Budaeli

After listening to thousands upon thousands of songs, it becomes clear that some songs stand out more than others to the point that most of the others aren’t worth more than one listen.

A great pop song makes it very hard to not sing along: you want to be a part of it and share in what emotion is being expressed. A “pop” song, by definition, should be about something that everyone can relate to – that’s why most songs are about love and its various aspects.

There’s no end of unhappy songs about love, but one shouldn’t listen to those all the time. A surprising number are about being “in love”, meaning that they’re about people already in relationships. My second favorite song, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell is such a song. But that can just as easily make someone unhappy as, say, “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.

No, a great pop song should inspire hope - so that there’s something uplifting when feeling down.

Taking all of this into consideration, I stand behind calling The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” the greatest pop song. It’s about love, specifically about falling in love. For me at least, it makes me want to sing out loud every time. The person doesn’t actually get the girl, he may never get the girl, but seeing her certainly lifted his spirits and made him rethink his preconceived notions about love.

I’ve felt that way before, and I’m sure you have too.

There’s far more to loving than what’s in “I’m a Believer” – but the final criteria for a great pop song is that it should be relatable to anyone 12 years old and up. I say 12 because that’s just the cusp of the teen years, when we start discovering what it means to want another person. We may not have understood sex, and certainly not how to have a real relationship with another person, but at 12 it’s not unreasonable to fall madly in love with someone else. Conversely, “I’m a Believer” rings true for anyone who’s ever had a bad relationship, or spurned by others.

“I’m a Believer” was written by Neil Diamond and the best version was recorded by The Monkees.

A note about bias in choosing the song:

The three songs mentioned in this post all come from 1960s pop music. I do have a bias towards that era, as the foundation of my musical tastes was discovering the Beatles  at 13. However, the vast majority of the best pop songs were written and/or recorded sometime from 1964-1968. Also, I listen to nearly every genre of music, and have favorites in all of them. My iTunes playlist of favorite tunes currently has 839 songs (and growing), all of which are nearly equally as good. “I’m a Believer” just happens to be just that much better than the rest.

One last thing: because I don’t want to totally come off as a music snob (even if everyone else thinks so), here’s a few songs on my “Favorite Song” list that a typical music snob would think embarrassing to like:

• Christina Aguilera “Genie in a Bottle”
• Dee-Lite “Groove is in the Heart”
• Monica “Don’t Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)”
• Pointer Sisters “Automatic”
• SoulDecision “Faded”
• Stereo MCs “Connected”

Think another song is the greatest?

The English band Bloc Party pulled a Radiohead-like stunt with their new album, Intimacy, by releasing it online early to try and catch all those people who got ahold of A Weekend in the City before its official release (no, I wasn’t one of them).

Here’s a link to buy the album. You can get just the digital version or also get the CD when it’s released in stores.

I like Bloc Party, and I don’t like CDs anymore, so I took the bait. They somehow manage to release the right album for the right time in my life.

This album is fucking brilliant. The songs on this album have all the best qualities of the first two albums, Silent Alarm and Weekend. This rocks hard, dances hard, and has lyrics of authenticity. And, my god, the hooks! I have a soft spot for songs with strong hooks, and Intimacy has some of the meatiest. Not only that, the shimmering guitar riffs are like Ride on speed. The world needs more songs of alienation that get your body moving.

The album is going to need some evangelizing over here in the States to get people to listen to this. It won’t be hard – they just have to listen. The time has come to get rid of all those crappy emo rock bands with the whining vocals and fake sincerity.

The plan was to have a post with a song-by-song opinion of the album, but “talking about music is like dancing about architecture” so I relented out of politeness.

I used to think that great songs needed complexity and a deep meaning.

Now I know that the best songs are honest and with as little filler as possible. And yet, my inner elitist is amazed at how many great songs are just about girls.

• My favorite song of all time: “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees.
• 2nd favorite: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell.
• 3rd favorite: “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan – not about girls, but about being authentic. And the feeling of angst in music form.

It just jumped out at me: of my top three favorite songs, none are from my hands-down, favorite band, The Beatles. While they created some of the most thoughtful, and fun music of all time – they didn’t write one song that can beat those three. I get more pleasure from “I’m a Believer” than any other song – it’s positive and hopeful and has the best hooks.

Today marks the 27th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. May he rest in peace.

If you don’t know much about John Lennon, go here, then here, then here, then buy these (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14), and this, and this, and this.  That’s only a start but you should get the picture if you’ve digested all of those.

Why remember his death? Well we are all defined by the culture we were first exposed to, and music forms an integral part of that, and our identity as humans. And if you grew up in the western civilization – particularly in an english-speaking country, almost every aspect of both popular music and derivatives of rock was either invented or popularized by the Beatles. It’s in our cultural makeup.

I also hope it will inspire an artist in the future to create great music.

Liam Lynch’s most recent album, How To Be A Satellite is a great little album that I fear is not getting the exposure it deserves. All anyone seems to know about him is he did that really short song a few years back…whatever. I had forgotten about him – his only major-label album, Fake Songs, wasn’t all that great – the songs weren’t that interesting, the singing was flat, and the music felt like he knew all the theory and where to put breaks and hooks – they sounded like he wrote them for a class on pop music instead of being the real deal.

Not so with this album.

While the songs don’t have a cohesive lyrical or musical theme, most of them stand up well on ther own. Lynch has a clear appreciation for melody and a catchy hook – and for someone like me who rates a certain English band above everyone else, I’m immediately attracted to his music. And the three best tracks – “Crow,” “On Waves Low And High” and the title track – are slow pieces that have the most polish and emotional impact. They’re also the three songs that I heard on his podcast, Lynchland, that made me want to buy the album.

It would have been nice if the album had any flow between the tracks, but I’m guessing he wasn’t trying to do that. Lynch seems to me the ideal 21st-century artist – independent, song-based rather than album-based, and less a musician and more a hyperactive artist with the skill and interest to be active in multiple disciplines. Music is just his home base, where he started, and where he’ll revolve around.

Similar artists: The Beatles (duh), Bob Dylan (duh), Paul McCartney, The Zombies, Frank Zappa, Eagles of Death Metal, Todd Rundgren, Beck, Violent Femmes, Wire…sorry, these are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, but they’re all good starting points (and the may say more about my musical interests than music similar to Liam Lynch).

This is a few days after the anniversary, but hey, what’s a few days to forty years?

Forty years ago, on June 1st, 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (well, in the U.K. – here in the states it came out on June 3rd). It’s hard to tell if it’s their best album – about a half dozen of their albums are among the best rock albums ever – but the influence of this album on popular music is massive. Its timing was perfect; although everyone nowadays thinks June of ’67 was the height of the psychedelic era, but it really peaked months earlier. However, by that summer, the effects of the free-whelling social experimentation, drug experimentation, and honest belief in peace had permeated the youth culture. Students who had been waiting for classes to end to come to San Francisco finally could come (and therefore ruin the truly peaceful hippy movement that had been existing.

Nevermind the hippies. This period was most important for liberalizing Western culture and allowing for the multi-culture, mainstream-less society we enjoy today, where people can join what ever sub-, sub-sub-, and sub-sub-sub-culture they choose without ridicule.

Back to the album. There’s the gorgeous cover, the innovative inclusion of album lyrics (apparently a first), the pervasive artiness of the package (how about that cut-out mustache?). Sadly, that great sleeve and its contents are no longer available. Notice I haven’t said anything about the music yet? Sgt. Pepper is one big art project.

The songs on the album, however, are what makes this such an important release. It’s a rock album through-and-through, yet few songs can be classified as rock. It’s also a one of the best examples of a “concept album,” yet only three songs are in any way related to the ‘concept.’ There are thirteen songs on the album, but they’re all really compositions. Quite a few songs are slight in the sense that they can easily be throwaways, yet they fit perfectly with the rest of the songs. Finally, every song has a different style to it – even the title songs are different – and yet every song flows into the next. Chamber music to Indian raga to rag-top-insane-organ-whatever-you-could-call-it.

After Sgt. Pepper, the rock album was never quite the same. Artists really began to treat it as an art form in itself.

As for myself, my feelings for Sgt. Pepper are somewhat complex. The same time I listened to the album every night I was also reading The Catcher In The Rye, so my memories of both are intertwined. Also, while I enjoy the album as a whole the one song that really stands out is “A Day In The Life.” It belongs with the other classic songs from this period of The Beatles: “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Penny Lane,” and “I Am The Walrus.” From the standpoint of technical mastery these four songs cannot be matched. More was innovated and there was more imagination involved than in almost all other pop songs ever produced. These songs are great for reasons almost entirely different from all of the other Beatles’ great songs: stuff like “Yesterday,” “Something,” and “She Loves You” will be remembered for their lyrics and musical tightness as songs.

Now that I’ve spent 565 words and said little of any weight, I still love The Beatles, their music, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.