New Classics Among the Dreck at the Funky Buddha

I was at a night club last night, my once-in-three-years get-dressed-up-in sleek-black-clothes and pay-double-what-I-should -for-drinks nocturnal adventure. My friends and I ended up waiting for an hour in 20-degree temperatures to get in, leading Eisa to utter the pertinent-yet-unanswerable question "Why do people do this every night?". I didn't have an answer, except to say that we wouldn't be back for three years, so we didn't need to figure it out. Still, we had fun when we got inside, people-watching clubgoers in tight clothes, sipping whiskey on the rocks, and bopping our heads to low-quality hip-pop, a mix of top-40 club songs and uninteresting rap music. I predicted that Beyonce's "Crazy in Love" would come on, and I was right. Let me get something straight: even though most of the music last night it the supposedly hip Funky Buddha was disappointingly boring, I love this song. It has outrageous horn flourishes, a catchy-sexy "Uh-oh-uh-oh" phrase, and all sorts of energy. Forgetting about genres and what kind of music I listen to and say I like, I think that this song is a classic in our midst, something that will be remembered and replayed and enjoyed for decades. Like "She Loves You" or "Stayin Alive" or "Billie Jean", "Crazy in Love"is going to stay around. So that got me to thinking, what other songs are classics in our midst? What do I really mean by classic? Is it just a song I like? I think I define it this way: a true classic is a song that will be respected and loved for years a song whose timelessness will transcend temporary conceptions of style and popularity. Of course, that's something that's impossible to judge about the present day, but I like to speculate. Others that come to mind: Eminem, "Lose Yourself", Norah Jones. "Don't know Why". These pop songs, works that became enormous hits and sold lots of CD singles to teenagers (and full albums to everybody else) deserved their acclaim. It's nice when songs are popular for a reason.

Readers, what else from the last couple of years was a classic the minute it hit the airwaves?