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Maybe it's just because they're already so far removed from their Ivy League days, but acclaimed Anglophile Afrophiles Vampire Weekend have a bit of writer's block on their inevitably chart-scaling second album, Contra. Oxford commas and New England commutes apparently don't cut it anymore once you're an indie-rock star, so you have to look for random rhymes for "horchata" instead. Which isn't to suggest they're not still obsessed with privilege. There's a very long song called "Diplomat's Son" that incongruously opens with an M.I.A. sample, and "California English" says something about "private schools" -- it's just harder to tell if they have anything clever to say about the topic.

V.W. have been singled out from the start as archetypes of the industry's accelerated hype cycle -- famous on the basis of just a couple of MySpace songs, months before the release of their first album. So it's less shocking that the sophomore slump would hit them than that they managed a fairly enjoyable debut in the first place. And it's not like Contra is a rehash; the title is a politically confused if presumably ironic reference to Sandinista!, the Clash's over-the-top-eclectic coffee-table triple LP from 1981, and the V.W.s do seem to broaden their own rhythmic palate across the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, in their own prim way. "Holiday" sounds like Haircut 100 doing some jaunty ska oompah; there's something vaguely zoukish about "California English"; "Cousins," the single and least twee track, opens with a hard James Brown vamp that Pigbag might've bleated out in the '80s. Evidently they've been listening to Latin music, too. But mostly there's a sort of stiffened punk-funk clank not far from what was coming out of Brooklyn's more bohemian neighborhoods from bands like the Rapture and Radio 4 at the previous decade's outset. Which might be useful on hipster dancefloors if Vampire grooves didn't have a mysterious tendency to clumsily disentregrate almost as soon as they're established.

They get praised for putting "space" in their music, probably because of the plinky-plonky xylophones and fancy-pantsy string orchestrations. Which are cute, sometimes. But the melodies aren't there like before, and inevitably Contra's charming numbers are the ones kept short and speedy; when the band slows down and stretches out -- frequently so Ezra Koenig can pirouette two-syllables words into ten -- they're a snooze. Obviously the hiccuping and yelping, just like all the upper-crust affectations, are part of the concept. But even rich boys need hooks, right?

Strangely enough, one of the most influential songs of the '00s may have come out in 1981. Hank Williams, Jr.'s "A Country Boy Can Survive" is basically a doomsday sermon about how the big city is going to hell in a handbasket, but it doesn't really matter, because out in the sticks, where folks are still taught to run trout lines and say "ma'am," life will go on no matter what. "The preacher man says it's the end of time/ And the Mississippi River she's a goin' dry," Bocephus ominously warns. "The interest is up and the stock market's down/ And you only get mugged/ If you go downtown." Not an entirely new stance for country music, obviously -- it's called "country" for a reason, after all -- but somehow more paranoid and mean-spirited than, say, "Okie from Muskogee" ever was. And even if Hank hadn't recorded an updated version called "America Will Survive" in 2002, in the wake of September 11th, his early '80s anthem would be a foreshadowing of the anti-urban resentment and stubborn local-barricade libertarianism that, a quarter-century down the line, would fuel Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann and countless tea parties and right-wing talk-show hosts. Throughout the '00s, similar fightin' words -- often from Nashville's best artists -- came close to defining country music, even as the genre's sound put up its dukes, appropriately turning tougher, louder, more rock. Here, a brief backlash primer.

The most relevant fact about music in the '00s was the sheer volume of it that came out, as digital technology democratized recording and distribution down toward individual-artist level. Most conservative estimates cite a figure somewhere in the 30,000-albums-per-year range in the U.S. alone, which computes to 300,000 over the entire decade. Add in countless bands who never graduated past five songs on MySpace, and the quantity turns astronomical. Given that only a tiny fraction of this music has inspired lasting adulation outside performers' immediate families, that means the overwhelming majority has long since slipped through the cracks of history. That said, here's a representative, genre-spanning sample of 10 great albums unlikely to make many other best-of-decade lists: if you knew about any of them in the first place, chances are you forgot them already. Until now.

10. The Exploding Hearts
Guitar Romantic, 2003
The decade's most tragic rock story: on July 20, 2003, a bus carrying Oregon powerpop-punk foursome the Exploding Hearts overturned on the Interstate while returning home to Portland from San Francisco. Three members -- vocalist and guitarist Adam Cox, bassist Matt Fitzgerald, drummer Jeremy Gage -- died. Only four months earlier, the band had put out its only album: 10 songs -- seven of them less than three minutes long -- about modern kicks and modern chicks and sleeping aides and razorblades. No other album in recent memory has come so close to matching the sweet-and-sour relentlessness of the Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady; most likely, no album ever will.

9. Skye Sweetnam
Noise From The Basement, 2004
Where pop-punk -- or at least cool old Pat Benatar chords -- lived on was Radio Disney. But where Avril reached a mass American audience, her fellow Ontario native Skye Sweetnam only crossed over to Canadians, and maybe some Cheap Trick fans in Japan. Underground tween-pop from its title on down, Noise From The Basement -- released when she was just 16 -- peaked at a humble #124 in the U.S. But that didn't make its impudence any less precocious or self-aware, from the single about skipping school to avoid Shakespeare to the subterranean homesick "Hypocrite": "Bubblegum braniac! Baby girl ultra brat! Angst schmangst! No thanks! Hope my record doesn't tank!" Sigh...

8. Wolf
Evil Star, 2004
In a decade wherein heavy metal never stopped mutating, but did so within a tighter and tighter perimeter, in increments indiscernible to most humans unschooled in the art of experimental composition, this Swedish trio stubbornly stuck to the pre-thrash leather-jacket-full-of-zippers basics: Power anthems distinguishable as actual songs, with ice-blue riffs as hooks, and words about ominous objects in the sky and werewolves going bump in the night -- all howled in a high register melodic enough for a layman to actually decipher them. And the Blue Oyster Cult and Ramones covers sure didn't hurt.

7. Collin Raye
Never Going Back, 2009
As metal and rock radio abandoned old-school blues-based hard rock, country picked up the ball -- so much that, by decades end, Bad Company riffs were even sounding stale in Nashville. So nobody much noticed when this longtime journeyman, who hadn't taken a single into the country Top 40 since early 2000, kicked off his last-year-of-the-decade album with some Grand Funk Railroad cowbell, then loaded the thing with butt-rocking couples smuggling contraband across the border and heading west for Vegas dancing jobs only to wind up on a riverboat outside Cincinnati. Plus remakes of Nilsson and Stealers Wheel classics, and Eagles-worthy ballads that frequently mention Jesus.

6. ZZ Top
Mescalero, 2003
Talk about your blues-rock journeymen making runs for the border: These ancient Texas beardos had been stuck in the boogie mud ever since their hightly lucrative mid '80s sellout-to-MTV era, then they suddenly took a sharp left turn on this largely unheard platter full of Spanish words, warped funk, screwy electronic effects, and flatulent jokes about alley-gators and intelligent quotients and punk-ass boyfriends. If a more entertaining hard rock album emerged this decade, it surely wasn't by guys in their 50s (all three born 1949!) who'd been grumbling like old men since they were in their 20s (excellent long-range business plan!) Their weirdest since El Loco in 1981, if you're keeping score.

5. Field Mob
From Tha Roota to Tha Toota, 2002
Not hard to imagine ZZ Top and Field Mob enjoying the same barbecue: This album's title refers to feasting on the entire hog, from snout to tail. And give or take Bubba Sparxxx, it's doubtful that the decade produced more countryfied rappers than these hick-town Georgians, who lyrically trace their Southernness back to the plantation their ancestors were sold and hung on. So while they revel in a comedic trickster spirit their genre mostly abandoned, it's run through with sadness -- soul, in other words, the red-clay variety, yet spiked with melodic beauty from classical Europe and the Far East.

4. Koffee Brown
Mars/Venus, 2001
And here's a path that r&b in the '00s sadly managed not to follow: From a man and woman named Fonz and Vernall, a grown-folks gender battle, in the time-tested tradition of Womack & Womack or Ashford & Simpson, "retro" only in the sense that it's not emotionally stunted by ice-queen restraint or melismatic bombast or strip-club crotch-grab. The fugue-like "Weekend Thing," setting its anticipatory upscale summer scene in beauty parlors and barbershops, gave up as warm a groove as any soul track this decade. But that single only charted #71 r&b; the duo never made another album.

3. Oneida
Steel Rod EP, 2000
Checking it at 31 minutes, this record is misnamed -- while admittedly containing only six songs including an untitled four-second closer, it's more a short album than an EP. And a half-hour is just about perfect for this dirty-twanged, keyboard-tempered breed of Brooklyn science-lab sludge, tossing Link Wray, MX-80 Sound, Pere Ubu, and Devo into the choogle-metal blender while obsessing on loaded weapons and hellbound trains. You'd have a hard time finding any other '00s guitar rock so convoluted and repetitious that also kicks so hard. In 2000, Oneida could've almost passed as Queens of the Stone Age's nuttier cousins; later on, QOTSA got more commercial as Oneida got artier. And they both kicked less.

2. Fannypack
See You Next Tuesday, 2005
"Do it now, turn around, get off like a wedding gown, people on the pitcher's mound, turn it up and lock it down, fast ball, curve ball, workin' on your nerves ya'll " -- Three impossibly sassy and accented Brooklyn girls, two hipster NYC club producers life-affirming enough to opt for freestyle jump-rope chants over electroclash bondage gear, a skit revolving around one svengali's hatred of reggae leading into a dancehall guest-spot by Mr. Vegas, what else do you need? From M.I.A. to "Chicken Noodle Soup" to Kid Sister, the '00s weren't a bad decade when it came to channelling the spirit of "Iko Iko." But nobody gave it more bounce than this oddball outfit from the 718, who seemed like a novelty but were more.

1.Various Artists
Bring It On: Music From The Motion Picture, 2000
If you need documented evidence that the decade kicked off with a great girl-group wave, look no further. Irish fiddle-gum flirts B*Witched revive Toni Basil; Left Eye discoveries Blaque get sarcastic then collaborate with an unknown named 50 Cent; fellow post-TLCs 3LW keep things light; bizarre Jersey expats Daphne And Celeste -- whose own album never even came out in the States -- inform you that you ain't got no alibi for being U-G-L-Y. Mere males like the Jungle Brothers and 95 South stay on the sidelines, leading cheers. R&B in the '00s never got giddier, teen-pop never got funkier, and where such good-natured energy disappeared to is a history that has yet to be written. If you don't miss it, you missed the boat. Or, as Liverpool's Atomic Kitten put it, "See ya. I wouldn't wanna be ya."

Ever since the early days of MTV, Flock of Seagulls haircuts, and Spandau Ballet new romanticism, it's been widely accepted that synthesizer pop is a mostly British (or at its weirdest, continental European) phenomenon: "Glitter-disco-synthesizer night school, all that noble savage drum drum drum," the band X ranted in their 1983 anti-Anglo tirade "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts." Americans were just too gritty and guitar-loving for all that silliness, right? Well, not all of them. Lady Gaga is only the latest -- and potentially the biggest -- artist from U.S. shores to re-imagine Anglo/Euro technopop, fashion sense and all. Here's a rundown of electronically inclined Americans who preceded her.

In his eight years recording, John Mayer has walked a stylistic tightrope, splitting his time between presenting himself as a sensitive heartthrob (mainly on his solo studio albums) and a serious bluesman (on the live 2005 John Mayer Trio album Try!, for instance). By now, he seems to have found a comfortable middle ground between sex appeal and chops. But he's hardly the first musicianly beefcake to balance such seemingly competing sides. Here, some hunky virtuosos who've come before.

Britney Spears' latest contribution to pop music's math textbook, "3," is a celebration of bedroom-floor activities involving more than two people, and I don't mean vacuuming! Though that might happen too, actually. But Britney coos naughty stuff about "Not only you and me/ Got 180 degrees/ And I'm caught between" and "Peter Paul and Mary gettin' down." (Where's Puff the Magic Dragon when you need him?) But believe it or not, Ms. Spears is not the first pop star to deal with said multipartner practice, and others have documented entirely different lovemaking activities at least as nontraditional. Herewith, an inventory of sex-obsessed songs that opt for flavors other than vanilla.

It has been said that every movie worth watching since 1939 contains some reference to The Wizard of Oz. But what about music? This week, Wu-Tanger Ghostface Killah releases his new album, Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry, the cover artwork of which features a yellow brick road extended across hottie-bedecked poppy fields toward Emerald City. And on October 3, in honor of the movie's 70th anniversary, Netflix is streaming Oz free, in a new high-definition version. Last week, to commemorate the same landmark, Jennifer Hudson, Julianne Hough, and ?Uestlove of the Roots performed songs from the movie in New York. Rock and pop have been in love with the classic for years, but there's never been a better time to count down the highlights of Oz-rock history.

So what's there to celebrate this Labor Day, anyway? That the unemployment rate is still going up, just not quite as fast as it was going up a few months ago? The songs on the playlist below are split between how hard it can be to find work, and how demoralizing jobs can be once you finally find one. Maybe a few will even make you hope unions aren’t dead. But here's hoping they all help you enjoy your day off.

• The Silhouettes, "Get a Job" (1958): Philly gospel singers turned doo-woppers, with the most topical song of rock 'n' roll's first decade. Their girlfriends nag them and claim they're lying, but no gigs can be found in the want ads.

• Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons" (1955): Country-boogie dirge about digging your way toward hell for the straw boss, only to die owing your soul to the company store.

• John Rich, "Shuttin' Detroit Down" (2009): A great city approaches the breaking point -- bosses collect bonuses, calloused assembly-liners lose pensions. The singer's confused politics come off as sincere for once.

• Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "Takin' Care of Business" (1974): Canuck buffalo rock about racing to catch the 8:15 into the daily grind again and wondering if self-employment is a way out.

• Martha & the Muffins, "Echo Beach" (1980): "My job is very boring, I'm an office clerk." So Martha takes a New Wave holiday, or at least dreams of one.

• Patti Smith, "Piss Factory" (1974): Another dirge (not to mention the artist's first and best single) about monotony and deadening heat and contemptible toothless co-workers telling you to slow down, when speeding up is the only way you know to escape.

• The Roches, "Mr. Sellack" (1979): The politics of groveling to get your crummy job back -- getting down on your hands and knees, literally, to scrub behind the steam table.

• Dolly Parton, "9 to 5" (1980): Karl Marx's favorite No. 1 single of the rock era. "It's a rich man's game, no matter what they call it, and you spend your life putting money in his wallet."

• Utah Phillips, "Joe Hill" (1984): A legendary labor organizer recites the Wobblies' union anthem, but first tells even better stories about his own life of work.

• Johnny Paycheck, "Take This Job and Shove It" (1977): A longhaired country outlaw walks out of the factory after 15 years, paycheck or no.

Woodstock obviously featured a handful of undeniably great bands, plus the occasional world-shaking performance by B-listers (Ten Years After's "I'm Going Home.") But those were exceptions. Maybe if the lineup had more fully captured the scope of rock and pop music in 1969, the result would have been more exciting, and less a tedious snoozefest. So here's a modest proposal for an alternate roster -- with every artist replaced by somebody comparable but cooler.

In 1978, a British New Waver calling himself Elton Motello had a supremely sleazy punk-disco dance club hit called "Jet Boy Jet Girl." Almost immediately, a Belgian New Wave singer calling himself Plastic Bertrand, using both the same studio musicians and same backing music as "Jet Boy Jet Girl," turned the song into a French song called "Ca Plane Pour Moi," one of punk's greatest and silliest novelty hits. Both songs have been covered countless times over the years, sometimes by far more famous bands. The playlist below provides an overview, and tosses in other rock classics about jets and by people named JET and Jett and Jetboy that somehow, in this context, totally fit.
 

Believe it or not, the year hits the six-months-gone mark this week. And while there's no point in claiming these are the absolute best singles of the first half of 2009 (left "Boom Boom Pow" and "Poker Face" off, for instance, figuring you already know what they sound like), they're still 25 really good ones. Lots of rap, lots of country, lots of soul. Not a ton of "rock", though -- maybe because most of the non-rock rocks just fine.

When constructing this flawlessly gorgeous and heart-wrenching compendium of soft rock, I was once again reminded that much of history's mellow gold is in fact a secret depository of mental imbalance (see playlist selections by Helen Reddy and Gilbert O'Sullivan and Lobo for instance) and downright sleaziness (the ones by Mac Davis and Cher and Gordon Lightfoot, for starters.) Or at least that was the case in the singles-bar-and-suburban-wifeswap-and-pagan-teenage-drug-commune '70s; the '80s tunes below are perhaps more inscrutable -- if no more deniable.

Something nostalgia for the '70s and '80s tends to forget is how nostalgic those decades were in turn for the '50s -- from Sha Na Na to American Graffiti to Happy Days, the era of greasers and poodle skirts was more inescapable throughout the era of quaaludes and smiley faces than youngsters today might guess. And one natural byproduct -- especially when Elvis died in 1977 -- was an often covert seeping of rockabilly sounds into hard rock, glam, new wave, country, even funk. The playlist below delves beyond the Cramps and Stray Cats to explore how, and where, the '70s and '80s lit late great balls of rockabilly fire.

"Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas has now been the most popular song in the country for nine weeks and counting with no end in sight, making it the weirdest and most outlandish song to work up that kind of batting streak since ... what? "Hey Ya!" (nine weeks, 2003-2004)? "Macarena" (14 weeks, 1996)?? "Bette Davis Eyes" (nine weeks, 1981)??? Mighty impressive, either way, and what cannot be denied is that it is also the most shamelessly ridiculous and unabashedly catchy confection to hit the radio this year (only competition: "Poker Face"), and it's inescapable for primarily that reason.

So you know what? If you're not among the millions (if not billions) of human beings who've already surrendered to the song, you might as well. Otherwise, you'll certainly regret it 99 years from now (2108!), when you hear it on the intergalactic oldies station wired into the computer chip in your brain and it reminds you how life felt in the summer of 2009 the way no other song possibly could. And if that's not enough of a reason to embrace "Boom Boom Pow," here are 10 more.

We can argue 'til the heifers come home about whether this is a good or bad thing (correct answer: very very very good), but it can not be denied that the soon-to-over '00s have been the butt-rockingest decade in the entire history of country music since the beginning of time. In fact, it could easily be argued that country music rocked a whole lot harder in the '00s than rock did. Below are 25 magnificently loud and heavy reasons why. If you're a purist who gets nervous when country goes places it isn't supposed to, feel free to sit this one out. Otherwise, turn it up!