The Only 10 Songs Worth Listening To
Is this headline a trick? A way to get people to read? Yes. Yes it is.
This list makes my girlfriend mad. After reading a preliminary draft of this article she mentioned several songs that I needed to include. I vetoed all of them and subsequently heard the four words every writer wishes to hear, “your list is bad.” I’m serious. Creating a list of ten songs and calling them “perfect” does nothing if not court controversy. A sizable portion of the mediasphere makes its money off lists like this one. By writing this I hope to get a couple extra readers, or at the very least, some digital opprobrium thrown my way.
But I also want to talk about perfection.
Perfection, as more than a few people have argued, does not exist. Mere mortals such as us do not traffic in the realms of perfection. Despite it being out of reach, we did not leave it alone. While perfection busied itself not existing, thinkers also fashioned it into the enemy of greatness, and something to strive for. With the spacious digs afforded to it by living in the eye of many a beholder, perfection captured the attention of many an artist and philosopher. While I claim neither title, I too have been captivated by the pursuit of perfection. I believe that perfection reveals itself much more readily than people generally admit.
While questions of taste, culture, upbringing, etc. etc., all influence people’s taste, when quizzed, anyone can readily name more than a few pieces of art they think of as perfect. Whether it’s a Kubrick Film, a Guanzhong novel, a Dickinson poem, a Le Corbusier building, or Kirby comic, people can generally come up with a list of stuff they think of as perfect. Perfection finds its beauty in that variance.
Not accounting for the variety remains the biggest problem with people’s idea of perfection. Perfection is not static. Perfection does not sit, symmetrical and rigid, collecting dust on some mental shelf. Perfection constantly shifts, molding itself to whatever transformations and changes the beholder has undergone. What I understand as perfect will change the instant I understand it as that. In that mutability is beauty. Humans, consciously or not, build our versions of perfection, each as unique and variable as the next.
This act of creation ties us to the artists making what becomes perfect in our minds. It binds humanity together. This idea of perfection at first seem rather alienating. How can we possibly understand one another if our visions of perfection rest upon a series of life events and interactions so personal as to be incomprehensible to others? But perfection does not exist in the vacuum of the individual. Perfection arises through interaction, it cannot exist without it. Through interacting with art, with family, with friends, with community, we all build links and shared nodes of understanding among one another. In this way we create a shared legibility. A legibility which connects us.
My current criteria for a perfect song – generally under 3 minutes, upbeat, probably involving a guitar – does not match up with my girlfriend’s. But because of the connections between our ever-developing ideas of perfection, we can understand those differences. We remain legible to one another.
So keep that in mind as you read this list. Labeling these songs alone as perfect does not constitute an attack on your perfect songs, in fact does the opposite. I wish this to become a call for deep understanding, a contribution to our collective understanding of perfection. And, to constitute a list of straight bangers top-to-bottom.
Here’s a link to a Spotify Playlist with all the songs except one. Follow this link to find the other one.
Slip Away – Perfume Genius
The movie Booksmart introduced me to this song. A dark, propulsive song that washes over you in waves, this song makes me feel as if I’m swimming in the bottom of the ocean without scuba gear, but in a good way. This song feels like being hit right between the eyes with a velvet hammer. Best practice for listening to this song involve speakers or headphones that can handle a little bass. That goes for the whole list.
Marijuanaut’s Theme – Sleep
I hadn’t even heard of this band until a year ago. I don’t really like any of their other songs. At its core it is a very silly song. I mean Marijuanaut? C’mon. But the weight of this song, and the feeling that Sleep puts into it, give it a sonic majesty that few bands have been able to reach and maintain over the course of a song. This song would not feel out of place being played in the cockpit during a NASA shuttle launch. And it ends with a bitchin’ guitar solo
Keep the Customer Satisfied – Simon and Garfunkel
Whooo baby, the horns on this bad boy. Mein Gott! The, I think, bari sax goes hard. For me, not much better than a ripping horn line exists in this world. People usually think of Simon and Garfunkel as a mellow, slow, sincere group. This song proves that they could rock when they wanted to. A catchy melody, and the aforementioned horns really make this a piece of solid pop gold.
June 21st – Jeff Rosenstock
This song has appeared multiple times in Dang, Dude. The second half of a two-part song, it clocks in at a wonderfully short one minute and four seconds. This song comes in like a burst of sunshine after a long rain, a tulip bulb blooming after a harsh winter, a 9th inning walk-off home run. Eminently sing-a-long-able, my dream involves leading a crowd of two hundred people in singing in this song at a crowded karaoke bar.
Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World
A new song for me that I found through the amazing, and slightly terrifying, Richmond Anthology of Music. I could listen to the pianos that come in during the second half of this song for eternity. I’m currently midwifing a sourdough starter and contemplated playing this song to the starter to make it into a stronger bread. I will always fall for a good “Woah” and this has them in multitudes.
Damn Thing – Pistol Annies
Been washed in the blood of the Lamb
And I washed blood off of my hands
And I can't do a damn thing about it
Been taught to love but I love to hate
And my mama tried, for Heaven's sake
I can't do a damn thing about it
This is the first verse of Damn Thing and I’ve yet to hear a better opener. The Pistol Annies have three lead singers and they all work together on this song. The melding of voices allows for close harmonies, beautiful tones, and a wall of sound that instead of threatening to crush you, raises you above it all. Best listened to while sitting on a porch, drinking a beverage, and hanging out.
Lay You Down – Nikki Lane
Nikki Lane has a great story. I won’t repeat it here, but she’s worth reading up on. More than her story, a blitzed out of her mind Lane also once took a picture with me and some of my friends after a show, so I’m a fan forever. This song in particular is a late-night jam. If you can’t drive down a country road at 10pm with your significant other while listening to this song, than I suggest you imagine doing that while listening to this song. Damn, I’m crine (for my less meme-literate readers, this is a reference to a meme)
Revenge! – Spoon
This is a song I know only because it was included on a Creative Commons CD published by the magazine Wired at some point in the first decade of 2000. It is not on Spotify but it is on YouTube. The drum section is forever embedded in my brain folds. An absolute train, this song chugs along, an unstoppable force never meeting its twin immovable object. Spoon isn’t really known for making songs like this anymore, but they proved that they had it in them the whole time.
July, July! – The Decemberists
It’s hack to like The Decemberists. They’re the epitome of early 2000s hipster indie rock bands with their heads up their ass. But they avoided all the usual traps of those types of bands when making this song. The phrase “rattle chicken chains” really is melodic beyond belief. A rather gruesome song that doesn’t sound like it all, my preferred time to listen to this song is when mowing a giant yard in the middle of summer.
Velvet Elvis – Kacey Musgraves
Velvet Elvis is a song best played indoors in a wood-paneled room, surrounded by overstuffed furniture, a whiskey glass in your hand while you spin around your carpeted floor. A woozy, almost suffocating song, Velvet Elvis defines the term “atmospheric.” I almost spent $125 on a used crushed velvet suit because of this song.