New Good Song: Hard To Love by Lee Brice

Here's a new good song -- "Hard To Love" by Lee Brice

How I found this song -- iTunes Top 200, on one of the days I was so dismayed that I ventured into country. I found this song about two months ago, so it's bordering on not being new, but it's still worth mentioning because it shows that sometimes one must cross genres to find new good songs. Most of today's country cross-over attention is going to Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and Lady Antebellum, but there are other artists who do country music that you can stand, and that in some cases is good, such as "Glass" Thompson Square, which is a nice lullaby and great to listen to when you're at the doctor having blood drawn.

There's quality within country, even if you're not a country fan. Usually the ballads are more digestible because they're more like rock songs, and there's a current dearth of ballads in pop, so if one likes ballads one must often turn to country. The best ballad of 2011, of any genre, was "Wanted You More" by Lady Antebellum, unless one considers "Nothing" by The Script a ballad. The best song of last year, incidentally, was "Super Bass" by Nicki Minaj, in case you missed it.

What makes this song good? Say what you may about country music, but pretty consistently it's clever and rings true, telling familiar and funny stories. "Hard To Love" captures an oft-felt but rarely expressed sentiment: I stink and don't understand why anyone would love me. Also, country uses real instruments, which is a step in the right direction but certainly not a prerequesite for goodness (see "Super Bass").

Is the iTunes 200 a good source for country music? If you seek country, there may be better sources, but if you simply seek new good songs regardless of genre, the iTunes 200 can be your one and only destination for adding country songs to your playlist. It's flooded with country. You may also need Wikipedia open to verify release date, but it's unusual for an old country song to be on the iTunes 200 unless it was recently performed on "Glee" or was features in a TV series.

New Good Song: Guardian by Alanis Morissette

Here's a new good song -- "Guardian," by Alanis Morissette

How I found this song -- iTunes. When embarking on any hunt for a new good song, I always start with the basic Top 200 songs selling on iTunes. The masses today don't have the best taste, but sometimes they'll surprise you. And a quick scan through this list always alerts me to the newest of the new, if not necessarily the best of the best. It was here I realized Alanis even had a new single. I adored "Underneath" a couple years ago. "Guardian" isn't as good because it's the same two chords over and over for more than four minutes. She can do better. But it's still better than most of what's out there. But if you haven't heard "Underneath," get that instead. It has one of my favorite bridges of all time, at 2:26.

What makes this song good? Instruments and a nice melody, and Alanis has a nice way with words. This isn't the greatest song on earth but it'll do.

Is the list of iTunes 200 most downloaded songs a good source for new good songs? Absolutely; this is the closest I've found to a "news alert" about what's new, although new doesn't mean good. For example, everything sung on "Glee" ends up on this list, but fortunately this poop is easy to spot and thus avoid, so that's no sweat. Then there's "The Voice," another series whose output clutters the list; these songs are not in the scope of my hunt because they're not new. They also aren't so much "songs" as "audition exercises."

Other than these shows, there are also a few genres that disproportionately take up space on the iTunes 200 list. One is American dance music, which is the worst genre of 2012 (see Jennifer Lopez, most Usher, anything featuring Pitbull, and a majority of Rihanna's output). The second is hip-hop, which used to be a good genre but in 2012 will make your ears bleed (e.g., "Get Low" by Waka Flocka Flame, "Work Hard, Play Hard" by Wiz Khalifa). For the most part, if a song on iTunes is marked "Explicit," and it's by an artist you you've never heard of, it's probably a hip-hop song from 2012, and therefore is the worst song ever made.

The final genre cluttering up the iTunes Top 200 is tricky to negotiate -- country. There are some new good songs in the country genre (e.g., "Hard To Love" by Lee Brice and "Glass" by Thompson Square), but in general most are bad, and it can be difficult to predict goodness or badness based on title and artist, especially if you're not a country fan. Fortunately, if you click on a country song preview, you can usually tell in 2 seconds whether it's the worst song of all time, by the degree of twang. Usually I only forge into country territory to find new good songs if I have exhausted the rest of the 200.

The iTunes Top 200 has been the source of many new good songs for me this year, including "Midnight City" by M83 and, ages ago, "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye f/ Kimbra. You can, of course, also sort through iTunes lists by genre. This can be very helpful in the alternative genre in particular; it's less useful in R&B and rock, because most of the songs on those lists are not new. That's when you need Wikipedia on your side. More on that to come.