Artist	Song
Ringo Starr	If it's Love That You Want
The Elephants	Obvious
The Magic Numbers	Mornings Eleven
Vanessa Carlton	Fools Like Me
Kylie Minogue	Wow
The Beatles	Octopus's Garden (LOVE version)
Sheryl Crow	Love is Free
The Spectacular Fantastic	Runaway
Josh Ritter	To the Dogs or Whoever
Sons and Daughter	Darling
West Indian Girl	Blue Wave
Sahara Hotnights	Getting Away with Murder
Bon Jovi	Lost Highway
Foxboro Hot Tubs	She's Not a Saint She's a Celebrity
The Ramones	No Go
Jimmy Eat World	Carry You
The Click Five	Flipside
Tommy Keene	Carrie-Anne
Amy Adams	That's How You Know
Harmonica	Friday Night
The Hard Lessons	See and Be Scene
The Thrills	Should've Known Better
Roadside Poppies	Just Another Love Song
Any Trouble	Second Choice
Paul McCartney	Dance Tonight
Dewey Cox	Beautiful Ride

Comment:

In which I happily indulge in my love of pure pop music. I just checked out Ringo Starr's new album "Liverpool 8" earlier this week and couldn't believe what a burst of winsome, smiling sunshine it was; I should've expected it in light of everything else he's done. But it got me thinking just how underrated he is. Sure he's not the artistic Beatle but as far as post-Beatle careers, I think his might be my personal favorite. I've enjoyed more of his solo songs than anyone else's. Which brings me to Paul - it wasn't until the last month that I gave his 2007 work "Memory Almost Full" a shot, too, and was similarly amazed by its quality. As genius as he was in the group, on his own afterwards I always thought he was the weakest of the four, so this "coming-to-terms-with-mortality" effort that every veteran artist seems to be indulging in nowadays to great effect was a delightful surprise. It's not consistently good but the fact that it has ANY good stuff on it is news to me. So I'm in a bit of Beatles-spirited goodwill lately

In other bits...never thought I could enjoy latter-day Bon Jovi, but it's a winning number. Sheryl Crow's newest reminds me of her "Soak Up the Sun", and I'm a sucker for a breezy summer song. Similarly, Kylie's latest "Wow" feels like a "Love at First Sight" revival, in a good way. The Dewey Cox track is the last one in the movie, his satirical triumphant-return-in-old-age cliche, but it's a genuinely affecting song, despite its deliberately corny, overwrought production. I'm totally in love with it. And there's also "Enchanted" - a solid movie, not the best, but if it counts, this is the best Disney soundtrack they've come up with in ages. Also, I acknowledge hesitantly that this isn't my first time using The Click Five, but while I didn't care about their last album, it had a couple minor charmers on it. I had some other selections from Belle & Sebastian, The Bee Gees, Dusty Springfield, ABBA, the New Pornographers, and some alternate Ringo cuts ("Liverpool 8" and "R U Ready" would work equally well, I think) but aside from the Ringo ones the others didn't quite match the tone, which I admit is still a bit unfocused in spots (I could've integrated that more rocking mid-section better), but I was never good at, uh, anything. Except enjoying music. That's where I'm a viking!

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