Discover Songs

As "Home" grows more clamorous and kind, it gets catchier, building to a freewheeling celebration rooted in unmistakable affection. It sounds terrific here, but when it's blown out in 360-degree live performance, "Home" is enough to make even the tiniest heart grow three sizes.

Hopkins' atmospheric "Insides" lumbers with a beat that's 50 stories tall; each gruff bass note hits like a defibrillator to the brain, with subtle glitches providing aftershocks. The music breathes erratically as the rhythmic stomps start to thrash. An astral chorus reaches for the heavens, but everything sputters to a halt, leaving a single note to whisper in solitude.

As expected with any list of its nature, our rundown of the Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings has drawn both praise and criticism, particularly from diehard fans of artists and albums that didn't make the cut. As one user put it in the comments, "How dare they list X, and I see no mention of Y?!" While we did our best to be inclusive, a lot of our individual choices didn't end up on the final list. Here are just a few, chosen by the reviewers who lobbied for them.

"Imagine what is possible if you could separate time," the two sing at the outset of "Long Way to Go." They provide a glimmer of what they have in mind during their live performances, wherein Finn samples himself playing one instrument before hopping over to the next, folding moments over on themselves until he's created a temporal loop of multiple Finns existing in one fragmented moment.

A sophisticated songwriter with a knack for wordplay, Landes has also worked as a recording engineer on several movie soundtracks. When she isn't behind the boards in the studio, she's singing her own indie-rock tunes. Her third studio album, Sweet Heart Rodeo, ties together classic tales of love and loss with the metaphorical device of the rodeo.

There's just something about Iggy Pop. It's that voice: implacable, tomblike, capable of conferring gravity upon the slightest slip of a song. In this case, the song is the cheery ode to misanthropy "I Hate People," by 22-year-old Jemina Pearl, former frontwoman of the short-lived, much-loved Be Your Own Pet.

From sensuous-sounding Chopin to a radical remix of Terry Riley's IN C, NPR Music's Tom Huizenga and All Things Considered host Guy Raz spin a wide assortment of new classical CDs.

More, more, more songs!

By Frannie Kelley The writing's on the wall . . . (c r i s/flickr) OK! Here you will find more songs recorded last weekend, in accordance with a very strict set of rules, namely, that each song must include one of these ...

I asked my friend Julie Cafritz (of Pussy Galore, STP and Free Kitten) if she wanted to write something for our End of the Decade coverage. Her "assignment" was due over the weekend, and when I didn't hear back from her, I figured her work as a teacher, or her kids, or life in general had gotten in the way. She answered in song.

In "Teardrops on My Guitar," Swift tells a common story. She likes this guy named Drew; he likes another girl; she fakes "a smile so he won't see" how much she hurts. Simple enough, but what differentiates Swift from other teen pop stars is that her songs impart viscerally what it feels like to be a teenager, when hyper-real emotions can still be conveyed with timidity.

The last time the blogger and his boss IM-ed each other, they listened a recording featuring Lester Young. So this week, on the eve of his 105th birthday anniversary, a feature for that other great early tenor saxophone master: Coleman Hawkins.

All alien-science synthesizers, crispy hi-hats and galvanizing delivery, "Umbrella" is what happens when an unclassifiable singer meets an ineffable song. It turned out to be the summer jam of 2007, echoing across the world to an indelible refrain: "ella, ella / ay, ay, ay."