I Need You To Listen To…

375.Song:Mama Tried

Artist:Merle Haggard

Album:Mama Tried 

If this song is a tragedy in miniature, then why does it sound so happy? Perhaps the dichotomy between the stoic lyrics and the D Major Key is meant for us to examine our relationships, both with our Mama’s and our tendency to mythologize the outlaw lifestyle? “I turned 21 in prison, doing life without parole/ No one could steer me right but Mama tried” just hits different with music like this accompanying it. Maybe this is also why so many criminals have so many admirers on the outside, if they have just a fraction of the charisma that Merle Haggard exudes then they would have it made. Heck, Merle would have know all about it, given that he was inspired to become a country singer after watching Johnny Cash perform at San Quentin prison. As a lot of the best country music is souped up folk, jangly guitars and barely sober singers drawling their way into the listeners hearts, “Mama Tried” is thus one of the best examples of the outlaw subgenre.

374.Song:What I Need

Artist:Hayley Kiyoko Feat Kehlani

Album:Expectations 

Love often has a heedless momentum to it, damn anything that gets in your way. Things like proper grammar and vocal grace? Get outta here. “All the back and forth gettin’ complicated/ Running me around got me frustrated”. Hyperpop synths bombard the listener with at least the good sense to boom efficiently, the steady handclaps and tastefully employed drums giving Hayley Kiyoko and Kehlani crucial space to vent their frustrations. And what frustrations. “When we’re with your fam, you don’t wanna show it/ You try to keep us on the low”. Buried sexuality, a lovers quarrel given songwriting form. The sonics are functioning as a cheerleader for these girls to get it together. There’s tangible joy here, a notion that they may indeed come to their senses and go loud and proud, not get bogged down in details and pleasantries. “I only want a girl not afraid to love me/ not a metaphor of what we really could be/ I ain’t putin’ on a show”.

373.Song:Basket Case

Artist:Green Day

Album:Dookie 

“Do you have the time/ To listen to me whine?”. The California punk scene of the 90’s wasn’t angry at the system so much as they were flailing around at their own miseries. But hey, at least they managed to make all of us have a fun time. “Basket Case” has steadily gained recognition since its release, even popping up in Rolling Stone’s recent top 500 songs of all time list. This is a magazine hyper-focused on being ultra-serious, so a song as energetically propulsive, as flippantly immature, as this making their cut speaks to its enduring appeal. Billie Joel Armstrong wrote this banger to help overcome his bouts of anxiety and depression. As shock therapy, with these indelible riffs and explosive drumming, with a wicked eye for self-deprecation, it will do quite nicely. “Sometimes I give myself the creeps/ Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me/ It all keeps adding up/ I think I’m cracking up” (Explosive drum fills).

372.Song:Edge Of Seventeen

Artist:Stevie Nicks

Album:Bella Donna 

A lot of Stevie Nicks best work showcases her smokers-lung vocals bouncing off of or gliding alongside some propulsive element that barely relents. “Edge Of Seventeen” finds a guitar riff that seems ready to peel the paint off of a few billboards at night, and Stevie belting “like a one-winged dove”. Potent witchcraft at work here. So potent that the song fades out rather than properly ending, as if no human mind could resolve the tension built up throughout. An atmosphere of suggestive conversation is created, wafts of cigarette smoke drifting through the air, by compulsive bass and forceful drums , slashing guitars and barroom pianos twinkling in the dark. The bongos are a neat touch in light of all of this, edging their way through each bar like a secret lover trying to tiptoe out to avoid undue attention. Stevie, of course, retains the spotlight, her vocals domineering and liquid, molding themselves to the beat when needed, forceful when desired.

371.Song:Cemetery Gates

Artist:Pantera

Album:Cowboys From Hell 

Dimebag Darrell’s guitar tone sounds like a chisel operating on a tombstone, carving its way through rock with machine-like precision to imprint an unforgettable sound in your head. The ropey screeches that fly throughout his compositions have found no equal in heavy metal since, which is bizarre considering the legions of guitar players that have been influenced by his output. Regardless, we arrive at “Cemetary Gates”, a solid slab of virtuosic performance, a monument to his greatness. Phil Anselmo wrote a beautiful, poetic, tribute to some friends of his that had committed suicide, but his vocals go toe to toe with Dimebag’s guitars, screeching at his level, soothing alongside the ethereal intro. “Reverend, reverend/ Is this some conspiracy?” The line after that is the most revealing though “Crucified for no sins”, Metal can be many things, but an outlet for grief is not on the minds of a casual listener. Heavy as it is, heavy as it needs to be.

370.Song:B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth)

Artist:GZA

Album:Liquid Swords

When putting together a killer rap beat, something that allows for maximal freedom for the rapper to generate killer bars, a producer has to walk a fine line between propelling the listener along and potentially overdoing the main hook. B.I.B.L.E. walks that knife edge with such patience and precision that the tension can’t help but be energizing. You will know all that 4th Disciple is capable of when you hear the piano glissando interact with the punchy bass and dry drums, as a child laughs briefly in the background of “Knowledge this wisdom, this goes back when I was 12”. Generating the type of glide normally reserved for stadium-sized anthems, Killah Priest’s words and raspy delivery are the perfect vehicle for delivering this peculiar mode of street gospel. While the particulars of the lyrics may strike many as askew of acceptable, there’s no denying the raw spiritual uplift generated on contact with this gorgeous hip-hop masterpiece.

369.Song:Johnny Guitar

Artist:Peggy Lee

Album:Timeless Voices: Peggy Lee   

If you’ve ever played the game Fallout: New Vegas, you will note how effective this song is at making you feel like the loneliest person on the planet. This of course while you traipse about a nuclear wasteland filled with Roman-legionnaire wanna-be’s, pegging giant cockroaches in the head while a cowboy robot tells you to “get a move on”. This song still makes you feel ill-at-ease. Peggy Lee’s voice is sultry, playing with the guitar like she is making out with it, then she gets to soar, hauntingly,  “I was always a fool, for my johnny/ For the one they call, Johnny Guitar”. Listening to this song nowadays, when we have access to the best quality audio, allows for essential details to come through, such as the Bass being plucked with precision, or the light pounding of the box drum, or the way the guitar seems to slightly crackle when its solo moment arrives. Warmth, finding its way through the years of relative darkness. Astounding.

368.Song:God Only Knows

Artist:The Beach Boys

Album:Pet Sounds

Time has worn off its innovative production edges, but “God Only Knows” remains a fantastic construction in its own right. After all, how many singers have successfully pulled off the gut punch of “so what good would living do me?” like Brian Wilson? This is the core of why this song will drift eternally through the collective jukebox. It’s also proof that great songs exist as a unity of Production, Performance and Intent. Without the production, laced as it is with instrumentation doubled and tripled on successive notes, it is a footnote. Without Brian’s performance, it isn’t nearly as revered. Without Brian’s sincere desire to elevate love into a spiritual pursuit, it likely remains dormant. These three elements coalesce into this perfect pop song, a once in a generation melodic sunspot. The Pet Sounds recording sessions are monumental in music history, but “God Only Knows” would be a high point regardless of its historical importance.

367.Song:Reach Out I’ll Be There

Artist:Four Tops

Album:Reach Out

There’s a distinct western feel to this song, a cinematic tendency that’s more akin to a folk-song than a motown soul record, as if the main character is riding on horseback behind the object of his affection. “Just look over your shoulder” Levi Stubbs ad-libs, just after sounding like he is pleading for something he could never hope to attain. This tension is present throughout, the verses having a dark momentum to them, as if by necessity they must tell a sorrowful tale  “and your world around is crumblin’ down/ Darling”. But every villain has his protagonist, and Levi Stubbs is our hope spot. His voice strains to the breaking point at several instances, more akin to shouting than singing, but this gives the rest of The Four Tops harmonies a bittersweet edge that completely sells the effort. Richard “Pistol” Allen’s drums hit like firecrackers, James Jamerson’s bass rolls like hilltops on the horizon and we have a true classic stuck in our heads forever.

366.Song:Hip Hop Hooray

Artist:Naughty By Nature

Album:19Naughtyiii

Watch the music video. Notice how torn down and grimy the setting is. Graffiti coats every available inch, the basketball hoop has one string hanging off of it, local teens bang on empty plastic containers as makeshift drum kits. The pollution has had every opportunity to grind everyone involved down to the nub; instead we get this, this anthemic display. I’ve described some hip-hop as an earned resilience function, taking the aural wallpaper of the artists lives and repurposing them for their own ends. Naughty By Nature crafts a propulsive loop by combining James Brown, The Isley Brothers and Peter Gabriel. Their verses are frantic, sounding like they are overjoyed just to get through the day, but everyone gets their turn. Again, the music video shows how infectious the joy in this track is, at the end it seems like the entire city has come down to chant “Hey, Ho, Hey, Ho”, to share in the uplifting power of shared resilience.

365.Song:Let There Be Rock

Artist:AC/DC

Album:Let There Be Rock 

Never let pesky facts get in the way of a good record. When Bon Scott sings about a “Forty-two decibel rockin’ band”, he is in fact not singing about a band that’s playing loudly at all. When he sings about Tchaikovsky “[having] the news”, he’s possibly referring to Chuck Berry’s seminal “Roll Over Beethoven”, or he’s simply winging the syllables necessary for the song to continue its heedless momentum. He is working on a primal level, setting up a mythic arc for the genre to travel for Angus Young’s seismic guitars to hitch a ride over. As solo after solo rings out, as each instance of the main riff compels you to riotous behaviour, the thing takes on the air of a slab of rock being pondered over by a studious archaeologist. As that final ascending solo climbs about as high as the band can sustain, releasing enough pent up energies to exhaust everyone involved, you can’t help but feel as if you’ve watched the legend of Rock and Roll incarnate.

364.Song:You (Ha Ha Ha)

Artist:Charli XCX

Album:True Romance

Sometimes a song hits so hard with its composition that anyone sampling it has no choice but to crib it in its entirety, hence Charli XCX taking the entirety of Gold Panda’s “You”. It was a great choice. The sample has so much inherent, propulsive, energy that it almost conjures up holographic imagery such as in Charli’s music video. “Yeah, we got a situation/lock down and I’m trapped in the basement” her opening lines, delivered with so much verve, are perfectly tuned to the beat, drawing us in to the hypnotic energies prominent throughout this hyperpop masterpiece. The few times that the main sample checks out, are mere breathing space before it kicks back in with full force, even louder and more explosive than before. While others could credibly argue that “Boom, Clap” deserved the spotlight more, I think this song’s sheer velocities have the potential to carry it, and us, along for the ride for far longer.

363.Song:With A Little Help From My Friends

Artist:The Beatles

Album:Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Here is a song that wills itself into your heart, a melody so catchy, so insanely perfect that it ruins other Beatles songs in the same key (Just try listening to “All You Need Is Love” without “Do you need anybody?” chiming in, during its chorus, in your head). Ringo Starr sings the melody here, becoming the center of attention as “Billy Shears, band leader extraordinaire”. While several of the lyrics can come across, to a cynical reader, as mean spirited mockery of their drummer, the song is so cheerful that it overrides such cynicism. It was made for raucous camaraderie, as confirmed by its usage in the film Across The Universe. This is a tune for the knowing ribs and deprecating humor of the closest of friends. The bass line, one of the bounciest ever written,  clanging guitars and reciprocating pianos only add to the barroom feel. To wit “I get by with a little help from my friends/ Mm, get high with a little help from my friends”.

362.Song:River

Artist:Leon Bridges

Album:Coming Home 

“Take me to your river/ I wanna go”. These are the words of those seeking salvation, through mortal love or faith in some sort of loving God, same river, different bridges. When Leon Bridges sings he sounds like he could captivate any room where people collect themselves to offer up their souls, his assured way of leaning into lines like “my heart’s been gone/ from you/ ten thousand/ miles gone” just bundles the heart into a swooning mess. The sparse nature of the instrumentation allows for guest vocalist Brittni Jessie’s “I wanna go, wanna go, wanna go”’s, meek as they are, to pair up with Leon’s in shared communion. The steady tambourine that rings out clear as a bell, the warm acoustic guitars that sound as rich and voluminous as a calm, flowing, river, the reverb that enhances Leon’s vocals, all help make this neo-soul song a new standard for the great American soul songbook.

361.Song:You Want It Darker

Artist:Leonard Cohen

Album:You Want It Darker

In a career filled with songs exploring the boundaries of his faith, Leonard Cohen decided to lay bare his soul before the lord on his final album. “You Want It Darker” is the most confessional song of the bunch. Haunting background vocals by a jewish choir are paired with soft drums and a deft bassline as Leonard notes the contradictions that come with religious adherence and the reality of human nature. Casting a grim eye on the ways that we use religion to justify atrocities “A million candles burning/ for the help that never came/ you want it darker”.  This is a grim epitaph, he doesn’t let up in his withering broadsides against a God that would allow such madness, such suffering, nay, seemingly demanding it “You want it darker/ We kill the flame” .I can’t help but feel how intensely brave Leonard was to write this, accepting that he would soon be facing the very same God he rails against “Hineni Hineni/ I’m ready my lord”.

360.Song:Dumb It Down

Artist:Lupe Fiasco feat. Gemini and Graham Burris

Album:The Cool

Lupe Fiasco has long been known as one of the most technically gifted rappers out there; consider his usage of Slant rhyming [1] throughout this song, where he rhymes the vowels rather than the consonants. I’m no rap expert, hence my reliance on external sites to explain the technicalities, but I knew I was listening to something special even way back when I was a teenager first discovering this track on Muchmusic. With a constant synth line drawling its way behind Lupe’s immaculate verse, trying to keep up with the constantly switching schemes and imagery is an enthralling experience. Even typing out some lyrics could scarcely capture the magic of the sheer velocity on display here. You might find some venom exhibited during the choruses, where villainous record executives and rivals take their turns trashing Lupe’s verbosity, but in the end, even they can’t resist the prowess on display. “How can I get on a song with you?”.

359.Song:Blowin’ In The Wind

Artist:Bob Dylan

Album:The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan 

There will be future generations that will bounce off of the old singer-songwriter folk-hero archetype, wondering what the point of singing softly into a microphone was, lightly picking an acoustic guitar, when volume alone can get the point across now. It will take them time to come around to how monumental a simple, pure performance can come across when the wider world is suffering from too much noise overpowering its rational capabilities. When Bob Dylan wrote this song, drawing off of the lessons of his mentor Woody Guthrie, I doubt he expected his message to change the world, he simply wrote what he could at a time when popular music was still struggling with the concept of protest anthems.”Yes, how many ears must one man have/ Before he can hear people cry?”. His assuredness, the steady authority with how he doles out his searching questions, that was his point.  To speak truth to power, you must learn to speak first.

358.Song:N.Y. State Of Mind

Artist:Nas

Album:Illmatic 

The one thing that hits you, as that Joe Chambers piano riff sample pulses against your eardrums, is how hard it is, each note seemingly dragging you down a staircase towards the peculiar hell that was mid-90’s urban New York City. Things are bad enough that Nas’s refrain “I never sleep, ‘cause sleep is the cousin of death”  becomes ghastly on recollection, like every day brought somebody’s Sword of Damocles down on their heads. His voice is caustic enough that the litany of crimes has an incendiary effect, like you want to protest the very fact of such a hellscape’s existence but are left powerless to help. Sampling Rakim in the chorus just lays this thought in further, as if generations have observed this spiteful dichotomy. Nas proceeds to rap “The city never sleeps/ Full of villains and creeps”, building up, beat by beat, a block full of the most heinous of crimes; “Nothin’s equivalent/ to the New York State of mind”.

357.Song:Landslide

Artist:Fleetwood Mac

Album:Fleetwood Mac 

These flowery guitars, arpeggiated so precisely and elegantly, generate an atmosphere of serenity, such as that beside a calm lake. The electric guitars that do pop up seem to agree with that assessment, popping in like ripples on the surface or a bird calling in the distance. Yes, the central metaphor is of being trapped by a literal landslide in a snowy mountainscape, but the guitars are so warmly recorded that I can’t generate that imagery in my head. They cascade around each other, leaving space in the middle for Stevie Nicks life-worn vocals to glide serenely throughout, only a light touch of reverb needed for emphasis. You might think that a lyrical-versus-musical dissonance might do a disservice to this songs appeal, but I believe this very dichotomy is why Landslide proved incredibly popular on the Country Radio circuits, with countless covers trying to capture its innate gliding-over-the-landscape appeal. Like the folk-pop of later generations.

356.Song:September

Artist:Earth, Wind And Fire

Album:The Best Of Earth, Wind And Fire, Vol.1

For a song that sounds so intensely happy throughout the majority of its runtime, why do the first ten seconds sound ever slightly so mournful? As if the songwriters were keenly aware that the fabulously joyful era of music they were in was about to come to an end, replaced by a cacophony of gated reverb and harsh digital sheens. Disco was nearing its demise in the wider pop-culture landscape, but “September”’s intro makes a brief remembrance and continues on into pure sonic bliss. It’s even more fitting when you consider that the lyrics call back to nostalgic memories, when everyone was willing and able to party on. “As we danced in the night, remember/ how the stars stole the night away”. Maurice White famously rebuffed attempts to rewrite his “Ba-Dee-Ya” lyrics, he insisted that the musical vibes were all that would ever matter to the listener. He was right, the vibes go on and on.

355.Song:Foxey Lady

Artist:The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Album:Are You Experienced

When a guitar player is so talented that he knows he can have his output mixed low behind every other element, like bubbling magma in a volcano’s caldera, and still have a rip-roaring appeal, that’s when you figure a legend present among mere mortals. Jimi Hendrix’s guitars find themselves battling with the entire rhythm section, not giving an inch of the stereo field away lightly. We shouldn’t sell drummer Mitch Mitchell or bassist Noel David Redding short either, they are clearly giving it their all. Hendrix’s lead vocals are panned to the left, with a light touch of plate reverb and intermittent “Foxey”’s on the right. Maybe he did this because having his vocals in the center of the audible chaos in the center would be untenable, the overall effect is to further shine a spotlight onto the transcendent talents on display there. Maybe this is why the album was titled Are You Experienced It wasn’t a question to be answered, simply a declaration of intent.

354.Song:The Light

Artist:Common

Album:Like Water For Chocolate 

Love is an emotion that it pays to tackle head on, don’t leave any room for doubt or interpretation, proclaim all that you need to mean. “If heaven had a height, you would be that tall”. Written as a tribute to his then-girlfriend Erykah Badu, herself an enticing musical talent, “The Light” might be the warmest hip-hop record ever produced. Producer J Dilla lays the bass on thick, like a slowly pouring vat of honey, the wah-wah synths find themselves bobbing up and down out of the soundscape, like a swimmer coming up for air, letting their presence be known. The drums thump warmly, like a heartbeat pounding against the chest. Bobby Caldwell’s “Open Your Eyes” sampled verse serenades us “There are times/ When you’ll need someone”. Common himself comes across as a man who could find no greater joy than to be here, spitting bars in favour of his boo “There’s so much in a name/ And so much more in you”.

353.Song:Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)

Artist:Billy Joel

Album:The Stranger 

There are admittedly a lot of reasons that this song shouldn’t work; from its schmaltzy atmosphere of barroom pianos and liquored up guitars, to Billy Joel vocalizing effects that could have been left to a studio delay machine “Heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack”. But it does work, and so here we are. Amazing! Why? Well its title gives a hint, but the ultimate appeal of this song rests with its punk-tinged lyricism. At once aspirational and enraged, Anthony is a protagonist keenly aware of how the machinery of society can break down everyone, how we all are left battling for scraps as if they mean anything (“Yeah, and he’s trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac”).  “And it seems such a waste of time/ if that’s what it’s all about/ Mama, if that’s moving up then I’m Movin’ out”. Billy Joel’s undeniable knack for detail, his undivided attention on the populist appeal of pop music, that’s what counts in the end.

352.Song:Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Artist:Israel Kamakawiwo’ole/ Judy Garland

Album:Alone In IZ World/ The Wizard Of Oz (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

When Judy Garland sang “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”, you couldn’t shake the feeling that she really desired an escape from the personal hell of her life; maybe suffering is the stimulus for more great art than we should ever be comfortable with. When Israel Kamakawiwo’ole sings, there is an air of sincerity that chokes up in your throat, like he will take all of your worries away and bottle them up within himself for you, for Judy. This is how a melody that jumps octaves comes to us, descending back to our common ground of humanity, with a ukulele backdrop as simple as it is heartrending. Music can reach across personal contexts, gliding over our shared sufferings, soundtracks for supercuts. Judy Garland singing this a hundred years ago will have something to sing for you a thousand years from now, and Israel will find you at the end of that rainbow, ready to take on whatever struggles he can for you.

351.Song:The Woman That Loves You

Artist:Japanese Breakfast

Album:Psychopomp 

Japanese Breakfast has a musical soundscape to sell you of immense fragility and decorative function. The guitars slash across the soundscape, with an ever shifting mode of a peculiar clarity and delayed precision, like those old samurai movie moments where the blood doesn’t spurt until needed for maximum impact. The synths glitter like they are being filtered through those distinctive paper walls, the vocal synth samples drawing us in delicately. The digital bass-lines and pumping kick drums are doing all that they can to jolt us out of the dreamscape, but the spell is too potent to break. This would be a fantastic tourist trip given musical form, if Japanese Breakfast were actually Japanese, instead Michelle Zauner is a Korean-Jewish American striking the musical modes of an Emo veteran. It speaks to the power of “The Woman That Loves You”’s potent musicality that this mixture of identities and intent produces such a beguiling mixture.