I Don’t Know (Beastie Boys)

The Beastie Boys were known for their eclectic musical style that evolved over the years, but they are primarily associated with hip-hop and rap music. Their music often featured a fusion of hip-hop, punk rock, and elements of funk and jazz. They were pioneers in the hip-hop genre, and their music was marked by clever lyrics, catchy beats, and a sense of humor. By contrast, I Don’t Know has the tone and feel of a California-sound from Jackson Brown or the Beach Boys. The track features a sample from “I Walk on Gilded Splinters” by Dr. John, which adds a cool vintage vibe to the song. –Baker

We Will Fall (The Stooges)

The Stooges were an American rock band formed in 1967 and are often considered one of the pioneers of punk and garage rock. Their music is characterized by a raw, primal, and aggressive sound that incorporates elements of rock, blues, and proto-punk. Iggy Pop, the band’s charismatic frontman, is known for his energetic and often confrontational stage presence, which was influential in the development of punk rock as a genre.

We Will Fall is a notable departure from the typical sound. Rather than loud, rebellious, high-energy rock, Fall is a slow, psychedelic, and experimental track from their self-titled debut album, The Stooges, released in 1969. In essence, it’s a unique and experimental piece within The Stooges’ discography, showcasing their willingness to push boundaries and explore different musical territories. Its inclusion on their debut adds an interesting dimension to their body of work from the start, signaling how little will be off-limits or out of range. –Baker

Black Coffee (Sinead O’Connor)

Don’t look, don’t look, just listen…OK, you can open your eyes now, and please, set a good example for our politicians: be honest–you didn’t, you wouldn’t have known what you just heard was Sinead if you weren’t reading this, right? In fact, at the time this was recorded, she would probably be last singer on earth you’d expect to hear gliding over lines like “a man is born to go a ‘lovin,’ a woman’s born to weep and fret.” Vesta and I were actually watching SNL, with an emphasis on the L, the night she tore apart a picture of the widely idolized John Paul II .  I remember that neither of us was offended–and Vesta’s a Catholic–we’d listened to enough Sinead by then, over and over, to know she must have had her reasons (and if you only know that she turned out to be right, we strongly recommend streaming 2022’s Nothing Compares).  But I know I was afraid for her–very afraid (for many years, if you weren’t watching that night you couldn’t see the clip we linked to above anywhere); it felt like she’d just torn up more than a picture of the Pope, more than her career, and it turned out she had. Yet looking back on it years later, she would call it a “blessing” that allowed her to escape the “prison” of being a pop star, that “having a Number One record [had] derailed [her] career,” and tearing up the photo put her “back on the right track.”

It’s easy to dismiss this as simply an archetypical example of the way many of us reweave and rewrite our pasts to bandage devastating old wounds that’ve never healed.  But I believe she was telling the truth–as always–because just days before she went on SNL, she released her third album, Am I Not Your Girl, from which Black Coffee is drawn, and while it’s beautiful, it’s simply not an LP (an album of standards drawn completely from The Great American Songbook? Really?)–that anyone who really wanted to be a pop star would ever release at that point in their career, especially not one with her “brand.”¹   RIP, Sinead; no one deserves to more. –Somnium

Lord Protect My Child (Bob Dylan, Susan Tedeschi)

Here’s where you’ll maybe think we’re starting to cheat a little–we have to; so many singer/songwriters have such distinctive voices you’ll know who they are the moment their larynx starts buzzing, and there are few people this is more true of than the original composer of this song–Bob Dylan.   It’s the content of its character that’s so surprising, to the point that Susan Tedeschi’s powerful heartfelt cover (if you’re a parent, you’ve probably heard it) just floats over the flags–e.g., if she’s singing about her child, why does she opine that “he has his mother’s eyes?”  You’d never guess that the famously prickly and guarded Dylan, author of arguably the coldest kiss-off song in pop music history (Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright) was capable of such open emotion and tenderness.  But he was; he specifically wrote it with his son Jakob, then 12, in mind, who would go on to front The Wallflowers, record some truly spectacular tunes of his own (e.g. One Headlight, Three Marlenas, et al), and confirms that the Dylan who penned Protect My Child is the father he and his siblings knew and know. In a playlist about change, leave it to the only rocker to win a Nobel to remind us that, other things being equal, nothing will change you like fatherhood–except motherhood, of course. —Somnium

Hero (David Crosby)

For a rock & roll era that prided itself on brutal honesty and authenticity, most of the hit songs–and especially the lyrics–of CSNY, one of its first supergroups, featuring alumni of The Hollies, Buffalo Springfield, and The Byrds, were surprisingly oblique, bordering on twee, with the notable exception of Ohio, written and sung by the member of the group, Neil Young, to whom that adjective would least apply.   Anyone who has had a substance problem–or familiarity with songs written by those willing to be brutally honest and authentic about it (Kris Kristofferson’s  Chase The Feeling, Webb Pierce’s  There Stands The Glass,² and Stew’s Kingdom of Drink come to mind)–knows where the tangential relationship with true honesty lies.

One of the most legendary “indulgers” was the singer/songwriter Young called “the soul of CSNY,” David Crosby, until truth caught up with him in a Texas state prison, where he decided to get and stay sober.  Seven years later, four years after he helped a young Drew Barrymore avoid the same fate, he wrote and recorded Hero, a far cry from Guinevere and the like in its rawness, vulnerability, courage, and relationship to reality. –Somnium

Drive (The Cars)

You probably knew this is a Cars song, but if you typically listen to music communally, we know, from statistically significant personal experience, that reflexively saying “guess who this is?” a few bars into every song gets old for your interlocutor(s) faster than one might think–so we thought we’d do our part to help keep your geek quotient acceptably mid-range when you play this list for others (you’re welcome)

In any case, while you know now it’s one of theirs, we’re guessing you didn’t the first time you heard it, because it sounds nothing like any of the band’s other hits—ie Just What I Needed, Good Times Roll, My Best Friend’s Girl, Shake It Up, You Might Think, Let’s Go, It’s All I Can Do, Since You’re Gone, or Tonight She Comes. The difference? It’s the only one where bassist Benjamin Orr handles lead vocals rather than front man Ric Ocasek, and not because Orr wrote it—Ocasek did.

The Cars are normally quirky and fun; Drive is soaring and gorgeous, which is probably why it’s the only pop song to inspire two videos featuring two different “it girls” of the  “beautiful when angry” persuasion—Paulina Porizkova (later Ocasek’s third wife) and Megan Fox. Did Ocasek write it first, then realize he didn’t have the right chops to sing it, or did he create it with Orr in mind as the vocalist when it was still in its embryonic scrambled egg phase–or is reality somewhere in left field or in between? Sadly we can’t ask either gentleman involved because they both died young (and not in the usual way). Whatever the case, the song became the biggest hit of the band’s illustrious, HoF career, certainly making the case for enabling and empowering others to take the wheel, for a change. –Somnium

Dirty Work (Steely Dan)

If you separate out the voice, you might be able to recognize this as a Steely song the first time you hear it, but that’s the point, isn’t it? You can’t. Donald Fagen’s decidedly un-dulcet tones normally define and shape the band’s elliptical lyrics, music, and vice versa.  Here everything is smoothed and soothed by David Palmer’s sweet tenor.

The story is that the duo didn’t even want the song on their Can’t Buy A Thrill album at all, but their label insisted at least a few straight ahead pop songs be included (and, in fact, believed Dirty Work would be a great cover for Three Dog Night). In protest, Fagen and Becker decided to distance themselves from the tune by having someone else sing it, and to be fair, the Steelies were notorious perfectionists,³ a quality miraculously integral to their greatness, plus Thrill was their debut, a juxtaposition Tom Lehrer might consider analogous to the dilemma faced by “a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.”

Today, Dirty Work is one of the enduring staples of their canon, a testament to the happy accidents resulting from compromise by the uncompromising (Thrill also includes a brutal takedown of one of the most beloved musical manifestos of all time, John Lennon’s Imagine) –in a time that surely needs to learn this gospel again. –Somnium

PS If genre-jumpers are chameleons, the Steelies were of a genus that changed very slowly, continuously evolving throughout their career, as you would expect of perfectionists, at least until they go Giacometti.  Here, for example, is a song Fagen & Becker wrote before they were Steely Dan (when they were part of the touring band for Jay & The Americans) that ended up recorded by Barbra Streisand…

The Green Manalishi (Fleetwood Mac)

Fleetwood Mac is a British-American rock band known for their diverse musical style, primarily falling into the rock and pop-rock genres. Their music is distinguished by harmonious vocal arrangements, intricate guitar work, and a blend of folk, blues, and pop influences. Fleetwood Mac’s sound has evolved over the years, but they are most famous for their classic rock albums, especially Rumours.

The Green Manalishi has a heavier and more bluesy sound compared to their typical pop-rock and folk-rock songs. The heavy use of distorted electric guitars and the aggressive rhythm make it sound more like a blues-rock or hard rock track. It represents a tonal shift within Fleetwood Mac, as it was one of the last tracks featuring Peter Green before he departed from the band. –Baker

San Tropez (Pink Floyd)

Change is not only defined by what came after but what was before. Pink Floyd’s sound is so distinctive that there is a lively Reddit thread dedicated to the “best Pink Floyd songs that don’t sound like Pink Floyd.” Many of those are the result of the band’s wildly experimental yet whimsical early years, driven by co-founder and original front man Syd Barrett, a painter and synesthetic musical genius who tragically lost his mind enhancing his (literal) creative vision with psychedelics.

To its credit, long after he became impossible to work with, the group, unlike the aftermath of a typical nasty rock & roll divorce, never forgot him or stopped honoring his formative role—Shine On You Crazy Diamond and parts of The Wall are dedicated to him. San Tropez (where two band members were arrested for busking) was recorded in the post-Barrett wilderness as the Floyd were casting about for a new identity; the song shows the polish they’d become known for, well-seasoned with his madcap proclivities, a what-could-have-been that likely accounts for its prominence on the unusual “best of” list described above… –Somnium

the BLACK seminole. (Lil Yachty)

Our bad—did we say the last song was by Pink Floyd? Lil Yachty is an American rapper and hip-hop artist known for making music primarily in the hip-hop and rap genres. His music often features elements of trap and mumble rap, and he’s recognized for his distinctive, melodic, and auto-tuned vocal style. Lil Yachty’s music typically includes themes of youth culture, partying, and materialism.

By contrast, the BLACK Seminole is a psychedelic, prog-rock odyssey, featuring dramatic guitar solos and wailing vocals. It comes from his 2023 album, Let’s Start Here, which is itself a dramatic departure from previous releases, heavily influenced by psych-rock acts like Pink Floyd and Tame Impala. –Baker

Old Town Road (Lil Nas X)

As we said at the top of the props, it’s one thing to participate in a phone bank or a march, quite another to put yourself politically out on a limb of the liberty tree. In music, that often means not just going where you’ve never been, but where you’re not wanted.

One of the more intriguing developments on the music scene of the last decade has been the rise of Black country music, which mostly kept to itself until Brown v Board of Education had a coda in the form of a Black gay hip-hop artist sampling Nine Inch Nails and–just before his sister was going to ride him off her couch and out of her house on a rail–storming up the country charts on his horse via TikTok to number #1 with a bullet, causing conniptions and pendant-clutching from Opryland to Branson. PS Unless you’re dead-set on owning the cons, now might not be the best time to observe that the banjo and slide guitar were invented in West Africa –Somnium

Johnny Soul’d Out (The Bus Boys)

If you know the BusBoys, it’s probably for this song, the only one in Billboard history to reach No. 1 without ever being released, thanks to its starring role in 48 Hrs., the 1982 Eddie Murphy-Nick Nolte smash. But two years before that clock started ticking, there was Minimum Wage Rock & Roll.

It’s lame, but perhaps understandable, for countryfolk not to know the Black–not bottle-blond–roots of their genre, but everyone knows Black artists invented rock-and-roll. Everyone except, apparently, the music industry. Appallogically, by the late ‘70s, the studios and labels had quietly and successfully managed to shunt virtually every Black musician into soul, r&b, disco, reggae–anywhere and everywhere except where the real money was. The BusBoys, an all-Black rock band, dedicated a large portion of their make-or-break debut calling out the industry on its “segregation forever” machinations, knowing full well that the only thing more dangerous than a psychically wounded white is a psychically wounded white liberal — Somnium

KKK (The Bus Boys)

The BusBoys were nothing if not cheekily humorous when they wanted to be, as they are on the Berryesque Johnny Soul’d Out, which tells a tale of community concern when a local prodigy who was “raised in the church, singing all day long” decides he’s “into rock and roll, and he’s giving up the rhythm and blues.”

Lest they be misunderstood, and the extent and power of their anger underestimated, their bitter outrage at how Black artists like themselves have been treated by The Biz comes out a lot hotter and more furious in the song that immediately follows, KKK, with its nuclear chorus, “I wanna join the Klu Klux Klan; and play in a rock & roll band.”

Hyperbole? We live by the axiom that no matter how bad you think racism is, it’s worse, so no, I don’t think so. The BusBoys never got nearly as far as their talents on Minimum Wage would suggest–in fact, if Eddie Murphy hadn’t pulled them aboard the 48 Hrs freighter, you might never have heard a word they ever sang (because if you listen closely to Boys Are Back In Town, you can’t help but notice that beyond eliminating certain profanities, they hadn’t backed down an inch).

When you read retrospective reviews of Wage, now that it’s safely in the past, find yourself recoiling from the sniffing and snark about its “performative” and “overly self-conscious” elements, and feel those reviewers just itching to bleat about “playing the race card,” you’ll know it hit a nerve in the “funny bone” where only T Carlsonesque helpless giggles can be produced.  And now that we know where kingmaker and Rolling Stone founder & editor Jann Wenner stood all along, does anyone this side of Sinead O’Connor have more of a right to say “I told you so” than the Boys?  I can only hope, for their sake, that their voices helped ensure the establishment was never able to do to rap and hip-hop what was done to rock & roll. –Somnium

Banned In DC (Bad Brains)

Not every “Black Invasion” was really a reclamation project. Punk, for example, was a genre in which, foundationally, bands were supposed to have unpleasant singing voices and, at most, minimal competence at playing their instruments.  To a lot of Blacks who heard it, it must have seemed like the polka of musical genres⁴–believe it or not, research has shown there’s a strong overlap between punk fans and fans of opera–and yet all-Black Bad Brains persisted and became one of the seminal groups in the catalog.  PS When the first Black death metal band emerges, you can be sure we’ll be adding it to “the list” –Somnium

Beth (KISS)

KISS never did anything by halves.  If “hard rock” and “metal” bands did power ballads de rigeur, by God they were going to stretch that concept of a plan to a breaking point.  A KISS song with…piano?…strings?…french horns?…a flute?  I remember seeing them perform this live on TV, and being struck by how inconspicuous the usually ubiquitous Gene Simmons was, in part because the whole thing was orchestrated by…the drummer?  Some will call it sappy–well, more than some–but I remember feeling it showing real people breaking through the ubiquitous face paint (which they were never seen without) and manufactured personas. And when Baker chose to play it back-to-back on top of These Days as we pulled out of the driveway to take him to college for the first time, well…touché, Baker, touché… –Somnium

Mercy Street (Peter Gabriel)

Of course, you know who wrote and sang this one as well.  But if you were a Peter Gabriel fan, as I was (and am), So, the album on which Mercy Street appeared, was a revelation, not unlike Beth, but emerging from beneath a very different set of masks–we’re talking about a guy whose previous four solo albums were all titled Peter Gabriel, which, in effect, meant their real titles were “Untitled,” “Untitled,” “Untitled” and “Untitled,” and Peter Gabriel merely his signature, as if he were an abstract artist–and the contents of the albums did little to dispel the sense this was the impression he wanted to give: the music was typically archly experimental and off-putting to many, the videos sometimes even more so, and the dominant emotions were rage and cynicism.  Personally, I suspect the third self-titled album, aka “the one with the melted face,” will always be my favorite Gabriel opus, but I also believe those who think he decided to “go commercial” or “sell out” with So really miss the mark.

Take Mercy Street, for example.  It’s no less thoughtful (and opaque) than previous Gabriel pieces–what seems at first like it might be a shadowy tale of an illicit relationship between an underage girl and an older man, perhaps even a man of the cloth, is really about the American poet Anne Sexton and her struggles with mental health, which eventually claimed her life.  What’s different is the music–like a writer coming into what should be their age of confidence, he’s unclenched his fists and stopped making the listener chase him down. The result is one of the most beautiful and haunting pieces he’s ever written.  Letting go is often an act of courage, not surrender, and as a whole, So feels like an artist bringing himself home (the real meaning of his early solo hit, Solsbury Hill)–for real this time. –Somnium

Wishing You Were Here (Chicago)

A popular YouTube construct among the older generations is watching a GenZ listen to one of our favorite old songs for the first time.  Unfortunately it’s become something of a racial trope–the young listener is typically Black, the song is typically one written and sung by a white artist or band, and the conclusion is almost always something along the lines of “Damn, those old white guys had it going on after all–they were cool!” Or at least that’s what the young performers say they feel about the music–they’ve gotta keep those clicks coming, after all (I leave the historical analogs & echoes to others).

But I have to admit I used this trope a few times on this project to determine whether a song I knew well–and knew well others knew well–really belonged, and this was/is one of them.  I played it for Baker and asked him who he thought it was.  After several guesses so right they had to be wrong, he gave up, and I told him.  “THAT’S Chicago?” he exclaimed, and they were in.  Frankly, it seemed like the band itself was a little flabbergasted, maybe even concerned about what they’d done.  One of the things that makes it seem most un-Chicago is the complete absence of their signature horns,⁵ replaced by ocean waves–until the very last measure of the song, when they come in quietly as if resolving a tension completely external to the music itself, which itself resolves in an unexpected way on the very last note.  After the vivid imagery the piece calls and conjures up, the horns are like the signature on a painting–or a whispered “yep, it’s us.” –Somnium

Crosstown Traffic (Jimi Hendrix)

This was one of those tracks Baker’s Germanic dad⁶ sprang on him. He was already a big Hendrix fan at the age of 12, and trying to convince his classical guitar-playing playing friend that Jimi was every bit as good as Segovia. “Who do you think this is?” I asked him. First he had no idea, and then it became his favorite Hendrix song.

Of course, if you’re familiar with Hendrix, his voice is distinctive enough to recognize, but he is so strongly associated with breathtaking, searing guitar solos that the cognitive dissonance Traffic creates is so strong it can prevent you from hearing the voice as his (to be fair to Baker, I didn’t recognize it as a Hendrix tune the first time either). Not only is there no guitar solo at all, but it’s one of the few in which his entire band (the Jimi Hendrix Experience) participated, a nod perhaps, conscious or not, to his Native heritage; having taken the lead to break through, he was bringing others up alongside him (including other bands, as we’ll see later in the list). And not only was the whole band in on it, but Hendrix reached outside that sacred circle–Dave Mason, best known for We Just Disagree, does backing vocals, and yes, that’s a kazoo you’re hearing, fashioned out of a comb and tissue paper by Hendrix, who played it as well. –Somnium

Piece Of Clay (Marvin Gaye)

Piece Of Clay found Gaye far from Motown, back to his gospel roots–his father was a Pentecostal minister–and appropriately so, given the subject matter of the song (written by Gloria Jones and Pamela Sawyer). Children are the pieces of clay that only God is supposed to play with, the song a plea to parents to stop emotionally abusing them (or worse), pain etched in his voice and the keening, caterwauling guitar that accompanies it.  The song was recorded in 1972 as part of an album, You’re The Man, that was shelved as too political by Motown founder Berry Gordy, and only released in 2019 on the occasion of what would have been Gaye’s 80th birthday.  Would have been, because in 1984, Gaye was shot dead by his father when he tried to intervene in a physical altercation between his parents. –Somnium

The Truth (Prince)

Is there any artist of our time you’d less expect to record an acoustic album than Prince⁷? The name of both the album and its title song are perfect; it’s Prince music stripped down to its essentials: a singer, an instrument, and his song, with the caveat that he can’t resist a few seconds of digital accompaniment here and there.

Though the song argues rather forcefully in favor of its title, these electronic supplements, the wackily subversive final words of the tune–sung sotto voce–and even the album’s cover, which features the normally flamboyant artist in a conservative double breasted pinstripe suit–yet looking for all the world like a boarding school truant–all seem to advocate for a more complex and/or expansive definition of truth than was the case in the BT era. –Somnium

Dollar Days (David Bowie)

Any list that consciously celebrates genre chameleons has to include Bowie, who not only moved fluidly through the musical ecosystem, but through multiple personas as a composer. We didn’t know where to begin in choosing one (or two or three) songs to represent him, so we began at the end, which he was true to, releasing the jazz-based Blackstar just before he passed away. Even within that narrow range, it’s hard to pick just one, so we’ve included a second, Lazarus, with its haunting video and only slightly less dire contemplations of mortality, on the playlist as well. –Somnium

Buster Poindexter (Hot, Hot, Hot)

Bowie may have been the greatest shape-shifter in pop music history, but no one ever underwent a metamorphosis as startling and complete as David Johansen’s. In the 1970s, he was the frontman of the legendary New York Dolls, a snarling cross-dressing, glam quintet that played a seminal role in the creation of punk. In the 80’s he re-emerged as Buster Poindexter, a pompadoured, tux-wearing, martini-swilling, electric lounge lizard doing jump blues and swing with the Uptown Horns behind him. Why? Because ‘Buster’ gave him free reign to “sing whatever I want to sing,” and he did. He went on to an eclectic acting career, formed a blues band called The Harry Smiths, named for the compiler of The Anthology of American Folk Music, reunited with the Dolls to put out three more albums, hosts a weekly Sirius Radio show featuring music “from all over the music map,” and was recently the subject of a Martin Scorsese documentary–among other things. A true liver (who still has one) of la vida loca, and an inspiration for anyone who hates boundaries, labels, and limits –Somnium

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright (Simon & Garfunkel)

I recently stumbled into a thread on Quora debating Paul McCartney vs Paul Simon as songwriters. Reasonable people can disagree, of course, but one of the curious arguments made on behalf of McCartney is that nobody has written music in more genres. Really? I suppose that could be true if you exclude all the genres native to what we call the Original (not developing or third) World. Otherwise, while it’s true Simon has never written anything in “English music hall” or music for children (if you exclude St Judy’s Comet, That Was Your Mother, Father And Daughter, and Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard), he’s written them in three Cameroonian genres alone. Here’s one in fluent bikutsi, for example.

You can hear Simon’s allegiance to a lane splintering in his last album with Garfunkel as surely as their relationship. The album is as variegated in style as Sargent Pepper (even though the latter was the product of four songwriters, not just one), including his first forays into world music (El Condor Pasa, Cecilia). It also includes the most “out there” song of the Simon & Garfunkel era, Frank Lloyd Wright, which remains a bit weird even to this day, but like a lot of Simon’s music, grows on you if you play it enough –Somnium

Satin Summer Nights (Paul Simon)

We’ve called the genre hoppers we wanted to honor ‘chameleons,’ but if you think chameleons change color to blend in with their surroundings (they don’t, actually), Simon’s definitely a herp of a different purp, and one due an extra level of admiration, because he doesn’t just shapeshift between modes we’re all familiar with, but has been introducing audiences for decades to ways of music they may never have heard before, exemplifying why the words for “teacher” and “leader” are the same in so many African languages–and God knows we could use more than a little of that⁸ in our next generation of leaders.

Not all these leaps of faith were successful. To preserve the element of surprise, we wanted to include a song where his instantly recognizable voice doesn’t give away the game in the first few bars. The only logical place to look for same is Songs From The Capeman, the album accompanying his spectacular Broadway flop with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott and choreographer Mark Morris. Simon does eventually show up on the track we chose, Satin Summer Nights, but even then he seems possessed, proffering language that might make Linda Blair blush.

Unsurprisingly, I’m sure, to anyone who knows him, Simon continued to work on Capeman after it closed, and it eventually returned for three triumphant performances in Central Park’s Public Theater. It’s also worth noting, as Margaret Spillane did in The Progressive, that Simon and his collaborators ruffled many a theater establishment feather in the making of the musical, and there were two categories of reviewers who did not participate in the panning pile-on against the show: out-of-town critics and, even more significantly, critics of color.

The River of Dreams (Billy Joel)

For a long time, I rather disliked Billy Joel, for two reasons. First of all, his My Life and Rupert Holmes’ Escape, with their shots at liberal culture and selfish attitude in general, were, to me and people I read, harbingers of what’s now become the Me Half-Century,⁹ and brought us to where we are. The second reason? I heard he regularly made fun of Paul Simon, who was then my favorite artist, and who I seemed to always be defending in my head or in person from those who considered him a phony in one way or another, the doors to the pantheon of “true” greats like Dylan, Springsteen, the Stones–and Jann’s other special friends–forever closed to him.

Then I heard that in the aftermath of Graceland, Simon gave Joel River Of Dreams, and thought the ridiculing I’d heard Joel was engaged in for must have been just good-natured ribbing—they were friends!¹⁰ QED, River was a natural to include on this list for a number of reasons. However I’ve since learned, in the course of researching this piece, that while Simon’s work almost certainly influenced it, if only unconsciously, the actual song came to Joel in a dream. Still, as spiritual journeys go, River is a long ways away from My Life, She’s Always A Woman, We Didn’t Start The Fire, the condescending pandering of Allentown,¹¹ etc. So we’re keeping it here, where for some reason it also seems musically to belong. –Somnium

Money (Flying Lizards)

Covers are the secret language of music, the way musicians speak to each other through their craft. And sometimes they become songlines, Homeric aural epics of change. The Flying Lizards were a new wave band in the late ‘70s and early 80s whose ‘thing’ was covers, but via a very distinctive postmodern process that captured the gestalt of the time. They would essentially deconstruct each song, separating the singer from the song and the music from the lyrics. The “singer” was a young English woman who would recite the words to the songs while the other band members would industrially abstract the music. It’s not that the sound or style was completely unique; in fact, structurally it reflected a growing trend represented by Lou Reed, the B-52s and, of course, the genre that would slowly but surely eclipse rock: rap/hip-hop, born several years before the Lizards got their start. But by applying their process to classics like Great Balls of Fire, Tutti Frutti, and Purple Haze, they arguably signaled more clearly than anyone else that a new era was arriving.

Money (That’s What I Want) was by far their biggest hit; I can remember it being ubiquitous for a surprising length of time on my college campus, as well as the rumors the bridge featured the sound of a live squirrel being cut in half by a chainsaw (it didn’t, Baker, it didn’t). Most of us considered it a cover of a Beatles song, but the Beatles version itself, like the Beatles themselves, also heralded the dawn of a new era. The real original was written by none other than Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford, and recorded by Barrett Strong in 1959. It announced– and became the first hit for–a fledgling Detroit-based label called Motown.

PS.  When you think about it, maybe it’s no accident that this song keeps popping up at the front end of eras–what brave new movement in America doesn’t want and need money to realize its full potential, including creative politics…

The Sound Of Silence (Disturbed)

The vast majority of covers end up being nothing more than communications within the artistic community, sometimes between artists and their fan bases, sometimes just album filler or worse. In the cases where a cover breaks into the mainstream, it’s usually someone else’s deep cut or long-forgotten hit.  It’s rare–like real change is rare–for someone to take a well-known and well-loved classic, recorded definitively by the original artist(s) and transform it, for the times or all time, bringing out powers that we all knew–or should have known–were there within it.  Most wouldn’t so much as dare to try.

Disturbed is a four-piece classic metal/hard rock group out of Chicago that’s been together for the better part of nearly twenty years. They’ve been plenty successful on their own, selling more than 17 million albums, with singles from all eight of their albums reaching the top of the mainstream rock charts and multiple Grammy nominations, but they’re hardly the group you’d expect to take a Simon & Garfunkel song and make it their own, let alone the tune that, when properly electrified, provided the folk duo’s breakthrough¹² into the limelight.

But that Disturbed did, punctuated by a series of stunning live performances, one of which Simon himself heard. In many businesses and other fields of endeavor, what this group did would not be well-received by the original inventor or creator. There are plenty of analogs to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only pro football franchise in the modern era to go undefeated, who unapologetically raise their glasses every year when the last unbeaten team goes down. The spirit of music is different, and it’s a spirit we could use more of, especially now. For his part, Simon reached out to the band with effusive praise and thanks. As he said at a recent tribute to his music hosted by the Grammy Foundation, “it’s really amazing if you’re a writer to hear another artist perform your song well.” Touching his heart, it really “makes you feel like you wrote a good song,” he added. –Somnium

Bittersweet Symphony (The Rolling Stones, Andrew Oldham, The Verve)

Considered by some to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, pop songs of all-time, Bittersweet Symphony is a case of a musical transformation that didn’t go so smoothly, at least not at first. In some ways, the music community is inspiringly generous; in others, especially in the sampling era, it can go from liberal to libertarian and litigious in the space of a single note.¹³ We’ll have more to say about what we think of IP law in another piece, but spoiler alert: we think it needs to be burned down to the ground, and the bittersweet tale of this song’s creation and aftermath is a good example of why.

Listening to Bittersweet, you might be surprised to learn that while it was recorded by The Verve, Mick Jagger and Keith Richard are credited as songwriters. You might be even more surprised to learn it’s considered a remake or rip-off (depending on your perspective) of The Stones classic, The Last Time, especially if you’re familiar with both songs, and that for years, The Verve and lead singer/songwriter Richard Ashcroft saw not a penny of royalties on by far their biggest hit.

In fairness, the story becomes a bit less outrageous, maybe even a lot less, when you learn that the Stones’ promoter and manager, Andrew Oldham, created–with the band’s permission–an album of orchestral versions of Stones songs (The Rolling Stones Songbook) like Satisfaction, Time Is On My Side…and The Last Time, which Oldham and his orchestra turned into this, and yes, those strings do sound familiar. But it should also be noted that unlike many artists back in that day (mid-’90s), Ashcroft reached out to Oldham and the Rolling Stones and received permission to sample this/the orchestral version of the tune.

The problem: the Stones and manager Allen Klein, who controlled the copyright to Last Time, claimed the band had sampled more than had been agreed to, the courts agreed with them, and it’s certainly true that the most memorable element of Bittersweet is identical to the orchestral Last Time, though you have to wonder, after listening to the Oldham interpretation, if that isn’t what The Verve licensed, what was? And for the band to lose all credits and all royalties over this? As if they’d written nothing at all? With the credits and lion’s share of money going to Jagger and Richard–Oldham once joked that “they got the watch, and I got a pretty presentable watch strap?” When it’s a lot harder to hear Bittersweet in their original Last Time than Got To Give It Up in Blurred Lines??¹⁴ Really? Really??

But we said this was a bittersweet story, and we meant that literally–first the bitter, then the sweet. Klein died in 2009, and a decade later, in May 2019, more than twenty years after the song was originally released, Jagger and Richard gave songwriting credit and the royalties back to Ashcroft and The Verve, a change for the better that we hope will reververate (yes, I’m a dad) elsewhere –Somnium

Fire (Bruce Springsteen, The Pointer Sisters)

Did you know this Pointer Sisters’ hit was actually written by Bruce Springsteen?  How about Patti Smith’s Because The Night, Natalie Cole’s Pink Cadillac, or Manfred Mann’s Blinded By The Light?  It’s not unusual for a great artist’s songs to get covered, of course, and much smaller number of artists are known for giving away songs–Prince, aka the Mozart of our time, is probably the most notable (though as we’re learning from The Vault, The Purple One could never have come anywhere close to recording and releasing all the chartable songs he’d written anyway).

What’s arguably unique about The Boss is the number of songs he’s written that became huge hits for others that he’s made little to no effort (in recognition, we assume, of the extent to which they made the song theirs) to claim as his own.  From the moment Sinead O’Connor opened her mouth, everyone knew Nothing Compares 2 U was a Prince song, and Paul Simon wrote Red Rubber Ball in the Brill Building, but who doesn’t know it was his?  Meanwhile, how many times have you heard Springsteen’s version of Fire or Because The Night?  With the exception of Cole’s Pink Cadillac, none of the famous Springsteen covers above are listed among the greatest of all time, because they’re not really considered covers.  In short, at least where what matters most to a top artist is concerned, he’s a paragon of the selfless generosity of spirit all real change requires –Somnium

PS What’s especially remarkable is the number of  Springsteen songs that have been made huge by women, given Springsteen’s rep as a “man’s man;” famously, he had to explain to the Reagan campaign that Born In The USA means exactly the opposite of what they thought it meant, and yet they kept right on using it as Ronnie’s entrance song.   At this point, he’s probably made it clear enough t where he stands that the MAGAs of the present day all “know” he’s a leftist “pussy” or “pansy” (their words, not mine), though it’s doubtful any would have the guts to say so to his face; deep down, they know their idol is the least manly man of all.

State Trooper (Bruce Springsteen)

I always knew my father was really angry when he got very quiet, his voice almost a whisper.  Prior to Nebraska,  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were known as the hardest working band in show business this side of James Brown & The Famous Flames.  Their concerts were legendary, the songs and singing were fast and loud, bordering on over-the-top and bombastic, so sonically bright and colorful it often obscured the angst and heartache that underlay it, most (in)famously in the case of Born In The USA.

Nebraska, an anguished cry on behalf of Forgotten America, which Springsteen recorded without his band, represented arguably the most dramatic–and certainly the quietest–shift “against type” of any work on our current list. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it, and I suspect many of you do, too.¹⁵ We could have placed any track from the album in this slot, and maybe should have included several, but for us, State Trooper best captures the desperation of the working class, our working class, our fellow Americans, that he was seeking to channel –Somnium

Lonely Blue Boy (Conway Twitty)

Tbh, we originally only included this one so you could “guess who this is?” when playing the list for friends, and watch the wheels turn in their heads as they bounce like mountain goats between rummaging their brains for this classic Presley tune that–how is this possible?–they’ve never heard before, and wondering if this is a trick question–who else could it be? But then we read a little more about Twitty and got a better sense of the real reason why and how it fits.  Because at least some of you know Conway Twitty, and if you’ve never heard this song (or It’s Only Make Believe), this isn’t him, is it? In fact, when these songs were recorded and released, the public was convinced “Conway Twitty” was a pseudonym Elvis was writing and recording under (paging Andy Kaufman). The truth? Like Elvis, Twitty was born in Mississippi, parallel to Tupelo, along Highway 278 on the opposite side of the state, which might make them twins in some kind of mystical way, except that Elvis had an actual twin who, sadly, was stillborn (and in case you pondering, Twitty was born two years earlier). As a high schooler, Twitty batted .450 in what was then still America’s pastime and was headed for the Philadelphia Phillies when he was called up for service in the Far East.

While there, he formed a group called the Cimarrons to entertain his fellow soldiers, and when he came home he turned down the MLB and embarked on a music career instead.  After hearing Mystery Train, widely considered one of the greatest tracks ever recorded (and Paul Simon’s personal favorite), he formed a band called the Rockbusters and quite deliberately styled his singing to sound like the King. The rest of his story, the capstone of this one, the story of the Twitty you know, is one of a man breaking away from top 10 singles in someone else’s voice to find and sing in his own, as we’ll all have to do in the months and years ahead.  And that’s really why Blue Boy is on this list, even if we didn’t know it at the time — Somnium

Out Of My Mind (AISIS/Breezer)

Think this is an Oasis tune you somehow never heard? Nope, it’s a representative of what could well be the biggest change in music in our lifetime.  By now, we’re guessing you’ve probably heard Kanye West (for some reason, he seems to be the favorite to cordycepify) and other popular artists singing, thanks to AI, songs online you know they never recorded.

AISIS, an English group made up of musicians from another British band, Breezer, have taken this to the next level.  They’ve taken a set of their own original compositions and had an AI play them as if they were Oasis on their debut album, The Lost Tapes, Vol. 1.  The results? Well, Liam Gallagher, Oasis’ lead singer, seems to be in a share and share alike mode. With the caveat that hadn’t heard the whole album, he averred that what he had sampled was “better than all the snizzle out there.” And what did he think of AI Liam? “Mad as fuck” he declared (and that’s a good thing), “I sound mega.”

Of course this is the kind of reaction we might expect from an artist who extensively quotes the French revolutionary Marat at the end of one of his songs; others may well feel differently. In any case, when the first AI-composed and performed tune hits the Billboard Top 40, we’ll be sure to add it to the list –Somnium 

Dear Mr. President (Pink)

As a pop mega-star known for songs like Get This Party Started, Pink was definitely passing through an unfamiliar zip code in penning what starts out as a humble open literatune to George W Bush, but quickly turns into an anguished attack over homelessness and the Iraq War (while still acknowledging he’s “come a long way from whiskey and cocaine”), all this with Dixie Chicks still visible in the rear-view mirror.  No doubt it helped to have the Indigo Girls behind her, and by 2006, when President was recorded, the gusano had definitely turned in the Bush administration bottle, but still…

PS Transparency requires me to acknowledge that Baker, no fan of GWB (he finds it unconscionable that Trump’s perfidy has turned W into something of a sainted elder statesman¹⁶) really doesn’t like this song, and would say it fails the “good” criterion to be on the list. I suspect he finds it a bit sanctimonious and easy, but I lobbied to include it anyway, in part because there were plenty of “Republicans buy sneakers too” celebrities in that era who would not only not touch politics with the proverbial 10 foot pole, but would turn their backs on it as it floated like a bloated body past them on the river of the times. The other reason? To set up the next song on the list…

Goodnight America (Miko Marks)

Of course so much seeking, finding, and defining truth in America happens on the road, and the difference between Pink and the Dixie Chicks is akin to the distance between New York and Nashville, LA and Laredo.  We have to travel many miles down the timeline from when the Dixies became the Chicks to find an artist who truly has the ovaries to match up–cast in brass to boot. Like the Chicks, and unlike Pink, Miko Marks is a country singer; unlike either, she is Black.  We know we’re not alone when we think of Black Americans as the conscience of our union, the greatest keepers, protectors, and defenders of the ideals espoused by the Founders, ironic as that may seem.  QED, there’s something heavier, turbulent and unsettling, in the air when a young Black country music artist, singing like a canary in a coalmine, decants lines about our nation like “So long, so long, I would say fare the wеll; But all the evil you have donе is; More than anyone could tell; God knows you’re headed for where the wicked dwell.”  Creating the kind of disequilibrium you normally only experience when the angel gives up and flies off your shoulder. –Somnium

Baraye (Shervin Hajipour)

Living by the axiom that no matter how bad you think racism is, it’s worse, in an era when 30% of our country apparently believes the Second Amendment–and eight trillion bullets–gives them the right to rule the nation–and do whatever they’d like to anyone who displeases them along the way, it’s difficult not to conclude that Ms Marks put a whole lot more than her career on the line when she recorded Goodnight and released it online.

If there’s a musical case where even more courage might be required, it would probably involve recording an anti-government anthem so poignant your fellow musicians are spreading it all over the world (e.g. here’s Coldplay singing it in Argentina), and doing so within a fully totalitarian 40+ year old regime with a well-earned reputation for brutality, at a time when it’s facing the most existential levels of civic unrest in its history–as a result of beating to death a young woman for absolutely no reason at all. Yet that’s what Shervin Hajipour did, and sure enough, he’s now in prison, fate unknown, but immortality probably about as secured as it can be… — Somnium

PS The Youtube link above includes the English lyrics in real time as he sings.  The title of the song means “Because of”.

We Shall Not Surrender Until The End Of The World (Naing Myanmar)

Of course it’s dangerous to be a singer-songwriter with a conscience in any authoritarian nation, from Russia down to countries many of us would be hard pressed to find on a map, like Cameroon, but there may not be any place in the world where a singer is more likely to pay the ultimate price for raising their voice in song than Myanmar, not that this has stopped the resistance from doing so, even after the “government” went so far as to hang one of the country’s leading stars, aka the godfather of Myanmar hip-hop, Phyo Zeya Thaw.

In 2011, after decades of protests in which music played an integral role, the military junta, which had ruled the country since overthrowing a democratically elected government in 1962, was forced out of office, but in 2021 it seized power again.  As if to underscore that they had not forgotten the past, nor the sacrifices made (while signaling their willingness to pick up where they left off and do it all over again), the mainly young protesters immediately began singing and recording protest songs that dated back to the 1980s (ie before they were born),³ and there are three, in particular, dating back to that period, that are regularly sung at the beginning of protest marches.

We’ve included the second of these, We Shall Never Surrender Until The End Of The World, because its melody will be startlingly familiar to you–it’s drawn directly from an 80s US mega-hit that I suspect many of us found to be one of the most depressing songs in the r&r canon–that it was also a notorious earworm may explain a lot about our generation’s fragile connection to mental health. That the Burmese seized upon it, of all the available options, and turned it into a standard whose message–and revival–is diametrically opposed to the original, says a lot about the spirit and character of the Burmese people. –Somnium

PS Unfortunately we haven’t been able to find WSNS (UTEOTW) on Spotify, so it’s not actually in the playlist, but the YouTube link above includes both a choral performance and English lyrics.  Careful, though–if you think about it, especially alongside the original, in the times we live in, it may bring a tear to your eye…

PPS We’ve made a copy you can download and drop into your copy of our playlist at the appropriate location–we think…

Stefania (Kalush Orchestra)

A good listen whenever you need to be reminding of why we added another 0.2% straight onto our national credit card to stop Russia and China from taking over the world, depriving no one but perhaps the 1% of anything by doing so, and why we should be doing this to support peoples fighting for democracy everywhere, lest our own country becomes a playground for authoritarians, oligarchs, and warlords.

Kalush Orchestra, a unique band from southwestern Ukraine that combines hip-hop with traditional Ukrainian folk music, rocketed into world consciousness when it represented Ukraine at Eurovision 2022, which took place just shy of three months after Russia’s invasion, and came to represent music’s contribution to uniting Europe and the West against Authoritarians, Inc. In advance of the competition, over the objections of a coterie of modern Brundageian pooh-bahs, Russia was barred from competing in the event (and, more or less simultaneously, from entering Kyiv).

Kalush was not supposed to be in it either, having only finished second in Ukraine’s qualifying event, until it was discovered that the winner, Alina Pash, had performed in Crimea for Russian occupiers who had illegally seized it from Ukraine, presumably getting paid in pieces of silver for her troubles, and worse, tried to cover it up by entering the stolen land via Russia and forging her transit docs to look like she’d never gone there at all, because she knew she would be ineligible to represent her country if it were known.

Stefania, which features multiple traditional Ukrainian instruments, was originally written as an ode to the mother of one of the band members, but in the wake of the Russian invasion, the mother soon became Ukraine itself. It was the perfect harmonic receptacle for the people of 40 nations to send a message to the post-modern fascists in the Kremlin, and in winning the competition, it also smashed records in the number of votes it received from thee, the people, across the European continent, swamping the jury vote of elites, who placed it only 4th. It also became both the first rap and the first offering sung entirely in Ukrainian to win.

Shortly after its victory, the band sold the trophy they were awarded for $900,000, donating the entire sum to the military to buy drones to defend the homeland, and like many of the country’s best-known sports and entertainment celebrities (there are more of them than you might think), one member of the group reported for duty on the front, eventually rejoining the band, which has been touring the world ever since, donating virtually all its concert and merchandising proceeds to the cause. –Somnium

Rich Men North Of Richmond (Oliver Anthony)

This is a song many of you are going to want to skip, but if you’re reading this, you care about the future of our country, so you shouldn’t. The “welfare queen”-type fat-shaming in its final verse is just plain wrong–and misguided–but the complaining about taxes? Perfectly legit if you’re not wealthy; contrary to Mitt Romney’s infamous hidden camera moment and serial health care fraudster Rick Scott’s claim, in pushing for the poor and working class to pay more taxes so they have “skin in the game,” Form 1040 is hardly the only way we’re taxed, the poor and working class pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the wealthy do, and they don’t need “skin in the game;” as we all learned during the pandemic while the wealthy were hanging out in the Hamptons, they/we are the skin in the game.

More importantly, when the GOP picked the tune up as a MAGA anthem for their first presidential debate, like Springsteen before him (see Born In The USA), Anthony made very clear where he stands, stating that he finds it “aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them,” noting that the song “has nothing to do with Joe Biden. You know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song’s written about the people on that stage and a lot more too, not just them, but definitely them.” At the same time, he disputes left-wingers’ claims that it’s an “attack on the poor,” protesting that “all of my songs that reference class defend the poor.”

Our opinion is that if he really means what he says, he should be open to some constructive criticism about the obesity verse, why it’s not only hurtful but fiscally way off base, and what he should replace it with–we’re working on a letter to him to this end that we’d love to have you jump in on.  Why? Because in our opinion, political polarization in our country is nothing but an increasingly intense and high stakes game of divide and conquer that 1 percenters (1/100s excepted) are playing (as they slurp more and more of the world’s resources into their insatiable maws) to keep Trump and Sanders supporters from ever realizing they are–or really should be–on the same side, and we’re pulling together a QR sticker-based campaign to prove it.  Guys like Oliver Anthony can easily be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

PS Another song popular with true red-hats that you might nevertheless find easier to listen to is  Jelly Roll’s  Save Me, which features prominently in Alexandra Pelosi’s bracing new documentary, The Insurrectionist Next Door. In one scene, one of the individuals in question–and an entire bar full of what we’re clearly meant to presume are like-minded individuals–sing along to it, and they clearly know the words a lot better than most of us know the Star-Spangled Banner.  This, in turn, apparently inspired Pelosi to run it over the closing credits.

Check My Machine (Paul McCartney)

“Check My Machine” by Paul McCartney is a distinctive departure from the musical landscape the legendary artist is known for. Released as a B-side to the single “Waterfalls” in 1980, the track stands out as an experimental foray into electronic music. McCartney’s usual melodic pop-rock takes a backseat as he delves into synthesizers, drum machines, and avant-garde soundscapes. The result is a quirky, futuristic composition that showcases McCartney’s willingness to push the boundaries of his musical repertoire. “Check My Machine” stands as a testament to McCartney’s versatility and adventurous spirit, providing fans with a glimpse into an unexpected facet of his creative genius. –Baker

Revolution Nine (The Beatles)

Arguably this one has no business being on this list, since it’s often considered one of the Fab Four’s worst songs, a piece of wretched self-indulgence they made because they could. Maybe my taste is more eclectic than good, maybe I just have the same affinity for aural collages as I do for visual ones (here’s a “concerto” Baker and I created that’s made entirely of Arctic birdsong), but it blew my mind the first time I heard it as a child, and if the pundits can be believed, I’m probably among the few who’ve played it enough to have it memorized.

Frankly I find the musical staties‘ propensity to label experimentation in this way—and worse–beyond tiresome. Which has aged better, for example, Yoko Ono’s oeuvre or the reviews it got at the time? By late 1968, when The White Album, which included Revolution Nine, was recorded and released, the Beatles could not have still believed they could say or do whatever they wanted, not in the aftermath of “more popular than Jesus,” the scathing reviews for their fourth film (1967’s Magical Mystery Tour) for many of the same reasons Revolution Nine would be savaged, and law enforcement’s determination to bust them.¹⁷ 

Tolerance for self-indulgence would be especially low in a double album fans would be shelling out 2x the shekels to obtain, and even lower for an alleged indulgence that was nearly twice as long as any other track on either pressing. The lads in the band were neither naïve nor stupid—some stones/cojones were required to put Nine on the album. In the end, maybe the greatest testimony to the value of the piece is how unremarkable it would be for any band to release anything similar today. Like it or not, Revolution Nine helped secure a significant swath of artistic freedom for all –Somnium

Come And Get Your Love (Redbone)

Everyone knows this song; longtime NYC star DJ George Michael went so far as to declare it America’s National Anthem of the Weekend, and treated it as such every weekend for years. You might not have known (or forgotten) the name of the group that did it, but that’s not why it’s on the list—it’s about who they were (sadly, two of the three main artists involved are no longer with us).

Founders Pat and Lolly Vegas were writing and performing surf music along Hollywood’s Sunset Strip (while writing for and playing with a panoply of stars) when Jimi Hendrix, who considered Pat his favorite guitarist and biggest influence, inspired them to form a rock band, and not just any rock band, but one in which all members, like Hendrix, would be of Native American heritage—Redbone is a Cajun word that means mixed-race. Come And Get Your Love, from their second album, was not only their biggest hit, but made them the first Native American group to breach the top five on the Billboard charts, though not the first Native composition to chart.

That distinction belongs to legendary guitarist Link Wray (unless you count hits penned by Black Americans whose families date back to before the Civil War, 85% of whom have Native American ancestry), who had a hit record you also probably all know, Rumble, one of the first rock songs to use tremolo and distortion, which reached the top twenty in 1958, and directly or indirectly influenced pretty much every rock guitarist since.  Unlike Redbone, we can all be excused for not knowing where Wray was coming from because–perhaps because he lived in Klan country, and didn’t enjoy the same strength in numbers–he felt he had to conceal his heritage18. Even so, Rumble was banned in New York and Boston–the only instrumental ever banned by radio stations anywhere–due to its alleged capacity to stoke gang violence.

By contrast, Redbone made clear who they were in their album titles, cover art, their onstage attire, and the subject matter of many of their songs. Which had consequences, albeit some of which they likely would have suffered (as so many Original Americans have–and do) whether they had so publicly identified as who they were or not. On the plus side, they headlined the first official celebration of the first Earth Day in 1972. On the downside, the lead single from their very next album, in 1973, We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee, which charted all over Europe and reached #1 in the Netherlands, was first withheld from release in the US, then banned by several radio stations.

Lead vocalist and guitarist Tony Bellamy died of liver failure at the age of 64; founder Pat Vegas died of lung cancer at 70, having already suffered a series of strokes. And then, of course, and maybe worst of all, despite all their efforts to be outspokenly Native in all aspects of their recording, we can’t help but wonder how many of those who know and love their joyous greatest hit are aware of the heritage behind it? Has it become yet another Native contribution to our culture stripped away and erased? Frankly, although I’m pretty sure I was aware of Redbone’s origins at the time, I had forgotten it myself until I saw a terrific documentary called Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World that might literally blow your mind if it hasn’t already done so. –Somnium

Mehcinut (Jeremy Dutcher)

Talking about firsts like Redbone’s can easily be double-edged, or worse. Too often it produces nothing more than a lot of unearned self-congratulation and complacency on the part of the society involved, sometimes even implicit negative judgment of the oppressed segment of that society’s achievement (what took even one member of that group so long to accomplish what members of the dominant group achieve routinely?) and decidedly mixed emotions on the part of those upon whom such accolades are festooned: pride, anger, frustration (for some reason, they tend to think that their group identity is not the entirety of who they are), embarrassment (at being expected to represent and speak for entire groups of people whom they know, far better than their interlocutors, are far from monolithic hive minds).

But the hope in calling out such heretofore unfortunately singular milestones is that they will inspire more of the same–or better yet, deeper, more far-reaching, even discomfiting attainments by those who follow. We can only hope that the efforts of Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Redbone, Buffy Sainte-Marie,¹⁸ and other Native musicians led a young Jeremy Dutcher, a two-spirit member of the Tobique First Nation, one of last 100 speakers of the language of his people, to revive songs like Mehcinut that, in at least some cases, haven’t been heard for more than a century, and offer up the powerful tenor voice he was given to record breathtakingly beautiful music in his native tongue– with no English translation provided. –Somnium

Were You There? (Roland Hayes)

As you listen to this one, try to guess when it was recorded. Here, for comparison (and a bit of a hint) is a typical recording of the great Enrico Caruso, circa 1917, who inspired Hayes to pursue the career you’re listening to… It sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday, right? Instead, it’s a real “blast from the past;’ he’s asking you his questions across a distance in space-time of more than a century.

And the way he sang was only one of the ways he was a man out of and ahead of his time. When he first tried to make a living as a singer in Boston, he found that no venue would book him, so he booked an entire concert hall himself, Boston’s largest and most prestigious, and he and friends cold-called Bostonians from the phone book until he had filled the seats with paying patrons. When the concert was a huge success, he set about getting himself recorded, only to find that no recording studio was interested in recording a Black singer. So he paid out of pocket for the studios to record him, paying 2-3 times what they were charging white producers to record, selling the resulting records himself. Then he went to England where a performance of Were You There? in a local church so moved clergy and congregation, he found himself performing the next day for the King and Queen, which, in turn, led to a barnstorming tour all over Europe that culminated in a performance of German lieder in Weimar Berlin before an audience packed with Nazis (which requires a cautionary note: yes, the Nazis were already a force to be reckoned with a decade before Hitler took power), where…

Well, if you want to know the rest, we have to insist you check out our source for all of the above, episode 5 of Radiolab’s Disappearance of Harry Pace series. You won’t regret it—the Roland Hayes story is much richer than the little blurb we’ve written here, the Lab tells the tale a lot better than we can, and said tale makes maybe the best case of any on our list re: how an artist, against overwhelming odds, can change ‘it is what it is.’ And therefore so can we–which is the whole point of the list to begin with. –Somnium

PS Here’s another, more recent, yet surprisingly unfamiliar case of someone well ahead of her time, albeit with a more tragic denouement.¹⁹ Check out this video–we’re betting you’ll recognize someone in it right away. You’re right, of course, that’s Karen Carpenter on drums in the 1960s. At a time when there were virtually no other professional female drummers at all, Karen C was considered one of the best of the best of any gender. And in the early years of The Carpenters, even after her talent as a singer had been discovered and deployed, she continued drumming while she sang.

But it was determined that if the group was to achieve the success it eventually did, Karen needed to be out front where the fans could see her, not hidden behind a drum kit. This, in turn, made her increasingly self-conscious about her looks, which led to her death from anorexia–and the first awareness for many Americans, of the existence of eating disorders and their potential consequences.²⁰

Mondnacht (Barbra Streisand)

This one’s on the list because my mom (Baker’s grandma) is a big Streisand fan and when we played this for her, asked her the question, and told her the answer, we got the diagnostic “THAT’S Barbra Streisand?”

It’s also here for a couple of other reasons. First of all, it’s just one track on an entire mid-70s album of Streisand singing classical music. It had to have occurred to her–and if not to her, then to others who would have told her–that the power and clarity of her voice could lead to an oeuvre with the potential to alter the course of classical vocal performance. For example, as this recording shows, what she could do without the warbling level of vibrato that mars classical singing in the ears of many was remarkable. So she gave it the proverbial whirl.

And then went back to the career path she had been on. Maybe she didn’t have what she thought was the requisite passion for the body of work involved, maybe she didn’t feel she was good enough at it or that it wasn’t the right fit to take full advantage of the capabilities of her voice (Mondnacht is definitely the standout on the album), maybe she didn’t feel it was worth it to give up her enormous pop success to try and prop up a genre that seemed to be collapsing under its own weight.

Irrespective of the reason(s), for the purposes of our list, Streisand’s performance illuminates a couple of important (and related) characteristics of change that many others don’t. First, that change is often as much about exploration as it is about decision, which is important, because viewing change as ‘do or die,’ ‘no turning back,’ is a good way to paralyze yourself into doing nothing.  Second, that the consideration of real change, personal or societal, compels–should even demand–the contemplation of alternative histories like the ones that come to mind when thinking about the trajectory of her career. If it doesn’t, there probably isn’t anything particularly real about the “pivot point” being foregrounded. –Somnium

Nessun Dorma (Aretha Franklin)

Another case of another great pop voice taking on a piece of the classical canon, but from a rather different motivation and perspective. Together this selection and the last represent the poles of a classic debate about the best way to effect change: from within or without? We believe that if Streisand had chosen the road not taken, it could have had a salubrious effect on the classical genre, but based on the album where she tried this on for size, it sounds like she would have chosen to do so within established parameters of the tradition (which is a primary reason why Streisand fans are likely to have a hard time recognizing she’s the one singing that beautiful rendition of Mondnacht).

By contrast, anyone listening to Aretha performing Nessun Dorma will know almost immediately the Queen of Soul is in the house–the unexpected is not why this performance is on the list. Franklin’s not trying to prove (or see if) she’s a great classical singer as conventionally defined; she’s trying to transform the music and bend it to her will. This is why she was famously able to fill in, on a moment’s notice, for Luciano Pavarotti (merely widely regarded as the greatest operatic tenor since Caruso) at the 1998 Grammys when the latter was too ill to perform.

The outcome of her approach, as confirmed by the audiences for both that performance and the official recording above, is nothing less than electric, and if nothing else, illustrates how much there is to be pulled out of (or exhumed from, depending on your POV) long-established traditions, rather than simply throwing them over or aside. Whether this is a good thing, in any or every case, as opposed to merely providing the spectacle of “a dog walking on its hind legs,”²¹ is up to us to decide –Somnium

American Tune (JS Bach, Paul Simon)
All By Myself (Sergei Rachmaninoff, Eric Carmen)

On occasion, artists’ resurrection and revivification of the best or foundational in our distant past has gone beyond performance to composition itself.  Two archetypal examples, one the better known song, the other the better known lift, are Paul Simon’s American Tune and Eric Carmen’s All By Myself.

As is his wont, Simon travels further in space-time, all the way back to 1727 in Leipzig, Germany, St Thomas’ Church specifically, or just across the street, where JS Bach composed four settings of the Passion story.  If you know American Tune, you’ll recognize it instantly in any typical St Matthew Passion chorale.  If you don’t, you will, when you listen to them side by side or in succession.

Eric Carmen’s case is more famous, in part because his revival of a more recent piece, the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, helped re-popularize it. It also probably didn’t hurt that Carmen gave Rachmaninoff a song-writing credit.  By contrast, when Simon was asked about the similarity between his track and the Bach chorale, he allegedly responded with some variation of Picasso’s pronouncement: “Good artists borrow, great artists steal,” no doubt secure in the knowledge that the Bach family was not represented by the attorneys for Marvin Gaye’s estate.

But before anyone climbs up that high horse, it should be noted that Carmen only gave the great Russian composer his due when he learned, to his surprise, that the piece (which he, as a young man would, believed was probably written shortly after the fall of the dinosaurs) was actually not yet in the public domain.  And while Simon has had an actual dust up over songwriting credit with the great Los Lobos, he’s also promoted and advanced the careers of dozens of artists, both here and abroad.  Besides, Bach isn’t exactly in need of the same level of recognition that, for example, South Africa’s Solomon Linda never got in his lifetime (for writing one of the world’s most popular songs) — Somnium

Echolocation (Bruce Hornsby)

If Hornsby isn’t familiar to you, his biggest hit, The Way It Is, probably is. And you’ve probably heard his work a lot more than you realize, because like a lot of other changemakers in their own fields, he’s collaborated with a dizzying array of other artists. He co-wrote, and played the piano for, Don Henley’s The End Of The Innocence, tickled the ivories on Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me, collaborated with and provided vocals for the Irish group Clannad, joined forces with jazz legends Wayne Shorter, Charlie Haden, and Bela Fleck to put out A Night On The Town, joined the Grateful Dead in its final years, playing more than a hundred shows with them (he was also part of Sheena Easton’s touring band in his early years, and more recently played concerts with the likes of Pink Floyd and the Doobie Brothers), formed an ongoing bluegrass collaborative with Ricky Skaggs, produced Leon Russell’s comeback album, Anything Can Happen, wrote for Huey Lewis, composed for and performed in numerous Spike Lee films, and appeared on albums by Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Stevie Nicks, among others. Many of these artists also appeared on his own albums, as have Pat Metheny, Branford Marsalis, Phil Collins, Bon Iver, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Sting, Mavis Staples, Shawn Colvin, and Christian McBride.

The Way It Is is a great tune, but I believe–and I’m sure I’m not alone–the main reason rose to prominence was that it was an overtly political song about homelessness and race in a soulless decade (the 1980s, aka the Reagan years, aka the Me Decade) when such compositions in the mainstream were few and far between (numerous rappers have sampled it, most notably Tupac Shakur). Hornsby has continued to focus lyrically on race, religion, judgement, and tolerance, and contribute politically in a variety of other ways.

As you can imagine, based on the range of his collaborations, it would be hard to find anything he’s done that’s truly a unique break from his past. He describes himself as “fairly restless creatively” and that would appear to be an understatement. And yet his most recent album, Absolute Zero, appears to embody this quality to another level—if the only Hornsby you know (or thought you knew) is his greatest hit, the entire album is likely to be unidentifiable. We chose Echolocation because not even his trademark instrument is heard on the track, though truth be told, he’s done at least one album where the only instrument he plays is a dulcimer, and his piano playing on this one doesn’t exactly give away the store. —Somnium

Clay Pigeons (Michael Cera)

It’s not uncommon for celebrities to record albums, and let’s face it, they’re usually straight-to-bin collages of vanity and fan service.  The self-effacing Michael Cera (aka George Michael, forever) is one of the last of his kind you’d expect to traverse this well-trod path–and indeed, he did so only at the repeated urging of friends, and then only completely on his own–no hiring of primo lipstick-applying producers, studios, and/or session musicians–self-publishing the result on Bandcamp.  So it should perhaps come as no surprise that true that (yes, of course the album title would be all lower-case) is a clear exception to the rancid rule above.  Clay Pigeons is a Blaze Foley cover, but tracks like Ruth, Too Much, and 2048 show he has the chops to hold his own. –Somnium

The Wizard (Black Sabbath)
Planet Caravan (Black Sabbath)

Featured on their iconic second album, “Paranoid,” released in 1970, “Planet Caravan” presents a stark contrast to the thunderous riff-driven compositions that defined Black Sabbath’s early career. With its dreamy and atmospheric quality, It transports listeners into a cosmic realm, characterized by jazzy percussion, spacey synthesizers, and Ozzy Osbourne’s haunting vocals. The song’s serene and contemplative nature showcases the band’s versatility, proving that beyond their powerhouse metal anthems, Black Sabbath was capable of crafting evocative and otherworldly sonic landscapes. “Planet Caravan” remains a standout in the band’s catalog, revealing a softer, more introspective side of the legendary metal pioneers.

Likewise, “The Wizard,” from their eponymous debut album released in 1970, stands as a unique gem in the band’s repertoire. Diverging from their typically dark and heavy sonic landscape, this track introduces a bluesy and folk-inspired element, prominently featuring Tony Lommi’s unmistakable guitar riffs alongside an unexpected twist – the harmonica. The harmonica, played by frontman Ozzy Osbourne, adds a rustic and rootsy dimension to the song, evoking a distinctly Americana feel. –Baker

Hurt (Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash)
Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode, Johnny Cash)

Would this list be complete without hearing from the Man In Black? While Disturbed had to really cut loose to make Sound of Silence theirs, all Johnny Cash had to do is open his mouth to make a song his, even in his final years, maybe especially in those final years.  The first time Nine Inch Nails lead Trent Reznor was exposed to Cash’s version of Hurt he said “hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend,” but when he saw the video–one of the greatest ever made–he got it (if you haven’t seen it, and we know there’s a good chance you haven’t,²² do yourself a favor)  “It felt like a warm hug,” he reported, which is a helluva sentiment if you know the song. “I have goosebumps right now thinking about it,” he continued.

When Cash came for Personal Jesus, songwriter Martin Gore of Depeche Mode was unsure, until bandmate frontman Dave Gahan told him off: “what are you, crazy. That’s like Elvis asking, of course you let him do it!” The Elvis reference wasn’t incidental–the original inspiration for the song was what Gore saw as the unequal nature of Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s relationship. For Cash, who grew up in a conservative religious family, on the other hand, “it was probably the most evangelical gospel song I ever recorded”

What gave Cash and his voice the gravitas to transform anything he sang? I believe it was because he spoke, in his singing, for so many who had no voice at all.  Everybody knows about his Folsom Prison & San Quentin appearances and recordings (he did at least 30 prison performances across the country); less well-known was his insistence, when he was still just a rising star–far from the untouchable icon he became, at a time when the music industry had much more control over performers than it does today, on recording and releasing Bitter Tears, a 1964 scorched earth jeremiad of an album about our genocidal, breathtakingly dishonest, and grotesquely corrupt treatment of Native Americans.  That it rose to No. 2 on the country charts is a testament to depth and openness of many country fans that should be remembered to this day.

One song, in particular, The Ballad of Ira Hayes, clearly struck a nerve, rocketing up the charts, then plummeting as radio stations and DJs pulled it from the airwaves, just as the studio he was under contract to no doubt feared they would. In response, Cash took out a full page ad in Billboard calling out the stations and DJs as “gutless” and demanding to know why they were afraid to play the song.  He also sent more than a thousand copies of it (at his own expense) to stations around the country. Within a month, the song had climbed back up to the upper echelon where it belonged. Thenceforth, we would contend, the spirit of original America multiplied the power of his voice –Somnium

It’s Oh So Quiet (Bjork)

The Icelandic songstress superstar is so creative she seems to be moving between genres that are all of her own making.  Like Black Coffee, the page she plucks from the Great American Songbook to use for a momentary descent from West Asgard to the land of the mortals is a surprising one, a tune written by two Germans for a male Austrian singer, then covered by Betty Hutton in 1951 on the B-side of a 45, but no matter.  The great 20th century music composition teacher Nadia Boulanger²³ often said someone who is truly original is incapable of copying anyone else, and Bjork proves it here, making So Quiet her own.  Her visit well-appreciated by the mortals, it remains her most popular hit to date. –Somnium

PS If you’ve never seen the video we linked to, gosh, Bjork is tiny; it makes the power she’s able to generate all the more remarkable, though not unprecedented.

Chicago (Sufjan Stevens)

Like Bjork, Sufjan Stevens seems to make up genres as he goes along, sometimes from song to song, and yet he’s so distinctly of his own universe in every way (has anyone ever covered a Sufjan Stevens track?) that he’s instantly recognizable no matter what he does, and unlike Bjork, I don’t think he’s ever come back to the pack, but for that reason, we think he belongs.  The question in such a situation is: what track to choose?

We figured our best chance at generating a “that’s who?” moment would be to go back to his early work, especially since it represents the kind of organized vision one associates with real change.  Specifically, Stevens announced himself on the scene with a 2003 album called Michigan that was entirely about the state of Michigan, and the announced intention to record similar albums for every state in the union.  I was introduced to Stevens via my sister (more on her later) and his second album in the series, Illinoise, which was where we happened to be living at the time.  Of course, because this is Stevens, the question then becomes, once again, which track? We chose Chicago as the most representative (and maybe because we lived there for a decade), but could easily have chosen other ground-breaking standouts like   John Wayne Gacy Jr.  or  Casimir Pulaski Day

Illinoise would prove to be the last album (so far) in what might be called Stevens’ musical equivalent of our politicos’ quadrennial fifty-state strategies that are never really realized–only a lot more ambitious. They have thousands of cogs to build a 50 state machine to execute the well-established mechanics of political campaigns; Stevens is a single songwriter in terra incognita for which he’s been the only Vespucci.

But such is the charge of real change; as Nelson Mandela’s words, now our unofficial motto: “it always seems impossible until it’s done.” So why not us? Why don’t we use our collective community-building bona fides to pick up the gauntlet in this nation so badly in need of healing and mutual understanding and organize the musical talent in each of the other 48 to make Sufjan’s vision a reality.  Frankly, with our help, Stevens’ idea could become the greatest contribution to real change of anyone or anything on this list –Somnium

Keep Young And Beautiful (Annie Lennox)

One of the things we found curious when looking for songs to add to the list was how many female vocalists, when looking to switch up, reached back into the Great American Songbook (or even further back)–eg Sinead, Bjork, Barbra, Ricky Lee Jones, Rachael Price (albeit with all-original tunes), back into the days when a women sang songs with lyrics ‘acknowledging’ that a woman’s role is to “stay at home and tend her oven,” and not write songs and lyrics (e.g. the lick we just cited was written by Paul Francis Webster). Why so often venture back into Gilead, rather than laterally into other current genres other than their own, or go wildly experimental?

To be clear, there are plenty of female artists who cycle through (or even combine) genres with the fleetest of the boys–Madonna, Beyonce, Gwen Stefani, Lady Gaga, Lana del Ray, Janelle Monae, et many al, and many who are as experimental as any man, or even more so–Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, the aforementioned Bjork, MIA, Kate Bush, Florence Welch, Joni Mitchell, etc etc etc (consider these legends and others of their guild as a literal motherlode for additions to this list! with apologies for the fact that they’re not already represented–there’s many more than six degrees between us and Jann Wenner, we promise :/)

But why go back to Gilead at all? A legend in her own right who arguably drives in both lanes above, Annie Lennox, has a acidly cheeky answer/response.  At the very end of Diva, her magnum opus album Rolling Stone calls one of the “essential recordings of the ’90s” (full disclosure: Vesta and I played a song from it for the first dance at our wedding), just when you literally think you’ve heard everything, up pops the little number we’ve included on the list –Somnium

Talkin’ Like You (Connie Converse)

Leaving Black female artists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Big Mama Thornton aside for the moment, perhaps the best example of an artiste who led the way for all the boys was Connie Converse, who invented the singer-songwriter genre a full decade before Bob Dylan popularized it.  Converse was not only a singer-songwriter, but a writer, poet, political thinker, activist, and painter, making contributions in all areas.  But as her biographer recounts, “she was an invisible ghost in her own life.” She established the singer-songwriter ideal by playing her songs at the dinner parties of influential friends in The City, and never made an album: all we have of her are recordings she and others made on reel-to-reel tape recorders, and she often joked she had “dozens of fans around the world.”  Her one moment of national prominence was the proverbial exception that proves the rule, a 1954 appearance on a Walter Cronkite program, of which there is no recording, just six still images.

That her music was unusual was likely a factor, featuring melodic lines and progressions that are still unique today, lyrics that were both direct and subtle (and sometimes slyly quite funny, in a slow burn way), with a union between the two that’s positively conjoint.  That she was a woman was almost certainly unhelpful, and her timing was bad: as Dylan was heading to New York to jump-start the folk scene, she was trundling out of NYC to decamp in Ann Arbor, MI.  As her biographer notes, “the two artists could have passed each other on I-90.” What most people, especially listicle addicts, know Converse for is what happened a few years after she settled down in the Midwest: one day, she wrote letters to friends around the country, got into her VW Bug, headed out of town, and was never seen or heard from again.  As NPR’s Colin McEnroe noted recently, “it was as if she had to disappear to be seen.”  –Somnium

PS There are some eerie parallels between Converse’s story and that of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, who invented abstract art years before Kandinsky, Picasso and the rest of the boys started doing it, and there’s reason to believe that Kandinsky, at least was exposed to her work.  Af Klint was a Theosophist, and in 1908 showed her abstract, spiritually visionary work to Rudolf Steiner, who told her, in not so many words, that it was blasphemous, and should never be shown to anyone else.  She continued to create these paintings, nevertheless, but never showed them to anyone but a few close friends and relatives.  Meanwhile, Steiner was a friend of Kandinsky’s.

Before she died in 1944, she made an arrangement with her executors that the paintings would continue to remain hidden until 50 years after her death.  She also had a vision for how they would be displayed when they were finally shown to the public; she envisioned the creation of a circular building. open in the middle with light pouring down from a skylight.  Her paintings would be on the walls of this building, and people would view them via a walkway spiraling ever upward until it reached the light.  In 2019, they were displayed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, an exhibition that drew more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most popular in the museum’s 60+ year history.  Though nothing can justify the suffering both Converse and af Klint experienced, together their stories should give inspiration to every struggling artist of every kind whose creativity seems to put them beyond the pale of the time they live in.

Nothing But Flowers (Talking Heads)
Sax And Violins (Talking Heads)

Be Still And Know (LeAnn Rimes)

Country music’s LeAnn Rimes, often considered the heir to, if not a reincarnation of, the otherwise incomparable Patsy Cline, had her first-charting hit when she was 13, and unbeknownst to fans it was actually a version of the song she had recorded when she was 11.  So maybe, as someone whose candle has burned particularly long and bright, it’s not surprising that she would come out, at the ripe old age of 38, with an album, Chant, made up solely of sung meditations, and an implicit message about change, that without a doubt, as sure as a butterfly needs a chrysalis, it requires periods of rest and reflection –Somnium

I’m Not Going To Miss You (Glen Campbell)

Arguably the most powerful song ever written by an artist facing the ultimate change, the passing from this world into the next. And doing so via the most horrifically jagged, narrow (and narrowing) stone-filled path through that portal in our time, the steady relentless annihilation of self that inevitably accompanies Alzheimer’s. Written for the soundtrack of a documentary covering his final tour, recorded with The Wrecking Crew, the legendary studio band he was an original member of, the last song he ever recorded, it’s…well…honestly, I can’t say anything about it he didn’t say better, and with more courage than we hope any of us have to muster. –Somnium

In Spite Of Me (Morphine)

If you know Morphine, you know they sound like this, and if you don’t know what they sound like, now you do. You would probably know them better if their front man, Mark Sandman, hadn’t died, suddenly and completely unexpectedly of a massive heart attack (anorexia would have seemed more likely) at the age of 46 while performing in Italy. About five months before he died, he wrote this song. It sounds nothing like Morphine, nor like the band he was part of before, Treat Her Right, or really anyone else. Half the time I hear it, I’m still at least momentarily stumped as to who it is.

My sister, who goes by Aunt Miriam on the site, suggested we add it (among others²⁶) to the list was and is a close friend of Sandman’s partner in the creation of Treat Me Right, and got to know a number of folks in and around the band. The song features Sandman singing to someone who he “always knew would succeed, no matter what you tried.” He’s “proud to have known you for the short time that I did, proud to have been a step along your way,” yet he knows who he’s singing about “did it all in spite of me.” It’s quiet, sweet, thoughtful, vulnerable, and deeply supportive.

Sandman never married, but my sister knows who he was singing to, and at the time of his death, what she would become could not have been more than a dream and a gleam: the founder and executive director of an extremely successful school to career program focused on the culinary arts, a board trustee on the private industry council of a major American city, and more.

This track would have qualified for the list just by being different enough to be unrecognizable, and beyond that, how far out on a limb Sandman was, both musically and lyrically, like we’ll all have to be willing to be, in our own way. But maybe it also says something about how important it is to have people in your life who see what you can become, possibly even better than you can. And sadly, how important it is to never forget tomorrow is guaranteed to no one—and act accordingly –Somnium

Pet Sounds (The Beach Boys)

In the midst of a musical revolution that repulsed the Greatest Generation, the Beach Boys were considered the clean-cut All-American band you could bring home to Mom and Dad. But those who listened to the deep tracks, not just the hits (most notably The Beatles, who created their magnum opus, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, as a direct response to that they saw as the gauntlet thrown down by Pet Sounds), knew that Brian Wilson & Co. could be just as wildly creative as any–and weirder than most, something that should have been apparent when they deployed a newly developed instrument, the electrotheremin, played by its creator, a former trombonist in the Glenn Miller Band, to create the iconic sound of their greatest hit.

Like The Talking Heads, Paul Simon, and a few others on the list, the Beach Boys’ sound is so distinctive it’s hard to find a true That’s Who? moment, but there is one place where Brian gets to let his freak flag fly incognito, the titular track of that Pet Sounds album –Somnium

Precious (JD McPherson)

JD McPherson is a rock/rockabilly/r&b singer-songwriter, an MFA, and former middle school art and technology teacher (the usual story—loved the teaching, hated the bureaucracy) from Broken Bow Oklahoma. Almost like a sign of some kind, I first heard this song at the tail end of an episode of Reservation Dogs (which if you haven’t seen it, you really, really should) while working on this list, and soon realized it was the perfect number to end on, at least until your additions start rolling in.

The entire song is about change, seeing the beauty in it, and drawing strength from times of transition like the one we’re all in now. God, it’s so tempting to give you a full exegesis of the lyrics, but that would be disrespectful to the song, the singer, its performance, and you, so I’m only going to urge you to check out–and hopefully eventually sing along with–the lyrics to make sure you get every drop of power it has to offer. It’s what I play now whenever I’m in dark place—maybe it will be for you, too. –Somnium

PS Here’s another version of the song, recorded on video in the studio. It’s emblematic, I think (a la the ground-breaking vids from The Goat Rodeo Sessions), of one of the many great things about music, the way it embodies coming together as a community, something we surely need constant reminders of, in every possible way, now more than ever.