Some internet dudes challenged me to put together a list of my 25 favorite songs from the past 25 years yesterday, and because I’m not a total punk I decided I would see their challenge and raise them a FUCKING AWESOME. Prepare to be dazzled!
The songs here are my personal favorites — in some cases songs I objectively realize aren’t that artist’s “best” song (examples: Pavement’s “Grounded” is clearly a superior song to the one listed here; Palace Brother’s “New Partner” or “Ohio Riverboat Song” likely slays my pick below, etc.), but these are the songs that lodged themselves in my heart and mind and soul for whatever reason. This probably says something about me — that I often deeply love songs that aren’t the ones I should’ve picked… I don’t know what that means, but it seems like something that could be important to know.
Google the titles – all of these songs can be found around the internet in a variety of different forms, for your listening pleasure. I hope when you hear them, you’ll discover your own reasons to appreciate them.
25. R.E.M. – Swan Swan H: My favorite R.E.M era is this one, when their music had a weird folk/country/sea shanty-on-postmodernism edge to it (Fables Of The Reconstruction is my favorite album of theirs). Pared down to beautiful, emotive bones, this tune and Stipe’s voice in it pulls my heart right up into my throat. Hurrah, we’re all free now!
24. The Pixies – Where Is My Mind?: To me, the archetypal Pixies song, as it perfectly compiles all of what they’re best at — pairing Black Francis/Frank Black’s (whatever) cool creepiness and humor with an awesome, hook-y guitar line and driving percussion. Just try getting that song out of your head now.
23. The Walkmen – In The New Year: Endings, beginnings. You pick yourself up, and go on, even when you don’t think you can do it. But everyone does — we have no choice but to, and to hope.
22. So What’cha Want – Beastie Boys: Perfectly distills for me the smart-mouthed, quick-witted, goofy-edged rock-n-roll awesome that is the Beasties. I want to drive down some town’s main drag with the windows rolled down, this song blaring out. You can’t front on that.
21. The Denial Twist – The White Stripes: I believe that if I could just share a glass of bourbon with Jack White one day, I would instantly become about 50 times cooler.
20. Nowhere Fast – The Smiths: Some of the best lyrics of any song ever, perfectly distilling my experience liviing in a small midwestern town during my High School years. Each household appliance is like a new science in my town. Gimme five, Morrissey.
19. Yuri-G – PJ Harvey: This song comes from one of those albums where just about any of its songs could be an all-time favorite (I really struggled between picking this song, “Missed” and “Rub Til It Bleeds” in particular). But this one, powerfully hooky, raw, filled with an astronaut’s longing for his moon-lover, gets me every time.
18. I Summon You – Spoon: I want to have Britt Daniel’s babies.
17. Wonderwall – Oasis: I was a long-time Oasis naysayer. In fact, when this song came out I was of the mind that listening to them was somehow stooping (oh hai, I’m a horrible music snob! [waves]). But this song, goddamn, there’s a reason it was so popular. Without getting too hyperbolic, it’s pretty much the most perfect pop song ever written. (heh)
16. Dragon Lady – The Geraldine Fibbers: 25 year old Tracey’s anthem.
15. Everything In Its Right Place – Radiohead: Simultaneously atmospheric and like dunking your head in Modern humanity’s stream of consciousness, this song to my mind articulates something human that could never be framed logically — something that the best music almost always does to one degree or other.
14. Star Witness – Neko Case: It’s the unsettling teenage sweetness of a David Lynch film distilled and put to music. And so lovely and sweeping, that it takes you a while to uncover it’s darkness, and realize it’s about a terrible car crash, death, and lost innocence.
13. Chicago – Sufjan Stevens: A genuine, authentic anthem of life’s intersecting inherent beauty and inevitable sadness. All things go, all things go. Tru, dat.
12. All My Friends – LCD Soundsystem: My 20s, put in terms better than I probably ever could, with all it’s lessons, failing, daring, longing, poetry, and fire. I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision for another five years of life either.
11. Jockey Full Of Bourbon – Tom Waits: To say I revere Tom Waits is to put my feelings for him in mild terms. One of the few people on planet earth I consider a real genius — He does for music what David Simon does for TV. To me, this song is a dark movie, part Barfly, part Mob drama. And I don’t pretend to understand it, but the mystery of it is intoxicating and captivating.
10. The Greatest – Cat Power: The weepiest of weepy songs for me. I literally can’t get through this song without getting choked up.
9. In Bloom – Nirvana: The perfect rock song. Tight, controlled, headbang-worthy, makes you want to dance and punch someone in the face AT THE SAME TIME. (pours a little out for Kurdt)
8. For Reverend Green – Animal Collective: Jarring, dissonant punk rock meets primitivism meets electronica meets I don’t know the fuck what. The screaming in this song gives me shivers. The good kind. These guys have a specific kind of path-forging, innovative brilliance I can’t help but sit in awe of.
7. Trains Across The Sea – Silver Jews: From one of the landmark albums of my 20s, it’s a song for every rainy day, a second-hand shop full of the worn remains and regrets of a life. Poetic, with the ring of something true.
6. The First Part – Superchunk: First, if you don’t own “Foolish,” the album this song is from, please do yourself a favor and get it right the hell now. Second, this is one of the great breakup songs of all time. Also? Fucking ROCKS. One good minute could last me a whole year. So been there.
5. Werner’s Last Blues To Blockbuster – Palace Brothers: As I said back in 2005, I find it near impossible to articulate the depth of my connection to this song, but I find it deeply moving, deeply personal. The strange fragility of Oldham’s voice, the piano, lyrics — it’s perfectly lonely and mournful in a way that appeals to (and pains) me like no other song does.
4. No Children – Mountain Goats:
A song that seems so despairing on the surface, but which I find oddly hopeful. Lyrically, it reminds me much of how kids respond to disappointment, sadness, frustration by pounding their fists and railing “I hate all of you! I wish I was never born!” etc. It’s both an articulation of despair about life and the world — naming as it does the worst case scenario for every subject it addresses, as if doing so would generate a talisman warding against those things (if you name it, you have power over it?) — while also quite literally, in nearly every line, summoning the word “hope.”
3. Holland, 1945 – Neutral Milk Hotel:
An wild, emotive postmodern painting of a song, full of love and violence and the destruction both of those things can wreak. This song is, to me, a “Big Picture” sort of survey of humanity distilled down to one life, one perspective, one age (Jeff Magnum was said to have been heavily influenced by just having read The Diary Of Anne Frank, which does precisely that). The world just screams and falls apart. By the final, crushing lines of the song I’m always on the verge of tears:
And here’s where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don’t move anymore
And 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
2. Father To A Sister Of Thought – Pavement: Two words: slide guitar. I first heard this song when I was living in Cairo, Egypt for a summer in my mid-20s, and as disjointed as it might sound this song reminds me of Egypt, of that age of my life. It has a wistful but oddly biting quality to it that matches some deep part of me — the part that wants what is impossible, loathes what is possible, and never quite feels comfortable or at ease anywhere.
1. Independence Day – Elliott Smith:
A distillation of what happiness is . To me this song is pure joy, pure hope — even in its closing lines that suggest lack, failure, and falling short:
I saw you at the perfect place
It’s gonna happen soon, but not today
So go to sleep, and make the change
I’ll meet you here tomorrow
Independence Day
Independence Day
Independence Day
It’s all aspiration and possibility, about what CAN be, even if it isn’t. It conveys to me a sense of empowerment (as corny as that sounds) — that life is in our hands, the ship ours to steer — and that maybe we will get to that perfect place… And that we should keep trying to get there.
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And with that, I’m done done done. And I tag all y’all, so DO IT DO IT DO IT. And please leave a link in comments to your post so I can check it out.
