Top 40 Songs of 2009: 30-21

30. Big Boi featuring Gucci Mane - Shine Blockas
The bouncy soul/funk beat alone is worth the listen, but the two rap juggernauts tear it up for good measure.

29. St Vincent - Actor Out of Work
If this list were based on lyrics alone, this would be a top 5 song. There is a lot to take in in just over 2 minutes... "You're a cast signed broken arm" ...amazing. While the vocals are calm, beautiful and all things traditionally feminine, they are undercut by the biting wit and sarcasm of the lyrics resulting in a wonderful song driven by its contradictions.

28. Wild Beasts - Hooting & Howling
I had never heard of Wild Beasts before this year. Moreover, I had never heard anything like them, a group revolving around the dynamic vocals of a lead singer who sings primarily in a falsetto. This track was the first single from their phenomenal album Two Dancers, and showcases singer Hayden Thorpe's jaw dropping vocal dexterity and how the musical structure of the band allows him to be the center of the show. A rare song that's as enjoyable as it is a "what the fuck is that."

27. The Decemberists - The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid
A track that serves as a chapter in the story that is their concept album The Hazards of Love; it's really two different songs in one. The opening of the song features a solid, but business as usual performance from lead singer Colin Meloy -- cute little antiquations delivered in that steady, but mostly underwhelming voice... typical Decemberist stuff -- but then the song transitions into the "repaid" part and on comes Shara Warden, who just goes ape shit over a marching, psychedelic rock groove to take the song to another level.

26. Washed Out - Feel It All Around
This is the only song I've ever heard by Washed Out, so I can't really tell you anything else about them other than that I like this track a lot. The newly coined indie sub genre chillwave describes this song perfectly. The best way I can describe its sound is like a hazy memory of a song you heard a long time ago and vaguely remember, but hearing it brings you back to that time - or at least your fuzzy idea of what that time was like. The song's strength lies in that foggy nostalgia that is both longing but pleasant at the same time.

25. Gucci Mane featuring Plies - Wasted
Gucci Mane was this year's Lil' Wayne. It seemed like he had a verse on pretty much every top 40 rap track, he dropped a mixtape or two, and had some radio success for himself, principally this song. The song doesn't really break any new musical ground (it's basically about getting drunk and the the process by which one gets drunk), but not all music has to break new ground to be good. When it sounds like this, it's ok to rap about getting wasted.

24. jj - ecstasy
Speaking of Lil Wayne, who knew his mega hit "Lollipop" would be turned into a hazy drug ode set to his beat as some kind of distant car alarm. If that doesn't make sense, it's because it's really fucking hard to describe this song. This song also contains one of my favorite lines of the year: "If you get a hug / Guess what drug" Hmm.... While the best song about ecstasy still belongs to Bone Thugs N Harmony, this song is a very close second.

23. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Soft Shock
The track begins like some kind of electro/indie rock lullaby, and Karen O channels some of the tenderness that made Maps one of the best songs of the decade. The song almost builds into a fully buzzing synth jam, but remains close enough to that lullaby to be a unique track that balances both lullaby and synth rock.

22. Islands - Tender Torture
If you've read this list straight through up to this point, you're probably tired of the phrase electro pop, but I have to use it again to describe this song... there are seriously keyboard and synths everywhere... but it all comes together really well and it's one of the most infections songs to come out this year.
p.s. - I couldn't find a good link for this song, so that's the best I could do.

21. Lil' Wayne - Watch My Shoes
The stand out track off his only mixtape this year "No Ceilings," it's a vintage Wayne mixtape track where he takes an expensive beat from some one-hit BET video group, and just tears it to shreds and makes everybody forget this wasn't his track in the first place. His mixtape wasn't at the level of his 2007-08 stuff, but trying to become a hip hop guitar player and getting sentenced to jail might have something to do with that drop off. Either way, it's good to know that his tank isn't empty and hopefully there will be more stuff like this to come in the near future from the best rapper alive.

20-11 tomorrow...