I Need You To Listen To…

7. Song:Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

Artist:Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

Album:United

Imagine a song so jubilant, so effervescently joyful that the mere echoes of its chorus in the title of another song grants that song  immortality. I’m of course talking about the song “River Deep-Mountain High” by Ike & Tina Turner. Don’t snicker, I truly believe that, in the process of compiling the various lists of great songs that it appears on, it has snuck onto those esteemed publication’s rosters by people simply misremembering which song they were supposed to vote for. Remember “Ain’t no mountain high enough/ Ain’t no valley low enough/ Ain’t no river wide enough”. Cough. “River Deep-Mountain High” is a lumbering mess in comparison to this shooting star of a song, one that doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near the level of accolades that “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” should have received in its place. Especially so since its output represents Tammi Terrell’s greatest contribution to the Motown sound.

The way that she and Marvin Gaye tackle the material is wonderful to behold. They both are clearly giving it their all, sweating through some marvellous vocal leaps together. “If you ever need a helping hand/ I’ll be there on the double/ Just as fast as I can” they both belt, as if nothing else but their love could possibly matter. Producers Johnny Bristol and Harvey Fugua can barely keep up with the dynamic duo, layering all of the classic Motown elements in a futile effort to contain their vitality. Strings both plucked and vibrato’d, oodles of percussive details, ringing harp glissandos, all to craft an atmosphere where vigor and the power of love wins the day. The partnership of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel was so exuberant that its ultimate tragic end lends a bittersweet quality to the proceedings, even if the joy ends up overpowering it in the end. Like a life lived to its fullest, with no room for regrets.

“Remember that day/ I set you free” Thinking back to when this song was featured prominently in Remember The Titans, the story of how a high school football team overcame racism, I am convinced that this is peak joy. So potent that it reaches across the romantic divide and simply calls for our common humanity to bridge petty differences. Countless songs have tried calling out humanity’s worst impulses, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” tries another way and calls out for our best impulses to take over. “If you need me call me/ No matter where you are/ No matter how far”. I mentioned it before on “Somebody That I Used To Know”’s blurb, but this song represents that song’s mirror image. With its comparatively lo-fi sound and ringing bells contrasting with that song’s more melancholic mood. It just goes to show the aftershocks of “Ain’t No Mountain”’s crystalline appeal, we’re still reaching for the contact high that it represents.

6.Song:Hide And Seek

Artist:Imogen Heap

Album:Speak For Yourself 

We’ve had a lot of songs on this playlist capable of inducing what Lorde termed “Supercuts” in the listeners’ imaginations. The myriad of momentums induced, the chordal movements that tease us along to a climax of noise. Few have toyed with the structures that enable such moments of synesthesia, fewer still with only the singer laying bare their soul for the world to hear. “Hide and Seek” is the sparest, most stark, rendering of grief ever recorded. Imogen’s vocals, wrapped inside layers of vocoder effects, shoot straight at the heart of anyone wondering “Why?”. They are all we have. “Where are we?/ What the hell is going on?”. Anyone who has ever had to sit down and muck through intense emotional pain, from whatever source, can find a paradoxical sense of comfort here, where the intimacy of her hushed vocals reckon with mutual understanding.

“Hide and Seek” is not conventional, the closest we have are tone poems or the ultra spare folk/blues that were in vogue in the 60’s and 70’s. Even those feel hemmed in by convention. With nothing but Imogen’s roiling synthetic vocal layers and a light touch of synths near the end, she carries us along through three distinct movements, each section distinct but inseparable. We have that famous “chorus” near the end, but that precedes a faltering fadeout section ”“you don’t care a bit”. The opening verses are expertly crafted in the ways that they invoke the lost comforts of happier times “Oily marks appear on walls/ where pleasure moments hung before/…the sweeping insensitivity of this/ still life”. The meme-ification of the second movement only proves that song has purchase in any intensely emotional moment, where fateful decisions can and do carry their consequences through the soul and present reflections.

“Mm, what’d you say?/ Mn, that you only meant well/ well of course you did”  The way the vocoder layers conspire to overwhelm the listener, every inch of the stereo space occupied by the ever-shifting vocals. Even the way she shifts her singing style towards staccato during the end section allows for the layers to sound like accompanying snowflakes, here and then suddenly gone. On the album Details, from her band Frou Frou, near the end of the song “The Dumbing Down Of Love”, Imogen sings the following: “Music is worthless unless it can/ make a complete stranger/ break down and cry”. In the whole field of music’s rich history, there have been precious few songs that are consistent in delivering on that promise, as Oscar Wilde said “All art is quite worthless”. “Hide And Seek”, in its movements and moments, in its shifting tides of momentum and quiet release, comes the closest.

5.Song:Strange Fruit

Artist:Billie Holiday And Her Orchestra

Album:Gold: Billie Holiday 

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit/ blood on the leaves/ and blood at the root” Opening with a somber trumpet and transitioning into a ghostly piano piece, here is a song that grabs you by the throat before Billie Holiday even begins to sing. Her voice is really what makes this version superior to all, it was originally performed as a protest song by its writer/composer Abel Meeropol, her reedy presence making every line drip with the metaphorical blood she sings about, dominating the proceedings, gliding over the subdued backing tracks like a ghost drifting in the wind. Little wonder that performances of this song required a totally dark room and a spotlight shone upon her, this was potent symbolism and music merging together into a gigantic shibboleth that demanded audiences attention back then and forever onward into eternity. “Here is a strange and bitter crop”.

Tracking down a version of this song suitable enough for inclusion was quite the effort. After listening to the many, many, versions available, I settled upon the recording on Gold: Billie Holiday. It has considerable hiss and numerous pops and crackles, but other versions based off of the 1939 recording had critical issues like even more pronounced hiss or degraded sound quality even when compared to the list version (eg:Billie Holiday 1957). One attempt to clean up the hiss resulted in a neutered song with less vivid dynamics (Billie Holiday 1988). Those who refuse to partake in old school vinyl audio issues can find some measure of comfort in Billie Holiday’s 1956 recording which brought the musical stylings in line with the period, but I feel that the 1956 version has none of the buried power of the original recording. 

In a case of picking my poison, I chose the deeper, more nuanced version, the exalted original in all of its faded glory. There is something entombed within the crackles and pops, the hisses and skips, that screams across time. From the horns that sound like the heralds of a funeral procession, combined with spectral piano chords and haunting woodwinds, to the dynamic ways that each instrument surges and seethes underneath Billie’s brooding performance. “Strange Fruit” feels like an ancient myth but, because the subject of its lyricism is so recent and not outside the realm of living memory, it seethes with ghastly trauma. Like connecting with ancient writers, feeling their struggles and exertions through their writings. Billie Holiday’s power to transfer the horrors of racism in the American South into your headspace is not something any music lover can afford to forget. 

4.Song:Change Gonna Come

Artist:Otis Redding/ Sam Cooke

Album:Otis Redding Sings Soul/ Keep Movin’ On 

“I was born by a river/ In this little old tent/ just like this river/ I’ve been running ever since”. Every song has its context, precious few succeed beyond them. Growing up in an environment of hellish racism, borne out by the establishment in every aspect of American life, Sam Cooke composed this gem after being denied accommodation at a holiday inn in Louisiana. “It sounds like death” was Bobby Womack’s response to the record, “That’s what it sounds like to me” came Cooke’s rejoinder. It’s such a haunting, powerful record, one that moves along at a pace that can best be described as a funeral procession. The composition is structured so sweetly that it couldn’t have been anything but a soul record, and nobody who covered it afterward ever did it any justice within that genre’s framework. Syrupy sweet strings and airy production surround a game Sam Cooke, so why isn’t his version the main one on this list?

After Sam Cooke died, Otis wanted “to fill the silent void” created (I am quoting the wikipedia page directly, but honestly, the words are too good not to take note of wherever you find them). Fill it he did with this, his greatest performance. Otis’s version is the superior record, simply because he stripped down the production, pared it down to its essential edges, allowing the inherent soul of the composition to shine through the darkness. There are no syrupy strings, no airy reverberations surrounding the proceedings, just a fanfare of sparse horns and ghostly background pianos and drums. More specifically, the Mono record is the definitive way to experience the majesty of Cooke’s structures and Otis’s world weary performance. Everything centered in and around a voice that grits and grinds its way through the declarations, the howls against the injustices of the world. 

“It’s been too hard livin’/ But I’m afraid to die” The great part of this record is how every element of it combines into a timeless proclamation. Anyone going through an existence of misery, of loneliness or hard living can use this song as a personal anthem, as a motivator to turn our personal hells into ladder rungs, inching us closer and closer to a vision of heaven on earth. However intimate you wish it to be, however large a cause you want to marshall its energies toward, “Change Is Gonna Come” is able to mold itself to your circumstances. “But there was a time that I thought/ Lord this couldn’t last for very long”.  When the horns first kick in there is no reason but to feel a sense of togetherness, a celebratory air that our shared sufferings have motivated us, and can continue to,  to strive for greater things, to consciously right the wrongs done to us and others. After all “It’s been a lo-oo-ong time coming/ but a change has gotta come”.

3.Song:All Along The Watchtower

Artist:The Jimi Hendrix Experience/ Bob Dylan

Album:Electric Ladyland/ John Wesley Harding 

From the very opening guitar chords, strummed as if they are pouring gasoline on to kindling, through to the guitar solos that set those piles alight, Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “All Along The Watchtower” strikes a revolutionary chord, in tune with all the chaotic inhibitions of humanity, of society. Those acoustic guitar chords continue ringing throughout the rest of the song, with a layer of tape distortion that laces them with an unnerving variability, like they are choruses for the damned. “There are many here among us/ Who view that life is but a joke” Hendrix sings, his voice clear in the mix, leaving us cryptic clues as an answer to some unknown prayer. No wonder this song played so well as part of that Vietnam War sequence in Forrest Gump, it was a perfect accompaniment to that darkest of wars, the black-hole gap in human morality that leads to young boys killing each other in the jungle for the benefit of out-of-touch elites.

For sure, Hendrix was working off of material written by that master of sphinx-like poetry, Bob Dylan. He who wrote the song but will not reveal the whys and hows of its particulars. This meant that Hendrix had to re-write the music to better fit the world of wars that he knew was at the core of this song’s personal interpretation. Where Bob’s version relied on the acoustic guitar for the main driving impetus, his voice providing the caustic fuel that Jimi knew he had to capture by other means, The Jimi Hendrix Experience had a power trio. Hendrix on electric guitars and vocals, Mitch Mitchell on drums and Dave Mason on those 12-string acoustic guitars. For all the buried power inherent to the best of Dylan’s work, this is one of those songs that demands the full power of a rock band propelling its satanic majesty. And Bob Dylan would end up agreeing with this assessment, as he plays Jimi Hendrix’s version at his live shows to this day.

Dylan ceding mastery of his material like this should speak to how great it is by itself, six decades of revolutions in recording technology and processes have revealed how masterful it remains. Consider how Hendrix’s solo guitar peels around the stereo field, as if demanding your attention no matter where it strays off to. What would be considered a gimmick today is a point in its favour, as the music industry and production techniques have become more and more stratified, its ghostly residues are still a testament to Hendrix’s instincts as a producer/composer. “But you and I have been through that/ and this is not our fate” Even despite the song’s apocalyptic energies, where despair hangs around with confusion and egotism as a common thread for humanity, there is a thrilling exuberance to “All Along The Watchtower”  that only the greatest supernovae talents can provide.

2.Song:Stand By Me

Artist:Ben E. King/Playing For Change

Album:Don’t Play That Song /Playing For Change 

At 3:02 long, “Stand By Me” manages to stand tall as the perfect pop-song, as confident in its delivery as it is concise in its runtime. As luminous an example of the type of soul that Motown would produce over the next decade that would ever be made. And for some reason his band The Drifters decided to pass on it! Sure, they didn’t have the benefit of hindsight that we have when listening to the fully recorded and arranged song, but someone should have knocked some sense into them. This is why Ben E.King went solo, some people just can’t be helped, even if salvation is staring them right in the face. Working with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to fill out the lyrics, taking some light inspiration from a Sam Cooke spiritual “Stand By Me Father”, this enlightened construction just breathes natural charisma, like you can’t possibly tear your ears away from it. 

It all starts with that bassline to end all basslines, something so simple and catchy that it’s a miracle that nobody else had cribbed it first. Lloyd Trautman’s performance here is exemplary of the studio musician’s craft, perfect precision work that illuminates all around it. The triangle and gourd scratches that accompany it for the first two bars twinkle with reverb that reaches across the stereo field. Then Ben E. King comes in “When the night has come/ And the land is dark”, reverb bouncing off of his voice, like candle light flickerings beckoning the listener toward hope. “Oh, I won’t be afraid/ Just as long as you stand, stand by me”. The structures are so simple, yet enlivening as strings and choral vocals enter the mix, climbing up and down the scales with a syrupy sweet cadence. Eventually King’s vocals take a break as the volume of the instruments shoots up, like watching a shooting star flit across the sky, or fireworks spark skywards.

The potent spiritual power of this song is such that innumerable covers have sprung up since its release. To my ears, the one that best captures its latent power to bridge the divides of culture and enmity is Playing For Change’s version. In a globe-trotting performance, a true unity of purpose is achieved as differing musical styles find themselves adhering to “Stand By Me”’s sweet structures. Everything from Native drum circles, to african tribesman chants, to bluesy folk-vocalists join in on this most luminous parade of humanity’s beautiful facets. It’s fitting that this most ageless of songs has its roots in the bible, specifically Psalm 46 on the lines “If the sky we look up/ Should tumble and fall/ Or the mountains should crumble to the sea”. As that tome speaks through the ages with its parables and commandments, so too shall “Stand By Me” speak to everyone for all time.

1.Song:Gimme Shelter

Artist:The Rolling Stones

Album:Let It Bleed 

As we finally get to the #1 position, I’d like to reflect on a few things. For one, sharp-eyed readers will have noted that The Rolling Stones only make four appearances on this playlist, and those solely in the top 100. There’s good reason for that; always seeming to be a band teetering on the knife edge of quality, they are either the greatest rock band in the world, or they are not. Here, on “Gimme Shelter”, they are the greatest, everyone else is not. Two, keeping that dichotomy in mind, the breathtaking scope of musical textures, lyrical themes and volume fluctuations had to culminate somewhere. Like the flames at the top of flare-stacks, all of the lessons I have learned in researching this playlist, all of the hopes and heartbreaks, the curious momentum that great music instills in the listener, all of this finds its ultimate release here. This haunting, gorgeous, run-ragged record.

“Ooh, a storm is threatening” There is an audible froth, a boiling undercurrent, to this record. With Billy Hyman’s bass thundering along, some maracas and ratchety guiro play as firecracker detail, Charlie Watts on the drums centers a roiling storm. His jazzy drumming style, unshowy but spectacularly serious, boils over in the chorus. At “War, Dear!/ Is just a shot away/ Is just a shot away”, his precision strikes are what de-escalate the riotous emotions. Producer Jimmy Miller, at the height of his powers, allows the dark momentum its space to breathe among the chaotic mix. Even with an onslaught of additional elements; rollicking pianos, Mick Jagger singing lead vocals and tapping in with a harmonica solo, as well as Keith Richards rhythm guitars crowding in, there’s a beguiling clarity to it, a kind of chaotic purity, like A rough-hewn diamond. 

But all of this wouldn’t have pushed this song to the mountaintop without two elements, Mary Clayton’s extraordinary vocal performance and Keith Richards lead guitars. Those shimmering notes that lead us in are stunningly gorgeous, unforgettably cinematic. The bluesy muscularity laced throughout the rest of the song arrives with a blue flame incandescence. Clayton’s performance soars over the proceedings, even managing to audibly astonish the group (a “Whoo” at 3:02) as her voice breaks with intensity on the lines “Rape, Murder/ It’s just a shot away”. Sadly, Clayton would lay the blame for her miscarriage afterwards on the strain she put herself through in the studio. That’s the lesson here; As Mick Jagger and Clayton duet over the outro, the lines that divide us are bridged. Through all the darkness and conflict inherent to human nature, under the weight of oppressive strain, “I tell you, love, sister/ Is just a kiss away”.

25.Song:Masters Of War

Artist:Bob Dylan

Album:The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan 

“Like Judas of old/ You lie and deceive/ A world war can be won/ you want me to believe”. Bob Dylan is a man who was called the voice of his generation and despised that fact. It’s as if he, with all of his considerable lyrical talents, foresaw that his words would be a clarion call for every generation after, not an anointed brood by virtue of being lucky to be born at a particular time and amidst particular circumstances. If we live in a “World of Wars” as Foreign Policy magazine puts it, then Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War” should be the background accompaniment to every decision, by every politician responsible for dragging us into the mire. It’s not enough that we, the people, must bleed for the greed and egos of others. They have to know that there’s only so much blood to give before the people return their affections in kind. “And I’ll stand over your grave/ ‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead”.

24.Song:Juicy

Artist:The Notorious B.I.G

Album:Ready To Die 

 “Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/ When I was dead broke man, I couldn’t picture this”  This is one of those rare great songs that immediately dated itself upon release, only to still sound effortlessly eternal. Puff Daddy had the right idea about wrapping Biggie Smalls rhapsodic verse with soulful vocal harmonies and bouncy bass lines, managing to add in his own voice as scattershot aural wallpaper. Tapping into such rich musical veins simply allows Biggie’s lines to reach aspirational heights that were rare in the gangsta rap days. He is truly a powerful voice, his rhymes flowing with precision that belies his booming presence.  “I never thought it could happen, this Rappin’ stuff/ I was too used to packin’ gats and stuff” While bling rap would take the materialist urges of this song to their logical limits, Biggie Smalls dared to dream large, and for five glorious minutes, we could all dream along with him. 

23.Song:Ain’t No Sunshine

Artist:Bill Withers

Album:Just As I Am

“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone” sings Bill Withers, the accompanying guitar strings creaking almost to the point of breaking, like a fragile promise. Stark, unforgiving, even the guitar player, one Stephen Stills,  lending some light percussion to the proceedings has the effect of leaving Bill stranded, alone, dealing with the kind of heartbreak that only becomes harder to take as time passes. It’s incredible how much raw emotion Bill wrings out of every syllable, crystal clear in the mix even when the orchestra comes in. When the parade of “I know”’s come in, you get the feeling that, even when he is acknowledging the incredible emotional pain he is in, he can never fully take that leap needed to move forward. At 2:06 long, here is a song that packs its emotional punch into a compressed timeline, saying all that is possible to say when one finds themselves without anything left to hold onto. “Only darkness every day”.

22.Song:Smells Like Teen Spirit

Artist:Nirvana

Album:Nevermind

I want you, the reader, to recontextualize “Smells Like Teen Spirit”’s appeal in the vein of young people not having easy access to full lyrics sheets, or even the crystal-clear audio equipment and streaming available to us today. You are a teenager or young adult in the early 90’s, passing around cassettes or CD singles, hearing SLTS on the alternative radio circuits, perhaps watching the music video on MTV. Kurt Cobain, clad in that oversized sweater frying out his voice on mumbled lyrics that are impossible to decipher clearly on the car radio. You can hear the chorus’s words just fine, but the verses are cryptic deluges of vocal fry and syllabic ambiguity. Weird Al Yankovic parodied this brilliantly in his video for “Smells Like Nirvana”, bags of marbles gargling out of his mouth. Regardless of all that, you feel the energy, the meaning, the intensity of this moment, you bear that badge with you for a lifetime. “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, doesn’t it?

21.Song:I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)

Artist:Whitney Houston

Album:Whitney 

The extreme digital sheen of the intro, with the Roland TR-808’s drum kit clanking with precision alongside a Moog synth bass line, can be off putting to someone noticing this song’s position on this playlist. After all, it instantly dates it to the mid-80’s, an era of popular music not exactly associated with warmth and humanity. Then Whitney Houston starts singing. In an age before auto-tune, you had to have either a really good producer or actual vocal talent. Whitney not only brings the latter, she renders the former moot. This might be the most extraordinary vocal performance in pop history. Just listen to how she modulates her voice in the beginning chorus [1:02] versus the triumphant final one [3:36]. This steady progression tells a story, not only of Whitney’s own turbulent, tragic life, but of anyone who has ever desired a connection on the dancefloor.  Her joys are contained here, her greatest achievement.

20.Song:The Calvary Cross

Artist:Richard & Linda Thompson

Album:I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight  

I regard the opening :50 of this song to be among the most interesting pieces of music in all of our rich history. But exactly why remained a mystery to me for quite awhile. Certainly the contrast between it and the rest of the 3:53 runtime is pretty stark, but in order to balance out my thoughts we should explore it. Richard Thompson’s vocals are isolated in the mix, cutting through the emotional grime with a light touch of spring reverb, reciting a litany of laments “I’ll hurt you till you need me”, slowly revealing his own faults in a toxic relationship as his partner, Linda Thompson “Ooh”’s alongside him “My claw’s in you and my light’s in you/ This is your first day of sorrow”. Back to that intro, knowing all of the context that the rest of the song is giving us, the guitar playing as if personally wounded, I find clarity in its purpose; What does one receive before a cross? Absolution. “Everything you do/ you do for me”…

19.Song:Seventeen

Artist:Sharon Van Etten

Album:Remind Me Tomorrow 

Wisdom is always chasing youth, when it finally catches us, are we not allowed to grieve our former naivety? “I wish I could show you how much you’ve grown”.  Sharon Van Etten’s “Seventeen” is a big, dirty, epic. The synths that soar throughout are often gritty, laying themselves out much like a gravel road. Thankfully, there’s some grace here, the electronic drums, with the signature retro-80’s sound of recent times, are a steady heartbeat keeping us centered. The Springsteen-ian pianos clumsily interpose themselves onto Sharon’s nostalgic verse. “I know what you’re gonna be/ I know that you’re gonna be…/Afraid that you’ll be just like me”. Her voice distorts heavily as she sings those lines, as if she is breaking through the temporal walls of time to warn her younger self of the trials to come, of the joyous potential of maturity. “You think you know something you don’t”.  It’s moving. Slowly but surely, it takes us where it needs us to go.

18.Song:Prayer In Open D

Artist:Phoebe Bridgers/ Emmylou Harris

Album:To Emmylou: A Tribute To Emmylou Harris/ Cowgirl’s Prayer 

“There’s a valley of sorrow in my soul”. While Emmylou Harris’s original has a distinctive country edge to it, it failed to tap into the ancient, haunting, energies that its lyrics implied. Phoebe Bridgers’ cover is, by direct contrast, an astonishing read. With a warmly recorded acoustic guitar providing the sole backing, Bridger’s reverb drenched vocals soar with the lyrics, rather than against them. Undulating with the tides of eternity. “There’s a river of darkness in my blood/ and through every vein I feel the flood”. Still, these are Emmylou’s lyrics and they do speak to some lost horizon of human empathy, towards oneself, towards some innate spiritual need encased in every soul.  With the guitar’s arpeggiated notes ringing out like bells; Phoebe Bridgers unlocks the power in her words, giving us a song that truly captures our inherent contradictions, our inner battles, the “valley of sorrow in [our] soul[s]”. A truly wondrous achievement.

17.Song:Hallowed Be Thy Name

Artist:Iron Maiden

Album:The Number Of The Beast 

Iron Maiden is the greatest metal band of all time, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. All other contenders fall by the wayside simply by the sheer volume of great work Maiden has put out over their entire career. Here is the monument to their greatness that I suspect will still be listened to in a hundred years. “Hallowed Be Thy Name” succeeds because it tells a tale almost literally as old as time, of someone facing death and reckoning with life. It has the ageless feel of old folk tunes mixed with the inevitable gallop that Maiden can always trot out. Bruce Dickinson gives his best performance “The sands of time for me/ are running looooooooooooooooooooooow”. The twin guitar assault, the stereo field filled with bombastic drums and thumping bass, it’s as majestic as it is unrelenting. Then comes the thrashing guitar solo, soaring above the slaughter like a demon rider searching for souls to capture. As influential as it is timelessly gargantuan.

16.Song:Fortunate Son

Artist:Creedence Clearwater Revival

Album:Willy And The Poor Boys 

There’s a moment in the video game Bioshock Infinite, a game where violence is endemic to the structures of society, where you come across a former slave singing “Fortunate Son”. As the soundscape in the background roars with riotous crowds, constant gunfire and explosions, the defiant tone she strikes also rings tragic. So we find Creedence Clearwater Revival, amidst a decade of hopeless wars, correctly sizing up the general mood. Harnessing the trappings of southern rock, the clear guitars on one channel contrasting with the deep-fried distortion on the other, the drums rollicking along like a steam train, John Fogerty’s rough-hewn vocals resting on top of it all. It, quite simply, rocks. “And when you ask ‘em “How much should we give?”/ ooh, they only answer “More, more, more””. With such a powerful, roiling momentum to its message,  I suspect that this song will forever find its muse in any age of conflict.

15.Song:Ghostin

Artist:Ariana Grande

Album:thank u, next 

Opening with unnerving, pitch shifting, synth pads, here is a song that hits with the disorientating intensity of heartbreak. “I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again/ Over him” Modern day relationships are rife with mixed emotions and unspoken traumas. So, here we have Ariana Grande singing about loving someone else while in the embrace of another, who she still clearly cares for. Instead of “Ghostin’ him”, she struggles with letting go. A cynic could take this at face value, but we’ve all suffered enough to share in Grande’s faltering performance as a collective totem. The Ariana Grande Wiki claims that she couldn’t bear to record a third verse for the song, instead populating the stereo field with orchestral swells and overlapping harmonies. It’s an emotional denouement for her (and allegedly for her former partner Mac Miller), for us, for everyone with forlorn hopes and confused feelings. (1)(2)

14.Song:The Art Of Peer Pressure

Artist:Kendrick Lamar

Album:good kid, m.A.A.d city 

In a lyrical universe where the social dynamics of Compton made violence and crime as inevitable as they were tragic, Kendrick’s mother wisely states “One day it’s gonna burn you out”. After a stormy intro of neo-soul and record noise, he couches the remaining seedy depictions in a warm bath of thumping kick booms and square wave synths. The dynamics shift around to match the storytelling, culminating in a frantic near-escape from the law after a robbery “We made a right, then made a left, then made a right/ Then made a left, we was just Circlin’ life”. There is a certain cinematic texture that this song successfully captures; that of the 1990’s “Urban” film, the Boys In Da Hood, Menace II Society types. One imagines that Queen Latifah and Tupac were constant sonic companions on the “Missions” that Kendrick Lamar deftly raps about here.”I’ve never been violent/ Until I’m with the homies”.

13.Song:Valerie

Artist:Mark Ronson Feat. Amy Winehouse

Album:Version 

Amy Winehouse had a peculiar way of making the old masters sound completely obsolete. The way her gin-drenched vocals worked a lyric, you would swear she had had a few affairs with it. This makes the tragedy of her life all the more bittersweet when encountering “Valerie”. Here is a song that shows just how much music needed her. Taking a completely, and I do mean thoroughly, forgettable original rock song and, with the help of Producer Mark Ronson, morphing it into this glorious wall of sound, it’s a triumph of joyous humanity. [I highly suggest sticking with the version on Mark Ronson’s album and not the (‘68 version) seen on some posthumous collections. Slowing down the tempo robs her performance of its vivid effervescence.]. Amy sounds like she can live for nothing else but singing this song, in this moment, forever. Maybe that explains the opening “”Alright it’s rolling” Sorry, Charlie Murphy, I was having too much fun”.

12.Song:Like A Rolling Stone

Artist:Bob Dylan

Album:Highway 61 Revisited 

“It’s Impossibly good. How can a human mind do this?”[1] Said Phil Ochs when listening to this most historic of albums for the first time. This is a line that’s been beaten to death, but if you are going to have a quote, have one as concise as this one handy. It also speaks to the very unique way that Bob Dylan’s mind worked at the time. For a song that has gained accolades everywhere, it seemed to have had very little preparation going towards its making. Dylan simply showed up with his band and ground out an epic, no rehearsals, improvising the lyrics and melodies as it took form. This ad-hoc bohemian parade allows the song to feel like a living, breathing, entity, open to flaws, dismissive of perfection “Like a rolling stone”. From the way that Dylan’s mic pans weirdly at 0:23, to that grand organ riff that propels the song forward, no other song quite captures the essence of a life lived free of pretension. Even if it is, functionally, a giant f-off.  

11.Song:Both Sides Now

Artist:Joni Mitchell

Album:Clouds 

This is as simple as folk gets. A girl and her guitar, wistfully singing and forlornly strumming. It would be blase if  “Both Sides Now” wasn’t so life-affirming. Those strummed chords, loads of Gadd9’s, D’s and Asus4’ths really make it seem as if the subject of the song is floating through life, not without care but also without much consequence when measured against events. The lyrical pattern of a first verse setting up vivid imagery (those famous  “Ice Cream castles in the air” or “Dreams and schemes and circus crowds”) collides into the brick wall of realism in the second (“But now they only block the sun” or “But now old friends are acting strange”). Joni does this three times, each flowing into the other effortlessly, each time she relents “I really don’t know __ at all”. Where other singers would lean into technique, Joni allows her voice to carry her and us along the shifting tides of fate, of love, of ice cream castles in the skies.

10.Song:Tomorrow Never Knows

Artist:The Beatles

Album:Revolver 

Having arrived at the top ten, I feel we must take stock of the sheer breadth of musical textures, topics and structures we have encountered so far. From ferocious death metal to flowery acoustic folk, from soaring synth pop to intimate indie screams. It would seem that every discernable edge has been skirted, oodles of sonic textures and charismatic singers have been courted, is there a song out there that could possibly encapsulate all of the madness that came before? Nowhere have we come across a song quite like “Tomorrow Never Knows”, a colossal achievement in recording technology and composition. Critic Jim DeRogatis, in the fascinating essay book Kill Your Idols, described “Tomorrow Never Knows” as a “violent spiritual rebirth”. That’s about as apt a description as you are ever going to get about this song, but it is worth it to dive into what exactly he meant with those words. 

In this hyper, manic, mixture of tape loops and droning bass guitar is a churning emotional storm. Paul McCartney’s laughs are turned into seagulls being swept through the tempest. The soaring brass sections can be a helpful marker but they too are swept up in the sonic mass. So what’s so “violent” about all of this? I think it’s the drums. This may be Ringo Starr’s most vital moment as a member of The Beatles. He plays like a man held at gunpoint. Nested on the tapes at Abbey Road are the strains of a man possessed, precision chaos centering the storm. Hi-hats and Snares pounding their way through the mess with all the clarity of thunderclaps. “Turn off your mind/ Relax and float downstream” comes off as a sick joke on the listener, how can one relax and float down this stream? One so rocked with tempests that the song threatens to topple over under the strains of its construction.

As to the “spiritual”? John Lennon did state to producer George Martin that he wanted to sound like the “Dalai Lama chanting from a hilltop”. To fulfill this not at all insane request, George turned to the studio engineer Geoff Emerick for a miracle. He hit upon passing John’s voice through a Leslie speaker. The result was the imaginative being turned into crystal clear reality. John had his “Spiritual” chants uplifting the listener.  “Rebirth”. That word is the key to understanding this song. In the context of world culture and its place in history. Before “Tomorrow Never Knows”, John was writing lyrics about love. After, he was forever drawn down the path towards lines like “I Don’t believe in Beatles/ I Just believe in me” and “The dream is over”. The dream of forever love was indeed dead, John was reborn and music was never the same. The future was uncertain, for the band, for the world, it was as Ringo said “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

9.Song:Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)

Artist:Kate Bush

Album:Hounds Of Love 

“It doesn’t hurt me” What doesn’t hurt you? Is it the sacrifices you would potentially have to make for your deal with God? Or is it the pain of knowing that your partner will never be able to fully understand your position? There’s a lot of buried emotion constantly threatening to be unleashed in “Running Up That Hill”, probably the pop song that most captures the halting breaths of a well-worn romance novel. That opening synth, as constant as a chilling wind, that haunts the entire song with its presence, those Fairlight synth hits, forever flitting in and out on gusts of atonal gales, the drums, programmed by Del Palmer, propelling us along towards something approaching an emotional denouement, all of it, just providing the lush sonic bedding for Kate Bush herself to draw us in to her personal apocalypse. Her voice rises above, every chaotic whisper and rising ooh bobbing us along on her passionate tides.

“And if I only could/ I’d make a deal with God” She cries out, the synths sounding like glass shattering around her, the pieces slowly falling to the ground. “And I’d get him to swap our places” Her voice really does sound on the verge of an emotional breakdown, her captivating soprano soaring through the chaos. “Be running up that road/ Be running up that hill/ Be running up that buildin’”. You get the sense that she would, in fact, do anything to alleviate the constant mindgames of a troubled romance, you also get the feeling that maybe it’s too late for band-aid fixes or Hail Mary’s. With the music swirling in the C minor key, a foreboding sense of sadness can’t help but permeate the speakers, but in such a way that haunts popular music to this day. Any pop song that attempts to have a driving melancholic beat with moody accompanying synths owes more than a little debt to Kate Bush here (ie: Taylor Swift’s “Style”).

But as I wrote before, there is a sense that even a deal with God would do little to mend things. “Is there so much hate for the ones we love?” her voices crumple in on her, cramming her lead vocal into the center while two vocals take over each speaker, before “Oh, Tell me we both matter, don’t we?” has her singing alone, in a pleading tone. It’s too late, maybe the partner said on the way out “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”. Maybe this is why we have Kate Bush’s vocals freaking out near the end, a seemingly endless cacophonic wail of voices, none making sense, all clearly in distress. The swapping of places begged for in the chorus takes on a chilling air after hearing all of that. Why would you wish such emotional hell on anyone and expect good things to come of it? Alas, you have Kate singing in lower registers at the very end, as if she is going to stoop to making a deal with a different sort of God. One that can make that deal.

8.Song:Hurt

Artist:Johnny Cash/ Nine Inch Nails

Album:American IV:The Man Comes Around/ The Downward Spiral 

It’s crazy how much a tiny change to a lyrics sheet can affect so much of a song’s meaning. By re-writing “This crown of shit” to “This crown of thorns” a monumental shift has occurred. From Trent Reznor’s blistering, fecal, original, Johnny Cash turned a drug-addicts worst nightmare into an old man’s final regrets. As the full scope of his life is laid out before him. Little wonder that Trent famously exclaimed that “that song isn’t mine anymore” [1]. How could anyone walk away from hearing this song, watching that music video, and not feel as if they had wrangled with a lifetime of guilt? It just goes to show how important interpretation is when poring over a song’s potential. One tiny alteration changing the world of the song entire. Instead of allowing us to wallow in our own filth, this version fills the listener with a spiritual uplift, beckoning them to reflect on their lives while the time is there.

Back to that music video, the gall of seeing Johnny Cash, his face worn ragged by age, as he pours wine over his feast, playing his guitar as if he can barely hold down the strings as his mouth barely opens. June Cash hovering behind him, in full knowledge of their own mortality, trying desperately to wring some meaning out of a life long lived. The artefacts of Johnny’s musical career giving him little meaning at the end. The terrifying reality of mortality interfacing with the ravages of the mind as a result of aging, “You are someone else/ I am still right here”. There are moments in the chorus, where images of a younger Johnny flash across the screen, where we can’t help but be carried along on the empathetic torrent “What have I become, my sweetest friend?”. Capping things off with one of the other horrifying aspects of time passing on “Everyone I know/ Goes away in the end”. 

But Johnny Cash is allowed to keep his dignity, to spark one final glance at the roads he travelled, thanks to the production. Listen to how Rick Rubin surrounds Johnny with an acoustic guitar that sounds as worn as his faltering vocals, with pianos that ring out with precision and clarity. Listen again to how Cash’s voice peaks the microphone in the chorus, more so in the final one. As if the cascade of supercut memories is overwhelming the senses “And you could have it all/ My empire of dirt”. But Cash will have the final word on his own life, no matter what has happened, all the trials and tribulations, no matter what regrets he has nursed all of these years, “I would keep myself/ I would find a way”. If great art is the bringing together of all that we care to remember and turning it into something we hope no one will forget, then “Hurt” is a monument to our drive for shared understanding and determination.

50.Song:Wish You Were Here

Artist:Pink Floyd

Album:Wish You Were Here

The fact that this song opens with AM radio transmissions, with all the crackling and hissing audio that accompanies it, is such a perfect way to immerse the listener in an air of isolation and nostalgic grief, that pointing it out borders on cliche. Yes, of course, we all know this was written as a tribute to ex-Floyd Syd Barret as he descended more and more into madness, but sometimes you need to emphasize certain germane facts to get a point across. “So, so you think you can tell/ Heaven from hell”, the whole band coming in, shearing off the radio sonics to uncover the crystal clear audio of a band grieving for what was lost but unafraid of what’s to come, the point is made, beautifully. “Did you exchange/ A walk-on part in the war/ for a lead role in a cage?”. There’s no drowning in sorrows, only a calm acceptance of certain circumstances. The point is emphasized at the end with synthesized winds blowing the band out of reach of memory.

49.Song:Good Vibrations

Artist:The Beach Boys

Album:Single 

“I don’t know where but she sends me there” Is it too much if we have three straight heavily-studio-constructed epics in a row? Certainly enough has been written about the innovations and structures of each that picking the superior one has been a hard fought battle in my head. After much pondering, I chose this most concise of epics; A crisp 3:36, barely over the average pop-radio length at the time and to this day. A richer listening experience is hard to find, even amongst the songs listed higher. Brian Wilson had a lot of creative demons wrestling inside his head, but the one defining feature of his music is how much joy he wrestled out of his dreamings, polishing it into crystal clear reality. To this day the joy inherent to the performances on display here is stunning to behold. Each sonic detail builds upon itself and the songwriting structures, until we have something approaching perfection. “Good, good, good, good vibrations”.

48.Song:Maps

Artist:Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Album:Fever To Tell 

Back in audio school, a teacher was showing us the songwriting craft. For a demonstration he asked us if a drum intro could be a hook, the answer was no, drums aren’t a hook. “Maps” came out during an explosion of indie rock, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs representing more of an art-rock take on things with screeching guitars and somersaulting yelps from its singer Karen O. Finding something relatable on their debut album would have been a mighty chore were it not for this explosively intimate gem. The rapidly picked guitars that open events sound like a downpour of raindrops (tears?) until the drums pound their way in. Brian Chase’s drums anchor everything with emotionally charged rhythmic stops, crashing cymbals and that distinctive opening lick. For sure, songwriting isn’t an exact science, but declarative statements of negativity are rarely helpful. Yes, former teacher, Drums can be the hook that pulls a listener in and keeps them there: “Maps” is proof.

47.Song:Young Blood

Artist:The Naked And Famous

Album:Passive Me, Aggressive You 

“The mood it changes like the wind/ Hard to control when it begins” not a single lyric has ever captured the sense of changing tides as well as this one. Released in the golden age of indie rock, where bands weren’t afraid to go as loud as their ambitions would lead them, “Young Blood” is a tempest leading the listener towards serene clarity. Alisa Xayalith’s vocals fight for space amongst the enormous cascading synth lead and stadium-sized drums, but she leans on every syllable like it’s the last one she’ll ever sing. Even when things go quiet, you can’t escape the feeling of teetering on a knife’s edge “You keep my secrets hope to die/ Promises, swear them to the sky”. The bass-synth that roils throughout keeps that tension simmering, allowing the choruses to explode, soaring above the listener even as lines like “The bittersweet between my teeth” hark to the emotional bloodletting this lyrics sheet conceals beneath the sonic maelstrom.

46.Song:The Thrill Is Gone

Artist:B.B. King & His Orchestra

Album:Live In Cannes 

The original studio recording is fine on its own merits, indeed, B.B. King sounds almost the same singing in either take. The difference is a matter of a few precious bars, all that stands between a staggered, weary existence is a drum intro of almost stunning banality. I first heard this song from the speakers of a stereo in my room, teasing its way quietly to my ears to avoid waking my grandparents in the next room. It was the version collected on the B.B. King Gold CD, initially from the Live In Cannes recording. I later spent years tracking down that take, always coming up short on those damn drums. Finally, due to the modern miracle of streaming services, I found my muse. The stark difference between the immediacy of the live track, and the more “lively” intro of the studio recording, was more than enough for me to declare that “the thrill is gone” from the latter. Only settle for the best when it comes to the King. 

45.Song:Fight The Power

Artist:Public Enemy

Album:Fear Of A Black Planet 

How does Flava Flav’s presence make Public Enemy such an incendiary force in rap? Especially when compared to his partner Chuck D’s more powerful vocal charisma, that booming voice that cuts through the mixture that the Bomb Squad has cooked up. How does this man, chiming in with his “Hey”’s and “People, People”’s, contribute so much to this roiling atmosphere? I find myself thinking of the old position of Court Jester in royal courts. A comic presence who would come together at the right moment to speak truth to power, as Flava does when he goes off on Elvis “Motherfuck him and John Wayne”. He is a force multiplier, because such a scattershot comic presence coming together with Chuck to sing “Fight the power” hits with enhanced vigor. The entire song sounds like it is a city on the verge of catching fire, much like in the film it originally appeared on the soundtrack for, Do The Right Thing. “Bum-rush the show”.

44.Song:everything i wanted

Artist:Billie Eilish

Album:Single

Billie Elish claims that this song was born out of a nightmare, and boy, does it sound like it. How it achieves this is a major production accomplishment by Finneas, her brother/musical partner. Just listen to the way the buried, booming, background kick drums are accompanied by low pass synths, how the soundscape seems to boil with understated tension. Even the ghostly opening piano chords, delayed and volume shifted, almost lo-fi, set us up expertly for Billie’s entrance. Lightly tinged with reverb at key moments, her vocals are mixed prominently, giving us an acute sense of claustrophobia as she guides us through her dreamscape. The second verse is where the magic reaches its full realization, when almost all of the accompaniment fades away, leaving us with nothing but the drums and Eilish “I tried to scream/ but my head was underwater”. Speaking to something primal, this song leaves us stunned by life’s anxieties.

43.Song:Live Forever

Artist:Oasis

Album:Definitely Maybe 

As Liam Gallagher sings “Maybe I just wanna fly/ Wanna live, I don’t wanna die”, there is no hint of the cynical rebuttal to grunge’s worst tendencies that this song was written to be. There is only a steadily progressing melodic movement towards serenity. His voice being buried under all of that reverb, struggling to break through, as if reaching a hand towards a drowning man, can’t help but overcome its meta adversities as he reaches his falsetto “You and I are gonna live forever”. The rest of the band is mixed in such a way as to resemble an enveloping fog, pierced through by a sunbeam whenever clarity hits. Noel Gallagher’s guitar solo pierces through this sonic overcast, reaching as high as the chords will let it, relenting only to allow Liam to repeat the verse, before returning in the outro, grimmer, but supportive of the key change, of life’s whims intersecting with our dreams. “We’re gonna live forever”. Life affirming? Definitely maybe.

42.Song:Hound Dog

Artist:Elvis Presley

Album:The Essential Elvis Presley 

There has been a recent trend towards crediting the success of many popular songs to their original recordings rather than the takes that made it big; “Hound Dog” has fallen victim towards that mentality. However well-intentioned these efforts might be, we must all remember that The King turned this song into a generational anthem, and no one else has equaled his take, before or since. His producers managed this by combining elements of many previous takes, yes, for instance taking the rhythms of Freddie Bell and The Bellboy’s version and having Elvis ape Big Mama Thornton’s bellowing bluesy vocals. But The King is the King for a reason, the way his voice digs into the beat, bouncing off of and around his rhythm section, the controlled nature of his snarls on “Well you said you was high classed/ Well that was just a lie”, it all adds up to a real bop of a track. Rid yourself of historical baggage and enjoy great music for what it is.

41.Song:God Save The Queen

Artist:The Sex Pistols

Album:Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols!  

We all know how preposterous it was to call the Queen of England a “Fascist Regime”. Johnnie Rotten himself would eventually denounce this aspect of “God Save The Queen” as “stupid”. This whole song is misguided, crass, mistaking youthful angst as righteous fury; it is also a masterpiece. Producer Chris Thomas, with game assistance from engineer Bill Price, saved this song, the album it came off of, and thus unleashed musical forces that persist to this day. Chiseling precision rage from the solid slab of pulsing anarchy that were the Sex Pistols is nothing short of miraculous, especially since Sid Vicious could barely play his instrument, necessitating his replacement in almost every song on the album but this one, his pummeling bass lines perfectly compliment the slashing guitar chords and crashing drums. This song is forever proof that rage, however badly misplaced, has its place in art. “No future/ No future for you”.

40.Song:Through The Fire And Flames

Artist:Dragonforce

Album:Inhuman Rampage

There comes a time for any music lover to crave something deeply unserious, to yearn for the sheer act of being while songs like “Through The Fire And Flames” pop their eardrums. This isn’t the realm of guilty pleasures, as that implies that you should be ashamed to like it. No, this song is the push over the cliff that metal, as a genre, has aimed for since its British New Wave Of Heavy Metal roots. I am certainly not ashamed to be carried along on its tsunami waves, surfing astride its glistening structures. So we find ourselves at the 3:40 mark of the song, with “Whoa-oh-oh”’s hyping us up for the glorious release to come; A guitar solo of face-melting, propulsively explosive proportions. If not important, in the same sense of most of the songs around it on this playlist, it certainly is one of those joyous outbursts that thoroughly demands and deserves your attention. “And endlessly, we’ll all be free/ Tonight”.

39.Song:The Sun Always Shines On TV

Artist:a-ha

Album:Hunting High And Low 

“I fear the crazed and lonely looks the mirror’s sending me these days” The music video is stark, gothic, black and white. Is this the same band that gave us the propulsive joy of “Take On Me”?; it even opens with the death of the protagonist of that video. A wall of doll face masks appears at an oblique angle, mannequins scattered around the band as they perform inside a cathedral. The drums seem to be in open rebellion against the gothic synths, crashing through the mix with violent, precision, intensity. Those rumbling digital bass lines offer up a compellingly dark atmosphere for Morten Harket’s gorgeous vocals to cut through, trying his best not to have an emotional breakdown. While the ideal of television that the lyrics reference may be old hat, the struggle brought to life here, the personal made intensely universal, will ring true forever.  “I reached inside myself today/ thinking there’s got to be some way/ to keep my troubles distant”.

38.Song:Stairway To Heaven

Artist:Led Zeppelin

Album:Led Zeppelin IV

When we talk about era-defining works, we usually aren’t talking about songs that, quite literally, sound like ten years of musical trends encapsulated into a concise runtime. Yet, here we find ourselves ascending “Stairway To Heaven”’s musical structures; to find a plateau where you can oversee all that is to come and find it wanting in comparison. The 70’s, a decade that saw the full flowering of progressive rock, soul’s assuredness and jazz’s intricacies, the birth of heavy metal’s galloping momentums, the soft-spoken flutters of singer-songwriter pop; it’s all here, in embryo. The lyrics are seeped in folklore, telling a story of “a lady we all know”, but who we wish we didn’t. Robert Plant’s magnificent voice bellows high over Jimmy Page’s multi-dimensional guitars and John Bonham’s savvy drums. The recording quality is so crisp, that people in a hundred years will still be able to clearly perceive its glorious aspirations.

37.Song:Street Fighting Man

Artist:The Rolling Stones

Album:Beggars Banquet 

“Hey, said my name is called disturbance”. We are starting to approach an era in time where the social struggles of the 60’s will soon become as alien to us as the Pre-WWI era was to hippies. As the Boomer generation dies off, their particular circumstances will fade, leaving only the permanent record that is their protest anthems to shout across time to us in our shared struggles. “Street Fighting Man” is the sound of mass protest given form. Its famous acoustic guitars, recorded on a home tape recorder -provenance unknown- sound like flaming undercurrents, threatening to spark off a conflagration all by themselves. Charlie Watt’s drums boom with precision, his snares exploding through the mix with reverb. Mick Jagger’s incisive lyricism and rollicking vocals are the center onto which the instrumentals cascade down around. “‘Cause summer’s here and the time is right/ For rising in the street, boy”. 

36.Song:Runaway

Artist:Kanye West Feat. Pusha T

Album:My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 

As a symbol of largesse, of staggering artistic excess, “Runaway” will serve quite nicely. It can only be described as a colossal monument  to Kanye’s massive ego. Coming off of Yeezy’s equivalent to Sgt Peppers, it is an ode to the douchebags that seemingly make all of the most exciting art. To make it, Kanye assembled an all star cast of backing singers and a veritable buffet of the choicest samples available. The “Look at ya’s” that cascade around the stereo field are just a hint of what is coming, the piano that stands tall through the whole track is a suitable riff for the king of rap to find himself engrossed in  “Let’s have a toast for the jerk-offs/ That will never take work off” . Booming bass roils underneath it all, sounding for all the world like a boiling cauldron of tension, the very tension that is bespoke to genius, of the accomplished versus the assuredly yet to be. Here is a masterwork that earns every second of its massive runtime.

35.Song:Living For The City

Artist:Stevie Wonder

Album:Innervisions

As the travesties of Jim Crow era racism start to leave our living memory, the record keeping that is soul, blues and folk music will continue to be powerful representations of the battles won and still to be fought. “Living For The City”, in particular, is an epitaph to the forlorn hopes never attained because of rotten circumstances. Its signature TONTO synth sounds are as grim as they are warm, as crisp as they are graven, the perfect accompaniment to Stevie Wonder’s forceful presence. Reciting how many sacrifices were often required for any social movement, let alone basic living, for black people in the southern US, he successfully illuminates just how cruel it is for the struggle to continue despite the dreams being attained by a lucky few. When he drops his voice to sing in a growl, you can immerse yourself in this song’s many litanies. “I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow/ And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow”.

34.Song:(Don’t Fear) The Reaper

Artist:Blue Oyster Cult

Album:Agents Of Fortune 

“We can be like they are”. Death is the one thing that comes to us all, the endpoint to any conceived narrative about ourselves, our place in the universe and the very atoms that compose the song of reality. “Romeo and Juliet/ Are together in eternity/ 40,000 men and women everyday” This is why “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” will stand the test of time, perhaps even more than songs placed higher on this playlist, it connects all of us, welcomes us into the loving embrace of death. It does this by bedding the cosmic lyricism in a warmth of arpeggiated electric guitars, pillowy drums, and lush vocal harmonies. The occasional melodic licks accentuate the structures, allowing the eventual guitar solo, which sounds like a person’s last rallying cry before the end, to shine. Eventually, everything comes together in one final flurry, the guitars pumping their chords in unison, the cowbell steady throughout, as the song fades out on “Come on baby/ Don’t fear the reaper”.

33.Song:Luv (Sic), Part.2

Artist:Nujabes

Album:Luv(Sic) Hexalogy 

The late Nujabes had a short career before his passing in 2010, but his body of work, on the seminal soundtrack for Samurai Champloo and in the production and sampling fields, was influential enough for him to inspire the entire genre of lo-fi hip hop. Drawing on trip and chill-hop influences, and collaborating with Rapper Shing02, “Luv (Sic), Part.2” is a masterpiece about the joys of creation. Just listen to the way the jazzy horns weave their way around Shing02’s musings on life and love, to the dreamy pianos that underpin the ever shifting wordplay. “The Rhymes will heal because I believe in music…/The beat plus the melody’s the recipe/ Your vibe surely brings out the best in me”. The giddy momentum interplays with lines like “Imagination brings bliss at no cost, when I blink blink I receive at no loss”, which interlocks with buzzing horns and record scratches, to bring out the dreamy luminosity of Nujabes’ musical genius.

32.Song:This Is America

Artist:Childish Gambino

Album:Single

Some people will insist that “This Is America” only succeeded because of its iconic music video. I say that these people have never sat down and listened to it. Submersed in the off kilter musical kaleidoscope that Childish Gambino presents as America, a paranoia fueled hellscape, is a buried celebratory air. Celebratory of what America could be if not wracked by its inherent contradictions and personal miseries writ large. This is the fuel for the gospel hooks, the “we just want to party”’s, if only the country would let them. We are stuck with Gambino, his schizophrenic staccato jibes, jungle drums and squirrelly synths. Seriously, allow yourself to be consumed by the roiling bass lines, Gambino’s ramblings and the sheer weirdness on display. It sounds like nothing else ever released, a propulsive mess that thoroughly earns its place in the canon. A truly magnificent piece of dissident art. “This is America/ Don’t catch you slippin’ now”.

31.Song:Helter Skelter

Artist:The Beatles

Album:The Beatles (The White Album)  

One thing missing from the modern musical landscape are full-on creative rivalries. “Helter Skelter” emerged out of such a rivalry with The Who. Paul McCartney, upon hearing their song “I Can See For Miles” being described, by Pete Townshend, as “The loudest, rawest, dirtiest and most uncompromising song”, McCartney took that as a personal challenge. The result is a sonic rollercoaster, nothing sounds like it even sixty years later. Here is a song whose compressed echoes have rippled through music since. Sudden, rising triple tracked vocals, screeching guitars, pummeling bass guitar, rapturous drums (“I’ve got blisters on my fingers” screams Ringo as the song fades back in) and a clearly on edge Paul singing above it all. “Coming down fast/ from miles above you”. Ian Macdonald, in the book Revolution In The Head, notes that “Few have seen fit to describe this track as anything other than a drunken mess”. Messy, yes, but essential.

30.Song:Respect

Artist:Aretha Franklin

Album:I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You 

Among these top 100 entries, this song might contain the most infuriating lyrics of all time, might is the key word here. Near the end of this soul classic, an anthem so tightly produced that mistakes seem unfathomable, Aretha Franklin’s enormous vocal presence fades at a critical moment. The volume on her track drops almost precisely on “Take care of TCB”. This mixing error, this most inconsequential of goofs, has caused most people to hear “Take out TCP”. Ironically enough, TCB is an acronym for Take Care of Business. This causes a world of difference between interpretations of the song: Wait a minute. “Take out TCP” leaves us with Rese! A nonsense word in any context, let alone this female empowerment anthem, beloved by basically everyone who hears it.”. Aretha’s voluminous presence has powered through any cynical takes on the song, especially in spite of that mixing error, we can “Respect” her for that at least.

29.Song:Go Your Own Way

Artist:Fleetwood Mac

Album:Rumours  

Love can prove to be more of a Trolley Problem than a straightforward affair. Do I choose between half-hearted devotion, the fear of dying alone propelling my answer, or freedom untethered to expectations, even though that will surely end with no one very happy? “Loving you isn’t the right thing to do” thus ends up as concise a lyric as possible for describing this situation, it conceals a universe of fragile possibility. A song borne famously out of relationship drama within the band finds Fleetwood Mac harmonizing gorgeously “You can go your own way, [go your own way]”, the mixture propelling us forward among the jangling guitars as everything comes together on “Way”, Lindsey’s “Go your own way” after sounding like someone calling out towards a fleeing lover in a taxi. This chorus, a most famous amongst famous choruses, drives us towards an understanding, if not a happy one, then certainly a final one.

28.Song:Sympathy For The Devil

Artist:The Rolling Stones

Album:Beggars Banquet

You have to admit, starting off a song asking you to identify with Satan himself via a samba beat is devilish indeed, a genre whose entire remit is to seduce you through danceable grooves. The snare hits panned to the left, congas to the right, Mick Jagger’s weird “Yeow’s”, all this just to set up “Please allow me to introduce myself”. Reciting a litany of sins and catastrophes makes it seem more like one of those Ancient Greek epic poems rather than a slightly dark rock song. The key to it all is the lyric “Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name/ but what’s confusing you is just the nature of my game”. “Just the nature”. Knead on that sourdough for a bit.With Keith Richards playing bass guitar, replacing the more clinical Bill Wyman, the entire groove feels like it is ever-shifting underneath the listener, like a moral floor that can’t quite find purchase beneath our feet. If not quite sympathy, then the Devil has certainly earned his due here.

27.Song:Everlong

Artist:Foo Fighters

Album:The Color And The Shape 

There’s a shapeless quality to this song that intrigues me the more I listen. Yes it is very much a Verse-Chorus-Verse structure, but the way that Dave Grohl finds himself subsumed by the mix, to the point of an unintelligible bridge, speaks to some emotional bloodletting, some confused otherness, I just can’t place its effect. The music video kind of proves my point, as it too is a barely coherent dreamscape, the visuals directly clashing with the rhythms of the music.This deliberate disconnect disorientates the viewer, leaving us stranded in an unfeeling reality. This would be too much for most songs, but “Everlong” strikes the right balance of playing in and around our emotional outlets. With a bath of guitar distortion covering every inch of the stereo field, Grohl’s vocals alternate between soothing, shoegazey, verses and anthemic choruses. Leaving us with enough hope to carry on, “you gotta promise not to stop when I say when”.

26.Song:Heroes

Artist:David Bowie

Album:Heroes 

Music production has its very own peculiarities. You have to possess the capability to really convince people that what they are hearing, devoid of visual or physical stimuli, is sincere. This is why great music is a form of alchemy, magic borne aloft on air pressure waves. Tony Visconti sensed that “Heroes” needed something to elevate its narrative of doomed lovers. David Bowie, a singular talent on his own, was fighting for space within this famously dense mixture, Visconti decided to make him fight even harder to be heard. By slowly moving the microphone backwards from Bowie as the song progressed, he forced him to start screaming to come in as clear on the channel. This caused the equivalent of a dolly zoom effect in audio, hyper fixating us on the dark star at the center of this swirling guitar maelstrom. “We can be heroes, just for one day”, we hear him howl,  for each listen, we can dream of being heroes as well.

75.Song:Superstition

Artist:Stevie Wonder

Album:Talking Book 

The lesson that you glean from listening to Stevie Wonder’s prodigious output is how pristine his soundscapes are. From his most trite pop ditties, through to his sophisticated masterworks, there is never a moment where some musical element is unclear in the mix. This is what makes his discography one of the most immensely listenable in the canon of twentieth century music. With “Superstition” we get his whole thesis of sound laid out before the listener. It can be hard to walk away from this lesson with anything but an air of awed respect. Listen to the way his synth leads collide against each other, to how the drums and bass play with a firecracker intensity throughout. Or you could just bask in Stevie’s vocals, as smooth as honey, as they soar through the dense mixture with aplomb . It’s all so very joyful sounding that you can find yourself easily forgetting that this is meant to be a dour reading of the material. “Superstition Ain’t the way”. Magical.

74.Song:Fast Car

Artist:Tracy Chapman

Album:Tracy Chapman 

As far as modern folk rock performances go, you would be hard pressed to find one as soul shattering, as impactful as this one. Tracy Chapman’s wounded inflections offer up a narrative of love, of heartbreak, of hope on the edges of existence. It is almost country in its form, indeed one could probably find this song as quietly influential on later artists like Taylor Swift and Garth Brooks, on his more introspective days. Chapman’s talent for narrative brilliance is topped only by her ear for a strong hook, which the absolutely devastating opening riff is. Its slides and acoustic intimacy are what keep all the immediacy, all of the beautiful noise grounded as Chapman sings “maybe we’ll make something/ me, myself, i’ve got nothing to prove”. It’s quietly insistent all the way through, much like how hope drives us forward through life’s miseries. “I had a feeling I could be someone/ be someone/ be someone”.

73.Song:Paint It, Black

Artist:The Rolling Stones

Album:Aftermath 

There’s an atmosphere of lingering dread that haunts every second of this record, like something bad is on the horizon, worse than what was already experienced. Keith Richards’ instinct to mimic a sitar provides all the fuel needed for the dark flames to flare off from, as Charlie Watt’s booming drums and Bill Wyman’s looming basslines thunder along in the distance. That an actual sitar, played by tragic figure Brian Jones, joins in is just another shining facet of this dark gem. Then Mick Jagger’s vocal comes in, delivering moody lines like “I have to turn my head until my darkness goes”, never rising above his dour prospects with any showboat vocals, just raw, instinctual, darkness. Eventually, he devolves into a demonic humming, as maracas and intensely strummed guitars froth the listener up. Released in the midst of the calamitous Vietnam War, “Paint It, Black” shines a camera negative light onto civilizational morality.

72.Song:Hallelujah

Artist:Jeff Buckley/ Leonard Cohen

Album:Grace/ Various Positions 

Jeff Buckley was one of those shining talents whose star rises ever higher the more time passes, as if we have all been robbed of the bountiful output he would have managed if his life hadn’t been tragically cut short. So we are forced into reckoning with his sparse output, but he left us with an album packed with material that fulfills the ambitions of its title, Grace. “Hallelujah”, a cover of the Leonard Cohen song, succeeds at grabbing onto the delicate threads of emotional intensity merely hinted at in the original. Where Cohen’s version reckons with heavenly material via a clumsy piano and weirdly inert synths, Buckley engages his electric guitar with lines of immense beauty. Hearing the reverb drip off of the notes, like morning dew off of leaves, is breathtaking. Then Buckley starts singing, I’m not gonna mince words here, this is one of the most gorgeous vocal performances ever. Like a falling star, “Hallelujah” shines brightly in the night.

71.Song:Somebody That I Used To Know

Artist:Gotye Feat. Kimbra

Album:Making Mirrors 

My pet theory as to why this song struck the chord that it did with the general public is that it is a direct sonic mirror to a generational hit from pop-music’s past. Consider: pair a listen of this song with Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”. Listen to the parallels of the lo-fi guitars, the chiming bells versus the xylophone notes, the central hook focusing on a powerhouse duet performance with a female co-singer, how the drums are pinned to one side of the stereo field. Even the lyrics are an almost perfect dark mirror of each other. “Somebody That I Used To Know” speaks of a relationship beyond repair, one half actively ghosting the other, “Ain’t No Mountain” is about as direct as a love song can get. It’s spooky how well these two songs play off of and imitate each other. Don’t let what I just wrote sell this song short for you, it struck a chord because it is a great song, written and performed with sincerity and palpable grief.“

70.Song:Sweet Emotion

Artist:Aerosmith

Album:Toys In The Attic 

“Sweet Emotion” is one of those hurricanes of sound that can take awhile to reckon with, where it seems that everything and the kitchen sink was involved in its creation. Almost literally too, as Steven Tyler revealed that he used sugar packets in the place of maracas [1]. That intro, with that bass line as snake-like and amorphous as any I’ve ever heard, is primed for cinematic montages in your head. With those vocal harmonies soaring above, it puts you into the mood of those oil rig boys about to start learning to fly in the movie Armageddon, until the guitar interludes start hitting with those tape-reverse hits, then you feel like you just got out of the fighter jets, a little woozy. This is a song that lives for those moments, where the sheer thrills of life cannonball into reality, but urging you to keep moving forward nonetheless. After all, these sweet emotions of tension and release aren’t going to feel themselves now are they?

69. Song:Baby I Need Your Loving

Artist:Four Tops

Album:Four Tops 

Lamont Dozier, Eddie Holland  and Brian Holland (Holland-Dozier-Holland when credited) had a knack for composing songs of ecstatic longing  and this may be their masterpiece. It has tangible joy jumping off of every note sung, every beat played. The Motown sound these two producers/songwriters perfected has still found few equals in the generations since; Not quite a wall of sound so much as a platform for forceful declarations. Listen to the warm bed of drums and percussion, how indistinct the kick and bass guitar are when paired together. Listen to the whirling strings, the pianos that strike the keys as hard as possible and sparkle like a diamond. All of this as if to force the singers to rise above it all. And rise they do, with Levi Stubbs lead vocal careening through the material with an unheeded longing, “This emptiness won’t let me live without you”, his fellow singers joining in on the choruses to ascend the group to the heavens.

68.Song:Best Of You

Artist:Foo Fighters

Album:In Your Honor 

“I’ve got another confession to make/ I’m your fool” Dave Grohl sings, screaming the notes like they are the last lines he will ever sing. You can clearly tell how loudly he was singing in the studio, being mixed low and dry in the final cut. The guitars that accompany him start out with much of their low end EQ’d out, as if they are allowing Grohl to wallow in a pit of his own despair. Finally, some lush harmonies accompany him on “Are you gone and on to someone new?” before the rest of the band kicks in explosively. Taylor Hawkins’ drums seems constantly on the verge of cutting loose, but always held back near the peak of the MC’s awareness, as if they are imploring some sort of resolution. Under no circumstances does the song let you off the hook, Grohl’s unrelenting screaming teeters on the edge of good taste, and yet we find ourselves pumping our fists along to the chorus “Is someone getting the best, the best, the best of you?/ Oooh”.

67.Song:Before I Forget

Artist:Slipknot

Album:Volume 3:The Subliminal Verse 

There are many ways to produce a metal record; you could maneuver the mix in such a way as to have every element clear. You could throw oodles of effects and tracking to get a deliberately sludgy mess. Or you could, very simply, just turn up the volume, max those compressor settings and leave the results for the listener to sort out. Rick Rubin opted for the latter on this one. From the opening notes to the last pummeling beat, the entire song bristles with distortion laced muscularity. You get the sense that the guitars could burst out of the speakers at any moment. Given their grimy sound, like a field of worms turned into guitar strings, that may not be an outcome you wish for. Corey Taylor’s vocals jump out of the dense mixture shivering with barely concealed contempt, for himself, for the world. At times it seems that all he has is his inner rage. “I was a creature before I could stand/ I will remember before I forget”.

66.Song:Just Look What You’ve Done

Artist:Brenda Holloway

Album:The Complete Motown Singles Vol.7

If you consider yourself an audiophile in any way, I may be about to speak blasphemy; I heavily recommend that you stick to the Mono, heavily compressed version found on The Complete Motown Singles Vol.7. Not only does it bring the show stopping talent of Brenda Holloway to the forefront, but it raises the backing track’s floor to match her energy beat for beat. This is in direct contrast to the stereo mix offered up on her album The Artistry of Brenda Holloway, which somehow sucks the life out of the mix while offering little clarity in return; or the bafflingly ever-so-slightly lowered tempo of The Very Best Of Brenda Holloway’s mono mix. The version on this playlist comes definitively recommended. While Brenda was never a prolific album artist, perhaps explaining her complete absence from discussions of Motown’s golden years, songs like this, frothing with energy, prove that she had the star power to shine above it all.

65.Song:Every Breath You Take

Artist:The Police

Album:Synchronicity 

The trick that this song has played on the music listening public is how deftly it has created the impression that it is an earnest, unproblematic, love song. Certainly the song has many traits that would endear itself to romantic hearts, the big dramatic chorus, “I feel so cold and I long for your embrace”, the synth strings, even the pianos that crash in every now and then. Listen closely to what Sting is singing so seductively in rhythm to that dark delayed guitar intro. The big dark secret in every human heart is our capability of allowing darkness to seep in as long as everything else checks out, and “Every Breath You Take” checks all the right boxes. “Every move you make/ Every step you take/ I’ll be watching you”. Really, people who play this at their weddings have their future divorces coming to them. That it remains an essential listen despite this is proof at how deviously well crafted it all is.

64.Song:Mr. Brightside

Artist:The Killers

Album:Hot Fuss

“It started out with a kiss/ How did it end up like this?” “Mr. Brightside” is a song that burst like a fireworks display onto the music scene, and it has essentially never left the music charts in the two decades since its release. The glittering guitar riff, cascading down the strings like a flame trail in the wake of an explosion, the drums that bristle with intensity, Brandon Flowers singing like he is on the verge of a heart attack, this is the musical equivalent of a gala affair. Just try not to stutter and halt to lines like “But she’s touching his chest now/ He takes off her dress now/ Let me go…” The Killers are a band that seems terminally addicted to the flash and dash of the bright lights, desperately chasing a contact high that society also wants to attain. With this song, this glittering anthem, they found something more sustainable in the long run, a life affirming outburst. “Open up my eager eyes/ ‘Cause I’m Mr.Brightside”.

63.Song:Will You?

Artist:Emilie Kahn

Album:Outro 

“My hand’s don’t work so well no more/ My mind ain’t so sharp either”. Emilie Kahn’s distant vocals guide us through an intro that is both stark and intimate, volume levels cutting in and out, a symphony of stereoscopic emotions. “Slowly slipping off the edge of this world” is the moment where she can finally release us from the tension, diving into a more familiar, but well earned, synth chorus. Even then, the song still finds its ways to surprise us, detuned chords, unconventional rhythms and a cautious use of reverb to call back to that intro. With the kind of jagged instrumentation from the cutting edge of modern music leading us in, electric harps and scattershot drums, etc., it feels like an encapsulation of The Caretaker’s Everywhere At The End Of Time in miniature. As an introduction to the final year of the 2010’s, it is one masterful exhibition of the sonic pleasures and possibilities available to the modern musician.

62.Song:Be My Baby

Artist:The Ronettes

Album:Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica 

When talking about the Ronettes, you cannot escape the spectre of Phil Spector, his wall of sound just overwhelms the senses when listening to their output under his supervision. In the book Kill Your Idols, writer David Sprague said that he “layered his productions with gossamer-like sonic leaf spun so intricately that Byzantine gold-spinners would no doubt nod their heads in approval”. He wrote this as a disparaging comparison to Bruce Springsteen, but the sonic size comparison hits harder every year as we become separated from the realities of studio production in the 60’s. Without any of the benefits of our convenient digital age, Phil Spector wrangled together a soundscape that rivalled the stadium-sized titans of rock. Listening to how every detail just has room for itself, how the background singers collapse around Ronnie Spector in luscious harmony. Like no other soundscape ever recorded onto analog tape, before or since.

61.Song:Just Another Day

Artist:Queen Latifah

Album:Black Reign

Rap samples are an earned resilience function, a reminder of what the artist used to hear throughout their lives filtered through layers of gritty existence. By taking Herb Alpert’s “Making Love In The Rain” and slowing it down, then layering in vocals of a younger version of herself (from the song “Princess Of The Posse”), Queen Latifah successfully guides us through her life before a word is even said.Then she starts singing, soulfully, which  sets up an oddly hopeful, inspirational, walkthrough of her chaotic neighborhood. Rapping in an aggressive, hard stop, fashion, we are told of everyday traumas inflicted on her people, cop stops and seven year old girls catching stray bullets. Weaker people would have been worn down long ago, but her “Hood” remains steadfast, with earned resilience. “A beautiful day in the neighborhood/ can’t go wrong, I feel strong/ and the flavor’s good/ I’m with whatever comes my way/ Hip-hop-hooray”.

60.Song:Black Hole Sun

Artist:Soundgarden

Album:Superunknown 

“Black Hole Sun” sneaks up on you. It starts off slow and moody, the guitars chorused precisely, as if rippling against the walls of reality, the drums jazzily syncopating along. Chris Cornell’s vocals are direct and clear, keeping us centered throughout the insane imagery of the verses “In my eyes, indisposed/ In disguises no one knows”. It’s like he cannot get a clear handle on what is happening around him, like the entire world is going to hell “Call my name through the cream/ And I’ll hear you scream again. The choruses seem like cold relief in light of the apocalyptic imagery. “Black hole sun, won’t you come/ And wash away the rain?”. The structures of the song almost can’t bear it, with Kim Thayil’s lead guitar finding itself being drained of its lifeblood in the solo, sputtering and staggering around. When Cornell’s voice starts splitting up into separate parts, joining erratically in his harmonies, you know you are done for.

59.Song:Angel Of Death

Artist:Slayer

Album:Reign In Blood 

When listening to “Angel Of Death”, one thing that can astonish the listener is the realization at how clear almost every element is in the mix. The guitars are bruising and chunky, but they don’t overpower everything else, reportedly Rick Rubin intentionally left them as dry as possible to avoid that fate. The result is that you can clearly discern every note, an apparently impossible ask for the great majority of metal records, even as Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman take turns seemingly disemboweling their guitars in the solo. The clarity also allows for the drumming by Dave Lombardo to stand out, which is one of the most dynamic performances ever recorded, cycling through blast beats and fills like a man possessed. Finally we have Tom Arava on the Bass guitar and vocals, the lyrics are about as grim as you can possibly write them, but Tom’s rolling bass and direct vocals give us an appropriate outlet for one of humanity’s darkest chapters.

58.Song:Immaterial

Artist:SOPHIE

Album:Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides 

“Immaterial girls, immaterial boys” Cecile Believe and SOPHIE chant in the beginning, a celebratory aura of pumping synths and propulsive handclaps accompanying them, another one of Cecil’s voices joining in above it all, wailing joyfully. If this strikes you as excessive, then this song deserves to be, to hold its head up high as an anthem for those amorphous individuals living among us. “I could be anything I want” goes the mantra before the verse literally spells it all out “You could be me and I could be you” with a stark hyperpop bassline underpinning the point. SOPHIE as a producer naturally gravitated towards the hyper aspect of hyperpop, with every aspect of this song seemingly stuck in vibration, working itself into a friction induced contact high. From the auto tuned vocals that never seem to settle on any stable ground, to the soundscape that can’t help but be as loud and frenetic as possible. It earns its volume.

57.Song:Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love

Artist:Van Halen

Album:Van Halen 

Writer Bruno Macdonald, writing for the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, said of Van Halen’s eponymous debut “Once hard rock lumbered; now it leaped”. Listening to “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”, fifty years after its release, it is astonishing how fresh and vibrant it still sounds. As if each note off of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar could leap out of the speakers to set your room alight. Diamond Dave is at his sassiest, most domineering, here. “You know you’re semi-good looking/ And on the streets again” he snarks, not in any mood but the darkest when it comes to his physical needs “My love is rotten to the core”, Michael Anthony’s high harmonies and pummeling basslines careening around him. Eventually, as if the “girl” hasn’t gotten the point Dave devolves into a primal snarl “Just like I told you before/ before, before”. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar histrionics are the only comfort in this atmosphere of toxic masculinity.

56.Song:Paranoid Android

Artist:Radiohead

Album:OK Computer 

Having embraced a knowing darkness that only the true cynic appreciates about humanity, Thom Yorke and co. endeavored to create the ultimate sing along for depressed lunatics. This whole song plays as “Like A Rolling Stone’s” camera negative, a suitably dystopian teardown, absent any of the joyous highs, of “The dullest fucking people on earth”. Where clanking guitar riffs ricochet off of tumbling drum patterns. Enmeshed within this coldly calculated, schizophrenic meter spasming,  mixture of snakey guitar lines, spacey reverbs and Thom Yorke’s uncanny ability to send people running for air raid shelters while itching at the bugs under their skin, is a darkly beautiful coda to a dying era of materialistic optimism. That “Screaming Gucci Little Piggy” would, somehow, never have it better than this.  Thom and his ilk gleefully say: Good riddance! “Rain down/ From a great height”.

55.Song:Purple Haze

Artist:The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Album:Are You Experienced? 

What I just wrote about Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” can very easily still be applied here, as the lessons learned from Jimi Hendrix’s phenomenal output seemingly skipped the majority of hard rockers up until the time of Van Halen’s eponymous debut;“Hard Rock lumbered; Now it leaped”. What makes “Purple Haze” such an astonishing listen almost sixty years after its release is how much Jimi Hendrix’s artistic ambitions are fulfilled. There is nothing but a lean and mean recording, all pumped up with an impeccable sense of energy and urgency, like it had to be captured on tape now and then or wither away into the ether. Mitch Mitchell on the drums sounds like a collapsing building, Noel Redding on bass’s roiling lines seemingly swirling around a zone of catastrophe. All while Hendrix’s guitars offer up a beguiling potency, that main riff dragging us further towards his vocal epicentre “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky”.

54.Song:Chop Suey

Artist:System Of A Down

Album:Toxicity 

The tragedy of suicide doesn’t so much lie in the death of the singular person, but in the thoughts of how it can affect the people around you. That very act of self-reflection can be as morally devastating as the intended eventual result. This is why “Chop Suey” works so well, it captures that crushing melancholia measured against the chaos you are about to cause as you plan your exit. The selfishness of the act measured against the relief it would hypothetically bring. “I cry/ As angels deserve to die”. I guess this is why the band left in “We’re rolling ‘suicide’” in the beginning, a recording mistake that leads into the thrashing guitars and staccato vocals that contrast so hauntingly with the coda. “Father, into your hands/ Why have you forsaken me?/ In your eyes, forsaken me?” Serj Tankian sings, Daron Malakian joining in in harmony on “Trust in my self-righteous suicide”, a gorgeous lead out to an unanswered prayer. 

53.Song:Testify

Artist:Rage Against The Machine

Album:The Battle Of Los Angeles 

Tom Morello’s guitar wizardry is on full display here, using a variety of technical tricks to achieve a sound comparable to the shifting revolutionary tides. Listen as his playing around with the guitar’s tuning results in that iconic “washing” sound that wavers back and forth on the knife’s edge, only subsiding when more muscular riffage is needed in the chorus and solos. About that solo, he achieved the distinctive ringing wah sound by touching the end of his guitar cable against his pickguard and aggressively engaging his wah-pedal[1]. The result is a maelstrom that Zach De La Rocha can pin his incendiary verse to, heedless of the powers that be “We found your weakness/ And it’s right outside your door/ Now testify”. Brad Wilk’s drums provide all the rhythmic kindling while Tim Commerford’s bass seems to be wrestling with everything around it. All the fire needed for revolution, contained in this muscular epic.

52.Song:I Wanna Be Sedated

Artist:The Ramones

Album:Road To Ruin 

The best thing the Ramones ever did was clean up their sound. You could definitely hear improvements from their first album when compared to its successor Rocket To Russia, but the clearer guitar tones on evidence here fully unlock their melodious appeal. The chugging guitars alongside the doo-wop vocals by Joey Ramone can’t help but be pleasing to the ear. The music video has more pronounced drums, cracking like a bursting light bulb, and shows the band sitting still while the whole world seems to pass around them. But the album cut is superior because it allows the melody to shine through. As if the whole world desperately wants to shift the Ramones off away from their lethargy, the band stands defiantly and declares that they would rather be sedated than partake in the expectations of society. See, this is punk rock I can get behind, clear, to the point, and absolutely a banger of epic proportions.

51.Song:Bohemian Rhapsody

Artist:Queen

Album:A Night At The Opera 

The thing about opera is that you are always aware of how ridiculous things could seem to an objective observer, you just can’t take your attention away from the best of it. Queen, more specifically Freddie Mercury, understood the assignment here more astutely than any other band could have done. Writing a song where he sings lines like “I don’t wanna die/ I sometimes wish i’d never been born at all”, getting you to empathize with a man who just committed murder, running him through a gauntlet of a trial before the gods and then into a thrilling hard rock kiss-off against those who would judge him, is something few songs have equalled, let alone bettered. Mercury’s performance here, one of the most luminous leaps imaginable, is one of those perfect things that shouldn’t be emulated.“Too late, my time has come/Sends shivers down my spine”. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Does that matter? No, not one bit.

100.Song:Ribs

Artist:Lorde

Album:Pure Heroine 

Growing up, the process of, often sneaks up on you. One moment you are a youthful creature, indulging in all of the energies of the moment, the next you are an adult navigating a world entirely new to you. No wonder that “Ribs” hits this hard, it’s so very hard to let go of your younger self. The vocals and synths find themselves swirling between both speakers, cycling through like how a flower will angle itself towards the sun. The warm kicks and bassline hover insistently throughout, as if the world is moving in slow motion while you process the phrase “It feels so scary getting old”. Having Lorde call back to previous versus in each chorus, and then leading us through a cascade of her vocals as she careens through lines like “I want em back, I want em back/ The minds we had, the minds we had” is what great songwriting leads you to; a moment of serene revelation as every second you can’t get back is thrown back towards you.

99.Song:Crazy On You

Artist:Heart

Album:Dreamboat Annie 

This is supposed to be a sincere love song, so why does it feel like a looming threat? You can’t have a lyric like “I’ll go crazy on you” and escape sinister connotations. Maybe this is why lead guitarist Nancy Wilson’s opening acoustic guitar heroics sound more like someone announcing their intention to duel you, or why that famous main guitar riff cuts through the mix like a slashing axe. The symbolism is rich, as the cool critics would say. If this is a failed attempt at a sincere declaration of love, then how can it possibly hold down a spot this high? Because it, quite simply, rocks as hard as anything that the 70’s ever produced. Ann Wilson’s vocals punch through the mix with a bitter sweet, slightly spooky, quality, as if she is dredging up a hex that she unleashes on the line “And you kept me alive with your sweet flowing loooove”. Even listening to the raucous drums, by Kat Hendrikse, is a real treat for the ears. A slasher-smile mini-epic.

98.Song:Kickstart My Heart

Artist:Motley Crue

Album:Dr. Feelgood 

If the 80’s were a decade of extreme excess in music and society, then Motley Crue symbolized the times as rowdily as possible. A band that came together in a haze of drugs and debauchery on the level of criminality, where its main songwriter Nikki Sixx literally died twice from heroin overdoses, and its lead singer killed a dude in a DUI crash. Maybe it takes living on the knife’s edge to achieve this level of contact high. “Say I got trouble, trouble in my eyes/ I’m just looking for another good time”. Mick Mars’ guitars slash and leap, the main riff crashing like a car into the speakers, only for things to quiet down in the bridge; softly picked guitars laced with light delay, like a neon light image flashing in your eyelids. Then Tommy Lee’s drums kick in at high volume and we’re revving back up to that thrilling chorus “Woah, yeah/ Kickstart my heart, hope it never stops”, as the talkbox guitar solo leads us out on a frenetic note

97.Song:You Know You’re Right

Artist:Nirvana

Album:Nirvana 

So it comes to this. I could have opted for a safer pick for this spot, maybe “Heart Shaped Box” with its more understandable context, or even the bleak resignation of “Come As You Are”. No, it had to be this song, before the only one better. Scraped together from haphazardly recorded jam sessions, “You Know You’re Right” sounds like Nirvana’s artistic culmination, combining every previous album’s strengths into one final send-off to Kurt Cobain’s genius. The roughness of Bleach, the sheen of Nevermind in the chorus, the organic dynamics of In Utero and the Folk-bloodletting of Unplugged, all here, in one 3:37 song. I am curious as to why this song isn’t ranked higher in music retrospectives or rankings, maybe the wounds are still too raw. As Kurt drones “You know you’re right” at the end, the realization that this is technically an unfinished song can’t help but hit you. As a metaphor, it’s too perfect to tolerate.

96.Song:Mirrorball

Artist:Everything But The Girl

Album:Walking Wounded 

Starting out as a lite-jazz sophisti-pop band in the early eighties, Everything But The Girl would find their greatest success only near the turn of the millennium with songs like this, this glimmering example of pop-electronica. “Mirrorball” plays out as a discotheque epic, telling a story of love-worn people with fading hopes and expectations of the dance floor. Ben Watt’s production utilizes dry guitars, shimmering synths and drums so intimate they could be confidantes. I have thus described everything in this song but the girl… Tracey Thorne’s gorgeous vocals wrap themselves around the lyrics like a long hug goodbye. Every “Come on girl” is a tragedy in miniature, a tiny nervous chuckle after the third verse becomes draped in reverb. It’s all so striking, so alluringly dark, yet so human in spite of its electronic production, a perfect anthem for the Walking Wounded. “And is he still, I wonder/ the fairest of them all/ mirror, mirrorball?”.

95.Song:Yesterday

Artist:The Beatles

Album:Help!  

“Oh, Yesterday/ Came suddenly”. In music, serendipity can often produce happenstance perfection. Paul McCartney heard this song in a dream, that most liquid of all human imaginings, and was unsure if his mind hadn’t merely pieced it together from existing arrangements. After showing the composition to his friends and bandmates, he was finally convinced to record. The result is serene magic, a melody that embodies wistful longing, and an acoustic guitar bedding of exceptional warmth. With George Martin handling string arrangements, something which Paul initially fought against, a timeless sense of emotional suspension is crafted. I want to note a strange example of a “happy accident” contributing to Yesterday’s appeal; At :52, on the line “Something Wrong/ Now I long for yesterday”, you can hear a suddenly doubled vocal take, which happened because Paul was listening to a previous take whilst performing the new one. Serendipity. 

94.Song:Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Artist:Cyndi Lauper

Album:She’s So Unusual 

To think this song was originally written at the height of the disco era [1]. On reflection, that era’s frisky rhythms and dalliances with stadium-sized lyricism were perfect bedding for Cyndi Lauper to spring from, fully formed and ready to party. The updated sonics, all those sparkling synths and guitars that sound like ripples in the ocean, allow for the lyrics to work perfectly as precocious flowerings. “When the working day is done/ Oh, girls, girls just wanna have fun”. Rob Hyman’s keyboards gift their exuberance to every note, the whole thing sounds like a sleepover party, with pillows flinging around and cocktails ready to be imbibed. In the video game Bioshock Infinite, this song appears as an organ instrumental, as one of the heavenly melodies that sparked through time to 1912. With how joyous Cyndi Lauper attacks each line, it too can be an ambassador to youth’s effervescence, for this time, for all time.

93.Song:Somebody Else

Artist:The 1975

Album:I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It

“So I heard/ You found/ Somebody else”. Anyone taking a nighttime walk through sedate urban environments, contemplating the could-have-beens of previous relationships, can listen to this song and fade into the background. Images of lit skyscrapers and lone car headlights passing by, illuminating the headspace. Vocals bouncing back and forth between the headphones, digital glitches having epileptic fits throughout, and the occasional sour notes in the synths form the ever shifting emotional backdrop to Matt Healy’s soulful singing. I suppose you could summarize this song as a culmination of the retro-80’s sounds and structures finding their fullest utilization here, but that implies that emotions this intensely abject are locked away permanently in trendy sarcophagi . This song proves that, wherever and whenever needed, the sounds of the past can help anyone in the present tackle their most human desires: a longing for tender embrace.

92.Song:Everybody Needs Somebody To Love

Artist:Solomon Burke

Album:The Very Best Of Solomon Burke 

One of the things that strikes you when viewing cultural depictions of gospel music, is how exuberant the performances are, like the performers really are trying to extend you a hand in joyous uplift. Solomon Burke showcases all the qualities of a star while beckoning us to join in on the fun, having complete faith in us, if only they would listen to this song that he sings “and I believe if everybody was to sing this song/ it would save the whole world”. You can’t sing lines like that if you don’t fully believe in them, and boy howdy does he believe, like the Morpheus meme from the Matrix. When he froths the audience into enough of a fervour, he gets them to sing along, “But I need you (you you you)”, like a preacher leading a sermon. Burke’s voice soars above, with all the untethered velocity of a comet, trailing nothing but stardust. The rest of the band might as well just be along for the ride, as exciting and hopeful as it is.

91.Song:Time Of The Season

Artist:The Zombies

Album:Odyssey And The Oracle 

There are few times in music where you can truly say “Nothing sounds like this”, “Time Of The Season” is one of those times. At a lean 3:34, it doesn’t linger too long, letting its secrets unfold before you as the crow flies. That famous 1-2-3-breath handclap rhythm can’t help but sound as fresh and daring today as it did sixty years ago. Like you’ve cracked open a refreshing cold one and allowed your darkest desires to seduce you. The call and response verses, as if two lovers are fighting against their own primal needs, the general aura of psychedelia that give full form to lucid songwriting, those swanky organs doing battle in the interludes, all come together to form a breathtaking sonic indulgence. Of the sort that would take on an even more seductive form with trip-hop and electronica thirty years later, of a timeless call to our flagrant natures. “It’s the time of the season for loving” the voices ring out, an eternal plea to desire.

90.Song:Streets Of Philadelphia

Artist:Bruce Springsteen

Album:Philadelphia: Music From The Motion Picture 

Someone could plausibly make the argument that the opening drum bars repeat themselves once too many times, delaying our entry into this gorgeously serene lament for a tad too long. When considering the payoff for a little patience, I think we can forgive the Boss a little indulgence. The music video for this song has Springsteen walking through the streets of Philadelphia, seeking comfort and warmth in the presence of his fellow man, even if he is in…Philadelphia, the city that famously destroyed a hitchhiking robot and had a jail cell in its football stadium. Regardless of the mess he’s in, he finds the beating heart, the yearning, at the core of every human being. Letting those FM synths waft and drift over the cold machine drums, his voice seems to falter at several points, as if he is reckoning with the magnitude of  his earthly existence and its effect on the ones he loves. “Ain’t no angel gonna greet me/ It’s just you and I my friend”.

89.Song:Thunderstruck

Artist:AC/DC

Album:The Razor’s Edge 

The big secret to a great rock-guitar riff is that you have to feel like you have the capability to learn it, to live it with the same intensity as you hear it. AC/DC have five entries on this playlist, more than seminal rock bands like The Rolling Stones or Van Halen, more than some arguably more important artists such as Bruce Springsteen or David Bowie. This is because they thoroughly mastered the SOUND of hard rock, the inner feeling that, not only do you want to be a rockstar while listening to their songs, but you absolutely can be if you can marshal their energies. “Thunderstruck” has an opening riff so thrilling, so energetically propelling, that it carries not only the song, but AC/DC the band forward with unstoppable force. It doesn’t matter if the lyrics are so straightforwardly thirsty they could dry up a desert, they SOUND like they have the capability to summon the thunderstorms to bring it back to life. “You’ve been/ Thunderstruck”.

88.Song:Where Is My Mind?

Artist:The Pixies

Album:Surfer Rosa 

Two mentally ill people, a man and woman, meet in a skyscraper, their room drenched in the darkness of night-time urban life. Outside are multiple skyscrapers holding the headquarters of major credit card companies. BANG! They start collapsing, precipitating a major financial system collapse. The man turns to the woman and holds her hand “You’ve met me at a very weird time in my life”. When Fight Club played “Where Is My Mind?” over those atmospherics, there was simply no better illustration of its appeal. This wonky, barely coherent mess of a song, a lullaby for the damned, perfect for those of us struggling through the wretched chaos of poverty stricken existence, of the indulgences we allow ourselves, the thoughts we let creep into our heads. Frank Black’s vocals careen between every note like he is on a bender of epic proportions, he very well might have been, given what we are hearing. Chaotic, fun, endlessly memetic.

87.Song:I’ll Be There For You (You’re All I Need To Get By) [Razor Sharp Mix]

Artist:Method Man Feat. Mary J. Blige

Album:Tical (Deluxe Edition) 

How can a love song, a rap ballad no less, sound so sinister? This remix of “I’ll Be There For You” sounds like an apocalyptic stalkers’ anthem, even if its melody is cribbed from a Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell original. You’d think that Gaye connection would soften the sonic edges, but the distinctive booming darkness of Method Man’s Tical era overwhelms everything. The original album version features indistinct sonic screeches and simple synths, RZA’s genius move was thus to pair Method with Mary J. Blige to sing the hook, and ditch the sound effects for the muted horns that turn this song into such a parasitic ear worm. Mary’s vocals turn the “You’re all I need to get by”’s into a faustian greek chorus, perfectly subsuming us into Method’s dark universe of gang violence and low expectations. They also turn his rap verses into something approaching a sincere ballad, making his declaration of “You’re my N***er” all the more terrifying.

86.Song:Lovers In Japan/ Reign Of Love

Artist:Coldplay

Album:Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends 

No music video has quite captured the essence of a song quite like the one for “Lovers In Japan”! Having all of those time-manipulated visuals, stuttering edits and graceful laser paintings, is something that can’t help but propel you along the song’s blissful release. With that constant woodwind-like synth in the background and a detuned tack piano serenading us through, Chris Martin sings the only song he has ever truly known: “But I have no doubt/ One day, we’re gonna get out”. Even the rest of the band can’t help but feel in lockstep with the beat, the lead guitars flail around fruitlessly trying to escape, the percussion sparking and undulating with the tides. The sheer immensity of it all speaks to Japanese landscape paintings, ever in touch with the romantic heart. The album version comes with “Reign of Love” attached to it, like two inseparable lovers. As with any heedless love, I’d take the two together.

85.Song:Run Away With Me

Artist:Carly Rae Jepsen

Album:E.MO.TION

There have been quite a few notable pop anthems that open with a saxophone, some trying to crib sophistication by proximity to more esteemed genres (“Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty), or simply trying to establish an immaculate vibe (“Careless Whisper” by George Michael). “Run Away With Me”’s opening saxophone is the latter but somehow even more stadium sized, setting a mood that, as NPR noted “shivers with the promise of reckless romance”. Shivers is the right word here, as the sonics evoke a chilly nightscape, much like the frozen landscapes of Carly Rae Jepsen’s Canadian homeland. “This is the part, you gotta say/ All that you’re feeling, feeling”. Her staccato delivery in the verses helps build up rhythmic tensions against the soft kick drums and ethereal synths, which gets a phenomenal release in the soaring chorus. Young lovers needing an excuse for their fleeting moments of opportunity, here is your anthem. “Run Away With Me”.

84.Song:I’ll Be Around

Artist:The Spinners

Album:Spinners 

This is a fascinatingly simple soul song, one where the margins of error were so small before it collapsed into forgettability. That it takes hold in the listener’s heart means that it cleared that bar, that it’s among the top 100 songs ever made takes a bit of explaining. It starts with Norman Harris on the guitar and Producer Thom Bell doubling the guitar riff on a clavinet. Both of these sounds together ring out true, like a sign that something important has been decided. Early Young on drums is credited in the Wall Street Journal with helping to craft the sounds of disco later in the decade with his unconventional beat emphasis [1]. Finally, for instrumentation we have Ronnie Baker on Bass, his thumping beats determined and playing off of Bobby Smith’s syrupy lead vocals. Combining all of these elements results in an unstoppable, unforgettable, impeccable mixture. One that you cannot listen to without your heart breaking in two.

83.Song:Born To Be Wild

Artist:Steppenwolf

Album:Steppenwolf 

One thing that modern hard rock seems to be desperately missing is a good organ sound. Because everyone wants to ape Led Zeppelin or AC/DC, they find themselves missing out on a truly dynamic sound, one that can ride on its own merits or bolster the muscularity of the rest of the band. So we have “Born To Be Wild”, with its organ fulfilling every possible sonic role it can, propelling shots across the bow or shimmering majestically. Of course we haven’t even gotten to the guitars, played by John Kay pulling double duty on vocals, one of the most famous riffs in all of rock. Stop-starting its way through the song, revving up like a beefy motorcycle, this is the kind of riff that guitar lovers will be learning to play forever. Because, at the end of the day, how can you possibly be more cool than this? Riding through the soundscape like somebody who has not a care in the world, only to live wildly. “We can climb so high/ I never want to die”.

82.Song:Rejoice

Artist:Julien Baker

Album:Sprained Ankle 

“Know my name and all of my hideous mistakes” Whenever you hear people say that horrible events are all part of God’s plan, the detail to notice is that they don’t say such things under the delusion of understanding, but rather that there’s some paradoxical comfort in not knowing why he allows them to happen. Julien Baker’s timid vocals sound like they are shuddering at the presence of such an indifferent higher power. The sheer spiritual energy that powers through every syllable she utters is enough to recast one’s own beliefs, to pose your own questions to the great unknowable other “Asking, “Why did you let them leave/ and then make me stay?”” The opening guitar chords clumsily strummed, dissonant and stark, faltering at the doors of grace, are all that she needs as accompaniment. Julien leaves us with a heartrending wail, affirming her belief, even if it causes her immense emotional pain “I rejoice/I rejoice/ I rejoice/ I Rejoice”.

81.Song:Four Women/ The Story Of OJ

Artist:Nina Simone/ Jay-Z

Album:Wild Is The Wind/ 4:44 

Here is a main piano line that strikes a beguiling tone. It’s so devilishly simplistic, anyone could play this, but this simplicity belies its considerable drawing power, you can’t tear your ears away from its presence. It’s the assuredness with which Nina Simone plays these bassy notes, with a rolling tone not unlike a bass guitar, that provides a compelling backdrop to her telling of the lives of four Black women affected by slavery. She embodies each woman as they navigate their lives in a system that exploits their bodies, uncaring of their personhood. With light percussive and woodwind accompaniment, Nina builds towards a climax of considerable force “What do they call me?/ My name is Peachessssss”, hoping that she is the last in the line of suffering.  Of course, she wasn’t, as Jay-Z’s sampling of this song proves on “The Story Of OJ”, exactly fifty years later. If this song proves anything, it’s that resilience can only take you so far.

80.Song:Fuck Tha Police

Artist:NWA

Album:Straight Outta Compton 

N.W.A. fired shots that changed the course of popular music forever, literally as well as metaphorically. It’s hard to appreciate that impact almost forty years later, when we’ve lived through scads of cataclysmic world events and scores of protests against the police and their brutalities. We’ve long since grown numb to trauma. Still, the narrative way that this song is setup, as a trial against a racist police officer, becomes symbolic of the entire LAPD. Each member that takes a verse, Ice Cube, MC Ren and Easy E, form a firing squad against inequity, firing fire bars in defense of their right to live unharassed. If I had to choose the best verse, it would be Ice Cube’s inflammatory first, as he attacks each syllable with a full-throated intensity. “So police think/ That they have the authority to kill a minority” intersects with astute observation “But don’t let it be a black and a white one/…/Black police showing off for the white top”. Explosive, essential.

79.Song:Who Are The Brain Police?

Artist:Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention

Album:Freak Out! 

This is the weirdest great song, one whose majesty can arguably only be appreciated after many exasperated listens. At least to normal people.As someone who is both autistic and a music lover, I found myself impressed by this song’s sheer out-thereness almost immediately. After all, that ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah intro can’t help but drift into the outer spheres of majestic beauty, with Zappa and Ray Collins delivering harmony of intense eccentricity. The “Who are the brain police?” chorus, delivered with all the bluntness of someone announcing a missing child at a mall, sometimes just… arrives in the midst of a pure sonic maelstrom, uncaring of what momentums it halts. Charging forward with all the boozy magnificence of a truly epic bender, we eventually get to Frank Zappa really freaking out “I think I’m going to die” repeating with a carousel of devilish counsel around him. “What will you do when the label comes off?”.

78.Song:Stop! In The Name Of Love

Artist:The Supremes

Album:More Hits By The Supremes

“Stop! In the name of love/ Before you break my heart”. When I said “Girl, you know you can just leave him” to Beyonce’s “Don’t Hurt Yourself” earlier in this playlist, I knew that that could apply here as well, if not better. However, unlike that exercise in listener timidity, listening to Diana Ross and The Supremes lace every note with a bitter sweet aura, here you get the feeling that nothing could convince the MC of the choice she knows she has to make. It starts from the sweeping organs that open the song, the horns that play like they are on their last forlorn hope, the drums that insistently urge us and The Supremes forward to something approaching a meaningful conclusion. A conclusion that will never be reached. Yes, you could argue that the MC is presenting an ultimatum towards her lover, but every instinct in my musical bones knows that something tragic is brewing, a tragedy of immense emotional intensity.

77.Song:Rockin’ In The Free World

Artist:Neil Young

Album:Freedom 

Neil Young has never been a conventional artist, from his flat-singing style to the way his musical energies end up seemingly teetering on the edge of listenability. He has a sound that hasn’t been matched, probably will never be, simply because to replicate Neil Young is to sift mercury through your fingers. But hey, if you have to rock out to one song of his, let it be this ungainly beauty. It has one of the most cynical lyric sheets I have ever come across, and this is a playlist with Radiohead on it, with such gems as “We got a thousand points of light/ For the homeless man/ We got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand”. By this point in his career he might have been out of fucks to give. It definitely sounds like that as well, with guitars that chug along with a fiery intensity, only for the chords to ring out like an axe head chopping at a tree. Even in the chorus, his voice seems ready to give out. “Keep on rockin’ in the free world”.

76.Song:Androgynous

Artist:The Replacements

Album:Let It Be 

For a topic as rife with potential faux-pas as sexuality, this song opening with and then maintaining an ungainly piano chord stagger is genius of a higher order. The way that Paul Westerberg fumbles through, his voice’s cadence swinging around clumsily, creating a bar-room atmosphere, a camaraderie with his subjects that never wavers, it reaches anthemic levels of joy. Drink in small details like the barely present drum brushings, the occasional “audience” interjection, the perfectly rushed way the song abruptly ends on “Jefferson’s cock”. The naked sincerity of lines such as “Same hair, revolution/ Same build, evolution” and “Mirror image/ see no damage/ See no evil at all” speak to a song far ahead of its time. Caught as we are in a maelstrom of confused mores, I can’t help but call back to this song’s effervescent clarion call “”Tomorrow who’s gonna fuss?/ and they love each other so/ androgynous”.

125.Song:Atlantic City

Artist:Bruce Springsteen

Album:Nebraska 

“Well Baby, everything dies, that’s a fact/ But maybe everything that dies, someday comes back” After a decade of stretching the capabilities of the studio and good taste, Bruce Springsteen finally found his muse outside of the E Street Band’s excessive shackles. With Nebraska he recorded simple songs at his home studio, no need to drag every possible instrument into things, a lean and mean record. “Atlantic City”, with its haunting atmosphere and Springsteen’s forceful beseeching, is the best song on it.  With an acoustic guitar, five chords in the key of Fminor and that gasoline soaked voice of his, he lays out the heart of his songwriting style, his knack for making the intensely personal immensely large. All of the little details that reverberate throughout this song enhance its ghostly appeal, from the harmonica played for emphasis, to the mandolin-like way Springsteen plays his guitar at points, as if serenading its spectral energies.

124.Song:Rebellion (Lies)

Artist:Arcade Fire

Album:Funeral 

Arcade Fire bleeds ethereal, like every lyric comes from a dream-like universe that only they can provide the appropriate atmosphere for. So it goes with “Rebellion (Lies)”, starting with extant noise from the previous song on the album, “Haiti”, the rest of the band emerges slowly out of the haze. First the insistent drums, then the alluring bassline, then, as the last of the extant noise fades out, the snare hits and the pianos come in to replace it with a glistening peal. When Win Butler finally comes in with “Sleeping is giving in/ No matter what the time is”, the spell is complete. The music video shows the band marching up the road of a sleepy town, every drum hit alight with animated flames, as if storing the energies needed for the rest of the song to explode off of, like fireworks. If this is a song that celebrates every kid who never could find the need for sleep in their heads, it certainly calls out for a certain need in our hearts.

123.Song:Pyramids

Artist:Frank Ocean

Album:Channel Orange 

“What good is a jewel that ain’t still precious?” asks Frank Ocean. Which jewel? This is a topic that he wrestles with throughout. Starting off with a paeon to Cleopatra, who in his mind was a Black figure rather than the more historically accurate Mediterranean woman, he then moves towards the excesses of a modern culture which has failed to uphold the mythical “Blackness” in women that he yearns for. Cheeky, inflammatory to anyone with a history book, but also a thought provoking incisive cut into the flesh of our modern misogyny. It would be too much for the structures of the song to bear if the music wasn’t so lush, so supremely vital. The bass lines that permeate every pore, Frank Ocean’s champagne vocals, the glitzy synths that polish every movement, the ever-shifting drum patterns, every aspect adds ever more to a construction as colossal as Ocean’s musical ambitions. “Working at the pyramid tonight, yeah”.

122.Song:Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay)

Artist:Sky Ferreira

Album:Night Time, My Time 

Night Time, My Time is an album where great big swirls of dirty noise collide against melodic lines, like a decorated punching bag taking a beating to alleviate tensions. “Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay)” is a song that you’d expect Courtney Love to have had a hand in, given how intense the emotions that Sky Ferreira is letting out are. “Every day people tell me somethin’ else that I know” is a lyric that anyone who has struggled against any mental illness or social demon can relate to. The pent up frustrations cut loose in choruses of astonishing pensiveness, like Sky is a coiled snake ready to bite anyone who comes near. The guitars are vague smears of noise, the drums are pounding away as if the drummer is about to spontaneously combust, the bass guitar sounds afraid to step out of line. All of this to support a woman clearly at the end of her tether “Nobody asked me if I was okay/ No no no no no no no”.

121.Song:A Tout Le Monde

Artist:Megadeth

Album:Youthanasia

Dave Mustaine insists that “A Toute Le Monde” isn’t about suicide [1]. This is a song where the lines “If my heart was still alive/ I know it would surely break” shares space with “So, as you read this/ Know my friends/ I’d love to stay with you all”. Not about suicide, sure bud. Regardless of his intentions when writing it, even especially so given how grim the entire lyrics sheet reads, “A Toute Le Monde” is a dark beauty. Just listen to the way the song seems to organically soar after the first chorus, where the former highlighted lyric is sung. Dynamics like that are rarely achieved in pop songwriting let alone a thrash metal dirge about suicide. Just the very particular way that Mustaine’s guitars ring out in the intro, “I don’t remember where I was/ I realized life was a game”, combined with his vocal to create a suspended feeling of awe, like he is fading in from some murky point of no return. A haunting presence lurking among us

120.Song:Count Yourself In

Artist:Ten Second Epic

Album:Count Yourself In 

“Please tell me that this life isn’t permanent”. I will fully admit that this is perhaps the worst mixed song on the entire list, and “Louie Louie” ranks high for reference when I say that. The opening riff pans bizarrely to the left from center, Andrew Usenik’s vocals sound like he is holding back gallons of spit on every syllable, even the time signature is a bit fluky. The drums can barely contain themselves alongside the wiry guitar tones.Why here? Because it overwhelms skepticism with momentum, the sheer audacity of its own existence. Recorded in a severe rush and with the band members taking out loans despite not even having a record label contract in hand, they pumped out a working class ballad that works in much the same mold of Springsteen, Guthrie and Downie. In barely holding itself together, this song captivates with its magnificently bodied presence. “We’ve gone too far to be unnoticed/ So let’s get gone”.

119.Song:Jolene

Artist:Dolly Parton

Album:Jolene 

“Jolene” opens with a flurry of guitar notes, as if the emotional storm is ongoing and not already settled. “Jolene (4X)/ I’m begging you, please don’t take my man”.  If I were to take a songwriting class and “Jolene” isn’t on the curriculum, I would leave a harshly worded review on yelp and stick with my own devices. The concise way that Dolly Parton lays out all the implications of her current situation begs for analysis. When her voice pleads precisely to the beat in the verses, frothing the listener up, only for it to quaver and articulate on the chorus, releasing pent up emotions like someone would stop the flow of beer from the tap, I sit back and ponder. The main character knows that she has lost her man’s affections, is reduced to begging but, crucially, is resigned to whatever happens. “There’s nothing I can do to keep/ From cryin’ when he calls your name, Jolene”. It’s a love song in the third degree. She deserves better than this man.

118.Song:Mayonaise

Artist:Smashing Pumpkins

Album:Siamese Dream

“Mother, weep the years I’m missing/ All our time can’t be given/ Back”. “Mayonnaise” is a song that proves that Billy Corgan has a great future in poetry, even when his vocal prowess often veers into the cliff walls of ability. This is a song that, lyrically, means nothing and yet, with each line worming its way into your subconscious, can very easily encompass everything. “Fool enough to almost be it/ Cool enough to not quite see it/ Doomed”. The Pumpkins as a band craft these one-offs into a coherent piece by bathing the guitars in distortion and giving the drums space to make us miss them when they’re gone. When I say “bathe in distortion” I truly mean it, you really feel your ears being cleansed with how beautifully cosmic the soundscape becomes with that brick wall of sound. This effectively amplifies the quieter moments of the song, like a big, clumsy, affirmation of life and all of its faltering dynamics.

117.Song:Our Song

Artist:Taylor Swift

Album:Taylor Swift 

With all the grace of a country belle and all the ear-catching immediacy of a pop starlet, our introduction to Taylor Swift was a sweet one. The jangles of the banjo interplay with the sugary fiddle lines, the soft electronic drums underpinning earthy acoustic guitar strums, a sense of serene comfort for Taylor’s vocals to bed themselves in. Her eye for detail and knack for story-telling and songwriting progression allow for swells of joy as she coos “waited for somethin’ to come along/ that was as good as our song” . While she would evolve her sound considerably in the coming years, that same core intensity of love and reflection would remain, allowing music lovers of any age to find her at their own level. After all, even the most hardened atheist can find comfort in the way she sings “And when I got home/ ‘fore I said Amen/ Asking God if he/ could play it again?”. “Our Song” is everyone’s song, whenever they need it, however they find it.

116.Song:How Soon Is Now

Artist:The Smiths/ Love Spit Love

Album:Meat Is Murder (US)/Hatful Of Hollow/ Charmed: The Soundtrack 

Smack dab in the middle of an album of jangly guitar rock, albeit with a dark edge to it, lies this caustic, foreboding, masterwork. Keep your heart set on the original 6:47 long version, as it preserves the sheer majesty of its toxic sludge. With a main rhythm borrowed from some vintage Bo Diddley records, the through line of the main character being, essentially, a club incel keeps it relevant today “You shut your mouth, how can you say/ I go about things the wrong way?”. There is a frequent wailing guitar sound throughout, as well as a layer of dark reverb attached to everything,  that lends a spooky air to the proceedings. This would be capitalized on when Love Spit Love covered it for the theme song of the Charmed TV series. This is a show where the main Trio of witches battle the forces of evil while also operating on the level of a soap opera with their relationships. If that isn’t the best representation of this song’s aura, then I can’t think of one better.

115.Song:You Only Live Twice

Artist:Nancy Sinatra/ Global Stage Orchestra & Leslie Bricusse

Album:You Only Live Twice/ My Name Is Bond…James Bond: 50th Anniversary Edition 

What else could this song have been but a Bond theme? It oozes class, bleeds sophistication from every edge of its quivering strings. Nancy Sinatra, and who else could it have been but the daughter of The Voice?, melts over every syllable, gliding over the notes like a silk negligee. The iconic orchestral sweeps can barely contain the tension. Its Oriental stylings add an exquisite detail for the ears to latch onto, as comfortably as lovers do. “This dream is for you/ so pay the price/ make one dream come true/ you only live twice”. The rock drumming beneath it adds an exquisite layer of tension to the proceedings as a delicate guitar drifts through the song like a smoke trail. When Mad Men later used this song to signify the depths and miseries of Don Draper’s soul, it felt for all the world as how critic Mark Monahan described it:  “Velvety, brittle and quite bewitching”.  Note: Get the original version if you can, not Nancy’s solo effort.

114.Song:Heroin

Artist:The Velvet Underground & Nico

Album:The Velvet Underground & Nico 

With “Heroin” we all get to experience what a drug trip feels like. It opens as it means to go on, with the guitars vaguely striking at a semblance of melodicism as often as they fall back into blunt power chords. Lou Reed drawls out an opening but then accelerates, like a heart going into overdrive “And I guess that I just don’t know”. The drums feel like a neighbor banging on the doors of a raucous party, surging and subsuming with the levels of volume. Of course, like a lot of drug trips, the excess of it all comes crashing down on us near the end. The guitars and drums start freaking out intensely, those guitars in particular sounding like they are being disemboweled and/or tossed around the room. In the center of it all is Lou Reed laughing at and accepting his fate;  “Ah, when that Heroin is in my blood/ Heh, and that blood is in my head/ Then thank God I’m as good as dead”. A swirling kaleidoscope of musical excess.

113.Song:Punching In A Dream

Artist:The Naked And Famous

Album:A Still Heart/ Passive Me, Aggressive You 

Sometimes tearing everything down is the only way to find something beautiful within. The original recording for this song stabbed at greatness with its open atmospherics and abundant indie pop-rock energy; this take leaves it standing dejectedly in the corner. “All the lights go down/ as I crawl into the spaces” The opening perfectly drags you down into a stark sonic landscape. Taking heavy influence from Imogen Heap’s seminal “Hide And Seek”, Alisa Xayalith’s vocals are bathed in vocoder layers throughout, with even heavier dosages of reverb injected at key moments. Aaron Short’s accompanying instrumentation expertly layers in guitars, pianos and the occasional supporting “Oooh Oooh”. The result is a sound that approaches anthemic, something that the original recording clearly aspired to, but the restraint in its production allows Alisa’s vocals the crucial voluminous space to breathe, to overawe, to punch through.

112.Song:Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

Artist:Metallica

Album:Master Of Puppets 

“Master Of Puppets”, considered by many the definitive Metallica song, is not on this playlist. I struggled with that decision. Certainly there are joys to find in the ways its thrashing guitars claw their way to a melodic climax. However, there is just something so powerfully chilling about “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” that is unmatched, not just in Metallica’s formidable discography, but in all of metal. Consider just the opening notes, stark strikes on the strings, at first ringing out doom and bell-like cold, the liquid flurries of notes that come after, transitioning into the dark progression that carries the song forward. “Welcome to where time stands still/ Noone leaves and no one will”. The rest is pure mastery of the instruments involved and the dynamics needed for the songwriting to shine. The oceans of reverb that haunt the proceedings swallow up the soundscape, refusing to let go of the subjects and our attention.

111.Song:Mad World

Artist:Michael Andrews feat. Gary Jules

Album:Donnie Darko (Original Soundtrack) 

It’s actually quite astonishing how badly the original version by Tears For Fears has aged. Its headlong momentum and lack of care for its internal songwriting dynamics just overpower whatever message the lyrics were trying to impart. Michael Andrews, with a limited budget and the power of friendship, managed to strip “Mad World” down to its chilling foundations. “The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had”. With Gary Jules as the singer and Andrews on the instrumentation, everything comes together. Those opening notes on the piano are dripping with a paradoxical cold-warmth, like the individual notes are sirens beckoning you to your doom. They gamely setup Jules world weary vocals, when he sings “All around me are familiar faces/ Worn-out places/ Worn-out faces”, you really do get the feeling that both him and the world are falling apart at the seams. “It’s a very, very/ Mad World, Mad World”.

110.Song:Bonny

Artist:Prefab Sprout

Album:Steve McQueen  

“All my silence and my strained respect/ Missed chances and the same regrets” Paddy McAloon had some darkness in him. Of “Bonny”’s writing he said that he “Imagined grief”[1], how it catches us all in an emotional Ouroboros, allowing ourselves to be eaten away by our personal tragedies. If this is imagined grief, then it is a vivid capture. The production is both intimately warm and coldly aloof, those acoustic guitars recorded so dryly that every detail is captured, every strum its own heartbeat, the synth flourishes that interject like a sharp winter wind (a literal woosh is heard throughout, incidental detail), the electric guitar feels like a torrent of tears being held back only just. Paddy’s vocals are direct, clear, letting the silences speak for themselves “I count the hours since you slipped away/ I count the hours that I lie awake”. A more perfect union of production and intent can scarcely be imagined. “All my insights from retrospect”.

109.Song:Me & My Dog

Artist:boygenius

Album:boygenius EP 

“Me & My Dog” successfully captures the sentimentality of watching fading photographs stream past your eyes from memory, sad to see them go, but aware of the need to move on. The slow burning haze of the guitars, the way Phoebe Bridgers sings “We had a great day/ even though we forget to eat”, it can be emotionally overwhelming on a bad day. Boygenius, a supergroup of modern emo-folk auteurs, all geniuses in the ways they wring raw emotions out of the simplest observations, all join in near the end. Harmonizing a verse where everyone, Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus and Phoebe, seems on the verge of tears, terrified to let something go, but needing to. The slowly building tension of this song, from that aforementioned intro, through the harmonized verse, to the heartrending scream piercing through the outro, a masterclass in emotionally charged songcraft. “I wish I was on a spaceship/ Just me and my dog and an impossible view”.

108.Song:Johnny Sunshine

Artist:Liz Phair

Album:Exile In Guyville 

No song has ever quite captured the feeling of everything falling apart around you quite like “Johnny Sunshine”. Interweaving bruising guitar chords and a greek chorus of herself in triplicate [“I think i’ve been taken/ For everything I own” she sings underneath the main lyrics], Liz Phair fills the soundscape with her snarky affectations. Taking the destruction of her life with all the gusto of someone who’s been there before and will be there again. “You took the house/ You went and changed the locks/ Now I’m stuck/ Living out in a box”. As the song awkwardly stumbles into its dream-like outro, Liz’s vocals morphing into an angelic choir, “You left me with nothing”, you could easily forget that anything was wrong at all. The parent album is full of delightful songs like this, but “Johnny Sunshine” stands out as a wickedly funny ode to crass existence. 

107.Song:It’s Raining Today

Artist:Scott Walker

Album:Scott Walker 3 

Listening to “It’s Raining Today”, you get the notion that Thom Yorke wore the grooves on this record ragged. Has any song captured the feeling of pouring rain quite as literally as this? That specific guitar chord plucking progression (Db(add9), Gb(add9), then Dbsus4(add9)), is so evocative of raindrops hitting puddles, sometimes in sheets, sometimes singularly with glancing blows on the window panes, that it very effectively countenances whatever the hell is going on with those strings on the right side of the speakers. Seriously, why are they so menacing? Given what the lyrics are saying as well  “The street corner girl’s/ A cold trembling leaf”, I can’t help but feel like this is a low-key serial killer origin story. All the talk about painful memories and regrets and then “I watch the cellophane streets”. Imagery like that, with music like this. “It’s Raining Today” is one of those seminal songs that spawns multitudes, creepy or not.

106.Song:Redemption

Artist:Drake

Album:Views From The 6

Views was an album that sounded fully Canadian, Drake’s homecoming album, each track spacious enough you could swear that there were audible gusts of wind chilling you to the bone. It was, and still is, a uniquely lush listening experience and “Redemption” is its ambassador. Its slightly disorientating synth sample is accompanied by a huge bass in the center while the drums pound at full volume with precision, Drake’s halting rap style descending like snowflakes “I miss the feeling of you missing me”. The soundscape remains palatial enough for what seems like an entirely different song to play in the background (Ray J’s One Wish), coming in at the end with a string swirl after “Since Take Care, I’ve been Caretakin’”, to lend an air of bittersweet harmony to it all. By wrapping his verses in such a warm blanket of melancholia, Drake spoke to the truth about heartbreak and regret, we all want that feeling of closure, even if we can’t have it.

105.Song:River

Artist:Joni Mitchell

Album:Blue 

Christmas is often called the saddest season. The way that the vast multitudes of happy families can crowd out the comforts of being single is just one of those inanities of life that bring out a lot of pent up emotions. This is why when Joni Mitchell sings “Oh, I wish I had a river/ I could skate away on”, she perfectly captures that desolate mood. Elaborating on the traditional Christmas song “Jingle Bells”, her piano plays like a sheet of icicles ringing out across a landscape of snow. There is warmth in the progression, just a subdued one. Joni Mitchell sings lyrics like “I’m gonna make a lot of money/ Then I’m gonna quit this crazy scene”, longing for an escape yet trapped by social convention and physical limitation. When her voice escalates into a serene bell-tone, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that longing is the gift that our regrets give us. “I wish I had a river so long/ I would teach my feet to flyyyyyyyyyyyyy”.

104.Song:Sunshine Of Your Love

Artist:Cream

Album:Disraeli Gears 

For the longest time, even when I was going to audio school around the beginning of the 2010’s, how exactly Eric Clapton achieved his celebrated “Woman” guitar tone was thought of as a mystery. It turns out that music writer Chris Gill has at last unlocked the secrets to this hallowed musical presence [1]. It’s a tone that fully suits the name of the supergroup Cream and powers this song with a latent intensity that smoulders throughout. This is a supergroup though, it’s not just Clapton’s show. Jack Bruce, the groups bassist and lead vocalist imbues the proceedings with a smoky air, silky smooth in the way that he handles the stop-start nature of the chorus “I’ve been waiting so long/ To be where I’m going/ In the sunshine of your love”. Ginger Baker, on the drums, is a force to be reckoned with as well. His style perfectly compliments the buried energies, always on the verge of coming up for air, but never overpowering events. A true firestarter.

103.Song:When The Party’s Over

Artist:Billie Eilish

Album:WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? 

I believe that people a hundred years from now will still be astonished by the vocal prowess that Billie Eilish has already displayed throughout her career. Especially on tracks like this. Opening with layer upon layer of wispy vocals, Billie Eilish provides a heart breaking backdrop to damaged lovers and wilting loners the world over. Softly layered pianos, glitched vocal samples and heavily crushed bass lines are all the accompaniment she needs to let her gorgeous voice carry a narrative of self-inflicted isolation. With a demonic Greek Chorus enveloping the soul in swelling outbursts of emotions, she lets her voice rise and fall to meet every moment like it’s her last. The hauntingly sparse production by her brother Finneas ties it all together. There’s an honesty here that lays bare the wealth of miseries that the human soul embraces after a relationship ends, but here is an anthem for those that need, or find, comfort in it.

102.Song:Won’t Get Fooled Again

Artist:The Who

Album:Who’s Next 

Whenever anyone questions the value of drummers to rock’s musical vitality, point them towards The Who and Keith Moon’s expansive offerings. His talents for inventing new rhythms and going off on self indulgent melodic benders have helped The Who age more gracefully than their contemporaries. That skill was never more apparent than here; “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a masterclass in the art of delayed satisfaction, forever building towards a climax of explosive proportions and keeping it just out of reach, until it can barely hold itself together any longer. Roger Daltrey’s volcanic “Yeahhhhhhhhhhh” was, and still is, a testament to this track’s majestic impulses. Carried along by the iconic synth lines, propelled by Moon’s swaggering timekeeping and guitarist Pete Townshend’s illustrious power chords, the listener could be forgiven for getting carried away by the potency of ambitions realized here.

101.Song:Babysbreath

Artist:Lovesliescrushing

Album:Bloweyelashwish 

To me, this is the ideal that shoegaze was always striving for, that it comes from some obscure band that nobody talks about serves as a perfect metaphor for its existence: Beauty powering through the noise. Voluminous guitars bathe the listener in phased distortion, a distant voice piercing through the tempest with a lullaby-like inflection. Judging by the title, you could take the song as coming from the perspective of a baby being calmed by its mother, overwhelmed by life’s sensations. The title is really all we have to go on, as trying to discern the lyrics is near impossible, though careful listening will reveal that they are singing definite words of some kind. The careful, delicate, weaving of distorted chords, synth chimes and the aura of calm projected from the vocals will help you fill in the blanks. From a genre famous for its volume and lack of subtlety, this warm bath of sheer noise is a welcome reprieve from life’s drudgeries.

150.Song:American Woman

Artist:The Guess Who

Album:7” Single/ American Woman 

Go for the 7” Single. The album version has an insipid sing-along intro that spells out A-M-E-R…If I hadn’t found the single version, which chops that full minute and a half off, that intro would have sunk it just the same as the endless sonic fart in “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf. Having said that, what a riff, what a song, and all springing from a glorious improvised performance. Those particulars I leave to others, but the sheer joyous energy here would leave some to believe that this is a love song.  Just the way that iconic fuzz guitar lead glides over the proceedings should entrance you, as it lilts over the notes acidly. Certainly Lenny Kravitz read into the “love song” angle, as he leaned harder into the passe’ hard rock appeal in his turgid cover version. No, this is a glorious kiss off, a “get the fuck away from me” of epic proportions.“American Woman/ Stay away from me/ American woman/ Ma’ma let me be”.

149.Song:Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long Long Time)

Artist:Elton John

Album:Honky Chateau 

The 70’s was quite a time for spacious atmospherics in rock. Enabled by rich recording qualities, buoyed by the warmth of analog tape recordings (as well as production geared specifically towards it, which anyone attempting to emulate the sound of this era nowadays seems to easily forget), artists could enact their most expansive visions with comparative ease. Elton John was not an artist cowed by the glittering lights of fame, he thrived in an atmosphere of stadium-sized piano ballads, toying with the dynamics to create an atmosphere of shivering brilliance. Even when the synths come in, cozy and snug in tone, they are in service to this all-consuming egotism. It’s not like he leaves much room for interpretation when he sings lines like “And I’m gonna be highhhh as a kite by then”, he is laying out the groundwork for his launch platform with every stroke of the keys. “Rocket man/ Burnin’ out his fuse up here alone”.

148.Song:More Than A Feeling

Artist:Boston

Album:Boston

“And I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)”. A soft fade-in with jangly acoustic guitars, the crunchy electrics, dual tracked for harmonized impact, the soothing drums bubbling underneath. Brad Delp’s serene vocals soaring over everything. It’s all so magnetic, all there on tape. It can almost make you forget how wistful the lyrics are “And dream of a girl that I used to know/ I closed my eyes and she slipped away”. I think what helps sideline any sense that this song is wallowing in regret is the clarity of the recording. Every sonic detail feels meticulously placed, nothing gets buried, all pent up regrets subsumed under the life affirming intention.  “I lost myself in a familiar song/ I closed my eyes and I slipped away”. I’ve been wearing my thesaurus ragged finding enough synonyms for Joy to populate this playlist’s blurbs, but I feel that if any song is truly deserving of the phrase “Joyous construction”, “More Than A Feeling” is it.

147.Song:You Get What You Give

Artist:New Radicals

Album:Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too 

The New Radicals released this song in a time where 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, the specter of nuclear war was no longer hanging over everyone’s heads and the economy was booming. Its clarion call to disaffected youth was meant to pull those kids, of those times, towards a more hopeful existence, however trite their concerns seem now. Looking out the window, doom scrolling through the social media of today, this song just hits harder. Its massively propellant piano chords and soaring choruses might spark spontaneous fist pumps, but we must never forget how much faith its lyrics have in you, that you can overcome your sufferings no matter how dark the prospects are for the world. Its rapid fire pop culture references at the end might have dated it, but their very nature as past-gone stumbles give them even more power when listened to now, with all of that context in the rearview mirror. We got past all of that, this world is gonna pull through.

146.Song:Supercut

Artist:Lorde

Album:Melodrama 

“In my head/ I play a supercut of us” Hints of this song have been sprinkled throughout the rest of the playlist, mostly because what Lorde sings about has happened to all of us, at the best and worst of times. Everyone of your hopes and dreams have been filtered through snapshots of memory, playing through your mind on demand, sometimes without permission. “In my head I do everything right” she sings as the rest of the song’s sonics play muffled under a low pass filter, as if unwilling to admit defeat against the monsters of Ego, the Id that can tear apart great relationships. While the song may be devoid of the particulars, this precise vagueness is why “Supercut”’s enveloping soundscape hits so hard; as the electronic drums pump insistently, the synth bass line barging in to make its presence known. The comfort may be cold, but the steady procession of images in our head are all that we may have to remind us of the best and worst of times.

145.Song:For What It’s Worth

Artist:Buffalo Springfield

Album:Buffalo Springfield 

“It’s time we stop! Hey, What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down”. The best of protest anthems strike a point during their moment and for any future time where they may be deployed. Sure, cultural vagaries may ensure that other songs may meet future moments, with all of their own peculiarities, better, but the option should always exist to draw upon the buried power of protest songs of old. The ringing guitar that opens the song seems tailor made for montages of riots, of the boiling atmospheres of cities on the edge of disturbance. The shouting harmonies that accompany the chorus, with Neil Young lending his unique vocals to the tempest, let you know where the songwriters stand. “There’s a man with a gun over there/ Telling me I’ve got to beware”. Stephen Stills knew what he was doing when writing these fire lines, he was drawing the lines of battle for every movement to follow along with, for his time, for all time.

144.Song:Ballad Of Big Nothing

Artist:Julien Baker

Album:Say Yes! A Tribute To Elliott Smith 

Elliott Smith does not make this list. I wanted to declare that and live with the consequences. That isn’t to say that he ever made a bad song, far from it. If one of the better up and coming singer-songwriters, Julien Baker, can turn one of your lesser tracks into one of the greatest songs ever made, then obviously a superior foundation was there. My hang ups with his work related to his production, it always felt too breezy, too effortless and yet somehow too polished for its intended effect. Julien takes that buried emotive reach and renders it with halting guitars and her vulnerable, fragile vocals. Smith comes highly regarded to me, Julien helps me peer into his craft, to find the hidden glory within. “A tired man with only hours to go just waiting to be taken away” combined with deep, beckoning piano chords, the oil-slicked reverberations on Julien’s guitar lines and her angelic vocal reach; One heck of a tribute to one of indie music’s tragic legends.

143.Song:Your Love

Artist:The Outfield

Album:Play Deep 

The 80’s sound draped around this record is so blissfully exciting now, which is weird to anyone who especially remembers an era in living memory where the aesthetic of chorusey guitars, gated reverb drums and lush vocal harmonies, was written off as cheesy, irredeemable, crap. As if people couldn’t stand having a cheery outlook on life, even in the drudgeries of romantic heartbreaks and infatuations. Here, The Outfield’s Tony Lewis sounds like he is having the time of his life, even if his character is undergoing a period of intense loneliness. How could he not? He has all the backing that 80’s sonics could give him; oceans of reverb with tastefully layered guitars and champagne drums to keep his floaty dreamscape going. When the bridge kicks in, where those layered guitars start drifting deeper into the chorus effect to accompany Tony as he dips enchantingly into a breathy register, how can you not adore it?

142.Song:Maggot Brain

Artist:Funkadelic

Album:Maggot Brain 

“I was not offended/ For I knew I had to rise above it all/ Or drown in my own shit” George Clinton’s crude poem at the beginning of this glacial guitar masterwork, is a challenge to the listener as well as guitarist Eddie Hazel. Could he play a guitar solo of such relentless momentum and ice-cold instincts that all appeals to good sense would evaporate? (Surely a guitar solo can’t carry literally an entire song, nay a band, by itself?) And could the listener not turn their ears away from all of the haunting reverberations, all of the screeching guitar effects decaying into the ether like dying space signals? While yes, I am aware of solo instrumental pieces that do indeed carry themselves as far as they can handle, this is a song that takes all of the possible energies of its opening lyrics and ties them down to the ground as the universal emotions of grief and awe collide. “Go on, Maggot Brain” George Clinton whispers, as if the devil were in Hazel’s ear.

141.Song:With Or Without You 

Artist:U2

Album:The Joshua Tree 

U2 is a band of contradictions. From the push and pull of their need to be huge and yet deploy intimate misgivings, their inability to make a song about any one thing, constantly tugging in different directions thematically and musically. “With Or Without You” is the definitive U2 song. Is it a love song? Or is it some spiritual pleading with some indeterminate “other”? The music certainly pulls you in, despite how simple it is, even within their expansive discography. The warmth of the bassline and pillowy drums is enough to lull you into a sense of  intimacy as the endless sustained notes of guitar serenade you through lyrics such as “Through the storm we reach the shore/You gave it all but I want more”. Near the end Bono chants “And you give yourself away”, this chant explains the band’s inherent appeal to the listener. We listen so we can be carried along on the tides of contradiction “I can’t live/ With or without you”.

140.Song:Kids

Artist:MGMT

Album:Oracular Spectacular 

Never let go of your youthful energies, all the curious momentums that give you your impulse power through adversity. That’s the message that MGMT wants to impart to you, as they leave this permanent document for you to consider as you age unstoppably. The nursery rhyme cadence that the song glides off of, with that synth line cutting through an ether of swirling synth pads and stop-start bass, finds itself fighting against the distortion artefacts of compression. The lead vocals in particular keep peaking the speakers, as if youthful exuberance can’t help but hit a brick wall of reality. Nonetheless, the sparkling atmospherics of it all are loud for a reason, you are only young once, act like it; “Control yourself/ Take only what you need from it”. The line after that is curious “A family of trees wanted/ To be haunted” is a peculiar one, as if you living for your moment also dooms those around you to wanting to feed off of your youthful energies. Magical.

139.Song:Teenage Crime (Radio Edit)

Artist:Adrian Lux

Album:Adrian Lux 

Aging is a reality that we all tackle in our own ways, youthful aspirations becoming buried by the cruelty of expectations. “We don’t sleep when the sun goes down/ we don’t waste no precious time/ all my friends in the loop/ Making up for teenage crime”, a simple verse repeated for effect, sung beautifully by Linnea Martinsson, her Swedish accent lovingly wrapping itself around the lyrics. Sometimes you just need a simple point hammered home, even if it is surrounded by enveloping trance-like synths. Maybe this is why the obviously sampled main guitar riff manages to work, it underpins the common narrative, carrying us through the highs and lows of the song as the emotional core.  I would go for the Radio Edit as it compresses what makes this song work so well into less than three minutes. Short enough to avoid repetitive overload, substantial enough to leave you crying on the way out “Don’t go away/ Don’t go away”.

138.Song:C.R.E.A.M.

Artist:Wu-Tang Clan

Album:Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

The Wu-Tang Crew had a knack for those acronyms, with GZA later crafting “B.I.B.L.E.” (basic instructions before leaving earth) on his solo effort Liquid Swords. But the acronym to end all acronyms in music is “C.R.E.A.M.” (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) “Get the money/ Dollar dollar bill y’all” Method Man repeats in the chorus, keeping the rest of the crew grounded in that most unignorable of realities. So the crew goes around, taking their turns at the mic espousing their hard-earned street wisdom “It gots to be accepted/ That what? That life is hectic” Inspectah Deck ruminates near the end, as if forcing the listener to adhere to that Protestant mantra “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” [1].  Raekwon’s opening verse has him standing his ground against all comers “Respect mine or here goes the Tec-9” as RZA’s chopped up pianos, simple and stark, collide against a sampled string swirl as alien as 90’s New York.

137.Song:Only Shallow

Artist:My Bloody Valentine

Album:Loveless 

Imagine turning an electric guitar amp to full volume, thrashing out a guitar chord, and finding the results to, against all odds, somehow be an ethereal soundscape. Then turning the screeches, the wails and massive volume cliffs into an entire album dedicated to that found beauty. My Bloody Valentine, bless them, went out and did it, music hasn’t recovered since. “So Shallow” is the best track on the album for showcasing all of shoegaze’s essential dynamics. Screaming guitar riffs, Belinda Butcher’s vocals breaking through the chaos like an alarm waking you up from a dream and a healthy disregard for volume dynamics. This is loudness as an art, about subtle beauty finding its way through the storm to your ears. Maybe that’s why the final forty seconds sound so otherworldly in contrast, a wordless, eternal, symphony, quietly worming its way through your subconscious. Leaving you breathless in awe on the way out.

136.Song:Hush

Artist:Deep Purple

Album:Shades Of Deep Purple 

To fully capture the feeling of this song, give it a listen while driving through an urban centre. Watch as the buildings fly past you, the cars speeding by on their particular business, the people indifferent to your voyeuristic presence. Something undeniably spooky should be felt by you. As if this song alone captures the cinematic nitty-gritty of life in the city, as happening as it was when Deep Purple covered the Billy Joe Royal original. The pumping bass line to this song might very well be the most propulsive in rock, every aspect of the song hangs off of it like a bouquet of grenades waiting to fall off the vine. Singer Rod Evans “Na na na na, na na na na na na”’s can’t help but be carried alongside the gritty organs and cascading drum patterns, popping off like fireworks at certain emphatic points. The raw animality of this song is evident when it lets the amp hiss just sit there amongst the general noise, like a live explosive just out of reach.

135.Song:Bleeding Love

Artist:Leona Lewis

Album:Spirit 

The rolling organ that opens this song lulls you into the mid-tempo sceance that Leona Lewis is establishing, a touch of light humming and ooh’s primes you for her entrance “Closed off from love/ I didn’t need the pain” she begins, the kick drums starting their rhythm below, beating almost precisely how a heart should behave when crying out for attention. “But something happened for the very first time with you” comes as the distorted toms and snare drop in like hovering thunderclouds. Finally, the song gives us everything it has in the chorus “I don’t care what they say/ I’m in love with you” Lewis’s voice starts harmonizing as a calming string section comes in lest some emotional point of no-return gets crossed. But alas, it’s too late for her, trapped as she is in the throes of love “You cut me open and I/ Keep bleeding/ Keep, keep bleeding love”. If only all love could be cut with a knife as beautiful as this.

134.Song:Everyday People

Artist:Sly & The Family Stone

Album:Stand! 

“Sometimes I’m right, and I can be wrong/ My own beliefs are in my song”. Simplicity in theme, in musical structure, can often be the most liberating thing an artist can indulge in. With “Everyday People”, Sly Stone found a way to make common cause with anyone and everything in the world that needed someone to stand with them. Don’t let its astonishingly brief running time fool you, this is an anthem of immense breadth, bridging the worlds of soul and rock with aplomb. “We’ve got to live together/ I am no better and neither are you”. That cowbell in the left speaker really does tie things together, as the rest of the drums are panned far to the right, bass sensibly in the middle, giving the rest of the band a warm bed of rhythmic noise to spring up from. Considering that this song was released in an era where the notion of a fully integrated society was relatively novel, the sheer joy that it exudes is still something to behold.

133.Song:Violet

Artist:Hole

Album:Live Through This 

Courtney Love is a woman who apparently half of the 90’s alternative rock scene had something to say about, with more than a few well known songs purporting to be about her and her destructive presence in people’s lives. In turn, her music sparked off like gasoline fires, always in danger of burning everything down around her. With “Violet”, a song reportedly about her relationship with Billy Corgan (I’m guessing this is where the “And the sky was made of Amethyst” line originates from), she tears apart any notions of stability. “Go on, take everything/ Take everything, I dare you to” she screams, the guitars raging around her, the drums rattling off beats like a crowd observing a mental breakdown. Having said these things, there is an off-key beauty to the music here, like someone hacking away an abstract cubist-expressionist piece from marble. All the hardness of reality paired with the deranged careening mannerisms of genius.

132.Song:Stand Back

Artist:Stevie Nicks

Album:The Wild Heart  

Imagine a synth progression so impossibly propulsive,  so insufferably unstoppable that the lead singer struggles to keep up with it several times during the song. Imagine that being paired with lyrics so stultifyingly vague that they circle back to being compelling. This maddening musical and lyrical soup found its ideal pairing with the witch-like aura of icon Stevie Nicks. Her throaty vocals prevent the synth riff from running away from the rest of the production, even if, again, she often feels the need to verbally sprint to keep up with it. Courtesy of an uncredited Prince, that synth riff is so simple and yet so beguiling that  it could only have been cooked up by a musical genius. The lyrics are elusively imprecise, shifting back and forth between asking for and denying love, or of being denied it. Maybe that is the key to understanding it, love is a confusing mix of emotional gives and takes, very often you do need to stand back to appreciate it.

131.Song:I’m Still In Love With You

Artist:Al Green

Album:I’m Still In Love With You

Listening to Al Green’s work is a bit frustrating, not because he is lacking in propulsive appeal, but because this man, who is one of the singular vocal talents that the 70’s ever produced, had talents that the rest of his accompaniment clearly couldn’t keep up with. Just listen to the exquisite amount of vocal control he exhibits on lines like “Why I feel, like I do”, and then have the need to smack the background singers for piping in at that exact moment. Those drums, in particular, have a nasty habit of getting in the way of appreciation of Green’s immense gifts, patting away loudly and against his rhythms. “Well it seems to me/ That I’m wrapped up in your love”, listen to how he stretches the syllables to the breaking point and tell me you are not overawed. There is a reason more songs of his aren’t on this playlist though, I blame the producers. Still, if you need any monument to his greatness, start here.

130.Song:At Seventeen

Artist:Janis Ian

Album:Between The Lines 

“To Me, “(At) Seventeen” offers hope, it offers hope that there is a world of people out there who understand”[1]. The genius of this song is how intensely personal it sounds, let alone how the lyrics read. Take the tactic of taking bossa nova rhythms, a genre of dance music that sounds the most intended for hugging your dance partner as closely as possible, and pairing it with lyrics like “To those of us who knew the pain/ Of valentines that never came”. Janis Ian’s vocals come through with serene clarity, never overstating the point, allowing people to take this song at face value, allowing deeper meaning to subtly worm its way through the subconscious. Producer Brooks Arthur allows for small details here and there: lightly brushed snares, syrupy bass lines, graceful chimes and muffled brass all interject at precisely the right moments. One of the best produced singer-songwriter tracks of all time, here for rejected loves and ugly duckings all.

129.Song:Grandloves

Artist:Purity Ring

Album:Shrines 

I showed this song to my friend one night and she had the clearest observation of why this song deserves to be here, amongst all of these greats: “That voice, coming out of this background of noise!”. “Take all the little things away/ Seek all the dimensions that stray” Megan James’s crystal clear voice emerges from a hurricane of massively compressed synth and vocal samples. As if there is a whole universe marshaling its resources to make sure that she, and only she, is the thing that matters. We also have Young Magic interpolating his song “You With Air” here, adding a rhythmic element that honestly sounds like a black hole ripping the energies downward into its gravitational center. The pre-chorus after the second verse plays around with the sonic elements, with a singular synth arpeggio drawing the vocal swirls around it, like a galaxy of stars blinking for your attention. What a soundscape, enjoy with headphones and volume turned to the max.

128.Song:97′ Bonnie And Clyde

Artist:Eminem

Album:The Slim Shady LP

The story goes that Marshal Mathers created the Slim Shady persona to help him wrestle with his inner demons and implacable rage. Judging by this song, it’s little wonder that society threw a gigantic side eye at him for the first half of his career. “97’ Bonnie And Clyde” is literally Slim Shady describing the process of disposing of his murdered wife’s corpse, all while trying to spin events to his infant daughter as non-concerning. “There goes Mama splashin’ in the water/ No more fightin’ with Dad/ No more restraining order”. It would be more concerning if the music didn’t reveal the piece’s true intent, raging against his ex yes, but this is first and foremost a song about Eminem’s love for his daughter. “Just the two of us/ Just the two of us” has warm bass lines pulsing underneath, haunting choral chords a constant companion to little Hailee’s verbal cooings. Rage, redeployed to affirmation of fatherly love. What a way to do it.

127.Song:Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

Artist:Iron Maiden

Album:Powerslave 

Having come across a vinyl copy of Powerslave, in one of the many thriving indie stores capitalizing off of vinyl’s resurgence, I commented to a friend that it was one of the only instances of album art making me feel small and insignificant. “Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” is one of those songs that can make a man feel mighty small indeed. The sheer NOISE of Iron Maiden, the way their guitars sound ancient and powerful when compared to today’s ultra compressed techniques, the way Bruce Dickinson weaves his mythic arc, is awe inspiring. Consider that this is the longest song on the list, that its guitars and rhythms find new ways to excite, to be bold, to be magnificent. Consider also that it makes us connect to an ancient human just as surely as if it were about someone from a more modern era. Like the Pyramids adorning its album art, this song will forever stand as a colossal monument to Iron Maiden’s greatness. 

126.Song:Strawberry Fields Forever

Artist:The Beatles

Album:The Beatles 1967-1970 (The Blue Album) 

“Nobody seems to understand where I’m coming from. I seem to see things in a different way from most people”. In admitting this we can see the essence of John Lennon, the artist. “Strawberry Fields” could only have been birthed from the mind of a manic creative, carried aloft only by his singular vision of reality. Brian Wilson seemed to suffer from much the same gripes, and is said to have broken down in tears after hearing it on the radio. Perhaps he sensed that someone else finally saw the world in the same way he did. In this dense mixture of strings, brass, tape loops and dry percussion are the hallmarks of a creative genius cutting loose. John’s lyricism deftly breathes life into dreamlike imagery, narrating us through cautious existence the way one tries to understand the world around them. One of the great studio masterworks, matched later only by very few artists, this is a frenetic experience, with endless rewards for repeated listens.

175.Song:Daniel

Artist:Bat For Lashes

Album:Two Suns 

Natasha Khan wrote this song because she had a crush on the character Daniel, from the seminal romantic movie The Karate Kid… Well, love makes for strange bedfellows. When you listen to this song in a good pair of headphones, these particulars vanish into an ether of suspended dread. The dark sonics that populate the soundscape, from the dry digital drums, to the FM horns, to the way that Natasha’s voice gets enveloped by oceans of reverb in the chorus, it creates a somewhat stifling atmosphere, reducing you to an antsy romantic “When I run in the dark, Daniel/ To a place that’s ours, Daniel”.  The lyrics sheet is as dark as the music, full of vivid imagery that leads into verses of stunning rhythm “And when the fires came/ The smell of cinders and rain”. Releasing a bit too early to catch the recent 80’s nostalgic wave, Daniel rides a songwriting momentum all its own, unshackled by the standards of its contemporaries.

174.Song:99 Problems

Artist:Jay-Z

Album:The Black Album  

Rick Rubin is one of those producers that defies convention. He has worked with a vast array of artists, from the thrash metal of Slayer to the neo-funk of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In all of these instances, the clarity of his productions shines like a diamond. There is no need for volume where precision will do. Thus, when working with Jay-Z for this outsized monstrosity of a rap song, he sampled from Billy Squier’s “Big Beat” [1] and ran riot. The singular clang of the detuned guitar sample allows Jay-Z the raw sonic space to vent his frustrations at police, at record companies, at the world entire. You’d think that all of this venting would make for a dour listen, but Jay-Z slips in enough humour [“You know the type, wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight”] and aplomb to keep us enthralled with his freestyle voodoo. A mighty fine showcase for both his rapping talents and Rick Rubin’s production mastery.

173.Song:Slow Dancing In A Burning Room

Artist:John Mayer

Album:Continuum 

“We’re going down/ And you can see it too”. The best of modern country showcases an instinctual inevitability, dragging us, the listeners, towards the logical conclusions of the misery on display. While John Mayer may not strike someone as a “Country” artist, he certainly displays the capability to tap into that genre’s primal dreads. The slide guitar intonations, with their blue-flame intensity, the plate reverb on the drums, the spring reverb on the lead guitar, all of this builds the sonic walls that alight in the chorus. The delicate way that the guitar chords cascade on each other, like torrents of flame climbing the ceiling, and how John flanks himself in each speaker in the chorus, it’s all so mesmerizingly heartbreaking. So desperately romantic. You get the sense that he feels fine doing a slow waltz while the flames creep up, as “Go cry about it, why don’t you?” seems to suggest, holding her close as the enveloping heat turns their love to ash.

172.Song:Rehab

Artist:Amy Winehouse

Album:Back To Black

There were a lot of superlatives attached to Amy Winehouse from the aftershock of her brief, meteoric, life in the spotlight, but focusing on what we lost can perhaps color our perceptions of the work a bit too much. For sure the tragedy surrounding her death adds an undeniable element of pathos to “Rehab”, her most iconic single, but I would argue that reading it through that lens reduces it to some kind of weird epitaph rather than the sheer creative outburst it truly is. Mark Ronson’s production style, overloading the auditory space with a mass of instrumentation-some boozy keyboards, woozy horns, pounding drums that sound like a bad hangover headache-makes it all the more remarkable just how commanding Amy’s presence is throughout. It leans on the edge of being overproduced, but her game drawls and woozy reflections like “The man said “Why do you think you’re here?”/ I said “I got no idea” keep it grounded, assured, essential.

171.Song:House Of The Rising Sun

Artist:The Animals

Album:The Animals  

Anything I write about this song’s history is just going to devolve into well-worn facts and legends, its impact on music is a very beaten path. The sound of the thing is where I must lead you and “House Of The Rising Sun” still proves to be a dark beauty, like a sunset in a thunderstorm. The way that every instrument is mixed, you’d be forgiven for thinking you had been sat down in the midst of a tornado. Just listen to John Steels drums as they just invite themselves in, uncaring as to what sonic real estate has already been claimed. Those drums are mixed very high, coming in clearer than everything but the organs and Eric Burdon’s howling vocals. Speaking of organs, Alan Price plays like a man possessed, the notes threatening to overpower everything until he finally gets to relieve some tension with a solo. Eric Burdon’s vocals are laced with dark reverb, cutting through the noise much like how a traffic warden’s whistle warns you to stop.

170.Song:Somebody To Love

Artist:Jefferson Airplane

Album:Surrealistic Pillow 

Written by somebody else, for another band, after dealing with the immeasurable misery of a breakup, Great Society guitarist Darby Slick could hardly have known how much his sister Grace Slick would perfectly complete it. The dark reverb, the clashing guitars, the pillowy yet insistent drums, all the hallmarks of a great song are there, her distinctive trilling, booming, presence elevates it into the stratosphere. “When the truth is found/ to be lies/ and all the joy/ within you dies” . Written during the time of the “Summer of Love”, you could hardly find a more cynical take on the social norms of society at the time. The venom on display perfectly describes the pure misery of people caught in emotional crosshairs. “Don’t you want somebody to love/ Don’t you need somebody to love?”.  Thus “Somebody To Love” proves that, if you profess to love everybody, you will find that not everybody loves you back for it.

169.Song:Baba O’Riley

Artist:The Who

Album:Who’s Next

Glistening. Cascading. Monumental. These are words that could describe those synths, but are just the appetizer to a song that exudes the energies of a glittering saga. “Out here in the fields/ I fight for my meals”. It’s fun to compare the approach that The Who took to crafting titanic epics as compared to Bruce Springsteen during the 70’s. Where Bruce would try to cram everything possible into as short of a time that his producers would force him to adhere to, The Who would go as far as they could, but with clarity, precision, heck even grace. Roger Daltry’s vocals soaring over the proceedings, Keith Moon’s virtuosic drumming, Pete Townshed’s near-calamitous vision for what this collection of talent was capable of; apologies to fans of Bruce, but is this not THE way to approach the craft? Take a mythic arc and allow each element its space to soar. Bruce would get the message in the 80’s, but we can all appreciate the sheer mass of this song forever.

168.Song:The Catalyst

Artist:Linkin Park

Album:A Thousand Suns 

 “God bless us, everyone/ We’re a broken people living under a loaded gun”. Linkin Park has been one of the most divisive, most maligned, artists of our young millennium. Nonetheless, they perfected their own mixture of strife and discord with this track. It combines the subtle menace of their “Session” instrumental, the sky high compression of “New Divide”, the indelible hooks of “Numb” and the bleeding lyrical anxiety of “In The End”. It is an encapsulation of all that made the band great, all that seethes under the surface of our society, and above all a monument to Chester Bennington’s inner demons. Titanic organs, frenetic electronics, phased reverb, all the tools of nu-metal harmonized into a compressed monster. Listening at full volume is advised only if you have some extreme emotions to vent, but hey, some sacrifices are required in times of distress. Never has existential angst sounded as supremely vital as this.

167.Song:Unforgettable

Artist:Nat King Cole

Album:Unforgettable 

There’s an awkward grace to the way that the piano chimes, bell-like, in the intro to this song, the hi-hat in the background interplaying with the bass, as if a crowd is clamoring together for a performance. Then Nat King Cole’s voice, described by NPR as “liquid, soothing” [1], drips into the track like honey, paired with syrupy strings, “Unforgettable/ That’s what you are”. You notice that the piano has gone quiet, as if seduced into good behaviour. “Like a song of love that clings to me./ How the thought of you does things to me” It swoons in response, a flight up the keyboard.  “Unforgettable/ In every way”. Nats genius was in making virtuosic compositional abilities sound attainable, as if he catered the music to you and your perceptions. “That’s why darling, it’s incredible/ That someone so unforgettable/ Thinks that I am unforgettable too”. Like a cherished memory given sweet, sweet, musical form.

166.Song:Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground

Artist:Blind Willie Johnson

Album:Dark Was The Night 

This is the only song on this playlist that breaks my rule of “No Instrumentals”, arguably. There certainly are a lot of “Aaah’s” and “Hmn’s” throughout this most desolate of tracks, I can almost certainly hear a few “lord”’s, even if they are so faint as to merely inspire hope in their implied presence. Listening to the churn of recording noise in the background as Blind Willie Johnson lets loose guitar slides of a haunting cadence, is truly mesmerizing. It is arguably just as stunning to realize that, almost precisely a hundred years after its recording, we still haven’t found a song that so perfectly captures such existential dread, such mournful yearning as this, captured in one take on truly ancient recording technology. It’s no wonder that NASA chose this song to represent humanity on the Voyager Golden Records, it just seems to be a natural fit among the vast, uncaring cosmos.

165.Song:Tutti Frutti

Artist:Little Richard

Album:Here’s Little Richard 

“Wop bop b-luma b-lop bam bom” Has a song ever opened with such an explosively propellant vocal lead? That famous onomatopoeia, that Little Richard takes us forcibly by the ears with, just screams excitement: The entire song rocks and rolls almost solely off of his considerably outsized presence. If you ever wondered how such a collection of syllables could ever come to fruition, apparently it was based off of a chant that Little Richard would snipe back at his boss at his old dishwashing job in Georgia [1]. That something so joyously complete should come from such a place of anger perhaps explains the rollicking energy of the rest of the song. The jumping piano lines, the horns that sound like they are being primed for demolition duty, the bass line that is barely contained by the four-on-the-floor rhythms of the drums. None of this would work as well as it does without the presence of Little Richard, a man truly big enough for the moment.

164.Song:Desired Constellation

Artist:Bjork

Album:Medulla 

Opening with a sampled vocal stretched to its mathematical extremes, bit crushed to the point of unrecognizeability, little dots and dashes of distorted blips echoing throughout as a sort of scratch drum track, the effect of a stark landscape is created. It is here, isolated and vulnerable, that Bjork’s warbly vocals come in, unsure of where they stand. “How am I going to make it right?” she sings, sometimes with a primal scream to punctuate just how alone she is. Jabs of “repeatedly” echoing in the stereo field. There is even a pseudo bass line constructed digitally from vocals, chiming in purely to add emphasis. While the central premise of the gorgeous album Medulla was its acapella nature, the heavily edited digital nature of this song arguably makes it a heavy exception. However, I think an exception or two can be granted, especially for a track as moody, fragile and beautiful as this.

163.Song:Wonderwall

 Artist:Oasis

 Album:(What’s The Story)…Morning Glory? 

“I don’t believe that anybody/ Feels the way I do about you now” The sneaky thing about depression is how it can overwhelm not just the person suffering through it, but the people around them trying to sift through the wreckage. This is why the people that do stick around you in your darkest hour can have such an impact on your life, they know the darkness inherent to the soul the most and still choose to radiate light. “Backbeat, the word is on the street/ That the fire in your heart is out”. The famous acoustic guitar chord progression that plays throughout is tinged with sadness, with a note of dourness hanging off of every strum. Maybe this is why it is notorious for being played by any fool with an acoustic guitar  at inconvenient times, the comparison just strikes the wrong notes in the listeners. But for those with a need for a compassionate ear, this recording will be your “Wonderwall”.

162.Song:A Thousand Years

Artist:Boyce Avenue/ Christina Perri

Album:Cover Sessions, Vol.3/ The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 1: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 

“Heart beats fast/ Colors and promises/ How to be brave/ How can I love when I’m afraid to fall”. Watching the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn in the theatre with my family (I was a teenager at the time), I was struck by how well Christina Perri’s song captured the sincerely fantastical atmosphere of romance novels. Anyone who has ever read one will be familiar with its yearning perforations, as if the reader’s heartbeat is supposed to burst off of the pages at every sigh. If Perri’s version captured the feeling of the old painted covers that that genre was famous for, then Boyce Avenue’s stripped down recording captures a more modern, wistful portrayal of churning emotions. Alejandro Manzano’s gorgeous falsetto highs swoon over and around the chords, as if serenading the listener through an eternal dance, where hidden truths are always on the edge of being revealed, and where the place only two people embrace is the center of the universe.

161.Song:Dancing Queen

Artist:ABBA

Album:Arrival 

“Anybody could be that guy” When you are an attractive young woman given a chance to be the center of attention, there is a certain tragic element to it. As if you are surrendering your purity for a chance to be seen, giving yourself to a temporary world of dancing bliss. Is this why ABBA’s vocals throughout sound so bittersweet? So melancholic about the possibilities? Listening to this song fifty years after it was released, after all of the revolutions in dance music that have happened since, I can’t escape the feeling that it captured something brittle and evergreen that nothing since has managed. Hearing the group harmonize over “See that girl/ watch that scene/ Diggin’ the dancing queen”, are we not supposed to feel that some important barrier has been crossed? Even the way that one member occasionally reaches the higher registers in conjunction with the harmonies is spooky, as if ABBA is tapping into some truly primal emotions here.

160.Song:Sexual Healing

Artist:Marvin Gaye

Album:Midnight Love 

I debated for quite awhile whether this or “Let’s Get It On” would be the Marvin Gaye seductive feature. The main hangup for the longest time for me was whether such out-and-out outpouring of our most primal urges in soul form wouldn’t come across as the corniest fucking thing in the universe. Sometimes, you have to let your instincts guide you. “Sexual Healing” is a song where only Marvin Gaye could have marshalled the required musical energies. His name alone adorns every instrument credit, bar the guitar and some background vocals from Harvey Fuqua and Gordon Banks. His voice sighs with such silky smooth intent, going into the higher registers as if pleading for his life, seducing the audience with his sheer charisma.   “And when I get that feeling/ I want sexual healing”. With its warm, champagne, drum machines and seductively precise night-time aura synths, “Sexual Healing” set the tone for 80’s soul as it embraced the digital era.

159.Song:The Weight

Artist:The Band

Album:Music From The Big Pink

“Take a load off Fanny/ Take a load for free/…You put the load right on me”. The parable of a travelling stranger visiting small towns, encountering strange people and events, is one as old as time. Certainly Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales would find something in common with this song that sounds like it has been around forever, drifting through the ages until needed. When lyrics like “I pulled into Nazareth/ I was feeling ‘bout half past dead” appear you can only shake your head in disbelief. Surely this song can’t just crib elements from the Bible and make that tome’s themes resonate as strongly now, during the listening experience, as it did back when it was written? Well it can and does. The Band’s harmonies have them singing syrupy sweet lines with complete sincerity, the booming drums sound like they are trying to escape from a prison of cake icing, all a hauntingly resonant mix for true believers.

158.Song:It Was A Good Day

Artist:Ice Cube

Album:The Predator 

Listening to this song, you have to wonder how insanely violent 90’s Los Angeles was for a “Good Day” for Ice Cube to be a day where he “didn’t have to use [his] AK”.  But here we are, soldiering on as Ice Cube reels off a laundry list of good things he finds himself celebrating “Lookin’ in my mirror/ not a jacker in sight” . The whole thing hangs off of a generously loud Isley Brothers sample, from their song “Footsteps In The Dark”, lending its chill auras to this mass of litanies.  Despite the fact that he is coasting off of good vibes, there is an element of imminent danger laced throughout the song “Hooked it up for later as I hit the door/ Thinkin’ “Will I live another twenty-four?”, even the end of the song has him halt things “Hey, wait a minute/…What the fuck am I thinking?” as if tomorrow will bring the good times to a screeching halt. Whatever, you only live once, enjoy the good times while they last.

157.Song:Maybellene

Artist:Chuck Berry

Album:Chuck Berry Is On Top 

I know that Chuck Berry has many more, arguably more important records in his catalog, the amount of credentials poured on anthems like “Johnny B Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven” is enough to make me wince at my continuous efforts to like them, but “Maybellene” is definitively his greatest burst of creativity. It sounds notably, meaningfully, different from the rest of his work, opening with a comparatively sparse guitar intro, it unleashes itself with the same cocksure confidence that would characterize all hard rock released after. Ebby Hardy’s drums pound gloriously in the background while Berry’s guitar gets smothered in a thick honey glaze of distortion and does battle with the booming bass and surprise maracas. Berry’s game lyricism is a treat to listen to as he speeds through lyrics like “Oh, Maybellene/ why can’t you be true?/ you done started back doing the things you used to do”. It rushes by nearly as fast as your fleeting passions.

156.Song:My Curse

Artist:Killswitch Engage

Album:As Daylight Dies

For a metal song, this has a terribly pretty opening couple of bars. The way that the guitar arpeggios ascend the scales, ringing out with a glassy beauty, doesn’t fade away when the full bath of distortion and chugging riffage kicks in, if anything it enhances it. “I watched you walk away/…I strain my eyes/ Hoping to see you again”. Listening to Howard Jones deep voice froth and spit and then seamlessly transition to operatic flights is a treat for the ears. The extremely tight rhythms of the drummer, one Justin Foley, primes us for the emotional clarity of the choruses and bridge, where the guitars open up a little as well.  Those trashing “This. Is. My. Curse” riffs allow the rest of surrounding verses a chance to release some pent up frustrations, that opening riff returning in the chorus has the audible effect of trying to drag us back to that opening serenity. “There is love/ Burning to find you/ Will you wait for me?”.

155.Song:Hung Up

Artist:Madonna

Album:Confessions on a Dance Floor

“Time goes by so slowly” sings Madonna as the famous ABBA sample slowly fades in (from the song “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”). The undulating bass line is as enormous and energizing as the moment allows, suffocating the listener with its presence throughout. A few of the many details that tickle my eardrums in particular are the various ways that Madonna multi-tracks her vocals; sometimes allowing delays to do the work, but oftentimes having this higher register distorted and pitch shifted track hovering just barely perceptible above the din of the dancefloor. The effect of all of these layers of pumping sound is a shimmering cadence. Time most definitely does not go by slowly here. Allowing yourself to be whipped around like the frenetic ABBA sample, with its uncanny ability to sound both ancient and utterly timeless, is, quite simply, the least your queen of pop demands of you.

154.Song:What’d I Say

Artist:Ray Charles

Album:What’d I Say 

The moment that you realize that Ray Charles was a songwriting maestro, as well as a transcendent performer, is when you let “What I’d Say” prove it to you. This was my journey into his discography, forever conscious of my musical taste colliding with my search for some sort of objective “There it is!” for great music. For “What I’d Say”, that moment comes in at 2:57, where the music stops while the audience seems to be caught up in an argument, forcing him to wrangle them back into obedience. The specific way that he beckons the harmonizing call-and-response with “Yeah (Nah)/ Oh (Oh)/ Ah (Ah)/[Etc.] is breathtaking. For sure, the bouncy Wurlitzer line and crackling piano that Ray composed and arranged, allow this moment to have its outsized impact, after all, what good is willing the crowd back to a party if the party wasn’t hella fun to begin with? “Come and love your daddy all night long”.

153.Song:Breaking The Law

Artist:Judas Priest

Album:British Steel 

The music video for this song, one of the earliest for heavy metal, is a fun trip. Following the band as they liberate a bank from the burden of its gold records, it reaches levels of matter-of-fact cheesiness that at least a few bands would take note of in the coming decade. Was Rob Halford being serious when he screamed out “You don’t know what it’s like!” as if he was a folk hero doing time? Hard to say, but we do have this nice little metal gem to compensate us for our time. The twin guitar attack of K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton form a nice bed of distortion for Rob Halford to rouse himself out of and lament with his operatic vocals “So much for the golden future, I can’t even start”. The bass guitar is one element of this song that I feel adds to that aforementioned cheesy atmosphere, just the way it “phlumps” through the meters hits me with a smile. Sometimes you need a heavy dose of cheese for a healthy musical diet.

152.Song:Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You

Artist:Lauryn Hill/ Frank Valli

Album:The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill/ Frank Valli: Solo 

Frank Valli’s original recording is a nostalgic treat, clean and bubbling with joy. It pales next to Lauryn Hill’s vivacious cover. Laced throughout with late 90’s production hallmarks, the sensibly clean production, random background vocal interjections, and repetitive drum loops. Lauryn Hill’s vocals glaze themselves over the lyrics like honey. “You’re just too good to be true/ Can’t take my eyes off of you”. The intro sets the tone so well, with Lauryn replacing the original’s horns with her vocal impressions and layering up a sickly sweet chorus, that it is very hard not to be drawn in. All of this induces a strong, uncanny, gossamer nostalgic quality, as if this song exists on some immaterial sunlit upland that we can only aspire to dream of. As the last vestiges of living memory of the pop culture landscape of the Fifties leave us, covers like this at least remind us that there was real joy to be had, even if it was as fleeting as all first loves are.

151.Song:Rebel, Rebel

Artist:David Bowie

Album:Diamond Dogs 

If I had to pick one song that really got the gears of “car radio” hits grinding, it’s this one. Listen to that guitar riff. How it glistens through the distortion, how it seems catered to the sight of the landscape passing by your car windows. Even its halting nature allows for the notes that do ring out to feel bigger in the mix, as if you are a passenger to the moment. David Bowie’s vocals, “doo, doo”-ing and emphatically pushing through the stereo mix and insistent drum beats, double tracks and pans around as needed, straining against the limitations of the speakers and society “Hot tramp, I love you so”. The way that every instrument is mixed leads to rich rewards for repeat listens, check the cowbell that rings throughout, or the acoustic guitar layered ever so lovingly alongside the main electric guitar. Playing off of the curious divide between out-loud insistence and innate desires, “Rebel, Rebel” is one for the diamonds in life.

200.Song:Fixed

Artist:Stars

Album:The Five Ghosts  

There’s a very specific moment I want you to listen to that will convert you into a believer; After the lyrics “It’s all in your head/ Wonder if I’m fixed to cut” play for the first time, I guarantee that the swirl of guitars that come in will send you into a light sense of physical careen. This is the gift that the tight rhythms and steadfast synths beforehand have granted you, the ability to almost literally, be physically moved by a song. Amy Millan’s waif-like vocals are the backbone of the maelstrom, keeping us centered through her recitations “What you want, you are, you always were”. The music video emphasizes minute moments of clarity as cascading imagery plays all around the band, fitting perfectly to the beats given to us. Eventually things come to a climax as all the elements combine into a moment of pure joy after “Is it your fall?” recites itself into our heads. “You, you’re sinking so they say”, playing us out, leaving us plenty of room for hope.

199.Song:California Dreamin’

Artist:The Mamas And The Papas

Album:If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears 

As a native Edmontonian, I can sympathize strongly with people who yearn for warmer climates. It’s not just the fact that the temperature can dip to body-numbing extremes, it’s also the fact that you are often trapped inside physically with people who you may or may not want to be around. The emotions become as icy as the weather. “If I didn’t tell her (If I didn’t tell her)/ I could leave today (I could leave today)/ California Dreamin’”. This is why this song sounds as haunting as it does, it recognizes our innate need for warmth, physical and emotional, and speaks to what separates us from it. The call-and-response harmonies, alternating between the speakers, act like the devil and angel on the shoulders of every pondering soul, except that they eventually end up agreeing on the necessary point. The crescendo at the end feels like it’s pushing you towards a final conclusion.; “California Dreamin’/ On such a winter’s day”.

198.Song:Train In Vain (Stand By Me)

Artist:The Clash

Album:London Calling 

“You didn’t stand by me/ No, not at all”.  Punks from this era of music had a knack for turning some of the most difficult emotions into joyful outbursts. The Ramones could craft whole albums of surf-rock adjacent power pop, The Sex Pistols made raucous rebellion sound like the only possible avenue for teenage angst, and The Clash sounded like they were going on a Magic School Bus field trip through popular music history. Dropping in as a hidden track on the seminal London Calling album, “Train In Vain” is just about the happiest sounding breakup anthem I’ve ever heard, and it takes seemingly every known compositional trick to accomplish that feeling. We’ve got organs, snappy guitar licks, harmonicas, heavily syncopated vocals by Mick Jones and, of course, cowbells, cowbells people!. All this to sound like breaking up is the best thing to do for all involved.”All the times, when we were close/ I’ll remember these things the most”.

197.Song:Psychosocial

Artist:Slipknot

Album:All Hope Is Gone 

In the film Gladiator, when the main character Maximus asks the audience at the gladiatorial arena, after he’s just brutally killed a few people right in front of them, “Are you not entertained?”, he already knows the answer; After all, this is what they are here for. Written in a world dominated by turmoil in the Middle East, mostly precipitated by the US invasion of Iraq, little did Corey Taylor know how prophetic his lyrics for “Psychosocial” would still prove to be nearly twenty years later. “Fake anti-fascist lie/ I tried to tell you, but/ Your purple hearts are giving out”. The beauty of metal is that the crushing sonics and cliffs of compression allow us, the audience, to vent our most extreme emotions. What gives “Psychosocial” its special power is the dichotomy between its dense guitar riffage and the comparative beauty offered by the chorus. “And the rain will kill us all/ Throw ourselves against the wall”. Bleak, but it is what we are here for.

196.Song:I Want To Take You Higher

Artist:Sly & The Family Stone

Album:Stand! 

On “I Want To Take You Higher”, Sly Stone harnesses the basic powers of his musical universe. Throwing together what seems like every possible instrument, he crafts a musical explosion, crackling with fiery intensity on every note. “I want to take you higher” works so very well on the musical layer that the implied drug usage barely registers. The heedless momentum of the soundscape is such that even when the lyrics devolve into complete nonsense, the famous “Boom Laka-laka-laka”’s, it feels completely natural. Name an instrument and it’s likely found somewhere within the mix, surfacing for air when needed for maximum impact. The Genius page highlights how powerfully this song hit when performed at Woodstock, but I, and other newer listeners, came across this song unhindered by historical context and found it just as meaningful, just as thrilling a listening experience as any great song before or since.

195.Song:I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)

Artist:The Electric Prunes

Album:I Had Too Much To Dream 

Listening to this song in a good pair of headphones almost induces a feeling of “I had too much to listen to last night”. Presaging trip-hop by three decades, the moody darkness of this song, where tape manipulations and sheer abyssal energy collide against the “traditional” psychedelic rock trappings, is a revelation today. The way that the guitars shimmer in one ear, and zap in the other, how the tape-reversed lines flit in and out of consciousness like a half-remembered dream, how they screech a moan of “No” in an uncanny-valley-like fashion, triggering primal fears in the listener, it’s not something I recommend listening to while stoned. The whole thing is delivered with such assuredness that it comes as a surprise to learn that Producer Dave Hassinger thought that the band could not write their own material, bringing in veteran songwriters Nancie Mantz and Annette Tucker to do so[1]. Oh well, what’s here is supreme sorcery.

194.Song:When I’m Up (I Can’t Get Down)

Artist:Great Big Sea

Album:Play 

“I am the fountain of affection/ I’m the instrument of joy” Alan Doyle sings. “I’m the boy/ I’m the boy”.  Growing up, Great Big Sea was one of the few bands that connected us western Canadians with their brethren in the Atlantic provinces, and “When I’m Up” was the band’s hallmark anthem of joy. I only found out it was a cover of a song, from an obscure English folk rock group Oysterband, when doing research for the playlist. Listening to their version very quickly reveals how beloved the cover has become. It simply radiates warmth from every note, you can easily imagine a camera rotating around the band onstage as they are feted by the audience. The dynamics on display, the quiet running headlong into the loud, allow each chorus their moment in the spotlight, each a sunspot of joy unto themselves “When I’m up I can’t get down/ Get my feet back on the ground”. A lush, harmonious, wellspring.

193.Song:Feel Good Inc.

Artist:Gorillaz

Album:Demon Days 

Sometimes you run into a song that defies convention so thoroughly that it circles around to being naturalistic, as if it couldn’t exist in any environment but the most conceited. “You got a new horizon, it’s ephemeral style/ A melancholy town where we never smile”. That bass line is so catchy that you suspect an insidious trap has been laid, luring you into complacency while the lyrics slice you to pieces. Is it the most ironic possible play to have two of three De La Soul members in on this? Let me ask you this, how long was it until you realized those “He he”’s in the beginning were actually “Feel Good”? Don’t lie. It doesn’t help when Trugouy The Dove is laughing alongside those shuffling nonsense verbs. “Feel Good Inc.” is simply priming you for disappointment in yourself, laughing at your inability to make out what should be blindingly obvious. One of the most incisive dark mirrors ever held up to the post-grunge era.

192.Song:Silver Stallion

Artist:The Highwaymen

Album:Highwaymen 2 

Of all of the 80’s supergroups, The Highwaymen were the ones who most capitalized on their appeal. Four country superstars writing a multi-layered fable of stealing a silver stallion and wooing a wild-eyed woman. Nothing more, nothing less. Perfect just the way it is. I’ve had a few theories running in my head as to how Country music has had an uncanny ability to glide over the mid-western experience, especially in the era of The Highwaymen. The one I believe in the most is those guitar tones, of which “Silver Stallion”’s oily lead tone is the best example. Listen to the way it “bubbles” up during the verses, and then to when it gushes up at the end of the choruses. Listen as well to the acoustic guitars that bed the lyrics as each singer takes his turn at the helm. The glide. Like in the music video where the sepia-toned Wild West intro morphs into a full-color motorcycle odyssey. A companion fable, musically, lyrically, legendarily.

191.Song:Highway 61 Revisited

Artist:Bob Dylan

Album:Highway 61 Revisited 

When Bob Dylan has “God say: you can do what you want Abe but/ Next time you see me comin’ you better run/ Well, Abe said, where do you want this Killin’ done?” is when you realize just how impressive he was as a lyricist. Mixing fantastical fable with cluttered whimsy, his weaving of a rough narrative around the titular Highway 61 starts as it means to go on; With a steam whistle beckoning us forward. The momentum doesn’t stop, with the guitars jamming along, some electrics mimicking the steam whistle from the intro, and a drum kit that has all the fun it can in the corner. What is this song about? Does it matter? Do lyrics like “But the second mother was with the seventh son” have any connection to the rest of the song? If I had to hazard a guess, it could just illustrate the surreality of reality, perceived and factual, as it collides with our personal narratives of the world. But that’s just one guess amongst a myriad.

190.Song:Shooting Stars

Artist:Bag Raiders

Album:Bag Raiders 

“Gave my love to a shooting star/ But she moves so fast that I can’t keep up, I’m chasin’” There is a certain high-wire balance that the most memorable of dance tracks must ride. Either they are so catchy that everyone and their mother knows about them and thus the general public tires of them, or they have enough cultural cachet to remain relevant despite themselves. There is no inbetween. “Shooting Stars” toes the line but ultimately falls into the latter category. The needle-nosed synth lead that plays throughout runs the danger of being an annoyance, but the way it melodiously rides the chords saves it from catastrophe, even if that would prove its most memetic element. The single best decision the Bag Raiders made was to delay the chorus until the very end, fulfilling the symbolic importance of its moment, allowing the discotheque elements to shine through, leaving us with a feeling of serene comfort. “When she falls/ I’ll be waitin’”.

189.Song:Schizophrenia

Artist:Sonic Youth

Album:Sister 

While Sonic Youth’s liquid guitar tones have always given their records an off-kilter appeal, it is with “Schizophrenia” that they attain the peak of their aspirations. Soft pillowy drums pin the listener in place as first Thurston Moore and then Kim Gordon air out their emotions. Thurston with the acid imagery of lyrics like “She said “Jesus had a twin, who knew nothing about sin/ She was laughing like crazy, at the trouble I’m in”, Kim with the Sphynxian “My future is static/ It’s already had it”. Meanwhile the guitars are slinking to and fro, melodic lines flicking in and out of consciousness, multiple guitar tones playing off of and intersecting with each other. A gorgeous kaleidoscope of detuned clumsiness. Eventually, like almost anybody who has ever had to take care of a loved one with schizophrenia, the entire band seems to collapse at the end, all hope leaving the ears with a detuned bass note the last thing we hear.

188.Song:(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay

Artist:Otis Redding

Album:The Dock Of The Bay 

The main quality that strikes you when listening to “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” is its assuredness, the steady workmanship that elevates the material. Consider the considerably on-point rhythm section, Al Jackson Jr. on drums and Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass. The way that their performances interleave with the rest of the instrumentation allows Otis’s main vocal the space it needs to breathe the ocean air. Steady, insistent, undulating like waves against the pier. Steve Cropper on the guitar and Booker T. Jones complete the general musical picture, with a small horn section for emphasis. All this to gain an air of serenity few songs have achieved. The ultimate tragedy of Otis’s untimely end before his completion of this song’s vocal parts just adds to its composure, as his whistling, originally recorded as a scratch track before the planned lead vocal, takes over. As if he is sitting alongside us, marvelling at life’s tranquility.

187.Song:Levi Stubbs’ Tears

Artist:Billy Bragg

Album:Talking With The Taxman About Poetry 

When you hear the guitar chords being strummed and some of the strings detuning in Billy Bragg’s hands, when you hear the stark spring reverb accompanying the hard strikes of the picks, nothing can separate you from the lived in reality of this song. The details are all gummed up in the gears of life’s momentum, Bragg’s voice bends and breaks on lines like “When the world falls apart/ Some things stay in place” the immediate warmth of the follow-up “Levi Stubbs’ tears run down his face” suggest a narrator who cares enough to notice that the subject even existed. Connecting folk traditions to their soul counterparts like this lends a universal air to the grim events. Describing the woman, a widow living in abject poverty, who was just shot by her lover “It hurt her more to see him walking out the door”. The horn that accompanies Bragg in the fadeout plays like an army band playing Taps to fallen warriors. “When the world falls apart…”

186.Song:Anchor

Artist:Novo Amor

Album:Bathing Beach EP

“Took the breath from my open mouth/ Never known how it broke me down” The vast expanse of the oceans pulsing up against the shoreline has generated reams of poetic imagery since time immemorial; Our modern wealth of artistic and technological capabilities now finally allow us to capture its magnitude. With acoustic guitars that sound like the embodiment of old wooden sailing ships, creaking as the waves batter them, buzzing strings accenting the delicate fingerings, Welsh artist Novo Amor’s heart is laid bare. His falsetto vocals drift  gently through phrases such as “Caught the air in your woven mouth/ I’ll be hearing how you went/ in search of someone else”. While some may find the imagery basic, “Anchor up to me, love” is the climax for instance, it’s the perfect way that Novo Amor weaves together his musical and  artistic elements that give this song the space it needs to breathe, to rise and fall with the emotional tides.

185.Song:Walk This Way

Artist:Run DMC feat. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry/ Aerosmith

Album:Raising Hell/ Toys In The Attic 

To think that it took a lot of convincing by Rick Rubin for Run DMC to agree to re-recording “Walk This Way” with Aerosmith rather than merely sampling it and calling it a day. We might have gotten a far clumsier, and therefore less vital, listening experience. To be sure, it still took an inspired performance by Steven Tyler, with his chaotic dynamic vocal swings, and Joe Perry’s guitar had to conform itself to hip-hop rhythms in order for this hybrid to stand a chance. It cleared the bar, setting the stage for countless rap-rock acts to come, whether they leaned toward the heavier end of the scales, ie:Rage Against The Machine, or simply grafting rock guitar onto the template like nu-metal would do. Let’s not sell the MC’s short either, Run Rey and DMC’s call and response rhythms perfectly ape Joe Perry’s iconic riffage, giving the song a chance for it to find its optimal aesthetics. Steven Tyler joining in on the fun is simply perfect symbolic excess.

184.Song:Levels

Artist:Avicii

Album:Levels (Remixes) EP

“Levels” is a song that has layers to it, like a cake there is no use to prying those sheets of sugary delight off individually, you just have to bite down and take it all in at once. Hence, this bouncy, energetic outburst. Going back to the cake analogy, I may just be really hungry as I’m typing this so bear with me, the synth lines that open weave their way up and down the notes like icing being applied in intricate patterns. Taking that and the bass line in, which is pumping to the max, and we have a neat way of building towards the main synth riff, which is that bounce, the verve, that gives this song its dynamism. The bass line comes roaring back in, allowing everything to rebound off of its overpowering rhythm. Then Etta James’ voice enters, “Oh, sometimes I get a good feeling”, her soulful inflection contrasting with the saw wave’s bubbling below. Sometimes you just have to let the good feelings overtake you. Now excuse me while I eat some cake.

183.Song:Superfly

Artist:Curtis Mayfield

Album:Superfly Original Soundtrack 

It’s curious that some of the greatest civil rights minded soul/funk came out of the multimedia world of the Blaxploitation era in cinema. Alongside his output on films like Shaft, Curtis Mayfield wasn’t one to await the eye of the storm, he created sonic hurricanes to bring people towards it himself. “Superfly” is both a theme song for a seedy film and an anthem that wields details of Mayfields’ upbringing into a dense funk-soul mix that holds rich rewards for repeat listens. Instruments come headlong into the mix, heedless of anything and yet precisely where they are needed. The warmth of the bass guitar does battle with congas and electric guitars, the blaring horns seem to be battling with themselves throughout. All this chaos and at the center of it lies Curtis, whose singing is so nonchalant that it blends into the narrative like those old cinematic newspaper swirls. It is effortlessly cool in how stunningly busy it is. In essence, “Superfly”.

182.Song:Highway To Hell

Artist:AC DC

Album:Highway To Hell 

Listen to Angus Young’s famous guitar riff. To how the chords seem to bristle with a fiery intensity, contained just barely by the brief pauses. To how the accompanying reverb exists only to make everything loud, suddenly. Then the dry drums kick in, needing only their studio room reverb to stand out. When Bon Scott finally starts singing “Livin’ easy, lovin’ free/ Season ticket on a one way ride”, it has a curiously inevitable edge to it that drags you along. Only when he sings “My friends are gonna be there too” does the rest of the band kick in and the chorus explodes. That barely contained fire I mentioned at the start, it gets unleashed in the solo that sounds like a gas-stack burn-off. Highway To Hell proves that you can drag people kicking and screaming towards a rebellious climax, as long as your joie de vivre is fully evident; Damn the consequences. “Don’t stop me”.

181.Song:Summer Of 69′

Artist:Bryan Adams

Album:Reckless 

Ha,ha, it’s about 69’, the sex position. Get it?. Confirming the “true” meaning of this song [Bryan Adams would have been only nine years old in the supposed “best days of [his] life”], however, does nothing to taint it; in fact, that very joke may be the key to fully appreciating its greatness. When Bryan belts out “Oh, and when you held my hand/ I knew that it was now or never”, what is that but gung ho adolescence? The joke is the embodiment of that energy. Surrounded by shimmering guitars and soaked in reverb, Bryan Adams raspy delivery is joyful, even when he is listing out the consequences of juvenile abandon, “[We] had a band and we tried real hard/ Jimmy quit, Jody got married/ Should’ve known we’d never get far”. What regrets are expressed are couched in the exuberance of the delivery. This is youth, joyously embraced, with all that it brings with it. “Those were the best days of my life”.

180.Song:You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’

Artist:The Righteous Brothers

Album:You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ 

A lot of music history is tied into this song and its creation. Note how massive it sounds. How every instrument feeds into a sonic palette that reaches into every possible crevasse of the stereo field. How Bill Medley’s low baritone holds the centre hostage until his partner Bobby Hatfield joins in. In the background you hear parts of The Ronettes, The Blossoms and the studio musicians that you had to have in your back pocket in this era, The Wrecking Crew. Hey, there’s Cher as well. A song that sounds this monumental and has this formidable a pedigree behind it, it would be a major catastrophe if something went wrong. Unfortunately, that tragedy would unfold decades later and arguably shouldn’t affect how we speak of true musical achievements like this, but the wall of sound that Phil Spector created always had an inherent darkness that feeds into every aspect of his legacy. Still, this song haunts like few others, it just carries unintended ghosts.

179.Song:Mannish Boy

Artist:Muddy Waters

Album:Hard Again 

Take the 1977 version over the original 1955 recording. Not only does the 1955 version have the unfortunate technological handicaps of its era, but it also lacks the rhythmic punch, the verve, of the newer recording. It also lacks Johnny Winter, who hypes things up and provides crucial backing guitars, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith on drums, which threaten to blow out the speakers with their tenacity, and James Cotton on Harmonica.. The result is a leaner, meaner, recording. Here is a song where Muddy Waters spells out MAN and BOY in the chorus with virility, where Johnny Winter is credited with “Miscellaneous screams” on Wikipedia and that’s not a portent of doom. The great strength of blues greats is that you could always feel the artists’ humanity through their music that can’t simply be aped, Muddy Waters makes his case for greatness by being as direct as possible “I’m a man/ I’m a full grown man”. No struggle here, just putting the MAN in humanity.

178.Song:Mordecai

Artist:Between The Buried And Me

Album:The Silent Circus 

One of the joys of listening to modern metalcore, is how intriguingly fluid the structures can be. Pairing the lyrics with the music is not often a verse/chorus/verse affair so much as it is a strongly worded memo, venting all of the singer’s concerns in one huge trauma-dump session. Mordecai starts off with extreme guitar riffage, from thrashing to straight up mauling the guitar to achieve its relevant-to-the-plot screechings. Tommy Rogers death growls his way through a serious mid life crisis “I learned to be selfish today/ I learned to be alive” . All of this roughness, this screaming into the void gives way to more melodic guitars and lucid yelps, then into a hazy dreamscape where Rogers tries to lullaby you to sleep. Then the climax hits, where the guitars pan wider to bathe you in distortion, chugging away as he finally cuts us loose with his denouement. “From the grind that annoys/ and the sarcasm they all hate”. Scrappy, churning, frothy stuff.

177.Song:Use Somebody

Artist:Kings Of Leon

Album:Only By The Night 

In an era where rock anthems were a dying breed, where digital perfection in music production was starting to overpower the charts, Kings Of Leon dropped this loud, clumsy beauty. The last rock song to win Record Of The Year at the Grammy Awards, “Use Somebody” has retained its anthemic powers. It has done this despite having a mix where every element seems to be trying to dig itself out of a grave of hazy muck. Trying to get a clear view of things seems impossible, until Caleb Williams first starts singing. “I’ve been roamin’ around, always looking down at all I see”. Singing about how most people hope for love amidst the noise of our modern lives, the lengths we go to for someone, anyone to notice us. So the song is working on a textual, meta and psychological level. All of the bluster, all of the moments where we want to just clearly hear the “Whoa”’s, it’s literally perfectly imperfect. Frustrating yes, but damn if it isn’t fun.

176.Song:Ultraviolet (Light My Way)

Artist:U2

Album:Achtung Baby

There is an inherent goofiness to love songs, as if the declaration is best kept to yourself rather than displayed loudly for all to hear. U2, a band that approached rock music from quasi-religious, sonically uplifting,  angles, was never afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Thus, on Achtung Baby, we have a song where Bono sings “Baby, Baby, Baby/ Light My Way” without any hint of revulsion or cringe coming from the listener. It does this by wrapping heartfelt, surprisingly dark lyrics in a glistening wreath of booming drums, warm bass lines and The Edge’s signature shimmering guitars, shrouding all of this under a veil of titanic amounts of reverb. “There is a silence that comes to a house/ where no one can sleep/ I guess it’s the price of love/ I know it’s not cheap”.  If any love song deserved a stadium, it’s this one.  In a career filled with dozens of iconic anthems, “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” is U2’s greatest soar song.

225.Song:I Fall In Love Too Easily

Artist:Chet Baker

Album:Chet Baker Sings  

For a song that has become a jazz standard performed by hundreds of artists, ever since Frank Sinatra first sung it in 1945, nobody has matched its alchemical energies quite like Chet Baker. His hauntingly feminine voice doesn’t just embody the lyrics, he haunts the headspace of anyone getting over a heartbreak. “I fall in love too terribly hard/ For love to ever last”, while this would be called love bombing today and possibly even frowned upon, Chet’s delivery absolutely breaks the barriers to empathy with the way his voice just falls upon every syllable, the melancholia that drips off of every word “My heart should be well-schooled/ ‘cause I’ve been fooled in the past”. Here is a jazz song that, through its perfection in delivery, defies convention, breaks through the mere boundaries of genre to become what every performer wants in their catalogue: A timeless classic.

224.Song:Entertain

Artist:Sleater-Kinney

Album:The Woods

The music industry is rife with artists struggling to reconcile their artistic impulses with the suffocating corporatism and critical gatekeeping that infest it. Sleater Kinney is one of those artists. “Entertain” is also a massively muscular explosive tirade. There is no reconciliation for this band, on this song, with this sound. “If you’re here because you want to be entertained/ Go away/ Please go away” Opening with Janet Weiss’s pummeling lead-in drums and guitars that sound vaguely threatening and cinematic at the same time, Carrie Brownstein’s lead vocal carries us off into a world of howling rage. Her voice goes from full throated screams to rhythmic yelps, careening towards a chorus of sycophantic redress. Released in a time before nostalgic reminiscence overwhelmed pop culture, lines like “Nostalgia, you’re using it like a whore/ It’s better than before/ it’s better than before” can’t help but maintain their relevance.

223.Song:Adam’s Song

Artist:Blink 182

Album:Enema Of The State 

The theory that “Adam’s Song” was inspired by an actual suicide letter sent to the band has long been debunked, but it’s understandable how people would come to that conclusion given how detailed the lyrics are about a boy feeling his way through his options in life. It was actually written as a metaphor for Mark Hoppus’s depression while the other two members of the band had girlfriends as he suffered alone [1]. Regardless, this is one of the most emotionally charged pop-punk songs ever written, with Mark successfully capturing the feelings of someone driven to a major suicide attempt “I’m too depressed to go on/ You’ll be sorry when I’m gone”. With Travis Barker’s compassionate drumming powering us through, and Mark Delonge’s guitars subsiding to allow Hoppus’s verses to shine, the song eventually soars to a life-affirming climax “Days when I still felt alive/ We couldn’t wait to get outside/ The world was wide”.

222.Song:Fight For Your Right

Artist:Beastie Boys

Album:Licensed To Ill 

I’m running a lot of risk here. Yes, yes, I know, “Sabotage” is just sitting there, begging for my appreciation. “Intergalactic”’s cosmic flows are forever worming their way into my skull and any of the songs off of Paul’s Boutique are objectively better crafted than this clumsy, juvenile, anthem. But can we just sit back and appreciate the absolute gall here? This is a song with no actual aspirations to meaning, just a showcase for each of the Beastie Boys personalities amidst a very dated metal mixture. It’s not revolutionary, it just rocks, unapologetically. We need more songs like it, frankly. The chugging guitar riffs in the verses are like audible winding springs, coiling up the steel for maximum impact until the mandatory solo. It’s like the Boys are capturing the fading energies of a gilded age, like the boys on Wayne’s World forever holding off the mid-life crisis. An absolutely adorable, frantically spastic, good time.

221.Song:Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

Artist:The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Album:Electric Ladyland 

Jimi Hendrix is either the greatest guitar player in the history of the instrument, or he isn’t. He is a binary all unto himself. The key to his greatness was not technical perfection, or even wild leaps in songwriting, but his sheer dynamism on the fretboard. Listening to him cut loose, as he does here, is like being the flames on his stratocaster, always hot, never in danger of going out with a whimper, incandescent. The signature Wah-wah’s here serve like an oil slick leading up to the explosive verses. Credit to the producer though, who knew to juice up his playing style with frantic spasms of stereo pans and volume fluctuations, said producer…Jimi himself. If he hadn’t died so prematurely, the ensuing decades of popular music might have been more experimental, more dynamic and unpredictable. But what we have here is pure alchemy on the guitar, spinning gold out of the pickups. No one has come close to equalling his virtuosity since.

220.Song:Fallin’

Artist:Alicia Keys

Album:Songs In A Minor 

“Sometimes I feel good/ Sometimes I feel used”. Anyone who’s been in a turbulent relationship can relate to the tortured emotional swings that accompany the undulating tides of torrid love. Alicia Keys wanted to write a song that embodied those feelings but with a youthful focus, to highlight that adolescents can and do go through the same whipsawing passions.She thus infuses every note she sings with the kind of assured grace that old R&B pros used to conjure, providing a steady hand at the wheel, guiding us through the storm. Aside from writing, she also produced “Fallin’”, making sure that every instrument packed a sonic punch, particularly the drums which I adore for the propulsive kicks and muted hi-hats. Even if Alicia Keys finds herself singing “I keep fallin’ in and out/ Of love with you” there are no plausible circumstances where a listener would tire of this song, of her, of our youthful energies made manifest here.

219.Song:Cactus Tree

Artist:Joni Mitchell

Album:Song To A Seagull 

Sometimes an artist gets it right the first time, as Joni Mitchell did here, on her debut album. The warmth of the acoustic guitars, recorded by David Crosby, is an ideal bed for lyrics that approach epic status as its female subject woos and is wooed, loves and loses love. Seriously, you can’t tell me you can hear “There’s a man who’s been out sailing/ In a decade full of dreams” and not desire to find out what’s about to happen? Joni’s performance alternates between rhythmic bluntness and serene highs, its dynamics are often breathtaking with how many shifts in emotional yearning can be heard. Little touches, like when she is doubled and then tripled, with each backing track singular in its musical purpose and place in the mix. With all of the praise that surrounds her later work, I humbly ask that you dedicate some time listening to this, one of the best tracks in her legendary discography. “She’s so busy being free”.

218.Song:Time To Pretend

Artist:MGMT

Album:Oracular Spectacular 

The curious thing about imagination is how precarious it is, how fragile our recollections can be of those quicksilver moments of creativity. If you don’t take care to note things down, to transcribe that music from your head, you can easily forget and lose sight of what’s important. I think this is why MGMT pushed the volume knobs as high as they could go on Oracular Spectacular, and then pushed their compressors even further, it was to prove a point. They didn’t want you to forget; about the creative impulse, the memories that spark vivid imaginariums. These synths are the most possibly massive they could be so that your brain has no ability to shunt that aside. Lyrics like “We’re fated to pretend” go hand in hand with stories of how people gave up, lost their way, let memories drift away. All to set up “Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do?”. As Shia Lebouf famously meme’d “Do it! Don’t let your dreams be dreams!”.

217.Song:Alright

Artist:Kendrick Lamar

Album:To Pimp A Butterfly

Is it too early to recognize To Pimp A Butterfly as one of the absolute top tier, top three, albums of all time? Three songs from it appear on this playlist in some shape or form.  It’s an album that runs the audience through so much masterly material that it becomes a dizzying experience. Emblematic of its whiplash nature is “Alright”, a song that defies convention, tosses it aside for the purpose of confrontation. Those famously stop-start vocals are hype enough on their own terms, but within this context they come to symbolize the constant back and forth nature of despair; acknowledging the fact that our society dangles carrots in front of racial minorities and expects them to be grateful for the opportunity. “Wouldn’t you know/ We been hurt, been down before, N***a”. With Pharrell Williams lending his quirky everyman aura to a serious subject in the chorus, Kendrick Lamar has once again left the door open for our own introspection.

216.Song:Not A Pretty Girl

Artist:Ani DiFranco

Album:Not A Pretty Girl 

Enmeshed  as we are in a generation of feminist resurgence, this song has become more relevant than even during its initial release. Starting off harsh and sarcastic, Ani Difranco slags off all would be male condescension and faux-heroics “Wouldn’t you prefer a maiden fair?/ Isn’t there a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere?”. What’s remarkable is how much mileage she gets from very blunt guitar chords and nothing else but stark drums as her backdrop. Skimming through the Genius notes on her lyrics page, one gets the sense that this song, in all of its compact fury, is the perfect encapsulation of all of the grievances feminists have with the way society is constructed today. Even with all of its barely contained rage, it does find time to allow some hope to shine in near the end “I don’t really want to be a pretty girl/ No, I want to be more than a pretty girl”. Then a cascade of her vocals, answering each other in the stereo field, lets us off easy.

215.Song:B.O.B.

Artist:Outkast

Album:Stankonia 

Listening to “B.O.B” is like trying to wrestle with anxiety. Are we really expected to keep up with this song’s blistering musical and lyrical paces? Are we supposed to glean meaning from lines like “Don’t pull the thang out/ unless you plan to bang/ (Children’s chorus singing) Bombs Over Baghdad”? As with many songs on this playlist, it’s all in the energy, the vibes, the hustle on display. Andre admitted to wanting to capture the fiery energies of Rage Against The Machine, and it definitely sounds like it. Frantic funk guitars clash with bleeping synths and frenetic horn sections, those horns seem like they’re desperately trying to keep ahead of things, forever chasing something unattainable. Big Boi’s verse is an achievement in syllabic efficiency, keeping pace with the mania around him. Every time I listen to this song I get overwhelmed by its sheer chaotic velocity, nothing remains certain within this frantic swirl of musical alchemy.

214.Song:Black Dove

Artist:Tori Amos

Album:From The Choir Girl Hotel 

“On the other side of the galaxy!” It’s not a stretch to say that Florence Welch took copious notes from Tori Amos, an artist who had a knack for intimately large personal anthems. She also had a way of making piano keys sound like coiled snakes, waiting for their chance to pounce, laced with venom. “They are my kin”. The breadth of recording details on display here is awesome to behold,  it feels like literally everything and the kitchen sink has been thrown somewhere into this tempest, without compromising clarity. It really does seem like you can pick out any element you want and ride it down with Tori as she lets some personal demons loose in the woods. The overall effect is of a cinematic horror movie trailer’s song, an A24 film’s propulsion. Her vocals writhe around the notes, only finding solid footing in the choruses, and even then you get the feeling she could take things further, if necessary. Thankfully, there is no need.

213.Song:I’m With You

Artist:Avril Lavigne

Album:Let Go 

For a track off of her first album, Avril Lavigne accomplished something with this song that precious few artists can manage through an entire career, let alone how soon and how finely she managed. A desperate longing for human connection forms the foundations “Won’t you take me by the hand/ Take me somewhere new”, and a massive pop-rock soundscape, unique to a ten year period in music from roughly 1996-2006, allows it all to soar. I won’t hear slander as to the authenticity of music made in this era of music. All I care about is what I hear, and “I’m With You” just hits that “long walk on the bridge” feeling that nothing else can. Imagining the dusky sky, you walking unsteadily in the crisp air as uncertain existence just happens all around you. Little wonder that its stature has been steadily growing ever since. When Avril sings “I don’t know who you are/ But I’m/ I’m with you”, she lets all those pent up emotions of youth out.

212.Song:Everything In Its Right Place

Artist:Radiohead

Album:Kid A 

The book Back To Save The Universe, by Jack Donehy, contains a fascinating insight into just how this song sucks you into its dark milieu, stating that it is “dramatic in the way of Beethoven’s Ninth”. Approaching this song from that orchestral, rather than the literal lyrical, method produces an astounding sense of appreciation as to how its interlocking, coldly placed, rhythms operate. Every change in how the electronics interact with Thom Yorke’s heavily processed, torn apart, and recombined vocals is a mini revelation, the coldly clinical bass lines and processed pianos pinging around the soundscape with impunity. The title of the song is as much declarative as it is just a function of the jarring musical shifts on display. “Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon”  functions exactly as John Lennon’s “I Am The Walrus”, leaving you alone, wondering “What the hell was that?”.

211.Song:Murder Was The Case (DeathAfterVisualizingEternity)

Artist:Snoop Dogg & Nigga Daz

Album:Doggystyle 

Viewing Snoop Dogg now as an artist, after decades of flanderization of his former gangsta rap image, you do wonder if there were missed opportunities to capitalize more on his sideways flows. A clear precursor to later artists such as Kid Cudi, his early-to-mid 90’s output, laced with G-funk synths, was immaculate, with this song proving the greatest monument to his talents. Flirting with multi-media success even at this early stage of his career, he would release a short film based on this song a mere year later, the cinematic doom crawl of the music behind his rapping is rich bedding for fire bars. When he makes a deal with the devil to come back to life, there is no hesitation, just a haunting acknowledgement “Close your eyes, my son/ My eyes are closed”. Ironically enough, this song interpolates from the same material as Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, with the nursery rhyme segments peppered throughout. Seductive Darkness in G-funk form.

210.Song:Ready Or Not

Artist:The Fugees

Album:The Score 

Game recognizes game. The Fugees certainly saw in Enya’s “Boadicea” a viable energy to crib for their own purposes. [1] Slowing down a few hums allows for “Ready Or Not” to have a ghostly undercurrent to Lauryn Hill’s declaration “You can’t hide/ Gonna find you/ and Take it slowly”. Perhaps not surprising for such a singular talent, Hill manages to outrap both Pras and Wyclef Jean, containing rapid-fire sequences such as “I’ll hex you with witches brew if you’re doo-doo/ Voodoo, I can do what you do, easy” in her verse, while the best bar either can manage is a trite “dance around the border like Cassius Clay”. Maybe this is why Lauryn raps “While you’re imitation’ Al Capone/ I’ll be Nina Simone”, her talent just shines so much in comparison. Still, the potent energy contained in that sample allows for The Fugees to sound like a world-class crew.You can find ghostly echoes of this song in modern R&B/hip-hop by the likes of Drake.

209.Song:Oh! Pretty Woman

Artist:Roy Orbison

Album:Oh! Pretty Woman 

2:59 of pop-rock brilliance, with a charisma so potent that an entire blockbuster movie could coast off of its latent energies. Roy Orbison had a voice that could make angels cry. Just listening to the way his falsetto, one of the best natural instances in music history, drapes itself over every word is enough to induce serenity. The result is uncanny, a song formed like a peach sorbet, scooped perfectly into the cone, a shining, timeless beacon into a time and place resting outside of context but always within reach of memory. “Pretty Woman, talk a while” is just the sort of lyric that pops up in every man’s mind when basking in a pretty woman’s aspect. The entire production pops like a soda fizz, the guitars, the glistening pianos, the drums that pound with the urgency and intensity befitting of a love being born. It’s giddy enough that when the final “Pretty Woman” is sung, and the reverb fades out, you can’t help but feel a hole in your heart, begging for a replay.

208.Song:Intuition

Artist:Feist

Album:The Reminder 

Leslie Feist’s The Reminder is an entire album borne aloft by oceans of silence, the spaces between her lines embellishing things already said and yet to be known. And sometimes a song comes on that carries you along its tides, content to fade in and out of your consciousness like a lucid dreamscape. “Intuition” is that song from this greatest of albums, an emotional journey that can’t help but drift towards… something, anything at all. Her enigmatic lyricism is couched by a gorgeous vocal performance with its own peculiar momentum. Consider lines like “And you choose, you chose/ poetry over prose”, where her voice circles back, unsure of itself. But when she reaches that denouement “And it’s impossible to tell/ How important someone was”, the words might be unclear, but the emotions are as clear as they are overpowering. A small chorus accompanies her as she ends the song on “Did I, Did I miss out on you?”. Don’t miss out on this.

207.Song:Peace Sells

Artist:Megadeth

Album:Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? 

I’m going to preface this blurb by desperately pleading with you to listen to the original mix. Not the Randy Burns mix, or the 25th Anniversary edition mix, the original in all of its caustic glory. Megadeth at its best was a punk band that did guitar solos, and Dave Mustaine could angst with the best of them. Here he rages against wars, the government and religion, all the hits. What separates this from the metal chaff is how muscular, incendiary the guitars are. Mixed so that the thrashing chords sound like somebody knocking down your door in each ear, with a bass guitar holding nothing back in the center, they pummel the listener into submission so Mustaine can preach with his growling vocal snarls. It’s not as bleak as you would assume as he definitely has a sense of humour about it all “What do you mean I don’t pay my bills?/ Why do you think I’m broke? Huh?”. A punk band that does thrash guitar solos, not a bad mix.

206.Song:White Room

Artist:Cream

Album:Wheels Of Fire

When Eric Clapton joined forces with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, the world knew that some magic was going to be produced. Yet, nothing could have prepared the world, then and now, for this song. “White Room” is an explosive romp through blues-rock songcraft, with some psychedelia thrown in for good measure. It opens with a bombastic, string-laced, intro, almost like a spaghetti western introducing its tragic hero. Eric Clapton’s virtuoso guitar sears its way through the structures of the song, existing like a flame serpent, flailing around like it’s about to set everything alight. Bruce’s bass guitar and vocals gamely hold their own and Ginger keeps events from drifting apart with his stellar drumming. Cream was lightning in a bottle, throwing three enormous talents together at the height of their powers, little wonder that none of its members managed to make anything this vibrant, this iconic, afterwards.

205.Song:What’s Love Got To Do With It

Artist:Tina Turner

Album:Private Dancer 

Is this what people want when they say they yearn for maturity? Wisdom passed down through musical forms and vocal fry? Tina Turner had had a celebrated music career before this, when her voice was full of pep and could pop a high note without seeming to bring her whole throat to the party. Here, she sounds like years of accumulated damage, a smoker’s lung given a vocal chord. “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken” she sings at the end, sounding for all the world like her body is going to give out, like late era Billie Holiday. What’s the appeal? Producer Terry Britten knew the answer. Crafting a sonic atmosphere akin to immersing yourself in a local dive bar, with muted guitars, cheap sounding synth flutes opening like drifting cigarette smoke, even the string swells sound cribbed from a thrift store keyboard. All this so Tina Turner can sing “What’s love but a second hand emotion?”. I suspect people prefer things this way.

204.Song:Hey Bo Diddley!

Artist:Bo Diddley

Album:Bo Diddley 

Listen to how much excitement the background singers are generating for Bo Diddley, they aren’t about to let such things as recording quality stop them from hyping the big man up. They are giving it their all, peaking the microphones, the notes escaping their mouths un-herded. All this for a man who scoffs at our notions of songwriting forms, he is going to give you one, maybe two chords, and you are going to like it. A man who has an entire musical rhythm named after him and him alone. This song is the perfect encapsulation of everything that made him such a seminal figure in popular music: From the heedless momentum of that signature rhythm, to the roughshod way his lyrics circle back to his favorite subject; himself. “Bo Diddley done had a farm/ On that farm he had some women/ Women, women, women everywhere”. If you aren’t suppressing an ear-to-ear grin at this intro lyric, you ain’t buying what Bo Diddley is selling.

203.Song:Photograph

Artist:Def Leppard

Album:Pyromania 

Producer Mutt Lange really came out of the Def Leppard recording sessions as a genius, taking a band that really, really, really, needs ample studio time to get a decent sounding end product and making it spectacular. Pyromania is one of the most expensive albums ever recorded (an eye-watering 4 367 000 in today’s money [1]) and, listening to lead vocalist Joe Elliot’s vocals, you wonder how on earth that number isn’t higher. Regardless, Mutt polished the band’s sound into a glistening sheen, allowing the admittedly strong songwriting to shine at its absolute brightest. “Photograph”’s guitars are stadium-sized, soaring as high as the production will let them. Rick Allen’s reverb-gated drums are as powerful as they are pinned to that era in time. If you are wondering how this song flourishes on this playlist next to all that came before it, with my ample criticism, well, sometimes you just need to polish a song until it shines like a diamond.

202.Song:Jesus Walks

Artist:Kanye West

Album:The College Dropout 

“The way that Kathy Lee needed Regis/ That’s the way I need Jesus”. Kanye West’s flavour of rap has been called maximalist, both in its sound which is expansive and unrelenting and in its lyrical aspirations. He is a man who can pull off a rap song about praising Jesus and have it top the charts, simply because he truly believes in the Greatest aspects of greatness. His ability to collate very disparate samples, combining The ARC Choir’s “Walk With Me”’s eerie chants with some reassembled drums from Lou Donaldson’s version of “Ode To Billie Joe”, into a powerful, unstoppable, militaristic march, is a treat for the ears. Even if the bouncing “N*****s” samples from a Curtis Mayfield song grate, they are at least on message for West’s particular brand of braggadocio. He embellishes his delivery on certain lines with a murderously clever sense of propulsion, letting nothing get in his way. “The only thing I pray is that my feet don’t fail me now”.

201.Song:If I Was Your Girlfriend

Artist:Prince

Album:Sign O’The Times

Here is a song that almost literally sounds like it’s keeping a secret from you. Just listen to that synth pad that plays throughout, hovering around the lyrics like someone about to leap from the shadows just to say “Here I am!”. It never does, and thus we are not privy to things we should not know. Looking through the credits for this song is like reading an itemized list of genius playing off of itself; Writer: Prince, every instrument: Prince, Recording engineer: Prince. This is a man whose talents were bountiful, who could innovate in songwriting and technical craft like few others. He was one of the few artists capable of translating what was in his head into our ears, without compromises. This allows him to write a song where he is jealous of a friendship between two women and not come off as a psychotic asshole, even if that absolutely was the intent. When the lines between genius and madness are blurred, lean toward the genius.