The best of 2007

by RICK KANE

A COUPLE of weeks ago I sat down with Matt and Brett, two esteemed colleagues (that's Esperanto for drunken mates) to go through our 10 best songs of the year. In previous years we have met at a bar in Fitzroy to attend to this most formal of rituals. However, talking about your favourites isn't as good as listening to them so this year we got together at my place and had ourselves a night of it.

Our good friend Polly couldn't make the night as he lives 3000km, two time zones, and 20 years away in the head office of that mining town called WA. He sent through his top 10 via telegraph. Had he been at the function (which could potentially grow in size to equal the Brownlow) we would have deferred to his great musical knowledge and his keen wit.

Instead Matt and I rabbited on while the music played, beer bottles mysteriously emptied. Brett drank his V8 and regaled us with story after story. Some of which were tenuously related to the song at hand, all were piss-funny and none of which I can remember now.

What follows is my list of top 10 songs. We decided to bring it right back to best songs so that we could put them all on an Ipod playlist and let them play through while we talked.

Trying to put together a top 10 set of songs is pretty difficult and my list tends to reflect my favourite albums of the year. In some cases (Steve Earle, for example) I didn't pick one song from a favourite album for this list and in other cases (Brad Paisley) I could have picked one of a number of great songs.

10. What a Job - Devin the Dude (featuring Snoop Dogg & Andre 3000)

9. Black Mirror - Arcade Fire

8. Watch the Tapes - LCD Soundsystem

7. Broken Down Cowboy - John Fogerty

6. Gypsy Biker - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

5. Gone, Gone, Gone - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

4. Ticks - Brad Paisley

3. Me & Mr. Jones - Amy Winehouse

2. Fake Empire - The National

1. Time is a Lion - Joe Henry

And for good measure I have included favourite movies and TV shows. Judging from the stock shows on free to air TV it might not appear so but over the last few years the quality of TV shows has been overtaking the best of film and that point is represented in my list.

Movies/TV
1. An Inconvenient Truth

2. The Wire

3. The Chaser's War on Everything

4. Election Night (ABC coverage)

5. Weeds (season three)

6. 30 Rock (season one & two)

7. Curb Your Enthusiasm (season six)

8. The Simpsons Movie

9. Blades of Glory

10. Lateline

Finally, you can't go past Harper's for a fantastic current events type magazine.

1 January 2008

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