30. Pyramids – Frank
Ocean
‘Pyramids’ is R&B’s ‘Paranoid
Android’; a sprawling epic split into two distinct parts which casts aside such
menially constrictive laws as time and coherence to allow Frank Ocean’s extraordinary
inventiveness roam wild while covering an impossible array of tones and themes.
It’s constantly expanding upon itself: in the first section Ocean teleports
Queen Cleopatra from her palace to a contemporary nightclub, ‘chandeliers
inside the pyramid/tremble from the force’, before it grows into a slow-jam,
a pimp’s sleazy poem for his prostitute lover, Cleopatra. Ocean’s production is
densely atmospheric but at the same time indelibly sprightly.
SEE ALSO: ‘Lost’ – Frank Ocean,
‘Bad Religion’ – Frank Ocean
29. Then He Kissed Me
– The Crystals
One of Motown’s sweetest love
songs compacted into two-and-a-half minutes. Dolores Brooks narrates a
picture-perfect romance which goes exactly to plan-they meet: they ‘go’: they
marry, without so much as an implication of a sarcastic comment inbetween to
soil its pristineness. It recounts every cliché of 60s American dating
culture you can think of; the awkward dance invitation, the meeting of the
folks; there’s probably leather jackets, hand holding and flittery summer dresses in
there somewhere. Its endless appeal lies in its unassuming innocence, comforted
by Phil Spektor’s benign strings. Its indefatigable belief in true love is as
refreshing as the vanilla milkshake they share while gazing helplessly into one
another’s eyes.
SEE ALSO: ‘One Fine Day’ – The
Chiffons, ‘The Shoop Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)’- Betty Everett
28. Protect Ya Neck –
Wu-Tang Clan
Enter The Wu-Tang was an accidental masterpiece, its
unintentionally grainy production giving it a murky grittiness unheard of
before in hip hop. It’s a brutally dark mixtape, no more so than on ‘Protect Ya
Neck’, which is overloaded with sagging beats, obtuse plotlines and grimy
couplets, ‘call me the rap assassinator/rhymes rugged and built like
Schwarzenegger’. It’s possibly the most Wu-Tangy Wu-Tang song there is. Saying
that, it’s the small flourishes which make it; the buzzsaw expletive buzzer,
the erratic almost-hooks of resounding ‘protect ya neck’s, and the first hint
of Ghostface’s genius, ‘not long is how long this rhyme took me’. Gloriously
heady.
SEE ALSO: ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ – Wu-Tang
Clan, ‘Triumph’ – Wu-Tang Clan
27. Jesus, etc –
Wilco
The noughties was a decade
typified by cultural togetherness and conflict, a period which saw a revolution
in international politics in the form of the War On Terror on a global scale.
This makes it hard to believe that one of its most defining songs opens with
white trash violins. Yet this country arrangement, drawn straight from the
slowdance of a Tennessee hoedown, possesses a subversive tension which echoes
the overinflated, systematic fear and paranoia of its time, eerily educing 9/11
even though Tweedy had written it beforehand, ‘tall buildings shake/voices
escape/singing sad sad songs’. ‘Jesus, etc’ is ultimately an imploration to
discard materialistic values and embrace the brief wonder of life, comparing
existence to a ‘burning sun’.
SEE ALSO: ‘Via Chicago’ – Wilco,
‘Pot Kettle Black’ – Wilco
26. A Change Is Gonna
Come – Sam Cooke
Inspired by Dylan’s ‘Blowin In
The Wind’, how it captured the cynical disposition of an era and nation while
being transcendent of any type of pidgeon-holing (his exact words were ‘since
when do whiteboys make music like that?), and hurting from the death of his 18
month old son, Sam Cooke had decided enough was enough. ‘A Change’ obviously personifies
the Civil Rights Movement, ‘I go downtown/somebody keep tellin me don’t hang
around’, but it’s no grand promise. It’s both disaffected sigh and abused
resentment, a pummelling of reality. Heartbreakingly released posthumously,
Cooke never lived to see how vital both this song, and he himself, was to so
many people.
SEE ALSO: ‘Wonderful World’ – Sam
Cooke, ‘Twisting The Night’ – Sam Cooke
25. Wolf Like Me – TV
On The Radio
Tunde Adembimpe’s hypnotising
howl has always blurred the lines between calming and menacing, provocative and
primal, but it has never sounded as unanimously malevolent as on ‘Wolf Like
Me’. A skin-crawling bass-line is ravaged by seething guitars and horrifying
vocal loops while Adembimpe embodies unadulterated corruption, ‘baby doll I
recognise/ you’re a hideous thing inside’. ‘Wolf Like Me’ creeps inside you;
it’s mentally dissolute, but its smiling, carnal evil is infectious. When it
crashes, it crashes, dragging you down with it into a blissfully debauch abyss.
It’s a seduction which works; you will be howling this song forever.
SEE ALSO: ‘Young Liars’ – TV On
The Radio, ‘Staring At The Sun’ – TV On The Radio
24. Decades – Joy
Division
(Note that I decided
against including New Order because they are so similar to JD. So, honourable
mentions to ‘Regret’, ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Ceremony’ and ‘Temptation’ among others.)
Quick, name a band more
progressive than Joy Division. Oh you can’t? Is it because they completely
reinvented rock, with their opaque discourse, soulful melodies and
innovative production paving the way for Indie, Grunge and (sadly)
Pop-Punk? Is it because they made sad pop music cool with ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’?
Or is it because no song before or since has so vividly understood alienation
as ‘Decades’? The world’s melancholiest synth understates Curtis’ ruminations
on the incapability of soldiers in adjusting to domestic life after war’s end,
‘weary inside, now our heart’s lost forever/can’t replace the fear, or the
thrill of the chase’.
SEE ALSO: ‘Dead Souls’ – Joy
Division, ‘She’s Lost Control’ – Joy Division
23. Changing Of The
Guards – Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s most underrated, and
my personal favourite. ‘Changing Of The Guards’ is more gospel pop than
politically overt folk: the fervent backing vocals cover Dylan’s pensive
silence between lines: a leaping saxophone replaces the weary groan of his
harmonica in the bridge, and the subject matter is emphatically upbeat (a
biblical parable of Dylan’s journey to fame and self-discovery) rather than pessimistic,
‘peace will come/with tranquillity and splendour on wheels of fire’. His
critics have derided ‘Changing’ as holding a Christian message, when really it’s
only the simplest moral one; be true to yourself and ‘fortune comes’. Dylan
sums it up best himself; ‘”Changing of the Guards” is a thousand years old’.
SEE ALSO: ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s
Alright’ – Bob Dylan, ‘Boots Of Spanish Leather’ – Bob Dylan
22. B.O.B. – Outkast
‘B.O.B.’ is a whirlwind of a
song, a breathtaking social commentary just as pulsatingly funky as it is
painfully resonant. It sprints through politics, race, religion and, most
importantly, war, at the speed of light. ‘B.O.B.’ literally stands for ‘Bombs Over Baghdad’.
Released too late to be directly concerned with the first Gulf War, and three
years too early to condemn the second, it finds itself an oddly ubiquitous
masterpiece, ‘don’t pull the thang unless you plan to bang’. Anti-war protest
is but one small fragment of its assembly; it offers fleeting predictions, ‘cure
for cancer, cure for Aids’, and private prophecies ‘got a son on the way’, all
set to a dizzying, shell-shocked, never-bettered beat.
SEE ALSO: ‘Hey Ya’ – Outkast, ‘Ms.
Jackson’ – Outkast
21. Hopeless – The
Wrens
‘Hopeless’ is my favourite Indie
Rock song, by my favourite Indie Rock band, from what I honestly believe to be
the most underrated album of all time. A constant, yet always evolving, 4-note
riff acts as its foundation while Charles Bissell wreaks havoc on a repentant
ex’s plea to get back together. Bissell’s melodramatic vocals drip with
romantic angst and emotional turmoil to the point where he almost transgresses into
emo self-consummation, but he, like his faultless instrumentation, hits the
nail right on the head. When he screams that refrain, ‘hopeless/that this will
turn out better’, it leaves you hollow in the best possible way.
SEE ALSO: ‘She Sends Kisses’ –
The Wrens, ‘Surprise, Honeycomb’ – The Wrens
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