Five Great Songs, or My Five Favorite:
1. Debaser by the Pixies(1989)
It's funny, if this entire album had done to me what its opening song did, I would call it the greatest album of all time. Instead, I'm calling it the greatest song I've ever heard. It rockets forward at one hundred feet per second, throwing ideas and melodies at you in trademark Pixies style. The chorus is simply genius, with an inspired lyrical emphasis. This song takes single words and little phrases and proceeds to drill them into your skull. The part that really embeds itself into my brain is the oft repeated line “I-am-UN. CHIEN. ANDALUSIA-I-am-UN.” It's ingenious, combining Spanish and English with such a unique lyrical emphasis, with zero pauses between words that should have pauses, and pauses where they shouldn't be. That is the key thing here. Emphasis and cadence. This song simply defines it. Listen to Frank's voice on the album version and you'll hear what I'm saying.
Another aspect is the impeccable intertwining of the vocals and the guitar. Listen as he screams 'debaser!' and the guitar slows down, descending, carefully plotting where to go next, then exploding again. In my mind you wont find a song filled with more energy and explosiveness. It's one of those songs that puts the Pixies in cahoots with legendary experimentalists such as Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, the creators of the film 'Un Chien Andalou', a short surrealist and experimental film made in 1929, that famously opens with a shot of a woman's eyeball being sliced. Like Bunuel, the greatest filmmaker ever to come from Spain, The Pixies broke down musical vocabulary and rebuilt it in their own image. Like Dali and Bunuel, they were debasers.
I personally would love to be a debaser. In a way, it's a tribute to all the underground and outcast artists out there.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
2. 4+20 by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young(1970)
A song drenched in utter depression and desperation. The saddest song I've ever heard. A song that instantly evokes memory. I first heard this song while on acid, and I nearly wept. It resonated so perfectly with the complex and way-too-deep-to-get-into-at-this-moment things that were happening around me. I felt like the eye of a hurricane that night. I realized that relationships and people were collapsing and being pulled apart all around me, and this is a song I cling to in dark time. Stephen Stills wrote two monster relationship songs, this and Suite Judy Blue Eyes. CSNY don't have the consistency that The Beatles had, but at their best, they're hard to beat. And this is them at their best: a soft-spoken anthem devoted to regret, short, with an acoustic guitar and Stephen Stills singing sadly, and poetic lyrics. An absolute killer of a song.
YouTube - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - 4 + 20
3. A Day in the Life by The Beatles(1967)
A song that is somehow mundane and touching, it guides us along with a distant vocal by Lennon, as if there were barriers between him and the listener(there always were). This song is the most distinctly co-written song by The Beatles as well, with John's narco-prophetics, waxing poetic about the inanity all around him, turning it into tragedy, perhaps due to his lack of feeling, lack of connection? And Paul's interlude, creating a distinct counter-point, a personal anecdote instead of reciting news items and small observations, yet very personal. But each portion of the song is connected by their inane surface lyrics, with deep emotional resonance beneath. This is their most successful experiment. There never was a song like this in the Western pop lexicon. It's surreal, the sounds are carried away by dream, by memory and flights of fancy. The long building up of the orchestra is juxtaposed with the free floating, tension-free rest of the song, and it ends with a definitive piano chord that lasts and lasts and lasts.
It's a perfect day.
YouTube - The Beatles- A day In The Life
4. Motion Picture Soundtrack by Radiohead(2000)
I tend to be affected most by songs that cut into me and immediately convey desperation, sadness and longing. This song does all three with the first chord. It's really the only ending that Kid A could have had. The lyrics are blunt and effective, sung in such as way as to MAKE them poetic. Thom Yorke uses lyrics as a canvas sometimes, an empty space to convey emotion by tone, rather than the merits of the words themselves: “Red wine/And sleeping pills/Help me get back to your arms/Cheap sex/And sad films/Help me get where I belong/I think you're crazy/Maybe/I think you're crazy.” It's a dirge, penetrating the air and injecting it with a heaviness of the soul. The kind of song I could envision being played at my funeral. Strangely, a faint glimmer of hope shimmers behind the heaviness, courtesy of the harps. Is it fake, a false hope? If I know Kid A, probably.
YouTube - Radiohead ~ Motion Picture Soundtrack
5. Snow Song Pt. 1(Live) by Neutral Milk Hotel(1998)
A left field choice, a lot of people haven't heard this I suspect, but it's a must-listen and see for anyone who likes Neutral Milk Hotel. It's a cruel sort of cosmic happening that the best thing this band ever did was a one time live song, a reinterpretation of a so-so song from their catalog off the Everything Is EP. It slithers forward like a psychedelic march and dirge all in one. The lyrics and the way they're sang is haunting, watch the video and see the look in Mangum's eyes as he sings:
“Cindy smiles in overcoats. She says 'Please stay a while like ice-cream floats and dreams, and I will fill your heart with boats and bells and beams and candy-apple ev...erythings. Bells and beams and candy-apple eve...erythingsss.' Cindy skips my trampoline. With horns and bells and bouncing things. Even the most silent...must sing a song of love. Even the silent they must sing a song...of loveee”
Listen to the initial guitar chords, they sound so unreal, it's like they're dancing. The way the horns inch their way into your consciousness is superb. The slight cry of the singing saw, then the conflagration of the last section of the song. It's Neutral Milk Hotel at their best in terms of a cohesive band(this is live remember), with a killer rhythm and a performance saturated with heart and emotion. For a band that came and went in the blink of an eye, leaving an indelible impression on the indie music scene, this is their best work, and my favorite. It just goes to show that many of their best things weren't ever on an album.
YouTube - Neutral Milk Hotel - Snow Song Pt. 1