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Pete Berg’s Top Ten Songs of 2008

Posted by Pete Berg on Saturday, December 27th, 2008 at 11:39 am

Everyone else in eternity is making year end music lists, so I thought I’d make my own. Because I’m douchey like that. These are my personal top ten songs of 2008. I’m not saying that they’re THE BEST, they’re just my favorites. And half of them weren’t even really released this year, but it was what I listened to for the last twelve months. I also included some honorable mentions at the bottom. Enjoy!

10. Vampire Weekend – M79

Vampire Weekend has been releasing singles for damn near forever, but they finally dropped their full length debut album this year. M79 is an amazing song, and my favorite from Vampire Weekend. I really love the violin.

9. Tim Fite – Big Mistake

Tim Fite released an awesome album in 2008, and this song really resonated with me. Since I made a lot of big mistakes. And this made me feel better about it. (Thanks for the mix, Rachel!)

This video is a fan animation to the song.

8. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal

The Fleet Foxes broke out this year, and “White Winter Hymnal” is a unique and haunting song. Plus the foxes have the coolest beards and lumberjack shirts ever. I’m jealous.

7. Eddie Vedder – Rise (from Into The Wild)

Into The Wild was the best movie of 2007, but I didn’t get the soundtrack until 2008. Eddie Vedder created a masterpiece that I couldn’t stop listening to. And this song is the one that really gets to me. When I listen to this, hitchhiking around the world makes perfect sense.

6. Estelle – American Boy (feat. Kanye West)

I actually prefer the Hood Internet remix vs the Ting Tings, “Shut Up, American Boy” to the original, but Estelle and Kanye West’s American Boy is super catchy and one of the year’s best pop tracks.

5. Olympic Theme Song – “Beijing Huan Ying Ni” (Beijing Welcomes You)

As an Olympics attendee, “Beijing Welcomes You” holds a special place in my heart. It is ridiculously cheesy, has amazing (translated) lyrics. It was also pretty much the only song I heard for about two weeks when the world convened in China for the Olympic Games. It was EVERYWHERE.

4. M.I.A. – Paper Planes

I first heard Paper Planes in a dance club in Brooklyn on New Year’s Eve, 2007. This song that helped me ring in 2008 became, without a doubt, the definitive dance / club song of the year. It is completely badass, has great lyrics, and really never gets old.

Bonus: Check out the Survivor: Leo Carrillo trailer edited by Brad Milison to Paper Planes. This is from a Survivor event I ran in Malibu in April for Reality Rush Adventures. No funny business.

3. The Mountain Goats – Sax Rohmer #1

The Mountain Goats are my favorite band of all time — you can tell if you look at my Last.fm play charts — and this was my most played song of the year. TMG released their album Heretic Pride at the beginning of ’08, and I listened to it a zillion times. In fact, my Facebook “Religion” status has been set to “Heretic Pride” ever since I got this album. Sax Rohmer #1 (and the music video that goes with it) are friggin amazing, and defined the first few months of 2008 for me.

2. Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up

WARNING: IF YOU CLICK PLAY ON THAT VIDEO, YOU WILL TOTALLY RICKROLL YOURSELF. (AND I BET YOU’LL DO IT ANYWAY.)

Rickrolling BLEW UP in 2008, was totally awesome, and then became mainstream and officially died. But for the first few months of ’08, there was nothing better than tricking people into listening to Rick Astley’s #1 hit from 1988.

My friends and I rickrolled karaoke bars, the Big Bear ski resort, Scientology, the internet at large, and each other. And it was amazing while it lasted.

1. MGMT – Time to Pretend

Time to Pretend is epic. When I heard this song, I think I made my decision to live fast and die young. Frankly, its lyrics outline a way of life. It was the song that played in my head as I spent 5 months backpacking through Asia…and, I’ll be honest, it was one of my reasons for going in the first place.

True, it’s not a 2008 song. “Time To Pretend” was originally released on a 2005 EP by MGMT, and re-issued on their 2007 album Oracular Spectacular in 2007. I even listened to it quite a bit in 2007…but in 2008 it became my favorite song. And that’s why it’s my #1 pick.

Honorable Mentions:

Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor – Best electronic track of ’08.

The Mountain Goats – Commandante – My second most played song of the year, though it was originally released in 2002. The lyrics still run through my head several dozen times a day. (It’s a pretty obscure song with no video, so this links to a crappy video of a 2007 live performance of it with slightly modified lyrics. But you get the idea.)

Lazytown REMIX feat. Lil’ Jon – Cooking By The Book – Amazing mashup that only the Internet could create.

Loudon Wainwright III – Grey in LA – Good for those days in LA when everything’s not perfect.

Kanye West – Love Lockdown – A lot of people dissed Kanye’s latest album, but this song is amazingly catchy. I usually don’t dig made-to-be-sold Billboard hits, this is the latest in a long line of gold released by Kanye West.

Uniting Nations – Ai No Corrida – Dance pop hit made famous by a YouTube video of a Star Wars stormtrooper dancing in Tokyo. I rocked out to this song pretty hard at the beginning of ’08, then found myself in Shibuya, Tokyo a few months later, replicating it.


Category: Awesome, Music Videos, Specials	5 Comments »

Marla says:

Good call on these! Especially “American Boy” its one of the catchiest tunes i’ve heard in a while + Kanye rocks :)
Tim says:

Pete, you forgot this classic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He8tSj4pvhw
Pete Berg says:

Oh my god, Tim. I can’t believe I forgot Renaldo!!! I guess I have to shift each of these songs down a notch so I can slide “Brothers Til The End of Time” into #1.
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