Monday, February 9, 2015

100 Desert Island Songs

So my brother came up with a list of his top 100 songs and, naturally, I had to follow suit. So. Given some totally bizarre desert-island anti-modern-technology rules, if I could only keep 100 songs from my iTunes library, what would they be? (This ends up being somewhat more expansive then an album list, which is forthcoming.)

First, a few stats:
Genre break down:
Alternative/Alternative-Rock/Garage Rock/Other Punk/Post-Punk/Punk-Pop/Rock: 24
Grunge/Hard Rock: 10
American Traditional Rock/Classic Rock/Mainstream Rock: 9
Alternative Pop/ Indie Pop/Synth Pop: 8
Classical/Choral: 6
Psychedelic: 6
Original Film&TV Music/Soundtrack: 5
Blues, Boogie & Southern/ Honky Tonk & Outlaw/Nashville Sound/Rockabilly: 4
British Indie Rock/Pop/British Invasion: 4
Stage Musicals: 4
Folk/Contemporary Folk: 3
Classic Pop Vocals: 2 (that would be Patti LuPone & Liza Minelli, which is how you know this list is complete and desert island approved.)
Oldies: 2
Singer-Songwriter: 2
Adult Contemporary: 1
Celtic: 1
Classic Soul/R&B: 1
Dance: 1
Hop Hop/Rap: 1
Jazz Vocals: 1
Latin Pop: 1
New Wave: 1
Surf Rock: 1
Thrash & Speed Metal: 1
World Fusion: 1

Year break down (although some of these are recording years, not composition years. For instance, the 80s includes a recording of a piece from the 12th century.)
2010-2014: 6
2000-2009: 26
1990-1999: 25
1980-1989: 7
1970-1979: 18
1960-1969: 15
1950-1959: 1
1833: 1
1720: 1

And now, the list (also here on youtube). In alpha order (and with the songs that overlap with my brother's list bolded):
#1 Crush - Garbage
All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix
American Girl - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Another Day - RENT OBC/ Jonathan Larson
Anything Goes - Patti LuPone/Cole Porter
Ave Maria (arr. David McIntyre) - San Francisco Girls Chorus
Baba O'Reilly - The Who
Born to be Wild - Steppenwolf
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
Call Me - Blondie
Carmen: Act 3: Halte! Quelqu'Un Est Là Qui Cherche À Se Cacher! - Agnes Baltsa, José Carreras, Etc.; Herbert Von Karajan: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Paris National Opera Chorus/Georges Bizet
Cold War - Janelle Monae
Criminal - Fiona Apple
Delilah - The Dresden Dolls
(Don't Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
Down On Me - Big Brother & the Holding Company
Dream On - Aerosmith
Duet - Philip Glass (performed by Sugar Vendil, Trevor Gureckis)
El Tango de Roxanne - Ewan McGregor, Jose Feliciano and Jacek Koman
Eleanor Rigby - The Beatles
End Transmission - AFI
Even Flow - Pearl Jam
Fairytale of New York - The Pogues ft. Kristy MacColl
The Foggy Dew - The Chieftains & Sinead O'Connor
Foolish Games - Jewel
Freedom '90 - George Michael
Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones
Glycerine - Bush
Go with the Flow - Queens of the Stone Age
Gold Dust Woman - Fleetwood Mac
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley/Leonard Cohen
Happy Home - Garbage
Hey Pretty - Poe
The Highwayman - Loreena McKennitt
House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
Hysteria - Muse
I Think I'm Paranoid - Garbage
I'd Like - Freshlyground
I'm Shipping Up to Boston - Dropkick Murphys
In Like the Rose - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Intro/Sweet Jane - Lou Reed
Jai Ho - A.R. Rahman ft. Sukhvinder Singh, Tanvi Shah & Mahalaxmi Iyer
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine - The Killers
Jessica - The Allman Brothers Band
Just Like Heaven - The Cure
Killer Queen - Queen
The Kiss - Trevor Jones
Knights in white satin - Moody Blues
Lights - Journey
Lonely for a Lifetime - Dana Fuchs
Mack the Knife (live) - Ella Fitzgerald/Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht
The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
Marat/Sade: Homage To Marat; Marat We're Poor; People's Reaction; Poor Old Marat - Judy Collins/Richard Peaslee
Marry Me a Little - Raul Esparza/Stephen Sondheim
Mein Herr - Liza Minelli/ Kander & Ebb
Midnight Radio - John Cameron Mitchell
Momma Look Sharp -  Scott Jarvis (I think?) / Sherman Edwards
New Fang - Them Crooked Vultures
Nothing Else Matters - Metallica
O Euchari - Emma Kirkby, Gothic Voices / Hildegard von Bingen
Oh What a Circus - Antonio Banderas & Madonna/ Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice
Ojos Asi - Shakira
Piano Man - Billy Joel
Pipeline - The Chantays
Proud Mary - Ike and Tina Turner
Ready to Go - Republica
Reasons to be Beautiful - Hole
Resistance - Muse
Ride - Lana Del Rey
Runaway - Del Shannon
Satellite Mind - Metric
Save Me - Joan Armatrading
Shake it Out - Florence + the Machine
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
The Snow Leopard - Shearwater
Somebody to Love - Jefferson Airplane
The Sound of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel
Spark - Tori Amos
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
Suffragette City - David Bowie
Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
Sweet Dreams - Eurythmics
Time of the Season - The Zombies
Toccata and Fugue in d minor - J.S. Bach
Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins
Touch Me - The Doors
Two Years Before the Mast - Astronautalis
Unchained Melody - The Righteous Brothers
Veni, Veni Emanuel - San Francisco Girls Chorus (French trad. melody)
Waking Up - Elastica
Walk - Foo Fighters
Walkin' After Midnight - Patsy Cline
Whatsername - Green Day
White Room - Cream
Winter (Allegro Non Molto) - A. Vivialdi
The Wolf - Phildel
Wonderwall - Oasis
Zero - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The funny thing is that he and I picked a lot of the same artists, but different songs (Walkin' After Midnight as opposed to Crazy; Sound of Silence vs. Only Living Boy in New York; Down on Me over Me and Bobby McGee; Touch Me vs. Light My Fire; The Man Comes Around over Walk the Line; Smells Like Teen Spirit > Come As You Are, and I picked two AFI songs to his one (Morningstar)) I do like that he managed to get a Cab Calloway in there, along with Moby, Gnarls Barkley, Magnetic Fields, and the Beach Boys (although he excluded classical songs). And already today, I wonder at what point the last Cranberries/Distillers/No Doubt/Adele/Beck song bit the dust, or when I lost the second Green Day/Tori Amos song, or Destroy Everything You Touch by Ladytron or Repatriated by the Handsome Furs...

Mostly the entire exercise makes me really, really glad to live in an era of mp3 players.

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