Top Ten Song 2006 (Time Version)

1. "CRAZY" by Gnarls Barkley

A huge cross-genre hit that opens with a giant beat and builds to a memorably weird hook sung by a guy who's not a singer. Sound familiar? Are you shaking that Polaroid? Like Hey Ya, Crazy is a song about sadness ("My heroes had the heart to live the life I want to live/ And all I remember is thinking I want to be like them") that made a lot of people happy. Danger Mouse's space-age funk production has something to do with it, but mostly it's Cee-Lo's sometimes on-key, sometimes screeched vocal, so warm and deeply felt that he makes collective insanity seem like a small cost for the privilege of just connecting.

2. "CHEATED HEARTS" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

It starts with Nick Zinner's guitar, Brian Chase's drums and Karen O's voice circling each other like gang members holding live wires. Then O sings "Sometimes I think that I'm bigger than the sound," Zinner's guitar roars over her in response and you get the sense that there might be a little tension in this band. Just as things sound like they're going to get violent, the instruments come together in a joyous, volatile third verse that resolves the dispute, for now.

3. "WELCOME TO THE BLACK PARADE" by My Chemical Romance

An audacious, goofy and insanely catchy attempt at merging Bohemian Rhapsody and Born to Run into a rock opera about... I don't know. There's a concept here, but it's not meant for me or anyone else who makes regular contributions to a 401k. Instead Black Parade is one of those signal songs that announce an Us vs. Them moment in the generational divide. The good news is that you don't have to get the meaning or feel the feelings to appreciate the brilliant hiccups of the melody or the depth of feeling in Gerard Way's vocal.

4. "ANOTHER SUNNY DAY" by Belle & Sebastian

Stuart Murdoch is the least cynical songwriter alive, and God bless him for it. The latest in his line of deceptively simple melodies finds him love-struck by a girl in a garden ("You broke the heart of men and flowers and girls and trees"). The relationship blooms at a pick-up soccer game ("I saw you in the corner of my eye on the sidelines/ your dark mascara bids me do historical deeds"), endures a little pain and then a lot of pain ("So what went wrong/ It was a lie it crumbled apart") leaving Murdoch looking for another tulip-planting beauty to change his life.

5. "THE FIREFLY'S SONG" by Alan Jackson

Songs about old men getting older and their love for their women getting stronger tend to be either transcendent or cheesy. This one's both. Jackson delivers his tale of wisdom-with-age in a Gordon Lightfoot baritone that suggests strength and sentiment in perfect harmony. ("I don't sing like I used to/ Sometimes less is more.") Meanwhile the production, like all country production, is just a little too eager. (Swelling lap steel, eh? He must be melancholy!) Luckily Jackson's knockout vocal—the best of his career—tilts the scale and carries the day.

6. "WHY CAN'T I LEAVE HER ALONE" by George Strait

Basically, this is a song about stalking. ("I know I don't want her, I swear that's a fact/ But the thought of somebody else rubbing her back, just keeeeeeeeels me.") But Strait, whose 55 #1 country hits suggest he knows a little something about interpreting a line, turns it into a perfectly pitched lovable loser tale ("I dropped by her mama's stoned out of my mind/ Just to hear that it's over from her one more time") complete with pick-up trucks, bar stools and big rolling tears plopping into glasses of beer.

7. "MY LOVE" by Justin Timberlake

While the rest of his Mickey Mouse Club class looks like a collective train wreck, Timberlake's worked his way towards respectability by working the dance floor. You can tell from the layers of stuttering hooks and the overcrowded rhythm track that it's a Timbaland track, but no previous Timbaland song has sounded this sexy, and that's all JT. Yeah, that's right, I called him JT. Any man who can sing in falsetto without sacrificing an ounce of manliness deserves to be called whatever he wants.

8. "KICK, PUSH" by Lupe Fiasco

A rap song about a man's romance with skateboarding that owes as much to Avril Lavigne as the Native Tongues. Fiasco's voice isn't rough or distinctive, but it cuts through rising and falling horns to tell his sweet tale of learning to kick and push ("First got it when he was six/ Didn't know any tricks/ Matter of fact first time he got on it he slipped") his way through life.

9. "SMILE" by Lily Allen

Like her peers and countrymen in the Arctic Monkeys, Allen's a kid who doesn't use the convenience of pop structure as an excuse for lazy lyric writing. With her acid tongue burning a hole in her cheek, she rap-sings over a gossamer calypso beat about a cheating ex ("At first, when I see you cry/ It makes me smile") until he's purged from her heart.

10. "OMAHA" by Tapes N' Tapes

The lyrics are from the Pavement school of abstraction ("Each howl, I get bigger/ I can't stay, I can for the night"), and lead singer Josh Grier has the same desert dry voice as David Byrne. But this is an indie rock band that knows how to create little mood fantasias, and Omaha has all the spooky, hypnotic charm of a night in a cornfield.