When friend of the blog Nick “Just heard the Byrds rendition of Mr. Tambourine Man for the first time. It's terrible!” Farruggia asked me among others for a top 50 songs in response to the new Rolling Stone 500, I took it as an excuse to throw out my plans for a “greatest AEW matches to date” post of interest to exactly one subscriber and do my own canon reshuffle. I last compiled an All-Time 99 in March 2008, and while it’s, you know, pretty good, that was half my serious listening life ago if we date that from ninth grade, and I should, in theory, now have a much broader view of the pop past than what I cribbed from Harry Smith and Ken Burns. Plus it’s fun to work out exactly how high “Super Bass” places in the grand scheme.
I toyed with the idea of banning the Seventies, because it’s the most overrepresented decade in these kinds of lists and because the Seventies suck, but I couldn’t bring myself to hold that against “Disco Inferno”. Instead I decided to leave out everyone in the top 30 on Acclaimed Music’s artists list (28 male plus Madonna and the Velvets, so you know), unless the song made my top forty. This freed up eight to ten slots for more interesting entries, if you consider Aimee Mann interesting. Otherwise I tried to be as honest as I could as to what my favorite songs are right now, though I did make an effort to search for contenders at the edges of my comfort zone—metal, (electronic) dance (music), songs not in English, jazz from after jazz stopped doing singles—without much payoff except for deciding that David S. Ware’s intro to the live “The Way We Were” is the greatest extended improvised solo ever. I didn’t make a distinction between “songs” and “singles” (let alone “tracks”) even though that distinction remains useful enough at times that I want to reclaim it from the pedants someday. I did run a mental “is this song mostly here because I love the album” check that continues Sleater-Kinney’s rough few years on and off this blog. No morals clause was directly applied, though I don’t guarantee that “Be My Baby” falling from fourth to 61st is unrelated to P. Spector’s conviction.
Fifty-five songs repeat from the 2008 edition; the highest entry from the old list that missed out this time was former #12 “Attention Na SIDA”, though Franco does well enough. I know many people who make singles lists say they might change everything if they re-did their list tomorrow, but things might be different for those of us who’ve been making favorite songs lists since before their serious listening life began. Number one was pretty obvious from the beginning, and I’m confident the top seven are the correct songs in the correct order; after that a certain margin of error creeps in, but at the bottom it’s more like ten songs than fifty. The major philosophical change is how conservative I’ve become about placing newer songs. In 2008 I put Robyn’s “With Every Heartbeat” at number eight a few months after I first heard (which it turns out was about right.) Now it takes about five years for a song to fully vest in my mind. The newest entry is Metric’s 2018 “Now or Never Now”, at a lowly #84. Let’s declare No-No Boy’s “The Best Goddamn Band in Wyoming”, which currently feels to me like the best song since then, an honorary #100, and give it good odds of making the next edition. The Anglophone bias is still quite bad; I need to spend the next few years working out which is the great Rail Band tracks, plus hopefully by next time I’ll have a clear (and positive) enough perspective on K-pop to place a few songs. 99 songs is sufficient for a list that’s vaguely representative of my taste by era but not really by genre and definitely not by artist—that James Brown is on there and Taylor Swift is not doesn’t necessarily imply I think Brown is a greater recording artist than Swift. In fact
Just give us the list before you get yourself into trouble
The number in parentheses is the song’s position in 2008. Years are release for studio tracks and recording for live ones; probably some are wrong. Here’s a Sp_t_fy playlist for your convenience; embeds are added for songs with mediocre streaming numbers.
1(2). New Order: “Temptation” [Substance version] (1987)
2(-). Clarence Williams’ Blue Five: “Cake Walking Babies (from Home)” (1925)
3(25). Spice Girls: “Wannabe” (1996)
4(-). Elizabeth Morris: “Optimism” (2013)
5(3). Funky 4 + 1: “That’s the Joint” (1981)
6(1). The Beatles: “She Loves You” (1963)
7(38). Thelonious Monk: “Brilliant Corners” (1957)
8(17). Amy Rigby: “Don’t Ever Change” (2003)
9(-). Franco & San Mangwana: “Coopération” (1982)
10(47). Sam Cooke: “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1964)
11(8). Robyn & Kleerup: “With Every Heartbeat” (2007)
12(21). Duke Ellington: “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” [Victor version] (1927)
13(-). Nicki Minaj: “Super Bass” (2011)
14(18). Straitjacket Fits: “She Speeds” (1988)
15(66). Joni Mitchell: “River” (1971)
16(15). Frank Sinatra: “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (1956)
17(53). Nirvana: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991)
18(62). Amerie ft. Eve: “1 Thing” (2005)
19(22). Franco & OK Jazz: “Très Impoli” (1984)
20(9). Fats Domino: “Blueberry Hill” (1956)
21(-). Geto Boys: “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” (1991)
22(6). Louis Armstrong: “Star Dust” [vocal version] (1931)
23(92). James Brown: “Cold Sweat” (1967)
24(43). King Tubby & Augustus Pablo: “King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown” (1974)
25(-). Rilo Kiley: “A Town Called Luckey” (2005)
26(94). Hank Williams: “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” (1949)
27(-). Roosevelt Graves and Brother: “I’ll Be Rested (When the Roll Is Called)” (1936)
28(95). Drive-By Truckers: “Outfit” (2003)
29(13). Pet Shop Boys: “Being Boring” (1990)
30(59). George Jones: “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (1980)
31(-). K. Michelle: “Build a Man Intro/Build a Man” (2014)
32(27). The Jackson 5: “I Want You Back” (1969)
33(-). The Trammps: “Disco Inferno” (1976)
34(7). Television: “Marquee Moon” (1977)
35(-). Natasha Bedingfield: “These Words” (2004)
36(-). David S. Ware Quartet: “The Way We Were” [live] (1998)
37(5). Sisters Underground: “In the Neighbourhood” (1994)
38(-). Duke Ellington: “Take the “A” Train” (1941)
39(10). New Order: “Bizarre Love Triangle” (1986)
40(11). Bob Dylan: “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” (1963)
41(91). Afrika Bambaataa: “Looking for the Perfect Beat” (1982)
42(-). Zane Campbell: “Layaway Plan” (2015)
43(31). The Five Satins: “In the Still of the Nite” (1956)
44(-). Martina McBride: “Independence Day” (1994)
45(24). Billie Holiday: “Fine and Mellow” [The Sound of Jazz live version] (1957)
46(-). My Chemical Romance: “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” (2004)
47(88). The Shirelles: “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (1960)
48(-). B-Rock & the Bizz: “MyBabyDaddy” (1997)
49(89). The Drifters: “There Goes My Baby” (1959)
50(-). Jens Lekman: “Waiting for Kirsten” (2011)
51(45). Lucinda Williams: “Passionate Kisses” (1988)
52(61). Sex Pistols: “Anarchy in the U.K.” (1976)
53(-). Baby D: “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” (1992)
54(72). The Orioles: “It’s Too Soon to Know” (1948)
55(48). Coleman Hawkins: “Body and Soul” (1939)
56(-). Randy Newman: “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country” (2008)
57(56). The Flamingos: “I Only Have Eyes for You” (1959)
58(28). Public Enemy: “Bring the Noise” (1987)
59(-). Beatrice Eli: “Girls” (2014)
60(41). Orchestra Super Mazembe: “Shauri Yako” (1983)
61(4). The Ronettes: “Be My Baby” (1963)
62(-). Chic: “Good Times” (1979)
63(-). Del Shannon: “Runaway” (1961)
64(-). Rachid Taha: “Barra Barra” (2001)
65(-). Green Day: “Basket Case” (1994)
66(-). Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven: “Potato Head Blues” (1927)
67(60). Billie Holiday: “Solitude” (1941)
68(-). Aretha Franklin: “Respect” (1967)
69(-). Sun-El Musician ft. Samthing Soweto: “Akanamali” (2017)
70(-). The Cranberries: “Linger” (1993)
71(67). Chuck Berry: “Johnny B. Goode” (1958)
72(44). M.I.A.: “BirdFlu” (2007)
73(32). DeBarge: “Time Will Reveal” (1983)
74(78). Acen: “Trip to the Moon Pt. 2” (1992)
75(34). Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five: “West End Blues” (1928)
76(-). Althea and Donna: “Uptown Top Ranking” (1977)
77(-). Rhythim Is Rhythim: “Strings of Life” (1987)
78(-). Kacey Musgraves: “Merry Go ’Round” (2012)
79(73). Talking Heads: “Once in a Lifetime” (1980)
80(33). Lucinda Williams: “Right in Time” (1998)
81(-). Bing Crosby & Al Jolson: “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1947)
82(74). Frank Sinatra: “Night and Day” [Capitol version] (1957)
83(-). Loretta Lynn: “One’s on the Way” (1971)
84(-). Metric: “Now or Never Now” (2018)
85(-). The Klezmatics: “Come When I Call You” (2006)
86(-). The El Dorados: “At My Front Door” (1955)
87(-). The DeZurik Sisters: “I Left Her Standing There” (1938)
88(-). Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five: “Saturday Night Fish Fry” (1949)
89(26). Eminem: “The Real Slim Shady” (2000)
90(37). The Temptations: “My Girl” (1964)
91(-). Duke Ellington: “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” [live] (1956)
92(-). Gilberto Gil: “Banda Um” (1982)
93(97). The Dismemberment Plan: “The Ice of Boston” (1997)
94(-). Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs: “Stay” (1960)
95(-). Beyoncé: “Formation” (2016)
96(-). Donna Summer: “I Feel Love” (1977)
97(93). The Swingers: “Counting the Beat” (1981)
98(54). Aimee Mann: “Ghost World” (2000)
99(-). Backstreet Boys: “I Want It That Way” (1999)