|
Artist |
Year |
|
 Satta Massagana |
Abyssinians |
1971 |
Satta Massagana is one of
the most covered tunes in the history of reggae and a
rare instance of a song that crossed over into church groups rather than
the other way round. Partially sung in Amharic (the title translates as “give
praise”), it’s a minor-key classic of close harmonies and the traditional
Rastafarian longing for repatriation. It was so far ahead of its time when
originally recorded in 1969 that Studio One’s legendary producer Coxsone Dodd
rejected it, leaving the song unreleased until the vocal trio formed their
own label two years later. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Dream On |
Aerosmith |
1973 |
Still only in his mid-20s, but
frustrated by a lack of momentum in his music career, Steven Tyler displayed
a Jackson Browne-esque level of maturity-before-his-time when he sang “Every
time that I look in the mirror/ All these lines on my face gettin clearer” in
Aerosmith’s anthemic debut single from their first album. Those lines would
deepen further over the drug-addled next decade, before Tyler’s dreams were
finally fulfilled by global popularity in 1987. MR |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Fluorescent Adolescent |
Arctic Monkeys |
2007 |
This wry treatise on female
sexual disappointment, co-written, perhaps significantly, by Alex Turner and
his ex-girlfriend Johanna Bennett, could be about a woman who settled down
too young at 23 or one who has hit a midlife crisis at 43. But that’s a strength
that derives from its graceful, old-fashioned melody, and the way the
virtuoso lyric glories in the pleasures of witty metaphor and scabrous
innuendo. A song for when the “Bloody Mary” of life is sorely “lacking a
Tabasco”. GM |
| Listen on Spotify |
| St James Infirmary Blues |
Louis Armstrong |
1928 |
A classic New Orleans funeral
blues, in which a rounder discovers his woman has died and he’ll shortly be
following her. The machismo with which he plans his own funeral – “Put a
twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain/ So you can let all the boys know
I died standing pat” – contains startling similarities to some of rap’s
funeral songs, such as Tupac’s Life Goes On: “Bury me smilin’ with Gs in my
pocket.” GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| What a Wonderful World |
Louis Armstrong |
1968 |
As the US descended into racial
and political strife, Impulse! records boss Bob Thiele (a jazz aficionado)
decided the country needed something uplifting. Co-written with George Weiss,
this two-minute paean to life’s simple pleasures was the result. Its greeting-card
sentiments would have turned to goo if sung by anyone but genial toughie
Armstrong, and even then it tanked at home while hitting the UK top spot. Now
a standard, it was banned by US radio after 9/11; too much irony. NS |
| Listen on Spotify |
| In My Room |
The Beach Boys |
1963 |
It wasn’t all T-Birds and
Surfin’ Safaris. The Beach Boys, unlike almost all their contemporaries,
understood that the teenage state of mind involved more than parties and
break-ups; it was also about solipsism and solitude. That strand would find
its fullest expression on Pet Sounds, but In My Room – about a place “I can
go and tell my secrets to” – will ring true for as long as adolescents
angrily stomp off upstairs. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Yer Blues |
The Beatles |
1968 |
Lennon’s cosmic blues only
serves to add further weight to the darkness at the heart of the
Beatles’ sprawling White Album. And while the title might be a
distancing device, lest the purists criticise the Fab Four’s foray into a
time-honoured musical tradition, there’s no denying that Lennon is talking
straight when he states, “(I) Even hate my rock’n’roll” towards the
end. Not the death of the Beatles by a long chalk, but certainly a
signpost for future honesties. RHJ |
| Yesterday |
The Beatles |
1965 |
As Paul McCartney worked on the
aching piano melody that had come to him in a dream, its first working lines
were: “Scrambled eggs/ Oh baby, how I love your legs.” Forty-four years
later, his ballad about the bitter memories evoked by lost love remains the
most covered song of all-time, with more than 3,000 versions and counting.
Yesterday was essentially the first Beatles’ solo performance, and was so
disliked by Macca’s bandmates that it was initially offered to singer Chris
Farlowe. GM |
| Look Up |
Chris Bell |
1974 |
The contrast between Chris
Bell and Alex Chilton became clearer when the former left Big Star.
In 1974 and 1975, both recorded songs about God: Chilton’s Jesus Christ
was a wracked Nativity song, sung from the dregs of his heart – one
you won’t be hearing in a primary school come December. Bell’s was filled
with hope, encouraging us all to look to the skies, where “He’s the life/
Waiting to love you”. Chilton continues to perform and record; Bell died
in a car crash in 1978. MHa |
| Paranoid |
Black Sabbath |
1970 |
Written and recorded in the time
it takes to watch an episode of The Osbournes, but still the Sabs’ most
famous record, Paranoid was hard rock stripped to a jackhammer riff and
primal howl. It also had one of the best opening lines ever – “Finished with
my woman ’cause she couldn’t help me with my mind” (oh, the irony) – and a
brilliant take on the vague sense of dissatisfaction that runs through rock
like a psychic faultline. “Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and
I will cry.” There there. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Happiness |
The Blue Nile |
1996 |
They take their time, but they
always deliver. From their third album, Peace at Last, this hymn to deep –
though transient – contentment is so delicately put together it’s barely
there at all. Featuring Paul Buchanan’s wearily ecstatic voice, the gentle tug
of an acoustic guitar riff and an atmospheric swirl, it’s so slow, sure and
steady that the interjection of the gospel choir at the end is truly
explosive. Blue-eyed Scottish soul in excelsis. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| (Don't Fear) The Reaper |
Blue Öyster Cult |
1976 |
Blue Öyster Cult’s Donald
Roeser, who wrote the band’s biggest hit, was horrified at how people
interpreted his song. “It’s basically a love song where the love transcends
the actual physical existence of the partners,” he said, dismissing the
notion that it was about a suicide pact. Anyone reading the lyrics, however,
would say: “Come off it, Don.” The charm of Reaper, however, lies in the
disjuncture between its gothic storyline and the sprightly, Byrdsian guitar
line that carries it. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| This Is a Low |
Blur |
1994 |
The final track on Parklife, and
for a long time the tear-jerking finale at their gigs. Damon Albarn taps into
our very British obsession with the weather, lifting the evocative
terminology of Radio 4’s comforting shipping forecast. Britpop’s favourite sons
strike a contemplative tenor, conjuring the atmosphere of a gloomy English
day, when the cold, dismal weather presses in on you but somehow its
familiarity is oddly reassuring. SB |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Kooks |
David Bowie |
1971 |
Jaunty enough to be sung to
his own newborn son, Kooks rather succinctly addresses the fact that mum
and dad aren’t likely to be as normal as other parents and this might rub off
on the next generation. OK, son? Purportedly influenced by Neil Young, not to
mention British vaudeville, Kooks is whimsical yet direct and remains
possibly one of the finer gifts a singer could bestow on a newborn child.
RHJ |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Never Get Old |
David Bowie |
2003 |
This skewed, very Scary
Monsters-esque rocker from Reality, the most recent of Bowie’s excellent last
two records, covers a lot of existential ground; not merely content to rage
against the dying of the light, Bowie also slyly nods to his own Dorian Gray
act while acknowledging that the human appetite can never be sated: “There’s
never gonna be enough money/ Never gonna be enough drugs/ Never gonna be
enough sex.” Well, he should know. GT |
| Bertie |
Kate Bush |
2005 |
The arrival of young Bertie in
1998 is the main reason we had to wait 12 years between Kate Bush albums.
Still, it sounds like he was worth it. This stately madrigal of devotion to
her son may vault the barrier between heartfelt and mawkish, but only a churl
could fail to be touched. Just when you think Bush has exhausted her rapture,
she finds deeper reserves: “You bring me so much joy/ And then you bring me –
more joy!” GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Goin’ Back |
The Byrds |
1968 |
“But thinking young and growing
older is no sin,” might be the first time pop confronted its inevitable
consequence: the creation of a generation mired in permanent adolescence.
Proof, if proof were needed, that the Gerry Goffin/Carole King songwriting team
knew wisdom, as well as an indelible melody. The latter has attracted a
string of performers – Dusty Springfield, Diana Ross, Nils Lofgren – to this
song, but it is the Byrds’ performance that captures it in almost
hallucinatory clarity. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Work |
John Cale and Lou Reed |
1990 |
Much of the duo’s Andy Warhol
memorial album, Songs for Drella, focuses not on the creativity of the artist
but on his capacity for getting on with the job. Over jumpy piano and guitar
Reed tells how Warhol would castigate him for not writing enough songs, for
not concentrating on building a career, and how he would explain why “the
most important thing is work”. It really is perspiration, not inspiration,
that counts. CSte |
| Will the Circle Be Unbroken (By and
By) |
The Carter Family |
1935 |
The pious hope that “there’s
a better home waiting in the sky” is embedded in country music. When
bluegrass patriarch AP Carter collected this hymn he left only its chorus,
replacing the original with a morbid scenario in which the narrator follows
the hearse to his mother’s grave. Endlessly covered, it was made, bizarrely,
into a singalong by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1971. Altogether now:
“Undertaker, undertaker, please go slow …” NS |
| The Mercy Seat |
Nick Cave and the
Bad Seeds |
1988 |
Cave takes us on that last
walk down the Green Mile towards the full blood-boiling horror of the
electric chair. Overflowing with biblical allusion, it’s a lyrical tour de
force in which the layers of the condemned man’s bravado are peeled away with
each verse. Whether played with the Bad Seeds at full throttle or just with a
piano accompaniment, this is an intense and vivid record. CSte |
| Listen on Spotify |
| I’m On My Way to a Better Place |
Chairmen of the Board |
1972 |
Gospel has always treated death
as a cause for celebration as much as grief, and it’s that tradition that
General Johnson draws on for this incredible performance. It begins with his
optimistic longing for a world free from hate and prejudice, but it’s only as
the angelic choir swells behind him that the true meaning becomes apparent.
By the time he’s promising gates made of pearl and streets lined with gold
it’s as much as you can do not to jump in the coffin alongside him. SY |
| If I Could Turn Back Time |
Cher |
1989 |
Not all regrets are nuanced;
certainly there’s little nuance in the single that cemented Cher’s
late-80s comeback. Diane Warren’s lyrics amount to little more than “Sorry.
Shouldn’t have said that.” And the video – featuring Cher straddling
the 16-inch guns of the USS Missouri – was laughable. But sometimes
mediocre songs make incredible records, and this is one: every element – the
chugging guitars, the thunderous drums, Cher’s bellow – works to create one
of the 80s’ most memorable and, yes, moving power anthems. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| C’mon Everybody |
Eddie Cochran |
1958 |
C’mon Everybody formed one part
of a trilogy – alongside Summertime Blues and Somethin’ Else – in which Eddie
Cochran codified the idea of the teenager. In Summertime Blues, the teen’s
got angst; in Somethin’ Else, the teen’s got lust; but in C’mon Everybody,
the teen’s simply bursting with the will to live: “Been a-doin’ my
homework all week long/ Now the house is empty and the folks are gone,” and
then the most exuberant of hollers: “Whooo! C’mon everybody.” MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| My Favorite Things |
John Coltrane Quartet |
1961 |
Made famous by Julie Andrews in
the 1965 film version of The Sound of Music and since covered by hundreds of
artists, it’s this 13-minute version that really gets under the skin of the
song. As drummer Elvin Jones and pianist McCoy Tyner rumble ominously beneath
him, Coltrane’s soprano gnaws at the three-note nursery-rhyme melody until
it’s transformed into something quite different – a hypnotic, spiritual
voyage that ends up higher on the hill than the lonely goat herd. JL |
| Listen on Spotify |
| School’s Out |
Alice Cooper |
1972 |
From its opening, urgent
guitar riff to the school bell and screaming kids at the end, this
is an impure blast of hormonal exuberance that captures all the craziness of
the end of term. The song set up Cooper, a Frank Zappa protege, for a successful
career of schlocky horror, and who can fail to smile at the line “We’ve got
no class, and we’ve got no principals” – whichever way you spell the final
word? CSte |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Fisherman |
The Congos |
1977 |
One of the most profoundly
beautiful reggae songs ever made, Fisherman bathes the daily grind in a
spiritual light, naming its titular anglers after four of the disciples
(dubbed Fishers of Men by Jesus), though it’s not known whether the original
apostles also stopped off to see the local collie man. It was produced by Lee
Perry (as was the accompanying album, the masterpiece Heart of the
Congos), and his prickly dub effects simulated the motion of the waves,
alternately calm and crashing. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| My Three Sons |
Elvis Costello and the
Imposters |
2008 |
It’s hard to imagine a less
likely composer of sentimental odes to children than the man stereotyped as
Mr Revenge and Guilt, but here is the inconvertible evidence: a simple
fireside strum for his toddler twins and grown-up son, with a bittersweet
lyric that expresses unbounded love and yet also hints at the lengthening
shadows closing in: “I bless the day you came to be,” he sings, “with
everything that is left in me.” GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy |
Kid Creole and the
Coconuts |
1982 |
Imagine a Mamma Mia 2! The
Brutal Truth, in which the rakish rumoured father of the girl denies all
responsibility. He also gives it to her straight about Mum’s time in St
Tropez (“Mama was in search of love/ But all she got was used”) and even
herself (“If I was in your blood/ You wouldn’t be so ugly”). Bruised feelings
are unlikely to be helped by the impossibly infectious Latin pop and
jawdropping panache with which this 1982 hit was delivered. MR |
| Listen on Spotify |
| My Favourite Girl |
King Creosote |
2005 |
Fife folkie Kenny Anderson
broods over the sombre realisation that time is of the essence as he falls
under the shadow of a looming separation from his young daughter. “Promise
you’ll tell her she’s my favourite girl,” he sings, in a heartbreakingly simple
lyric that churns potently beneath the surface. Deeply moving
and exquisitely maudlin, it jerks your heartstrings like they’re
flimsy saplings in a force 10 gale. SB |
| Listen on Spotify |
| That’ll Be the Day |
The Crickets |
1957 |
Sung by Buddy Holly and composed
by Holly and Crickets’ drummer Jerry Allison (producer Norman
Petty’s credit remains disputed), this irresistible beat-pop shuffle took its
title and hook from John Wayne’s catchphrase in the classic John Ford western
The Searchers. Despite the tune’s friendly jauntiness, the lyric is actually
a cruel macho brag – virtually a blueprint for the male domination
fantasy of the Stones’ Under My Thumb. GM |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Killing an Arab |
The Cure |
1978 |
Robert Smith translated Camus’s
L’Etranger into the language of brittle post-punk on this chilly little
assassin, capturing the underlying existential numbness that powered the
creative impulse of much of the self-described Blank Generation: “I can turn and
walk away/ Or I can fire the gun ... Whichever I chose/ It amounts to the
same/ Absolutely nothing.” Following the events of recent years,
it’s been rechristened in concert as the achingly PC Killing
Another. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Personal Jesus |
Depeche Mode |
1989 |
This much-covered Martin Gore
classic was a major shock upon its release. Depeche Mode may have spent the
80s getting away from fey synth-pop, but still no one expected thundering
stadium drums, rockabilly guitars and a Dave Gahan vocal of such depth and
authority. Inspired by Priscilla Presley’s autobiography, Elvis and Me,
Personal Jesus is about the dangers of giving too much power to the
lover/mentor in your life. Johnny Cash’s 2002 version lent extra gravitas.
GM |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Fat As a Fiddle |
Chris Difford |
2008 |
Squeeze’s master lyricist always
excelled in kitchen-sink drama. Here he turns his attentions to the fridge,
singing as a well-lunched middle-aged gent panting farewell to the last
crumbling vestiges of his previously youthful, lady-killing self in the face
of overwhelming physical evidence. Endlessly quotable – “Now I have tits just
like my Mum/ I’m out of breath before I run” – Fat As a Fiddle is, literally,
the future. GT |
| Teen Angel |
Mark Dinning |
1959 |
Rock’n’roll was laced with
tragedy from the start – if it wasn’t dead stars (Holly, Cochran) it was
“death discs”. Like Lee Hazlewood’s The Girl on Death Row, Teen Angel echoed
like a mausoleum and had a doomed heroine. Her date pulls her clear from the
car stalled on the railway track, but she returns for his high school ring.
Kaput! Now she watches from “somewhere up above”. This mawkish tale was
banned by the Beeb. NS |
| Sunshine Superman |
Donovan |
1966 |
A surprise US No 1, this
sublimely funky psych-pop single by Scotland’s Donovan Leitch brought a
summery ebullience to both hippie imagery and the art of seduction. Over
Jimmy Page’s ringing guitar and a memorable, bluesy bass line, Donovan turns
down a trip and compares himself to DC comics superheroes Superman and Green
Lantern before opting to “make like a turtle” and dive for pearls for his
girl. Marc Bolan was surely taking notes. GM |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Working in a Coal Mine |
Lee Dorsey |
1966 |
Lee Dorsey was already in his
40s when he entered the studio to record Allen Toussaint’s song, and he
conveys every possible ounce of world weariness. Unlike that other great
American tune about mining, Ernie Ford’s Sixteen Tons, there are no politics
here, just a groove (and a dance) that aped the digger’s rhythm and a voice
that ached to quit. No stranger to the world of manual labour, Dorsey
maintained his own sideline as a mechanic throughout his brilliant career.
SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Black Eyed Dog |
Nick Drake |
1986 |
Inspired by Winston Churchill’s
characterisation of his own depression, Nick Drake’s haunting song, backed by
spare guitar with beautiful use of harmonics, was recorded in February 1974
(although not officially released until 1986, on the Time of No Reply
compilation), two years after the singer’s Pink Moon album had bombed. He had
been drifting between friends’ houses and the family home for some time and
his high, haunted vocals speak volumes of the depression, weariness and fear
that must have followed him. Nine months later, he was dead from an overdose
of antidepressants. MW |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Not On Top |
Herman Düne |
2005 |
Not On Top is less about the
reality of middle age than the fear of it. It relates that sense of creeping
dread familiar to anyone who’s ever grown a little too attached to their
childhood to realise it’s over and the time for big decisions has come. “Feels
like I’ll never get my shit together/ 27 and I’m fucked,” sings David-Ivar
Herman Düne in his piercing falsetto, before bemoaning the passage of time
since Nirvana’s Nevermind changed his adolescent life. SY |
| Death Is Not the End |
Bob Dylan |
1988 |
Dylan once again provides plenty
to chew on, offering a song of apparent comfort that’s actually far more
ambivalent than it first appears. “When the cities are on fire/ With the
burning flesh of men/ Just remember that death is not the end,” he sings. Does
death provide a welcome escape from earthly horrors, promising an afterlife
of peaceful fulfilment? Or does it usher in another world of eternal pain and
suffering? It’s your call. GT |
| Every Grain of Sand |
Bob Dylan |
1981 |
Even fans appalled at Dylan’s
conversion to born-again Christianity were won over by this Shot of Love
endpiece, which seems to articulate a more universal religiosity. There’s no
Satan here, just a gentle melody, a rueful tone and a title apparently quoting
Blake’s To See a World in a Grain of Sand. Still, it's Biblical imagery –
Cain, “the morals of despair”, “flowers of indulgence”, “the Master’s hand” –
that creates a suspicion that behind the poesy lurks another dull sermon. NS |
| Forever Young |
Bob Dylan |
1974 |
The part where Dylan, now with
newborn child, gets back together with the Band briefly to reveal a side of
him free of acerbic intent. Regarded by many as Dylan’s finest moment,
Forever Young is a dream of hope that in many ways warns away from the very cynicism
that gave Dylan his bite in the first place. Fatherhood, they say, can do
that to a man. RHJ |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door |
Bob Dylan |
1973 |
A wisp of a tune that
disappears from the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid almost
before it seems to have started, this has become one of the most covered
Dylan songs. Both Warren Zevon and Kevin Coyne performed it, on stage and on
record, after being diagnosed with terminal illnesses, and even Guns N’ Roses
couldn’t bludgeon it into submission. CSte |
| Listen on Spotify |
| The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll |
Bob Dylan |
1964 |
Dylan’s so-called “protest
songs” were mostly allusive and image-driven, but here he relates a real-life
event to devastating effect. Carroll was a black servant who died after a
drunken assault by her boss, William Zantzinger, whose subsequent six-month
prison sentence became a scandal, if only in liberal circles (he lived a
long, affluent life). Slow and painstakingly detailed, the song paints a
damning portrait of a still segregated, deeply corrupt south where justice
depends on skin colour. NS |
| Lonelier Than This |
Steve Earle |
2000 |
Earle has written far more songs
about the vagaries of the human condition than he ever has about politics,
and this utterly convincing hymn to wretched solitude is one of the best.
Muttered over a sweetly plucked guitar and a rat-a-tat-tat martial drumbeat,
it comes from a place where no solace can be found: “It don’t get any
lonelier than this,” he sings. “My heartbeat ringing like a hollow drum.” GT |
| Ebony Eyes |
The Everly Brothers |
1961 |
A genuinely sombre, substantial
sob song. Look beyond the cheese and there’s something unbearably moving in
JD Loudermilk’s tale of a man waiting for his bride-to-be to touch down, only
to discover that her plane has crashed. The beacon light from the
control tower whipping through the dark skies becomes a haunting image, and
you realise that Phil and Don, raised on spooky American music,
know a little bit about this death business. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Summertime |
Ella Fitzgerald |
1959 |
The classical critic Alex Ross
describes this sombre aria from Gershwin’s 1935 opera as a “steady-state
environment in which a gifted performer can move around at will”, bending
notes, adding ornaments and so on. Hundreds of artists – from Billie Holiday
to Janis Joplin to Rufus Wainwright – have done so, but Ella’s remains the
definitive reading. Ira Gershwin’s lullaby lyrics of hope, transcendence and
happiness are kept in check by the ominous minor key and by Ella’s
magnificently restrained improvisations. JL |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Regulate |
Warren G and Nate Dogg |
1994 |
G-funk dealt in pairing x-rated
themes with universal tunes, and Regulate is the very embodiment of the Death
Row records sound. The pair trade verses on a ditty that finds Warren G being
mugged when Nate Dogg turns up and blows the thieves to bits. The fact that
Nate’s cousin Snoop Dogg was on trial for murder at the time did this tune no
harm at all on the radio and charts, where it took up long-term residency.
Nor did the hook, borrowed from Michael McDonald: rarely have so many sung
along so absentmindedly to murder. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Save the Children |
Marvin Gaye |
1971 |
“Who’s willing to save a world/
That is destined to die?” Marvin Gaye and co-composers Al Cleveland and
Renaldo Benson cut through the crap to ask the only question that mattered on
this heart-stopping highlight from Gaye’s Vietnam war concept album, What’s
Going On. The song’s ethereal, symphonic soul construction and the spoken and
sung lyric are powerful enough. But when Marvin starts to wail “Save the
babies!”, walls – and tears – come tumbling down. GM |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Glory Hallelujah, How
They’ll Sing |
Bobbie Gentry |
1969 |
Although it’s just ambiguous
enough not to antagonise Bobbie Gentry’s large, hipster audience, Glory
Hallelujah sees the Mississippi belle come not to mock southern
baptism, but to praise it. It isn’t in itself religious, but a celebration of
the role faith plays in binding a community, from sing-songs at a country
picnic to the barndance and church. The lyrics are fantastically detailed,
and when the ecstatic gospel chorus breaks in, it would
take a heart of stone not to feel the rapture. SY |
| Mind Playing Tricks On Me |
Geto Boys |
1991 |
The sharpest analysis of the
psychological effects of a criminal lifestyle, created by an uncompromising
Houston rap trio best known for their most high-profile member, Bushwick
Bill, being a dwarf and having one eye shot out during a domestic. There’s no
guns or bling here, though, only paranoia and vulnerability, a sense of
constantly looking over one’s shoulder, marking time until it’s your
turn to get hurt. GG |
| So Nice (Summer Samba) |
Astrud Gilberto |
1966 |
Written by renowned Brazilian
musician Marcos Valle, there’s nothing about this Brazilian cheese-fest that
should work – not Walter Wanderley’s rinky-dinky fairground organ, not the
drums that lurch from rambunctious samba to Casiotone bossa nova, and certainly
not Gilberto’s characteristically naifish, off-key vocals. Yet somehow, it’s
impossible to listen to the combined effect of this wonky bossa without
ending up with a huge smile on your face. JL |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Tired of Being Alone |
Al Green |
1971 |
There’s a difference between
being lonely and being alone, a line that Green crisscrosses here. One moment
Al’s a forlorn lover “crying tears”, the next he’s simply a Lonely Heart
asking for another date; “meeting you has proven to be my greatest dream”
could be a frantic text. If the soul pin-up sounds more interested in
himself than his girl, his song’s melodic swoops make up for it. Helps
to have a Memphis backing and a brilliant voice, mind. NS |
| Spirit in the Sky |
Norman Greenbaum |
1969 |
A three-time UK No 1 (for
Greenbaum, Doctor and the Medics, and Gareth Gates), this bullet-proof song
was written after Greenbaum heard Porter Wagoner singing gospel on TV. Its
refusal to sombrely observe the traditional tropes of “spiritual” music gives
it its affirming kick. Set to a fuzzy, boogie guitar riff, it’s simply a
joyous pop single with a sly gospel undertow, the afterlife depicted as the
ultimate aftershow party. GT |
| Workin’ Man’s Blues |
Merle Haggard |
1969 |
Haggard’s tribute to the common
man arrived alongside his infamous, anti-hippie Okie from Muskogee, and his
insistence that “welfare is one place I’ll never be” is either right-wing
nonsense or blue-collar pride, depending on your point of view. Later, the
Californian country star delivered A Working Man Can’t Get Nowhere Today, a
blistering attack on exploitation, but this paean to sweat, beer and babies
is more celebrated, and inspired Dylan to pen a song with the same title.
NS |
| Listen on Spotify |
| All Things Must Pass |
George Harrison |
1970 |
The title track of Harrison’s
bestselling triple album had been rehearsed but not recorded by the Beatles.
In its Buddhist-derived acceptance of death and the impermanence of all
things, it would have made a fitting end to their career: as it is, George’s
plaintive vocal and an almost restrained Phil Spector production combine on a
shimmering track that now stands as a memorial to its creator. CSte |
| I Hear Voices |
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins |
1962 |
If sinister vaudevillian
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins recorded but one track to rival I Put a Spell On You,
it is this brilliant mindbender. Hawkins makes incomprehensible chatterings
throughout, which, when set against the discordant keys and dizzying backing vocals,
can make even the calmest soul question their sanity. MR |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Hey Joe |
The Jimi Hendrix
Experience |
1966 |
Tales of vengeful, gun-toting
lovers stalk American song, but Hendrix brought an unrepentant swagger to the
role (and a sonic guitar assault). Written by a California folkie, Billy
Roberts, Hey Joe was a favourite with west-coast bands, including Arthur Lee’s
Love and the Leaves. In old-time ballads such as Little Sadie, the felon is
usually brought to justice, but Joe seems destined to slip across the Mexico
border and escape the hangman. NS |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Stuck Between Stations |
The Hold Steady |
2006 |
“We drink and we dry up and we
crumble into dust/ We get wet and we corrode and we get covered up in rust,”
sings Craig Finn in a singularly uplifting hymn to despair. Stuck Between
Stations deals, in part, with the suicide of the poet John Berryman, but
really it’s about the million profound disappointments of life, about how
beneath the apparent hedonism of kids “sucking off each other at the
demonstrations”, they’re actually “crushing one another with colossal
expectations”. Depression rarely sounds this exciting – because it isn’t,
really. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Gloomy Sunday |
Billie Holiday |
1941 |
Written by László Jávor and set
to music by Rezsö Seress (and also known as The Hungarian Suicide Song), this
spectacularly morose ballad found fame through Holiday’s recording of Sam
Lewis’s English translation and has since been performed by everyone from Mel
Tormé to Diamanda Galás. Though there’s scant evidence supporting the legend
that the song inspired dozens of real-life suicides, Seress finally followed
through on the threat implied in the song: he jumped from his Budapest
apartment window in 1968. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| These Important Years |
Hüsker Dü |
1987 |
Minneapolis power-trio Hüsker Dü
were set apart from the hardcore scene that spawned them: rather than spewing
anger outwards, they turned their gaze upon their own lives and emotions
(perhaps making them progenitors of emo). These Important Years opened their
final album, by which time the band was falling apart, and captures the ennui
of being trapped in a life that somehow seems to have gone wrong, warning:
“These are your important years, you’d better make them last.” MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Dead Homiez |
Ice Cube |
1990 |
One of the first rap tracks to
confront the human reality of black-on-black violence, this thoughtful,
heartfelt eulogy to the departed also seethes with anger and almost casually
brilliant social commentary: “He got a lot of flowers and a big wreath/ What
good is that when you’re six feet deep?” An early and important
reminder that rap is – was? – capable of adopting a more reflective attitude
to death than it is often given credit for. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Good Life |
Inner City |
1988 |
While the other two of Detroit’s
“Belleville Three” (Juan Atkins and Derrick May) were busy shaping techno up
as a futurist commentary on their crumbling post-industrial surroundings (in
the minds of journalists, anyway), Kevin Saunderson found huge success with a
project that had all the unabashed non-intellectualism of its disco ancestor.
Good Life, which swiftly followed his very similar Big Fun, was hedonism
squared, a celebratory house record paying tribute to celebration itself.
SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| The Number of the Beast |
Iron Maiden |
1982 |
There were those who were
outraged by Iron Maiden’s offering to the devil. Why? Even the most cursory
inspection of the lyrics reveals The Number of the Beast to be a Hammer
Horror storyline set to metal, nothing more. More exciting – and why it
remains a stage favourite – is that it’s a clever little song, Clive Burr’s
stuttering drums in the verses lending it an air of menace and tension
resolved by the descending, fist-pumping chorus. Not scary, just fun.
MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Seasons in the Sun |
Terry Jacks |
1974 |
Written by Jacques Brel in 1961,
and translated by Rod McKuen, this song was picked up by Jacks, Canadian
leader of psychedelic band the Poppy Family, and offered to the Beach Boys
before being released as a single. The bastardised, mawkish version of Brel
became a monster hit, and the four-note guitar opening is an instant warning
that it is probably hard to die when all the birds are singing in the sky.
CSte |
| Needle of Death |
Bert Jansch |
1965 |
Jansch’s debut album, recorded
on a reel-to-reel at engineer Bill Leader’s home in Camden, contains many
treasures, among them this stirring tale of a junkie’s slow descent towards
the grave. The story is told straight (if sentimentally) and without metaphor
or allusion – “How strange your happy words/ Have ceased to bring a smile
from everyone/ How tears have filled the eyes/ Of friends that you once had
walked among” – but is no less affecting for that. One from the heart.
MW |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Gun Shot |
Anthony Johnson |
1982 |
Jamaica in the early 80s was an
economic and political basketcase, but as the music tilted towards the more
hedonistic strains of dancehall, some remained committed to cultural lyrics.
One such was Anthony Johnson, whose classic Gun Shot was inspired by the
police shooting of a Trenchtown man; not by the singular nature of the
killing, but because it was an everyday event. The pared-back rhythm and
muted horns made room for a pained vocal that owed much to Dennis Brown.
SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Losing My Edge |
LCD Soundsystem |
2002 |
“I was there in 1974, at the
first Suicide practices,” laments the ageing hipster at the centre
of Losing My Edge, a spoken-word warning about the dangers of trying too
hard. If you’ve replaced your personality with cool reference points, what happens
when fashion finally leaves you behind? The answer arrives in the form of a
Greek chorus, chanting, “You don’t know what you really want” until the track
stumbles to a close. GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Someone Great |
LCD Soundsystem |
2007 |
A deliberately ambiguous song
about loss, Someone Great maps the demise of a significant relationship,
though it is unclear whether the termination is the result of death or simply
an irreparable breakdown in communication. The end comes via a phone call,
singer James Murphy nailing the anxious mood and putting the listener right
next to the receiver with an ominous: “Nothing can prepare you for it, the
voice on the other end.” GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Gallows Pole |
Led Zeppelin |
1970 |
The “maid freed from the
gallows” is a centuries-old staple of folk songs with dozens of variants, but
the Zep’s reworking is the most familiar. Acoustic guitar and mandolin then
drums, bass and banjo build behind Robert Plant’s bluesy, banshee voice as relatives
visit the condemned. Traditionally the hangman is bought off with gold and
silver, but in their absence he accepts the felon’s sister’s favours and
hangs him anyway, breaking into “see-saw, Marjorie daw” for good measure as
the poor chump walks on air. MW |
| God |
John Lennon |
1970 |
At 29 and fresh from the
Beatles’ bust-up, Lennon was ready to burn bridges. The finale of his first
solo album is a howl of disillusion, disavowing the 60s – “The dream is over”
– and rejecting his metaphysical forays in favour of “Yoko and me – that’s reality”.
His assertion that “God is a concept by which we measure our pain”, is almost
a bonus, borrowed from primal therapy. “If there is a God,” he said at the
time, “we’re all it.” Amen to that. NS |
| Here I Come |
Barrington Levy |
1985 |
Justly one of dancehall’s most
famous records (even if half its fans think it’s called Broader Than
Broadway), Here I Come is actually a jumble of lyrical ideas, through which
peeps the story of a woman seeking to unburden herself of her child. “Because
you are old and I am young/ And while I’m young, yes I wanna have some fun,”
is as good a reason as the father gets. Its impact was huge in the UK, where
Jah Screw’s jerky rhythm and squirty effects combined with Levy’s peerless
warbling to produce a reggae mainstay. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Knoxville Girl |
The Louvin Brothers |
1959 |
Evolving from the 17th-century
ballad The Cruel Miller, this plain depiction of brutal murder in the
Appalachians remains the archetypal murder ballad, the ultimate expression of
what Nick Cave calls “murderous male attention and nefarious transferred erotic
desire”. If the way Ira Louvin sings “I took her by her golden curls and I
drug her round and round” doesn’t send shivers down your spine, then you’re
made of very strong stuff indeed. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Alone Again Or |
Love |
1967 |
If you are unfortunate
enough to stumble across Sarah Brightman’s version of this song,
ignore it. Please. Just go to Love’s Forever Changes and listen to the
mariachi sweetness of Bryan MacLean’s most wonderful song (and one that seems
destined to be always associated with Arthur Lee). Alone Again Or makes being
alone sound like joy itself – a rare moment of lightness on a dark and
disturbing album. The different between MacLean and Lee might be summed up by
this song’s line: “I think that people are the greatest fun.” MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Baggy Trousers |
Madness |
1980 |
One of the Camden Town ska/pop
band’s favourite subjects was the growing pains of teenage years. Baggy
Trousers is a breathless, bouncing, affectionate ode to harmlessly misspent
school days at a 70s north London comprehensive –“oh what fun we had, but didn’t
really turn about bad … trying different ways to make a difference to the
days” – which still strikes a chord with the Grange Hill generation nearly
three decades later. LB |
| La Tristesse Durera (Scream to
a Sigh) |
Manic Street Preachers |
1993 |
The title roughly translates as
“the sadness will last”, which were reputedly the words of a near-death Van
Gogh, but here are the thoughts of a war veteran whose medals mean nothing in
old age – they’re merely a “cenotaph souvenir”. Despite the subject matter,
this was a minor hit on mid-90s dancefloors, its mighty drums a regular
feature of the Chemical Brothers’ DJ sets. GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| May You Never |
John Martyn |
1973 |
Martyn often dismissed his most
famous song as a “lollipop”, but it’s a truly beautiful mix of warm
sentiment, wine-drenched vocals and rhythmic finger-picking. Assumed to be
about one of his children (though many swear it was written for a drinking
buddy), its simple, humble humanity – “May you never lay your head down
without a hand to hold” – ensures the universality of its message, and it has
attained extra poignancy following Martyn’s recent death. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Safe from Harm |
Massive Attack |
1991 |
Safe from Harm breaks one of pop
music’s golden rules, that for “baby” you should always read “lover”. But
there’s little doubt that Shara Nelson means an actual gurgling, screaming
infant here, coming over all protective in the face of “midnight rockers,
city slickers, gunmen and maniacs”. Beneath that cavernous bassline sampled
from Billy Cobham, it’s easy to overlook just how magnificent the lyric is,
brilliantly distilling the transition from youthful confidence to parental
anxiety in a dangerous world. With perfect timing, the Gulf war broke out,
forcing a brief abbreviation of the group’s name to Massive. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Fade to Black |
Metallica |
1984 |
Having released one of the
fastest, heaviest records ever in debut Kill ’Em All a year earlier,
Metallica threw a curveball by including a ballad on 1984’s Ride the
Lightning. A first-person depiction of a suicidal man’s thoughts, it unfolds
over seven minutes from a delicately picked acoustic intro to a climactic
guitar solo at the end. A triumph of light and shade, it showed there was
more to Metallica than sheer speed and served as a blueprint for breakthrough
single One four years later. PMon |
| Life’s a Bitch |
Nas |
1994 |
A highlight even on Nas’s
peerless Illmatic debut, Life’s a Bitch worked its wonders over a smooth
groove, but it was the lyrics, shared with friend AZ, that made it such a
special moment. From the vantage point of men turning 20, the two reflect on
their nihilistic youth, expressed in the hookline “life’s a bitch and then
you die, that’s why we get high, cause you never know when you’re gonna go”,
before resolving on a more positive outlook. Nas’s father playing trumpet on
the track lent added poignancy. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Feel It (In the Air Tonight) |
Naturally 7 |
2006 |
The New York a cappella septet,
who use voices to imitate all the instruments, found internet fame after
performing this drastic reworking of the Phil Collins hit in front of
startled commuters on the Paris Métro. It’s more detailed than the minimal
original, building on Collins’s chorus a narrative of a fatally wounded
gangster getting ready to meet his maker. A fabulously soulful record in its
own right, it’s worth the price of entry for two moments of magic: the line
“fat lady-type singing like it’s over now” and the beatbox-ed to perfection
take on the original’s much-imitated drumroll. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| God’s Song (That’s Why I
Love Mankind) |
Randy Newman |
1972 |
Leave it to the most sardonic
of singer-songwriters to depict the relationship between God and
man as a cruel joke, born of the desperate need to believe in something,
anything, even if it doesn’t seem to be helping much. Newman’s divinity is both
callous and pompous, levelling entire cities then smugly announcing that they
“laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me”. Not one to play
when the vicar pops round. GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Lithium |
Nirvana |
1991 |
At first listen, the third
single to be lifted from Nevermind appeared to go against Nirvana’s perceived
image as gloomy and pessimistic, its cathartic chorus (essentially
just Kurt Cobain singing “Yeah” repeatedly, until hoarse) sounding refreshingly
positive, and its quiet-loud-quiet dynamic seemingly made for indie discos
the world over. In fact, Cobain was relating the altogether more
ambiguous tale of a man’s discovery of religion after the death of his
girlfriend. PMon |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Mo Money Mo Problems |
The Notorious BIG |
1997 |
Released a few months after the
Notorious BIG’s still-unsolved murder, this followed I’ll Be Missing You to
the top of the US chart, providing him with a second posthumous No 1. The
title might have seemed prophetic – he was victim of the violence that seemed
endemic to hip-hop’s commercial omnipotence during the mid 90s – but the
track’s sheer glee suggested the cash was worth any attendant chaos. GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Suicidal Thoughts |
The Notorious BIG |
1994 |
Few artistic gestures are as
nihilistic as a debut album whose final sound is that of a gunshot-assisted
suicide, but that’s how the New York rapper concluded 1994’s Ready to Die. On
the phone to mentor Puff Daddy, the Notorious BIG suddenly spins off into
depression, regretting a life of pretty crime and treating his dear old mum
like dirt. Puff can’t talk him round and there’s only one outcome … GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Alone Again (Naturally) |
Gilbert O’Sullivan |
1972 |
So over-freighted with misery
is this song that it should collapse into a fit of giggles. The singer
has been jilted at the altar, is considering suicide and then, to lighten
things up, tells of his parents’ deaths. O’Sullivan’s matter-of-fact tone saves
the day. In 1991, his successful case against Biz Markie over a sample from
this song changed the law and the course of hip-hop. CSte |
| Live Forever |
Oasis |
1994 |
The third single from Definitely
Maybe, Live Forever perfectly encapsulated the infectious, life affirming
ambition of Oasis’s debut, and was also the first real indication of Noel
Gallagher’s ability to write a simple chorus that engraves itself on the public
consciousness. The title came in response to a Kurt Cobain song: “I remember
Nirvana had a tune called I Hate Myself and I Want To Die and I was like
‘Well, I’m not having that.” LB |
| Satan |
Orbital |
1991 |
The dance duo’s sample of Sweat
Loaf by Texan psychedelic adventurers the Butthole Surfers (“If you see your
Mom this weekend, be sure and tell her ... Satan!”) was initially there to
mess with ravers’ heads. Live, though, it was accompanied by a montage of
tanks, helicopters and general militarism, a comment on human nature that may
or may not have been picked up by thousands of revellers in various degrees
of “refreshment”. GG |
| Ms Jackson |
OutKast |
2000 |
Ms Jackson was a song with an
inbuilt soap opera. Couched as an apology to the mother of André 3000’s
former girlfriend, singer Erykah Badu, the mother of his son, Seven, it laid
bare the recriminations caused by their split. André bemoans his lack of access,
promises to pay the bills and turn up “on the first day of school, and
graduation” (what, no school play?). The song marked divorce of another kind,
André’s gradual detachment from hip-hop, a development that reached its
zenith three years later with The Love Below. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| 9 to 5 |
Dolly Parton |
1980 |
Not only a Grammy-winning US No
1, but a deceptively jaunty anthem of female empowerment (“Pour myself a cup
of ambition”) for disaffected working women seeking to climb the career
ladder while their male bosses step all over their fingers. Written by Parton
for the film of the same name, the music – a febrile mongrel mix of
disco and honky-tonk – conveys the sassy message with humour and gusto.
GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Another Brick in the Wall, Part II |
Pink Floyd |
1979 |
Memory is unreliable, but it
suggests this song was inescapable as 1979 turned into 1980. It wasn’t just
that Pink Floyd’s first UK single since 1968 was all over radio and TV, which
it was – it was that Another Brick in the Wall was sung by every child, in
every school playground, at every breaktime, for months on end. They weren’t
thinking about what Roger Waters meant by “We don’t need no education” – it
was just a statement of generational difference, resonant in its profound
simplicity. MHa |
| Message in a Bottle |
The Police |
1979 |
Loneliness and misery were
fixtures of the Police’s early years. But Message in a Bottle was the moment
they nailed it, turning despair on its head by having the castaway realise
that far from being the world’s most isolated, he’s simply one of a hundred
million in an identical situation. Call it a song about the broken-hearted or
social atomisation, or just one about the Bleach Boys’ own pariah
relationship to punk. Either way, this was their first, and deserved, No 1.
SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Glory Box |
Portishead |
1994 |
Of all the dinner party
soundtracks of the 90s, Glory Box is, possibly, the most improbable. Like a
lovelorn teen invested with the spirit of the blues, Beth Gibbons, “tired of
playing with this bow and arrow”, yearns to be worshipped for her femininity,
the harrowing guitars and an Isaac Hayes sample colluding to signify her
troubled state of mind. Incredibly, Geoff Barrow, the West Country troupe’s
songwriter, thought it “too commercial” to be issued as a single. Happily,
the band’s label Go! Discs disagreed. PM |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Sour Times |
Portishead |
1994 |
The other peak of the Bristol
collective’s John Barry-meets-hip-hop muse – although Lalo Schifrin is
actually the sampled soundtrack composer – this hit single and track from
Dummy is an exercise in enigmatic misery. Although the obtuse verses do their
best to obscure the theme of lost love, Beth Gibbons’s bereft but sexually
charged torch voice repeatedly unleashes a tortured wail of “Nobody loves me,
it’s true/ Not like you do”. Guitars twang in threatening agreement. GM |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Stagger Lee |
Lloyd Price |
1958 |
Lee “Stagger Lee” Shelton killed
a man in St Louis in 1895 and became an archetypal figure in blues and r’n’b.
This stomping version of his tale, driven by sax and doo-wop backing singers,
topped the US charts but Price, after a campaign by the Legion of Decency,
had to change the words when performing it on TV so that neither gambling nor
killing took place. CSte |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Paranoid Android |
Radiohead |
1997 |
The title is typical Yorke
self-deprecation, referencing the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s
comically depressed robot, Marvin the Paranoid Android. The rest, though, is
a misanthropic brain dump, a stream of anxiety and bitterness that includes
the phrase “kicking, screaming, Gucci little piggy”, a dead-eyed put down of
a woman whom Yorke witnessed freaking out in a club after someone spilled
booze all over her designer frock. GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay |
Otis Redding |
1968 |
Songs don’t come more poignant
than Redding’s posthumous smash. Conceived after his Monterey festival
triumph, where the soul star crossed the divide to touch white hearts, Bay
was unlike Otis’s previous output – contemplative, without anguish. Recorded shortly
before his death, released just afterwards, its rumination on the tides of
time made an exquisite, wistful epitaph to a talent that had yet to peak.
NS |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Paint it Black |
The Rolling Stones |
1966 |
Mick Jagger once said that this
claustrophobic song was the beginning of “miserable psychedelia”, although
other beat-boom bands, including the Beatles, were already exploring darker
emotions. Brian Jones’s sitar riff shows what an intuitive musician he was,
while Jagger’s lyrical rage at the early death of a girlfriend – we don’t
know how or why – still chills. CSte |
| Listen on Spotify |
| I Seen a Man Die |
Scarface |
1994 |
The man who rapped on the Geto
Boys’ ferocious Mind of a Lunatic has pursued a more thoughtful direction in
his solo career, and this slow, smoked-out, sinister southern rap may well be
his masterpiece. Like some updated Biblical parable, it tells of man’s
inability to feel empathy with his fellow man – and himself – without first
wreaking destruction. A chilling work, words and music perfectly in tandem,
the end result is truly haunting. GT |
| Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard |
Paul Simon |
1972 |
Rhymin’ Simon gets his teen self
arrested – it’s a serious rap because a “radical priest” has to spring him
from jail and then “we was all on the cover of Newsweek”. He bids farewell to
his girl Rosie, his home (Corona, Queens) and heads off. Simon’s Latin-tinged
hit remains a lovely enigma – just what were he and Julio up to? Drugs?
Sex? Gay sex, claimed Truman Capote. Paulie claims he doesn’t know or
care. At least, he ain’t telling. NS |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Feeling Good |
Nina Simone |
1965 |
Like Bill Withers’s Lovely Day,
Nina Simone’s Feeling Good was destined to reside in the graveyard of great
songs murdered by advert overkill until last November, when Obama’s election
signalled its sudden reappearance on a million playlists. Originally written
for a long-forgotten musical, its celebration of nature’s simple pleasures is
timeless enough to be reshaped at the listener’s pleasure, though it’s the
power of this rendition by Simone that renders it a civil rights anthem by
another name. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| It Was a Very Good Year |
Frank Sinatra |
1965 |
Ervin Drake wrote It Was a Very
Good Year for the Kingston Trio. But who remembers that version? It took
Frank Sinatra recording it for his album September of My Years to make it a
standard. This was a perfect match of singer to song: Sinatra shedding the
ring-a-ding-ding to embrace gravitas as he looks back at a full life. Better
even than the studio recording is the version on Sinatra at the Sands, where
the slight cracking in his voice reveals the awareness of mortality that is
at the heart of the song’s power. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Piss Factory |
Patti Smith |
1974 |
With just piano, guitar and
voice, Patti Smith created a terrifying portrait of a teenager confronting an
adulthood that was not as she had imagined: “Sixteen and time to pay off/ I
got this job in a piss factory inspecting pipe.” Her first recording – the
B-side to Hey Joe – lays down the themes she would pursue when she had
recruited a group: the redemptive power of rock’n’roll, the relish in the
complete immersion of the senses in experience, the ecstatic improvisatory
flow. It still sounds startling now – goodness knows how those hearing it in
1974 reacted. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Dress Sexy at My Funeral |
Smog |
2000 |
For those who have yet to
discover him, this poignant warning against sinking into matrimonial tedium
is a great introduction to the wonderful and unsettling talent of Maryland
misanthropist Bill Callahan. It’s bleakly funny, especially when he sings with
deadpan relish, “Tell them about the time we did it/ On the beach
with fireworks above us.” Better still, it savagely lays bare the
conceit of reinventing people’s characters after their death. SB |
| 100% |
Sonic Youth |
1992 |
“Can you forgive the boy who
shot you in the head, or should you get a gun and get revenge?” sings Sonic
Youth’s Thurston Moore to deceased friend and Black Flag roadie Joe Cole,
murdered outside his and Henry Rollins’s house in Venice Beach, California. A
heavy, mid-tempo stomp, 100% is part eulogy, part blinded fury and is
complemented by one of the band’s freest guitar and feedback sessions. Oddly
it’s still pop to many ears. RHJ |
| Listen on Spotify |
| No Surrender |
Bruce Springsteen |
1984 |
Perhaps the ultimate expression
of one of rock’s great articles of faith: the vow of eternal brotherhood,
from schoolyard to graveyard. It’s hard not to hear it as a song about the
enduring bond between the Boss and his faithful sidekick Steve Van Zandt, who
“learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school”.
Adopted by John Kerry as his 2004 election anthem, the solo acoustic version
featured on Live: 1975-1985 cuts deepest. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| O Death |
Ralph Stanley |
2000 |
Stanley’s a cappella reading of
this Appalachian dirge unfolds as an evocative two-hander between the
narrator and a merciless Reaper, impervious to emotional pleas. Its roots are
centuries old, but the final version was written by Lloyd Chandler, a Baptist
preacher from North Carolina, in 1916. Aged over 70, bluegrass legend Stanley
recorded the song for the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and
it has since sold around 10m copies; a strangely comforting thought. GT |
| Once in a Lifetime |
Talking Heads |
1980 |
Once in a Lifetime is about
about an existential crisis and, suitably, there’s tension everywhere –
between David Byrne’s anxious lyric, about the mid-life confusion of a
salary man, and the joyous, Fela Kuti-inspired rhythm
track; between the sudden self-awareness of its protagonist and the
trance-like pull of the music that surrounds him; even between the
sanguine call of the verses and panicked response of the chorus. In fact,
just listening to it can make you nervous. GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Psycho Killer |
Talking Heads |
1977 |
The song that established David
Byrne’s public persona – tense, nervous, unhinged – is anchored by Tina
Weymouth’s memorable bassline and has a three-line chorus in English, French
and gibberish. We don’t know if the disturbed protagonist has killed anyone –
but it’s clear he thinks he has. Which probably makes it even more uneasy ...
CSte |
| Listen on Spotify |
| This Is the Day |
The The |
1983 |
One of the most outstanding
chroniclers of the modern age and much needed once again, Matt Johnson’s The
The project had a brush with pop stardom with This Is the Day, their biggest
hit. Scratch beneath the surface of the lyrics, however, and you’ll find the
song is a fevered battle between a closely intertwined fatalism
and optimism. Bittersweet might be a phrase commonly used in pop but
rarely has it been so accurately realised by a British artist. RHJ |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Wish Someone Would Care |
Irma Thomas |
1964 |
Wish Someone Would Care was the
first song this phenomenal New Orleans soul singer ever wrote herself. It’s a
missive from the edge of despair, the lyrics almost a stream of consciousness
from a woman whose first marriage was on the slide and career was going
nowhere. By the end she’s even given up rhyming (unheard of in soul) as she
breaks down at the terrible unfairness of it all. Asked why she never wrote
again, she told writer Gerri Hershey: “I don’t ever want to get that mad
again.” SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| The End of the Rainbow |
Richard and Linda
Thompson |
1974 |
A cot-side lullaby of crushing
despair that begins: “I feel for you, you little horror/ No lucky break for
you around the corner,” and then proceeds to get really grim. Written
shortly after the birth of the Thompsons’ first child, Muna, this minor-chord
lament captures the dreadful flipside of all that postnatal euphoria:
that inevitable moment when a parent asks: “What kind of world have
I brought you into?” GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| I Ain’t Mad at Cha |
Tupac |
1996 |
Sung from the perspective of a
man whose criminal past has proved fatal, this is a sanguine goodbye,
intended for an old friend who had the sense to go straight. What might seem
like cliche is rendered poignant by the accompanying video, featuring Tupac in
a cheesy heaven filled with lookalikes of Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye
and Louis Armstrong. It would be the last he made before his death.
GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Hail Mary |
Tupac - as Makaveli |
1997 |
A grim premonition of the
rapper’s own death, recorded in August 1996, a month before his murder in Las
Vegas, but released a year later. Beneath the macho posturing is a man
resigned to his fate, who realises he’s just as likely to meet a nasty end on
the street as he was inside the prison he has not long left. By this point
his life was so steeped in violence that potential enemies were everywhere:
there was no way out. GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Exit |
U2 |
1987 |
The most musically intense
and lyrically confrontational track U2 had attempted to that point,
the penultimate track on The Joshua Tree is a fanatical, delusional
interpretation of God’s will taken to obsessive ends. The killer in the song
has something of Rev Harry Powell about him, Robert Mitchum’s crazed preacher
in the 1955 movie The Night of the Hunter – a man who, as the song puts it,
got “the cure” but went “astray”. Discothèque it ain’t. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| One |
U2 |
1992 |
The most impressive fusion of
Bono’s twin faiths: Christianity and rock’n’roll. Compassion, forgiveness,
redemption, the power of platonic love – all are alluded to in that slightly
vague way best suited to stadium rock. Allied to a cracking chorus, it’s the
U2 mission statement in four and a half minutes, basically. And if you don’t
believe rock’n’roll can heal the world, Johnny Cash’s cover is rich in wisdom
that’s been earned the hard way. GG |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Walk Like a Man |
Frankie Valli and the
Four Seasons |
1963 |
With its unforgettable
drumroll, excitable handclaps and impossibly immature vocals (the
Four Seasons’ bass singer, Nick Massi, sounds like one of the Dead End Kids,
though he was anywhere between 28 and 36) Walk Like a Man is a Be My Baby for
boys. There are better ways of putting an ex behind you than jeering, “My own
father says give her up, don’t bother/ The world isn’t coming to an end,” and
when Frankie Valli’s outrageous falsetto takes on the title, you can almost
hear him welling up inside. But this nails adolescence like acne. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Jesus |
The Velvet Underground |
1969 |
The marvel of Lou Reed’s writing
in Jesus is that the song works equally well when performed by the Velvets –
no one’s idea of a God-fearing churchgoers – and by born-again Christian Glen
Campbell, who recorded it last year. It’s barely a song at all, just three
different lines, but context is all. When Reed sings “Help me in my weakness/
’Cause I’m falling out of grace” one hears it as a plea from the gutter for
rescue. When Campbell sings it, the line becomes an acknowledgment of
humankind’s frailty. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Rufus Is a Tit Man |
Loudon Wainwright III |
1975 |
No musical dynasty has bared
family squabbles with the candour of the Wainwright-McGarrigles. Loudon
greeted the arrival of his and Kate’s firstborn with a ditty of naked
parental jealousy, gazing at his son “sucking on a nipple, sweeter than the
Ripple wine”. Later he would write Daughter, Rufus would snipe back with
Dinner at Eight, and Martha with Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole. The irony, of
course, is that gay icon Rufus turned out not to be a tit man at all.
NS |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Martha |
Tom Waits |
1973 |
Even before he’d truly found his
artistic voice, the young Tom Waits was trying out different characters for
size. Here, on his debut album, Closing Time, he takes on the role of Tom
Frost, weakening just enough to pick up the phone to call an old flame after
many years. What could so easily be maudlin is made poetic partly because of
Waits’s performance but moreover because even then he was a master of
understanding the frailty of romance, treating characters with deserved
dignity. RHJ |
| Listen on Spotify |
| You in the Sky |
The Waterboys |
2006 |
Recorded during the mammoth
Fisherman’s Blues sessions (it finally appeared on the album’s 2006 deluxe
edition, and was later re-recorded for 2007’s Book of Lightning) this is
perhaps the most thrilling of Mike Scott’s many conversations with the man
upstairs, documenting the triumphs, doubts and frustrations that define the
spiritual quest. The music is prime-period Waterboys, all towering sax and
searing fiddle, the big music thrillingly shackled to the folk train. GT |
| Frankie and Johnny |
Mae West |
1928 |
Its origins are contested, the
consenus being the song was based on the murder of Al Britt by Frankie Baker
in 1899 St Louis, Al possibly being Frankie’s pimp (it’s often Frankie and
Albert). A popular blues number, it became a signature tune for Mae West, who
showcased it in her play Diamond Lil. There are hundreds of versions and
variants, but all agree “He was her man and he was doing her wrong”. Some
things never change. NS |
| 23 Years Ago |
Paul Westerberg |
2004 |
The former Replacement’s solo
career has been entertainingly patchy, but this tearfully dishevelled,
musical midlife crisis is a highlight. Plagued by guilt and regret,
Westerberg confronts the festering sore of an eternal will-we-won’t-we
relationship that long ago passed the point of ever being fulfilled. “Our
paths cross again and again/ Sometimes five years in between/ There’s one
thing goes unsaid ... Maybe you were the one.” Hear it and weep. GT |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Grandma’s Hands |
Bill Withers |
1971 |
Although this song is about all
the good uses grandma put her hands to, it’s her relationship with the church
that really defines it. Like the best of Withers’s output, it’s tantalisingly
short and deceptively simple, never quite breaking into the big gospel hook
that’s lurking round the corner. Instead, we’re left with the image of a
woman devoting her life to banging her tambourine on Sundays and doing unto
others as she’d have others do unto her. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| My Death |
Scott Walker |
1967 |
Scott Engel’s fascination with
all things Jacques Brel reached a crescendo early on with this take on Brel’s
La Mort, in many ways creating the definitive version (for English-speaking
countries, at least). Beautiful arrangements by Wally Stott give the piece a
classic 60s swing, but there’s no mistaking that Scott Walker’s real
interests in the song lie in the fatalism of the lyrics. Walker would later
move into even darker waters – which is saying something. RHJ |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Moon On Your Pyjamas |
Paul Weller |
1993 |
A soppy ode to the
transformative powers of fatherhood, Weller thanking his son Natt for giving
him an optimistic streak (“You got the moon on your pyjamas/ The stars in
your eyes/ Sweet child, you’re a dream in disguise”). Inevitably, Natt grew
up to be an outrageous goth, keen on Marilyn Manson. Meanwhile, dad wrote
about his kids once again on Why Walk When You Can Run, from last year’s 22
Dreams album. GG |
| I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry |
Hank Williams |
1949 |
Hank doesn’t even bother letting
us know the cause of his woe (though it’s a safe bet wife Audrey is
involved); here loneliness is a given, a fact of life in which nature itself
conspires. Through the longest night, robins weep, leaves die and the moon hides.
The song was Hank’s favourite, though he fretted his audience would find
lines such as “the silence of a falling star” too fancy, and it was stuck on
a B-side to await posthumous recognition. NS |
| Listen on Spotify |
| My Son Calls Another Man Daddy |
Hank Williams |
1950 |
This sorrowful wail from an
imprisoned parent may have sounded more authentic coming from Lefty Frizzell.
Hank’s spells in jail were always short and both the wealth and fame he
acquired in his lifetime ensured that putative offspring, of which there were
several, were not likely to “never know my name nor my face”. Outrageously
dark by anyone else’s standards, for Williams this is pretty typical. Hank
mines the depths of despair as only he can. MR |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing |
Stevie Wonder |
1973 |
“Y’know I speak very, very, um,
fluent Spanish,” Stevie’s protagonist brags during the intro. The stumbling
attempts that follow prove otherwise, but the ensuing song proves that he’s
entirely fluent in Nuyorican salsa. Despite the lyric’s exhortations to chill
out and take it easy, the musical accompaniment becomes increasingly
frenetic, with Stevie’s vocal leaping up an octave on the second chorus as he
provides his own backing vocals and piles in the Latin percussion. JL |
| Germ Free Adolescents |
X-Ray Spex |
1978 |
Poly Styrene was a pop star of
rare talent and even rarer courage. Mixed-race when it was anything but
fashionable, she attacked conformism and consumerism in her songs, of which
Germ Free Adolescents was the most successful. Delivered as a slow lament, itself
a bold statement in punk’s intolerant heyday, it details the obsessive
teeth-cleaning, deodorised, sterilised existence of a numbed teenager lost
somewhere between Howard Hughes-ish OCD and the body fascism of the Heat
generation. Demonstrating her own weary indifference to it all, Poly wore
braces on her teeth. SY |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Old Man |
Neil Young |
1972 |
No one will learn too much about
the ageing process by listening to Old Man: lyrically it amounts to little
more than Neil Young reflecting that because he’s alone, he’s a lot like an
old man. But here the message is in the music. Young’s customary dum-dum-thud
rhythm is softened by acoustic and slide guitars and mandolin to create a
mood of reflective melancholy. In Laurel Canyon they probably thought this
was the sound of the pension queue. MHa |
| Listen on Spotify |
| Keep Me In Your Heart |
Warren Zevon |
2003 |
It’s hardly surprising that a
songwriter as scabrous as Warren Zevon would have written about dying. More
surprising, however, is that Keep Me in Your Heart was written when Zevon was
dying of cancer. Gone is the vicious humour of the songs that made him
famous, replaced by the simplest of longings – to be remembered fondly. The
edge is added by the knowledge that Zevon’s life had not been one to make
those who loved him happy; he understands that there’s at least a possibility
his plea will be ignored. MHa |
|
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