1. Los Campesinos!, "You! Me! Dancing!" [edit] (from Sticking Fingers into Sockets EP, Arts & Crafts)
2. Amerie, "Gotta Work" (from Because I Love It, Sony BMG U.K.)
3. Prince, "Chelsea Rodgers" (from Planet Earth, NPG/Columbia)
4. Rihanna, "Shut Up and Drive" (from Good Girl Gone Bad, Def Jam)
5. Ruthie Foster, "Fruits of My Labor" (from The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster, Blue Corn)
6. Jill Scott, "Crown Royal" (from The Real Thing: Words and Sound Vol. 3, Hidden Beach)
7. Common, "I Want You" [edit] (from Finding Forever, Geffen)
8. Charlie Hunter Trio, "'Speakers Built In'" [edit] (from Mistico, Concord)
9. Michael Brecker, "Tumbleweed" (from Pilgrimage, WA)
10. McCoy Tyner, "Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit" [edit] (from Quartet, Half Note)
11. Dee Dee Bridgewater & Red Earth Band, "Compared to What" [edit] (from Red Earth: A Malian Journey, DDB)
12. Spoon, "The Underdog" (from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Merge)
13. LCD Soundsystem, "North American Scum" (from Sound of Silver, Capitol)
14. John Fogerty, "I Can't Take It No More" (from Revival, Concord)
15. Bruce Springsteen, "Long Walk Home" (from Magic, Columbia)
16. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (from Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, RCA)
17. Ghostface Killah, "Walk Around" (from The Big Doe Rehab, Def Jam)
18. Ministry, "Let's Go" (from The Last Sucker, 13th Planet)
19. Kanye West, "Good Morning" [edit] (from Graduation, Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam)
20. Brother Ali, "Faheem" (from The Undisputed Truth, Rhymesayers)

I'm a sucker for the gradual intro by Los Campesinos here, but there's a lot to jam in, so we've got to fade this delectable froth right after the line, "I can't dance a single step." Go to Amerie, Puritan work ethic pureed through the funky cultural polyglot, with the sexiest "give it to me!" ever recorded. Flip to Prince, "Chelsea" edging out "Guitar" and "The One U Wanna C" from Planet Earth because the opening Sly cop matches Amerie's opening Sam & Dave cop, because we get horns instead of purple keys, and because the female vocalist maintains the ongoing vibe. There could have been a half-dozen tracks off the Rihanna, the year's best dance record. Everyone else will tab "Umbrella," so give me "Shut Up," the inverse of blue-eyed soul: brown-skinned Nashville.

Time to exhale: Ruthie Foster, theoretically covering Lucinda Williams but dead-ringing Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," so gorgeous and bucolic. Then a wet spot of adult baby-making music courtesy of Jill Scott and Common—and what a fine, soulful child that pair would produce.

The swamp fuzz-funk guitar of Charlie Hunter makes the deft bridge over to jazz. Here's where I lose a lot of you, but while your M.I.A. discs will grow as dusty as Beck's five years from now, the serpentine sinew of Michael Brecker (R.I.P.) and the cavernous ivory thunder of McCoy Tyner will divulge the same sharp citrus decades down the road. Pardon the cliché (not to mention the lecture), but it's America's classical music, the basketball of sonics.

Dee Dee Bridgewater and her African band reprise Nat Adderley Jr.'s "Compared to What," sliding from straight-no-chaser jazz into funky-joyful-angry politics. A good segue into the guy hiding behind a tree on Penny Lane, clutching a serrated spoon and laying in wait: "You got no fear of the underdog/That's why you will not survive." And why should he? "North American Scum"!—and LCD owes David Byrne a beer.

As a baby boomer who has watched my peers ruin this nation, I'm obligated, and grateful, to point out that many of us are putting our queer shoulders against the wheel (as Ginsburg once put it) in ways both nimble and catchy (the Fogerty) and stern and sermonic (the Springsteen). Both help sustain me—and steel me for the coming apocalypse. Ditto, the sentiments of "The Pretender" work much better if you imagine Dave Grohl and company addressing government leaders instead of ex-girlfriends (but it's kick-ass either way). I had to get Ghostface's "Walk Around" in, the perfect companion to my favorite film of 2007, No Country For Old Men, and the linchpin of the triptych of insanity that culminates with Ministry's "Let's Go." If you're really pissed off at the daily headlines—like, if you read—Al Jourgensen lances the boil almost every time.

Sap that I am, I couldn't end it with a fireball, so we do the I Ching bit and finish at the beginning with Kanye's "Good Morning" (again, I assume "Champion," "Stronger" and "The Good Life" will be well represented). The last thought I want left in your heads is Brother Ali's ode to his son. Cherishing your kids is square one, and the only solution.

Britt Robson is a writer in Minneapolis.