Best Song of the Year

"Carved your name across three counties
Ground it in with bloody hides"

With that line, I bring you my favorite song of the year.

Neko Case - "This Tornado Loves You" from Middle Cyclone



Gifted with our generation's most powerful voice, Neko Case came out of nowhere this year - much like the titular act of nature - and unleashed this jewel of a track on an album that could barely keep up with it.

Working from the backbone of a surprisingly simple - albeit allegorical - concept, "This Tornado Loves You" finds our Patsy-Cline-meets-Ozzy protag chasing after a poor, unknowing schmuck with terrifying devotion. Devotion, that is, in a swirling vortex of death with Fatal Attraction issues kinda way. Children are orphaned, insides are sucked out of orifices and - while waiting with "a glacier's patience" - said vortex demolishes flora, fauna and structures as it bores into the ground for miles and miles across.

Then, there are the tender moments, as Case's hellacious warble softens to the dulcet tones we've grown to love. To go from almost comically destructive to endearingly earnest is generally not in the post-country chanteuse's bag, but Case sells it and makes it stick to the heart as she laments, "I miss how you'd sigh yourself to sleep / When I'd rake the springtime across your sheets."

Scary. Weird. Flagrantly hipster-ish (no choruses, folks). Touching. Sad. Lonely. Introspective. Words ... PSSHAW! Mere words.

Words do no justice. Words cannot make sweet, limb-numbing, back-convulsing love to the ears the way the gilded aura Case unleashes upon the listener can.

Sadly, as our decade opened with a massive tragedy, followed soon by 9/11 (take that, Dubya), it ends with a depressed sigh. As our generation tries, almost in vain, to prove that it has something worth giving to the world, we, like Miz Case, may be asking, "What will make you believe me?"

For now, as long as we continue to turn out great artists, we'll have to make do with the unanswered question.