Wednesday Bears: Bears and Bullets Top 25 Songs of the Year (Pt. III)

We'll continue our top 25 countdown with songs #15 through #11.

#15: Zebra - Beach House
The lead track off of Beach House's third album Teen Dream, "Zebra" perfects the Baltimore duo's ephemeral pop-scoping dream, collectively tying any of the looser knots heard on their 2006 self-titled debut and 2008 LP Devotion. While "Norway" and "10 Mile Stereo" may have been the beneficiaries of more word of mouth, "Zebra" is Beach House at their core; wildly impossible and poignantly conscious of what they do at their best - endlessly ethereal dream-pop.

#14: Ready to Start - Arcade Fire
"Ready to Start" isn't The Suburbs most defining moment. With what the album is, as a whole, it seems like "Ready to Start," is a bit of a misnomer, fitting beyond the group's three studio albums. It doesn't conjure the unbridled joy of "Wake Up," the childlike mystery of "Rebellion (Lies)," or the ascending propose of "Intervention," but what it first brings to the band's catalog is the idea of relentlessness - that a band so cued for for tight orchestrations and breathtaking execution can actually sound eager and engaged, and capable of so much more.

#13: Cold War - Janelle Monae
Janelle Monae's critically acclaimed debut The ArchAndroid brought a bevy of welcomed new approaches for the tiny contemporary pop starlet, namely Monae's casually unnerving approach for bigger and brighter sounds without compromising the integrity of simplistic perfection. "Cold War," behind the "Bombs Over Baghdad" drum roll, evokes strength in Janelle's apparent personal weakness. "If you wanna be free / below the ground's the only place to be," may be a bit bleaker than it sounds coming from Monae's soft, yet booming voice, but that's what sense comes here - the ability to transpose all those ideas in a tight, confound space, brilliantly pieced together.

Janelle Monae - Cold War



#12: Lovesick - Lindstrøm & Christabelle
This? It's the song from that commercial your not sure of that you think you might like. Maybe it's for a phone, I'm not sure, and at the rate that I write these, looking it up is a waste of both of our time. Regardless, "Lovesick" is one, for lack of a better term, one of the sexiest songs that is actually executed without throwing innuendo in the listener's face. Lindstrøm's well-spaced compulsion of sound, mixed with Christabelle's slow, whispery vocals connect to form a valiantly paced three minutes that end up sounding like it drifts infinitely.

#11: Power - Kanye West (ft. Dwele)
"Power" was most fan's first listen to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West's magnum opus album that would later dominate all others in 2010. It's a collective bash of the enigmatic march of "Jesus Walks" with a profound majesty that Kanye has been able to finally manipulate eight years into his notorious career. "Power" is a smack in the face, rather than that breath of fresh air that listeners always ache for, with it's tight-fisted blasting beats and menacing snarls, touching base on death and the delusion of power in the grandest of scales.

Kanye West (ft. Dwele) - Power



Stay tuned, we'll return tomorrow with songs #10 - 6.