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My 100 favorite songs

10. The Avalanches - Since I Left You

I put off writing this all day, feeling like I don’t really have the words for it. There isn’t too much of a story for me to tell about my personal relationship with it either, except to say I do remember this album fully living up to the hype of every review I ever read of it, and getting unreasonably excited about the recent follow up to the debut, and trying not to let it disappoint me, but it did. There’s 10000 words out there about bands who could never live up to their great debuts, but The Avs don’t really deserve that.

Truly, a better album has not come out since this was released. It’s complete perfection filling every second. This duo must have picked an insane amount of crates to find these samples, they echo around my brain all the time. They tell a story with each song, with each verse, and it questions everything about originality and creativity. It’s just one of those masterpieces that makes you wonder how it got made. It makes me question my own approach to life and writing and art all the time.

I don’t know what you guys think but even though the lyrics suggest otherwise, I’m not sure the person is happy with the new world they’ve discovered since they left their love. Picking a single song from this album does feel like it’s doing a disservice to the vision but I do think there are individual songs that stand on their own, this one and Frontier Psychiatrist especially. “You’re a nut! Crazy in the coconut!” is a line that rattles around my brain a lot. But SILY is a disco electronic dance dream of a song. It’s the thematic core of the album, announcing itself. It’s wistful and dreamy and beautiful. I can go whole years forgetting this album exists and come back and discover things new about it, but I often return to this song and it’s as I left it.
 
9. Curtis Mayfield - Move on Up

Fair warning yesterday was my wedding anniversary and this week’s songs are gonna have a real Wife Guy vibe to them. Our wedding band played this while my wife and I were “introduced” and before our first dance. A lot of feelings come up thinking about building a life together over the last seven years, 13 if you go back to when we met. In 2010 I had just reenrolled at Wake after flunking out, I was living in my mom’s basement after my folks split, and I had been enjoying the single life. I met my wife sometime around Valentines Day 2010, unclear exactly when, there were lots of house parties, lots of weed and booze and I was unsure if I wanted to get their last four credits and graduate or just fucking call it and work retail and go to Opera House every night. Now I own a home in DC with two kids under 3, I can conceive of giving my children a comfortable upbringing and a bright future, life is good. I owe a great deal of this to my wife, and when I think about our shared love of music, how we put together the songs that mean everything to us, I can only feel proud and safe and loved. I’ve struggled mightily at times with my own self worth and utter failures of motivation, but I think of my wife’s encouragement when I think of this song, she’s someone who will make me do what I can.

Move On Up is about sticking it out when times get tough. If you’re going to accomplish anything worth doing it’s going to take some overcoming challenges, it feels. Growing up for me has meant recognizing where it’s worth not cutting corners, and mostly those times are building and maintaining relationships with friends and loved ones. It’s about sticking to your convictions even when that won’t make you understood or popular. Your folks might understand you, by and by.

The song doesn’t waste any time, two quick drum hits and it is on big time. It packs one hell of a punch in less than three minutes (on the single version), a funky soul classic that pairs big bold horns and conga style rhythm with Curtis’s buttery smooth voice. I defy you to listen and not dance, not smile, not tap your toes. Unlike the similarly titled Movin’ On Up, I don’t think this is about social climbing so much as it is just a positive message. It’s another timeless one, sounds every bit as good today as it did 50 years ago. There are a ton of great Curtis Mayfield songs I could have chosen that aren’t personal to me that have beautiful social and political consciousness—he was a lovely soul—but sometimes your favorites choose you.
 
this is my favorite song of all time, the long version, and it's all about how happy it is
 
7. Daft Punk - One More Time

Random Access Memories came out when I was just post-college living with a bunch of roommates in Hershey, PA, paying $375 in rent, just teetering on a precarious edge, but also living an extremely fun life. We had a huge garden, 10x20 feet in one section and wrapping around the back of the house in another, and life in the summer was picking whatever was ready and firing up the grill, and calling some friends and neighbors over, and blasting records from the house, and imbibing and enjoying the evenings. There is no party/dance record like a Daft Punk record. I can’t seem to track down the quote but an interviewer asked the duo if they were happy with the record and they said (paraphrased): “not really. But it will still be the best record of the next 20 years.”

This song is not from RAM, which feels distinctly more American than their early career. Early Daft Punk was made for big euro clubs, for the beaches in Ibiza and the French Riviera. The general theme seems to be: aliens are real, they’re here, and they want to party. One More Time is the pinnacle of this style of music. It is hands down my wife’s all time favorite song. She would look at my list and say “too much sad boy shit, how would you even dance to half of it?”

That summer Random Access came out I got very into the Interstella 5555 animated movie, the “visual companion to Discovery” which forms a lot of my ideas about what this song and record mean. I’d play it on my laptop in bed before I fell asleep half drunk and stoned, it was oddly soothing. One More Time is also the climax of that movie, it’s clearly a crowning achievement for the band. This song is on my running playlist, which I basically only use during races, and it is truly excellent for pumping you up. Sometimes you just need to tap into that lizard brain existence and just rock the fuck out.
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
as a known hater, i would appreciate a bottom 10 songs list at some point
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I don’t have enough musical knowledge to qualify to produce this list much less a bottom 10 list but it’d be a fun exercise

In terms of songs that make me the angriest, the genre is definitely Taylor Swift fucking with my dad rock favs the Dressners/Bon Iver with her twee bullshit

But I’m not into punching down at bad pop songs or yucking anyone’s yum generally, you like what you like
 
i think the song that i will always hate the most, as someone who worked a customer facing job circa-2007, is "hey there delilah"

that song can get fucked
 
I want the next U Talking U2 to Me to be them just slaughtering the Owl City catalog
 
will never forget that one p4k track review of the owl city song
 
That one nba draft (I think?) where they played the “remember meeeee for centuriessssss” song by Fallout Boy one million times cemented it as my least favorite song ever.
 
I Don't Wanna Wait and Where Have All the Cowboys Gone by Paula Cole are probably my least favorite songs of all time, primarily because they were played on a loop when I worked at Eddie Bauer in Hanes Mall one summer during college and also because they're bad songs.
 
Shooshmoo said:
I Don't Wanna Wait and Where Have All the Cowboys Gone by Paula Cole are probably my least favorite songs of all time, primarily because they were played on a loop when I worked at Eddie Bauer in Hanes Mall one summer during college and also because they're bad songs.
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The truth is that you don't like Paula Cole because she is openly bisexual.
 
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