I Need You To Listen To…

100.Song:Ribs

Artist:Lorde

Album:Pure Heroine 

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

99.Song:Crazy On You

Artist:Heart

Album:Dreamboat Annie 

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

98.Song:Kickstart My Heart

Artist:Motley Crue

Album:Dr. Feelgood 

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

97.Song:You Know You’re Right

Artist:Nirvana

Album:Nirvana 

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

96.Song:Mirrorball

Artist:Everything But The Girl

Album:Walking Wounded 

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

95.Song:Yesterday

Artist:The Beatles

Album:Help!  

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

94.Song:Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Artist:Cyndi Lauper

Album:She’s So Unusual 

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

93.Song:Somebody Else

Artist:The 1975

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

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

92.Song:Everybody Needs Somebody To Love

Artist:Solomon Burke

Album:The Very Best Of Solomon Burke 

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

91.Song:Time Of The Season

Artist:The Zombies

Album:Odyssey And The Oracle 

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

90.Song:Streets Of Philadelphia

Artist:Bruce Springsteen

Album:Philadelphia: Music From The Motion Picture 

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

89.Song:Thunderstruck

Artist:AC/DC

Album:The Razor’s Edge 

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

88.Song:Where Is My Mind?

Artist:The Pixies

Album:Surfer Rosa 

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

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

Artist:Method Man Feat. Mary J. Blige

Album:Tical (Deluxe Edition) 

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

86.Song:Lovers In Japan/ Reign Of Love

Artist:Coldplay

Album:Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends 

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

85.Song:Run Away With Me

Artist:Carly Rae Jepsen

Album:E.MO.TION

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

84.Song:I’ll Be Around

Artist:The Spinners

Album:Spinners 

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

83.Song:Born To Be Wild

Artist:Steppenwolf

Album:Steppenwolf 

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

82.Song:Rejoice

Artist:Julien Baker

Album:Sprained Ankle 

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

81.Song:Four Women/ The Story Of OJ

Artist:Nina Simone/ Jay-Z

Album:Wild Is The Wind/ 4:44 

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

80.Song:Fuck Tha Police

Artist:NWA

Album:Straight Outta Compton 

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

79.Song:Who Are The Brain Police?

Artist:Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention

Album:Freak Out! 

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

78.Song:Stop! In The Name Of Love

Artist:The Supremes

Album:More Hits By The Supremes

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

77.Song:Rockin’ In The Free World

Artist:Neil Young

Album:Freedom 

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

76.Song:Androgynous

Artist:The Replacements

Album:Let It Be 

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