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.
Kind of sad to admit, but up until a few years ago, I had only a passing acquaintance with Elvis Costello's music from the late 70s. I'd heard his reggae-tinged "Watching the Detectives" used on T.V. in various ways over the years. (Never really cared for the song, actually.) But all I really knew about the guy was that he'd recorded some stuff with Burt Bacharach in the late 90s and was married to jazz artist Diana Krall. It wasn't until the mid-2000s when I was living in Charlotte that I sort of stumbled upon Costello's early New Wave stuff. There's this classic rock/deep cuts station called 95.7 "The Ride" that broadcasts in the city. The station is what FM radio should be: no stupid morning teams trying (and failing) to be funny, no dumb contests, and zero hype—even their station ID bumpers are just this dude with a weathered voice saying, "95.7: The Riiiiiide." The disc jockeys simply play music, and they never talk over the tracks. It's awesome. One DJ in particular named Harriet Coffey always had a knack for playing stuff that I liked. And she always seemed to enjoy and know a lot about the stuff she played, too, which made me a fast fan. One afternoon, I was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic in suburban Charlotte, watching the traffic lights ahead change from green to red at least 6 times without anyone moving an inch, when here came Harriet to save the day. She announced that her next song was "Pump It Up" from Elvis Costello's album This Year's Model (1978), and this jam with thudding drums, throbbing bass, cranked up guitar, and squeaky Vox Continental organ came springing from my speakers. I was floored. This was definitely not the Costello who'd made a cameo in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, strumming his guitar and crooning mildly with a grinning Bacharach backing him on piano. No, this was a manic punk with brains, come to shake us up and shimmy down. Speaking of brains, it's a wickedly clever song from a wickedly good album. On the surface, "Pump It Up" is a terse little rocker about hanging out with girls and listening to music with the volume cranked up. But a closer read reveals a biting satire of the club scene of the late 70s: the pills, the powders, the booze, the sex. Basically, the tableau he presents is one where everyone is looking for some sort of gratification but only gets frustration instead. To expand on that, I recently ran across a quote from Costello from an interview with SPIN from 2008, where he was discussing his 70s image and songwriting. "I didn't feel like a rock 'n' roll star. I was just some guy working in an office who'd written some songs. And the fact that I had this absurd name and was posing like a rock 'n' roller with these splayed legs [on the cover of My Aim Is True]—it was a satire. That's kind of the same thing in 'Pump It Up' [from This Year's Model]: If you listen to the lyrics, it kind of goes against the grain of hedonism."
Two things before we get started. 1. Clem Burke is one of the best drummers of all time. 2. I really need to start paying attention to the speakers/lecturers schedule at the 92nd Street Y. I just found out yesterday that I missed a candid chat with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein at the Y a few months ago. I'm totally kicking myself right now. For a measly couple of bucks and a 4-block walk from my apartment, I could have listened to two of my favorite people in rock yak about everything from CBGB to Fab 5 Freddy for an evening, and I frigging missed it. (No doubt I was sitting at home, doing something stupid that evening, like watching Chopped while playing "Name That Toupée" on Sporcle. **sigh**) Anyway, if you need an explanation for item #1 above, just take a listen to the drums on "Dreaming" from Blondie's 1979 album Eat to the Beat. They sound like rolling thunder throughout the entire track, and Burke just never lets up. His energy level is as intense at the start as it is by the time the song fades out 3 glorious minutes later. (His closest counterpart for sheer rhythmic intensity is the late Keith Moon.) But props also have to go to Harry for her heartfelt lyrics and Stein for his tasty pop-punk melody. (Seriously, why isn't anyone writing pop music with brains and muscle like this anymore?) According to the Interwebs, Stein came up with the basic chord progression and the line Dreaming / Dreaming is free, and then he handed it off to Harry, who ran with the theme. And based on a transcript of their conversation at the Y (did I mention that I missed it?), the song was inspired by a very unlikely muse. Said Stein, "'Dreaming' is basically (ABBA's) 'Dancing Queen.' It's a direct cop. There's not enough (similar) notes to get sued, though." I'm a pretty astute listener when it comes spotting the influence of one song on another. (That's generally why things are sequenced the way they are on my list of favorites.) But never in a million years would I have picked up on the influence of "Dancing Queen" on "Dreaming" had I not read that quote. Consider me floored.
It's one of the most famous intros in all of rock. The moment you hear that hypnotic synth sequence, there's no doubt that you're listening to "Baba O'Riley" from Who's Next (1971). Part of Pete Townshend's abandoned rock opera Lifehouse (see my entry on "Won't Get Fooled Again"), "Baba O'Riley" is set in the future after mankind has turned the planet into a polluted dump—hence Roger Daltrey's repeated phrase teenage wasteland toward the end of the song. More or less, the song is about poor farmers' kids tossing down their plows and making a pilgrimage across what's left of England to attend this massive electronic music concert, where they hope to rekindle some kind of connection with reality and humanity. So what's that story have to do with the song's title? Not much, really. As Townshend states in this clip from VH1's Storytellers, the "Baba" part refers to Indian philosopher/spiritual leader Meher Baba, whose teachings about perception and spirituality heavily influenced Townshend during this period. The "Riley" part refers to American avant garde musician and composer Terry Riley; Townshend's synth line is a clear homage to Riley's electronic experiments on the album A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969). (Take a listen, and you'll instantly hear what I mean.) Finally, because the violin jig at the end of the track sounded "a bit Irish," he added the "O'" to Riley's name. The decidedly cerebral part of the song aside, it's a bruiser. Between Townshend's windmill power chords and the late Keith Moon's rhythmic assault, it's impossible to hear this track and not want to take on the world. (I've used it many a time to psych myself up for some task that I was dreading or scared to do.)
I first heard heard "Bohemian Rhapsody" from Queen's A Night at the Opera (1975) sometime in 1992. I was watching Queen's concert film We Will Rock You (1982) on cable, and the song was kind of buried in the middle of the show's lengthy song set. Considering that everything preceding and following it was equally hyper-dramatic and energetic, the song honestly didn't stand out to me. (When you're going 150 mph already, speeding up to 200 doesn't feel all that different.) Not long after, I saw the film Wayne's World (1992) and that scene everybody now knows, where Wayne and Garth lip sync to Freddie Mercury's vocals and headbang to the heavy section of the song. I loved the movie and that scene. Still, the song seemed like a gilded novelty to me; the lean, mean rock of 1977's News of the World appealed to me more than the extravagant A Night at the Opera. It really wasn't until a road trip in the winter of 2001 that I warmed to the genius of "Bohemian Rhapsody." I'd driven from Charlotte to New Orleans for a job interview at a publishing house. The most bizarre interview I've ever had in my life. The gentleman who owned the company was kind of like a cross between Boss Hog and Colonel Sanders; he had the all-white linen suit and everything. The moment he asked me, "Who are your people, son?" and then let slip that their original headquarters on the other side of the Mississippi may have been set ablaze for insurance purposes, I started looking around for the hidden cameras. It was all too Tennessee Williams to be real. Feeling quite sure I was not the candidate that he and his HR henchwoman were looking for, I re-packed my bags the next morning and got on the road for North Carolina. (The weirdest part was, six months later, after I'd already landed a job at a trade magazine in DC, the HR woman called my mother's house, asking if I'd found an apartment in New Orleans. They hadn't seen me at work, and they wondered when I might be coming in. Apparently, the old fella had hired me, but no one had bothered to tell me!) So I was in the middle of the 11-hour drive from New Orleans to Charlotte. I'd stopped off at a McDonald's on the west side of Atlanta to psych myself up for the traffic hell that is Georgia's capital and get a very large cup of much-needed coffee. As you might have guessed, I promptly spilled about half of the coffee on myself/my seat as I was getting back into the car. Still deliriously tired, I get back on the expressway. I'm zipping along I-20 with the strong smell of java and warm sugar wafting from my upholstery, when I hear Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? coming from the classic rock station on my car radio. It was the perfect line to sum up the entire experience. By the time I started winding my way through the center of the city on I-85, I was belting out the opera section and not really giving a damn if other drivers could see me. And that's when it hit me: that was Mercury's whole point. He knew the song was going to raise some eyebrows. But so what? Why not put opera and hard rock together in the same song? The people who understood that the world is bizarre would get it. A Night at the Opera was a "now or never" moment for Queen, and Mercury boldly put what was in his head out there as if no one (and everyone) was listening. And it paid off. Anyway, when I listen to the song now, I not only think of that trip, but also I listen and marvel that Mercury pretty much had the whole 6-minute suite with all of its mood shifts and operatic vocals, mapped out in his head before the band had even started to record, as guitarist Brian May notes in this interview. It's simply a work of art.
"I Wanna Be Your Dog" from The Stooges' eponymous, John Cale-produced debut album begins in a mangle of distortion and ends in a haze of wailing fuzz guitar. In between, there's some clanging piano, jingling sleigh bells, and thunderous drums that sound like they're getting the daylights pounded out of them. It's 3 minutes of primal perfection. Quite simply, the song is Iggy Pop declaring that he wants to be objectified like a dog. Or as he put it to Howard Stern back in 1990, "It's the idea of 'I want to unite with your body.' I don't want to talk about literature with you or something, you know. I don't want to judge you as a person. I want to dog you." No more, no less.
Even before I listened—I mean really listened—to the song "Rock the Casbah," I was a big fan of the music video. I'm pretty sure I first saw a snippet of it on Casey Kasem's syndicated America's Top 10 T.V. show sometime around late 1982/early 1983. Those famous shots of the Arab sheik and Hassidic limo driver, hanging out, dancing around, and chowing down on Whoppers outside an Austin-area Burger King, instantly made an impression. I laughed myself silly the first time I watched it (you know, one of those "grab your feet and rock back-and-forth while trying not to wet yourself" little kid laughs). I didn't really think much of the song itself until I started hearing it again in college. In the mid-90s, G-105 (WDCG-FM) out of Raleigh, NC, went to an all alt-rock format. So anything that even smelled faintly of angst got steady airplay, including certain songs from The Clash's Combat Rock (1982). "Rock the Casbah" made at least a daily appearance amidst all of the various Third Eye Blind and Goo Goo Dolls stuff that was in constant rotation. Hearing it on its own, separate from the video (which is still a work of low-budget genius, by the way), I realized just how good "Rock the Casbah" is. Unlike other songs from that era, there's little about it production-wise that screams "1982." Its punk sneer, biting wit, and danceable groove all feel timeless. It also still feels eerily relevant, considering that not much has changed with the political situation in the Middle East since the late, great Joe Strummer wrote his lyrics about religious fanatics banning the boogie. But the real genius behind the song was the band's drummer, Topper Headon, who not only wrote the music but also performed drums, piano, and bass on the track. The irony is, Headon got kicked out of the band just before "Rock the Casbah" became a hit. Strummer fired him because he was in the throes of heroin addiction and was becoming more of a liability than an asset. It's a battle Headon only recently won after years of self-destructive behavior.
Two power chords, played over and over. Save the key changes at the end of the verses, that's all there is to "You Really Got Me." It's that simple, and it's simply amazing. Every time I listen to this track from 1964, it's impossible not to hear the blueprint for everything from The Stooges to The Sex Pistols in that distorted guitar riff. To me, it's the aural equivalent of Ben Franklin tying his infamous key to a kite in a lightning storm: he might not have known what the outcome was going to be, but he knew the future would make your hair stand on end. Story goes, Kinks frontman/songwriter Ray Davies and his brother/sparring partner, guitarist Dave Davies, would listen to records on their home hi-fi with the volume turned all the way up, which caused the speakers to distort. So they wondered if they could get the same crackle out of a guitar amp. Depending upon which Davies brother you choose to believe, Ray claims he stuck a knitting needle in the speaker cone of his brother's amplifier; Dave says he slashed up the cone of his amp with a razor blade so that the sound produced a "jagged roar." Either way, a new sound was born. What I find even more interesting, though, is where Ray claims he got the inspiration for the song. In a 2014 interview with NPR's Terry Gross, he says he was studying fine art and filmmaking in art school and was just dabbling in music as a hobby, when a mentor of his encouraged him to starting writing his own songs. So he began trying his hand at coming up with R&B riffs, drawing upon his affection of American country blues, particularly bluesman Big Bill Broonzy. But then, he says his experience singing Gregorian chants in his school choir started creeping in, and that sound influenced the outcome of the verses: Girl, you've really got me going... "So it evolves through a mixture of blues and my sort of English, quirky, subliminal influence of being in a choir doing Gregorian chant, which definitely comes through if you really think about it."
