The best
There are some songs that have taken over my life for a month or a year, or had a life of their own and forced me to listen to them over and over again. As I remember them, I jot them down. Here are the ones I’ve recollected so far, listed in reverse chronological order, 2004 to ~1989.
Muttonbirds/A Thing Well Made
Bill Withers/Grandma’s hands
Neil Finn/Into the Sunset — In the middle it falls asleep and breaks in two like Cam’s poem.
Doves/Sulphur Man
Weta/Calling On
Avril Lavigne/I’m With You
Turin Brakes/Painkiller
Tool/Schism
Belle & Sebastian/There’s Too Much Love…
Grant Lee Buffalo/It’s the Life
Beth Orton/Couldn’t Cause Me Harm
Dodgy/One of Those Rivers
Leonard Cohen/Ballad of the Absent Mare
Incubus/The Warmth
Ride/Rolling Thunder
Blur/This is a Low
Supergrass/It’s Not Me
Seven Mary Three/Cumbersome
Soundgarden/Black Hole Sun
Live/All Over You
Live/Lightning Crashes
The Police/Don’t Stand So Close to Me
Coolio/Gansta’s Paradise
Genesis/Fading lights
REM/Find the River
Toad the Wet Sprocket/Walk on the Water
Scorpions/Wind of Change
Australian Crawl/Reckless
Boston/More Than a Feeling
Dire Straits/Brothers in Arms
Sting/Russians
Phil Collins/Who Said I Would?
21 responses to “The best”
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Tell me that’s not your top 23 favourite songs.
10cc/Dreadlock Holiday
Nice comp. Matt. I love how you inserted Coolio and Avril they work well with the songs around them.
Surely Russians by Sting should be in there?
Yes, you’re exactly right.
The presence of the two Tool songs in succession clearly explains those few months of foul language and excessive violence early this year.
No radiohead/ben folds?
Albums, not songs.
phil collins is so hot right now!
Matt, a little disappointed that the only NZ representative on your list is Weta. Listening to Mighty Joe Moon right now. Pure Gold.
I think it is because few NZ bands have that ineffable Other-ness which I retrospectively find in many of the songs on the list.
I’ve only properly grokked Fuzzy, Copperopolis & Ladies Love Oracle, so I have vistas yet to appreciate.
i happen to know for a fact that backstreet boys/shape of my heart should be included in this list.
are you embarrassed matt?
on the topic of music, the church’s hymnal committee is currently taking submissions. i hereby strongly urge everyone to make submissions, and good ones. i have a copy of the committee’s mandate if anyone wants it.
12: not embarrased (see: Avril) and it doesn’t get on the list, sorry.
13: I don’t know any hymns that aren’t in the blue or gray hymnals.
so then: submit which ones you would like to see retained. or write your own hymn or versify a psalm and submit it.
i vote more 3 times as many limericks in the new hymnal
also backwards words together around sometimes
Matt, you are missing GLB’s finest album. I recently re-acquired Might Joe Moon and will forward it to you, as well as the GLB best of album which has a whole bunch of mint b-sides.
Interesting Matt
Maybe another good one would be to see how many faces to names your readers could put:- e.g.
George Bush
Crackafat(scuse spelling)
Madonna
Helen Clarke
etc.etc.
That would be a good heuristic to try and fun for all.
I don’t get it.
Yeah, I like that whole album very very much.