Son of Mecha Mummy

"Commissioning a Symphony in C" might sneakily be my actual favorite Cake song. the whole album honestly feels like their strongest overall work, I think it's a credible pick!

(the "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" video is also just a beautiful slice of summer '01)

#TheTenX5 Day 30. "Kiss Your Lips" by Allo Darlin' (2010)

an endlessly winsome, summery indie pop song. So winsome, in fact, that the singer freely admits that her favorite Weezer song is off Pinkerton and it's sweet and endearing and raises no concerns. Impressive feat, earns a spot on the list.

#TheTenX5 Day 29. "The Bug Collector" by Haley Henderickx (2018)

gorgeous, dreamy folk. One of my favorite songs about love/relationships of the '10s and it doesn't really provide any concrete details about the people involved, just bugs and a daily routine that's seemingly gone on for ages.

"The CIA conspired to make me less cool than I was when I was 25" is the most succinct Gen X manifesto I've ever heard

#TheTenX5 Day 28. "Replicant" by They Might Be Giants (2013)

Was torn between my TMBG pick being the most literal song they've ever written or something more typically opaque and, well, fuzziness won. A song made for a sleepless night in a motel you'd like to check out of as soon as possible.

#TheTenX5 27. "Hold Up" by Beyonce (2016)

and here's my other Beyonce pick! *Maybe* my favorite Beyonce song overall! I love that it uses the sparseness of the Andy Williams sample to just bounce around various ideas/contributions/interpolations without the song ever feeling scattered.

I'm one of the other Jamiroquai voters and American and I had never heard anything off A Funk Odyssey when I started getting into the albums around 2004ish. I pretty much only knew "Virtual Insanity" and "Canned Heat."

It's a good one, though! "Black Crow" makes my in-flight playlists a lot.

#TheTenX5 26. "After the Storm" by Kali Uchis ft. Tyler the Creator, Bootsy Collins (2018)

So smooth! Love that on top of his own solo work, Bootsy Collins also has a 30+ year run as one of the most effective cameos in pop. Just let him say stuff for ten seconds and a great song gets even better.

#TheTenX5 HM5. "This is America" by Childish Gambino (2018)

one of the two songs I most associate with the time around the start of the job I've mostly had for the last eight years! Wow. Weird. Time flies. I'll make the other song my next pick in my main list.

Glad you did it! They're a lock for my main list for the '00s poll, though I'm only just now noting that "Thank you, my twilight" was never released as a single. Their *biggest* song internationally was, though...

#TheTenX5 HM4. "Ousama ni Nare" by the pillows (2017)

honestly I was just thrilled that someone voted for a pillows song and it wasn't me. It's very good too, they just churned out good indie guitar rock on the regular for a couple decades there until they just suddenly called it quits.

#TheTenX5 HM3. "Fists of Fury" by Kamasi Washington (2018)

Doing my part to shore up the jazz vote a little by giving some points to a Kamasi pick that was not mine! This one is also excellent.

#TheTenX5 HM2. "Where Are We Now?" by David Bowie (2013)

the actual swan song album will be represented in the back half of my main picks but this one's very good too and could have been a good sendoff song as well. Glad it wasn't, though!

YouTube video by LadyGagaVEVO Lady Gaga - The Edge Of Glory

alright, time to get started on my #TheTenX5 HONORABLE MENTIONS.

HM1. "The Edge of Glory" by Lady Gaga (2011)

since, well, getting to this spot would in fact be being on the edge of glory, wouldn't it

#TheTenX5 Day 25. "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" by Caroline Polachek (2019)

Ending my first half by getting into THE ZONE. I missed Chairlift so my first impression of Caroline Polachek is her square dancing in Low Budget Hell and truly, great way to meet an artist.

hahaha hell yeah, my pick if I won was almost certainly going to be that, it was that or the Spirited Away soundtrack probably

#TheTenX5 Day 24. "Pink + White" by Frank Ocean (2016)

I have hard Channel Orange decisions to make but I'm saving that for the back half LIKE A PRAGMATIST (coward) so for the meantime I'm picking my Blonde rep. What a shocker, I like the really smooth one with a Jon Brion string arrangement.

#TheTenX5 Day 23. "Ain't Got Nobody" by Weezer (2014)

I guess the joy of loving a loser sports team is that every now and then they actually win and it's something special when they win, and that's how I feel about the 2-or-so album run Weezer had in the mid-'10s. The riffs in here are real fun!

Fraiser: And how is Dr Quinzel?

Niles: Didn’t you used to date her, Fraiser?

Jonathan: Well I can’t say her taste in men has much improved.

#TheTenX5 Day 22. "Redbone" by Childish Gambino (2016)

It's my dad's birthday so I figured I'd save an actual honest-to-god song from this decade that he immediately loved upon first hearing. Good pick, Dad, this is definitely my favorite piece of music Donald Glover's ever made.

#TheTenX5 Day 21. "Pedestrian at Best" by Courtney Barnett (2015)

always a fun trick to write a diabolically catchy song about your own mixed reaction to having a song you wrote get popular. The verses overload you with stream-of-consciousness and then the chorus cuts straight through. A+.

Sir Babygirl - Crush On Me
Caroline Polachek - Pang
Hatchie - Giving the World Away
Kaoru Akimoto - Cologne
Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World

#TheTenX5 20. "Come For Me" by Sunflower Bean (2018)

Very fun, unapologetically dumb stuff. It's like if Prince's habit of just tossing off really good songs he doesn't have the time extended to Suzi Quatro somehow

#TheTenX5 Day 19. "Nobody" by Mitski (2018)

love a chorus that's just one word and it never actually gets old hearing that one word repeated in slightly different ways. more songs should do that but I guess they probably wouldn't do it as well!

(especially because unlike Cody, Hangman seems to understand that wrestling character work is a long-term thing and not an outfit you put on and then discard every couple months for the next one)

yeah I can't blame people for getting riled up because that was obviously the intent -- it's the literal same PPV and same opponent as the last time this happened -- but I do wish more people would maybe go "well they're probably invoking this for a reason, might be worth giving things a week"

YouTube video by Crunchyroll Soge King Theme | One Piece

his introduction in the anime is an incredibly good gag

#TheTenX5 Day 18. "Archie, Marry Me" by Alvvays (2014)

I have a terrible habit of hearing the main line in the chorus and substituting Molly Rankin's vocal for someone doing a really bad Edith Bunker impersonation. That's not the song's fault though, it's very good and deserves to get votes.

#TheTenX5 Day 17. "Pack Up" by Eliza Doolittle (2010)

s/o to the 8tracks.com playlist dedicated solely to music that would be nice to listen to on a walk for putting this song up top, which is how I first found it. I mostly listen to it on planes, though, it's good for all sorts of travel!

yeah that was my feeling too. I do respect that they're basically establishing that this Max reign isn't the same as the last Max reign where he truly wanted to wrestle as little as possible but I would have liked him to pull a bit more bullshit.