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My 100 favorite songs

TownieDeac

TownieDeac

words are futile devices
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A bit of a writing exercise, a bit of a compulsive list (spent several months whittling from my most listened Spotify tunes), and a hope that I’ll score some new tunes along the way from people who wanna talk music with me.

I plan to write about a song on my list every weekday I can. Be cool, I’m not an expert on music, and my tastes aren’t as diverse or interesting as I once pretended them to be. I’ll try to keep this first post updated with a running list. Spotify playlist with the whole thing descending here 100-1 if you wanna dig in early:


100: Arab Strap - The First Big Weekend
99: Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook
98. Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move
97. Willie Nelson - Night Life
96. Kevin Morby - Campfire
95. Mission of Burma - That’s When I Reach for My Revolver
94. Prince - Let’s Go Crazy
93. A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears
92. Lauryn Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)
91. Leonard Cohen - Bird on a Wire
90. Squeeze - Up the Junction
89. Jim Croce - Operator
88. Mac DeMarco - My Old Man
87. Eric B. and Rakim - Don’t Sweat the Technique
86. Counting Crows - Omaha
85. Tyler Childers - Lady May
84. Orrin Evans - Explain it to Me
83. Digable Planets - Dog it
82. Bob Dylan - The Man in Me
81. This is the Kit - Shinbone Soap
80. Titus Andronicus - The Battle of Hampton Roads
79. Sly and the Family Stone - Family Affair
78. The Wood Brothers - Postcards from Hell
77. Big Boi - Tangerine
76. Yellow Ostrich - Whale
75. Clipse - Grindin’
74. Grandaddy - Jed the Humanoid
73. Gillian Welch - Everything is Free
72. Blake Mills - Wintersong
71. Big Thief - Simulation Swarm
70. Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
69. Green Day - She
68. The Cranberries - Linger
67. The Beach Boys - Caroline, No
66. Spoon - My Little Japanese Cigarette Case
65. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg - The Next Episode
64. The Strokes - Someday
63. Loudon Wainwright III - Motel Blues
62. Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
61. Frank Ocean - Thinking Bout You
60. Invincible - Ropes
59. Built to Spill - Traces
58. A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick it?
57. The Supremes - You Keep Me Hangin’ On
56. Velvet Underground & Nico - Heroin
55. Outkast - Rosa Parks
54. Frog - You Know I’m Down
53. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings - How Long Do I Have to Wait For You?
52. Third Eye Blind - Jumper
51. Nick Drake - River Man
50. Band of Horses - Is there a Ghost?
49. Frontier Ruckus - The Blood
48. Allman Brothers Band - In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (Live)
47. Steely Dan - Do it Again
46. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - Almost Cut My Hair
45. Modest Mouse - Paper Thin Walls
44. The Tallest Man on Earth - Love is All
43. Daniel Johnston - Life in Vain
42. Television - Marquee Moon
41. Wilco - Spiders (Kidsmoke)
40. Simon and Garfunkel - For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her
39. Miles Davis - Shh / Peaceful
38. Grateful Dead - Box of Rain
37. The Beatles - Hey Bulldog
36. David Bowie - Queen Bitch
35. Ann Peebles - I Can’t Stand the Rain
34. Nirvana - Something in the Way
32. Pavement - Gold Soundz
31. Wolf Parade - California Dreamer
30. Watchhouse - Daylight
29. The Cure - Just Like Heaven
28. Phoenix - Lasso
27. Pink Floyd - Dogs
26. Bill Callahan - Baby’s Breath
25. LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
24. Fleetwood Mac - The Chain
23. Rolling Stones - She’s a Rainbow
22. Madonna - Like a Prayer
21. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Don’t Haunt this Place
20. The Mountain Goats - The Recognition Scene
19. Animal Collective - Fireworks
18. Faces - Ooh La La
17. Broken Social Scene - Almost Crimes
16. The Wrens - Happy
15. Keith Fullerton Whitman - Lisbon
14. Stevie Wonder - Sir Duke
13. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
12. Bon Iver - 33 “GOD”
11. Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex
10. The Avalanches - Since I Left You
9. Curtis Mayfield - Move on Up
8. Bill Withers - A Lovely Day
7. Daft Punk - One More Time
6. The Microphones - I Want Wind to Blow
5. Talking Heads - Burning Down the House
4. Radiohead - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
3. Songs: Ohia - Captain Badass
2. Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing
1. The Zombies - The Way I Feel Inside
 
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100: Arab Strap - The First Big Weekend

The first song on my list and I’m already stretching my capabilities to write about music. Arab Strap is like spoken word plus rave or dancehall maybe, plus a cool Scottish brogue. I like how this one starts with a noodling guitar and then a kick drum and then the cymbals start, and as it picks up in rhythm and intensity, the weekend kicks into gear. It sounds like a conversation you’re having with your drunk mate at a pub where the music is too loud and your head is pounding.

I discovered Arab Strap around 2012 and had no idea how to place them. I dug into the catalog a bit and found several more songs (especially Daughters of Darkness) and at least two albums I have revisited often since. The music puts me in the mood to listen to a totally different style of music, the music I imagine Arab Strap listen to while taking harder drugs and hanging out with cooler people than I could handle.

I like that it manages to be melodic and challenging and interesting. Would dig similar recs if you got em.
 
This is an awesome idea, Townie. i don’t remember if you were on the discord back in 2019 when I tried to start a music trade, where I posted two songs I really liked for Kory and explained why I liked them, and asked for 2 more in return. Think one of my songs was Vice Versa by Pastor Troy, lol
 
whoa pretty dope -- will def listen. i keep a playlist of my top 20 songs that i swap songs in and out (have to remove one before one can go in, kinda like hockey)

three of my top 20 were in your top 100:
+billie jean
+box of rain
+ooh la la

and a few others have formerly been in my top 20.
+like a prayer (just swapped out that one for call me al)
+operator
+wintersong
+the chain
+sultans of swing

i'd guess about 50 total songs have ever made it on my top 20 list.
 
I have your playlist on now. Very cool thought process and interesting selections. While Our musical tastes are very dissimilar, I still have seen several of these acts live. What I am fascinated by is that even when we have artist overlap, they are different songs by the artists.
 
I have been listening to a lot of Talking Heads lately, and while I love Burning Down the House, I think Road to Nowhere is in my top five favorite songs now
 
If I kept a Top 20, Gold Soundz would be on it.

Ooh La La, You Keep Me Hangin’ On and Sir Duke are great additions to any playlist.

With my kids I play songs from Sing and they love singing along (e.g. Golden Slumbers, I’m Still Standing). I’ll try it out with The Way I Feel Inside.
 
BeachBumDeac said:
I have been listening to a lot of Talking Heads lately, and while I love Burning Down the House, I think Road to Nowhere is in my top five favorite songs now
Click to expand...
And She Was is a great addition to any playlist.

My wife’s drama teacher made her class dance to Once in a Lifetime at the start of every class.
 
99. Sigur Ros - Gobledigook

There are two big meaningful life touchpoints for me with Sigur Ros. The first is the employment of Staralfur in the end of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, my favorite movie. I get a lot of my musical taste, perhaps embarrassingly, from Wes Anderson movies and how well he uses songs in film. There is deep emotional resonance from a scene where the characters are drained, wrung out with grief, and ready to quit. The song plays as funereal, and yet a tiny glimmer of promise sneaks through. It’s devastating and uncompromising and thoroughly beautiful. I’m not always in the mood to listen to it, like a lot of Sigur Ros, which requires a time and headspace I don’t always have anymore. Aegis Byrjun has any number of beautiful songs I could have chosen for this list.

The other major touchpoint for me was seeing Sigur Ros at Lollapalooza in 2012. The show was, as memory serves, in late afternoon, and I left the previous show early to go get a great spot, abandoning my friends and smoking a joint with an older fella and talking about what songs we wanted to hear. The concert was incredible in a way that an outdoor show in front of many tens of thousands with a big band singing in Icelandic had no right to sound, intimate and warm and uplifting and joyous. I don’t speak the language but years of listening to the albums had me hopping around and shouting phonetically, gutturally, with no idea what was being sung or played about. I was experiencing a euphoria that I haven’t in maybe any other concert since.

Gobbledigook is a more recent addition to the catalog, from a 2008 album that really didn’t get the acclaim of some of their bigger works. It is more self-contained, an easier entry point into a band that often plays complex and slow and emotionally wrought songs with caterwauling vocals and heavy strings. This song for me is one I can plug in headphones and turn up loud and dance around my house any time, a mood changer, and just a fun song.

What’s your favorite Sigur Ros?
 
I look forward to following along with this and, very likely, discovering some new music. It also got me thinking about how I would go about constructing my own list and I realized that the musicality or lyricism that I might admire in a song would be secondary in importance to that nostalgic moment in time that the song represents for me. There are songs that can take me right back to my driveway 38 years ago, boom box plugged into the garage wall outlet on a Saturday morning, listening to Casey Kasem while I threw baseball after baseball towards one of those rebounding nets. Also, a large percentage of the list would have songs that are new to me in the last ten years and that gets me excited for the stuff I would probably love that I haven't heard yet. So, thanks for putting this together.
 
DeacInVermont said:
I look forward to following along with this and, very likely, discovering some new music. It also got me thinking about how I would go about constructing my own list and I realized that the musicality or lyricism that I might admire in a song would be secondary in importance to that nostalgic moment in time that the song represents for me. There are songs that can take me right back to my driveway 38 years ago, boom box plugged into the garage wall outlet on a Saturday morning, listening to Casey Kasem while I threw baseball after baseball towards one of those rebounding nets. Also, a large percentage of the list would have songs that are new to me in the last ten years and that gets me excited for the stuff I would probably love that I haven't heard yet. So, thanks for putting this together.
Click to expand...

This is why the Hold Steady's "Certain Songs" has always resonated so deeply w/me.

Certain songs they get so scratched into our souls
 
TownieDeac said:
99. Sigur Ros - Gobledigook

There are two big meaningful life touchpoints for me with Sigur Ros. The first is the employment of Staralfur in the end of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, my favorite movie. I get a lot of my musical taste, perhaps embarrassingly, from Wes Anderson movies and how well he uses songs in film. There is deep emotional resonance from a scene where the characters are drained, wrung out with grief, and ready to quit. The song plays as funereal, and yet a tiny glimmer of promise sneaks through. It’s devastating and uncompromising and thoroughly beautiful. I’m not always in the mood to listen to it, like a lot of Sigur Ros, which requires a time and headspace I don’t always have anymore. Aegis Byrjun has any number of beautiful songs I could have chosen for this list.

The other major touchpoint for me was seeing Sigur Ros at Lollapalooza in 2012. The show was, as memory serves, in late afternoon, and I left the previous show early to go get a great spot, abandoning my friends and smoking a joint with an older fella and talking about what songs we wanted to hear. The concert was incredible in a way that an outdoor show in front of many tens of thousands with a big band singing in Icelandic had no right to sound, intimate and warm and uplifting and joyous. I don’t speak the language but years of listening to the albums had me hopping around and shouting phonetically, gutturally, with no idea what was being sung or played about. I was experiencing a euphoria that I haven’t in maybe any other concert since.

Gobbledigook is a more recent addition to the catalog, from a 2008 album that really didn’t get the acclaim of some of their bigger works. It is more self-contained, an easier entry point into a band that often plays complex and slow and emotionally wrought songs with caterwauling vocals and heavy strings. This song for me is one I can plug in headphones and turn up loud and dance around my house any time, a mood changer, and just a fun song.

What’s your favorite Sigur Ros?
Click to expand...
My favorite Sigur Ros is "Svefn-g-englar" from Ágætis byrjun which I definitely stole while working in the B&N music dept. I forget where I heard it, but then it popped up in Vanilla Sky, so there was definitely a movie association with it as well. I know that movie got a lot of shit, and I don't even remember if I liked it, but I saw a super late show of it after getting off a shift from a different B&N and remember leaving and being basically the only one in the parking lot of this massive strip mall complex thing and feeling very, very weird. I put on that disc that I just happened to have in my car, and it was a very eerie, quiet ride home. Not going to speak for the quality of the movie, but there is definitely an spacey, dreamy atmosphere around my viewing of it that I will probably always remember.

My next job briefly had a very cool interactive video thing where we had cool shit with ( ) and Lambchop - Is A Woman that I used to stare at, but then I totally forgot about Lambchop until I saw them about 7 years later, and I don't think I've listened to any Sigur Ros since, either, at least not intentionally. But I'm gonna put on at least Agaetis byrjun now for a bit.
 
man I really want to engage with this but I have like 600+ more Bell Labs pages to document before I drive home so for now I'll just say I miss the old Sigur Ros, Iceland is my favorite country in the world, Von is underrated, I'm glad I split off from RSF and MDMH at Boston Calling to go see them alone, the Sigur Ros tax fraud case kinda sucks, Route 1 is an incredible project/video, and ( ) is pronounced saw-suh-jedges,
 
Kory said:
man I really want to engage with this but I have like 600+ more Bell Labs pages to document before I drive home so for now I'll just say I miss the old Sigur Ros, Iceland is my favorite country in the world, Von is underrated, I'm glad I split off from RSF and MDMH at Boston Calling to go see them alone, the Sigur Ros tax fraud case kinda sucks, Route 1 is an incredible project/video, and ( ) is pronounced saw-suh-jedges,
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, they were playing at the same time as Chance.
 
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