Top 10 songs ever

[desh]

In honor of WXPN's countdown of the top 885 songs of all time, here is my vote for 10 best, or what it would've been had I voted on time:

1. Doors - Light My Fire
2. The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again
3. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
4. Derek and the Dominoes - Layla
5. Billy Joel - Piano Man
6. John Lennon - Imagine
7. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
8. Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone
9. Beatles - Hey Jude
10. U2 - Sunday, Bloody Sunday

...and, man, I can't believe I have to leave out Romeo And Juliet, Orange Sky, Hallelujah, Bobby McGee, everything by Pearl Jam, everything by Zeppelin...

What are your lists? (Looking at other people's lists here might help.)

I might try to start a meme next week, once their top 100 is revealed...

Comments

[krisispm.livejournal.com]

Though I find it fun to do this objectively, the practice usually turns into choosing the ten of the most relevant artists and then methodically isolating their most culturally signficant hit. Of course, "Best" is as subjective as it gets, but it's fun to see how closely the two align.

Using that as my foundation, here's a shot at a few (already flawed by my anticipation that XPN will cheat towards classic rock and folk).

The Eagles - "Hotel California" - Rock critics and casual fans alike love to fawn all over this. Slightly edges "Desperado."

Simon and Garfunkel - "Bridge Over Troubled Water" - Seems to have an equal shot against "Sound of Silence," and I think is ultimately more covered.

The Beatles - "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" - Could also be "Hey Jude;" maybe both.

Rolling Stones - "Satisfaction" - Important AND completely ingrained in our pop-psyche.

Aretha Franklin - "Respect" - Possibly the most quintessential female vocal in pop music history.

Elvis Presley - "Hound Dog" - Birth of rock blah blah blah.

Bob Dylan - "Blowin' In The Wind" - Might cite some other artist's version.

Don McLean - "American Pie" - Come on, this is XPN we're talking about.

I think your #4-7 have a definite shot of displacing these, or landing close behind. I was tempted to throw in "What's Goin' On," "Landslide," "You've Got A Friend," or something by The Doors or Led Zepplin, but my inclination is that none of them are quite essential enough to be in the top ten. To be a best song of all time the song has to be something that launches a thousand tangents.

I fully expect one or two songs from my lifetime to sneak in there, possibly "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Beat It," but otherwise i stand by my prediction. I'll ruminate on my personal top ten for tomorrow :)

[desh]

So, wait, this is your prediction, rather than your personal 10 best? Interesting. I can't really argue with them, and of course I'm too skewed to early 70's power rock. It's what I like.

You should know, their methodology was to somehow sum the total of all the top 10 lists submitted to them, rather than to just pick in studio. One consequence of this is that multiple copies of a song can appear, if at least one was a cover. For example, Jersey Girl by Springsteen and Waits were right next to each other, at 684 and 685.

So anyway, because of this, XPN won't necessarily restrict the top 10 to one representative song per artist. (Though, I must confess, I sort of did this for my own top 10.) I fully expect the top few of the XPN list to be all Dylan and Beatles. I think an interesting bet would be the position and identity of the first non-Beatles non-Dylan song. My current guess is Satisfaction at 6.

I really want to hear your ten best.

[krisispm.livejournal.com]

Well, i had partially accounted for the methodology, as that's how most of these lists are compiled, but i didn't necessarily account for the sample population. However, i was assuming "no covers unless they're definitive" ("Respect" & "Hound Dog") in the same way Y100's album countdown typically leads with "no compilations or best ofs, unless they're definitive" (Bob Marley "Legend").

That said, the Beatles did represent about half of a recent Rolling Stone Best Albums poll top ten - I would be shocked not to see it happen here. However, I don't think Bob would necessarily rank that many songs at the top if a different population was polled, but a glance at their sample page has all sorts of Dylan songs i don't know in top tens.

This is, of course, why i rarely put any faith in scientific polling that samples such a fractional amount of a population, no matter how carefully or randomly selected; i would wager that a truely representative poll of music lovers (and, be sure, this isn't a critics poll, they haev musicians right next to traffic reporters) around the country would *probably* yield less top-ranked Dylan in favor of more commercially successful singles in the vein of "Respect" and "Satisfaction" in the same way that any idiot knew that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was being watched by a hell of a lot more people than Neilsen said it was.

Ahh, grad school, how she beckons me.

Tentative Ten

[krisispm.livejournal.com]

Tentatively, in no specific order, with extended justifications on CK.

Lisa Loeb, Stay
David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust
Madonna, Vogue
Ani DiFranco, Untouchable Face
The Supremes, Stop In The Name of Love
The Beatles, Oh Darling
Sheryl Crow, All I Wanna Do
Carole King, I Feel The Earth Move
Weezer, Say It Ain't So
Veruca Salt, The Morning Sad

I'd be shocked if any of them make the top ten on XPN, but on MTV or VH1 i might have a shot.