15. Charlemagne vs. Eisley vs. Interpol

	vs.		vs.
"Pink and Silver" by Charlemagne from Detour Allure		"I Wasn't Prepared" by Eisley from Room Noises		"Evil" by Interpol from Antics

"Pink and Silver" (14 plays at Last.fm, tied for #82): Leading off Charlemagne's second album, this tune's synthy, fuzzed-out folk pop encapsulates in many ways the preeminent Madison sound of the middle of the 2000s. It's hugely catchy and makes for a great, stage-guest friendly set opener. On the other hand, it's a little slight lyrically, especially when compared with the also catchy "Fave Unknown" from the same album. Possibly my favorite local song, but not a likely contender overall.

"I Wasn't Prepared" (4 plays, unranked): My first time through Eisley's debut LP, this was an immediate grabber. The song is so well structured as a showcase for Stacy DuPree's breathy soprano, without itself being overly fragile. And in fact, this was the song I kept coming back to for quite a while. But while this one a ceiling early on, others such as "Telescope Eyes" and "Trolleywood" have grown on me a lot, leaving this song's relative prominence a bit lower. Still, it's a big part of what drew me to similar acts such as Minipop.

"Evil" (9 plays, tied for #299): I never got into the first Interpol album, and I think the consensus over the last few years is that they're no good anymore. But I liked Antics a lot, and this was the song that opened the door. That sweet, simple bass line to kick it off builds to an awesome song structure that culminates in one of those great moments as it all peaks - "Rosemary, aw, heaven restores you in life." It brings things together to set the album's mood in a way that probably wouldn't work without this song.

VERDICT: This is sort of a weak round, but "Evil" stands out as the best of the bunch. The way it crescendos and glides back down really makes the whole album work and allows Interpol their best moment of their own identifiable sound.

14. System of a Down vs. Pearl Jam vs. Weezer

	vs.		vs.
"Aerials" by System of a Down from Toxicity		"In Hiding" by Pearl Jam from Yield		"Only in Dreams" by Weezer from Weezer

"Aerials" (7 plays at Last.fm, unranked): There's so much to hear in this tune it's hard to know where to start analyzing it. You can find Alice in Chains, you can find Metallica, you can find Soundgarden, not to mention the band's eastern European influences and unique showmanship. As the best song on an album the band didn't know how to follow up, it has the bitter flavor of impending doom to it, but also has come to signify for me the final end of the 90s hard rock era. The rest of the field was in transition, with nu metal and the point-missers of nu grunge coming on. Hard to believe it's been almost ten years.

"In Hiding" (5 plays, unranked): It's amazing how hopeful so much of this album is, in the context of PJ's first three albums and the false start of No Code. Landing near the record's end, it caps the set with lyrics that aren't so much positive as they are looking toward positivity: "It's funny when things change so much/It's all state of mind." It's also a great and subtle showcase for the band's musicianship. Eddie Vedder gets some terrific Cornellian crooning opportunities in the chorus, while the variations within the tune provide ample room for different guitar approaches. By 1998 they had become a careerist band, and this is a careerist song, but it's one that should be among their best-loved mid-period album cuts.

"Only in Dreams" (5 plays, unranked): At the time I was simply amazed. The blue album was astonishing. Now it's diminished in some ways and grown in others. Opinions on the exact date differ, but there is a broad consensus that Weezer began to suck hard sometime from 2001 to 2005, and it's difficult not to let that suckage impact the older, brilliant material. At the same time, as an older, wiser music fan, I'm now able to hear more in a song like this. I can imagine this being a local band's first incredible song, the one that everybody shows up early to hear, that sells hundreds of copies of their EP. It's such a raw and unassuming song -- even more so than the rest of the album, and that's saying something. The combination of teenage uncertainty and garage-based guitar fantasy could never be made this organically on anything but a first record, and the way it bookends the opening cacophony of "My Name Is Jonas" is a feat unmatched in the modern era. An absolute classic; just writing about it is almost enough to make me forget "Beverly Hills."

VERDICT: "Only in Dreams" in a landslide.

13. Cracker vs. Massive Attack vs. R.E.M.

	vs.		vs.
"Euro-trash Girl" by Cracker from Kerosene Hat		"Leave" by R.E.M. from New Adventures in Hi-Fi		"Teardrop" by Massive Attack from Mezzanine

"Euro-trash Girl" (4 plays at Last.fm, unranked): In my mid-90s college days I bought a used copy of Kerosene Hat, mostly on the strength of "Low," but also after hearing this song on my school's radio station. To my horror, the copy I bought was the version distributed by BMG, which didn't contain any of the hidden tracks, including this gem. As a result I always considered this like a lost track or a rare b-side or something, which only added to its epic nature. It's probably the least gratuitous eight-minute song in the history of rock, and the subtle way it builds to its climax is stupendous. There's also something about it that sort of epitomizes its era of college rock, in a way that validates a lot of music that, 15-20 years later, doesn't get the kind of respect it deserves.

"Leave" (4 plays, unranked): And then you have R.E.M.'s most gratuitous song (most gratuitous good song, at least). The original version of this track includes a sweet little introductory dirge, while the main body features six straight minutes of knob-twisting by Scott McCaughey, which would certainly have been looped by a lesser band. The song is the peak of the band's music and ambition in the Monster/New Adventures period, which makes it such a disappointment that they've largely abandoned it for a shorter, thinner, quieter version that originally appeared on the soundtrack to "A Life Less Ordinary." It also makes for a great, though unintended, dénouement for the band's original line-up, and a high point that they have yet to reach again since.

"Teardrop" (1 play, unranked): Often when a song I love appears repeatedly on TV I'm done with it, but this track acting on the theme to House hasn't dampened my appreciation for it. If anything, it's a frequent reminder that I'd really like to listen to the full version, with vocals. Massive Attack is an atmosphere band working in an atmosphere genre, but this track -- perhaps on the back of its wooden beat and sparse piano chords -- takes it a step further. I'm writing this entry on a dark plane between Tokyo and Singapore, and it's taking all my effort not to simply declare this one the winner of the whole tournament and be done with it.

VERDICT: I think I can be objective enough to factor out my surroundings and gauge my typical standing enthusiasm for "Teardrop" a little lower. And in the battle of lengthy, era-defining songs, I have to give the edge to the era that's stuck with me a bit more. 1996 might be my favorite year of music ever, and "Leave" was a big part of that.

12. The Dismemberment Plan vs. Rage Against the Machine vs. Fastball

	vs.		vs.
"The City" by The Dismemberment Plan from Emergency & I		"Wake Up" by Rage Against the Machine from Rage Against the Machine		"Fire Escape" by Fastball from All the Pain Money Can Buy

"The City" (8 plays at Last.fm, tied for #395): It's hard to overstate the tragedy of the Dismemberment Plan over the past decade. Since making one of the best indie rock records ever -- this tremendous song is one of four in the tournament, out of just 12 on the album -- they produced a middling follow-up, a forgettable remix album, broke up and gave birth to Travis Morrison's embarrassing solo career. This tune is maybe the most disappointing of it all, though, in that it should have been a radio smash. I suppose 1999 was not the right time for it, but the guitar chime opening just begs to heard with "This is the Dismemberment Plan on Z104" over it. The rest of the song is structured impeccably, with verses flowing smoothly into a little chorus descent, and matching the tone of the lyrics -- despair, loss and understanding -- exactly. The one and only time I got to see them live, on their farewell tour, that last line, "All... I... ever... say... now... is... good... bye!" was a tough one.

"Wake Up" (2 plays, unranked): There are a handful of songs in this tournament almost entirely because of their use in film, and this is one of them. For a lot of reasons, this was the perfect track for the coda and credits of The Matrix. That said, it's also by far the best encapsulation of the Rage sound -- I think it says something for it that I originally assumed it was new when I first heard it, rather than seven years old at the time. You've got explicit politics, historical metaphor, calls to action, solid rapping, Tom Morello's wakka-wakka funk, some excellent youthful screaming from Zach de la Rocha. Even the six-minute length works well -- the bridge allows for some nice metal moves to be thrown into the mix and connects and makes the whole song really feel epic. The second half does a lot of things you don't often get from Rage, and certainly not from the later, more singles-oriented work.

"Fire Escape" (3 plays, unranked): 1998 brought an odd flood of power-pop hits that I liked but whose follow-ups I loved, and no one else did. This is one (Barenaked Ladies and Semisonic had the others). I've always thought this song was much better than "The Way," which always seemed a little gimmicky to me for some reason. This tune told me there was really something there with this band, and the record wound up becoming one of my favorites of the late 90s. It's still quite good, but it hasn't aged as well as it could've. While the genre as a whole has taken a commercial nosedive in the U.S., this decade has brought about a lot of great power-pop records from the likes of Starling, the Long Winters, Fountains of Wayne, the New Pornographers, etc. I'm still able to appreciate the well-founded melody here, the harmony and jangle, but it doesn't have the same kick it used to.

VERDICT: Later rounds of this tournament may be dominated by the Dismemberment Plan, quite frankly. "The City" barely has to nod in the direction of the other songs to advance, and it's going to be tough to beat until it's up against another one from Emergency & I.

11. Mates of State vs. The Anniversary vs. nine inch nails

	vs.		vs.
"Proofs" by Mates of State from My Solo Project		"All Things Ordinary" by The Anniversary from Designing a Nervous Breakdown		"Dead Souls" by nine inch nails from The Crow

"Proofs" (1 play at Last.fm, unranked): I don't know if any debut album has had a more style-encapsulating first song than this one. You can hear where Mates of State will go over their first three albums in this song, and yet even now it feels much more unique than derivative. The recording is still a bit lo-fi and the basic song structure is wonderfully natal -- plain organ and drums, vocal back-and-forth with occasional harmony. And it's so happy! Kori Gardner's "Yea-eah!" near the end is just blissful, coming on the heels of two and a half minutes of "It doesn't matter what might come true/It's simple enough to try." It's a triumph of the boy-girl indie pop genre and a testament to track sequencing; I don't think anyone could listen to this song and not want to hear more, more, more.

"All Things Ordinary" (6 plays, unranked): Between My Solo Project and the album this song comes from, 2000 seemed to herald a new age of poppy, keyboard-driven harmonies. This one, too, is a bit of archetype for the band, and it's one that was followed-up on much more by other bands (like the Hush Sound and 1997) than the Anniversary, who produced one more, quite different album, then broke up. What I like about these guys more than the rest, though, is that they're not ashamed to let the synth lines be out in front. That bouncy line along with the yearning vocals -- nicely split between male and female parts -- creates a danceable setting that's still recognizably within the late 90s/early 00s emo landscape. It's too bad that there's nobody really putting all those elements together anymore.

"Dead Souls" (1 play, unranked): In the middle of 1994, a crazy year musically and the first summer of my college years, The Crow was released with what's turned out to be a relatively seminal soundtrack. What I remember most from the movie and from the ads are Stone Temple Pilots' "Big Empty" and this superb Joy Division cover by NIN. I had no idea it was a cover at the time, I was just getting into the band and thought, hey, awesome new song that's not on my copy of the downward spiral for some reason. Now I know it's heresy in some circles to admit this, but I don't care for Joy Division at all, and as a result I find this cover vastly superior to the original. Trent Reznor pulls back some of the explosive energy he had on broken and combines it with the atmospherics of some of the remixes that were being made from the downward spiral at the time. The result is both a great soundtrack tune and a terrifically listenable song that fits flush within the NIN canon, even presaging the thick drums of 1997's "the perfect drug" a little bit.

VERDICT: All these songs are pretty evenly matched and it's tough to say one is any greater than the others. But, "All Things Ordinary" is the one that I get the itch to listen to the most, so that gets the win.

10. Foo Fighters vs. Portastatic vs. Mates of State

	vs.		vs.
"For All the Cows" by Foo Fighters from Foo Fighters		"You Blanks" by Portastatic from Be Still Please		"Whiner's Bio" by Mates of State from Team Boo

"For All the Cows" (2 plays at Last.fm, unranked): The first time I played the debut Foo Fighters album was an unnerving experience. I had heard "I'll Stick Around" a couple times but I was basically going into it deaf and trusting in my love of Dave Grohl as Nirvana's drummer. As good as the whole thing was, this was the song that immediately stuck out for its quiet-LOUD-quiet structure, its shimmery guitars, even its obtuse lyrics to a certain extent. It's the one that sounds most like a Nirvana track, and I kind of felt at the time (and especially when the next Foo record came out) that it was a closure track -- the thing that allowed Grohl to move forward. That was probably a bit of a 16-year-old's overreading, but the way the album is sequenced, you can still get that sense that Grohl needed to make some kind of statement, but that he wanted to build to it over the first 2/3 of the album, and then do it indirectly.

"You Blanks" (22 plays, tied for #13): The most overlooked measure in public opinion polling is the right track/wrong track measure. For the last couple years of George W. Bush's presidency, even before the economy crashed, right track was at about 20%. Now it's in the high 40s, even though little substantive change has actually happened yet, the economy's still in the toilet, we're being besieged by pirates, etc. Atrios, who frequently promoted this song, formulated today that right track/wrong track is all about subconscious feelings about the president, and that everybody basically hated Bush. This song captures that era perfectly: "All my songs used to end the same way/'Everything's gonna be OK'/You fuckers make that impossible to say." The sheer lizard-brain loathing for what the Bush administration did to this country is still not well appreciated by pundits or scholars, but Mac McCaughan expresses it as well as can be -- both at the individual level of his song-writing and at the societal level ("Now every horse I dream about is pulling a hearse").

"Whiner's Bio" (9 plays, tied for #299): The night I met my wife Mates of State played what I assume was one of the earliest live performances of this song; a couple years later we saw them again and they dedicated it to us. It also represents in a lot of ways the end of the first Mates of State era. This song is structurally more similar to their first album than to the one that followed it, but it includes some of the flourishes (e.g., a horn line) that would mark their transition on Bring It Back. That combination really has them at their peak so far -- complicated harmonies, a good mix of keyboard tones and a catchy chorus.

VERDICT: I thought coming into this round that "You Blanks" might have the edge. My Last.fm stats go back to the start of 2006, and it's the highest-ranked song in the tournament so far by quite a bit. But listening to "For All the Cows" again really brought home how well put-together it is. A part of my music brain is always going to be stuck in the early and mid-90s (earlier today I found myself thinking how underappreciated the Juliana Hatfield Three's Become What You Are is), and this song is one of the important tethers.

9. Radiohead vs. Nirvana vs. Nirvana

	vs.		vs.
"Palo Alto" by Radiohead from Airbag/How Am I Driving?		"Heart-Shaped Box" by Nirvana from In Utero		"Sliver" by Nirvana from Incesticide

"Palo Alto" (7 plays at Last.fm, unranked): I think the listening public has largely come around to my view that The Bends is superior to OK Computer. A big part of why my opinion came out that way is the quality of the b-sides found on the Airbag EP, of which this tune is the last and best. It neatly encapsulates what made the band's 90s output so great, both musically and lyrically -- the little guitar and noise flourishes, the big crunchy chorus, the desolate and soulless future. For me, this was essentially Radiohead's high-water mark. I couldn't say yet whether it's their best song -- "Just" will provide stiff competition if it comes to that -- but it may well be.

"Heart-Shaped Box" (7 plays, unranked): Like so many Nirvana songs, it's hard for me to hear this one for just the song and not for the memory ripples it kicks off. I remember the late summer of 1993, just as I was starting college, being all about this song and its superb video. Those first few times hearing, it was face-smacking: This dry sound, this raucous mess was how they were going to follow up the bright shimmer of Nevermind. It was so much more visceral and narrow; it didn't trade in melody the same way "Teen Spirit" and the other previous singles had. Throughout the promotion and discussion of the album -- and I recall the review in Rolling Stone hitting this pretty hard -- was the awareness of a line being drawn through the band's audience, with this song on one side and about 80% of Nevermind owners on the other. Sales-wise, it didn't quite to that, but this thing that was excised from Kurt Cobain as a middle finger to the grunge industry was revelatory for me both as music and as cultural commentary. I don't think it's a coincidence that I later wound up enjoying artists like Marilyn Manson as media provocateurs as much as musicians.

"Sliver" (4 plays, unranked): The randomizer put these two Nirvana songs together in this round, and I guess it's appropriate that they be from such different eras. And how odd is that this band can be said to have eras at all, let alone these distinct ones three years apart? The sort of play-acted innocence of this song (and the use of Frances Bean Cobain as a prop in the video) is typical of a lot of the band's early recordings ("School," for instance), but this one has such great pop energy that you can't help but be taken by it. Of all the songs that I'll never get to see performed live, this one might be the most disappointing. It's such a perfect two-minute bounce for a small club full of kids looking to dance off a buzz.

VERDICT: I vary from match-up to match-up on how to weigh my historical feelings about older songs, and this time I think my history puts "Heart-Shaped Box" over "Palo Alto" by a nose.