Ok, I've given it a shot. These are not my 30 favorite songs of all time. Rather, they are 30 OF my favorite songs of all time. My list is far more mainstream than some of the ones that have been posted thus far. That said, I have still tried to populate my list with stuff that might be new to some of you anyway. These are not in order, just 30 of my favorites. Here goes:
1.Alan Parsons Project - Old And Wise
This is a beautiful, morbid song about a man who is about to die, and who is looking back on his life with some regrets.
2.Billy Joel - The Stranger
Classic and catchy as hell.
3.Billy Joel - Movin' Out(Anthony's Song)
Classic and catchy as hell. The Whole 'Stranger' album is just brilliant.
4.Depeche Mode - One Caress
Great song from DM's 'Songs Of Faith And Devotion' album...about a drug habit/death/girl, depending on how you interpret it. Slow, brooding, gorgeous, nice string arrangements.
5.Eric Clapton - Bell Bottom Blues
This song shows why Eric Clapton is great. The contrast between the bridge and chorus is interesting, because the bridge is relatively upbeat, but then chorus is sort of sorrowful and reflective - "I don't want to fade a-waaaay". A classic.
6.Guns'N'Roses - Patience
This song might be overlooked, being on the b-side of their 'Lies' EP, sandwiched in between the huge 'Appetite For Destruction' and the epic implosion-inducing 'Use Your Illusions', but it is nontheless on the best songs Axl, Slash and co. ever penned. It is a beautiful, catchy ballad, with Axl singing in an uncharacteristically subdued manner, and Slash playing only on an acoustic guitar. Good stuff.
7.John Lennon - Oh My Love
This is a short, but heartwrenching ballad from his solo record, 'Imagine'. In the shadow of such heavyweights from the same record, like the title track and 'Jealous Guy', this song about finding a love so profound that it changes the way you see and feel about everything, could very possibly make grown men cry.
8.Hanson - Man From Milwaukee
Yes, Hanson. Don't laugh. This is a wacky, catchy, sometimes amusing song from the trio that brought you mmmBop. It's not quite as cheese as mmmBop though. Give this a chance. Don't write it off just because it's Hanson.
9.Jane's Addiction - Everybody's Friend
I love this. Very simple but effective song about the fact that you can never please everybody and that sometimes there is no absolute right or wrong.
10.John Williams - Jurassic Park Theme
This is classic John Williams. There are two basic parts to it, a quite part and a more in-your-face part. The beauty of it is that it not only fit the movie perfectly, accentuating the achievement of genetically engineering dinasuars, but that it could affectively accentuate any big achievement - case in point, it is commonly used as background music when NBA teams raise championship banners or retire players' jerseys.
11.Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
Very simple, but very eeiry, very haunting song here. Curtis's vocals seem distant and emotionless, and that effect works well with the lyrics and music - which is very atmospheric and soundscap-y - to effectively convery the message of the song. It is in fact Curtis's very lack of emotion in this song that so accurately illustrates the numbness of being in a relationship for so long that you've drifted apart. I'd like to add that 'Donnie Darko' was a perfect choice of movie to use this song in.
12.Lit - Lovely Day
Nothing much to say about this song, other than that it manages to be very, very catchy without sounding like everything else on the Radio. By no means an all-time great, but worth giving a listen to for sure. 'Such a lovely day, but it's nothing more than ordinary...'
13.Madonna - Frozen
The best song from what I think is Madonna's best record ever, 'Ray Of Light'. It's a ballad and it's a little long but it sounds like few things you've heard before. A great piece of music about how wasting your time with hate and grudges is a good way to make sure you never love again. 1998 was a great year.
14.Metallica - Anesthesia(Pulling Teeth)
Taken from their debut record, 'Kill 'Em All', this is a lesser-known(to non-Metallica diehards) song, but a bloody great one. It's an instrumental, and it illustrates why Metallica went downhill after bassist Cliff Burton passed away. The song is basically a four-minute bass solo with some drums added in halfway through. Old-school Metallica rules.
15.Pet Shop Boys - Can You Forgive Her
If you haven't heard anything off their 'Very' album, you should. This is why I've included what I think are some of their best songs on my list. I think this one of the few singles from this record.
16.Pet Shop Boys - To Speak Is A Sin
Again, from 'Very'. Slower than 'Can You Forgive Her', but beautiful. I wish I could describe these two songs better, but I don't know that much about PSB on a conversational level - I just know that their music is interesting and that I like it a LOT.
17.Pink Floyd - On The Turning Away
This is late, post-Waters, post glory-years Floyd. For this reason, this song is often overlooked. It was taken from 'Momentary Lapse Of Reason' - which was essentially a David Gilmour solo record - and is easily the best song on the record imo. Great melody in the verses(there isn't really a traditional chorus), and mean-yet-catchy guitar solos at the end.
18.Radiohead - Cuttooth
Ah, we reach Radiohead. Out of four RH songs on my list, only one came from an LP, and this isn't it. This is from the 'Knives Out' EP/Single and it is one RH's most chilling, haunting, creepy numbers ever. It is kind of amazing that they've such a chilling, haunting, creepy song out the repetition of just four or so notes. But that's just how good RH is. The latter parts of this song are perhaps the scariest vocals Thom Yorke ever recorded. Incidentally, I've found that, with a 6 second crossfade, this song segues quite awesomely into U2's 'Mofo'.
19.Radiohead - How Can You Be Sure
Taken from the 'Fake Plastic Trees' single, this is one of RH's more poppy songs. Light years away from the sonic experimentation that would take place on OKC and Kid A, this song is a just a guitar and Yorke's vocals for the most part. This is the kind of song where you'll find yourself humming it at some point during the day, but you won't for the life of you be able to remember what damn song it is that is making you incapable of concentrating on anything. This song has the honor of falling in the sparsely populated category of 'Radiohead songs that actually don't depress you in one way or another'.
20.Radiohead - True Love Waits
Taken from the 'I Might Be Wrong' live EP, this is a beautiful song that appears to be literally just an acoustic guitar and Thom's vocals. I don't think there is a studio version of this song, but I'm not sure I want one because I'm not sure it could ever live up to this brilliant live version. Really beautiful.
21.Radiohead - How To Disappear Completely
Bear had this in his list, and with good reason. The only of the four RH tracks here to come from an album. Haunting, mournful, and beautiful. Perhaps the least emotionally detatched song on Kid A.
22.Saint-Saens - Carnival Of The Animals
A short twenty minute classical piece, which is actually a series of short pieces, each one depicting a different animal. Fun, interesting, and just plain GOOD.
23.Semisonic - Singing In My Sleep
I think this is superior to the megahit 'Closing Time', off the same record, 'Feeling Strangely Fine'. It is catchy, somewhat sonically intereseting, and is just a great pop song as far as I'm concerned. This also contains some of my favorite lyrics about a 'Capulet on a balcony in my head'. We can all relate to the feeling of chasing an ideal, a Juliet(or Romeo) that might not exist.
24.Stevie Wonder - Overjoyed
Candidate for 'Best Stevie Wonder Song Post-Glory-Years'. It's just a love song, but what really makes it stand out for me is the beautiful chorus melody and Stevie's vocal delivery of that melody. One of Stevie's best vocal performances imo, really.
25.Tarkan - Dudu
Yes, the song is called Dudu. No, it's not talking about
that dudu. Can we be adults now?
Tarken is a superstar in Turkey, not exactly so well-known in the States. I am familiar with him because I myself am half-Turkish(mother is Turkish) and I have been there seven times in my life. The most recent of those visits was in 2003, this song was a single at the time, and it played every, I mean EVERY, two minutes, no matter WHERE you went in the city. You won't be able to understand anything he says in this song because it's all in Turksih, but it's catchy as all hell and was a huge hit over there.
26.Third Eye Blind - The Background
You hear 'Semi-Charmed Life' on the radio and you think you have 3EB's number. But on the very same record as the aforementioned hit is this darker, lesser known, very uncheesy, brooding gem of a song with a subtle but groovy guitar riff and one of those choruses that takes its time getting there but in the end the road to the payoff made the payoff better. This is about losing someone important to you, be it through death or breakup or whatever, and the fact that wherever you go and whatever you do, that person is with you in the figurative background.
27.Third Eye Blind - Slow Motion(Unedited Version)
This song was intended for their 'Blue' album in 1999. Long story short, record company thought the lyrics hit too close to him regarding certain events that were recent at the time(Columbine), and so the song ended up on the album as in instrumental. The original version with vocals surfaced on the internet. This is what frontman Stephen Jenkins said about it: "That song is a protest song. It's an irony. 'Slow Motion' is about how we revel in amorality, it is supposed to be seductive, it's almost like an opiate. It is intent on drawing you in. I'm sure I'll get a lot of shit for it. I'm sure nobody's going to get any sense about it at all. But I like it, I get it".
28.Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Learning To Fly
I am a huge Chicago Bulls fan, and theme song for the 1991 championship video 'Learning To Fly' was this. That was the first time I ever heard this song. This is just a great song. It can/could be about so many things - drugs, religion - but in the end it's about the fact that you never know where you'll end up in life but that you're not alone in the not knowing. I'm sure most of you already know this one.
29.Tori Amos - Spark
One of Tori's best. Beautiful. LOVE it.
30.The Beatles - The End/Abbey Road Side B Medley
I wasn't going to include the Beatles on my list for the same reason nobody is including any U2 on their lists, but I had to include this one for its significance. It is 'The End' of the Beatles. Each member gets a little solo, and then it ends with the vocals/lyrics that I, and I'm sure many others, are eternally unable to dissociate from 'The Chris Farley' show skit on SNL:
[skit]
Chris Farley: Right. I think we.. I think we got time for one more question. Uh.. remember when you were in The Beatles? And, um, you did that album Abbey Road, and at the very end of the song, it would.. the song goes, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make"? You.. you remember that?
Paul McCartney: Yes.
Chris Farley: Uh.. is that true?
Paul McCartney: Yes, Chris. In my experience, it is. I find, the more you give, the more you get.
Chris Farley [ ecstatic, starts to point at Paul and mouth "AWESOME!" ]
[/skit]
Awesome, indeed. Such a shame a comedic genius like Farley left us so soon. Anyway, this song is the conclusion of the Abbey Road Side B medley(You Never Give Me Your Money to The End), which I consider to be one of the great achievements in modern pop music.
That's about it. I'll upload them in the next day or two.