Alternate title: Top 50 Lists Can Eat My Whole Butt

This is a transplant post of a google doc I wrote back in 2020, regarding a "top 50 song list." I forget what its inception was, but it's been shared numerous times, as well as the doc. In a recent conversation, I had considered "I should probably make a new one," which led to a whole train of thought about the best way to _do_ that. Do I make a new list? Update the old one and lose the changes? Track the changes? Modifications / injections to the original doc are included in annotating blocks like this one.

The original 2020 playlist, unmarred. The following text is lifted, with some update / modification, from the source companion doc.

Intro

I really, really, loathe superlative lists; especially with large haystacks such as “the body of every song I’ve ever heard.” They are impossibly and eternally time-bound: my favorite song from last century, last decade, last year, or even last week is quite possibly not my favorite presently.

That said, I have done my best to compile one. I am sidestepping driving my brain to exhaustion by deciding on a more objective process that applied arbitrary constraints that I would force myself to follow. These constraints were:

• 50 Song limit (implied)
• Songs must exist on Spotify (constraint of the exercise)
• No duplicate artists
• Favor songs that are more likely to be less known (to make the playlist more interesting)

There are some additional songs that I would have included that are not on Spotify.

Process

I find it hard to effectively brainstorm while wearing both Brainstorm and Critique hats simultaneously; they compete too much with one another. Phase 1 is wearing my Brainstorming hat, phase 2 is wearing my Critique hat.

Phase 1: Bulk Up

I immediately had 10-20 songs already on the top of my head that I would add, so those were added. Then I went through my existing playlists, particularly “Liked Songs” and “Liked from Radio” and added any songs that felt like they stood out from the rest. It was particularly challenging when I like a large portion of an artist’s body of work – Kimbra, Radiohead, Opeth, Bad Religion, etc. For these artists I did briefly wear my Critique hat to choose only the songs that I felt would warrant evaluation later.

My initial bulk run was about 80 songs.

Phase 2: Cut Down

I started by sorting the list by Artist and running down it and looking for any duplicates; there were several. There were many cases here where I legitimately could not choose which one to preserve. I decided to track a separate “Honorable Mentions” list (below) to record any entries that I removed, as I removed them. This made it a little bit easier to pick. Constraint 4 helped choose in multiple cases – my thinking was that if I’m going to ask people to listen to a playlist, I should give them something that they’re less likely to have heard before.

Got the list down to about 65 songs with this.

Phase 2a: Ruefully Cut Down

Now I have to remove songs that are sole inclusions of artist, so really “Does this artist belong in my horrible top 50 or not?” My razor here was Constraint 4, again – a few of the sole-inclusions were radio hits, so they were bumped to the Honorable Mentions. The final razor was looking at song length. There were a couple songs that were 10 mins+ long and they were outliers; most were 3-6 minutes. I removed one and replaced the other with a shorter song from the same artist.

Phase 2b: Suddenly Remember Songs / Artists That I Forgot and Add Them

😐

Phase 3: Sort the Assemblage

Normally when I’m sorting a playlist, it’s a lot shorter. I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked really sorting through this and perfecting it, but it’s not bad.

I try to focus first on the mood of the songs, putting songs into clusters so that going from one song to the next isn’t a jarring whiplash experience. Within that, I try to think about the endings and beginnings and put songs adjacent that feel like they kind of fit together. Not every song can be paired like this, of course, but I try to do it as much as possible. The goal is to avoid the listener feeling like “WHOA that came out of nowhere!”

Commentary

The following songs are sequenced per Phase 3 above, and this is not a count-down/up. Suffice to say "I love each song equally" but also "I love these 50, right now, a little more than other songs not in this list, if only by a little bit {subject to change}."

Here’s some brief discussion about songs that were included / considered, and why.

Songs that Made the Cut

Dirty Boots : Sonic Youth

This is probably my favorite song by Sonic Youth. It has a distinctly “Alternative Rock” feel, and the music video reminds me a lot of the first rock shows I attended in the town where I grew up. This would have been in the mid-90s, when grunge and alternative rock were both very popular. The video features a bouncy mosh pit, crowd surfing, and tight quarters.

I Remember : Bully

I saw Bully open for Lord Huron in 2019. I had never heard of them before, but instantly fell in love with their music. That night, I bought both their vinyl at the show (which included digital downloads!). For being a modern band, their sound takes me back to my teenage years, when I would attend those shows I mentioned, above. There’s just something about screaming, barely intelligible vocals and murky distorted guitar.

The Wait : The Pretenders

This song I didn’t actually discover until a few years ago, but I definitely remember The Pretenders from the 90s: Brass in Pocket and Back on the Chain Gang both got quite a bit of radio play; the former was a favorite of mine at the time. Scarlett Johanson’s character in LOST IN TRANSLATION performs that song at karaoke, midway through. I love the energy of this song. I discovered it on the “Cameron Howe” playlist on Spotify: the person behind the music selection for the show HALT AND CATCH FIRE created a different playlist for each of the main characters; Cameron’s was by far my favorite.

Where Eagles Dare : The Misfits

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t realize Glen Danzig was the frontman for the Misfits until some point in the 2010s. I had first heard of him with his solo song Mother '93, which remarkably got quite a lot of radio and MTV play back then, but I didn’t hear the Misfits until several years ago. I lament not getting to rock out to this as a teen; they had a lot of bangers.

Glen is a bit problematic nowadays, but at this point I’ve had a lot of practice separating the creations from the creator.

Come Out Swinging : The Offspring

There are many songs by this band I would have liked to include. They are produced by Epitaph Records, which is the label of Brett Gurewitz (the guitarist for many of Bad Religion’s albums and one of the original members). Smash was in frequent rotation on my walkman and stereo back in the 90s, and while I lost touch with them a bit during their Pretty Fly (for a white guy) years (late 90s / early 00s), I was pleased to reconnect with them, by happenstance, on The Kids Aren't Alright and after re-acquainting myself with their discography I found this song. I feel hardcore punk in my soul, and this song is no exception.

Kill The Poor : Dead Kennedys

Dead Kennedys were another band that I slept on. Some of my peers in high school were big DK fans and I regret not giving them a listen back then. Jello Biafra’s vocals are perhaps an acquired taste, but I absolutely love their irreverent, but still smart, political commentary.

This song is ironic; you may need to look up the lyrics if you can’t understand Biafra.

Hooray for Me : Bad Religion

Another band I didn’t finally discover until my 20s, despite having heard some of them in my teens, they are probably one of my favorite punk bands. I know many punk purists find them to be a little…manufactured…but I don’t care. This song is one of my favorites by them, though it was very, very challenging to pick between this one, Let them eat war, and Beyond Electric Dreams. The whole Empire Strikes First album is phenomenal and is heavily influenced by the politics of the US at the time (we had just invaded Iraq), the songs from that album, Atheist Peace (the opposite of “Religious War”), Let them eat war, and Boot Stamping on a Human Face Forever are all specifically about that incursion.

Stranger than Fiction might be my second-favorite album by them, and I blame it for a good portion of my tinnitus.

Why Am I So Flipped? : Nervebreakers

I don’t remember how I discovered this song, but I absolutely love the southern california punk sound. So-Cal punk often has a surfer-rock vibe too, particularly on the twangy electric guitar and drum rhythms.

Violet : Hole

I remember this song, which emerged in the tragic wake of Kurt Cobain’s (independently and coincidentally; it’s unrelated to) death back in the early 90s. I was barely a teen and that was really hard to deal with for myself and many of my friends who all really loved Nirvana’s music. I didn’t particularly like Courtney Love, then; I think it was too soon. At some point in the last decade, I gave this album another chance and I think the pain of that loss, so many years ago, had faded enough that I could really feel this one and its raw intensity.

Break the Line : Guano Apes

I love this German rock band and the US is really missing out, in my opinion. This song was, I believe, their only song that hit the US airwaves, and it was on either MTV2 or one of those late-night music compilation shows in the late 90s.

The video is solid.

The funny thing is how I discovered them. I was looking around for songs by Apocalyptica (Cellists playing Metallica covers!) and there was one song by them, Path Vol 2 that featured the vocals of Sandra Nasic. That song is fire, too.

I looked her up and found out she sang for the band Guano Apes. I found some music by them on a music exchange and fell in love with them. Their albums from the late 90s and early 00s were solid rock albums. Nasic did a solo album in the 2010s and then the band came back together for a couple more albums – they were ok. Much more pop / radio-friendly, but still good rock tracks. If you like rock, particularly women-led where they really belt out the vox, give this band a shot.

I Just Got This Symphony Goin’ : The Fall of Troy

This band, my millennial cousin tells me, is in the genre “post hardcore”. I think I am just a few years too old and missed being contemporary for it, but I dig their stuff anyways. They had a song on one of the Rock Band games, I think – F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X., another great one by them. They do some very creative and weird things with their song structure, such as time signature (I think).

Ralphy’s Cut : The Desaparecidoes

I had the pleasure of seeing this band while they were touring this album. It was a small venue, and Conor Oberst was drunk for most of the show, but the show was awesome anyways. I hadn’t been in a mosh pit for at least 10 years prior to that. This song, specifically, always gets me in the gut because it reminds me of my dad who passed from lung cancer a few years ago. (The context might make more sense if you look up the lyrics). This album, “Payola” is full of many gems, including The Left is Right, MariKKKopa, Anonymous, and others.

The Pretender : Foo Fighters

Much like Hole, Foo Fighters is a band I took a pass on. I have much respect for Dave Grohl now, and love many of their songs, but when “The Colour and the Shape” came out in the 90s it felt too soon. I gave them another shot in the early 00s with Everlong, a song I dearly love (both to play on the drums and also drunkenly belt out at karaoke). That song was almost my pick, but everyone’s heard that one so I wanted to pick another song by them that I really enjoyed and thought was maybe less heard. The video is awesome.

Hawkins obviously died AFTER 2020 (2022), but that addition was amended to the original doc, not this transplanting.

Prayer of the Refugee : Rise Against

Similar to Fall of Troy (and A.F.I, Bullet for my Valentine, etc) I missed being contemporary for them by a few years. I had friends who had recommended this band to me in the mid 00s but it wasn’t until the 2010s when I finally gave them a chance. I know that they were featured on Guitar Hero III (this song, specifically), and I think they had another song (Give it All) on a previous game. Once I finally got around to giving them a listen, though, I really dug it.

Favorite Things : Incubus

This band is great, but I am sad that all of their albums after “S.C.I.E.N.C.E.” (the one this song is from) lacked the intensity of that album. “Make Yourself” is a great album too, but I still maintain this one is better; or rather, it is a better fit for my musical tastes. Boyd’s clean vocals over the frenetic energy of the grimy distorted guitars was an exciting juxtaposition that most other bands weren’t doing at that time (this was during the “Nu Metal” popular period - a lot of screaming, often unintelligible)

Your Ex-Lover Is Dead : Stars

“When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire” I don’t know any other songs by them, but this is my favorite “breakup song.”

French Disko : Stereolab

This was another one that I discovered through a “Halt and Catch Fire” spotify playlist, but I forget which one (possibly Season 4?). It’s a bop.

Booby Trap (Commander Tom Remix) : Microworld

I have distinct memories of dancing to this song at some local underground rave house parties back in the mid-90s where I grew up. A couple of the local DJs really loved to play this song, and for good reason! Some things to keep in mind when listening to this (and do give it a full listen, if you can; it’s 7:32 long): it was produced specifically for dancing; like pretty much all electronic dance music songs from that era, it is highly structured and paced for the purpose of being mixed and danced to. One thing I love about this song in particular is how the intensity continues to build throughout the whole song, even the momentary pauses only briefly catch their breath, and the break at 3:30 is a respite that builds right back into an intense drop. This song structure is one that would later be mimicked by the drops of modern EDM. The song finally tapers off at around 6 minutes which is when the DJ would cue and begin to mix in the next record; in practice, the intensity of this song would be kept up for whole set, both before and after this one. A great example is this promo mixtape by “Da Thickness” [link no longer available], an Acid Trance DJ that used to play at those parties I went to – the tape features this song (a few tracks in).

Forbidden Fruit (BT & PVD Food of Love Mix) : Paul van Dyk

This song is, by far, my favorite Trance song ever. I had the pleasure of seeing Paul van Dyk live in 2002, but he had long been one of my favorite producers, since the mid-90s. I have several of his records, and would frequently play them when I DJ. His style is very unique and identifiable, and I think many producers in his wake have emulated that sound. He’s released a few albums that are fully mixed, including “Out there and back”, “The Politics of Dancing” and others.

Sirens of the Sea : Above & Beyond presents Oceanlab

I don’t remember how I heard about Oceanlab originally, but I had heard Above & Beyond, as well as Justine Suissa, previously on other songs: Oceanlab is the combination of both of them. They only released one album, plus an album of remixes, but it’s a really unique and relaxing EDM album.

Cider Time : Lifeformed

Back in the early 2010s, there was an indie game released in a Humble Bundle called “Dustforce”. The release included the soundtrack, by Lifeformed (featuring a whole album of songs like these), and they were just delightful.

Mayonaise : Smashing Pumpkins

“Siamese Dream” is probably my favorite Pumpkins album. While I found it very challenging, I really enjoyed trying my best at playing this song on the drums. Jimmy Chamberlin (their drummer) has some jazz drumming roots and he is playing steady quarter-notes with his left foot on the hi-hat, which requires a fair amount of limb independence that I just didn’t have in my teens. I’ve since worked on developing that independence better and would be curious to see if it’s any easier to play now.

Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) : Deftones

Long ago, in the early 00s, I went to a rock show at a small bar in southwest Ohio and this band played a bunch of rock covers, including a song they said was by the Deftones. I knew some Deftones (my girlfriend at the time was really into them) but hadn’t heard that song – I spent quite a while searching for the song, and I’m pretty sure it’s this one. That this band is as good, or as successful, as they are, is sometimes a mystery – the songs aren’t particularly complicated or elaborate, but something about the music just really kicks ass. Maybe it’s Chino’s vocals :shrug_emoji:.

They rock and I love this song, regardless.

Pearly : Radiohead

As I mentioned above, I got to see Radiohead open for Alanis Morissette when I saw them back in 1996. Prior to that show, the only song I knew by them was Creep and I wasn’t particularly impressed, so I looked at my ticket for that show as “I guess I’ll suffer through them to see Alanis.” I was so, so wrong. They opened with the title track from “The Bends” and I instantly fell in love with their music. This track was on a B-Sides mixtape a friend made me a year after that. In 2019, I went to a laser show in Rochester featuring Radiohead music (pretty incredible!)

Orestes : A Perfect Circle

This band is a band that features Maynard James Keenan (the vocalist from Tool). Interesting fact: the producer of this band originally wrote it with the intention of this role being sung by Elizabeth Fraser (from the Coctaeu Twins). You may also recognize her name as the person who sings the vocals on “Teardrop” by Massive Attack (the song used for the title theme of “House MD” on TV)

Fraccions : Soen

I only discovered this band recently, via a random Spotify play. I was very surprised to learn that they were not Tool, particularly because I’m pretty sure the time signature is 8/12 or some shit like that. The band features an amalgamation of some other famous metal bands, including Opeth (one of my favorite metal bands, featured later on this playlist). I particularly love the harmonizing at 4:06, which reminds me more of Opeth than Tool.

Forty Six && 2 : Tool

There are many, many songs by Tool that I have loved over the years. I think the first time I heard their music was when the video for “Sober” was played on the MTV cartoon “Beavis & Butthead” (or maybe on “Alternative Nation”?) Maynard James Keenan has such an incredible voice, but all of the instrumentalists in this band are downright phenomenal. Being able to play the drums for this song is a frequent rite of passage for youtube drummers, and I would liken the solo in the middle as an accomplishment similar to playing Neal Peart’s solo in Tom Sawyer.

I think my favorite performance of this song is done by the O’Keefe Music Foundation: a performance by an array of very talented teenage children.

Steady : The Staves

At a previous job, I worked with a local musician and we were trading playlists of stuff we had been into lately, and she shared this band. The video is similarly incredible.

Little Bit : Lykke Li

My connection with Sweden is a weird thing that is too elaborate to explain in this document, but there was a 5 year period where I kept finding that artists I really enjoyed happened to be from Sweden. This song came up on a Spotify playlist (a similar one, “Dance, Dance, Dance” from the same album had been previously shared with me). In swedish, her name would be pronounced more like “LEE-kuh LEE” but it looks like “Likely” in English. I’m not sure which she prefers.

You Got Me : The Roots (feat. Erykah Badu)

While the whole song is great, I love this song almost specifically for ?uestlove’s breakbeat drumming at towards the end. At the time this came out, I had been listening to a lot of jungle / drum’n’bass so it was really awesome to hear a mainstream-friendly song that featured some D’n’B rhythms. Erykah Badu is a wonderful feature on this one, as well.

R.I.P. - Remarc

Years ago, in the late 90s, a friend from Boston had made me a compilation tape including a bunch of ragga jungle (drum’n’bass with a strong reggae influence), including this song. It features extensively cut up Amen Loops (something that I wrote a lengthy post about a couple years ago).

The sped-up female vocals (“he-he-he-he-oooo!”) are from an audio sample collection (“Datafile One” by Zero-G) that features several vocal stabs sung by the same person (I think). The two samples immediately following this one, in that sample pack, are the ones used in “What is love” by Haddaway.

Girl/Boy Song : Aphex Twin

In high school, a friend in my Animation class introduced me to Aphex Twin with this album (The “Richard D. James” album). Richard D. James is both the name of this producer, as well as his still-born brother, born a year or two before he was. I think that might be the origin of his stage name, but I’m not certain. Anyways, this song has such a wonderful juxtaposition between the erratic synthetic drums and the more organic-sounding plucked strings.

I don’t believe there was ever a video for this song, but his later piece Windowlicker has a hilarious video,

… as does Come to Daddy

… and Donkey Rhubarb.

Protect Ya Neck : Wu Tang Clan

Wu-tang Clan is a group that I heard, peripherally, in high school (this song, C.R.E.A.M. and a few others by individual members), but I re-discovered them in my 20s. Something about the Wu personifies east-coast hip-hop for me; the bass hits with the punchy snares and soul-samples; the gritty sound; jazz and R&B influences… I don’t know what it is exactly.

Get By : Talib Kweli

We had a rather extensive downtown project complete, and when it finished, our mayor had booked Talib Kweli to come here and perform in our new pavilion. It was an awesome show, that I got to see. (clip, clip).

Devil May Care : Diana Krall (and the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra)

Diana Krall is by far my favorite modern jazz / R&B singer and pianist. She’s just incredible. This song is from her Live in Paris performance, which I also have on DVD. If you like swing, jazz, and R&B, you absolutely must hear it.

This performance, in particular, I have a weird connection to. Her drummer is Jeff Hamilton. Long ago, I lived out in the midwest. Near my birthday one year, the “Jeff Hamilton Trio” happened to be performing in town, and I went to see them; they were great. I bought their CD from the merch table. Sometime after that, I got this CD by Krall and was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was the drummer on this tour! So I was working at a restaurant at the time, as a server, and I happened to have a large party come through. I could swear that the man at the end of the table looked familiar but I wasn’t entirely sure. It turns out, it was his birthday and he was in town visiting with some family. I would like to say that I gave them great service (I did) but I’m obviously biased (I’m not, it was perfect service).

While they were eating, I had called a friend to come to the restaurant, get my keys, go to my apartment nearby and get both his Trio CD as well as my copy of this Live in Paris CD, bring those plus a sharpie also, and I managed to get his autographs on my CDs. A few years (and 2 jobs) later, I found out that my coworker was his cousin, and that she was there at the dinner that night!

Back to Black : Amy Winehouse

I miss Amy Winehouse a lot. I actually first heard her years before this album with her song “F Me Pumps”, but this whole album, “Back to Black”, is one of the few albums I can listen to in its entirety. It’s such a shame she died so young.

Another Story : The Head and the Heart

This song is a beautiful song but the stupid gorram awful terrible motherloving music video makes my dumb eyes leak water every single time.

Drops in the River : Fleet Foxes

I’m not sure how to describe this other than that it’s “Millenial stoner music” but it’s fantastic. Great for listening to after lighting candles and laying in a warm bubble bath.

Both Hands : Ani DiFranco

There are many Ani DiFranco songs that I love. Her “Revelling & Reckoning” album, especially, is an incredible double album (Grey, Reckoning, Revelling, Marrow, and then School Nite just makes me ugly cry). I love the imagery in it. This is, I believe, from her debut album, which is similarly great.

I got to see Ani in Nov 2023 in Ithaca, NY. It was absolutely fantastic. She is an incredible live performer.

Lost in Time and Space : Lord Huron

Of Lord Huron’s three albums so far, “Vide Noir” isn’t my favorite, but I do like this song and I have fond memories of seeing Lord Huron – this was one of the first songs they opened with, and the breeze was blowing the fog machine clouds across the stage, like so much dusty tumbleweeds, while the sun set off to the side. Their album “Lonesome Dreams” is probably my favorite album, though. Just the whole album. Fantastic.

Can I : Alina Baraz (& Galamatias)

Ok listen, y’all been sleeping on Alina Baraz. Seriously. Her new album “It was Divine” is great and all, but “Urban Flora” is the sex. Get on this level. (Also: a great album to take a bath to)

Njosnavelin (The Nothing Song) : Sigur Ros

Between “Bjork”, “Sigur Ros”, and “Of Monsters and Men” I feel a similar connection to Iceland like I do with Sweden (one key difference being that I have no Icelandic ancestry). This is one of those songs that just feels like home, though. Something I really love about this album, which is sort of untitled (noted by the symbols: “( )”) is how about halfway through there is a 30 second gap, similar to what you might hear if you were listening to it on cassette. This one evening I was taking a bath while listening to the album and I fell asleep during the song right before the gap and then woke up suddenly when the next song came back on; it had felt like an eternity. I think they put the gap between the songs to emulate flipping a cassette over, maybe?

Song for a Winter’s Night : Sarah McLachlan

Back in the 90s, in between going to punk shows and raves, I really enjoyed listening to a variety of artists, including Sarah McLachlan. She had an official album called “B-Sides and other Rarities” which had remixes and other unreleased singles, including an earlier version of this song. This version has some additional instrumentation that wasn’t in the original simpler version, but it’s good nonetheless.

Tip of My Tongue : The Civil Wars

This band. I swear.

They have some history.

They are, perhaps unsurprisingly given their name, no longer around, but my goodness. The two albums and two EPs they’ve released are cherished, but I have so many bittersweet feels about their exodus.

Midnight In a Perfect World : DJ Shadow

This was a hard one to pick. Long ago, I was staying with some friends; there was probably a dozen of us living in one 2 BR apartment for a week or so around the holidays, watching movies, eating pizza, playing video games, and listening to music; this album was one of them. Phenomenal trip hop.

The Great Below : Nine Inch Nails

Another hard one. I’ve followed their discography closely, and “Pretty Hate Machine”, “Downward Spiral”, and “Broken” have been played on my Walkman more times than I could guess. This song, though, is a favorite of mine because of the story behind it.

The album this is from, “The Fragile”, is a double album, and similar to “The Downward Spiral”, chronicles the descent into a major depressive episode. Trent Reznor had been going through some shit while writing this album, and this song in particular was, as he described in an interview, related to some ideation he had about walking into the ocean and not turning back. I don’t recall if he ever acted on that. Contextually, it’s the peak low-point in the depression, followed by the malaise of introspection on disc 2.

Closure : Opeth

Another band from Sweden, roughly half of their body of work is Black Metal: heavy guitars and deep guttural growling. When I first discovered them, it was this album, “Damnation”. I forget how I found them, but it was around the same time that I discovered the Guano Apes. I love the percussive elements in this song. Their more recent music has been a lot more “Prog Metal” sounding (with organs and all). It would be inaccurate to say that this song is representative of their typical sound, and there were many other possible choices that I passed over when choosing this one. A few are noted in the Honorable Mentions.

The Tempest : Pendulum

Another anomalous choice from a band with a similar divide in their musical catalog. Pendulum began as a Drum’n’Bass act, but managed to turn that into a live stage act and their more recent albums have been more conventional in song structure and composition. Still good stuff, but closer to “rock songs” than “EDM songs”. This song has its feet in both ends of that pool, beginning with a more conventional rock sound, and ending with an homage to some of their roots. (The remainder of this album, “In Silico” is more in line with their Drum’n’Bass roots, as is its predecessor “Hold Your Colour”)

Say You’ll Go : Janelle Monae

Other than “play me a song by Janelle Monae” and this coming up, I forget how I found this one. But I love it. The album is great, though I particularly like how this one ends with an homage to Debussy. The solo sub-bass-booms in between verses is a secret pleasure of mine on this one, as well.

Waltz Me to the Grave : Kimbra

Kimbra might be my favorite artist ever, though I’m not imminently dying yet so it’s too early to say that for certain. But there is not a single song by her I dislike, and the vast majority of them I love. I’ve been following her since shortly after “Vows” was released, and became very enamored when I saw her live radio performance where she used a looping station to sample her own voice.

Or the live one of Settle Down at SXSW.

Or her live performance of her cover of Nina Simone’s Plain Gold Ring.

Something that I particularly love about her music is how creative and original it is. I don’t know that I could say “oh, she’s a ___ artist” – she doesn’t easily fit into any one genre and instead she just makes…music. Whatever she wants. Big ups to her music company for having the wisdom to let her create what she wants to.

If ever I had a bucket list artist, it would be seeing Kimbra live.

This song, in particular, is a favorite. I can’t explain exactly why, though I guess maybe it has a lot to do with some introspective and existential views on mortality.

Her whole discography is wonderful though, truly.

Honorable Mentions

These songs were initially added during Bulk pass, but then removed during Cut pass.

• **Alice in Chains ** - Would?
• **Ani DiFranco ** - School Night
• **Bad Religion ** - Let them eat war
• **Diana Krall ** - Cry Me A River (Orig. Ella Fitzergald)
• **Dizzee Rascal ** - I Don't Need a Reason
• **DJ Shadow ** - Stem
• **Foo Fighters ** - Everlong
• **GZA / Method Man ** - Shadowboxin’
• **Incubus ** - Certain Shade of Green
• **Incubus ** - Pardon Me
• **John Coltrane ** - Giant Steps
• **Kali Uchis ** - Gotta Get Up
• **Kimbra ** - Recovery (really, everything by her)
• **Kongero ** - Den Som Frisker är och Sund (folk song, but I like this a cappella performance best)
• **Conjure One / Max Graham ** - Redemption (Dead Sea Mix)
• **Neil Young ** - Harvest Moon (in hindsight, disqualified because he pulled his discography from spotify)
• **New Order ** - Regret
• **NIN ** - Wish
• **Oceanlab ** - Breaking Ties
• **Ol’ Dirty Bastard ** - Brooklyn Zoo
• **The OneUps ** - Ghouls ’n Ghosts ’n Goblins ’n Gypsies
• **Opeth ** - Marrow of the Earth
• **Opeth ** - Atonement
• **Opeth ** - Ghost of Perdition
• **Opeth ** - Harvest
• **Opeth ** - The Drapery Falls
• **Pearl Jam ** - Even Flow
• **Pendulum ** - Streamline
• **Pendulum ** - Hold Your Color
• **Radiohead ** - Bishop’s Robes
• **Smashing Pumpkins ** - Jellybelly
• Wu-Tang Clan - C.R.E.A.M.