My 50 Favourite Songs

[Glass Co.]

Yeah, I need a distraction from doing a Master's. Listening to music has been my passtime while researching for a while now. Going to try and include some analyses of the songs, the artists, and whatnot. Trying not to be too restricting with form, here.

[Dukefrukem]

Lets do this

[Glass Co.]

One sec, gotta change clothes.

[D_Davis]

So there better be some King Crimson on the list.

[Glass Co.]

50. Tricky - Aftermath

Downtempo/chillout is like the cool jazz of electronic music. It took a look at the high energy beats and decide to slow it down and leave only what was necessary. Bringing out the darkly erotic elements found in a lot of the earlier trip-hop, Tricky was less jazz than Portishead and less soul than Massive Attack. In fact, he is probably the hardest of the three to pin down.

What works in this song is the play of male and female voice, cascading off one another, instruments themselves seeming to tangle themselves in the messy interloping (enough sex analogies yet?).

The great thing about this song is it combines this with a paranoid, uncertain backing and lyrics. “How can I be sure / In a world that’s constantly changing?” A simple truism perhaps, but backed with music this entrancing it becomes modernist gold.

Key Lyric: Down to the centre / Which used to be central

Best Musical Moment: The pay-off of drums and guitar at :30 after that seductive keyboard and echo-y cymbals.

Youtube: FWNOzFnYCI4

[Glass Co.]

49. A Silver Mt. Zion - 13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round the Side of Your Bed

Taking more from the melancholy of their former band Godspeed YBE and less of the doom, here the Montreal trio create what is still their greatest accomplishment. Using only a violin, a cello (?), a keyboard and what I think are some vocal effects, they manage to convey a feeling of acceptance and courage in the face of sheer despair. It is accurate yet predictable to call this track ethereal, celestial, shimmering. What I also hear is a nostalgia and yet an awareness of its sentimentality. The idea that while it may be a bit weak and childish to romanticize the past, it is nonetheless all we have in our final days.

It is also really fun to throw on at parties.

Key Lyric: Instrumental

Best Musical Moment: Oh, post-rock. At the crescendo of noise of course, around 5:45 when the "voices" sound nearly panicking and defensive.

Youtube: hQZfGa5t4e8

[Glass Co.]

48. Big Black - Bad Penny

I don’t think anyone does rural young American anger/angst better than Albini, and here with his original band he proves it. The guitars sound like meat grinders, the bass and drum machine like the rumble that they create on the factory floor, and Albini himself yelling away like a man so twisted by the unfairness of the world that he has decided to rage against it.

Big Black have more complex songs, even more original ones, but nothing represents their pure full-frontal assault on the senses better than this one. Countless punk and alternative bands would be trying to replicate this for years to come, but few matched the pure catharsis.

Generally this song works better if you heard it as a 16-year-old male, but if you’re simply looking to rock out it fills that void as well. Just make sure your neighbours don’t hear it.

Key Lyric: Oughta know what a liar I am / Oughta know me by now

Best Musical Moment: The only time the band lets up and allows Albini to go on his hilariously “I think I fucked your girlfriend once” rant, getting back at those who wronged him the best way he knows how.

Youtube: oaFNjY8UPOo

[Glass Co.]

47. Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Powderfinger

A great combination of the folky laid-back Neil and the distortion filled heavy Neil, this song tells the story of an unspecified war that nonetheless sounds vaguely American civil war. The war is not the important part of course, it is the effect on the individual speaker of the song that provides its catharsis.

Featuring some of his most passionate singing, this has always remained one of my favourite songs because it conveys a sense of a lost way of life so vividly both in its lyrics and its perfectly placed chord changes. This is often a theme of Neil's (see After the Gold Rush) but I slightly prefer this song because of how the urgency of the backing band gives a sense of protest, declaration and revolt to the whole proceeding.

Key Lyric: Think of me as one you'd never figured / Would fade away so young / With so much left undone / Remember me to my love, / I know I'll miss her.

Best Musical Moment: That first chord change at twenty seconds hooks me every time.

Youtube: FMvjfBdeiKw

[Glass Co.]

46. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle

I generally prefer older New Order, when they had a bit more of their gothic/post-punk roots following Joy Division's dissolve. That being said, with their newfound sense of danceable rhythms and catchy melodies they really hit quite a few stunners, no better than this beauty. Admittedly nostalgia plays a big part in this choice, this being the final song played at a club on one of the most life-changing nights I ever had.

The strength of the song (and the band in the general) is the line it/they tow between traditional rock quartet and the then emerging club scene. Breaking boundaries of "alternative" and "mainstream", and showing how silly those two definitions can really be.

Key Lyric: I feel fine and I feel good / I'm feeling like I never should / Whenever I get this way / I just don't know what to say / Why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday

Best Musical Moment: Honestly, the opening minute or so before the main synth line kicks in. Few things fill me with the desire to get on the dance floor more.

Youtube: IOmazuzCXCg

[D_Davis]

46. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle


Great track. It'd be hard for me to pick a favorite New Order track, but if I had to narrow it down to albums I'd pick from Brotherhood, Lowlife, and Technique. It'd be close, but I think Technique would win. First CD I ever bought, too.

[Mr. Pink]

Great track. It'd be hard for me to pick a favorite New Order track, but if I had to narrow it down to albums I'd pick from Brotherhood, Lowlife, and Technique. It'd be close, but I think Technique would win. First CD I ever bought, too.

I haven't heard all their songs, but I think it would pretty hard for them to top True Faith. 586 is pretty awesome, too.

[Russ]

call me a heretic, but my favorite (and I love 'em all) has always been the the Blue Monday remix:

THE BEACH

[Mr. Pink]

call me a heretic, but my favorite (and I love 'em all) has always been the the Blue Monday remix:

THE BEACH

If you say the words "my favorite New Order song is," it doesn't really matter what follows because liking their music automatically disqualifies you from being a heretic.

[Glass Co.]

I saw them live a couple of nights ago. Even without Hook it was a fantastic concert.

[kopello]

I've never even heard of Big Black before but I really dig the tune, interested to see where this list goes. Also Powderfinger is prolly my favorite from Rust Never Sleeps, good stuff.

[ContinentalOp]

46. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle

I generally prefer older New Order, when they had a bit more of their gothic/post-punk roots following Joy Division's dissolve. That being said, with their newfound sense of danceable rhythms and catchy melodies they really hit quite a few stunners, no better than this beauty. Admittedly nostalgia plays a big part in this choice, this being the final song played at a club on one of the most life-changing nights I ever had.

The strength of the song (and the band in the general) is the line it/they tow between traditional rock quartet and the then emerging club scene. Breaking boundaries of "alternative" and "mainstream", and showing how silly those two definitions can really be.

Key Lyric: I feel fine and I feel good / I'm feeling like I never should / Whenever I get this way / I just don't know what to say / Why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday

Best Musical Moment: Honestly, the opening minute or so before the main synth line kicks in. Few things fill me with the desire to get on the dance floor more.

Youtube: IOmazuzCXCg

This is one of the few songs that will get me on a dance floor. I also have great memories of listening to and dancing to this song at a club, an 80's club here in Portland. It's probably the coolest song ever made. I think my favorite song of theirs' is "Dreams Never End", one of those older, more goth/post-punk New Order songs.
Also really love Big Black. Albini is my go to guy when I need to blow off some steam. "Kerosene" has been my favorite Big Black song for a long time. Also really like his work with Rapeman and Shellac. Saw Shellac perform once and they are just pros, man. The shirt I bought from the show is thinning badly but I won't get rid of it till it evaporates.

[Glass Co.]

45. Kate Bush - Cloudbusting

I had no idea who Kate Bush was as a child, I do not believe I heard any of her songs (she was not hugely popular on this side of the pond with maybe a couple of exceptions), and my parents were never fans. Despite that, so much of her music sends me back to that time that rivals Boards of Canada. This song in particular is continually uplifting no matter what place I am in (in fact, in a couple of downer moments it's actually brought me to tears).

Beyond just the typical adjectives used to describe Kate (whimsical, airy, spiritual) I find that familiar (or perhaps familial) is the best way to describe my relationship to her songs. This one in particular seems to be about a father, and like many of her songs the close human bond seems to transcend the more fantastical flights of fancy. One section is particular really speaks to me: "On top of the world / Looking over the edge / You could see them coming / You looked too small / In their big, black car / To be a threat to the men in power." She seems to acknowledge that escapist element of her lyrics more viscerally than ever, putting her daddy up to a mystical, powerful figure even if the mundane world never saw him that way. I wish I could have grown up with someone like her.

Key Lyrics: "Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen / And I don't know when / But just saying it could even make it happen"

Best Musical Moment: The synth's entrance at 3:37 until the harmony vocals come in at 4:07, with Kate's "we're cludbusting, daddy." *tear*

Youtube: eLLENYukPno

[Glass Co.]

44. Curtis Mayfield - Little Child Runnin' Wild

Much of the evolution of 70s soul and funk would have progressed differently if not for the stylings of this individual. By introducing a new orchestral element a new sound for a new decade was both.

Superfly is Mayfield's most famous album for a reason. Every song is unbearably catchy and insanely danceable. My favourite from it has a bit more of a dramatic flair than the rest of the lyric-based songs. At least, this one is not quite as funky. There is a tinge of malice here.

The song sums up the lyrical theme of the album, a somewhat critical view of the inner city drug market that nevertheless does not come across as preachy or judgmental.

Key Lyrics: Where is the mayor / Who'll make all things fair / He lives outside / Our polluted air

Best Musical Moment: The string climb at the end. Still one of the best uses of an orchestra in pop music.

HJkjVfOcIxs

[dreamdead]

Since I've never really listened to Kate Bush, I'm pleasantly surprised on listening to "Cloudbusting" to hear a lot of The Haunted Man-era Bat for Lashes. Seems like I'll definitely have to devote some time to seeing if this too can hit my wavelength. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!