I Need You To Listen To…

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.