———
There’s a scene near the end of High Fidelity where Rob Fleming / Gordon (depending on whether you’re curled up with Nick Hornby’s novel, or watching Steven Frears’ adaptation) is approached by a pretty journalist who asks him, as part of research for an article she’s writing, for a list of his all time favourite songs. At first Rob can’t decide whether she means songs he’d play in a club, or at home (there is a difference, apparently), but after they’ve cleared that up, he’s able to rattle off a provisional list with minimal effort, before deciding instead to make her a compilation tape. This lands him in hot water with girlfriend Laura, with whom he has only recently reconciled, but Rob manages to make amends by proposing, albeit in a slightly unconventional manner.
It would be nice to have some sort of summarising list with which to (almost) finish the blog, and a roll call of all-time favourites would probably be quite apt. My musical preferences have been fickle over the years but one thing I’m quite pleased with is a general sense of consistency when it comes to great songs. I’m never quite sure if I find Pink Floyd pretentious or brilliant, or the Beatles overrated or masters of their craft (it depends very much on the day) but I’m always reasonably sure which of the thousands of songs I’ve encountered on my travels stand out as personal favourites.
The problem is that I’ve held this list in my head for over ten years now, and while it’s altered surprisingly little during that time, it’s also frightfully tedious. The simple truth is that my taste in music is just not very interesting: the palate is too unrefined, the experience eclectic but not particularly knowledgeable, meaning I come across as a man who knows a little about quite a lot but nothing that scratches the surface; a jack of all trades; a bluffer. I don’t own a single Van Der Graaf Generator album. I do have most of the Dire Straits back catalogue but the sum total of my Elvis Costello collection amounts to his greatest hits and North, the album of autumnal-sounding songs he released in 2003. I own a lot of Lloyd Webber recordings, including five different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar, but no King Crimson. I have a lot of stuff, but you’ll still find more gaps than in a redneck’s dentures.
My list of all time favourite records includes Chris Isaak, Elton John and The Police. I maintain adherence to a few songs that are universally acknowledged as being structurally flawless and immaculately produced (none of this would matter, of course, if they didn’t connect with you on an emotional level, but they do). There may be the occasional nod to nonconformity but for the most part it’s all very predictable; a dreary mixture of established academic authenticity and personal response. They are the songs I will bring out for MP3 compilations, the ones I’ll lecture about at parties and in the car to anyone who’s interested, and more often than not to a lot of people who aren’t. They are my own choices and I make them freely in spite of support from the critics who would agree with me, but to discuss them here would be tedious, so I won’t.
However.
Instead of a list of great songs, how about a list of great moments within songs? You know the ones I mean: the spine-tingling, heart-stopping moments where you jump out of your chair with surprise or delight; the climaxes; the unexpected modulations; the split-second changes where the adrenaline courses through your veins or, alternatively, you burst into tears for all the right reasons. Moments like this are few and far between but they turn a good song into a great one, or a great one into something truly exceptional.
This is thus a list of those moments, as experienced by yours truly. It is not exhaustive; it is of course entirely subjective and not entirely balanced. Many of these tracks would not necessarily make my all time hits list, because it is for their stand-out moments that I choose to remember them, rather than the songs as a whole. Conversely, individual songs that I consider unilaterally great but which have no specific moments that grab me have been omitted: this is why you will not find any Joni Mitchell, or any Bob Dylan. Even the Beatles one is an anomaly. But they’re all there because they have for one reason or another made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, nigh on every time I hear them.
‘Back to Black’ (Amy Winehouse)
2:43 – In one of the finest breakup songs ever written, Amy Winehouse puts herself through the wringer over a driving Motown / Phil Spector beat, as she laments that “Life is like a pipe / And I’m a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside”. The first chorus remains unresolved after “Back to…”, almost as if Winehouse can’t bring herself to say the word ‘black’ (even though she’s just done it at the end of the verse). Come the second chorus, she jumps in with both feet, dolefully and repeatedly chanting ‘Black’ over a torrent of strings and choral-like backing singers. The effect is solemn, almost funereal, and it’s arguably the most moving moment on the album. The impact was diminished a little when she got back together with Blake, the subject of the song, but it’s still a fantastic four minutes.
‘Fantasia’s Confidential Ghetto’ (P.M. Dawn)
6:49 – A medley of Prince’s ‘1999’, Talking Heads’ ‘Once In A Lifetime’ and Harry Nilsson’s ‘Coconut’ is perhaps not what you’d have come to expect from New Jersey’s finest R&B group, but ‘Fantasia’s Confidential Ghetto’ turned out to be a career highlight. Closing 1995’s Jesus Wept, the Cordes brothers take three songs that on paper really don’t go together, and create a smorgasbord of musical wonder, a whole that’s far more than the sum of its parts. Halfway through ‘Coconut’, Prince Be sabotages Nilsson’s lyric, changing the doctor’s instructions to “Put the lime in the coconut, and call me when you’re flying”, before jumping seamlessly into a four-bar musical nod to the Beatles’ throwaway instrumental – it never worked in Magical Mystery Tour, but it slots in perfectly here. And speaking of which…
‘Hey Jude’ / ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise’ (The Beatles)
0:11 – There are many fine moments on the Love album. The mashup of ‘Within You Without You’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is a powerful tour-de-force of Eastern mysticism that gives both songs new life and vigour; elsewhere, George and Giles Martin effortlessly fuse ‘Drive My Car’, ‘The Word’ and ‘What You’re Doing’, and the rendition of ‘Strawberry Fields Together’ – which moves through from Lennon’s original demo through the various studio incarnations he concocted with Martin through to the final version – is simply stunning. But it’s the end of the album that provides perhaps its finest moment: an edited ‘Hey Jude’ climaxes with an isolated orchestral track, the band having faded to silence, and after a couple of circulations of the four-chord riff there’s an audible “One – two – three – four!” as Ringo’s drum track from the Sgt. Pepper’s reprise kicks in, underpinned by the orchestra, before they’re joined again by the guitars. It’s like being at a gig, and watching the band disappear backstage after the last number for a quick snort before rushing back on for the encore: slick, seamlessly mixed, and utterly captivating.
‘Comfortably Numb’ (Live, Pink Floyd)
0:53 – The contrast between the menacing, imposing doctor of Roger Waters’ verses and the lyrical, resigned tenor of David Gilmour’s choruses was never more pronounced than it was in the live versions of Pink Floyd’s magnum opus. The live recording of The Wall is absolutely packed with atmosphere, but it reaches a climax on CD two: performing the second half of their 1980-81 show largely behind a wall, save for occasional appearances through the holes, ‘Comfortably Numb’ begins as Roger emerges wearing a medical coat to deliver his prescription. All of a sudden, Michael Kamen’s beautiful string arrangement swells in the background, as Gilmour begins his vocal, and a spotlight blasts the upper section of the wall to reveal that he’s standing on top of it, to a roar of approval from the crowd. One of the best songs in the world just got better.
‘Sol Invictus’ (Thea Gilmore)
1:38 – Thea Gilmore entirely escaped my notice until last weekend, when a chance encounter on the Bob Harris show just this side of midnight left me absolutely spellbound. Strange Communion, her 2009 Christmas album, contains a pleasant mixture of styles, but one of the highlights was this a capella opening, a Pagan winter hymn that promises the coming of spring. ‘Sol Invictus’ starts with Thea, and then by the second chorus – where we join her here – the choir swells, declaring: “Rise up, rise up / Ever victorious / Low the tide / Low the light / Comes the sun again”. Spine-tingling, ethereal, beautiful.
‘The Angry Mob’ (Kaiser Chiefs)
2:50 – After two and a half minutes of satire directed both at the tabloids and the people who read them, the Kaiser Chiefs’ semi-title track from their 2007 album suddenly kicks into another gear. The guitars become earthy and grungy, playing a menacing four-chord riff underpinned by Nick Hodgson’s thumping bass drum. After a moment or two, the rest of the band come in with “We are the angry mob / We read the papers every day / We like who we like, we hate who we hate / But we’re also easily swayed”. Repeat for two minutes. A nice way to stomp on the masses and get a superiority complex, but it gets the adrenaline going.
‘Umbrella’ (Rihanna)
0:55 – I’ve long since maintained that ‘Umbrella’ is a good song hidden beneath overproduced R&B pap, and it’s the arrival of the first chorus that proves it. Jay Z raps for a bit and Rihanna talks about magazines and shiny cars, before getting to the meat of the song: “When the sun shines we’ll shine together / Told you I’ll be yours forever”, before admitting that “Now that it’s raining more than ever / Know that we’ll still have each other / You can stand under my umbrella / You can stand under my umbrella”. The melody is repetitive but not dull, and the changes work perfectly. Perhaps my personal connection with this song makes me biased, but it’s still enough to bring a practically cancerous lump to my throat every time I hear it.
‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ (The Who)
7:44 – The Who’s eight-minute stadium favourite, describing an impending revolution which leaves the state the same as it ever was (to bring back Talking Heads again), is also home to one of the coolest moments in all recorded music. Roger Daltrey sings of fighting in the streets, and the party on the left now jumping to the other end of the spectrum, while Townshend’s guitar crashes through to a lengthy breakdown that consists solely of repeated organ chords. Eventually Keith Moon begins to fill out the texture, tentatively at first but gradually becoming louder, still drumming like he’s playing lead guitar – you get the sense that something is about to happen, and when Townshend hits another power chord, it does. Roger bellows a “Yeah!” that is pure, unadulterated rock and roll: lustful, carefree and rebellious, ascending the mountain of potency to the sort of dizzy heights that the band would never again reach, at least not on record. You could read all sorts of contextual significance into the scream, perhaps seeing it as a metaphor for political defiance, or embodied frustration at the corruption of the system, but personally I think Roger just dumped it in there because he thought it sounded good. And it does.
‘Careful With That Axe, Eugene’ (Pink Floyd)
3:08 – Another scream, another Roger. This one is chilling, rather than defiant: three minutes of droning bass and weird, almost raga-like improvisations from Rick Wright, and then the song appears to gather momentum. Roger almost imperceptibly whispers “Careful with that axe, Eugene…”, before breaking into a blood-curdling wail that rips out your heart the first time you hear it: there’s a roll from Mason, Gilmour’s guitar gets heavier and then the rest of the band smashes through the metaphorical doors with a full-on jam that lasts for the rest of the song. We all have our favourite screams: mine is the live version on 1969’s Ummagumma. Music to commit murder to.
‘One’ (Live, U2)
3:18 – My first exposure to U2’s powerhouse ballad was the live version that serves as a B-side to ‘Miss Sarajevo’, and some fourteen years later it’s still my favourite. Eschewing Larry Mullen’s drums in favour of a full orchestra, the band deliver an initially tentative, almost hesitant version of this that builds in intensity as the strings gain prominence, threatening on occasion to drown out The Edge’s guitar. Perhaps the best moment comes at the climax of the middle eight, when Bono sings “You ask me to enter, and then you make me crawl / And I can’t be holding on to what you’ve got / When all you’ve got is hurt”. The way he sings ‘holding’ alone, full of pain and suffering, is enough to bring tears to your eyes.
‘Solsbury Hill’ (Peter Gabriel)
3:23 – From solsburyhill.org: “The track’s pace quickens as new instruments are added with each additional verse, the final cathartic moment occurring at the last ‘home’ as the crash cymbal darts across the stereo spectrum (a technique applied to many of the songs’ instruments, so much so that listening to ‘Solsbury Hill’ in audiophile headphones can create a sense of motion sickness) and the electric guitars growl down to the tonic chord over bristling shouts and oddball squeals. ‘Solsbury Hill’ is one of the few songs in popular music to guarantee goosebumps with every listen and well deserves its place in the Peter Gabriel catalogue.” There’s nothing I need to add to that.
‘Hello Earth’ (Kate Bush)
1:07 – The emotional climax to The Ninth Wave, the Arthurian song cycle that makes up the second half of Hounds of Love, sees Kate Bush admit that “with just my heart and my mind I can be driving / driving home / and you asleep on the seat”. There’s an orchestra, and some very eighties-sounding drums, and a lot of reverb on those lyrics, and then she does something totally unexpected – the sound cuts back completely to reveal a chanting male choir performing ‘Tsintskaro’, a Georgian folk song that was also used in Werner Herzog’s take on Nosferatu, during the plague scenes. It’s an absolutely stunning moment: the choir is fragile and brittle but totally focussed, and the sense of sadness and melancholy is almost overwhelming. Kate herself says that the voices “are meant to symbolise the great sense of loss, of weakness, at reaching a point where you can accept, at last, that everything can change”. I’ve never sought out a translation of the text, and I am tempted to leave it this way, thinking instead of Morgan Freeman’s monologue in The Shawshank Redemption: “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared. Higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away…and for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.”
