samruddock@hotmail.com for any uploaded songs.
1. Granada - Amazing It Seems
This is the only song whose position I know. Hauntingly beautiful, it is as though the piano intro grabs you by the collar and leads you into a vacuum between this world and another and the only thing that can penetrate the nothingness is this voice calling from the distant recesses of time and space. It does my head in, it silences me, it makes me cry. Its as beautiful as a forest full of trees in winter, all bare and spindly and swallowed up by a great grey sky. Its nothingness into nothingness, and somehow that is the perfect combination for me.
The rest are in no particular order.
2. Oasis - Solve My Mystery
Just scraped out Solve My Mystery is a demo from the Sotsog sessions. Its a solo noel song which is almost the culmination of all the noel acoustic songs that dot the outtakes of all their albums. Its bright, challenging, much deeper than most people would give it credit for and has the immortal line - "They told me I lost my mind, but i believe that i rule the world".
3. Bob Dylan - Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie
It was a straight run off between this, My Back Pages, Visions of Johanna and Sad Eyed Lady of the lowlands. This is a poem dylan wrote and recited loud at a concert. Its 7 minutes long, and until the last phrase he doesnt mention anything about woody Guthrie. The pace is quick, its full of comedy and imagery of the like found in 'Stuck Inside...', ' Desolation row' and the like. Its basically a paen to how one man can relieve the pressure of life. I defy someone not to find an intensly personal lyric somewhere in this wonderful rant.
4. Tom Mcrae - Human Remains
Again, which song to pick? This is my current favourite from an almost perfect album whose opening line is "welcome back" and the closing line of the final song (this one) is "tell em what's next". The symmetry here is amazing and this song speaks to me through the corridors of history like its a set of bones warning against the bitter onslaught of time and the vulnerability of human relationships. Its about a man and his father but could be about everything and nothing from the entire scope of human history. Genes and pasts that cannot be escaped. "This is not enough" repeated encapsulates the anger and dissapointment of the song.
5. Judy Garland - Somewhere Over the rainbow
Perhaps a strange song and I certainly dont hold that Eva Cassidy's version is better. This song just encapsulates my childhood, my imagination that there was a perfect place somewhere out there. I once wrote a really bad falsetto song when I was about 11 which was along these lines. This song is just so innocent and yet so bitter and full of resentment at the real world.
6. Tracy Chapman - The Promise
I never really noticed this song until i heard it live a couple of years ago and was blown away by the sheer vulnerable power of it. Its a song of doubt and weakness but with the strongest of messages at its heart. "I will wait for you, if you wait for me". Can be heard as the thoughts of a dying person, or a young person in love and not ready for the committment of marriage. Its just so simple and the way Tracy performs it alone on a big stage with absolutely no pretence is mesmeric. One of my wedding songs.
7. Radiohead - No Surprises
I wasn't sure between this and another but 'How to dissapeer completely' has been mentioned enough. This is the song I always wanted to write before I heard it. Its the prettiest little song full of charm and sweetness but with the most bitter message at its heart. Its like Saccarine laced with cyanide, if the beautiful little timpany riff doesnt kill you, the anger pulsing through the vocals certainly will.
8. Lemon Jelly - Rambling man
This is not the greatest of songs in the world. But i have always been fascinated by people who love travelling and have no need for any sense of home. Im completely the opposite and this song first brought home to me how someone like this could feel. Its full of the rosy-tinted view of remembered places and cunjures images of a crimson sunset over the bay of a horizon not yet glimpsed. Full of optimism, and a dream like reverence for the unknown. I was so intrigued by it, it has formed the central charachter of my first novel (which is sadly still in my head and not on paper).
9. Beatles - Here, there and everywhere
I will never forgive Pheobe Buffet for stealing this as her wedding song only 3 months before it was to be my wedding song. So simple, life with you is better than life without you.
10. Crowded House - Dont Dream Its Over
I remember this song from a Now Thats What I Call Music album and loved it then. Its moving, and it progresses at such a meandering pace. Almost perfect in its construction.
11. Don Mclean - American Pie
This song is like the phrase at its very heart; "The day the music died". Its a homage to music, to the way it can make you think and feel. Its powerful but nonsensical, full of imagery that seems inoccouous but comes together to paint a picture of something ephemeral, indiscribable. So bittersweet; thank you for the memorable times, i wish they could be future's too.
12. Elbow - Powder Blue
Again its such a simple little arpegio of notes ontop of which floats along a p=matress of powder-blue comfort and security. This is a song into which vulnerability and loneliness melts like cocoa in warm milk. And twice as soothing. Brings a tear to the eye its so beautiful.
13. Roxette - It Must Have Been Love
This song makes me cry. It is so heartfelt and I just cant help feeling the complete waste of it all. The sorrow at something passing and the confusion over it all. I have to admit to romanticising pain and suffering and as a result there is no more romantic song in the world.
14. Leonard Cohen - Bird On A Wire
On the liner notes it says that Kris Kristoffersson wants to put the first few lines on his tombstone. "Like a bird on a wire, like a drunkard at midnight choir, i have tried in my way to be free."
Ouch.
15. Ron Sexsmith - Gold In Them Hills (with Chris Martin)
This is all built around a very simple intro riff similar in many ways to No Surprises by Radiohead. Its such a positive song about seeing the blessings in disguise around you. And then Chris Martin comes in and his voice is the catalyst to take off and suddenly you are flying through space looking down over those golden hills and you are in no doubt as to the truth of the song.
16. Pulp - Something Changed
Common People is without a doubt the standout track on the album, probably the most barely supressed anger track ive heard but this song is, as the saying goes, a mystery wrapped in an enigma. It will screw up your mind if you think about it too much. But in that originality lies its brilliance. Does every action we take transform our lives in dramatically different ways? A really refreshing view of fate, luck and coincidence.
17. Suede - Beautiful Ones
A mid-90's challenge to the forgotten generation of youth. Speaks of such alienated suffering and deranged existance that you cant help but be shocked by it all. A call to arms, a fuck-you to all authoraty figures and a reminder of the seedier dirty side of britpop. And through it all its so sing alongable that you cant resist being uplifted by it.
18. Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
A welcome change from all the bitter and negative views of the world. A tremendously positive look at the spectrum of colour in the world around us. "I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do, they're really saying, I love you."
19. Neil Halstead - High, Low and In between
Like the tale at its centre, this is all about getting away from the earth and floating through the atmosphere above, free from earthly suffering. Like the story, the moment of freedom is only too short, and soon we too are rescued by an airline pilot, just before the lack of oxygen brought forth all the power of our imaginations.
20. Clearlake - I Want to Live in a Dream
I stupid little ditty about not wanting to grow up and live in the real world. Its a little much and its sometimes embarrassing to comprehend how much you agree with it all. Admirable sentiments m'boys!
21. Ed Harcourt - Loneliness.
Its quite sad that a song called loneliness reminds me of my honeymoon. But it really does, not because it reminds me of my emotions but it is so closely linked in my mind to the book i was reading at the time (The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie). It speaks of the otherwordly devotoion to love with which Ormus Cama goes through life. Its mystical and untouchable.
22. Hope of the States - The Black Amnesias
Hope of the States are phenomenal. They are like Pink Floyd in that they can take a song and just let it rise and fall and swell without much on top of it. This is an instrumental opening to the debut album and it is so powerful, it grabs you by the neck and drags you straight down into the dark pit of forgetfulness with which the title speaks
23. Electric Soft Parade - Things Ive Done
FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN.
24. Gary Jules - Mad World
This song has overkill. But i will never forgeet that only 6 weeks before it hit Christmas Number 1 it was scheduled to be released and I went into HMV in Nottingham and looked for it and then went and asked as it wasnt there. The man knew nothing about it and spent 5 minutes looking on his computer to see whether he could find anything about it. Only a month later and it was absolutely everywhere, a real testamount to the power of blanket marketting and its success hints at how empty and bitter many people feel towards the Christmas season.
Oh and its just a phenomenal song.
25. Procol Harem - Whiter Shade of Pale
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS ALL ABOUT? Again the power is in the imagery, though i have no idea what the imagery is. I cant explain why i love it, but I do.
26. Black Eyed Peas - Where Is the Love
Such a great example of a song that i believe will be looked at as a 'classic' of modern protest music in the future. Like Dylan's 'With God On Our Side' this is a considered diatribe against the hypocracy and idiocy of the prevailing order.
27. Elton John - Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
I first heard this is the film 'Almost Famous' at the point where the tragically fucked-up Penny Lane has hit rock bottom and to me it charts the most powerful moment of intimacy in the film. Its a very angry song from Mr. John, all about the falsity of public life and the unreality of living the party life. Takes the listener on a trip through psychodelic cartoon landscapes until they emerge in the deserted streets of an empty city at night. Makes me feel powerful and significant like walking through those deserted streets at night.
28. Johnny Cash - Hurt
Wow, the best cover version of a song i have ever heard. There is nothing i can say about this one, anyone who hasnt heard it, go out and listen, anyone who has knows exactly what i mean.
29. Kid Galahad - I Go To Sleep
This is like 'I'm only sleeping' by the Beatles in that its about sleep. In every other sense its completely different. Nonetheless, I am absolutely fascinated and in love with sleep and cant understand why there aren't more songs about the simple everyday harmony of sleep.
30. James - She's A Star.
Like I said, romanticising the suffering. There is so much of that in here. And so sing-alongable as well.
31. The Streets - Empty Cans.
This is only a great song becausew of the 11 that preceede it. Mike Skinner takes us on a journey of ups and downs and when this final up comes along it is the most cathartic moment on any record ive heard. Pure waves of joy wash over me and the story is complete in a perfect way.
32. Kinks - Apeman
This song really hit home to me like no other how much real fear there was about nuclear war in the 1960's. In hindsight its easy to see that there was little chance of there ever being a nuclear war but this song transported me back into the contemporary mind like nothing else ever has and showed me how frightening the world around had become. Its title references King Kong and tarzan in my mind and is basically a commentary on the state of human society. An very underrated kinks song.
33. Doves - Lost Souls.
THE ENTIRE ALBUM cannot be listened to in particles, it is a whole song with 11 different movements which go together to create a mesmeric masterpiece. I could never single out one single song from an album like this so i wont even bother. As a complete piece of work this is simply untouchable.
34. John Lennon - God (anothology Version)
A Requiem for the 1960's dream. The anthology is less polished and doesnt have so many of the little piano flecks which i think get in the way of the album version. Its lennon putting to bed his Beatles past and the mythology that they and he had built up around them. Like the rest of Lennon's easrly solo music its intensly and sometimes uncomfortably personnal but no song can be bad after such a strong opening line; "God is a concept by which we meassure out pain".
35. Dire Straits - Brother In Arms
The perfect and understated end to a great album. Brothers in Arms is like Bridge over Troubled Water in its slow progression towards its immaterial end. Its not written by them but you would never believe it, sounds too perfectly placed and weighted to be a cover. And yet there it is.
36. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah.
It took me 5 years to finally get why Jeff Buckley is great. I had heard Leonard Cohen's original of this first and lyrically it was very different and stood out immediately. Indeed, it references itself and compares itself to the sacred song itself. Downbeat but confident. And Jeff Buckley takes all the genius of the song and somehow multiplies it exponentially to create a force of such simple beauty its hard to believe its not his own song.
)
"Don't Dream It's Over" should have been on my list as well as something from early Elton.
My list is going to be rather mainstream as well but anyway...
