My Super-Duper Top Favorite 7 Songs of the Year

Well, 2007 has been a good year for music.

This year I decided to refine my listening habits, trying to purchase whole albums instead of just fabulous singles. Yes, iTunes is a beautifully addictive technology that puts untold hours of juicy music right at my fingertips 24/7. It also lets me severely limit an artist's scope by just downloading one 3-minute pop song instead of digging deeper into their work. So I made a deliberate effort this year to choose the long view whenever I could.

Picking out these songs is always one of my favorite exercises at the end of the year. Every year, I sift through my music collection and come up with this list of songs that I didn't know twelve months ago. It just makes me realize all over again how much beautiful stuff people are doing out there in the world. (2007's forecast calls for new albums by Nora Jones, Rufus Wainwright, and Sam Phillips. People, life is good.)

(7) Ray LaMontagne — "Within You"
'Til the Sun Turns Black was Ray's much-anticipated sophomore album, and though I don't think it hit the crazily high standard set by his first album, it did offer some memorable moments. This song is one of those curious pieces that manages to be deeply mournful and uplifting at the same time. The song doesn't even have much lyrical content, but it has a soulful, soaring melody that gets me right in the gut every time I listen. The arrangement of the strings and the horns really makes this song shine.

(6) Jon Dee Graham — "Something Wonderful"
This spring, a friend at work told me about Jon Dee Graham, a Texas artist with a gravelly voice and a lot of sad stories. His voice sounds like he just got off the bus that took him to hell and back. And now he's singing you the wonderfully simple lesson he learned while he was there: "Something really wonderful is going to happen to you." I challenge you to listen to this song at an appropriately blistering volume, and just try to not feel better. Impossible.

(5) Sera Cahoone, "Couch Song"
Sera Cahoone's voice pays tribute to hillbillies and torch balladeers. I was delighted to discover this debut album on NPR's "Song of the Day" (an endless source of thoughtful musical selections). "Couch Song" showcases Sera's soulful Patsy-Cline-meets-Neko-Case voice, and her wistful lyrics. "If we don't talk, I won't mind, because that's the only way to get along sometimes," she sings, offering a perfect tribute to a faltering, complicated love.

(4) Luka Bloom, "She Sings Her Songs With Open Arms"
The little promotional sticker on the cover of Luka Bloom's Before Sleep Comes album calls it "nine songs for insomniacs." In 2003, an aggressive bout of tendinitis forced Bloom to lay down his usual instrument of choice, a steel-string electric guitar. While recovering, he picked up a gorgeous Spanish guitar with nylon strings, hoping it would be easier on his hands. This gentle mini-album was the result of his nights experimenting with that guitar. Clocking in at just 28 minutes, the album offers nine little lullabies for adults. You can almost feel the tension melting away at the first notes of this first song. This album is a particularly fitting soundtrack for a quiet cup of tea (and Bloom offers a beverage recommendation — the fifth track is titled "Camomile").

(3) Rocky Votolato, "White Daisy Passing"
Rocky Votolato may be Texas' answer to the ghost of Elliot Smith. "I'm going down to sleep in the bottom of the ocean," he sings in this haunting folk song layered with delicate harmonies. I became slightly obsessed with this song in 2006, adding it to just about every mix CD I made. I also made a point to tell as many people as possible that I did not discover Rocky Votolato after hearing this song on The O.C., where it was apparently featured. (I've got standards.) Just because Mischa Barton likes this song doesn't mean you can't like it, too.

(2) Cat Power, "Lived in Bars"
Choosing just one song off Cat Power's fantastic 2006 album was very, very hard. The Greatest reveals Cat Power finally coming into her own, and knowing how good she really is. For this album, Cat Power (Chan Marshall) recruited a handful of great Memphis soul musicians to support her in the studio. I've been following Marshall's music for a while now, feeling pangs of sympathy whenever I encountered another story of her paralyzing stage fright ("she has been known to stop playing in order to apologize for a self-perceived flaw in her performance," says Wikipedia). That's why The Greatest is a particularly satisfying release for The Little Girl from Georgia That Could. "Lived in Bars" begins in its typically simple, stripped style, a minor-key dirge on the piano. But about halfway through, the song picks its skirts up and starts dancing around in the kitchen, and you find yourself singing along. It just makes me happy every time I hear it.

(1) Kate Bush, "Sunset"
"Every sleepy light must say goodbye / To the day before it dies in a sea of honey," sings Kate in this elaborate song near the end of her masterful double-CD release, Aerial. Kate Bush is definitely an acquired taste; if you are a meat-and-potatoes music lover, you will find her tendency to experiment endlessly annoying. Aerial features bizarre sound bites of Kate's son talking, her lover whispering, birds chirping, Kate herself laughing hysterically, Kate herself reciting 150 decimal places of pi, etc. But "Sunset" feels like a slice of genius, six minutes of musical perfection. It starts with just a single piano, a voice lamenting the end of the day and describing the colors of the sky and water. It gradually builds to a joyful climax that makes me envision Kate herself dancing on the beach at dusk. Naturally, she pulls out lots of her classic tricks along the way (weird Greek chorus thing in the background, crazily ambitious tempo changes that shouldn't work but somehow do, etc.). It took Kate Bush 12 years to develop this ambitious double album, but she has said that she hopes Aerial will not be her last release. I am glad that this artist plans to continue sharing her work with us as she moves into her richest, most imaginative years.

Honorable Mentions in no particular order:
Paul Simon, "Another Galaxy"
M. Ward, "Poison Cup"
Bob Dylan, "Someday Baby"
Neko Case, "Hold On, Hold On"
Maria Taylor, "Song Beneath the Song"
Camera Obscura, "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken"
Hem, "He Came to Meet Me"
Hem and Autumn Defense, "Saint Charlene"
Madeleine Peyroux, "La Javanaise"

What was your song of the year? Post a comment and tell me about the music that changed your life in the past twelve months.