100. The Isley Brothers: "It's Your Thing"(O'Kelly Isley/Ronald Isley/Rudolph Isley)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#30)
Available on Ultimate Isley Brothers
A molten guitar-and-piano strut bleeds over some serious locked-groove drums and a few perfectly placed horn-stabs, Ronald Isley growls some second-wave feminism, and then the whole vicious lope explodes in a euphoric storm of woozy, joyous psych-funk. The Isleys already had more than a decade of hits behind them in 1969, but they still managed to completely internalize both James Brown's rigorously amorphous stomp and former sideman Jimi Hendrix's tumultuous squall, squishing it all into a triumphant marvel of precision-engineering, every musician involved hitting his notes hard at exactly the right moment. --Tom Breihan
(Bob Dylan)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#20), UK (#5)
Available on Electric Ladyland
This belongs to the most exclusive class of cover versions: One that not only improves on the original, but makes you forget who wrote it in the first place. The words-- a comment on class disparity as represented by jokers, thieves, and princes-- belong to Bob Dylan, but it's Hendrix's despairing performance that lend them continuing relevance, that aching first line ringing truer with each coffin that comes back from Baghdad. And the guitar solos are arguably the most dramatic that Hendrix ever laid down, sounding less like displays of technical virtuosity than pleas for sanity in a world gone to hell. --Stuart Berman
(Rod Argent)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Odessey and Oracle
Fact: "Care of Cell 44", which opens the Zombies' psych-pop masterpiece Odessey and Oracle, is the sunniest song ever written about the impending release of a prison inmate. At the end of the first ineffably sing-song verse, Colin Blunstone tells his sweetie, "You can tell me about your prison stay" -- and sounds positively tickled. To be fair, describing the song's lush arrangement and ecstatic melodies as "sunny" is a vast understatement. Every time Blunstone belts out, "Feels! So! Good! You're coming home soon!" after the lull of a Beach Boys-style multi-part harmony, it sounds like his heart's burst with joy. --John Motley
(Frederick Hibbert)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Sweet and Dandy
"Pressure Drop" was covered by the Clash and the Specials, but the definitive version is still the original, performed by the Maytals (later to become Toots and the Maytals after their lead singer, Frederick "Toots" Maytal gained some post-incarceration notoriety). Toots' opening melody alone is almost too sweet and desperate to bear-- always faster than you remember it, far stronger than you thought possible. He less sings than rips through the rest of it. It's a revenge song-- "when it drops, oh you gonna feel it, know that you were doing wrong"-- but when Toots cries, "It is you," it sounds like love. --Zach Baron
(George Morton)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#18), UK (N/A)
Available on Myrmidons of Melodrama
"When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love-- l-u-v!" Sadly bereft of the ambient effects that feature so distinctively on Shangri-La's singles, "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" nevertheless features one of the foursome's most striking spoken-word sections. One girl asks her friend how her man dances; she replies: "Close...very, very close." The fear and excitement in those four words could make anybody want to kiss him-- and enough handclap ra-ra in the chorus (plus a kiss sound-effect!) to make everybody else jealous. --Zach Baron
(Sam Cooke)
1961
Chart info: U.S. (#17), UK (#7)
Available on The Man and His Music
It's not the dumbest lyrical conceit ever, but it's up there: Sam Cooke is worried that the girl he loves doesn't know he exists, so he asks the Roman god of erotic love to smooth things out for him. But in the hands of Sam Cooke, it sounds as natural as breathing. The gently rippling drums, the soft and plaintive trumpet, and the frosty hum of the strings mesh together into a luxuriant bed for Cooke's gorgeously airy falsetto. Cooke had the preternatural ability to turn any cliché into gospel truth, and that searching, wounded coo just melts over everything. --Tom Breihan
(Paul Simon)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#4)
Available on Bookends
The disparity between "Mrs. Robinson"'s jaunty music and elegiac lyrics might stem from the circumstances of its creation-- asked for music for The Graduate, Paul Simon dusted off an unfinished instrumental, dropped in the jailbait-seducing lead's name, and built a requiem for America's lost idealism around it. Slinky acoustic rhythm guitars, bluesy licks, and pattering congas give out to an infectious 4/4 stomp slicked with the folkies' seamless harmonies. An odd but true-ringing amalgamation of religious piety, stern pedantry, and suburban circumspection fills out the twilit corners of this shrine to our nation's mythological age of innocence. --Brian Howe
(Holger Czukay/Michael Karoli/Jaki Liebezeit/Malcom Mooney/Irmin Schmidt)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Monster Movie
Can were digging out beats from the mud with the muscle of Community and Industry behind their electro-acoustics and MANIA ROCK POWER. Forget "krautrock"-- this was actual, in-the-resonance acid-truth music; stuff that might send your buttoned-downs into the next room, but made much easier any ideas you wanted to entertain regarding quantum mechanics. Liebezeit is of course bigger than Jesus. Tape loops are the self-contained shit. "Yoo Doo Right" is the kind of thing that should keep people at shows way too late, filling the street with freak drug youths night after night. And Malcolm Mooney was a bad man. Malcolm Mooney was a bad man. --Dominique Leone
(Nick Drake)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Five Leaves Left
Two albums before his solemn swan song Pink Moon, Nick Drake was already meditating on some oppressively heavy topics. With its fixation on the relentless passing of time, "River Man" is the loveliest and most delicate of those from his debut, Five Leaves Left. Over plaintive strums, Drake's mournful voice paints images of fallen leaves, passing seasons, and the flowing river. What Drake does with his voice and an acoustic guitar is haunting enough, but it's Harry Robinson's string arrangement that makes it absolutely chilling. Singing the "Prufrock"-inspired refrain of "How they come and go," Drake's voice is swallowed up by the strings, which swell like a rising tide. --John Motley
(Pete Townshend)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#5, #7 for 1976 reissue)
Available on Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy
While rumors have long been snuffed that "Substitute" stems from Pete Townshend's Rolling Stones-fueled inferiority complex, this self-righteous power-pop lament never took America by storm like similar rockers "Satisfaction" or "Day Tripper", and it's difficult to understand why. Maybe we weren't ready for the cunning lyrics, Keith Moon's whopping fills, or, my lord, John Entwhistle's anachronistic, shredding bassline. Even more salient with today's listeners, Roger Daltrey turns the sunny 60s frontman persona on its head, howling about superficiality, duplicity, and social class. Ultimately the song taps just the right amount of angst, hitting that sweet spot between libertine classic rock and the austere, self-important grunge movement it no doubt helped inspire. --Adam Moerder
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