O.k here’s the deal - I’m asked to get seven songs together that rocked my year (why seven? Maybe the editor is on a Madonna Kabalistic tip - who knows?). My clause - these are songs that I’ve played obsessively throughout the year, but they’re not necessarily released this year. Now, with that out of the way, we can proceed:

 What’s Your Problem - The Zutons

As the backlash against globalisation gathers pace, some decent swamp-rock from Liverpool is the best aural antidote to the credit crunch. This is a snappy dancing beast that got played on my desktop most monday mornings throughout the year. The perfect response to all those - this blog included - that spent their time dismissing them as the band that wrote that brilliant Amy Winehouse/Mark Ronson song Valerie. This is upfront, sassy, and jubilant - though they trip in the final hurdle with that ‘it was the face of a woman’ explanation. Never apologise, never explain.

I get so excited - The Equals

I’ve long meant to check out The Equals, the North London reggae band from the mid ’60s, and this was the year that I got around to it. The band are best known for having Eddy Grant on guitar, and for their chart-topping hit Baby Come Back, but the main impulse for me was to hear Police on My Back, after that electrifying cover by the Clash on the Sandinistas! album. That original is mildly dissapointing compared to the Clash cover, but there are so many gems on The Best of the Equals that it’s irrelevant. I get so excited sums things up perfectly - with Derv Gordon’s gruff voice and Grant’s catchy riff, this is pop music for young working men and women on the cusp of a friday night. Put it on at any party and watch the dance floor fill - a timeless classic.

That’s Not My Name - The Ting Tings

This was one of the best and most abused songs this year. Using their technical limitations to produce something familiar but new, that’s not my name got taken on and championed by the purse-string-holding hipsters that it lampooned. With a stripped back electro riff that brings those of us old enough to remember back to Toni Basil’s catchy but b-anal Oh Mickey. this is a song sung by Katie White lamenting the patronising indifference she faced with her first band, and yet it’s been marketed here, there, and everywhere on its catchy hook and her pretty blonde looks. Ironies abound, but don’t let your head get too messed up on it - it’s a great tune, from a great band. Don’t let the fact that it’s on every advert and tv promo around interfere with that. ‘Nuff said 

These Few Presidents - Why?

I’m lucky enough to not know much about Yoni Wolf’s previous musical incarnations (cLOUDDEAD or Greenthink), or even Why?’s previous outings like Elephant Eyelash. Lucky in the sense that knowing precious little about them, I don’t have to jump into the critical maelstrom evaluating his musical style-shifting (from abstract hip-hop through to alternative pop). For me it’s enough just to listen to the brilliant album Alopecia and enjoy. There are some great tracks on offer on the album, but the one I kept coming back to was this. Why? (couldn’t resist that rhetorical flourish) Because of it’s cool D.I.Y feel, the bass, the gear shifting chorus  and what must be contender for the best line of the year “even though I haven’t seen you in years, yours is a funeral I’d fly to from anywhere…”

She Just wants to move - Scotland Yard Gospel Choir

Another song that’s not of this year, but which, slowcoach that I am, came my way during 2008. It’s a potent reminder that, sometimes there’s no reason for an ulterior motive. Sometimes a song, shorn of context or complications, works just because it’s got a chorus to die for. No innovation, no trendsetting, but you can’t stop yourself singing along.

Abel - The National

This is one of those guilty pleasures - a song that Mrs Murphy just physically can’t listen to, and so to be enjoyed when she’s out of hearing range. Why she can’t abide Abel is a matter open to conjecture, but the screaming repeated chorus of ‘my mind’s not right’ probably has something to do with it. It’s a tense song, liable to raise your heartbeat, and, if you’re prone to nerves, make your palms sweat.

Which is all to the good, because this is a superb and twisted slice of American rock, from probably the best album of the year. With it’s staccatto beat drumming, ranting and raving your attention is grabbed. The story is, like all the best, ambiguous - is the singer Cain when he edgily sings ‘Abel c’mon, give me the keys back’?What makes this brilliant, though, is that it’s not just a 120mph thrash -no, this is shaded, paced, and not just a little bit creepy.

Ilegal Attacks - Ian Brown (featuring Sinead O’Connor)

It’s a sad state of affairs when you have to get a political wake-up call from the man who may well be best remembered for penning the lines ‘the messiah is my sister, ain’t no king man she’s my queen’, but that’s exactly what we got from Ian Brown this year, with his brave stance against US & UK militarism and the death and destruction it causes. The album was great, but this track was extraordinary - in no small part thanks to O’Connor’s haunting vocals (for someone with such a strong voice and personality, O’Connor has repeatedly put in brilliant collaborations - with Shane McGowan on the Pogues Haunted, or more recently with Damien Dempsey).

You’ll have the cynics turning their noses up at the simplicity of it all, but sometimes simplicity is what’s called for - and in a year when both Blair and Bush admitted their ‘mistakes’  without any consequences, maybe Brown’s opening ‘what the fuck’ is the most eloquent response necessary.

I had reservations about picking a tune so newly-lodged in my mind for the Monkeys Tunes (great idea, by the way - reviewing single songs). Ever-mindful of the ‘o.k computer fallacy’ (where Q readers voted radiohead’s then latest album as the greatest album of all time), I was more inclined to pick something sure to stand the test of time.

But then again, this is a tune that almost immediately provokes a number of questions that, in themselves, make it worthy for discussion - plus, I’ve a sneaking suspicion that in years to come some version or other of this Zutons song will still, rightly, being played (like O.K Computer).

The main question the song begs relates to authenticity. Prized, almost above all-else, in criteria for evaluating a ’serious’ artist, sincerity or ‘keeping it real’ has become a weighty millstone around the neck of modern rock. You might not be able to sing brilliantly; you might not be able to write a sophisticated bridge; you might not even - god forbid - look the part, but as long as your song is sincere you’re liable to be taken seriously by someone somewhere. Is this a good thing?

The first version of this song that I heard was on the BBC Radio One live Lounge album. A bluesy admirably drawled-out version by the Diva Amy Winehouse. Now, the first time a song sticks in your head, that particular version has an automatic head-start on any other - as I find out to my detriment when it took me years to displace Gary Moore’s pompous bombastic version of the Yardbirds Shapes of things in favour of the immensely superior earlier version by the Jeff Beck group (with the much-maligned Rod Stewart singing his soulful heart out).

So the second version of the song was always going to have a hard time competing, even though it came from the original authors of the song, the Zutons, performing a live version on the self-same BBC album. Not a bad version of the song, with plenty of space, and cracked vocals oozing world-weariness from the Liverpool band. When weighed with the other versions bouncing around, though, this version of the track sounds uncomfortably like a busking band (albeit a good one) making a decent stab at it.

The third version was the actual studio version by the Zutons, which strangely swings more than their live performance - in particular the guitar punctuates the melodic bass line allowing the song to pulse and swell. The band get, in a sense, to reclaim their work.

It’s at this point that we finally get to the version chosen above all others, as this Monkey’s tune - and it’s down predominantly to the role of producer Mark Ronson. From the opening drumbeats, this is a song ramped up into an entirely different and better context. The beats could be straight from The Supremes You can’t hurry love, but this is no pastiche. He takes an earnest indie love song, and through crystal clear ’50s beats and the extraordinary voice of Amy Winehouse (finally channeled into something worthy of it) manages to make something that sounds current, captivating, and just the right side of edgy. The gender confusion of Winehouse singing throws out questions:

“‘Cos since I’ve come on home, well my body’s been a mess
And I’ve missed your ginger hair and the way you like to dress
Won’t you come on over, stop making a fool out of me
Why won’t you come on over Valerie, Valerie.
Valerie, Valerie?”

How do we interpret Winehouse’s voice? Should the song then be read as a call to herself? Should it be taken as a Lesbian love song? Should it be taken as a simple example of brilliant technicians performing a role? We’ll take this song, obviously written by a man for a woman, and get a woman to sing it convincingly with 100% soul, just to show you we can. The singer as performer and actor, and take your authenticity and shove it. ‘ 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of big-producers, who can take a song and wrap it in their trademark sound. If I had a Papal dispensation, I’d round up the Mutt Langes and Timbalands of this world and dispatch them to a console-less pit. Ronson will probably get on my nerves just as much, should he continue to be flavour of the month (though he’s done an admirable job of improving Maximo Park’s apply some pressure, a song I already loved). In the meantime, though, let’s celebrate the crafted elevation of a good song into a brilliant one. Its a credit to all involved.