Best song of the day: Camera Obscura, “French Navy”

I'm mostly just shocked that the first time I heard this song was over the piped-in sound system in the suburban mall where I work now. Technically it's not the radio, but who cares, because do you think the radio would ever play this song?

Last year I worked in a drug store and the chain had its own piped in "radio" playlist. It had many advantages to radio, but just as many disadvantages: Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and Feist were in their rotation, but so was Colbie Caillat. Also, more songs and more diversity means less certainty that you'll hear what you want, but then again it also means you don't have to hear "Don't Trust Me" 4 times in a 7-hour period.

Guilty pleasure of the day: Jet, “She's A Genius”

Jet are the kind of big dumb shaggy-haired rock band where you're embarrassed to say you like them, but when you listen to their songs you can't figure out why exactly, because you're too busy rocking out hard. Even when they get all misguidedly artistically ambitious and channel the Beatles via the Vines, they're solid. They're repetitive, derivative, and boring, but at least they're trying.

Still not gonna even look at this album in the record store though.

Worst song of the day: Our Lady Peace, “All You Did Was Save My Life”

But seriously, if you whole-heartedly, unironically love anything Our Lady Peace has done since 2002, or for that matter any lyric Raine Maida has written since 2001, you should go. Now.

Worst song of the day: Chickenfoot, “Oh Yeah”

I don't get it. Van Halen in the Sammy Hagar era was decent, Joe Satriani is a legend, Chad Smith is the drummer for the goddamn Red Hot Chili Peppers - so how the fuck did that collaboration result in a song called fucking "Oh Yeah!"? Taking "lowest common denominator" literally, it seems.

Worst song of the day: Silk, “Freak Me”

I’m not actually sure why this song is so bad. The lyrics are cheesy, but not abnormally so; the slow grind of the music is trying, but not irritating; and it’s old (if 1992 is old now), so it’s harder to accuse it of unoriginality. But for some reason, all of this adds up to create the kind of hypnotically bad song that seems to go on for 10 years and makes you sit around for all 10 of them, saying “This is so bad” but unable to change the station.

Oh honey, no

102.1 the Edge DJ Josie Dye thinks this song "sounds exactly like The Strokes". It gave me the same "Oh honey, no" feeling I get when the Toronto Star publishes wide-eyed articles about Twitter - you mean well, but you've got it all wrong. I like Josie, so I'm going to pretend she actually said the White Stripes and I just heard it wrong. (Does it sound like The Strokes? Am I crazy?)

Best song of the day: Gob, “I Hear You Calling”

You know those songs that you get into when you first start listening to the alternative radio station, because they're short and addictive like pop songs but edgy enough to accommodate your burgeoning teen angst, but then you get older and start liking music that's increasingly inaccessible and less melodic and you become convinced that all of those songs you liked when you were younger are embarrassing, poorly made, indulgent crap, and then when you get older and get over yourself and start listening to the radio again the song comes on the radio, years after you forgot it ever existed, and you realize that it's actually a really good, perfectly constructed song?

Yeah. This is one of those.