This is the second of five posts listing my 50 favorite songs of 2011. Part 1 can be found here, and an updated Spotify playlist is here

40. Gratisfaction – The Strokes

Most of Angles can be summed up as “The Strokes play ___”, with the blank filled in by everything from metal to 80’s synth ballads. In only one case, though, does this approach really pay dividends. “Gratisfaction” is a fantastic little rock-and-roll song in the mold of mid-70’s Queen, vocal harmonies, huge choruses and all. This may seem like an odd fit for a band renowned for its inhumanly efficient garage rock and cool air of indifference, but Queen’s rhythm section has always been ridiculously underrated, and Julian Casablancas enhances his normal laid-back style with the level of swagger and flair that copping Freddie Mercury requires. Throw in a guitar performance arguably amongst the best the Strokes have ever recorded, and you’ve got a hit.

39. Yonkers – Tyler, the Creator

Yeah, the Odd Future bubble has arguably already burst. Yeah, I don’t really like anything produced by OFWGKTA affiliates not named Tyler or Frank, and I don’t even like a lot of the stuff that Tyler puts out. Forget about all that; it doesn’t change the fact that Tyler’s spitting fire and brimstone on this track. Over the course of four minutes, he verbally demolishes anything and everything he doesn’t like, a list so long it essentially consists of the entire Earth, including himself. His self-produced beats, which don’t work well on a lot of the album, create a perfect atmosphere of foreboding on this track, ebbing and flowing along with Tyler’s rage. When he decides to put his words into action and the song trails off unfinished, you’re not sure if he’s going to murder someone or go the same route as the music video and hang himself. “Yonkers” paints a portrait of Tyler, the Creator as an unpredictable, dangerous person. That’s not really true in real life, but it’s precisely what he intends on this track. In that sense, as well as artistically, the song’s a success.

38. Some Children – Holy Ghost!

I feel sorry for Michael MacDonald. Yeah, those jokes about him in The 40-Year-Old Virgin were funny, and yeah, I don’t enjoy his music, but holy crap can the man sing. Holy Ghost! made the shrewd move of bringing him in on “Some Children”, giving an already fairly-epic song an extra level of gravitas. The lyrics are cryptic, but in the hands of MacDonald and a female choir it’s clear that whatever’s happening is really important, possibly the most important thing in the world. It helps that Holy Ghost! have serious songwriting chops and are signed to DFA, headed by one of the most brilliant producers in indie music in James Murphy. The bassline has the same taut, physical sound as all the best LCD Soundsystem tracks, and the percussion is recorded impeccably, right down to the handclaps. It never ceases to amaze me that James Murphy’s knowledge of recording is so vast that he knows how to mic a handclap perfectly. That kind of precision and detail is important when you have Michael MacDonald’s vocal histrionics on your track.

37. Six Foot Seven Foot – Lil Wayne (feat. Cory Gunz)

Just… listen. Preferably while looking at the lyrics. This song is four minutes long, with Lil Wayne and Cory Gunz rapping basically every second of it, and there isn’t one line that isn’t instantly memorable and endlessly quotable. My instinct is to say that Weezy must have spent his year-long incarceration thinking up all these punchlines, but his performance is so unhinged it seems equally likely that he listened to the beat once and ad-libbed the whole damn thing. Either way, “Six Foot Seven Foot” is the single most relentlessly creative song of the year, bar none.

36. Battery Kinzie – Fleet Foxes

This song is shockingly morbid. It literally took me months of having it stuck in my head before I thought about the lyrics. There’s some depressing stuff going on here, man. It’s understandable that it took so long for me to figure that out, though, when “Battery Kinzie” is so damn catchy. Musically, the song is all jangly guitars, big group harmonies, and folky percussion. The mental image it constructs is one of a group of friends sitting around a campfire, or maybe in front of a roaring fire in a log cabin somewhere. It’s rustic and pleasant, is the point.

35. Sister – The Black Keys

The blues are a great foundation for any band, but if you spend more than a few albums playing those same licks pioneered decades ago without expanding your horizons, your music quickly goes stale. The Black Keys are well aware of this, and they’ve spent the past few years working with indie mega-producer Danger Mouse to build upon their raw two-man blues-rock sound. On “Sister”, these efforts have produced a real gem. The song’s foundations, bluesy guitar riffs and a steady thumping drumbeat, aren’t far divorced of the band’s roots. That’s where Danger Mouse comes in. He gives the track a propulsive bassline, dramatic organ and most importantly of all, falsetto backing vocals on the chorus. The falsetto is, I think, the single most important element the collaboration has brought to the Keys’ sound. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have a great ear for poppy hooks, and the backing vocals give their choruses the anthemic quality that they’ve always suggested but never quite delivered.

34. A Little Death – Fucked Up

“A Little Death” isn’t that different from the rest of the songs off David Comes to Life, Fucked Up’s brilliant hardcore punk rock opera. Why I chose it for this list is a matter of degrees. The guitars riffs are just a little bit more jagged, the drums hit just a little bit harder. Pink Eyes’ rage is just a little more righteous, his screams a little more unhinged. “A Little Death” is also a great example of Fucked Up’s terrific melodic instincts; even before Ben Cook comes in during the chorus, Pink Eyes hints at melody in a way that other punk screamers don’t.

33. Will Do – TV on the Radio

I didn’t save my poetry assignments from sixth-grade English, but I have a feeling they’d read something like the lyrics to “Will Do”, with its strict A-B-A-B rhyme schemes as far as the eye can see. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s clear that Tunde Adebimpe really means what he sings “Any time will do, my love”, and that’s what counts, right? The production backs him up with toy keys, a gentle, fuzzy bassline, and eventually a soaring string quartet. It’s essentially a lullaby, the love it sings of childlike and innocent. During the bridge, though, the song takes on a new dimension, as the rhyme scheme and strings are interrupted by fidgety harmonics and lyrics that suggest far more primal urges than the verses let on. In the end, though, the painfully earnest chorus returns and the song fades into the same peaceful sleep it woke from during the intro.

32. Michal Jackson – Das Racist

At the end of his batshit insane, stream-of-consciousness verse, Himanshu “Heems” Suri yells out, apropos of nothing, “Yeah! I’m fucking great at rapping!” Like most of Das Racist’s best lyrics, it isn’t entirely clear how much humor, sincerity, and just-plain-screwing-around contribute to the line’s delivery. As hard as they try to hide it, though, there’s no denying that Heems and Victor “Kool A.D.” Vasquez are, in fact, really fucking good at rapping. Victor’s verse, while it doesn’t produce anything quite as amusing as Heems’ aforementioned boast, somehow manages to connect ketamine, DJ Khaled and Richie Valens in one long rant. I haven’t even mentioned the hook yet, which is totally nonsensical but becomes undeniably catchy when belted out 12 times in a row.

31. Ladder Song – Bright Eyes

How such a good song came off such a terrible album I’ll never understand. The People’s Key is a turgid bore, most of its tracks ranging from unbearable (“Firewall”) to passable (“Triple Spiral”). And then there’s “Ladder Song”, in which Conor Oberst creates more meaning with just his own voice and an old keyboard than he manages on the rest of the album combined. Inspired by the suicide of a close friend, Oberst uses that tragedy as a jumping-off point to ruminate on heartbreak, betrayal and crushing loneliness. Rather than larding up the track with the slick overproduction the rest of the album suffers from, only a few light overdubs of sirens and keyboards are used, creating the feeling of being the only person on Earth. The main theme throughout The People’s Key is one of universalism and Being at One With All Things, but it’s the stark isolation of “Ladder Song” that rings true.