Crashbeats: November 2015

Monday, November 30, 2015

My Top 100, No. 49: "There's a Fire" by OK Go

There might not be a band I'm higher on, compared to public perception, than OK Go. I might have said this about another artist already, but if I did, I was lying, because OK Go rules.

It drives me absolutely nuts that OK Go has become the band with the cool music videos, because people know them as the band with the cool music videos and not as a band that's been putting out stone cold Grade-A power pop music with alarming consistency for 15 years.

My Top 100, No. 50: "Cosmic Love" by Florence + the Machine

I love movie trailers. There's an art to balancing the desire to showcase the film's good stuff with the need to hold something in reserve.

My favorite trailer of all time is the extended cut for Cloud Atlas. It sets up an extremely complex story and takes a six-minute emotional ride that gets me more than most two-hour feature films. Though after watching not only this trailer, but The Fault in Our Stars, I'm realizing that I might just have a neurological condition that turns me into a sobbing mess whenever I hear M83 in a movie.

My Top 100, No. 51: "Kids" by MGMT

"Kids" is a pretty simple song, when you boil it down to the musical nuts and bolts.

You've got the kick drum/snare drum backbeat, which, like so many great percussion parts, sounds like a persistent ogre beating a pig to death with a sledgehammer. You've got the main synth lead line, which starts out just being catchy but ends up having a familiar comforting quality. You've got the bass (I think?) doing its "ooh-wah ooh-wah ooh-wah" thing, which is always the part I sing along to. And finally, the repeated chorus line: "Control yourself / Take only what you need from it," which begs to be shout-sung by drunken undergraduates in the best tradition of Brand New's acoustic album-closers. MGMT shows off each of those parts individually, then layer them on top of each other, which is fairly straightforward compositional technique.

But despite being a pretty simple song, it's somehow become imbued with a very complicated emotional message.

My Top 100, No. 52: "Laura" by Scissor Sisters

Scissor Sisters' debut album is another one of those select few records on which I like every song. It's probably a top-10 album ever for me.

Therefore, the major problem with this album was not whether a song would make the top 100, but which one.

My Top 100, No. 53: "Always Be My Baby" by Mariah Carey

This song is the evolutionary missing link between Wilson Phillips and Christina Aguilera.

I worry that some of my comments earlier about Mariah Carey's cover of "One More Try" might make it sound like I don't give Mariah Carey her proper respect, so let's get one thing clear right off the bat. I love Mariah Carey.

My Top 100, No. 54: "If I Can't Love Her" from the Beauty and the Beast Broadway Soundtrack

Going from pop punk to the Broadway adaptation of a Disney musical is a tonal shift.

But regardless of the provenance of this song (I heard it for the first time on one of those Disney's Greatest Hits tapes that my parents played on long car rides), it's just monumentally sad and beautiful.

My Top 100, No. 55: "The Writhing South" by Say Anything

If you take away the very top level of any musical community--the internationally most popular part--you run into lots of weird subgroups.

I thought I had pop punk and emo pretty well figured out until I got to college and met a bunch of people who were exactly like me, but who'd grown up in Atlanta or South Carolina or Tennessee. And their brand of pop punk and emo was completely different from mine.

My Top 100, No. 56: "Infected Girls" by Electric Six

You know how there's a whole thing in Harry Potter about how saying "Voldemort" out loud shows you're not afraid of him? That's kind of Electric Six's approach to raunch and sleaze.

Because, like every other rock band, Electric Six sings about sex and drugs, but they just don't have any pretense of hiding it.

My Top 100, No. 57: "We Belong" by Pat Benatar

I think I've finally figured out why Pat Benatar always looked weird to me--it's because her eyes are bigger than her mouth.

Anyway, on to the song.

My Top 100, No. 58: "I'll Believe in Anything" by Wolf Parade

Fuckin' Wolf Parade, man. Wolf Parade.

Wolf Parade.

My Top 100, No. 59: "In the Meantime" by Spacehog

I know absolutely dick-all about this band apart from this song, and I do not care. Such were the wonders that produced one hit in the 1990s.

I do know that this song is not great for the reason you think it is.

My Top 100, No. 60: "Runaway" by The National

And now we get to a The National song.

The National is my favorite band, insofar as such a thing exists. They are the only artist to put three songs on this list, and that would make sense, because I love overwrought poetry and being sad in general.

My Top 100, No. 61: "Everlong" by Foo Fighters

Somewhere along the line, I got it into my head that if "Everlong" hadn't existed by the time I started writing music, I could've written something like it. Which is almost certainly not true, after further reflection.

I'm not sure that any individual component of this song is really at virtuoso-level. (Except the drums, maybe. This is good drumming.) But the whole package became an iconic piece of modern rock and made Dave Grohl into a superstar.

My Top 100, No. 62: "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC

(smokes whole cigarette in one drag, straps on forged steel breastplate, tugs on brim of newsboy cap)
Okay, motherfuckers. Let's do this.

First semester of my senior year of college, I somehow managed to pull off a class schedule in which I had Monday, Wednesday and Friday completely off.

My Top 100, No. 63: "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash

Back when Facebook let you put religious/political views in your profile, I left my religious views as "It's Complicated."

Because I'm not really religious anymore, but my religious upbringing is too important a part of how I came to be the person I am to reject it entirely. I'm a professional empiricist and skeptic, but I'm also a professional storyteller. So I can't buy any mythology or theology, but neither can I reject it out of hand.

Which is how I wound up in a position where I guess I believe in God, but I get around theodicy--if God is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient, how does evil exist?--by rejecting the idea that God is benevolent. The orthodox answer to that question is that God allows bad things to happen in service of a greater good later on, but I never found that satisfying for two reasons: 1) It doesn't actually answer the question, because an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God could just wave all the world's pain away and 2) Is there really a compelling reason that if God exists, He's actively good?

My Top 100, No. 64: "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts" by Sufjan Stevens

I never thought for a second that Sufjan Stevens would get through his 50 states project, but that was a really cool idea, if nothing else, produced one of the most interesting albums of its era: Illinois.

"Man of Metropolis" (I'm not typing that whole name out. It's a great song, but a stupid name.) is a lot like "Read My Mind" in that 1) it conveys a sense of going somewhere and 2) I could've put any one of four or five songs from this album on this list.

My Top 100, No. 65: "Read My Mind" by The Killers

This is the only The Killers song on this list, which--even though it's fairly high up--is not necessarily a statement that I like "Read My Mind" a ton better than most other The Killers songs.

My Top 100, No. 66: "Stolen" by Dashboard Confesional

Yes, I used to have feelings once. ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME.

This was a magnificent slow-dance song once upon a time, a perfect emotional conduit for suburban white children who think high school dating is the biggest problem facing the world at any given moment, which I mean lovingly, because I used to be one of those people. In fact, so perfect is this song that I'm going to give this video the "One More Try" treatment.

My Top 100, No. 67: "Sweet Talkin' Woman" by Five Iron Frenzy

Yes, the Five Iron Frenzy cover, not the ELO original.

Which is not to say the original isn't a bit of pop-rock genius, only that it's not as good as the Five Iron Frenzy cover.

My Top 100, No. 68: "MoneyGrabber" by Fitz and The Tantrums

I listened to Fitz and The Tantrums' other big hit, "The Walker," about 40 times a day involuntarily when MLB decided to make it the playoff theme song one year.

"MoneyGrabber," however, I listened to about 40 times a day on my own, because it wasn't enough just to dance around campus whistling the chorus--I needed to hear the whole thing over and over and over.

My Top 100, No. 69: "Through & Through & Through" by Joel Plaskett

More obscure Nova Scotian indie rock.

I'm actually kind of furious that they took down the music video for this song, because it's just Joel Plaskett traveling creatively through a fishing village. Like, by school bus, skateboard, scull, and in the front bucket of a backhoe. Which does not start with an S. "Steam shovel" does, I guess, but that's a different thing.

My Top 100, No. 70: "Hey, Doreen" by Lucius

This is the first song on this list that I've written about before, in my Top 8 Songs of 2013 post, and I didn't write much about it then because my feelings about it are uncomplicated in the extreme.

So I'll just say two things:

1) I hate this music video. I'm not entirely sure why--I think it's that the song is really fun and the video's not?

2) I'll repeat what I said two years ago: "Imagine Fitz and the Tantrums had a loudmouth sister, and imagine that she crashed a Ferrari full of clowns through the front wall of your house."

My Top 100, No. 71: "Will Do" by TV on the Radio

TV on the Radio is like a normal indie rock band, only really really spacy.

The key to the appeal of "Will Do" is in the first line. That melody, repeated throughout the song, is so catchy. I don't listen to this song on purpose very often, but like four or five times a week I find myself just absentmindedly singing, "It might be impractical to seek out a new romance" to nobody in particular.

My Top 100, No. 72: "One More Try" by George Michael

The time has come to deal with My Thing For George Michael. I hold maybe three or four hot take-y musical opinions that might rub people the wrong way and will come up over the course of this list. One of which (on the relationship between Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse's popularity) I've disclosed already.

The next one is about how George Michael, despite having gone platinum more times than most jewelers, is still criminally underrated as an artist.

I don't think you'd get too much argument if you said Michael Jackson was the best male pop star of his era, if not ever, and that Freddie Mercury was the best rock frontman of his era, if not ever. I don't think Michael Jackson could have been Freddie Mercury, and I don't think Freddie Mercury could have been Michael Jackson, but I do think George Michael gets you about 90-95 percent of the way to either one.

My Top 100, No. 73: "Ride" by The Vines

The early-2000s garage rock renaissance was awesome. It was a glorious time, when alt-rock radio was besieged by small bands of sleepy-looking men from the British Commonwealth who'd broken the overdrive knobs off their amps and would probably pronounce "garage" more like "grodj."

There are songs higher up on this list from grodj rock artists later in their careers, but if we're talking about the raw, almost disdainful noisy simplicity of golden-age grodj rock, The Vines' "Ride" was the best of the bunch.

My Top 100, No. 74: "Lazy Eye" by Silversun Pickups

I cannot believe this song is eight years old already.

I don't know if Silversun Pickups feel like a Smashing Pumpkins update just because of Brian Aubert's Corganesque singing voice, or if there are other reasons.

My Top 100, No. 75: "Barcelona" by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe

Not only do I love this song, I love the idea behind it.

In 1988, Freddie Mercury collaborated with Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballe on a theme song for the 1992 Olympics, and the song turned into an eight-song LP, the last Mercury would release before his death in 1991. Because he was writing for and performing with an opera singer, Barcelona took on an operatic feel.

My Top 100, No. 76: "Feel Good Inc." by Gorillaz ft. De La Soul

I used to not be able to drive while this song was playing--I was afraid I'd be overcome with the urge to dance and crash. And as it turns out, Gorillaz is the first artist to get more than one song in the top 100.

Demon Days elevated Gorillaz from a gimmick band to a dance rock/hip-hop/electropop juggernaut, and "Feel Good Inc." was the biggest song from that album.

My Top 100, No. 77: "Sing Me Spanish Techno" by the New Pornographers

The nice thing about going beyond the normal four- or five-piece standard rock band is that you can put out a ton of noise when you want to.

It's one thing to have five people in the band who can sing, but it's harder than you'd think to get the most out of them.

My Top 100, No. 78: "The Good Life" by Weezer

I feel like Weezer's one of those bands where everyone who was born between 1976 and 1990 has a story about their importance as a band, and all of those stories sound more or less the same.

I've talked about power pop a lot so far, and I'll talk about it more here and again later on in the list, if only because, under pain of perjury, I'd tell you it was my favorite musical genre. And if the most important band in the history of power pop is The Beatles, Weezer's probably No. 2.

My Top 100, No. 79: "Stubborn Love" by The Lumineers

I understand if you died from Lumineers Fatigue sometime during the winter of 2012-13 and want to give this one a pass. It's easy to get tired of good-looking and earnest white people in porkpie hats and button-down shirts.

I guess I love this song because I didn't get tired of The Lumineers in 2012, possibly because I could distinguish them from Mumford and Sons (a group whose original music I haven't really cared much for since "Little Lion Man" but--with performances of The National's "England" and Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire"--would probably be my favorite band in the world if they were strictly a cover band).

My Top 100, No. 80: "Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky

There's a great tradition of mailbag columns in modern sportswriting. It's something we can do now that email and Twitter make it easier for readers to get in touch with sportswriters, and the unlimited space of the internet makes it easier for them to respond.

I'd like to share with you what I believe is the greatest mailbag answer in the history of sportswriting.

My Top 100, No. 81: "And So It Goes" by Billy Joel

I don't know when it became extremely uncool to like Billy Joel, but it feels like it is. On the other hand, I'm so extremely uncool anyway that maybe I don't have anything to lose by continuing to like him?

Billy Joel's got a few piano ballads that express sadness and/or longing and/or loss--and if we're talking about piano ballads in general, sadness and/or longing and/or loss is pretty well-covered territory. I don't think "And So It Goes" uncovers any revolutionary insight in terms of breakup songs. But this is one of the saddest fucking songs in the universe.

My Top 100, No. 82: "The Fallen" by Franz Ferdinand

I think this song was stuck in my head my entire sophomore year of college.

Like "Bulls on Parade" I don't mind that "The Fallen" has a suburban poseur anarchist slacker vibe because it's so kinetic.

My Top 100, No. 83: "Those Thieving Birds (Part 1) / Strange Behaviour / Those Thieving Birds (Part 2)" by Silverchair

This song is the exception to the all killer, no filler doctrine.

"Those Thieving Birds (Part 1) / Strange Behaviour / Those Thieving Birds (Part 2)" (which I'm going to refer to as "Strange Behavior" from now on, because I hate typing the full title) is more than seven minutes long, except not really, because it's an awesome power pop melody shrouded in an ablative outer shell composed of Enya song.

My Top 100, No. 84: "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" by Celine Dion

HELL YES IT'S CELINE DION TIME MOTHERFUCKERS!

I'm so excited. Celine Dion owns. I remember being on an Elliott Smith kick a while back and watching this performance of "Miss Misery," at the 1998 Oscars, at which was nominated for best original song. It's just him alone up there, with the orchestra behind the curtain, hammering out his quiet, reserved little number, looking terrified and like he didn't want to be there, and nobody in the audience knew who he was. Contrast that with the performance of the song he lost to.

My Top 100, No. 85: "L.S.F." by Mark Ronson ft. Kasabian

I have two Mark Ronson hot takes. The first is that Mark Ronson is the coolest person in pop culture, if not the entire English-speaking world. Ordinarily I'd say something like "I wish Mark Ronson was my best friend" because he's so cool, but Mark Ronson is so cool, I worry about how uncool I'd look in comparison if we were ever in the same room. He's so cool he goes completely around the cool/uncool spectrum to the point where, despite coming off as a perfectly decent and nice man, he terrifies me and if I ever met him I'd probably melt into a stammering puddle of goo and die of embarrassment.

The second hot take is that nobody actually likes Amy Winehouse, and people who think they like Amy Winehouse actually like Mark Ronson.

My Top 100, No. 86: "You Know You're Right" by Nirvana

Nirvana's almost in The Beatles territory for me, in that I respect their place in the history of rock music more than I actually like the music itself. HOWEVER, this song is a fucking jam.

In case it's not clear by now, I'm a sucker for simplicity, crescendos and jarring chord changes, and "You Know You're Right" has all three.

My Top 100, No. 87: "Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis" by Brand New

Brand New's Deja Entendu is one of only a few albums in existence that doesn't have a song I don't like. I'm sure I was only one of a few hundred thousand mopey Mid-Atlantic teenagers who figured out it was possible to wear out a CD through overuse by playing this disc on repeat for most of 2003-04.

Deja Entendu also gave me irrational hope that every vapid emo band's second album would be amazing, at least until Panic! At the Disco proved conclusively that the opposite was true.

My Top 100, No. 88: "19-2000" by Gorillaz

More than any other song on this list, the music video for "19-2000" is about a machine.

Murdoc's dune buggy is one of my favorite fictional vehicles, and every bit as cool a car as any in the history of music videos. It's so cool it ended up on the album cover. It's the defining bit of imagery for Gorillaz, a band that--because it's made up of cartoons--has an entirely constructed image.

My Top 100, No. 89: "Telephones" by Mardeen

This list is almost exclusively made up of songs with at least some level of mainstream notoriety--about 93 of these songs will cause at least one person who reads the list to go, "Oh, dude, that's my jam!" or whatever you'd say if you're cooler than I am. The exception is the enclave of Nova Scotian indie rock that I've somehow gotten exposed to for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me.

Mardeen's "Telephones" has no music video that I'm aware of, nor could I find guitar tabs or even lyrics posted online under the original artist. That's because this version has been clearly outstripped in popularity by a cover of "Telephones" from Mo Kenney, who you've never heard of either. Every so often, Spotify will take my hand and rag me a little farther down this Nova Scotian indie rabbit hole, and it's never let me down, because this song is a magnificent bit of power pop.

My Top 100, No. 90: "Close to Me" by The Cure

Every so often I look back at a very strange time in my life and scratch my head. For about a year, I was a huge The Cure fan, and I'm not entirely positive how that happened.

I'd never listened to The Cure on purpose before, but for 12 months, give or take, I'd listen to my The Cure's Greatest Hits CD front to back, then start over when it was done. And then, at some point in my freshman year in college, I just stopped, and all of these songs went back into regular rotation, more or less.

My Top 100, No. 91: "Mr. Blue Sky" by Electric Light Orchestra

All that jazz about contemporary Christian music in the DC Talk post almost ended up in a post about "Love Liberty Disco" by The Newsboys. I used to call "Love Liberty Disco" the least pretentious song in rock and roll, but the more I listen to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky," the more convinced I am that I was wrong.

Look at these guys. I could never have played in ELO because my hair doesn't get all frizzy when it grows out. On some level, I can't really relate to this song, because I've never been that uncomplicatedly happy in my life. I'm not sure any human has. This song is so happy I'm about 90 percent sure there's some darker meaning, like Jeff Lynne wanted to kill his wife, and "Mr. Blue Sky" was the code name for a hitman, but I can't find any.

My Top 100, No. 92: "Bulls on Parade" by Rage Against the Machine

I've got kind of a love/hate relationship with Rage Against the Machine. Rage is much harder (i.e. loud and not particularly melodic) than I usually like, but I find their music as energizing as I find their particular brand of extremely self-serious late-90s anarchism to be cute.

On the other hand, one of the few cures for writer's block I'm aware of is tossing on RATM's greatest hits and going to town.

My Top 100, No. 93: "Jungleland" by Bruce Springsteen

I am a sportswriter, and I am from New Jersey. That I have The Boss on this list should surprise precisely nobody. I am a cliche, and I have made my peace with it.

The big Springsteen songs fall into one of two categories: Long Springsteen and Short Springsteen, and this is probably the best example of the former. "Jungleland" is renowned as containing the definitive Clarence Clemons saxophone solo, and it's great, but that's not why I like it so much.

My Top 100, No. 94: "Santa Monica" by Everclear

Also "Father of Mine" and "I Will Buy You a New Life," but you know what? I'm cool with self-plagiarism. I've got about 13 jokes and nine pop culture references that I just recycle, so I'm not going to get on Everlcear for re-using the same hook.

And the reason for that, of course, is that it's a really good hook.

My Top 100, No. 95: "My Friend (So Long)" by DC Talk

There are going to be two responses to this post: One from people who weren't raised as evangelical Protestants in the late '90s and early 2000s and have no idea how significant DC Talk was, and a small but vocal minority who were and will absolutely lose their collective shit. Because if you were into contemporary Christian music at all when you were a teenager, DC Talk was the pinnacle.

Which is ironic, because it's a song that's about how dangerous fame and popularity can be.

My Top 100, No. 96: "Doctor My Eyes" by Jackson Browne

My feelings about Jackson Browne's "Doctor My Eyes" are pretty uncomplicated when it comes to the song itself.

It's a song that, despite its lyrical content, makes me feel bouncy and upbeat, and while it's fun in its own in its own innocuous Jackson Browney way, I'm not positive it's better than "Running on Empty," or that Jackson Browne's version of "Doctor My Eyes" is even the best version of this song.

My Top 100, No. 97: "I Still Remember" by Bloc Party

I've been a sportswriter for most of my time writing for publication, with occasional forays into technology or public affairs out of professional necessity, but back when I was in high school I wrote a lot about music. The first album I ever reviewed was Bloc Party's Silent Alarm, which came out in February of my senior year and was then--as it is now--magnificent. To this day I rarely put on a jacket or turn up the thermostat without belting out, "It's so COLD in this ... HOUSE."
The hallmark of that album was the wild and manic drumming of Matt Tong. Most bands use the drums to keep tempo and have the rhythm guitarist and/or bassist fill in the rhythmic flourishes. Not so Bloc Party, who'd pretty much strum eighth notes while Tong flipped out, layering syncopation with polyrhythmia (which is not a word, but I don't care) like he's making a lasagna out of sixteenth notes or something. It's incredible.

But the one Bloc Party song on this list is not from Silent Alarm, nor is it their third-album Japanese monster movie "Flux." It's "I Still Remember," in which Tong lays down as conservative a drumbeat as any in the entire Bloc Party oeuvre.

My Top 100, No. 98: "Dirty Work" by Steely Dan

I don't remember a time before I knew this song, and yet I don't think I ever really gave it serious thought until a couple years ago, when it backed up the opening credits to American Hustle.

I love a well-curated movie soundtrack almost as much as I love a good slow-walk scene, and choosing "Dirty Work" placed the film immediately in a certain time and tone. Because not only is "Dirty Work" completely '70s, it's sleazy and sad and sordid, but in a way that's far too silly for you to take seriously.

My Top 100, No. 99: "Stay" by Rihanna, ft. Mikky Ekko

If you'd asked me, I'd probably tell you I'm kind of ambivalent about Rihanna, but if you asked me about any one of about five or six of her songs individually, I'd lose my shit. Which, I guess, means I like Rihanna more than I let on. This is not my favorite song whose music video primarily features a woman in a bathtub, but it did beat out Sarah McLachlan's "Fallen" for second place, which is saying something.

My Top 100, No. 100: "All You Wanted" by Michelle Branch

In case you thought I had a particularly cool or sophisticated musical sensibility, I'm punting on that right off the bat, because after having contemplated the classics, I'm going straight for juvenile turn-of-the-century chick rock. There are going to be songs on this list that I dissect in great detail, in which I'm in awe of the lyrical or musical construction, and which can be held up as objectively good. This is not one of them.

My Top 100--Introduction and Table of Contents

As you might have heard, the publication to which I'd devoted almost all of my creative energy over the past three years was shut down on Friday. This leaves me not only without my primary place of employment, but without any place to write or pressure to do so.
So, because I've got nothing better to do, and if I don't keep myself busy bad things will happen, I've decided to undertake a Large Writing Project. In this case, to list and rank my 100 favorite songs, and to write at least briefly about each--why I like it, as well as what (if any) emotional, historical or cultural significance it has.
This list is, of course, completely subjective, so you're probably going to disagree with at least some of the rankings, though that's not really the point. My goal is (apart from just staying in practice) not to be authoritative about anything, but to discuss these songs themselves, because the order will probably change by the time I finish writing, to say nothing of how I'll feel months into the future.
Right now, my plan is to finish this project by New Year's Eve, which means two posts a day most days, which could change if a big professional opportunity comes up and I get particularly busy in the near future.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this and/or I enjoy writing it.

Monday, November 30, 2015

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Thursday, November 19, 2015

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Monday, November 16, 2015

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Friday, November 13, 2015

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Monday, November 9, 2015

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

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