We're getting close to the final top 50 songs on my list of 500 all-time favorites...each of the below songs are classics to me and, although each one has its unique sound they are all very serious pieces with some pretty rough elements in either their musical presentation, lyrics, or both. Only two of them I've heard before on the radio, so there's a high probability you're new to most of them...try them out!
55 SUNNY CAME HOME...Shawn Colvin
This was a big radio hit in 1997, as well as the only one by Colvin...should have been more as she is quite a good singer, and if this song is an example a good songwriter as well. The topic is severe as a woman takes matters into her own hands with fire...not something I would recommend. So you have this very sweet-sounding, sad song with its haunting mandolin accompaniment and lyrics and before long it gets under your skin as it did with me. Sunny Came Home won the Grammy Award as the song of the year...
54 NEON BIBLE...Arcade Fire
The title track to Arcade Fire's outstanding 2007 Neon Bible album, it only lasts two minutes...and is a slow-moving song for such a short duration. The band's lead singer Win Butler reportedly wrote it to mix together some of his thoughts about religion and culture...but it's the kind of song that releases the listener to derive their own meanings from it. The chorus features Butler's wife Régine Chassagne with a childlike sing-song melody...the lyrics seem to be directed at "every boy and every girl". The crackling sound of a neon light flickering off and on adds a interesting effect to the song as well. The Neon Bible album, the band's best in my opinion, contains many excellent tracks...
53 AGAIN...Alice in Chains
For such a rough, menacing song combining grunge, the blues, and heavy metal, Again's lyrics are surprisingly sensitive as the singer laments repeated betrayal by someone he had trusted and befriended. Released in 1995, I listened to it a lot the following year on Gainesville's Rock 104 radio and later crowned it my "song of the year" for 1996. Lead vocalist Lane Staley had his share of drug problems, which contributed to his early death a few years later...Staley and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell to me were the great, soulful singers of the grunge era in rock...
52 THE GOOD'S GONE...The Who
I had never heard of this brilliant old song by the old British rock group The Who until I bought, at a steal, their first four vinyl studio albums at Hyde and Zeke Records nearby the University of Florida campus some time in 1994. From their 1966 album The Who Sing My Generation, The Good's Gone is a relatively lengthy track, driven and relentless, with Roger Daltrey singing his gruff best and the electric guitar dominating...especially the long mid-song instrumental break. Jimmy Page once claimed to had contributed guitar work on some of The Who and Kinks' old recordings...it sounds like him here...
51 FIERY CRASH...Andrew Bird
Not a song ever to played on a plane or at an airport, Fiery Crash, from Andrew Bird's 2007 Armchair Apocrypha album, is nonetheless something you should experience...in a safe, secure place, that is. Bird is known as a multi-instrumentalist...his trademark "instruments" are the violin and his own whistling virtuosity, both of which he exhibits on this song. Chances are you've never heard of this talented Chicago-based musician, but he's put out several albums and his music always pushes the frontiers of creativity. My favorite part of Fiery Crash is the break in the middle when it eerily resembles the Beach Boys' classic hit Help Me Rhonda. Then again, this song in its entirety is pretty eerie...
Next week: #50-46...
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