10. Runaway – Kanye
West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is arguably the best album, if
not the best artistic statement, to emerge from the 21st century so
far, so to promote any track as its definitive showpiece would be immensely
contentious. But ‘Runaway’ is My
Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s definitive showpiece. From its humble
beginnings (a static, retiring piano), it ultimately manifests itself as a
mind-blowing contradiction; ‘Runaway’ is a deconstruction of Kanye West’s ego.
As it grows it becomes increasingly frustrated that nobody bows down to its
superhuman pride; it tosses out more and more flustered boasts over its
aggrandised greatness in the vain expectation of approval and endorsement. But
this is Kanye; he just wants someone to appreciate his genius, even to the
point of self-parody. We can’t help but sympathise, and yes, appreciate.
SEE ALSO: ‘Lost In The World’ –
Kanye West, ‘Diamonds From Sierra Leone’ – Kanye West
9. Rebellion (Lies) –
Arcade Fire
‘Rebellion’ is a summation of Funeral, a record avidly devoted to the
ability of love and passion (and dreams) in defeating death. Win Butler is
resolute in his quavering preaching; the power of adolescent spirit inevitably
conquers all. Naturally, he’s not alone. As defiantly solitary as Butler sounds
on ‘Une Annee Sans Lumiere’, here he has back up; jovial piano, incessant bass,
up-tempo percussion, and a zealous choir of humming. The composition is
gorgeous, with each separate component slotting in painlessly forming a collective
whole almost as fanatically philanthropic as Butler’s lyrics; dreams aren’t
only a means of escape, but the truest form of living, ‘come on baby in our
dreams/we can live on misbehaviour’.
SEE ALSO: ‘Wake Up’ – Arcade
Fire, ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’ – Arcade Fire
8. Stop! In The Name
Of Love – Diana Ross And The Supremes
Diana Ross is Motown; she exemplifies its brazen joy, its implicit
rebelliousness, and its wholehearted longing for something better. ‘Stop!’ is
Ross at her most swaggeringly vengeful, and at her most bruised. In agony after
discovering her lover’s affair, she intervenes, and both demands and begs him
to come back to her. This paradox is evident in the chorus; the resounding
confidence in that ‘stop!’ so immediate it commands its own exclamation mark,
but it’s followed by the tear-jerking ‘before you break my heart’. Her vocals
are stereotypically flawless, and the imposing production eggs her on
splendidly, but the real triumph of ‘Stop!’ lies in the covert victory of love
over lust, ‘is her sweet expression/worth more than my love and affection?’
SEE ALSO: ‘Where Did Our Love Go’
– The Supremes, ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ – The Supremes
7. The Third Planet –
Modest Mouse
‘Trailer Trash’ is Modest Mouse’s
best song (perhaps deserving of higher than seventh), but ‘The Third Planet’ is
the opening track, yet focal point, of possibly my favourite album; The Moon And Antarctica. It’s an
opalescent synopsis of existence both as a physical and metaphysical concept;
Isaac Brock introduces his own logic in a cosmos free of it, toying with
theological and philosophical constructs with the brilliant arrogance of
Kubrick, ‘The
3rd planet is sure that they're being watched/by an eye in the sky that can't
be stopped’. Like most of Mouse’s stuff pre-Good News, Brock’s exposition of fractured alienation is structured
around a bleak, isolated, lo-fi aesthetic, providing him with the assured equanimity
of a religious prophet.
SEE ALSO: ‘Trailer Trash’ –
Modest Mouse, ‘Float On’ – Modest Mouse
6. Born Slippy. NUXX
– Underworld
The voice of a sagacious divinity
pierces your skin; it’s addressing you directly, ‘let your feelings slip
boy/but never your mask boy’. It requests, no, orders you to let yourself go,
to lose yourself to dance, while a cascading synth line alternates ephemerally
between the realms of secular reality and rave fantasy. It seduces you, so when
that beat kicks in, you’re stranded in its hedonistic train crash. Now that
beat: it’s raucous: gruelling: booming: coarse: insatiable: unstoppable, and
you’re helpless to it; it drives you to the point where its profligacy is too
much yet the only answer. You are Underworld’s prey; it’s a sermon on the
thrills of decadence, the loud acuity of debauchery. It proposes that a life of
excess is true serenity.
SEE ALSO: ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ –
Massive Attack, ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ – The Prodigy
5. Holland, 1945 –
Neutral Milk Hotel
Neutral Milk Hotel’s sound disregards
genre (folk-punk?); an eclectic alliance between wailing vocals, distorted
guitars, acoustic guitars and ‘fuzz’ background noise, but it’s all a sidenote
to Jeff Mangum’s peerless lyricism. He recklessly catapults abstruse,
difficult-yet still stunning-couplets into white noise. It’s
initially bewildering, but slowly understanding sets in. ‘Holland, 1945’ is a
war lament, Mangum declaring his undying love for someone already dead; Anne
Frank. It traverses time and space, asserting that Anne Frank’s soul-her life
as a symbol of anti-war sentiments-is everlasting, and that’s why he can love
her, and that’s why he does. The final three lines are gut-wrenching, ‘it’s so
sad to see the world agree/that they’d rather see their faces fill with flies/all
when I’d want to keep white roses in their eyes’.
SEE ALSO: ‘In The Aeroplane Over The Sea’ – Neutral Milk
Hotel, ‘Two Headed Boy Pt. 2’ – Neutral Milk Hotel
4. Intergalactic –
The Beastie Boys
The two main samples from
‘Intergalactic’ are from The Toxic Avenger,
a campy, low-budget B-movie, and Rachmaninoff’s Prelude C-Sharp Major. This inexplicable expansiveness, this
ridiculous disparity, is representative of the track’s loveable strangeness and
the left-field genius of Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock. How do I adequately express
my love for this song without using the term ‘just mental’? For starters the
rhymes are some of the trio’s wittiest, ‘if you try to knock, you’ll get
mocked/I’ll stir fry you in my wok’. The beat is dynamic, seesawing between
menacing and bizarre on a whim, and let’s not forget that indomitable
robot-announcer hook. They may never record another song, but remember; the
Beastie Boys will always know when to let the beat… mmmmmmmmm dddrrrroooppppp!
SEE ALSO: ‘What’cha Want’ – The
Beastie Boys, ‘Shake Your Rump’ – The Beastie Boys
3. Schizophrenia –
Sonic Youth
Sister is heavily influenced by both the band’s obsession with
sci-fi writer Philip K Dick, and Thurston Moore’s Catholic guilt.
‘Schizophrenia’ is where this amalgamation is most apparent, the duopoly of
paranoid voices in Moore and Kim Gordon referencing Dick’s renowned
schizophrenia, while the bitter undercurrent of Moore’s ‘Catholic block’,
perhaps personified by the sister character, monopolises the album’s tone. In
other words, it’s his guilt which incites Moore’s paranoia. The tribal drums
and post-punk guitars are purposely tinged with jagged melancholy rather than
SY’s trademark abrasion; this is not a song about youthful discontent or social
anarchy, but a powerfully human sadness, the cataclysmic pressures and
strains we thrust upon ourselves that are objectively meaningless.
SEE ALSO: ‘Teenage Riot’ – Sonic
Youth, ‘Tunic (Song For Karen)’ – Sonic Youth
2. Let Down –
Radiohead
‘Reckoner’ is probably the best
song I’ve ever heard, but ‘Let Down’ is something more. Thom Yorke renovates Kafka’s
short story, Metamorphosis; in the
original, a man wakes up to discover he’s half insect and eventually kills
himself because he’s rejected by society. But that’d be too simple for Yorke to
adapt, too unequivocal. He never gives up hope on finding his identity, his
essence. He is absolutely indefatigable in his faith, and pitilessly
condemnatory of the artificiality surrounding him, ‘don’t get sentimental, it
always ends up drivel’ (there’s the link to OK
Computer’s inherent anti-materialism). Yorke is adamant that he’ll find the
authenticity, the spiritual affluence to survive the consumerist apocalypse.
It’s heart-rending, but so, so uplifting. The epiphanic catharsis after the
bridge is the most emotional, the most beautiful, the most inspiring moment
I’ve had listening to music, ‘one day/I am going to grow wings’.
SEE ALSO: ‘Reckoner’ – Radiohead,
‘Idioteque’ - Radiohead
1. All
My Friends – LCD Soundsystem
James Murphy hates ‘All My
Friends’. He denounces it as ‘too poppy’. It’s true, it is, fundamentally, a
pop song: the arrangement (notably the unfaltering piano and euphoric guitar)
is bright and catchy: the coda is titanically climactic, and the lyrics are
transparently buoyant. Murphy enters cynical, languorous,
concerned about Losing His Edge, but by God does he pine for those days, my
days. Murphy (in his unintentionally adopted archetype of reluctant hero for an
entire generation of disillusioned Alternative types) doesn’t seem to realise
that he captured perfectly the unbridled elation of post-adolescent living; the
meeting of soon-to-be lifelong friends, the excitement of carefree
experimentation, the greater, more thorough grasp of your own sense of person,
and most importantly, that feeling of complete invincibility and infinite
possibility; you and your friends will take on the world tonight, with all of
its poverty, hatred and disease, and you’ll win; ‘I wouldn’t trade one stupid
decision/for another five years of life’. Murphy finally, gracefully accepts his
maturation; it’s no longer about being cool, but being thankful for the times
you had trying to be cool. I’ve never been able to relate to a song so deeply,
and never has any piece of art provided me with such gratitude for life. It vocalises
exactly how I, and millions of others, feel. That’s the impact of ‘All My
Friends’. It makes me achingly nostalgic for a period of my life which is just
beginning; ‘we’re your friends tonight’.
SEE ALSO: ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ –
LCD Soundsystem, ‘Someone Great’ – LCD Soundsystem
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