This post is part of a series counting down my favorite songs of all time. Follow the links at the bottom of this post to read related posts.
50. Gram Parsons – In My Hour of Darkness
Throughout his career, Gram Parsons strived to create a sound he envisioned as “Cosmic American Music.” Those familiar with his oeuvre know that he succeeded in this task. His music is one part Nashville, one part Neptune, a mélange of folk, rock and country injected with a heaping dose of psychedelia. Detractors may nip at the sincerity of his devotion to the Country and Americana part of the formula, but the honky tonk hippy never really strayed far from his roots. Tunes like this one or his signature song, “Hickory Wind,” testify to the fact that underneath the Nudie suits and esotericism, Parsons was just a simple country boy.
49. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Me and Mia
I could do without uplifting songs. Most of the time, they’re pretty condescending. Oh, but if you could only live up to your potential! No thanks, I’ll wallow in my own abject mediocrity, if you don’t mind. Admittedly, that veneer of cynicism sheds the moment I hear the muted chords that kick off this song. All those horrible music critic aphorisms – bristling energy, gangly speed, gnarly something or other – probably apply here. Coupled with the unbridled lyrical optimism, and it’s almost enough to give a guy ambition. Yeech.
48. James Carr – The Dark End of the Street
This brooding soul masterpiece captures the talent of one of the genre’s great also-rans, James Carr. Carr avoids the histrionics here, but still manages to effuse the emotions and drama appropriate for an illicit love affair. And that tempered baritone delivery is perfectly matched here by a sinuous arrangement of twinkling piano melodies and towering brass. The sound epitomizes the rugged grace of southern soul, a dialect that strove to a rare sort of heaviness that could only be derived from the sweat and blood of oppression and a sanctified fear of damnation.
47. The Velvet Underground – What Goes On
When John Cale left The Velvet Underground in 1968, a void consumed the band. Without his amplified viola and tempestuous avant-garde ideas, the band shifted toward a quieter, folksier sound for their third album. So while a song like “What Goes On” could have ended up akin to past fare like “White Light, White Heat,” instead, it became svelte. The guitars ring clean, and the organ drone provides an interesting contrast to the furious atonal screeches that previously provided texture to the band’s tunes. And while the spasms of sound of White Light, White Heat helped define a path forward for nascent noise rockers, here we have the blueprint for something else. It was this something that predicted the proto-punk sound of Jonathan Richman, the nervous pulse of The Feelies and the jangle of R.E.M. To put a phrase on it, this is the sound of the loudest something barely heard.
46. Pavement – Summer Babe [Winter Version]
The problem with rock and roll is that it is a completely subliminal art. The finest conveyance of the form is often manifested as an expression of koan-like simplicity. To know it is to speak the language of the soothsayer, the precocious pinheads, the ingenious nitwits and clever cretins. Three chords and the truth. On the other hand, the active conceptualization and conscious development of rock and roll as an intellectual exercise inevitably produces such atrocities as Emerson, Lake & Palmer or Phil Collins. As children of western rationality, it is especially difficult to defeat this inclination to kill simplicity with excessive scrutiny. And so I salute those who stuff a sock in the mouth of Socrates and abide by the most witless inclinations. If I could, I would bathe in this font of nonsense, noise and snot for a season.
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