My 20 Greatest Songs of All Time
Time to tell a story once more.
Rolling Stone updated it’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time very recently and it was certainly…different. Compared to it’s previous update in 2004, the list recognises the last 30 or so years of music in a much more substantial sense (that doesn’t start and end with Nirvana). Suddenly it feels relevant, while still retaining the realisation that the songs from 60’s and 70’s will forever be bangers.
As is apparently the MO of Rolling Stone it somehow comes across as both controversial and safe. The placing of some songs feels like an anticipation, uncomfortably sitting next to the stone cold classics. Most likely we’ll become comfortable with the placings as we recognise that music is still pretty great now as it was back when Muddy Waters, Elvis and Miles Davis were hitting halos.
That’s the difficulty with a hugely evolving art form. The song has taken on a million different styles the last twenty years.
Listening to Drake’s or Kanye’s latest two hour ramblings show an industry where the biggest artists’s have no idea where the boundaries are anymore, so the fans are left with sifting through stacks of needles to find a needle.
Where does the singular song lie nowadays? The record that changes your life the moment you hear it? The one you continuously, obsessively hit repeat on?
We are in limbo. Like most things in life right now. But Rolling Stone’s release at least provides a chance to look back on the those moments within an album where a song completely transported you to a place you never knew existed, and never wanted to leave.
With that in mind, and with my capacity to string sentences together fragmenting by the second, here’s my contribution to the best songs I’ve ever heard in my damn life.
Some you may have heard of, some you may have not, but I encourage you to have a listen and if the mood takes you, to explore these artist’s works as much as you can.
20. All Along The Watchtower — Jimi Hendrix
An apocalyptic tirade that Hendrix somehow held back with some of the most searing guitar play in history. Reality breaks down listening to him turn his guitar into a holy weapon.
19. Strawberry Fields Forever — The Beatles
John Lennon knew how to connect to the world and yet Strawberry Fields Forever is all about the loss of childhood. That moment of remembrance that’s made up of a life we wished we had.
18. Desolation Row — Bob Dylan
A Homeric epic that closes Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited record in such a way that you are left dizzy and ecstatic with the foreboding and devastating tale he’s taken you on.
17. Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag — James Brown
One could argue that this is the true birth of hip-hop. In the primordial chalice that was Brown’s intense, ultimate funk soul. So much of hip-hop is indebted to the Godfather of Soul, and this song is the nexus point.
16. Paper Planes — M.I.A
Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam is never shy. Paper Planes screams from the parapet about the injustice that immigrants are subjected to. Lyrics that eviscerate governments over genocide, racism and brutal foreign policy in a bleakly satirical tone that doesn’t take any prisoners.
15. Life On Mars — David Bowie
The Thin White Duke was a master of transition. Life on Mars appears as transition personified. A song from another world. An alien looking in on our society, flabbergasted and distraught by what it’s seen. Bowie knew how to skewer celebrity, fame and power more than any other pop/rock star during the most hedonistic times. Life on Mars is his apex.
14. What I’d Say — Ray Charles
How can you not get jamming as Charles and his crew start bopping and moaning during the second half of What I’d Say. People got offended in the 50’s as fun was personified. Rock, Soul and RnB were being fused together with this song that once more altered pop music history.
13. Billie Jean — Michael Jackson
Eternally remembered as the first song heard when I began playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. That is not a slight. Billie Jean is the epitome of the 80’s, the pinnacle of Jackson’s mastery of pop. We were one with the decade whenever the song was played.
12. Time — Pink Floyd
One of the darkest and most foreboding songs recorded by a band that always had the spectre of The End shadowing it. Breaking in with clocks, an ironic metronome and heavy chords, Time encapsulates Pink Floyd’s constant yet futile existential search for meaning in a cold, dead universe.
11. Smells Like Teen Spirit — Nirvana
‘Teen Spirit has gone beyond a mere song. Or an anthem. Or a genre/decade/artist defining track. It has achieved a level of being that I’m not sure any other song has reached. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is up to the ear of the listener.
10. Runaway — Kanye West
As difficult as Kanye has been ever since the release of Yeezus, and the yearning of the days when his music wasn’t overshadowed by whatever weird stunt he went for that was disguised as either a church service or fashion release, Runaway still hits as hard as it did when it was first released. An epic nine minute distillation of the eternal contradiction that lies at the heart of Kanye’s music that he most likely will never top. If this is his pinnacle then it is a most glorious pinnacle.
9. God Only Knows — The Beach Boys
A song about love that recognises that it will end one way or another. A devastating counterpoint to 60’s revolution of free love and the infinite possibilities. It bleeds with such heartrending tenderness will shake you to the core. Would be a very odd first dance at a wedding song, that’s for sure.
8. B.O.B-Bombs Over Baghdad — Outkast
I’m not going to say Outkast are underrated but damn, the idea of Outkast should be pulled back to the essence of their work. B.O.B encapsulates the turn of the millennium and the world pivoting on the events of 9/11 with such raw power that you’d be forgiven for feeling bludgeoned by the righteous fury the Atlanta duo explode with.
7. Paranoid Android — Radiohead
Ominous. Prescient. Terrifying. It becomes more relevant with every year that passes. Shifting tone and themes as if Thom Yorke has gone schizophrenic amongst a world that has become brutally isolated and dehumanised. The comparison of pig skin and humans still gets me every time.
6. Respect — Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin and Freddie Mercury are my 1a and 1b picks for most dynamic and compelling voices in all of music. Respect has Aretha purring, probing and attacking in a masterful vocal display that remains as powerful and relevant today.
5. Hey Jude — The Beatles
4. All My Friends — LCD Soundsystem
3. Bohemian Rhapsody — Queen
2. Stairway To Heaven — Led Zeppelin
- A Day In The Life — The Beatles
