2005 : 27 "Losing My Edge" by LCD Soundsystem

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I've already mentioned the fact that I thought a lot, in 2005, about being an aging music fan. And part of this may have been because 2005 marked the release of the best song ever written about being an aging music fan: LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge." I'm losing my edge To all the kids in Tokyo and Berlin I'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties The early portion of the song is a gauntlet of trenchant observation and self-lacerating humor: no music fan of my generation will pass through without it landing at least one palpable hit. But the song's best passage comes around the 5:45 mark, when James Murphy begins racing through a roll-call of "relevant" bands. It's as simple as a grocery list, but no other gesture this decade has more truly evoked what it feels like to be a music fan in the contemporary world: the terrifying sublimity that comes from having your very identity bound up in efforts to attain mastery over a spectrum of cultural material that is, for all practical purposes, infinite. This Heat Pere Ubu Outsiders Nation of Ulysses Mars The Trojans The Black Dice Todd Terry the Germs Section 25 Althea and Donna Sexual Harrassment a-ha Pere Ubu Dorothy Ashby PIL the Fania All-Stars the Bar-Kays the Human League the Normal Lou Reed Scott Walker Monks Niagra Joy Division Lower 48 the Association Sun Ra Scientists Royal Trux 10cc Eric B. and Rakim Index Basic Channel Soulsonic Force Juan Atkins David Axelrod Electric Prunes Gil! Scott! Heron! the Slits Faust Mantronix Pharaoh Sanders and the Fire Engines the Swans the Soft Cell the Sonics the Sonics the Sonics the Sonics.... —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: LCD Soundsystem >> "Losing My Edge"