and I look forward to seeing what they do with the franchise in the future–as well as playing the rest of the songs I haven’t gotten to yet in the meantime. Except for “I Like to Move It”–way too soon after the commercials to be drawing back from that pool already.

It’s a little weird, I know. I’m currently a Philadelphian living in New York, which means that as a sports fan of just about any degree, my thoughts, viewing schedule, and life in general should be absolutely dominated by baseball–what with the Yankees and Phillies about to play in the World Series and all–these next few weeks. But while I’m pretty ridiculously excited for that, it’s the upcoming start of the NBA season that I can’t get off of my mind. Even with my team probably heading into a year of maddening inconsistency and the ceiling of a third-straight first-round playoff exit, I still found myself just as excited to watch the Sixers’ pre-season games as I was to see the Phillies in the divisional and league playoffs. What can I say? It’s been a long, basketball-less summer. I need dunks, three-pointers, “Sirius” and Jeff Van Gundy back in my life.

With the return of the NBA season invariably comes the return of epic Bill Simmons basketball preview columns–which, in itself, is one of the best things about basketball being back. His column for this year was of the 33 most intriguing people of the upcoming season–the players, coaches, and executives that would provide the most interest subplots over the course of the next 82 games. Some minor quibbles aside–Tim Duncan at #2 is way too high, and Shaq probably should’ve been #1B next to LeBron–it’s an excellent list, and one which I would be ill-advised to try to better. But I feel like writing a lot of words about the NBA, and since any basketball column I write would probably end up ripping off Simmons anyway, I figure it’d be slightly more righteous to instead just piggy-back off him–with my list of the next 33 (or as they’re presented here, #66 – #34), the ones that Bill excluded.

In any event, you should read his column before (and arguably instead of) mine, as it’s far better and (basically by definition) much more relevant. But if you’re like me, and you just can’t wait for the season to fucking get here already, hopefully mine help tide you over a little while longer too.

66. Omri Casspi

I’m thinking that the Kings could end up being a kind of sneaky-fun team to watch in the West this year–that is, if you get the NBA package or live in the greater Sacramento area, since they certainly won’t be televised nationally anytime soon. The team undoubtedly hit the necessary kind of Rock Bottom last year, with the bright spot of the entire 17-65 season being the emotional retiring of former franchise player Chris Webber’s jersey before a game that they almost won against the Jazz (really, it was close!) But with some of their flotsam jettisoned or just prescribed to the bench, and a decent young trio now of Kevin Martin, Jason Thompson, and rookie point-guard/physical-freak Tyreke Evans leading the way, I think they could be kind of exciting.

Really though, I’ll be watching for Omri Casspi, the Kings’ other ‘09 first-rounder, and (likely) the first-ever Israeli-born baller to play in the NBA. M.O.T.s come up so rarely in the NBA, and much as I love the Lakers’ Jordan Farmar, he just doesn’t have the inclination or the opportunity to rep as much as we’d like. Casspi should certainly get his shot with a team as talent-barren as the Kings, and he’s put up some pretty decent numbers in the pre-season, so here’s hoping. An Israeli bball stud would likely do wonders for our people, politically and socially–more than Sean Penn in Carlito’s Way, even.

#65. Darko Milicic

After a half-decade of being basketball’s walking, dribbling and perimeter-drifting punchline, Milicic finally gets to fulfill what seems to be the destiny of all positionally ambiguous European-born basketball players–to play in Mike D’Antoni’s up-tempo, largely position-devoid Seven Seconds or Less system. A shot-blocker and a potential inside-outside threat on a team that badly needs both of those player types, I think it’s fairly safe to say that it’s now or never for the one-time #2 pick of the 2003 draft. He’ll never be mentioned in the same sentence as LeBron, Melo and D-Wade in anything outside of that ‘03 context, but it might not be too late just yet to distance himself from Michael Sweetney, Marcus Banks and Zarko Cabarkapa either.

#64. John Kuester

I find it somewhat fascinating that the little-experienced Kuester was given the keys to a fucked-up Piston team and essentially told (in my impression, anyway), “Hey, we’re handing you to the keys to this team right now because it’s too fucked up and we’re too economically strapped to hire a real coach, so try not to fuck it up any worse than it already is and we’ll see if we can’t find someone better in a year or two.” Talking with my Piston fan co-worker recently, though, he was able to convince me that maybe this team isn’t quite as royally screwed as you’d think coming out of that disastrous late-season / playoff-run–that unburdened by the Iverson mess and by Sheed’s negative energy, Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince will come back motivated, and Rodney Stuckey will emerge into one of the East’s dominant point guards. (He also had me thinking that Charlie Villanueva was the cost-effective signing of the off-season and that Ben Wallace and Kwame Brown can somehow add up to a passable starting center). I don’t know if any of it’s true, but it made me think Kuester might not be in the worst position after all.

Were Charlie V and Ben Gordon the answer to the team’s problems? Probably not. Does the team have a shot at competing with the conference elite? Not really Is Kuester’s job about as secure as the PlaySkool safe I used to keep my loose change and little-used pot paraphernalia in (Hint: The combination is “1″)? I would guess so. But given the opportunity, it’ll be interesting to see what Kuester can do in one of the NBA’s most toxic jobs, given a roster that, on paper at least, can still be pretty competitive.

#63. Brandon Jennings

With a strong start to his career in Milwaukee, this guy could make waves that end up being pretty far-reaching. The first American player to forego playing college ball to get pro experience overseas, Jennings could set a precedent for unsentimental high school kids who decide that preachy coaches, meaningless conference rivalries and “One Shining Moment” don’t hold as much sway for them as the prospect of getting legit pro experience, and making millions in the process. And really, when you think about it in its most basic, logical components, what do you think prepares people to hold down a job as an adult–a year of frat-parties and non-stop inside-the-bubble adulation, or a year spent as an outsider in an occasionally hostile culture, where for likely the first time in your life, you’re not such hot shit? Personally speaking, if you’d dropped me in Italy as a college Freshman and told me to learn how to make a living working with professionals, it would’ve grown me up right quick.

Of course, it won’t matter so much if Jennings busts, and he might even turn into a cautionary tale akin to preps-to-pros busts like Kwame Brown and Darius Miles. But like Casspi, the Bucks are going to be so devoid of legitimate players this season (the one man to beat for Jennings at the point position is Luke Ridnour–’nuff said) that he’s almost guaranteed to get a fair deal of laying time, and like Casspi, he’s made some noise in the pre-season. He’s worth checking in on from time-to-time, they could be making a 30 for 30 (60 for 60?) special about this kid one day.

#62. Carlos Boozer / Paul Millsap

Or, the NBA’s attempt to answer the scientific conundrum, “Can two objects occupy the same space at the same time?” I have no clue what the Jazz were trying to accomplish this off-season, but I guess they got their man/men–they matched Portland’s offer for Millsap, and they failed to move Boozer, so there’ll certainly be no shortage of double-double-racking in Utah this season. Seeing which of them ultimately wins out the battle for power-forward supremacy–and what will end up happening to the loser–might end up being the only interesting thing about the Jazz this season, one of the most (appropriately, I suppose) vanilla teams in the NBA.

#61. Trevor Ariza

The best thing about Sports Illustrated’s NBA preview issue came in the Houston Rockets section, where Shane Battier–the team’s offensively-limited but defensively-tenacious forward–talks about how weird it is to be the last player introduced in the Rockets’ pre-game routine, an honor usually reserved for the team’s star player. Needless to say, with Yao Ming out for the season and Tracy McGrady temporarily sidelined (more on him later), the Rock Boys are relatively devoid of star power, and a guy like Battier–who defines the team’s general ethos, even if he doesn’t move all that many jerseys–is the closest thing to a franchise player. That is, unless the team’s hot new signing in the off-season can step up to be that go-to-guy–ex-Laker swingman Trevor Ariza.

This is weird for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that just a year ago, barely anyone (including Lakers fans) had any clue who Ariza was. A second-round pick out of UCLA who was shooed out of New York and Orlando (the irony of the latter not being lost on many in last year’s finals) before landing in LA, and who spent his first year on the West Coast out with foot injuries, Ariza slowly made a name for himself over the course of last season with his versatility, his perimeter defense and his much improved three-point shooting. Still, he mostly flew under the radar, and I even remember hoping the Sixers would be able to land him in the off-season for a relatively reasonable price. But a title does funny things to people’s reps, and when the Lakers took home top honors in the off-season, Ariza got much of the credit (and rightfully so). Hence, he was able to get a mid-level contract from the Rockets in the off-season–roughly the same amount, strangely, that ex-Rocket Ron Artest took to take his place in Los Angeles, essentially working out to just a straight swap between the teams–and by ‘09 Houston standards, that basically makes him an instant superstar down south.

Can Ariza make that next leap as a player, going from virtual unknown to fringe-All-Star in just two seasons’ time? I always liked him, so I hope so. It will no doubt be a fascinating experiment in Houston regardless, as we see if the Rockets’ solid infrastucture, market-manipulating dealings and core values of smart team play and hard-nosed defense is good enough to make up for the lack of personnel. Basketball is one of the only pro sports where the organizational philosophy can even threaten to supersede the means of the players, and the Rockets this season should be a pretty good focus group on just how far that concept can be stretched.

#60. Greg Oden

The honeymoon–and the ESPN The Magazine commercials–are definitely in the past with this guy. I never watched him in college, so it’s getting to be a little confusing to me why a guy who still can’t convincingly overtake Joel Przybilla for starting center on the perpetually up-and-coming Blazers was ever going to be a hot prospect, let alone draftable over that skinny guy that Seattle ended up taking. In his article the Sports Guy has the Blazers falling to 41-41 next season, and though I’m not sure if they’ll fall quite that far, I do think they take a step back this season–that is, unless their allgedly-dominant center actually starts to come into his own. He was such a disappointment last year that you almost forget he’s even on the team now, but you have to keep in mind that if Nate McMillan can get just about anything out of him, they could pretty easily catapult from regressors to contenders. He’s supposedly coming back leaner and meaner (a little mean would certainly go a long for this guy), so it’ll be interesting to see if he can leave the Vanilla Gorilla in the dust once and for all.

(Side note: Let’s say Oden never really pans out the way people hoped. We had a stretch in the middle of this decade where Andrew Bogut, Andrea Bargnani and Grampy Oden were consecutively picked as #1 in the draft. I mean…really? Granted, they weren’t the strongest draft classes to begin with, but during that stretch, Chris Paul, Brandon Roy, Kevin Durant, Deron Williams, Danny Granger and Rajon Rondo were all taken with lower picks…and the best we could do on top were three slightly above-average big ‘uns? You have to go back to the 70s to find even two straight #1 picks who never made an all-star team, and right now at least, it’s looking like we very easily could have a three-fer. An unfortunate blemish on pro ball in the 00s.)

59. Lawrence Frank

Frank’s job will certainly interesting this season, with the Nets ownership in flux and the team in full-on rebuilding more. But more on that later. What I’m really interested about with regards to Frank is just how much longer he can hold on to his job. When he took over from Byron Scott as coach of the Nets, it was January 27, 2004–OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” was the #1 single in the country, and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King had just been announced as the most heavily-nominated movie at the Academy Awards, with eleven nods. OK, so maybe it doesn’t quite feel like half a lifetime ago, but it was long enough in the past to make him the longest-tenured coach in the revolving-door Eastern Conference. Lawrence Frank! The guy still looks like he’s an interim manager–like he’s just biding his time on the sideline, trying not to piss off the front office (whoever that may be) or the star players (whichever of those are left). He’s like Commissioner Burrell from The Wire–a guy just competent and well-liked enough to consistently maintain the status quo as everything goes to shit around him. Will he be able to survive a possible 25-win season, though? Better start politicking now, Lawrence.

#58. Stephen Jackson

The ridiculous thing is that it wasn’t even a year ago that Captain Jack signed a three-year extension with the Warriors. Now he wants out? I mean, fair enough…but how long did it take him to realize that he didn’t want to play for a backwards organization and a vindictive, absentee coach in a guard-heavy, overstuffed offense-only lineup? Did he wake up in a cold sweat sometime in April and say to himself “Oh shit…I’m signed on for three years with the Golden State Warriors!” We’ve seen this movie before with malcontents in the Bay Area, and it seems pretty likely that the Captain will be up for grabs before the trading deadline. That’s a good thing–no point in one of the league’s most lovable characters languishing in glorified babysitting duty in Golden State, when plenty of contenders could use a smart, skilled swingman with championship cred late in the season. The Cavs, the Celtics, a second tour with the Spurs…it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility, and it’ll make the post-season that much spicier.

#57. Adam Morrison & J.J. Redick

It seemed like kismet, or the kinship of all living things, that these two guys should meet in the NBA finals last season. Never mind that J.J. only played 16 minutes a game and shot just 40% from the field, or that Adam didn’t even dress for the series. Maybe the best article on the NBA I read all last season was one that focused on these two guys–before Morrison got traded to the Lakers, I think–and their struggles to make a living in the pros, while forgetting about how they used to be the two most electric college players in the country, not having to worry about anything but scoring and playing XBox (“I haven’t played Halo in years” said Redick, in the piece’s most heartbreaking line). It was nice to see these guys at least being able to mime playing as the stars under the world’s biggest stage again. And with Redick still in the Magic rotation, and Morrison lighting it up in the Summer League this off-season, who knows? There’s a possibility–however slight–these guys could be showing down one-on-one for real in the finals next year.

#56. Dwight Howard

There’s a lot to look for about D-12’s game this year–whether he can take the step from franchise player to face of the league, whether he can keep Vince Carter in check and not get threatened by his go-to status in late-game situations, and most importantly, whether he can keep LeBron James from showing him up in this year’s Slam Dunk Contest. But what I really want to know is this: Can the dude learn to shoot free throws? Lest we forget, the Magic were up three with about fifteen seconds to go, and only one Howard free-throw away from clinching game four of the finals last year, but Howard bricked both, and Derek Fisher hit a game-tying three to send the game into overtime, where the Lakers eventually won. For a team historically haunted by poor free-throw-shooting, it was one of the worst (and most gnawingly predictable) ways to lose a big game, and one which basically guaranteed that the Lakers would be going home with top honors.

I’m fascinated by players like Dwight and Shaq’s inability to earn points at the charity stripe, for this simple reason–I’m pretty sure that when I was in sixth grade, I could reliably hit three out of five free throws, and these guys just can’t do that with any regularity (D-12 went just 21-43 from the line in the finals). Now, it’s not a totally fair comparison–the strength and huge hands of these physical weirdos make the physics much harder to control, and the pressure of drilling these shots in such high-leverage situations is obviously slightly more than I experienced in my middle school gym class. But this guy is considered one of the five greatest basketball players in the known universe. It’s just weird that there’s something on the court that I could do as an eleven-year-old that he still can’t. (Yet, anyway–I’m sure there’s an entire scientific brain trust operating underneath Disney World currently devoted to the sole purpose of figuring out a way to get Howard’s FT% up to 65%).

#55. Jonny Flynn

No pressure, rook. With two draft picks in the top six, a once-again-healthy core that went on a surprisingly promising run when at its peak last winter, and new management on the way, it looked like the Timberwolves might have been a team to watch in the West this year. But all the optimism was quickly undercut with new GM David Kahn’s inexplicable move to draft back-to-back point guards with their top two picks, upsetting both and thoroughly alienating the first, Spanish sensation Ricky Rubio, who ended up deciding to avoid the drama altogether by sticking around overseas for the next couple seasons. Now big man Kevin Love is injured as well, and suddenly a lot of eyes are going to be on Flynn to do something to justify the entire mess and keep the season from being a complete wash. He’ll get some help down low from Al Jefferson, but he still has to prove his play-making potential, and with newly-signed backup Ramon Sessions nipping at his heels, he’ll have to do it somewhat expeditiously as well. I’m pulling for you, Jonny–that Syracuse team last year was a whole lot of fun.

#54. Devin Harris & Brook Lopez

I’m also thinking that the Nets could end up being a kind of sneaky-fun team to watch in the East this year–that is, if you get the NBA package or live in the greater New Jersey area, since they certainly won’t be televised nationally anytime soon. (Maybe you really shouldn’t listen to me about these things, though–I also thought the Nationals and the Pirates were going to be .500 teams this MLB season. I have a soft spot for thoroughly, unapologetically terrible and talent-less teams, I guess). In any event, they do have some nice young players now–Courtney Lee, Chris Douglas-Roberts and Terrence Williams all look to be somewhat undervalued pieces now, and they’ll have time to grow together without having to sing backup to any established vets in the process. The leaders of this ragtag bunch, though, will undoubtedly be point guard Devin Harris and post-man Brook Lopez, who need to grow as scoring threats and floor leaders if the Nets want to be more than a 20-win team this year.

Harris and Lopez have–or, should have, anyway–two loftier goals in mind with with their performance this season, though. The first will be proving that there’s enough of a talented, high-ceiling young core already in place with the Nets for LeBron James to consider the team as a viable landing place for him in the off-season. The more I think about it, the more logical the idea of LeBron joining the Nets seems to me. I see the Shaq experiment ending very badly in Cleveland (like, “Top 5 Reasons You Can’t Blame Shaq for Driving The King Out of Cleveland” bad), I don’t think the Knicks have enough of a future in New York for LeBron to consider spending the next phase of his career there, and as fun as it would be to have Kobe and LeBron in the same city, the Clippers…I just don’t see it. But if the Nets do end up moving to Brooklyn, then LeBron can live out his Big Apple fantasies (with Jay-Z at his side, no less) without necessarily sacrificing the next three or four years of his career to rebuilding. Besides, playing for the newfound Brooklyn Nets in Year Zero, LeBron would absolutely get to define the franchise for all-time, and even maybe achieve the street cred that’s sort of eluded him in his career thusfar. And with an eccentric Russian billionaire writing the checks…c’mon, tell me you can’t see it.

Oh, and the second thing? Convincing me that if and when this team does come to Brooklyn, that I’ll need to shell out the money and sacrifice what little social life I have left to attend 30-40 home games a season. I imagine I won’t need all that much of a push.

#53. Jamal Crawford

A whole decade–573 games in all–without once making the playoffs, in a league where more than half the teams make the damn playoffs, is tragic enough to begin with. But considering that Jamal Crawford spent most of those years not only on teams with little to no playoff aspirations, but in three of the most fucked-up NBA situations of all the 00s (the Bulls in the post-Jordan era, the Knicks under Isiah Thomas, the Warriors after Nelly mentally checked out)–it has to bring a little bit of a smile of your face to see him traded to what should be a good situation and surefire playoff team for once. Brought to the Hawks in an off-season trade, Jamal will likely be coming off the bench behind Mike Bibby and Joe Johnson, but while most twenty-a-game scorers would take that as an affront, you have to think that the guy will be so grateful to be on a team likely to win more than 33 games (his previous ceiling) that he’d be willing to spend the entire season squeegeeing the Phillips Center floor and demonstrating how to take charges in practice if that’s what it took.

#52. DeJuan Blair

You gotta love it in the NBA when a decision is made that even at the time everyone else seems to know is incredibly stupid, and which turns out to be just that stupid in reality. How DeJuan Blair ended up getting picked with the #37 pick in the ‘09 draft–behind such can’t-miss future-superstars as DeMarre Carroll, Christian Eyenga and Sergio Llull–is utterly mind-boggling to me, and it appeared to be just as stupifying to anyone who wrote half a sentence about the draft this year. Blair looked like an absolute monster in just about every game of his sophomore season, and played with an alpha-male fury that made me think he sort of resembled Gerard Butler in 300 (you can kinda see it…maybe if you squint). The knocks on him coming to the pro game were obvious–at 6′7″, he was short for a conventional power forward, and after repeated knee surgeries, he had no more ACLs–which could maybe explain why he fell out of the lottery. But his upside, for however long he could stay on the court…how could you possibly let this guy slip to the second round?

Of course, there are too many smart teams in this league for everyone to stay stupid forever, and the Spurs gobbled him up at #37 with the surprised enthusiasm I usually display when nobody else wants the last dumpling at Chinese dinner. In the pre-season he put up cartoon numbers, going for 14 points, eight rebounds and two steals a game–in only 18 minutes a game. He’s sure to get a spot in the Spurs’ rotation this season, and I’m enamored enough with the guy to consider rooting for the team I’ve spent more energy in the last few years seething against than any other sports team just because he’ll be there. And I will never forgive the teams with the #21 – #36 picks in the draft for forcing me to contemplate this.

#51. Chris Paul

By all rights, the Hornets should be terrible this year. They took a major step back last year, they got absolutely humiliated in the playoffs, they have no starting two-guard and a one-man bench, and they appear to be intent on giving their coach the cold shoulder for the rest of his tenure. I want to write them off going into the season, but I can’t do that, and there’s only one even semi-logical reason why–Chris Paul. In a recent Yahoo! Sports chat, one of the guys was asked who the most underrated player in the NBA is, and Paul was his answer. On the surface, this answer should have been ridiculous–Paul is one of the league’s most beloved players, a two-time all-star universally renowned as the league’s best point guard, who finished second only to Kobe Bryant in league MVP voting two seasons ago. But I thought about it for a second, and just kind of shrugged, like “yeah, fair enough.” Dude is that good, maybe the third-most valuable player in the league right now, and any team that he’s on absolutely has to be taken seriously–even if that team is planning on starting Morris Peterson and Julian Wright on a regular basis. I know, right?

#50. Jameer Nelson

Some people, namely the Sports Guy himself, pointed out that the Lakers’ title last year had less to do with the Lakers making any great strides as a team (or Kobe making any great strides as a team player), and more to do with a bunch of weird, fluky circumstances that all worked out in their favor. KG got hurt, Manu Ginobili never got healthy, the Cavs never made the mid-season move they’d been long-threatening and then proved oddly flummoxed by the Magic in the conference finals. But the luckiest of all had to be the injury that fell Magic point guard Jameer Nelson–he who had absolutely shredded the Lakers in their regular-season meetings that year, and would doubtless have continued to do so in the finals. Nelson returned to play the Lakers, but in an extremely limited backup capacity, and I believe that had Nelson been right for the matchup, it would’ve swung at least one or two of the games, and possibly the entire series. Nelson getting back to his All-Star form from last season, I think, makes the Magic the likely title favorites going into the season.

(By the way–the good thing about there being three obviously great teams in the East this year (the Cavs, Celtics and Magic, all of which are arguable as the conference’s best team) is that it should provide for some good late-season excitement, because the three of them will all really be pulling for that #1 seed. Not just because they want home court status throughout–which is important but slightly overrated–but because the two teams that end up in the #2 or #3 seeds will have to play two of the other elite teams, while the #1 seed will likely get something close to a second-round-bye against the Hawks or Wizards or Heat before they have to take on a real challenge. It’s enough of a motivation that if things are close between two of the teams at the end of the season, shit could get real epic for the last couple games. Nobody likes to see coasting in the pros.)

#49. Bryan Colangelo

I have no clue whatsoever what to expect from the Raptors this coming season, but at the very least, I greatly admire Raps GM Bryan Colangelo for adhering to a relatively cohesive blueprint in what should undoubtedly be the weirdest fucking team in the NBA this season. Their starting lineup alone this season contains a Spaniard (Jose Calderon), an Italian (Andrea Bargnani), a Turk (Hedo Turkoglu) and an Alien (Chris Bosh). None of them play fixed positions (with the possible exception of Calderon), and none of them play defense (with the possible exception of no one). My best guess is that they’ll end up looking like a Babblefish-translated version of Suns North, but whether that translates to 50 or 20 wins this season is just about anybody’s guess. I do think it’s only appropriate, however, that the only non-US based team in the NBA should be doing their damnedest to make themselves seem as foreign (in just about every definition) to the regular stateside game as possible. Marco Belinelli is pretty grateful too, I bet.

#48. David Lee & Nate Robinson

Offered one-year extensions by the Knicks after the rest of the league couldn’t make heads or tails of their worth in the off-season, David Lee and Nate Robinson have one more year to prove their worth to…well, somebody. The two of them are really all the Knicks have in terms of genuine, NBA-ready young talent, but despite the former’s endless stream of double-doubles and the latter’s slam dunk prowess, neither is really anywhere close to the kind of player you want to build a franchise around, even in part. Not yet, anyway–there’s still a chance that Nate can prove that he’s more than just a benchwarming sideshow, and that David can finally start to hit that eighteen-foot jumper that separates good power forwards from dominant power forwards (and really, watching Lee struggle hopelessly with that shot is the primary reason to still be watching Knicks games in this day and age, costing himself about one or two thousand bucks with each brick). But the next off-season, with both as unrestricted free agents, will be ultimate decision time, as both get legit deals from teams that actually want them or just resign themselves to being Knicks role players for the rest of their careers.

While we’re on the subject of the rebuilding Knicks, by the way–when does the new administration start to draw heat for wasting their last two top-ten picks? Sure, it’s extremely early to close the books on either of these guys, with Danilo Gallinari playing just 26 injury-stricken games last season and Jordan Hill yet to play a second in an official NBA game. But in what I’ve seen of both, Gallinari looks like a solid bench player at best, whereas Hill has just looked dreadful in each of the half-dozen or so pre-season/Summer League games I’ve seen him in–he looks miserably out of his depth going up against JaVale McGee and Yi Jianlian, God help him when he has to struggle with Kevin Garnett and Elton Brand. In a period when they need to stockpile as much young, cheap talent as humanly possible to attract the Big Free-Agent they’ve been dangling in front of their fans since the end of the Isiah Thomas era, it might prove extremely consequential if they end up having whiffed on both of these–especially considering that they’ve already traded away their pick in the ‘10 draft. Yikes.

#47. Hasheem Thabeet

Thabeet is kind of a reverse DeJuan Blair, in that everyone seemed to know that drafting this guy with the #2 pick was way too high even as it was happening. Ironically, the game that defined both players in college may have been the one they played against each other, when Blair positively abused Thabeet in the low post for all 40 minutes of a late-season UConn/Pitt contest–or at least, for all of the 40 minutes that he was on the court, as he got in foul trouble early and had to ride the bench for much of the game. Taken #2 by the Grizzlies, he was supposed to be an offensive project but a defensive stalwart, and now people are questioning if he even has the smarts to play good NBA defense. Thabeet’s status bottomed out with his 57 rating in NBA 2K10, a rating that ranks him lower than a bunch of second-rounders, and now he’s earned the rare status of being deemed a bust before he even sets foot on the court in a regular-season pro game. The fact that he’s going to have to fight Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol on the most damned franchise in the league…it appears we might be a few years away from omnipresent “YOU CAN’T STOP THABEET” posters at the FedEx center.

#46. Ernie Grunfeld

The Wizards GM did a very noble thing for the NBA in the off-season–he kept the middle-class alive in the Eastern Conference. Everyone this off-season has bemoaned and/or celebrated the fact that in the NBA, the rich have gotten richer while the poor got poorer. And indeed, after the Wizards’ uber-disastrous 19-win 2008 season, Grunfeld would have been fairly justified in following the leads of countless other teams in ripping it up (trading what pieces he could, though some of his contracts were largely unmovable) and starting again (rebuilding around the team’s young players and their upcoming No. 5 draft pick). Instead, he held on to his stars and turned the No. 5 pick into Randy Foye and Mike Miller, two above-average role-players to flesh out the Wizards’ thin bench. With starters Gilbert Arenas and Brendan Haywood returning from injury, the Wizards could turn out to be a 50-win team this season–albeit not one who provides that much of a threat to the troika at the top of the conference.

This is more important than people probably realize. The Wizards are one of the decade’s best second-tier teams–a fun, swaggery bunch that can hang around just long enough to put a scare into a legit contender and get people fired up for a possible upset, but not long enough to actually put together a championship run. Wizards fans seem to acknowledge this, and to their credit, they seem mostly OK with it–they (hopfully) realize that it can be just as much fun to root for a scrappy, entertaining second-round team as it is to root for a more composed, professional one who plays deep into the spring. When the Wizards undoubtedly end up playing the Cavs in the playoffs for like the seventh time this decade, I’ll root for them like they were my own team–even though I know perfectly well they barely have a shot. It’s the kind of stuff that really gives the league character, and it’s absolutely necessary.

45. Tyson Chandler & Emeka Okafor

The two participants in the most stupifyingly pointless deal of the off-season. When two players with relatively similar positions, skill sets, and contracts get swapped for each other like Chandler and Okafor, all I can think about is how pissed off I would be if I was one of those players. I mean, I’m currently trying to move from one New York borough to another, and the task seems so monumentally large that I can barely even begin to think about it before I decide to watch Adult Swim re-runs instead. To have to pick up and move from Charlotte to New Orleans, or vice versa, for no particularly pressing reason (a couple extra years on one contract? Injury concerns? The difference between a 13 and 10 statline and a 12 and 11?)–I’d be fucking livid. The good news here is for Okafor, I suppose, who a) upgrades from Raymond Felton to Chris Paul, and who really knows how many points a game that’s worth, and b) goes from being primarily associated throughout his career with Dwight Howard (with whom he was taken back-to-back in the ‘04 draft, and whom he somehow beat out for the ‘05 Rookie of the Year) to now being associated with Chandler, by any criteria a much more flattering comparison.

44. Andre Iguodala

Little personal bias here, perhaps, but I don’t see how you can deny what a big year this is going to be for Mr. Iguodala. Whether you saw it or not (or cared), ‘Dre turned a major corner in last year’s playoffs–or more specifically, in games one and three of the series, where he was about as smart, electric and clutch as just about anyone else in the post-season. And now with Andre Miller gone to Portland, and Elton Brand just wanting to prove that he’s still a half-decent player in this league, the Sixers are now unquestionably Iguodala’s team–not to mention that with coach Eddie Jordan’s newly installed Princeton Offense, and without a proper point guard, ‘Dre’s probably going to have to shoulder even more of the team’s load this year (after already leading the league in minutes played last season). I don’t know if he’s up to the task, but us Sixers fans (the hundred or so of us left) had better fucking hope so, because without Iggy raising his game to an unquestionable All-Star level, the team doesn’t have much of a prayer to make the playoffs this season.

#43. Luol Deng

After his shockingly inconspicuous absence from the Greatest Post-Season Series of All-Time–I don’t think I heard his name mentioned once in all of Bulls-Celtics, until Paul Pierce mentioned that they’d be even more dangerous next season with Luol Deng healthy (although he referred to him just as “Lu,” which kind of blew my mind). I’ve already written in great detail about just how weird it is that a guy who was not that long ago seen as the Bulls’ franchise player–and signed to a contract to match–sat out the franchise’s most pivotal series since the Jordan era, and nobody even seemed to notice. But now back and with a team that seems like the most plausible to be a threat The Powers That Be in the East–and one which, sans Ben Gordon, once again has a defined place for him in the lineup–he’ll certainly get his shot at proving why people should give a shit about whether he’s with the team or not. Another 14 and six season, though, and the guy’s officially yesterday’s news, on a team which has plenty of other players capable of taking over the spotlight.

#42. Tracy McGrady

Aside from Elton Brand–who was arguably never quite on T-Mac’s level to begin with, despite winning more playoff sereis (currently a 1-0 tally)–you’d be hard to find a player currently in the league who went from elite to worthless in a shorter time than Tracy McGrady. Injuries, too many games logged at too young an age, the weight of an astounding seven career first-round-playoff exits…hard to say what happened, exactly. All I know is that if I was McGrady, I’d have found it damn hard to cheer my teammates along as they rocketed to a brilliant second half of the season and even won the franchise’s first playoff series in over a decade–while I watched from the sidelines with a gimpy left knee and saw my status as an NBA player gradually depreciate from “All-Star” to “Chemistry distraction” to “Injury-prone expiring contract.” Now when people talk about the Rockets’ prospects in the upcoming season, they don’t even mention that T-Mac might be coming back not that late into the season, like they weren’t sure if his return will even be considerable as a positive for the Rockets’ mid-late-season prospects.

All that said, I think McGrady could make things more eventful in the second half of the season than people think. Either he comes back to a much stronger and NBA-tested Rockets core and provides them a scoring first-option that they’re just not going to have with Trevor Ariza, Aaron Brooks and Luis Scola getting most of the touches, or he comes back to a team and organization that’s already so mentally past the Tracy McGrady era that they’re willing to give away his expiring contract for just about whatever they can get in return, possibly swinging the mid-season fates of two franchises in the process. Whichever ends up happening, I don’t think he can be discounted–the guy’s still only 30, and even if he’s not as explosive as he once was, I can’t believe that there aren’t a sizeable number of teams out there that couldn’t use his playmaking and outside-shooting services. Unless, of course, his knees are so shot from the surgeries that he just stays on the sidelines until his free agency next season, which would just suck.  The NBA’s still a more interesting place with Tracy McGrady playing in it.

#41. Derek Fisher, Jordan Farmar & Shannon Brown

Maybe the most incredible thing about the Lakers’ 2009 title was that they got it with essentially zero production from the point guard position. Starting floor general Derek Fisher shot a paltry 38% from the field, and a stunningly low 28% from beyond the arc, where he’s a career 41% shooter in the playoffs. Backup Jordan Farmar wasn’t much better, and third-stringer Shannon Brown ended up being the most reliable of the bunch, despite only playing about 13 minutes a game. Fish saved himself a very, very long off-season by performing well in the finals against the Magic after being outright dreadful throughout the Conference playoffs, most notably hitting two extremely key threes in Game Four which basically erased public memories of how useless he had been up until that point. He probably would have had it anyway, but those two shots cemented his status as the Lakers’ starting pointman going into the ‘09-’10 season.

They can’t stick with Fisher forever, though. The dude’s already 35, and that has become especially apparent on defense, where younger, quicker point guards like Aaron Brooks and Jameer Nelson have abused him remorselessly. Farmar is the more athletic, more conventionally play-making backup plan, but he proved to still be a little green last year, and Shannon Brown was lucky just to get into the rotation, a mere throw-in in the Radmanovic-Morrison deal that ended up being one of the team’s key reserve players late in the season, showing toughness and shot-making potential far beyond anyone likely dreamed. We know who’s going to start the season at the one in Los Angeles, but who’s going to finish it there? Seems almost an even money proposition between the three to me.

40. Shawn Marion

I know it can be a little dangerous to judge anything from the pre-season, but I saw Shawn Marion play once with the Mavs, and I’ve become completely convinced that he’ll end up being the best signing of the off-season. It just makes sense–Dallas so badly needed just one more guy another smart, athletic player who could hit the offensive glass, run the break, and (hopefully) not just chuck up three-pointers whenever he touched the ball in the half court. Marion’s statistics have been so underwhelming since he left Phoenix that you forget that he can still do a lot of little things for a team, especially on defense, where he remains one of the league’s most versatile guys. His days as a #2 or a #1 scoring option on a playoff team are likely over, but as a #3 or 4 guy on Dallas, I think he could make a world of difference–especially during the inevitable 20-25 game period where Josh Howard is out with in an injury and/or suspended for his stupidity. With The Matrix–and other good new pieces in Drew Gooden and undervalued rookie Rod Beaubois–I like Dallas as the #3 team in the West this year, and maybe the only one who can threaten the supremacy of Los Angeles and San Antonio.

This is all predicated, however, on the idea that Marion is finally and officially done with sulking over getting less attention in Phoenix than Steve Nash and Amar’e Stoudemire, and ready to do the “I just want what’s best for the team” thing for the final half of his career. This can’t really be assumed or taken for granted with a guy like Marion, and if it isn’t, it could make a huge difference. But I hope he’s gotten past that, because I think this Mavs team is gonna be mad fun when firing on all cylinders.

#39. Don Nelson

If Don Nelson used to be a Mad Professor type, now he’s one who’s been given tenure, so he feels no further need to cover up how zany he really is. It’s hard to say what will be more fascinating next season–watching how Nelly tries to split minutes between Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry without pissing off both, or watching his already disheveled hair start to approach full-on Albert Einstein territory. Nelson’s an unmotivated coach on an undisciplined team, and the combination of that has the ‘09 Warriors with pretty decent odds of rivaling the Jail Blazers and the Isiah Knicks as the ultimate Lunatics Taking Over the Asylum team of the decade. Amazingly, it doesn’t seem like crowds at Oracle Arena seem to mind their transformation from playoff busters to traveling circus all that much. And that is why I need to move to Oakland but badly.

#38. Tyler Hansbrough

On one level, getting drafted by Indiana was one of the best things that could’ve happened to Tyler Hansbrough–a young, positionally-flexible team without a set rotation that plays the kind of up-tempo style he’s used to and is overseen by a basketball legend, in a city that no doubt appreciates a certain amount of everyman scrappiness. On another level, though, it was one of the worst things that could have happened to him, since it served to draw unnecessary attention to the fact that he was, well, an extremely white dude, now playing for a franchise that was starting to take a little bit of heat for overvaluing some of its white players. In a way, Tyler will be able to blend in on the Pacers in a way he couldn’t have done on say, the Wizards or the Pistons, but in another way, he’s going to stick out more than ever.

Of course, race is far from the only point of interest with regards to Tyler Hansbrough in this off-season. For a guy who’s gone from being overrated to underrated and back about a dozen times since his Junior year at UNC–everyone has an opinion about Ty, ranging from him being an eminent star in this league to him being lucky to end up a journeyman–he’s invariably going to end up proving somebody very right about something, whether it be someone preaching the value of gutsiness and floor intelligence above all else, or someone ranting about the unrealistic expectations placed on college stars whose skill sets simply do not translate to the pro level. I’m hoping it’s the former, personally–I’ve been in love with the guy ever since I saw his unforgettably awkward victory celebration in the 2008 ACC tournament.  I’ll probably buy a jersey if I ever set foot in Indiana.

#37. Carmelo Anthony

I saw a clip of the “Stop Snitchin” segment recently with Carmelo hanging out in the background, looking vaguely embarrassed, and it reminded me just how far he’s come. After a somewhat disappointing regular season–he missed the All-Star team last year, if you remember–Melo put it in another gear during the playoffs, looking every bit the peer of LeBron, Kobe and D-Wade the first couple rounds. For a guy who always seemed to have the talent–even last year had the historic bright spot of Melo scoring 33 in a single quarter, breaking the NBA record–but maybe lacking the smarts or the proper drive, it was heart-warming to see him finally reaching something close to his birthright in the post-season as an immaculate scoring machine. He tapered off, though, in the last few games of the conerence finals against the Lakers–I think he might have been sick or something–and lost the deciding game on his 25th birthday. “It was a terrible birthday present,” said Anthony, “But I can get used to playing on my birthday.”

Can he, though?  Like many, I’m not sold on the Nuggets getting back to the #2 seed or the conference finals in the West–it just seemed like too many things went right for them last year, and that some injury or off-court incident or just simple regression to the mean will occur with them in ‘09-’10. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, though, if Anthony can string together an entire season on the levvel of his ‘09 post-season. With a matured, smartened and motivated Melo, the Nuggets can be just as dangerous as any team in the West. It’s just that one thing going wrong could spiral into a season-long wreck, and the Nuggets seem to have too many combustible parts to go another 82 games without that happening. Still, the proposition is tantalizing, and at the very least, I’d prefer Carmelo as the third-party alternative to the Kobe/LeBron debate to Dwyane Wade any day of the week.

#36. Delonte West

Consider this a study in the difference between small and big media markets. On the surface, at least, I’d argue that Delonte West’s off-season gun-toting incident–which saw the bipolar two-guard caught strapped with firepower on a motorcycle, including one gun in a guitar case, a la Desperado (presumably)–was far more noteworthy than some idiot wide receiver shooting himself in the leg at a nightclub. Yet, the Burress hooplah was like the second coming of the OJ trial, and the West coverage lasted for about one afternoon before being swept under the rug entirely. OK, so there might be a few differences between the scenarios–Burress’s crime was far more public, and he was a much more popular player than West. But lest we forget, Delonte West has now been the Cavs’ second-best and second-toughest player in the Cavs’ last two post-season runs, the only member of the team who didn’t look completely out of his depth during the Orlando series. If West comes back a mess, or if he doesn’t come back at all, it’s going to be a much bigger blow to the Cavs this season than people seem to realize, and might ultimately be of even greater consequence than whatever does happen with the Shaq experiment. Yet it barely even gets a passing mention in most Cavs season previews. Bizarre.

35. Steve Nash

By now, just about everyone seems to realize that the window has closed on the Suns–they came close a couple times, but due to a confluence of circumstances, this team, as currently constructed, is never going to win a title. No one seems to be more acutely aware of this fact than the team’s signature player (and one of the league’s most lovable figures), Steve Nash, who in general seems much sadder than he used to–no doubted the result of a half-decade’s worth of frustration over owner Robert Sarver’s penny-pinching, over the continuous and often inexplicable playoff losses to the Spurs, over the pouting of some teammates (Marion), the selfishness of others (Stoudemire) and the arguable betrayal of yet others (O’Neal). It’s clear that he still loves playing, loves his coach, his teammates, his fans. But Steve Nash is not going to win a championship in Phoenix, and he knows it. And for anyone who has followed basketball for any part of the last five years, you know what an existential Shame that is.

With that in mind, it should seem odd that Nash decided to sign an extension in Phoenix, that he willingly signed on for another two years of cost-cutting and half-hearted rebuilding, another two years of distracting trade rumors and shifts in coaching strategy, with no glimpse of the Larry O’Brien trophy in sight. Couldn’t he have sought out the Blazers, an exciting and talented young team with a magnanimous, basketball-loving owner, badly in need of a veteran point guard and experienced leader? Couldn’t he have signed as a backup on a loaded title contender like the Magic or Celtics, just to feel the camaraderie and excitement of a championship run? Hell, couldn’t he have signed on with old coach Mike D’Antoni in New York, in the hopes of attracting another big-name guy for a legit run the next couple of seasons? Couldn’t he have done anything else but doom himself to that sinking ship of a franchise?

But with some time to think about it, I’m glad that Nash made the decision he made. Too much emphasis these days is placed on titles–that you can measure your worth and your legacy by how many you’ve won, despite the fact that generally speaking, only a handful of different teams will win a title throughout the average player’s career. What Nash did was weigh the importance of going after a title–which as he should know better than anyone else, is never guaranteed, no matter who you’re playing for–and measured it against the other things that make up the totality of a basketball player’s existence–the money, the fans, the teammates, the community, the medical staff. Ultimately, he decided that he’d rather spend the twilight years of his career in comfort among friends and family in Phoenix than chasing rainbows out in Portland or New York or wherever–and can you blame him? Though it’s certainly sad and more than a little disappointing, it’s also kind of touching, too. There’s more to basketball than championships, you know.

Of course, with all this said, it’ll be interesting to see how this newfound perspective on NBA life translates for Steve Nash this season. Does he still try to give it his all, knowing how dire the situation will be? Does he sit out a dozen or so games this year? If the team does squeak into the playoffs, will he go all kamikaze for a few weeks in the hopes of one last run why the hell not? Can he keep Amar’e focused and motivated–and on the team at all? Is he still going to be one of the most electric players in the league? Nash giving up on titles is one thing, but Nash giving up on basketball would be something entirely different, and much more profoundly disturbing. Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that.

34. Kobe Bryant

Really, as long as #24 is still playing, I can’t imagine there’ll be too many seasons going in where he isn’t considered the most intriguing person of the season–or at least in the top two. So as you’ve probably heard by now, Kobe won a title last summer, and he did it without some fat seven-footer that can’t shoot free throws to help him. So, uh, what now? As you’d know if you read the Sports Guy’s article and the rest of my own, you’ll know that Kobe’s going to have some interesting shit going on with his teammates this year–a battle for minutes and supremacy at point guard, a perpetually-one-step-away superstar at center, a crazy person who may or may not be a lockdown defender at small forward, and a newly minted reality TV husband as a sixth man. As the team’s unquestioned leader–hey, he always wanted it this way, and you better believe that now he’s got it–it’ll fall more on Kobe than on anyone else, including Phil “I Can Only Show You the Door, You’re the One Who Has to Walk Through It” Jackson, to keep everyone in line and make sure the team doesn’t crumble under its own overexposure and weirdness.

But Kobe’s got someone else he needs to keep in check, too–himself. (I know, cue dramatic music). Seriously, though–after seven years of Wanting It So Bad, what does Mr. Bryant do now that he’s finally proven he can win a title without Shaq? Does he keep pushing himself and his teammates to the limit, going after the magic MJ number of six rings? Or does he consider point proven, give up on trying to keep Ron Artest from climbing to the hotel roof in his underwear to look for UFOs, and revert to mid-decade Kobe, just going for numbers and seeing how far he can go? Like most people, I’m hoping its the former. But then again, I’m also kinda hoping it’s the latter–Mixed-Up, Volatile, Narcissistic Kobe was always a much easier sell than Upstanding Citizen Kobe, and it would be just a little sad to think that MUVNK was lost to the NBA for all-time. Then again, some people–not the least of all, the Lakers themselves–think LA can push for 70 wins this season. No matter what happens, you’d have to be somewhat crazy not to consider the Lakers the most fascinating team of the upcoming season.

And with all this, you’d have to be completely nuts to not be ridiculously excited for this upcoming season in general.

In the 00s, there were two #1 hits sung by men primarly on the subject of cheating on their girlfriends. One was Usher’s “Confessions, Pt. 2,” a guilt-wracked but surprisingly self-righteous confession from Mr. Raymond to his special lady about knocking up the girl he was stepping out with. It was dramatic, it had an unbearably tense guitar hook, and it featured a video with at least one scene of a mirror shattering into thousands of pieces. The other was Shaggy and Ricardo ‘RikRok’ Ducent’s “It Wasn’t Me,” a shamed recounting from the latter of his woman walking in on him and mistress mid-coitus, to the former, who advises him to deny, deny, deny. It was catchy, it had a nice breezy guitar hook, and it featured a video where both men plotted Ducent’s high-tech escape from what appears to be a cadre of vengeful ninja ex-girlfriends. The lesson here, as always in pop music: When acting like an asshole, revel in it unapologetically, rather than fake contrition for your misdeeds.

Shaggy’s return to the pop landscape in the Naughty Oughties was an unexpected, but far from unwelcome surprise. Those of us who were around for the booming 90s remembered him bset from his contribution to the 90s reggae revival, the loverman classic “Boombastic,” ensured immortality with its use in a weirdly claymated Levi’s ad. But here he was back again, now something of an elder statesmen of the genre, willing to dispense his wisdom to the next generation–such as Ricardo ‘RikRok’ Ducent, a younger English singer with Jamaican roots and an airy, lovably innocent-sounding voice. With the reggae comeback of the previous decade long since eroded, and the dancehall revival still a couple years away, Shaggy would need a single with dynamite crossover potential–and the assistance of the more anglicized Ducent–to have any chance of re-entering the charts.

“It Wasn’t Me” was that single, and then some. It had a bounce to it that no other single this decade could quite match–just an irrepressible sweet-naturedness that made you smile the second you heard the first notes of that accoustic opening riff. I’ve heard the song cited as being instrumental in the eventual dancehall craze of the early-mid 00s, but while it may have had an indirect importance, and Shaggy’s vocals are undeniably Jamaican the song’s actually much closer in nature to a J. Lo and Ja Rule single than it is to anything by Beenie or Elephant Man.  It’s just a big, sunny pop song, with an irresistibly stupid lyrical conceit and an impressively tuneful chorus.

The song leads off with a spoken-word dialogue to set up the story: Ducent’s girlfriend caught him fucking some chick in his house, and he doesn’t know what to do about the situation. Not exactly high theater, but then again, neither is Shaggy’s solution to the problem: “Juz say it wasn’t you!” And really, that’s the entire song’s content in a nutshell–the verses are mostly just Shaggy elaborating on his plan of action, often incomprehensibly (“Make sure she knows it’s not you and lead her on the right prefix / Whenever you should see her make a gigolo flex”), while the chorus is mostly just Ducent going into excruciating detail of just how badly the evidence stacks against him (“But she caught me on the counter! / Saw me kissing on the sofa!”)  Some words of warning are given by Shaggy (“You better watch your back before she turn into a killer”) and some sentiments of remorse are expressed by Ducent (“You may think that you’re a player but you’re completley lost”), but the song is ultimately little more than this kind of winking, We’re No Angels paling around between the two.

The key to the song’s success, I believe, is this: It’s the greatest karaoke song of the decade. Not that one has to be an empty orchestra regular to enjoy it, but I believe the joy to be had in the song is inextricably tied to how much fun it is to sing along to. You have your choice of highly-juxtaposing styles to be had, whether it be Shaggy’s quickfire delivery and impenetrably thick accent and patois, or Ducent’s laid back stylings and sweet, almost teenage-sounding lilt. Shaggy’s vocal line stays to the same note pattern, and despite its general indecipherability, is actually much easier to fake through than trying to attempt Ducent jumping up and down the octave. But both are an absolute blast to try to imitate, and highly recommended for anyone attempting to pay tribute to the decade in drunken-singalong format. (Works even better as a duo routine!)

Just as important to the song’s success, of course, is how fucking ridiculous the whole thing is. It’s not just that Shaggy’s advice to Ducent on how to handle this most delicate of situations is to claim ignorance, despite the basically lead-solid case to the contrary. It’s not just that neither Shaggy or Ducent seem to care about the consequences of the situation beyond the fact that RikRok was caught in the act, lacking any moral grasp over the fact that cheating on your girlfriend is, y’know, bad. It’s not just that Shaggy tries to convince Ducent that his girlfriend will get distracted from the truth and eventually forget it entirely when she goes to “noontime mass.” It’s that apparently the response of Ducent’s girlfriend–she who is supposedly appalled by this whole mess–is to pull out a camera and tape her beau’s infidelity, as if possessing the foresight to know that one day the incident would show up in a pop song, and she would need the hard video proof to seal her case. (Although, the fact that Ducent’s girl “stayed until it was over,” combined with the taping, leads me to an alternate conspiracy theory–maybe she was a little bit into it? Perhaps Ducent should have talked this problem out with the young lady, rather than immediately reaching for Shaggy’s assistance). Is this all a bad thing? Of course not–dumb songs are the lifeblood of pop music, and the unblinking confidence of the idiocy on display here could win over the most hardened smart dude.

Shaggy’s reversed commercial fortunes lasted for one more song, the similarly popular “Angel,” which featured a RikRok-like R&B vocal performance from the golden-throated Rayvon, and got a big leg up from pop history in the form of the guitar line from Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” and the chorus hook from Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning.” The well dried after that, and Shaggy never really cashed in on the dancehall boom the way he probably could have–perhaps he had strayed too far from the course. Hip-hop and pop music changed quickly after that, and between the edgier, sparser beats of The Neptunes, the grimy assault of Lil’ Jon, and the souped-up soul of Kanye and Just Blaze, the lithe bubblegum of Shaggy’s second moment in the sun became almost instantly antiquated. Today it seems a blissfully naive and perfectly simple moment in pop history, not sure how it got to the forefront, but thoroughly overjoyed to be there. Every decade could use a dozen more of its kind.

The answer to that age-old question, “What do you get when you combine the surreal, disturbing imagery of a Skittles commercial with the unsettling sexual tension of a Quiznos commercial?” Who knew that Halls was so concerned with cornering the 18-25 stoner-friendly demographic? Are we supposed to have notoriously bad breath or something?

Over the final months of our fine decade, Intensities in Ten Suburbs will be sending the Naughty Oughties out in style with a series of essays devoted to the top 100 songs of the decade–the ones we will most remember as we look back fondly on this period of pop music years down the road. The archives can be found here. If you want to argue about the order, you can’t, because we’re not totally sure what the qualifications are either. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy.

I never felt entirely comfortable with Lil’ Wayne’s Best Rapper Alive status. There’s not really any question that he has it right now, and that he’s probably earned it with a decade’s worth of albums, mixtapes, freestyles and guest appearances. But to put him in that lineage is sort of difficult for me, because he doesn’t really do the things that I’m used to my Best Rappers Alive–2Pac, Biggie, Jay-Z, even Kanye or Andre 3000–doing. Mostly, he can’t write a coherent song, and appears little motivated to even try. Unless you’re Slick Rick, rap rarely follows a strictly linear lyrical format, but all those guys have proven themselves more than capable of at least writing a whole song on the same subject matter, or at least on the same general theme, or at least with the same general mood or tone. Weezy, on the other hand, could barely even go a couplet without going off on a tangent. He had no knack whatsoever for storytelling, and appeared about as concerned with song structure as Ornette Coleman. Even his cheesiest pop crossover, “Mrs. Officer,” which starts out as a basic narrative, quickly disassembles into a mess of bad puns, needlessly repeated phrases and free-associative ramblings.

None of that is to say that Lil’ Wayne is a bad rapper, though, or even not a great one. He has as much charisma, as much lyrical dexterity, and arguably as much raw talent as nearly any other rapper of the last 20 years. It’s just that Wayne, despite showing a decent amount of respect for those that came before him, still took kind of a Year Zero approach to being a hip-hop legend. More than anything, he felt quintessentially young, in a way that no rapper of significance had since Eazy-E. It helped that despite being 26 around the time of Tha Carter III’s release, he still sorta looked like a 14-year-old, and likely will for decades to come. But he also basically acted like a 14-year-old, flippant and arrogant, with a ten-second attention-span and a perpetual, almost naive horniness. He made it seem old and boring for a rapper to worry about crafting a perfect single–let alone a perfect album, which despite the preponderance of excellence on Tha Carter III, will likely be forever beyond Wayne’s grasp in strict Blueprint/Illmatic terms. Screwing around for ten minutes in the studio while getting super-high and macking on chicks couldn’t help but seem a little more exciting by comparison.

All of this is why, for me, “A Milli” was the ideal Lil’ Wayne single. At three-plus minutes, without any sort of intro, chorus, breakdown, bridge, or outro sections, it was really very little more than a glorified freestyle–and that’s all it was intended for, really, as it was initially supposed to just show up in different sections and with different guest rappers throughout TCIII. But there was just something so powerful about it that, despite it being about as uncommercial as any song on the radio in 2008, forced its way above ground and into the Top 40. Especially given that “Lollipop,” released somewhat concurrently, was a little bit too crossover-baiting for a lot of people (including me, at least at first) as a lead single, the free-form, almost atonal nature of “A Milli” (the song doesn’t even change chords once the entire time) was new and exciting enough to make it clear that Weezy hadn’t gone soft in his old age.

First and foremost, you have to start with the hook. And of course, I use the term “hook” fairly liberally, given that the musical accompaniment is nothing but a single repeated bass note and an alien voice in the background endlessly exclaiming “A MILLI-, A MILLI-, A MILLI-” (borrowed from the Vampire Mix of A Tribe Called Quest’s “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo”–the sample of which is broken down here, which you really, really should watch). But to say that the effect of the hook is hypnotic would be a gross, gross understatement. It’s an almost retro sort of beat, harking back to the days of songs like “Sucker MCs” and “Roxanne, Roxanne” where a drum beat, a simple bass part and some scratching noises would be all the rappers had to work with. But it also doesn’t really sound like anything that’s ever come before it, with that almost apolcalyptically-low and rumbling bass (which I could hear pumping out of every car from about a mile away for the months that it was popular) and that disembodied, sort of disturbing vocal chant (also made visually unforgettable by that screen in the MTV performance linked to above, with the endless zooming “A MILLI” graphic). Weezy often claimed to be a martian–and he is a legitimately freaky-looking dude–but only a couple of times has he actually sounded this genuinely extraterrestrial.

And over it all, Weezy just let it rip. Without having any form of conventional structure around him to box him in, Wayne went completely stream-of-consciousness, just about emptying his whole aresnal on the freestyle. There’s the split-second thought-process-shifts (“They say I’m rappin’ like Big, Jay and Tupac / Andre 3000, where is Erykah Badu at? / Who dat? / Who dat say they gon’ beat Lil’ Wayne?”), the pop culture references (“Boy I got so many girls / Like I’m Mike Lowry”), the laboring on one phrase (“Man I hate a shy chick / Don’t you hate a shy chick / Had to plate a shy chick / She ain’t shy no more, she changed her name to My Chick”), the strange threats (“He who don’t believe I’ll make dessert of him / Sherbert him”), and the eh-ish puns (“My name ain’t Bic, but I keep that flame”). Weezy approached the whole thing almost like a prizefighter in a ten-round bout, spitting with such unceasing ferocity that you can almost hear a bell ringing for him to take a breather every 16 bars or so. It’s all a rich tapestry, and if you don’t like Mr. Carter, then this would probably be your Exhibit A as to why he couldn’t hold the mantle of the all-time greats. But if you’re willing to take Lil’ Wayne on his own terms, it’s a pretty fascinating ride, to say the least.

Of course, if you don’t like Lil’ Wayne, then pop music was probably a pretty lonely place for you in the last couple years of the Naughty Oughties. He’d been around the entire decade, even popping up at the tail end of the 90s in Juvenile’s “Back That Ass Up,” but no one could’ve been prepared for the onslaught that occured as of about 2007, where Weezy appeared on an absolutely staggering 21 top 40 hits–more than all but a handful of artists had achieved over the course of the whole decade. He even started popping up on sports shows, engaging in some cringe-worthy debate about SEC football and LeBron James with Skip Bayless on 1st & Ten (did these people not listen to “Don’t Get It?” The guy is only slightly more able to maintain a logical train of thought while engaging in intelligent discourse as he is rapping). We can’t be more than a year away at this point from his cameo in XXX3, can we?

I still don’t know if I can call Lil’ Wayne the best rapper alive in good conscience. But I can definitely acknowledge his talent and his importance, and I imagine that a decade or so from now, we might look back to Weezy’s rise to power as a turning point in the normative style of hip-hop lyricism. In the meantime, it’s comforting to have him out there, spicing up otherwise forgettable R&B hits, loosening up the top 40 with his weirdo crossover hits, and likely going down on 5% of the female population of North America. For better or worse, right now, hip-hop just ain’t hip-hop without him.

The List So Far (Now With Links!):

100. Green Day – “Jesus of Suburbia”
99. The Ying Yang Twins – “Wait (The Whisper Song)”
98. Crazytown – “Butterfly”
97. Taylor Swift – “Teardrops on My Guitar”
96. The Fray – “Over My Head (Cable Car)”
95. Fergie – “Fergalicious”
94. Lidstrom – “I Feel Space”
93. Chevelle – “Send the Pain Below”
92. T-Pain f/ Yung Joc – “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)”
91. The Arctic Monkeys – “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”
90. Cassie – “Me & U”
89. Nelly Furtado – “Maneater”
88. Mike Jones f/ Slim Thug & Paul Wall – “Still Tippin’”
87. Bat for Lashes – “Daniel”
86. The Darkness – “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”
85. Dynamite Hack – “Boyz n the Hood”
84. DJ Khaled f/ T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman, Lil’ Wayne & Akon – “We Takin’ Over”
83. Matchbox20 – “Bent”
82. The Game f/ 50 Cent – “Hate It or Love It”
81. 311 – “Amber”
80. 3 Doors Down – “Krptonite”
79. Nas – “Made You Look”
78. Royksopp – “Eple”
77. The Pussycat Dolls – “Don’t Cha”
76. DMX – “Party Up (Up in Here)”
75. Junior Senior – “Move Your Feet”
74. Twista f/ Kanye West & Jamie Foxx – “Slow Jamz”
73. The Streets – “Weak Become Heroes”
72. Jimmy Eat World – “The Middle”
71. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
70. Snoop Dogg f/ Pharrell – “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
69. Alice DeeJay – “Better Off Alone”
68. Xiu Xiu – “I Luv the Valley OH!”
67. Incubus – “Stellar”
66. Mariah Carey – “We Belong Together”
65. Andrew W.K. – “Party Hard”
64. Jurgen Paape – “So Weit Wie Noch Nie”
63. Taking Back Sunday – “MakeDamnSure”
62. Kid Cudi – “Day n Nite”
61. Paramore – “That’s What You Get”
60. System of a Down – “Toxicity”
59. dNTEL f/ Ben Gibbard – “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”
58. Three 6 Mafia f/ 8Ball & MJG – “Stay Fly”
57. Good Charlotte – “The Anthem”
56. The Lonely Island – “Lazy Sunday”
55. Darude – “Sandstorm“
54. Yellowcard – “Ocean Avenue”
53. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
52. Luomo – “Tessio“
51. Blink-182 – “Stay Together For the Kids”
50. My Chemical Romance – “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)“
49. Freelance Hellraiser – “A Stroke of Genius”
48. Daft Punk – “Digital Love”
47. Snow Patrol – “Chasing Cars“
46. Sean Paul – “Like Glue”
45. Ludacris – “Stand Up”
44. Britney Spears – “Toxic”
43. Kings of Leon – “Sex on Fire“
42. Jennifer Lopez f/ Ja Rule – “I’m Real (Remix)”
41. Lifehouse – “Hanging By a Moment”
40. Plain White T’s – “Hey There Delilah”
39. MGMT – “Kids”
38. Gym Class Heroes f/ Patrick Stump – “Cupid’s Chokehold”
37. Franz Ferdinand – “Do You Want To”
36. Kylie Minogue – “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”
35. Vertical Horizon – “Everything You Want”
34. The White Stripes – “Fell in Love With a Girl”
33. Jay-Z – “Takeover”
32. Maroon 5 – “This Love”
31. Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
30. M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”
29. Timbaland f/ OneRepublic – “Apologize”
28. Beyonce f/ Jay-Z – “Crazy in Love”
27. Coldplay – “Yellow”
26. Lil’ Wayne – “A Milli”