A far more comprehensive and
ordered list than my previous tame, uninspired effort. In order to make as
strong and diverse a list as possible, I’ve set myself some rules for its
composition. Firstly, I’m only allowed one song per artist (although I’ve used
a ‘SEE ALSO’ section to highlight other great songs, from either the same
artist, or ones similar in genre or theme). Secondly, to ensure variety over
the course of the list, I’ve split the 100 into ten groups of ten. For each
ten, I’ve assigned the number of places according to genre; my favourite genre,
Rock, receives three places per ten. My next favourite genres, Hip Hop and
Indie/Folk, are assigned two each per ten, while Modern Pop and Motown each
receive one per ten. Old Pop and Dance are each assigned one per twenty, but
cannot be in the same ten as the other. Therefore, I’d choose my 30 favourite
rock songs, 20 favourite hip hop and indie/folk songs, 10 favourite modern pop
and motown songs, and 5 favourite old pop and dance songs. Thirdly, I’ve set
myself a limit of 100 words per song, except for number one which is allowed
150. Lastly, just to clarify, while the placement of a song on my list is a
reasonably decent barometer of my opinion of that artist, there are a few
anomalies, for example Crystal Castles, The Flaming Lips, Built To Spill and
The Rolling Stones would be far higher on a 100 Artists list, while Fugazi,
Guided By Voices, The Libertines, Nick Drake, Interpol, Dean Martin, Simon And
Garfunkel, Wire, The Strokes, Tame Impala, Prince, The Postal Service, Depeche
Mode and, of course, Frank Sinatra would actually be on it. They are some of my
favourite artists, but they lacked an exceptional stand-out track. There are
also the inevitable one-hit wonders, although these are supplemented by
fantastic songs of the same genre. Now that I’ve explained my self-indulgent
pretensions, enjoy!
One quick piece of trivia: Before
I decided upon my ‘one song per artist’ rule, I drafted an initial list. It
contained 14 Radiohead songs. Four from Ok
Computer, three from Kid A, three
from In Rainbows, two from The Bends, one from Amnesiac and one from Hail To
The Thief; ‘Paranoid Android’, ‘Let Down’, ‘Climbing Up The Walls’, ‘No
Surprises’, ‘The National Anthem’, ‘Idioteque’, ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’, ‘All
I Need’, ‘Reckoner’, ‘Videotape’, ‘Talk Show Host’, ‘Fake Plastic Trees’,
‘Pyramid Song’ and ‘There, There’.
Honourable Mentions:
ROCK: Today – The Smashing
Pumpkins, Pork And Beans - Weezer, Admit It! – Say Anything
INDIE/FOLK: Suzanne – Leonard Cohen,
Poke – Frightened Rabbit
HIP HOP: They Reminisce Over You
– Pete Rock And CL Smooth, Yonkers – Tyler, The Creator
MOTOWN: I Want You Back – Jackson
5
MODERN POP: Sexy Boy - Air
OLD POP: Walk Away Renee – The
Left Banke
DANCE: We Are Your Friends – Justice
And Simian
100. Young Hearts
Spark Fire – Japandroids
Written before Japandroids soared
to critical darlingdom and commercial success, ‘Young Hearts Spark Fire’ is a
celebration of carefree hedonism and a morose acknowledgement of mortality.
Believing the opportunity to fulfil his dream of breaking into the post-punk
scene had passed, Brian King had reached a stalemate in his life. Directionless,
he expressed his disillusionment in the only way he knew how; songwriting. The
result is double-edged; blissfully loud pop-punk on the joys of getting
wankered, ‘beat up[…] but too drunk to feel it,’ but also unreservedly,
powerfully morbid, ‘we used to dream/now we worry about dying’.
SEE ALSO: ‘The House That Heaven
Built’ – Japandroids, ‘To Hell With Good Intentions’ – McLusky
99. Hey Boy, Hey Girl
– The Chemical Brothers
It starts with two samples: the
creepily enticing vocal from Rock Master Scott and the relentless synth from
Joeski Love. Then, seconds later, the bassline resonates in the distance, approaching,
and growing. When it arrives, it’s not with a bang, but a bow. The bass-drop is
so ceaselessly satisfying because it’s more of an elegant bass-slide than a
drop. It just clicks. The synths, drums, vocals, bassline. All of it. The
Chemical Brothers are one of the most consistent dance groups because they
understand the importance of a seamless sample arrangement. ‘Hey Boy, Hey Girl’
is their masterpiece.
SEE ALSO: ‘Midnight Madness’ –
The Chemical Brothers, ‘Star Guitar’ – The Chemical Brothers
98. Myth – Beach
House
Beach House don’t use the synth
to excite, but to caress. ‘Myth’ is the finest track off the outstanding Bloom and the best representation of
Beach House’s maturation as the quintessential dream-pop band. They’re often
criticised for being too over-produced, squeakily clean and therefore empty; a
polished shell. However, BH’s abstract, textured sound is opulent with striking
imagery in itself, transiently evoking sunrises, sunsets, moments of happiness,
moments of loss. In ‘Myth’, Legrand capsises lyrically from her introverted
dispassion into the role of authoritative counsellor, ‘You can't keep hangin'
on/to all that's dead and gone’.
SEE ALSO: ‘Zebra’ – Beach House,
‘My Girls’ – Animal Collective
97. White Winter
Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
‘White Winter Hymnal’ is a song
which simultaneously diverges and converges; it diverges out into effervescent
synchronised harmonies, while converging on the same perversely pretty image at
the verse’s close; ‘And Micheal you would fall/and turn the white snow/red as
strawberries in the summertime’. The verse is repeated three times: as
percussion is introduced, guitars are strummed with greater ferocity and vocals
become fervent, the same lines become more and more horrifying, yet
spellbinding. The light folksy melody is circumstantial to a tale of a brutal
animal attack. An aesthetically glorious contradiction.
SEE ALSO: ‘Helplessness Blues’ –
Fleet Foxes, ‘Upward Over The Mountain’ – Iron And Wine
96. Feeling Yourself
Disintegrate – The Flaming Lips
Like the best Flaming Lips songs,
‘Feeling Yourself Disintegrate’ combines the innate catchiness of Bowie-lite pop-rock
and the atmospheric, trippy otherworldliness of The Velvet Underground’s
psychedelic rock while addressing themes of galactic significance. In its multi-layered
build-up Coyne articulates the ultimate problem, that life should be dedicated
to love (not purely romantic love), but that it’s too short to properly commit
and that death’s omnipresence inevitably dictates everything. In a crash of
guitars, strings and drums, Coyne concludes that death and living are forever
interlinked, that to love, you must live, and in living, death’s footsteps echo
closely behind.
95. Backstreet
Freestyle – Kendrick Lamar
In the first three lines he
compares himself to MLK Jr. before recalling a prayer for his ‘dick to get as
big as the Eiffel tower/so [he] can fuck the world for 72 hours’. Public Enemy
this is not. ‘Backstreet Freestyle’ is a bold self-endorsement, a
tongue-in-cheek proclamation of charismatic arrogance. Lamar is one of, if not
the, best rappers around, and he thoroughly enjoys rubbing it in. The
production is excellent, an irretrievably deep bassline operating the flippant
hook which in turn breaks up the exhausting verses. It’ll be iconised by the
third verse’s repeated howl of ‘BIATCH’.
SEE ALSO: ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe’ – Kendrick Lamar, ‘R.A.P.
Music’ – Killer Mike
94. Holocene – Bon
Iver
Before their self-titled LP was
released in 2011 Bon Iver had been a band whose music I enjoyed without truly,
irrefutably loving it. They had pleasant melodies, touching lyrics and a unique
voice in Justin Vernon, but seemed destined for Sun Kil-Moon level general
agreeability rather than the universal adoration, acclaim and obsession of a Smog
or Belle And Sebastian. Bon Iver and
‘Holocene’ changed that, demonstrating a thematically ambitious Vernon and an
evidently refined (perfected?) folk songwriting ability. There’s an ambivalent
beauty in the soothing guitars, distant claps and out-of-time clarinets
accompanying Vernon’s ambiguous, haunting lyrics.
SEE ALSO: ‘Perth’ – Bon Iver,
‘The Snow Leopard’ – Shearwater
93. What Becomes Of
The Broken Hearted – Jimmy Ruffin
One of Motown’s saddest songs,
showcasing the darkness that comes as a side effect of the idyllic romance so
jubilantly described by Ruffin’s contemporaries. The steady two-three bass-drum
mimics the beat of Ruffin’s particular broken heart, and you can imagine him
treading the pavement of an indefinite city seeing the tragedy in every
interaction as he sings. The bashed piano and impassioned backing vocals stress
that this is not a rhetorical question, but a helpless yearning; he’s desperate
to find something, that ‘piece of mind’ which he can use as a launch pad to
finally begin the recovery process.
SEE ALSO: ‘Standing In The
Shadows Of Love’ – The Four Tops, ‘Behind A Painted Smile’ – The Usley Brothers
92. Common People –
Pulp
Cocker’s sneering (eventually
vindictive) assault on class tourism is just as relevant today as it was twenty
years ago, and just as riotously epic. It’s the song everyone knows the words
too, the perfect Indie Rock anthem, and as it builds up to its inescapably
ballistic climax it’s infectiously dancey. But it’s often forgotten just how
angry ‘Common People’ is, with Cocker gradually escalating from a condescending
whisper to a furious cry of disaffection; ‘You will never understand/how it
feels to live your life/with no meaning or control.’ Its transformation from
satire to direct political condemnation is terrifyingly effective.
SEE ALSO: ‘Running The World’ –
Jarvis Cocker, ‘Paint The Silence’ – South
91. The Next Episode
– Dr Dre And Snoop Dogg
The continuation of ‘Nuthin But A
G Thing’ indicated Dre’s return to the mainstream, and what a return it was. ‘The
Next Episode’ succeeds because of, not in spite of, a paradox: Dre’s harsh
verse and the pounding drums shouldn’t work alongside the effortlessly casual
synth line and Snoop Dogg’s nonchalant moan. The strings sample, used to introduce
the track and separate the verses, sets the chilled tone impeccably and
complements the simple concept of friends getting together to make music, as
Dre raps ‘Dre and Snoop chronic'ed out in the 'llac/with Doc in the back,
sippin' on 'gnac.’
SEE ALSO: ‘Still Dre’ – Dr Dre
And Snoop Dogg, ‘Nuthin But A G Thing’ – Dr Dre And Snoop Dogg
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