Ye Olde Hit Parade: The Underdog

Editor's note: Ye Olde Hit Parade takes a look back at my favorite songs year by year (starting in 1978, when I really started paying attention to music).

2007: Spoon - The Underdog

The year 2007 got off to a big start in January when Apple announced the introduction of the iPhone. The Mitchell Report came out, unveiling the rampant use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. And Larry Bud Melman died.


It was a big year for me because I hit the big 4-0, although I didn't make a big deal about it. Just another year. We drove down to Disney World for our family vacation in July; it was an exhausting drive and an exhausting week going through the various parks, but we had fun. Hannah started kindergarten in the fall, which was tough for her at first, but she got the hang of it. I ran the Baystate Marathon in October and did pretty well (for me, anyway).

There was plenty of good music happening. Radiohead caused a stir by releasing their new album In Rainbows as a pay-what-you-want download. Nick Cave got loud again with his Grinderman project. Dinosaur Jr. released their first album with the original lineup since 1988 and it sounded like they picked up where they left off. And there was interesting new music from M.I.A., El-P, Marnie Stern, the Besnard Lakes, LCD Soundsystem and the Horrors, among others.

For concerts, I saw Sloan, Mission of Burma, The Tragically Hip (twice), Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Queens of the Stone Age and Spoon.



It was that last act that had the song of the year for me. I started getting into Spoon with their last album, Gimme Fiction, but the new one, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, was their big breakthrough. And "The Underdog" was the standout song, augmented by horns and acoustic guitar, two very un-Spoon-like features. It ended up getting used in a fair amount of TV shows and movies. It's an indie rock song that can be appreciated by mainstream music fans and indie rock snobs alike, and it definitely cut across radio demographics. On this tour and beyond, you started seeing a lot of older folks who learned about the band on NPR and adult alternative radio. But it wasn't a sellout. It's just a damn good song.


Honorable mentions: Spoon - "Don't You Evah"; Radiohead - "Bodysnatchers"; of Montreal - "Suffer for Fashion"; Bloc Party - "Hunting for Witches"; Arcade Fire - "Black Mirror"; Grinderman - "Depth Charge Ethel"; Grinderman - "No Pussy Blues"; Queens of the Stone Age - "Sick, Sick, Sick"; Queens of the Stone Age - "3's and 7's"; El-P - "Flyentology"; Modest Mouse - "Dashboard"; Marnie Stern - "Vibrational Match"; Joel Plaskett Emergency - "Drunk Teenagers"; Arctic Monkeys - "Brianstorm"; Dinosaur Jr. - "Been There All the Time"; The White Stripes - "Bone Broke"; Les Savy Fav - "Pots and Pans"; Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Down Boy"; M.I.A. - "Paper Planes"; The Good, the Bad and the Queen - "Kingdom of Doom"; The Besnard Lakes - "Devastation"; Kaiser Chiefs - "Everything is Average Nowadays"; The Horrors - "Jack the Ripper"; LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends"; LCD Soundsystem - "North American Scum"; Andrew Bird - "Fiery Crash"; Wilco - "Impossible Germany"; Tim Armstrong - "Into Action"; Buffalo Tom - "Three Easy Pieces"; Flight of the Conchords - "Business Time"; Okkervil River - "Unless It's Kicks"; The New Pornographers - "Myriad Harbour"; Eddie Vedder - "Hard Sun"; Kevin Drew - "Tbtf"; Future of the Left - "Real Men Hunt in Packs"; PJ Harvey - "When Under Ether"; The Fiery Furnaces - "Restorative Beer"; Electric Six - "Down at McDonalds"; The Hives - "Tick Tick Boom"; Black Francis - "Tight Rubber"; Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb."; Mondo Generator - "Lie Detector"; The National - "Mistaken for Strangers"