I'm in the middle of upgrading and tightening this page. Most people use Spotify as a library, so whenever they think of a song, they add it, and you get 100 hour playlists that no one will ever listen to. I love making short playlists where every song is great and every transition works. On the left are my Spotify playlists, and below are some lists and playlists that either have commentary, or too many songs that are not on Spotify.
Top Ten Songs: the Obscure
In the first YouTube video of this song, a comment described it as a tragedy. The tones are so intense, someone could think that, but this is the happiest song of all time. This is incomprensible hippie Cthulhu levels of happiness. The first time I heard it, I didn't know my ears could do that. You might think it's bad singing, because what notes even are those? It turns out, they're the exact pitch and timbre to split my head.
On the lyrics, from my
Big Blood page:
They might be about the ecstasy of ego loss in intense social experiences (some things wash away, so you're one thing) or meditation (the choice, every part of this groove is quiet). But I think they're about a well-lived life (greet more friends, bearing the weight of themselves lightly) and its metaphysical context (the bright is all the more beautiful, the spirit risen in sequence). Life begins when a spark of the divine is fixed in space and time (so you're one thing, right in this vicinity) and it ends with a reopening (windows, curtains) and dissolving of the self. The loudest word in the song is "quiet", and at the end the vocals fade under a riff like a cosmic processional. The final words: "And I'm holy."
Pretty & Twisted - Souvenir (1995)
Concrete Blonde's 1990 hit
Joey was written by Johnette Napolitano about Marc Moreland, best known as the guitar player for Wall of Voodoo. Moreland died of liver failure in 2002, probably inspiring Napolitano's 2003 song
Suicide Note.
In 1995, they collaborated on a one-shot album called
Pretty & Twisted. It's not on Spotify, and has only 3500 views on
YouTube, but it's quite good, and it contains this incredible song of doomed love, with probably the heaviest vocals ever. It suffers from a hurried fade-out, but that's just what the song is about: "I don't want to see you fade away."
Big Star - Kangaroo (1974)
Like Souvenir, Kangaroo is a love song where the subject of the song participated in the recording. Alex Chilton went into the studio late one night with his girlfriend, Lesa Aldridge, and she recorded while he played a 12-string and sang. The rhythm was loose, and being on one track, the sounds could not be separated. Chilton gave it to the producer, Jim Dickinson, and said "produce it".
This is probably the best produced song of all time. Dickinson played every other instrument: mellotron, guitar feedback, bass and drums; and laid them down meticulously, filling the spaces around Chilton's dissipated strumming. There's no rhythm section! Even the drums are played as a lead instrument, and the cowbell in the final verse is a work of art.
The raw recording has a title I like better:
Like St Joan. Chilton does everything he can to make it sound sad, but the lyrics are completely happy, filthy and triumphant. "We looked very fine as we were leaving".
Life Without Buildings - Let's Get Out (2001)
From my albums page: Four Glasgow artists formed a band on a lark, made one album, and went on with their lives. Sue Tompkins' vocals are from another planet, feral and stuttery, seemingly improvised -- and yet, in live perormances the songs are basically the same. And if you listen closely, her vocals are in sync with equally complex math rock. I've never heard anything so chaotic and so ordered. This is as brain-stretching as jazz and as blood-pounding as metal.
This song, on the surface, is about a missed phone connection. But it's also an intensely spiritual song about being alive, and I wonder if it inspired the band name, because who needs buildings? "Look around, information, in the leaves." It's about being flesh in the world with its flaws: "I'm a visitor here" and "I still believe in getting low." It's about the tension between regret and the preciousness of all experience: "Look back and say that I didn't!"
Hana Zara is a currently active folk singer who at least three times has knocked a song out of the park. Little Doll (2012), Hooray Hoorah (2017), and this, a perfect song about the beauty of small moments.
On almost the same theme, the beauty of the lives of small people, and sadder, this reminds me a lot of Nick Drake's Saturday Sun.
This garage surf romp ticks all the boxes for greatest of all time: it's raw, it's intense, and it's transcendent. "I want to live under water... I want to live in a spaceship... I want to see all my ages with you." From the same country in the same year:
Wireheads - Holiday (2014)
As raw as Beat Happening and as heavy as Hawkwind, this is the best space rock song of all time. With the whale-like interlude, and the theme of reaching toward the light, it reminds me of Pink Floyd's Echoes.
From the album that invented space rock, with Lemmy on bass, and the vocals are just a teaser for the jam that follows. This is flat-out the best crescendo in rock. Wait for the change at 3:26 and revel in the keyboards.
Orphans & Vandals - Argyle Square (2009)
The album, I Am Alive and You Are Dead, is a one-shot masterpiece of Dickensian chamber rock fronted by singer-songwriter Al Joshua. The other two major songs are about a suicide and a murder, but this one is about the joy of urban life.
my slideshow videos
One of the best written songs of the decade. Images are mostly from the Imaginary Colorscapes subreddit.
As with Holiday, above, the images are mostly from anime boards.
Wireheads - Sagan (2014)
One of my favorite solos, and I don't even know the name of the guitar player. Images are from two books of sci-fi art.
Top Ten Songs: the Hits
Starland Vocal Band - Afternoon Delight (1976)
A lot of people hate this song, because if you view music as a cultural signifier, it represents the sappy culture of the 1970s. But when I use my actual ears, these are the tightest and must luminous harmonies I've ever heard. This would be the first song on my "aliens please don't kill us" playlist.
Coldplay - Yellow (2000)
Yellow is the color of the sun. It's the color of warm light. In the context of this song, it's a wild card for feeling that good about something. Even "skin and bones" could be anything with substance and form, inner and outer. This is the perfect love song, because whoever or whatever you love, it fits. Churches could sing this about God. For me it's about being alive in this world. "So then I took my turn. Oh what a thing to have done."
Technically not a hit, as it was relased during a trucker's strike and the records weren't delivered. But it got a ton of airplay in the UK, and later Tracey Ullman got a hit with a cover that's basically a tribute, with the peak of the song, "Bayyyby", still MacColl singing.
Crystal Gayle - Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue (1977)
Crystal Gayle is my favorite singer of the 70s. Karen Carpenter has more depth, but the vibrato in this song is like the wings of birds. Because the regular keyboardist was sick, they brought in Hargus "Pig" Robbins, who made up this classic riff on the spot. On the first take, live in studio, they laid down a moonshot recording.
Juice Newton - Angel of the Morning (1981)
This is the kind of singing that hardly ever happens, an epic performance of an epic song.
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You (1993)
Summer of 1994, those were good times and this was the song, dreamy and yearning.
A Flock of Seagulls - Space Age Love Song (1982)
The guitar part is revolutionary, and the lyrics are short and perfect. It's the third line, "for a little while", that takes it to the next level.
Neil Diamond - Soolaimon (1970)
Neil Diamond's two best songs, this and Holly Holy, are both epically spiritual. I would go to church all the time if the music was this good.
Not on Spotify Playlist
The point is not that they should be, but look what's outside the wall.
Silver Summit - Child (2012)
Spotify has a different version mislabled as this superior version.
Wireheads - Holiday (2014)
A teenager's only single, I'm not even sure about the year.
I wish I wrote this.
Bone Cellar - Dryrot (1994)
Best sad song ever, and the solo at the end is transcendent.
Pretty & Twisted - Souvenir (1995)
Joanna Newsom - En Gallop (2004)
The note at 1:44 owns me.
A Listening Autobiography
The number one song when I was born.
This video blew my mind at age four, and it might be my biggest single influence.
Gordon Lightfoot - Don Quixote (1972)
On family trips my dad would play Gordon Lightfoot on the car stereo, and this was my favorite.
The first song I really loved. At the time I was drawn to the vocal melody of the chorus, and now I admire the crystalline soundscape of echoey low notes and high vocals.
The first band I really got into, and back then I liked their hits, but now I think this was their one great song.
I got obsessed with Rush around 1983 and bought all their albums. At the time I preferred Xanadu.
Blue Oyster Cult - Astronomy (live 1978)
At some point in high school I got into Blue Oyster Cult, and this song stood out, and still does, for its gothic poetry and hammering climax.
Their Making Movies album felt like higher quality music than I had previously been listening to, and I got even more into Love Over Gold. This song has an incredible guitar solo at the end.
...but this guitar solo is the best, then and forever.
Their Call of the West album was a new level of weirdness for me, and I loved it. Another gem from that album is Factory, a massive upgrade of Machines by Lothar and the Hand People.
It's too melodramatic for me now, but I listened so heavily to The Final Cut that I knew all the lyrics. The only Pink Floyd album I still listen to is Meddle.
My perennial second favorite band for 35 years. Now I like their heavier stuff, but this smooth and catchy song from their Zones album was an early favorite. See the Hawkwind section of my albums page.
My hipper friends were already into R.E.M., but I didn't like them until I heard this unearthly masterpiece.
In college in Seattle, I heard this song when Beat Happening opened for Billy Bragg and was hooked. It sounds good in a way that nothing sounded good before -- a new dimension of quality.
I had been following this band since their first album, and their fifth, Key Lime Pie, blew me away, especially these two overlapping songs. June has the best lyrics and AHFF has the best music.
I discovered Big Star around 1992. The bit starting at 1:25 is like nothing before and not much since. I write more about them on the albums page.
The Muffs - Lucky Guy (1993)
I heard this on college radio, immediately bought their debut album, and became obsessed with the Muffs for years, for their catchy songwriting, tight fuzz guitar, and especially for Kim Shattuck's voice. Her best screaming is on Ethyl My Love, and Upside Down is a great song from their third album.
This was the only time I really liked a new popular song, and I like it even more now that I understand the lyrics, in which unrequited love is a metaphor for this entire world of dark surfaces with bright depths that we can't touch.
Bone Cellar - Dryrot (1994)
An obscure Seattle band that recorded two brilliant albums and played the best live show I ever saw.
For years this was my favorite song, but it faded into the background when I discovered Big Blood. Another great Jeff Mangum song is this informal live version of Little Birds.
I'm not a fan of emo, but a friend stayed with me and introduced me to this concise and luminous breakup song. The lyrics are a subtle gutpunch, from the setup, "Don't forget to kiss me if you're really going to leave," to the climax, "Keep your eyes on the road." I interpret it in more detail here.
Orphans & Vandals - Terra Firma (2009)
My girlfriend has highly developed taste in music, which sometimes overlaps with mine. Here's her top 100 from a few years back.
One of their more accessible songs, and the first I heard. I discovered this band in summer of 2014 and became obsessed for years. Much more on my Big Blood fan page, Ecstasy and Doom.
Automatic - Humanoid (2019)
My theme song for COVID. It's about being more alive.
Top Tier Scraps
Songs that aren't in any playlist yet, in order of release date.
Neil Diamond - Holly Holy (1969)
Melanie Safka - Lay Down (1970)
The Kinks - Strangers (1970)
Syd Barrett - Dark Globe (1970)
Exuma - Baal (1970)
Hawkwind - Infinity (1979)
Cocteau Twins - Pandora (1984)
Beat Happening - TV Girl (1989)
R.E.M. - Belong (1991)
Beat Happening - Godsend (1992)
The Garbage and the Flowers - Carousel (1992)
This sound is like the best parts of Alex Chilton and doom metal. Nothing else this heavy, and this good, is this warm.
Nothing here about dying, but it's very sad, and it leads into the next song, by a band that sounds a lot like Big Star's third album.
Benjamin Clementine - Cornerstone (2015)
Again, the lyrics don't mention a suicide, but I like that interpretation.
The lyrics and video are carefully balanced between two interpretations of "I go out."
This must be the saddest song possible, because it also has so much beauty.
The song I want played at my funeral.
My favorite lyrics.
This video features a mind-blowing drum performance by Erin Doubenmier.
This makes ordinary music sound like it was recorded with a cat sitting on the microphone. Every sonic texture is sharp-edged and beautiful, the mix is airtight, and the high keyboard and electric guitar, at 2:30 and again at 4:00, are brighter than the sun.
Red Fang - Wires (2011)
Great video!
Esben and the Witch - No Dog (live 2014)
Play it loud.
unknown - Misirlu (1927?)
OOIOO - Ina (1999)
Orphans & Vandals - Metropes (2009)
This is like an old Kinks song that cynically mocks the elite, but it's darker and stronger. The bit from 3:30-3:42 should last five minutes.
This makes Bohemian Rhapsody sound like children's music.
Sigur Rós - Svefn-g-englar (Sleepwalkers) (1999)
My favorite foreign language song, except for this.
This is like the definition of psychedelic folk, unless it's Secret Garden.
To my knowledge, the only song with this stunning symmetrical structure: first verse, different verse, chorus, solo, chorus, different verse, first verse.
Harriet Wheeler was the hottest woman who ever recorded a great song. "The only thing I ever really wanted to say, was wrong, was wrong, was wrong."
Instrumentals and Jams
Moondog - Torisa (1995)
Retro Remix Revue - Gerudo Valley (2009)
Dick Dale - Misirlou (1962)
I need to listen to more classical music, but so far, this is one of the few things I really like. Another is Satie's Vexations.
Like a lot of early 70's Miles Davis, this is practically space rock. I can't even understand it sober, but on cannabis it's the most psychedelic thing I've ever heard.
Yo La Tengo - Spec Bebop (1997)
Is it pronounced Space Bebop? This whole thing is actually riffing on a sound near the end of Miles Davis's song Billy Preston.
Like my favorite classical piece, Beethoven's Great Fugue, this whole album was despised by contemporaries. I don't think either Beethoven or Davis were trying to be weird or difficult. They were just trying to be good, and they pushed quality so far that almost nobody got it.
Ten minutes of primal space rock with a barrage of low horns playing the same two notes over and over.
Rachel Flowers - Piano Phase (2011)
Probably the biggest influence on my own piano playing.
The Velvet Underground - What Goes On (1969 live)
The first part with vocals is nothing special, but the jam for the last six minutes is unprecedented and all-important in the history of my favorite music.
Sort of a cover of What Goes On.
Per the title, this song synergizes exceptionally well with cannabis.
The Voyager space probes recorded electromagnetic signals from around the solar system, and back on Earth these were converted into sound. Collages of these sounds were released as NASA Voyager Space Sounds, separated into ten 30 minute tracks from different places, and also as Symphonies of the Planets, with different planets blended into five 30 minute CD's. All the prettiest and spookiest stuff, mostly from the rings of Uranus, is on CD 1.
Godspeed You Black Emperor - Gathering Storm (2000)
GYBE took the slow buildup to a whole new level. My other favorites include East Hastings and Moya.
Sting's songwriting was a trick to get people to listen to the genius of Summers and Copeland, which was never better than this.
One of the deepest roots of my favorite newer jam music.
Yes - Würm (1970)
The last section of Starship Trooper. It's no Space Is Deep, but it's still the best jam in prog rock.
Covers
This inspired Neil Diamond cover sounds like children's music on acid.
The Beach Boys - Sloop John B (1966)
My favorite song of the 1960's. The original is a folk song from the Bahamas.
Also the guitar solo covers and improves the Our Man Flint movie theme.
Originally by Yoko Ono.
Loreena McKennitt - Greensleeves (1991)
Improvised in one take, and its rawness makes it sort of her best song.
Big Blood - Vitamin C (2007)
Originally by Can.
This rocks harder than the original, and the vocals are ridiculous.
It's easier to unlock genius by trying to be bad than trying to be good, and this masterpiece of badness must be what Song For Baltimore sounds like to other people. Related: Guy Plays A Cat Organ, and a mind-blowing version of Greensleeves on Otamatone.
Second Tier
Joanna Newsom's "En Gallop" is sort of a cover of this. They have the same theme, the conflict between the world of spirit and the money economy. They use the same uncommon meaning of the word "flesh" for how your body chains you to an unpleasant material world. And the riff near the beginning of "En Gallop" is almost the same riff that starts at 2:09.
Camper Van Beethoven - Lulu Land (1986)
The band's best lyrics were written by David Lowery's otherwise unknown roommate, Paul McKinney. "In Lulu Land the walls are soft and dark, in Lulu Land your secret heart is in command, in Lulu Land."
Joanna Newsom - Sadie (2004)
"And all that we built, and all that we breathed, and all that we spilt, or pulled up like weeds, is piled up in back; and it burns irrevocably."
Best breakup song ever. Check out this interpretation by MisterPuzzles.
I love the verse about the birds.
After REM's Belong, this is the song I'd play to convince aliens to not exerminate humanity. (If I wanted them to do it, I'd play We Are The World.)
Beat Happening - Tiger Trap (1992)
Dire Straits - Skateaway (1980)
Their most magical song.
Like Skateaway, this is a beautiful song about the divine feminine. It's not as precise or complex, but the whole sound on Communique has a depth that's not on any of their other albums.
Sultans of Swing has a great guitar solo, but otherwise this leaves it in the dust.
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
You have to go back to "Like a Rolling Stone" for a song that's both this good and this influential. After listening to 90's rock inspired by Nirvana, it's incredible to listen to this and hear how much better it is.
Red House Painters - Katy Song (1993)
Not a fan of their sound, but these are great lyrics.
Weird song about the ancient conflict between sedentary and nomadic culture.
U2 - Bad (live 1985)
Originally from his tinny-sounding first album, Gary Numan's best written song sounds
much better live in the movie Urgh! A Music War.
Galaxie 500 - Flowers (1988)
This is what reverb was invented for.
The full-length version totally rocks!
The Flaming Lips edge out Neutral Milk Hotel in the category of best band worst name.
I like the KEXP live version best, and made the video with a camera toss image I found on the internet years ago.
The Velvet Underground - Candy Says (1968)
Their best written song. Sung by Doug Yule.
This is like Space Is Deep backwards, with an incredible rising jam in the first half, and pretty good vocals in the second.
This song has never been released or even bootlegged -- you can only hear it by watching the movie Cutter's Way, and only the first verse plays clearly. I bought the dvd just so I could extract it for the video.
The second best song title ever, after Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun".
I love the structure of this song: a simple 18 note vocal melody repeated 16 times with changing lyrics.
The most mature breakup song I've ever heard.
The superior Gord's Gold version of this song was cut from the CD and to this day has not been offered for sale in digital form. But it has been ripped from vinyl and it's on YouTube now.
Violent Femmes - Never Tell (1984)
More like a collection of scraps than a song, but every scrap is intense and inspired.
The Beatles - Rain (1966)
My favorite Beatles song and Ringo's best drumming. I write more about the Beatles here.
Did ZZ Top take their whole sound from this?
Neil Young - Helpless (1970)
Neil Young - The Needle and the Damage Done (1972)
A perfect song, and I love the unexpected quick ending.
Neil Young - Powderfinger (1979)
Screamin' Jay Hawkins - I Put a Spell on You (1956)
The songwriting is nothing special but the performance is one of the most interesting things in the 20th century. Instead of covering it, other artists should try to play their own compositions with this kind of wild intensity.
The Old 97's - Valentine (1999)
Loudon Wainwright - New Paint (1972)
The best version of Kris Kristofferson's best song.
The best classic punk song.
The second best classic punk song, and my favorite band name.
The third best classic punk song.
Flying Burrito Brothers - Sin City (1969)
The original alt-country band.
It's like a post-punk When The Levee Breaks.
Their purest love song, from their brilliant second album, Leave Home.
This would make an awesome country song.
Donovan - Atlantis (1968)
The first half is an embarrassing spoken word bit, and the second half, a fourteen syllable repeating chorus, is one of the best things ever.
The Shins - New Slang (2001)
Here's another video showing the album cover references in that video.
Helicon - Seraph (2017)
This is like the new wave Space Is Deep.
Have A Nice Life - Earthmover (2008)
Again, pretty good song, great jam.
The live version from The Secret Policeman's Other Ball.
Forgotten political song about how people are tricked into believing in the system that feeds on them.
Appendix: top by letter of the alphabet
- Argyle Square - Orphans and Vandals
- Belong - R.E.M.
- Carousel - The Garbage and the Flowers
- Destin Rain - Big Blood
- En Gallop - Joanna Newsom
- Fade Into You - Mazzy Star
- Godsend - Beat Happening
- Holiday - Wireheads (Haystack - Big Blood)
- Indian Summer - Beat Happening
- June - Camper Van Beethoven
- Kangaroo - Big Star
- Lost Her in the Sun - John Stewart
- Mirrorball - Nisennenmondai
- New Yorker Cartoon - Jenny and Johnny
- Oh Country - Big Blood
- Picture Postcard, A - The Promise Ring
- Questioningly - Ramones
- Rise of Quinnisa Rose, The - Big Blood
- Song For Baltimore - Big Blood (Space Is Deep - Hawkwind)
- They Don't Know - Kirsty MacColl
- Untitled - R.E.M.
- Venus in Furs - The Velvet Underground
- Watery Down Pt II, A - Big Blood
- Xanadu - Rush
- You Burnt The Toast - Hana Zara
- Zero - Yeah Yeah Yeahs