"How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us" (R.E.M.)

Ask many of my peers to name an album that was the defining soundtrack of their pre-teen/teenage years, and they'll point to something by R.E.M.
Although I personally never worshipped at the altar of Michael Stipe, I did/do like R.E.M.  I respected their ability to stay relevant while never chasing any other band/sound/trend out there.  As a matter of fact, it always amused me how the boys made running from the mainstream a sport.  If rock seemed to be making a right turn, R.E.M. not only turned left, but they torched the beat-up Chevy Nova they were riding in and hitched a ride on a mule cart with a wobbly front wheel, destination: elsewhere.  
Even still, their fans followed.  For awhile anyway.
In 1995, the band was touring in support of its blistering rawk album Monster (1994) and attempting to write/record music for a new album during soundchecks and between shows.  As lead guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Peter Buck told MTV interviewers in 1996, "Our whole goal was to get on the road (and) write a body of work that kind of reflects what the touring experience is like without necessarily being about, like, Holiday Inns."  
The tour ended up being the last time the four founding members of the band would tour and record together again.  While on stage in Switzerland, drummer Bill Berry collapsed from a ruptured brain aneurysm.  Although he survived and recovered, the tour and the eventual New Adventures in Hi-fi (1996) were essentially his last hurrah with R.E.M., as he decided to retire from music and enjoy a life of farming in rural Georgia.
Although Berry's exit didn't officially happen until 1997, I remember hearing New Adventures in Hi-fi and thinking, "This sounds like a band that's saying 'farewell'."
The song that struck me the most was "How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us."  Its decidedly lo-fi, Spaghetti Western sound is in direct contrast to the fizzy title of the record.  In fact, it opens the album on a decidedly melancholy note.  On the surface, it's a song about Manifest Destiny and pushing westward.  But just under that layer of fine desert silt is a song about a broken band--a band that had been the darling of critics and fans that skyrocketed to mega-stardom, and then, almost as quickly, was facing acerbic criticism from many of those same critics/fans for supposedly losing their compass.  
What's more, on that rocket ride, their drummer nearly died.
It's asking the hypothetical question, "Was it worth it?"
It's one of my favorite R.E.M. tracks because it is so evocative of a mood and sense of place--or, rather, lack of place.  Berry's nearly downtempo drums, Buck's grunting bass, and Mills's angular piano create a loping groove, setting the desolate backdrop for Stipe's lyrics, which are not so much sung but whispered like a sinner in a confessional.  
It's the band at its most vulnerable and yet, ironically, at its strongest.

"Brian Wilson (Live)" (Barenaked Ladies)

My sophomore year roommate at UNC listened to Barenaked Ladies nonstop.  Luckily, I found them refreshing.  They lacked the angst-y/poseur-y bull crap that half the bands on rock radio embodied in the late 90s.  (Have I mentioned that I wasn't such a huge fan of 90s mainstream rock?  Maybe I have...)  They also had a knack for catchy melodies, lyrical wordplay, and close vocal harmonies, making them sound like no one else out there at the time.
The band's live album, Rock Spectacle (1996), made an appearance at least once a week in our dorm room.  While my roomie and his girlfriend enjoyed the goofy folkiness of the sing-along "If I Had $1,000,000," I always anticipated the more serious "Brian Wilson."
The song "Brian Wilson" was written by vocalist/guitarist Steven Page, a founding member of the band who actually left to pursue a solo career in 2009.  It's an extended metaphor, using both blatant and slightly obscure references to The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, detailing a creative drought that Page experienced around his 20th birthday in 1990, when melodies and lyrics just weren't coming to him.  
When he wasn't staring at the ceiling of his basement bedroom to pass the time, Page was making late night trips to Sam The Music Man (a music mega-store that went belly-up in the digital music age) on Toronto's Yonge Street, just to try and get inspired.
As the lyrics convey, he obtained a copy and began listening, over and over, to The Beach Boys' album Smiley Smile (1967)--an album that consisted of a mishmash of tracks from Brian Wilson's abandoned pop symphony, SMiLE.  Eventually, he started seeing parallels between his own inability to write and Brian Wilson's 1967 mental breakdown, referencing in the song's chorus Wilson's years-long, self-imposed exile from writing and performing: Lying in bed, just like Brian Wilson did...
(He also references Wilson's controversial therapist, Dr. Eugene Landy, who from the mid-70s to the early 90s controlled literally every aspect of Wilson's life--sleeping, eating, shtupping, writing, recording--ostensibly to get Wilson off drugs and in a better frame of mind.)
The original studio version of "Brian Wilson," released on the 1992 album Gordon, is good, but it's lacking a certain spark that comes through in the live version.  In particular, Page's voice is more expressive, and the frenzied coda really delivers the feel of coming unhinged.
Quite simply, it's a smart song from a smart band.

"Surf's Up" (The Beach Boys)

"Surf's Up," a 1966 composition by Brian Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks, was slated to be a focal point of the ambitious SMiLE—a song cycle that was, as Wilson called it, a "teenage symphony to God" and the intended follow up to Pet Sounds (1965).

Using clever wordplay, the song's lyrics describe someone feeling hollow inside after watching a staged performance, questioning the meaning of existence and human constructs, and then having a spiritual, transcendental awakening after hearing children singing.  
Quite simply, it's about death and rebirth.  Literally, a migration away from the surfing songs that had made them famous into something brand new.

But Wilson's new compositions for SMiLE, particularly "Surf's Up," sparked ire within the band.  It was especially hated by Wilson's bandmate/cousin, Mike Love.  

As Parks recounts in the 2004 documentary Beautiful Dreamer about the making—and Wilson's eventual 2004 revival—of SMiLE, Love took Parks to task for the lyrics of "Surf's Up," feeling the words were purposely inscrutable and too artsy for The Beach Boys' longtime fans.

Parks comments, "It sure is tedious to have to explain lyrics to people, and it wasn't something I wanted to do for a living."

Unfortunately, the SMiLE project was abandoned by Wilson before its completion.  Record label pressure to deliver the album, tensions within the band about his new art pop leanings (and his growing use of psychedelic drugs), as well as his deteriorating mental state all fueled the decision to shelve the album, which he deemed "inappropriate music."

(Regarding Wilson's mental health: one of the portentous events that led to the project's and his own breakdown was the recording of an evocative, chaotic instrumental piece for SMiLE called "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow," named for the infamous bovine that knocked over a gas lantern and sparked the 1871 Great Chicago Fire.  Intended as a symbolic embodiment of "fire" for a suite called "The Elements," Wilson convinced himself that the song had caused—on some metaphysical level—a warehouse across the street from the recording studio to burn to the ground, as well as a string of other fires across Los Angeles.  The incident marked the beginning of a slide into depression, culminating in Wilson retreating from both songwriting and the public eye for several years.)

After the project disintegrated, snippets of SMiLE popped up on various Beach Boys albums, including 1967's Smiley Smile—a disjointed, gutted version of Wilson's vision.  In 1971, Wilson's younger brother, Carl, worked to resurrect "Surf's Up" for an album of the same name, recording new vocals over existing backing tracks.  While that version is respectable, actually hearing the track in the context of Wilson's SMiLE from 2004 and being able to connect the dots musically to other tracks in the work (especially a song called "Child Is Father of the Man," which is reprised in the coda of "Surf's Up") illuminates the true genius of its creator.

(There are a number of versions of "Surf's Up" out there on the web, including "official" versions that people have edited together from 1966 demo tapes and the 1971 recording.  The one below appeared on 2011's The SMiLE Sessions, an album featuring outtakes, snippets, and songs that were awaiting final mixing from the SMiLE project.  This version is the closest to the arrangement on 2004's SMiLE and features the vocals of the band in its prime.)

"Alleluia" (Randall Thompson)

The late Serge Koussevitsky, musical director for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), founded the Berkshire Music Center (later the Tanglewood Music Center) in Lenox, MA, in 1940.  To celebrate the opening of the center, which continues to serve as the summer home of the BSO, Koussevitsky commissioned composer and music educator Randall Thompson to create an anthem embodying the center's mission as a forum for advanced musical study and performance for budding classical musicians. 
As a 2001 article from Harvard magazine recounts, the center was set to open on July 8, 1940.  The center's choral director, G. Wallace Woodworth, had been expecting sheet music for the new Thompson composition well in advance of the opening festivities to give him time to rehearse with his students.  But after days of waiting, the sheet music never arrived.
That is, not until 45 minutes before the performance.
Upon reviewing the work, Woodworth was surprised that Thompson hadn't penned the triumphant vocal fanfare that Koussevitsky had ordered.  Instead, the composer had written a solemn a cappella piece marked lento--meaning "slowly" (40-45 beats per minute)--with just a single lyric, repeated over and over: alleluia.
In the weeks prior to the opening, France had fallen to Nazi forces.  Therefore, Thompson felt a boisterous, celebratory song was completely inappropriate in light of world events.  In turn, he penned a humble cry from the heart of humanity to the Almighty.  
Thompson later said his composition was akin to Job 1:21: "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord."
The piece is still performed each summer when the center opens for the season.
...
I got the chance to perform Thompson's "Alleluia" for the first time my freshman year of high school (our music director pushed us like professional musicians, and I'm eternally grateful for that).  
If you've ever been part of a vocal group, choir, or band (of any sort--I'm not just talking classical music), you've likely experienced one of those moments where your level of interaction with your fellow musicians suddenly goes from conscious to pure ESP, where you're no longer having to think about what notes come next or what each voice/instrument is supposed to do.  Instead, the music just flows.   It's times like those when you sense that, what you're creating is not only good, it's bigger than each/all of you.  It's life-affirming.
One specific performance sticks out in my mind: I remember getting up on stage at a choral competition in Asheville, NC, with about 50 of my classmates.  Many of the vocal groups that had gone before us had (painfully) mumbled their way through Appalachian folk and children's songs.  (Although, I recall one high school doing a funky, piano-driven rendition of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" that was pretty good.)  As we began to sing Thompson's "Alleluia," without sheet music in front of us, completely a cappella in whisper-soft triple pianissimo, we could feel the energy in that cavernous auditorium, which was filled to capacity with fidgety teenagers and their directors, starting to shift.  Being a shorty on the front row of the risers, I could see people in the audience leaning forward in their seats, their faces revealing that they could not believe what they were hearing.  I could see it on our director's face, too, as she literally pulled the music through us.  Suddenly, there was this collective sense that we were creating something bigger than ourselves and bigger than what we thought we were capable of.  
When we breathed those final notes at the end of five minutes, there was complete silence in the auditorium, followed by a minute of thunderous applause.
After that, I don't think any groups in our region ever presented half-hearted versions of "Bile Them Cabbage Down" as the "best they could do"--at least not at that competition.  And I don't think any of us in our group ever doubted for a second that we could face any challenge thrown at us (musical or otherwise) after that.  
I haven't.

(The great performance of Thompson's "Alleluia" below is by Kansas City, MO-based Octarium, a vocal octet.)

"Oh, Shenandoah" (trad., arr. James Erb)

Okay, kids.  I'm going full-on chorus geek on this one.
My senior year of high school, a couple of my friends and I auditioned and were selected for the North Carolina High School Honors Chorus in Winston-Salem, NC.  I remember the hours of rehearsal that went into perfecting our performance, but I honestly can't remember half of what we sang.  Except for one piece: an a cappella rendition of the traditional folk song, "Oh, Shenandoah."  
Looking over the sheet music for the song before the event, I remember kind of shrugging it off, figuring it was going to be the same melody I'd sung as a kid in my town's boys' choir (don't laugh--that boys' choir produced at least one Grammy-winning musician).  But then we began to run through it, and it was worlds apart from the original tune.  There were hints of Aaron Copland's populist approach to classical composition and George Gershwin's jazz-steeped harmonies, jumping out of the SATB multi-layered vocals.  The lush harmonies made the lyrics--which express a longing for nature, loved ones, and home--that much more poignant to my friends and me, considering that we were going to be heading our separate ways after graduation, leaving our Blue Ridge home for our respective universities and/or jobs.
Saying it was moving is an understatement.  
This particular rendition was arranged by composer/conductor James Erb, who was associated with the University of Richmond in Virginia for most of his 40-year teaching career--hence the lyrical focus on Virginia's Shenandoah River Valley in his arrangement.
According to the Library of Congress Song of America Project website, the origins of the song are unknown.  Some contend that it is a post-Civil War sea shanty about a sailor who's missing his Shenandoah Valley home.  Others believe it has Native American roots--Shenandoah referring to an Algonquian chief whose daughter had been courted by a white Missouri River trader, who had been away for "seven long years" but still longed to see the maiden again.
If you listen to no other part of the video posted here, which features a great recording by the US Air Force Singing Sergeants, go to the 1:50 mark, and take in the vocal harmonies on the line Across the wide Missouri.  It's a thing of pure, hair-raising beauty.

"The Only Living Boy in New York" (Simon & Garfunkel)

It's early 1969.  Art Garfunkel is in Mexico, trying his hand at acting in a film adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22.  Filming is taking months longer than anticipated, and Paul Simon is back in New York City, trying to write new music for their upcoming album without his best friend to bounce ideas off of...
In Jennifer Lebeau's 2011 documentary The Harmony Game, which explores the making of the album Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970), Simon discusses the gestation of "The Only Living Boy in New York," noting that the "Tom" in the lyrics is actually Garfunkel (their stage names having been "Tom & Jerry" when they were teenagers, just starting out).  
In short, the lyrics are Simon wishing Garfunkel well on his acting debut (I know your part'll go fine), while also feeling abandoned, isolated, and slighted by a lack of communication (I can gather all the news I need on the weather report).  But, ultimately, it's a painful acknowledgment that they were drifting apart (Half of the time we're gone, and we don't know where / And we don't know where), both as friends and creative collaborators.
Despite the song being a virtual farewell to Garfunkel, it's also one of their warmest vocal collaborations on tape.  Their multi-tracked, sanctuary-echo aaahhh harmonies throughout are angelically uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time.
And then there's lauded session musician Joe Osborn's bassline--a living, breathing thing that glides and plucks at all the right moments.  It's one of the key elements, along with Hal Blaine's strategic bursts of percussion, that give the song an almost Pet Sounds quality (which, incidentally, Blaine appeared on).

"Early Morning Rain" (Peter, Paul & Mary)

When you're feeling lonely or broken, "Early Morning Rain" is the kind of song that reminds you that you're not mewling over your bourbon alone.
Written by Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot in 1964, it's a profile of a guy who is homesick, broke, and full of rotgut.  He's watching planes take off from the airport and wishes that he could hop one like a freight train, hobo-style, to get back home.  
It seems to be a semi-autobiographical snapshot of Lightfoot's stint in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, when he was studying music theory and composition at Westlake College of Music--a time that, by Lightfoot's accounts, was a mix of excitement, lean living, and longing for the familiar.
In an April 2009 CBC Radio interview, Lightfoot recounted to radio personality Jian Ghomeshi that, while he was attending Westlake, he and his classmates often would go watch planes take off at LAX as a no-cost diversion.  One morning, it happened to be particularly foggy and rainy, and the image stuck in his mind, only to pop up years later while babysitting his infant son.
Recalled Lightfoot, "[The image] came back to me, and I wrote that song while I was minding my kid.  I suppose it took me two hours to write the song."
It was after folk trio Peter (Yarrow), Paul (Stookey) & Mary (Travers) recorded the song in 1965 and made it a hit that Lightfoot got offered a management and recording deal, leading to countless others, from Bob Dylan to Elvis Presley, also covering his songs.
As great as Lightfoot's own version is, I prefer Peter, Paul & Mary's take on "Early Morning Rain" because I grew up hearing that version on my parents' copy of (Ten) Years Together, the trio's 1970 greatest hits compilation.  It's the album my parents reached for when I was being a cranky, fidgety toddler.  I must admit, it did a helluva job mellowing me out.  I remember "Early Morning Rain" on vinyl sounding particularly good on my dad's sound system, Yarrow's baritone blending seamlessly with Stookey's tenor and Travers's alto.  The blend was honest and soothing, like analgesic for the brain.  
Incidentally, it was "Early Morning Rain" that came back to me after I'd tentatively moved to Chicago after graduating from college, expecting to land a job writing commercials at one of the many ad agencies that had courted me while I was in school.  
Living frugally on money I'd saved up from working each summer, I pounded the pavement to get interviews with tons of agencies, even going so far as to wait almost 5 hours in the reception area of one behemoth firm, where I refused to let the creative director blow off an appointment that I'd scheduled 30 days before.  (I never did get to meet with one Mr. George Tenney.)
Ultimately, some hiring managers would gush over how funny or creative my work was, and then just never return my calls and emails; others bluntly told me I was a hack.
After getting jerked around for months, hearing empty promises of employment, and then seeing several pieces from my portfolio (including ones that had been derided by junior execs not much older than me) show up on TV with only slight modifications, I bought a ticket and boarded a plane at O'Hare on a rainy morning in August 2000 with $10 left in my pocket.
All I can say is, humming this song in my head helped immensely on the long trek back to North Carolina.

"Chan Chan" (Buena Vista Social Club)

Back in 1996, guitarist Ry Cooder traveled to Cuba and recorded with a group of musicians who'd been part of the burgeoning pre-revolution club scene of the 1930s-50s.  
Before I go on, I should clarify that by "club," I don't mean dancehall, per se.  Rather, there were social clubs in Cuba, dating back to the island nation's colonial days, that generally were centered around profession and race.  (So, for example, there might have been a cigar makers' social club for Cubans of African descent.)  At these clubs, members would socialize, make business connections, and also enjoy live music and dancing.
That's where the musicians on Cooder's recording come in.
After the revolution, organizations like the Buena Vista Social Club, which was an actual club in a suburb of Havana, were disbanded by the government, meaning musicians who'd made a living creating music at these venues suddenly found themselves out of a job.  Along with that, the types of Cuban music that were performed in these clubs no longer had a stage, which caused them to fall by the wayside.
Nevertheless, the musicians were still out there, still carrying the songs and musical traditions with them and even writing new music.  That's what Cooder was able to capture when he recorded with this collective of musicians, who ultimately adopted the name of the long-defunct Buena Vista Social Club.
"Chan Chan" is the song that kicks off the 1997 album and is, in many ways, its heart and soul.  Composed by musician Compay Segundo, who contributes vocals, guitar, and percussion to the album, "Chan Chan" is an example of son--a traditional Cuban musical form that combines the Spanish cancíon (basically a lyrical ballad) with African rhythms.  Essentially, son tells a story while giving your feet something to move to.  
In this case, "Chan Chan" is the story of two characters from Cuban folklore: the peasant farmer Chan Chan and his wife Juanica.  The newlyweds are clearing land and hauling sand to build their new home, and...how shall I put this delicately?  Chan Chan is having a difficult time focusing on his work because he's too busy watching Juanica's bottom bouncing as she helps sift the sand.  
The liner notes of the album also point out that the repeated verse De Alto Cedro voy para Marcané [I'm going from Alto Cedro to Marcané] / Luego a Cueto voy para Mayarí [Then from Cueto, I'm going to Mayarí] is kind of a shout-out to rural towns near the northeastern coast of Cuba--the idea being that Chan Chan is traveling through these villages on his way to join Juanica.
To me, the intoxicating thing about this recording is that you can hear the melting pot of Cuba come through, loud and clear: the African-feel drums, the jazz-influenced trumpet, the countrified/Spanish-tinged acoustic guitar--it all blends into something universal that's bigger than the sum of its parts and bigger than any political ideology.

"50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" (Paul Simon)

"50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" was the last song that Paul Simon wrote for his 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.  Word has it that he considers it kind of a nonsense, throwaway song.  Yet I think it's one of the best things he's ever recorded.
The most clever thing about the song is that the chorus—with its plan/Stan, coy/Roy, bus/Gus nursery school rhyming—isn't the real hook of the song; it's session drummer Steve Gadd's marching pattern on his snare against the time-keeping hi-hat/tambourine and syncopated kick drum.  That funky drum pattern was what always captured my ear as a kid every time the song came on the radio, often prompting me to go marching around our living room.
The icing on the cake is Simon's intricate chord changes in the verse.  The melody skirts the line between the melancholy of an Eastern European folk tune and the soulful, blue melodicism of cool jazz.  In fact, the chord changes remind me a bit of John Lewis's composition "Django"—an homage to the late Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt—as first recorded by the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Lyrically, "50 Ways..." is a snapshot of a man who's having an affair.  He's discussing ideas with his girlfriend—who almost takes on a kind of psychiatrist/analyst role to Simon's patient—about how to ditch his other lover.  
Only in recent years did I really get to thinking about the structure of the song—the weighty, emotional subject matter of the verses juxtaposed with the kiddie rhyming in the chorus.  It seems to suggest that, here are two adults, engaged in very adult matters, who aren't really thinking things through.  They're feigning a clinical and logical approach to solving the "problem."  However, they're really acting like little children, having their fun without really considering the consequences.  
Pretty smart on Simon's part.

"Kiko and the Lavender Moon" (Los Lobos)

Mention the East Los Angeles band Los Lobos to some people, and you'll get blank stares.  Others will dig back through the dusty files in their gray matter and recall that they were the guys who remade the song "La Bamba" for the 1987 Richie Valens biopic of the same name, starring an embryonic Lou Diamond Phillips.  And then, there are others whose eyes immediately brighten and enthusiastically proclaim that Kiko (1992) is one of their favorite albums of all time.
Kiko is one of those albums that sounds of, yet outside, its time.  There's little about Mitchell Froom's production that screams "early 90s."  But at the same time, the album's eclectic mix of roots rock, jazz, psychedelia, traditional Mexican folk, blues, funk, and New Orleans-flavored R&B somehow couldn't have been birthed at any time but 1992.  (It's kind of like how The Band's Music from Big Pink couldn't have come from any year but 1968, yet sounds completely removed from 1968 at the same time.)
The centerpiece of Kiko is the track "Kiko and the Lavender Moon."  Lyrically, the song is about a mystical mischief-maker who fills the active mind of a small child with nocturnal visions of lavender moons, green shoes, haircuts, and cake as he tries to drift off to sleep.  Musically, the song is an intoxicating blend of big band jazz, Mexican folk, and psychedelic rock, with a descending horn line that drifts along like a mellow, otherworldly take on "Three Blind Mice." 
Just like the entire album, it feels fresh yet vaguely nostalgic.  But every time I attempt to figure out which time period it reminds me of, I just find myself smiling as I reminisce about how I once viewed the world from my highchair.

"Breaking the Girl" (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

If you only listened to the first two tracks of the Rick Rubin-produced Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) when it was first released, you likely thought that Red Hot Chili Peppers hadn’t evolved much since Mother's Milk (1989).  Granted, Michael “Flea” Balzary’s bass playing was a little more subtle and less breakneck, and John Frusciante’s guitar was a little more Sly & The Family Stone than Black Flag.  But the ingredients were pretty much the same: frontman Anthony Kiedis rapping/singing over party-ready funk-rock.
But even now when I reach track 3, “Breaking the Girl,” it surprises me.
Suddenly, you’re no longer getting down on the Sunset Strip.  You’re transported to Tangier or Casablanca as Flea’s melodic bass and Frusciante’s strummed acoustic guitar (reminiscent of Led Zeppelin’s song “Friends”) play with urgency in waltz-like 6/8 time.  Chad Smith’s drums rise like the sun through mist and ride on a jazzy groove that Buddy Rich might have dreamed up, as Kiedis croons some very intimate-sounding vocals.
In fact, the lyrics were intensely personal for Kiedis.  He reveals in his autobiography Scar Tissue (2005) that the song is about a difficult breakup with his then-girlfriend, model Carmen Hawk. 
According to Kiedis, their relationship was tumultuous, vacillating between uninhibited sex and explosive quarreling.  He gives pretty blunt descriptions of a number of frightening episodes, where Hawk accused him of cheating (some justified, some not) and either attempted or succeeded at hurting herself in retaliation.
Kiedis notes that traumatic events from Hawk’s early childhood--particularly, her father ditching her family and her subsequently never getting to know him--resulted in her fear of abandonment and self-destructive tendencies, not to mention use of sex as a narcotic to numb her pain.  As much as Kiedis urged her to seek counseling to work through her issues, as much as he craved their visceral love making, and as much as he genuinely loved her, he finally acknowledged the relationship was destructive, and it had to end before it caused permanent damage.
In working through these feelings, he penned the poem that became the basis of “Breaking the Girl.” 
Writes Kiedis, “Even in the heat of our turbulent battles, I never considered her an evil person or hated her.  I just saw her as a girl who never got a chance to grow up and deal with all her pain.”
At the same time, he began reflecting upon his own turbulent upbringing: his father having been a hard-partying, drug-dealing, wannabe-actor who had a taste for cocaine and women.  Lots of women.  So, lyrically, the song also is about Kiedis staring down his own demons.
“I began to question myself and wonder if I was stuck in repeating my father’s pattern of hopping from flower to flower, the girl-of-the-day thing.”
Hence the stanza that begins Raised by my dad / girl of the day...
The track’s raw honesty, melodicism, funkiness, and inventiveness (they're beating on metal pans and pipes, culled from a scrap yard, during the bridge) make it one of my favorite songs ever created by Kiedis & Co. and one of my favorite songs of the 1990s.

"Where It's At" (Beck)

In journalist Gavin Edwards’s 2008 article “Beck’s Odelay: The Secret History” for Rolling Stone, Beck reveals that, back in 1996, he was keenly aware that people thought of him as a one-hit wonder.  In fact, he figured his nascent recording career was pretty much done.
“I thought Odelay might be the last time I got a chance to make a record.”
With his record company not really expecting much of a followup to 1994’s Mellow Gold and most of the world viewing the song “Loser” as a one-off novelty track, Beck was free to make whatever album he wanted.  
After abandoning an attempt at a very lo-fi acoustic album, Beck joined up with Mike Simpson and John King, who are better known as the Dust Brothers—the California-based production team behind The Beastie Boys’ 1989 masterpiece, Paul’s Boutique.  The trio ended up crafting an album that drew from their collective eclectic tastes, tossing everything from rap to Mariachi music into the blender.
While it's true that Odelay has tons of obscure samples and snippets from rare vinyl, a lot of what sounds like vintage samples are actually original loops created by Beck.  As Simpson recalls in a March 2011 musicradar article, “The making of Beck’s Odelay”:

“We’d always been forced to sample from records. Whereas with Beck he’d say, ‘I’ve got some ideas,’ and plug in his guitar and just start riffing. He’d play a bar or a measure, and we’d take that and loop it up, and he’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s incredible. Wow, I don’t even remember playing that!’ We were of like minds, had the same goals and were looking to make the same kind of music.”

This is how “Where It’s At”--a track that lyrically gives props to early hip-hop and reflects on Beck's early career, doing odd jobs and busking for his supper (Pulling out jives and jamboree handouts)--got its start.  He was tinkering around with a Wurlitzer electric piano in the studio and came up with the jazzy little riff that underpins the whole song.  From there, it became a riff in search of the right beat.
Says Beck in Edwards’s interview, “We didn’t really have the means to record drums, and at the time, drums were recorded in a particular style that I just didn’t care for: boomy, kind of ringy.”
So he and the Dust Brothers went looking for a drum break with an appropriate 60s/70s funk feel and landed on Allen Toussaint’s New Orleans funk classic “Get Out of My Life, Woman,” as performed by Lee Dorsey.
A few other vinyl samples also help make the song what it is.  The whole motif of two turntables and a microphone is borrowed from the track “Needle to the Groove” (1985) by hip-hop/electro-funk group Mantronix.  (The sample actually pops up after the first chorus.)
Last but not least, there’s the source of the song’s title: a really obscure sex-ed album from 1969 called Sex for Teens (Where It’s At) by Stanley Z. Daniels, MD—a “hip,” “with-it” attempt to talk about bow chicka wow wow with teenagers.  (It’s where the hilarious What about those who swing both ways, AC/DC’s? sample comes from.)
In all, Simpson sums up what I love about this song.
“It was a nice blend of Beck sounding really good rapping, but then lots of nice musical elements…It’s one of those riffs that makes you reminisce back to your childhood.”

"Saturday's Child" (The Monkees)

I’ve said it before: for my money, you can’t ask for a more distinctive rock vocalist than Micky Dolenz, and one of my favorite Dolenz-fronted tracks is “Saturday's Child”--a cut from the group’s 1966 debut album that was featured in two episodes of the TV show (“Monkee vs. Machine” [9/26/66] and “The Spy Who Came in from the Cool” [10/10/66]) but was never released as a single.  Shame, because it’s one of their more rocking songs.

In fact, it’s the only song on the debut album that really makes them sound like the garage rock band that the TV show made them out to be.  

The song prominently features a distorted guitar riff, very similar to the gritty sound The Beatles had captured on Revolver earlier that summer.  But like so many of their songs released before their 1967 album Headquarters (when they gained a little more control over their output and finally were allowed to play their own instruments on their records), Dolenz is the only Monkee on the track.  Session musicians performed the entire backing track, including that fantastic riff.

"Ramble On" (Led Zeppelin)

When it comes to prototypical hard rock, it doesn't get much heavier than Led Zeppelin II (1969).  Written and recorded in short bursts while the band was touring North America and Europe in early/mid-1969, the entire album burns with an urgency and immediacy that makes it still sound fresh today.
That said, for every thunderous, riff-based track like "Whole Lotta Love" or "Heartbreaker" that Led Zeppelin II contains, there's an equally nuanced track to balance it out.  ("Light and shade" as the band's guitarist Jimmy Page likes to put it.)
"Ramble On" is one of those amazingly nuanced tracks.  It begins with Page's bucolic acoustic strumming, syncopated with a steady rhythm of 16th notes, played by drummer John Bonham.  Played on what is a subject of debate: the most common claim is that he's tapping his drumsticks on his vinyl drum seat (or throne, if you will); other people postulate everything from a plastic garbage can lid to the bottom of his shoe.  
Based on how flat and sticky it sounds, my vote is for the vinyl seat.
The feel is very folky (for a few seconds), until John Paul Jones--former session musician and self-professed Stax/Motown fanatic--comes in with his bass, which automatically lends an almost R&B feel to the song.  Then, the layers continue to build as Robert Plant's hushed vocal breezes in, followed by a mellow, finger-picked electric guitar, which lends a bluegrass vibe for a fleeting moment.  
And the second you think the song is going retreat back into the woods for a quiet stroll through the falling leaves, everything shifts into high gear on the chorus, and you're on a Harley, doing 70 mph down a sunny country road: Page's guitar crackles, Plant launches into his banshee wail, Bonham punches his drums like they owe him money, and Jones--well, he just keeps it funky on the low end.
A moment later, you've ditched the Hog, you're ambling down a wooded path, and there are Tolkienesque visions and a Medieval-sounding recorder, swirling through your head...
It's easily one of the best songs the band ever put on tape and a very direct precursor to the band's 1971 epic, "Stairway to Heaven."

"Mysterious Ways" (U2)

“Mysterious Ways” from U2’s album Achtung Baby (1991) started out as a jam called “Sick Puppy.”  Not much of “Sick Puppy” made it to the final track with the sole exception of Adam Clayton’s funky bassline, which became the throbbing heart and soul of “Mysterious Ways.”   
At first, the band didn’t really know what to do with the bass-heavy groove until lead guitarist David “The Edge” Evans started playing his 1966 Rickenbacker guitar through a Korg A3 pedal on the “Funk Wah” setting.  The gritty, funky sound of the guitar catapulted them in a new direction, and “Mysterious Ways” was born.
Those distorted gulps of guitar over the undulating Berber drums were what first grabbed me years ago.  But it’s really Clayton’s slinky bass, which is pushed up in the mix much more graciously than most modern rock bands would allow, that keeps “Mysterious Ways” and Achtung Baby in my playlist for months at a time.  (And I don't even consider myself a big U2 fan.)

"Reckoner" (Radiohead)

Admittedly, I don’t think the sun rises and sets on Radiohead.  But when Thom Yorke and the boys go off experimenting with their Theremins and throw everything from electronica to free jazz in a blender, just to see what comes out, it makes me feel all is right with the world.  So I am a fan.
Even if I weren’t a fan, I’m pretty sure I’d still love the song “Reckoner” from 2007’s near-perfect album In Rainbows, which takes its name from the backing vocal lyric sung during the bridge of "Reckoner."  
The song’s roots stretch back to early 2001, when Yorke and Radiohead’s lead guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood started working on a song called “Reckoner.”  This heavy and heavily-distorted forerunner to the final version (heard here in a 2001 bootleg recording from Washington’s Gorge Amphitheater, where the band debuted the song) was shelved for quite a few years and didn’t turn up again until the In Rainbows sessions.  As the band tinkered with the song, Greenwood and Yorke added a rhythm-driven, more introspective coda to balance out the song's hard-driving core.  In the end, the band decided they liked the new section better than the original, so they ended up tossing out everything except the coda.  
The reworked song with new lyrics became the “Reckoner” released on In Rainbows, and the abandoned song was resurrected in 2009 as the Yorke solo track, “Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses.”
Musically, the song is built around chopped-up snippets and loops of Philip Selway’s live drum track and a guitar line that, as Yorke noted on a radio interview with Britain’s XFM, was inspired by John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
From various bits of commentary I’ve read about the track and the album in general, both seem to be influenced thematically by Goethe's Faust.  (The track that precedes “Reckoner” on the album is even called “Faust Arp.”)  I’ll try to give the quick, Cliff’s Notes synopsis of the drama: the plot centers around Faust, who wants to find the meaning of human existence.  So, he sells his soul to Mephistopheles, an agent of the devil, in exchange for superhuman knowledge/power/pleasure.  After years of unlimited power, Faust finally experiences a moment of pure happiness, and Mephistopheles, per their original bargain, comes for his soul.  However, Mephistopheles is thwarted by angels who whisk Faust to heaven, saving him from eternal damnation.  The end.
Considering Yorke’s struggles with sudden fame after 1993's Pablo Honey and feeling constant pressure to top his previous achievements--not to mention his gnawing concerns that he and the band were helping perpetuate crass commercialism and the rock-star myth, it seems plausible that “Reckoner” is Yorke seeing himself in a Faustian light: someone who was once handed the world on a plate (via a deal with the devil), only to realize that the true meaning of our existence is neither fame nor fortune.
The backing vocals, which repeat In rainbows...In rainbows in the song’s bridge, seem to represent finding a place of comfort and peace, outside the limelight.  (Specifically, in reflected/refracted light.)
Looking at it another way, it’s a song about mortality and coming to grips with the fact that all things must pass.
It’s heavy stuff, packaged in one of the most ethereal tracks that Radiohead’s ever done.

"Only In Dreams" (Weezer)

I had a really hard time warming to most alternative rock in the 90s.  I often preferred listening to my parents' classic Beatles, Zep, Blondie, and Who records because most of the 90s bands seemed to be aping them anyway.
But there was something about Weezer that grabbed me.  I think it was Rivers Cuomo’s doing-the-Times-crossword-puzzle-in-ink-smart lyrical geekery and heart-on-his-sleeve sincerity.  Not to mention his uncanny ability to create catchy melodies, which often felt like kids’ campfire songs as reinterpreted by Pixies, or maybe The Cars.  (After all, Ric Ocasek produced the “Blue Album.”)
We won’t talk about the schlockfest that Weezer has become since the “Green Album,” though.  
A former coworker of mine had a hypothesis that Weezer has been one, big Cuomosian exercise in irony since the turn of the millennium, and I’m inclined to agree.  But I’ll take it one step further: every album/single since 2001 has been Cuomo’s poppy revenge on the world for dissing Pinkerton (1996), his dark, complex reimagining of Puccini's Madame Butterfly.  (It’s psychological revenge executed on a level that usually only surfaces in Stephen King novels.)
But let’s go back to 1994 to the track that won me over to the pre-2001 Weezer: “Only In Dreams.”
Compositionally, the song is very dreamlike.  It floats along on this pillow of air, only to explode in perfectly placed blasts of distortion every time Cuomo acknowledges that his relationship with the object of his affection exists in his head alone.  It’s like an indy rock version of “Just My Imagination” by The Temptations with just a melodic pinch of Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story, thrown in for good measure.
I realize, that makes "Only In Dreams" sound like a big, smelly block of cheese.  But there’s actually so much that saves it from slipping into Meat Loaf “I’d Do Anything for Love” territory.  
Matt Sharp’s simple but effective bassline, for one, gives the song its melancholy beating heart for a solid 8 minutes.  Then, there’s that full-throttle, goosebumps-inducing, three-minute crescendo at the end of the song, which has some pretty complex harmonic things going on in Cuomo's twin-guitar eruption.
It's one of those rare instances where 8 minutes for a song just doesn't feel like enough.  And call me a sap, but the romantic in me always hopes that, when I hit replay, he'll actually get the girl the next time around.

"Dirty Harry" (Gorillaz)

For a band that doesn’t actually exist, Gorillaz has crafted some damn good music over the past decade—particularly the album Demon Days (2005).
In reality, Gorillaz is a clever vehicle for social and political commentary by way of comic book-style characters and a unique hybrid of alt rock and hip hop.  The brains behind it all are musician Damon Albarn, graphic artist Jamie Hewlett, and producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton. 
Based on a 2003 demo by Albarn called “I Need A Gun,” the track “Dirty Harry” (referring to Clint Eastwood’s gun-toting vigilante cop) is a great example of the “band’s” genius, combining a danceable rhythm track, sing-along verses--complete with children’s choir, and insightful observations about the state of the world.
The commentary in the song is twofold: first, it’s a look at our society—kids carrying guns to feel safe in everyday situations (I need a gun, ‘cos all I do is dance).  Second, it’s a rumination on the 2003-2011 Iraq War.  It’s not so much a criticism of the politics or motivations behind the war, though; it's more of a reminder to listeners that there were young men and women on the ground there, facing very real danger.  
Rapping from the point of view of a disillusioned young soldier, the Pharcyde’s Romye “Bootie Brown” Robinson makes direct reference to our 43rd President’s infamous declaration of “Mission Accomplished” while the war was still raging:

And I'm filled with guilt from things that I've seen
Your water's from a bottle, mine's from a canteen
At night I hear the shots
Ring so I'm a light sleeper
The cost of life, it seems to get cheaper
Out in the desert with my street sweeper
“The war is over,” so said the speaker
With the flight suit on
Maybe to him I'm just a pawn
So he can advance
Remember when I used to dance?
Man, all I want to do is dance.

"Tighten Up" (The Black Keys)

I’ve had conversations with people (okay, near fistfights) over whether or not The Black Keys sold out on their album Brothers (2010).  I’ve even had some argue that the duo's initial collaboration with producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton on the album Attack & Release (2008) was the beginning of the end of their homegrown sound.
I completely disagree.  There’s a difference between selling out and refining a good thing.  I will admit, their more recent releases have had a garage rock via Memphis kind of feel, whereas their earlier albums had a garage rock via Detroit feel.  But that’s Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney’s prerogative to take their sound in new directions.  The original fire and crunch are still there, even if the sound is a little more polished.
For my money, Brothers was the best album released in 2010—rocking and soulful with exceptional songwriting from start to finish.  It’s an album that will hold up for many years to come.
The same can be said for the track “Tighten Up,” the first single released from Brothers.  It happened to be their only collaboration with Burton on the album, and it actually came at the very end of sessions.
The bulk of Brothers was cut with producer Mark Neill at the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL, where artists from The Staples Singers to The Rolling Stones recorded hit records in the 70s.  Thing was, when Auerbach and Carney made the decision to record at Muscle Shoals, they weren't really aware that it hadn't been a functioning recording studio in more than 30 years; it was basically a shabby museum, sitting on the side of a highway in rural Alabama.  So Neill shipped recording equipment from his own California studio to Muscle Shoals, allowing the duo to record in the fabled studio, albeit on outside machinery.
As Neill states in an August 2011 Sound on Sound article, "Recording The Black Keys at Muscle Shoals," the natural acoustics of the studio immediately affected the way Auerbach and Carney approached writing and recording the material for Brothers.  Notes Neill, the cinderblock construction of the building and springy floors in the studio act as a sponge for bass.  So Auerbach and Carney were sort of driven to focus on drums and bass first--an approach they'd never taken before.  Likewise, Neill states that the sound in the studio's control room tends to swallow bass, too.  Therefore, his tendency was to compensate by pushing up the bass and kick drum when mixing.  
Upon playback, he was shocked at the bass-heavy sound that they were getting.
“First few takes, we literally couldn't believe what we were hearing,” says Neill. “Dan and Pat were kind of looking at each other saying, 'That doesn't even sound like us.' Seriously.”
After recording had wrapped in Alabama, Auerbach and Carney spent their downtime hanging out with Burton in New York and decided to cut one more track with him at Brooklyn's Bunker Studio.  With the Muscle Shoals sound still fresh on their minds, the track began with Carney playing around with a rhythm pattern that was inspired by the 1972 song "Vitamin C" by German experimental/psychedelic rock band Can.  Auerbach came up with the core riff and lyric, and they both decided the song needed that "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay"-style whistle in the intro as the icing on the cake.
Although the song is their biggest hit to date, Carney states in the 2011 Mojo article "Exiles on Main Street" they figured the song was a throwaway.  "We made the song, didn't think anything of it, shelved the thing for a month and a half.  That was 'Tighten Up.'  We never thought it would get played on the radio." 
I can't express my admiration of this song enough.  It is equal parts past and present, a simultaneous throwback and a leap forward that combines Stax soul and modern, club-ready blues-rock.  I completely love Auerbach's vocal and the genius shift in tempo during the last minute of the song, which gives you just enough time to catch your breath before hitting "repeat."