Itunes Top 50 11/18/06 50-41

(We took out clean versions of songs already on the list, so #50 is actually #54, if you wanted to buy this song for some reason)

TKG: Tom Karro-Gassner
PAS: Phil Schneider

50. Stone Sour- Through Glass

TKG: This really sounds like a folk rocker doing a power ballad. Like this guy got tired of opening for Iron and Wine and realized he had a mortgage to pay.

PAS: There are actually a bunch of songs on this list which are basically power ballads, and it is interesting to try to figure out who the band wanted to be before they decided to throw it in and just become Skid Row. Stone Sour clearly wanted to be Songs:Ohia

TKG: For power ballad this feels like it belongs somewhere between REO Speedwagon's " Can't Fight This Feeling"and Boston's "Amanda".

49. Paula De Andra- Walk Away

PAS: Linda Perry completely ruined girl pop. With this basic Casio keyboard beat this could have been a perfectly passable 2001 Vitamin C album track. Now every single teen pop song has to be all maudlin and deep.

TKG: This needed a spoken part where she calls Mos Def to tell him about the jacket he left at her folks Mexican restaurant.

48. The Fray- Over My Head

TKG: Is this the theme song to Spider Man 3? The new Ghost Rider movie?

PAS: Have the Real World Denver spoilers leaked yet? Does the gay Southern Baptist kid attempt suicide? I imagine this is the song that plays while he gets the razor.

47. Gnarls Barkley- Crazy

TKG: This has been around long enough that I can't really write about the song itself and can only write nostalgically about memories of things that happened while listening to it. So I'm in this bar and meet this girl. She told me she was from DC so I asked her what high school she graduated from. When she told me, I asked her what year she graduated thinking I might know one of her classmates. She reluctantly told me that she graduated in 2002. She wanted me to know that people were always surprised about her youth, because she was kind of an old soul. She really liked old things and old music. I was expecting this to mean that she was into hot jazz or something but instead she told me "Like I really should have been alive when Marley was alive" Marley died in the 80s. That's old? Thats like claiming "I'm mature beyond my years because I like the Cars". It was a struggle, as laughing in some ones face normally will prevent you from getting pussy. She played Crazy on the jukebox as she wasn't an old enough "soul" to play "Lovely Day".

PAS: I saw Goodie Mob open for Fishbone and De La Soul in 1995, and they pretty much saved that show (Fishbone was so bad, my buddies girlfriend broke out the Economist mid set.) The highlight of the set was an amazing version of Cell Therapy done with Iron Man as a backing track. It is pretty weird to think that Cee Lo Green did basically two brilliant pieces of music 10 years apart. There were a bunch of bad Goodie Mob and solo albums in between Cell Therapy and Crazy, but if you are going to have a two song resume, those are a pair of songs to have.

46. Diddy featuring Nicole Scherzinger- Come to Me

PAS: Being somewhat ignorant about pop radio, when I saw Diddy did a song with someone name Nicole Scherzinger I figured that he got some Teutonic Opera Singer to sing the hook of his latest exploitative Biggie tribute. This was a lot less interesting then that would have been.

TKG: Bad Boy is all about being all baroque and over the top. Pushing stuff to be so over the top that it's almost tasteless. Should be about Diddy bringing together lots of talent and pushing them to be as over the top as possible with as much over the top production as possible. The production here wasn't especially expansive sounding and this only had one singer and Diddy. Where's the LOX?, Where's Craig Mack? Shouldn't deaf Foxy Brown be making overproduced seal noises? Bail out Shyne, damnit!!!

45. Plain White T's-Hate

TKG: False Advertisement. False advertisement. I was expecting a snap tune. D4L are better lyricists.

PAS: This has a semi-amusing chorus, and appears to use the Mighty Mouse theme as its guitar riff. It still may be the worst non-Fergie tune on this list

44. Taylor Swift- Tim McGraw

PAS: So it has gotten to the point where current shitty modern country artists are doing nostalgia songs about other shitty modern country artists. At least Alan Jackson wanted to be Waylon Jennings.

TKG: Jenny said when she was just five years old, you know there's nothing happenin' at all. Everytime she put on the radio, there was nothing going on at all. One fine morning she put on a Nashville Station and she couldn't believe what she heard. she started crying to that fine-fine music. Ooh her life was saved by Tim McGraw.

43. The All-American Rejects- Move Along

PAS: I saw Death Cab for Cutie play Constitution Hall a couple of weeks back. There was a long section in the middle of the show, where they did all of their pre O.C. indy stuff, which is all fine, but has no hooks. So you had a crowd of earnest 19 year olds wanting to sing along, but no hooks to sing. The All-American Rejects are a really sub par Death Cab for Cutie, but they at least write some hooks.

TKG: Is this the first pop tune with a Bo Diddley beat since George Michael's Faith? The opening drumming part also has a real cool hollowed out almost Adam and The Ants/Bow Wow Wow type production to it. I kind of like this tune . Good nostalgia for senior year song. I imagine fifteen years from now guys who graduated from high school in 2007 will listen to this and go "those were the days...Man. Frank, that car, that bridge" and then start crying.

42. Keith Urban- Once In a Lifetime

PAS: This song opens up with a Postal Serviceish spare electronic drum beat, and closes with a weird start and stop Q and not U guitar, and pretty much everything in the middle was standard pop country. I think we may have accidentally downloaded the Diplo remix of the original. Not actually a good song, but even stranger then any of the Timberland stuff on this list.

TKG: Is all Keith Urban this weird? The quiet quiet loud Dischord section segues into Mandolins and what the fuck. Feels like some sort of producers joke. I mean a country star with last name Urban. is this for real. I mean I guess there was an R&B hearthrob whose last name was Sweat. But...He's supposedly a New Zealander and I tend to like C&W from Oceania. The Koori country stuff with Aborigine's playing country rules. And a lot of country down under still has yodeling. This tune ends with Urban doing a little yodel. I kind of want to hear more Urban. For guys from Down Under doing fake country this may be weirder than anything Nick Cave has done.

41. Ciara- Promise

PAS: This was really dull, I have heard some Ciara before and usually her singles at least have a semi-interesting Jazzy Pha beat, but this was just boring. Who is still using Roger Troutman voice box stuff as innovative production in 2006? If you are going to jack Zapp, it shouldn't be this forgettable.

TKG: I didn't know there was non-Jazzy Pha Ciara. I mean I assume he wasn't involved with this as there wasn't two minutes of him telling me that he was there. I normally like Ciara but this did nothing for me and her attempts at falsetto didn't accomplish anything. I mean you go to falsetto it should be for some emotional payoff or something. And the spoken parts never felt confessional the way spoken parts should. This really felt like it was written for Tamia. Maybe she could have done something more with it.