100 favorite songs of all time (Part 2)

So with the first five songs are down, I’m realizing how many great songs I’ve left off this list. Not too worried about that. 100 is such a small number, especially considering the thousands of songs I’m trying to mentally sift through.

I’ve already revised the later parts of the list a few times, though. The top rankings seem more arbitrary each time I look at them, but whatever.

Anyway, let’s continue where we left off…

95. M. Ward – Paul’s Song

M. Ward wrote this song just for me. Because I’m special. It has some soaring slide guitar licks and it really isn’t all that special, especially among the equally-pleasing tunes in Ward’s catalogue of indie Americana. But it belongs to me. Get lost.

94. The Scientists – Swampland

I liked to believe that the reason Australia produces bands like The Birthday Party, Radio Birdman and The Scientists is because the population of the country is basically the offspring of bunch of British convicts. I know that’s not true, but it makes sense, right? This is outback post-punk, as brittle and sneering as anything the Queen’s punks produced. It falls somewhere between the delectable rockabilly camp of The Cramps and the languorous shuffle of grunge rock.

93. T. Rex – Mambo Sun

Marc Bolan was all style. He was a dedicated follower of fashions. It was only natural he abandoned the bongo-folk pretensions of his early stuff to help Glam, the most fashion-oriented of all rock and roll sub-cultures, blow up. And man, glam suited him so much better anyways. As an album, “Electric Warrior” is uniformly great stuff, even when it drags into dorky white-boy stomps. Most of the success is thanks to Bolan’s inventiveness. He was able to spin those tired Chuck Berry riffs with enough je ne sais quoi to stave off the doldrums. This song, it’s swagger music.

92. The Wedding Present – Brassneck

I’m relatively new to The Wedding Present, but I’ve already tracked down all their albums. I like to think of them as an English analogue to Hüsker Dü. Both bands play blindingly fast, loud and most of their best songs are fraught with naked emotion. But they’re both fun rock and roll bands. They don’t dwell so much on the self-important egotism that can come along with songs about relationships. Pretty much the best band to listen to in copious amounts when recovering from a break-up.

91. John Cale – Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend

Sometimes I listen to Lou Reed’s post-Velvet Underground albums and wonder just exactly what the guy was thinking. Don’t get me wrong; I like a few of his songs. “Perfect Day” is a beauty and “Street Hassle” is just the right amount of epic. But God, Reed had such a horrible batting average as a solo artist. It’s especially apparent when you compare his career to John Cale. For every half-decent Lou Reed song, Cale shat out an album of wonky gold. And while Reed descended into schlock, Cale predicted the tortured manias of punk rock, delighted in pop experimentation and mangled the classics in a coke-fueled craze. This tune is a great example of his range. The syncopations on the album version hint at some kind of mutant reggae filtered through the lens of avant-garde piano rock. And what was Lou Reed doing? He was chooglin’ with Rick Wakeman and sticking Don Cherry’s horn god-knows-where.

This post is part of a series counting down my favorite songs of all time. Follow the links below to read related posts.

1-5 | 6-10 | 11-15 | 16-20 | 21-25 | 26-30 | 31-35 | 36-40 | 41-45 | 46-50 | 51-55 | 56-60 | 61-65 | 66-70 | 71-75 | 76-80 | 81-85 | 86-90 | 91-95 | 96-100 |