I Need You To Listen To…

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.