I Need You To Listen To…

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.