THE TOP 50 SONGS OF 2010 (So Far) - PART 1

50
Here Lies Love - FATBOY SLIM & DAVID BYRNE FT. FLORENCE WELCH


Included in the seft titled concept album by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, about the life of the former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos, Here Lies Love is the prologue to the Imelda tale, as sung by Florence Welch, singer of Florence and The Machine.

This song acts as a prologue and is sung from Imelda’s point of view in a style reminiscent of mid-to-late-’70s club music. She’s whooping it up at a disco, and at the same time she’s looking back on her life, her achievements, her sacrifices and her childhood. She’s also thinking ahead, imagining her legacy, what it might be.

“Here Lies Love” is nothing like Welch has recorded thus far; a kind of swelling, closing credits theme song mashed in between modern disco beats and timeless, romantic strings.





49
Hollywood - MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS

The quirky and flamboyant Marina Diamandis is gaining a following for her inventive songwriting, theatrical stage shows and dazzling style. If a young Liza Minnelli was starring in a Broadway musical telling Tori Amos's life story, it might sound like this.

In her teens, she auditioned for girl bands and cruise liners, dropping in and out of university to fund her ambitions with student loans.

Frustrated by failure, the Welsh-Greek chanteuse realised she needed to strike out on her own. So she taught herself piano and began writing spiky, memorable pop songs under the stage name Marina and the Diamonds.

Fearless, ambitious and stylish, her debut album The Family Jewels is a compelling pop confessional. Comparisons to Kate Bush and Siouxsie Sioux have been plentiful - but, on tracks like Shampain, she also channels the harmonic dazzle of Abba.

On HOLLYWOOD she sings about who she was: "Hollywood infected my brain and I really valued the wrong things in life, but I changed dramatically. This obsession with celebrity culture is really unhealthy. I don't want to live my life like that, and I don't want to be a typical pop star".





48
I Feel Better - HOT CHIP

Boybands, screaming fans, a lazer-breathing Christ-like figure and a floating head, The perfect formula for what I consider one of the best and most funniest videos of this year (so far).



Hot Chip - I Feel Better

Hot Chip MySpace Music Videos


47
Faithfully - GLEE CAST

What a great way to end this (long) first season. The Glee kids went back to their original JOURNEY inspiration and we saw Rachel and Finn declaring their teenage love FAITHFULLY. Somehow it felt like Danny singing to Sandy and we all Gleeks come together for this finale. Can't wait for Season Dos!!!





46
My Baby Left Me - ROX

Roxanne Tataei is a half Iranian, half Jamaican Londoner who makes nourishing soul music and counts Lauryn Hill and Sade as her biggest inspirations.

Her musical training came at church as a child before she enrolled in the Brit performing art school, the former stomping ground of Leona Lewis, Adele, Kate Nash and Amy Winehouse. With a powerful, jazzy voice, she is likely to get this year's Amy comparisons.

MY BABY LEFT ME was produced by Al Shux, the man behind Jay-Z’s and Alicia Keys’ number one hit “Empire State of Mind". Rox seems mainly interested in turning out a memorable pop tune, and that is exactly what this is.




45
Tightrope - JANELLE MONAE FT. BIG BOI

This James Brown-style funk workout by the futuristic R&B showstopper Janelle Monáe was the first single taken from her second album, The ArchAndroid. Monae's voice is a tough, confident rat-tat-tat, more Katharine Hepburn than Erykah Badu. On the verses, she tosses out tight, controlled couplets with the sort of speedy idiosyncrasy that mentor Big Boi must appreciate. But when the chorus hits, she switches up into a classic soul-singer wail, the type of immediate retro yowl that keeps Sharon Jones in fancy shoes. And after Big Boi struts on in and rhymes "NASDAQ" with "ass crack", she ups the ante, rhyming "alligators" with "rattlesnakers," "another flavor," and "Terminator." It's just a star performance all around, and god knows we need those lately.





44
Hard - RIHANNA FT. JEEZY




43
The Pursuit of Happiness - KID CUDI FT. MGMT & RATATAT

This song features the New York based dance punk act MGMT and was produced and co-written by New York electro duo Ratatat.

"It was a dream come true, and I was excited to be that artist to bring them together and really do it in the proper way." "THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is the epitome of what you would imagine a Ratatat-engineered Kid Cudi song would sound like. And these songs came about fairly quickly – we went in the studio for hours and hours and hours trying to just do this one song and figure out a first verse, I wrote it down really quickly, and that was the whole method behind the entire album, just movin' off of that creative spark right away."





42
Watching You - INSTRA:MENTAL

Here is a beautiful piece of music that I had to share with all of you. Instra:mental has really dug themselves into a nice little sub-genre in the past few years with their minimal approach to drum and bass music. Al Bleek and Kid Drama are the highly acclaimed duo that have been testing the boundaries of drum and bass with a unique style that is unrestriced by tempo.

This is a stunning tune, built more for home listening and journeys than the club. Haunting and emotional, this is wonderful music.... love it!





41
Hey Soul Sister - TRAIN

This is 2010's best selling digital with 3.4 million, making it the only tune to shift more than 3 million this year. What a great come back for this band that gave us the unforgettable DROPS OF JUPITER back in 2001.





40
Halcyon - DELPHIC

Indie guitars and euphoric electronica have rarely gone together well, but this Manchester group make them a natural fit. Hypnotic songs are driven by pulsating beats as frontman James Cook sings infectious hooks. Their motto is: "The guitar is dead, long live the guitar."

This is what would have happened if New Order embraced ambient techno, or Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant had spent his time at raves. Great tune!!





39
Cinnamon - STONE TEMPLE PILOTS

STP is back!! And even when this song hasn't be released as a single yet, it's the best tune of the new Stone Temple Pilots self titled/come back album.
CINNAMON it's psychedelic, man. It's fun, poppy, light-hearted, totally grooving - the flipside to STP that they don't often show people.

Stone Temple Pilots, the album marked the first time that Dean DeLeo and his bassist
brother Robert had written together since Army of Anyone's self-titled album in 2006.

Dean explained:

"We were working on the song, and during a dinner break my brother Robert grabbed a Tele and asked Eric (Kretz, drummer) to lay down a single beat, and in a matter of minutes they had the song tracked. It's pretty much my brother's song. Even though I play the solo on the record, Robert wrote it. The whole thing is very joyous."





38
She Said - PLAN B

This finger-snapping tune is the second single from The Defamation of Strickland Banks, the sophomore album from British singer/songwriter and rapper Ben Drew, who records under the name of Plan B.

Once upon a time, Plan B was a startling proposition, a sweary UK rapper with a penetrating stare, dragging an acoustic guitar behind him. That's right, an acoustic guitar. Here's this tough kid with tough rhymes and street-hardened scowl standing on stage with an instrument more commonly associated with weedy singer-songwriters and their endless tales of slightly-disappointing love, basically the essence of SHE SAID.





37
Nothin' On You - B.O.B. FT. BRUNO MARS

B.o.B., who is known to his friends and family as Bobby Ray Simmons or Bobby Ray, is a rapper and producer from Atlanta Georgia. After signing to Atlantic Records through Jonsin's Rebel Rock on October 3, 2006, he recorded several mixtapes and EP's before the release of his debut album B.o.B presents "The Adventures of Bobby Ray" in 2010.

This melodic track that was originally slated for rapper Lupe Fiasco is the first full single release from his debut album and it features the vocals of R&B singer Bruno Mars.

Lyrically on this smooth number, the singer is assuring his girl that she has nothing to fear from other women as they've got "Nothing on You".

"I'm still young, but in the song I'm reflecting on my younger days when I was all about chasing girls. I was a hopeless romantic and made a lot of stupid decisions. It's about those days. I'm compiling my observations of myself and putting them on a record. I feel like it was a happy marriage between the lyrics that Bruno sang and what I'm doing because he pretty much summed it up and I just had to elaborate on it in my way. I switched up my vocal inflection. It's different; a lot of B.o.B. fans didn't notice it was me on first listen."


Here's some cool trivia for you:

B.o.B. is the first American act whose name is a palindrome to top the Hot 100. The other two who did so prior to the Atlanta rapper were both Scandinavian groups. They were ABBA, who reigned with "Dancing Queen" in 1977, and A-Ha, who led with "Take On Me" in 1985.





36
Rude Boy - RIHANNA

This was released as the third single from Rihanna's Rated R. "Rude Boy" features Rihanna dancing and singing in front of a green screen, with a rainbow of Jamaican-flag-inspired colors animated in during post-production. According to MTV News, Rihanna claims the vid was inpsired by the Pop Art movement, and there's definitely some Keith Haring homage in the clip.

But there seems to be some other inspiration at work here, as well. That of M.I.A.'s vibrant video for "Boyz."





The colorful, purposely lo-fi animation, the color palette. Nothing particularly wrong with it; heaven knows there's a hundred videos of dudes playing guitar in the desert.

No less an authority on M.I.A. than Diplo has noted the similarity in this tweet: "anyway.. riri is lookin soo damn hawt in this video but its super boyz boyz boyz #howmaydere ? yahmsayin?"





35
Telephone - LADY GAGA FT. BEYONCE

Video of the year (so far)?

When was the last time a pop video became a global talking point? Lady GaGa’s all-singing, all-dancing, lesbian-prison-sex and mass-murder promo for Telephone has stirred up the kind of pop sensation not seen for a decade or more. It has featured on television news bulletins and the front pages of newspapers, as well as predictably tearing through the internet, breaking records on YouTube, trending on Twitter and inspiring frame-by-frame analysis and vigorous pro and anti blog commentary.

Can a video really tell us about the times we live in? If anything, GaGa’s video seems to refer back to the excesses of the Eighties, the supposed golden age of the music video, when bigger was better, and decadence and transgression were the standard currency of pop.

In a move boldly contrary to the credit-crunch spirit of the modern music business (where the average pop video budget has fallen to under £10,000), GaGa’s big production is on its way to becoming one of the most watched videos of all time, clocking up 17 million views in its first four days, and that’s not counting its massive television audience. It propelled her song to the top of charts around the world on downloads alone.





This, after all, is how videos began: as a promotional tool. The Beatles were among the pioneers of the genre, when they realised they could send clips to US television shows rather than cross the Atlantic in person. In 1965, they shot 10 black-and-white promos in one day at Twickenham film studios. But it was with their avante-garde, backwards film for Strawberry Fields Forever in 1967 that something new was born, something more than just an advertising tool, effectively a visual extension of the song itself.

MTV was launched in 1981 to exploit the new medium. Then came Michael Jackson and Madonna, visually intuitive pop stars for whom video was the sharp point of their attack on global consciousness. More than any artist before or since, video defined them.

If necessity has been the mother of video invention, Lady GaGa threatens to turn back the clock to an era when nothing succeeded like excess. I don’t expect it to start a new video budget arms race, however, partly because there isn’t another pop star today who could pull this kind of thing off.

With the musicality and showmanship of Michael Jackson and the powerful sexuality and provocative instincts of Madonna, Lady GaGa might just turn out to be the ultimate video queen.


34
Under The Sheets (Jakwob Remix) - ELLIE GOULDING

Hands down, The best remix that I've listened in the last 6 months!

Singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding came out on top of the BBC Sound of 2010 list, which showcases the best rising music stars for the coming year.

Born in Hereford, the 22-year-old's "folktronica" sound mixes a traditional acoustic approach with a more cutting-edge electronic style.

Ellie Goulding was discovered at a talent contest in her home town of Kington, Herefordshire, and began as a traditional acoustic singer-songwriter.

But while studying drama at university in Canterbury, Kent, she hooked up with dance producers Frankmusik - who appeared on the Sound of 2009 list - and Starsmith, and the results soon gained a following on MySpace.

Goulding has also received the Brit Awards' Critics' Choice prize and said she was "absolutely honoured" to be at the top of the Sound of 2010 list.

"I didn't expect to get anywhere a few years ago," she said. "I didn't even expect to have a record deal, let alone be put in such a prestigious thing so I'm very happy. I think the list this year is great and I really believe in a lot of the acts."

As far back as the summer, people were touting her as the next big name. She looks good, she's got a good story and her songs are great - haunting, ethereal, but somehow catchy, like Cocteau Twins go pop, or something.





33
Everlasting Light - THE BLACK KEYS

The Black Keys — singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney on drums — are a two-man combo with a big-band mind. On Brothers, their first studio album after a year of offshoot affairs (Auerbach's solo album, Keep It Hid; Carney's side group, Drummer; a hip-hop project, BlakRoc), the Keys make a thick, dirty racket, overdubbed but never overstuffed. "Everlasting Light" has hive-of-bees distortion, corn-pone harmonies and an Auerbach falsetto that suggests Prince singing through a mummy's gauze. This tune dips, drives, and plunges, a series of pelvic thrusts under a fuzzy falsetto. It doesn't speed up, it doesn't slow down; it's confident (charmingly cocky?) enough to persist at a medium pace, well aware that forcing it never does the job.





32
Pass Out - TINNIE TEMPAH FT. LABRINTH

Tinie Tempah's real name is Patrick Chukwuem Okogwu Jr. But by the age of 13, he had invented his stage name.
He explained to The Independent: "I looked up 'anger' in the thesaurus and I was starring at 'temper.' I thought, 'this is a little bit aggressive'. I didn't want to scare anyone off. So I added Tinie. By playtime, Tinie Tempah was born."

This debut single was co-written by the London MC and producer Labyrinth.

"We tried out so many different things by going in the studio and having fun. It wasn't like we just put a drum & bass ending on it and then thought, done! We tried out so many things, guitars, reggae bass; we were having so much fun. That track at least took 24 full hours to put together. Me and Labyrinth both tired, with Red Bulls in hand, were like this track is sick. Labyrinth had two of his stylists in the studio and by the time the track was done they were singing the bass rhythm and the chorus. The drum & bass mix up was a trialled and tested method. Once we put it in there everyone went crazy in the studio and that's why we thought we would keep it there."

The perfect tune to have fun, dance (for a little bit), get drunk and PASS OUT!





31
Born Free - M.I.A.

If you thing Gaga makes the most controversial videos, wait 'til you watch this video.





She might not have many nice things to say about Lady Gaga lately, but M.I.A. freely admits that her controversial "Born Free" video took more than a little inspiration from Gaga. Like, way more than a little.

"With our video, we were really copying 'Telephone,' " M.I.A. told the New York Times Magazine in a feature set to run on Sunday (May 30). "Both our videos are road movies. We kill people, and they kill people. They start out in a prison, and we start out in a squat, hunting people down."

But the (sorta) pleasantries end there, as M.I.A. went on to land another jab against Gaga. "All I'll say is, it's upsetting when babies say 'ga-ga' now," the British/Sri Lankan artist told the magazine. "It used to be innocent. Now, they're calling her name."

She said she gets annoyed when LG is praised for her originality — saying she mostly borrows from ABBA — and positively livid when her rival is compared to Madonna.

"You can't really say that Gaga is culturally a change," she said. "Madonna was truly unique."

Of course, in the same feature, M.I.A.'s pal — and "Born Free" director — Romain Gavras gets far nastier, joking to the Times' Lynn Hirschberg that "Madonna was pretty. ... Pop stars should be pretty."

M.I.A. explained that she and Gavras had originally intended to shoot the "Born Free" clip on the U.S.-Mexican border, but ultimately had to move production to Los Angeles because, as she put it, "Interscope won." And she told Hirschberg that she purposely avoided showing the completed video to the folks at the label (to which both she and Gaga are signed) because "the Interscope lawyers will want to send [it] to a censorship board." (Of course, Interscope head Jimmy Iovine told the Times that not only did he see the video, but that it "was more than fine with me. ... I didn't even have a blink.")

Building on that concept, M.I.A. said she's planning a stage show based entirely on censorship, with the audience's every move monitored and recorded, and individuals singled out and asked to leave if they violate certain rules.

"I want to be like the government," she said. "It could be interesting."


30
The Only Exception - PARAMORE

Paramore, who usually write and record darker material, mainly of the alternative and emo genre, had, musically, gone in a different direction with "The Only Exception"

The song's lyrics pertain to the protagonist not believing that love exists and trying to live without it, mainly to avoid rejection, but eventually realizing that it does.

"The Only Exception" features singer Hayley Williams forging a connection instead of simply spitting out her feelings, while the band locks in at a sympathetic simmer behind her.

Falling in love with someone is hard, we have doubts, we rethink ourselves, we make up excuses. But then we find that exception, that one person who makes it all worth it. The one that is finally worth the risk.

Not only I know it, I feel it... You are the only exception...





29
World Sick - BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE

This tune was the first single to be leaked for their "Forgiveness Rock Record" released on May 4th. I can’t say anything bad about Broken Social Scene they are without a doubt the heart and pride of Canadian indie music. It’s a great rock song, not too heavy on the guitar heavy on the drums and just the right amount of everything. An epic tune.





28
My Boys - TAKEN BY TREES

This is “Young Folks”/ex-Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman's (aka Taken By Trees) gender-specific take on the Number 1 Song of 2009, Animal Collective's “My Girls”.

"My Boys," sticks with the repetition of the original but this time it sounds like hand claps and bongo drums. The insistent bass in the original becomes a synth key here, and the whole thing suggest tropicalia.

THIS ONE IS DEDICATED TO MY BOYS KEVIN AND ED!!

"I don't mean to seem like I
Care about material things,
Like a social status,
I just want
Four walls and adobe slats
For my boys..."





27
Good Intentions Paving Company - JOANNA NEWSOM

"I regret how I said to you, 'Honey, just open your heart,' when I've got trouble even opening a honey jar," she twists, the piano and organ that have been pulsing and pealing behind her relenting to a playful banjo-and-guitar gait. She teases her own nervous disposition, segues "Auld Lang Syne" into "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours", and compares her love-stricken state of mind to a fistfight with the fog.

Actually, love takes the other lead here. As Newsom, the passenger, and her new partner, the driver, head toward a gig through what seems to be a treacherous mountain pass, she confesses that she's committing: "I fell for you, honey, easy as falling asleep," she sings when she knows they're safe, her voice more tempered and casual than it's often been. She admits she's tried to control her heart, describing the limbo-- to love, or to run-- with a zest for syllables worthy of a backpacker rapper and a Rickie Lee Jones-like knack for shaping bits of verses into little hooks. The song keeps shifting, and each piano line pulls her like rope to a simple romantic conclusion: "I only want for you to pull over, and hold me, till I can't remember my own name."

This is a rare thing, then-- an unapologetic love song that feels, you know, new.





26
Stylo - GORILLAZ FT. BOBBY WOMACK AND MOS DEF.

This was the first single from animated quartet Gorillaz's third studio album, Plastic Beach. The song features R&B singer Bobby Womack crooning the chorus, as well as rapper Mos Def, who joined Gorillaz as an animated character named "Sun Moon Stars" on the album.

Womack told Q magazine March 2010 that he gave the band a scare during the recording of this song. He said:

"I'm diabetic, and after an hour I could feel myself passing out. Last thing I remember is thinking, Lord, don't let this happen to me. They walked me to the couch and gave me a banana. In two or three minutes I woke up and said, 'Let's go again.' They said, 'No, we got it on tape.' I know it musta freaked them out because it freaked me out. Murdoc kept a straight face. He said, 'I'm telling you, man, you're my idol.' I said, 'well don't kill your idol.'"

Bassist Murdoc told The NME: "This is a new sound for Gorillaz. An electro-ish 'crack funk' sound, with a little bit of politics and a lot of soul going down. With 'Stylo', I wanted the music to feel euphoric, whilst still putting across how precarious our tightly packed situation is now, worldwide. Where we're at as a species on this overpopulated planet ('Coming on to the Overload. Overload. Overload')."





UK reggae artist Eddy Grant alleged that this song plagiarises his 1977 track "Time Warp" by using the same keyboard section as his hit. "This is pure piracy, it is an obvious infringement of my song," he said. "Anyone who knows 'Time Warp' will know this is 'Time Warp' with people singing and rapping over it, [along] with funny little noises. 'Time Warp' is a very popular song and has been a staple of the DJ scene for many years and I feel total disrespect from Gorillaz and their management company. It's such an obvious copy that from day one the band and their management should have taken control of this situation with EMI Publishing. I would like the outcome to be that the band admits that they have lifted my song, that I have a full credit for the song and an apology from the band."





25
O.N.E. - YEASAYER


"I had this idea about writing a song about addiction — alcoholism — but kind of relating it to a way you'd get rid of a girlfriend or something. So we worked on that song for many months Upstate, in Woodstock, and threw a big beat over it. It became kind of like a early-'90s era Beck song, with a break beat over it. And then when we brought it to the live setting, with our new bandmates, Chris [Keating, vocals and keyboards] kind of said, 'It's not a dance song,' and we were talking about how, on this album, we wanted to commit to certain styles for an entire song and not jump around. So, finally, I caved in. I only caved in after the Bonnaroo audience was so excited by our live version, and I was like, 'OK, I guess I lost that argument.'"

Guitarist Anand Wilder on the "One is Not Enough" song





24
Just Breathe - PEARL JAM

Eddie Vedder said Backspacer was meant to be a more optimistic album, having stated, "I've tried, over the years, to be hopeful in the lyrics, and I think that's going to be easier now,” and I think ‘Just Breathe’ couldn’t have made that comment more accurate, with lyrics: “Oh I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands the ones I love / Some folks just have one, yeah, others, they've got none”.

Unlike many other recent Pearl Jam singles, it is the absence of fanfare that really makes 'Just Breathe' something worth listening to. A paced bass line and a subtle layer of strings laid over the guitar adds further texture to the basic tune. The gentle calm of the melody, and raw honesty in Eddie Vedder’s lyrics, are completely engaging, and the delicate song seems to flow naturally from the grunge rock legends.

For me this is the song that describes this wonderful feeling that have been experienced since the beggining of this year. February 21st was the day that happiness re-appears in my life and it hit me with a double shot.
Life should be this easy and enjoyable.

"Oh I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands, the ones I love...
Some folks just have one, others, they've got none...
Stay with me, Let's just breathe..."





23
Soldier of love - SADE

According to the rumor mill, Kanye West and hip-hop's newest "it" boy, Drake, reached out to Sade, the reclusive chanteuse, for a possible collaboration. She said she'd have to do some research to find out who they were before she could say yes. The story is apocryphal at best, but is spreading at an urban legend's pace because, like the best urban legends, it confirms what we already thought. Sade, the notoriously press-shy songstress who has stingily parceled out music since the mid-'80s, seems like the type to have never heard of Kanye West. She doesn't keep up with music; music keeps up with her. YES!!!

For Sade’s most ardent listeners, the time between the present and Lover’s Rock (2000) has lasted an eternity. When “Soldier of Love” surfaced online at the beginning of this year, news of a new Sade song fast ignited a blaze of exclamation points across blogs and Facebook pages all over the world. The excitement stirred by “Soldier of Love” has made Sade’s latest release the first hotly anticipated album of the ‘10s.

Sade can casually drop back in to a warm reception because she has built the pop-music equivalent of a luxury brand.

Part of the Sade brand just comes from who she is: born to a Nigerian father and English mother, raised in London, blessed with a beauty that looks barely weathered at 51. She's the exotic, alluring foreigner. Her music is essentially pop, but heavily flavored with music styles favored by the elite.

It comes as some surprise, then, to hear Sade loosing up-to-the-minute martial beats on the title track of her new album, Soldier of Love. The video finds the 51-year-old in a spangly catsuit, swinging a lasso over a smoking wasteland. Succinct, masterful and adventurous!!





When you’re not trying to stay in fashion, you can concentrate on doing one thing extremely well and not worry that people will find it dated. Sure, the production on Soldier Of Love sounds a bit tougher and chunkier than the band’s early work, but the classic Sade vibe we love is still front and centre.

Waiting 10 years between albums usually means a crisis in confidence. In this case, it seems to have been the opposite – they’ve got nothing to prove, so they can just relax and take their time.


22
Older - BAND OF HORSES

On 2007's Cease to Begin, Band of Horses became more of a one-horse town, with frontman Ben Bridwell carrying the load in the wake of partner Mat Brooke's exit. He sounds less lonely on the group's third set, which adds singer-songwriter Tyler Ramsey as a full member, and sees multi-instrumentalist Ryan Monroe growing as a songwriter. Suddenly, the band has blossomed into something more like the Band, with rich harmonies — even when Bridwell just multitracks his own voice — and fuller arrangements. You can also hear some Fleet Foxes, a soft-rock shift that may bum out older fans. But for tuneful chilling out, it's like a fine old couch.





21
Let's Go Surfing - THE DRUMS

This local band from Brooklyn have said their song 'Let's Go Surfing' isn't about surfing at all, but is, in fact, is an ode to American president Barack Obama.

In a track-by-track guide to their self-titled debut album, Frontman Jonathan Pierce and guitarist Jacob Graham explained that they wrote the track on November 4, 2008, the day of the last presidential election.

"We actually wrote it on the day that Obama won the election, and everyone was so excited," said Graham. "We're not very political and we don't usually know what's going on, but in America you couldn't really help but know what was going on and get excited about it. The whole country had suffered eight years of feeling like we were in prison or something and then Obama came through and it was impossible not to get swept up with the whole nation, so that's when we wrote 'Let's Go Surfing.'"

Pierce added that the second verse of the song is a direct reference to Obama.

"There's a new kid in the town / Honey, he's moving into the big house / Remember / When I was so very hopeless / Darling, he's gonna make it all better."