31 Songs

2007-02-25T12:41:00.001-08:00

Inspired by Nick Hornby's excellent 31 Songs book, and kicked into gear by Binface and Witsy getting theirs out into the ether, I have complied my list of 31 songs. I have a few caveats to begin with. This is not a comprehensive list of all the songs I love, it would be too long for that. There are also several rules to abide by. Only one song by an artist is the hardest one, but the most needed to stop this from just being a list by about 5 artists. Another rule is that these have to be genuine songs to have affected your life or be loved by you. There is no space here for being cool or trying to impress. This is nearly impossible to keep but you will see that I have managed it, Meatloaf is still on this list. Please don't stop reading.

These are songs that have travelled with me in my life, some I love just because I love them, most have a story attached, a box of memories to delve into. I am slightly obsessed with music, as you will discover I can chart my life and friendships through music. I find it hard to imagine what you would do or be if you didn't have a permanent soundtrack in your head. Music is how I express what is in my head, gives voice to the emotions, helps me communicate with others and does weird things inside me.

I've loved and been frustrated at compiling this list, it's a lot of fun, but also too hard. Mostly because music tastes seem to be so relative to the indivdual involved, I've been afraid I'll never be able to explain what I love about these songs, because you might not love them too. They are personal to my story and that's why I find it hard to share some of them. But enough ramblings, here are the songs. Enjoy, wince, laugh and cry along with these snapshots of my life.

THE CLASSICS

2007-02-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

Being restricted to one song from one artist is a headache and brings it’s own limitations in this whole thing. How do you chose just one song from artists that you have loved for different reasons over 15 or so years? This small section is my attempt to do that, I’ve loved these bands/singers for a long time now and they’ve been too prolific in their writing to just chose one song. But here goes.

1. A kind of magic- Queen

2007-02-25T12:34:00.002-08:00

Queen, the first band I knew all the dates of birth of, the first band I covered my walls with pictures of, the first band I grabbed as my own. Sadly, all due to the death of Freddie Mercury which I heard on the radio before I’d really heard much of their music. But the radio stations all played Queen songs, the tribute concert is still on video somewhere at my parents house and I was hooked. I remember clearly the moment my friend handed me a recording of their second Greatest Hits album in the corridor at school, the longing to get home and play it.

Queen have done better songs than this one, there are others I could have chosen, but this is the first one I really listened to that afternoon when I got home from school. I remember switching off the stereo after two or three songs because it was too much, I wanted to savour it all. The opening bars of ‘A kind of magic’ had sent shivers up my spine, an over used cliche when talking about songs, but the best description of the way music can grab you, do something that nothing else has ever done before inside you and make you long for more.

Every Saturday I would go down to the collectors record shop in Guildford with a friend, we would spend hours looking at the records and tapes and eventually buy one, sometimes just for the need to buy one, sometimes because we’d found what we were looking for, sometimes because we wanted to educate each other. Gradually all the Queen albums were found and I became hooked on buying, collecting and loving the feel of walking out of shop with a fresh load of music to do things inside me.

2. No Surrender (acoustic) - Bruce Springsteen

2007-02-25T12:34:00.001-08:00

Bruce is someone who gets a bad press, if Reagan had completely missed the point of one of your songs and used it in a campaign to be president it would be easy for you to get a bad press as well. When I meet someone else who really gets Bruce I love it, for a long time he was one of those artists that you didn’t mention on your top 5 list. But he’s more than the 80s cheese images of the Born in the USA album. He’s someone who sings with passion, someone who expresses important stuff about life and reality, and who sings like he means it. His songs tell stories, take you on journeys through dark nights and long car chases, and some of his songs do make you want to run around the room with glee, drive way too fast, grin with much joy and cry with the unbearable sadness of some of this life.

Thinking about it, I also love the way his songs sometimes express hope, hope that things might work out, hope that there might be something better up ahead on the road. I like that not everything has to be black all the time, and sometimes you do want to sing along with the fact that “it ain’t no sin to be glad that you’re alive”. There should be music for those times. When you want to sing about salvation through music, relationships and escaping the current grind of life. No surrender does just that, and speaks of the redemption found in music, as I’m a fan of the darker side of life I much prefer the sad acoustic version than the loud rock anthem. Mainly because it sounds like Mr Springsteen has been through more emotionally and is singing it one last time to scrape some hope together in this world. (or maybe that’s my bias and really songs just sound better played on an acoustic guitar.)

3. Stay, far away, so close- U2

2007-02-25T12:33:00.001-08:00

U2 are really where mine and my brothers music tastes collide, cross over and find a lot of common ground. I love the way they progress throughout the albums they make, the cyclical way their albums have come out. Their albums always come in stacks of three. Boy, October and War form their early years of working out how to do this rock thing, and getting it pretty near perfect on War. The Unforgettable Fire starts to experiment with new things, new ways of expression, Joshua Tree is when they nail it and Rattle and Hum is when the wheels start to fall off. And so they go back to the drawing board and come up with something new and inventive again, Actung Baby; if ever you need to explain the difference between the 80s and 90s as decades to an alien from outer space, just sit them down with the Joshua Tree and Actung Baby.

Going back to my brother for a moment, you can tell a lot about us both from the fact that his favourite U2 album is the Joshua Tree and mine is Actung Baby. Someone once described Actung Baby as the sound of the Joshua Tree being hacked down with a chainsaw. In the days of cassettes the first song had us all checking our stereos to see if they were chewing the tape rather than just playing the distorted opener to Zoo Station. Irony, cynicism, tiredness of hope never getting fulfilled and the loss of meaning pretty much marked the 90s and U2 moved with that. Zooropa took it further and then it all started to fray at the edges with Pop. And so they went back to the drawing board and put all the good elements of their career together and came up with ‘All that you can’t leave behind’ and ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’. If things carry on like this the next album might not be so great and we might be due for a new invention again, it’ll be interesting to see.

Anyway, clearly all this is just an excuse to write down my theories on U2 as a band, now to the song. There are too many good ones to chose from and so I chose this one, a slightly obscure one only listeners to Zooropa will discover. It’s a beautiful song with all the usual elements that make for a beautiful U2 song, but I chose it for the ending alone. I have never heard a cymbol clash used so evocatively.

4. Paul Simon- Graceland

2007-02-25T12:32:00.000-08:00

There are songs that are companions on the journey, there are songs that stick through the dark times and songs that keep you warm late at night when it has all become too much. There are songs that are too painful to listen to again and again because of the memories they evoke. There are songs that make you feel things too deeply and so are restricted listening, or songs that you want to listen to again and again and again until you can recite every lyric. I hope Mr Simon won’t be offended by this entry, the things is, I love his songs because they don’t really have that effect on me. Yes, I love them, yes some I play over and over again but they’ve never been with me in the emotional depths, or highs and for that I love listening to them.

I can happily forget how good Paul Simon is at what he does, I don’t need to listen to his songs but they are perfect for the times when I just want to love music for being music, when I don’t have to worry about the memories that will come through as a result of listening to them. Sometimes we just need music that is great for it’s own sake rather than the memories it evokes in our head, a less intense experience maybe, but needed for the moments of just getting on with it in our lives.

Now, I’m not saying they are bland songs, I’m just saying that I’ve never cried my eyes out to them and so I love rediscovering his songs from time to time because he is clearly just a musical genius (we won’t talk about some of his later stuff…). Graceland is a sublime album, I don’t think there’s a duff song on it. And the song Graceland sums up Paul Simon, the way the music gently wraps itself around you, the smooth voice, intelligent lyrics, humming rhythm and the need to head off somewhere to find some hope. “I have reason to be believe, we all will be received in Graceland.”

The I blame the parents section:

2007-02-25T12:31:00.000-08:00

I claim no responsibility for these songs. I had no choice. They were the only records on offer and they laid my musical foundations. My love of random folk music, slightly embarrassing appreciation of country music and joy at cheese can be entirely blamed on someone else. I can trace almost every song I love now back to these songs and artists. These are songs that are like old familiar friends, songs that take me back to my childhood, songs that I will never get tired of because they are so entrenched in my story. These are the songs that I will carry with me forever. These are the companions along the way.

5. The Rhyme and Reason- Garth Hewitt

2007-02-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

This one is slightly obscure, few people have heard of Garth beyond certain Christian circles and people over the world who he’s been involved in speaking up for. He is a lover of justice and speaking up for the poor. He taught me a lot. We had all his records in our house when we were growing up, my parents were friends with him and my Mum worked for him. I couldn't escape him. But I am indebted to him. However nasal the voice, however strange the songs, I owe him my love of American music, my appreciation of singer songwriters and my love of people who can make you cry with the passion they put into singing the songs they write.

He didn’t write easy to understand songs at first. Talking through the meaning of lyrics with my brother taught me to listen to songs, to listen to the stories that you can tell so much better with a guitar. He taught me of a world that is wrong, a world that is messed up and that telling the stories of that world is important. He expressed things about the God who cared about these stories too.

This song, the rhyme and reason, was one I spend time trying to work out. Time dwelling in the lyrics and taking them on as my own. Which is something we all do with songs, we find ourselves in the story, we look for the point of identification and the expressions that put into words the deep corners of our souls. This was one of the first songs that I can remember doing that to me. The cry at the end “I long to be of value, I long to have a friend, I long to have a home to go to when my life should end” became my cry, and later on the answer as well became mine “And just as I start thinking that this could not be mine, he contradicts me with his body and a cross far back in time”. I spent lots of the dark times crying out for these things that could only ever come through that cross.

6. Folsum Prison Blues- Johnny Cash

2007-02-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

The prison albums sum up everything I love about music. I’ve never been able to explain to anyone adequately why I love these two albums so much. I don’t think I’ve ever played them to anyone for fear that they won’t get it and won’t get how much I love them. It’s a risk playing music that means something to you to your friends, there is a risk that they’ll laugh and then you’ll have to pretend that this track you’ve played them didn’t really mean that much to you and that they haven’t just mocked part of your inner soul that you rarely show anyone. It’s a risk I rarely take, music is so personal to each one of us and for those of us who express our souls through the music we listen to, who have a soundtrack to our lives, who have a song in our heads constantly it’s a risk to expose that to others who might not understand.

Anyway, I love these albums because you can hear the men responding to the songs on them, you can hear that Johnny was doing something magical in those prisons as he sang songs that identified with their plight, as he didn’t preach to them but sang with them in their pain, repentance and unrepentance. The roar of appreciation for the line “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” sends shivers up my spine. I couldn’t believe what was going on when I first listened to these albums, some songs took my breath away and left me stunned at his guts, understanding and presence. I haven’t listened to this album with anyone else and I’m not sure I ever could, what if they didn’t get it? I can’t explain even here what this music does to me, what the sound of a man bringing hope to others and being able to hear hope living and breathing does deep inside me.

7. Sloop John B- The Beach Boys

2007-02-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

One of the only bands we could all agree on in car journeys when I was growing up was the Beach Boys. They gave me my love of cheese and my love of any song with a catchy sing a long chorus. Sloop John B is from the more serious, less jump in a car with a girl side of the Beach Boys. A story of longing to go home, a song I sing when I’m fed up with this world, when all of me just wants to go home, where the things I struggle with will be gone, when there will be peace and this trip will be over. It’s a great song to sing at the top of your voice.

8. What did you learn in school today?- Pete Seeger

2007-02-25T10:16:00.002-08:00

Some songs teach you things. Pete Seeger taught me about civil rights, taught me about another world far away from white middle class Guildford, about people standing up for their rights in a world that thought they were second rate citizens. Pete taught me about protest songs and although I didn’t understand the full implications of some of his songs he taught me about metaphor and breaking free from conformity. When I was about 10 or 11 I had an old chewed up tape of one of his concerts that I ‘borrowed’ from my parents. I loved explaining his songs to one of my friends, possibly the first memory of me introducing music and communicating through it. ‘What did you learn in school today’ is clever, funny and an example of how easy propaganda is to spread.

9. Sweet Soul Music- Arther Conley

2007-02-25T10:16:00.001-08:00

A song for Sunday mornings to be put on the record player and turned up loud. When my parents went off to church and I stayed at home to be rebellious I would put on my Dad’s old soul records and dance my blues away around the house. I secretly love dancing and funky soul music is perfect for such occasions. The song is just Arther Conley singing about how much he loves Soul music, trying to express in a song how great other songs and singers are, all to the backdrop of some funky guitar. Simple but effective in making me dance around the house like a loony.

10. America- Simon and Garfunkel

2007-02-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

No round up of the songs that were to influence everything else would be complete without Simon and Garfunkel. Their spectacular brand of misery and dark lyrics combined with pretty hum along tunes is a familiar theme throughout the rest of my record collection. With songs that have opening lines such as; “hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again”, songs that devastate you when you listen to the lyrics and make you realise that you’ve been humming along happily to a nice ditty about the effects of a Nuclear Holocaust, it’s hard to pick just one song to talk about. And so I’ve copped out somewhat and just gone for what I think is one of their best songs, purely on the merit of the song itself. I could have talked about the first time I listened to Richard Cory, the identification with I am a Rock, the amusement of listening to Ceclia and the (as I though at a young age) risky lyrics. But America is just a beautiful song.

It’s got it all, wistful road journeys out into the wilderness, expressions of lostness, being alone, searching for some indefinable meaning, and of course the line “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why”. I’ve always wanted to go back in time, get a camper van and drive across America, probably due to this song.

THE TEENAGE YEARS

2007-02-25T10:14:00.002-08:00

11. Everything louder than everything else- Meatloaf

2007-02-25T10:14:00.001-08:00

For as long as I can remember I’ve been a sucker for a good tune, lyrics to make you cringe and that overwhelming feeling that something is grabbing your insides and squeezing you tight. This song encapsulates all that into a nifty 8 minutes. I could have picked anything from the Bon Jovi/Def Leppard/Bryan Adams back catalogue but nothing else gets closer to defining my love of uncool music that makes me put my fist in the air, sing at the top of my voice and want to drive off cliffs triumphantly.

Meatloaf himself is an incredibly uncool person. He has no style or taste, looks or even critical appreciation. You don’t admit to liking Meatloaf. And if you do it’s probably only because Bat out of Hell IS a classic rock album and you want to show you know things like that. The fact that his music makes you lie on your back on the floor playing air guitar remains a closely guarded secret between you and your bedroom walls. Especially if you are a girl. This is, in theory, the music of boys. The music that makes them want to grab girls, drive off into the night and get laid in a good all time American way. But it still does something in the deepest darkest regions of my soul that I don’t want to talk about.

The song itself sums up and defines everything about the genre that I love, from the opening; ridiculous dialogue and unashamed passion for lines that no human being should be allowed to say out loud. “Goddammit daddy, you know I love you, but you got a hell of a lot to learn about Rock and Roll”. I mean, really. How do you get away with something like that? But from those opening lines to the very first power chord you are hooked into something that approaches embarrassment, but ends up grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and pushing you into a room that you long to enter but have never dared. You see, the song has an affect, it makes me write overblown long pompous statements. It is an overblown long pompous song and I love it.

It sums up the disaffection of youth, the desire to escape, the feelings of being misunderstood, and and and…. Look, lets forget the cod psychology and sociological explanations, the song rocks. more importantly it ROCKS. I can’t defend the song. It has no defence, it’s overblown, stupid, cheesy, clichéd and far far too long. But I love it. I love that I can sing along to it at the top of my voice. I love that when it comes on I want to sing with all my heart, and truly believe that a wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age. That life has no meaning so we might as well sing into the night, jump onto a stage and play music until we can play no more.

Who knows, maybe it’s just me. I wish I was cooler, I wish I reacted differently, but there is something about this music. It’s got me. Cheesy rock. The anthem of the rebel stuck inside me that wants to stick two fingers up at life and believes that problems can be solved and life can be worth living if all you have is a guitar, some drums and a few killer riffs. And write clichéd sentences with the phrase ‘killer riff’ in them. Oh dear.

Kill me now.

12. Paint it Black- The Rolling Stones

2007-02-25T10:13:00.000-08:00

For someone who loves music so much, it seemed obvious to want to join a band. I tried the guitar, I tried the piano, but it later turned out I was OK at hitting things in time. When they advertised drum lessons at school I remember the agony of fighting my shyness to be able to go up to the teacher afterwards and say that I wanted to learn. I loved learning to play the drums, talking to my slightly mad teacher about the blues, Jazz and the Rolling Stones. And then I got put in touch with a guitarist through a friend and Highly Dubious was born. We were a band who didn’t know how to play in time for the first year. My poor family had to put up with the sound of drums pounding out some kind of rhythm, Elli’s slightly off key singing and the endless repeats of Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones coming out of our garage every Sunday afternoon. For a whole year. We did get better, we got a singer and a bassist and two types of songs. We had fast depressing songs, and slow depressing songs. You get the picture. This song is so brilliantly dark, all they want to do is paint everything black. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

13. Wave of Mutilation (U.K Surf)- The Pixies

2007-02-25T10:12:00.002-08:00

One of the films I constantly watched as an angst ridden teenager was Pump up the Volume. Don’t rush to buy it because you’ll probably be faced with some cliché ridden high school movie. The thing is, I loved it. Amongst the clichés it’s full of great one liners and lots of despair over the futility of life,
“They say I'm disturbed. Well, of course I'm disturbed. I mean, we're all disturbed. And if we're not, why not? Doesn't this blend of blindness and blandness want to make you do something crazy? Then why not do something crazy? It makes a helluva lot more sense than blowing your brains out.”
"There's nothing to do anymore. Everything decent's been done. All the great themes have been used up--turned into theme parks."
You see, lots of things to identify with. A couple of the songs from the soundtrack stand out, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows’ with its worn out cynical approach to love and the Pixes – ‘Wave of Mutilation’. This version is changed from the original, slowed down into music that creeps up to you, puts it’s arm around you and slowly leads you down the path to misery.

14. Territorial Pissings- Nirvana

2007-02-25T10:12:00.001-08:00

I can still remember watching the news and hearing that Kurt Cobain had died, I still remember the phone call afterwards with a friend. It was one of those important things we went through. The first voice to be silenced. Every teenager needs music to listen to in the dark, to jump around their bedroom to, to scream along to the lyrics and know that someone else is going through the sadness and pain of figuring out what life is all about. This song does all that and more. Music that you can’t stand still to and that scratches the deep inner itch of fear, pain and confusion.

15. Misshapes- Pulp

2007-02-25T10:11:00.004-08:00

I had to include a song from the brit-pop era, from the days when we would sit around in a classroom in the 6th form at school and talk about music. 6th form was the time I starting noticing that the music in the charts was taking a definite turn for the better, bands who played real music with real instruments were back. I have a whole load of singles from those two years full of fairly bouncy cheery songs, not musical pap but not genius, just some fun stuff with sing a long choruses. (the Beach Boys influence coming out again.). Pulp were a little more innovative than the rest and I and a friend spend much fun imitating the slightly angular movements of Jarvis Cocker.

Misshapes is one of those songs that helps you feel less alone when you are clearly a geek and aren’t one of the crowd. (clearly I should also have included Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ for similar reasons) Someone else putting a voice to the fact it’s ok to have a brain and not be the same as all the rest was a good thing. As someone who walked through my home town and got punched in the arm for smiling the lyrics were highly pleasing…

“Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits, we'd like to go to town but we can't risk it, Oh 'cause they just want to keep us out. You could end up with a smash in the mouth just for standing out.” “We'll use the one thing we've got more of - that's our minds.”

16. Everybody Knows (except you)- The Divine Comedy

2007-02-25T10:11:00.003-08:00

There are few love songs on this list, mainly because I haven’t had many relationships where love has been reciprocated. This song sums up some of the torture of unrequited love, especially when it seems so obvious to you and everyone else. The important thing is never to play this song in the same room as the person you are obsessed with. Yes I did, yes it was a bad idea, and thankfully he didn’t pick up on what seemed so painfully ironic and obvious to me, he just appreciated me introducing him to a new band. Sigh.

JUST BECAUSE

2007-02-25T10:11:00.001-08:00

17. Still Fighting it- Ben Folds

2007-02-25T10:10:00.001-08:00

There is no story attached to this song, I just like it. Mainly because it includes lines like, “everybody knows it sucks to grow up”, and, “you’re so much like me, I’m sorry”. Working out what growing up is all about is just hard. Here’s a song to help.

18. Landlocked Blues- Bright Eyes

2007-02-25T10:09:00.000-08:00

I spent a whole month recently listening to nothing but the Bright eyes album, “I’m wide awake it’s morning”. This is a man whose every song echos something of the fight to express the meaningless of this life, to work through the pain, to express the hollowness and to ask the questions of identity and purpose. He doesn’t write your average verse chorus, verse chorus songs. Every song is an epic journey, poems to music, anguish expressed in beautiful ways. Landlocked Blues pretty much has it all, lines such as, “the worlds got me dizzy again, after 22 years you’d think I’d get used to spin”, and “You’ll be free child once you have died, from the shackles of language and measurable time.” Questioning anguish has never been expressed so well.

19. Cannonball- Damien Rice

2007-02-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

I don’t know how I am possibly meant to chose just one song of Damien Rice’s. Cannonball is one of the first ones I loved and so it is included here, but really, it could have been almost any of his first album, and many from his second. He took me by surprise when I first listened to the album, the aching voice, the original songs, the perfection of it all is too much. The album ‘0’ is still one of those albums that makes me stop whatever I am doing and listen to it. Music that refuses to be relegated to the background. Music that makes me want to shut up whoever is talking at the time and just listen. That’s probably one of the highest compliments you can pay a piece of music.

20. La Tristessa Durera- The Manic Street Preachers

2007-02-25T10:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently the song’s title means, the sadness will never end. It’s funny then that this song has me grinning inanely every time I listen to it. I think it’s the combination of a pounding rhythm and the freedom of someone else saying. “I retreat into self pity, it’s so easy” and someone else screaming, “all the sadness will not go, will never go away, baby it’s here to stay.” For some reason that cheers me up.