Your Top Five's Top Five

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Your Top Five's Top Five

Post by pinback »

Here is the thread where you pick your five favorite songs from your five favorite bands/artists.

I'll be doing one post per band, but you do it however you want.
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

Post by Tdarcos »

I can do it either way.
Anita Baker:
- Caught Up in the Rapture
- Giving You the Best that I've Got
- I Apologize
- Same Ole Love
- Sweet Love
I can't think of any other single performer or group that I can say this about: I have never heard amy performance from them that I didn't like.

Top five separate performers:
- Bob Welch, Sentimental Lady
- Fleetwood Mac, Everywhere
- Gary Jules, Mad World
- Grass Roots, Midnight Confessions
- Talk Talk, It's My Life
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

Post by Tdarcos »

I can't edit a post once saved or I wouldn't have posted the above message in that format. When you said "you can do it either way," I took that to mean five different artists or five songs by the same artist.

I'll do a sypplemental set.
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Post by Tdarcos »

Picking a performer that I liked 5 of their somgs was easy as Anita Baker immediately came to mind, there are so many good ones I realized there was probably one or more I liked better. So, in alphabetical order:
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Bob Welch, Sentimental Lady

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Bob Welch, Sentimental Lady

This was probably one of the first songs I ever thought was one of, if not possibly the best song's I've ever heard.

The B side, "Hot Love, Cold World" was a nice song, but not as interesting.

Why did I like it? Hmm, hard to say. The music, perhaps it's the opening guitar tones, perhaps its the lyrics, about a man so enabored with a woman that his world makes no sense until she pulls him together:

'Cause we live in a time
Whenn meanings fall in sputters from our minds
That's why I've travelled far
'Cause I come so together where you are
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Fleetwood Mac, Everywhere

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Fleetwood Mac, Everywhere

This is one of those "Love at first sound" somgs, where it just blew me away with the opening "trill" of sounds. I can't really describe the level of adoration, of Neing absolutely besotted over a song. When I first heard it, it blew me away. As the lyrics said, only about the song.

"For IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII wanna be with you everywhere"
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Gary Jules, Mad World

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Gary Jules, Mad World

This is a cover of a Tears For Fears song, but hearing the original after I heard this one made me think their version was a cover of this.

Jules takes a song with a bit too cheerful music of lyrics this kind of sad, and makes it sad; shows it way down. In the process he created an "Out of the Park" home run.

The singer describes a world he doesn't understand, full of sadness, of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, a world he neither understands nor finds anyone else who seems to understand, crazy people in a mad world. Where even the terrble is an improvement.

"I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams I gave of dying are the best I've ever had."
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Did you not understand the exercise?
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Here, I'll try to help. I'll start mine with ONE of my top five's top five, and then I will do the other four later.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
=========================
5. Mic Check - A relative oddity for Rage, its halting, oddball beat, and lack of memorable riff should land it near the bottom, but it all works amazingly well. And Tom makes his guitar sound like a helicopter.

4. Maggie's Farm - The last track off of their last studio album, it's infinitely better than Bob Dylan's original, and not just because it's not Bob Dylan, who I can't stand. A thunderous riff and Zach's growling reinterpretations of the lyrics make it a far darker (and more rockin') experience.

3. Testify - "The Battle of Los Angeles" could almost be repackaged as The Best of Rage, but this one kicks it off with an explosion of funk and raw sound. Tom plays the solo on this by unplugging the guitar. Don't try that at home.

2. No Shelter - This never appeared on a Rage album, and was notable for being featured in the credits of 1998's horrible "Godzilla", which is funny because the lyrics specifically implore you to not bother watching Godzilla. It features every signature sound and element that Rage brings to the table. Their entire discography summed up in one song.

1. Killing in the Name - Their first album is my least favorite. Zach had not yet found his voice, and the tone on the guitars seems too "clean" compared with what was to come. But this song changed rock forever, changed my listening habits forever, and has the singular best non-Zeppelin riff in history. Thirty years later, if you don't still get amped up at the "fuck you" part, something in you has died.
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

Post by AArdvark »

The Doors
---------
L.A. Woman
When the Misic's Over
Peace Frog
Strange Days
Moonlight Drive

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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

Post by Casual Observer »

pinback wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 5:53 am Here, I'll try to help. I'll start mine with ONE of my top five's top five, and then I will do the other four later.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
=========================
5. Mic Check - A relative oddity for Rage, its halting, oddball beat, and lack of memorable riff should land it near the bottom, but it all works amazingly well. And Tom makes his guitar sound like a helicopter.

4. Maggie's Farm - The last track off of their last studio album, it's infinitely better than Bob Dylan's original, and not just because it's not Bob Dylan, who I can't stand. A thunderous riff and Zach's growling reinterpretations of the lyrics make it a far darker (and more rockin') experience.

3. Testify - "The Battle of Los Angeles" could almost be repackaged as The Best of Rage, but this one kicks it off with an explosion of funk and raw sound. Tom plays the solo on this by unplugging the guitar. Don't try that at home.

2. No Shelter - This never appeared on a Rage album, and was notable for being featured in the credits of 1998's horrible "Godzilla", which is funny because the lyrics specifically implore you to not bother watching Godzilla. It features every signature sound and element that Rage brings to the table. Their entire discography summed up in one song.

1. Killing in the Name - Their first album is my least favorite. Zach had not yet found his voice, and the tone on the guitars seems too "clean" compared with what was to come. But this song changed rock forever, changed my listening habits forever, and has the singular best non-Zeppelin riff in history. Thirty years later, if you don't still get amped up at the "fuck you" part, something in you has died.
Agreed except I'd add Wake Up.

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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Top Five #2: RUSH (These are not in order of favorite band, I'm just trying to keep it straight how many more I have to do.)
================
5. High Water: This was off their worst album (Hold Your Fire) during their worst period (the mid/late eighties /shudders) but this final track manages to pull off a miracle, both coming up with a lyrical topic I don't think anyone had explored before, and setting it to a thumping, infectious beat, and Geddy's staccato, side-winding bass line. It felt wrong not putting anything post 1981 on this list, so here ya go.

4. La Villa Strangiato: "How can you listen to that guy's voice?" Well, you get used to it. But it's unsurprising that two of my five favorite songs are instrumentals. This one has it all, virtuosic mastery from every member of the band, comedy, mystery. Amazing.

3. YYZ: The other instrumental. There was a time, in the early nineties, if you can believe it, that I didn't know much about or care much about Rush. I had heard "Tom Sawyer" played ten thousand times over the past decade, but never paid much attention cuz the guy's voice was annoying and the drums were all weird. Then some buddies said, dude, listen to this, and put YYZ on. And I listened to Rush more than any other band for the next 10 years. And it became the main riff I'd practice when trying to learn how to play bass.

2. The Spirit of Radio. I may have heard this song more than any other song ever. I still cannot totally figure out that ballistic, out-of-nowhere riff that sends you for a loop once at the beginning and then toward the end. And it again incorporates comedy, parodying the Sound of Silence in its bizarre reggae refrain. What's not to like?

1. Cygnus X-1. Takes everything that made early Rush great -- sci-fi, trance rock, bizarre time shifts, all of it -- and ramps it up until it sucks everything around it in, like the black hole it's about. A monstrous thing. The follow-up, "Hemispheres" is also a work of genius, but it doesn't rock this hard, and you can't put an 18-minute song with multiple, distinct movements as "one of your favorite songs".
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Top 5 #3: LED ZEPPELIN

Led Zeppelin is my favorite, and the greatest by far, band of all time. This proves that this list is not in order of my favorite bands.

5. In The Light: In betwixt John Paul Jones' ethereal, dreamlike keyboard soundscape, you're treated to a riff I literally couldn't believe came out of the '70s, it's so angular, single-minded and forceful.

4. Four Sticks: Does one thing, and does it great. John Bonham is the greatest drummer of all time.

3. Whole Lotta Love: You don't wanna put the big hits on these lists, but I can't help it. The most perfect, simple riff ever devised. I believe the early radio cuts removed all the psychotic nightmare fuel that fills the middle part, which is probably why I didn't notice it until Led Zeppelin wasn't a band anymore.

2. The Ocean: You don't wanna put the big hits on these lists, but I can't help it. The main riff is maybe Zeppelin's most iconic, and therefore music's most iconic riff. But what makes this for me is Bonham, because it's such a rocking tune you don't notice how much he is not playing. In the full two-bar measure of the chorus, he plays the snare three times. That's over eight full beats. But he's filling the rest of the space so perfectly that he still comes across as dominating the proceedings. I don't love the goofy ending bit, but everything that proceeded it was so fabulous and exhausting that it's nice to finally get a break.

1. How Many More Times: When the song started, I didn't know much about Zeppelin. By the end, I knew they would always be my favorite band.
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Queen

(While in preview, I see that I don't specifically mention John Deacon in this. John Deacon wrote some of my favorite songs. He is a world-class bassist. He is an inspiration. He is also someone I greatly admire for being so good that the other members of Queen did not go back to their bassist before them, Lex's Dad, because if they DID go back then it follows that Lex's Dad's life would have been different and we would not have gotten Lex, who will never read this. I would much rather have Lex in the world than any particular piece of music. Say what you will about this decade being a shitstorm, I appreciate whoever went back in time and got John Deacon together permanently with the other three.)

5. All Dead, All Dead - I thought that "You're My Best Friend" or "Don't Stop Me Now" would be here when I was thinking about this thread. Then I looked at tracks from all the Queen albums I love, which is all of them. "Somebody to Love" or something probably would have been in this spot before half my family died in the space of two years, but they did, so here we are.

4. The Show Must Go On - Freddie at the peak of his theatrical powers, it's the song that makes you think you were a drama kid in high school even if you weren't. Dying of fucking AIDS while making this one, I don't do anything with as much dignity as all of Queen possesses in this song.

3. Nevermore - This is like the good bit of a larger song - it's just under 90 seconds long - and I don't like that I am including a song that doesn't have Roger playing drums. But I remember hearing this for the first time in Olean at Thanksgiving as a teenager, as my aunt and uncle gave me the CD of "Sheer Heart Attack" at that time, because we celebrated Christmas at Thanksgiving each year with them.

"Nevermore" has probably the best example of Freddie singing lead and also in a chorus, which probably took extra-large tape reels to do back then or something, I don't know. You could submit this on the gold disc that I assume will accompany Voyager III and aliens won't vaporize us until they get more Freddie.

2. The March of the Black Queen - Everything everyone likes about Bohemian Rhapsody is in this song and it's better.

1. It's Late - This is my favorite song of theirs. It has a glorious rock riff that comes in after May starts the song by escorting us out of the Shire or something. After that it's just the best singer to have ever lived and his guitarist for a bit, which I kind of like. How many times do you get something like that, just a bro singing with his pal on guitar before everyone else comes in?

Then the rhythm section does come in, but not before we get Roger Taylor singing backup with dubbed Freddie and Brian May and Roger could have, should have (was?) been a singer in his own rock band, he's that good. He could have sung for most bands and he sings on the third-most tracks for this band.

"It's Late" ends as a chaotic scramble, but it has the most uplifting chorus I can think of, which, goddamn, I'm getting pumped just remembering. Sometimes we as a people need to hear something like the chorus of It's Late.

It's Late
It's Late
It's Late
But not too late
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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How on earth did pinback post FOUR Rush songs I have never heard before? I like Rush! I consider myself a Rush guy! What is going on here?
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Daryl Hall and John Oates

I get that none of you are ever, ever going to listen to any of these songs, but I will defend my choices to the death.

5. Dreamtime - Not specifically a Daryl Hall and John Oates song because John Oates isn't on it, but none of you are reading this anyway. I could see this song winning gold at the Pop Olympics. I enjoy that Daryl starts the song by talking about RAGE, the only emotion that anyone feels anymore. "Dreamtime" is ripped from today's headlines.

4. I Ain't Gonna Take it This Time - When Change of Season was released in 1990 this song was a favorite of mine because of course I was angry at certain parts of the world in the same way we all were in high school. Boy, that Hilton Big M, what a shithole, right? Over 30 years later and well over 30 years sadder, I of course get that he IS going to take it this time and he IS going to suffer and no matter how many times he tells himself that things will be different, of course they won't. The pair wrote 15 of the catchiest pop tunes to ever exist and did them all in a major key; naturally, the one song they did with a minor key is the most honest because it tells a lie.

3. Art of Heartbreak - I love the saxophone in this, this song is probably the most inspirational single for the music I try to make. There are at least three things the saxophonist does that I would not know how to write down in sheet music. Daryl sounds like he is singing at the end of a dark alley, hell, the entire song sounds like if you were trying to run into darkness to get home without getting stabbed and a band was playing. They did this one on "Live at Daryl's House" decades later and reworked it a bit and it's even better, I think.

2. Wait for Me - I can't "defend" this one, it has been playing as an earworm in my head for 40 years. What ya gonna do.

1. Everytime You Go Away - This was my favorite song of theirs before the show "Watchmen" was on HBO a few years ago. Hall and Oates is my favorite band, this is my favorite song of theirs, this is their best song, it all lines up.

In the show, we are taken back in time when Sister Night is a kid and an orphan and is meeting her grandmother, who is going to take her away from all that and give her a normal life. And this song starts playing. And goddamn, it's probably the best piece of television-making I've ever seen in my life because it was basically written for me, specifically me, specifically the person that loves this song so much. The writers of this episode don't just start playing the start of the song, either, and end it. No, as Angela and her grandmother talk, there is this entire scene, this entire exchange, and you just might think that things are going to be okay, but they picked this song and not "Private Eyes" for a reason. The scene ends in the only way it inevitably could. It's the best single scene I've ever seen watching television, a goddamn ticking time bomb where all the dynamite is in the viewer's ears.
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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AArdvark wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 2:28 pm The Doors
---------
L.A. Woman
When the Misic's Over
Peace Frog
Strange Days
Moonlight Drive

I'll edit in personl comments when I get on a real keyboard
Good one! Basically my same list for The Doors aside from replacing Peace Frog and Moonlight Drive with Crystal Ship and Love Street.
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Ugh, Pinkback picks Led Zeppelin, and excludes Stairway! Cretin.

[o]Stairway to Heaven[/i] is a special, unusual song that could never ber released today (at least by a record label). Starts with a slow guitar. then a flute, like a folk song, and all the other things it does, including using people to simulate musical instruments ("Oh oh oh oh"), it doesn't really fit into one genre. While it qualifies as a rock song, it could probably fit into others, But tt's just the sort of unusual combination that would scare the shit out of a record company executive. Only a very successful band could get a record company to release something like this today (or a group releasing its own songs).

Next, Jonsey picks Hall abd Oates and except For Every Time You Go Away, I've never heard of any of the songs he. Not You Make My Dreams, not Maneater? Not... oh hell, I can't remember any pf the others, so maybe he's right.

I wonder, for those (like myself) who posted "Top 100" lists here, how many of your selections here have appeared there?
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:22 pm How on earth did pinback post FOUR Rush songs I have never heard before? I like Rush! I consider myself a Rush guy! What is going on here?
If you've never heard of YYZ, it means you've never owned or listened to Moving Pictures, by far their most heralded and popular album, which means you've never owned or listened to any Rush album, which means you've only heard the songs they played on the radio, which means you've never heard four of the songs I posted.
Last edited by pinback on Sat Jul 02, 2022 6:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Your Top Five's Top Five

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Tdarcos wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 5:00 am Ugh, Pinkback picks Led Zeppelin, and excludes Stairway! Cretin.
Because I don't like it. It's boring, and lacks most of the qualities I like about Led Zeppelin. It's my least favorite song off the album, and probably in my bottom 25% of all their songs.
Only a very successful band could get a record company to release something like this today.
Yeah, they were lucky to find an executive with the foresight to know that these nobodies were gonna turn into superstars once this song was released.
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