The Top 10:

10. Modern Dance. Pere Ubu. The Modern Dance. 1978.
Unsettling as hell. MERDRE! MERDRE! Even worse, subversively infectious. MERDRE! MERDRE! Caused leading mad genius of music criticism Piero Scaruffi to completely lose his shit. "The modern dance of Pere Ubu is a funeral rite for humanity after the catastrophe," he says. MERDRE! MERDRE! "A pagan representation of the end." MERDRE! MERDRE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mlpSZ0b9a8&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLFA273A3AD350A59A

9. Interzone. Joy Division. Unknown Pleasures. 1979.
A distilled, post-punk adaptation of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." The downward spiral has rarely sounded this unhinged, never this masculine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgoBRn2HQDo

8. Blitzkrieg Bop. Ramones. Ramones. 1977.…

Getting Rid of the Albatross: Craig McDermott’s 20 Definitive Punk & Post-Punk Tracks, 1975-1980. Part I

Editor's note: Just discovered, to my utmost embarrassment, that Wipers' "Youth of America" was released in 1981, not 1980, thus disqualifying it from this list. As such, I'm adding it to the beginning here as a special honorable mention, and shaking up the list a bit while adding in the song's worthy replacement.

HM. Youth of America. The Wipers. Youth of America. 1981.
A ten-minute assault. Not that The Wipers waste any time getting to the point. The jaw-dropping opening line ("Youth of America/is…

My inaugural "Primer" post: devoted to one of the most underrated bands of the past decade. The Hold Steady should be a household name, but of course they're not, and Nickelback is. So here's a little ten-song primer for those of you still yet to realize that there's gonna come a time when she's gonna have to go with whoever's gonna get her the highest.

10. Hornets! Hornets! Separation Sunday.
Best line: "I guess the heavy stuff/ain't quite at it's heaviest/by the time it gets out to suburban Minneapolis."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFx5tP8JdPI

9. The Weekeends. Heaven is Whenever.
Best line: "In the…

"But now they have that song “I Was a Teenage Anarchist.” To me they’re saying, “Oh, forget about all that stuff that we said before because we were just young and stupid just like you are now.” Now they seem to be telling us reject all that anarcho-punk stuff and get into something else — presumably capitalism it would appear. So that is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. And that bothers me. Punk ethics are important. They can do whatever they want, but don’t try to belittle something that might be important to somebody else…

No. 5-1 Primer: Kanye West officially conquers hip-hop, gives reason for concern that something in Chicago's water has been turning its leading pop culture figures into unstoppable, sociopathic juggernauts; Deerhunter valiantly remain the lone holdouts in Stadium-ready Indie Rock; Flocka puts Dr. Lex Luger's steroid injections to good use by flexing Dirty South muscles, second only to real life experiences from the past year in being responsible for widening the "hood credibility" chasm between him and Jay-Z ; Janelle Monae matches compelling, perfectly-controlled exterior persona with compelling, perfectly-controlled feminist self-affirmation, effectively ends Lady Gaga's career; Titus Andronicus overcome over-exaggerated self-importance,…

No. 10-6 Primer: LCD Soundsystem retools a classic parental cliche for the hipster generation, reminds them, "If you can't say anything nice, shut up and dance;" Arcade Fire wisen up with the game on the line, sub in Renee Chassange for Win Butler and trade the soapbox for the disco, Debbie Harry earns MVP trophy; Wiz Khalifa sees quality marketing opportunity in using a stone-cold club banger to hype an NFL team (and, of course, himself); Sleigh Bells set out to ruin the self-esteem of a generation/bolster the profit margins of the hearing aid industry; Surfer Blood get their Michael…

No. 15-11 Primer: Crystal Castles shows just how dance-able your latest heart-wrenching break-up can be; Mike G. takes hip-hop to sub-zero temperatures; Freddie Gibbs three-minute autobiographical track containing more hard truths than the entirety of Decision Points; Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti prove they're as weird as their name, lead the charge in revamping the image of the term, "groovy."; Rick Ross becomes first person in human history to use a personality crisis for bragging purposes.

15. Not in Love. Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles.

It’s becoming a rule that I fall in love with one song from each Crystal Castles LP.…

Public Image, Ltd. The Sex Pistols, only much more dangerous. Reason being that the Pistols, as great as they were, sought to use confrontation to inspire mob violence. While the Pistols' prowess in accomplishing this goal proves to this day admirable in its own right, the result was nonetheless unsatisfying in its nihilism, its dehumanizing, and most maddening, its continued entrenchment within rock and roll cliche. No one was more pissed off about it than lead singer John Lydon, aka "Johnny Rotten."

So here we have Lydon and his new group, Public Image, Ltd., three years after Year Zero, performing…

No. 20-16 Primer: The National continue to be living proof that you can't be mature without also being deeply fucking depressed; Katy Perry helps a nation of young males reach puberty; Big-Boi throws a party, invites both Ghostface and Lou Reed;.Gorillaz produce the National Anthem of the Capitalist States of America Brought to You by Citgo; Girls remind the pop music world that the ladies can be wooed by other things than money.

20. Bloodbuzz, Ohio. The National, High Violet.

The National’s drummer, I’m not going to bother looking up his name because that would belie the point I’m trying…

What a presumptuous journal entry. As if I'm at all qualified to select twenty-five songs as the "best" songs of a particular year, when my own exposure to the almost un-quantifiable (probably not a real term) multitude of tracks released during 2010 is ridiculously limited. Yet, here I am.

Okay, so I've listened to almost every track from last year that has been considered "relevant" over the past six months. And by almost every track I mean a mixture of albums and selected songs I acquired either when they were first released or after scanning various years' best lists. I've…