Pitchfork: Top 50 Singles of 2004

My Top 10 coming soon...

Amen to just loving great music, and not being a genre jihadist.

Pitchfork: Top 50 Singles of 2004: "The advent of new technology is notorious for altering listening habits. In 2003, widespread file-sharing, per-song downloads, and open-minded discourse between online music fans began breaking down the long-held biases we sometimes stubborn indie music fans once harbored for non-indie music. Easy and immediate access to any track we wanted-- and the ability to look into friends' MP3 folders and see that we weren't the only ones who dug that Kelis song-- allowed us to realize that, hey, maybe what we all really love is just good songs.
As music in both the mainstream and the underground continues to push the envelope, tying ourselves to outmoded rules and regulations that dictate which music is or isn't acceptable to enjoy seems needlessly limiting. It now seems clear that, despite their differences in politics, these two sworn enemies can peacefully co-exist on our hard drives without one corrupting or destroying the ideals of the other.
Now, as iPods continue to gain prominence, our self-determined playlists-- increasingly consisting of recommendations by friends, websites, message boards, and MP3 blogs-- offer what commercial radio never could: No commercials, no song overplayed, and no fucking Nickelback slow jams, ever. If ever there was a year to celebrate the single, this is it."