Hey, I'm just a few days from revealing what I believe to be the best songs of the year -- my very own Top 25 for 2007, an arbitrary collection of new songs I heard this year, all of which made an impression on me for one reason or another.

But first, we still have 1980 to take care of, right?

We've looked at my favorite songs, my Top 10, for 1980 -- combed from the year-end Billboard charts. If it was a big hit in 1980, big enough to make their year-end list, it was big enough for me to give it consideration. Not only was I looking for tunes that pleased my aesthetic fancy, I was looking for songs that had some pop culture significance.

And, for me, it just doesn't get much better than The Pretenders. Over the years, they have really never released anything I thought was turdish, which is to their credit considering just about every artist has dropped a turd in their day.

What made The Pretenders so great was Chrissie Hynde. She's sexy, vocally unique and embodies the song I have tabbed for No. 3 in my 1980 Top 10 list -- "Brass in Pocket."

It's a tune about self-confidence and using it to, well, get noticed. It's a song whose melody and arrangement are soft but whose personality is uber-strong. This is a song that only sexy women can sing. Take, for example, Scarlett Johannson in the movie, "Lost In Translation."

She's donning the sexy pink wig. She's had a few drinks, and she thinks old-man Bill Murray is the deal. At a little Japanese karaoke get-together, she busts out the "Brass in Pocket," and every hetero, red-blooded male swooned.

I could have cared less that she doesn't sound a thing like Chrissie Hynde. Truth is, this song stands up with the same power when somebody else sings it as when The Pretenders mastered it. Overshadowed in this, though, was the tune Bill Murray sang -- "More Than This" from Roxy Music.

I could go on and on about how great this movie was. One of my five all-time favorite movies, and one of the ten or so great romance movies of all-time. However, we're here to talk about this tune, and I think its placement in this movie, used as a device for wooing Bill Murray, underscored what a great song this is.

First, here are The Pretenders with No. 3 - "Brass in Pocket"

Next, here is Scarlett Johannson with her brief cinematic version: