Prompt: "A song titled 'The Underdog' by a band called Spoon from an album called Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga released in 2007"
Selected by Joe
"The Underdog"
Spoon
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, 2007
Here are my 100 favorite songs of all time, in order, as of approx. 11/21/24 7:0x AM.
100. "Friday" by Rebecca Black
We start with a joke. But not really. It's a joke and it's not. Maybe it started like a joke, but then gradually, as the years went on, and the circumstances surrounding it (the context of its creation; the long winding road of personal turmoil of its audience; the crumbling of the social structure into which it was originally slingshot) morphed into something new, something worse, worse but way funnier, maybe the original joke lost its original shine. "Friday" is a good song. It's funny, or it was. Maybe it's not so funny now.
99. "Hey Jealousy" by Gin Blossoms
This list, organized in ascending order from least-best to best-best, feels front-loaded with '90s songs that land with me (and us) now because of nostalgia. I heard the song a lot through minivan speakers, and decades later, I found the song again, and realized that it still worked its wonders. "Hey Jealousy" is a song that I feel blessed to have heard too many times in my youth.
98. "Run-Around" by Blues Traveler
Sometimes, there are forces outside of a song that threaten to tarnish that song. I vaguely recall that John Popper was kind of an asshole online or something? I also vaguely recall John Popper dressed like an Amish man, playing us out after the bowling movie? I don't know enough about the pros and cons of loving a band like Blues Traveler to know whether anything threatens to ruin the song I know. I just know I love the song. So it goes, with the 98th-best song of all time.
97. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper
The list is mostly concerned with so-called "indie rock" songs from the mid-'00s. That's unavoidable. And but so maybe this is the only chance on this list I'll get to give a healthy round of FUCK YOUs to our least favorite animated characters—the Trolls. My kids love this song, as they motherfucking should. They are girls! They just wanna have fun! But FUCK YOU to J.T. and Anna Kendrick for changing the lyrics to "Trolls Just Want to Have Fun." This is going to take the combined length of three separate childhoods to undo.
96. "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" by Stars
There will be plenty of songs on this list that I've already written about in some other corner of the blog. That's unavoidable, when the good songs stick around and somehow the daily blog does too. When that happens, I'll link the song title to that blog post instead of the video on YouTube (I'll also link when someone else chose the song for Song Challenge, since that seems easier to me than link to YouTube). That happens here, when we are linked back to a Song Challenge post in which I write briefly about "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" by Stars. I will also attempt, when a song is a "blog repeat," to write something new, some fresh perspective. I just don't think it's possible here, though. It was my first real(ish) heartbreak. I heard a song that seemed to mirror the hurt that I was feeling. I healed over time, so much so that I'm embarrassed about what I felt back then, and why. But the song remains.
95. "Can You Picture That?" by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem
I don't have too many novelty songs on my iPod. I tend to avoid original songs from movies or TV shows or theater productions, as I feel that their presence on my iPod would sully the fidelity of such a precious musical object. So let this prove that the Muppet song on this list is so fucking good that I don't even give a shit about the arbitrary rules that I set for myself. I guess maybe it helps that it's easy to pretend that the Electric Mayhem are a real band? Even though they are technically not. I like to think that they are. And this band is cool as fuck. (WARNING: that stupid fucking 2023 TV show about this band redid their best and previously only song in the pilot episode, and it sucks shit. Please seek out the original Muppet Movie version of this song whenever you need your Dr. Teeth fix.)
94. "Lust for Life" by Girls
There will be some crossover on this list from previous lists I made for the 100 Best Songs of the '00s and the 100 Best Songs of the '10s. With the addition of five years of reconsideration, and plus the entire canon of music prior to January 2000, there will obviously be some rearranging for a lot of the repeat songs. "Lust for Life" was #40 on the aughts list. It's still hanging around, because it's a great song. Is it the best Girls song? I mean, obviously I'm making the case here that it is. But I can also see an argument for other Girls songs that could make the cut here. "Lust for Life" sticks around on list after list, though, because it gets closest to the heart of the human condition. We want to live our best lives, and that means enjoying the good times and enduring the bad. "Lust for Life" is a holistic picture of what we need to live fully and completely.
93. "Hit & Run" by King Tuff
Sometimes a song just gets to you in a way that lasts, but also in a way that you'll never be able to understand. This is that song for me. I don't know why it's the 93rd-best song of all time, it just is. I don't have a story behind it. The best I got for you is that it is the song that ended every episode of WPPR, back when that was even a passing concern for PoYB. But that's not an explanation, that's just an example. "Hit & Run" is special to me for no reason other than it is a good song. The mystery remains. I suppose it's like an actual hit-and-run incident in that way. It affects you deeply, and it lacks closure. You'll always wonder why.
92. "From the Morning" by Nick Drake
Humans experience pain always, constantly, during every phase of one's life. But I'll posit now that pain at different eras in one's life carry different flavors. The pain I felt in infancy does not taste like the pain I felt on the morning after my 21st birthday, as one wild example. The pain feels similar in some ways, but much different in others. There was a specific type of pain that I felt in high school. Maybe you are familiar with it, having been in high school at one point yourself. I remember it well. I can still taste it. And that pain in high school is a pain I can hear as well. I can hear it every single time I push play on Nick Drake's "From the Morning."
91. "Where'd All the Time Go?" by Dr. Dog
100. "Friday" by Rebecca Black
We start with a joke. But not really. It's a joke and it's not. Maybe it started like a joke, but then gradually, as the years went on, and the circumstances surrounding it (the context of its creation; the long winding road of personal turmoil of its audience; the crumbling of the social structure into which it was originally slingshot) morphed into something new, something worse, worse but way funnier, maybe the original joke lost its original shine. "Friday" is a good song. It's funny, or it was. Maybe it's not so funny now.
99. "Hey Jealousy" by Gin Blossoms
This list, organized in ascending order from least-best to best-best, feels front-loaded with '90s songs that land with me (and us) now because of nostalgia. I heard the song a lot through minivan speakers, and decades later, I found the song again, and realized that it still worked its wonders. "Hey Jealousy" is a song that I feel blessed to have heard too many times in my youth.
98. "Run-Around" by Blues Traveler
Sometimes, there are forces outside of a song that threaten to tarnish that song. I vaguely recall that John Popper was kind of an asshole online or something? I also vaguely recall John Popper dressed like an Amish man, playing us out after the bowling movie? I don't know enough about the pros and cons of loving a band like Blues Traveler to know whether anything threatens to ruin the song I know. I just know I love the song. So it goes, with the 98th-best song of all time.
97. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper
The list is mostly concerned with so-called "indie rock" songs from the mid-'00s. That's unavoidable. And but so maybe this is the only chance on this list I'll get to give a healthy round of FUCK YOUs to our least favorite animated characters—the Trolls. My kids love this song, as they motherfucking should. They are girls! They just wanna have fun! But FUCK YOU to J.T. and Anna Kendrick for changing the lyrics to "Trolls Just Want to Have Fun." This is going to take the combined length of three separate childhoods to undo.
96. "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" by Stars
There will be plenty of songs on this list that I've already written about in some other corner of the blog. That's unavoidable, when the good songs stick around and somehow the daily blog does too. When that happens, I'll link the song title to that blog post instead of the video on YouTube (I'll also link when someone else chose the song for Song Challenge, since that seems easier to me than link to YouTube). That happens here, when we are linked back to a Song Challenge post in which I write briefly about "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" by Stars. I will also attempt, when a song is a "blog repeat," to write something new, some fresh perspective. I just don't think it's possible here, though. It was my first real(ish) heartbreak. I heard a song that seemed to mirror the hurt that I was feeling. I healed over time, so much so that I'm embarrassed about what I felt back then, and why. But the song remains.
95. "Can You Picture That?" by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem
I don't have too many novelty songs on my iPod. I tend to avoid original songs from movies or TV shows or theater productions, as I feel that their presence on my iPod would sully the fidelity of such a precious musical object. So let this prove that the Muppet song on this list is so fucking good that I don't even give a shit about the arbitrary rules that I set for myself. I guess maybe it helps that it's easy to pretend that the Electric Mayhem are a real band? Even though they are technically not. I like to think that they are. And this band is cool as fuck. (WARNING: that stupid fucking 2023 TV show about this band redid their best and previously only song in the pilot episode, and it sucks shit. Please seek out the original Muppet Movie version of this song whenever you need your Dr. Teeth fix.)
94. "Lust for Life" by Girls
There will be some crossover on this list from previous lists I made for the 100 Best Songs of the '00s and the 100 Best Songs of the '10s. With the addition of five years of reconsideration, and plus the entire canon of music prior to January 2000, there will obviously be some rearranging for a lot of the repeat songs. "Lust for Life" was #40 on the aughts list. It's still hanging around, because it's a great song. Is it the best Girls song? I mean, obviously I'm making the case here that it is. But I can also see an argument for other Girls songs that could make the cut here. "Lust for Life" sticks around on list after list, though, because it gets closest to the heart of the human condition. We want to live our best lives, and that means enjoying the good times and enduring the bad. "Lust for Life" is a holistic picture of what we need to live fully and completely.
93. "Hit & Run" by King Tuff
Sometimes a song just gets to you in a way that lasts, but also in a way that you'll never be able to understand. This is that song for me. I don't know why it's the 93rd-best song of all time, it just is. I don't have a story behind it. The best I got for you is that it is the song that ended every episode of WPPR, back when that was even a passing concern for PoYB. But that's not an explanation, that's just an example. "Hit & Run" is special to me for no reason other than it is a good song. The mystery remains. I suppose it's like an actual hit-and-run incident in that way. It affects you deeply, and it lacks closure. You'll always wonder why.
92. "From the Morning" by Nick Drake
Humans experience pain always, constantly, during every phase of one's life. But I'll posit now that pain at different eras in one's life carry different flavors. The pain I felt in infancy does not taste like the pain I felt on the morning after my 21st birthday, as one wild example. The pain feels similar in some ways, but much different in others. There was a specific type of pain that I felt in high school. Maybe you are familiar with it, having been in high school at one point yourself. I remember it well. I can still taste it. And that pain in high school is a pain I can hear as well. I can hear it every single time I push play on Nick Drake's "From the Morning."
91. "Where'd All the Time Go?" by Dr. Dog
The loop is hypnotic. What is that? I guess it's some kind of synth. I don't know. I never know the nuts and bolts of a song, that's not really the type of listener I am. I understand that this is to my detriment, but I'm just gonna have to live with that, because your mid-30s is not the right time to be learning how to play musical instruments. Still, though, I'd like to think that I can get a lot out of songs, even without knowledge about how a particular sound is made. I'd like to think that I can hear a song like "Where'd All the Time Go?" and hear not only some mysterious instrument, but also, a time machine. I hear this song and I hear Dr. Dog asking where the time's gone and I feel my brain reeling back to the time when I first heard this song with its hypnotic loop, and in doing so, in going back to that moment, I suppose I'm answering the original question. Not "what is that?" but literally "where'd all the time go?"
90. "Christian Street" by Marah
In my opinion, the best writers are the ones that can deftly handle the details, making them fresh and bright while also not distracting from the task at hand. So Marah's got that covered, no doubt. But I think what puts this particular song over the top is twofold. First, that it is describing my city in vivid detail. I know Philadelphia pretty well, and the details on here match. But then second, it is describing a time and place of my city that I will never know. I could not have been on Christian Street in the late-'90s, due to age. It was different then. So while I feel that this is the best Philly song, it's also true that it's all new to me, this version of this city. The details are universal enough that I know them, and specific enough that I don't. It's the best of both worlds. The details are the key. And the particular detail of the Mummers strumming along to the chorus is one of my favorite details ever.
89. "Not Gonna Die" by Will Butler
That bari sax feels like it's tethering us to the ground, down here on earth, where people act rationally and with sound mind. And maybe if it wasn't for the baritone sax keeping us here, we'd all float away, up into the clouds, up where people talk crazy fucking nonsense, where people think that the enemy is everywhere, that they are going to die because someone seeking shelter is going to kill them, because some malicious entity on the television said it was so. No, the bari sax says. That's not how it works. You are going to die in a hospital. It will be quiet. You will find the same peace you've found your entire life. There was no need to be scared. The bari sax makes it clear that death will be more comforting than you can possibly imagine.
88. "The Magic Position" by Patrick Wolf
Oh whoops, another bari sax. All good, though. This song is a little lighter in theme. Actually, I don't really even know what the song is about. "It's gonna be a beautiful day" in the first verse seems to say it all—this is a celebration song. It makes me think about days gone by, as these songs usually do. Some specific memories are tied to it, but they aren't important anymore. What's important is that we still get to listen to magical songs like these, and we get to hear them and remember to always be open to the good moments when they arrive. Because they still are! Even now! In your mid-30s! Every fucking day!
87. "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse
Okay, I literally just said in the previous blurb that the specific memories aren't important anymore. That's true for most songs, but maybe for other songs, the specific memories are the whole point. So dense are those memories that they anchor the song that soundtracked those memories into the forefront of your brain, forever. For "Missed the Boat," we have: a week home alone, a month before college, a summer before big change, a weeklong celebration in my own home, right before I moved out, that celebration featuring everyone I loved in that moment in time, and somehow this particular Modest Mouse song burrowed its way into that memory. I'm 99% sure it was played on loop as we tore up my parents' backyard with our revelry. Who knows if it was supposed to fit the moment. It does now, and it will forevermore.
86. "No Matter Where We Go" by Whitney
Okay, so there's this idea, right? The escape. I've never actually tasted the idea, not really. Oh, sure, I've pretended on plenty of occasions. I've transitioned from one moment to another and sometimes those transitions were big enough that I could pretend I was "escaping" the thing I was transitioning away from, when really we both know it wasn't a true escape, not really. I think if we're talking about Escape, then we need to say that Escape is only true if you are escaping EVERYTHING. Like, completely escaping everything you've ever known, and starting fresh. I've never tasted that. My life has been too privileged to even want to. But I can guess what it tastes like. I can guess because I have this song.
85. "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Cass Elliot
I spend a lot of my time listening to music and trying to make connections. Music is one big web, one single truth with many legs, and I spent my idle time connecting dots and understanding how it all comes together. It wasn't always like this. There was a time when I had no idea that Cass Elliott was Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas. I didn't know and I didn't care. I just knew it was the song from the iconic opening to the second season of Lost. Thinking back now, that mindset of now knowing just seems so pure and innocent. I miss it sometimes. Not knowing that Cass Elliott died in the same bedroom that Keith Moon would four years later, but instead just knowing that this was a good song, an important song, a song about living your own life free from expectations, that feels truer to life than the knowing. And I don't know what to make of that.
84. "Holy" by Frightened Rabbit
There are plenty of Frightened Rabbit songs that could fit in this space, because it was that sort of band. The end of the band might have something to do with it. You can imagine why. I think it's important to know the story. We tell our own stories and we retell the stories of others, because that's helpful. Scott Hutchison lived with substance abuse and mental health and died by suicide. The point isn't to say this to be gossipy, and the point is not to just simply say "oh well the song about feeling like you have holes totally makes sense." This is his story. And maybe you find a little bit of your story in his. And maybe you can't even fucking see it within yourself if you don't hear the song, and know this other story here. That's all I'm saying.
83. "Turn On Your Love Light" by Grateful Dead
The version of this song I love is found on a Greatest Hits compilation called Skeletons from the Closet. Once upon a time, I didn't know where to start with Grateful Dead, but I just knew I didn't want to start with the live albums. Ironic, perhaps, that the best song from that compilation ended up being a live version of a song. A song that's not even theirs, as it turns out. Originally, "Turn On Your Love Light" was a 1961 single by a man named Bobby Bland. But the Dead turned it into a concert staple, and this is the version that I love. It's probably not even the full version, since it noticeably fades in at the beginning. And it's not even a full picture of the band, since the lead singer is Pigpen McKernan, who left in 1972 and died shortly after. But here it is. The version I love. The 83rd-best song of all time. I love this version. But the version that I actually love even more is a version that I'll never hear again. That version happened twice, both by the same band, and both on the same night during back-to-back years. Black Friday night, the 11 PM hour, the erstwhile Hop Angel Tavern, stop number five on a six-bar crawl, the band kindly taking the suggestion of a blotto moron who slurred it into their ears, and then played "Turn On Your Love Light" better than basically anyone ever has in the history of the universe, including the goddamn Grateful Dead themselves. But all that is over. The only version left is this one, and about a hundred more.
82. "Strangers" by Langhorne Slim
I'll cop to the fact that this could easily slot into a Coca-Cola or Hertz commercial. It's whatever, man. Sometimes the ad men are correct. Sometimes a song is so pure and so uplifting that of fucking course it's going to be also used to hawk product. Just because Slim says "We need an element of danger" doesn't make it literally true. Oh sure, the 81 songs below this one are less safe than "Strangers." I'll cop to that too. Art is at its best when it keeps you on your toes. But you can't feel that way all the fucking time. That's called trauma. Sometimes you just need a good fucking song to soothe. That's "Strangers." That's Langhorne Slim. Give me the goddamn soda pop and the rental car, I don't care.
81. "Machine Gun" by Portishead
Over approximately 20 years of serious music listening, one of the ideas that has most affected my understanding of what music is and what makes it good is: repetition. Immaturity is hearing an industrial drum pad beat repeated over and over and thinking something like "this is boring." Maturity, then, is hearing that same beat over and over and over and over and having the emotional capacity to understand how it's the repetition itself that holds immense meaning. So I think about that when I hear "Machine Gun." But also not, because note how, three-quarters down the line, that beat starts to morph into something else. It repeats its rhythm but the quality and tone go fucking apeshit. And then, as you well know (since you too have heard "Machine Gun" hundreds of times, many of those in the dead of the otherwise quiet night), that high-pitched siren wail, on top of it all, to alert you to the fact that repetition is nice but that everything is new, nothing is the same, everything is different if viewed from the proper perspective.
80. "Fidelity" by Regina Spektor
Hmm. Sometimes I hear a song a thousand times and I think about it one way, and then all of a sudden, one day—say, perhaps, when you are giving it deep listen #1001 in preparation for writing a blurb about it for some dumb fucking overblown blog post—you hear something new. The first one thousand times, you see what it has always been, which for me in this case was the anthem of every theater kid I ever knew in high school. Then I listen today and I'm wondering if I missed the point. How this is a song about vulnerability. How protecting your heart is a natural thing to want to do but it is helpful only up to a point. How we sometimes need to fail to know how to truly soar. And I'm thinking that maybe this isn't quite an about-face, that the two thoughts could be connected. That theater kids are uniquely designed to wear heart on sleeve, and that a song like "Fidelity" was safe to love because we had already learned its lesson, we were already vulnerable. This quirky Regina Spektor song was just confirmation of everything we already knew. That, in itself, is a self-defense mechanism, I guess. Anyways, this is what I'm thinking about, having heard this one thousand times, and listening to it again.
79. "Dreams" by the Cranberries
I am a fucked-up person. We know this. Because I am a fucked-up person, my knee-jerk reaction is to say that I hate the Cranberries. I'd first say they were overrated, and then I'd go too far in the opposite direction, and the simple dismissal would eventually ferment into a hate. I would stand near the keg at a party and say something ridiculous like "'Zombie' by the Cranberries is the worst song of all time," just to see how it feels on my tongue, and just to see the reaction of all the so-called normies who love it because of course they do. Much of what I've written for this blurb so far is true, but some of it is exaggeration. It doesn't matter what I think of the Cranberries, honestly. I could say that you're a fucking dork if you think this is a band worth mentioning, and maybe that's true, or maybe that's just me being a fucked-up person. Doesn't matter! Sometimes, a song is good enough to cut through all that. "Dreams" is sharp and cuts through like an axe through butter. It's a great song. Fuck everything else, and fuck me.
78. "Simple Song" by the Shins
The idea passed around in show biz is that you gotta leave 'em wanting more. Never let them be satisfied. Promise them the goods, and give 'em a peek, and then hold back, forever. That's how you keep 'em hooked. "Simple Song" is like that. It's not what you're thinking. It's not that the Shins delivered with "Simple Song" and then keep hinting at it with the rest of their discography, leaving me wanting more. No, it's worse than that. I'm saying that "Simple Song" leaves me wanting more within the song. This fucking thing is all build. That moment when it's building and building and then fizzles at 2:42? That's blue balls if I've ever heard it. I love this song because it is flawed, on purpose. It never reaches its full potential! Which sucks, but then again, here I am, back once again, listening to it once again, putting it in the Top 80 Songs All Time because I just can't quit it, can't help but keep coming back and searching once more for the true payoff that never arrives.
77. "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen
There is nothing to said about this song that hasn't already been said in every corner of the world, including on this very blog. It was a Big Bang moment for most of the music that I currently hold dear, and I imagine you feel the same way. The thing about Big Bangs is that they are loud, and everyone can hear them. No sense trying to describe the details of the explosion, since you were there, and you know. You heard it. I'd be preaching to the choir. But if you'll allow me like two more sentences to preach, then I'll say the thing I love most about this song is how cool it sounds. It's not just cool, it defined the word "cool" for at least the subsequent seven decades, and I still feel cool loving it.
76. "Narrator" by Squid
Like the Grateful Dead song up there at #83, we have another example here of a moment in music that can never be repeated. For "Narrator," though, that once-in-a-lifetime moment just happened to be captured on tape and printed onto the studio album. Trust me, I've tried to find a repeat. I've seen Squid perform the song in a live setting (via YouTube), and it's not the same. I mean, Martha Skye Murphy is not part of Squid. She just popped in to give one of my favorite performances from any song ever, and then popped out. It's not like she's touring with them. So there's something beautiful here, in the fleeting, momentary nature of this song. Beauty all over the place, in the repetition, in the cacophony, in the gradual building toward explosion, in the mystery and awe of the repeated phrase, in the softness contrasted with the violence. But it will never be the same. Squid will never play "Narrator" like this again. And after you hear it, you will never be the same either.
75. "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd
I was in a friend's backyard in let's say the summer of 2008, and his parents were gone, and we were all pretty drunk. And I was chilling with another friend. Both drunk. And this friend is telling me that it's been a couple years, but he just can't seem to get over his ex. He tells me that he's having a rough go of it. He tells me that he's been spending an unhealthy number of hours alone in his bedroom, listening to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here." The memory stops there, and I don't know if I responded well, or responded at all. But this is what I think about when I hear this song now. I think about how life is rough, and it takes time to gain the proper perspective. Took a while for this one. Took sixteen years, to be exact. I heard a speech three weeks ago that unlocked it for me. The speech didn't mention "Wish You Were Here," but I knew it was implied.
74. "My Girl" by the Temptations
I like the idea of my friends reading what I write, even though I know that's not usually true. I know some of my friends read some of my words some of the time, but that's the limit of it. If I wrote something in this blurb that went something like "well, I know I don't have to write any more about 'My Girl' and the Temptations and the Motown sound and their outsized importance in my life," then I don't actually think that anyone else knows what the hell I'm referring to. Maybe I wrote about Motown three years ago. Let's say that's true, hypothetically. Then even at the start, there's only like a 30% chance that any given reader would have even read it originally, and then maybe 10% of that 30% is going to remember it, three years later. Sometimes, I wonder what the hell I'm even doing here. Sometimes, I don't even care, and just let the good song do all the talking. "My Girl" is perennial, in life and on the blog. "My Girl," however, can also stand for itself.
73. "The Funeral" by Band of Horses
I wonder if every generation wonders whether it was weird that their musical touchstones ended up being what they are. Like, I wonder if a boomer ever sits down and wonders, like, "wow, isn't it weird that 'Play That Funky Music' by Wild Cherry is an important song for our generation, for whatever reason, and it has somehow withstood the test of time?" This is how I feel about "The Funeral." I'm not comparing Band of Horses to Wild Cherry, that's not the point. I'm just saying that it feels almost arbitrary which songs get selected as the capital-i Important songs of our generation. For me and for people like me (i.e. people who gave a shit about music in their late teen years which happened to line up with the mid-aughts), "The Funeral" is a fucking IMPORTANT song. And it's weird that it is, when you think about it! A big hard almost ballad-like stomper about death! Wow, a song for a generation! Actually, ya know what, looking around right now, and seeing the shitshow we're in, I guess it retroactively makes sense. Maybe we're all just living the funeral.
72. "Total Football" by Parquet Courts
I explained the concept six years ago, when I claimed that "Total Football" was the best song of 2018. Basically, football (soccer) as a metaphor for life, and how "total football" is a metaphor for the power we have when we come together to work as a team. Trying to do everything yourself is wrong. That's a broad way of putting it. The specifics have to do with the might of the working class and how we need to take back power from the ruling class. I mean, fucking zoom in or out at your leisure, the song is powerful either way. What I didn't speculate on, at the time, was if anything was going to change in the six years after this song was released. Whether we'd actually rise up together. I mean... Tom Brady is an NFL color commentator now. I'd say that things have gotten significantly worse, and we are even more fractured than we were before. I guess that doesn't tarnish the shine of this song, though. Once more, and forever: FUCK TOM BRADY.
71. "How Can You Really" by Foxygen
I know some of these are repeats from around the blog, but man, it feels like I just fucking wrote about Foxygen's best song like yesterday. Okay, it was two and a half weeks ago. Still pretty short turnaround, in blogging time at least. How Can I Really find something else to write about besides how much work sucks? Hmm. I could see what I wrote about it the time before that? Let's see, it was the 36th-best song of the 2010s, I wrote about how Foxygen was interesting. Okay... but how? Why are they interesting? That just feels like a word I threw around to sound adept at writing about music. They aren't that interesting. They feel like a band that peaked with a really great song that was on a bizarre album that most people hated and then gradually faded away. I suppose there's pathos to be found in the idea of a band never being able to top their undoubtedly best song? Can we do something with that? Oh, are we out of space on this blurb? That's a pity. Till next time, folks.
70. "Casimir Pulaski Day" by Sufjan Stevens
I've always been skeptical of the term "empath." I think it should be normal to feel what others are feeling. It says something about how fucked we are as a species when we feel like we need a special word for a very normal act of "empathizing with someone." Like, if you're not an empath, then there's something wrong with you. In any case, I think about this as I sit here and listen to "Casimir Pulaski Day" and feel all the emotions that Sufjan Stevens is conveying through this song, most of which are different flavors of "sad." If I didn't feel sad listening to this song, then there would be something wrong with me. At the same time, I'll acknowledge that Sufjan Stevens is the master at eliciting empathy from his audience. This is a fictional story—probably—and yet I often find myself close weeping when I listen to this story. It doesn't even have to be sadness—joy, confusion, anger, Sufjan covers it all throughout his vast and fascinating discography. This is one of six different Sufjan songs I considered for this list, which is probably more than any other artist you're going to find here. That says something about his artistry. And that says something that us, too, that we are so willing to buy into the emotions. But it's normal, to feel emotion! It is! Don't let any so-called empath tell you otherwise!
69. "You! Me! Dancing!" by Los Campesinos!
It works so well because it breaks it down so thoroughly. Don't let the great swelling intro fool you—it's simple, by design. There ain't nothing to it, not in music and not in life. All you need is three things. You need you, you need me, and you need dancing. Two people to share life and the greatest, most freeing activity you should possibly fill that shared life with. Forget everything else, if it gets too much—and with Los Campesinos!, sometimes the "too much" becomes the point, which I guess makes the simplicity of their best song somewhat ironic. Forget about all that too. Just get up, find someone you care about, and dance. Love and music. That's it. That's all.
68. "DVP" by PUP
There's a whole host of songs on this list whose power only grew after I submitted to the S-word, but this is the first song I'm encountering in the rankings as I move from 100 to 1, so "DVP" is gonna be saddled with the explanation. So, okay, it's a song about being a fuck-up, basically. That's cool. Some of the best songs of all time are about being a fuck-up (see: many more of the 99 other songs on this list). PUP explicitly explains it as being a fuck-up due to alcohol. Also cool, and totally normal. For real, nothing wrong with it! And I knew this, when I too was a fuck-up, due to alcohol. And I related. I related hard, man. There's perverse pride in it too, I think. "I'm a fuck-up but at least I know it!" The fear was that I would get sober and stay sober for as long as possible and some of these songs that I took pride in would fall by the wayside because I know long could relate to them in a nuts-and-bolts way. But I'm 20 months in. I still fucking love "DVP." The pride is still there too. Pride in knowing how far I've come. Pride in knowing that I'll be able to go farther. Pride in surviving going 180km/h on the Don Valley Parkway... figuratively speaking. And pride knowing that this song is gonna stand no matter what I'm doing, and no matter where on the path anyone else who loves the song is.
67. "I Know the End" by Phoebe Bridgers
It's always been about the scream. We're almost five years removed from the initial circumstances of the thing that made us need to scream in the first place. I think I would've liked "I Know the End" a lot even if we hadn't lived through the anxieties of COVID. But I needed "I Know the End" in 2020, and that's what makes me love the song. Love is not a choice sometimes. Love is occasionally foisted upon us, and we either accept it, or die. So it goes with the best song by the best sad girl.
66. "Rock Me Gently" by Andy Kim
"Pop" is such a fucking nebulous term. It could mean literally any kind of music, assuming that that music is popular. At one point, jazz music was pop, technically speaking. And who knows, maybe jazz is gonna be pop music again one day. It's not that hard to imagine. What is hard to imagine, however, is that a list like this from a dude like me is going to contain that many pop songs. I am messed up in that popularity often functions as a turn-off for me. I don't feel that way on purpose, it's just how I'm built. I don't hate pop songs due to quality. There are some great pop songs out there! But being popular is a huge roadblock for me, in terms of "best songs ever." That's just how it goes! All this to say that it's not an insurmountable roadblock. Especially if it's a great pop song from a long time ago, and I never really had the chance to feel the oppression of its popularity. What if there was a #1 hit that functioned like a deep cut for me, just simply because it's really fucking old and no one gives a shit about it anymore? What happens then?
65. "25!" by Bomb the Music Industry!
We don't talk enough about the faux-rap song that ends "25!" What's up with that? My only explanation is that this is totally something that a dumb 25-year-old would do, tack on a totally lame bit at the end of a rip-roaring song about being a dumb 25-year-old. Like, is this a real sample? I don't even know. I should look it up. Okay, I just looked up the song Genius. The lyrics about living at my momma's house aren't even on there! What the hell? Okay, so it's definitely a bit. Which is cool. I can appreciate it. I can appreciate it emotionally, I think, because maybe the song "25!" is a little tough to take sometimes, like it's hard to remember that time in your life without feeling a certain way, and maybe it's a little too good at sucking you into that mindset, and you get stuck, and what you need in that moment is some two-bar sample of a dumb fake rap song to snap you out of it.
64. "Party in the U.S.A." by Miley Cyrus
I just raised the question of "what is a pop song" two blurbs ago, and now we're here. I'm pretty sure that this is the only modern-day purposeful straight-up pop song on this list. Well, okay, "Friday" at #100, but that has a layer of irony cocooning it that makes it untouchable. So why this song? Couldn't tell you. Well I could, but you'd probably roll your eyes. It's a good song, yes, but so were many other pop songs from my formative years. It's a good pop song that soundtracked a lot of incredible moments in my youth, but that's true for more than one song as well, and, like, you're not gonna see Kesha or LMFAO on this list, ya know? If I had to move beyond its bona fides and move beyond the swimming pool-sized amount of malt liquor that was consumed while listening to this song, I think I'd wager that this is THE pop song on my Top 100 list because it's a pop song that speaks to the power of good pop music, and I'm a sucker for that self-reflective shit. When you're listening to "Party in the U.S.A.," if feels like a party in the U.S.A. Does that make sense? No worries if not, I'll still be out here nodding my head and moving my hips like yeah.
63. "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners are an English band. I probably would've guessed that they were Irish, were it not for its suspicious absence throughout the many forced Americanized St. Patrick's Day traditions I've experienced throughout my lifetime as a white person in Northeast Philadelphia. They are English, though. And did you know that "Come On Eileen" was not their first #1 hit in the UK? It's true! They had a song two years prior called "Geno" that also hit #1 on their pop chart. I don't know if I knew that till right now. In the US, they are pretty close to being one-hit wonders (another Too-Rye-Ay cut, "The Celtic Soul Brothers," peaked at #86, and only upon rerelease). I wrote a whole goddamn blog post about their big album and I could not now tell you a single thing about DMR except that they have one immortal song. It's a good song. It's one of the best, in fact. It's too good, maybe, since it has so clearly overshadowed everything else about this band, and I can imagine that this is to their detriment. Ah well, whatever, I don't actually care about any of this. I'm just over here listening to "Come On Eileen" yet again.
62. "Steal My Sunshine" by Len
I have to imagine I've written about this before somewhere on the blog. I can't find it, so maybe it's just lived in my brain for so long that I imagined that I had written about it. But sometimes the leap from the brain to the blog is a long one, and so here we go. There was an interview. This was with the frontman of Len, whose name is probably not "Len," and this was like within the past six or seven years. So, way past the cultural peak of "Steal My Sunshine." The interview found the frontman in a space of nostalgia. What I liked about his thoughts on this subject were how gracious and thankful he was for even having the opportunity. There was no ill-will toward the undeniable fact that Len and its members will never taste success in this way ever again for as long as they live. Like, this dude was just reminiscing about the label giving them all this money to rent quads and shoot a video while driving around the city and having fun and goofing off. It wasn't a sadness in that this would never happen again, but a joy in that it happened at all. And I thought that was a really healthy perspective about life in general, and now it's what I think about whenever I hear this great fucking song.
61. "Free Energy" by Free Energy
At some point in the past six months (I forget exactly when), Pam finally noticed. "This song is on a lot of your playlists, isn't it?" And so I explained to her, sheepishly, that yes, every party/gathering playlist I've made in the past decade or so begins with this song. I push play, I switch the iPod over to shuffle mode, and then let the playlist run as the party (or party prep) begins. But it always starts here. Why? I don't know. I honestly don't remember. Let's see, Stuck on Nothing came out in 2010, and there was no significant gap between release and consumption. And I don't remember when I started with the playlist thing, but I'd imagine it was in 2010. So twelve years? And plenty of memories of hitting play on the iPod in the family's Florida room and cracking open that first beer. It signals the beginning of the party! How can it not be the 61st-best song of all time?! Its meaning is homegrown. "Free Energy" is about the beginning of the party because of my actions and my actions only. I don't think that fact is disqualifying on a list like this.
60. "Down Down the Deep River" by Okkervil River
I've made the argument before that Okkervil River's best songs are heightened by the drama that Will Sheff brings to it with his to-the-breaking-point vocal performances. And I think that's true here—there is sincere drama all over this thing! But the reason that "Down Down the Deep River" is in this spot, as opposed to, say, "Black" or "On a Balcony" or "Calling and Not Calling My Ex," is that this song as depth and breadth as well. It feels like an entire movie. It's obtuse in some ways—there's child abuse in here, I just know it, but I can't prove it based on the evidence presented—but the emotions are true. And they are wide and deep. It feels epic in every direction. I don't know if that makes sense. I'm not good at describing my emotions. I'm not Will Sheff.
59. "Light a Roman Candle with Me" by fun.
She asked, not unreasonably, "is this a bad song to use as a wedding song?" On its surface, it's a song about a one-night stand. Maybe not the best song to express everlasting love in front of family and friends? It was a good question. But I went on the defensive. No! Not a one-night stand! This is actually a song about POSSIBILITY. Yes, it's possible that the roman candle will burn out after a few seconds. But it's also possible that the flame will burn forever. And there's no way to know until you strike that match, ya know? So we weren't just celebrating the flame, on that night ten years ago now. We were celebrating the risk that we took in lighting the match, and we were celebrating the wonders of life, and how one single match led us here, to this perfect moment. She was sold.
58. "Like a Friend" by Pulp
Don't quote me on this, as we still have 57 songs left. But I'm pretty sure this is the highest-ranked song that I first heard on a television show. (#85's Lost song being the only other one on the list, I think.) "Like a Friend" soundtracks the conclusion to the Venture Bros. S4 finale, "Operation P.R.O.M.," probably one of the best TV episodes of all time, and almost certainly the most hopefully Venture Bros. episode of its entire run. To describe it would be to spoil the show, and if you haven't seen it yet, then I'd be doing you a disservice. (I also don't want to spoil the names of ***'s kids—jk, jk, he took great pains to never say their names while he was a regular on this blog, I wouldn't do that to him now.) Oh shit... in writing this blurb, I was informed that the series finale movie was released last year. How did I not know this?! Stay strong, Joey, you have 57 more blurbs to write. No time to watch the 84-minute conclusion of the TV show you've been watching since you were in high school. Stay strong!!!!
57. "With Arms Outstretched" by Rilo Kiley
I spent a lot of time in August 2023 writing a blog post for this song. I haven't gone back and read it since hitting publish. Probably not worth it. Just a lot of bullshit thrown together. Please don't let that diminish the strength of this song though. tl;dr: this is the song that I want played at my funeral, if I die in a scenario where it's just me dying and there's time and space for an individual funeral, as opposed to like just throwing my body in a mass grave or some shit. If it works out, this is the song. Why? I mean, I don't have to answer that question. It's my goddamn funeral song. By the time it actually matters, I'll be dead. But okay, fine, I'll briefly answer the Why question here. "With Arms Outstretched" is about living life to the fullest. That's it, in its clichéd summary. I want people to know I tried to live my life to the fullest, and now I'm dead, and maybe y'all can use that space to reflect on how you too can live your life to the fullest, since you're still alive. Unlike me.
56. "Point/Counterpoint" by Streetlight Manifesto
Oh wow, I guess I've already written about a lot of these songs, huh? That's my bad. Maybe I should've held a few of my cards closer to my chest. Though I didn't really have the idea of writing about my Top 100 Songs until like two weeks ago, so it was a little late. The ska train had already left the station by that point. Yes! I love this ska song! I mean, I guess I could theoretically use these spaces to provide miniature updates about the shit I wrote about the last time each song passed through the blog? This one was about the woman who called me "ska man." I haven't spoken to her since. But I swear it's not because she called me "ska man." Can't ever fault anyone for providing me with blog fodder. I dunno though... that doesn't seem appropriate for a blurb such as this. I'm supposed to be here explaining to you why I think that "Point/Counterpoint" is the 56th-best song of all time! And here I am wasting time with the "ska man" gag! My bad!
55. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" by the Temptations
Wait, so how many artists on this list show up more than once? The Temptations are one of three artists that show up twice, unless I'm forgetting somebody. None of the songs from the other artists have shown up yet, so I won't spoil anything here. Don't need to in order to fill this blurb, though, since "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" is one that I could write 10,000 words on. I could, but I won't, because I'm not a crazy person. I'll keep it succinct, and I'll talk about the power one feels when they step on stage for karaoke. If I've done karaoke 100 times, probably 40 of those were singing "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." I miss feeling that way, that power that comes from pretending that you are commanding an entire room. I can't think of any analogous feeling here in sobriety. We should come up with one. All y'all sober dorks out there, who's with me? Let's put our heads together.
54. "Jesus of Suburbia" by Green Day
Dave finally got me to read the Sellout book that he mentioned in a few dozen blog posts two summers ago. The book explores the idea of "selling out" to a major label, and traces selling out stories through over a dozen different bands, one chapter at a time. It starts with Green Day, who were banned from local concert venues because they had the audacity to sign to a major label. This was over 30 years ago at this point, so the idea seems a little thin to me, but the book does a decent job at bringing you back to a time when this was really the case, when fans really did draw such dumb lines in the sand. Had they not signed to Warner Bros., then maybe we wouldn't have gotten Dookie, which is crazy. "Jesus of Suburbia" is not on Dookie, it's on American Idiot, which came out ten years later, and was hailed as a major comeback for the band. Due to how things lined up for me, I jumped on board during American Idiot. Those older than me have a problem with this. Apparently the older kids are always gonna have a problem with Green Day. I have never given a shit about all that and I still don't. "Jesus of Suburbia" is Green Day's best song and it's not really that close. But if you asked a Green Day fan in 1993, then they probably would've said that they'd rather Green Day die penniless in a fucking ditch somewhere than bother to sell albums and make serious music. I don't get it.
53. "Elephant Gun" by Beirut
There's always room to expand the palate. There is no ceiling, there is no floor, there are no walls. You begin with one type of music, and then over the years, you keep pushing, and you discover new things. Some of the new expands your world by inches, and some of it by miles. It's all an unending process, and it's beautiful to behold. I started with rock 'n' roll. It sounded like one thing, and then, gradually, I came to understand that music sounds like that but also other things. It can sound the same and opposite. It can sound local and it can sound otherworldly. To the latter point, my first exposure was Beirut, and the almighty "Elephant Gun." It was close enough that I could reach out and touch it; it was far enough away that it felt like I had been uprooted and dropped in the middle of a strange land and I didn't have a map. My world has grown significantly since I first heard this song.
52. "Queen of Hearts" by Fucked Up
A running theme on this list—as you may have noticed, almost halfway into it now—is my attraction to songs that sound BIG. And better yet, songs that are big and fucking know it, and fucking lean into it. Fucked Up swings big on their hardcore punk rock opera David Comes to Life, and "Queen of Hearts" sets the scene. A romance whose flames are so intense that a lightbulb factory explodes... it's a whole thing, you gotta be there I guess. The best part about Fucked Up is they don't even have to do this. The band is tight and Damian Abraham's vocals are vicious. They could just be a regular ol' hardcore band. And yet they are out there doing this. I'm thankful.
51. "Boys in the Better Land" by Fontaines D.C.
I've had to let go of nights like this. It's been over 20 months and I haven't had a night that felt like the type of nights that the protagonist seems to be having pretty often here. It's something I've had to accept, and I have. It's fine. It's whatever. I'm still living my best life. But I've allowed myself some reminiscing lately. Absolutely not in a "I could maybe do......" way, which is fucked up and unhealthy. More like, hey, that was good, and, like, maybe allow myself to feel that energy again, at the very least to start brainstorming how I can get there without crossing any hard personal lines. I listen to "Boys in the Better Land," and I know I can get it. I know I can feel it again, without stepping too far. This is a song of hope, but just for me.
50. "How Many More Times" by Led Zeppelin
"It's a journey," he says, and you have no fucking clue what he's talking about. And you don't care, really, because it's 4:45 PM on a Friday and you just had the longest fucking week and now you're on the train platform waiting to get home to loved ones and start that small fraction of the long week that is traditionally blocked off for rest and relaxation. The weekend. But now this dude is saying some shit. He knows you're listening to that Led Zep tune. He's calling the song a journey, maybe. And it is. But it's unclear, because the week was a journey too. A struggle, as always. A struggle, like how the members of Zeppelin push and pull for attention here, the strangled yawlps of Plant and the unhinged Page riffs and the unleashed Bonham fills and the Jones bass pulling it tighter and tighter like strangulation. "A journey, man." Like the one you just had, earning a paycheck. Painful, yet satisfying, to get to the end. I think that's what he meant. I don't really care. It's the weekend.
49. "Banquet" by Bloc Party
This upcoming summer of 2025 will be 20 years with "Banquet" for me. And let's see, that was about two years after I had switched from playing just a single snare drum in grade school band to playing (or attempting to play) the full drum set in high school and beyond. And then I more or less quit after graduating college in 2011, with a couple cameo appearances after that, but not many. So it's been just about thirteen years since I've been officially "a drummer." It's been a while. And yet, when I hear "Banquet," even now, I am a drummer once again. I have heard this Matt Tong drum rhythm and all his little intricate fills thousands of times now. I can play the whole thing on the steering wheel of a car, or a cubicle desktop, or my thighs as a I sit and listen to the song while I'm trying to write a blurb for the song in the #49 spot of the Top 100 Songs of All Time list. I get to pretend. It's a good feeling.
48. "Lazy Eye" by Silversun Pickups
I don't like leaning on the idea of "here's what I've previously written about this song," or the idea of "here's where it was on a previous list, and here's how its ranking now compares to that previous ranking," but both are pretty interesting to consider here. First, I am pretty proud of the blurb I wrote for this song for the Top 100 of 2000s list. Check out the relevant portion of that list here and then Ctrl+F that shit. Note what was written, and then note that it was apparently the 69th-best song of that decade, but now it's the 48th-best song of all time. How does that make sense? Well, it makes sense in a lot of ways, but primarily, it's just that some songs age really well. If this song really is about the importance of my high school experience and how that importance changes shape the smaller it gets in the rearview mirror, than it makes sense that it would feel like an even better song six years later. And that maybe it cracks the Top 40 in another six years. Or maybe not. Maybe it just stands as one of those totems for a time long past. "I've been waiting for this moment / all my life." Like, c'mon. That kinda line just gets sadder and sadder every year.
47. "Doing It Right" by the Go! Team
This list took me like two weeks to put together, and now I'm forgetting what I've written about song higher up on the list. Did I write about high school yet? Lol jk jk, but seriously, did I write about Comcast OnDemand yet? There are certain songs that make me recall lazy Friday nights at a friend's house, when we'd be maybe drinking or maybe not, but regardless just hanging out, spending time together, not passively in front of the TV, but actively in front of the TV, taking turns with the Comcast remote, each choosing what music video we'd watch next. There were a surprising number of Joe K*** songs on there; the mid-aughts were a special time for "indie rock," probably this made-up genre's peak, in retrospect. But "Doing It Right" was one of those songs. The tune just felt like a party, like a pump-up jam, almost like we were bound for greater things on any given Friday night. And we swallowed the lie, because we knew that Friday night was gonna continue like this—hanging out, shooting the shit, watching music videos, nothing exciting—until curfew, and that was totally okay. But it was fun to pretend for a few minutes too.
46. "The Best of Me" by the Starting Line
Pam didn't attempt to get My Chemical Romance tickets because of the price, and I'm thankful for that, because they are expensive. But if you had asked me, I would've said that I wasn't interested in seeing the big nostalgic show because I wasn't part of that scene back in the day. I'm a latecomer, and an interloper, and more of an observer. I'm just some old dude who likes good music, ya know? Whereas seeing The Black Parade performed in full at Citizens Bank Park is for the former scene kids who lived that shit 20 years ago. I wasn't that teen. In fact, it's sort of become a sticking point between me and some of my hometown friends, those who actually were part of that scene (the "Warped Tour" scene, if you need to define it). Like, even if I said that "The Best of Me" has become of my favorite songs ever, and even if I had already, years ago, familiarized myself with Say It Like You Mean It, and was becoming well-versed in the emo and pop-punk shit of their youth, I would never in a million fucking years be invited by my friends to see a Starting Line anniversary show. Never. Because the lines were drawn in the sand long ago, and those lines were inscribed too deep to change now in some people's minds. The best of me looks like someone who is open to all musical experiences, and open to the beauty of a perfect song. But I don't blame anyone for not seeing the best in me like I see it. That's not their job.
75. "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd
I was in a friend's backyard in let's say the summer of 2008, and his parents were gone, and we were all pretty drunk. And I was chilling with another friend. Both drunk. And this friend is telling me that it's been a couple years, but he just can't seem to get over his ex. He tells me that he's having a rough go of it. He tells me that he's been spending an unhealthy number of hours alone in his bedroom, listening to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here." The memory stops there, and I don't know if I responded well, or responded at all. But this is what I think about when I hear this song now. I think about how life is rough, and it takes time to gain the proper perspective. Took a while for this one. Took sixteen years, to be exact. I heard a speech three weeks ago that unlocked it for me. The speech didn't mention "Wish You Were Here," but I knew it was implied.
74. "My Girl" by the Temptations
I like the idea of my friends reading what I write, even though I know that's not usually true. I know some of my friends read some of my words some of the time, but that's the limit of it. If I wrote something in this blurb that went something like "well, I know I don't have to write any more about 'My Girl' and the Temptations and the Motown sound and their outsized importance in my life," then I don't actually think that anyone else knows what the hell I'm referring to. Maybe I wrote about Motown three years ago. Let's say that's true, hypothetically. Then even at the start, there's only like a 30% chance that any given reader would have even read it originally, and then maybe 10% of that 30% is going to remember it, three years later. Sometimes, I wonder what the hell I'm even doing here. Sometimes, I don't even care, and just let the good song do all the talking. "My Girl" is perennial, in life and on the blog. "My Girl," however, can also stand for itself.
73. "The Funeral" by Band of Horses
I wonder if every generation wonders whether it was weird that their musical touchstones ended up being what they are. Like, I wonder if a boomer ever sits down and wonders, like, "wow, isn't it weird that 'Play That Funky Music' by Wild Cherry is an important song for our generation, for whatever reason, and it has somehow withstood the test of time?" This is how I feel about "The Funeral." I'm not comparing Band of Horses to Wild Cherry, that's not the point. I'm just saying that it feels almost arbitrary which songs get selected as the capital-i Important songs of our generation. For me and for people like me (i.e. people who gave a shit about music in their late teen years which happened to line up with the mid-aughts), "The Funeral" is a fucking IMPORTANT song. And it's weird that it is, when you think about it! A big hard almost ballad-like stomper about death! Wow, a song for a generation! Actually, ya know what, looking around right now, and seeing the shitshow we're in, I guess it retroactively makes sense. Maybe we're all just living the funeral.
72. "Total Football" by Parquet Courts
I explained the concept six years ago, when I claimed that "Total Football" was the best song of 2018. Basically, football (soccer) as a metaphor for life, and how "total football" is a metaphor for the power we have when we come together to work as a team. Trying to do everything yourself is wrong. That's a broad way of putting it. The specifics have to do with the might of the working class and how we need to take back power from the ruling class. I mean, fucking zoom in or out at your leisure, the song is powerful either way. What I didn't speculate on, at the time, was if anything was going to change in the six years after this song was released. Whether we'd actually rise up together. I mean... Tom Brady is an NFL color commentator now. I'd say that things have gotten significantly worse, and we are even more fractured than we were before. I guess that doesn't tarnish the shine of this song, though. Once more, and forever: FUCK TOM BRADY.
71. "How Can You Really" by Foxygen
I know some of these are repeats from around the blog, but man, it feels like I just fucking wrote about Foxygen's best song like yesterday. Okay, it was two and a half weeks ago. Still pretty short turnaround, in blogging time at least. How Can I Really find something else to write about besides how much work sucks? Hmm. I could see what I wrote about it the time before that? Let's see, it was the 36th-best song of the 2010s, I wrote about how Foxygen was interesting. Okay... but how? Why are they interesting? That just feels like a word I threw around to sound adept at writing about music. They aren't that interesting. They feel like a band that peaked with a really great song that was on a bizarre album that most people hated and then gradually faded away. I suppose there's pathos to be found in the idea of a band never being able to top their undoubtedly best song? Can we do something with that? Oh, are we out of space on this blurb? That's a pity. Till next time, folks.
70. "Casimir Pulaski Day" by Sufjan Stevens
I've always been skeptical of the term "empath." I think it should be normal to feel what others are feeling. It says something about how fucked we are as a species when we feel like we need a special word for a very normal act of "empathizing with someone." Like, if you're not an empath, then there's something wrong with you. In any case, I think about this as I sit here and listen to "Casimir Pulaski Day" and feel all the emotions that Sufjan Stevens is conveying through this song, most of which are different flavors of "sad." If I didn't feel sad listening to this song, then there would be something wrong with me. At the same time, I'll acknowledge that Sufjan Stevens is the master at eliciting empathy from his audience. This is a fictional story—probably—and yet I often find myself close weeping when I listen to this story. It doesn't even have to be sadness—joy, confusion, anger, Sufjan covers it all throughout his vast and fascinating discography. This is one of six different Sufjan songs I considered for this list, which is probably more than any other artist you're going to find here. That says something about his artistry. And that says something that us, too, that we are so willing to buy into the emotions. But it's normal, to feel emotion! It is! Don't let any so-called empath tell you otherwise!
69. "You! Me! Dancing!" by Los Campesinos!
It works so well because it breaks it down so thoroughly. Don't let the great swelling intro fool you—it's simple, by design. There ain't nothing to it, not in music and not in life. All you need is three things. You need you, you need me, and you need dancing. Two people to share life and the greatest, most freeing activity you should possibly fill that shared life with. Forget everything else, if it gets too much—and with Los Campesinos!, sometimes the "too much" becomes the point, which I guess makes the simplicity of their best song somewhat ironic. Forget about all that too. Just get up, find someone you care about, and dance. Love and music. That's it. That's all.
68. "DVP" by PUP
There's a whole host of songs on this list whose power only grew after I submitted to the S-word, but this is the first song I'm encountering in the rankings as I move from 100 to 1, so "DVP" is gonna be saddled with the explanation. So, okay, it's a song about being a fuck-up, basically. That's cool. Some of the best songs of all time are about being a fuck-up (see: many more of the 99 other songs on this list). PUP explicitly explains it as being a fuck-up due to alcohol. Also cool, and totally normal. For real, nothing wrong with it! And I knew this, when I too was a fuck-up, due to alcohol. And I related. I related hard, man. There's perverse pride in it too, I think. "I'm a fuck-up but at least I know it!" The fear was that I would get sober and stay sober for as long as possible and some of these songs that I took pride in would fall by the wayside because I know long could relate to them in a nuts-and-bolts way. But I'm 20 months in. I still fucking love "DVP." The pride is still there too. Pride in knowing how far I've come. Pride in knowing that I'll be able to go farther. Pride in surviving going 180km/h on the Don Valley Parkway... figuratively speaking. And pride knowing that this song is gonna stand no matter what I'm doing, and no matter where on the path anyone else who loves the song is.
67. "I Know the End" by Phoebe Bridgers
It's always been about the scream. We're almost five years removed from the initial circumstances of the thing that made us need to scream in the first place. I think I would've liked "I Know the End" a lot even if we hadn't lived through the anxieties of COVID. But I needed "I Know the End" in 2020, and that's what makes me love the song. Love is not a choice sometimes. Love is occasionally foisted upon us, and we either accept it, or die. So it goes with the best song by the best sad girl.
66. "Rock Me Gently" by Andy Kim
"Pop" is such a fucking nebulous term. It could mean literally any kind of music, assuming that that music is popular. At one point, jazz music was pop, technically speaking. And who knows, maybe jazz is gonna be pop music again one day. It's not that hard to imagine. What is hard to imagine, however, is that a list like this from a dude like me is going to contain that many pop songs. I am messed up in that popularity often functions as a turn-off for me. I don't feel that way on purpose, it's just how I'm built. I don't hate pop songs due to quality. There are some great pop songs out there! But being popular is a huge roadblock for me, in terms of "best songs ever." That's just how it goes! All this to say that it's not an insurmountable roadblock. Especially if it's a great pop song from a long time ago, and I never really had the chance to feel the oppression of its popularity. What if there was a #1 hit that functioned like a deep cut for me, just simply because it's really fucking old and no one gives a shit about it anymore? What happens then?
65. "25!" by Bomb the Music Industry!
We don't talk enough about the faux-rap song that ends "25!" What's up with that? My only explanation is that this is totally something that a dumb 25-year-old would do, tack on a totally lame bit at the end of a rip-roaring song about being a dumb 25-year-old. Like, is this a real sample? I don't even know. I should look it up. Okay, I just looked up the song Genius. The lyrics about living at my momma's house aren't even on there! What the hell? Okay, so it's definitely a bit. Which is cool. I can appreciate it. I can appreciate it emotionally, I think, because maybe the song "25!" is a little tough to take sometimes, like it's hard to remember that time in your life without feeling a certain way, and maybe it's a little too good at sucking you into that mindset, and you get stuck, and what you need in that moment is some two-bar sample of a dumb fake rap song to snap you out of it.
64. "Party in the U.S.A." by Miley Cyrus
I just raised the question of "what is a pop song" two blurbs ago, and now we're here. I'm pretty sure that this is the only modern-day purposeful straight-up pop song on this list. Well, okay, "Friday" at #100, but that has a layer of irony cocooning it that makes it untouchable. So why this song? Couldn't tell you. Well I could, but you'd probably roll your eyes. It's a good song, yes, but so were many other pop songs from my formative years. It's a good pop song that soundtracked a lot of incredible moments in my youth, but that's true for more than one song as well, and, like, you're not gonna see Kesha or LMFAO on this list, ya know? If I had to move beyond its bona fides and move beyond the swimming pool-sized amount of malt liquor that was consumed while listening to this song, I think I'd wager that this is THE pop song on my Top 100 list because it's a pop song that speaks to the power of good pop music, and I'm a sucker for that self-reflective shit. When you're listening to "Party in the U.S.A.," if feels like a party in the U.S.A. Does that make sense? No worries if not, I'll still be out here nodding my head and moving my hips like yeah.
63. "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners are an English band. I probably would've guessed that they were Irish, were it not for its suspicious absence throughout the many forced Americanized St. Patrick's Day traditions I've experienced throughout my lifetime as a white person in Northeast Philadelphia. They are English, though. And did you know that "Come On Eileen" was not their first #1 hit in the UK? It's true! They had a song two years prior called "Geno" that also hit #1 on their pop chart. I don't know if I knew that till right now. In the US, they are pretty close to being one-hit wonders (another Too-Rye-Ay cut, "The Celtic Soul Brothers," peaked at #86, and only upon rerelease). I wrote a whole goddamn blog post about their big album and I could not now tell you a single thing about DMR except that they have one immortal song. It's a good song. It's one of the best, in fact. It's too good, maybe, since it has so clearly overshadowed everything else about this band, and I can imagine that this is to their detriment. Ah well, whatever, I don't actually care about any of this. I'm just over here listening to "Come On Eileen" yet again.
62. "Steal My Sunshine" by Len
I have to imagine I've written about this before somewhere on the blog. I can't find it, so maybe it's just lived in my brain for so long that I imagined that I had written about it. But sometimes the leap from the brain to the blog is a long one, and so here we go. There was an interview. This was with the frontman of Len, whose name is probably not "Len," and this was like within the past six or seven years. So, way past the cultural peak of "Steal My Sunshine." The interview found the frontman in a space of nostalgia. What I liked about his thoughts on this subject were how gracious and thankful he was for even having the opportunity. There was no ill-will toward the undeniable fact that Len and its members will never taste success in this way ever again for as long as they live. Like, this dude was just reminiscing about the label giving them all this money to rent quads and shoot a video while driving around the city and having fun and goofing off. It wasn't a sadness in that this would never happen again, but a joy in that it happened at all. And I thought that was a really healthy perspective about life in general, and now it's what I think about whenever I hear this great fucking song.
61. "Free Energy" by Free Energy
At some point in the past six months (I forget exactly when), Pam finally noticed. "This song is on a lot of your playlists, isn't it?" And so I explained to her, sheepishly, that yes, every party/gathering playlist I've made in the past decade or so begins with this song. I push play, I switch the iPod over to shuffle mode, and then let the playlist run as the party (or party prep) begins. But it always starts here. Why? I don't know. I honestly don't remember. Let's see, Stuck on Nothing came out in 2010, and there was no significant gap between release and consumption. And I don't remember when I started with the playlist thing, but I'd imagine it was in 2010. So twelve years? And plenty of memories of hitting play on the iPod in the family's Florida room and cracking open that first beer. It signals the beginning of the party! How can it not be the 61st-best song of all time?! Its meaning is homegrown. "Free Energy" is about the beginning of the party because of my actions and my actions only. I don't think that fact is disqualifying on a list like this.
60. "Down Down the Deep River" by Okkervil River
I've made the argument before that Okkervil River's best songs are heightened by the drama that Will Sheff brings to it with his to-the-breaking-point vocal performances. And I think that's true here—there is sincere drama all over this thing! But the reason that "Down Down the Deep River" is in this spot, as opposed to, say, "Black" or "On a Balcony" or "Calling and Not Calling My Ex," is that this song as depth and breadth as well. It feels like an entire movie. It's obtuse in some ways—there's child abuse in here, I just know it, but I can't prove it based on the evidence presented—but the emotions are true. And they are wide and deep. It feels epic in every direction. I don't know if that makes sense. I'm not good at describing my emotions. I'm not Will Sheff.
59. "Light a Roman Candle with Me" by fun.
She asked, not unreasonably, "is this a bad song to use as a wedding song?" On its surface, it's a song about a one-night stand. Maybe not the best song to express everlasting love in front of family and friends? It was a good question. But I went on the defensive. No! Not a one-night stand! This is actually a song about POSSIBILITY. Yes, it's possible that the roman candle will burn out after a few seconds. But it's also possible that the flame will burn forever. And there's no way to know until you strike that match, ya know? So we weren't just celebrating the flame, on that night ten years ago now. We were celebrating the risk that we took in lighting the match, and we were celebrating the wonders of life, and how one single match led us here, to this perfect moment. She was sold.
58. "Like a Friend" by Pulp
Don't quote me on this, as we still have 57 songs left. But I'm pretty sure this is the highest-ranked song that I first heard on a television show. (#85's Lost song being the only other one on the list, I think.) "Like a Friend" soundtracks the conclusion to the Venture Bros. S4 finale, "Operation P.R.O.M.," probably one of the best TV episodes of all time, and almost certainly the most hopefully Venture Bros. episode of its entire run. To describe it would be to spoil the show, and if you haven't seen it yet, then I'd be doing you a disservice. (I also don't want to spoil the names of ***'s kids—jk, jk, he took great pains to never say their names while he was a regular on this blog, I wouldn't do that to him now.) Oh shit... in writing this blurb, I was informed that the series finale movie was released last year. How did I not know this?! Stay strong, Joey, you have 57 more blurbs to write. No time to watch the 84-minute conclusion of the TV show you've been watching since you were in high school. Stay strong!!!!
57. "With Arms Outstretched" by Rilo Kiley
I spent a lot of time in August 2023 writing a blog post for this song. I haven't gone back and read it since hitting publish. Probably not worth it. Just a lot of bullshit thrown together. Please don't let that diminish the strength of this song though. tl;dr: this is the song that I want played at my funeral, if I die in a scenario where it's just me dying and there's time and space for an individual funeral, as opposed to like just throwing my body in a mass grave or some shit. If it works out, this is the song. Why? I mean, I don't have to answer that question. It's my goddamn funeral song. By the time it actually matters, I'll be dead. But okay, fine, I'll briefly answer the Why question here. "With Arms Outstretched" is about living life to the fullest. That's it, in its clichéd summary. I want people to know I tried to live my life to the fullest, and now I'm dead, and maybe y'all can use that space to reflect on how you too can live your life to the fullest, since you're still alive. Unlike me.
56. "Point/Counterpoint" by Streetlight Manifesto
Oh wow, I guess I've already written about a lot of these songs, huh? That's my bad. Maybe I should've held a few of my cards closer to my chest. Though I didn't really have the idea of writing about my Top 100 Songs until like two weeks ago, so it was a little late. The ska train had already left the station by that point. Yes! I love this ska song! I mean, I guess I could theoretically use these spaces to provide miniature updates about the shit I wrote about the last time each song passed through the blog? This one was about the woman who called me "ska man." I haven't spoken to her since. But I swear it's not because she called me "ska man." Can't ever fault anyone for providing me with blog fodder. I dunno though... that doesn't seem appropriate for a blurb such as this. I'm supposed to be here explaining to you why I think that "Point/Counterpoint" is the 56th-best song of all time! And here I am wasting time with the "ska man" gag! My bad!
55. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" by the Temptations
Wait, so how many artists on this list show up more than once? The Temptations are one of three artists that show up twice, unless I'm forgetting somebody. None of the songs from the other artists have shown up yet, so I won't spoil anything here. Don't need to in order to fill this blurb, though, since "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" is one that I could write 10,000 words on. I could, but I won't, because I'm not a crazy person. I'll keep it succinct, and I'll talk about the power one feels when they step on stage for karaoke. If I've done karaoke 100 times, probably 40 of those were singing "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." I miss feeling that way, that power that comes from pretending that you are commanding an entire room. I can't think of any analogous feeling here in sobriety. We should come up with one. All y'all sober dorks out there, who's with me? Let's put our heads together.
54. "Jesus of Suburbia" by Green Day
Dave finally got me to read the Sellout book that he mentioned in a few dozen blog posts two summers ago. The book explores the idea of "selling out" to a major label, and traces selling out stories through over a dozen different bands, one chapter at a time. It starts with Green Day, who were banned from local concert venues because they had the audacity to sign to a major label. This was over 30 years ago at this point, so the idea seems a little thin to me, but the book does a decent job at bringing you back to a time when this was really the case, when fans really did draw such dumb lines in the sand. Had they not signed to Warner Bros., then maybe we wouldn't have gotten Dookie, which is crazy. "Jesus of Suburbia" is not on Dookie, it's on American Idiot, which came out ten years later, and was hailed as a major comeback for the band. Due to how things lined up for me, I jumped on board during American Idiot. Those older than me have a problem with this. Apparently the older kids are always gonna have a problem with Green Day. I have never given a shit about all that and I still don't. "Jesus of Suburbia" is Green Day's best song and it's not really that close. But if you asked a Green Day fan in 1993, then they probably would've said that they'd rather Green Day die penniless in a fucking ditch somewhere than bother to sell albums and make serious music. I don't get it.
53. "Elephant Gun" by Beirut
There's always room to expand the palate. There is no ceiling, there is no floor, there are no walls. You begin with one type of music, and then over the years, you keep pushing, and you discover new things. Some of the new expands your world by inches, and some of it by miles. It's all an unending process, and it's beautiful to behold. I started with rock 'n' roll. It sounded like one thing, and then, gradually, I came to understand that music sounds like that but also other things. It can sound the same and opposite. It can sound local and it can sound otherworldly. To the latter point, my first exposure was Beirut, and the almighty "Elephant Gun." It was close enough that I could reach out and touch it; it was far enough away that it felt like I had been uprooted and dropped in the middle of a strange land and I didn't have a map. My world has grown significantly since I first heard this song.
52. "Queen of Hearts" by Fucked Up
A running theme on this list—as you may have noticed, almost halfway into it now—is my attraction to songs that sound BIG. And better yet, songs that are big and fucking know it, and fucking lean into it. Fucked Up swings big on their hardcore punk rock opera David Comes to Life, and "Queen of Hearts" sets the scene. A romance whose flames are so intense that a lightbulb factory explodes... it's a whole thing, you gotta be there I guess. The best part about Fucked Up is they don't even have to do this. The band is tight and Damian Abraham's vocals are vicious. They could just be a regular ol' hardcore band. And yet they are out there doing this. I'm thankful.
51. "Boys in the Better Land" by Fontaines D.C.
I've had to let go of nights like this. It's been over 20 months and I haven't had a night that felt like the type of nights that the protagonist seems to be having pretty often here. It's something I've had to accept, and I have. It's fine. It's whatever. I'm still living my best life. But I've allowed myself some reminiscing lately. Absolutely not in a "I could maybe do......" way, which is fucked up and unhealthy. More like, hey, that was good, and, like, maybe allow myself to feel that energy again, at the very least to start brainstorming how I can get there without crossing any hard personal lines. I listen to "Boys in the Better Land," and I know I can get it. I know I can feel it again, without stepping too far. This is a song of hope, but just for me.
50. "How Many More Times" by Led Zeppelin
"It's a journey," he says, and you have no fucking clue what he's talking about. And you don't care, really, because it's 4:45 PM on a Friday and you just had the longest fucking week and now you're on the train platform waiting to get home to loved ones and start that small fraction of the long week that is traditionally blocked off for rest and relaxation. The weekend. But now this dude is saying some shit. He knows you're listening to that Led Zep tune. He's calling the song a journey, maybe. And it is. But it's unclear, because the week was a journey too. A struggle, as always. A struggle, like how the members of Zeppelin push and pull for attention here, the strangled yawlps of Plant and the unhinged Page riffs and the unleashed Bonham fills and the Jones bass pulling it tighter and tighter like strangulation. "A journey, man." Like the one you just had, earning a paycheck. Painful, yet satisfying, to get to the end. I think that's what he meant. I don't really care. It's the weekend.
49. "Banquet" by Bloc Party
This upcoming summer of 2025 will be 20 years with "Banquet" for me. And let's see, that was about two years after I had switched from playing just a single snare drum in grade school band to playing (or attempting to play) the full drum set in high school and beyond. And then I more or less quit after graduating college in 2011, with a couple cameo appearances after that, but not many. So it's been just about thirteen years since I've been officially "a drummer." It's been a while. And yet, when I hear "Banquet," even now, I am a drummer once again. I have heard this Matt Tong drum rhythm and all his little intricate fills thousands of times now. I can play the whole thing on the steering wheel of a car, or a cubicle desktop, or my thighs as a I sit and listen to the song while I'm trying to write a blurb for the song in the #49 spot of the Top 100 Songs of All Time list. I get to pretend. It's a good feeling.
48. "Lazy Eye" by Silversun Pickups
I don't like leaning on the idea of "here's what I've previously written about this song," or the idea of "here's where it was on a previous list, and here's how its ranking now compares to that previous ranking," but both are pretty interesting to consider here. First, I am pretty proud of the blurb I wrote for this song for the Top 100 of 2000s list. Check out the relevant portion of that list here and then Ctrl+F that shit. Note what was written, and then note that it was apparently the 69th-best song of that decade, but now it's the 48th-best song of all time. How does that make sense? Well, it makes sense in a lot of ways, but primarily, it's just that some songs age really well. If this song really is about the importance of my high school experience and how that importance changes shape the smaller it gets in the rearview mirror, than it makes sense that it would feel like an even better song six years later. And that maybe it cracks the Top 40 in another six years. Or maybe not. Maybe it just stands as one of those totems for a time long past. "I've been waiting for this moment / all my life." Like, c'mon. That kinda line just gets sadder and sadder every year.
47. "Doing It Right" by the Go! Team
This list took me like two weeks to put together, and now I'm forgetting what I've written about song higher up on the list. Did I write about high school yet? Lol jk jk, but seriously, did I write about Comcast OnDemand yet? There are certain songs that make me recall lazy Friday nights at a friend's house, when we'd be maybe drinking or maybe not, but regardless just hanging out, spending time together, not passively in front of the TV, but actively in front of the TV, taking turns with the Comcast remote, each choosing what music video we'd watch next. There were a surprising number of Joe K*** songs on there; the mid-aughts were a special time for "indie rock," probably this made-up genre's peak, in retrospect. But "Doing It Right" was one of those songs. The tune just felt like a party, like a pump-up jam, almost like we were bound for greater things on any given Friday night. And we swallowed the lie, because we knew that Friday night was gonna continue like this—hanging out, shooting the shit, watching music videos, nothing exciting—until curfew, and that was totally okay. But it was fun to pretend for a few minutes too.
46. "The Best of Me" by the Starting Line
Pam didn't attempt to get My Chemical Romance tickets because of the price, and I'm thankful for that, because they are expensive. But if you had asked me, I would've said that I wasn't interested in seeing the big nostalgic show because I wasn't part of that scene back in the day. I'm a latecomer, and an interloper, and more of an observer. I'm just some old dude who likes good music, ya know? Whereas seeing The Black Parade performed in full at Citizens Bank Park is for the former scene kids who lived that shit 20 years ago. I wasn't that teen. In fact, it's sort of become a sticking point between me and some of my hometown friends, those who actually were part of that scene (the "Warped Tour" scene, if you need to define it). Like, even if I said that "The Best of Me" has become of my favorite songs ever, and even if I had already, years ago, familiarized myself with Say It Like You Mean It, and was becoming well-versed in the emo and pop-punk shit of their youth, I would never in a million fucking years be invited by my friends to see a Starting Line anniversary show. Never. Because the lines were drawn in the sand long ago, and those lines were inscribed too deep to change now in some people's minds. The best of me looks like someone who is open to all musical experiences, and open to the beauty of a perfect song. But I don't blame anyone for not seeing the best in me like I see it. That's not their job.
45. "This Life" by Vampire Weekend
"Oh christ! / Am I good for nothing?" might be my favorite lyric from any song on this list. There are a few dimensions to the line. The first is that it is an existential cry for help, but it is contained in perhaps Vampire Weekend's bounciest and one of their most straight-up fun songs. The second is that it really does touch the soul in a painful way, a call to self-reflect, and consider whether you, the listener, feels worthless, and why you feel that way. Third, and most importantly, is its meaning when you remember the line that immediately precedes it: "I've been cheating through this life / and all its suffering." This is the level that I've since dug down into in the years since this song first hit my ears and caused me to fall in love. It's not just empty posturing, the pain. It is, in fact, a treatise on pain itself. What is pain? Vampire Weekend is saying that pain is what gives life meaning. And by saying that he has been avoiding that pain, the protagonist is questioning whether he's really been living life to the fullest, or if he's been cheating life because he's been cheating pain. And if that's the truth, well, then, that's fucking scary! Because who wants to be in pain? And who wants to consider the fact that life is hard, but only worth it because it is hard? The incredible Paul Simon-esque melody and rhythm is what makes "This Life" good. But its thoughts about What It All Means is what makes it the best.
44. "Constructive Summer" by the Hold Steady
Sometimes we'll drive past the Burholme water tower's base (it's a shortcut home from dance class) and Willow will be like, "Daddy, remember you said that you used to try to climb the water tower?" I guess I probably spoke about my teenage dreams to my daughter at one point, and you know how those types of things stick within their young developing brains, randomly, for unknown reasons. So this is where I'm at. I reminded of my long-gone youth of hopes and dreams ever once in a while by my daughter who is just starting to consider these ideas for her own young self. In this way, "Constructive Summer" is something I can pass down to future generations. Maybe neither of us will ever scale the barbed-wire fence and climb that tower in our lifetimes, but we can have a song that speaks to our tall dreams, and hope that we'll one day see them through to fruition.
43. "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows
Sneakily one of the best songs to emerge from '90s rock radio. I heard this song one thousand times as a child, but it took me till deep into adulthood to understand how passionate I am about this particular song, and why. As a kid, you hear the catchy hooks, and they are still there. But as an adult, you feel the power of the mystery and whirlwind confusion of growing up. I guess that's what I hear in "Mr. Jones." It seems trite to describe it that way, but that's what it is. The Mr. Jones may or may not even exist. He's at the very least a stand-in for the excitement of being able to explore the world with nothing holding you back. It's the sound of that time in your life when the world is your oyster. There's just so much to do and see! Notice that there isn't really a chorus on this song; it keeps coming back to the phrase "Mr. Jones and me," but then the lyrics after that are always different. Because there's just so much! When you're a kid, you can't imagine how free you'll feel when you grow up. And when you finally feel it, it's overwhelming. That's what "Mr. Jones" sounds like—being overwhelmed at how vast and wide and deep life truly is.
42. "6th Avenue Heartache" by the Wallflowers
I guess there's a chance that a lot of these songs are high up on the list because I've managed to convince myself that they are More Important than they actually are. At the beginning of this year, "6th Avenue Heartbreak" came to represent, for me, the power of music, and the privilege that music can in your life, if you know where to listen. One might argue that that's just me blowing smoke up my own ass when I'm tasked to write about a good song. I suppose it could just be true that "6th Avenue Heartache" is just a real good song, and doesn't amount to much beyond being catchy with an expressive hook. But that seems boring to me. Doesn't it seem boring? Wouldn't you rather listen to a good song and, instead of just saying "that's good!", say something like, "this song makes me know that life is worth living!"? That's what I get from this Wallflowers tune, and that's why it's one of the best. But I do acknowledge that saying something is "the best" is a choice that I make, and not a choice that most people have the wherewithal to make in the first place.
41. "Do You Realize??" by the Flaming Lips
I guess along those same lines, I'll say this: a lot of the songs toward the top of this list are going to be songs that attempt to answer the eternal question of "why are we here?", with a sub-question of "is it all worth it?" You've already seen the existential crisis re: this song, in real time, and yes, that is why this is the Flaming Lips song that appears so high on a Top 100 Songs list. It's catchy, it's epic, it's fun. But at a certain point, I need to acknowledge that the thing I appreciate most in music is that feeling that I get from the best songs that life is totally worth it. There is so much joy in what we're doing here (listening to music), and the best songs are self-aware in this regard. This song is explicitly self-aware about the beauty of the universe and the ways in which the song itself makes the universe even more beautiful.
40. "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen
I don't know how many Wildwood vacations I have left in me. It's just too much, man. It's too much being in the same house as my extended family for an entire week. Maybe things will get better as the kids grow older. Maybe things will get worse, the deeper I get into sobriety. I just don't know what the future holds. But the one thing I do know is that, every year we have left in that town, every car ride down there on the finite list of car rides remaining, all of them are going to end with the ritual of listening to "Thunder Road" as we cross the bridge into town.
This past summer was probably the first time the older kids were aware that this was a thing we did as a family. This was the first year they asked questions about it. And that made me choke up a little bit too, ya know? Because Pam always tells me about one time when she was driving down to Wildwood by herself, pregnant for the first time, and she had a vision of our future family as she crossed that bridge. Prior to that, she made fun of the ritual I had held true personally since I was a teen, but after that, the tradition ceased being about me and began its life as a true family tradition, together.
The premonition came true. There are five of us now, and we drive down the shore as a family, and we listen to this song when we finally make it. I don't know how many more times we'll be driving to Wildwood, but I know that we're always gonna make it, as a family.
39. "Vincent" by Car Seat Headrest
Okay, this is the time to tell you that there was an attempt at a "Top 100 Songs of All Time" list here on this blog back in 2016. Well, alright, it wasn't on PoYB, it was on a short-lived family blog that Pam and I attempted to run together back during the fall of that year. This was before I figured it was just easy to rope all my family and friends into Puke on Your Birthday, since it was the blog that we'd already had for a while, and thus it was easier to build its legacy. ANYWAY, anything I wrote on that other blog eventually ended up archived here, so that's what I linked for you at the beginning of this blurb. Note that you only see #100 through #81. I never got around to writing blurbs for the Top 80, and in the eight years in between, I lost the list. So I have no idea what songs were on the rest of this list! Maybe a lot of songs you'll see below.
Looking at those first 20 songs, though, there aren't many that ended up here at all. Maybe two? But see the Car Seat Headrest selection at #98. Not "Vincent," but "Drunk Drivers / Killer Whales." A great song off the same album, but, ya know, a lot can change over eight years. Maybe "Killer Whales" cracks the Top Ten Car Seat Headrest Songs list, maybe not. "Vincent," in the meantime, starts to sound more essential over time, with the drum fills being perfect for some aggressive steering-wheel banging, the meta line about the Van Gogh Wikipedia page being totally up my alley, the idea taking shape and form in the late '10s and early '20s that a desperate, aggressive, pedal-to-the-fucking-metal Car Seat Headrest is this artist at its peak.
I dunno, man! That's the beauty of archiving this shit, though. Eight years from now, I'll be looking back at this list, and I'll be like "NONE of these songs are on my current list wtf." And I just think that's so cool.
38. "Drunk II" by Mannequin Pussy
I'm pretty proud of my RC review for Mannequin Pussy's Patience, even though its less an album review and more an essay about "Drunk II" and coming to grips with my own alcoholism. One aspect to the essay that was a little underbaked, however, was the idea that I "used" people to drink. The terminology is probably too strong in that way, anyway. I think it was less about "using" people for an opportunity to drink, and more like that I "saw myself" in certain other people, and I took advantage of that by choosing to hang out with that type of person more often, since that meant I'd be more often drinking.
Okay, this is the time to tell you that there was an attempt at a "Top 100 Songs of All Time" list here on this blog back in 2016. Well, alright, it wasn't on PoYB, it was on a short-lived family blog that Pam and I attempted to run together back during the fall of that year. This was before I figured it was just easy to rope all my family and friends into Puke on Your Birthday, since it was the blog that we'd already had for a while, and thus it was easier to build its legacy. ANYWAY, anything I wrote on that other blog eventually ended up archived here, so that's what I linked for you at the beginning of this blurb. Note that you only see #100 through #81. I never got around to writing blurbs for the Top 80, and in the eight years in between, I lost the list. So I have no idea what songs were on the rest of this list! Maybe a lot of songs you'll see below.
Looking at those first 20 songs, though, there aren't many that ended up here at all. Maybe two? But see the Car Seat Headrest selection at #98. Not "Vincent," but "Drunk Drivers / Killer Whales." A great song off the same album, but, ya know, a lot can change over eight years. Maybe "Killer Whales" cracks the Top Ten Car Seat Headrest Songs list, maybe not. "Vincent," in the meantime, starts to sound more essential over time, with the drum fills being perfect for some aggressive steering-wheel banging, the meta line about the Van Gogh Wikipedia page being totally up my alley, the idea taking shape and form in the late '10s and early '20s that a desperate, aggressive, pedal-to-the-fucking-metal Car Seat Headrest is this artist at its peak.
I dunno, man! That's the beauty of archiving this shit, though. Eight years from now, I'll be looking back at this list, and I'll be like "NONE of these songs are on my current list wtf." And I just think that's so cool.
38. "Drunk II" by Mannequin Pussy
I'm pretty proud of my RC review for Mannequin Pussy's Patience, even though its less an album review and more an essay about "Drunk II" and coming to grips with my own alcoholism. One aspect to the essay that was a little underbaked, however, was the idea that I "used" people to drink. The terminology is probably too strong in that way, anyway. I think it was less about "using" people for an opportunity to drink, and more like that I "saw myself" in certain other people, and I took advantage of that by choosing to hang out with that type of person more often, since that meant I'd be more often drinking.
That still seems too strong of a way to put it. I wasn't taking advantage either. It honestly just boils down to empathy. I like hanging out with likeminded people. Which I think is pretty normal? It just gets complicated when the thing you are likeminded about is the penchant to drink too much. Now that I'm not drinking too much in any sense, the opposite complications arise—how can I still hang out with the friends I love without appearing in any way judgmental of the actions that it is totally their right to participate in regardless of my own actions and how my own actions took me down a dark path? I will not abandon my relationship with anyone; that's not the type of person I am. But I need to be better at separating the judgment I hold for myself with any sense of perceived judgment I might have toward others.
And I think the same mindset applies to a song like "Drunk II." I can still have a relationship with this thing, even if I see within it my own worst impulses. There's so much value in a good song beyond "I am a fuck-up just like its protagonist!" That would be so reductive, to think that way. I hear "Drunk II," and I feel joy in the understanding that humans are complicated, and that we're all just out here trying out best.
37. "The Flinch" by Dave Hause
I don't think that it requires bravery to listen to music. Maybe that's just me approaching the act of listening to music as a private thing that I get to do on my own a lot of the time. Unless you live in a country where certain types of music are literally illegal (not America... yet?), then I can't imagine a scenario in which someone listens to a song or an album or an artist and someone else witnesses that act and says, "Wow, so brave." Like, even if you're going out of your way to listen to music that is looked down upon by others for whatever reason, that's not courage, that's just a difference of opinion.
But I do think that music can do a great job at speaking to the idea of bravery. And I think there are very few songs that speak about bravery in such a comfortable yet engaging way as "The Flinch." Dave Hause is your everyman rocker, and I don't think his music is ever going to set the world on fire. But being a relative nobody means that Hause has his boots on the ground, and he understands what's it's like for people like us. He's just some fucking Philly dude, you know? I find a kinship. When he sings about not flinching anymore at life's hardships, I take him seriously.
And I really do think that it has a way of inspiring. At least, I hope it does—this was the first song that my middle child ever heard, and it was specifically chosen for her in the hopes that it'll inspire her, when she's older, to be brave. The act of listening to "The Flinch" is the opposite of brave! We were very comfortable in that hospital room, listening to this song, almost exactly five years ago. But in listening to the song, I still hope it inspires courage in whoever hears it, whether that's me or that's a baby or whoever.
36. "Swan Dive" by Waxahatchee
The first thought it probably that this is a song about suicide, which is always a tough pill to swallow. Maybe the dark themes are softened by the fact that these ideas are expressed through a dream—not a literal fall to your death, but the discomfort of constant nightmares about such an act. I dunno, man. Waxahatchee, the beautiful poet that she is, neither explains herself, nor needs to explain. It's just something to parse through on your own time. In fact, I think that's what's going on here. The protagonist and her partner are going through it, and they are trying to figure out if the bad dreams are a sign or just coincidence.
I've always wanted to keep a journal by my bedside, in an attempt to record immediate reactions to dreams. This personal aspiration has been put on hold in recent years, now that a full night of sleep is rare, and dreams are even rarer. But maybe I'll get them back eventually. Or maybe I don't need them. Dream journals are just another way to try to figure yourself out, right? And I think I already have that in music. I can hear a song like "Swan Dive," and I can try to consider why such a song would be important to me. Like, figure out what it says about me. Why do Waxy's "oooh-ooooh" choruses affect me so deeply? I don't know. But the hook is written down in the journal in my brain, and I return to it often, to figure out what it all means, and who I am.
35. "Fear and Trembling" by Gang of Youths
"I feel it all / I feel everything." I keep returning to a tweet I saw recently (in the act of doomscrolling, which I feel like I've also taken decent steps at curbing) in which some rightwing dude was like "you ever notice how conservative women are happier than liberal women?" and someone responded "yeah it's because they don't carry the burden of caring about other people or having a conscience or empathy." Some of the truths contained in these tweets are dubious or hyperbolic, but I still think about it a lot, because I've been thinking about how just the very act of knowing, the possession of knowledge, can be such a fucking albatross sometimes. There's a reason a lot of intelligent people are also alcoholics who drink to forget.
When I hear a song that says something like "I feel everything," then it absolutely makes sense that it would be contained within a song called "Fear and Trembling." It also makes sense that it's a song that features one of the most intense tempo-changes I've ever heard in a rock 'n' roll song—it's like this dude is trying to outrun the horrors that he is doomed to know. Clearly, just based on the writerly descriptions contained within, there is intelligence here. You can't write this type of song if you don't have the brain chemistry for it. What I'm saying is that it all makes sense, when I think about it this way. That a song like this could be relatable in many ways, but mostly in the way that feeling everything can be its own specific kind of burden.
34. "When You Were Young" by the Killers
I guess I never really considered what the line "he doesn't look a thing like Jesus" might mean. I don't mean to say that it has a hidden meaning, or that it's "so deep" or whatever. Reading through the lyrics now, I'm seeing that this is more or less a romance song, how the protagonist's expectations are not met by her lover, and so on. What I mean to say is that there is occasionally a very wide gap between what a song "means" and what it "means to me." Those are necessarily the same. That's okay. That's our prerogative as the listeners.
36. "Swan Dive" by Waxahatchee
The first thought it probably that this is a song about suicide, which is always a tough pill to swallow. Maybe the dark themes are softened by the fact that these ideas are expressed through a dream—not a literal fall to your death, but the discomfort of constant nightmares about such an act. I dunno, man. Waxahatchee, the beautiful poet that she is, neither explains herself, nor needs to explain. It's just something to parse through on your own time. In fact, I think that's what's going on here. The protagonist and her partner are going through it, and they are trying to figure out if the bad dreams are a sign or just coincidence.
I've always wanted to keep a journal by my bedside, in an attempt to record immediate reactions to dreams. This personal aspiration has been put on hold in recent years, now that a full night of sleep is rare, and dreams are even rarer. But maybe I'll get them back eventually. Or maybe I don't need them. Dream journals are just another way to try to figure yourself out, right? And I think I already have that in music. I can hear a song like "Swan Dive," and I can try to consider why such a song would be important to me. Like, figure out what it says about me. Why do Waxy's "oooh-ooooh" choruses affect me so deeply? I don't know. But the hook is written down in the journal in my brain, and I return to it often, to figure out what it all means, and who I am.
35. "Fear and Trembling" by Gang of Youths
"I feel it all / I feel everything." I keep returning to a tweet I saw recently (in the act of doomscrolling, which I feel like I've also taken decent steps at curbing) in which some rightwing dude was like "you ever notice how conservative women are happier than liberal women?" and someone responded "yeah it's because they don't carry the burden of caring about other people or having a conscience or empathy." Some of the truths contained in these tweets are dubious or hyperbolic, but I still think about it a lot, because I've been thinking about how just the very act of knowing, the possession of knowledge, can be such a fucking albatross sometimes. There's a reason a lot of intelligent people are also alcoholics who drink to forget.
When I hear a song that says something like "I feel everything," then it absolutely makes sense that it would be contained within a song called "Fear and Trembling." It also makes sense that it's a song that features one of the most intense tempo-changes I've ever heard in a rock 'n' roll song—it's like this dude is trying to outrun the horrors that he is doomed to know. Clearly, just based on the writerly descriptions contained within, there is intelligence here. You can't write this type of song if you don't have the brain chemistry for it. What I'm saying is that it all makes sense, when I think about it this way. That a song like this could be relatable in many ways, but mostly in the way that feeling everything can be its own specific kind of burden.
34. "When You Were Young" by the Killers
I guess I never really considered what the line "he doesn't look a thing like Jesus" might mean. I don't mean to say that it has a hidden meaning, or that it's "so deep" or whatever. Reading through the lyrics now, I'm seeing that this is more or less a romance song, how the protagonist's expectations are not met by her lover, and so on. What I mean to say is that there is occasionally a very wide gap between what a song "means" and what it "means to me." Those are necessarily the same. That's okay. That's our prerogative as the listeners.
I know that this feels more like a film than a song, for me. It has a cinematic quality; you can taste the layer of dust that has settled over the scene as we pan the camera across the desert town that it takes place in. There is a sense of adventure in the song that is irrevocably tied to the time in which I first heard it—yes, okay, fine, I heard it when I was young. I know nostalgia is beyond commodified at this point, but when I strip away the consumerism (e.g. that there is literally a fucking festival series named after this song), I still get to hold onto the emotional core of the thing, which is "I felt young and free when I fell in love with this song." That's cliché but it's fucking true.
I don't think that's what the Killers were going for here. That's all I'm trying to say. I feel certain emotions when I hear it, and those emotions are incongruous with the lyrics on the page. I think that's fine.
33. "Teen Age Riot" by Sonic Youth
The 80-second intro makes this song untenable for party playlists. I suspect that this is by design. No time for such pedestrian concerns as "music for the background while you eat chips and dip." Not while Sonic Youth is explaining the universe.
33. "Teen Age Riot" by Sonic Youth
The 80-second intro makes this song untenable for party playlists. I suspect that this is by design. No time for such pedestrian concerns as "music for the background while you eat chips and dip." Not while Sonic Youth is explaining the universe.
In order to prepare for the creation of this list, I made a playlist with almost 250 songs, and spent a decent amount of time over the past six months playing it on shuffle, maybe a couple times a month, just gently sifting through the pile to see if any gold emerged. The timing was sweet on this one. I had been hanging out with a high school friend, one whom I had become tight with during a very specific time of my teenage years, and I was driving home from her parents' house, in 2024, just like I had a few times back in like 2007, and this song hit, and I was just fully fucking transported back into the past.
I think that there are songs that "you listened to when you were younger" (see: most songs on here). But there are certain songs that get way more specific than that. For me, this song, "Teen Age Riot," sounds like cigarette smoke tastes. I probably had the out-of-body experience a couple months ago because I similarly had the taste of cigarette on my tongue, and all the senses were working together to bring me back to that middle-period of senior year, when everything suddenly came together for me. It was one of those times in my life when I could touch the infinite and I fucking knew it. This is the song.
I'm listening now and the feeling is obviously nowhere near as strong. There are diminishing returns with this kind of thing, if you try to force it. But I'm not trying to force it, I swear. I am in touch with my past, but I don't lean on it. I'm not a teen, and I'm far less riotous.
32. "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan
I always thought that this would be a good karaoke song. Well, no, I guess it depends on the audience. Those attending a karaoke session in which I attempt "Like a Rolling Stone" would be required to have patience, since it's a long song, and I'm a bad singer. But the thought usually crosses my mind, because I know the song pretty well, having heard it approximately one million times since I was a young lad. And I'd like to imagine that I know all the different cadences and reflections that a similarly young Bob Dylan spits out during this six-minute opus.
I'm listening now and the feeling is obviously nowhere near as strong. There are diminishing returns with this kind of thing, if you try to force it. But I'm not trying to force it, I swear. I am in touch with my past, but I don't lean on it. I'm not a teen, and I'm far less riotous.
32. "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan
I always thought that this would be a good karaoke song. Well, no, I guess it depends on the audience. Those attending a karaoke session in which I attempt "Like a Rolling Stone" would be required to have patience, since it's a long song, and I'm a bad singer. But the thought usually crosses my mind, because I know the song pretty well, having heard it approximately one million times since I was a young lad. And I'd like to imagine that I know all the different cadences and reflections that a similarly young Bob Dylan spits out during this six-minute opus.
Because the dude sings kinda funny! We don't talk about this enough. He's been a legend for sixty years now, and so the eccentricities have perhaps been sanded down from our consciousness, but still—the pronunciation on so many words on "Like a Rolling Stone" are just so goddamn silly. Right? And that's what I mean when I say that I would be good singing this. Because I know how he says certain words, and when. "You're inVISable now, you got no SEcrets, to con-cealllllllll" and then Dylan and his studio band crashing into the chorus a half-beat off from each other. I can read the lyrics on the page and I can hear it as clear as day, every single goofy-ass word.
Not to diminish the SERIOUSNESS of the situation. The boomers and their collective sense of importance when they hear the song that could almost certainly define their generation if you wanted it to. The obtuse poetry that could mean one thing or another but most people choosing to read it like it's a mission statement about the '60s or whatever. I mean, am I off with any of this? And, more importantly: is it wrong to say that I just love this song because it sounds good, and not because it's "important"? I've made the opposite argument all over this goddamn list, but sometimes I just hate boomers so much that I'm willing to be an asshole contrarian just to see 'em sweat. And, like, I'm saying that it's the 32nd-best song of all time, so there's really no reason for anyone to be upset.
31. "Float On" by Modest Mouse
Maybe one of the flaws in Yearlong Song Challenge is that some of the prompts make it too easy to choose songs that you love but that are also mega-popular. Which is fine, when that happens, because good people like good music and it's always nice to sit down on a Monday morning and listen to a song that everyone already loves and enjoys (because it is a good song). But that stymies the sense of musical discovery a little bit. I love sharing music but it's not really "sharing" if the other person has already had their fill for the past twenty years or more.
31. "Float On" by Modest Mouse
Maybe one of the flaws in Yearlong Song Challenge is that some of the prompts make it too easy to choose songs that you love but that are also mega-popular. Which is fine, when that happens, because good people like good music and it's always nice to sit down on a Monday morning and listen to a song that everyone already loves and enjoys (because it is a good song). But that stymies the sense of musical discovery a little bit. I love sharing music but it's not really "sharing" if the other person has already had their fill for the past twenty years or more.
I don't have many non-meta things to say about "Float On" that I didn't already say when I chose the song as an answer for a YSC prompt. I already said what I had to say. I think it was important to say it—that the song works for a large audience because it speaks to some universal truth about our species, and though it was written ironically, its long life as a sincere anthem suits it, and me, very well. But I also wonder if picking a song that everyone and their goddamn mothers has had imprinted in their brains since the mid-aughts was doing our little group here a disservice. Listening to "Float On," again, meant that you didn't expand your horizons.
But the universe is infinite both expanding outward and expanding inward, and so I'll take the opportunity to explore the self over the opportunity to explore some new music, for the most part. I guess that's why I'm making this list—you're not necessarily learning more about music, since you know most of these songs, but you are learning a little something about me. Let's see what the final 30 songs can teach us.
30. "Four Score and Seven" by Titus Andronicus
It's weird how distant a "favorite songs" list can be from a "favorite artists" list. But they are such different questions! Favorite Artist requires consistency, and regular high points. Favorite Song can be a flash in the pan, an outlier. Titus Andronicus has so many songs that I'd consider some of my Favorite. Stretch this Top Songs All Time list to maybe 250 songs, and Titus easily has the most songs on there. They might even land at #1 on a Top Artists All Time list, were I to make one (I won't). And yet "Four Score and Seven" is the only +@ song on this list. Why?
30. "Four Score and Seven" by Titus Andronicus
It's weird how distant a "favorite songs" list can be from a "favorite artists" list. But they are such different questions! Favorite Artist requires consistency, and regular high points. Favorite Song can be a flash in the pan, an outlier. Titus Andronicus has so many songs that I'd consider some of my Favorite. Stretch this Top Songs All Time list to maybe 250 songs, and Titus easily has the most songs on there. They might even land at #1 on a Top Artists All Time list, were I to make one (I won't). And yet "Four Score and Seven" is the only +@ song on this list. Why?
Who cares, man. It's a good song. It's the 30th-best song of all time. It's fucking EPIC. It's the lynchpin of the album-length Civil War metaphor. "This is a war we can't win" is part of that metaphor because it applies to life! Sonically, this song fucking rocks! Witness that drum roll in the middle that signals a switch into overdrive! The lyrics "Fuck! I'm frustrated, freaking' out something fierce!" are a great alliteration! This great lurching beast of a song has been pounding my soul for almost fifteen years now.
We've rehashed The Monitor on this blog too many times to count, and I can't do it again. I'm sorry. I've written about it so many times that I'm starting to maybe even consider that it's not even my favorite Titus Andronicus album anymore. Too much! I am going to stop now! But here's one for the newbies, those who missed all that coverage in between March 2010 and now, and who want to know more. Why is Titus Andronicus one of my favorite bands? "Four Score and Seven" is a pretty great place to start.
29. "American Girl" by Tom Petty
I have no idea if I've ever heard this song while drinking at Keenan's, but when I think about "American Girl," I picture myself at Keenan's. The North Wildwood bar, the one where a few blog posts have already taken place at. It's not like I've had too many wild nights there, but I've had a few, and I guess technically there's a chance that I've been on the dance floor when this song hits. An equal chance, maybe, that it's a fever dream.
29. "American Girl" by Tom Petty
I have no idea if I've ever heard this song while drinking at Keenan's, but when I think about "American Girl," I picture myself at Keenan's. The North Wildwood bar, the one where a few blog posts have already taken place at. It's not like I've had too many wild nights there, but I've had a few, and I guess technically there's a chance that I've been on the dance floor when this song hits. An equal chance, maybe, that it's a fever dream.
Here's how I picture myself: I am on the perimeter of the dance floor, and I have maybe a cold Miller Lite bottle in my hand, and I hear the immortal drum beat of "American Girl" come in, and I'm walking through the dance floor, and I see so many friends and family, and the song, man, the song sets that scene perfectly, so fucking cool, like the coolest goddamn song, something about that rhythm intertwined with the jangling guitar, it feels cool, and in that moment, real or hypothetical, I feel cool. I'm the coolest motherfucker in the world, out on that dance floor, and it's not because I'm actually cool, it's because it's a cool song, and the coolness from the song seeps through every fucking inch of me, every fucking pore, I am cool now too, I am cool, just like Tom Petty, the coolest fuck to ever slink his way tipsily across the slick dance floor of Keenan's Irish Pub.
I don't know if that happened or if I made it up. I don't know if there's a chance that it could ever happen, either for the first time or again. I don't know if I'll ever feel as cool as I imagine I might in that moment. Probably not. But when I hear "American Girl," even if I'm just sitting in my pajamas on my laptop, I hear it and I really do feel like the coolest motherfucker on the planet.
28. "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus
I had written down somewhere on the vast store of digital scraps of paper scattered all over the internet that a "fun fact" about me is that "my karaoke song was 'Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus" and so on and so on, and while I know that plenty of people on this blog had ample opportunity to call me on my shit when it came to this fact, I am now thinking of an off-blog conversation (it happens sometimes! I know! weird!) in which an acquaintance tried quizzing me, like right off the bat, and she's like "can you name the movie that features the song 'Teenage Dirtbag'?" and I'm like, c'mon, that's fucking child's play, I know "Teenage Dirtbag," I know the dumb fucking movie, come at me with some tougher bullshit than that, let's fucking go.
28. "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus
I had written down somewhere on the vast store of digital scraps of paper scattered all over the internet that a "fun fact" about me is that "my karaoke song was 'Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus" and so on and so on, and while I know that plenty of people on this blog had ample opportunity to call me on my shit when it came to this fact, I am now thinking of an off-blog conversation (it happens sometimes! I know! weird!) in which an acquaintance tried quizzing me, like right off the bat, and she's like "can you name the movie that features the song 'Teenage Dirtbag'?" and I'm like, c'mon, that's fucking child's play, I know "Teenage Dirtbag," I know the dumb fucking movie, come at me with some tougher bullshit than that, let's fucking go.
But I didn't react like that, because that would be... well, that would be very sad, to get defensive about such a dumb song, even if the defensiveness would be slightly ironic. But also, to say "I've already written 1000 reasons why I love this song" to try to prove my bona fides would in turn force me to reveal to this relative stranger that I have a blog, and I try to get at least 90 minutes of friendly face-to-face time in before I casually mention that Puke on Your Birthday exists and that you can totally write for it if you're ever bored but no big deal it's cool it's cool.
Mentioning the blog would........... I mean, I hate to pull this shit with too many blurbs on this list, but, it would make me feel like a LOSER!!!! Do you see what I did there? Do ya? Do ya? Oooooooooooooooh yeah, dirtbag! No she doesn't know what she's missing by doubting my Wheatus prowess.
27. "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem
Oh gosh, this is the most boring pick. Not boring musically, but boring like from a critical perspective. I don't think anyone was sitting around in 2007 proclaiming that they were too good for this shit. It's a song for everyone. Every person who has ever heard "All My Friends" has it on their potential Top 100 Songs All Time list. It's just that type of song.
27. "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem
Oh gosh, this is the most boring pick. Not boring musically, but boring like from a critical perspective. I don't think anyone was sitting around in 2007 proclaiming that they were too good for this shit. It's a song for everyone. Every person who has ever heard "All My Friends" has it on their potential Top 100 Songs All Time list. It's just that type of song.
And I am just that type of person. For I was young once, and that "once" was approx. 2007, so I was there. I wasn't in the cool niche corners of Brooklyn, I wasn't on the scene, but I was in that mind space, emotionally speaking. I was able to hear a song about appreciating your loved ones and making an honest attempt to hold onto as many of them as you can while the waves of times constantly crash into you and then pull back, taking many people you care about with them, so that all of a sudden you're old and you can count the number of close friends you have with one hand. This is a song in the moment before that. It's talking about emotions that you wish you knew you were feeling in the present tense.
I have taken the lessons from this song to heart. I have tried harder than anyone to keep the people I care about close to me. It's not easy. It's not easy for anyone. But I'm fucking trying. Every night, I wish I could see all my friends tonight. But life is like a train, barreling down the track, sounding like the constant pulse of a piano riff, shaky at times but constant, constant, and there's nothing you can do to stop it, not the train, not the piano, not the song that correctly predicts what happens to you when you're no longer a kid, no longer wild and free.
26. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by the Band
I am once again performing my annual self-audit regarding my love of this song. No, I don't think it's political. No, I don't think it needs to be political. Just because the Civil War was fought because the Confederacy wanted the right to own human beings as slaves, which is wrong, and it was good the Confederacy lost the way because of that... I also think that this is a very human story that doesn't have anything to do with that ideology. Obviously. It's just a story that attempts to consider the idea that sometimes humans are complex creatures, and get wrapped up in shit that's bigger than them, and that doesn't mean that their humanity is completely stripped from them in the process.
26. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by the Band
I am once again performing my annual self-audit regarding my love of this song. No, I don't think it's political. No, I don't think it needs to be political. Just because the Civil War was fought because the Confederacy wanted the right to own human beings as slaves, which is wrong, and it was good the Confederacy lost the way because of that... I also think that this is a very human story that doesn't have anything to do with that ideology. Obviously. It's just a story that attempts to consider the idea that sometimes humans are complex creatures, and get wrapped up in shit that's bigger than them, and that doesn't mean that their humanity is completely stripped from them in the process.
We had a parent-teacher conference the other day for our first grader. It was my first as a parent (the preschool and kindergarten conferences happening over the phone with Pam). It was mostly just pleasant chit-chat. But we were talking about the children's book series that they are reading as a class (because Willow then comes home and tells us all about them), and the teacher said that sometimes, the books will use the word "stupid," and she made it clear that she'll either skip over that word or substitute the word "silly." This was a mild warning, just in case Santa Claus left a Junie B. Jones book or two under the tree—she says the word "stupid."
I get why she had to say it—Catholic school and all—but it still felt kinda stupid to me. I gave some gentle pushback. I didn't argue that my kid had any use for the word "stupid" (and I don't even think that she should be allowed to, at least not right now, at least around us... but code-switching between situations with peers and situations with adults is an idea that will come in time), but I did argue that the idea of "this is a character in a story with a different POV" is something that even a first grader can hopefully grasp. Like, maybe she doesn't say "stupid" herself but is generally aware that there are kids out there using the word "stupid" and that's okay because you can't control anyone else's actions, just your own, and so Junie B. is providing her a choice, to use the word and be like the stupid kid who uses it in the book, or be kind, and not call anyone "stupid," even though all kids by and large are pretty stupid.
The point I'm trying to make here with this too-long anecdote is that this is just a fucking story. It's a good song and it's not trying to make any sort of political point, it's just telling a story. Just because I like a song about a fictional family who lived in the South during the Civil War doesn't mean I think slavery should be legal. It's a story! We can learn from it! From the characters in it! Don't you see, teacher?! Don't you see how important it is to provide the art as is so that we can view ourselves within it, not literally but emotionally, see ourselves in the heartbreak and the joy and the struggle??!?!
25. "Stay Useless" by Cloud Nothings
The song is catchy, and infinitely repeatable. This is a good thing, because it's been twelve years, and I cannot stop thinking about this song, trying to parse through it and figure out what it means, and I wouldn't be so obsessed with trying to figure it out if I wasn't able to repeat it so many times while I'm on the hunt. There are plenty of interesting songs out there, but most of them are not as pleasant on the third listen as "Stay Useless" is on its 300,000th.
Okay, so what is the song about? "I need time to stop moving / I need time to stay useless." The knee-jerk reaction is to say that this is a nostalgia thing—time is moving too quickly, and so much of our rose-colored past has already been lost, so this is a call to stop the bleeding. Maybe! Seems a little trite, though, especially because that doesn't consider the second part of the chorus. I need time to stay useless. "Stay" is the key word. So it's always been useless? If you're missing the past, then you can't possibly think that. It would be a contradiction. Maybe "stop moving" means that today is a really good day, and if time doesn't mean anything, then this good day will never end? Sound good, until you check out the verses, which paint a picture of a very not good day. Genius.com says that "time is anxiety-inducing," and that's true! But this song feels packed with anxiety, and so why would it need to stay that way? Or maybe it's been useless, and that's what's making him anxious, and the anxiety is a good thing? Anxiety that fuels the artist to greatness? Could it be that the gap between the seemingly contradictory "stop moving" and "stay useless" is itself supposed to signify that time means nothing, and that we need to live in the moment if we want to survive?
All that shit that I just typed is a lot, and probably most of it doesn't make sense. But this is what this fucking song does to me! A lot of the songs on this list are "this means a lot to me because it speaks to my truth" or some such as that. "Stay Useless" is high on the list for opposite reasons—I cannot describe why this is important to me, and at this point I doubt I ever will, but it still feels right to me, for reasons I'll never understand. This is a blurb of acceptance.
24. "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles
LOL, the sole Beatles song on this list is a cover that they did early in their career. It's not even a Beatles song! It's an Isley Brothers song, it's a Burholme song, it's a Ferris Bueller song, but it's not a Beatles song.
I gave up that Beatles column, but even if I had gone the full 100 songs (maybe one day), we never would've gotten to "Twist and Shout," since the arbitrary rules that the column's source book was that cover songs don't count in the Beatles canon. And so I thought it would be pretty funny if the only song performed by the most important rock band in modern recorded history was a cover song. Hopefully you see it as the canary in the coal mine that it is for this list—shit's not serious, don't take it that way.
All that shit that I just typed is a lot, and probably most of it doesn't make sense. But this is what this fucking song does to me! A lot of the songs on this list are "this means a lot to me because it speaks to my truth" or some such as that. "Stay Useless" is high on the list for opposite reasons—I cannot describe why this is important to me, and at this point I doubt I ever will, but it still feels right to me, for reasons I'll never understand. This is a blurb of acceptance.
24. "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles
LOL, the sole Beatles song on this list is a cover that they did early in their career. It's not even a Beatles song! It's an Isley Brothers song, it's a Burholme song, it's a Ferris Bueller song, but it's not a Beatles song.
I gave up that Beatles column, but even if I had gone the full 100 songs (maybe one day), we never would've gotten to "Twist and Shout," since the arbitrary rules that the column's source book was that cover songs don't count in the Beatles canon. And so I thought it would be pretty funny if the only song performed by the most important rock band in modern recorded history was a cover song. Hopefully you see it as the canary in the coal mine that it is for this list—shit's not serious, don't take it that way.
The other Beatles song that could've theoretically made it, especially if I had tacked on maybe song numbers 101 through 120, was "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey." The opening line to that song is probably the most fitting here in this blurb: "C'mon, it's such a joy, c'mon, it's such a joy." That's why we're really here, ya know? I just find such joy in these songs, such utter fucking joy, that I don't mind wasting weeks of my life putting a list of 'em together for you. "Twist and Shout" is a cover song, and it ain't that deep. In the scope of my life, and the joy that I try to find while I'm living that life, "Twist and Shout" is probably the deepest song that's ever existed.
23. "Four Winds" by Bright Eyes
Oh shit, is this my favorite country song of all time? This thought literally only just occurred to me, right this second, right before I typed these past two sentences. I mean, there aren't very many songs I like better than "Four Winds," that's not what I'm questioning. It's the descriptor of "country." Would you call this country music? I mean, I guess not. It's the violin that does it for me. You don't usual think "violin" when you think of country music, but violin is pretty close to the fiddle, which is more socially acceptable within the country genre. "Four Winds" is country in the same way that Bob Dylan's Desire is country—sort of, kind of, not really.
"Four Winds" is also areligious, and possibly even anti-religious, so that doesn't jive with our modern understanding of country music either, so entrenched is it now in the bootlicking cultures of the far-right. But regardless. I mean, why would this even matter to me? I guess it doesn't. Genre is not important. A great song can come from any genre. I know that you aren't seeing too many genres beyond indie rock today, but that's my fault. Just because it doesn't shouldn't mean it couldn't, if ya catch my drift. The ol' Ratatouille / American Fiction dichotomy.
23. "Four Winds" by Bright Eyes
Oh shit, is this my favorite country song of all time? This thought literally only just occurred to me, right this second, right before I typed these past two sentences. I mean, there aren't very many songs I like better than "Four Winds," that's not what I'm questioning. It's the descriptor of "country." Would you call this country music? I mean, I guess not. It's the violin that does it for me. You don't usual think "violin" when you think of country music, but violin is pretty close to the fiddle, which is more socially acceptable within the country genre. "Four Winds" is country in the same way that Bob Dylan's Desire is country—sort of, kind of, not really.
"Four Winds" is also areligious, and possibly even anti-religious, so that doesn't jive with our modern understanding of country music either, so entrenched is it now in the bootlicking cultures of the far-right. But regardless. I mean, why would this even matter to me? I guess it doesn't. Genre is not important. A great song can come from any genre. I know that you aren't seeing too many genres beyond indie rock today, but that's my fault. Just because it doesn't shouldn't mean it couldn't, if ya catch my drift. The ol' Ratatouille / American Fiction dichotomy.
I've said this before, on previous lists like this, that "Four Winds" soundtracks a specific memory I have in my mind. The memory is filled with crime and so I'll have patience with younger versions of myself and not repeat it, but suffice it to say that I was with friends, and we were younger, and we felt pretty in tune with the wide expanse of the universe. And so there was "Four Winds."
But if you backtrack a few weeks or months from that memory, you'll see me, seventeen-year-old loser, sitting down at a lunch table with a few kids I barely knew, and eventually, after a few minutes of shooting the shit, finding commonality in a love for the new Bright Eyes album. So while "Four Winds" generally sounds like Conor Oberst doing his best to tear down everything he's ever known, "Four Winds" to me personally is the sound of a new world being built. New connections, new friendships, new bonds, built over a love of music. Maybe that dangerous ride down I-95 would've still happened if we didn't have "Four Winds," or maybe not. But I can say that there was a reason that "Four Winds" soundtracks that particular memory. It's not just a coincidence. It is, instead, a symbol of the bonds of brotherhood that we form over shit like this. Even if it's temporary. Even if it's country music.
22. "Casey" by the Menzingers
"I bet I sound like a broken record, every time I open my mouth." This is the line that stood out to me on this go-around. That's basically what this entire list amounts to—constant repetition. I've already written about most of these songs. I'm writing about them again because they are good enough to persist at the forefront of my brain and ears, important enough to mean something to me, which motivates me to keep listening, and keep remembering, and keep writing, over and over, like a broken record.
I bring this up in the "Casey" blurb, not only because of that lyric, but because the song is about the idea of not being able to repeat. This is a "remember the old days" song, framed within a specific relationship that appears to be long gone. The protagonist is grappling with the idea that there are moments and people and places in your life that are just fucking gone, you can never go back. You can't repeat. Oh sure, there are daydreams about it. "Just tell me when you're ready, I'm all packed to go / To search for that old place we found forever ago." But me and you both know that's mostly bullshit. The protagonist will eventually know it too. We can hear him working his way through it in real time.
21. "She Moves in Her Own Way" by the Kooks
Before we crack the Top 20, let's take a moment to acknowledge and give a nice little shoutout to all those songs who found their way onto this vaunted list on the backs of nostalgia alone. Not every song means something. Sometimes, a song is just enjoyable because you found it during a pivotal moment in your life, and so you forevermore use the song as a crowbar to open up the big dusty box that holds the memory of that moment, and you feel good because you get to revisit a feeling that maybe you'd forgotten about, and so the song becomes one of "the best" due to this function, which is an important one, but still, it possibly says very little about the song itself, and shines the spotlight to brightly on the listener and their own personal experiences.
I had a friend named Casey and I haven't seen her in years. Maybe the idea of having to write this blurb in the coming days spurned me to reach out to her, to see how she's been. We're gonna catch lunch in a couple minutes. Things won't ever be how they were back then, but maybe they can be something else. This isn't a sad song. It's a wistful song, but it can be a song of hope, if you choose to see it that way.
21. "She Moves in Her Own Way" by the Kooks
Before we crack the Top 20, let's take a moment to acknowledge and give a nice little shoutout to all those songs who found their way onto this vaunted list on the backs of nostalgia alone. Not every song means something. Sometimes, a song is just enjoyable because you found it during a pivotal moment in your life, and so you forevermore use the song as a crowbar to open up the big dusty box that holds the memory of that moment, and you feel good because you get to revisit a feeling that maybe you'd forgotten about, and so the song becomes one of "the best" due to this function, which is an important one, but still, it possibly says very little about the song itself, and shines the spotlight to brightly on the listener and their own personal experiences.
"She Moves in Her Own Way" is one of those songs. It's not high-minded. It's a simple love song about a connection that is pure and innocent. The big action in the chorus is that the singer's girlfriend visited him to say hi. That's it! It's nice. It's very nice in a very nice way. It's pleasant. It's catchy, as many simple love songs are. I like it and I would've liked it if I had discovered it at an imperfect age—imagine 67-year-old Joe, stopping to consider the new Kooks single, and saying something along the lines of "hmm, that's nice."
It's a simple song about love. Except in the bridge. That's where I think things get a little tricky (in a good way!). "I wish that we never made it through all the summers." This feels like a dark turn. It also feels like a flashforward. All of a sudden, the carefree days of innocence are gone, and the protagonist is older and wiser now, and he's looking back, years into the past, at those same carefree days, and he's expressing something along the lines of regret. The bridge sits there, unobtrusive, almost unnoticeable if you're a seventeen-year-old and you can't possibly imagine looking back on those days as the best of your life. But it happens to all of us.
It's a simple song about love. Except in the bridge. That's where I think things get a little tricky (in a good way!). "I wish that we never made it through all the summers." This feels like a dark turn. It also feels like a flashforward. All of a sudden, the carefree days of innocence are gone, and the protagonist is older and wiser now, and he's looking back, years into the past, at those same carefree days, and he's expressing something along the lines of regret. The bridge sits there, unobtrusive, almost unnoticeable if you're a seventeen-year-old and you can't possibly imagine looking back on those days as the best of your life. But it happens to all of us.
See, there I go again, attempting to inject meaning into a song. I'm really just trying to justify its inclusion at #21 on this list, and I'm afraid to give you the real reason, which is dumb and means nothing to anyone except me. Which is my right, but, ya know, there's a limit in scope with that as well. I could tell you that I've loved this Kooks song since it played on loop during a weeklong party I held in my parentless house over half a lifetime ago, but that would just betray that the song isn't that deep, and so what the fuck is it doing all the way up here on the list? That's what I'm trying to say, though—it doesn't have to be deep. It can also just be a good song. Let's not go too deep on the Kooks. Let's just enjoy a good song.
20. "Waitress" by Hop Along
I'm too deep into this music thing to quit now. But I can at least keep my head above water for a couple moments, long enough to acknowledge that it's gotten a little out of control. I'm just always searching for that next high, man. Just like before. But it's slightly different now. I'm listening to music all the time. I'm getting desperate in my daily searches for the dopamine. I'm downloading a new album like every single day on average, which is just too much new (to me) music to be able to legitimately digest in a given week. But I can't stop now. The highs are just too enjoyable. I need them now. I'm willing to do whatever it takes.
"Waitress" sounds to me like the days when I was just listening to music for fun. I would just be casually exploring some new album by some band I'd maybe heard of but probably not, just chilling on like one new album a week, giving it a couple tries and then seeing what's up, listening and then BAM, right there on the fucking 56 bus, it hits me, that insane fucking high, the knowledge, all of a sudden, out of fucking nowhere, the knowledge that this is probably one of the best songs I've ever heard. And I'm just content to let that ride out for a while! That's the key. It was enough to sustain me, for a while, back then.
But fuck, man, how can you listen to a song like "Waitress" and not immediately want more? Everything is clicking so well in this song. The vocals of Frances Quinlan are infamous and still unmatched. The drumming is idiosyncratic but somehow manages to keep the beat while sounding like the roiling waves of an ocean. The scratchy guitars layers on the noise. The lyrics about the anxiety of seeing someone you know feel poignant without ever announcing themselves as such. And the vocals, oh christ, the vocals! C'mon!
I saw speculation recently that Hop Along was officially as a unit, and that makes sense. It's been a while. Quinlan is doing their own thing. Also: there are a handful of perfect Hop Along songs, and how could you possibly compete with them with anything new? I get it. Still doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Still doesn't mean that I can rue the irony of writing about the search for that next high as soon as that drug-dealer calls it quits.
19. "A Certain Romance" by Arctic Monkeys
I saw speculation recently that Hop Along was officially as a unit, and that makes sense. It's been a while. Quinlan is doing their own thing. Also: there are a handful of perfect Hop Along songs, and how could you possibly compete with them with anything new? I get it. Still doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Still doesn't mean that I can rue the irony of writing about the search for that next high as soon as that drug-dealer calls it quits.
19. "A Certain Romance" by Arctic Monkeys
I dunno man. I don't know how I can possibly say anything more about this song than I already have. I hate that that is my first reaction when I get to this empty space below the song title where the blurb is supposed to go, but it is, and I don't know. Yes, it is my own little anthem to our own little friend group in our little corner of Northeast Philadelphia. No, I don't know if any of my other friends from this neighborhood still remember this song, or care. Yes, I get all misty-eye'd thinkin' about 'em, even still. It's a good song for a good crew.
I just spent a full day with a few of them a couple weeks ago. I was a groomsman in the very last wedding, and so we met up before the ceremony, and partied till the lights went on in the hall. It was like twelve hours. It was a good fucking day. I literally did nothing the entire day except hang out with friends and bullshit and laugh and bullshit some more. It wasn't my day, it had nothing to do with me, I was just lucky enough to be asked to stand adjacent to it while it happened. I was thankful for the opportunity.
But if I were to theoretically say that it was a good day for me particularly, then I'd say that it's just nice to have people in your life whom you can be around for that long and just feel so goddamn comfortable with the whole day. These aren't the only people in my life I feel this way about, but these are the only people whom I think about when I'm listening to "A Certain Romance," so we're going with it. I felt comfortable. I felt like myself. No one drank at the groom's parents' house before the ceremony, which was weird, in retrospect. But also speaks to the idea that maybe I was the problem in those types of situations, that I was making thing less comfortable by forcing alcohol into that kinda thing, and so, against all odds, a sober morning and afternoon with the dudes actually ended up being MORE fulfilling than it would've been in a different lifetime, with twelve Hamm's under my belt.
The forgiveness cuts both ways. "And though they may overstep the line / I just can't get angry in the same way." No one is perfect here. We've been hanging out together for 25 years and I've seen all these mopes in various states of disarray and then also have seen them with their shit together. We're all just figuring it out, individually, and then together. I appreciate the friendship. I don't know, these are just idle thoughts I have as I try to figure out a fresh perspective for the nineteenth-best song of all time's blurb.
18. "Holland, 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel
The forgiveness cuts both ways. "And though they may overstep the line / I just can't get angry in the same way." No one is perfect here. We've been hanging out together for 25 years and I've seen all these mopes in various states of disarray and then also have seen them with their shit together. We're all just figuring it out, individually, and then together. I appreciate the friendship. I don't know, these are just idle thoughts I have as I try to figure out a fresh perspective for the nineteenth-best song of all time's blurb.
18. "Holland, 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel
That theory about Jeff Mangum going back in time to save Anne Frank and bringing her to the future and marrying her and then writing an album about her—I've written about this thing before on the blog, right? I can't find it. But man, I'm just fucking obsessed with that shit. Here it is.
I'm obsessed, but not in a "holy shit, this might actually be true!" sort of way. I'm not a fucking moron. But I am obsessed with the idea of ridiculous conspiracy theories, especially lighthearted ones that everyone is in on the joke for. My obsession with the Anne Frank bit is dependent on the certainty that the person who put together the theory has explained this theory through a shit-eating grin. That he doesn't actually believe it. That he's just pushing the theory for a jape, a ruse. I'm assuming this is the case. If it's not, and there is somebody out there who actually believes it, then please don't tell me, because that would only make me sad.
I appreciate even the ironic attempt at creating mystery and lore. Because some of the mystery has worn away from this album and this song as the years have gone by, hasn't it? I had a friend who asked me recently if I was still obsessed with In the Aeroplane over the Sea. The peak of our friendship was the late-'00s, so that makes sense. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on why I am not obsessed with it anymore, and I've landed on: lack of mystery. That happens. It's a symptom of growing up and of being online and of the music blogs and their tendency to over-report on everything. Seeing Neutral Milk Hotel live, I realized they were mortal.
Still, if I strain hard enough, I can listen to something like "Holland, 1945," and I can really, truly believe in the magic. I could even believe that Anne Frank is alive and well and married to a time-traveling indie psych-rock recluse.
17. "4th of July, Philadelphia (Sandy)" by Cymbals Eat Guitars
Still, if I strain hard enough, I can listen to something like "Holland, 1945," and I can really, truly believe in the magic. I could even believe that Anne Frank is alive and well and married to a time-traveling indie psych-rock recluse.
17. "4th of July, Philadelphia (Sandy)" by Cymbals Eat Guitars
Oh man, I love when a song gives a specific date when the incident of the song occurs. For this one, the intro verse announces that the inciting incident with the roman candle occurs on July 4, 2015. That means that the tenth anniversary of "4th of July, Philadelphia (Sandy)" is coming up next summer. What are we doing to celebrate? We all gonna meet at the Pep Boys on Aramingo and then set out on the streets of Kensington in search of one of the most important nights of our lives?
That's actually the funny thing about the story as it is presented here. There's violence, but it's small, and it lacks conclusion. A friend of the protagonist does something dickish and he gets cracked over the head with a baseball bat for it, and then... well, that's it for the friend. Who knows. When the bat makes contact, the POV shifts suddenly to the protagonist, who's revealing that he's been dealing with depression, and he realizes that adrenaline rush from the run-in with the Kenzo that he doesn't feel depressed anymore. It's like the baseball bat knocked the entire universe askew.
I think it's a funny story because I can picture with great accuracy the type of street that this occurred on, and I laugh, mainly because I think if Bo was critically injured, Joseph D'Agostino would have the grace not to being singing about it. But I think it's an essential story because it touches on something you don't hear too much, at least not in songs like these. It's about mental health, right?
But there are no buzzwords here, no mention of therapy or anything like that. It's just: "Can't make it matter / My life is sliding by." It's great to know to seek out help if you need it, especially if things get too dire. But I think that there's also this prevailing truth that most people are just silently dealing with a low-key version of it. Might not even be clinical, it might just be a malaise. And we're all just getting by, ya know? It's just a minor annoyance that we deal with as we slide through life. It's not a matter of "being brave" or any of that shit. It's just normal. And it feels normal all the time, until you're faced with a moment like a scary uncle attacking you with a baseball bat. Only then is it like, "oh shit, I'm depressed!"
But there are no buzzwords here, no mention of therapy or anything like that. It's just: "Can't make it matter / My life is sliding by." It's great to know to seek out help if you need it, especially if things get too dire. But I think that there's also this prevailing truth that most people are just silently dealing with a low-key version of it. Might not even be clinical, it might just be a malaise. And we're all just getting by, ya know? It's just a minor annoyance that we deal with as we slide through life. It's not a matter of "being brave" or any of that shit. It's just normal. And it feels normal all the time, until you're faced with a moment like a scary uncle attacking you with a baseball bat. Only then is it like, "oh shit, I'm depressed!"
It's normal to wonder if there is more out there. It's abnormal to wonder if there are better songs out there, because this is one of the best ones.
16. "Younger Us" by Japandroids
"Yo dude!" This was cousin Andrew on the other end of the phone. "You gotta get OVER here." It was late. A little too late to be making the three-block journey across the police-populated suburban enclave. The cops hate kids who break curfew. But this was a call to arms. I was already in bed! But I wanted to get up and drink with him instead!
Ten minutes later and I'm standing in his kitchen, and the reasons for this bat signal of a hangout were becoming less and less clear. Some drama about a girl? But that girl wasn't even here? And now he's talking about the fact that there was wet in his cigarette or some shit, I don't even know what the hell he means by that. I'm standing in the kitchen drinking an iced tea. His older sister is asking me what's all over my face. "It's my acne medicine," I say, and try to look at my reflection in the microwave. "I was already in bed."
16. "Younger Us" by Japandroids
"Yo dude!" This was cousin Andrew on the other end of the phone. "You gotta get OVER here." It was late. A little too late to be making the three-block journey across the police-populated suburban enclave. The cops hate kids who break curfew. But this was a call to arms. I was already in bed! But I wanted to get up and drink with him instead!
Ten minutes later and I'm standing in his kitchen, and the reasons for this bat signal of a hangout were becoming less and less clear. Some drama about a girl? But that girl wasn't even here? And now he's talking about the fact that there was wet in his cigarette or some shit, I don't even know what the hell he means by that. I'm standing in the kitchen drinking an iced tea. His older sister is asking me what's all over my face. "It's my acne medicine," I say, and try to look at my reflection in the microwave. "I was already in bed."
None of this would have been happening if I hadn't always harbored a secret desire to be inconvenienced in the middle of the night to spend some bonus time with friends and loved ones. That desire existed both before and especially after "Younger Us" put words to it. That night at Andrew's wouldn't have happened if both our sets of parents hadn't traveled somewhere, leaving the kids in charge. Nights like that didn't happen for a while because I had the stamina to stay up until sunrise, and by that point, there was no one left to wake me up because everyone was asleep at 6 AM. And now they don't happen for the same reason minus the stamina—everyone I know is asleep by 9 PM.
But I'm here. I'm ready. I'm willing and able. I don't even wear acne night cream anymore.
But I'm here. I'm ready. I'm willing and able. I don't even wear acne night cream anymore.
15. "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero" by the Mountain Goats
The key in this story reveals itself at the 1:52 mark. "You let me down, but Chavo never did." Though the narrator never reveals who the "you" is in that sentence, you can make a good guess that it's a caregiver, possibly parent. Honestly, it's probably a dad or stepdad, based on the fact that there's an emphasis in the narrative about how good of a father Chavo was for his wrestling sons (plus, consider previous autobiographical content from Darnielle's band). But he never says, and it doesn't matter, because the narrative trick is just too great to be tarnished by lack of explanation. Almost the entire song focuses on the young kid watching professional wrestling on the TV, but then, without warning, the camera zoom back, and you see the room in which that child is watching TV, and there are hints as to who is right there in the next room, and you get oblique references as to why this kid is maybe using the wrestling on TV as an escape. You're set up with these tall tales of glory from the top rope, and then the rug is pulled, and you're left with cold, hard reality...
...and then also permission, I think, to keep that escape handy if you ever need it. Look, I know almost as well as most that life is long and hard and there is absolutely no sense in trying to withstand the grueling experience without help. And so why not the wrestling dude on TV? Why can't that be your hero? This ain't a cool story about a larger-than-life figure, this is a story about survival, man. And so then final trick from John Darnielle is that he shoves the rug back under there. He reveals that this is not some epic tale, but then he makes it feel epic anyway. That's some good shit right there.
14. "Drinkin' Days" by Pkew Pkew Pkew
This has been a question I've been asking for about five years now, and I think I am ready to answer it. Are Pkew Pkew Pkew self-aware? I mean, clearly they aren't completely there, since they have chosen to name their band "Pkew Pkew Pkew," which, in my opinion, is the worst band name of all time by a significant margin. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the drinking and cavorting and generally acting young. Do they know? Do they know that it can't last?
When I discovered "Drinkin' Days," I was self-aware. I'd like to think I was, anyway. I mean, read the description of the song from when I made it the #2 song of 2019 (should've been #1, clearly). Reading that blurb, it's making it seem like listening to "Drinkin' Days" was literally the first time I had ever considered the fact that I was alcoholic. Surely there is some poetic license in that blurb, but I'm also sure that reality wasn't that far off. 2019 was probably the very beginning of the end for me, and at least some part of me knew it. "There's a hole in my heart 'bout the size of a bottle, and I like to fill it every day" was the truest thing I've ever heard in a song. Ever. It landed so hard with me that it was almost unbearable to hear with my own ears. And then it was like, oh, okay, cool, I'm just on the bus listening to this simple and celebratory pop-punk song and I'm crying, jeez, great.
You can imagine how long it took me to attempt to listen to it once I made the decision to not fill that hole every day. It took me a while, mainly because, ya know, the hole is still fucking there. It's still bottle-shaped. I still want to fill it every day. But every day, the wanting lessens, to the point where most days now, I don't even notice. Listening to "Drinkin' Days" makes me notice. That wouldn't have been healthy at the beginning. I'm in a good enough space now that I welcome the reminder. I want to recall how it felt, because I want to feel the pride I know I have now. The pride is a different shape, it doesn't fit the hole. But it's something. I want to notice that too, and this song helps me get there.
So does the band itself know this? I'm going to guess no, it does not. Or maybe it does, and chooses to ignore. Which is totally fair, and it's not my place to say one way or the other. I approach the music totally lacking judgment for the lives of the artists behind it. They've obviously touched me greatly, so at this point, it doesn't even matter if that was their intentions. I don't care. The music is what I say it is, and I say that "Drinkin' Days" is a cry for help, even if I was the only one who heard and/or needed to hear the cries.
13. "Black Cab" by Jens Lekman
Here's a good question: are there any happy songs on this list?! I ask that only somewhat facetiously. It does seem like a lot of these tunes make me feel sad, doesn't it? Though maybe that's just a misinterpretation of the emotions that I'm trying to convey here. It's not that the best songs make me depressed, it's that they just make me feel so goddamn much, and sometimes, when the emotions overflow like that, it comes out looking a little sad. But what I'd really be going for is wistfully melancholic, I think. If that hasn't come across, then that's on me, and not the music.
14. "Drinkin' Days" by Pkew Pkew Pkew
This has been a question I've been asking for about five years now, and I think I am ready to answer it. Are Pkew Pkew Pkew self-aware? I mean, clearly they aren't completely there, since they have chosen to name their band "Pkew Pkew Pkew," which, in my opinion, is the worst band name of all time by a significant margin. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the drinking and cavorting and generally acting young. Do they know? Do they know that it can't last?
When I discovered "Drinkin' Days," I was self-aware. I'd like to think I was, anyway. I mean, read the description of the song from when I made it the #2 song of 2019 (should've been #1, clearly). Reading that blurb, it's making it seem like listening to "Drinkin' Days" was literally the first time I had ever considered the fact that I was alcoholic. Surely there is some poetic license in that blurb, but I'm also sure that reality wasn't that far off. 2019 was probably the very beginning of the end for me, and at least some part of me knew it. "There's a hole in my heart 'bout the size of a bottle, and I like to fill it every day" was the truest thing I've ever heard in a song. Ever. It landed so hard with me that it was almost unbearable to hear with my own ears. And then it was like, oh, okay, cool, I'm just on the bus listening to this simple and celebratory pop-punk song and I'm crying, jeez, great.
You can imagine how long it took me to attempt to listen to it once I made the decision to not fill that hole every day. It took me a while, mainly because, ya know, the hole is still fucking there. It's still bottle-shaped. I still want to fill it every day. But every day, the wanting lessens, to the point where most days now, I don't even notice. Listening to "Drinkin' Days" makes me notice. That wouldn't have been healthy at the beginning. I'm in a good enough space now that I welcome the reminder. I want to recall how it felt, because I want to feel the pride I know I have now. The pride is a different shape, it doesn't fit the hole. But it's something. I want to notice that too, and this song helps me get there.
So does the band itself know this? I'm going to guess no, it does not. Or maybe it does, and chooses to ignore. Which is totally fair, and it's not my place to say one way or the other. I approach the music totally lacking judgment for the lives of the artists behind it. They've obviously touched me greatly, so at this point, it doesn't even matter if that was their intentions. I don't care. The music is what I say it is, and I say that "Drinkin' Days" is a cry for help, even if I was the only one who heard and/or needed to hear the cries.
13. "Black Cab" by Jens Lekman
Here's a good question: are there any happy songs on this list?! I ask that only somewhat facetiously. It does seem like a lot of these tunes make me feel sad, doesn't it? Though maybe that's just a misinterpretation of the emotions that I'm trying to convey here. It's not that the best songs make me depressed, it's that they just make me feel so goddamn much, and sometimes, when the emotions overflow like that, it comes out looking a little sad. But what I'd really be going for is wistfully melancholic, I think. If that hasn't come across, then that's on me, and not the music.
But "Black Cab" doesn't have that problem. If you just read the lyrics, then maybe it too comes across pretty bleak: "Don't want to look this dead / Don't want to feel this dread." In Lekman's hands, though, "Black Cab" feels innocent and hopeful. It's the sound of a young man who, yes, feels dead inside, but also is wise enough to acknowledge that this is just a symptom of youth, and not a permanent malady. The black cab that silent Jens gets into after the party is presented as a cowardly escape, but to me—and I assume to all you Jens Lekman fans out there—it feels like a success. Jens is safe in a cab, he is alive, he is ready to meet the dawn when it arrives.
This will be the only song on this list, or least this high on it, for which I need to clarify which "version" of the song is one of my favorite songs of all time. So this was first on the compilation album Oh You're So Silent Jens, in 2005 (in my hands by that Christmas). Then, by 2022, it was so out of print that kids were telling him at his concerts that the new song about a black cat was their favorite, so, for many good reasons (not the least of which is to correct these new kids in the same way their parents needed correcting, in that it's a black cab and not a black cat), he rerecorded the songs on there, and released it as The Cherry Trees Are Still in Blossom. The new "Black Cat" is fine. It's not my preferred version. But I understand why it needs to exist.
And I think we can probably find something poignant about it, too, if you want to. Something about music being reborn under trying circumstances, or about the inevitability of growing up and the sadness that comes with that, or the pathos of improving upon past versions of yourself but feeling the subtle pain of losing those past versions too. Whatever. It's whatever. We don't need to get sad for this blurb. It's just a fun song. Let's leave it at that.
12. "Fake Empire" by the National
I already gave you 100 reasons, and I think I'm tapped out after that. I was tempted to just slot "Bloodbuzz Ohio" in this spot just to mix things up, but no, no, this is the one. This is the twelfth-best song of all time, no one is denying that. If someone put a gun to my head, I could give you 100 additional reasons. No one is wasting their time using their guns for that though (gun owners are too busy using their guns like dildos in their assholes, trying to ejaculate by hitting their prostates with their guns, so turned on are they by gun ownership......... see, that's Reason #101 right there!!!). Also, that would be bad blogging. Especially after writing 87 blurbs about other good songs right before that. This is tiring already.
What the National is trying to capture here, I think, is a nation that is tired. That's the sense I get. There's irony in the fact that it soundtracked the most recent *successful* progressive campaign for the presidency and probably the last one that we will ever see. Instead of acknowledging the fake empire, we have accepted it, and for many, maybe even embraced it. Shit's fucked, as we tiptoe through our shiny city.
This will be the only song on this list, or least this high on it, for which I need to clarify which "version" of the song is one of my favorite songs of all time. So this was first on the compilation album Oh You're So Silent Jens, in 2005 (in my hands by that Christmas). Then, by 2022, it was so out of print that kids were telling him at his concerts that the new song about a black cat was their favorite, so, for many good reasons (not the least of which is to correct these new kids in the same way their parents needed correcting, in that it's a black cab and not a black cat), he rerecorded the songs on there, and released it as The Cherry Trees Are Still in Blossom. The new "Black Cat" is fine. It's not my preferred version. But I understand why it needs to exist.
And I think we can probably find something poignant about it, too, if you want to. Something about music being reborn under trying circumstances, or about the inevitability of growing up and the sadness that comes with that, or the pathos of improving upon past versions of yourself but feeling the subtle pain of losing those past versions too. Whatever. It's whatever. We don't need to get sad for this blurb. It's just a fun song. Let's leave it at that.
12. "Fake Empire" by the National
I already gave you 100 reasons, and I think I'm tapped out after that. I was tempted to just slot "Bloodbuzz Ohio" in this spot just to mix things up, but no, no, this is the one. This is the twelfth-best song of all time, no one is denying that. If someone put a gun to my head, I could give you 100 additional reasons. No one is wasting their time using their guns for that though (gun owners are too busy using their guns like dildos in their assholes, trying to ejaculate by hitting their prostates with their guns, so turned on are they by gun ownership......... see, that's Reason #101 right there!!!). Also, that would be bad blogging. Especially after writing 87 blurbs about other good songs right before that. This is tiring already.
What the National is trying to capture here, I think, is a nation that is tired. That's the sense I get. There's irony in the fact that it soundtracked the most recent *successful* progressive campaign for the presidency and probably the last one that we will ever see. Instead of acknowledging the fake empire, we have accepted it, and for many, maybe even embraced it. Shit's fucked, as we tiptoe through our shiny city.
I don't know if this song is supposed to give us hope at this point. I don't know what could. That's probably not the point. What is the point? I don't know. I forget. I'm too tired.
11. "Wolf like Me" by TV on the Radio
Too many "back in college" stories connected to these songs. I'm getting bored. (Plus, I already did that for this specific song on this very blog. No repeat themes!) This is a badass indie rock freakout about the act of transformation. The werewolf is the metaphor, you see, and becoming a werewolf (or becoming a ____ of your choosing) can be painful. Yes, I've applied that to becoming a college student (and then becoming a college student again), but it doesn't have to stop there. We are constantly transforming. We are constantly changing, and improving. That shit takes time, and can be extremely painful. Sometimes, all you can do is stand under the full moon and howl.
11. "Wolf like Me" by TV on the Radio
Too many "back in college" stories connected to these songs. I'm getting bored. (Plus, I already did that for this specific song on this very blog. No repeat themes!) This is a badass indie rock freakout about the act of transformation. The werewolf is the metaphor, you see, and becoming a werewolf (or becoming a ____ of your choosing) can be painful. Yes, I've applied that to becoming a college student (and then becoming a college student again), but it doesn't have to stop there. We are constantly transforming. We are constantly changing, and improving. That shit takes time, and can be extremely painful. Sometimes, all you can do is stand under the full moon and howl.
I want to change. I want to be better. I want to be the werewolf. That's probably why I feel like telling the same old fucking college stories over and over is detrimental—it impedes growth. Okay, there are stories out there with lessons attached to them, and it's okay to tell those. But what to make of the story of buying Return to Cookie Mountain at the beginning of freshman year? There's not much of a point to that beyond "hey, remember in my dorm room, when I listened to the best music ever?" I keep thinking about when I first heard this song, and it's nice, but it's not helpful to me now. It doesn't indicate growth. I could easily listen to "Wolf like Me" ten times a day for the rest of my life, but at a certain point, its impact would be blunted, because I'd be listening to a song about transformation while I myself am stagnant. And that's disrespectful to the craft.
10. "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Literally five minutes before I wrote this, I saw that CYHSY is going out—dutifully, I might add—on the 20th anniversary tour of their first and obviously best (but not as obvious as you might think) album, the self-titled. They'll be at Union Transfer the Saturday after Willow's seventh birthday, so it's doubtful that I'm gonna fit in a concert that weekend too, but that's how it goes. We kill our teenage selves so that our own children will have a shot at happy teenage years.
10. "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Literally five minutes before I wrote this, I saw that CYHSY is going out—dutifully, I might add—on the 20th anniversary tour of their first and obviously best (but not as obvious as you might think) album, the self-titled. They'll be at Union Transfer the Saturday after Willow's seventh birthday, so it's doubtful that I'm gonna fit in a concert that weekend too, but that's how it goes. We kill our teenage selves so that our own children will have a shot at happy teenage years.
We're in the Top Ten now, so you can rest assured that anything negative I might have to say about any of the songs should be taken in context. There's a reason I'm saying this negative thing, and that reason is not in service of an argument that it's a bad song. We're well past that point. These are my favorite songs ever. They are perfect.
But this one... I mean, it's a little shambolic, no? A little messy? The pinched-string guitars, the lolling bass, the hi-hat-happy drums, all three are iconic pieces, and the three of them fit about as well together as three layers of jello. And that's before Alec Ounsworth's warbly falsetto crashes in. I love this song with all my heart, but really, it's a wonder that the thing sticks together as well as it does. Imagine Usain Bolt winning a race in a pair of flipflops.
The announcement for that 20th anniversary show said something along the lines of "we had a few songs together for an EP, and at the last minute, added a few more just to make a full album" (not a direct quote, I'm too lazy to look it up). And listening to the album with that knowledge, it makes total fucking sense. These are the sounds of man fucking around with some recording equipment. AND YET. And yet. There is no doubt that there was a precious alchemy here. Maybe Ounsworth himself doesn't understand it; I'm picturing him at those 20th anniversary shows, looking out into the crowd, utterly perplexed that there are fans out there and that they are singing the songs back to him, after all this time.
9. "The Boys Are Back in Town" by Thin Lizzy
WXPN recently asked listeners for their "Top Ten Songs of the 21st Century So Far." I'm sure all the boomers sweated it out and put their blood and tears into compiling those lists. Me? I already had this Top 100 list locked and loaded, and because my prime years were in the 21st century, I already had a Top Ten that was most compiled of post-1999 songs anyway. You'll see for yourself as you scroll down. But you'll also see that the song whose blurb you are currently reading is the one single exception. So of course, we turn to that immortal question that fuels so many second and third paragraphs of blurbs like this—WHY?
9. "The Boys Are Back in Town" by Thin Lizzy
WXPN recently asked listeners for their "Top Ten Songs of the 21st Century So Far." I'm sure all the boomers sweated it out and put their blood and tears into compiling those lists. Me? I already had this Top 100 list locked and loaded, and because my prime years were in the 21st century, I already had a Top Ten that was most compiled of post-1999 songs anyway. You'll see for yourself as you scroll down. But you'll also see that the song whose blurb you are currently reading is the one single exception. So of course, we turn to that immortal question that fuels so many second and third paragraphs of blurbs like this—WHY?
On the surface, it's just a fucking great, cool song. I don't say that about many classic rock songs. I don't say that about many cliché dinosaur oldhead 5-PM-on-a-Friday-during-the-Rock-Block radio songs. None, really, except this one. The guitar licks are hot and the vocals are cold as ice. It would, and did, take a lot for a song of this ilk to crack the Top Ten on such a list. It probably helped that I knew the song but I didn't know it till relatively later in life. Had I grown up with uncles who blasted this during Labor Day BBQs, then I probably wouldn't like it as much.
Dive deeper, though, and you start to appreciate that this is a song about male comradery. Okay, not that deep; the word "boys" is right there in the title. But the special part is that the song for the most part avoids sincere macho tropes. These are just dudes enjoying each other's company, goofing off, looking for fun, being pals. Men by and large suck, but I have occasionally found myself in the company of male friends whom I love deeply, and when I hear "The Boys Are Back in Town," I think about how comfortable I am with those dudes, and how much fun we have being the titular Boys in the titular Town.
I totally understand if the ironic displays of macho clichés are too much for you (since it could be that the irony is all in my head). But I think you're wrong. Maybe five or six years ago, I got into an argument with my dad, who grew up through Thin Lizzy's peak, and did not believe me when I said that "Boys Are Back in Town" was a Top Ten song. That's because he grew up taking the male comradery for granted, I think. I promise to never do that. I promise to appreciate those rare moments when I feel like I'm living out a Thin Lizzy song. I know they are rare these days, and I won't let Thin Lizzy down.
8. "The Bleeding Heart Show" by the New Pornographers
I like exercises like this (as tedious as they are, what with the writing 27k words and knowing that maybe three people are going to read it) because they give me an opportunity to attempt a fresh perspective. I find myself sitting here and asking myself "what can I say about this song that I haven't already?" It forces me to reassess what I know, and perhaps learn something new. And a lot of the time, that involves me looking at a key lyric and being like, hmmm, okay, I wonder what that means.
What the hell is a "bleeding heart show"? I guess that's the main question here. I'll cop to this not being a truly fresh perspective, as it's a question I've thought about before. Maybe I've even already used this as a thesis for the various blurbs I've written about this thing on the many lists that it deservedly ends up on. But for real, what is it? I appreciate how someone took a stab at it on Genius—"They are not at a point in their lives where they can sit around feeling sorry for each other"—and how that annotation has a -2 rating. What could I say that might earn a rating that doesn't fall into the red?
Well, let's acknowledge here that poetry doesn't necessarily have one answer. This lyric—and all the lyrics for this song, honestly—are obtuse, and that is to its benefit. Doesn't matter what the author intended by building a singalong chorus around the phrase "bleeding heart show," it just matters that it sounds good and mysterious and provocative and real fucking pretty when belted out over thunderous drums.
But I guess if I was forced to say what it means to me, I'd go with a somewhat obvious answer of "bleeding heart show" being an act of drama about the self, a confession or an acting-out, a look-at-me type thing. And if you're "too late" to play the bleeding heart show, then you're saying that too many people are already acting out in this way, and that it would feel uncomfortable to do so at this point, and so you remain stoic. You keep it inside. Which isn't healthy, sometimes, but other times, maybe you find a healthier outlet. Like, say, singing aloud the words to one of the best and brightest indie rock songs that's ever existed.
I am obviously not too late to play the bleeding heart show.
7. "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers
Just because a song is popular doesn't mean it's good. But I think that once it reaches a certain echelon of popularity, then the song must be good. Popular songs are "popular" because of a majority, which could mean 51%. Elite-popular means everyone, and you can't be elite if you're turning off the people who would normally stick their noses up at something for just being regular old popular. You gotta be the best to rope those people in too. I am one of those people. I love "Mr. Brightside."
7. "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers
Just because a song is popular doesn't mean it's good. But I think that once it reaches a certain echelon of popularity, then the song must be good. Popular songs are "popular" because of a majority, which could mean 51%. Elite-popular means everyone, and you can't be elite if you're turning off the people who would normally stick their noses up at something for just being regular old popular. You gotta be the best to rope those people in too. I am one of those people. I love "Mr. Brightside."
I've heard this song described as "the 'Sweet Caroline' of the millennial generation." I've heard this song described as "the 'Back That Azz Up' of white people." Both are accurate, and neither diminish how much I love this fucking song. Remember that trump bar that I was talking about last week? Even those mustachioed motherfuckers were belting this shit out at the top of their lungs when it came on, and even then, I can't deny the power of the song. It's a good song. It's good enough that I find myself in the company of the entire human race, many whom I would otherwise feel uncomfortable rubbing elbows with.
At a certain point, I start having thoughts/fears about the chicken-and-egg theory, whether this song is popular because we love it or if I love it because it's popular. Like maybe it was only through constant overexposure that I realized that I still loved it, and maybe even loved it more the more I heard it. But then I realize that it just doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't. Who knows why certain songs spend 20 fucking years on the U.K. pop charts! Who knows why certain songs touch us in this particular way!
I got drunk one time after a bad breakup and I cried Hurricane tears listening to "Mr. Brightside" (jealousy turning snakes into the sea indeed). I no longer drink and I'm possibly more secure in my relationship than I've ever been, and I still cry sometimes when I hear it, so powerful is this song. It doesn't matter. "Mr. Brightside" forever and ever.
6. "Stuck Between Stations" by the Hold Steady
I was a drummer so I hear rhythms, but I wasn't a good drummer so sometimes the rhythms are all fucked up in my head. I've tried to explain this before, but I'm about as good at explaining as I am at playing the drums, so I usually fail. It's like... so my brain not only hears rhythms, but needs to feel the rhythms, and sometimes there are other factors that mess up my sense of rhythm, displace it by a half beat or reverse it or whatever. When I say "other factors" I mostly mean other instruments. If, say, the guitar comes in first, but the guitar is playing syncopated beats ("on the upbeat"), then my brain flips it and starts to hear those guitar beats as the downbeat, which means there's an intense whiplash when the downbeat actually comes in. At that point, my brain has to dislodge the needle and place the song back in its correct rhythmic position. Sometimes I literally just have to pause the song and start over, because my brain is so broken.
6. "Stuck Between Stations" by the Hold Steady
I was a drummer so I hear rhythms, but I wasn't a good drummer so sometimes the rhythms are all fucked up in my head. I've tried to explain this before, but I'm about as good at explaining as I am at playing the drums, so I usually fail. It's like... so my brain not only hears rhythms, but needs to feel the rhythms, and sometimes there are other factors that mess up my sense of rhythm, displace it by a half beat or reverse it or whatever. When I say "other factors" I mostly mean other instruments. If, say, the guitar comes in first, but the guitar is playing syncopated beats ("on the upbeat"), then my brain flips it and starts to hear those guitar beats as the downbeat, which means there's an intense whiplash when the downbeat actually comes in. At that point, my brain has to dislodge the needle and place the song back in its correct rhythmic position. Sometimes I literally just have to pause the song and start over, because my brain is so broken.
I just realized now that the beginning of "Stuck Between Stations" does this to me. I've heard this song so many goddamn times, and I have to imagine it's happened every time. I just tried to hear that intro with the bass drums on the downbeat, but I couldn't do it. I don't know why I'm like this. Thankfully, this is such an important song, and so good, and so catchy, and so anthemic, that it doesn't really matter that my brain does a 540-degree turn every time the intro crashes into the first verse. It's wild how normalized something like that gets with so much exposure. Maybe there was a time when it bothered me. If there was, it was so long ago that I don't even remember it.
But I don't ever want this song to be normalized, is the thing. It's special, and I don't ever want to take it for granted. Maybe I do sometimes. Like, it wouldn't be too out of the ordinary to hear this song played at 10 AM on a Thursday on WXPN in between new Lizzy No and Leon Bridges cuts. And depending on who was in the car with me, I might turn around and say, "this is a good song, this is one of daddy's favorites" or whatever, but that would be it. Simple enjoyment.
No. It needs to be more than that. I want to hear "Stuck Between Stations" and I want to feel passion. I want my heart to feel like it's on fire. I want to hear this anthem and I want to want what I wanted when I was young—to feel free, to feel invincible, to feel a kinship with everyone and everything. "Stuck Between Stations" begins with a literary quote about everyone feeling sad, and ends with a prognostication of death. In between—life, so much life. I want to feel it all. And I want to feel it when I hear this song. No more taking it for granted. No more getting out of rhythm.
5. "I'll Believe in Anything" by Wolf Parade
5. "I'll Believe in Anything" by Wolf Parade
I remember so much about that album. Not the music itself—no need to "remember" when I can listen to it any time, and do—but the physical copy of it. The CD that fit too snuggly in the thick cardboard case, as the label or the band or both had decided to eschew the traditional plastic clamshell case for this one. The tiny scratches on the back, making a couple of the songs briefly skip. The cover, looking all worn but too new for that to be anything but a stylistic choice, light pink and purple pastels in diamonds and ovals against a white-gray background. I remember pulling that thin plastic circle out of that case a thousand times. I remember sliding it into the CD player in the trunk of my parents' car, and hitting play as soon as I began my journey from my dad's work (where I dropped him off so I could borrow the car) to my high school. Pulling into the big driveway on the steep hill usually when "I'll Believe in Anything" was hitting its stride, arriving at school all fist-pumping out of the window, threatening to crash the car before I could make it to AP Calc.
But I don't remember when I finally decided—or more like realized—that this was the song from this album, and then that this was the song from, I dunno, life. So many memories to parse through, and this one didn't make the cut. Or didn't exist—I mean, sometimes these things just happen gradually over the course of two decades. It gradually goes from "this would be good on a mix CD" to "this is probably the best song on the album" to "this might be the best song that came out of that time period" to "this is no doubt one of the greatest songs of all time." Whoever's next to me in the car when I make this claim (probably Pam) will be like, "Oh yeah?" and I'll say, "it's a fucking lock for Top Five, ALL TIME."
You are perhaps like me and fell into loving indie rock music as a formative age. If you are, then I need not sing the praises of this seminal track. You already know them. You've already listened to it countless times. You've already lived important life moments under its tutelage. I don't need to tell you about the cascading drums, the never-more-passionate Spencer Krug performance, the way that the energy gradually ramps up to the point that it feels like the entire world is going to catch on fire, and you need that time-signature-changing outro to just fucking cool down. The lyrics don't mean anything, but, as is the case for many of the anthems we yelled out of shitty car windows in our youth, the lyrics mean everything too. "Because nobody knows ya, and nobody gives a damn anyway." For a loser with lots of amazing loser friends, this was a proclamation, a mighty call to arms.
I remember so much but I have forgotten even more. I can't forget whatever I felt back then when I heard this song, so indelibly is it burned into my soul.
4. "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance
We begin this blurb in media res. Zoom in on a young man, a father, extremely drunk after a long day of imbibing on cheap beer in and around a rented North Wildwood home. He's out on the deck. He's on his phone. Just fucking around, ya know how it is. Everyone he could have been texting is behind him in the house anyway. He's listening to music. Quite intoxicated, etc. And now he's watching a video of Alex Lahey (who in about eighteen months would soundtrack the closing credits of the movie that the child who Pam is currently pregnant with would eventually love) performing a DIY cover of "Welcome to the Black Parade." And the thought suddenly occurs to him that this song—in its original form, in whatever form—is one of the greatest songs of all time.
The song doesn't start there, just this blurb. The story of this song starts long before I enter the picture. Or maybe I made a cameo appearance or two, in the background, out of focus. I recall a friend's house, long ago, listening to the song, commenting that it was good but a little out of my range. I remember mocking the histrionics of its intro, but clearly the mocking was a mask to disguise my true appreciation and, eventually, devotion to this fucking thing. At one point, not long before the non-incident on the deck of the Wildwood house, I considered it really, really great. That greatness would, for whatever reason, flower into perfection. That transformation is within me, not within the song, which has remained its perfect self for eighteen years now. But that's focusing too much on my story again.
It's all I got, though. I'm not the guy to carry the torch for this band. There are too many fans who have been there since the beginning. They loved "Helena" and all that stuff, and loved the evolution of the band into arena-rock emo mega-stars. I'm just some fucking guy who fell in love with an album because some fucking emo band wanted to be Pink Floyd. I'm not the keeper of their legend. I'm lucky enough to be privy to it, but I am far from an expert. I just like the song.
I like how big it feels. This thing is fucking massive. The size is both in sound (glockenspiels? that huge fucking bass drum hit to end the song?) and theme. I guess whenever you talk about life and death, it starts to sound important. I am intoxicated by the idea of a massive song that takes place in the mind of a dying man. I think it's just ridiculous enough to work. And it fucking works, man. It makes me feel something. It's big enough that I feel the weight on my chest every time I hear this thing.
But then, so does a lot of other things in my life right now. Make me feel heavy, make life feel big. I don't mean to single out this song for making me feel that way. It wasn't always like this. You grow up and they don't tell you that when you grow up you start to feel a lot more. And sometimes, the perfect song comes along to make you feel something that you never felt before. Maybe you're only feeling it because you're older and frailer, and the black parade looms ever closer. That's okay, to frame it that way. This is my story. Now zoom out.
3. "Your Deep Rest" by the Hotelier
As the numbers have gotten smaller, the blurbs have gotten harder to write. I wish that I would've just given into temptation and written glib sarcastic one-liners for each of these songs and just called it a day, instead of spending like two weeks straight wringing myself out emotionally, trying to say what needs to be said about these important songs in my life. I don't want to seem hyperbolic (oh my word, not hyperbole on the blog, I would never!!), but this has been a particularly tiring activity. Is blogging supposed to be like this? Is any of this worth it? Will anyone read my multi-paragraph mini-blog post about the Hotelier's "Your Deep Rest"? Especially after it feels like I just spilled my guts over this song a few months ago? What the hell am I doing with my life?
I have tried to match the intensity of each song with an intensity in writing, and I do that by writing from the heart, confronting how I really feel, wrestling with that feeling for a while, and wrangling it enough so that I can translate it for the digital page. And it's tough writing about how you feel. That process is painful. It's extremely uncomfortable to confront your inner truths, and then to make that ugly naked truth somehow palatable for the blogging public without making 'em squirm too much. But I also think that this idea—that you need to meet the moment, when talking about the Best Songs of All Time, by being the most heightened version of your authentic self on the page—is what makes "Your Deep Rest" work so well.
Because it's a song about confronting your feelings, right? It drops the protagonist in one of the tensest, traumatic situations imaginable—a friend's funeral—and watches as they try to grapple in real time with the intense emotions of grief and sadness and regret and guilt that they are feeling in that moment. But that's fucking brave too. You could easily sleepwalk your way through that funeral, ignore everything you feel, maybe load up on depressants to tamper it out, or maybe just check out mentally. That's not what happens here. The protagonist is so sick over confronting their secret shame that they call out of work! I can't imagine their working a salary position either!! But they do it because that's the only way to live. To feel, to confront the feeling, to process it, and to live as best you can in its wake.
Listening to music is usually not traumatic, but it could be. And in those moments, for the very best songs, we need to confront the trauma head-on. "Your Deep Rest" fucks me up in ways that I've already explained, but I still listen to it all the time. It tells me so much about myself. To feel pain means to live, and I don't understand why I'd ever give that up.
2. "7/4 (Shoreline)" by Broken Social Scene
I wonder how much the time signature actually matters. Not structurally, because there of course it matters; it's in the name of the song and its entire premise is built around it. But I'm talking emotionally. I don't know. It's a neat little trick but I don't know how it adds to the fondness I have for this song. Could there be a "4/4 (Shoreline)" that makes it to #2 all-time? Maybe! Most of the songs on this list are not in irregular time signatures, and all these songs are fucking awesome, so there's your proof right there.
I mean, we learned two summers ago that most people don't even know what the fuck time signatures even are, let alone what they look like when they are "irregular," so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here. I could see a scenario in which BSS intentionally includes the time signature right there in the title of the song because they want to make sure people know the exact reason why the rhythm feels "a little off." So who cares, right?
You know that ain't the case, though. You know this is just me devil's advocating. Of course it's important. It's the raison d'être of this fucker. It's what makes the song so fun to drum along to in the car. It's what sets it apart from the rest of the 4/4 detritus. This is a crazy good song and it's so fucking weird. Weird means special where I come from.
It makes me think that maybe there really never has to be anything definitive in a song. The audience imparts so much of themselves on the art, and occasionally, it doesn't even matter what the art is saying. We know that the time signature is saying something, but what? It doesn't matter. We know that lyrics mean something... probably? For twenty years I've been singing "it's cold in hell" because I always forget that it's actually "it's coming in hard." I keep forgetting because it doesn't matter. Nothing matters when that tight, booming 7/4 drum beat locks into position. I lose myself, and am certainly in no position to be questioning What It All Means.
Especially if the What It All Means of the unique time signature basically just boils down to: great fucking song. One of the best.
1. "The Underdog" by Spoon
I have been recently made aware that this is a popular song.
1. "The Underdog" by Spoon
I have been recently made aware that this is a popular song.
I mean, I've always generally been aware of the fact that it's well-known. "The Underdog" might not be world-consuming (see thoughts for #7 "Mr. Brightside"), but it's a song that maybe your aunt would know, even though she gets all her music suggestions from the Alexa in her kitchen. I didn't know this was the case until just recently. There was no sudden moment when I realized, no incident that made me open my eyes. Just a gradual sense of learning, like: oh shit, yeah, it's one of those songs now.
Back when I was a freshman in college, back when "The Underdog" was brand new and I was newly formed Spoon acolyte because of it, I was playing Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga a lot in my dorm room, naturally. My roommate Pat was there for many of those listens. There is a lot to be said about Pat, and much of it has been said on the blog already, but something else that I could say is that the man is not hip. A great guy, definitely not on the up-and-up when it comes to cool music. I think that's a fair way of putting it, no? But eventually, it came to be that he would describe "The Underdog" as "our song." Which was sweet, and pretty perceptive of him to pick out what was obviously the best song from this album I kept playing.
I always took that observation as a quirk of our living arrangement, that "The Underdog" was the type of song that was prone to beating this music-agnostic roommate into submission just by sheer quality and number of plays. But now, now I'm thinking that maybe I was wrong. Maybe "The Underdog" doesn't need to sell itself through constant repetition or the obvious obsession of an assigned living partner. Maybe it's just the type of song that people like Pat would love regardless of context. Those who don't know music still know "The Underdog." I had no idea.
And I guess I'm okay with that? Look, I'll be honest. The idea gives me pause. It also makes me think that maybe in ten years, after "The Underdog" has more thoroughly oversoaked the general public pop culture consciousness through IP soundtracking use and whatnot, and after I decide once again to sit down at a computer desk as the world crumbles around us to fill out my Top 100 Songs of All Time as of the mid-2030s, that at that point maybe "The Underdog" is gonna slip in these rankings. Which is natural, and totally fine. Like friends, neighborhood bars, diet plans, and happiness, good music comes in and out of your life seemingly at random. I am still in a position where there is no other song in the world I love more than this one; who knows what will change in the years ahead.
As of now, I'm reexamining this thing as a mechanic would under the hood of a car, and I'm finding no flaws. None. Everything is perfect, every syncopated handclap and celebratory blast of a trumpet, fucking perfect. Everything about its context within my life is so pure, too. I loved this song once upon a time because I was young and impressionable and prone to latching onto good music, and next thing I know my lifespan has more than doubled and I still love the song. I remember it clicking on (by request from a pal) at the jukebox at a bar at 7 AM on my birthday, and everything feeling so goddamn amazing because of that song. I remember Brandon Flowers playing it at a solo concert at the Electric Factory—say what you will about the Killers (and I already have), but I sometimes imagine that Flowers possesses a similar amount of "cool" as my old roommate Pat. I remember every party and gathering that shuffle deigned to play this during. I remember every car ride. My world is better because of "The Underdog."
I'd like to think that I am mature enough to share that love with the world at large these days. Even if it against my will, even if maybe I'd choose to keep it a secret, given a choice, I still submit to the will of the general public, and I release my iron grip of this song, and say: have at it. It's a great song. Overplay it if you must, it's okay. It's strong enough to withstand your abuse. Tear at that central theme—ya know, being an underdog—and rip it to shreds by making it very much an overdog, an undeniable winner. That's fine. I don't care. It's not mine. It's yours. Enjoy it, just like I have.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alright, that's it! This is officially the longest blog post I've ever written, easily eclipsing the dumb shit I wrote about Buckethead, and about Donny Most have incredible sex with a prostitute in the dressing room of the Happy Days set, and even finally besting the longest Your Favorite Movie interview (Sleuth with Sam). Thanks for reading.
Here are the honorable mentions for this list (presented in alphabetical order by artist). In a perfect world, I'd write a little bit about each of these too. But it's late on a Wednesday night, and I have other shit to do. Like write for Record Club.
Sound off in the comments if I missed anything (besides every rap song that's ever existed).
Sound off in the comments if I missed anything (besides every rap song that's ever existed).
- "FUCKMYLIFE666" by Against Me!
- "Bamboo Bones" by Against Me!
- "Take on Me" by a-ha
- "Never Meant" by American Football
- "Fake Palindromes" by Andrew Bird
- "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies
- "Listen to Me" by Baby Huey & the Babysitters
- "Money (That's What I Want)" by Barrett Strong
- "Bicycle Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle" by Be Your Own Pet
- "Sloop John B" by the Beach Boys
- "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey" by the Beatles
- "Like Dylan in the Movies" by Belle & Sebastian
- "Stand by Me" by Ben E. King
- "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You" by Black Kids
- "Simple Twist of Fate" by Bob Dylan
- "Holocene" by Bon Iver
- "I Feel So" by Box Car Racer
- "It's All Gonna Break" by Broken Social Scene
- "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen
- "Summer of '69" by Bryan Adams
- "You Were Right" by Built to Spill
- "C'est la Vie" by B*Witched
- "Let's Get Out of This Country" by Camera Obscura
- "Better" by Caracara
- "Father and Son" by Cat Stevens
- "Surrender" by Cheap Trick
- "The Red" by Chevelle
- "Le Freak" by Chic
- "iT" by Christine and the Queens
- "The Twist" by Chubby Checker
- "White Riot" by the Clash
- "Lodi" by Creedence Clearwater Revival
- "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" by Cocktail Slippers
- "Hang Me Up to Dry" by Cold War Kids
- "Linger" by the Cranberries
- "Men's Needs" by the Cribs
- "Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals
- "Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club
- "Screaming Infidelities" by Dashboard Confessional
- "O Valencia!" by the Decemberists
- "Calamity Song" by the Decemberists
- "The Mariner's Revenge Song" by the Decemberists
- "Ben Franklin's Song" by the Decemberists
- "Shiny" by the Decemberists
- "Roll to Me" by Del Amitri
- "Bay of Pigs (Detail)" by Destroyer
- "Upside Down" by Diana Ross
- "Ending the Mission" by Don McCloskey
- "The End" by the Doors
- "When the Music's Over" by the Doors
- "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John
- "I'm a Pretender" by the Exploding Hearts
- "I Feel It All" by Feist
- "Zombie" by Fela Kuti
- "Race for the Prize ('Sacrifice of the New Scientists')" by the Flaming Lips
- "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1" by the Flaming Lips
- "Drunken Lullabies" by Flogging Molly
- "Big Me" by Foo Fighters
- "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People
- "Stacy's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne
- "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" by the Four Tops
- "Bushels" by Frog Eyes
- "Born to Stay" by Future Teens
- "the angel of 8th ave." by Gang of Youths
- "45"" by the Gaslight Anthem
- "Hey Jealousy" by Gin Blossoms
- "The Jason Lodge Poetry Book" by Gothic Horizon
- "A Farewell Ode to Port Sunlight" by Gothic Horizon
- "Little of Your Love" by Haim
- "Forever" by Haim
- "You Make My Dreams" by Hall & Oates
- "Massive Nights" by the Hold Steady
- "Only Wanna Be with You" by Hootie & the Blowfish
- "Goodnight Goodnight" by Hot Hot Heat
- "Don't You Want Me" by the Human League
- "Closer to Fine" by Indigo Girls
- "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor
- "Pynk" by Janelle Monae
- "Me and Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin
- "Paprika" by Japanese Breakfast
- "It Gets Easier" by Jason Isbell
- "USA" by Jeff Rosenstock
- "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane
- "A Postcard to Nina" by Jens Lekman
- "You Were Meant for Me" by Jewel
- "People Who Died" by the Jim Carroll Band
- "Oh Yoko!" by John Lennon
- "St. Elmo's fire (Man in Motion)" by John Parr
- "I Can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash
- "Swimming Pools (Drank)" by Kendrick Lamar
- "California Waiting" by Kings of Leon
- "One Trick Ponies" by Kurt Vile
- "There She Goes" by the La's
- "My Own Worst Enemy" by Lit
- "Midnight City" by M83
- "Light On" by Maggie Rogers
- "Mornings Eleven" by the Magic Numbers
- "Cissy Strut" by the Meters
- "Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo" by Minus the Bear
- "The Tracks of My Tears" by the Miracles
- "Your Graduation" by Modern Baseball
- "Summer" by Modest Mouse
- "All the Wine" by the National
- "Bloodbuzz Ohio" by the National
- "My Friends Over You" by New Found Glory
- "Letter from an Occupant" by the New Pornographers
- "Use It" by the New Pornographers
- "These Days" by Nico
- "Sunday Candy" by Nico Segal & the Social Experiment
- "Express Yourself" by N.W.A
- "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis
- "Black" by Okkervil River
- "Okkervil River Song" by Okkervil River
- "Calling and Not Calling My Ex" by Okkervil River
- "This Love Is Fucking Right!" by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart
- "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Paul Simon
- "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam
- "Objects of My Affection" by Peter Bjorn and John
- "Lisztomania" by Phoenix
- "Money" by Pink Floyd
- "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd
- "B Is for Bethlehem" by the Promise Ring
- "A Wolf at the Door (It Girl. Rag Doll)" by Radiohead
- "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead
- "I'm a Survivor" by Reba McEntire
- "Can't Hardly Wait" by the Replacements
- "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield
- "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" by the Rolling Stones
- "Shoulder to the Wheel" by Saves the Day
- "Triumph" by Screaming Females
- "Expect the Bayonet" by Sheer Mag
- "The Big Game (Movements 1 & 2)" by Sledding with Tigers
- "Tonight, Tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins
- "Cemetry Gates" by the Smiths
- "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden
- "Sister Jack" by Spoon
- "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder
- "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" by Stevie Wonder
- "She Bangs the Drums" the Stone Roses
- "Under Cover of Darkness" by the Strokes
- "I Want to Be Well" by Sufjan Stevens
- "The Mistress Witch of McClure (or, the Mind That Knows Itself)" by Sufjan Stevens
- "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" by Sufjan Stevens
- "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!" by Sufjan Stevens
- "Fat Lip" Sum 41
- "You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II)" by Sunset Rubdown
- "You Can't Hurry Love" by the Supremes
- "She's So High" by Tal Bachman
- "betty" by Taylor Swift
- "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?" by Ted Leo
- "Steel Claw" by Tina Turner
- "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ" by Titus Andronicus
- "Theme from 'Cheers'" by Titus Andronicus
- "Dimed Out" by Titus Andronicus
- "Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club
- "The Taste of Ink" by the Used
- "The Space Between" by Valencia
- "A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend
- "Step" by Vampire Weekend
- "Get Free" by the Vines
- "Voyager II" by Virginia Coalition
- "In Chains" by the War on Drugs
- "Baby Missiles" by the War on Drugs
- "Silver" by Waxahatchee
- "Lilacs" by Waxahatchee
- "Buddy Holly" by Weezer
- "My Generation" by the Who
- "Baba O'Riley" by the Who
- "Heavy Metal Drummer" by Wilco
- "Be Thankful for What You Got" by William DeVaughn
- "Land of 1000 Dances" by Wilson Pickett
- "Jet" by Wings
- "The Paris of Nowhere" by the Wonders Years
- "That Thing You Do!" by the Wonders
- "Los Angeles" by X
- "Maps" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- "Diamond Studded Shoes" by Yola
- "Favorite Song" by 2nd Grade
- "What's Up?" by 4 Non Blondes
8 comments:
Y'all had some good song choices today. Good work, everybody.
This is a great list and I'm feeling....proud??? that I knew like 85% of the songs picked.
Now listen to the other 15 and tell me which is your favorite.
lol and I thought my WOD rankings was crazy to do. This is impressive level stuff sir
I want to make a playlist of all these songs and listen all the way through. Amazing work.
If I had one more day, I would've made the Spotify playlist. But I ran out of time. So it goes in the blogging fast lane.
Ok this took me a real long time. But I know you would do the same for me. I knew 62/100 songs! Of the 38 I did not know I gave them a 30 to 60 second listen for a pass fail. 55% passed! I feel like you like British bands a lot. Party in the USA should be higher on the list and you know that.
Oh man, I'm honored that you did this! I would love to hear more about the songs you liked and didn't like. Talk my ear off at the Christmas party maybe.
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