Ever since being exposed to MTV Unplugged(still the best thing MTV ever did imo) - which premiered in 1989 but didn't get super-popular until 30 years ago in 1991 when Paul McCartney released the first MTV Unplugged album - in my childhood, I have loved acoustic/unplugged music. With that in mind, I have made a list that is entirely(well, 98% anyway, there are the tiniest bit of electric flourishes here and there) acoustic in nature. I feel like this kind of music has an intimacy to it, a purity, and an emotional immediacy to it that is just very fulfilling when done right, and as such I have selected very pretty, very melodic songs that play to those characteristics. I think there's also a timelessness to it. There are songs written in eight different decades on this list, but with every song either minimally produced in its original form, or stripped of its production in subsequent form, it would be more difficult to tell which song is from which decade if you didn't already know better. So timelessness is certainly a theme here.
And I can safely say that, given the mini nature of this DI, this was the most difficult time I've ever had cutting a list down to the appropriate time constraints. So many great tracks that didn't make the cut. One of my main guiding lights when making decisions about what to cut was 'is this too obvious?'. I just didn't want to have a bunch of stuff that you've all heard a million times(or if I did include a song you've heard a lot, I wanted it to at least be somewhat fresh in the acoustic context). Like, there's probably a bunch of early Dylan tracks that would've been right at home, but the biggest contenders are songs you've all heard so many times. I had GnR's "Patience" on the list for a long time, but it's such a standard and I needed the six minutes, so I had to cut it. I only used one track from an actual MTV Unplugged album, dispensing with the others I was considering; Nirvana and Alice In Chains' Unplugged albums are deservedly legendary and I figure most if not all of you are familiar with them, so those tracks didn't make it either.
Anyway, enough about what didn't make it. I'm going to just write a little paragraph about each track I've selected to offer my insights. My hope is that some of these tracks make you see a song, or even an artist, in a way that maybe you hadn't before(I know this won't be the case with all of them, but maybe some of them). I'm sure none of you were expecting to see a DI list with Kiss, Bon Jovi, and Sammy Hagar on it, but here we are, and I stand by my choices.
It is my hope that this list will make you see some songs, or even some artists, in a way you hadn't before(though that is more likely with some than with others).
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I resisted putting a Beatles track here until the very end - and went with a cover at that so there's at least a chance it's something you haven't heard a million times - when a separate decision resulted in me needing to find a different, shorter track to open the list. I've always loved McLachlan's beautiful voice and Blackbird is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, so it's a great match. And it flows perfectly into the next track
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GAF used "Friend Of The Devil" in its original form on one of his lists years ago; the song was originally played at a pretty fast pace, but Jerry Garcia at some point later in the 70s heard someone do a much slower cover of it, and he loved it so much that he and the Grateful Dead started playing it like that at their live gigs. I grew up listening to their "Dead Set" live album, which has a fantastic slow(but not acoustic) performance of the song on it. In 1991, Garcia and his longtime friend David Grisman recorded an acoustic album, and one of the songs they did was this slower "Friend Of The Devil". I love this recording - it's just so chill and mellow and soulful, and the guitar work is so good. It was recorded only four years before Garcia's early passing. Artists who are gone became a subtheme of this list as it went on.
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Dave Matthews Band does not have a big fanbase here, and I know they take a lot of shit despite their massive popularity - whether it's because of his voice or the attitude of their fans or whatever, I don't know. I do like them quite a bit, I think they're phenomenally talented musicians. That said, for me, "Crush" has always been their greatest track, and honestly I think it's one of the great love songs of the last 25 years. I nearly put the studio version on my DI list last year, but I just couldn't find the room for it. This, the first in a series of four live tracks, is an acoustic performance by Matthews and DMB lead guitarist Tim Reynolds, and it's so freaking good. Reynolds in particular turns in some of the best guitar work on this whole list. (Mixing live material with studio material can be tricky, but there's minimal crowd noise at the beginning of this track, so the transition is pretty smooth.)
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Chris Cornell was - it still hurts to say was - one of the greatest rock vocalists of his generation, maybe of any generation. Later in his career, he became a fairly prolific acoustic artist, even doing a whole acoustic tour on his own, and recently a posthumous album of acoustic covers was released. He has a bunch of great acoustic tracks, and I had a really hard time picking one - it came down to the wire - but ultimately, the others that were in consideration just didn't fit for one reason(too long) or another(segue trouble), so I ended up selecting his performance of "I Am The Highway", live from the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto, off his Songbook live album. "I Am The Highway" was the fourth single from the first Audioslave album, and it holds up in this powerful, completely stripped down solo acoustic performance.
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For me, there are two stand-out tracks on Bowie's 2003 "Reality" album: "Bring Me The Disco King", and this semi-acoustic gem "Days". It's a fairly simple song, both musically and lyrically, but I think it conveys so much emotionally despite this. This is a fully-acoustic live performance - a "digital bonus track" from 2010's "A Reality Tour", his last live album released in his lifetime, documenting his final tour in 2003-04. There is something poignant about hearing him sing about "all the days of my life" in such a musically naked setting on his last tour.
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There are only a small handful of Kiss songs I would listen to on purpose. Their cover of "God Gave Rock'N'Roll To You" from the "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" soundtrack is among them, because there's a lot of nostalgia attached to it for me because of the movie. But their best song by far imo is "Beth", the 1976 ballad penned and sung by drummer Peter Criss(which maybe explains why it's so atypical of the band). This is the only track on this list I've taken from an actual MTV Unplugged album, and the significance requires some context.
Kiss's OG makeup era was from 1973-83. In 1983, with founding members Criss and lead guitarist Ace Frehley gone, they ditched the makeup and commenced their "unmasked era", which went until 1995. They had some success early on in this era with singles like "Lick It Up", but by the early/mid 90s, they had, like many other bands of their ilk, fallen on hard times with the rise of grunge and alternative rock. The band were invited to do an Unplugged in the fall of 1995, and Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons secretly invited Criss and Frehley to join them for a few songs at the end of the gig, one of which was "Beth". So in this performance of "Beth" you're hearing the first time the four original members had played together publicly in 16 years. The mini-set with the OG lineup was so well-received, that less than seven months later, that OG lineup was on stage at the Grammys, in full make-up, announcing a reunion tour to start that summer, which was the start of the band just milking their brand for all it was worth for the last 20+ years. So this "Unplugged" gig was pretty much the last thing they did unmasked and the last thing they did before going into "milk it" mode.
I love this performance of "Beth". The song has a classic, beautiful melody, and I love the way Frehley's lead guitar, Stanley's rhythm guitar, and Simmons' bass interact with each other in this rendition. Frehley has a great solo too. Also, you can't see it unless you watch the video, but it's kind of endearing how enthusiastic Criss is to be singing his song with the band again. It's just this rare moment for Kiss where there's no makeup, no pyrotechnics, no over-the-top theatrics, but just four guys sitting with their instruments playing a classic song. It's a window into Kiss being an actual band instead of a cartoon.
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"Song For The Asking" is a Simon & Garfunkel track that I feel doesn't get enough recognition. It's one of the most beautiful songs Paul Simon wrote for the duo, and that's saying something. Garfunkel has even cited it as his favorite. Also, the crowd noise at the beginning made it ideal for transitioning out of the four-song run of live material and back into studio material.
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"Kyoto" was a standout on Phoebe Bridgers' "Punisher" album, but now I almost can't listen to the album version anymore in light of this Spotify-exclusive mostly-acoustic rendition of the song. Jackson Brown is featured, contributing gorgeous vocal harmonies. I feel Bridgers' vocals and melodies more acutely when contrasted against this sparse instrumentation. This is such a great version.
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"No Code" never got as much love as other Pearl Jam albums around it, but I've been on record for years that it's one of my favorites. This is the second straight DI where I'm including a track from it("In My Tree" made the last one). As far as I'm concerned, "Off He Goes" is one of the best songs Eddie Vedder and the band ever wrote. He's processing his newfound fame and difficulty relating to his old friends, and he's doing so in an unguarded, musically compelling way. I believe there are some flourishes here and there of electric guitar in this song, but it sounds like 95% acoustic, so I'm counting it.
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"Stranger Things Have Happened" is an acoustic deep cut from the Foos' 2007 album "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace". I think it's one of the most beautiful tracks Dave Grohl ever wrote, but relatively few outside of their hardcore fanbase know about it, and the band has never played it live. Great melody and vocal take, and the guitar soloing at the end is a special highlight, with Grohl and Chris Shiflett going at it. Happy to share this one.
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Obviously Bon Jovi is not very popular around here, but I would remind everyone of JBJ and Richie Sambora going on the MTV VMAs in 1989 and doing Livin' On A Prayer and Wanted Dead Or Alive acoustically. It's one of the most famous VMA performances ever and it is known to have at least partially inspired the creation of MTV Unplugged. I have always felt that Sambora was the bigger talent of those two guys, and I feel this track, an acoustic version of "Born To Be My Baby", bares that out. Upon doing some research for this, I found out that this is actually the original, first-recorded version of the song, but that the producer of the album persuaded the band to re-record it full-band. To me, the full-band album version has nothing on this acoustic version, which was recorded a year before the VMA performance and originally released as a single b-side and later on the deluxe version of "New Jersey", the album the song was on. Sambora is the star of the track, with his vocals(his harmonies in the choruses and throughout outshine Jon by a lot) and guitar work(I love the solo towards the end). There's a moment at the end of the second repetition of the chorus where Sambora just holds a long note - "...made to be your maaaaaaaaaaaan" - and then launches into the solo, that just does it for me. Give it a chance.
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When we were all talking about Eddie Van Halen after his passing six months ago, Ashley said the following:
"One of these days I'll go full bore guilty pleasure and put 'Dreams' on a list."
Well, I've done it, albeit not with the original track, and I don't feel the least bit guilty. Hagar did this album with his guitarist Vic Johnson in 2014 where they re-recorded tracks from throughout his career acoustically, and this was on it(the only Van Halen track they did). Hagar-era Van Halen was my first favorite band when I was a little kid and there are a number of tracks, including this one, that have stayed with me over the years. It's a good version - Sammy can still sing pretty well. I also like it as a tribute to EVH, as even though he's not playing on the track, it's still his musical composition, and it's still one of the bigger hits his band ever had.
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While on a long plane flight some years ago - probably 2015 - I watched a movie called "If I Stay" on the little 3-5 inch screen on the back of the seat in front of me. The movie stars Chloe Grace Moritz as a teen Cello prodigy who falls into a coma, and her life beforehand is flashed back to while she's in the coma. Long story short, it's a melodramatic teen romance thing, and I wouldn't really recommend it - I don't even remember all of it - but what always did stay with me was that Moritz's character was in a band in the movie, and that band did an acoustic cover of "Today" towards the end of it. It's acoustic guitar, cello, and vocals, and it's always stayed in my mind. It strikes me as sort of half chamber pop and half what it would've sounded like if the cast of Glee had ever done the song.
"Willamette Stone" isn't a real band, but rather the fictitious band in the film. It's more difficult than you would think to figure out who was really playing on the track(I know Moritz didn't actually play the cello, and I know that the guy playing her love interest DID do the lead vocals). Anyway, I just think it's an interesting take on a song we've all heard so many times. It's prettier and far less angsty than the original(including the whole second verse only being done instrumentally), and in the end what it really does is shine a light on what a great songwriter Billy Corgan was/is at his best.
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Pink Floyd's 1969 album "More" came at a unique moment in time for the band. Syd Barrett was already gone, and David Gilmour was in, but the band were kind of searching for their identity. The songs on this album aren't of the psychedelic flavor of Barrett's stuff, but the band hadn't yet forged the progressive rock sound that would make them legends starting with "Atom Heart Mother" either. It's not the most cohesive album, as the songs are all over the map. There are songs like "The Nile Song" and "Ibiza Bar" that sound like proto-Grunge, decades ahead of their time; the jazz-tinged "Up The Khyber"; the international flavor of "Main Theme", "A Spanish Piece", and "Dramatic Theme"; and then there are tracks that are more straight-ahead and more "pop" in nature, like "Cymbaline" and this track, "Green Is The Colour", a gorgeous Waters-penned acoustic ballad sung by Gilmour. It's a beautiful melody and one of Gilmour's most tender vocals. There is a tremendous warmth about this track, from the guitar tone to the vocal to that tin whistle in the background(played by Nick Mason's wife at the time, according to Wiki). Apparently they only ever played it electrically live, but I think this original acoustic version is tops. A real gem from Floyd's early days.
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I guess we all know about Elliot Smith at this point - how he is posthumously regarded as one of the great songwriters of his generation despite not being known until the last years of his life. I heard "Say Yes" for the first time in a while a few months ago, and when I started this list I knew I had to include it. It's one of his most well-known tracks - maybe only "Miss Misery" is known more - but it's just pretty close to a perfect pop song - the melody, the wordplay, the musical left-turn of the middle 8, the simplicity of the whole thing, it's just so good. It's downright Beatlesque. I honestly think it would fit in nicely on Rubber Soul, and I'm not sure there's much higher praise I can give than that.
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Torres is one of my favorite new-ish artists of the last few years, and this track - "Gracious Day" - off her latest record "Silver Tongue", is one of her best. It was released as the second single, but I didn't even know that when I put the song on the list(it's not like a Torres single is going to be promoted much). It's a great choice for a single though - a beautiful, sentimental melody that is somehow bittersweet, delivered via a great vocal that sees her going into a higher register than she normally does in some places. I played this track for my dad, and he said he liked it, and that it reminded him of Joni Mitchell. I hadn't thought of it before, but he's right, the way she's singing here, it does kind of sound like Joni. High praise.
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I recently binged "Peaky Blinders" on Netflix, and this song - Laura Marling's "What He Wrote" - was used in an episode; I'd never heard it before, but even as it was playing in the show, I knew I wanted to find a way to include it in my list, and my list was already "finished" at that point. That led to a series of late changes. Anyway, I love this track - there's this sense of foreboding about it while simultaneously being pretty, and her velvet voice captures both things perfectly.
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"Dreams" might be Eddie's musical composition, but he's not actually playing on the version of the track I included, and I felt like "Spanish Fly" was a perfect way of paying tribute to him with his actual playing on this list. Essentially a short EVH solo track off Van Halen's sophomore album, clocking in at just over a minute - this is as good an example as any of Eddie's prowess on the guitar. And it segues perfectly into...
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As part of my ongoing quest to increase appreciation for RHCP around here, I've included this number, "Road Trippin'", the closing track of their 1999 classic "Californication". Kiedis has never been known as a great lyricist, but this quiet ballad about friendship is one of his best and most direct/genuine. Musically, it's primarily a Frusciante composition, as it was based on a chord sequence he was playing around with, and it also is of a piece with a lot of the solo work he'd do in the years immediately thereafter. The story goes that the two of them and Flea were on a road trip together shortly after Frusciante re-joined the band(the first time) and, after surfing together, John picked up his guitar and started playing these chords, and then Flea joined in, and then Kiedis started improvising a melody, and that was that. I've always loved this song - the reflective, sad-and-happy-at-the-same-time guitar, the sing-along melody, the stirring string arrangement in the middle 8, Frusciante's vocal harmonies, all of it. One of their greatest tracks.
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"Dust In The Wind" is probably one of the only really obvious tracks on here. I think it gets made fun of, but I don't care. It's a great lyric, beautiful melody, iconic guitar work, just a great song, and fits perfectly between these two tracks.
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And finally, Eva Cassidy. I assume you all know who she is by now, but a brief recap of her story just in case: Born in 1963, she was singing and playing guitar in bands from the time she was 11, but was pretty much unknown outside of her native D.C. by the time of her death in 1996 at the age of 33 of cancer. She didn't have much original material that we know of; she was an interpreter, singing everything from pop to jazz to country. She was reportedly incredibly shy and had anxiety playing in front of large crowds Apparently, she had drawn some interest from record labels in her lifetime, but I guess they wanted to make her "more accessible" and she was unwilling to make those compromises, from what I gather(information is limited).
So she only released a few independent albums, and a live album recorded in early 96, before finding out that cancer from a mole she'd had removed several years earlier had spread. She was diagnosed in July and was gone in November. The folk singer Grace Griffith met Cassidy shortly before her death and convinced her label to sign Cassidy. A compilation album of some of Cassidy's recordings up to that point was made and released two years after her death. Another two years after that, the BBC radio personality Terry Wogan played some of the tracks to his sizable audience. It caught fire after that, and long story short, Cassidy is now regarded as one of the greatest voices of her generation.
"Over The Rainbow" - as in the Wizard Of Oz - is one of her most well-known tracks, along with Sting's "Fields Of Gold" and Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time". This rendition of "Over The Rainbow" is breathtaking, and makes for a show-stopping closer for this list - it's too powerful to be anything but the closer. It speaks for itself. Appreciate not just the superlative vocal performance, but also her stellar guitar work(pretty sure it's her playing).
She was a massive, massive talent taken way too soon.
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A final note - I liked the symmetry of the list starting with "blackbird singing in the dead of night" and ends with "if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow/why oh why can't I"; I imagine the symbolism of it starting and ending with birds as being akin to the floating feather that bookends Forrest Gump.
That does it. I really thought I wouldn't write that much this time, but...it seems I have. Anyway, I've really enjoyed putting this list together(although, as usual, I'm just a little sick of it after listening to it so many times in the process of making it) and I'm pretty proud of the flow and the segues throughout. I hope you get something out of it.