10. Desmond Dekker & The Aces: "Israelites"
(Desmond Dekker)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#9), UK (#1, #10 for 1975 reissue)
Available on Rockin' Steady: The Best of Desmond Dekker
The dearly departed Desmond Dacres will have to argue with Toots Hibbert and Lee Perry over who actually invented reggae, but "Israelites" is as good a starting place as any. Dekker's mighty lament for the sufferer's woe of the titular tribe still rides ska's backbeat, but clipped to a stately lilt. The organ and stabbing guitar lock with percolator percussion for a groove that's irresistible, but never bouncy like prime ska.
The warm, glowing, muffled quality of Perry's recording-- a ghostly halo of echo and reverb-- was at least partially created by feeding seemingly paltry two-track recordings back into themselves. Dekker's voice produces Perry's nimbus all on its own. The swaying, heat-warped quality of "Israelites" feels like gospel and the blues, and considering the song links Biblical trials with the hustle of modern poverty, the comparison's not as far off as it might seem. "Get up in the morning/ Slaving for bread, sir/ So that every mouth can be fed/ Oh, oh, the Israelites."
And it was a huge hit, the first of Jamaica's exports to reach an audience off the island, going Top 10 in both the U.S. and the UK. It earned Dekker a tribute from a (rightfully) awed Beatles and made him Jamaica's first international sensation. Saint Bob would of course eclipse Dekker in popularity, but little in the Marley catalog has this kind of power. --Jess Harvell
9. The Who: "I Can't Explain"
(Pete Townshend)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#8)
Available on My Generation
You could stop this song after four seconds and still hear why the Who's first single launched their career back in 1965, why they continued to open shows with it decades later, and why it remains a favorite more than 40 years on. Those syncopated bursts of contained explosion constitute one of the most perfect power-pop riffs ever strummed, and the only way to improve on it is to add Keith Moon's hyperactive drumming to fill in the charged silences between the chords. If that's all there was to "I Can't Explain"... well, it would have probably still made the list, but the snake attached to that head is a great song as well as a persuasive argument against originality in rock.
Written by Pete Townsend as a blatant Kinks rip-off, "I Can't Explain" ably replicates the Davies' herky-jerky rock rhythms right down to the handclaps, but the Who supe it up with American pop harmonies and a hooky chorus that hints at their meaty, beaty, big and bouncy singles to follow. Writing in Rolling Stone in the early 1970s, Townsend mused, "It seems to be about the frustrations of a young person who is so incoherent and uneducated that he can't state his case to the bourgeois intellectual blah blah blah. Or, of course, it might be about drugs." Either way it's also about the best song the Who ever recorded. --Stephen M. Deusner
8. Johnny Cash: "Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)"
(Johnny Cash)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#32), UK (N/A)
Available on At Folsom Prison
"Hello. I'm Johnny Cash." That opening line, so deadpan and needless-- everybody, especially in Folsom, knows who Johnny Cash is-- may be the genesis of the Man in Black myth, even more so than the song "Man in Black". Making such a humble introduction, Cash sounds larger than life-- definitely larger than prison-- and he delivers an electric, excited performance on his signature Sun hit.
Egged on by W. S. Holland's driving snare and Luther Perkins' breakout guitar solos, Cash gives a shout-out to the Razorbacks ("Soo-ey!") and after the second verse laughs a playful heidi-ho. But as the song progresses, his freewheeling energy becomes hurried and dogged, and he sounds like a truly desperate man, as haunted by the idea of confinement as any of the inmates-- a measure of how deep his identification with his audience went. The fear in his voice still resonates decades later, long after the man has died and the Man in Black has become a canonical American figure. --Stephen M. Deusner
7. The Beach Boys: "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
(Tony Asher/Brian Wilson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#8), UK (N/A)
Available on Pet Sounds
Love songs in rock and roll can be many things-- lusty, lecherous, pining, resigned, anguished, sweet-- but "Wouldn't It Be Nice" is the rare one that feels genuinely innocent. It kicks in with a music box harp figure that's quickly obliterated by Brian Wilson's Phil Spector-sized drum sound-- it's the sound of reality briefly shattering fantasy. The reality for these lovers is that they're simply too young to be out on their own. But they can imagine, and their fantasy magnifies every child's naïve wish to become an adult-- freedom without the mortgage, cars that need fixing, and lack of adequate health insurance.
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" has everything you love about the Beach Boys in spades: the Wall of Sound Jr., the scarcely believable harmonies, the dreamtime prosody, and the imaginative instrumentation. It's the ultimate starry-eyed teenage symphony to God, and it perfectly captures the earnest devotion we only seem capable of in a small window of years. --Joe Tangari
6. The Ronettes: "Be My Baby"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#4)
Available on The Best of the Ronettes
Phil Spector hasn't descended into self-parody the way some others on this list have, but certainly not for lack of trying. Trigger happy, possibly unhinged, and now sporting a bizarre Hair Bear Bunch afro, if Spector had been a star in his own right, his trials and travails would be all over Court TV. Thankfully, he hid behind the mixing desk and the biggest, blackest shades this side of Jack Nietzsche, thereby preserving some of his legacy. (Like you can listen to "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" without a reflexive twinge of sadness.)
Critic David Toop has talked about the disconnect between hearing "Be My Baby" on record and seeing the Ronettes live on stage, lost in cavernous British theaters in their immaculate print dresses, their live backing bands not even able to approximate the force of Spector's Wrecking Crew. The first time I ever really heard "Be My Baby" was on a PBS special of all things, on a TV with a shitty mono speaker-- and even then it felt Cinemascope wide and THX intense.
But if "Be My Baby" birthed modern studio pop-- the point at which records became artifacts that could not be accurately (or at least easily) replicated in the real world-- then it would be merely impressive. What makes it soar, punch holes in hearts as well as walls, is the lead vocal by Ronnie Bennett. Bennett's voice was a little raw, unlike Darlene Love or Diana Ross, and her kittenish performance that strains slightly at the chorus transmutes the slightly sappy lyrics into possibly the best pop song of all time. --Jess Harvell
5. The Beatles: "A Day in the Life"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles had attempted ambitious mosaics before ("She Said She Said", "Tomorrow Never Knows"), but Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band's epic finale catalogues every explosive element of the Fab Four. George Martin's production revolutionized pop music with its avant-garde opulence. Lennon and McCartney's aural bricolage elevates and parodies itself, and their lyrics distance the group from naiveté and Summer-of-Love idealism. Lest we forget, the opening line notes how someone "blew his mind out in a car" and finds Lennon cackling at corpses, media saturation, and humanity's natural disposition toward violence.
When paired with hailing folk and piano, Lennon's portion is as wry and poignant as rock is ever likely to get. In fact, "A Day in the Life" is pretty much the archetype for the Lennon/McCartney duality, firmly distinguishing John as a nightmarish narcophilosopher and Paul as a pragmatic businessman with a schedule to keep. But with its startling juxtaposition of pop melodies and flowery experimentalism, "A Day in the Life" consolidates all of the group's audiences. Here is a song for preteens and acidheads, surrealists and Sinatra fans, the Monkees and the Manson family. That final crescendo, with all its disembodied screams and orchestral terrorism, is surely the most famous-- and strident-- ending of any song in the last 50 years: a caterwauling assemblage of Zen humming, instrumental flairs, and three monolithic pianos stacked on top of one another. Somehow the world's greatest musical icons closed their most famous album with a solid 30 seconds of morbid textural sculpture. By the time the dust settled, Paul was dead, atonalism had gone pop, and four Liverpudlian rockers became high-art heroes. --Alex Linhardt
4. Bob Dylan: "Like a Rolling Stone"
(Bob Dylan)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#4)
Available on Highway 61 Revisited
From its first double-drum crack (which Bruce Springsteen later described as the sound of someone "kicking open the door to your mind"), to its mythical opening couplet (a perfectly seething "Once upon a time..."), "Like a Rolling Stone" is one of Dylan's strangest and most enthralling moments, a big, shambling statement that hovers on the verge of total dissolution, threatening to shimmy your record player (and, potentially, your entire life) off the shelf and onto the floor. One minute in, when Dylan finally hits the chorus, glibly hollering "How does it feeeel?" to an unnamed subject (or possibly himself), his sneer is so convincing it's difficult not to feel deeply ashamed of everything you've ever done, but still desperate for five more minutes of lashings.
It's hard to overstate the cultural heft of "Like a Rolling Stone", which puttered to #2 on the pop chart (the first song of its length to do so) and hovered there for nearly three months. In 2005's Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, Greil Marcus exhausts 200 pages dissecting the socio-political context and lyrical nuances of "Like a Rolling Stone", ultimately christening the track "a triumph of craft, inspiration, will, and intent," and, more importantly, "a rewrite of the world itself." Certainly, the song transforms every time it's played, expertly adapting to new generations and new vices, just wobbly and amorphous and dangerous enough to knock us over again and again. --Amanda Petrusich
3. Sam Cooke: "A Change Is Gonna Come"
(Sam Cooke)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#31), UK (N/A)
Available on The Man and His Music
Filtered through a vessel of honest hurt, message and moment meet modern gospel. Suffering from the recent death of his 18-month old son Vincent and troubled by the omnipotent specter of racism, Cooke caught the unsteady temperament of a nation. Struck by Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", the Mississippi native detected the folk movement's crucial sense of understanding; they "may not sound as good but they people believe them more," he once said. Sam Cooke sounds pretty great on "A Change Is Gonna Come".
After Martin Luther King was assassinated, Rosa Parks listened to "A Change Is Gonna Come" for comfort. The spiritual synergy between King's preaching and the song's painful vignettes is powerful. Both are battered, bruised but vigorous. Rene Hall's classic arrangement, bolstered by French horns, timpani, and a flowering orchestra is pure Hollywood magic but Cooke subverts the Disneyland pomp with anguished realism: "It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die/ 'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky." "A Change Is Gonna Come" was released as part of a single only after Cooke's murky murder. He never felt its rapturous reception. Yet, as long as change aches for resolution, the song will stand. --Ryan Dombal
2. The Jackson 5: "I Want You Back"
(Berry Gordy, Jr./Alphonso Mizell/Freddie Perren/Deke Richards)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#2)
Available on Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5
Writers and producers Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell, and Deke Richards originally envisioned this as the backing track for a Gladys Knight and the Pips song, but Berry Gordy had other ideas. With a little rewriting he heard it as the perfect vehicle to introduce five kids he'd just signed from Gary, Indiana. And as was so often the case throughout the 1960s, Gordy was right.
What is it about this song that cuts through generations and trends and cynicism and makes everyone within its range prick up ears and loosen hips? I once thought my age had something to do with my deep love of this song (it hit the Hot 100 two months and a day after my birth) but here Pitchfork writers up to 15 years my junior heard something special just as clearly. Some of it is Michael Jackson's voice reaching beyond its years, some of it is the Five's supportive backing. But really I think it's the song's most basic structure, possibly the best chord progression in pop music history. The descending bit on the chorus is joy reduced to its molecular level: I / IV / vi / iii / IV / I / ii / V / I. --Mark Richardson
1. The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows"
(Tony Asher/Brian Wilson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#39), UK (#2)
Available on Pet Sounds
I'm sure you've read these: "the world's greatest song," "Brian Wilson's masterpiece," "the most beautiful piece of music ever recorded." Yes, the initiation into the Museum of Western Popular Music is always rough, as credible historians rush to summarize our collective experiences in short phrases. But for better or worse, "God Only Knows" is the kind of song that's almost impossible for me to talk about divorced from the way it makes me feel: sad, in love, honestly grateful, but also a little hopeless. Even in mono, it's like being swept up by a wave of compassion but still getting bruised.
The first words Carl Wilson sings, "I may not always love you," are already uncertain, so if you need a tie into the legacy of 1960s youth culture, glance no further than the naïve but strained optimism locked inside this song. Yet, Carl made this uncertainty sound gorgeous. The voices that sail behind his might just as well be a quartet of violas and cellos playing counterpoint that'd already been obsessed over a few times before they got it. "God Only Knows" is so ideally conceptualized and realized, critics can't help but support it. Somehow, even that can't turn it into an art exhibit; its humanity resists the attempt. To me, this song is a goodbye to being a kid, and hoping that love actually is the answer. And almost nobody knows if it is. --Dominique Leone
Taken From Pitchforkmedia Website
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1 comment:
Interesting List. I'd hope to have to the beatles in the first place, but......
Anyway, beach boys rules :)
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