A list (in no particular order) of my 500 favorite songs (singles, deep cuts, hits, and more) of all time. Includes a wide array of selections from rock, punk, funk, R&B, soul, classical, jazz, folk, and world music.
I remember hearing OutKast's second album ATLiens (1996)in college and thinking it sounded like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon as reimagined by George Clinton. The whole extraterrestrial/Marvel comics vibe felt like an extension (not a rip-off) of what the latter had created with Parliament in the late 70s. But what struck me most about the album was its fearlessness, especially at a time when hip-hop had gotten stale and "Puffy-ized": every two-bit rapper in the mainstream seemed to be bragging about the same crap ad nauseam over unimaginative beats and even lazier pop samples. Instead, here were two young cats out of Atlanta who not only were rapping about more philosophical topics (life, spirituality, and the nature of success), but they also had made an effort to write, perform, and produce/co-produce all of the backing tracks on their songs. ATLiens really did feel like it had dropped from outer space. Although I typically gravitate to the unearthed gems on OutKast's albums that didn't get a lot of airplay ("Chonkyfire" anyone?), I do still love "Elevators (Me & You)," the biggest single from ATLiens. The dubbed out drum track, spacey organ, and that anthemic chorus (Me and you / Your momma and your cousin, too...) all set the stage for Antwan "Big Boi" Patton and "André 3000" Benjamin's seamless flows, which address the fact that they were still struggling as artists despite the perception that they had "made it." For my money, one of the best verses ever in hip-hop is Benjamin's final stanza, where he tells a fan (who feigns knowing him from high school) that he and Patton are basically still living paycheck-to-paycheck, despite selling a bunch of albums. It's delivered with such lightning-fast precision and raw truth that I'm sure it made half of the emcees who heard it—you know, the ones who were tooling around in rented Bentleys and yachts, spraying Sprite disguised as Cristal on the engineered breasts of models in their videos, circa 1996/7—feel a bit inadequate.
After proving Motown president Berry Gordy wrong with the huge success of the single "What's Going On" (Gordy had initially refused to release the song, feeling it was uncommercial and would alienate longtime fans with its social message), Marvin Gaye continued in his social consciousness vein with "Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)." After taking an extended break from recording, largely due to being depressed about the death of his friend and singing partner Tammi Terrell, who'd passed in 1970 from a brain tumor, Gaye decided that, if he was going to record again, he only was going to make music that spoke to things he cared about: love, life, God, people, and nature. As Gaye told Britain's Disc and Music Echo in 1971, "I can remember as a child I always kept myself to myself, and I always dug nature. I used to fool around with worms, beetles, and birds, and I used to admire them while the other kids were playing sports. It was like some strange force made me more aware of nature." It probably seemed completely out of left field at the time for an R&B star to release a song about environmental concerns, but Gaye felt it was his duty to say something. Incidentally, Gordy didn't care for "Mercy, Mercy Me" either. (Apparently, he also had to be told what ecology was.) But, once again, he changed his tune when the single version became a Top 10 seller in 1971. Apart from Gaye's heartfelt delivery and poignant commentary about the ills mankind had inflicted upon the environment, I love the sound of this track. There's the deep, signature Funk Brothers groove and Wild Bill Moore's unhinged sax solo, but then there's also that echo created by the heavy reverb on the percussion instruments. That spacious sound created by the woodblock and congas is so evocative of the song's somber mood; it not only sets the scene that Gaye is drawing upon distant memories of better times, but it also replicates the paved-over, hollow sound of inner cities in that era. In fact, if you are old enough to remember what most downtowns across America looked like in the 70s to the mid-80s, you'll know what I mean: there often were few trees, lots of concrete and asphalt, and lots of abandoned buildings. In that emptiness, the cold sounds of vehicles and machines were amplified, including the din of demolition—the crashing and banging of falling debris and dump trucks. Those were the sounds I heard as a child when my parents would take me to downtown Asheville. Or when we visited relatives in the Rust Belt. Or when we went to D.C. for the first time and stayed on South Capitol Street. And it was that sound that struck me the first time I heard the song on the radio as a kid. I remember being amazed that a sound could capture a time and place so precisely. And I still marvel at Gaye's brilliance to not only use his words but also the very aural texture of America's crumbling cities to reach listeners. It's simply a great and important song.
It's almost ridiculously simple: an understated acoustic guitar playing a single chord, paired with an electric guitar with the tremolo cranked up, playing the same two-note pattern, over and over—plucking the 1, plucking the 5, and then back down to the 1 of the scale. It doesn't sound like a formula for any kind of hit song. But that's the structure of "For What It's Worth" by short-lived folk-rock band Buffalo Springfield. The song was penned and sung by Stephen Stills, who most notably went on to form supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash after Buffalo Springfield imploded (the result of creative tensions between Stills and bandmate Neil Young and various members getting busted—and even deported—for possession). Although it's often assumed that the track is a protest song about the Vietnam War, that's not the case. Stills wrote it after witnessing a run-in between police and students on LA's Sunset Strip. There were a number of bars and clubs geared to teens and college students along Sunset Blvd. Various business owners and older residents had grown tired of kids congregating outside the late night clubs, and they pushed to have a "no loitering" ordinance passed, which stipulated a 10 pm curfew. Students saw this as a violation of their rights, so they took to the street outside a club called Pandora's Box (currently the site of a traffic island, across from a strip mall). Things started peaceably enough. But as the number of student protestors grew and they started blocking traffic, that's when the riot squad got called in. Stills wasn't directly involved in the protest; he'd merely driven through the area, saw the tense situation, and turned right around and headed home, where he came up with the music and lyrics in a matter of minutes. A close read of the lyrics reveals that it's neither explicitly pro-students nor pro-police; it's merely a chronicle of the event by a bystander who can't really comprehend how things got so out of hand. In short, you have the students marching and holding picket signs on one side because they're pissed off about a curfew, and then police overreacting on the other. That's why the refrain (I think it's time we stop. Children, what's that sound?Everybody look what's going down) is just as important as the line Nobody's right if everybody's wrong, in my humble opinion. So it's not a protest song. But it is one hell of a piece of journalism, set to the funkiest backbeat in all of 60s folk-rock.
Van Morrison's Moondance (1970) is one of those rare albums that fits any mood. Its tinges of R&B and jazz can drag me out of gloom when I'm down or play the perfect companion when things are sunny. At the same time, its folk-rock jangle can be the perfect prescription for soothing a stressful day. It's just a well made, genre-defying record that stands the test of time. One of my favorite tracks from the album is "Into the Mystic." Originally titled "Into the Misty," Morrison sensed the inherent spirituality of the song and decided "Into the Mystic" was a richer, more fitting title. In it, Morrison uses vivid seafaring imagery and a soulful, bass-driven groove to explore the spiritual side of the human condition, poetically addressing everything from love to mortality in a mere three minutes. In short, there's nothing quite like hearing Van the Man belt out I wanna rock your gypsy soul followed by that dual saxophone riff to make your spirit feel like it's soaring.
So much has been written about "Strawberry Fields Forever" already, so I'll keep the history portion brief. In 1966, The Beatles had tired of touring. The crazed fans, various death threats, and breakneck schedule had taken their toll, and the band was on the verge of breakup. So they officially retired from the road and turned their focus exclusively to making records. The studio follow up to their mid-1966 album Revolver originally was planned as a concept album: a collection of original songs about childhood memories of growing up in Liverpool. As we all know, the band famously took the album concept in a different direction, pretending to be an Edwardian-era marching band in day-glo uniforms, playing a concert for a crowd of onlookers. Nevertheless, two songs were recorded for the nostalgia project before it was abandoned: Paul McCartney's "Penny Lane" and John Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever," both released as a double A-side single in February 1967. Strawberry Field (minus the "s") was the name of a Salvation Army home for children, located a short walk from Lennon's childhood home. He and his boyhood friends would often play in Strawberry Field's garden, despite his aunt's stern orders not to trespass on the property. (My guess is that's exactly why they played there and why it held such fond memories for him.) I first heard "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the car radio on the way home from my elementary school's annual Halloween Carnival, which was sort of a throwback to rural harvest festivals, complete with bobbing for apples, cakewalks, and the like. The ghosts-n'-goblins feel of the evening kind of fit with the psychedelic vibe of the song's eerie Mellotron flutes, strange backwards percussion, and heavily compressed strings. So for many years, the song just evoked fond memories of being 6 years old and playing carnival games in a homemade lion costume. But when I bought Magical Mystery Tour on CD as a teenager and listened to it while driving to/from school, "Strawberry Fields Forever" resonated with me for a different reason. Lennon's poetic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics painted the picture of a bittersweet childhood: the innocence and escape of Strawberry Field pitted against feelings of being a misunderstood oddball. I'd also felt like the odd man out growing up. I was an only child, and there were no kids my age in my neighborhood to play with, so I learned early on to keep myself occupied—drawing, building Lego cities, going on fantasy time travel adventures on my bike, or pretending to be a rock star and putting on concerts for my stuffed animals and action figures. I also spent a lot of time around the adult members of my family. Consequently, my interests and topics of conversation tended to be a little more World News Tonight than Fraggle Rock. So I often felt like I was speaking a different language from some kids at school, never really connecting with them on an intellectual level. That's why Lennon's whole lyrical motif of knowing you have a passionate, singular point of view but having difficulty expressing it to others really struck me. I came to embrace the song's refrain Strawberry Fields, forever as a kind of rallying cry for individuality—a declaration that, just because you're misunderstood by some doesn't mean you should change how you look at the world.
"You're All I Need to Get By" (1968) is one of the best ballads ever released by Motown. The Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson-penned track is dramatic without drifting into the realm of melodrama. It works because, even with those dulcet strings, you have The Funk Brothers rhythm section keeping the song rooted in soul along with Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell delivering their vocals with gospel-tinged fervor. It's passionate, and it's honest. As I've written before, Terrell and Gaye weren't actually romantically involved. Although, that's almost hard to believe, listening to a performance like "You're All I Need to Get By." I think it's fair to say that they were soulmates. While performing with Gaye at Hampton-Sydney College in Virginia, Terrell, who had been prone to migraine headaches her entire life, collapsed on stage in Gaye's arms after complaining that she wasn't feeling well. Turned out that she had a malignant tumor, growing in her thalamus. Recovering from the first of many operations and wheelchair-bound, Terrell still wanted to record, and "You're All I Need to Get By" was the first single that she worked on, post-surgery. Because of their schedules (and also to allow Terrell sufficient time to rest and recover), she and Gaye didn't cut their vocals together in the studio; their vocals were recorded separately and then edited together as a duet afterward. Nevertheless, there's still a palpable feeling of unity on the track. And under the difficult circumstances, I think it's even more poignant that they were singing to each other (even if it was via studio wizardry): you're all I need to get by.
"Take Five" is one of those curious songs that seems to cross every boundary. Even people who claim to not like jazz will embrace "Take Five" as one of their perennial favorite songs. Personally, I think it has as much to do with its eternal cool factor as it does with its indelible saxophone melody. Saying that you're a fan of "Take Five" is like casually flashing your membership card to the avant-garde. Brubeck and his band had come back from a 1958 U.S. Department of State-sponsored world tour, where they had acted as "jazz ambassadors," sharing the uniquely American art form with developing nations and countries that had been cut off from the West by the Iron Curtain. Along the way, they jammed with local musicians in places like India, Pakistan, and Turkey, where they soaked up the intricate folk rhythms, which often were in time signatures like 7/8 or 9/8—time signatures that were uncommon to jazz in 1958. All of those experiences were distilled into the album Time Out (1959), which presented a set of seven original compositions, all in time signatures other than waltz (3/4) or common (4/4) time. During one of the sessions for Time Out at Columbia's famed 30th Street Studio in New York, drummer Joe Morello was playing around with a rhythm in 5/4 time, and Brubeck asked saxophonist Paul Desmond if he could come up with a melody that played off Morello's beat. Desmond doodled around for a bit and came up with two passages but struggled with how to unite them into a single song. So Brubeck stepped in and added the staccato piano vamp, creating a foundation for the verse, and then figured out the release heading into the bridge section. And "Take Five" (named for its 5/4 time signature) was born. Curiously enough, the song is credited only to Desmond, even though it is the tune most associated with Brubeck.
