Daily Top Songs

Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Donna Summer “I Feel Love”

TimD — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:04:59 +0000

Today Donna Summer appears to have passed away. For many of us Donna Summer was a staple of Lite radio with songs like “Last Dance” and “Hot Stuff”, likely not the coolest thing going but solid pop radio songs non the less. For me as I grew into my appreciation of a variety of genres Donna Summer very quickly became something else. The song “I Feel Love” would have been a strange experiment in almost any era, Summer coos over the robotic production of Italy’s Giorgio Moroder, an electronic music pioneer and a driving influence of everyone from Kraftwerk to LCD Soundsystem.

“I Feel Love” still sounds and feels monumental, it’s sprawling eight minute run time offering a chance for the ethereal vocals of Summer and the insanely groovey production to really sew themselves into your brain. The song in many ways still feels ahead of it’s time offering guidance to artists as diverse as indie electro weirdos Chromatics, huge pop songstress Robyn and Germany’s Lindstrøm.

RIP Donna Summer.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Lou Reed “New York Telephone Conversation”

TimD — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:20:27 +0000

By Tim Duffy

Lou Reed has been called by some “the Man Who Brought Art To Rock.” It is a lofty title but with Reed’s association with Andy Warhol, his roots in New York loft spaces and his interest in everything from poetry and painting, to film work and performance art it seems he merits the title. Sometimes though, Lou Reed was downright goofy. For almost every “Heroine” in his catalog there is a “Lonesome Cowboy Bill” goofing off on another record. For every “Perfect Day” there is a “New York Telephone Conversation.”

“New York Telephone Conversation” manages to sound like the cheese ball theme song to a Woody Allen movie while still leaving Lou Reed looking cool as a cucumber in it’s center. His heavy New York(nearly Long Island) accent and the silly theatricality of the piano make the song one of his silliest and somehow it all works out okay.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Brian Eno “Here He Comes”

TimD — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:22:09 +0000

By Tim Duffy

With all the focus on “Brian Eno weird sonic innovator” it often feels like “Brian Eno weird pop songwriter” gets short-shrift. On four of his first five records Brian Eno spent most of the time brewing up strange pop songs that included some more ear catching versions of the sort of strange atmospheric ephemera that would define his later solo work.

Before And After Science was in many ways his last pop album and “Here He Comes” was in a lot of senses the pinnacle of his pop songwriting. Listening back on the song’s rich melody and simple sentiment you almost expect to here the song on a classic AM hits radio compilation.

The song does include a subtly strange instrumental passage at it’s center but the whole thing feels so familiar and knowable that it almost surprises you that something so straight forward would spill from Eno’s brain. His voice is plain but perfectly enveloped in the sound of the record. Nobody makes them like this anymore because frankly no one ever made pop songs quite like Brian Eno.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Gang of Four “Anthrax”

TimD — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:58:06 +0000

By Tim Duffy

I recall an interview with Radiohead before the release of their iconoclastic Kid A record. An executive worried to the person writing the Spin Magazine article that Thom Yorke might think of Radiohead as “more of an art project than a band.” Upon discussing this with the writer Thom flipped shit, stating aloud that R.E.M., Nirvana and others were always more art than band and what the fuck kind of thing to say was that anyway?

The bands that came out of early punk and especially out of the post-punk explosion were more art project than band. Gang of Four in particular, while often recording catchy punk rock songs, seemed to have a conceptual bent to their music. Never more so perhaps than in the song “Anthrax” a piece of music that might as well have been an art instillation in it’s exploration of a subject matter.

The songs sound is a wash of feedback that leads into a wobbly base line. There are two vocals, one a slightly miffed definition of love song in a frank plane way with a catchy easy to get melody. The other was a spoken diatribe about the nature of talking about love in pop songs. The whole thing culminates in a beautiful button at the end tying the whole thing together before going back into the wash of feedback that began things:

“Love will get you like a case of anthrax and that’s something I don’t want to catch.”

It was an art project first and a pop song second, but a pop song none the less.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Nirvana “I Hate Myself And I Want To Die”

TimD — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:08:56 +0000

By Tim Duffy

When I was a tyke we bought cassette tapes and listened to them until they wore straight through. One of my favorites was the 1993 release The Beavis And Butthead Experience. The compilation featured contributions from Primus, Anthrax, Run DMC, and the pretty much totally forgotten Jackyl(they played Woodstock 94 yo!). Each of these songs were shittier and less necessary than the next.

The tape however opens, after some brief patter from Beavis and Butthead themselves, with a stone cold Nrivana classic named prophetically “I Hate Myself And I Want To Die.” The song has a grueling guitar tone among the best in the Nirvana catalog and one of their catchiest and most pummeling choruses as well. Strange to think that Kurt Cobain would drop such a gem on such a corporate endeavor. It makes you wonder just how much Beavis and Butthead Kurt was happily watching at the time.

I hear this song and am immediately brought back to my yellow Sony Walkman. I remember listening to the song, stopping, rewinding and repeating for a seemingly unending loop in 1993 through 1994.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Liars “Tumbling Walls Buried Us With Debris And ESG”

TimD — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:22:26 +0000

By Tim Duffy

“Tumbling Walls Buried Us With Debris And ESG” is one of a collection of essentially perfect post punk from Liars stellar debut They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top. The repetitively tight and hauntingly simple groove that the song rides beginning to end is a clear wink at New York’s ESG, one of the most sampled bands in early hip-hop and a beacon of simplistic dance music that guided the early work of the Liars as they came to define Brooklyn rock in the early aughts.

The lyrics are hypnotic and repetitive:

“I’d rather be lost than found
Rather be heard than right
Rather be sick than dead
Rather be loved than not loved”

The song is plays out like a ritualistic chant of the time. “Leave your work at home, put down your briefcase.” It feels like dark shit being spewed by such a menacing band but it is really just a playful harassment of the trust-funders who first came to define Brooklyn in the late 90′s and by this time were it’s cultural center.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Schoolboy Q festuring A$AP Rocky “Hand On the Wheel”

TimD — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:24:20 +0000

By Tim Duffy

Sometimes a hip-hop track “drops” and makes me flip my lid for a week before quickly falling into the darkest recesses of my iPod never to be heard from again. Generally it is hard to tell exactly which songs will have this quality and which will stand apart and remain entertaining months after first listens.

Schoolboy Q’s “Hand On The Wheel featuring A$AP Rocky” seemed a very good candidate for the sort of brief fling listening experience I just described but here I am 5 months out from first hearing the track and I am still psyched about it. Built on a hook from a Lissie cover of Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” the song could really function without any rapping at all. Instead both Schoolboy Q and A$AP Rocky are compelling, charismatic and downright hooky all over the track.

Hearing someone sample a cover of a Kid Cudi song could have killed this song for me if the production was not so expertly executed and familiarly exciting.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: ABBA “Love Isn’t Easy(But It Sure IS Hard Enough)”

TimD — Tue, 08 May 2012 18:16:31 +0000

By Tim Duffy

I prefer Abba to the Beatles. I’m not saying they are more important or more innovative or more influential. I am simply saying they are better. I am not going to qualify this statement with a “my opinion” because reality being mostly based in perception, my opinion is the only one that matters. I am the one typing after all.

Abba’s songs fill me with a joy that the Beatles simply can not and the fact that much of their catalog has not been canonized in quite the same over done way the Beatles’ has means there are songs that can pop up on shuffle and reveal themselves at just the right moment. Sitting around with friends last night I shared my latest favorite Abba song, “Love Isn’t Easy(But It Sure Is Hard Enough).”

The song expertly combines the male and female vocal side of Abba’s dynamic, wisely favoring the female side in explosive choruses that explode with Bjorn’s less show stopping male voice heading up the opening of each verse. The song manages to take in a sharply used explosion sound, some fantastically just wordy enough lyrics, and about three hooks in it’s brief span all while lamenting the difficulties and necessity of love.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Beastie Boys(Adam Yauch) “I Don’t Know”

TimD — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:20:00 +0000

By Tim Duffy

On Friday a legend and a personal icon of everything that being a great music fan and a great person should mean Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys passed away. When I found out that he’d passed away I felt sadder than I had about any celebrity passing in recent memory. Perhaps only Kurt Cobain’s death rattled me so specifically. I am nearly 30 and for most of my life Adam Yauch aka MCA was a beacon of what being cool, smart and forward moving were all about.

On Friday and into Saturday I listened to Paul’s Boutique(my favorite), License To Ill, Check Your Head, but before I put any of those records on I put on 1998′s Hello Nasty. Many people slag Hello Nasty but to me it is one of the best distillations of everything the Beastie’s ever did. The songs are funny, high minded, genre bending and forward looking. It was the album that the Beastie Boys became elder statesmen in the same vein of contemporaries like R.E.M.

The album features three songs where one at a time the Beastie’s take to the mic and sing. For Adam Yauch’s contribution he sings a torch song of sorts about confusion and trying to move meaningfully forward in life. It was a song that seemed to underline the greater journey of his whole life. It was a beautiful piece of pop music from a man who had changed the contours of what that phrase meant. In the face of his death the confusion, hope and slight hint of sadness felt just right. I will miss Adam Yauch more than I can really think of any other deceased celebrity. For me he was and will always be a force of the sort of guiding principals we should all try and uphold.

RIP Adam Yauch, RIP MCA.

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Today’s “Best Song Ever”: Cat Power “Nude As the News”

TimD — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:27:21 +0000

By Tim Duffy

Chan Marshal aka Cat Power has one of the most affecting voices in indie rock. For many that voice first came to focus on the classic slab of indie rock that is What Would the Community Think? That album’s stand out cut was probably the mildly menacing “Nude As The News.”

“Nude As The News” has a distinctive catchy riff in the subtly rocking indie rock fashion. The song sounds weirdly hollow on an instrumental level offering Chan a lot of room to make the song, as all of the Cat Power catalog is, about her. As things move forward the song reaches a fantastic climax with Chan Marshal’s vocals reaching their aggressive zenith. “Nude As The News, Nude As The News, All Over All Over All Over Yooou,” it is one of the best vocal performances of the entire indie rock genre.

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