I Need You To Listen To…

250.Song:Lose Yourself

Artist:Eminem

Album:Music From And Inspired By The Motion Picture 8 Mile 

The scratchy record noise that accompanies the haunting piano and synth chords in the opening isn’t there to generate feelings of happy nostalgia, if anything it speaks to memories that perhaps would be best left forgotten. “You only get one shot”, he sings in the chorus, to leave behind a life of crushing poverty takes not only skill and gumption, but incredible amounts of luck. We all know that Marshall Mathers’s story had a happy ending to it, that he maximized his talents and drive at the precise moments on offer, but the reason this song can remain as powerful an anthem for the downtrodden is its mythic arc appeal. Telling the story of the movie 8 Mile to us in discrete verse, with a guitar riff that is reminiscent of “Kashmir”, as if to remind us further how high the barriers are to escaping poverty, his double tracked vocals are doing everything they can to drill the point home into your skull. Consider us all lost in the moment.

249.Song:The Hardest Button To Button

Artist:The White Stripes

Album:Elephant

The White Stripes were a kooky duo, the kind of band that would name an album after the vague outline of an animal you can only barely perceive if you squint at their posture. Meg White’s drumming style could often be called “adjacent to” precision beats, while Jack White, a modern day musical renaissance man if there ever was one, could barely shove out ideas as fully formed as he would like and the audience would demand. The famous music video, where Meg White lays nice little drumkit eggs on every beat and just sort of leaves them all over the place as she follows Jack’s muse, shows their talent for meme-ification. With lines like “I grabbed a rag doll and stuck some little pins in it…/ Now we’re a family, and we’re alright now” feeding us an image of horrific dysfunction, and Meg’s bruising beats keeping us from just fleeing for our lives, it’s hard not to feel as if you are being held against your better judgement.

248.Song:Where The Streets Have No Name

Artist:U2

Album:The Joshua Tree 

Perfection is a pursuit that can drive people mad, take Brian Eno who, at one point during the recording process, was ready to delete the multi-track recording. Timely intervention by an assistant engineer proved its salvation. It took weeks of work in the studio, but Bono and the rest of U2 finally arrived at their vaguely implied destination.Watching the concert DVD U2 360 At The Rose Bowl, I was struck by how powerfully the opening organs and guitar flicks snuck up on the crowd, how magnificently it overwhelmed their senses. They were cheering for this subtle, inhumanly beautiful opening crawl as if it would personally take them to…”Where The Streets Have No Name”. “And when I go there/ I go there with you/ It’s all I can do”.  Bono had successfully intuited that this would be the “Ultimate U2 live-song” before the band had finished recording it, its awesome ethereal energies have barely been bettered, let alone equalled.

247.Song:That’s What You Get

Artist:Paramore

Album:Riot! 

Reading through a history of the band Paramore will yield rich revelations, both to the sound of each record, and to Hayley William’s astonishing consistency given the emotional storms surrounding her. Handcuffed to a band that would largely come to blows with itself, the stop start nature of “That’s What You Get”’s main guitar riff reads as less an artistic statement and more of a functional cudgel. With the drums playing along, the guitars seem to be reaching upward melodically, spastically, to what? In the chorus, they adopt a sickly sweet distorted edge, ringing out alongside “That’s what you get/ when you let your heart win”. Subtle. At the center of all of this noise is Hayley Williams. Possessor of a wicked vocal range backed by a powerful belting ability. Her vocals crystallize all of the questions surrounding her, her bandmates and the lyrics “Pain, make your way to me, to me/ And I’ll always be just so inviting”.

246.Song:Place To Be

Artist:Nick Drake

Album:Pink Moon

I’ve searched and searched, but no other guitarist sounds like the results Nick Drake achieved on Pink Moon, recorded late at night in the studio with only engineer John Wood accompanying him. It seems he had a unique ability to weave a spell on his audience. Solace is the word that comes to me when hearing this song, like you have sat yourself underneath an elm tree, contemplating the paths that led you there. Even if his lyrics expose regretful feelings, “Now I’m weaker than the palest blue/ Oh so weak in this need for you”, there’s no drowning in sorrows, just simple acknowledgement of well-worn laments “I never saw the truth hanging from the door”. Nick’s voice is a lulling, chill, wind, carrying you along on its wistful tides. His presence in the mix is very upfront, allowing his voice to fill out the stereo field with soothing frequencies. The guitars, recorded with such warmth, allowed him his personal emotional coda, before his tragic end.

245.Song:Never Too Late

Artist:Three Days Grace

Album:One X 

Adam Gontier has a voice that sounds like it hurts. When he belts out the chorus ““Even if I say, It’ll be alright/ Still I hear you say you want to end your life”” I can’t help but feel that he could benefit from a soothing beverage. Having said that, some songs deserve maximal output from everyone involved, “Never Too Late” is one of those songs. The rest of the band is playing like their lives depend on it, contributing to a compressed wall of sound that can be truly breathtaking to experience. Anyone who has experienced depression can relate to every single aspect of this song, from the surprisingly delicate acoustic guitar riff intro, to that aforementioned compressed roar, from the dark post-grunge atmospherics to Adam’s pleas “It’s not too late/ It’s never too late”. The most damaging realization that “The world we knew won’t come back/ The time we’ve lost, can’t get it back” can always be held off by not giving up, always holding on to hope.

244.Song:Cult Of Personality

Artist:Living Colour

Album:Vivid 

Maybe highlighting how ridiculously fragile the sheen of fame is on the people promoting themselves and how the vagaries of their egos affects us and society is what makes this song as potent as it is. Or why the guitar riff sounds like ascending and descending blocks, as if to show how easy it is for some random nobody to ascend to the ranks of these cults of personality, and then fall from grace. “You gave me fortune, you gave me fame/ You gave me power in your God’s name/ I’m every person you need to be”. Vernon Reid’s guitar work here is a masterwork of graffiti-laced distortion, foisting immaculate riffage on us before tearing the guitar apart into a mess of garbled noise. Corey Glover’s sharp vocals are given lots of space to breathe, Muzz Skillings on bass sounds like he is having the time of his life, the way he pounds each accenting note, the way he follows the guitar riff to a tee….Uh-oh. I’m in the “Cult Of Personality” now!!!!!

243.Song:Paper Planes

Artist:M.I.A.

Album:Kala 

The montage of youthful abandon that plays in Far Cry 3, right before the camera zooms out to reveal you being held hostage by a crazed mercenary named Vas, is the perfect encapsulation of what makes this song so great. How can a song that features M.I.A. quite literally robbing a store in each chorus not be an anthem for the type of person who wants to give in to their darkest impulses? Far Cry 3 has your protagonist literally becoming a local god, a wrathful spirit of vengeance killing his way through armies of mercenaries, while doing boatloads of drugs and engaging in questionable local business opportunities. “Paper Planes”, a reference to the passports that enable you to fly, celebrates that level of criminal enterprise, revels in it, but with music so cheery that it can be hard to tear your attention from it, even when gunshots are ringing out and people are dying “Some some some I some I murder/ Some I some I let go”.

242.Song:Holy Wars…The Punishment Due

Artist:Megadeth

Album:Rust In Peace 

Dave Mustaine was a guitarist who actually sounded like he was thrashing out some intense emotional feelings with his records. All of the chugging, thick slabs of distortion, the slashing riffage that gives his work its uniquely punk characteristics within thrash as a genre, the way the rest of his band keeps up with him beat by punishing beat. It all adds up to a punishing mixture, one, dare I say it, superior to the more clinical approach that Metallica took with many of their records. Here you feel the intensity of the Holy Wars that Mustaine is writing about. The genius page for this song notes that it was inspired by the Irish Wars of religion and Irish independence [1], but it’s hard not to read some reference to the Middle East with some of its musical passages. Whatever specific conflicts that he sings about, the raw power on display here will surely fan the flames of perpetual conflict for quite some time to come.

241.Song:Mojo Pin

Artist:Jeff Buckley

Album:Grace 

I must confess that I often, when making edits to this playlist, held my finger hovering over the delete button for “Mojo Pin”, pondering whether a song that takes a while to offer up its true substance to us listeners truly deserved its hallowed space amongst (waves hand at the rest of the playlist). Every single time, I would listen again and get overwhelmed by its colossal beauty. The intricacies of its guitar arrangements and drum patterns climbing slowly into view. To be sure, it has an opening for the ages, with Jeff Buckley’s angelic vocals drifting in over floating guitar chords, but the age of cynicism has primed the listener for such delicate things to shatter before long. “Mojo Pin” holds firm. “Ageless, ageless/ And i’m there in your arms”. Jeff builds momentum, priming the listener with inward tensions and sonic beauty, until, finally, he cuts loose with pent-up hard rock energies. If love is an explosion, then “Mojo Pin” is truly volcanic.

240.Song:Loser

Artist:Beck

Album:Mellow Gold 

“Loser” might be one of the weirdest great songs. In a case completely opposite to what the Cocteau Twins achieved on “Cherry-Coloured Funk” earlier on this playlist, here you are meant to hear every syllable, every single word that forms the chain of perplexion. Nonsense spews from Beck’s mouth in sputtering cadences “Someone came, saying I’m insane to complain/ About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt” or “With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job”.  The best that I and others have been able to wring from these inanities is Beck wrestling with poverty in a tone poem of shocking insignificance. In other words, the type of brilliance that music critics adore and the rest of us plebs can only scratch our heads at. Hey, sometimes you need to hash out a lot of emotions about your state of mind through insane flights of thought about whatever is to hand, or, as Beck says as an afterthought in the chorus, “Get crazy with the Cheez-whiz”.

239.Song:Sunflower

Artist:Low

Album:Things We Lost In The Fire

Confirmation of a song’s meaning can often be frustrated by artist obstinacy or a song simply being so obscure that nobody bothers to ask before it’s too late. In the wake of vocalist Mimi J. Parker’s death in 2022, it might be too early to ask the other members of Low what this haunting dirge really means. Regardless, one Genius user[1] gave it a try to connect the imagery, and came out with the Holocaust memoir Sunflower (David Weisenthal). The record notes show that Alan Sparhawk is the lead singer on this song, it would truly not be complete without Mimi’s bittersweet vocals accompanying him, hanging off of every note like a remembrance. Its rough, sparse production allows for the dynamics of the song to reach a heartrending plateau, then some sweet strings come in to let us off gently. When I learned that Steve Albini produced this record, all of the pieces fell into place. This is a lived in record, borne of despair, grief and resignation.

238.Song:Billy Jack

Artist:Curtis Mayfield

Album:There’s No Place Like America Today 

Music Production is the art of giving a track exactly what it needs to succeed artistically. So when Curtis Mayfield Produced “Billy Jack” he wanted to create an atmosphere of crushing, oppressive dread, that permeates every pore of the listeners being. He was already well versed with funk’s innate sense of rhythmic dynamism, and especially what a wah-wah pedal could do for a guitar’s sounds. But something was missing from the kaleidoscope of vocal harmonies and tight, dry drums, something that appears so simple on the surface that its obviousness causes a few shakes of the head “Of course that’s what a song like this needed!”. What Mayfield did was fill a thermos with water and a few ice cubes and shake it to the beat. When combined with those moist guitar lines, you have a musical atmosphere of stifling heat, you can practically feel the sweat drenching Mayfield and his cohort. A small detail that speaks to Mayfield’s impeccable artistry.

237.Song:Get Up, Stand Up

Artist:The Wailers

Album:Burnin’ 

There’s something so natural in reggae for it to serve as fertile ground for protest anthems. Perhaps the stark, insistent, on-the-2 emphasis allows for harsh dichotomies to be highlighted, for the verse-chorus-verse to come off even more tightly structured for a point to be made more emphatically. Whatever the case, “Get Up, Stand Up” may be the very best of the great reggae firestarters. It exudes chaotic energy, each instrument sounds like they are having their own party somewhere else from the vocals. As if they are waiting for a rallying cry to bring them together. “So now you see the light, aay/ Stand up for your right, come on”. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh both have their chance to shine as they spew incendiary  verse “We’re sick and tired of your ‘ism and schism game”. This is a song that tilts on the edge of revolution, releasing the tension with potent harmonies in the chorus, imploring you “Don’t give up the fight”.

236.Song:Wake Up

Artist:Rage Against The Machine

Album:Rage Against The Machine 

“Wake Up” is the most accessible song off of Rage’s debut record, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have the same blazing fury exhibited on other tracks like “Killing In The Name Of”, if anything its “Kashmir”-like opening riff allows for Zach De La Rocha to build towards something approaching a cathartic release near the end. Tom Morello’s surging guitar lines throughout are a perfect backdrop to Rocha’s stop-start vocal stylings and the constant way that they evolve throughout allows for natural evolutions of lyrical themes from “He turned the power to the have-nots/ and then came the shot” to the guttural screams of “what was the price on his head?/ What was the price on his HEEEEADD?”. What we have here is a tragic poem wrapped up in a hard rock/rap fusion, an explosive outburst at the ways in which we allow our heroes to get killed and the seething resentment that that builds in society.

235.Song:I Heard It Through The Grapevine

Artist:Marvin Gaye/ Creedence Clearwater Revival

Album:In The Groove/ Cosmo’s Factory 

Originally written in 1966 and recorded by multiple artists around the same time (it’s complicated), Marvin Gaye’s version has proven definitive. Can you believe it was rejected as the first official release? [1]While Gaye had recorded this take first, Gladys Knight & The Pips got to release their single version while he had to settle for keeping it as an album cut. Buried on an album, probably dead on arrival on the charts. It’s a good thing Disc Jockey’s back then had functioning ears. This is one of those sublimely intimate takedowns that only soul could effectively muster. Marshalling the steady backing of the Motown session musicians, Gaye’s voice glides over the proceedings with grace and precision. While the lyrics would imply that he is heartbroken, the evidence that our ears give us lace it with a subtle, threatening, aura. Adele would try to recapture this feeling over her whole career, Gaye owns it in 3:17. A masterclass.

234.Song:Baptized In Blood

Artist:Death

Album:Scream Bloody Gore 

Scream Bloody Gore. Scream Bloody Gore. As an album title, it’s one of those perfect “things” to say that gets your hopes up for the content of the album. “Baptized In Blood”, with its main riff reaching gothic cathedral levels of titanic magnificence, is an extended screaming session. Chuck Shuldiner’s guttural yelps make it sound like his throat is being scraped by some infernal sandpaper. “Dark Is my soul/ Reborn they’ll learn/ Baptized in blood”. Chris Reifert’s blast beat drumming  has the audible effect of cornering Chuck, amplifying his screams into paranoia-fueled howls. The guitars are frantic, feeding into that manic energy that gets full release with every “Baptized in blood”. Considering that Chuck Shuldiner played every note on every guitar himself, the intensity of this lattice structure of distortion is astounding, something that only true genius can craft and the slightly off-kilter can appreciate.

233.Song:The Kids Aren’t Alright

Artist:The Offspring

Album:Americana

“How can one little street/ swallow so many lives?”. Written as a belated response to The Who’s “The Kids Are Alright”, this is a blistering riposte, a song unafraid to dive into the needless sufferings of one little street in america. Its rough guitars, bathed in distortion, coupled with its thunderous drums, are all the backing one needs to tell tales of woe, of abject desolation. “Jay committed suicide (whoa-oh)/ Brandon OD’d and died/ What the hell is going on?/ Cruelest dream reality” Dexter Holland’s wails are a plea for salvation, for understanding of how the brightest lights can be snuffed out by the bleakness of life’s many miseries. It may come across as somewhat rich for a band of suburban white dudes to sing about such suffering, and maybe that was the point. If The Who can get away with salving the egos of an entire generation, maybe everyone can find the faults in that mode of thinking, maybe we all can suffer equally.

232.Song:Learning To Fly

Artist:Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Album:Into The Big Wide Open 

The cover of the album, Into The Great Wide Open, depicts a painted pastoral scene, adorned with autumn leaves and a big blue sky soaring over it all. Tom Petty, exceedingly fond of jangly guitar chords, to the point of acquiring the sobriquet “Baby Byrd”, sure paints a pretty picture with his twelve-string guitars. Singing with a voice that has been described as “Bob Dylan but in tune”, he exists warmly at the core of the jangles. Here is a song so breezy that it comes off as effortless, eternal. Like a lost folk anthem passed down through memory. “I’m learning to fly/ But I ain’t got wings/ Coming down/ Is the hardest thing”. It might come across as a little too simple for jaded cynics, but “Learning To Fly” has such a joyous atmosphere to it that it ascends beyond such negativity. Tom Petty’s songcraft has always reached above the clouds, let “Learning To Fly” take you there, soaring into the great wide open with glee.

231.Song:I’m A Believer

Artist:The Monkees

Album:More Of The Monkees 

If I may make a somewhat clumsy comparison, I reckon that Coldplay and The Monkees would find a lot of common ground musically. Both bands excelled in finding the awe in sheer, bloody minded, naivety, writ large and small. At their best, both hit the sweet spot. If Coldplay did small best with “Yellow”, The Monkees did it here. Originally written by Neil Diamond, The Monkees, a band forever branded as an industry plant, a facade of a rock band propped up by the dreaded “teen” demographic, gave it their all. The result is an effervescent, eternally luminous, pop-rock gem. Every aspect hits perfectly, from the airy guitars strumming with a tinge of tape distortion, to the bouncy bass lines and preppy tambourines. From the propulsive vocal harmonies [“I’m in love (Hmmmm)/ I’m a believer (ahhh)/ I couldn’t leave her if I tried (yeah)”], to Micky Dolenz’s sublime lead performance.. Let the hype catch you in its joyous embrace.

230.Song:War Pigs

Artist:Black Sabbath/ Faith No More

Album:Paranoid/ The Real Thing 

Tony Iommi’s unique guitar tone on Black Sabbath’s best music is hard to describe as compelling to a modern listener, songs like this leave us with work that often sounds disconnected from the rest of the band. It fills a lot of stereo space that could have been used for something else, most definitely he wouldn’t be produced this way in a modern studio. Its frequencies are somehow both warm and coldly distant, wiry and restricted. But these qualities are precisely how Iommi’s work remains as beguiling as it is, something you can’t quite get a handle on is also something you will regret not trying to. Compare Iommi’s work to Faith No More’s recording, a more muscular recording that layers on reverb and multiple tracks to accomplish its sound. This spatial breadth finds itself competing with stark singularity. While you may find yourself preferring FNM’s take, the original has a mysteriously compelling quality to it that will forever defy convention.

229.Song:Come Together

Artist:The Beatles

Album:Abbey Road 

Are we reading too much into this song when we call out the fact that John Lennon says “Shoot Me” during the intro and interludes? Maybe we are, given the panoply of ridiculous lyrics that are peppered through the song, only coming together (heh) on the line “One thing I can tell you is you got to be free”. Everything else about this song is predicated around that line. He wasn’t foretelling his own doom, he was laying down a blueprint for life and this song that resonates more than the tragic end of his life. He lived as he wanted to and wanted that for us as well. To do this he predicated curiosity with those nonsense lyrics “He got monkey finger/ He shoot, Coca-cola”, or “He got ju-ju eyeball/ He one holy-roller”. With Paul McCartney’s appropriately swampy bassline sticking us in this stoner swamp, coming away with any conclusion other than that this song exists as a power anthem is a bit knackered. “Come together, right now/ Over me”.

228.Song:Jesus Of Suburbia

Artist:Green Day

Album:American Idiot 

Punk almost always seems to bring out the monumentality of its greatest creators. The Who started it all with Tommy, a proto-punk (if vastly overrated) conceptual leap, The Clash pummelled Sandanista to life, and Green Day crashed into the zeitgeist with American Idiot. On this stadium sized epic, really five songs in one, Billie Joe Armstrong weaves a steadily progressing suburban odyssey. Rife with the imagery of the disaffected: the rampant drug use, the urban decay of a hollowed out generation, even the soft betrayal of the mottos of modernity “Of the 7-Eleven where I was taught/ The motto was just a lie”. Thick slabs of distorted guitar, interrupted occasionally with some acoustic guitars and coo-ing “Oooh”’s, are our guide through this moral apocalypse, culminating in a soft Piano coda “I don’t feel any shame I won’t apologize/ When there ain’t nowhere you can go” and one final explosive release “Ah, you’re leaving home”.

227.Song:Livin’ On A Prayer

Artist:Bon Jovi

Album:Slippery When Wet

Emulating Springsteen-ian aesthetics is a task that has occupied generations of musical producers and artists. So when Producer Bruce Fairbairn had to try he took the sound of Bon Jovi as a unit and pumped their sound to the limits. The result is a skyscraping, stadium-sized, epic. One of those songs that translates the intensely personal into the immensely large. The Talkbox riff that Richie Sambora plays throughout undulates like an argument, personified by the characters of Tommy and Gina roughing their way through a thankless existence. Jon Bon Jovi’s vocals are at times warm and consoling and at others straining at the top of his vocal range, trying to reach the emotional climax promised by that most anthemic of choruses. “Take my hand/ We’ll make it I swear/ Woah-oh, livin’ on a prayer”. What some would term needless sentimentality I call a sincere attempt to strive for what’s always just out of reach.

226.Song:What A Wonderful World

Artist:Louis Armstrong

Album:What A Wonderful World 

This song might be the siren song of kitschy schmaltz, but in the chaos of the modern world it strikes a note of dissonance that brings chills to the spine. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore recognized this when he played it over a montage of death and destruction in the film Bowling For Columbine. In fact, I invite the reader to listen to this song and imagine the sounds of artillery and war alongside images of riots, soldiers fighting in urban environments in various military conflicts, of the environment being destroyed for petty financial gain. Images of the past decade of discord and disillusionment for modernity. If you don’t experience chills, you are the 1%. Originally written to bring people together, unfortunately, it only illustrates how far apart we all are from each other. Still, the honest sincerity that Louis Armstrong’s presence brings to this record, with all of its rough-hewn sweetness, is enough for it to mean what you need it to mean.

275.Song:Sinnerman (Live In New York 1965)

Artist:Nina Simone

Album:Pastel Blues

“Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?” While jazz is a fine genre for exploring the manic flights of musical experimentation, or meditating on some moody feelings, you don’t often get jazz epics as controlled and proportionally explosive as this. Every aspect of the composition expects you, the listener, to allow yourself to be dragged up the workman-like structures, to arrive at the expected denouement as if you couldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else but here; basking in Nina Simone’s vocal mastery as she yells “Power (Power to the lord)”. For someone with only a one octave vocal range, her tonal mastery becomes all the more impressive, even especially as she interacts with the rest of the musicians. At one point they all find themselves stuttering, staccato-like, as if they are ascending physical steps. Even if you aren’t a religious person, you can surely find some inspiration in this spiritually titanic gesture.

274.Song:Nemesis

Artist:Arch Enemy

Album:Doomsday Machine 

Trying to wrap your head around the walloping riffage of Arch Enemy guitarists Michael and Christopher Arnott is like trying to cite poetry in front of a riot. Some will get the meaning, but the rest are here for violence. So it seems that, in the tradition of the best thrash bands, Angela Gossow seems content with blunt ferocity “We are enemy/ Opponent of the system/ Crushing hypocrisy/ Slaying the philistine”. Harnessing all of this sonic power for, essentially, punk energies, Gossow’s growls stand in contrast to the hyper-melodic guitar lines during the chorus, which come in as if to float hope above the anarchy. Listen to how some of the lead guitar elements seem to flicker like the flames of a riot and tell me you aren’t impressed. Female fronted melodic death metal bands are a rarity in a hyper masculine, balls-to-the-wall genre, but Arch Enemy proves here that raw power is gender inclusive. “One for all/ All for one/ We are strong”.

273.Song:Common People

Artist:William Shatner

Album:Has Been 

If you find yourself sniggering at the suggestion that any song featuring William Shatner can be anything but kitschy slop, then I kindly suggest you give this populist anthem a listen. Not only is it vastly superior to Pulp’s original recording, it succeeds in being as sincere as Shatner’s peculiar mode of speaking can allow. Producer Ben Folds, not completely insane and brimming with compositional talent, surrounds Shatner with a preppy power-pop atmosphere, letting the original working class lyrics bristle with vigorous energies. “You will never understand/ how it feels to live your life/ With no meaning or control”. Everything and the kitchen sink from the power-pop palette is thrown into what effectively becomes part-tone poem, part melodic deluge; meticulously placed synths, acidic guitar parts interposed with melodic chordal movements and even a choir thrown in for good measure in the end. Kitsch? Maybe, but profoundly moving nonetheless.

272.Song:93 ‘Til Infinity

Artist:Souls Of Mischief

Album:93 ‘Til Infinity

Sampling the fusion song “Heather” off of the Billy Cobham album Crosswinds (from roughly 5:58 to 6:14 with a pitched up final note near the end and a low pass filter throughout), Souls Of Mischief laid down a backing track so smooth, with vibes so immaculately chill, that it still sits comfortably astride the 808’s and Heartbreaks crowd. Passing the verses around the crew like a good blunt, each member gets their moment and none disappoint as they lay down a blueprint for rap domination. “Yo, Crews are jealous cause we get props/ The cops wanna stop our fun/ But the top is where we’re dwellin’”. What keeps this experience glued together is the camaraderie on display, through each verse you hear the rest of the group cheering the current MC on, adding emphasis where it matters, letting the rhymes breathe when needed. If only the world could be as chill as this group “This is how we chill from 93’ Til [Infinity]”.

271.Song:Sunday Bloody Sunday

Artist:U2

Album:War 

People tend to forget that U2 started out as a post-punk band, with a grim aesthetic and rough sound to match. Their heart was still huge, even if the sound to match their intentions wouldn’t catch up until years later. Thus, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is the definitive early U2 song. The military style drumbeat that opens the song is front and center throughout, keeping the emotional core focused. The guitars are distorted in such a way as to suggest that they’re close to pulling themselves apart. Distant celtic strings surround Bono as he wails against political violence. Despite the explicitly political nature of the song, the lyrics are careful to not get too specific, (it almost began with the lyrics “don’t talk to me about the rights of the IRA”) enabling it to become a clarion call for the disaffected of any generation of listeners willing to dive deep into U2’s discography, dredging hope out of mankind’s eternal darkness.

270.Song:Wrecking Ball

Artist:Emmylou Harris

Album:Wrecking Ball 

Country music as a genre has found its singers laying bare their hearts for all to hear. Emmylou Harris knew this when she sang the opening lyrics from the Neil Young original “My life is an open book/ you read it on the radio”.  This is a song that sounds achingly delicate, like it’s about to be torn down at any moment by a particularly strong gust of wind, or, dare I say it,  a wrecking ball. Perhaps this is why Larry Mullen Jr., of U2 fame, was called in to do the drum work, any other drummer could have busted the structure beyond repair and his familiarity with subtle arrangements is well utilized here. Glistening guitar arpeggios accompany Emmylou’s fragile vocals, she often finds her voice slightly overpowered in the mix by her background vocalist Neil Young, but she remains the heart of this gorgeous, moving, lament. Her voice slightly slipping of off each syllable, like she is barely holding on within this silvery dreamscape.

269.Song:Whole Lotta Love

Artist:Led Zeppelin

Album:Led Zeppelin 2

Much has been written about how much studio wizardry was packed into this track, but I don’t intend to bore you by repeating such well worn details. Indeed, in an era where anyone with a laptop can turn any song into a digitally warped soundscape, studio effects such as this become less important as time moves on. The reason this song remains vital, essential listening even today, is how all of that manipulation plays into the lived symbology of the listener. After all, we’ve all been in  punch-drunk love, a state of being where our mind reels under the pressure. “Whole Lotta Love” is that gut feeling.  “I’m gonna give you my love/ I’m gonna give you my love? Wanna whole lotta love”,  how else can that famous bridge, where the sonics seem to scrape across the stereo field like a woozy fever, be read? We can talk about the minutiae of production and recording technique, or we can all have a moment together. Live in that moment. Need that love.

268.Song:21st Century Schizoid Man

Artist:King Crimson

Album:In The Court Of The Crimson King 

It opens with a steam whistle-like organ effect, like the song is barrelling towards you with all the momentum that a freight train would imply. Greg Lake’s vocals, laced with distortion, come across like a madman screeching about the latest calamity. The horn section seems unable to come up for air as the notes shoot out with a machine gun cadence, the drums and bass matching this pace note for note, often flitting in and out of hearing like a mental flashback. Much like the mental illness named in the song’s title, “21st. Century Schizoid Man” wallops you with an ever-shifting soundscape, you never quite feel like you are on stable ground for long. Written as a protest against the Vietnam War, it fits into a weird amount of modes of both protest and embodiment. Certainly very few songs achieved the screaming momentum on display here, and fewer still are monuments to all of our sins quite like this.

267.Song:1979

Artist:The Smashing Pumpkins

Album:Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness 

The Smashing Pumpkins make big, beautiful, clumsy records. Even their best works can’t help but get in their own way. Take “1979”. It’s a whole verse too long, a large chunk of its running time is taken up by sonics that are the exact same verse to verse, and Billy Corgan seemingly has to tuck in his chin to be able to hit the lower notes. None of this matters. Perfection is unattainable as the lyrics would seem to suggest, live life as recklessly, as headstrong as you can. “The street heats the urgency of now/ as you see there’s no one around”. Those samey sonics? They are enthralling enough to lull you into complacency, as Corgan’s poetic lyrics build you towards a bridge that releases the tensions of our collective youths. “Faster than we thought we’d go/ Beneath the sound of hope” Coming off an album where Metal epics collided with soft spoken guitar ballads, “1979” was, and remains, the right song, at the right place. Beautifully flawed.

266.Song:Hey Ya!

Artist:Outkast

Album:Speakerboxx/The Love Below

When Andre 3000 asks “What’s cooler than being cool?” and a crowd of his clones answers “Ice Cold!”, you are pinging off of this musical stunt as he descends into “alright,alright,alright,alright,alright, {etc.}”. Is all of this deliberate attempt at constructing joy a bit too much? “You think you’ve got it” he states, as if he is battling with himself via imposter syndrome. Maybe this is why the music video was famous for that aforementioned army of clones, each placed in their assigned position to generate musical harmonies, or why the sound of the song has a bittersweet edge to it beyond its lyrical themes of a failing relationship. Even the rhythmic structure seems to have to halt to catch its own breath as the 6/4 bars collide against the more traditional 4/4 beats (Everytime you hear a handclap in the first verse is where the 6/4 extension comes in). “Shake it like a polaroid picture” captures the essence of these collisions, clumsily and poetically.

265.Song:Bad Reputation

Artist:Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

Album:Bad Reputation  

You can picture whatever raunchy, explosive, chaotic music video you want instantly, the guitar chords are so raucous and the drums so effortlessly bombastic that imagery can’t help but be carried along in your head, and that’s before Joan Jett even opens her mouth. As if you needed any good reason to be here, she belts out lyrics like “A girl can do what she wants to do/ and that’s what I’m gonna do”. Then the chorus where she is accompanied by furious doo-wops “Oh No (no no no no no no no)/ Not me (me me me me me me me)”. Learning all of the lessons of the pop-punk movement, the roaring guitars don’t sound like roughly worn industrial scissors, they are gunpowder propellant to the timeless verse, no more, no less. I suspect it wouldn’t have mattered to Joan, after all “”I’m only doing good when I’m having fun/ and I don’t have to please no one”. Like a mirror-image to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”, just louder.

264.Song:The End

Artist:The Doors

Album:The Doors

A lot has been written about the creepy, Freudian aspects of this song (“Mother I want to…Unintelligible screaming), so I will leave that aspect alone for others to elaborate upon. What makes this song so deserving of its high position in music culture is its uncanny ability to feel epic and soaring without actually going over the top, until juuuuust near the end. It earns its climax through mystical guitars darting in and out, the constant, left panned, drums booming occasionally for dramatic effect, and tasteful organs surging throughout. This distinctly dark musical soundscape, soaked in absolutely titanic amounts of reverb, is almost all that is needed as Jim Morrison goes insane over the 11:35 running time.  But we are talking about The Doors here, without Morrison flailing around biblically, they wouldn’t have had this opportunity to flex. Adore this, their crowning achievement. This monument to their own contact highs.

263.Song:Churchill

Artist:Samantha Crain

Album:Kid Face

“My fortunes never made sense/ So I assumed neither did I”  Listening to Samantha Crain’s Kid Face has us reckoning with how many unnoticed talents there are in the world. A record recorded with a budget of saved up tips from her job at a now shuttered restaurant [1], where the fiddle player you hear delicately touching the harmonics throughout this song couldn’t even hear the songs he was recording, having to go off of memory. Making art as warmly personal as this takes courage, the strength to face probable failure and fight through, all for the chance that somebody, anybody, hears your work in its best light. And oh, what a beautiful bed of noise “Churchill” is; Rolling acoustic guitar arpeggiation followed by bass lines so warm you could wrap yourself up in them and drift asleep, with slide guitars slipping into the dreamscape as delicately as gossamer threads. “So blame me for what I cannot finish” you finished it, you won at life.

262.Song:The Gallis Pole

Artist:Lead Belly

Album:BD Music Presents Lead Belly 

Giving an artist from the 1930’s credit for releasing any music at all, in as ridiculously influential a genre as the blues, can get tiring to the casual music listener. Like, how on earth can music from nearly a century ago be as good as music coming out now? And with vastly better recording quality to boot? Answering these questions has become even more vital in this age of convenience, where we can switch songs the instant we don’t feel any good vibes from them. With “Gallis Pole”, I will have to lean hard into the archaic nature of its recording. After all, it’s hard not to get a rustic, spooky, vibe from how the acoustic guitar pierces through the surges of recording noise, Lead Belly’s vocals are the clearest element, even peaking the microphone at times with their dynamics. The theme of escaping the gallows with pure old-fashioned bribery will always catch a revolutionaries ear. As vital as it was upon release all those years ago.

261.Song:The World Has Turned And Left Me Here

Artist:Weezer

Album:Weezer (The Blue Album)

The Blue Album was chock full of genre defining songs, from the wacked out folk rock of “My Name Is Jonas” to the brooding alt-rock of “Say It Ain’t So”, even some nostalgic boomer bait with “Buddy Holly”. However, as influential as all of those records are, I would put this tune as the album’s most quietly influential. Sonically dense, emotionally wounded, fountains of angst that emo would drink deeply from. In its distortion bathed muscly power chords, you can find the seeds that would sprout snarky power pop (Fall Out Boy). In its emotionally naked lyrics and River Cuomo’s soft moanings you can hear the siren calls of the Rainer Maria’s. In its acoustic additives and folksy vibes, Tegan And Sara would find purchase. Rarely do you find a song that encapsulates an entire genre’s worth of stylings, textures and intents. Rarer still  are the tracks that still vibrate with the intensity of their moment. Let the world of emo leave you here, breathless.

260.Song:Autumn Leaves

Artist:Frank Sinatra

Album:Where Are You? 

I could have stuffed this list with Sinatra joints, packed it to the brim with swinging swagger or forlorn ballads. Arguably the most popular and influential performer of the twentieth century, Frank has such a fine command over the emotive power of his vocals that he acquired the nickname “The Voice”. While he did his best work under the auspices of arranger Nelson Riddle, birthing the modern album era in the process, it is with this song, arranged by Gordon Jenkins, that he reaches his emotional peak. Cascading strings and woodwinds replicating the feel of the autumn wind,  swirling leaves around on its currents. Sinatra sings as if he has lost everything, as if love is no longer possible, as the seasons shift to winter’s song. “I miss you most of all/ My darling/ When Autumn leaves/ Start to fall”. Like the omnipresent pop star he was for half a century, one way or another, Sinatra’s voice will continue to glide over us all.

259.Song:Love Story

Artist:Taylor Swift

Album:Fearless

Fearless is an album packed to the brim with perfect country-pop, where the sheer momentum of the songwriting carries you away on tides of awe; “Love Story” succeeds on the level of the songwriting craft and the mythic appeal of its storytelling. Consider the lyric “Marry me Juliet/ You’ll never have to be alone”, the culmination of every arc that the song has been frothing the audience up to. The key even modulates upward to give it an extra soaring push towards its stadium sized conclusion. Whatever flak you might give Taylor Swift for her vocal abilities at this point in her career, the aching vulnerability and breathy fragility she imbues into every syllable can’t help but give the whole affair a sense of emotional authenticity often lacking in Country’s usual aesthetics. While she would later cash in on the goodwill engendered with songs like these in her pop career, let us never forget that Taylor Swift was a Country artist first.

258.Song:Another Man Done Gone (Live In NYC)

Artist:Odetta

Album:At Town Hall 

Odetta is an artist forever paired with the Civil Rights movement, the list of accolades relating to such on her wikipedia entry is impressive, her level of influence on blues and folk even more so. But we are not here for me to recite the wiki, we are here because we want to listen to great music, regardless of context. So I give you this, this most stark of performances. Her, alone, before a crowd, baring her soul as a monument to all souls lost to injustice, nothing but a steady handclap to accompany her.. This is the most wounded vocal performance in music history; you get the real sense that the audience simply couldn’t afford to breathe, lest they disturb the solemnity of moments like “I didn’t know his name”. When her voice devolves into a primal whine on lines like “They killed another man”, the abyssal depths to which racism can carry a society comes into full view. An unforgiving, unforgettable, recording.

257.Song:The Times They Are A-Changing

Artist:Bob Dylan

Album:The Times They Are A-Changing 

It’s curious that Bob Dylan, a man who famously hated being dubbed ‘The Voice Of A Generation’, would find himself recording a song so unabashedly an anthem. According to the book Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions (1960-1994), music critic Tony Glover asked him why. Dylan responded “It seems to be what the people like to hear”. How can something born from such a cynical mindset sound as vibrant and alive as when it was first recorded? How can those guitars sound so crisp and bell-like, never interfering with Dylan’s uniquely nasally treble? “For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled/ The battle outside raging” Maybe this proves that maybe, just maybe, Dylan knew the power of his voice. As the Civil Rights movement raged around him, he knew he needed to give them something to work with, a rallying cry for a revolutionary time. However sincerely he meant it, there’s no denying how well he succeeded.

256.Song:Helena Beat

Artist:Foster The People

Album:Torches 

“Helena Beat” is the sound of someone tackling their inner demons head on. Mark Foster certainly has a honed ear for weird constructions, as every element of this song seems on the verge of vomiting. Consider the drums, Mark Pontius’s performance here suggests a rhythm one wrong beat away from collapsing the scaffolding. The wildly frenetic granular synth leads that flail about throughout this track are perfect for capturing the mentality of a shut-in nutbar, various synth pads are tonally wobbly, detuning even as they are being played. The closest this song gets to conventional is the bridge that feels like it is leading you on towards your own destruction. Coming from a band most famous for a song about a school shooting, “Helena Beats” showcases a healthier way to vent your frustrations about yourself and your capabilities. Even if things get really weird, you can always write a song capturing your unique view of the world.

255.Song:Dreams

Artist:Fleetwood Mac

Album:Rumours

The best music often flows like a dream, from the liquid ethers of our imaginations, the aim is to extract what we can from fleeting dreamscapes. This is what apparently happened for “Dreams” in the recording studio[1]: Stevie Nicks was bored in the studio and asked for some keyboards to noodle around on, only to come back to the recording sessions with “Dreams” ready to go. Demo’ing the track before the rest of the band, they all started joining in. The resulting guide vocal from Nicks was apparently good enough that she couldn’t repeat its magic, despite repeated urgings from Audio Engineer Ken Caillat. Sometimes all you can extract from the creative mind is the golden thread that enlivens the capabilities of your collaborators. With “Dreams”, we have something approaching perfection coming from an imperfectly recorded test recording, with the rest of the band sounding as warm and comforting as a soft bed. Magic!

254.Song:Protection

Artist:Massive Attack

Album:Protection 

It is my humble opinion that Tracey Thorne had the most gorgeous singing voice of all time in the 90’s and early 00’s. The many ways her dulcet tones wrapped themselves around every syllable, every register of her contralto dripping like honey through the headphones. Small wonder that Massive Attack partnered with her for this track, which might also contain the best verse intro ever; just listen to how the drums decay out at :40 and how she sings “This girl I know/ needs some shelter”. Chills!. This trip-hop epic, lasting almost eight minutes, finds the group crafting just the right atmosphere for her voice, that voice of angels, to glide over the proceedings. Bending gender conventions throughout, she alternates identifying as a boy and a girl as the lyrics demand, the song finds middle ground in the ever shifting sexual dynamics of the dancefloor. “I Stand in front of you/ I’ll take the force of the blow/ Protection”.

253.Song:Them Bones

Artist:Alice In Chains

Song:Dirt 

Very few times has the name of both a song and its parent album come together in symbolic unity as well as on this pummeling tune. The opening guitar riff really does sound like shovels hacking away at the dirt, trying to uncover some unfathomably evil bones underneath. “Some say, we’re born/ Into the grave” Layne Stayley’s vocals harmonize demonically as the guitars shift into a different mode, exuding a buried menace as they strike out five paces, only to find themselves hurried in the chorus, as if they are unprepared for what they have dug up. Writer and Guitarist Jerry Cantrell wanted to write a song that confronted mortality, taking as grim a topic as death head on like this serves as a life-affirming method, even if Layne Stayley would ultimately provide his own grim epitaph for the band, and this song in particular. Small wonder then when he sings “I feel so alone/ Gonna end up a big ol’ pile of them bones”, we believe him.

252.Song:Here’s Where The Story Ends

Artist:The Sundays

Album:Reading, Writing & Arithmetic 

“It’s that little souvenir, of a terrible year/ That makes my eyes feel sore”. Maybe it’s a good thing this song was released before the shoegaze and grunge waves hit the world like a hurricane, the traumas eeked out of those desolate, screechingly loud soundscapes would certainly have overwhelmed this delicate structure. Harriet Wheeler’s waif-like vocals bounce around with enough energy to fool a casual listener into believing that a fairy-tale world exists that the jangly guitars are helping to conjure. The lyrics put a halt to that. How can it not with lines like “I can see how people look down/ They’re on the inside”? This is cafe-core, a unique dream pop aspect that appeared in the late eighties and was extinguished by the loudness wars of the 90’s. Suzanne Vega with “Tom’s Diner”, Edie Brickel with “What I Am”, all facets of this observational diamond, brought to its fullest fruition here.

251.Song:Fever

Artist:Elvis Presley

Album:Elvis Is Back! 

“Never know how much I love you/ Never know how much I care”. The timeless appeal of Elvis Presley was multi-layered. On one hand you had his intense physicality and showmanship, on the other you had his undeniable singing talents. Here, he showcases all that made him the biggest rock star in history. All apologies to miss Peggy Lee, whose version of this song is recommended by most music critics as the definitive take, but Elvis definitively steals the spotlight here. The way his voice slinks up and down, warbling at all the right times, the notes he chooses to linger on, the ones he cuts off at the moment of tension. He lathers up the listener, seduces them with sheer charisma. “What a lovely way to burn” . The backing bass and percussion exist merely to drift along his tantalizing tides. Say all you want about other singers takes on this jazz classic, no one, not a single one, has convinced me they care about your needs as much as the King.

300.Song:The East Wind

Artist:Gord Downie And The Country Of Miracles

Album:The Grand Bounce 

When Gord Downie worked with The Tragically Hip, there was always a sense of a buried power waiting to unleash itself. With his solo work, he could let that power take flight, with the appropriate folksy atmospherics to help it along. The jangly guitars don’t overpower the treble, the drums hover in the background like a light breeze, and Gord Downie’s vocals soar through lines like “It doesn’t go around you/ It goes through you”. This serene atmosphere, where you can practically see the vast distances of the  prairies rushing by in your head, continues on, the rest of the band joining in on the fun. The electric guitars drip like honey off of the soundscape as the drums collide into you like an old friend. “Hello again my friends/ I’ve come to see you again” Downie sings to emphasize the point. But like any friendship, there will always be a certain distance to maintain “No I do not love you/ Hate the word”, but for now, enjoy the time spent together.

299.Song:Bust A Move

Artist:Young MC

Album:Stone Cold Rhymin’ 

Hip-hop’s resilience as a genre relies on its chameleonic capabilities. For its aural wallpaper to shift from genre to genre, from whatever was needed to what is necessary now. Hence, “Bust A Move”’s continued relevance, a dance party anthem is always welcome, but one this deliriously funky, catchy, rhythmic, etc. retains its cachet even when the rest of the genre finds itself mired in the complications of social commentary and materialism.  “Bust it” Young MC declares, as if the only thing that matters now is what you are here for. Forget the rest of the world. That signature “Ballin’ Jack’s” sample is so deliriously funky and jubilant that it hard carries the entire song almost on its own. Crystal Blake’s emphatic vocals in the chorus provide just the tonic for morose existence “you want it/ You got it”. Yes, his flows can come across as basic, even obsolete at the time of release, but Young MC’s undeniable charisma keeps the party going forever. 

298.Song:Bette Davis Eyes

Artist:Kim Carnes

Album:Mistaken Identity 

If you can believe it, this was originally written as a country tune by Jackie DeShannon. Listening to that version is where you realize that covering a song well is a major talent, to do so in a way that makes the original entirely redundant is miraculous. Enter Kim Carnes. It was keyboardist Bill Cuomo that came up with the distinctive synth riff that carries us along through the song with its unstoppable momentum and warm presence, but this is mainly Kim Carne’s show. Her rough vocals turn this song into a true banger, finding a rhythmic line that the original couldn’t hope to compare against. Everything about this song is perfect, from Carne’s throaty performance, to the delectable way that the electronic snare hits introduce themselves, like thunderclaps. It seduces us with the force of personality that the lyrical subject exudes. We’ve all known firecracker personalities, what attracts us to them, “Bette Davis Eyes” precociously lights up our fascinations.

297.Song:Louie Louie

Artist:The Kingsmen

Album:The Kingsmen In Person 

Usually for songs on this playlist I have the Genius lyrics sheets on hand in a secondary tab, but for “Louie, Louie”, I find that there is no need for it. This is the record that, more than any other, gave full flight to the concept of “The Sound” mattering more than what was said. How else can we explain its success on the charts, when the lyrics are not intelligible at all, more so when listening to it on the radio instead of headphones. It has lyrics, even defined ones when reading off the sheets, it doesn’t matter. We are here for the vibes and nothing else. Now that I think about it, this absolutely could be read as a presager for multitudes of genres that were still to come, from electronica to shoe-gaze, from punk to noise-rock. There are explanations for its otherwise grubby sound, mostly related to budget, but the audible “Fuck” at 54 seconds in by drummer Lynn Easton gives off all the impulse power needed when considering its impact.

296.Song:I Still Feel

Artist:Martina Topley-Bird

Album:Quixotic 

Martina Topley-Bird is an artist in danger of being lost to the uncaring ravages of time. While trip-hop enthusiasts might scoff at that notion, after all she does have some legacy cachet due to being featured on Maxinquaye, I submit that her solo work, despite being just as beguiling, is rarely referenced.To compensate, I will satiate with this: “I Still Feel” hits all of the highest notes that trip-hop as a genre strives for; subtlety fighting for space against the voluminous soundscape, seductive impulses versus the drugged out implications of the club-beats. Starting with low droning bass guitars and distorted drums, transitioning into a sampled plucked harp string riff, Martina’s vocals slide in upon a bed of record noise and subtle reverberation “Wish that I could close my eyes/ and stop this room from moving”. Stunning stuff, all the more so when the harmonies flit in and out of the stereo field, like a persistent itch that you can’t scratch.

295.Song:God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot

Artist:Buffy Sainte-Marie 

Album:Illuminations 

Leonard Cohen had a lot of complicated emotions to wring out when it came to God. Even on his deathbed, he was wrestling with the contradictions of faith. He collected a lot of his stop-start, whirling thoughts into a collection of poetry called Beautiful Losers, which is where Buffy Sainte-Marie found “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot”. This baffling slab of mystic lyricism, that seems to span a Biblical epoch with its scope, was perfect for a woman with ever shifting identities. Recording her main performance in one take, producer Maynard Solomon laced the proceedings with eerie synthetic vocals, delayed and reversed to wrap around the song and define its purpose. You are not supposed to get a solid feel of where Leonard’s lyrics will take you, Buffy constantly builds towards non-existent revelations, her voice throatily drilling through mythic sounding verses. Magic is definitely afoot here, but God, apparently, takes some serious will to find.

294.Song:Eleanor Rigby

Artist:The Beatles

Album:Revolver  

“All the lonely people/ Where do they all come from?” Paul McCartney’s voice pans to the centre on this line, like he’s letting you in on a secret. This whole song, off of one of the most revolutionary albums ever recorded, gives off that air. Consider the characterization of Father Mackenzie, as a man who composes a sermon “that no one will hear”, who darns his socks in the night for a performance that none will appreciate. All of this for a woman, one “Eleanor Rigby”, for whom nobody would come to her funeral. She may or may not have lived a fabulously rich life, all that mattered, in the end was what it all amounted to. The big tragedy of this song, whose funeral march of strings sounds provides the backdrop, is how this isn’t an isolated incident, that people die every day with no one to care or notice “Ah, look at all the lonely people”, with even the structures of religion failing to provide comfort for those ends. A tragedy in miniature.

293.Song:Work It

Artist:Missy Elliott

Album:Under Construction

It mystifies me how long it was a mystery to the music public what the reversed lyrics were in the chorus[1], they were literally the reverse of the immediately preceding words. It does speak to this song’s long term viability in the great songs sweepstakes, we are still combing through it for meaning. It is refreshing how blunt this song is “Go downtown and eat it like a vulture”. What separates it is the zaniness of the sonics, this is prime Timbaland magic, throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the backing for Missy Elliott’s unhinged stylings. Her personality threatens to overpower the proceedings, the sexual energy pouring through every syllable is palpable, but Timbaland barely lets the listener breathe as he samples everything from Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass” to Run DMC’s “Peter Piper”.  That all of this works so well is an incredible feat, for Missy Elliott, it’s a mere Tuesday.

292.Song:The Man Who Lives Forever

Artist:Lord Huron

Album:Lonesome Dreams

Originally, this song’s spot on the playlist was taken up by a Coldplay song, “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall”, itself a massively loud outburst of romantic energies. Lord Huron’s take on the worldly magnificence of love just happened to edge them out. Heck, if you took Coldplay’s Viva La Vida and compressed it down to one song, this would be the result. The intro, with its metal drums and bird sounds captures an innate exploratory appeal, as if Lord Huron would travel the entire span of the globe to reach the object of his affections. “There ain’t enough time in the life that they gave me” as a lyric pairs with “I wanna be the man whole lives forever” in the chorus, as Ben Schneider’s vocals seem to drift in from some ethereal plane, hazy, indistinct when compared to the crystal clear arrangements. Let the “Ooh, Ooh-Ooh”’s that populate the structures carry you along on its momentous tides.

291.Song:Money

Artist:Pink Floyd

Album:The Dark Side Of The Moon 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that this song is in 7/4 time, but describing the appeal of that halting rhythmic structure can be a blessing and a curse when it comes to Prog-rock bands. With “Money”, one of the more famous songs off of that most famous of albums, you get perhaps the best rejoinder to anyone who complains of the genre’s inaccessibility. Here you get big blunt basslines and slashing guitars, matter-of-fact synths and David Gilmour spelling it all out for you “Money, it’s a crime”. That halting 7/4 structure always has the listener coming up short, banging up against the structures of society “But if you ask for a rise/ It’s no surprise that they’re giving none away”. Alan Parsons’ production gives Pink Floyd everything they need to rage against the machine, from literal cash register sound effects, to the space they need for those rollicking solos. “Money, so they say/ Is the root of all evil today”. It’s all there for your appreciation.

290.Song:Flesh Without Blood

Artist:Grimes

Album:Art Angels

“A diss track about a false friend” Grimes said about” Flesh Without Blood” [1]. Why do a lot of artists find their most bountiful fruits picked from failed relationships, friendships or otherwise? When listening to this song, you get the feeling that Grimes could wring pure gold out of a soiled dishrag. It most emphatically does NOT mean to go on as it starts. Those melodic oooh’s and aaah’s that kick things off are mere accouterments to the surging electronica. Grimes sounds barely self-contained as her vocals careen from line to line, the occasional operatic flourish given an extremely long tail of reverb/delays, only to grace us with some ethereal chorus delivery “Baby, believe me/ and you had every chance/ you destroy everything that you know”. This song is the dream that floated through every prog-rock artists’ head before the technology was available for them, it certainly plays out like one. A lucid, ever shifting, dreamscape.

289.Song:Supersonic

Artist:Oasis

Album:Definitely Maybe 

Written and recorded in the space of one day, this is Oasis embodied. Egotism, beauty and clumsy perfection. One of the music videos for “Supersonic” shows the band surrounded by the grit and grind of the city, trash bags drifting in the wind behind the drummer and the trains speeding by. Even the grainy, as the crow flies, photography harkens back to Let It Be era Beatles, who the Gallhager brothers so desperately wish to be compared against. All of this contrasts with the song itself, which is a muscular beauty, a perfect, capital R, Rock song. “You need to be yourself/ You can’t be no one else” This lyric captures the essence, from a band that tried to replicate all that came before and overshadow whatever would come after. They carved out a spot for themselves in the canon by aiming for greatness, however sincerely or not they managed. “I need to be myself/ I can’t be no one else”.

288.Song:Concrete Jungle

Artist:Bob Marley & The Wailers

Album:Catch A Fire

Imagine how utterly despondent someone would have to be, when catching a glimpse of mid-twentieth century America’s urban centres, to write a song about how soul stifling the city life can be. The benefits of modern urban planning have largely freed us from those concrete hellscapes, but for those unlucky souls still trapped in places like, say, Gary, Indiana, this is the song for you. “No chains around my feet but I’m not free”. The stark electric guitar that plays throughout performs like the ashes of accumulated dreams of escaping from rural destitution. Bob Marley’s vocals sound like they are wavering on the knife edge of hope, dynamically fluctuating against the synth lead and accusatory bass lines. Reggae’s constant insistence on the 1-2 1-2 gives “Concrete Jungle” a punk-rock edge as Marley sings “No sun will shine in my day today”. As he asks “Where is the love to be found?” you get the feeling that nothing could console him.

287.Song:The Motor City Is Burning

Artist:John Lee Hooker/ MC5

Album:Urban Blues/ Kick Out The Jams 

The best of the blues could often be just as incendiary as the most raucous of punk, this is probably why MC5 chose to cover this song on their seminal live album Kick Out The Jams. As titanic a guitar assembly as they managed there, they still can’t quite match the gliding ferocity of John Lee Hooker’s original recording. Written and produced by Al Smith, Hooker is given all the room he needs to run riot over the traditional blues structures. The drums crackle with a restrained fury, like they are about to pop off at any moment, the rolling bass lines match that energy beat for beat. Hooker’s guitars flicker like the flames of a riot, as was the case in the summer of ‘67, when society was starting to tear itself apart over  the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. His vocals have all the assured presence of a man who has seen these times before and is content to watch the flames. “The Motor City’s burnin’/ Ain’t a thing that I can do”.

286.Song:1901

Artist:Phoenix

Album:Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 

Sometimes a song comes along that vents all the pent up aspirations of youth, that carries us along a beat so intensely propulsive that we surrender to its magic. “1901” has that energy, a through-line of fantastical vivacity that speaks to the ages. Written as an homage to 1901 France, just before the calamities of the World Wars, an age where the future was as bright as it was seemingly limitless with potential, this song refuses to let go of its naivety. If anything it wants to drag you along with its hopeful vigor. Great big synth slabs pair with a guitar line ringing out in the distance, like a call to action, as the drums come crashing in along the rhythm guitar parts, suggesting notes hanging just out of reach. As the chorus worms its way into your skull, you get the feeling that you would rather be nowhere else but here, dancing along to its exuberant highs “It’s not a miracle we needed/ And no, I wouldn’t let you think so/ Fold it, fold it, fold it, fold it”.

285.Song:Bitter Sweet Symphony

Artist:The Verve

Album:Urban Hymns

Sometimes life just throws stuff at you that synchronizes perfectly with your artistic aspirations; As what happened with “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, where The Verve got screwed out of songwriting royalties for their usage of a small part of an orchestral rendition of  The Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time”. Allen Klein proved to be one of the most cutthroat managers in music when he strong-armed them for 22 years [1].  When life and art come together like this, you can’t help but be impressed by the cosmic roulette that we all play with our lives and those of our surrounding significants. “‘Cause it’s a bitter sweet symphony this life”. The voluminous strings that appear throughout are simply perfect manifestations of melodramatic grandeur, of the pettiness of life writ large. The rest of the band serves as mere accouterments, striking through the dense string mixture with resigned indifference. As if life couldn’t be more perfectly atonal.

284.Song:Don’t Hurt Yourself

Artist:Beyonce Feat. Jack White

Album:Lemonade 

Listening to this song is an exercise in timidity. Girl, you know you can just leave him right? When Beyonce finds herself singing lines like “You ain’t trying hard enough/ You ain’t lovin’ hard enough”, is she actually following the logic through to the end in her head? Whatever, humans are complicated, love even more so. Music can help us parse through these things, but finding easy answers through it? Forget it. Beyonce found a well of uncontested artistic brilliance from it at least. Teaming up with Jack White, the two produce a neo-soul rocker that hits on every possible cylinder. From the way that the organ riff at the beginning flares up and down, to the way that the drums seem to fill a void that only they could fill. There is something here for any audiophile to drool over. But back to Beyonce’s lyrics, after an entire song filled with invective, she growls menacingly at the end “If you try this shit again/ You gon’ lose your wife”. We shall see.

283.Song:Cherry Coloured Funk

Artist:Cocteau Twins

Album:Heaven Or Las Vegas 

No lyrics sheet exists for this song. The closest that we have are educated guesses [1]filled with nonsense sentences and disjointed imagery. Kooky stuff like “You steam a lens stable eyes and glass” or “You’ll hang the hearts black and dull as the night”. These are lyrics that mean nothing, to be sung as if they are known unknowns. Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals have always been a guessing game, the kind of late-night party-game where you could lose your mind trying to decipher the vaguest of syllables for the vaguest of ends. Still, you can’t escape the sheer spacious beauty that the Cocteau Twins surround her vocals with. The guitars that are always shifting on these unstable foundations, as if they themselves also can’t find the answers that we are seeking. The drums that are the only constant that we can hang our hat on, keeping an insistent push as if nudging us towards some kind of  understanding. Whatever it all means, it’s a lovely uncertainty.

282.Song:Red Rain

Artist:Peter Gabriel

Album:So

On So, Peter Gabriel’s emotions were outsized. In a year where music was exceedingly global with its intentions, where the Cold War threatened every advance with the specter of our darkest potential, he released this moody epic. Borne out of a nightmare, only “Red Rain” could sound like this, at this moment, for this purpose. The intro soars in like a thunderstorm, the synths and drums impacting like lightning over the savannah. Then Gabriel’s voice, lamenting, rough, and worn down by trauma, unleashes itself in torrents. “I am standing at the water’s edge in my dream/ I cannot make a single sound as you scream” That his performances eeks a semblance of hope out of the bleak soundscapes is utterly remarkable, but the end result is still a plea for…something, it’s not quite clear from the lyrics, which I guess is the point. Letting nightmares define your way forward can only end in misery, but “Red Rain” at least allows for that reflection.

281.Song:My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme From “Titanic”)

Artist:James Horner & Celine Dion

Album:Titanic 

Yeah, for a year or two this was the most played song on the planet, get over it. It deserved to be played then, now and forever. Recorded in one take by Celine Dion, this is by far the best showcase of her talents as a performer. To lilt from line to line, first softly, then bombastically, to power through lyrics like “Love was when I loved you” without breaking into laughter, in fact to make us not care about that writing snafu, that’s magic. James Horner was smart enough to craft the production around her, not overpowering but adding in crucial touches, such as the signature delayed claps dotted throughout, or carefully threading the line of cheesiness with the angelic synths. This song has a momentum that approaches unstoppable, the kind of inevitability that one has while watching the Titanic sail right into the iceberg. One take! No cover, no studio touch ups. Celine Dione alone, against the world. The world clearly loved it and so should you.

280.Song:The Passenger

Artist:Siouxsie & The Banshees/ Iggy Pop

Album:Through The Looking Glass/ Lust For Life 

While Iggy Pop’s original version of this song is much more beloved, it does have a more punk-rock energy to it, I believe that, given time, Siouxsie & The Banshees’ tighter recording will prove definitive. The main weakness of the original, to me, was the lack of a rhythmic center to its more tone poem production, the ad-hoc nature of its recording. It turns out, adding a brass section completely chained to the rhythm allows the rest of the song to bounce off of it more effectively. Thus, Siouxsie. Every musical element just functions far better when the listener isn’t desperately holding on for dear life. While that lackadaisicalness may be the point, may even be artistically far more potent, it is far easier to ride those musical waves when we are assured of where we and the band stand. That Siouxsie is a better singer is an added bonus, she can simply reach those peaks that Iggy, bless his soul, simply can’t reach.

279.Song:Ghost Rider

Artist:Suicide

Album:Suicide 

This song came out in 1977, at a time when disco was at its peak and Giorgio Moroder had already made several of his iconic synth sets. So it’s not as if there hadn’t already been precedents for what Suicide would give the world, a sixties band named Silver Apples explored much of the same terrain as well. But what makes “Ghost Rider” so iconic is its blase attitude towards rebellious youth. Like it could care less that American boys were so recently led to slaughter in the Vietnam War, it pummels forward over the notions of good sense. How else can you explain its comic book inspiration taking up so much space in the lyrics sheet? “Ghost rider motorcycle hero” Alan Vega just sort of angsts out, his vocals on the verge of insanity as Martin Rev’s synth organ and stark drum machine sounds play on and on and on. This mood of coiled up anxieties, never allowed to really cut loose, would go on to inform entire genres of resigned dissatisfaction. 

278.Song:Higher Ground

Artist:Stevie Wonder

Album:Innervisions 

Stevie Wonder had such a knack for soulful, enervating, songwriting that it almost doesn’t matter if you can call “Higher Ground” out for being instantly dated due to its distinctive synths. The joy overpowers the cynicism, as a matter of course. The fact that every sound is crystal clear in the mix allows the sonics room to breathe, to percolate their way into your senses. The warmth of the basslines and groove of the drums form a steady base for introspection. Given the context of a post civil-rights decade still grappling with the particulars, the sharp blips and bloops of the keyboards function as a neat metaphor for the continued need for awareness and agitation to “reach the highest ground”. “Teachers keep on teaching/ Preachers keep on preaching…/Cause it won’t be too long”. Barack Obama once said that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, songs like “Higher Ground” will be here to remind us to “keep on learning”.

277.Song:If I Die 2Nite

Artist:2Pac

Album:Me Against The World 

Against a sonic backdrop hard enough to create the effect of a man rapping with his back to the wall, 2pac lives up to his considerable legend. We have those sparse synth hits, swirling horns in the chorus and outro, Dr.Dre popping in with his bassy emphasis and 2pac double tracking his vocals through each verse, an onslaught unto himself. The drums and bass deserve special credit here: that bass is a powerfully punchy thing, coming in alongside 2pac’s plosives like a concealed sidearm. The dry snare has the effect of shining a spotlight onto the proceedings with its slashing frequencies, the kicks mixed low enough to become abyssal. A perfect production style to allow 2pac’s snarling rhymes their space to ram through the speakers “I hope they bury me and send me to my rest/ Headlines reading ‘murdered to death’ my last breath”. “ If I Die 2Nite” is the sound of 2pac having the last word, no matter what should happen.

276.Song:No Church In The Wild

Artist:Jay-Z & Kanye West (Feat. Frank Ocean & The Dream)

Album:Watch The Throne  

“We formed a new religion/ No sins as long as there’s permission”. In the light of Kanye West’s fascinating descent into his god-delusion, “No Church In The Wild” hits even harder as a spiritually debauched, seductive, showcase of his talents. Yes, producer 88 Keys introduced him and Jay-Z to the main beats, but he had the insight to fill the soundscape out with Frank Ocean’s sharp voice and demand certain changes throughout. It gets to the point that, even though this ostensibly a collaboration between West and Jay-Z, it really could have just been another track on a mainline West album. That’s not to sell Jay-Z’s philosophically dense contributions short ,“Socrates asked whose bias do y’all seek/ All for Plato, screech”, it’s just hard not to place it as a result of a man battling his own internal spiritual demons, especially with that liquid, deep toned prog riff circling around the proceedings like a flock of vultures.

325.Song:Boogie On Reggae Woman

Artist:Stevie Wonder

Album:Fulfillingness’ First Finale 

Stevie Wonder was a master at bridging genres, you would often get the feeling that the entire musical palette was at his disposal, bristling at his fingertips upon the keyboards. So “Boogie On Reggae Woman” comes to us exactly as the title implies, merging funk, reggae, boogie and even some blues. That Moog Bass synth lead is so ridiculously catchy, so rich in its sonic warmth, that it could carry the entire song on its own, let alone masterfully interplay with Stevie’s Fender Rhodes piano lines. Almost everything on this track comes across pillowy soft; the drums, Stevie’s syrupy vocals, the distinct lack of reverb allowing every aspect its own space to cook, all except the harmonica that leads us out. It stands out, it makes a statement. Flitting out over the warm bed of noise, it’s Stevie cutting loose, free-forming over the tightly-controlled rhythms. “Can I Play?” He asks, yes he can. To the delight of all.

324.Song:Pray For Me

Artist:Kendrick Lamar Feat. The Weeknd

Album:Black Panther: The Album 

“I fight the world/ I fight you/ I fight myself” The short, grinding intro to this song is a perfect summation of what this song is about to deliver, a fight to the finish for ideals against an often monstrous existence. The Weeknd’s vocals sound like they are holding back a simmering resentment, even when he melodically opens up, the autotune effects keep him on a leash. “If I’m gon’ die for you/ If I’m gon’ kill for you/then i’ll spill this blood for you”. Tribal chants accentuate the aggressiveness as Kendrick cuts loose rhythmically, cutting his way through an acidic verse “Mass destruction and mass corruption/ the souls of sufferin’ men”. The soundscape of harsh bass lines crunching up against the tight drums craft an atmosphere of claustrophobic angst. But there is hope to be found, when The Weeknd sings the final chorus; soft synth chords ring out, his voice reverberating around the stereo field, letting us breathe. Tension and release.

323.Song:Gimme The Loot

Artist:The Notorious B.I.G.

Album:Ready To Die 

“Yeah, motherfuckers better know/ Imma Bad, bad, boy”. The intro for The Notorious B.I.G.’s scariest song is stark, the drums booming alone, some light guitar samples as an accent.  Then Biggie comes in and gangsta rap has its defining epic. Playing a dual role of two hardcore muggers, Biggie Smalls lays down a horrifying display of the daily life of 90’s New York. “And my n***a Biggie got a itchy one grip/ one in the chamber, thirty two in the clip”. The ease at which he switches personalities as his two characters terrorize the streets is a tour de force performance, never faltering in his commitment to the gangsta ideal. “I wouldn’t give a fuck if you’re pregnant/ Give me the baby rings and the #1 Mom pendant”. Perhaps this was a genre that came too close to reality, as Biggie’s demise would later prove, but damn if songs like this didn’t freeze this moment in time perfectly, as graphic and unflinching as it still proves to be.

322.Song:Parking Lot

Artist:Anderson Paak

Album:Malibu 

One thing that Californians will never cease to remind others of is the fact that they come from California. They can’t help themselves. They live in a state blessed by what are essentially perpetual summers, so much so that it becomes a season that, as Vince Cunningham wrote “I most easily and most happily forget”[1]. Little wonder that so many of Pop Music’s outbursts of joy come from artists blessed to live in its neighborhood, or in comparison to it. The Beach Boys sang about surfing, The Mamas And Papas sang about needing to be there to feel any happiness at all, and here we have Anderson Paak just coasting on a musical vibe so potent that cynicism just wafts away along the sunbeams. All he needs is the main hook “1 2 3, Come on, you feel me”, repeated as many times as needed, and his drumming finesse. If all you are surrounded by is the warmth of the summer sun then you can very easily forget your worries, as here.

321.Song:Midnight City

Artist:M83

Album:Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming 

When thinking about spiritual release, God doesn’t necessarily have to enter the conversation, he can be merely ancillary to the experience. Hence lines like “The city is my church/ It wraps me in its blinding twilight”. Anyone who has ever looked out the window of a bus, train or car in a downtown city centre after dark will know the feeling of a nightlife invigorating the soul. “Midnight City” gives this feeling its full purchase in our hearts. Glittering synths collide against human synthesized vocals (“Waiting in the car” being my best guess as to their sounding). The electronic drums bubble up and down the dynamics, shunting us through each emotional shift.  If you allow the album art’s visuals access to your imagination, you can easily picture flashing neon lights and disco balls. This feeling of wild abandon carries through until the saxophone comes in, gliding cinematically over our spiritual release. Pent up emotions filtered through the night.

320.Song:Waste A Moment

Artist:Kings Of Leon

Album:Walls 

“Name your price to all this living/ Oh, never ask to be forgiven” .”Waste A Moment” is a miracle. Why? What other anthemic songwriters immerse their sonics in such a distinctly Southern grime and still sound otherworldly massive? The guitars here sound like they are dripping with gasoline set alight, the drums cascading over each note like sweat, Caleb Followil’s vocals entwine themselves around the lyrics like he is proposing to the bartender that this song is about. “Drove a little slick car/ to tend bar with the static on her brain”. If a band wants to write soaring choruses about small town lovers with dangerous paths ahead , then the rest of the music has to sound grounded, lived in, like it has learned the lessons of hard living. “Waste A Moment” is a miracle because it sounds precisely like that, it earns its soars. When a hard life threatens to overwhelm you,  remember, you can always “Take the time to waste a moment”.

319.Song:You Can’t Hurry Love

Artist:The Supremes

Album:The Supremes A’Go-Go

Those opening bass notes by James Jamerson are so spongy, so bouncy, that their energies alone could propel the song forward on their own, but we have to account for the rest of the Funk Brothers, helping the Supremes out on this most luminous of pop songs. Every aspect of this song is spectacular. Benny Benjamin’s punchy drums, Earl Van Dykes quicksilver piano, or even the steady command that Jack Ashford’s tambourine holds on the proceedings. Producer Lamont Dozier’s signature Motown sound just shines effervescently through every beat, every twinkling note from Diana Ross’s lead vocal. Mary Wilson and Marlene Barrow’s background vocals lilt over the syllables in contrast to Ross’s sharper delivery. The tasteful reverb that fills out the soundscape gives off the aura of our fleeting nostalgias, playing in our heads, a supercut of light bloomed memories “I grow impatient for/ a love to call my own”.

318.Song:The Show Must Go On

Artist:Queen

Album:Innuendo 

Freddie Mercury was such a technically perfect singer, a virtuosic performer, that retakes in the studio could often cause the tracks to start phasing when played together. He was a singular talent that was robbed from us by a demonic scourge, but he left us a career filled with songs that will stand as a monument to his skill with the microphone. “The Show Must Go On” sounds gothic in comparison to most of Queen’s work, perhaps because the band sensed that Mercury’s time was near. Chilly synth lines complemented by earthy guitars and gated drums almost make it sound closer to post-rock. Still, this is Freddy’s show, he soars over the epic soundscape with aplomb, never holding back, defiant against the coming darkness. Few songs have such a dark energy coursing throughout and still have the listener pumping their fists in unison with Mercury’s everlasting coda “I’ll face it with a grin/ I’m never giving in/ On with the show” .

317.Song:Born To Die

Artist:Lana Del Rey

Album:Born To Die 

I don’t think I am overreaching by calling Lana Del Rey the “Frank Sinatra” of our generation. Her knack for composing songs that glide, just so, over nearly any situation is impeccable. It all started here. Her vocals slink through the lyrics like a greased up snake, insidiously digging through your emotional armor, only letting up the pressure in the chorus where she raises her register to a breathy high “Come take a walk on the wild side/ Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain”. The soundscape is populated by sophisticated synth strings, the insistent pulsing of a muted metallic snare hit interspersed with vocals screaming “Louder”. While some of the lyrics are a bit of a miss, “Lost, but now I am found”, they are only a blip on the sheer experience she exudes. Love to Lana seems like something to both die for and to keep out of reach for the chasing. As “Born To Die” proves; She will find a way to glide over your emotions, whether you like it or not.

316.Song:Crazy

Artist:Patsy Cline

Album:Showcase 

It is kind of funny that, for a song that has long been a country standard since its release in 1961, how jazzy this seminal tune is. I think this is because Patsy’s performance simply reaches the heart of what Country as a genre hopes to attain: A longing for inner peace through the thoughts of another. Written by Willie Nelson before he hit it big, Patsy drifts over the jazzy seventh chords angelically, twanging at just the right moments to stay true to her distinctive vocal stylings. She even recorded it in one take after recovering from a brutal car crash. Gospel quartet The Jordinaires join in the fun on background vocal duties as pianist Floyd Cramer’s swaying chords propel us through the tight guitar and drum performances. For such a short song, clocking in at a tight 2:43, it feels like it should forever be drifting through the minds of forlorn lovers everywhere. “I’m crazy for trying/ And crazy for crying/ And I’m crazy for loving you”.

315.Song:Stan

Artist:Eminem Feat. Dido

Album:The Marshall Mathers LP

Here is a violent, rage-filled rap epic, detailing the tragedy of what is now termed “Stan culture”, where a man ends up building himself up into such a frothing emotional mess that he ends up killing himself and his pregnant girlfriend by driving off a bridge (with her stuffed into the trunk, screaming in the background). It is also one of the most beloved rap songs ever made. Maybe its shock value was considerably blunted by Eminem’s previous releases, where he often found pure glee in being the most combative possible, in a meta sense, artist. Maybe that Dido verse hook really is good enough to lull people into a sense of emotional comfort, grafting a sense of pathos onto a story where the fan writes “P.S. we should be together too”.  What is for certain is how effective Stan is at humanizing some of the worst impulses of modern pop-culture. Yeah, horrible stuff happens, but remember “It’s not so bad/ it’s not so bad”.

314.Song:Fake Plastic Trees

Artist:Radiohead

Album:The Bends 

One of the joys of listening to great music is finding the different means and methods of getting the listener to feel anything at all, of hearing the scaffolding built around lyrics that mean one thing at first reading, then another as the realization of what the whole construction means dawns on you. You could perhaps find “Fake Plastic Trees” to be a condemnation of the “fakeness” of society, or a pretty sounding acoustic ballad to play for people at a campfire. It would certainly inspire many later artists, such as Coldplay, each finding their own meaning of this song, and its sonics, within themselves.  Upon further review, I hold that this song, this gorgeous construction of earthy acoustic guitars, shimmering Hammond organs, syrupy crescendo strings and Thom Yorke’s exceptional vocals, is simply everything you need it to be at the moment you hear it. Confound anyone who wants to pin it down definitively.

313.Song:Mysterons

Artist:Portishead

Album:Dummy 

Beth Gibbons sings like a woman getting to grips with the monster hiding in her closet. “All for nothing/ Did you really want?”. This whole production speaks to something incredibly spooky, to a common haunting thought that comes to everyone in the depths of the night. What that thought is is vague, unclear, buried in a trip-hop mixture so abyssal that the lyric “This ocean/ Will not be grasped” sparks some cosmic horror vibes. It would be too much if the inspiration for this song wasn’t so goofy (an old british sci-fi show Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons), but the theramin loops doing battle with the drums will always sound like nothing else. Robert Christgau, famed rock critic, once slammed Dummy as “Sade for androids”, which is a perfectly clear summation of its internal battles of kitschy appeal and oppressively dark soundscapes. “Mysterons” is the sound of giving yourself to the darkness, no matter how it finds you.

312.Song:Roundabout

Artist:Yes

Album:Fragile 

Progressive rock has a kitschy reputation. How could it not? This is a genre famed for its writing and musical excesses. If Rush can write a mini-epic about sentient trees, how can restraint possibly be an option? So if we allow ourselves the option to be amused, we can also be enthralled. “Roundabout” is one of the best constructions in the genre, throwing almost all of the hallmarks of big P (for Progressive) together into a marvelous skyscraper of a tune. Opening with a famed and forever meme-ified guitar and bass intro, the song runs the absolute gamut. We have evolving time signatures, lyrics about traveling to a rock festival but made fit for P, spastic musical fits, drum solos, bass solos, ORGAN SOLOS. It’s all here, and it’s awesome. If you listen to this music and find yourself objecting to the “unseriousness” of it, I heartily suggest taking a chill pill, grabbing a good pair of headphones, and taking a grand trip to the big P.

311.Song:Farewell, Mona Lisa

Artist:The Dillinger Escape Plan

Album:Option Paralysis 

Listening to this metalcore song, and reading through the lyrics, I get the feeling that Greg Puciato was letting out some intense feelings as a form of therapy. Certainly the frantic changes in intensity happening throughout are perfect for making the listener feel like they are in conversation with the god of Bipolarism. As frenetic as this song’s structure is, there is a lot to get out of the guitars, which are layered and performed so well as to merge into a wall of gigantic stacks of distortion. Even the hectic noodling during the verses enhance the feelings of whiplash the lyrics perform “What am I supposed to feel?”. Eventually, the discordance on offer achieves a sort of grandeur near the end as the screaming vocals layer over the guitars and pummeling drums. “Don’t you ever try to be/ More than you were destined before”. Anyone trying to ape this song’s brutality and emotional maturity is simply not worthy.

310.Song:We Will Not Be Lovers

Artist:The Waterboys

Album:Fisherman’s Blues 

Here is a song that wastes no time in setting up its mood. Attacking with violins, mandolins on the left, with a big earthy sound to its drums and bass and guitars in the center, no wonder the band’s musical style was self styled as “The Big Music”. “Planets collide, collide, collide/ At the smack of your kiss” is a line so gloriously anthemic that pretension dissolves before it. It’s hard to believe then that this song is a big eff-off to the subject. “I know what you want, and I see what you see/You’re looking for somebody but he isn’t me/ Find yourself another because we will not be lovers”. It goes on like this, with each lyrical barb intertwined with the sorts of lines that complicate everything, sort of like how abusive relationships play out. When one is trying to move on, yet what seems like the entire world is begging the other particular party to get the hint. Oh, what a glorious note to end things on though, flying past at the speed of passion.

309.Song:Praise You

Artist:Fatboy Slim

Album:You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby 

The album art for the parent album contains a markedly obese person sporting a shirt that says “I’m #1 So Why Try Harder?”. Point taken, said Fatboy Slim, and “Praise You” is the result of that hard-earned notion. The way that the lead vocal gets digitally hung up on the after-tail of “I have to praise you like I should-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-[etc.]” just speaks to the atmosphere of ballsy assuredness present here. With a music video that was shot on shitty videotape as an amateur dance class performs to its beats, I can’t help but feel that this track is perfectly suited for urban strolls; Of watching all the trappings of modernity passing you by as you strut. The whole aura of funk/soul being digitally placed together like this strikes me as a celebration of all the joy that previous generations of musicians had bestowed on the world. All the juicy material they had left for DJ’s like Slim to repurpose. Hey, as long as the samples clear, right?

308.Song:Layla

Artist:Derek And The Dominos

Album:Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs 

Everyone who has read up on musical history knows that the title track of this wonderful album deals with Eric Clapton’s love for his friend, George Harrison’s, wife Patti Boyd. That bit of music lore may not be all that relevant today (and was rendered moot when he married and subsequently divorced her), but it is not needed to appreciate the love-worn howl of this classic blues guitar showcase. Clapton deservedly gets credit for the writing and structure, with a little help from his piano playing friend Jim Gordon, but this is Duane Allman’s show. Nevermind that he composed its brilliant opening riff, his sickly sweet guitar howls bleed all over this song. Without his performance, this song would be just another ballad, with him it ascends into guitar hero valhalla, forever transfixing lovelorn fools everywhere. That beautiful piano coda, as triumphant as it is bittersweet, is icing on this titanic cake.

307.Song:Re: Stacks

Artist:Bon Iver

Album:For Emma, Forever Ago 

The Re: is regarding. The stacks are a result of the emotional pilings of love’s ravages. I very easily could have stacked this list with tracks off of For Emma, Forever Ago. I regard it as very close to being a perfect album, but I forced myself to pick one song to represent the naked emotions of the record. “Re: Stacks” is my choice, though I suppose you could swap in “Skinny Love” or “Flume” if you have objections. This is a song that aches delicately for love, the acoustic guitar often sounds like it is close to creaking itself to pieces. The emotional heart is Bon Iver’s vocal harmonies and falsettos’, gracefully layering themselves over heartfelt laments such as “and it’s hard to find when you knew it/ when your money’s gone/ and you’re drunk as hell”. Songs like this perfectly capture a feeling of desolate heartbreak, of snowflakes drifting slowly to the ground, indifferent to warmth, in danger of melting away regardless.

306.Song:I Want You Back

Artist:Jackson 5

Album:Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5 

Michael Jackson was a singular talent brought low by his inner demons. Maybe this is why a lot of his best vocal work seems to be tinged with sorrow, as if he had regrets about time he could never have back. This is evident even here, at the tender age of 11, when he was fighting with his ever-demanding father. When he sings “Oh baby all I need is one more chance/ Won’t you please let me (Back in your heart)?” his voice breaks upon the syllables, vocal fry at its most damaging and sincere. But even the inherent tragedy of his life can’t distract you from how joyous it still sounds, largely because he is giving it his all on the microphone, while his brothers work the harmonies. Even if his demons would come back to haunt him, we will always have this most luminous of pop records to commemorate his considerable talents. True candy for the ears.

305.Song:Risingson

Artist:Massive Attack

Album:Mezzanine 

I distinctly remember listening to this song one night and tripping off of its rippling, dark, aura without the need for any stimulants, as my headphones struggled to contain its abyssal energies. Starting off with whale songs, as if communicating from a dimension completely alien to us, the song slowly drifts into itself. That bass line is so thick that its presence drips off of the architecture, at several points its absence generates ghost notes in its favour. 3D’s verses seem to be mocking observations of drugged out people at clubs, Daddy G pops in on occasion to drag us further into the ether. “Why do you want to take me to this party and breathe?/ I’m dying to leave”. Ricocheting noises and haunting choral voices culminate in the refrain “Dream on” the “on” reverberating for what seems to be an eternity. Eventually, 3D finds himself consumed by the creeping insidiousness of it all “Toy-like people make me boy-like”. Listen with headphones. At night.

304.Song:Straight Outta Compton

Artist:N.W.A.

Album:Straight Outta Compton 

“You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge” Dr.Dre speaks, his voice echoing. What follows is merely a platform for seditious rhyme. “MC Ren controls the automatic/ For any dumb motherfucker that starts static”. Ice Cube, MC Ren and Easy E all get their chances to shine as tire squeals and thumping drums samples percolate the soundscape, the horns almost literally sound like the fires of a riot, imbuing each verse with an incendiary urgency that comes through loud and clear. The guitars, insistent and clear in the mix, are the flickers at the tip of the flames. One of the real strengths of this record is its very structured form. MC Verse/ Refrain/ MC Verse. This allows any aspiring artist room to add their own touches to the formula, such as in the youtube cover/parody Straight Outta Gotham. You can’t really top N.W.A, as Dr.Dre says at the end “Damn, that shit was dope!”, but you can tap into its fiery spirits whenever you need to.

303.Song:Babylon

Artist:SZA Feat. Kendrick Lamar

Album:Z 

If the real-life Babylon gardens likely never existed, how can the question of the divine reckon with an aggressive female sexuality? Producer Dahi had to wrangle this question out of SZA’s grasp and form it into this gorgeous, amorphous, mass. SZA’s voice echoes throughout, writhing and moaning within the bounds of acceptability, operatic phrasings colliding against her coo-ing “Crucify, Cru-crucify me”’s. The synths and bass lines seem like they are barely able to contain her raw physicality, merely leading her to where she means to go as she envelops the stereo field. “And I can’t recall the last time I took love from anyone/ I called daddy, who’s got one anyway?”. Kendrick’s guest verse finds him contrasting the Masculine ID against her charged sexuality, as if both sexes searching for a hypothetical lost garden speaks to the intangible nature of our shared frustrations. “Aren’t you tired/ Of always making amends, tho?”.

302.Song:Crazy Heart

Artist:Hank Williams

Album:40 Greatest Hits 

Wikipedia bizarrely notes this song as “Better suited to a palm court orchestra than Hank Williams”, due to its relative lack of chart success. This just goes to show you how much luck plays into the perception of any given song, you could be among the greatest songs ever recorded and still be mud thanks to a random smorgasbord of radio airplay. This is precisely why this playlist exists, to give time to songs that deserve to be in the conversation. Hank Williams’ distinctive voice paints a pretty picture as he twangs his way through lyrics calling out a friend for dating an unworthy partner. “I knew you’d wake up and find her missin’/ I tried my best to warn you but you wouldn’t listen” Given the age of this record, his voice comes through the mix crystal clear, even if the rest of the band struggles against the recording technology of the time. Still, this wildflower rose of a song is a banger, today, tomorrow, for the rest of time.

301.Song:Revelator

Artist:Gillian Welch

Album:Time (The Revelator) 

There has always been a cultural cachet to being the first to explore new methods and means, leaving newer artists constantly operating in the shadows of greatness. Thus, sings Gillian Welch, “I’m the pretender/ and not what I’m supposed to be”. The proper response is to not let yourself be overawed by what has come before, but to simply create what must be created, on your terms. Time, after all, will sort out the wheat from the chaff. Here, Gillian crafts an exquisitely delicate country song, her vocals intertwining with guitars that seem to assert themselves clumsily at first but they slowly reveal their intricacies through repeat listens. There is a tangible anger seething throughout this song that the guitars exploit, weaving in dissonance and harmony in equal measure. Welch’s vocal harmonies kick in at all of the right moments to underpin the pettiness that gatekeeping creative pursuits can lead to. Let time be the ultimate revelator for this track.

350.Song:Doo Wop (That Thing)

Artist:Lauryn Hill

Album:The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill 

One thing that strikes you reading the credits list for this song is how singular a vision Lauryn Hill had. Writer: Lauryn Hill, Producer: Lauryn Hill, Arranger: Lauryn Hill. Even the legion of background singers are all her, requiring her voice to jump around the octaves at a dizzying pace, and affecting different modes of speaking/singing. Virtuosity is the term for these types of talents, and Lauryn Hill just is the only person who could have pulled this song off. Her instincts are on point for the soundscape; that piano sounds like alternately like a twinkling shower of sparks or a whiskey-soaked barroom Paeon; that warm, punchy bass that sounds like it could only have found a home here; those slinky horns that chime in on occasion. All this in service of a feminist R&B anthem that will sing to the souls of women for a very long time to come. “Girls you know you’d better watch out/ some guys, some guys are only about/ that thing, that thing”.

349.Song:Better Off Alone

Artist:Alice Deejay

Album:Who Needs Guitars Anyways? 

You can hear it, at exactly 30 seconds in, the crowds of hands reaching towards the heavens, a cathedral of noise. The breathtaking suspension as each note rings out, the synthetic choir doing its best to keep up with the momentum, the drums finally completing the holy conception, allowing us to breathe in and start dancing. Then Judith Pronk’s voice comes in, asking “Do you think you’re better off alone?”, eventually answering with “Talk to me, ooooh, talk to me”, as if to taunt you into your only course of action. The best dance songs have almost always felt like an invitation to dance, rather than a mere acknowledgement of the act, rather like how a priest will ask if you have anything to confess. The main synth riff even starts dropping notes near the end, faltering before the gates of grace as if to ask you to play it again, to revel in our shared communion in the halls of trance. “Do you think you’re better off alone?”.

348.Song:The Man Who Sold The World

Artist:Nirvana/ David Bowie

Album:MTV Unplugged In New York (Live)/ The Man Who Sold The World 

When listening to David Bowie’s original it is hard to escape how mystical and otherworldly his recording is, like he was communicating with a true eldritch force. Kurt Cobain singing “You’re Face, to face/ With the man who sold the world” is spooky, but on the level of a man who clearly has nothing left to lose pointing a gun at…well. I am desperately trying not to place too much emphasis on the ultimate tragedy of Kurt’s life, but when you listen to, truly digest, his catalogue, It is impossible not to view it through the ghastly lens he focused on himself for us. His halting performance, pitchy at some points, hauntingly beautiful at others, is probably the ultimate coalescence of his talents. “For years and years I roamed/ I gazed a gazeless stare” Whatever you wish to divine from Nirvana’s formidable oeuvre, you can start your journey here and decide on whether or not to continue. “Oh, no. Not me/ We never lost control”.

347.Song:Check The Rhime

Artist:A Tribe Called Quest

Album:The Low End Theory

 One thing that strikes me as I watch music videos for a lot of Rap songs is how much of a celebration of community they can be. Seeing the crowds of people cheering Q-Tip and Phife Dawg as they trade bars just makes the act of listening present itself in a new light. These two rappers from Queens, New York still sound as fresh and vibrant as they were revolutionary upon release. Hearing them go back and forth over that Minnie Ripperton sample, their voices couched in a warm tone throughout, is a real treat. “It was I, the Abstract/ and me the five footer”. The Sampled horns from the Average White Band (seriously!) provide all of the raucousness to get the block party started, flitting in and out as needed. Maybe the act of bringing all of these samples together was the main point of this era of rap, to celebrate shared musical experiences and tie them together with the call-and-response playfulness displayed here.

346.Song:In The Air Tonight

Artist:Phil Collins

Album:Face Value 

Among many things that strike me when perusing the lyrics sheet are how many refrains of “Oh Lord” there are. The other is how all of the delayed, shifted, vocals seem to suggest two people holding on to a shocking secret, one that strikes an especially deep emotional wound. Maybe this is why the initial drums sound like popped painkiller bottles. Sure, the lyrics are vague to the point of existential angst, you can read into the ever-shifting forms of Phil’s performance whatever you need to, it will always all come to a head with that famous drum solo. Pounding in suddenly and with ferocity, the huge sound contrasts sharply with the subdued dynamics exhibited elsewhere in the song. “I’ve been waiting for this moment/ All my life”. Those guitars that slash in, bubbling up like blood from a wound at some points, lingering like thunderous echoes at others, speak to the emotionally charged , frothy, momentum that makes this song shine.

345.Song:Somebody Loves You

Artist:Betty Who

Album:Take Me When You Go 

Coming out in the era of maximalist pop, it’s astonishing that Betty Who’s glorious outburst of anthemic power-pop got lost in the shuffle. Good thing I serendipitously stumbled across it for this playlist then, eh? Opening with halting synth chords, Betty Who’s serene vocals bubble in like champagne “Who’s around when the days feel long?/ Who’s around when you can’t be strong?”. The bass line and drums froth in to join the fracas, but with the precision that pop demands. “Somebody misses you when you’re away/ They wanna wake up with you everyday/ Somebody wants to hear you say/ Ooh, somebody loves you”. Then the chorus kicks in with its ricocheting “you”’s, leaving the listener in a state of suspended bliss as the verse plays out. The enormous synth swells feel like the champagne glass about to froth over, spilling joyous noise out on the dancefloor. A stupendous anthem for the “taken for granted” people in life.

344.Song:The Game Of Love

Artist:Santana Feat. Michelle Branch

Album:Shaman

For a solid decade, Santana had figured out a formula for hit singles that still allowed his distinct talents to shine. This had arguably already borne its full fruits with 1999’s Supernatural and the smash hit “Smooth”, but for my money I’d bet on “Game Of Love” being his legacy defining song. Before you do a spittake, yes, I am aware of his already formidable catalog of influential albums and singles, hear me out. While the “formula” for hit songwriting was reaching its apex around the time of this song’s release, Santana’s sound is so distinct that it elevates the structures surrounding him. Add in a game Michelle Branch singing serene high notes on “So please tell me/ Whyyyyyyy” and then transitioning to lush harmonies with “It just takes a little bit of this/ A little bit of that”. Sometimes, rarely, you get an artist on a tear that only needs something to play off of, to remind us of their greatness by sheer force of contrasting will.

343.Song:Can’t Feel My Face

Artist:The Weeknd

Album:Beauty Behind The Madness 

It’s about cocaine. That’s it, that’s the whole point of the lyrics. Cocaine. Say it again! Cocaine. There are a surprising number of contenders for this playlist that referenced Cocaine in one form or another, none of them carried the feeling of ecstasy that the drug is supposed to give you through to its logical conclusion like “Can’t Feel My Face”. It even opens like The Weeknd just huffed a big bag of blow, with fuzzy synths dancing all around the stereo field before he starts singing, then they subsume themselves under his voice. Like the drug is still coursing through his veins and about to pop off. “And she’ll always get the best of me/ The worst is yet to come”. But the worst is definitely not to come in this absolute top-tier banger. Indeed, the chorus leaves all doubt behind as he sings “I can’t feel my face when I’m with you/ But I Love it!”. Even when he finds himself slurring his vocals, clarity always comes back “But I love it”.

342.Song:Cecilia

Artist:Simon & Garfunkel

Album:Bridge Over Troubled Water 

I will note briefly here that both “Cecilia” and “Mrs. Robinson” begin in much the same way, with acoustic guitars playing forcefully around some bongo accompaniment. That “Cecilia” is on this playlist and not “Mrs. Robinson” is testament to how consistently sustained its energies are. “Cecilia” does not flag after a strong opening chorus, doesn’t descend to what is essentially a shootout between flagging verses and, again, a very strong chorus. This is the whole shebang, a complete encapsulation of everything that made Simon & Garfunkel great at their peak. From that opening “‘Cilia, you’re breaking my heart/ You’re shaking my confidence daily”, through to the extended instrumental fadeout, this song carries its abundant momentum forward with aplomb. The soundscape even has room for sonic details to be audible, rather than overpowered by events, and it exudes a warmth that most folk rock has to fight tooth and nail to achieve. Effortless.

341.Song:Come On In My Kitchen (Alternate Take)

Artist:Robert Johnson

Album:Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings 

Playing, as it does, through a thick screen of static and distortion caused by its primitive recording quality, Robert Johnson still sounds momentous, as vital on this record as his influence would demand. Modern music would simply not be the same without this man, but this song isn’t here merely because of that, no, the song is the thing and what a thing it is. Wounded, lamenting, soul rending, Johnson’s mournful singing and insistent guitar leave their mark the better part of a century later. “Ah, the woman I love/ took from my best friend/ some joker got lucky/ stole her back again”. With his voice peaking the microphone, you can practically hear the wind creaking through the boards, the strings of the guitar straining to interpret the alchemy of Johnson’s playing style.This most ancient of musical titans, the man who sold his soul for immortality and got his wish. Not a bad deal, all things considered, for us at least.

340.Song:My Generation

Artist:The Who

Album:My Generation 

“People try to put us down (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)” As time goes on, this song remains as exciting and fresh as when it first appeared. Part of that has to do with Keith Moon refusing to take any prisoners on the drums (no wonder, he often detonated or destroyed his kit during performances), Pete Townshend’s apt knack for guitar hooks and John Entwhistles’ bass guitar histrionics. The main reason though is the sheer novelty of  Roger Daltrey’s stuttering vocals. As the story goes, he found himself in the studio to record, bereft of rehearsal time and either trying heroically to keep up with the rest of the band or simply to keep himself from going too far forward. As a musician who has had to alter parts of my own performance to fit in with the cacophony around me, I deeply respect the creative aura that Daltrey finessed out of key syllables “Why don’t you all fff-fade away”. Producer Shel Talmy knew what he was hearing and kept it. Heh.

339.Song:Comfortably Numb

Artist:Pink Floyd

Album:The Wall

It’s funny to hear the discourse surrounding this song after decades of perceptions of Prog-Rockers as a particularly LSD-raddled generation [1]. Guys, Pink Floyd has gone on record stating that this is about Roger Waters being administered morphine for stomach cramps. To be absolutely fair to our current crop of armchair songwriters, this song apes the best stoner anthems to a tee. From the way the guitars and keyboards seem to be drifting through the consciousness like the fleeting inspirations of the mind on ether, to the delayed vocal effects that open the lyrics “Hello (hello hello), Is there anybody in there?”. From the screams of agony after “Just a little pinprick”, to the strings that sound like the torrents of ideas that come to the uplifted mind. If it’s not about heroin, then it is doing a damn good job of aiming adjacent to it. The truly epic feel of it all, like someone being set free from earthly considerations, doesn’t help, nor should it.

338.Song:No Scrubs

Artist:TLC

Album:Fanmail 

Of all the late 90’s to mid 00’s R&B power girl songs, this might be the uncontested best. Astonishingly, its lyrical themes have proven even more durable in the age of dating apps and rampant social media discourse. I’m not saying that they were never relevant, I’m being very deliberate with my language here, “Even more” is the key phrase. We live in interesting times to say the least. I think what separates this song from the pack is how tight, how concise it is. There are no superfluous intros, no obsession with weirdly placed sound effects in the production, nothing inessential. All killer. The vocal harmonies especially are rhythmically tight, never hanging out in the background trying to steal the spotlight. As time goes by its very distinct, very dry production may start to age it horribly, but its lyrical themes threaten to stick with us, like an earworm, for longer than we’d like. “No, I don’t want no scrub/ A scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me”.

337.Song:This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)

Artist:Talking Heads

Album:Speaking In Tongues 

Can you base a whole song off of one single, unchanging, guitar riff? A riff that strikes a grand total of 6 notes, grouped in three two-note chords? David Byrne thought he could pull it off as a concept, even swapping musicians in the band off of their usual instruments to generate a feeling of naive simplicity (hence, “Naive Melody”). Other elements come crashing in over the guitars and bass riff, like those awkwardly stumbling synths that sound like they would rather be somewhere else, or those insistent drums that never falter from their assigned behaviour. The lead guitar element even manages to sound as if it is contemplating an idea of love wholly incompatible with reality. How does all of this nervousness coalesce into a coherent, nay vital, work? Perhaps you can listen to Byrne’s squeaky vocals as the harmonies come together on “Cover up, say goodnight”, and find some comfort there.

336.Song:Souvenir

Artist:boygenius

Album:boygenius EP

“Dreamcatcher in the rearview mirror/ Hasn’t caught a thing yet” There’s a wounded quality to the songwriting of boygenius’s members, like every possible emotion is being filtered through their voices. When they combined into this folk/indie supergroup, those talents coming together not only felt completely natural, but lent the proceedings on “Souvenir” an air of funerary inevitability. Every instrument is recorded with such warmth, from the acoustic guitars through to the bass guitar and vocal harmonies. First Julien Baker, Then Phoebe Bridgers, then Lucy Dacus are given their own verse, each allowed to heal or grieve on their own terms. “When you cut a hole into my skull/ Do you like what you see?/ Like I do?”. The composition slowly adds elements in, each coming in so organically that a ghostly feeling is conjured, like you are being led to a personal catharsis, unable to avoid what needs to happen.

335.Song:Bizarre Love Triangle

Artist:New Order

Album:Brotherhood 

Sure, this song’s heavily sequenced, digital instrumentation sonically dates it, but they also lend it an arch charm that few songs with obsolescent production values have ever captured. Its iconic synthetic string swells are the perfect example of a song teetering on the edge of oblivion, the digital bass that opens things is so uniquely large and clumsy,  only for the chorus immediately afterwards to uplift all of this to top tier status. Bernard Summer’s vocals, in said chorus and in the rhythmic verses, do much to humanize the stark sounds surrounding his impeccable lyrics. “There’s no sense in telling me/ The wisdom of the fool won’t set you free”. While the shorter single version is what most people are likely to be familiar with, I actually recommend the album cut. Its harsh bass intro creates a striking contrast with the beauty that the band successfully conjures from the digital ether.

334.Song:Wolf Like Me

Artist:TV On The Radio

Album:Return To Cookie Mountain

The appeal that the myth of the werewolf has for humanity is the shared fear of unleashed primal desires, unconstrained by flesh or rationality. So, in other words, Love. Starting off with a guitar that audibly aches to be set free, drums that pump blood throughout the monstrous form, Tunde Adebimpe’s vocals seem to be begging to be set loose, straining against the scaffolding of the songwriting form. “My mind has changed my body’s frame/ But, God, I like it”. So it goes that when things slow down in the bridge, an image of a brooding menace comes to mind as Tunde’s voice harmonizes itself into multiple forms, as if fighting with and against his own instincts. This culminates into an explosive finale, as if the werewolf is brooding itself into a berserker rage until it finally cuts loose. The song ends on every aspect of the soundscape collapsing, exhausted, back into the fragile, human form. “We’re howling forever, Oh-oh”.

333.Song:Ace Of Spades

Artist:Motorhead

Album:Ace Of Spades

One thing you can never accuse Lemmy of aiming for is a subtle edge to his music. Nothing but raw, blunt energy here. Coming from an era of music production where the recording process should have polished its edges down to a crystalline sheen, the guitars here all scream bloody murder, sawing their way through the proceedings deliberately, not letting such matters as clarity stop their heedless momentum. Producer Vic Maile allows Lemmy and the rest of Motorhead all the space they need to run riot. The drums, the bass, Lemmy’s cigarette-marinated voice. It all smashes into and around each other, like a car crash you can’t look away from. That a guitar solo manages to pierce through this veil of chaos is a major miracle. At one point the drummer, Phil Taylor, ecstatically starts banging his drumsticks together. Given the wall of noise, dredging detail out of this is a rewarding process, precisely because it makes you work hard for it.

332.Song:Diamonds Are Forever (Main Title)/ Diamonds From Sierra Leone

Artist:Shirley Bassey/ Kanye West Feat. Jay-Z

Album:Diamonds Are Forever/ Late Registration 

Shirley Bassey had already made an all-time Bond anthem with Goldfinger, but I guess she had to have a thing for the aura of charismatic elegance that the franchise could exude. For arguably the worst Bond movie, she swooped in to save the day here with this bombastic performance. Her silken tones glitter like diamonds against velvet, every volume shift a chance for her to ping off of John Barry’s electric orchestration. Playing almost like a call and response at some points, the horns flaring up cautiously, she simply radiates the type of brilliant energies that only a Bond theme could capture. Kanye West would later use the song as the basis for his screed against conflict diamonds and the bling culture that enabled their trade. He and Jay-Z do all that they can to match Shirley’s voluminous presence, but if you want a show of force, a performance that will shine forever, go with the original.

331.Song:I Wanna Be Your Dog

Artist:The Stooges

Album:The Stooges

The guitars that open this song sound like a pack of dogs ripping the entrails out of a fresh kill, slashing with such kinetic energy buried in their distorted tones that you wouldn’t be surprised if your headphones caught fire. Contained as they are in the left speaker, they are left to inflict their damage on society as ably as they can. At least this gives the rest of the band a chance to shine. Iggy Pop’s direct vocals find themselves in the center, colliding against Dave Alexander’s blunt bass guitar and Scott Asheton’s proto-punk drums, singing lines like “And I lay right down in my favourite place/ Now I wanna be your dog”.  Producer John Cale plays Sleigh Bells in the right speaker, piano for emphasis on the left, which is an odd musical choice for a band that has often been called the “Godfather’s of Punk”, but, much like The Dude’s carpet, it ties the whole thing together. Supremely menacing and raucously energetic, like it’s training us for a stated purpose…

330.Song:Geyser

Artist:Mitski

Album:Be The Cowboy 

Love is an act of worship. Understanding it brings us a whirlwind of contradictions and, paradoxically, clarity about our relations to it. As an emotion, things are heady enough, but Mitski, in less than two and a half minutes, brings us closer to something resembling absolution. The way she begins with slow organs, adding sickly sweet guitars and jarring audio glitches,  before unleashing with a “Geyser” of distorted bass, swirling strings and horns, is nothing short of a masterclass in songwriting structures. “You’re my number one/ You’re the one I want”. That sense of clarity I mentioned earlier applies to her vocal performance, it never leaves our view, always soaring above the noise like an unattainable goal. Very fitting, given the lyrics, which are vague to the point of confusion, but her forceful presence powers through any misgivings, helping us reach an understanding, of us, of our dreams and loves. “Cause you’re the one I got”.

329.Song:Already Lost

Artist:Rainer Maria

Album:Catastrophe Keeps Us Together 

“Lay down all  those instruments of navigation/ Cause we’re already lost” is a clumsy way to open up a song about a relationship falling apart at the seams. Navigating the emotional ordeals of love is something that even the world’s great poets have had trouble reckoning with “Already Lost”’s emo genre trappings allow us to tackle things head on and find some sense of resolution amidst it all. Listen to how Caithlin De Marrais’s vocals break through the churning guitars and swirling synthetic strings, crystal clear among the maelstrom of noise. The warm bass lines keeping us steady throughout as the drums crash and bang their way along the undulating waves of Verse-Chorus-Verse. “I waited up all night/ and my thoughts were of desolation” would be super bleak, if the next lines weren’t so beautifully cathartic “but the best part of waiting up all night/ was in the morning when/ I didn’t feel a thing”.

328.Song:Welcome To The Black Parade

Artist:My Chemical Romance

Album:The Black Parade 

Emo as a genre was widely mocked in its time, disregarded as a medium of importance, of any use for sorting through the full spectrum of human emotions. Time has proven those naysayers wrong, not just because, of course, that songs like “Welcome To The Black Parade” tackle the headiest of possible subjects in death, but also because the genre’s muscular rock trappings have aged like a fine wine. If it helps, consider WTTBP an equivalent to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, in conception even if the details differ, even if there is more tangible joy in this song than the latter. Starting with Gerard Way recounting his character’s most precious memory, the piano notes and parade-ground drumming all build up to a rapturous sonic release as the verse guitar riffs kick off. The emotions don’t plateau there though, the chorus, with its excitatious “your memory will carry on/ We’ll carry on”, is life-affirmingly jubilant. Now get parading, you emo freaks!

327.Song:Fade Into You

Artist:Mazzy Star

Album:So Tonight That I Might See 

“Fade into you/ Strange you never knew”. Here is a song whose vibe is eternal, where you can barely imagine a world without it inhabiting some background space in your mind, forever holding an aerial view of your mental safe space. Drifting along at a 6/4 pace, tambourines and sparse snare drums keeping you grounded as Mazzy Star’s vocals lilt in “I wanna hold the hand inside you/ I wanna take the breath that’s true”. Those electric guitar slides dancing around the flowery acoustic guitar bed grant “Fade Into You” the air of an eternal slow dance, the spotlight focusing in on the one couple that matters. Taylor Swift, among others, would crib its atmospherics for a song of her own (“Sad, Beautiful, Tragic”), speaking further to its uniquely potent, reverential, spell.  If, while listening to this song,  you find yourself swaying side to side, just embrace it, everybody gives in in the end.  “Fade into you/ I think it’s strange you never knew”.

326.Song:A Hard Day’s Night

Artist:The Beatles

Album:A Hard Day’s Night 

Of all of The Beatles’s early work, pre-Revolver, “A Hard Day’s Night” goes the furthest to capturing their appeal. Opening with an explosion of a chord, a G11 Suspended Fourth, the band rushes headlong through the rest of the running time, barely pausing for breath. “It’s been a hard day’s night/ I should be sleeping like a log” . Famously birthed from a Ringo Starr quote, the film that this song was made for also portrays the chaotic energies that The Beatles were in the process of mastering, of a band furiously throwing everything at the creative process and succeeding beyond anyone’s expectations. But it was also forward looking, with a super dense mix of percussion and jangly guitars underpinning the vocal harmonies, as well as some chordal modulations thrown in, this song anticipated the full creative flowering of the group’s ambitions later on. Until then we had this joyous outburst; as Roger Ebert once wrote “Oh, what a lovely spring”.

375.Song:Mama Tried

Artist:Merle Haggard

Album:Mama Tried 

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

374.Song:What I Need

Artist:Hayley Kiyoko Feat Kehlani

Album:Expectations 

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

373.Song:Basket Case

Artist:Green Day

Album:Dookie 

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

372.Song:Edge Of Seventeen

Artist:Stevie Nicks

Album:Bella Donna 

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

371.Song:Cemetery Gates

Artist:Pantera

Album:Cowboys From Hell 

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

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

Artist:GZA

Album:Liquid Swords

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

369.Song:Johnny Guitar

Artist:Peggy Lee

Album:Timeless Voices: Peggy Lee   

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

368.Song:God Only Knows

Artist:The Beach Boys

Album:Pet Sounds

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

367.Song:Reach Out I’ll Be There

Artist:Four Tops

Album:Reach Out

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

366.Song:Hip Hop Hooray

Artist:Naughty By Nature

Album:19Naughtyiii

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

365.Song:Let There Be Rock

Artist:AC/DC

Album:Let There Be Rock 

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

364.Song:You (Ha Ha Ha)

Artist:Charli XCX

Album:True Romance

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

363.Song:With A Little Help From My Friends

Artist:The Beatles

Album:Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

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

362.Song:River

Artist:Leon Bridges

Album:Coming Home 

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

361.Song:You Want It Darker

Artist:Leonard Cohen

Album:You Want It Darker

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

360.Song:Dumb It Down

Artist:Lupe Fiasco feat. Gemini and Graham Burris

Album:The Cool

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

359.Song:Blowin’ In The Wind

Artist:Bob Dylan

Album:The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan 

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

358.Song:N.Y. State Of Mind

Artist:Nas

Album:Illmatic 

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

357.Song:Landslide

Artist:Fleetwood Mac

Album:Fleetwood Mac 

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

356.Song:September

Artist:Earth, Wind And Fire

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

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

355.Song:Foxey Lady

Artist:The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Album:Are You Experienced

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

354.Song:The Light

Artist:Common

Album:Like Water For Chocolate 

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

353.Song:Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)

Artist:Billy Joel

Album:The Stranger 

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

352.Song:Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Artist:Israel Kamakawiwo’ole/ Judy Garland

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

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

351.Song:The Woman That Loves You

Artist:Japanese Breakfast

Album:Psychopomp 

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

400.Song:Da Mystery Of Chessboxin‘

Artist:Wu-Tang Clan

Album:Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) 

The appeal of The Wu-Tang Clan was the very real threat that their implied lifestyle would imperil their future, creatively and mortally. The result is that the groups best work has them flying through the material with a lassez fare, yolo, intensity. “My peoples, are you with me, where you at?/ In the front, in the back, Killa Beez on attack”. “Da Mystery” has an atmosphere of dread dripping off of every sample. The drums are abyssal wardens, the bass lines seem to froth up from the depths, briefly subsiding then coming right back up. Of course, each of the Wu-Tang get their verses and every-single-one is a fire set of bars. Ol’ Dirty Bastard has the most distinct verse as his voice careens from syllable to syllable like he owes them rent. “The flow changes like a chameleon” Masta Killa raps as the song nears its conclusion, ending on its signature “Five Deadly Venoms” sample “When properly used, it’s nearly invincible”. As they were.

399.Song:There She Goes

Artist:The La’s

Album:The La’s  

Jangly dream pop such as this runs the danger of coming up insubstantial, of sacrificing sonic warmth for fey aspirations. “There She Goes” comes very, very close to that danger point. What, with its lyrics that are vague to the point of abstraction, to its guitars that betray an air of “let’s go precisely here and nowhere else” sort of vibes. What saves this song and makes it essential are two things, the rhythm section that provides much needed warmth and propulsion, and the cinematic gliding aura that lead singer Lee Mavers provides. As he coos “There she goes again/ Racing through my brain”, you can’t help but feel carried along, borne aloft on the winds of soothing melody. Chris Sharrocks’ Drums and John Power’s voluminous bass boom with intent, allowing the guitars to jangle with glistening momentum. “But I just can’t contain/ This feelin’ that remains”. Sure, it may or may not be a love song, but you will fall in love with it nonetheless.

398.Song:As Time Goes By

Artist:Dooley Wilson

Album:Casablanca (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

 Dooley Wilson must have felt invigorated as he played this song in the celebrated classic film Casablanca. You can certainly feel his joy emanating from the record, even despite the grime of ancient recording technology that haunts it still. “You must remember this/ A kiss is just a kiss”. A curious thing happens as we listen, at around :47 Dooley becomes subsumed under the pianos, his voice peeking out from behind a glittering curtain of reverb. This is the exact cutoff point in the film, where Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine comes up to stop Dooley from playing it. Perhaps the dreamlike atmosphere this creates was intentional, as if the filmgoers were being asked to conjure up their romantic fantasy as to how the song would have continued. Either way, this allows “As Time Goes By” to have a haunting quality to it, as love’s tragic yearnings almost always do in the end. “The fundamental things apply/ As time goes by”.

397.Song:Just A Friend

Artist:Biz Markie

Album:The Biz Never Sleeps 

As with many gimmick “One-hit wonders”, this is a song that should not work. Biz Markie rapping clumsily over a twinkling piano, the lyrics exceedingly simple to the point of disbelief, and then he sings off-key as he belts out the chorus. How the heck is he charming everyone? To figure out why this tune is as beloved as it is, I think we have to dive deep into the roots of rap. Sampling itself is an act of aural wallpapering, of decorating your vibes with the cribbed charisma of previous generations. Hip-Hop is representative of combining that potency with the symbolic pulse of the broader culture. So when Biz Markie belts “Oh baby you/ You got what I need/ But you say he’s just a friend” everyone relates and joins in in an act of collective angst. So he barrels through our cynicism to speak to our hearts “So please listen to the message that I send/ Don’t ever talk to a girl who says she just has a friend”. Preach brother, preach.

396.Song:Overcome

Artist:Tricky

Album:Maxinquaye 

Who knew that adjusting the volume on a drum fill could be so disturbing? Taking a break from his work with Massive Attack, iconic trip-hop innovators, he retreated into the studio with his muse Martina Topley-Bird to record the dark and shifting Maxinquaye, from which “Overcome”, itself a remake of the song “Karmacoma” from the group’s record Protection, stands out as its peak. Martina’s vocals, silky smooth and punctuated by staccato breaths throughout,  tie all the abyssal energies buried within the lo-fi mix together. It seems that every trick in the book was used to craft this oppressive atmosphere, phase shifting, distortion and scads of samples circling around the groove like a pack of vultures. The result is a spooky fluidity, like someone indistinctly following right behind you and breathing softly. Don’t believe me? Try listening to it on a dark urban street and tell me if you keep your earbuds in.

395.Song:Read My Mind

Artist:The Killers

Album:Sam’s Town 

Is it a terrible impediment if, to this day, no one can really say what this song is really about? I ask because I’ve encountered a ton of artists who never seem to be able to pin themselves down, or worse insist on being maddeningly obtuse in an attempt to come across as clever. The Killers at least have always worn their hearts on their sleeves. Even with lyrics as imprecise as “The stars are blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun”, we get the gist, if not the detail. Oh, what a gist. This epic in miniature is one of those gleaming “what?”’s that allow other artists to fill those pesky details in for themselves. Maybe this is why supergroup boygenius covered them, Phoebe Bridgers being precisely the type to adore such formless vibes. Even if we can’t decipher the clearest of intentions, that gist of longing to escape, of latching on to whatever imagery possible in the hope of finding ourselves, grasps firmly the ideals of hope and never lets go.

394.Song:You Shook Me All Night Long

Artist:AC/DC

Album:Back In Black 

One of the funnest anecdotes about Back In Black, the album, is that it was so well recorded that audio engineers would supposedly use it to sound test their recording studio spaces. This raucous, explosive, downright disgracious, walloper of a tune used to help audio nerds finesse their techniques. Awesome. From a band that mastered the art of lyrical excess, and absolutely nailed their choice for a replacement for Bon Scott, this is a song that embodies the forward momentum that would carry AC/DC Mach II through the 80’s. Angus Young’s guitar bristles with energy, halting itself near the moment of climax often, only to cut loose in the gut busting solo. Brian Johnson’s rough vocals sound like the flame running down the wick, speeding us toward the dynamite as he rips out lines like “Working double time on the seduction line/ She’s one of a kind, she’s just a-mine, all mine”.  Finesse and audacity, rolled into an epic firecracker of a song.

393.Song:Sit Down

Artist:Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Album:The Decca Singles, Vol.1 

Some things are just ordained. Consider the serendipitous placement of this earliest of rock tunes next to the most raucous possible rock band. That Sister Rosetta Tharpe comes off as energetic and talented as she does, both as a guitar player and songwriter, next to the more modern hard-rock of AC/DC, is a major miracle. Unburdened by the grime of ancient recording technology by sheer force of dynamics and performance overpowering the recording hiss, Sister Rosetta unleashes rollicking guitar licks. The lyrics touch on her gospel roots “Well I just got to heaven and I can’t sit down” and emanate joy to a degree that can’t be denied. The quiet-loud dynamics of her guitar mastery, juking and jiving along her considerate verses, allow the energies contained within to soar. Even more than 80 years after its recording, I suspect this outburst of barely concealed glee will continue to find rotation in the great jukebox in the sky for a long time to come.

392.Song:Rosyln

Artist:Bon Iver & St. Vincent

Album:The Twilight Saga: New Moon: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

One of the tangible feelings that the Twilight series of movies captured was the chilled aura of the Pacific Northwest. Hearing the wind, breathing the air, as it winds its way through the trees. The creeping fog banks enveloping the soul. They also had a killer soundtrack, as Rosyln demonstrates here. Embodying everything I just mentioned, Bon Iver’s falsetto vocals are ghostly, interweaving with the acoustic guitars and St. Vincent’s more assured, warm, performance. The occasional electric guitar whispers accent the atmosphere of creaking timbers and dew laden leaves. Upon singing “Wings wouldn’t help you/ Wings wouldn’t help you”, the sense of airily drifting through some tragic romance becomes undeniable. Like a feather constantly being thrown back into the sky they whimper “Won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t let you talk me…down”. Then the music comes in on a final pile-on, a release of tension as the wind dies down.

391.Song:The Magic Number

Artist:De La Soul

Album:3 Feet High And Rising 

“Three forms the soul to a positive sum/ Dance to this fix, and flex every muscle”. One thing missing from a large swath of modern hip-hop is the feeling that people are really enjoying what they are creating. In other words, a sense of joy. De La Soul was an outfit that exuded happiness, like they couldn’t help but create the most exuberant hip-hop possible. “The Magic Number” is their upbeat masterpiece, rolling along with an ecstatic momentum that only the Beastie Boys could hope to match. “Three is the magic number”. Each member of De La Soul gets their verse to shine, with generous samples accompanying them from a dizzying array of sources. This heavy sample usage had prevented a large swath of hip-hip from this era of music from being available on modern streaming platforms, but now that we are finally getting access we can all find ourselves being carried along its joyous momentums.

390.Song:Adore

Artist:Amy Shark

Album:Night Thinker EP 

The guitars open off kilter, slightly out of tune, the sound of a bonfire crackling in the background as partygoers faintly cackle, then Amy Shark describes her walk home after, delirious from being in contact with her crush.“I’m just gonna walk home kicking rocks at parked cars”.  It’s quietly cinematic with its imagery, evoking some of the better teenage romance films of the 80’s. “I want the entire street out of town just so I can be alone with you…I adore you”. She sings with such a lackadaisical energy, so laid back, an energy of woozy infatuation is generated. The clumsy way the drums boom in, the millennial oooh’s in the background, double tracked lead vocals on select words “found by you”, there’s only one way this song can be described, perfectly imperfect. Precious few songs have managed to capture the giddy intensities with which we adore each other, here is one that does.

389.Song:Brand New Colony

Artist:The Postal Service

Album:Give Up 

Is it a coincidence that the main synth riff for “Brand New Colony” sounds like an off-kilter Mario theme? Does this allow for the empathetic lyrics to find some deeper symbolic meaning for the gaming generation? If you are like me, you are constantly imagining a music video in your head of Mario finally professing his love and appreciation for Princess Peach. If you are not, you are probably still finding a lot of warmth and infatuation within Ben Gibbard’s fantastically romantic lyricism. “I’ll be the phonograph that plays your favourite albums back/ As you’re lying there, drifting off to sleep”. That rhythmic synth riff envelops the soul as much as it does the soundscape, those electronic drums feel like they are teetering on the edge of lucidity as the cymbals softly clash together. Volume levels for everything fluctuate as the bridge buries the strings in low-pass filters. “Everything will change/ ooh ooh”.

388.Song:This Is How We Do It

Artist:Montell Jordan

Album:This Is How We Do It 

“This is how we do it/ it’s friday night/ and I feel alright”. “This Is How We Do It” feels like a never ending block party given musical form. Listen to the background, crowd noise is present almost everywhere, the horns seem like they are beckoning even more people in, the bass genuinely feels like it is being blasted out of street level speakers. Still, there is an underlying sense of menace to the atmosphere, “all the gangbangers forgot about the drive-by”, implying that the celebratory air is never far from a funeral. It’s hard not to be carried along with Montell Jordan’s charismatic energies regardless of those undertones “I’m kinda buzzed and it’s because (This is how we do it)”. Oddly, this is the second song on this playlist thus far that has been featured in the video game Saints Row IV. Seeing the main villain partying so gleefully along with the Saints gang, an alien who killed literally everyone, serves as a nice metaphor for this song’s appeal.

387.Song:Painkiller

Artist:Judas Priest/Death

Album:Painkiller/Sounds Of Perseverance 

In the long history of virtuoso drum performances, no song has ever opened quite like “Painkiller”. Travis Scott’s pummeling blast beats and nuclear snares make for one of the heaviest metal tracks ever all by themselves, but we still have the rest of the band to account for. Right before going on a decade-long hiatus from Judas Priest, Rob Halford lent his stupefying vocal presence to this howler of a song, one that still gives symphonic death metal wailers a run for their money. “Faster than a bullet/ Terrifying scream” Of course, being a heavy metal song, the shreddings and string maulings of Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing excite, their dual guitar attack aging preposterously well against the total output of metal guitar freaks since. That glorious opening riff, bluesy and muscular, keeps us centered until the incendiary, laser-like, solo threatens to sear the listener with its sheer velocity. “This is/ the painkiller”.

386.Song:Dance Of The Dolls

Artist:Moral

Album:And Life Is… 

Here is a song that I don’t wish to oversell, on this playlist of bangers is one of the starkest, potentially most underwritten, songs ever released. I am willing to bet a lot on you having heard nothing else like it. It opens as it means to continue, with an arpeggiated synth line so basic and yet so oddly compelling, and then Hanne Winterberg’s vocals coming in cold, clinical. With lyrics that lean on symbolism spare enough to evoke the band’s nordic origins “you dream of being something else/ than an exhibit”. One verse, that’s all you get, then wordless vocals swooning and moaning for the rest of the runtime. It’s so cold and isolating, especially with the reverb bouncing around the soundscape. Discogs lists them as either a “Cold Wave” or “Minimal Synth” band, either descriptor works but Cold Wave in particular helps me reckon with such an intensely impersonal, yet icily intimate exhibit. May it haunt your music listening days.

385.Song:Me And Mrs. Jones

Artist:Billy Paul

Album:360 Degrees Of Billy Paul 

If you’ve ever felt like you had dirty laundry that you didn’t want aired, there are a surprising amount of pop songs available for you to vent your compromised emotions to. Extramarital affairs are cowardice of the heart given form, so it’s no surprise that “Me And Mrs. Jones” is a perfect anthem for such confused situations . After all, it’s hard to feel bad about how things turned out when the strings sound this sentimental, the reverb filling out the stereo field as if everyone involved had had their say in the matter. Billy Paul’s soothing vocals function like that bottle of wine you corked out so you could deal with the “thing going on” that he sings about. “We both know that it’s wrong/ but it’s much too strong/ To let it go now”. This song was a massive hit, so maybe a lot more of us are cowards than can be safely admitted, thus the purpose of the song is forever assured, etched into our collective soul. “We’ve got a thing going on”.

384.Song:Long Snake Moan

Artist:PJ Harvey

Album:To Bring You My Love 

I’ve been lingering on “Long Snake Moan” for a while in my head, mostly asking what purpose purposefully stringing the listener along as they wait for the chorus to appear serves? I am acutely aware of the sexual metaphor, I’m just in supreme awe of the constructed thing I am listening to. If any song sounded like it was born in a swamp, it’s this one. Those powerfully mixed guitars that slash and froth, bubbling with a fiery intensity that makes this song, and its parent album, ideal listens in hot, humid, environments. PJ Harvey’s vocals sound like she is a cat in heat, barely containing her pleasured wails as the chorus erupts “You oughta hear my long snake/ Moan”. The question I asked in the beginning seems answered with aplomb, but I still feel there’s a deeper layer to it. As if accessing the climax of physicality is more of a spiritual experience than we allow ourselves to think; “Hell’s Low/ God Above”.

383.Song:God Is A Woman

Artist:Ariana Grande

Album:Sweetener 

Sex is a hard topic for music to meaningfully explore, since any song that tries to be “sexy” quickly becomes meme fodder or fades into the background of our hyper-sexualized pop culture landscape. Ariana Grande tackles this in a way that, to me, makes the most sense, she simply overawes the listener with stylistic expressiveness. Here is a song that crams Rock guitars, trap beats, Gospel style choral vocals and the abyssal beats of Trip-Hop into a concise, mature, package. Ariana raps, whispers, and croons, building tension until the chorus’ subdued release. Unlike other pop-starlets who do the “Good girl gone bad” trope, Grande seems to sincerely believe in her sense of earned divinity. She demands and receives, this is not a conversation, it is a submission. “When all is said and done/ You’ll believe God is a woman” . Note: This was originally recorded by Camilla Cabello but never released officially, thus Ariana reaps the rewards.

382.Song:Wind And Walls

Artist:The Tallest Man On Earth

Album:There’s No Leaving Now 

“In all these riots of broken sound” Kristian Matsson’s voice breaks, perhaps speaking to how love and purpose can be found in music, on the dancefloor, in little moments of overstimulation. In a song written entirely in verbose metaphors, often reminiscent of a young Bob Dylan’s compositions, the warm acoustic guitar chords flutter through sweet constructions like “singing songs of rivers tied to accidents within” or “So lay it on the plains where there is time, there is love, there is rest”. The slide guitars that ring out throughout emphasize the shifting dreamscapes that The Tallest Man On Earth conjures out of the ether, allowing his charismatic presence to drift through the verse-chorus-verse structures and land with aplomb on lines like “So when I get there you trust me son, and just leave/ I’ll catch up”. If any song ever suggested a gust of autumn wind, with the leaves swirling up all around you, this is it.

381.Song:Sicko Mode

Artist:Travis Scott Feat. Drake

Album:ASTROWORLD

“Sicko Mode” is three great songs smushed together into one headlong mini-epic. Starting off with a fake-out Drake solo “goin’ on you with the pick and roll/ Young la flame, he in sicko mode” before shifting to the main Travis Scott show. Showcasing a flow that suggests a man wrestling with an alligator, the rough scales of the animal evident in the texture of his verses “was off the Remy, had a Papoos”. The extended middle section finally subsumes itself in Drake’s darker sonic universe, minor key synths and droning bass underlying his cigarette smoke flows “Had me out/ Like a light/ Like a light”. All credit to Scott, he joins in and holds his own within Drake’s climes, having the last word on how to achieve “Sicko Mode”. Bearing all the hallmarks of bling rap, but pairing that lyrical excess with trap beats, “Sicko Mode” finds us being regaled with the sonic talents of Drake’s production instincts and Scott’s gnarly capabilities on the mic.

380.Song:Rolling In The Deep

Artist:Adele

Album:21 

“Rolling In The Deep” has all the subtlety of a looming threat. “You’re gonna wish you/ Had never met me” accompanies Adele in the chorus, a deep well of lower end acoustic guitars linger in the intro and the drums sound like they are ready to take the subject out back and beat them half to death. That this song doesn’t come across as a narcissistic stalker anthem is testament to Adele’s enormous presence, and her knack for timely gusto “Think of me in the depths of your despair/ Make a home down there, as mine won’t be shared” (Those drums storm back in here, like a posse forming a shield). “Rolling In The Deep” is soaked in 70’s style pop production, which is probably why it enjoyed such massive crossover appeal, but it absolutely wouldn’t have succeeded as much without Adele. Her powerful sax-like vocals attack each note like it’s the last one she’ll sing, or rather the last one her ex-lover will ever hear. Remind me not to piss Adele off.

379.Song:The Curse Of Millhaven

Artist:Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Album:Murder Ballads 

Murder Ballads, the album, is a very, very, dour experience. Definitely not an experience you’d enthusiastically recommend to people unless you are heavily goth or off of your medications. “The Curse Of Millhaven” would seem to add to that reputation, what with its lyrics being the POV of a little girl (played by Nick Cave, of course) murdering her way through a small town. “All God’s children/ They all gotta die”. It is also brilliant, often wickedly funny through sheer force of personality, and a manifestation of musical chaos from the opening crash of notes and cymbals. The sheer contrast of Nick Cave’s usually cavernously deep vocals going off the deep end, as he role plays a psychotic blonde orphan, provides one of the most jarring experiences in rock. The gall of it all, the murderously hilarious energy that Cave throws into lyrics like “I’ll sing to the lot/ now that you got me going”, as a chorus goes “la-la-la-la” alongside,  is a real treat.

378.Song:Solsbury Hill

Artist:Peter Gabriel

Album:Peter Gabriel 1: Car 

When Peter Gabriel left Genesis, a band that helped him indulge in some pretty out there concepts musically and lyrically, it somehow freed him as a solo artist to indulge even more in flights of fancy. “Solsbury Hill” is the sound of that full flowering, almost nearly quite literally. Those acoustic guitars flutter to the 7/4 beat, the drums bouncing along, the kick drum so pillowy it might as well be stuffed with feathers, even Gabriel’s voice finds itself drifting along like a gust of wind giving every musical element its impulse to flight. When he sings “My heart going boom, boom, boom” there is no going back, you are as hooked to the concept as he was to the joy of creation on his own terms. The synth French Horn riff and flutes tether us to each bar, allowing the rest of the instruments to gaily play around with the 7/4 measures, and Gabriel’s halting lines something to pin his hopes on with each line “Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home”.

377.Song:Tops Drop

Artist:Fat Pat

Album:Ghetto Dreams

A rap aficionado acquaintance once said to me “The East Coast had Biggie, The West Coast had Tupac, and The Gulf Coast had Fat Pat”. Given the tragic arcs of their lives, they all died by the assassin’s bullet, that comparison has a haunting quality to it that has stuck with me ever since. Perhaps Fat Pat understood the game he was playing, as “Tops Drop”, while on the surface being a bling-rap adjacent diddy, has a sinister edge to its music. Just listen to the underlying synths, the way that the constant droning line has a funeral tint to it, slithering alongside Fats lyrics like the mythical Nidhogg. It is his constant companion, even clearly audible when other synth lines try to clamber in to give a neon edge to the proceedings. Only in the chorus, where he doesn’t sing the hook, does it leave us. But the context wouldn’t matter if the song was forgettable, Tops Drop is a game banger, a suitably enticing deep cut, immortality achieved by other means.

376.Song:A Thousand Miles

Artist:Vanessa Carlton

Album:Be Not Nobody 

The very moment that the glittering main piano riff hits your ears is the moment you let go of your cynical tendencies. It is a riff that instantly defines the way it interacts with your heartstrings and Vanessa Carlton’s vocals “Makin’ my way downtown/ Walkin’ fast, faces pass, and I’m homebound” duh-duh-duh-duhduhduh-duh. This song came from an era in pop music where having an orchestra on hand seemed mandatory and cliche’, but the presence of the strings fills out crucial gaps in the melody and enhances the rhythmic strikes of the piano keys. Producers Ron Fair and Curtis Schweitzer knew what they were doing here, giving Vanessa Carlton enough space for her soprano-ite vocals to shine while giving the proceedings an epic air that only the best ballads can achieve. After all, if someone is willing to walk a thousand miles, they are surely in the kind of love about which such actual epics would be written.

450.Song:Rainbow In The Dark

Artist:Dio

Album:Holy Diver

In metal, cheese can be an advantage, as strategic deployment of carefully crafted mountains of it can help cement a classic. Take these precise, oh so eighties, synth leads as a veritable buffet. That isn’t the main strength of this song however, they are merely icing on the cake, rinds on the fromage. No, what makes this song ascend into heavy metal’s illustrious canon is Ronnie James Dio’s fantastic vocal performance, his charisma and edged yelps propelling a tale of darkness and hope to its glorious conclusion: A face melting guitar solo of righteous proportions. The third concert I ever went to was an Iron Maiden event in Edmonton, just a few weeks after Dio’s death in 2010. As Bruce Dickinson sat onstage, a titanic roar of “DIO!” filled the air, an onslaught of noise and a mark of respect to the late giant of metal. That Iron Maiden went on to perform this very song, well, you can call that a send-off of the highest order.

449.Song:Umbrella

Artist:Rihanna ft. Jay-Z

Album:Good Girl Gone Bad 

The pop cliche of the Good Girl Gone Bad shouldn’t have applied to Rihanna, after all she didn’t exactly have a squeaky clean, family orientated image to uphold beforehand. She was famous for exactly the sort of dance music this new album was stuffed with, but a rejection of this song by Britney Spears opened up a curious new mode for Rihanna to capitalize on, pop perfection. This song has no right to be this good. With its gigantic bass line, thundering along with an unstoppable momentum, amidst piles of glittering synth lines, and Jay-Z showing up to introduce us to our new pop queen with an opening verse of immaculate braggadocio. This is one of the great earworms in pop history. Refusing to leave the skulls of anyone who catches its strays, even those who have never heard it can faintly grasp at its demonic energies with the endless memes generated since: “You can hide under my Umbrella-ella-ella”.

448.Song:This Kiss

Artist:Carly Rae Jepsen

Album:Kiss 

If any singer in the history of pop can lay claim to having “Sugary” vocals, it’s Carly Rae Jepsen. Just listen to the ways that her voice curves around words such as “And you know I’ve got a boy”, or how she glides over the pumping bass lines and blasting percussion with “you know you’re just my type”. Producers Redfoo and Matthew Koma maximize those talents, surrounding her with a crunchy, glittering soundscape of synths, sickly sweet electric guitars and a crushed-candy digital sheen. Carly’s vocals are run through a gamut of impact edits, stuttering perfectly on beat, compressed to the sky, allowing even her breaths to hit with maximum emotional impact. All of this combines to create a breathtaking momentum that Carly expertly shepherds us through. While “Call Me Maybe” will have more nostalgic cachet in the future, deservedly so since it’s an undeniable banger, “This Kiss” deserves to also be remembered as a perfect pop gem.

447.Song:Purple Rain

Artist:Prince

Album:Purple Rain 

The legend goes that, upon hearing that his 2007 Superbowl performance was going to have a heavy downpour threaten to overwhelm it, Prince asked the showrunners if they could “make it rain harder”[1]. Listening to the song itself, and viewing that performance in its entirety, you get a sense that Prince was an artist with his own reality distortion field, that famous saying about certain manic geniuses such as Steve Jobs. Whatever was in his head, he willed into being, whatever was in his way was just affirmation of his god-given rights to steamroll over them. So it goes that we have this song, threatening to explode out of the disc into its own stadium field (there are even crowd whistles mixed in near the end as if to prove my point). The generous amounts of gated reverb on the drums, the delays added to Princes’ vocals, the lush guitars, put together it all puts the “Power” in power ballad. “I only want to see you underneath the purple rain”.

446.Song:Mr.Sandman

Artist:The Chordettes 

Album:Single

It can come across as trite, this song describing the ideal man as one with “lots of wavy hair like Liberace”, but there comes a point where we, as a music loving public, must simply accept joy at face value. The Chordettes vocal harmonies throughout this song are so warmly produced that even phrases like “Give him the word that I’m not a rover/ Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over” escape cynicism. Like, seriously, the warm bass line that bubbles up underneath, the occasional Celesta notes popping out like stars in the night sky, the one time where Mr. Sandman himself interjects (“Yes?”); The famous hand-clap rhythm that opens the track giving the whole track the feeling of a bottle of Champagne ready to pop; Those vocal harmonies, there are so many instances throughout where emphasis is placed with aplomb, where reverb is allowed to ring out strategically, that this is one of the great repeat listens in pop history.

445.Song:Unforgettable

Artist:Drake & Young Jeezy

Album:Thank Me Later 

“Let me know/ Let me know” Aaliyah sings, her voice fading into guitar distortion, soft synth pads hit and echo in the background. After Kanye West released 808’s and Heartbreak, it only took a few years for an artist to bring the concepts of that album to their fullest fruition. Drake’s rapping against that background of sparse synths and drum machines, his voice laced with autotune, collates and condenses that album experience into this atmospheric gem. I do have to state that this track is really Young Jeezy’s show, as he takes up the entire back two-thirds of the verses, his rough boomy vocals overtaking Drake’s understated presence in the chorus as well. But the emphasis on sonic beauty wins through in the end as Drake checks back in “I just really hope that you think of me/ cause I’m trying to be unforgettable”. Then Aaliyah joins us one final time, fading back into the warm distorted guitar bath.  Young Jeezy: “Timeless, homie/ Unforgettable”.

444.Song:Grace, Too

Artist:The Tragically Hip

Album:Day For Night 

“Grace, Too” is a gorgeous slow burner, like watching a David Lynch film, the interpretation is left to you while the music hits you at an oblique emotional angle. Hence, the snakelike bass line that opens draws us inwards to a warm bed of acoustic guitars and dry drums, tinged with electric guitar distortion as Gord Downie sings “He said “I’m fabulously rich”/ C’mon just let’s go”. The backing vocals sound like a flock of loons, menacingly hanging over the proceedings as the chorus threatens to prematurely explode, before settling down into a seething calm. “Armed with will and determination/ And grace, too”. Near the end, as Gord Downie devolves into yelping fits, the rest of the band goes slightly psychedelic, arguably psychotic, beefing up the soundscape with wide volume sweeps and guitar feedback. Clearly something ominous is happening, we aren’t quite sure what it is or how to avoid it. Then it just fades out quickly, as all bright lights do.

443.Song:Personal Jesus

Artist:Depeche Mode/ Johnny Cash

Album:Violator/American IV: The Man Comes Around 

At the exact moment I sat down to write this blurb, one of those annoying pop-up ads appeared on the Genius webpage. As this song thundered forward, the ad turned out to be for a series of winter jackets, white puffy things with blood red inner linings. Serendipitously, the jacket opened by an invisible hand to reveal said liner, looking for all the world like an angel being gored and opened up out of the corner of my eye.”Reach out and touch faith”. In this era of digital perfection and AI uncanniness, “Personal Jesus”’s soundscape is all the more powerful. Seriously, that guitar riff is so ploddingly distracting that it has to mean something right? “Someone to hear your prayers/ Someone who cares”. Johnny Cash taps into some spooky vibes on his take, with his faltering voice seeming to grasp at every note, as if he actually needed that personal jesus. Both takes are essential in the ways that they both call for and desperately need to receive absolution.

442.Song:Rich Man Poor Man

Artist:The Gladiators

Album:Back To Roots 

One of the unfortunate realities of living in a first world nation is being insulated against the realities of life in other, less fortunate, polities. The sufferings of others can only be related to in an abstract, exceedingly partial manner. This is why music can help bridge gaps in understanding. Even if differences between languages are still a tough barrier, differences within a language are much easier to bear. This is why, I believe, reggae had such a monumental effect on world music. It was punk via joy, externalised pain turned into spiritual uplift. “Hey, everything will soon be okay/ As soon as the war is over”. The Gladiators, a band as chained to that hypnotic emphasis-on-the-two beat as Reggae’s best, add in a soulful warmth as the group sings in harmony “Don’t cry my brothers/ Don’t cry my sisters/ These tears won’t change the situation”. A deep belief in the power of music is present here “Have some faith/ Have a little faith”.

441.Song:Tornado

Artist:Jonsi

Album:Go 

Reading through Anna Karenina for the first time, I have been struck by how, when given proper form, the inner world of human emotions can help others deal with their own little miseries. As that novel states in the beginning “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, a song like “Tornado” is unhappy in a way that makes it universal. With lovely, churning, piano chords adding a glisten to every chordal movement, and strings chiming in to add a sickeningly sweet emotional foundation, It can be hard not to get taken in by its awesome emotional reach. For sure, Jonsi’s lyrics are a bit of a literal mess “You sound so blue/ You now are gloom”, and they are vague in specifics, but when he reaches the finale “I wonder if I’m allowed/ just ever to be”, you have gone through an emotional gauntlet. His vocals are the serene center, reaching high into the heavens and keeping us there with a shared understanding of all of our little miseries.

440.Song:Stronger

Artist:Kanye West

Album:Graduation 

“You should be honored by my lateness”. Kanye West, the man, the myth, the musical legend. His mind is a myriad. He can hear a Daft Punk song, focus in on a five second chunk and realize its potential for a chart-topping hit. Slowing down said sample turned out to be just one more affirmation of his ego, it had to be his and only his insight that made the song pop. The sound of “Harder, better, faster, stronger” is rich, dynamic and, most importantly, flexible. Its syllabic clarity, and handy pre-processed qualities, allow for a seamless construction in whatever forms needed. Kanye’s unerring ear for an unstoppable hook ensures maximal impact as he raps “Let’s get lost tonight/ You can be my black Kate Moss tonight”. This is braggadocio harnessed to its ultimate conclusion, a perfect sample run down into the muck only to emerge polished like a diamond in the end. This Kanye realizes: “Bow down to my greatness/ ‘Cause right now, thou hast forsaken us”.

439.Song:Here Comes The Rain Again

Artist:Eurythmics

Album:Touch 

“I want to talk like lovers do/ Want to dive into your ocean/ Is it raining with you?” One thing that strikes you about the UK is the constant overhang of heavy grey clouds, always threatening to drown the world in a cascading deluge. Eurythmics, a duo of Scott Annie Lennox and Brit Dave Stewart, composed songs rich in sonic detail but devoid of warmth, as if the rain had seeped into their bones. “Here Comes The Rain Again” is their most complete song, one where the most prominent bass lines are taken up by synth strings in the right speaker and Annie Lennox has full reign of the reverb on the left. It’s a neat setup, provided that the archness of it all doesn’t bury us in procedural songwriting. All credit to the structures then, for the dynamics of the song remain standing despite a constantly shifting foundation. Ingenious note placements, impeccable rhythms on the synth leads and drums, this is one of the pinnacles of 80’s synth-pop.

438.Song:Recite Remorse

Artist:Waxahatchee

Album:Out In The Storm  

Listening to the steady organ crawl, to the guitar glissando’s chiming in every now and then, to Katie Crutchfield’s vocals peering through the musical mists, a funerary air of inevitability is palpable. A very real sense of suspended animation is created as Katie’s lyrics prep us for ascension: “For a moment, I was not lost/ I was waiting for permission to take off”. At each utterance of permission throughout, a new musical element bursts forth, like flowers blooming suddenly in the fields. The most effective of these elements is the bass guitar, played by Katherine Simonetti, which first beckons us along, and then thunders forward, carrying the rest of the band along its mellifluous tides. Always the guitars hover around the soundscape, dropping notes like raindrops glistening in the sun. “I Was out of my body/ Reciting lines of remorse”, lyrics like these anchor us, reminding us of what lies just out of reach, but to never stop reaching.

437.Song:Since U Been Gone

Artist:Kelly Clarkson

Album:Breakaway

By all accounts, Kelly Clarkson arrived to meet with Producers Dr.Luke (Yechh) and Max Martin expecting to collaborate with them on writing the song. It turns out that she had been lied to about the collaborating part [1]. Knowing this is one of those cool factoids that can’t help but improve every moment of listening. When the song is building up with its dry electric guitars, corked electronic drum kits and Clarkson’s codeine vocals, you get the sense that something special is coming. “But since you been gone/ I can breathe for the first time”. There! A moment of pure emotional catharsis. Kelly’s in the moment rage transformed into a generational breakup song. She sounded hurt, because she was, you sound elated, because you are. Nothing seems able to contain her here, in this living, breathing, explosion of a moment. After the final chorus the energy seems to peter out, as if we and her are all coming down from the biggest possible contact high.

436.Song:The Wanderer

Artist:U2 Feat. Johnny Cash

Album:Zooropa

During a break in their meta-universe freak show world tour Zoo TV, U2  had energy to burn and a suddenly available Johnny Cash with which to record this, arguably their most emblematic record. The album Zooropa was notable for how wild its mood swings were, to close on this apocalyptic note was somehow enlivening. Crunchy, arcadey bass, barely there hi-hats and a backing soundscape of angelic oohs and aahs, the sound of it all coming together is so absurd, it should not work at all. As the book Into The Heart notes: “It might sound potentially like a thin joke…until Johnny Cash opens his mouth”. Singing a batch of lyrics inspired by The Book Of Ecclesiastes, Cash pins this song to the heart. Whatever you may think of U2’s undeniable habit of overreaching musically, “The Wanderer” connects it all to their need to reach as high as possible for spiritual uplift, using whatever means necessary; unfathomable alarm blips and all.

435.Song:Space Oddity

Artist:David Bowie

Album:Space Oddity 

“Planet Earth is blue/ And there’s nothing I can do” In his multi-decade career, David Bowie always found a way to connect the loners of the world with a mass audience. In this way he could arguably be called the progenitor, not just of many more great rock acts to come, but of the incisive bite of emo and the humanist grime of grunge. In light of those highly intimate offspring, “Space Oddity” is a track that is pretty far out there in terms of production and lyrical conciseness. Floaty woodwinds collide with soaring saxophones, mimic electric guitars, a constant atmosphere of floaty acoustic guitar bedding and Bowie’s liquid vocals. “This is Major Tom to ground Control/ I’m stepping through the door”. This potent mixture was covered by astronaut Chris Hadfield in 2013, but after Bowie’s death in 2016 it became a touching, everlasting, tribute to the man that found humanity amongst the stars.

434.Song:Shame

Artist:PJ Harvey

Album:Uh Uh Her 

Leave it to PJ Harvey to have the last word on love and hate. She hates how much she has to have the subject of her devotion, recoils from the raw vulnerability she emits. “I’d jump for you into the flame/ Try to go forward with my life/ But just feel shame, shame, shame”. Her voice beds itself in low growls and leaps to operatic yelps, covering every melodic inch of the wretched earth, screaming into herself in the name of love. “You changed my life/ We were as green as grass”. Watching the music video for this song is equivalent to witnessing a ghostly lava lamp undergo a psych evaluation. Seeing PJ Harvey’s face weave in and out of the liquid imagery, hearing the cruddy distortion effect on the guitars, realizing that the drums really are just panned off to one side of the stereo field. All of this is an imperfect mirror held up to our amorphous faces, after all: “Shame is the shadow of love”.

433.Song:Imprisoned (Original Mix)

ArtistShogun & Emma Lock

Album:A State Of Trance-Yearmix 2010

One side-effect of listening to lots of different genres of music for this playlist is simply that so many songs refuse to adhere to naming  and labelling conventions. Take this song, which has at least three mixes that I know of, all of different lengths and structures. At least in this instance I can clearly name the superior version, do all you can to track down the “Original Mix” of at least 7:58 length. Here you can really appreciate all that made Trance such a dominant electronic music genre until dubstep and other forms subsumed it. Emma Locke’s soothing vocals gliding above throbbing bass lines, teasing us along as the synths climax underneath “Throw caution to the wind/ I guess I need something to believe in”. Shogun does relent, allowing the listener crucial space to breathe and appreciate the interlocking chordal and melodic structures that build towards that famous “State of Trance” that the genre has found few equals in

432.Song:If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)

Artist:AC/DC

Album:Highway To Hell

One of the most astonishing things you come to realize when listening to AC/DC’s output on Highway To Hell, is how strikingly modern it sounds. The production is so crisp, so muscular, that cynicism simply fades away before Angus Young’s titanic riffage. What’s even more baffling is how this song in particular has received almost no love from either the music listening public, or the band itself as it does not appear in any of their “Greatest Hits” collections or sheet music compilations. For sure, it does strike a similar vibe to the classic “It’s A Long Way To The Top If You Want To Rock N’Roll”, and yes it does follow many of the band’s well worn songwriting conventions, but damn; it really is the prototypical deep cut. From the start-stop opening riff, alone with its reverb in the opposite speaker, to Bon Scott’s seismic vocal performance, this is one of the most raucous, most outright fun times you are ever going to have listening to hard rock.

431.Song:No More Tears

Artist:Ozzy Osbourne

Album:No More Tears 

“Crazy Train” gets a lot of the love in Ozzy Osbourne’s expansive discography, but “No More Tears” deserves more thrown its way. It has every bit of what made “Crazy Train” sound epic in its time; with the added benefit of rich, modern, production to throw its weight more judiciously. Guitarist Zakk Wylde gifts the song with some huge slabs of meaty riffs, Ozzy being one of the best at recognizing guitar virtuosos when he hears them. Ozzy himself gives arguably his best vocal performance as his weird, high ranged, style breaks through the sonic walls of metal surrounding him. What gets crazy is how the song simply stops at 3:17 and goes on a Meatloaf-esque piano ride until 4:30, and still never feels like it has skipped any beats as Zakk goes hog-wild in a guitar solo for the ages afterwards. A true epic in an influential career packed with hits, this is Ozzy’s best solo work.

430.Song:Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)

Artist:Neil Young

Album:Rust Never Sleeps

Here is a guitar tone that will put some hair on your chest. Listen to the way it seems to bubble with a boiling intensity, almost frothing over at every moment of emphasis. There’s something to be said about how a live setting can let loose demons that would never fly in a recording studio. Surely the alchemy at work here couldn’t be captured on tape when confined in those boxes, only out in the open does it have the space it needs to pummel you to death. “And once you’re gone, you can’t come back/ when you’re out of the blue and into the black”. Neil Young’s lyrics turn into a merely symbolic gesture, half overridden by events on the stage and half slurred out by his uniquely flat vocals. It would be funny if it didn’t have a deranged energy to it unmatched by all but the most insane of musical geniuses. It might be weird to say this, in light of the recording quality, but I urge you to listen to this with some really good headphones.

429.Song:I Want It That Way

Artist:Backstreet Boys

Album:Millenium

Virtually every site that I visit has the same thing to say about this song, that its lyrics are abstract and vague; too muddled to get a clear handle on their meaning. I find that funny, because the thing about music is that we have a whole song to listen to to impart said meaning to us. I’m autistic and even I can figure out that this song plays as it means to mean. This is clearly in the tradition of The Beatles “Yesterday”, the vagueness is the point, because love is too messy for clarification. Written by pop guru Max Martin and Andreas Carlsson, this is one of the great singles of all time, better alone than its entire parent album. The lush vocal harmonies that punctuate the chorus “Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache” are sublime and the immaculate production allows them to shine.. “You are my fire/ The one desire”, that moment of suspension in the bridge, before the final chorus, is far too beautiful to be unclear. It is what it means to be.

428.Song:Panama

Artist:Van Halen

Album:1984 

Asked to explain why I love Van Halen so much, without the excuse that I was practically raised on them, I took to pointing out the band’s mixing. Eddie Van Halen, one of the most transcendent fretboard talents of all time, used to always be mixed to the left of the stereo field. Stuck in this sonic space, and usually given some reverb on the right both to slightly balance and to give him an outsized sonic presence, it was Van Halen against the world, and he won out every time. “Panama” is one of the band’s biggest bursts of machismo, Diamond Dave’s train-whistle charisma giving us some swagger and the drums pounding precisely to the beat.  The bridge on this monster is the closest rock has ever come to making a guitar sizzle and burn, and Dave sounds like he is close to bursting into flames himself as he works the gear shaft. Everything about this track exudes the sort of intensity that powers the engines of hard rock, a perfect showcase for Van Halen.

427.Song:Born To Run

Artist:Bruce Springsteen

Album:Born To Run 

One thing to recognize about Bruce Springsteen is not that he gave full license to artists to bring every emotion to the top of the wall, even though he surely did, but that he was an artist whose best work almost always teetered on the edge of calamity. Listen to “Born To Run” and sincerely try to tell me that the instrumentalists aren’t hanging on for dear life on the scaffolding, Bruce filling in the structure with a multitude of lyrics.”Just wrap your legs ‘round these velvet rims/ And strap your hands across my engines”.  If the slightest element was out of place this would be an unlistenable sludge. But precisely because everything is just where it needs to be at the moment it needs to be there, this song glitters with a thousand points of light. The audacity of Bruce to insist on himself, to bring out the inner optimist of a lyricist who absolutely cannot allow for brevity or sense, that’s the American Dream. As told by the Boss himself.

426.Song:Blue

Artist:Joni Mitchell

Album:Blue 

Half a century on and we are still finding comfort in songs such as “Blue”, off an album so packed with songs that explore our infatuations and innermost desires that it has now been almost universally recognized as one of the best albums ever made. But here, in “Blue” the song, we find a call from another time and place poking through the mists of eternity. From a time of hippies and road trips, divorced from constant media and emotional saturation. “Crown and anchor me/ Or let me sail away”. People found their ways through depression differently back then, but the song remains the same. Joni Mitchell’s melismatic singing allows each note, each emphasized syllable, to drift alongside the piano chords, beautifully recorded by the way, like a seed borne by the wind.  As time moves on, we may find newer songs, newer artists, that speak to our most vulnerable moments just as well, but I doubt many will better “Blue” on the terms it gives us.

475.Song:Teenage Dream

Artist:Katy Perry

Album:Teenage Dream 

It opens quietly, with a guitar line so unpronounced it is in danger of melting away, like cotton candy, Katy Perry’s vocals coming in breathlessly overtop some of the softest drums possible. “You and I/ Will be young forever!”. The emotional eruption of the chorus shouldn’t be this good, it is a fireworks display when compared to what came before. “So take a chance and don’t ever look back/ don’t ever look back”. Sure, a platoon of writers was needed to get this song over the top, but oh, how it reaches. One can critique Perry’s vocal presence, but I think her range suits the aspirations of this song perfectly, rushing towards a hazy dream with all of the headlong intensity of foolhardy love. Every pop song aspires to take us somewhere, to capture an intense emotion for the world to consume, “Teenage Dream” takes us to the clouds and keeps us there. “Let’s go all the way tonight/ no regrets, just love”. A perfectly produced gem.

474.Song:Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)

Artist:Pras feat. Ol’ Dirty Bastard

Album:Ghetto Supastar 

Here is a rap song whose sampled melody vastly improves over the original, to the extent that that original becomes an infuriating listen. The key difference is literally the timing of a scotch snap, in the original, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton “Islands In The Stream”, they snap on “and we rely on EACH other/ Uh Huh”. Mya’s moves that snap to the “Uh Huh” and thus ruins whatever cachet “Islands” ever had. “Ghetto Supastar” rides Mya’s momentum as far as it can go, which is substantially far considering Pras’s noticeably lacking flow when compared to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s guest verses. ODB’s personality infects this song so thoroughly that I have to put a disclaimer on its inclusion on this playlist. Sometimes being just “good enough”, as compared to surrounding greatness, is the key to success . “Run away with me/ to another place/ we can rely on each other, uh huh/ from one corner to another, uh huh”.

473.Song:The Boys Of Summer

Artist:Don Henley

Album:Building The Perfect Beast 

“I can tell you/ my love for you will still be strong/ after the boys of summer have gone” For a hit with such a catchy, propulsive, chorus, the rest of the song seems strangely dire, like Don Henley was chasing something ethereal, unknowable. The FM synths and digital drums that open the song are wracked with guilt,  very intentionally played in the key of D#min, “Those days are gone forever/ I should just let them go”, the song ascends keys strategically, allowing joy to burst through in the chorus with the relative F#Maj progression. I write all of this, not to bore you with tedious theory, but with amazement at how meticulous the craftsmanship is here in the songwriting. It lays you low then bounds joyfully skyward. For a song so steeped in the sounds of 80’s synths, it has also lucked into a timely re-assessment of the strengths of that soundscape, and of the strong craft buried beneath the glistening digital sheens of yesteryear. Nostalgia chasing forever.

472.Song:Don’t Stop Believin’

Artist:Journey

Album:Escape 

When those iconic piano chords first crash into the speakers overlooking the landscapes of everyone’s personal Jour,…ahem, lived experiences in life, it is hard to not see the lighters thrown up in the air in shared communion. “Just A small town girl/ living in a lonely world” Steve Perry is a Greek chorus, behind every gamble, every cheap thrill that allows his subjects yearnings for a meaningful existence. Bruce Springsteen’s seminal album Born To Run tried to capture this feeling over an entire album, Journey accomplishes its goals in one glittering starburst. “Streetlights, People/ Livin’ just to find emotion” The rhythmic churn of the verses builds tension until the band lets the pent up aspirations of its lyrics morph into a glorious, anthemic, rallying cry cheering everyone on to a life well lived. “Don’t stop believin’/ Hold on to that feeling”. With a presence this outsized, only the stadium of life could fit this song within its confines.

471.Song:Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)

Artist:Green Day

Album:Nimrod

The moment Billy Joe Armstrong stumbles over the acoustic guitar intro, tries again, fumbles, and just says “Fuck”, is when you find a rare moment of “leave it in” imbuing the whole song with potent symbolic energy. One of the all-time great breakup songs, “Good Riddance” continues the tradition of “Yesterday” by the Beatles, finding a sense of serenity in those moments of heartbreak familiar to every human being. “Tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial/ For what it’s worth, it was worth all the while”. There is a bittersweetness in Billie’s performance, like his vocals were recorded immediately post-breakup, the tears still caught in his throat. Maybe it’s partially out of guilt, as the line “It’s something unpredictable, but in the end is right” seems to suggest, maybe there is real anger behind the title of the song. Whatever the case, like a person looking back with maturity and grace, “I hope you had the time of your life”.

470.Song:Noises

Artist:Pale Waves

Album:My Mind Makes Noises 

“Is this me?/ Tell me who I can be” One theory I have for how the recent 80’s revivalism in music has exploded is that a lot of those sonics weren’t just great at providing clear sounds for songwriting purposes, but that they provided an outlet for depressive angst without wallowing as in the Grunge/Alt-rock landscape that would follow. “And the faces that you love/ Are slowly giving up/ What you gonna do?” Heather Baron-Gracie’s lyrics strike at the heart of this revival, the sheer unstoppable force of this song pulls the listener through a goth-pop enlightenment, said momentum even had me imagining ghost notes for the background synths in the chorus. Producer Jonathan Gilmore crafts a glistening soundscape of rollicking guitars and enveloping synth pads, Ciara Doran’s drums hitting at all the right moments. Combine the 80’s renaissance with the benefits of modern production techniques, and you too can craft masterpieces like this.

469.Song:That Song

Artist:Big Wreck

Album:In Loving Memory Of… 

If ever a song has fully embodied its purpose, this song is one of those rarities. Consider; The mix truly sounds like a band playing at the local bar, the lead singer surveying the crowd and trying to avoid breaking down. The drums are crystal clear as the guitars stab and grind their way through the side-channels, the bass coming in warmly under center, the amps hissing during the quieter moments. Ian Thornley belts out lyrics such as “And when you hold him/ would you hear me/ scream at the top of my lungs?” as the rest of the band crescendos around him. The volume suddenly dies, as the guitars settle into quiet, delayed, arpeggios and strums, Thornley’s vocals ricocheting in the opposite speakers. The song breathes as he laments “So you crank that song/ and it might sound doom”. It’s such an effective usage of the Quiet-Loud dynamic that I actually think it must be mandatory for any songwriter to listen to. “And I love that song/ I love that song”.

468.Song:Bob In Your Gait

Artist:Julianna Barwick

Album:The Magic Place 

Ethereal. Too perfect for this world, as the dictionary suggests. Yet, here we have string scrapes and amplifier buzz bouncing around with the delayed guitar notes, the piano note dynamics threatening to burst through the barriers of good taste. Once Julianna Barwick starts singing it takes some work to discern exactly what she is vocalizing. All of the structures involved with making this song, as enthralling as it is, are very delicate, the scaffolding filled in with oceans of reverb and delays. But here we have a culmination of what Enya set out to achieve all those years ago, a soundscape bobbing along the tides of emotion rather than the dictates of convention. “Bob in your gait/ feeling alive/ Song in your heart”. Barwick layers in so many vocals, all of them overwhelmingly clear in the mix, that you have no choice but to allow yourself to be swept up in the pure majesty of it all. Ethereal, too perfect for this world.

467.Song:Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Artist:Tears For Fears

Album:Songs From The Big Chair 

The most surprising thing about this song is how clumsy it is structurally. Behind those glistening synths is a song whose dynamics jump wildly, from the familiar synth-pop aesthetics to power pop guitars and harmonies. Lead singer Curt Smith often sounds like he is holding back a monstrous hiccup, there’s a constant droning E note underneath everything that gets tiring once you notice it and the shuffling vibe of the rhythms barely holds together. All of this adds up to…one of the defining songs of the 80’s. Not only was it bespoke for the decade of yuppie greed,  “All for freedom and for pleasure/ nothing ever lasts forever”, but it’s very unwieldiness allows for those dynamic leaps to shine ever brighter, “There’s a room where the lights won’t find you/ holding hands while the walls come tumbling down”. If Lorde’s recent cover of it proves anything it’s that this song may be un-coverable, forever standing firm on its own shaky, sparkling, foundations.

466.Song:Refuse/Resist

Artist:Sepultura

Album:Chaos A.D. 

It opens with a distorted heartbeat, seemingly gaining in tempo, before the tribal drums pound out a primal rhythm that any protest movement will inevitably chain itself to. Taken as a wide scale metaphor for when those movements boil over, for when the tempest of tempers in society overtake the calls for decency and order, “Chaos A.D.” strikes a body blow against any attempts at moderation. The dense forest of guitar riffs sound for all the world like someone would have to take a machete to the strings to stop their momentum.   “Chaos A.D/ Tanks on the streets” Max Cavalera’s rough vocals seem like they are coming from a megaphone, narrating the ebbs and flows of the revolution. “Refuse/ Resist/ Refuse.  Then the tipping point, the blood-boiling, up-tempo shift into the cauldron of fire that is the guitar solo. As those flames flicker on, we can only listen in to the chaos and wonder where we all went wrong.

465.Song:Family Affair

Artist:Sly & The Family Stone

Album:There’s A Riot Goin’ On 

One of the things that strikes you as you listen to “Family Affair” is how you can almost feel the heat, see the glistening sweat, coating the group. The intense warmth of the bass guitars and primitive machine drums, with some wah-wah’d guitars completing the murky soup of the soundscape, it’s almost too much to bear. The lyrics justify this atmosphere of hostile intimacy, cooing and scatting about how family dynamics can overwhelm its participants “You can’t leave because your heart is there/ but, sure, you can’t stay because you’ve been somewhere else”. When you consider the pressures that Sly Stone was constantly under, from groups as disparate as the Black Panthers and his record label, It’s astonishing that this song came out of the drugged out ether as perfectly as it did. For a nation then under titanic cultural and social evolutions, “Family Affair”  was the perfect release for the public’s angst, or maybe its symbolic cage given form.

464.Song:Pennies From Heaven

Artist:Louis Prima

Album:The Call Of The Wildest

“Everytime it rains, it rains/ Pennies from heaven” If there is one thing to take away from this song, it is that Louis Prima is a criminally overlooked artist. Taking a page from the great bandmasters of the early twentieth century, the King Of Swing earned his moniker by being as relentlessly, overwhelmingly, exuberant as he could get away with. What’s more is that his energy was capably captured on tape, unlike a great many of his contemporaries who languish in a hell of low-fidelity recordings/production. From the opening bars onward, he and his band are having the time of their lives, and inviting you to partake. This is a guy who can get his backing singers to say “Macaroni” in response to “Sunshine and ravioli” and not have the audience sneer, who can scat out complete nonsense (“oh boldily boy zoy” ) as if it means something and make it sound sincere. This is a song that has been covered countless times, he alone has mastered it.

463.Song:We Will Rise Again

Artist:Meredith Godreau/ Hammock

Album:Far Cry 5:Into The Flames/ We Will Rise Again 

When composer Dan Romer and audio director Tony Gronick assembled a vast collection of folk, country and post-rock talent to populate the sonic landscape of Far Cry 5, I highly doubt even they knew the gold they would strike. The way that Meredith Godreau’s voice lilts and flutters, flickering like a light in the darkness, as some background apocalypse looms large overhead, can’t help but send shivers down the spine. “In the west shall rise/ A sinister creed/ The rich will get what they want/ The poor will lose what they need”. The warm bed of acoustic guitars and subdued strings allow us crucial breathing space as the full breadth of the catastrophe envelops us. Hammock, a post-rock ambient group of some acclaim, would turn that same passage into a lullaby for the damned, with the listener swallowed up by the oceans of reverb and distant vocal hymns. Both versions prove essential listening, but the beauty comes with a cost to your sanity.

462.Song:Tom Sawyer

Artist:Rush

Album:Moving Pictures 

It might come off as cheesy nowadays, because of its inevitable seepings into popular culture (most notably its space invaders line that allowed it to sneak on Futurama for a classic episode), but “Tom Sawyer” remains a titanic testament to Rush’s catalogue. Neil Peart’s squeaky vocals masterfully dodge any accusations of un-listenability, his voice riding the chordal changes like a rubber duck bobs along the tides. The guitars present themselves with thick slabs of distortion , grinding their way through the verses in a vaguely doom-inducing manner as Peart sings “What you say about his company is what you say about society” .Those iconic synths permeate the dense chord structures and complicated drum patterns, adding layers of candy-like texture precisely when needed. The lyrical themes of alienation, and the hope of changes to come,“Changes aren’t permanent/ But change is”, scream epic. This is the theme park of prog-rock.

461.Song:How High The Moon

Artist:Les Paul And Mary Ford

Album:Les Paul & Mary Ford Greatest Hits 

The progenitor of studio guitar wizardry, Les Paul, alongside his muse Mary Ford, would craft one of the earliest examples of virtuoso guitar pop. “How High The Moon” is a perfect little slice of early rock nirvana, as short as it is sweet. Mary Ford utilized early tape recording technology to double, nay triple, her vocals, creating musical crescendos with her voice that still hit with the force of a hurricane (Clock in at 1:08 to hear this technological climax). Even when compared to the multi-track technological advances that bands like The Beatles and The Beach Boys would use to revolutionize music production, this phenomenal tune still stands tall as one of their shining predecessors. “Somewhere there’s music/ how faint the tune/ Somewhere there’s heaven/ How high the moon” Oh and that guy, Les Paul, sure can play the guitar pretty well. Thought I’d mention that.

460.Song:Spirit In The Sky

Artist:Norman Greenbaum

Album:Spirit In The Sky 

The iconic guitar riff  for this song, imbued with a fuzzbox tone that has never been successfully replicated, has a profoundly moving, cinematic, quality to it. You can easily picture it accompanying the opening credits to a road-trip film or, as in the 1996 film Michael, a redemptive feel-good comedy. The dynamics are wild, flailing about like a frantic jazzy horn section, but it provides potent propellant for the lyrics. These gospel inspired verses do pin it to christian leanings, but I fully believe that its intentions weren’t to preach, but to inspire. As Norman himself would state “It appeals to one’s inner self and the need for redemption, plus, heck, who wants to go to hell?” Listening to great music is a deeply spiritual experience. Irregardless of any particular religious leanings, there is something enlightening about extracting meaning from sound vibrations in the air, like some “Spirit In The Sky” is here for you, whenever needed.

459.Song:Jesus Christ Pose

Artist:Soundgarden

Album:Badmotorfinger 

I swear “Jesus Christ Pose” next to “Spirit In The Sky” was completely serendipitous, I only noticed this placement when starting to write this very blurb. Despite that, I feel that there’s a good lesson to be drawn from this delightful dichotomy; “Jesus Christ Pose” is such a harsh, angry, listening experience that its placement next to the joyous outburst of the previous tune should reveal the strength of my methods for this playlist’s creation. Quality, not any notion of “importance” or “tonality”, is the be-all. Chris Cornell’s screaming vocals, as powerful as they are crystal clear amongst the resentful chugging of the guitars, hold us in place as the lyrics deliver a powerful rebuke to the notion of the “persecuted artist”. Ben Shepherd’s bass guitar barely seems able to contain itself, loudly spasming underneath every chord. Matt Cameron on the drums plays as if he is the pot lid barely containing the band from frothing over. “Like I need to be saved”.

458.Song:Bring Me To Life

Artist:Evanescence

Album:Fallen 

To get an idea of how vital the hard rock guitars and rapping were to this musical outburst, take a gander at the band’s most recent orchestral reimagining of it on Synthesis. I want to focus on the chorus in particular; contrast 0:56 of the orchestral version with the original. Yes, Amy Lee’s vocals are as soaring as ever, but without the element of anger that the nu-metal guitar stylings and angsty rap vocals brought to the table, it is just another casualty of its own hubris. With those elements added, this is one hell of a breakdown. Lee, with all of the backing her hugely powerful vocals demand, elevates it into an angelic lament, an appeal to love that surpasses its gothic/nu-metal trappings.”[Wake me up] Wake me up inside/ [I can’t wake up] Wake Me Up Inside/ [Save Me] Call my name and save me from the dark”.  It turns out that sometimes you do need a little rage to help capture inherent beauty.

457.Song:Maniac

Artist:Kid Cudi Feat. Cage & St. Vincent

Album:Man On The Moon Vol.2: The Legend Of Mr. Rager 

St.Vincent’s “Strangers”, off of the fantastic album Actor, was a song that tackled the inner sadness of a brat spoiled by “decadence and leisure” [1]. Kid Cudi decided that those vibes were a perfect fit for him to wrestle with his own struggles and sampled “Strangers” heavily on “Maniac”. This mixture of Vincent’s stuttering grace (“Paint the black hole blacker”) and Cudi’s liquid persona is an effective one. The guitars that surround Cudi in the chorus, “I am a maniac”, swirl around nauseously, the harmonic blips peppered throughout the verses are the audio equivalent of stars in your eyes, and the booming kicks contribute to an increasingly manic atmosphere. All of this combines into a song where a closed off Kid Cudi reaches one of the discomforting core truths of depression: That some of us prefer it. “I love the darkness/ Yeah, I’d like to marry it/ It is my cloak, it is my shield/ it is my cloak”.

456.Song:That Lady, Pts. 1 & 2/ i

Artist:The Isley Brothers/ Kendrick Lamar

Album:3+3/ To Pimp A Butterfly 

Imagine a soul song with vibes so immaculate that anyone attempting to harness its energies can’t stand to alter it for their own ends. The shimmering guitar chords with overlain solo leads, which burn with a blue-flame intensity, ensure the song a frothy momentum that the rest of the band gamely coasts on. Ronald Isley’s smooth vocals ride over the chords as he dispenses syrupy love “Who’s that lady?/ Beautiful lady?”. If we all had the charisma and zest of this song, there would be no loneliness in the world. Kendrick Lamar intuits this and repurposed the main riffs for his own efforts with “i”, though you would be advised to stick with the album cut, he did re-record the guitar parts rather than directly sample, but the effect is stunning nonetheless as he raps about the need for love and unity “Dreams of reality’s peace/ Blow steam in the face of the beast”. Both of these versions are just as empowering, for whatever ends you need them for.

455.Song:The Sounds Of Silence/ The Sound Of Silence

Artist:Simon And Garfunkel

Album:Wednesday Morning, 3 AM/ Sounds Of Silence 

“Hello darkness my old friend/ I’ve come to talk with you again” The producers of “The Sounds Of Silence” wanted a hit. Absorbing the contact highs of the new folk rock craze, notably the dynamics of the Byrds and Bob Dylan, they went about recruiting a drummer and an electric guitarist. They then welded the power of rock onto an already recorded folk song, to call the results ungainly is an understatement. The new version reportedly horrified Simon And Garfunkel, at one point you can hear the drums slowing down to allow the singers to catch up, but a hit was a hit. Still, let’s not go crazy here. The original “stripped down” version is the best. Carrying all the delicate melodicism of their illustrious partnership, “The Sounds Of Silence” is a haunting tune, familiar to all on the verge of isolation or death. It has successfully embedded itself into the popular psyche through its own quiet insistence, an accomplishment too vaunted to question.

454.Song:The Twist

Artist:Chubby Checker

Album:Twist With Chubby Checker 

It is terribly easy to forget that music consumption was not easy at all in the late 50’s and early 60’s. People were limited to the radio, sporadic television performances,  the tyranny of jukebox selections and random chance at the record store. Madness. Little wonder that people had the reactions they did to this record, arguably the most energetic dance song released to the public at the time. Just watch the Mad Men episode “The Hobo Code” and see the excited reactions of the girls as the record starts playing, and those reactions are reportedly not far off from the real thing. Chubby Checker sounds like he’s having the time of his life as he calls on girls to “Come on and twist/ Yeah, baby, twist”, throwing in as many innuendos as he could get away with (“We’re gonna a-twist, a-twist, a-twistin’/ ‘Til we tear the house down”) and never letting up as he barrels his way through the speakers and into our hearts.

453.Song:It’s Not Unusual

Artist:Tom Jones

Album:Along Came Jones 

It’s only two minutes long but it might be the purest audible concentration of joy on this playlist. This is despite its lyrics containing this little whopper “Oh, I wanna die”, despite the back-up singers and clapping having a charmingly laissez faire approach to rhythm and technique, and the song’s structure floating freely without a recognizable chorus. What gives? The one lesson I feel should be taken from “It’s Not Unusual” is that it pays to be so undeniably exuberant that cynicism simply fades away. Tom Jones’ vocals are just so damn joyous, how can you have hate in your heart for him? This is why the eventual declaration of “It’s not unusual to find that I’m in love with you” works so well, he earns our adoration. Note: Several sources list Elton John as playing the piano on this recording (under his pre-stagename moniker Reginald Dwight), if true, that’s another legacy of joy forever attached to it.

452.Song:Black

Artist:Pearl Jam

Album:Ten 

Pearl Jam was a band that seemed to embody the grunge aesthetic the most, especially when considering their sound. Those earthy guitar riffs, seemingly soaked in pine tar, and working class drums, those insistent bass-lines interplaying with Eddie Vedder’s nearly operatic vocals. They convincingly immersed you in a world of emotional and moral decay, ground your face into the dirt and spoke to hidden truths. This was not for the purposes of wallowing, this was to help the listener attain a spiritual release through a sense of shared communion. Hence, we have lyrics such as “All five horizons revolved around her soul” resolving into “Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn”. It’s how the steady buildup of this titanic song devolves into seemingly endless falsetto “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doooooo”’s and still leaves us standing abject, but still hopeful. This is the band, at the height of their powers, knowing you as well as themselves.

451.Song:Love And Affection

Artist:Joan Armatrading

Album:Joan Armatrading 

Here is a song that continuously evolves the listeners expectations. Layers of guitars, at first stark, then enveloping, a constant trickling in of musical instrumentation as it builds inevitably towards its climax. Few songs earn their denouement as gracefully as here. I haven’t even mentioned Joan Armatrading’s vocals or lyricism, which are both deft and intimate. Consider the quick notes as she sings “Why can’t I feel love, really love, really love?” and then the sustained flourishes “Just take my hand and lead me where you will”.  Occasional backing vocals, warmly provided by Clarke Peters, accentuate all the right moments. This is a production masterclass. Not a note feels out of place or over-played. The warmth of the music and of Joan’s ear for intent is profound, her steady hand guiding us through emotional upswells with aplomb. If you still aren’t convinced to listen,  remember, “I am not in love./ But I’m open to persuasion”.