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My 100 favorite songs

JuiceCrewAllStar said:
I was also at that Boston Calling Chance the Rapper set
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the muddiest show i've ever seen

iirc that was the first year they moved the festival to harvard from city hall, and they didn't do shit to prep for inclement weather. there were parts between the red/green stages that were legit like half a foot of mud
 
muddy and way crowded

most packed in outdoor festival I think I've ever been to
 
Only time I've tried to see Chance was at Lolla the year he really blew up and they hadn't accounted for it and put him on a big enough stage. Was dangerously crowded and not fun at all.
 
98. Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move

I could probably make a top 100 list of songs from the mid 2000s from Brooklyn art rock bands or just the top artists on Sub Pop/Merge/Domino/4AD/Jagjaguwar, following my worst instincts to just canonize my favorites from my college years. Some combination of the songs my college roommate downloaded from what.cd or oink.fm plus whatever Cokemachineglow or Brooklyn Vegan or Gorilla vs Bear told me was cool made up nearly the sum total of my musical taste after my high school obsessions with jam bands and classic rock. I haven’t done that with this list, but I could have. Maybe it would have been more honest than pretending my tastes are more diverse than they are, but anyway, let’s get specific.

This song is deeply etched into my psyche because a girl I was crushing on put it on a mixtape for me circa 2009 when I was newly single and deeply emotionally vulnerable, and she was older and a grad student and really smart and hot and I thought every song she chose was sending me deep messages about our relationship, which at the time consisted of one shared class and also smoking lots of weed together. I assumed she was telling me that maybe we could be together someday but not yet, we should just keep being friends, let’s not wreck this. In retrospect, it didn’t mean anything more than the Hood Internet mashups that made up a lot of the rest of the playlist, and she definitely wasn’t into me at all.

I like this song anyway because it’s ridiculously catchy and poppy but not straightforward as a composition whatsoever. That describes Dirty Projectors fairly well across the many different iterations of their band, and while Bitte Orca and Swing Lo Magellan are their two best known and reviewed, there are tons of gems across their full catalog. I like the percussion here especially. Dirty Projectors borrow from afrobeat and electronic music a lot, and I like how they shake off categories but make very listenable music at the same time.
 
TownieDeac said:
98. Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move

I could probably make a top 100 list of songs from the mid 2000s from Brooklyn art rock bands or just the top artists on Sub Pop/Merge/Domino/4AD/Jagjaguwar, following my worst instincts to just canonize my favorites from my college years. Some combination of the songs my college roommate downloaded from what.cd or oink.fm plus whatever Cokemachineglow or Brooklyn Vegan or Gorilla vs Bear told me was cool made up nearly the sum total of my musical taste after my high school obsessions with jam bands and classic rock. I haven’t done that with this list, but I could have. Maybe it would have been more honest than pretending my tastes are more diverse than they are, but anyway, let’s get specific.

This song is deeply etched into my psyche because a girl I was crushing on put it on a mixtape for me circa 2009 when I was newly single and deeply emotionally vulnerable, and she was older and a grad student and really smart and hot and I thought every song she chose was sending me deep messages about our relationship, which at the time consisted of one shared class and also smoking lots of weed together. I assumed she was telling me that maybe we could be together someday but not yet, we should just keep being friends, let’s not wreck this. In retrospect, it didn’t mean anything more than the Hood Internet mashups that made up a lot of the rest of the playlist, and she definitely wasn’t into me at all.

I like this song anyway because it’s ridiculously catchy and poppy but not straightforward as a composition whatsoever. That describes Dirty Projectors fairly well across the many different iterations of their band, and while Bitte Orca and Swing Lo Magellan are their two best known and reviewed, there are tons of gems across their full catalog. I like the percussion here especially. Dirty Projectors borrow from afrobeat and electronic music a lot, and I like how they shake off categories but make very listenable music at the same time.
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Oof chicks man. Its amazing how songs and women and be linked for the rest of your life. For me the song is Frozen Man by James Taylor. My girlfriend and I were breaking up and the song came on and she just started singing:

"Angel of mercy, I'm alive or am I dead?"
My name is William James McPhee
I was born in 1843
Raised in Liverpool by the sea
But that ain't who I am
Lord have mercy on the frozen man

Had absolutely nothing to do with what was going and, I just sat there thinking shit, I'm really gonna be a mess when she is gone.

Now that song is probably one of my top 10.
 
TimmyClutch said:
Oof chicks man. Its amazing how songs and women and be linked for the rest of your life. For me the song is Frozen Man by James Taylor. My girlfriend and I were breaking up and the song came on and she just started singing:

"Angel of mercy, I'm alive or am I dead?"
My name is William James McPhee
I was born in 1843
Raised in Liverpool by the sea
But that ain't who I am
Lord have mercy on the frozen man

Had absolutely nothing to do with what was going and, I just sat there thinking shit, I'm really gonna be a mess when she is gone.

Now that song is probably one of my top 10.
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@wakephan09 batsignal
 
97. Willie Nelson - Night Life

I associate Willie Nelson with my grandfather playing 45s and sitting in this massive recliner he had. His records were mostly classical, a lot of Chopin and Gorecki and Penderecki. He’d get out his oboe or his violin and jam along with polka and zydeco records. Just about as Polish a scene as you could get, paired with lots of wine and a huge family. Occasionally he’d put on Pete Seeger or the like. He was a fan of anything (music, movies, books) that was about working and providing a good life for your family, talking to an impressionable 8 year old Townie about the importance of a stable job. He told me the two most important things a person can be are humble and compassionate. Pretty cool dude.

I think if you grew up in the 90s or later you could be forgiven for just thinking Willie Nelson is that stoner guy you see in some movies sometimes. I never really dug into his catalog at all until a camping trip with my dad after college when he was playing Nelson tunes on his iPod at camp and it brought me back to childhood at my grandparents house and I was open to the experience. I found that my ideas of what Nelson’s music were and what his albums actually sounded like were miles apart. He has country western, folk, blues, rock, the whole American southern experience in his music.

There’s a reason the likes of BB King and Aretha Franklin have covered Night Life. It’s a simple song, like so many he wrote about life on the road, with that special mix of pain and contentment: “the night life ain’t a good life, but it’s my life.” This song was written the year my dad was born, but there it was 50 years later being sung around a campfire by men in completely different circumstances and background. I’d like to think some songs I love from recent years will have that kind of staying power to enjoy with my children and grandchildren.
 
TownieDeac said:
97. Willie Nelson - Night Life

I associate Willie Nelson with my grandfather playing 45s and sitting in this massive recliner he had. His records were mostly classical, a lot of Chopin and Gorecki and Penderecki. He’d get out his oboe or his violin and jam along with polka and zydeco records. Just about as Polish a scene as you could get, paired with lots of wine and a huge family. Occasionally he’d put on Pete Seeger or the like. He was a fan of anything (music, movies, books) that was about working and providing a good life for your family, talking to an impressionable 8 year old Townie about the importance of a stable job. He told me the two most important things a person can be are humble and compassionate. Pretty cool dude.

I think if you grew up in the 90s or later you could be forgiven for just thinking Willie Nelson is that stoner guy you see in some movies sometimes. I never really dug into his catalog at all until a camping trip with my dad after college when he was playing Nelson tunes on his iPod at camp and it brought me back to childhood at my grandparents house and I was open to the experience. I found that my ideas of what Nelson’s music were and what his albums actually sounded like were miles apart. He has country western, folk, blues, rock, the whole American southern experience in his music.

There’s a reason the likes of BB King and Aretha Franklin have covered Night Life. It’s a simple song, like so many he wrote about life on the road, with that special mix of pain and contentment: “the night life ain’t a good life, but it’s my life.” This song was written the year my dad was born, but there it was 50 years later being sung around a campfire by men in completely different circumstances and background. I’d like to think some songs I love from recent years will have that kind of staying power to enjoy with my children and grandchildren.
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i can't believe i have never listened to this song before but it instantly is one of my favorites
 
TimmyClutch said:
@TownieDeac I believe you only did 1 song per artist. Was that purposeful or did you have to make cuts?
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I did that on purpose, will probably talk about it in some write up one of these days. I do think I accidentally cut some songs that should have made my final list, but oh well.
 
TownieDeac said:
98. Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move

I could probably make a top 100 list of songs from the mid 2000s from Brooklyn art rock bands or just the top artists on Sub Pop/Merge/Domino/4AD/Jagjaguwar, following my worst instincts to just canonize my favorites from my college years. Some combination of the songs my college roommate downloaded from what.cd or oink.fm plus whatever Cokemachineglow or Brooklyn Vegan or Gorilla vs Bear told me was cool made up nearly the sum total of my musical taste after my high school obsessions with jam bands and classic rock. I haven’t done that with this list, but I could have. Maybe it would have been more honest than pretending my tastes are more diverse than they are, but anyway, let’s get specific.

This song is deeply etched into my psyche because a girl I was crushing on put it on a mixtape for me circa 2009 when I was newly single and deeply emotionally vulnerable, and she was older and a grad student and really smart and hot and I thought every song she chose was sending me deep messages about our relationship, which at the time consisted of one shared class and also smoking lots of weed together. I assumed she was telling me that maybe we could be together someday but not yet, we should just keep being friends, let’s not wreck this. In retrospect, it didn’t mean anything more than the Hood Internet mashups that made up a lot of the rest of the playlist, and she definitely wasn’t into me at all.

I like this song anyway because it’s ridiculously catchy and poppy but not straightforward as a composition whatsoever. That describes Dirty Projectors fairly well across the many different iterations of their band, and while Bitte Orca and Swing Lo Magellan are their two best known and reviewed, there are tons of gems across their full catalog. I like the percussion here especially. Dirty Projectors borrow from afrobeat and electronic music a lot, and I like how they shake off categories but make very listenable music at the same time.
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hmm i think today I will listen to some Dirty Projectors

Swing Lo Magellan is so fucking fun to play/sing on guitar
 
96. Kevin Morby - Campfire

Here’s another appearance from the 2010s Brooklyn contingent already (is he an LA guy now?). I could dive into my life in the early 2010s and my many visits to my then girlfriend in Brooklyn as the development of Barclay’s Center pushed her further out in South Slope, but todays isn’t a biographical entry like many will be, I’m sure.

I first saw Morby when he was in Woods, opening for somebody somewhere in New York, and bought At Echo Lake on vinyl before I was in possession of a record player. I didn’t obsessively follow his career after that; maybe Harlem River made it to my year end list in 2013, who can recall those things? But for whatever reason, 2020’s Sundowner hit me like a ton of bricks. Some critic called it his Harvest Moon, and holy shit, I agree. This is a 2020s masterpiece of tone and feel and scene and place, you’re there with him around the campfire summoning the spirits and experiencing the totality of human emotion from grief to madness to euphoria.

Campfire is several songs in one, but the aesthetic of a crackling fire is such rich sonic context for the lyrics, which are about death and the universe. He invokes the loss of Anthony Bourdain, Richard Swift and Jessi Zazu, “now they’ve done their time and they’re laid to rest.” Midway through the song transitions into Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) with an angelic interlude, and I envision the smoke rising up from the campfire lifting the souls of the dead into the sky “a thousand years old.” Morby used Sundowner to mean someone who feels melancholic and nervous as the sun is going down, and though the album was mostly written in 2017, it sounded just right for the first year of the pandemic. The album came out a week before my first son was born, and I spent hours and hours and hours listening to it in the wee hours of the morning or to rock him to sleep, thinking about birth and death, the way that only beautiful music can punch you hard in the gut one second and make you dance and smile the next. Do I read too much into this, or is it a profound and beautiful paean to human life on Earth?
 
I listened to Willie with my grandfather on his carport. I doubt he had an album collection even in the double digits but I recall a few late 70s Willie, Haggard, Cash, and the Statler Brothers. I still associate those songs with my grandfather 30 years after his death.

Willie has been around so long. Born the same year as the aforementioned Conway Twitty.
 
woods at rock and roll hotel in dc (rip) is the best concert i've ever been to (morby had already left the band). i did see morby perform with them in brooklyn on new years later on.

really liked this song will give the whole album a listen.
 
Kevin Morby has been especially prolific in the past 5 years, and fortunately his albums have been so thematically different that if you don’t connect with one, he will probably release something you like a year later.

And I think he has lived in Kansas City for a while
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
Morby and Waxahatchee's cover of "Farewell Transmission" was the closing track at my wedding

(for reasons I've covered in the CT, I will probably remember this for as long as I live)
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Do you mind retelling? I missed it.
 
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