10. "Mississippi Queen" - Mountain
The mother of all riffs? Shit, it's gotta be right? I think it's fair to say that Mountain's "Mississippi Queen" is the most ass kicking song in the history of either ass kicking or songs or history. It is physically impossible to hear this song anywhere and not turn the volume up on whatever devise these glorious sounds are emitting from. I love many a classic rock band and many of them a lot more than Mountain as a whole, but "Queen" is the ultimate classic rock jam. Bar none. The band composed it together, drummer Corky Laing, (how I wish that was my name), and legendary axe-slinger Leslie West fleshing out the lyrics and bassist/producer Felix Pappalardi throwing down on some of the awesome as well. Whoever happened to be channeling the gods for that riff to emerge, (my money's on West), shit mother of fuck dick is it glorious. Though many a band has covered it over the eras, including one of my own in basement band form, it's almost sacrilegious for anyone else to attempt to rawk it as well. Especially for 1970, long before metal became a legitimate genre, Mountain straight-up had the heaviest song anyone had ever heard.
9. "Adore" - Prince
All that talk in the last post about how stoner jam "Let's Go Crazy" was the Prince song that willingly keeps getting played to death by yours truly, that all be true. But at the end of the week when all's said and done, "Adore" is the Purple One's masterpiece. This is all anybody needs to hear to put any confoundedly ignorant claims well to rest that Prince is one of the greatest vocalists who ever uttered a sound, as the multiple vocal tracks hit every panty-moistening note humanly possible. This is Prince doing Al Green more or less. It's the ultimate slow-fuck jam and delivered by a man who has probably liquified more birth canals with his godlike sex powers than any other being in any dimension. Sexual chocolate has a song and it tis "Adore". Sign "O" the Times is the best album Prince ever made and the third greatest double album of all time. "Adore" closes it because no song could've possibly followed it. After hearing it you either immediately need to get laid or take a cold shower. Prince has all the respect he deserves and though never released as a single, "Adore" still gets played regularly on the radio and still ranks very high for many as the ultimate of his jams. I will agree 100% I shall.
8. "Who Wants To Be Lonely" - Kiss
Mmm...'80s Kiss. For me, the legacy of Asylum's "Who Wants To Be Lonely" begins with the music video which I first saw in the Kiss Exposed VHS. It is easily one of the most unintentionally brilliant and hilarious music videos ever made. If Spanish Fly actually worked and the entire decade of the '80s took all of it and then hair metal, sluts, and blindingly bright highlighted colors all got together for an orgy in a steamy and moist factory, the video for this song is exactly what it would look like. But all these years now listening to Kiss on repeat as well as regularly going back to the music video for all the chuckles I need, I have made the revelation that it is in fact the best fucking Kiss song ever. Actually, it's always been one of my favorites and with each list I've made, it's just continued to climb the ranks to where it not must only sit in the top ten and dwarfing all other Kiss jams. I love and defend '80s hair metal Kiss almost solely because of this song. Stanley as well as his partner in crime during that decade Desmond Child constructed "Lonely" along with musician Jean Beauvoir, (who also co-wrote "Uh! All Night" another brilliant piece of awesome off the same album). Whenever the Kiss camp got together and made sweet love to a song with Child on board the results were always top notch.
7. "untitled 8 ("Popplagið")" - Sigur Rós
I'm not sure if this counts as my favorite instrumental of all time since Sigur Rós's music technically features the human voice. Jón Þór Birgisson is not your typical vocalist though, as he uses that voice as an instrument above all else and wails away in a soaring falsetto of made up language. The melody is used as just another sonic layer, Birgisson's own bow playing guitar work yet another ingredient. I haven't been keeping up with this band as I should, but the albums Ágætis byrjun, ( ), and Takk... I do own and greatly enjoy. Especially the former two and especially more 2002's ( ), which features eight at the time untitled tracks, culminating with this one. The band included no text or information with the ( ) album but unofficial titles eventually emerged. "Popplagið" translates to "the pop song", though this isn't anything you're likely to hear on the radio. At nearly twelve minutes long, "untitled 8" is typical for the band, a very slow building repetitive melody that sounds like the soundtrack for the most wonderful dream you've ever had. Most Rós songs at least of this period rarely moved away from a single theme throughout, but "8" has two sections and the one that shows up near the halfway point starts a whole other slow boil and is the most epic sounding piece of music I've heard besides Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana". Both shiver me spine most wonderfully.
6. "Dear Friends" - Queen
In the forward for this list I mentioned that I play no popular favorites worship with a band's songs. I don't care if it's been played on the radio every hour on the hour somewhere for decades or if I find the one and only copy of a song by a band and keep it to myself. If it's my favorite of their songs, then so it be. "Dear Friends" is an interlude track on the very best Queen album Sheer Heart Attack. Though if anyone were to tell me that any other Queen album between Queen II and News of the World was in fact their best, I would argue not at all. But anyway, "Friends" was composed by Brian May, with May himself making a rare appearance on piano. Besides that, it's just Freddie singing the words and May, Taylor, and Freddie again doing the three-part harmonies of the gods during the second verse. Oh, and the song is just barely over a minute long. So why is this my favorite Queen song? All I can say is to just listen to it. It is incredibly beautiful. And I think it speaks volumes that a band as good as Queen with as many hits as they had and as many stellar albums as they had, (all of them really), and then again as many fantastic album tracks and non-singles as they had, that such a simple and short lullaby such as "Dear Friends" can end up so very, very enduring.
5. "Unchained Melody" - The Righteous Brothers
Last post I said that "Hey Jude" was probably the most popular song I had on this list. I stand corrected. "Unchained Melody" is one of the most covered songs of all time and the Righteous Brothers version specifically has spent decades in the public consciousness and heard by millions of folk most likely millions of time. So yeah, we all know this one. Originally written in 1955 by songwriters Alex North and tin pan alley lyricists Hy Zaret, "Unchained" is a love song to the later's wife and is probably the best straight-up love song ever written. I wouldn't call myself a Righteous Brothers fan per se, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" is pretty appropriately righteous though. "Melody" is the only of their songs that I far more than dig let alone regularly listen to. Oddly enough it was a 1965 b-side originally, the flip to "Hung On You" which most of us have probably never heard ironically, and produced by none other than everyone's favorite electric socket hairdo, gun toting, wife murdering lunatic producer Phil Spector. Ultimately, it's but one thing that places this song this high on my personal favorites list. That is the solo vocal performance by Bobby Hatfield which is the best vocal in all of pop music.
4. "Mannish Boy" - Muddy Waters
Yeah son. "Mannish Boy" lyrically might not be the most definitive blues song since Muddy Waters is hardly hootin and holla'in about having the blues here. Quite the opposite. Basically, Muddy Waters is Conan the Barbarian and wants you all to goddamn know it. The women's vaginas hath been torn asunder from this man's man-ness. Recorded a whole mess of times by not only Waters himself but I think literally every other blues artist since, it's the Hard Again version from 1977 that is the masterpiece. For just under five and a half minutes, Waters delivers the most devastating vocal performance in the genre's long history over but one riff the entire time. And it's THE blues riff. The one that even people who are completely ignorant to this kind of music can instantly recognize. Muddy, who's left just doing the sangin' and at the mercy of his wholly competent backing band, also has the one and only Johnny Winter on fuck-tasty leads and those answer-back "Yeahs!" every time the word "man" is uttered, (and that's a lot). "Mannish Boy" is the most slammin, loin-quivering blues monster ever and all the other versions and covers of it can continue to pop up for all the more decades, but this here be the top of Mount Fuckmore.
When it comes to songs that have gradually grown on me, there is no more profound example than U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". Never before in my long time as a U2 fan has "ISHFWILF" been my favorite of their songs. It's been over the last two years really that inexplicably a song that I've heard countless times for most of my life has just eased it's way to where I now think it stands. Not the radio, not anything can ruin this song for me. The origin for "Still Haven't Found" is rather daft. The band developed many of the tunes that ended up on The Joshua Tree out of jam sessions, and one such demo tape featured a bunch of stuff they never used except a drum part from Larry Mullen Jr. It's odd I think cause the drums are the least interesting part of the song, yet a creative fire was lit off of them nevertheless. They then proceeded to build what became the rest of the music in the studio, (utilizing a standard 12-bar blues backdrop), and producer Daniel Lanois inspired Bono to go all gospel with the lyrics. The result is the best song of the 80s and the best song U2 has. And the best gospel tinged pop song of all time as well. Bono became the ultimate singer in rock music by the time the band dropped the monster that was The Joshua Tree and this is his finest four-minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Surging, powerful, and emotional glory on full display.
2. "A Change of Seasons" - Dream Theater
Dream Theater had been kicking around pieces of their definitive epic for several years by the time they finally got around to recording it with then noob Derek Sherinian on keyboards taking over for founder Kevin Moore who up and left as soon as Awake was in the can recording wise. It was apparently mostly ready to go when the band cut Images and Words and good Satan of dick, I can't imagine an album that brilliant also including a song this brilliant. All the good that can possibly be achieved by Dream Theater was achieved in "A Change of Seasons". It is the prog-anything song of the century and contains the best arrangement any piece of music has ever had. At just over twenty-three minutes, it effortlessly and seamlessly morphs through seven sections, (all pretentiously sub-titled of course), and it flows so well and keeps pummeling you with it's amazingness that before you know it, it's done and over with. It feels quicker than a three minute pop song. Mike Portnoy penned the lyrics being inspired by his mother's death when he was a teenager and they are without question the best lyrics he's ever written. One could say that's not saying much since most of Portnoy's lyrics are terrible at best, especially in his later years with the band, but they are outstanding here. The circle of one's life runs through all four seasons and it's as epic a concept as prog-rock dictates it must be and nothing more optimizes or does justice to the genre than this.
1. "Lover, You Should've Come Over" - Jeff Buckley
My number one hath changed. How about that? For probably ten plus years now, I've always considered Dream Theater's "A Change of Seasons" to be my favorite song ever. And since I first heard Jeff Buckley's Grace, "Lover, You Should've Come Over" has rapidly climbed the ranks to be in the top ten for awhile now. But well, the truth is out there. This is my very favorite song. I have grown to adore Jeff Buckley's music more and more each and ever year that goes by. Perhaps it's because it's just one more year that he's no longer with us and the very minuscule amount of material left behind for us to listen to stays just as minuscule and in effect, becomes more and more precious. But I'd say it has more to do with just how amazing of an artist Buckley really was. Along with Freddie Mercury, he is the best singer of all time and everything he recorded is instantly made better because of this. But "Lover" as a song is just everything a song should be. The lyrics have a longing in them that is undeniable, the vocal is Buckley at his best, (especially during the feverish finale), and it's another slow build that takes it's sweet time to get to the chorus and is over with before you realize it. Close to seven minutes long, it could be seven hours long as far as I'm concerned. I've prided myself with learning the entire thing on guitar, badly mind you, and half the chords in it I had never heard of before. I am envious as all get out as to the song's construction and existence. If I can ever in my days come up with something that just grazes the surface of "Lover's" greatness, than I shall die a happy soul.
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