100 Favorite Songs of All Time (Part 14)

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.

35. Neil Young – Tell Me Why

Like Otis Redding, this list should be filled with Neil Young songs. Instead, I trimmed the list down to this succinct acoustic number. As evidenced by tunes like “Cortez the Killer,” “Ambulance Blues” or “Cowgirl in the Sand,” Young is a sprawling sort of songwriter. His guitar solos are like impressionist swipes across the vast steam-of-conscious landscape of his lyricism. Often, he moseys from one idea to the next. In general, I prefer that side of Young. But he could write pristine folk pop, too. This song is just so fragile, you want to touch it. But you mustn’t touch.

34. Mission of Burma – Academy Fight Song

Sometimes I wish I heard this song when I was younger. Like around the age 14 or so. That would be the perfect age to hear this song for the first time. Instead, I can only imagine what it would be like to be a snotty, unctuous brat and come across this burst of self-involved anti-conformist rhetoric. It reeks of a certain kind of irony that would appeal to my 14-year-old self. If I ever have kids, I’d be sure to subject them to this song often and early. And really, that’s the dream of every parent: to provide his children with all of things denied in his own youth.

33. David Bowie – Station to Station

For the longest time, I was pretty ambivalent about Bowie. I’d heard Ziggy Stardust, found Low in a second-hand record shop in Walla Walla and enjoyed a smattering of other songs. But his stuff never really resonated with me until I heard Station to Station. Between that album and Young Americans, I really started to find a side of Bowie that appealed to me. During this time, he’s obviously in a transition period between his vision of plastic soul pop and Teutonic-inspired experimentation. So you get this blend of downbeat drone, syncopated drumming and angular guitar riffs that coalesces into something pretty epic. Admittedly, funky Bowie can be pretty cornball, but I dig it pretty well.

32. OutKast – B.O.B.

I am of the opinion that OutKast is the best pop group of my youth. If such things can be quantified, I’d also call them the most important. But that’s just fancy talk for saying they could write some pretty infectious pop tunes. For me, their major pop hits define a period that spans the late 90s through to the early 00s, peaking with the release of Stankonia. Even though “B.O.B.” didn’t chart as well as other singles from Stankonia, it still stands out to me. I don’t think I’d heard much like it at the time: it was blippy, there were guitar solos and it was fucking anthemic. In many ways that whole album opened my ears to different sounds, effectively laying the ramparts for the likes of George Clinton, the gorgeous cacophony of Sun Ra and the legendary big beat and boom-bap practitioners of yesteryear. Needless to say, this song played a large part in the development of my musical tastes.

31. Fela Kuti – Zombie

Some songs just blow you away the first time you hear them. “Zombie” is one of those songs. If you’ve never heard it before, you owe to yourself to buy it, steal it, find it somehow. I recommend stripping down to your skivvies and laying it on at full blast. Dance like you have a fever, flit about like possessed by some demon of rhythm. You won’t be able to help it. At least that’s what I’ve found. I bought this album on CD from a beachside record store in Laguna Beach run by this hippy surfer dude. When I brought it up to the register, the dude just gave me this knowing nod. I’m pretty sure I ended up playing this song on repeat for about a month. As an aside, my biggest regret: not buying this album on vinyl from Tonevendor, the fantastic independent record store that used to exist just down the street from The Beat on J Street in Sacramento.

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