Gettin’ close to the top!
Playlists: Amazon and Spotify.
- #40 “Down in It” – Nine Inch Nails: I don’t remember exactly when I first heard Nine Inch Nails, but I do remember going to a practice for a play and showing people my copy of Pretty Hate Machine. I got a lot of looks of “what the…?” at the time.
- #39 “Hope I Never Lose My Wallet” – Mighty Mighty Bosstones: This song is very much in the same vein of “The Impression That I Get”. Or better said, the latter is in the same vein as the former. “Hope I Never Lose My Wallet” is the finest of old school Bosstones.
- #38 “Kings of the Wild Frontier” – Adam & the Ants: Somehow, Adam & the Ants never get the due they deserve for recording some real cool music.
- #37 “Free Fallin'” – Tom Petty: This song could easily be unlistenable – insipid, boring and generic. Yet, somehow, Tom Petty reached into the song and made it unforgettable. A tale of disappointment, regret and sadness yet a pop masterstroke. Yet, somehow, a song that samples it will be coming up even higher on this list.
- #36 “Sabotage” – Beastie Boys: Few people know or acknowledge the Beastie Boys hardcore roots, but in what is by far their best song, they merge the hardcore and the hip hop masterfully.
- #35 “The Fly” – U2: Just think how people who last heard U2 on Rattle & Hum must have reacted to this. Their band had become clanking, grinding, distorted. The schism starts here and it was never healed.
- #34 “Girlfriend” – Matthew Sweet: Once we get into the top 40, you could put most of these songs in almost any order. For high school me, hearing this power pop guitar anthem and seeing the anime-themed video (on 120 Minutes I think) that went with it was pure magic.
- #33 “Jesus Built My Hot Rod” – Ministry: It is hard to really love Ministry, mostly because Al doesn’t want to be loved. So, it kind of makes sense that my favorite Ministry song is actually fronted by Gibby Haynes. Speed metal, industrial, what might become known as grindcore.
- #32 “Fallin'” – Teenage Fanclub & De La Soul: Here it is, that song that samples “Free Fallin'”. Judgement Night was many things but mostly it was a soundtrack so far ahead of its time.
- #31 “After You” – Pulp: Weird, right? The last Pulp single that didn’t even ripple in the States is this high. Released over a decade after the Pulp’s previous single, this was a tease of what a James Murphy-produced Pulp album might have been. Yet, all we get is this one masterpiece.
- #30 “Personal Jesus” – Depeche Mode: The first album I ever bought myself (on cassette!) was Violator. The foot stomping banger that is “Personal Jesus” was why. Me at 13 had never heard such a sound.
- #29 “Hunger Strike” – Temple of the Dog: Grunge was a strange time. The sound literally took over rock and roll, yet I find myself with very few true “grunge” songs on this list. Temple of the Dog wasn’t even directly one of the big players of grunge. They were part Pearl Jam, part Soundgarden, all coming from the ashes of Mother Love Bone. Yet, few “duets” seem so natural as Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell.
- #28 “X, Y & Zee” – Pop Will Eat Itself: I have always been a sucker for British music, yet no band really personified the quest I took finding their albums in the States like PWEI. That mission was launched by the song, the ultimate Madchaster dance song.
- #27 “It’s a Sin” – Pet Shop Boys: Maybe the most important song of the 1980’s for a whole variety of musical and thematic reasons.
- #26 “Common People” – Pulp: Jarvis Cocker has always sang from the working class perspective, maybe like a disco Billy Bragg. Not only does “Common People” tackle the class differences, but it also indicts the upper crust. The song builds and builds like a mini-revolution with Jarvis leading the way.
- #25 “The Ship Song” – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Nick Cave might be most famous for his dark side, but it is the tender Nick Cave that sets him apart. Very few songs really make me choke up almost every time like “The Ship Song” does. The way that Nick crawls from the verse to the chorus, he’s singing up to the balcony.
- #24 “Lola” – Kinks: Is this song appropriate? Who is being wronged? Anyone? Ray Davies really skirts a fine line yet the dry wit of the song makes it absolutely captivating. A real pop anomaly.
- #23 “Johnny Mathis’ Feet” – American Music Club: Mark Eitzel really nailed a song about feeling like a failure in the eyes of a success.
- #22 “Heart of Glass” – Blondie: When I first heard this song (junior high?), I just lumped it in with all disco. This really meant I thought it was goofy and not particular good. Over the intervening 30 years, how that worm has turned.
- #21 “Losing My Edge” – LCD Soundsystem: I might have been in my mid-twenties when this song came out, but even then I got the whole “getting older is hard” thing that James Murphy nailed: “But I’m losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent … and they’re actually really, really nice.“
The Intellectual Thicket 