THE LAB: Top Music of 2009 - Part 1, Honorable Mentions

Before I post the top songs of 2009, I would like to mention those songs that didn't make the cut

Songs that were so close to the top but not as good as the rest.

Mute Math - Spotlight
You Say Party, We Say Die - Laura Palmer's Prom
Sparks - This is the Renaissance
Paramore - Ignorance
Placebo - For What it's Worth

Songs that turned out to be released before 2009 so they couldn't make the list.

Metallica -All Nightmare Long
Lykke Li -Little Bit
Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance
Linkin' Park - Given Up
Verdeoscuro - Cancion Nocturna
The Ting Tings - That's not my Name

Some other artists that I just started getting into in 2009 but their stuff was actually released before.

Emiliana Torrini
Regina Spektor
Meg
Gogol Bordello
Empire of the Sun
Lilly Allen

Best Music from a Film

In The Princess and the Frog, Diseny's animators went back to their roots, they were smart enough to make New Orleans their new setting which allowed them to include a lot of interesting elements to their story, alligators, swamps, jazz, gumbo, fireflies, riverboats, above ground tombs and of course voodoo. The best part of the film is also the scene where we can see the magic that can come out of traditional animation, "Friends on the other side" was the typical song where the villain exposes his "villanaisness" and his master plan that sets in motion the rest of the movie. It's a great scene that like I said illustrates all that great things traditional animation can do. Like dancing voodoo dolls, singing masks and evil shadows.

Best Soundtrack
Coraline by Bruno Coulais

Songs I had forgotten but suddenly fell in love with them again on 2009
Pink Floyd - High Hopes
Guns N Roses - Estranged
The Beatles - Happiness is a Warm Gun
80% of the "Jose Jose - Un Tributo" Album

Leave it to movies to influence my music hearing habits. First, Michael Jackson's This is It tshowed us MJ the entertainer, not the troubled celebrity, and it made me observe the magic of hheis art, especially with his 90's "Earth Song" which I never really paid attention to until now.
UPDATE: I'm glad to say The Grammys noticed it too, we got to hear a live tribute version of "Earth Song" which featured singers Celine Dion, Usher, Carrie Underwood and Smokey Robinson.

Then there's Quentin Tarantino, who's sort of a voodoo priest bringing pop culture figures back from the dead, from The Coasters to The Statler Brothers to John Travolta or just plain using an element in the most unusual but very fitting places like David Bowie's "Cat People (putting out the fire)" on Inglorious Basterds in one of his best scenes ever. David Bowie is no stranger to movies, from the Goblin King to Nicolai Tesla to Andy Warhol to a cameo as a runway judge on Zoolander. More than an actor he's a musician and his songs have a large place in movies, appearing in hundreds of them, sometimes as Bossa Nova covers like in The Life Aquatic or as original songs like in Cat People, the first appearance of "Putting out the Fire" the same song heard while our heroine from 'Basterds' Shosanna is concocting her master plan for revenge.

Old songs I just discovered
Depeche Mode - Told You So
Squeeze - Cool for cats

Honorable mentions by bands that DID make it to the Top 10
Mando Diado - Dance with somebody & You got Nothing on Me
Bat for lashes - Daniel & Moon and Moon
Franz Ferdinand - Ulysees & No you girls
Depeche Mode - Miles Away
Muse - Uprising, Undisclosed Desires & Resistance

The so stupid it's actually enjoyable award goes to
She Wolf (La Loba)

The 'Meh' Award goes to
The new Alice in Chains song Check My Brain

Songs that drove me nuts... and not in a good way.
Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
Alejandro Sanz & Alicia Keys - Looking for Paradise

My Top 5 music moments of 2009
5 - I didn't expect to hear Hole's Violet at the end of Jennifer's Body but it was one of the only things I liked from that stupid movie
4 - My WTF? moment came when I saw the video for Asian Dub Foundation's 1000 Mirrors and then realized that the song I had in my computer for over 5 years now wasn't the same as the original. It seems that I have a cover version which I just love, but after looking and looking and googling I still haven't found WHO THE HELL sings such cover.
3 - My nephews got Rockband 2 and the Beatles Rock Band games and there was a moment while playing "While my guitar gently weeps" that I just felt like wow. I almost weeped myself.
2- There was a presentation of the hybrid techno collective NORTEC along with the local Symphony, the concert in itself was just ok, but we got to see the sound test where they rehearsed one of their best melodies, I got an indescribable feeling just hearing a group of violins with an electronic base and the norteño sound that defines NORTEC.
1 - Natalia LaFourcade seems to represent the thin thread that holds the mexican alternative pop music alive, we got to see her live in some dingy old flea market which made it all more alluring, a very intimate presentation of her very heartfelt music, she ended the night with a great rendition of Lykke Li's Dance Dance Dance that just made me beat myself up for not bringing a camera.

And finally, the top music video...
it's.. it's... it's a QUADRUPLE TIE!!!

First a fan made video that turned out to be be better than the official one.

Check out the original here and see for yourself.

I love stop motion animation, thus, I love this grammy nominated video

The pop music scene needed someone crazy enough to shake it upside down, this year saw the rise of Lady Gaga with her wacky dresses, the blending of diverse styles in her songs, the whole hermaphrodite controversy. She came doing her own thing, insisting to bring her own art to her shows, her clothes, her music of course and her videos like this Bad Romance vid. It has the choreography that reminds us of a time when Michael Jackson and Madonna ruled as pop kings, and the Kubrickish setting of a futuristic bathhouse with a little S&M thrown in all nicely wrapped within a context of Girl Power takes us to a more modern vision of what can POP music do for you.