80: Nelly Furtado [ft. Timbaland]
"Promiscuous"
[Geffen]

Prior to hooking up with the new and improved Timbaland, Nelly Furtado's music was working as the muzak in granola coffee bars all across American college campuses. But with tracks like "Promiscuous" selling cellphones and making kids scream her name on "TRL", Nelly officially joined the world of pop. Here, she reclines atop Timbo's bed of pop-and-lock synths like a laconic Debbie Harry, waiting for the right man to figure out what she's thinking. She acquits herself nicely, trading lines with Mr. Mosely, but it's those coy "la la la"s at the end of the track that speak volumes. --David Raposa

79: Cam'ron
"Weekend Girl"
[mixtapes]

MP3: Cam'ron: "Weekend Girl"

Let's face it, this wasn't a banner year for Cam. Wayne showed him up on his own jam. His movie made State Property look like The Godfather. His album tripped on an overabundance of ostentatious fanfare, making fans long for the days when his default was breezy, not brutish. Then he was oddly quiet for months, except for this carefree come-on that laid on that Purple Haze charm thick. Peppered with smooth uptown nostalgia and downtown creeping, "Weekend Girl" was the gangster-Gestapo antidote we wanted to hear. No forced pomp, just a quaint, rhetorical question: "What you doin' this weekend?" --Ryan Dombal

78: Be Your Own Pet
"Adventure"
[Ecstatic Peace/Universal]

MP3: Be Your Own Pet: "Adventure"

Even if every review hadn't already told you that Be Your Own Pet are teenagers, you probably would've figured it out from this song. Maybe not from the wide-open sprawl of the rhythm section, or the elegant swoops of guitar, or the captivating vocals-- all of which sound like the work of people who know what they're doing and have been at it for a while. No, you'd have figured it out from the way this track leaps around ecstatically and talks big ("We're, like, adventurers! We've been to every place, anywhere in the world!") with enough energy to leave even tired old jerks like me enthusiastic about the epic possibilities of, like, life and stuff. --Nitsuh Abebe

77: Jamie Lidell
"Multiply (In a Minor Key)"
[Warp]

MP3: Jamie Lidell: "Multiply (In a Minor Key)"

Where Jamie Lidell's live sets are feats of technological prowess that find him singing, beatboxing, and sampling his way from climax to climax in real time, this duet with his frequent tourmate Gonzalez is a more controlled affair. Stripping down the arrangement to boogie-woogie piano vamps and vocal acrobatics, this is far more intimate than the original version, even while Lidell's voice is multiplied into pinwheeling, layered harmonies. Gonzalez mirrors the vocal fireworks with bright rolls and tone clusters as an imaginary crowd murmurs approvingly beneath it all. For all the melancholy of the title and lyrics, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more celebratory song. Coming unglued never sounded so good. --Philip Sherburne

76: Cham [ft. Akon]
"Ghetto Story (Remix)"
[Atlantic]

The track is almost non-existant: skeletal snare-ticks, gasping, gauzy synths, and lots of empty space. It leaves room for voices and words, and Cham and Akon fill that space enormously. Cham's rangy hyena yowl couldn't be further from Akon's shivering autotuned tenor; they're gravel and silk. And they're both in terse, economical storytelling mode-- Cham recalling a hardscrabble Jamaica childhood, weaving in half-forgotten memories about kids getting shot, and Akon singing about immigration, car theft, and prison. The two stories never intersect, but the way both singers' voices work together makes it an all-encompassing tapestry of violence-- City of God in song. --Tom Briehan

75: The Killers
"When You Were Young"
[Island]

MP3: The Killers: "When You Were Young"

After all this time, sincerity remains the Bossman's calling card, which is why some found this Bruce tribute from upwardly mobile Vegas con men so troubling. Epic, romantic rock may have been invented some time in the early 1970s but now it's a form like any other, a costume that can be pulled from the rack when you want to try a new number. And Killers fit their suits well on this explosion of rock grandeur and pomposity. Once upon a time this kind of stuff just wafted out of radios and you didn't know who'd made it or what they stood for; all we were left with was a song and a hook, and a phrase like "when you were young" rang true even if you were 10 years old. --Mark Richardson

74: The Pipettes
"Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me"
[Memphis Industries]

When the Pipettes broke on the internet with this song, their YouTubed concert video introduced the three members: the sassy librarian, the one who sings pretty, and the one who waves her arms. The stomping hook and frothy Technicolor chorus put the band squarely on the map, and it also helped kick off a Shangri-La's renaissance-- partly because these three made their forebears' lyrics seem like Shakespeare by comparison. But even if the verses are more brush-off than tragedy, the declaration of the title is stadium-sized. We'll always be suckers for big hooks and polka-dot dresses. --Chris Dahlen

73: Poni Hoax
"Budapest"
[Tigersushi]

MP3: Poni Hoax: "Budapest"

Drone disco-- like black mascara on club queens you wouldn't let blow you for all the coke in NYC-- isn't for the faint of fashion. French people don't bat an eyelash, of course-- they were goth-chic before goth was. But for the rest of us, "Budapest" makes a great excuse to get dark and ready to go out. If the vocals make you feel queasy, maybe imagine them coming from your roommate's girlfriend. The one you're trying to steal. And if the track's lo-fi-ish production doesn't grab you, focus on the dreamy chord progression. The one ripped from Can. --Dominique Leone

72: Built to Spill
"Goin' Against Your Mind"
[Warner Bros.]

It'd been a five-year dry season for Built to Spill fans, and an even longer drought for those still wishing for a pure throwback to the wide-scale guitar mantras of Perfect From Now On. For those listeners, the nine-minute "Goin' Against Your Mind" provides a welcome and long-overdue deluge, encapsulating the group's diverse strengths so deftly that, at first glimpse, it seemed almost like a mirage on a desert horizon. Driven by Scott Plouf's unyielding backbeat, this typically wry saga of inner confusion is at its best when Doug Martsch drops his UFOs-as-God whispers and lets the guitars do the heavy thinking. Packed tight with overlapping riffs and melodies, this track is likely to stand as one of Built to Spill's definitive creations, and is undiminished by the fact that little else on You in Reverse is quite able to match its heights. --Matthew Murphy

71: Candi Staton
"His Hands"
[Astralwerks]

Manhandling is the central motif of Candi Staton's recorded output-- as well as much of her adult life. It's hard not to see "His Hands" as the epitome of that strain. Her preacher's-son husband mistreated her before she became a star, and this song's main character is equally beholden to both an abusive mortal patriarch and an erotic male God. Southern men wrote and produced Staton's music decades ago (even forcing her to do multiple takes to irritate her throat, in pursuit of her famous wise-victim rasp) and for this 2006 gem she had a Lambchopper manning the boards and Will Oldham penning the lyrics. The mournful sex-gospel of "His Hands" compensated, in the pop culture karmasphere, for Peter Jackson's sentimental fumbling of King Kong : Staton wailed from the viewpoint of woman as a captive possession of a self-loving, barbaric, masculine will-to-power. --William Bowers