Earlier this year, Tom Ewing summarized the power of popular music quite nicely:

Often, the pleasure of pop is surrender: when a record overrides your reflexes or emotions for a few minutes, when you let it possess you. That feeling isn’t easy to write about, let alone argue over.

Pop music, for me, has come to mean two things: current and fun. Somewhat contrary to the modifier “popular,” the music described here is not overplayed and overconsumed.

So, when I spend a few hours every week catching up with my mp3 blog aggregator (much cooler than it sounds) and reading band news and album reviews, I’m actually chasing new sources, hoping to find those diamonds in the rough that will possess me. It sounds like an addiction because it is an addiction.

The capacity of any song to induce surrender is temporary. After the first few listens my memory starts to capture the most prominent qualities of the song (a bass line, a vocal harmony in the chorus). Soon the song realizes its full potential in my brain, and the song possesses me.

Possession continues for multiple future listens; the staying power of a song varies from five to about twenty replays. Then, as the newness of the melody, dynamics, and rhythm wanes, it loses its grip on my brain.

If the song is merely good, it sits quietly somewhere on my hard drive until I stumble upon it on some future date. If it’s a really good song, it has several different long-term locations in several different playlists, and I will listen to it occasionally in the future. If it’s a great song, it will have a celebrated retirement home where I will visit it (similar to beach-side assisted living in Boca).

Every song must retire. Here are my 2009 inductees for the Dog Food Money Hall of Fame — the most surrender-inducing songs of the year.

Best album

Paris* — Friendly Fires featuring Au Revoir Simone (Aeroplane remix)

Note: I know, it was released in ’08, but it wasn’t put on blast in our house until January ’09, and I didn’t hear anything better that came out this year.

Most Annoying

At least in indie and mp3 blog circles, 2009 was the year of AnCo. They started the year with a much-anticipated, inevitably-leaked full length album, and ended it with a heralded EP. They narrowly escaped the list below because they produced interesting music throughout 2009, but when will the AnCo hype machine take a breather?

Here are the bands that I think were overhyped and overrated in 2009.

The Antlers — I know that music critics loved “Hospice”, but it was a bit too whiny and monotonous for my tastes.

YACHT — Psychic City was amusing the first few times I heard it, but the other tracks from this album annoyed me.

The Dirty Projectors — If I’m just not sophisticated enough to appreciate the dissonance and tempo changes, then so be it.

Wilco — Just because I’m a dad, that doesn’t mean I have to like dad-rock.

Modest Mouse — I know they didn’t realease a full-length album in 2009, but I’ve heard plenty of the EP they put out. After This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About and The Lonesome Crowded West, I would have never guessed their music could be boring after Johnny Marr joined the band (not that it’s his fault). Oh, and Isaac never screams like he used to (that’s a bad thing).

The Very Best — Someone explain to me why they are so widely adored by critics.

Kings of Leon — They’ve regressed in a similar way, yet in a much more dramatic way, as Modest Mouse. They have a clothing line now, and I hear their music on sports radio. I am now proposing a new law (the Followill rule) for evaluating music: The second a song is used as a segue snippet on sports radio, it is instantaneously lame.

MGMT — See the Followill rule, and I’m talking specifically about Kids of course.

Now, on to 2010. In with the new!