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My 100 favorite songs

Strickland33 said:
I nominate this as the worst song of all time. Anybody who worked retail during the months of October-December probably agrees.

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Every year, I want to torture any person associated with the creation and dissemination of this flaming garbage bullshit.
 
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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And her voice is trash in that higher range.
 
the only song that really makes my blood boil is Santa Baby
 
The 10th anniversary edition of Random Access Memories has some good content including another banger with Casablancas

 
6. The Microphones - I Want Wind to Blow

I haven’t done a close read interpretation of any of the songs on this list yet, you like the songs, you don’t like the songs, I don’t care. I guess it’s different for me with Phil and his catalog. With The Microphones or Phil Elverum more broadly it’s personal, or maybe it’s more than personal, I care deeply and intimately about this music. It’s an extension of the person I am. I don’t know Phil, I’m not related to him, he’s of a different generation than I am, he’s a west coast guy, he’s a Canadian guy at heart maybe, he’s got a very different brain than me, but every single thing he’s ever done speaks for me in a spiritual and metaphysical way I can’t and won’t explain.

Early Microphones stuff is interpreting Pacific Northwest punk in a new way that not only did I not have access to, I can’t come close to explaining or pretend to understand in a deep way. Anacortes seems like its own scene different from Seattle or Portland or Vancouver, it’s spooky and spare and different.

This album cover will be my next tattoo, covering my left bicep, and when I look at it from the time I’m young(ish) to when I’m old, I want it to convey a feeling, no matter if I have my arms around it or not. I have an appointment to get this tattoo in the next couple months—it’s a long time coming.

This album, The Glow Pt 2, is already etched into me in a way I can’t describe. It has an atmosphere that reflects my experience with sanity, my approach to being, unlike any other album apart from Songs:Ohia. It sounds like it was recorded on a boom box, in a room in a house by people who desperately cared what it sounded like but couldn’t afford to or didn’t want it to sound better or different than it does.

It starts with some static, tape reels spinning, and it’s not clear if this is two guitars or a guitar having a conversation with itself. In fact no matter how many times I listen to this I can’t get on top of this record. There’s too much swirl, the production is trying to elude you, it’s not trying to catch you, it’s not trying to find its commercial footing, it’s got an idea and it’s going to dig its feet in and take root.
Soft, tinny cymbals announce themselves, but Phil’s voice starts to weigh in, and it’s there more than anything else. It sounds like boarding up a house for a storm. The mix is louder than the recording can accommodate. There’s something that isn’t musical instruments, it’s like a hammock, it’s something swaying in the wind.

Eventually it won’t be anything but the bass drum hits, the toms and cymbals are there first but eventually the bass is the only thing in the song, the biggest thing happening in the world, this song is a summoning and the storm is here. The song has two distinct breaks: one at 2:30 where it goes into a light fugue, and another at 4:10 announcing the climax where it’s just a full maelstrom. The recording can’t pick it all up, so it’s just chaos and noise, and before it can all coalesce and clarify again it cuts itself off completely.

There were songs I wanted to write up, there were songs I dreaded writing up, and there are songs like this that I will be writing up all my life. Phil has experienced life and love and loss and translated it in ways that few can match. He’s a genius in the way that I’m not sure many alive today have the essential genius to be, to capture, to translate, to turn from idea into sound into recording.

Is there no part of you that wants the wind to blow? That simply yearns for the elements to take over your senses, for nature to dominate and take over your life? That knows deep within you that you are an atom in this universe, fortunate for a moment in time to experience something so rare and beautiful as a cooling breeze across you, a relief, a reprieve, an inexplicable mercy and grace in this suffering and pain?
 
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(Wrote that very late last night kinda drunk, it’s a little dramatic)
 
TownieDeac said:
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.
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I love SiruisXMU (great crew of Josiah Lambert / Jenni Eliscue) and Voyager is one of their go-to Daft Punk songs. I’m a sucker for a good baseline and this one is straight up addictive. I’ve never watched Interstella 555 until last night and it is a great pairing with Voyager: A fun road trip culminating with some mystical shit.

SiriusXMU’s other Daft Punk go-to is Something About Us. The use of the wah funk pedal at the beginning and end is brilliant. It also pairs nicely with Voyager.

I agree RAM will be the best record of the next 20 years, unless they (hopefully) make another one. If Infinity Repeating really is their last song ever, they went out on a high note.
 
5. Talking Heads - Burning Down the House

I’ve been crazy about Talking Heads since high school, 20+ years now of different favorite songs, favorite albums, favorite eras of Byrne clothing choices. Remain in Light was my high school favorite, the video for Once in a Lifetime making my friends and I laugh—we’d incorporate the hand movements into our own moves at Rock the Block while we flailed around like crazy people, uncaring what anyone thought. I’ve had Born Under Punches and Crosseyed and Painless on my running playlists since high school (remember Grooveshark?).

Jumping ahead to 2016, my wife and I danced our first song at our wedding to Naive Melody. We weren’t one of those couples to rehearse a dance before hand, just sorta hippie flailed and enjoyed ourselves while all our closest people circled us and smiled. It’s really a perfect song for something like entering a marriage, there’s a little wink behind the euphoria of the lyrics, maybe you’re being naive but for now everything is just right. Just an animal looking for a home, to share the same space for a minute or two, and you’ll love me til my heart stops, love me til I’m dead. Might as well be vows. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also say I think it was at one point @wakephan09 ’s fav song ever, great choice. We are all the sum of our collective influences and feelings.

I was also fortunate enough to see David Byrne warming up for the American Utopia tour at the XPN Festival outside Philly around the same era, and it is without question the finest concert I’ve ever been to. Every second is choreographed, every song is perfection. They closed with Janelle Monae’s Hell You Talmbout, a perfect theme for the winking American Utopia idea. I have never danced so hard in my life as I did at that concert, it’s just what Talking Heads is about, no matter if it’s the weird art rock period, more electronic, more world music or more straight pop, the through line is that you can get the absolute utter fuck down on the beat and go to town.

I’m sure I’ve told my Burning Down the House anecdote before, but maybe my favorite Talking Heads memory is associated with college. Over the summer I pinged back and forth between a house off Coliseum and two houses on Polo a lot, my friend groups split between the weed smoking hippies, the frat bros, and Team Friendship. My pals at Sigma Nu always had a couch to crash on, always had a spot to play golf or an invite to a party, they were a great group of friends. One afternoon we were in the car on the way to go play 9 at Reynolds Park, to drink a stupid amount of beers, and to get some freshmen to drive us back to campus, and Burning Down the House came on the shuffle. It became the inspiration for a house party that night where it was played on repeat for hours and somehow nobody got sick of it or managed a single complaint. Your random sorority sister after the tenth time of listening would come shout in your face “Ahhhhhh WATCH OUT,” and the night culminated with a backyard bonfire that just about left the house in tact, safe from burning down.

There will always be more Talking Heads to love, just an incredibly giving band, one who evolved a lot and rarely got stale. I can mark time in my life by their music, there are at least ten more such touchstones I can think of that are as meaningful as the ones I’ve already mentioned. When a band makes an impression like that on you it’s hard to pick a favorite, it points at the silliness of a project like this, but let’s just go with it and rock out.
 
Burning Down the House, for me, is always associated with dorm fire drills at Wake Forest. One of the RAs would always have it going on speakers out the window as we gathered between Babcock and New (Luter).
 
Yeah, that song, and the video, got so much overplay in the 80's that it's just background noise now. It's a great song, but It's played out for my generation.
 
I think Crosseyed and Painless is a better song. The version with Bernie Worrell in europe on that concert recording? I can't even imagine being there.
 
I resisted the talking heads/david byrne for a long time because my idiot friend liked them and I couldn't give him a W on anything. he was also a real deal alcoholic and his favorite tune was "Heaven" about going to the bar and I can't fucking stand that song. Naive Melody or Strange Overtones would probably make my list
 
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I just hit the pen and put on that Rome concert linked above. I'm not taking it as a coincidence that this shit really kicks off right at 4:20

ok see y'all tomorrow
 
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