top 10 — maybe the first in a series
This one started during an Aug. 20 conversation in New York with a fellow Wallflowers fan. What are your top 10 Wallflowers songs? What are your 10 least favorites?
We set a few ground rules: unreleased songs counted; live covers didn’t. We’d send each other the results and compare.
On the train ride home, I scrolled through their songs on my iPod and scribbled my lists on the back of a receipt and a business card. The band is usually known as “roots rock,” but they’ve experimented a bit outside those bounds on a few albums, which means they’ve had a few different sounds going on.
It turns out I have a very strong bias toward their “sad cowboy” songs (the more pedal steel, the better) and a (relative) dislike of their almost-electronic-but-not-really-because-it’s-still-rock songs. I’m glad Jakob has since fully embraced his inner sad cowboy — and not-sad cowboy — in his solo ventures.
Top 10, in oh-so-dramatic reverse order:
10 — Bleeders (from Bringing Down The Horse)
Great driving rock beat and chock full of compelling, vivid imagery. For reasons beyond the scope of this blog, the lyrics summarize much of my college career.
Choice lyric: Sometimes it’s hard to tell the wishing from the well/where you threw the penny and where it fell
9 — Used To Be Lucky (appeared on a Kosovo refugee benefit album)
It doesn’t get more “sad cowboy” than this. The organ cries all the way through this, sounding beautiful while doing so. Somehow, even when he’s singing “sad, sad, everything has gone bad,” it’s truly sad rather than pathetically emo. (See also: “Josephine.”)
Choice lyric: You see me fallin’ in love with a guillotine
8 — How Good It Can Get (from Red Letter Days)
Many of us devoted Wallflowers fans consider Red Letter Days the weakest link in their discography, but its pre-release and touring era was generally when we met each other and formed a lot of great memories. This song brings me back.
Choice lyric: Yeah, but you gotta give in/and you gotta let go/then you can begin to come up slow like a desert rose
7 — After The Blackbird Sings (from The Wallflowers)
Revived and occasionally played live during the later years of the Wallflowers, long after it appeared on their 1992 debut album, with good reason. It’s lyrically and musically ahead of most of the songs on that raw, unpolished (but lovable!) record. Overall, underrated.
Choice lyric: She had her hands full of lightning/she rolled it down to me/a Lolita smile with a thorn in her eye
6 — Nearly Beloved (from Rebel, Sweetheart)
It’s got a unique rhythmic kick to it, along with oodles of rich, slightly surreal imagery and an (altogether too brief) keyboard solo. Also, the Rebel, Sweetheart tour was where our second set of memories was made on the road, and this song is the official “brings me back” one.
Choice lyric: Now I’m the boy spinning on the wheel there/stuck with knives
5- Asleep At The Wheel (from The Wallflowers)
I have no idea what he’s singing about in 90% of this song. Think he was covering everything up in so many layers of metaphor that it just stopped making sense altogether. But there’s something indescribable about it, not to mention the raw just-Jakob-and-guitar setup, that commands attention.
Choice lyric: Deadbeat girls and freaks at a people’s convention/all these sugars with no vitamin sensation
4 — Sleepwalker (from (Breach))
This one was actually a hit! Sort of. It’s also, in my opinion, musically the best of their rockers: confident, catchy, complex. I’ve heard that lyrically, it’s at least loosely about being a famous band (which they were, after the previous album), but the nice part is that the words are also much more broadly applicable. Plus, this song has handclaps and cleverly name-drops Sam Cooke.
Choice lyric: Maybe I could be the one they adored/that could be my reputation (or “infatuation,” in later live versions)
3 — How Far You’ve Come (live early version is what I’m picking, though a different version later appeared on Rebel, Sweetheart)
More sad cowboy at its saddest cowboy-iest, and deceptively simple lyrics that actually have great depth (much like the classic folk songs that I think this song is supposed to be like). I can’t even list how many life situations I’ve applied it to. Musically, it sounds good on the album, but early live acoustic versions have a different feel and are just gorgeous. On these versions in particular, the intro sounds the vaguest bit like “Auld Lang Syne,” which somehow fits perfectly.
Choice lyric: The truth will not set you free/it’s okay to believe you’re not good enough
2 — God Says Nothing Back (from Rebel, Sweetheart)
In a few interviews, Jakob has mentioned that he feels he really reached a new level of songwriting in this song. I think so, too. Lyrically, it manages to deal with those “big four” heavy themes — faith, love, time, death — in way that’s understated and restrained, yet powerful. From the urgent opening drumbeats all the way to the acoustic guitar solo all the way through the fading “ooohs” at the end, the music and melody are striking. It’s a “quiet” song, but it has a “this one’s special” feel from start to finish. The lack of standard verse-chorus-verse structure (something else that Jakob has mentioned in interviews about this song) gives it a constant forward movement that fits the lyrics perfectly. Without going into storytime, I’ll add that the song also has special personal meaning.
Choice lyric: Buried under leaves blood red and gold/death says nothing back but I told you so
1 — I’ve Been Delivered (from (Breach))
And we’re at №1. The song of songs. Actually, this was considered my favorite song of all songs (Wallflowers and otherwise) for a while. Now, if someone asked me my favorite song, I’d be frantically sorting through at least 10 contenders. But anyway. You know how some songs have that killer brilliant line that just hits you like a bucket of water? This song is, to continue this probably-not-apt metaphor, a waterfall. Those lines keep coming, flowing and crashing and taking your breath away. Once again, we have a non-traditional structure (pretty much one long, long verse, with some repeated and repeated-with-slight-modifications lines) that fits the mood and theme: just keep going on your way, keep searching. And the organ. Did I mention the organ and keys? They’re featured prominently in this one, with chiming, slightly carnival-like sound, and one particular loop that keeps bubbling along all throughout the song. Beautiful. Their best song on (what I think is) their best album. Severely underrated. It also has some magic quality that would allow me to remember every single word to sing along when it was (occasionally) played live, even though I’d go years without listening sometimes in fear of burning it out.
Choice lyric: Now I’d rather bleed out a long stream from being lonely/and feel blessed/than drown laying face-down in a puddle of respects
And the least favorites, not really in any particular order:
6th Avenue Heartache
The only one I will get bored with during a concert, and they played it. Every. Single. Show. For the record, I will never get tired of hearing “One Headlight” during a show.
God Don’t Make Lonely Girls
A weird choice. Every fan seems to love this one. I could never get into it. The music always seemed a little too straightforward rock, and the lyrics are vaguely uncomfortable.
From The Bottom Of My Heart
Pretty, but far too long.
Everybody Out Of The Water
This was when Jakob tried to be a heavy-guitars tough-guy rocker, in the middle of the “almost electronic” era. The same time they replaced the “O” in their logo with a star. It was a really awkward time in Wallflowers history.
Three Ways
Meh. Some interesting lines, but musically unchanging and boring. And it has that drum machine.
Health And Happiness
This is another one that everyone seems to love. I think it was ruined for me on the first listen, when I couldn’t get past how he was pronouncing “happiness,” with way too much emphasis on the second syllable (to fit the rhythm). Very distracting.
Honeybee
You have to be in the right mood to make it through the more than nine minutes it lasts.
Laughing Out Loud
Not bad, just not very memorable.
For The Life Of Me
Another “not bad, just not very memorable.” The scratchy, muddy recording quality doesn’t help.
Here In Pleasantville
Repetitive drum-machine syndrome, a la “Three Ways.” Some interesting lyrics, though.
This was a fun thought exercise. I’d like to think this top 10/bottom 10 is something I’ll do for other favorite artists, though I’m not sure I know anyone else’s full catalog well enough to be comprehensive.
