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.

New Good Song: Always Summer by Yellowcard

Here's a new good song -- "Always Summer" by Yellowcard.

How I found this song: I'm not much into that which the hipsters call indie. Usually, "indie" means bad vocals, cheap production, obscure song structure and indecipherable lyrics. But the Indie Spotlight area of iTunes contains some of the better new good songs of today, and it's where I discovered "Always Summer," as well as some of my other current favorites, including "Satellites" by Catcall, and "Para" by Calexico. It's also where I purchased a few songs that I originally thought were good but that turned out -- upon repeated listens -- to be merely almost good, such as "Totally True" by Violens (click if you like The Cure), "Pretty Face" by Soley (click if you like Tori Amos) and "In The Morning" by Soulsavers (click if you like Morrissey).

What makes this song good? Great melody, clean production, positive feelings, real instruments. This song is on the borderline of being bad because it's reminiscent of a very bad genre, which was the neener-neener pop-punk of the mid '00s (e.g., "Perfect" by Simple Plan, the worst song of all time). However, "Always Summer" is happy, not whiny, and seems fresh in 2012, and perfect for summer. I feel a little too old to like it (I'm 33), but the tremendously skillful violin/fiddle playing adds a stamp of offbeatness and musical credibility that makes me feel better about liking it so much. "Always Summer" would have been a Top 10 hit if it had been released 9 years ago, and I probably wouldn't have liked it at the time because it would've sounded too much like things that are bad. But in 2012, this type of song is rare, and therefore new and good.

Is the Indie Spotlight area of iTunes a good way to find new good songs? Yes and no. My hunch -- backed by no evidence -- is that more of today's music is released independently because of lower barriers to entry, or fewer opportunities at big labels, and thus the "indie" umbrella is wide. Therefore, the Indie Spotlight turns out to be where many new good songs live. But to find one such gem, you have to wade through about 5-10 pieces of poop. And that wading is made difficult by the surprisingly poor organization of the Indie Spotlight. I think iTunes should further divide this area into genres and then further rank them by popularity, which is an un-hip thing to do and counter, perhaps, to the whole "indie" vibe, but it would help sort out what's good from what's awful. To its credit, iTunes does help the user a bit by ranking the popularity of songs by artist. So, for example, if you do click on the Yellowcard album "Ocean Avenue," you will get two clues -- one is a visual clue called "Popularity," which fills in vertical bars by how popular a song is; another is a box at the left called "Top Yellowcard" where there's a ranking of songs. This can help you find new good songs, although you have to look carefully. "Ocean Avenue" is not new -- it's 9 years old, according to the information box at left. But "Always Summer" is new. To learn that this is so, you would have to follow the link to "Always Summer - Single" or go to the Yellowcard Wikipedia discography. There, you'll see that "Always Summer" is a 2012 release.

Incidentally, it tends to be the case that when an album title on iTunes is the same as the song title with the word "Single" after it, it's a new song. This is another good clue.

The Wikipedia discography is a fantastic but not fool-proof source for figuring out the difference between what's new and what's not. One particular limitation is that it's sometimes not clear whether something is new or old in the United States vs. elsewhere. For example, "Is this Love" by Aiden Grimshaw is a new good song, but even though its Wikipedia page says it was released a week ago, it's actually not available for purchase on iTunes in the U.S. (yet?). One clue that the release date on Wikipedia is not referring to the U.S. is that it says "3 June 2012," which is a British thing to say.