The rundown of my favorite songs of 2006 continues…

“On The Radio” | Regina Spektor | Begin to Hope | Sire | 6/13/06 | 3:22 | buy disc/mp3s
As documented earlier, I got past some initial prejudice about Regina Spektor and came to really dig Begin to Hope. “On The Radio,” with its bouncy beat, plucked strings and amiable feel, was the first Spektor tune to work its way into my heart.

The “November Rain” reference might’ve really fallen flat–too much kitsch not enough Soviet?–but it’s sung so lovingly that it’s clearly more an homage than a slight to St. Axl, who’s had a hard enough time this decade without indie rock chanteuses piling on. I mean, we all love GNR a little, don’t we?

By the same token, a young woman trying to take on the totality of life and experience in song (”this is how it works…”) risks awful, awful pretension. “On The Radio” isn’t the even the only song on this record to swing big like this, proffering words of wisdom.

Maybe I’ve just been thinking too much about life and death this year, or maybe I’ve been brainwashed by Spektor’s pixie-ish charms, but I love her ambition, and I think it’s pulled off with the right amount of humor and humility.

“LoveStoned/I Think She Knows (Interlude)” | Justin Timberlake | Futuresex/Lovesounds | Jive/Zomba | 9/12/06 | 7:24 | buy disc/mp3s
Sometimes it’s a little tough for me loving Justin Timberlake’s music. I end up interrogating myself. Am I listening because he’s sort of the approved pop star of the undie intelligencia (except when he ain’t)? Is my fave-of-year nod to “LoveStoned/I Think She Knows” some sort of contrarian thing, when everyone else is bananas for “My Love”?

I plead guilty, give up, and submit to you that “LoveStoned,” if you can bring yrself to forgive a goofy lyric here or there, comes the closest in its loose-limbed feel and almost improvised spirit to rekindling the charms of Justified without simply rehashing old territory.

Let me further submit, that “I Think She Knows,” and seriously perk up those ears around 4:55(!), is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve heard this year. That vaguely indie-ish processed guitar, the borderline glitch-pop beat, something about the combination fucking floors me. It’s almost too much when the spacey keyboard comes in around 5:42.

It’s been said better elsewhere, but dude’s come a hell of a long way, and certainly far enough to pack away the cheese of his boy band past. I’ll be paying attention when his next joint hits.

Regina Spektor “Samson”

I didn’t trust Regina Spektor at first. The first I’d heard of her was singing on a Strokes single, and while I actually like the Strokes’ music, I don’t trust them. Does that make any sense? And then everything I heard about her was comparisons to Tori Amos. We can all agree, right, love ‘er or hate ‘er, that we don’t need a copy of the woman? Right?

Once I opened my sometimes-jaded ears this year to her smart and bouncy ace pop tunes “On The Radio” (swear I got this one from Stereogum, but can’t find the post) and “Fidelity” (from My Old Kentucky Blog), I was pretty much converted.

So this was going to be a really emo post where I admit to first being disappointed by Begin to Hope because it was ballad-heavy, then being hit out of nowhere by “Samson” and finding myself driving and crying.

In the song–yes, a piano ballad–a woman casts herself and her lover as an alternate universe Samson and Delilah, she the devoted lover and he sometimes distant.

The first thing that struck me about “Samson” was the Wonder Bread/bed rhyme, which made me think of nothing so much as a songwriter lazy, or desperate, to make a rhyme. It’s funny how a song can take you entirely out of its context one moment, and then totally fucking slay you the next.

Somewhere between the sadness in “the history books forgot about us/the Bible didn’t mention us” and the falsetto, yearning “I loved you first,” she got me. I hope she gets you too.

Regina Spektor played the Palace Avalon Hollywood on Nov. 2.
Begin to Hope at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)