In lieu of a more “substantive” blog or a “finished story”, let’s do another music blog. This time, I grabbed ten songs that I really love but which wouldn’t be expected picks if you knew what my favorite bands are. Also, this is songs specifically, not albums; these are times when the album (or artist in general) actually doesn’t click with me that much, but this specific song has a special hold. I know the other music blog was a similar theme; I’ll do “songs I like from bands I like” soon, but for now I wanted to kinda cut down the amount of things I’d have to listen to as prep.
There’s also a bonus eleventh song, which is not really a promise of extra value because this is a blog but it does exist so there’s that. Also, I will be adding links but only for the songs that I listen to primarily on YouTube. The others are probably available but this feels more authentic to me, so this is what I’m doing. I invite you to check them all out however you can, though. Like before, this is in a rough order of how much I like them, but it’s only rough.
Honorable Mentions
- Dr. Dog, “Warrior Man” (full disclosure: this probably would have gotten on the actual list but I didn’t remember it until it came up as a next video while I was writing)
- Althea & Donna, “Uptown Top Ranking”
- Norma Tanega, “You’re Dead”
- Christopher Cross, “Ride Like the Wind”
#10. “Cold War” by Janelle Monae
Album: The ArchAndroid (2010, Atlantic)
I don’t listen to a lot of R&B or soul, Black singing as opposed to Black rapping. I don’t listen to a lot of white singing either, I gravitate towards rock and metal. I’m just saying that to say two things: one, this really came out of nowhere for me when I first heard it, and two, I think I like it because it has a lot more of what I like in rock music and I don’t tend to find in a lot of singing. It’s a driving song, I’m gonna sound stupid if I try to use music terms off the cuff (it’s been a long time since I played anything), but it has the same kind of forward momentum that I like in fast metal. Throughout that, though, the instrumentation is really built to showcase Monae’s incredible voice. It has a very chilly vibe, it feels cinematic, like a movie scene where an action heroine uses turbo-skis to escape from a cavern as she’s followed by a flood of ice and snow that just explodes out behind her like the evil CEO’s building just exploded (but instead their ship crashed in the ice or something) and she’s making her cool exit. I remember being extremely excited for Monae off the back of this song, and the rest of the album which is pretty alright. Unfortunately, I think she moved away from this sound on later stuff and I just kinda stopped following her. But “Cold War” has really etched a place in my mind.
#9. “Only You Know” by Dion
Album: Born to Be with You (1975, Spector)
I’ve not been lucky in love in my life. I haven’t really had my heart broken or anything but I haven’t been lucky. But this song makes me think of love, of sharing it with someone. It’s not necessarily that I would share this song in particular. I wouldn’t be against it, but it’s like, it’s more that the song puts me in that kind of mood where I’m yearning for that feeling. This isn’t exactly the subject of the song, though it is still a love song in a way. I’m not a lyrics guy, I find trying to listen to lyrics really lessens my enjoyment of songs, but I recall looking them up years ago and I think it’s got a bit of the kind of… 60’s everybody’s-doing-it chauvinism in there. But I think what I grab from the chorus is very sweet, and I think it’s part of what drew me to it, along with the performance of Dion and the bouncy, warm vibe of the song in general. “You’ve been through a lot but things are going to get better and I want to be there with you.” I can’t recall where I first heard this song, but I know that I definitely heard it before the rest of the album, which is fine but again, not part of a regular rotation. Maybe later I’ll actually revisit all these albums and see what I think of them now.
#8. “Django” by Roberto Fia
Album: Django (1985, Generalmusic)
Now, I’m just going by what I have on my MP3 tags for this because I didn’t grab it from an album. I think I just found it online somewhere ripped from the beginning of the move Django for which it is the theme; I can hear hooves clopping (not like that). I didn’t say Django Unchained, note. This is an older cowboy movie where a guy drags around a coffin. It’s like a 60 year old movie but I won’t spoil it in case you want to run out and watch it. It’s not a top tier cowboy movie in my estimation, but the theme song is absolutely fanastic. I came across Django when I was watching a bunch of Westerns in my college days so I suppose it kind of reminds me of that. This song is just a ballad by this really powerfully voiced guy who I assume is called Roberto Fia. I’m not sure I can really pinpont what works about this so much because again, this is really not my genre. But every time I listen to it I’m captivated.
#7. “Crossroads” by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
My memory is not great. I can remember facts and things like that, but my memory for incidental stories from my childhood is not great. I know that this song is from hanging out with my cousins when I was a kid, but I don’t remember exactly which set of cousins it was. But for a while when I was a kid, right around when it was released I think, it was probably my favorite song. I didn’t really understand it, like I don’t know if I could have said it had to do with Notorious B.I.G. or Eazy E, I don’t think I knew who they were. Was it the video that really grabbed me the most? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but the video is absolutely iconic in its own right. I didn’t end up going down the path of music where I kept listening to stuff like Bone Thugs and I almost forgot about this song for at least ten years. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the album it’s off of. While I have heard other Bone Thugs stuff, nothing really grabbed me like this one. The music is peak, of course, a deep and contemplative beat which only enhances a group which could absolutely kill even without backing, they have something similar to what I’ve seen in college-type a capella groups where they’re able to support each other with harmonies. But honestly, after coming back to the song, one of the things that resonates most strongly with me is the really tangible fear of death that runs through it. I’ve always been afraid of death, just on an existential level, but I think growing up I always felt that everyone was either pretending like it wasn’t going to happen or that they were okay with it. In that way, this song helps me feel connected to humanity in a way that a lot of things don’t.
#6. “Goin’ Down South” by R.L. Burnside
Album: My Black Name a-Ringin’ (1999, Genes)
This might be the first “Ruthless song” that I’ve talked about. Obviously, Bone Thugs, Ruthless Records, but that’s not what I mean. When I was a teenager, I had two main online social outlets: e-wrestling and the Ruthless Reviews forum. I don’t know if Ruthless is around and I’m not going to check. It was an offshoot in a way of Something Awful; I wasn’t super aware of that at the time, but I did know some people had accounts at SA then, and the more I’ve learned about SA the more I realize how much it influenced Ruthless culture. One of the great things about that forum was that they had a music sharing subforum and there is a significant amount of my musical taste that sprang from discoveries I made there. Like I said before, my memory is not great, so I don’t want to put this in a cause-and-effect way… but let’s just say that “Goin’ Down South” is what I imagine the blues to be, and the fact that other blues is not very much like this is why I don’t listen to blues all the time. “Only You Know” is a song that sounds like love, but so is “Goin’ Down South”. But where Dion’s is warm and inviting, Burnside is desperate. Growing up in my era my brain always wants to put something a little sinister on what he’s saying, but I think that’s just me reading in. Because when I sit down with it, despite the rawness of the solo squeaking guitar and his strained voice, the message of “goin’ with you babe, don’t care where you go” is exactly the same as “but there’s better things you’re gonna get into, and I wanna be there, too.” Whatever happens, good or bad, I wanna be with you. The rest of the album is enjoyable, if I remember correctly, but Burnside does electric blues in later albums that I’m much less engaged by.
#5. “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits
If I have “Ruthless music”, then you could probably also say I have “social media music”. With the Ruthless music, it’s actually mostly not one-offs; some of my favorite bands like NoMeansNo, Meat Puppets, Minutemen I only started listening to there, and it’s how I discovered Krallice (who I’ll probably talk about on this blog at some point). The few songs I’ve really grabbed onto from social media haven’t tended to translate, though. This one was posted just out of appreciation for it, the kind of post I usually wouldn’t check out, but this time I did. And yeah. I don’t know how to describe this song other than magical. It’s not like unbelievable in any of its parts, and by that I don’t want to take away from any of the instrumentals or anything like that. I just mean, I feel that this band’s sound sits along acts like Steely Dan that I’m not a huge fan. Mark Knopfler is a great guitarist, but like, if you bring out a Jimi Hendrix solo, you’re probably going to say “Oh that’s Hendrix or someone playing in his style”. I don’t get anything as immediately distinctive here. But the way it all comes together is just perfect. It doesn’t insist on itself and yet it’s irresistible. And though this is a backhanded compliment, the song would not work if Mark Knopfler could really sing. If he was strong enough vocally to really try and grab your attention the whole vibe of the song would be off. Diegetic isn’t the word for the song but I don’t want to try and figure out what it would be. What I’m trying to describe is this: lyrically, the song is describing a random bar band which is just jamming out at a random gig, doing their thing, and that is also the exact musical appeal of the song. It feels like being in a bar, hanging out with your friends over some drinks, there’s a decent rumble of voices going on, and you suddenly realize like holy shit, this band is fucking killing it.
#4. “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping” by Grouper
Album: Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (2008, Type)
This one might be a Ruthless song as well, but I can’t remember exactly where I first heard it. This sort of ethereal music is not always my jam, although I’m always at least a little interested in it. What I think really makes this song is when it hits almost a minute in and it goes into the second part. Before, it’s like you’re sitting at the edge of a lake. Then all of a sudden, this water creature comes up out of it, grabs you and pulls you down under, holds your head in its world for a few seconds, and then lets you come back up. And as you’re sitting back on the shore, you realize that all you want is to be underwater again. And then the creature returns, and takes you back. And it’s just… sweet peace. I don’t have many personal thoughts for this one, and if I’m honest, I forgot that I had this on the list when originally writing up the blog (I went back after I realized my count was off). But that lapse is my fault, it’s not the song’s fault. It’s still a hauntingly beautiful track; that’s a cliché, sure, but all a cliché means is that you probably know exactly what I’m trying to say.
#3. “Streets Are Hot” by Miho Fujiwara
Where I discovered this one is a mystery to me. It could have been social media. It could have been YouTube (which I don’t count as social media, it’s its own thing). It was sometime within the last 5-10 years, though, so it was after I had stopped posting on Ruthless. Regardless, this one is so far outside my wheelhouse it even stuns me sometimes. Until I listen to it, obviously. I know that people would probably tell me to go listen to Janet Jackson or someone, I’m sure there’s other people who have songs in a similar vein, and it’s not that I think those songs are bad, they just don’t really grab me. For whatever reason, this funky city pop jam hooks me hard every single time. Have I been chair dancing instead of writing for most of this? Yeah. I feel like that’s all I gotta say. This is the main song from the anime OVA California Crisis which is… fine. It’s O-K. I think Kenny Lauderdale just uploaded a rip of it so it’s available in good quality if you want to check it out, but “Streets Are Hot” is the best thing about the anime, and it’s also better than the anime; anime-heads really dig the art but I just thought it was… okay.
#2. “A Line You Can Cross” by Lansing-Dreiden
This is one that I am 99.9% sure is a “Ruthless song”. It’s also one of the few songs that I will make a very strong advocation for on social media about once a year. It is a crime in my opinion that this song only has 34k views on YouTube after EIGHTEEN YEARS. This is just an amazing vibe, honestly. Chic, decadent, poisonous. You know what it reminds me of. If you have read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (and if you haven’t, do it), when the man with the thistledown hair takes the woman who Mr. Norrell brought back to life to the fairy world so she can dance in the balls with him forever. Well, if they did those scenes in an adaptation but moved the time period forward to the 90s or 2000s, this would be the song that would be playing. No, Eyes Wide Shut is not the right vibe; the right vibe is the thing I said. I’ve heard a couple of their other songs and while I should listen to a full album, I haven’t yet, and this song still manages to keep me coming back. Check it out. Boost their views like crazy. I don’t know if they’re still around but the song should be known by everybody.
#1. “Sideshow” by Nick Lutsko
This song is another one I would probably put under “social media songs”, but with a bit of a twist. I first heard about Nick Lutsko for doing comedy songs. I eventually discovered he did “serious” music as well and checked it out, and out of his stuff on Swords, this song just leaps out at me. When I was in high school I played bass and had a high school band, and the way our songs were set up was kind of “backwards”, in that my lines were fairly busy compared to the guitar. And this song gives me kind of the same feeling with the busy bass in parts, the bass really driving the chaotic feeling parts of the chaos. But it really feels like a “complete” riff, or maybe “replete” is the word I want. Whereas a lot of songs, even ones I really dig, are put together where there’s a core part which is layered over and under, “Sideshow” feels like every part of each riff or bit of the song works together in a way where they are all load bearing, including Lutsko’s voice. Lutsko is a decently strong singer in my opinion, in a way where if he wasn’t I don’t think this song would work. But what really makes it all work is the total composition which is, if I remember his other songs correctly, one of the more involved ones he does. But it really works in my opinion. The only thing I’d really criticize about it is the tribal-ish ending, but it’s not that it sounds bad, it’s just like… I dunno, a pretentious armchair critic idea of “laziness”. Like, I’m sure I’m not alone in being kind of unsatisfied when a song simply fades out instead of having “a real ending”, and this is kinda the same. But that’s not a real complaint, it’s just something I couldn’t keep myself from saying, given that I’m writing this on my own blog. I think about it every time I hear the song.
#0. “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities
If there is a social media song for me, it’s this. It’s for two reasons. First is that I came across the song in these YouTube shorts. It was this guy called Jake who would be doing something like be out at a restaurant, the waiter would go “Have a nice meal”, and then the guy would go “You too, oh crap I look dumb now” but the waiter would be like “… me too?” and then the guy and the waiter would be sharing the meal. I just randomly checked the song out one day and I was like okay, it’s kinda nice, it doesn’t turn me off in the way some big deal pop does. But then I ended up sharing that I liked it on social media and one of my friends, Vanessa, said it was one of her favorite songs and she loved those shorts. And that was kind of it, we’d talk about it sometimes, talk about other shorts, etc. Anyway. Some time ago, I want to say in 2024 but it might have been 2023, we got word over social media that she had died in her sleep. And I have always been extremely broken up over it. I don’t know why this is. I describe Vanessa as my friend, but we weren’t like good friends. I’d interacted with her over a couple of years. She was a nice woman. Maybe it’s because the first interaction we had was a bit icy, but after a while we warmed up to one another. Even so, we weren’t like chatting a bunch on different platforms or anything like that. She was a woman I knew on the internet. I don’t even know what she looked like. But every time I hear this song now I think about her. This world is fucked up but I feel like she should still be here. This isn’t last because it’s my favorite song on the list, it’s last cause I didn’t want to start things off with a eulogy of sorts. In fact, I probably would have put it on the honorable mentions just on its merits alone. But after I had the idea for the blog and thought about the song, I knew I wanted to talk about it, so it was going on the list no matter what. I’ve just always been interested in why I feel so affected, and why this song is the trigger. And I miss Vanessa. RIP Vananarama.