Top 12 – Music

Top 10 lists are just so 20th century, I think we need top 12 lists for this new modern 21st century! To kick off my top 12 lists for the year (there will be several) I’m focusing on Music.

I still find it hard to believe that some people don’t love music. I find it even harder to believe that some people actually feel like they could live without music in their lives. I think that would be very painful for me because I love it. I crave it like food and listen to it every single day.

I find that music can help or even make me feel a certain way, but not just happy or sad. It can also make me feel powerful, lost, determine, affectionate, romantic, sentimental, nostalgic, angry, creative and even nothing… sometimes I use music to push my emotions in a certain direction. I am one of those weirdos that enjoys a good cleansing cry a few times a year. Music can easily help get me going on it when I need to purge. Though pushing my emotions is definitely not all I need music for, and I definitely think I might go a little crazy(er) without it in my life.

I like to have music on while I do chores, cook, craft, work on graphics or websites and when I am gaming. I like Big Beat while I’m cooking or gaming, classical while I’m working, and pretty much ABC music (anything but country) while I’m doing chores. Don’t get me wrong, I like Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, and Charlie Daniel’s Band but I don’t really care for country western music on the whole. In fact, of any type of music genre out there, it’s definitely my least favorite.

Though I find it easy to put certain types of music at the bottom of a list, I find that the closer to the top of my favorite music lists the harder it gets to define “favorite”. I’ve been mulling over my top dozen list for music since the end of last year. I set myself some rules, created a text file on my desktop and only added to it the songs, albums and bands/singer lists when I really felt like it was truly in my “top 12”. I finished the list last week so I could finally post about it.

I’ll explain my rules before each list and none of the lists are in any particular order.

The song list was really tough to make and there are several that only just barely didn’t make it. My rules for this list were simple; only songs that I think about listening to/listen to most often and/or have some relevance in my life.

• Brown Eyed Handsome Man – Chuck Berry / I first heard this covered by Buddy Holly, but the original is the best one IMO. I love the line “That’s what your Daddy is, a brown eyed handsome man”. My Dad was a brown eyed handsome man! Other then that, I have no reasons why it’s a fav. I just like the sound of it.
• Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers / This is one of those strange songs that just haunts me for no reason. I think about it on occasion, I’m always happy to listen to it when it plays, it’s not really relevant to anything in my life or my past, I just like it. More recently I thought about my fat ginger cat crying after my granddaughter leaves, and that if I ever made a video of my cat singing it would be him singing this song as soon as the door closes behind her… Yes, I think about doing things like this. I mentioned I was crazy already in this post, right?
• Daniel – Elton John / I love the Spanish sounding guitar and the line “you’re a star in the face of the sky”. The song makes me feel sad for no particular reason. I know it’s a sad song, but it is fairly irrelevant to my life. Just a good song I guess.
• Paranoid Android – Radiohead / Strange that my all time favorite band only has one song in my top 12! I was really honest with this list, and though I could listen to Radiohead for hours on end, this list is solely about songs. I simply love this one, Gucci little piggy and all.
• Sweet Thing – Van Morrison / The first time I heard this song I was a little kid. The song was released about a year after I was born, but I didn’t hear it for the first time – or I don’t remember hearing – until I was about 12. It made me feel profusely sad and still does to this day. I have no idea why.
• Aubrey – Bread / I have loved this song for as long as I can remember. I could not pick out a single line in this song that I like above the others, I think the whole song is perfect and I love the name, Aubrey. I found out some time back that David Gates wrote the song about Audrey Hepburn after he watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Though he changed the name from Audrey to Aubrey and turned the boy’s name into a popular girls name.
• If I had A Million Dollars – Barenaked Ladies / This song is so cute and funny. It makes me feel happy and that is the only reason I like it.
• Cold Desert – Kings of Leon / The first time I heard this song it was firmly in my top 12, even though I didn’t have one when I heard it. The lyrics just have line after line of good emotional rawness without a real strung together meaning. The writer himself cannot explain this song other then he was drunk and this is what came out, so I don’t’ want to assign a meaning to myself. I just like it and it sounds sad. Favorite line “I’m too young to feel this old”.
• Shadow Stabbing – Cake / “The white paint plastic saints say it all”, and they just do, don’t they? That is my favorite line from this song. I’ve heard a lot of speculation about what this song is about. I think it’s about a writer who writes about the world as it is and it drains him of emotion because the world is so shitty. I could be wrong, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still a great song.
• This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) – Talking Heads & David Byrne / I loved this song from the first time I heard it as a young teenager. My favorite version is on the Stop Making Sense video concert. The black stage, the single floor lamp, the skinny man in the big white suit. They all have little or nothing to do with why I love the song! Though I did really love that part of the concert. I love the song because I love what it means. Finding “the one”, being in love, staying in love and having the romantic/love part of your life fulfilled. I’d just like to add that I like the newer David Byrne only version too and that I this is my favorite love song of all time.
• She Will Be Loved – Maroon5 / I remember my sister telling me that she liked the line “I want to make you feel beautiful” and then playing the song for me. I was visiting from overseas and we drove around listening to the song over and over again during that visit. The line that stuck out to me was “look for the girl with the broken smile”, and though it does not actually pertain to my particular affliction, the fact that she will be love (according to the song) really stood out to me. At the time I was recovering from nerve damage that left me with a “broken smile” and I was going through a separation from my now ex-husband. I guess it made me feel like there was hope for my future love life… that and I just love the song.
• Let It Be Me – Ray LaMontagne / This song is just so honest and bare in its emotion and intent. No hidden meanings, no deep meaning to figure out. It’s beautifully written and performed by the artist and I love it.

Here is my top 12 songs playlist from Youtube. The songs are sorted by oldest to newest post date, not by my preference. I’ve picked either the official video or one with lyrics. I’d like it to be noted that I don’t care for all the videos, just the songs.

So this post doesn’t drag on much longer I won’t go into great detail about these last two lists…

Rules: only albums I like all the way through and could listen to over and over (and often do). They are not in any particular order.

Albums

• Neveroddoreven – I Monster
• In Rainbows – Radiohead
• Frampton Comes Alive – Peter Frampton
• Only By The Night – Kings of Leon
• Rumors – Fleetwood Mac
• Daisies of the Galaxy – Eels
• Comfort Eagle – Cake
• David Gray – White Ladder
• The Wall – Pink Floyd
• Six Wheels on My Wagon – Fluke
• Brothers In Arms – Dire Straits
• Underworld – Dubnobasswithmyheadman

Rules: I own the most of, listen to the most and would gladly go to a live show of any of these bands. They are not in any particular order, but Radiohead is my number 1 favorite.

• Bands / Singers
• Radiohead
• The Crystal Method
• Simon & Garfunkel & Paul Simon
• Pink Floyd
• Barenaked Ladies
• Cake
• David Byrne & Talking Heads
• Eels
• Fleetwood Mac
• R.E.M.
• UB40
• Underworld

A few new favorites, not on a list…

I’ve been listening to James Blake a lot lately. It’s pretty strange stuff and definitely not for everyone. I also like 2cellos. Their videos are great, their song choices are great and the cello is my favorite instrument. Plus, these guys are charming and funny.