my top songs of the 80’s list-in-progress
Pitchfork’s top 00’s song countdown inspired me to finally start and follow through on my long backburnered 80’s track-down over at postpunk, and I’m already 10 songs in!
In order to make the project doable (I am writing blurbs as well), I chose 35 songs with room for a few last-minute impulse/oh-shit-i-missed-that inclusions as “honorable mentions”. All told, there should be 40 songs on the final list.
- HM1: The Passions - Africa Mine
- #35: Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen
- #34: My Bloody Valentine - She Loves You No Less
- #33: Adam & The Ants - Stand and Deliver
- #32: Hüsker Dü - The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
- #31: Orange Juice - Falling And Laughing
- #30: Hall & Oates - I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)
- #29: Martha and the Muffins - Three Hundred Years/Chemistry
- #28: Soft Cell - Tainted Love
- #27: Fugazi - Waiting Room
It’s funny reading some of P2K postmortems while I produce/publish this list, because I am dealing with reader expectations and responses on a song by song basis. It’s nice to see something like “Edge of Seventeen”—generally loved, but overlooked by a lot of 80’s canons—do quite strongly in terms of Tumblr notes/playcount. My two most idiosyncratic and obscure choices so far—“Africa Mine” and “Three Hundred Years/Chemistry”—have signifcantly fewer plays than my hours-old Fugazi post (the ratio is like 5:2).
Of course, these are imperfect metrics for measuring response, since you have to account for how packageable the post is (a tl;dr post discourages reblogs and hence plays by non-followers) and consider how the reader experiences the posts (if they check once a day, they should see two of my posts in reverse order but will likely only budget their attention on one of the songs).
My P2K Predictions: 17/20
Track #5 has the sickest blurb ever, but I think Tom Ewing’s “it’s a like prayer” riff from the Pitchfork 500 does a better job for that song.
I have a method of scrolling precisely through the list, playing the songs one at a time, reading the blurbs, taking great pains to not have the list spoiled. My little brother started to follow along with me during 50-21, so tonight I got to introduce him to #13.
BTW he had never heard AnCo before this list and he hated what he heard (#35 and #73). It’s funny how little some of the music impressed him.
Highlights from P4K’s 100-51 List
Telling it like it is - Joshua Love on “Someday” #53:
The placement of “Someday” as the top Strokes song on our list befits the fact that it’s possibly the best distillation of lead singer Julian Casablancas’ irresistible brand of insouciant asshole charm.
Actually this is all I want in rock music - Matthew Solarski on “Obstacle 1” #64:
[T]his early knockout from the record remains the signature distillation of Interpol’s well-apportioned strengths, as if urgency + hook + tempo change = all you’ll ever need to craft the perfect little rock song.
Biggest LOL - Ryan Dombal on “Mr. Brightside” #72:
In the decadent, Moulin Rouge-inspired, ham-a-lot video for “Mr. Brightside”, Brandon Flowers and Eric Roberts battle for the love of a ghostly courtesan by playing a game of… checkers. Not chess. Not poker. Not, like, a pistol duel— checkers! Is there a less sophisticated and/or consequential way to settle a score? (Naturally, Flowers eventually flips the board in disgust, ending the brief showdown.)
Most impressive stretch - Tom Ewing on “Stroke of Genius” #78:
Christina Aguilera and the Strokes find smolder in one another, Aguilera’s purring sultriness transforming the ache in “Hard to Explain” from world-weariness to frustrated desire. Impressively, the Hellraiser predicted the arc of 00s teenpop with this— its turn away from bubblegum R&B to guitar-driven confessionals.
Best recontextualization - Marc Hogan on “I’m A Cuckoo” #97 (which btw I was so happy to see):
Not only does this version make “Cuckoo” finally sound as carefree as its melody, it also predicts indie pop’s late-2000s turn Africa-ward. (See especially the Tough Alliance and Air France remixes of former Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman’s Taken By Trees project.)
Blurb that makes me love the original song even more and hence the best blurb - Douglas Wolk on “Work It” #54:
Yes, there’s a beat— a dumbfounding one, so stripped-down and fluid it’s practically gestural, so good you say blah blah blah— and the samples that bookend it (Rock Master Scott at the beginning, Run-D.M.C. at the end) point out just how much more graceful technology has made hip-hop in 20 years. But this is Missy’s show as both a writer and a rapper, and she’s got so much juice she can literally reverse the flow of time. She can end nearly every line with an oh-ah rhyme (half of which are words she made up herself), she can ditch rhymes altogether for an even funnier effect (of course “nails done” matches “hair did”!), and she can totally grind on you and play it off as a giggle— note that she’s not comparing herself to Halle Berry but to “a Halle Berry poster.” There aren’t many more bluntly sexual songs that have turned into hits this elephantine; maybe it slid by because there aren’t many songs that are anywhere near this funny about sex.
Okay I am a total listwhore
Maybe it’s because they tend to come out around Christmas and I tend to exhaust every list I come across and find lots of music that I really really like, that I get this whole Christmas-morning “let’s unwrap presents” sensation from any P4K song list. Anyway, I love lists and I know far too much about them.
I have P4K’s list from five years ago backed up! I’ve been mentally comparing placements on this list to the P4K 500 (i.e. funny that “Party Hard” never made the book…). I am literally worried by how high the Hold Steady will place, because they are awful. I am excited to see how 2009 shakes out on the list and how bands that really picked up steam in recent years (The National, Hot Chip, Deerhunter) fare. What about really old albums? Will we get different tracks because some have aged better? How about remixes?
But yeah, I have far too much fun with these. I don’t even really read the site anymore.
