I'm going to get my top twenty bands from last.fm, although they aren't entirely representative, give you my favourite song, and why I like that song.
1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Far From Me - I like this song because it is the perfect breakup song. The instrumentation is so sparse, so intuitive, proof of how talented and chameleonic a band the Bad Seeds are. It's my favourite song by them because of the lines 'It's good to hear you're doing so well/but really can't you find somebody else that you can ring and tell?'
2. Ryan Adams - Political Scientist - I like this song because of the sweeping contrast between the verse and the chorus. Ryan Adams is one of the last mavericks left in music. He doesn't give a s**t and plays by his own rules.
3. The Beatles - A Day In The Life - What more can be said about The Beatles? As for this song - it is everything that's great about The Beatles rolled into one song.
4. Bob Dylan - Most Of The Time - Because it is a beautiful, beautiful song that has Dylan revealing a lot more of himself than he is wont to do. This was hard to pick.
5. Wilco - I Am Trying To Break Your Heart - A band who are the American equivalent of Radiohead, changing from album to album. I love this song because it does what the title claims it is trying to do. Lyrics that are by turns gorgeous and ridiculous, instrumentation that clashes, clangs and chimes...gorgeous.
6. Primal Scream - Slip Inside This House - Another band that are great for changing styles, I prefer their druggy baggy phase and their hard-rockin' electro phase. This is my favourite because of the relentless groove it has and the great piano that comes in on the choruses.
7. Pink Floyd - I'd say that these guys should be higher up, but I just tend to listen to them more on CD than on my PC these days. I couldn't pick a favourite song because I have so, so many that I could, they are an amazing band. If pushed, Shine On You Crazy Diamond has elements of everything that made them great - long running times, jams, keyboards duelling with guitars, Roger Waters, Syd Barrett.
8. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Open Invitation - A hard-rockin' bastard of a band...until the bluesy and folksy Howl which I still consider to be a five-star, modern masterpiece record. It's just amazing. I chose this song because it's the heartbreaking hidden track on it, I've sung it live a capella before now.
9. Radiohead - Idioteque - The British Wilco? A band who never seem to stay still, always pushing a boundary somewhere. Another band with so many great songs but I chose this one because it is the epitome of the minimalist style of Kid A and I love the vocals.
10. Eminem - Sing For The Moment - The great White American hope. A man who is partially responsible for a lot of my social and political viewpoint. A man who was turning me onto rap as early as 1999, before I even became a rock-only guy. A man whose rap style s**ts all over almost anyone who's in the charts - and a lot of those elsewhere - he raps about what he wants, when he wants. Whilst he bowed out on a lacklustre album, he created three fantastic records, and this is taken from my favourite, The Eminem Show. This song just sums up so much of what I think is wrong with society particularly in America. The blame game, the litigious nature of people now. 'They music can alter moods and talk to you/but can it load a gun up for you, and cock it too?/Well if it can, the next time you assault a dude/tell the judge it was my fault/then I'll get sued!'
11. Refused - Liberation Transmission - A band who have made what I consider the greatest punk album ever in The Shape Of Punk To Come. If only it had been, as that record is breathtaking. This song is my favourite on there because it exemplifies how much they were going against the grain as far as punk - not only are there only two heavy passages in there, but it ends with a quieter passage. The jagged verses, the great lyrics, the violent dynamic changes - it's a masterpiece, just like its home record.
12. N.W.A. - Real Niggaz Don't Die - A group who proved to me that gangsta rap is not an endless wasteland. The work of Dr. Dre and Ice Cube is accepted virtually everywhere as being among the best gangsta stuff out there, but NWA are generally seen as a hardcore rap group whose whole was always far less than the sum of its parts. Particularly their second album gets a lot of flak, but this proper opening track on it is a rare example of an epic, widescreen, giant beat - something so rare in rap. I also love it because of the hilariously offensive opening tirade - 'niggaz know how to die/niggaz been dying for four hundred years/niggaz don't know nothin' else BUT dyin'/niggaz DREAM about dyin'...'
13. SikTh - Skies Of The Millenium Night - A band whose disparate influences, from metal to jazz to classical to hardcore to punk to pop, are so wide ranging it'd be impossible to list them all. And it comes through in their utterly riduculous, and ridiculously good, music. The combination of melody and brutality in this song is what makes me love them as a band, I just think this is its finest moment.
14. Hundred Reasons - Silver - A band who have sadly now gone to crap - a band who had a profound influence on me from their debut in 2002, they are one of the very earliest bands I got into. 2006's Kill Your Own is their masterpiece album, but this song is their individual greatest work. Sadly now that Paul has left the band I will never get to see it live properly. But the transition from the 6/4 verse to the 6/8 chorus is just glorious.
15. Twilight Singers - There's Been An Accident - Another band who created a modern masterpiece, Powder Burns was for my money the greatest album of 2006. Greg Dulli's revolving door policy has led to fresh records, including this one which is great virtually from start to finish. This track in particular features my favourite vocal performance in history, the second chorus where he goes up an octave brings a lump to my throat every time and if I can ever hit those notes, I'll be happy with myself as a vocalist.
16. Oasis - D'You Know What I Mean - One of the first bands I ever really liked on my own. Just shameless rip-off artists, but it serves them well. 2005 was a return to form for them but this tune remains my favourite, one of the few gems on a stinker of an album. The sound is SOOOO massive all the way through, it's an aural apocalypse and I love it from the backwards vocals to the four guitar parts playing at once to the wah-wah solo.
17. Hope of the States - Black Dollar Bills - One of the few bands to exemplify the sprawling, romantic fatalism that I do love so much, their shameless induglence as far as strings, heartbreak, pianos, guitars and collapsing noise is something we should all aspire to. This is my favourite song, three minutes of a lovely ballad before a four minute breakdown and build up to a climax that's almost as good as a real one. Almost.
18. Joy Division/New Order - Decades - I count these guys as one band, as despite their great differences. Ian Curtis is an idol of mine, and this is his finest, most heartbreaking moment. New Order, meanwhile, have their own sound and as recently as 2005 I still think they were as vital as ever.
19. Weezer - The Good Life - A band who I have retreated from recently, but who are so perfect for an autist. Rivers must be autistic, based on these songs. This is my favourite of Weezer's songs, a collapsing masterpiece that's almost amelodic and yet so catchy all at once. They are also responsible for my favourite album ever, their self-titled debut.
20. blink-182 - Man Overboard - They were immature, they were peurile, they were far funny than they should've been - they made the album of their career. Then they tread water for a while. Then they made their second masterpiece. A band who don't get nearly as much credit as they deserve either live or in the studio, they have soundtracked so much of my life by this point that I lost track long ago. This is my favourite of their songs, an emotional heart beating at its centre, a gonzo major key riff undercutting it, the two vocal styles duelling.
That took a while.
06 Nov 2007, 5:19 am
