Ten songs you won't regret stealing.
10) "This Time Tomorrow," The Kinks. In which they incidentally swipe the spaceship trope from glam rock, a few years too early. As seen in Les amants réguliers.
9) "Move With Me," Neneh Cherry. Ghostly, as if she already knew it was all over. Cherry remains one of the best narratives of circulation, in which the first person to balance rap and soul — that is, to understand the future of popular music — retires to a lifetime of very slow avant-funk, funded by her husband, who writes songs for the Spice Girls. I believe in miracles and words in heavy doses.
8) "Love Letters from Old Mexico," Leslie Satcher. Having written songs for Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, LeAnn Womack, Randy Travis, and Trisha Yearwood, she couldn't get arrested with her solo album, which is beautiful top to bottom (other than a misreading of "Ode to Billie Joe"); this song does as much with pronouns as John Ashbery.
7) "Pais e filhos," Legiao Urbana. For all the harm that "world music" has caused, it remains useful for certain things: Manu Chao, baile funk, and as a repository for certain kinds of very very happy major-key melodies that can't quite find a home in contemporary FM radio's series of niches.
6) "Thieves in the Temple" (Remix), Prince. Ultimate Prince can't do much for anyone who was alive in the Eighties; either you're already a Prince completist, or a lost cause. But here's the thing: all the vinyl is out in the garage, and who can be bothered, so the second disc of remixes provides easy access to, say, the extra verse in "Pop Life," the pointless additional hour of "U Got The Look," and the odd sparsity/demented seriousness of this track. A panic attack from when metaphors mattered.
5) "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," Hole. I know, let's cover Them's version! Sort of!
4) "Studio Hair Gel," Barcelona. Our friend put this on a mix for us. It seems to be some kind of Chicago in-joke. Also, apparently it's electroclash. Tell it to Candy-O.
3) "Double Life," The Cars. Or, in general, much on the implausibly superb and utterly erased second album, Candy-O.
2) "Trick or Treat," Shanté (née Roxanne Shanté). You want ass the cash is first — you got dead presidents baby I got a hearse in my purse. What did Greg Kihn say?
1) "Come una Pietra Scalciata," Articolo 31. Italian people do not like it when you explain to them that, simply because they have gone through the trouble to make terza rima possible via ending almost every single word in their language with an unstressed vowel, it is pretty much impossible for them to make convincing hip-hop. Even in the best case scenario, it ends up sounding like Bob Dylan at his most arbitrary. Which perhaps explains why the greatest Italian hip-hop song (discovered courtesy Greil Marcus) is in fact a cover of Bob Dylan .