Tonight’s topic: ten songs that are so happy it’s impossible to be down while hearing them.

Katamari on the Rocks (Main Theme) from the Katamari Damacy soundtrack
Get It Together by The Go! Team (the defacto theme of Little Big Planet)
Baroque Hoedown by Jean-Jacques Perrey (used in the Disney Main Street Electrical Parade)
Blue Skies by Bobby Darin
Psyche Rock by Pierre Henry (inspired the “Futurama” theme music)
Reading Rainbow Theme
Sweet Soul Brother by Hideki Naganuma from the “Jet Set Radio” soundtrack
I Hear the Bells by Mike Doughty from Haughty Melodic
All About the Music by Z-Trip featuring Whipper Whip (but only when played along with that video)
Dream Island Obsessional park by Susumu Hirasawa, from the soundtrack to “Paranoia Agent.” (It’s happy assuming you don’t actually watch the video, connect it with the series, or understand the lyrics, of course)

I heard “samples from 60s and 70s kung fu and blaxploitation movies, horns, cheerleaders, and a pretty hot female rapper” and I was sold. As an extra added bonus, turns out they’re also the ones who did that terrific song from Little Big Planet that I was never able to find ["Get it Together" from Thunder, Lightning, Strike, in case that link goes bust]. So I’ve been a fan for years and didn’t know it.

Also highly recommended: “Milk Crisis” and the PBS-in-the-70s-tinged “My World”. I can’t get enough of this stuff. My favorite by far, though, is “The Wrath of Marcie”, which I’m still hearing even when the video’s not playing:

The word on their website is they’ve got a new album Rolling Blackouts coming out in January (UK)/February (US) 2011.

Today’s song is “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield. Ostensibly it’s a song about a young man — Mr. Springfield himself, since he wrote the song — infatuated with a woman he can’t have. “Unrequited love,” according to the Wikipedias.

But I can’t help but notice that he seems a lot more preoccupied with Jessie himself than with his girl. We don’t know anything about her, like a name for instance, other than “property of Jessie.” (I’m assuming some kind of mail-order bride type of arrangement). All we know is that she has eyes, and she also has a body (he just knows it). In fact, Mr. Springfield keeps vacillating between wanting her, and being willing to settle with a woman like her.

We know a good bit about Jessie, though. Jessie was a friend — no, a good friend. So good a friend that Mr. Springfield is driving himself crazy thinking about him having sex. As guys tend to do, think about their friends having sex enough to write songs about it. He can’t even fantasize about her, he keeps thinking about her and Jesse doin’ it. It’s like if you couldn’t have a sex fantasy about Catherine Zeta-Jones without including Michael Douglas. The subtext is pretty clear: instead of holding her, why can’t Jessie be holding him in his arms late, late at night? He “feels so dirty” when they start talking cute, which is how they described it back in the 80s before they came up with the term “self-loathing.”

I started to wonder if maybe the whole song is supposed to be creepy-ironic. Like it’s really about jealousy instead of unrequited love. But you don’t usually see that kind of sophistication in a song that rhymes “cute” with “moot.”

Well, if you were more hip than I am, you could’ve seen all that in 2008, apparently, with Metropolis: The Chase Suite from Janelle Monáe. It was a concept album EP about Monáe’s alternate identity Cindi Mayweather, a rogue android who — actually, the liner notes explain it better than I could:

The year is 2719. Five World Wars have decimated the earth. To escape from the ecological destruction, mankind has banded together to create one last great city named Metropolis. Under the rule of the evil Wolfmasters, the city becomes a decadent wonderland known for its partying robo-zillionaires, riotous ethnic, race and class conflicts and petty holocausts….

Into this turbulent world is born Android No. 57821, an Alpha Platinum 9000 named Cindi Mayweather. Unlike other androids, Cindi’s programming includes a rock-star proficiency package and a working soul….

And the videos “explain” the brilliant nonsense better than that. In particular: the “short film” video for “Many Moons” from the Metropolis EP., which handles all the introductions:

She’s doing a big push for “suites II and III” of the story, her new album The ArchAndroid, and that includes a great performance of “Tightrope” on Letterman.

And ArchAndroid is pretty much awesome; it’s tough to think of a musical style she doesn’t touch on in there — funk to big band to Hendrix-style psychedelic rock to straight-up disco. And I liked one of the comments in the Amazon reviews, that described it as somehow sounding even more cinematic and theatrical than a genuine soundtrack.

Big Boi of Outkast is a collaborator and executive producer on both records, and in fact you can’t hear the song “Violent Stars Happy Hunting!” (yeah, that’s the real title) from Metropolis without being reminded of “Hey Ya!” But more than that, I can’t watch or hear any of this stuff without being reminded of how “Hey Ya!” seemed to come out of nowhere — again, for the less hip among us — and blow me away.

But this is like if you took that and added robots!

According to my research, I’ve heard exactly six of the albums released in 2009:

• Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future by The Bird & The Bee
• Middle Cyclone by Neko Case
• The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists
• Sad Man Happy Man by Mike Doughty

and the only two that I thought were worth putting on a “best of” anything list:

1. Actor by St. Vincent
I’ve already confessed to having a huge crush on Annie Clark now, but I want to say it again: this is some of the best music I’ve heard in years. Best track is either “The Strangers” or “Black Rainbow,” take your pick.

(Incidentally, apparently I had it wrong, and Clark doesn’t call herself St. Vincent, but it’s the name of the band. The name is a reference to St. Vincent’s hospital in New York, which she calls “the place where poetry goes to die.”)

2. The Music of JG Thirlwell for The Venture Brothers
This was just bad-ass and you can also get it on vinyl. And it counts as an album instead of just a soundtrack, because I never really noticed the music that much during the series but I think it’s amazing here. If you can hear “Tuff” and not totally rock, rock out, then you’re a robot.

(And if you like the Venture Brothers music but haven’t heard Thirlwell’s other recordings as Foetus and Steroid Maximus, you should check out Ectopia, the track “Chaiste” in particular.)

A catchy song and a creepy video? Reason enough for me to try out the whole album, Actor. But it’s been at least five or six years since I’ve gotten really excited about music, so I didn’t listen to it more than a couple of times, and I didn’t think much other than “it’s interesting enough.” (And still, I’d occasionally find myself whistling some tune that had lodged itself in my subconscious, but I couldn’t quite place it).

Fast forward a few months to October, when I catch this performance on “Austin City Limits”:

I was completely captivated. And when she and the band segued into “Black Rainbow”, it was downright creepy: I knew this song; I’d been hearing it bounce around my head for months.

I think she’s just fantastic, the perfect antidote to everything boring and predictable about popular music. She composed the whole album in her apartment, so it’s not as predictable and soulless as the over-produced pop that has taken over everything. She’s not a pop star who picks up the guitar for a song or hops over to the piano for her big power ballad; she really knows music. And she’s clearly intelligent, but without making a show of it: you don’t get any sense of twee self-important irony that you get from musicians who are presenting themselves as an antidote to pop. Plus, the videos and live performances I’ve seen are every bit the bizarre bursts of creativity you get from musicians like, for example, Bjork, but she can turn it off and be perfectly unassuming and sane. Obviously, I’m completely smitten.

There’s a good interview from TV Guide where she talks about the process and her influences when writing songs. An even better and more insightful interview from ABC News describes her music as “sweetness and creepiness,” which is perfectly appropriate. The interview makes the great point that her music could come across as “precious” — Clark lists the orchestrations of Disney movies like Sleeping Beauty among her inspirations — but that she can also “truly shred on the guitar.” I don’t think the contrast is quite that simple — sweet-sounding songs with sinister lyrics is an easy gimmick, as Lily Allen’s remaining 3 out of 15 minutes are proving — but it’s a big part of what makes it work.

It becomes even clearer when you watch this acoustic performance of “Black Rainbow” with just Clark on guitar and Andrew Bird on violin. It’s a great melody that still sounds epic and cinematic even when stripped of all of its extra layers of production; it doesn’t depend on a gimmick to make it work. As orchestrated for the album, though, it turns into the pop song equivalent of the Winchester Mystery House: ending with St. Vincent tearing it up on an electric guitar in a climax that just keeps building before cutting off abruptly, like a staircase that leads to nowhere.

The title of this post is from my favorite song off “Actor,” the first track, called “The Strangers.” The album version really is best, since you get the background vocals and the keyboards and the full effect of the production, but this live acoustic version is almost as great:

I can also tell you when and where I first bought Revolver: it was at Downtown Records in Athens, GA, around 1991, and I bought it on cassette to listen to in my car, and I was convinced that I’d gotten hold of some super-exclusive collector’s edition with an all-instrumental version of “Taxman” until I realized that it was just that the right speaker on my car stereo had given out again.

I’d only call myself a “moderate” fan of the Beatles — I’ve listened to the White Album and Abbey Road about a billion times since 1987, but there are still plenty of songs by the group that I never heard before tonight — and I can still vividly remember all the details about my first exposure to each of their albums. There are bands I like at least as much — Led Zeppelin and the Pixies, to name two — but I couldn’t tell you anything about the first time I heard Physical Graffiti or where I bought my copy of Surfer Rosa.

And the reason for that is the Beatles have always been presented as a phenomenon more than as a band. People have been going back and forth on the merits of their music for as long as I’ve been alive: for everyone who claims that they’re the greatest musicians of the 20th century, there’s somebody else who complains that they’re just an overrated pop group that in 2009 have become completely irrelevant. Whatever you think of their music — and personally, I’m closer to the “brilliant composers” end of the spectrum than the “overrated pop band” end — it’s only part of what makes the band such a big deal, still relevant 40 years later. Because the Beatles were talented musicians, ridiculously talented and versatile composers, and innovative geniuses (with George Martin) at audio engineering. But I’d say their real genius was in self-promotion.

The current round of hype is over the release of The Beatles Rock Band and remastered versions of all the Beatles’ albums. There are already CD releases for all the records, plus the red & blue greatest hits compilations, plus the number 1 records compilation, plus the Love remixes. And of course, people don’t really buy CDs anymore, and for the past couple of years, websites have been predicting the imminent release of the entire catalog as downloadables any second now. So the question is what the NPR music blog asked back in April when the remasters were first announced: does anyone other than Baby Boomers and obsessive Beatles fanatics really care?

Well, I’m still young enough to have missed the first couple decades of Beatlemania, and I’ve never really been an obsessive fan, but I still cared enough to double-dip on the remasters of a few of the records (Revolver, the White Album, Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, and Past Masters, in case anyone’s curious). I didn’t think I’d be able to hear a dramatic difference, and I’m not that interested in the potential for downloadables, either. But the music’s always been just one part of the appeal. I can’t listen to anything from Abbey Road without picturing… well, Paul’s Boutique first, but after that: the album cover. I can’t hear “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” without seeing the band in their Sgt. Pepper costumes. Listening to “If I Fell” makes me think of the scene from the A Hard Day’s Night movie (which, incidentally, I believed was a documentary until I was in college). Or the cartoon series version of Ringo. Or the Yellow Submarine versions of the band. Or the suits and the unified bow at the end of the Ed Sullivan Show. Or the “bug music!” parody versions from “The Flintstones” who just sang “yeah yeah yeah” over and over again.

The image has always been as much a part of the mystique as the music itself. And the remasters do a great job of perpetuating that image. The packaging is very faithful to that of the original albums (at least, so I’m told: since I wasn’t there to see the originals, I have to take some things on faith, as you would with any religion). They’re filled with pictures, and each has new liner notes to put the record in context and remind you just how important it was to the development of 20th century civilization. Plus there’s a “mini-documentary” on each disc, a short video with more audio clips of interviews and even more pictures. If they’d been released in the 90s, they would’ve been perfect examples of how to do “multimedia” right. In 2009, though, they’re kind of like advertising for Coca-Cola: they won’t necessarily show you anything you didn’t already know, but they’re more a reminder that The Beatles Exist and They Are a Very Important Part of Your Life.

As for the recordings themselves: my prediction was right; I’m not enough of an audiophile to be able to tell much difference between these and the 1987 versions. I finally went through and did a track-by-track comparison, and could hear a slight improvement in clarity on some of Revolver and Abbey Road, but I still don’t know if that was just the placebo effect. It’s a lot more noticeable on older tracks from Past Masters, especially “From Me To You” and “I Feel Fine;” on those, the remasters are much better. That’s as technical as I get, I’m afraid: to my ears, there’s just a little bit more clarity, the instruments are a little bit more separated, and the bass and drums are a little more prominent. (I’ve read some reviews that say the difference is like night and day, so by no means trust my judgement!) I’m still enough of a fan to appreciate having the “definitive” versions, and the packaging is so well-done I don’t regret buying a single one of them. I feel like Rip Torn’s character in Men In Black: I’m resigned to having to buy a new copy of the White Album every so often.

But I’ll skip the downloadable versions. And the iTunes and Amazon MP3 releases, if they ever happen, aren’t what will render these CD remasters obsolete. If there were any doubt that we’re now living in The Mysterious Future, then get this: the best testament to the legacy of the Beatles, and the best way to expose new people to their music, isn’t a bunch of pristine re-releases of the music itself. It’s a videogame.

It’s been months since I listened to any of the Beatles music, and even longer since I played Rock Band. But it was pretty much guaranteed I was going to get The Beatles Rock Band as soon as I saw the greatest cinematic in the history of videogames. And that video pretty much sums up the game.

Now, I don’t want to over-sell it, because the game doesn’t ever quite reach the level of imagery that you see in that video. It’s still Rock Band with The Beatles music, just like it says on the box. But it’s full of the spirit of that video; it’s full of all the iconic images you’d associate with the band, and everything that makes The Beatles such a big deal to people. And, somewhat surprisingly, what makes The Beatles perfect for a videogame like this. There are other bands with big catalogs of music that’d be a lot of fun to play (I’ve seen frequent requests for Led Zeppelin Rock Band, and I’d undoubtedly play it), but I can’t think of any other band that has as much fantastic imagery associated with it, as much legend and hype surrounding it, and that fits so well into a Story Mode.

You follow the band through the key moments in their career: early gigs, the Ed Sullivan show, stadium concerts in New York and Tokyo, studio recording at Abbey Road, and their rooftop concert for Let it Be. Most of us were first exposed to their music long after even the hype had already died down, so we’ve seen and heard everything mashed together out of sequence. Playing through story mode was the first time I got a real idea of the band’s progression, and I was surprised at how moved I was by it. When I finished the first show at Budokan, and the achievement “The Final Tour” popped up, I actually said “No!” They’d just gotten started, they can’t be breaking up already!

As you go along, you’ll unlock pictures and accompanying facts about the band, the first time I’ve actually been interested in the unlockables in a game like this. I don’t know if they’d be old news to long-time fans, but they were new to me, and more satisfying than liner notes because I had to work to see them. And as you go from venue to venue, there’s a great transition sequence that combines still photos with animated album covers, kind of a pictorial overview of what the band was doing in between shows. I will admit to getting goosebumps when the cover of Revolver appeared.

Once they leave live shows and go to the studio, the game breaks from Rock Band tradition and starts presenting what they call “dreamscapes.” It sounded like a corny idea from the initial marketing, but after trying it, I’ll just say this: if you can play “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” without grinning like an idiot at everything that goes on, then I’m sorry, but you have no soul. Even better is “Here Comes the Sun.” That’s already a dangerously uplifting song, but actually playing along with it while watching the band in a sunlit field seems to inject euphoria directly into your brain. The game’s full of little uplifting moments like that: John Lennon calling his part out from inside the submarine in “Yellow Submarine,” the band dancing together at the end of “Hello Goodbye,” and pretty much every single moment in “Dear Prudence.”

I do have a couple of complaints. My favorite Beatles song is “Tomorrow Never Knows,” but instead of the original version, they used the weird remix with “Within You Without You” from the Cirque du Soleil Love show. The downloadable content (which I’m already going to buy without hesitation, in case it wasn’t obvious) is going to be in the form of whole albums, so I’m hoping a full release of Revolver will fix that. My other gripe is something they really couldn’t fix: I’ve always hated Let it Be. So the last section of the game is kind of a downer; I wish they’d at least included “Two of Us” and “Across the Universe.” But I will say that “Dig a Pony” isn’t quite as annoying when you’re playing along.

And I don’t want to spoil the game for anybody (they break up!) but I will say that the end is perfect.

The Beatles Rock Band would be impressive enough just for being a pitch-perfect history of, celebration of, and introduction to The Beatles. But even more than that, it’s the perfect vindication for the whole genre of music games that Harmonix created. Obviously, the games have sold so spectacularly well that they don’t really need to be defended any more than The Beatles’ significance needs to be defended. But you’ll still see people dismissing the games as nothing more than a waste of time playing with plastic guitars instead of investing in a real instrument and playing real music. The problem with that is that I don’t believe Guitar Hero and Rock Band were ever really about making music. They’re about enjoying music. Appreciating it in a way you can’t with just an album with liner notes explaining the significance of the music and how it’s constructed, or watching a video of the band’s interpretation of the song.

The game’s easier than other versions of Rock Band; I’m pretty lousy at these games, and I got through the whole story with five stars on every song at medium difficulty. But I don’t believe it’s because The Beatles music is simpler than the tracks they have in other versions. I suspect it’s because the game was designed to be accessible. It’s for all of us who’ve listened to the songs and tapped out drum beats or hummed the bass line or sung along in the car, approximating the harmonies as well as we could hear them.

I’ve heard reviews of the CD remasters claim that the individual voices and instruments are easier to make out in the new versions; I wasn’t able to hear it. But playing the game, I was able to see bass or guitar parts separated out on screen. I’ve read comments on line where people say they have a new respect for Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, now that they’ve gotten an idea of how complex their parts really are and how much is going on in each song. Some of these songs I’ve heard hundreds of times before, but it’s really no exaggeration to say that playing along, mashing big colored buttons on a toy guitar along with a grossly simplified version of the real music, is like hearing the songs for the first time.

“The P.I.S.S is by far the most together group in the show biz.”

I was playing around with it using my favorite videos from Omodaka. They work great and yield some pretty cool effects, since the videos already do a lot with symmetrical frames. If you play around with the frame sizes, you can get the full-page effect to match up with the beat of the music.

Here are my favorites:

• Kokiriko Bushi: probably the best of the bunch, a screen full of skeletons and 80s disco lights.
• Kyoteizinc: the mirroring effects in the original video get replicated dozens of times
• Cantata No. 147: a screen full of weird singing heads

In case the main site’s down, you can see the videos on Kutiman’s YouTube Channel, or this compilation page compiled by a fan at innerlogics.com.

It really is phenomenal. It would’ve been impressive enough if even one track had worked, but he somehow managed to compile seven songs without a single dud. And even more impressive, it works as a complete album. My favorite is “Babylon Band”, but I’m embedding the first track, because you really should listen to them in order.

Two of the YouTube comments as of right now are “mindblowing” and “Dear God in Heaven. This is stupendous.” They’re not exaggerating.