Not long ago, Apple introduced a new version of its iTunes store. I’m sorry to say that I hate it. It’s messy, overly-busy, and places more emphasis on downloading Twilight than it does on music. One of the things iTunes had going for it was simplicity, but now I’m wondering if navigating bit torrent isn’t less of a hassle.

The iPod/iTunes impact on the music industry is well documented, as is how well Apple promoted its music venture. So, before I eschew the iTunes store in favor of illegal file sharing, let me meditate on what made me dig iTunes and Apple so much.

Top 5 songs used in iTunes commercials

1. “Bruises,” Chairlift

In promoting an iPod Nano available in an array of colors, Apple introduced Chairlift, a band that sounds as if it only recently emerged from the primordial New Wave ooze of the ’80s, although they formed only a few years ago.

2. “1234,” Feist
Apple helped to launch Feist’s career using her fantastic, one-take video for “1234.”

3. “Vertigo,” U2
An interesting variation on the iconic dancing sillohuette iPod commercial, this ad doubles as a promotional for U2’s 2004 album “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.” There was even a special edition red and black iPod available for a couple of years. U2 and Apple have since parted ways, with U2 choosing the Blackberry RIM as its digital music partner of choice, reportedly because the band got more creative input with RIM.

Still, that was one hell of a video … advertisement … whatever.

4. “Around The Bend,” The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
With a simplistic but rocking horn groove, raw percussion and bratty vocals, “Around The Bend,” by Danish pop group The Asteroids Galaxy Tour is an ultimate brain-off/party-on song.

5. “Cubicle,” Rinocerose
Is there such a genre as Corporate Electronica, and is that a bad thing? (Answers: “No” and “Yes.”) Still, Rinocerose’s “Cubicle” makes a good companion to a visually impressive ad.

Runners Up: “Someday Baby,” Bob Dylan; “Flathead,” The Fratellis; “Viva La Vida,” Coldplay.

It wasn’t like that night three years ago in Tijuana that involved swallowing the tequila worm and the resulting three hours of hallucinatory debauchery, culminating in you purchasing a cock-fighting franchise.

No, this is different. Despite it being a beautiful Fall day, and though there’s no male prostitute named Pedro passed out in the shower (this time, thank God), things seem more ominous.

Then you remember: Yesterday was election day.

Oh, what terrible things befell the American public by its own hand? Shaking, you turn on the TV just in time to see the cheery, slightly bulbous form of Willard Scott give way to the local news, where a reporter informs you that Proposition 23, which amends the state constitution to allow the eating of kittens wrapped in a burned American flag, while at the same time banning marriage, hugs, high fives and eye contact between members of the same gender, passed 87% to 2%. Noooooo!

It’s going to be a long day.

Top 5 songs for the aftermath of a soul-crushing political defeat

1. “American Tune,” Paul Simon
“American Tune” was written in the wake of the reelection of Richard Nixon in 1972, though this could have easily been written in the wake of the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004. That’s politics for ya.

2. “I’m So Bored With The U.S.A.,” The Clash
You know what? Constitutional democracy was so 18th Century.

3. “Oil Man’s War,” Kathleen Edwards
I’m moving to Canada! No, I really mean it this time! Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards said she’d give me a lift.

4. “Days Like This,” Van Morrison
OK, relax, mellow out, man. Your mama told you there’d be days like this, and the soulful feeling of this song will make it a little easier to swallow.

5. “Walk On,” U2
Don’t give up. Keep on trying, though it’s hard, though it might be the last thing you feel like doing. Walk on …

Top 5 songs for the aftermath of a soul-crushing political defeat

In the early days of analog recording, it was important to get a good take. Tape cost money, and editing clips together could be painfully slow. As technology progressed this got easier. Now any boob can throw together a digital recording on their computer and copy/paste it to perfection.

Why, then, a modern recording would have blatant mistakes on it is beyond me. The examples on this list exist for different reasons, and I’ll do my best to deconstruct their origins.

1. “You’re Beautiful,” James Blunt

When I was in Ecuador I went on a long bus ride, and for some reason the driver had this song running on a continuous loop. Every time the beginning of this song came around, I thought it was skipping. Why did he come in early with “My life is brilliant”? And why was it left in the song? This one gets the top spot because I have no idea what they were thinking.

Weird Al parodied this mistake brilliantly in “You’re PItiful”, but Blunt denied him permission to release it, so he put it online.

2. “Head Over Feet,” Alanis Morissette

Setting aside that the expression is “head over heels,” not feet, one could still make the case that this whole song is a mistake. The big gaff comes when Alanis does something she should probably never do – she plays the harmonica.

A quick lesson on harmonicas: they come in two flavors, diatonic and chromatic. The diatonic ones only play the notes in a certain key, so anyone can blow in and out to their heart’s content and it will sound great … as long as the chords stay in the key.

Unfortunately for Alanis, the chords of her song move away from the key and her harmonica solo sounds more and more like it’s being played by a toddler. Maybe she surrounds herself with sycophantic yes men, but a good producer would have put a stop on this train wreck.

3. “Believe,” Cher

This one may not actually contain a mistake, but I’m including it anyway because this is the first song I remember hearing that had that digital voice sound. “That digital voice sound” is actually a computerized auto-tuner; a plugin that corrects singers’ pitches. You can adjust the settings to tell it how long a note needs to stay off pitch before it is corrected, or how gradual the correction should be. If you go too far with some of the settings, it makes that digital sound.

My guess is that the engineers were fixing Cher’s singing in the studio, overdid it with the settings, and decided it sounded kind of cool.

4. “Vertigo,” U2

“Uno … dos … tres … catorce!” Catorce? 1,2,3, 14? I don’t think any of the lyrics to this song make any sense, but the opening line is baffling. In fairness, it does adhere to Bono’s law: Everything Bono does is correct.

5. “Steven’s Last Night in Town,” Ben Folds Five

For the record, I am a big fan of mistakes. As a jazz musician, most of what I do revolves around spontaneity and serendipity. I believe that an imperfect performance is more human and often more emotional than one executed with clinical perfection. The album Whatever and Ever Amen was recorded in Ben’s house, and is riddled with imperfections that only seem to add to its genius. My favorite happy accident is in “Steven’s Last Night in Town.” At 2:54 when the band breaks, you can hear the phone ring. It sounds like it belongs, which is the mark of a really good mistake.

Top 5 mistakes

Rolling Stone has listed what it claims are “The 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time.” Rather than come up with the definitive list, however, the article simply fans the flames of a long-running debate.

Many music critics would say that sound and inventiveness trumps technique and skill.  Serious musicians could counter that even if you stun listeners across the nation with your songs, it doesn’t mean your playing is any good, never mind sophisticated.

The RS list appears to lean toward the former argument. That’s fine, but in reading its list, one can’t help but feel mislead. If they called this list “100 Great Artists Whose Guitar Is Their Primary Instrument,” then, yeah, you could get behind that. But to give props to Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil because he used dropped-D tuning, but exclude technically superior musicians like Eric Johnson and Alex Lifeson … that just seems wrong.

One thing is for certain; Rolling Stone’s list leaves a lot of head-scratching.

Top 5 “what the hell were they thinking?!” moments on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time:

1. Eric Clapton

No. Sorry. He’s not the fourth greatest guitarist of all time. I’m not even sure if he’s the fortieth. Yes, he’s incredibly popular; yes, he’s been around for a bit; yes, he deserves a huge thanks for giving the blues a British renaissance; and yes, the baby boomers love him. But as my old guitar teacher once said, any kid on the street corner can play his licks. The pentatonic scale is just not that hard. If he’s “God,” then my dad’s God … and he’s not.

2. Kurt Cobain

Cobain helped to give the music industry an enema just when its hair band-impacted bowels needed it, and we’re all better off for that. But Cobain was not that great of a guitarist, he just wasn’t it. If you need to recognize a guitarist representing the early ’90s alternative/grunge music, why not Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready?

3. Johnny Ramone

Punk is a good and almost necessary form of music. But its very nature shuns the technical know-how of its contemporaries such as prog-rock. The Ramones is New York punk through and through, but you didn’t go to CBGB to hear an exercise on symmetrical augmented scales.

4. Keith Richards

One of the most overrated guitarists from the world’s biggest overrated band. The Rolling Stones did not do much to innovate. They came along at the right time, tweaking the Beatles sound with a bit more sex and drugs, and most of them had the good fortune to stick together and not die. Richards is a decent guitarist, but he’s not one of the all-time greatest.

5. Neil Young

As a singer-song writer, he’s fine. But like Cobain, he’s simply not that great of a guitarist. If you want to talk musicianship with a flair for songwriting, give me Paul Simon any day of the week.

Runners up: George Harrison (#21); The Edge (#24); Ron Asheton (#29); Tom Morello (#26); John Fogerty (#40); Clarence White (#41); Joni Mitchell (#72); Joan Jett (#87).