Pantheon Songs

“For God’s sakes Lemon, we’d all like to flee to the Cleve and club up at the Flats and have lunch with Little Richard, but we fight those urges.” — Jack Donaghy to Liz Lemon, from an episode of 30 Rock

“Here’s the place where there used to be industry.” — from the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video

“I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE” — from Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s letter to fans after LeBron James decided to go to the Miami Heat

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Cleveland, for whatever reason, is the laughingstock city of America. It’s called the “Mistake by the Lake.” It hasn’t seen a pro sports championship of any kind since the Browns won the NFL Championship in 1964. Additionally, the Browns won 4 AAFC Championships in a row, something that buttresses the notion that they were a dynasty in the ’40s and ’50s… except that the NFL does not recognize the All-America Football Conference’s existence… so those accomplishments appear to be vapid to anyone born after that time. Cleveland houses the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a place that’s supposed to be a pop culture temple but only elicits shrugs for the most part. (How shrug-inducing is the Hall of Fame? The 25th anniversary concert—the concert celebrating the very existence of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—was held at Madison Square Garden… instead of, you know, the city that actually houses the building that was the object of the anniversary concert.)

I say “for whatever reason” in regards to Cleveland’s laughingstock status because how does the collective reasoning to make fun of a city work anyway? Is Cleveland really a worse or soul-crushing a place to live in or visit than, say, East Saint Louis or Detroit or Spokane, or seemingly boring places like Helena or Bismarck? Or is Cleveland’s laughingstock status a product of their sports failures? Or because the Cuyahoga River once caught on fire? In general it seems that Cleveland is like the city version of the kid everyone made fun of in grade school—at a certain point, nobody remembers why people started calling him or her names; it’s just that it became part of their identification. (Cleveland should just be called “Boogers” or “Fat Ass” or “Drooler” apparently.)

Or maybe it’s because Cleveland exists in a kind of no-man’s land. Like Buffalo, it sits on the wrong side of a lake—the side that gets more snow and colder weather during the winter;^[1] it’s not the far and away largest city of its state like a place like Atlanta or Detroit is to their state; it’s not the biggest college area of its state (Columbus is); its proximity to the other large cities is pretty close, unlike the distance that separates the largest cities in states like Pennsylvania or Florida. Whatever the reason(s) is/are, Cleveland is the birthplace of Pere Ubu, a band so wildly electric and experimental and influential that they alone should be the phoenix that wipes away any jabs or cuts into the city that Michael Jordan and John Elway once tormented.

To me, punk music of the ’70s was about making music with a tone and feel lined that up with the overall feeling of dirtiness that came from the high crime rates, rampant corruption of government, and the general impotence and disaffection with what to do about the domestic problems of American cities. To grossly simplify things: shit sucks, and there’s more fun to be had with our girlfriends and boyfriends and breaking things and listening to songs about sniffing glue. The music of mid and late ’70s punk tried to feel like the shitty alley or parking garage that Charles Bronson would have to fight his way out of: it was angry, it was dirty, it was a release. Any history book worth its salt will place the New York punk scene of the ’70s as the most significant contributions to this style of music that lined up with the America of that time on a macro level: the Nixonian corruption, the Gerald Ford-ian impotence, the new era of crime (and crime reporting) that people like the Son of Sam and the Zodiac killer brought to a national consciousness. The bands that conquered that scene are influential on a number of levels, but Pere Ubu’s debut album The Modern Dance thrashes them all in terms of music that feels like an escape from and a reminder of what was going on—even if it’s not a true blue punk album. Ramones is a three chord anthem, accessible and up front even if you are not the target audience; The Modern Dance is a portal into chaos that at times openly embraces an avant-garde aesthetic.

Not only does the music on Pere Ubu’s debut feel like a dirty alley or an abandoned factory or a sidewalk you wouldn’t want to walk down at night, but it does so with a chaotic beauty. It’s littered with shrill guitars and broken glass and busted horns and psychotic keyboards and huh-what inclusions of musettes and tape effects, all of which is corralled and lined up alongside lead singer David Thomas and his oftentimes electrocuted-sounding vocals. The opening track on The Modern Dance, “Non-Alignment Pact,” starts with thirty five seconds of obscenely high feedback, pulsing every second like an S.O.S signal of the damned or a clarion call for the pissed off.

Part of the internal equation of how I go about determining if an album is a capital-C Classic—or capital-G Great—is how it begins. Does the opening track set the table for the album’s overall tone? Or does it simply begin an album that includes a couple or few great (or really good) songs that don’t really fit into a cohesively and thought-out whole? Love it or hate it “Non-Alignment Pact” does a phenomenal job of preparing you for the rest of the album. It assaults you from the first chord. You will either embrace that first chord or you will reject it. It’s polarizing—just like Nixon, just like opinions on crime in inner cities. If you embrace the first thirty seconds of the song’s distortion and you embrace the sound and the melody that takes over afterward you will be helpless to not be sucked by this album and Thomas’s aforementioned eccentric vocals.

I fully realize that most people will not be sucked into this song’s intro, its overall melody, Thomas’s vocal stylings, or even the album as a whole, but the mission of this website is to tell the history of modern music one song at a time; to create an auditory mosaic of songs that help explain decades and genres and icons and eras. And to me you cannot you have a discussion about experimental punk rock in general, or about late ’70s rock in particular, without including Pere Ubu. “Non-Alignment Pact” is one of the best underground songs ever made, from an album that most people have never heard of—an album that deserves the same kind of cult follower numbers that The Velvet Underground & Nico has. Instead, it is largely unknown to a casual music audience almost 35 years later.

What a Cleveland thing to have happen to it.

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[1] I live near Chicago—the good side of a lake—and while our winters can suck here they sometimes pale in comparison to the snowfall that can be dumped on western Michigan and northwest Indiana. I used to work with a guy who lived in Valparaiso IN and at least once a year he would wake up to six-plus inches of snow and have to battle through it to arrive in downtown Chicago, where there would only be a baker’s dusting of snow on the sidewalks.

“As a result of going into a subway station and meeting Andy [Mackay], I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I’d walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now.”

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In 1975, two significant things happened to Brian Eno: 1) he collaborated with Peter Schmidt to create Oblique Strategies, a series of 100 cards designed to help foster creative inspiration, and 2) he was confined to his bed for a few months because of a car accident. The former, on the surface, can sound like a precursor to the kind of buzzword or Successories language that became prevalent in the corporate America of the ’90s. And who knows, maybe you will think that a series of cards with messages such as “Use an old idea” or “Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them” or “Is it finished?” written on them is inherently ridiculous and on par with cheap motivational language. The reality is that these cards—both the creation and application of them—helped Eno become the musician he is. While it’s impossible to measure or know how much of a net impact Oblique Strategies had on Eno, we do know that his convalescence was something that impacted him significantly as it was during this time that he essentially created ambient music—and in the process indescribably expanded the boundaries of electronic music.

Brian Eno is the most anonymously ubiquitous musician currently walking the earth. His birth name is Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno and he is sometimes referred to as simply Eno. All three variations of his name are pretty memorable, and yet, I would be willing to bet that at least half of casual music fans are unaware of who he is and the music he has a hand in creating—both as a musician and a producer.

Eno’s notable career started with Roxy Music, an influential art rock/glam band from London that formed in 1971, manning the keyboards and synthesizers. He was kicked out the band for some of the same reasons that Peter Gabriel was kicked out of Genesis (taking the focus away from the rest of the band during live shows because of his extravagant looks and costumes, etc.) which prompted him to embark on a solo career that started in 1973 and continues to this day. Additionally, in between the time he left Roxy Music, and interwoven throughout his solo career, Eno produced or co-produced (in addition to many others) the following seminal and influential albums:

— More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light by Talking Heads
— The Unforgettable Fire, Achtung Baby, and The Joshua Tree by U2
— Low by David Bowie
— Ultravox! by Ultravox
— Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! by Devo

In addition to all of this, and the primary reason as to why the best descriptor I could come up with for the man is “anonymously ubiquitous,” in 1994 Brian Eno began working on a sound that would ultimately clock in at only six seconds: the startup music for Windows 95.^[1] So, even if the name Brian Eno doesn’t ring any bells for you, you have heard his music before if you ever logged in to a Windows 95 PC.

In summary: Eno played a role in the first two years of an influential glam rock band, essentially created a genre of music, produced or co-produced some of the most recognizable and influential albums of the last 35 years, and created the startup music on Microsoft’s groundbreaking OS. If you want to put his legacy into a larger scope Brian Eno redefined how a recording studio is seen and utilized. He proved that the studio itself can be a living organism, a breathing entity filled with cavernous spaces with which infinite textures reside that are waiting to be plucked and utilized. It is telling in the quote at the beginning of this post that Eno says that he would probably be an art teacher if he had never met Andy Mackay because I envision Eno’s approach to making music is similar to how a painter makes their art. A painter’s studio is filled with multicolored smudges on brushes and palettes and jars and canvases that didn’t make the final cut; unfinished abstract colorings here, a still life involving cloths and bazaar knick-knacks over there. And I imagine an Eno-inhabited recording studio having the same feel: an unfinished xylophone-and-keyboard centric track here, a brief soundscape that evokes the color red over there; an audio equivalent of Picasso’s studio.

So, with everything taken into account, which song best describes Brian Eno? Honestly? I have no idea. The man’s catalog is so unique and filled with so many different phases and sounds that you could make a case for any number of songs. Therefore, I have decided to go with my favorite song from his best album: “Golden Hours” from Another Green World. The personnel notes for “Golden Hours” are as follows:

Robert Fripp: Wimbourne Guitar
John Cale: Viola
Brian Eno: Choppy Organs, Spasmodic Percussion, Club Guitars, Uncertain Piano

The “Wimbourne Guitar” is a play on Fripp’s hometown of Wimborne Minster, England and the instrument names that Eno assigns to himself are all you probably need to know when it comes to how his mind works with regards to the abstract and ambient sound he pioneered. “Choppy Organs” and “Uncertain Piano” are perfect descriptions for what is emitted through your speakers. As previously mentioned, Another Green World was the result of convalescence: unable to stand up or play traditional instruments or drive to the studio, Eno immersed himself in keyboards and organs and exploring textured soundscapes while bedridden, resulting in songs with titles such as “In Dark Trees,” “Little Fishes,” and “Becalmed”—songs whose music matches their titles.

“Golden Hours” begins with the aforementioned choppy organs and its spasmodic percussion is appropriately intermittent, but the real beauty of the song—and why I think it sets itself apart from all of Eno’s other work—is Fripp’s guitar solo, which is quite possibly the most beautiful solo I have ever heard. Beginning almost exactly at the two minute mark Fripp unfolds a series of notes so gorgeous that I sometimes forget that they are coming from a guitar (sometimes, because the sound is so soft yet precise, it sounds as if Fripp is playing some otherworldly instrument that only a few musicians know about).

As I wrote earlier, when it comes to Brian Eno it is nearly impossible to pick one song that best represents him as a musician in particular, and modern music in general. Eno’s catalog is pretty substantial: some of it is accessible, some of it… not so much. I think “Golden Hours” possesses enough beauty and awe as to elicit an approving nod for its inclusion on this site by fans, as well as being a very strong song to win over casual fans who have maybe never heard of the anonymously ubiquitous artist before.

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[1] From a 1996 interview in The San Francisco Chronicle:

Q: “How did you come to compose ‘The Microsoft Sound’?”

A: “The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, ‘Here’s a specific problem—solve it.’

“The thing from the agency said, ‘We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,’ this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ‘and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.’

“I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.

“In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.”

“We were playing in one room in a house with a recording truck, and a drum kit was duly set up in the main hallway, which is a three storey hall with a staircase going up on the inside of it. And when John Bonham went out to play the kit in the hall, I went ‘Oh, wait a minute, we gotta do this!’ Curiously enough that’s just a stereo mike that’s up the stairs on the second floor of this building, and that was his natural balance.”

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There will never be a more important band than The Beatles. The Beatles redefined pop music, essentially created power pop music, redefined pop rock, and created the template of success for every single band that arrived after them. The Beatles were the first band to transcend the notion of a global audience; songs like “She Loves You” flattened and leveled the world. The Beatles forever changed the way that music is marketed and digested on a mass level. There will never be another Beatles, just like there will never be another George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Part of the mass appeal of The Beatles was that they were a band of four guys who were both collectively cool and individually God-like. Of course, nearly everyone identified themselves with McCartney or Lennon as the former represented a universal kind of genius and accessibility while the latter tapped into the arty and culturally conscious kind of genius that life after 1968 demanded. And then you had Harrison’s Quiet Guy personality—smart, reserved, sensitive, spiritually experimental—and Ringo’s Everyman quality—the blue collar and working man’s totem; a (mostly) forgotten personality but a guy who nonetheless checked his ego at the door and thanklessly provided the foundation for every Beatles song ever made. Each band member had a meaning above their role as a musician/entertainer. To reiterate: The Beatles changed how we look at music, and musicians.

A handful of other bands and artists around this time (namely, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Who) also arrived and created their own mythology-making machines, but in terms of four-man bands the only one, I think, that rivals The Beatles in terms of individual larger-than-life, God-like personalities whose sum was greater than its individual parts is Led Zeppelin.

As a band, all Zeppelin did was take power blues with a collective force to levels not seen before (to the point that one can plausibly map out the history of heavy metal to include the seeds laid down by Robert Plant’s screams, Jimmy Page’s mythical riffs, John Paul Jones’s heavy bass riffs, and John Bonham’s booming drums). To be sure, there were bands doing power blues before Zeppelin, most notably Cream, but Zeppelin pulled away from the pack almost instantly. “Good Times Bad Times,” the first song on their debut album, announces itself to the world so powerfully that only Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” stands above it in terms debut album openers. “Good Times Bad Times” kicks down your door and punches you in the face; the strengths of each Zeppelin member is on display with this song. You can learn a lot about an artist and what their trajectory will be based on their first piece and “Good Times Bad Times” shows you everything you need to know in spades.

As individuals, the members of Led Zeppelin are iconic and mythical; demigods to any rock-loving guy or man that’s ever stepped on American or British soil over the last five decades. When viewed strictly through the lens of talent Plant, Page, Jones, and Bonham are all arguably in the top 5 of their respective abilities in the history of rock. Would anyone disagree that Plant is not one of the best rock frontmen/lead singers; that Page is not one of the best rock guitarists; that Jones isn’t one of the best rock bassists; that Bonham isn’t one of the best rock drummers of all time? But to say that these guys are some of the best individuals to grace a microphone, guitar, bass guitar, and drums does not paint the entire picture. The reality is that these guys are not only demigods but also comic book superheroes incarnate as well. Damn near every guy who loves rock has imagined being like any one or all of them, or some combination of them.

The history of rock is in part written by emulation and deification, and few are the guys who haven’t tried to sing like Plant during that intro of “Immigrant Song.” Few are the guys who’ve never wished that they looked like Jimmy Page performing on stage, or being able to pull something like “Over the Hills and Far Away” out of their ass while learning the guitar. Few are the guys who haven’t envied Bonham’s drum-playing ability, or to be in position to re-enact his personal highlights. Few are the guys who have heard the bass lines to “Dazed and Confused” and didn’t imitate their crisp sound at least once while it played through their car or stereo speakers. Few are the guys who didn’t draw at least one of the runes from their fourth album on a book cover, folder, or backpack during a class or study hall in high school. I believe it was Chuck Klosterman who once wrote that most guys will agree that The Rolling Stones are the best rock band of all time, but that Led Zeppelin is the band that they most want to emulate and love on a more personal basis. And I cannot disagree with this assessment at all. After all, who would you rather be if given the chance: Charlie Watts or John Bonham?

So where does Led Zeppelin’s collective and individual greatness dovetail—where does their masterful craftsmanship intersect with the (sometimes pot smoke-induced) mythology that has been applied to them? What is their best overall song that also shows each member at the height of their demigod powers? It’s “When the Levee Breaks”—specifically the part of the song that runs from 2:26 until 3:05. There are other songs one can choose when talking about Zeppelin’s overall presence (“Stairway to Heaven,” “Kashmir”) or about individual deification (“You Shook Me” or “The Rain Song” for Page and/or Plant; “Moby-Dick” or “Immigrant Song” for Bonham; “Dazed and Confused” or “In the Light” for Jones, amongst others) but “When the Levee Breaks” is the band’s masterpiece. The track starts with John Bonham’s famous thundering drum beats, recorded by way of the setup explained in the quote at the beginning of this post, and then it proceeds to be one of the best rock songs ever made as it effortlessly marries straight-up rock with just experimental enough production touches (the backward echo harmonica). And then starting at 2:26 and running until 3:05 you have Jimmy Page shifting from metallic jangly riffs to letting off riffs that are the auditory equivalent of fireworks, but the firework riffs are drowned out a bit by Bonham’s assaulting dual bulldozer bass drums and Jones’s deep bass lines.

And then there are the screams by Robert Plant.

The screams are short, guttural, and alien. They are exactly the kind of thing that you will never be able to imitate in your car but fuck if you think you nail them every time while this song is blaring. “When the Levee Breaks” is the last track on Led Zeppelin IV, which is arguably Zeppelin’s most accessible album and the album that is filled with radio-friendly juggernauts. “Stairway to Heaven” (or even “Kashmir”) might be the go-to seven-plus minute song in Zeppelin’s catalog for many people but for me “When the Levee Breaks” kills every song in their catalog. It stands alone. It is the crown jewel from four demigods. It is the exclamation point on one of the most iconic albums of the last 40 years. It reinforces the reason why all of the many symbols of Zeppelin appeared on so many guys’ backpacks and jackets and book covers. It is one of the best blues covers of all time.^[1]

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[1] “When the Levee Breaks” was originally recorded by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929.

I am not a musician. Never been one. On a random day in fourth grade at the Catholic school I went to, my class was herded to an all-purpose room to see if any of us were interested in learning an instrument. This being 1985 or 1986 (I forget which year), when asked which instrument I was interested in, I said the saxophone. It would be easy to say that this desire was born out of seeing Rob Lowe rocking a saxophone in that memorable bar scene in St. Elmo’s Fire but, alas, that would be a lie because I had not seen the movie at that point. No, the reason I gravitated towards the saxophone was because the sax seemed to have (to me) a fantastic niche in pop music at the time. (And wouldn’t it be awesome to be a sax player in a band? I thought to myself.) The saxophone, along with the keyboard, which I was also interested in but our school didn’t use one, was enjoying some success as a go-to background instrument. I held the saxophone and attempted to unleash a money truck of awesomeness on the poor sixth or seventh grade band student who was volunteered for this annual musical experiment. I don’t remember what collection of broken notes and dying mallard noises came out of my saxophone but I was politely told that my hands were too small and therefore the saxophone wouldn’t be a good fit for me. Would I be interested in trying another instrument, the older kid asked me in what I am sure was a tone of please-say-no please-say-no please-say-no. I said no and thus ended my music career save for a keyboard that was given to me as a birthday gift a couple years later which quickly collected dust, and probably a spider or two.

Additionally, I am not now nor ever have been employed as a critic or journalist. I have never interviewed a band, let alone followed one around on multiple stops during at tour or during recording sessions for an upcoming album. I don’t know the difference between A# and G# and I am unaware of just about every intangible that goes into making an album or keeping your sanity during a tour. But in spite of these deficiencies I feel confident in writing that Big Star is a band’s band, comprised of musicians’ musicians. I feel confident in writing this because this is oftentimes the default way to describe a band that is legitimately great but failed to make a name for themselves on a wide mainstream scale. And to understand how great a band Big Star was is to understand the genre of power pop, and how it differs from pop.

Technically speaking, power pop is a genre defined by pop songs whose lyrics are more personal in nature cloaked in music that emphasizes melody and (typically) disregards guitar solos. Again, technically speaking, The Beatles are the progenitors of power pop (“Yesterday” is arguably their high watermark contribution) but my opinion is that Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys is the first true start-to-finish power pop masterpiece. One can certainly delve deeper into the history of power pop and come up with all sorts way to describe it further but, to me, I think the best way it can be summed up is the way that Jody Rosen summed it up (I’m paraphrasing): power pop is music written by and for dorks, the vulnerable guys.^[1] When seen through this prism, you can understand why I think Brian Wilson is the power pop Buddha and why a song like “I Know There’s an Answer” or “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” would stand out in bas relief.

Big Star’s first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, are filled with power pop classics^[2] most notably “September Gurls” (according to most rock critics). Like many bands and artists on this site, you can make a case for a number of songs in the Big Star catalog. The one I’m going with is a track off of their debut album, “When My Baby’s Beside Me.” For the most part, power pop is a genre that mostly resides in England or on the coasts of the US; for a while it rarely had a southern tinge, or evoked thoughts of southern music. (If you were to play a music-based word-association game, I think it’s fair to assume that most people, upon seeing the word “south,” would think of “country music” “banjo” or “Lynyrd Skynyrd” before thinking of power pop.) Big Star forever changed that and in the process they unfurled a blueprint for contemporaries like R.E.M., Wilco, Ryan Adams, and countless others.^[3]

Again, I could make the case for a number of songs here but for me what separates “When My Baby’s Beside Me” from the rest of Big Star’s catalog is the feelings that it evokes. This is a song that would be perfectly at home emanating from the speakers of a jock’s muscle car on an abandoned road while teenagers drink and curse the small town they had the misfortune of growing up in, or playing through the headphones that sit atop the head of a kid that is terrified of the potential embarrassment that resides in the hands of a pretty girl. “When My Baby’s Beside Me” has riffs that would tickle Dr. Johnny Fever and cause him to spin in his chair and then stand up and play air guitar, as well as a chorus that connects with every guy whose shyness causes him to daydream of the girl that singularly relaxes and levels everything for the singer. It is a rock song that feeds into the Cool Guy alter ego that resides in every guy while being rooted in a dorky kind of universality. It is power pop personified.

Big Star is notable for being the band that Alex Chilton was in—Chilton being the preeminent Musician’s Musician. Chilton’s musical career began in Memphis in 1967 with a band named The Box Tops, of which their release “The Letter” was a regional success and an overwhelmingly critical success. In 1971, Chilton, along with Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel, formed Big Star and the rest is rock (and Memphis) history.

Big Star and Chilton and Bell and Stephens and Hummel are not big household names outside of the domain of rock writers and musicians upper-tiered music lovers. Some may say that this reality is a minor tragedy, or an indictment against the Top 40-ness of the typical American music consumer. I shy away from throwing that kind of contempt at an audience: shit happens and bad timing happens. Big Star never hit it big on the mainstream stage; there are other tragedies to concern ourselves with. If you have heard of Big Star then you are (most likely) familiar with this song. If you have never heard of Big Star before I would tell you that they are a band whose catalog is worth visiting. Their lack of a household name aside, they are one of the pillars that the music of the ’70′s is built upon. They are in the team photo of the most influential bands from that decade.

Or, to put it another way: if I were playing the role of the older band student from the first paragraph above and you were me trying to play the saxophone, I would lean in and whisper hey and then pass you this single and tell you to start with this first. You don’t need to be a musician or a writer or a producer to recognize its greatness.

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[1] Jody Rosen is a music critic whose writings have appeared on numerous sites and magazines. I know him primarily from his work on Slate.com, both as a writer and as a semi-frequent guest on the site’s Culture Gabfest podcast.

[2] Third/Sister Lovers does too but that album is a far more experimental type of power pop.

[3] The Byrds are usually the de facto band referenced when describing R.E.M.’s early I.R.S. years, but Big Star was just as big an influence on their sound.

The metal genre is about as misunderstood as Nietzsche; people’s misconceptions about metal (that it’s all about death, and that its followers are causelessly violent, or suicidal) probably match up with most people’s misconceptions about Nietzsche (that he’s tied to German militarism and Nazism, and that his followers are causelessly violent, or suicidal). “I love metal” and “God is dead” might as well mean the same thing to people who have never delved into either.

“God is dead” was never intended to be a celebratory quote, or anything of that measure. The context of the quote has to do with Nietzsche’s opinion that science and modernism had killed God; that modern men (“murderers of all murderers”) had no need for God anymore. Thus, God is dead in the sense that the idea of God has outlived its usefulness. But I am sure that many people believe the quote to mean that God was murdered, or that there is a spectacle associated with the death of God and that we should relish in its demise. The reality is that Nietzsche did not unilaterally despise religion (he was positively affected by the teachings of Jesus Christ, despite his ironical writings that could be construed to the contrary) and was dismayed by what he believed was the collective death of God in society. But Nietzsche’s image suffered greatly for many decades after his death when his sister allowed his writings to become propaganda for Hitler and the Nazi Party. Even after scholars and writers rediscovered his works and brought his name to a better standing Nietzsche is still widely misunderstood (i.e.–killers, most recently Jared Lee Loughner, still quote and look at Nietzsche like the Nazis did by misinterpreting his “will to power” and “God is dead” quotes).

Metal music suffers from an image problem too. Ask people who aren’t metal fans to describe metal fans and I am sure that some of the following descriptors would be tossed around: long hair, freaky looking, lots of tattoos, imposing, scary, violent, aggressive. The Venn diagram of metal’s perception would most likely have “Violence” and “Suicide” intersecting at some point, regardless of how much of that is rooted in urban legend type perception. (Honestly, how many people do you know personally have been beat up by a metalhead for absolutely no reason at all?) Metal prides itself to some degree in being the metaphorical Bogeyman and on many occasions the media and parents’ groups took up the task of trying to assign a literalness to metal’s inherent outward theatrics: Marilyn Manson caused the Columbine shooting; Judas Priest caused a couple of kids to kill themselves with shotguns. And so on.

The reality is that most metal music, like many of the works of Nietzsche, simply attempt to show life and human nature through a different lens. At its most fundamental core, metal explains life better than Bob Dylan or The Beatles or Randy Newman ever could. There is more existentialism in metal than in “When I’m Sixty-Four” or “Mr. Tambourine Man.” In this respect, metal is also like Dostoevsky: it’s not for everyone but it speaks powerfully to those it connects to because it oftentimes deals with death and personal (and literal) hells and the underground; the stuff that we love to explore but usually not at stalagmite depths (or with blurry fast—and/or shrill—riffs, or assaulting and quick drum beats).^[1]

In the span of 128 days in 1970 Black Sabbath released two albums—their eponymous debut, followed by Paranoid. For all intents and purposes, their debut album is the progeny of the metal genre while Paranoid is the first true metal masterpiece. (And it was probably considering the defining metal masterpiece until the ’80′s arrived with Metallica and Slayer in tow.) In its nascency metal was mostly considered to be heavier music that didn’t really fit typical rock conventions. This made sense to a degree as bands like Led Zeppelin and Cream in the late ’60′s, with their virtuoso guitarists and bass-heavy sound, could have been easily classified as hard rock/heavy metal. Black Sabbath was always seen as something heavier than the aforementioned bands but in the beginning they were all kind of lumped together, if only for a short time. In the ’70′s bands like Aerosmith and Alice Cooper were also thought of metal as well until Judas Priest and Motörhead arrived and fully established the boundaries of what metal was. Even before this boundary-establishment took place Paranoid was already seen as an instant classic album. “Iron Man” and “Paranoid” were fuck-yeah tracks that connected with many casual music fans—the former has an indelible opening riff and lyrics that are even more indelible; the latter has the feel of an update to Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” that makes it almost impossible to dislike, especially if you love Zeppelin.

And while “Iron Man” is probably the bigger casual music fan favorite I believe that “War Pigs/Luke’s Wall,” the opening track on Paranoid, is Sabbath’s masterpiece. I think that the intro to “War Pigs” is better than “Iron Man” and that the riffs in general are of higher quality than any of the songs that were released on their first two albums. The most important reason, though, as to why “War Pigs” was selected for this site—and what sets it apart from other songs in the Sabbath catalog—are the lyrics. The lyrics are incendiary and so damn perfect, and in a historical context they serve as a great origin for metal’s brand of existentialism and social commentary. The song starts famously with the lyrics,

“Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerer of death’s construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds, oh Lord yeah!”

To be sure, these lyrics are outstanding as the rhyming and the construction make for something that is both serious and theatrical. But it is the next groups of lyrics that, to me, best encapsulate the incendiary nature of the song:

“Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor”

The opening set of lyrics uses words (“sorcerer,” “witches,” “black masses”) that border on cartoonish, but the next set of lyrics has a pure fuck off intensity. The rhyming couplet is ditched in favor of being able to fully level you with its true point of view and opinion,^[2] and it’s all the more powerful when Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward are so perfectly and powerfully in sync. When it comes to anti-war songs “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival is the gold standard, and rightfully so as it manages to be the auditory equivalent of a middle finger wrapped in a deliciously catchy tune that clocks in at under two and a half minutes.^[3] But if “Fortunate Son” ranks at #1 then “War Pigs” comes in at #1B because it doesn’t hold back at all. It wants to punch you in the face, and it does. And it does this musically by getting louder and louder at about the midway point: when the track begins you just want to turn the volume up as high as possible so that you can live inside those riffs and Bill Ward’s drumbeats, and as the song progresses the volume keeps getting higher until it envelops you and you begin to wonder if you should turn it down a little. (Note: you should not turn it down.)

As an anti-war song “War Pigs” is par excellence, and its legacy as an anti-war song by itself is something that allows for immediate entry into the Pantheon. But its lasting and most significant legacy is that this song essentially defined the origin of the metal genre. Sabbath’s debut album came before “War Pigs” and the debut album definitely sets up the roots of metal but Paranoid is the foundation for everything that came after it and this song is the best track from the album. “War Pigs” is instrumental in creating the genre that is widely misunderstood and, like Nietzsche, it will probably always be misunderstood by a sizable group of people. The key is that something this great and powerful will always have its keepers to correct those who want to assign random nonsensical actions of unbalanced people to it. And in a stroke of irony, the people who are legitimately well versed in metal (and Nietzsche) are some of the most levelheaded people walking around this earth, despite their scary, imposing look.

If you are looking to get your feet wet in the metal genre, this is the place to start; if metal doesn’t appeal to you at all you would still be hard-pressed to find a better heavy song in the modern rock catalog than this.

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[1] Please do not misread this paragraph: I am in no way suggesting that only “real” people appreciate existentialism or its elements that appear in metal. I am in no way trying to devalue The Beatles or Bob Dylan or Randy Newman because their exploration of the human condition is not Dostoevsky-esque. I love “When I’m Sixty-Four” and its pop approach at looking at aging.

[2] The original title of the album was War Pigs but the label was nervous about it because there were still a lot of people, in England and in the U.S., who were for the war in Vietnam. It was renamed Paranoid but the cover was allowed to depict what the band considered a war pig to look like.

[3] The only thing I suspect that would be harder than writing a definitive anti-war song that is catchy as hell and clock in at under two and a half minutes would be writing a 1,000-page novel that reads like a 300-page novel.

Alongside Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, John Hughes is one of the most influential writer/director/producers of the last thirty years. He directed eight movies (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, She’s Having A Baby, Uncle Buck, and Curly Sue), produced 23 movies (Pretty In Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone, in addition to some of the titles that he also directed), and his writing credits also dovetail into some of the notable movies listed above. Hughes’s best movies and most universally loved movies are the early ones he directed—Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller—and the primary reason that they (and by extension Hughes himself) are admired is because those movies advanced the notion that teenagers aren’t just silly caricatures that the world of after school specials traded in. Now, do many of the characters and scenes in these movies seem kind of dated and corny nowadays? Of course. But it doesn’t change the fact that these early movies by Hughes were the first to humanize teenagers in a modern light on a mass level.

What Hughes did for teenagers with The Breakfast Club is akin to what Children’s Television Workshop did for children with Sesame Street. Before Sesame Street, the world of children’s television programming was ruled by the assumption that kids only wanted to watch animals; that trying to program anything not animal-centric was pointless. Of course, that theory turned out to be thoroughly wrong. While children do love to watch animals, The Children’s Workshop found that children will be entirely attentive to puppets and scenes involving adults speaking to them too, and many other things that were assumed to be over their heads. CTW helped to prove what we probably knew all along but didn’t want to admit: that kids’ brains really are sponges.

Hughes, on the other hand, spoke fluent Teenager.^[1] His casting choices were par excellance. I think many would agree, without irony, that Molly Ringwald was the Audrey Hepburn of our youth and Judd Nelson the Marlon Brando. (You know, provided you were born after 1975.) And his movies dealt with totally relatable things even if the settings were sometimes unrealistic: the girl who worries about being able to afford a prom dress as much as she worries about having a date; the “wouldn’t it be cool if…?” school-ditching daydream that every kid has had that was made manifest in Ferris Bueller; the light being shone on the dorky guy who has no shot of getting the girl before the credits close. Hughes helped to prove what we probably knew all along but didn’t want to admit: that teenagers were closer to adults than most adults realized.

Therefore, it was no surprise that Hughes put up these lyrics on the screen before The Breakfast Club begins:

“And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through”

The lyrics, of course, are from “Changes” by David Bowie, the opening track on Bowie’s fourth album Hunky Dory.

To write about David Bowie is to write about an artist who is quite literally at times more artist than musician. Bowie essentially created the glam rock genre, a genre that is equal parts theatrics and fashion forward philosophy. Bowie’s look is so unique, and his androgyny could be so pronounced, that in many of the pictures from the ’70′s and ’80′s he looks more like a fashion supermodel than the man who wrote ethereal instrumental songs with Brian Eno. To write or talk about Bowie is to also concede on some level that there may not be a definitive song by which to assign to him. Bowie is nothing if not a chameleon who is partly defined by his assortment of musical eras.

But to me “Changes” is the best attempt I can make at trying to define him (and modern music) with one song. Not only is this track sublime in a pop rock sense but the little things like the aforementioned lyrics that quietly waves a middle finger in the faces of the ignorant and the far-removed help catapult the song onto a different level. Or listen to how perfect the chorus is with its amplified “turn”s and deft “ch-ch-changes.” In the hands of a lesser talent “Changes” would probably sound like a lounge act, composed of vocal plateaus and valleys that would come across as disingenuous or winking to the listener. Instead, Bowie is somehow able to recalibrate his vocal range to hit all of the notes just right (even when those notes are not technically perfect). When he sings “turn and face the strange changes” he sounds like an actual guide, a real presence, a manifestation of what the Counterculture was shooting for but arrived a few years after the fact. The message was more lucid and not drenched in LSD and/or patchouli.

Anyone can definitely make the case for “Space Oddity,” “Ziggy Stardust,” “Young Americans,” “Let’s Dance” or “Heroes” or (any other song that you may be partial to) as the song to be on this list and, honestly, I probably couldn’t disagree with you. But what puts “Changes” over the top for me is that it does the best job at describing Bowie as an artist and Bowie’s early catalog to someone who has never heard his music before, or to any of his ardent fans. And the fact that the lyrics from this song appear in The Breakfast Club is like the proverbial cherry on top. Both Bowie and Hughes instinctively knew how to reach their younger audiences in ways that felt new while also connecting on a personal level that felt tangible, and they both treated them with a level of respect and trust to find the soul of their art in ways that many have tried to emulate since.

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[1] Before I delve completely into this paragraph please note that I am not saying that John Hughes is the progenitor of all modern day teen-related cinema elements. Cameron Crowe’s work on Fast Times at Ridgemont High pre-dates Hughes and is just as influential. The point that I am going for with the Hughes portion of this post is that he more than anyone else shaped and formed our current mainstream flavor of teen-related cinema elements. If Phil Spector was the Tycoon of Teen, then John Hughes was the CEO of Teen—someone who changed the established paradigm of Teen; someone whose awareness was such that the world of cinema needed to be more of a mirror rather than projection (there are more Anthony Michael Halls than James Deans walking around).

If you were born in any of the years during the ’70′s and you were like any other red-blooded human being who thought that MTV was the greatest thing since sliced bread^[1] you were no doubt blown away by the music videos that were made for Peter Gabriel. Everything culminated with “Sledgehammer”—the video that showed off a game-changing and groundbreaking use of stop motion animation and claymation. If I remember correctly I think it took nine weeks to make. If it weren’t for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” the greatest music video of all time title would belong to “Sledgehammer.” Gabriel’s music videos for “Big Time” and “Shock the Monkey”—just to name two—were also terrific examples of how creative and brilliant a music video could be as an art form.

I bring up music videos here first when talking about Peter Gabriel because he is probably the most visual singer of my lifetime.^[2] This is not to be confused with the notion that Gabriel has the most diverse or iconic image; countless other singers like David Bowie and Mick Jagger and Lou Reed, just to name a few, have a more far-reaching (or even outright chameleonic) image than Gabriel. But Gabriel’s music, especially the music he made in the ’80′s, seem to be synonymous with his videos (especially if you saw those videos during your formative years). To be sure, this was a pretty common byproduct of the MTV era, the assimilation of image and music (see: Duran Duran), but Gabriel’s songs and the videos that were overlaid on them really do combine to make a perfect communion.

And it’s not just music videos on MTV that this applies to. The scene in Say Anything… with John Cusack playing “In Your Eyes” through his boombox on Ione Skye’s driveway is an iconic scene, and half of that scene’s iconography is tied to Gabriel’s song as much as it is to Cameron Crowe’s brilliant staging and filming of it. “In Your Eyes” may not be the coolest song in the world or the first that you think of when thinking of ’80′s music but it is absolutely perfect for that scene. That scene also acts as a good way to describe Peter Gabriel in general: he has the ability to make absolutely perfect music, but is also sometimes quietly forgotten.

I say “quietly forgotten” because chances are you are reading this thinking that this post will be about one of his songs from the ’80′s, the aforementioned “Sledgehammer” or “In Your Eyes” or “Big Time,” or “Shock the Monkey” or “Red Rain.” Instead this post is about “Solsbury Hill,” Gabriel’s masterful debut solo single from 1977 that has no indelible music video attached to it. And yet, “Solsbury Hill” is an extremely visual song: its easygoing melody and guitar practically unfolds itself into the musical manifestation of Springtime or a greenhouse shrouded in sunlight or a sunrise; whatever would be your visualization of growing or rebirth (which makes sense, considering that this song is about Gabriel’s departure from Genesis).

Peter Gabriel was born on February 13, 1950 and became a founding member of Genesis, which formed in 1967 and released their debut album in 1969. He left the band in 1975 due to many factors, namely that the band was getting tired of his eccentric, flamboyant costume-wearing on-stage persona (similar to how Roxy Music grew tired of dealing with Brian Eno), and Gabriel himself realized that he had to step away from the band and its Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour once his wife’s pregnancy with their first child started having complications.^[3]

“Solsbury Hill” is off of the debut album Peter Gabriel, the first of four albums to bear that same title. The song is about his life after Genesis but in a very Gabriel-esque way: its use of imagery ranges from the almost mystical (“Today I don’t need a replacement/I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant/My heart going boom boom boom/’Hey,’ I said, ‘You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home’”) to a kind of beautiful poetry (“When illusion spin her net/I’m never where I want to be/And liberty she pirouette/When I think that I am free”). It’s a song, both lyrically and musically, that has so much imagery that I can’t help but to think what this video would have looked like if it had been released during the days of MTV’s Zeitgeist run.

Not that it needed MTV to validate it as a great song; it’s iconic all on its own. It’s not too often that an artist’s first single can define their legacy with such ease but I think in the case of “Solsbury Hill” it does just that. From this first single you can pretty much connect all of the creative dots that Peter Gabriel laid down with every successive album afterward. And for that reason I have to give the nod to “Solsbury Hill” over those brilliant and indelible singles that he made in the ’80′s.

I hope that my nine year old (and MTV-addicted) self will understand.

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[1] I, for one, thought as a kid that MTV was far greater than sliced bread. Because my parents were staunchly opposed to getting cable TV, I had to get my MTV fixes by way of my friends and their more progressive and cable-friendly parents. So whenever I was over at a friend’s house watching MTV it always felt like the same buzz that I would get on Christmas morning. I wish I were joking.

[2] For those who do not know me: I am 33 years old as of this writing.

[3] His daughter Anna would eventually arrive in this world with some medical issues initially, which furthered his reason for leaving Genesis.

“In the few interviews he’s given since its release, Neil Young has played along with the idea that [the album] Harvest was an aberration, and that its success drove him to seek the musical wilderness. When he compiled his triple-album retrospective Decade, he included half of Harvest, but undermined ‘Heart of Gold’ with an unequivocal liner note: ‘This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling [sic] there soon became a bore so I headed for a ditch. A rougher ride but I met more interesting people there.’”

— Sam Inglis, from the 33 1/3 series entry on Harvest

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Unbeknownst to Neil Young at the time, Harvest, Young’s fourth solo album, would become a crossroads album for him. The mainstream success of this album (“Heart of Gold” reached #1 on the Billboard charts, “Old Man” reached #31) caused Young to rethink the direction and the tone of his future albums. Before Harvest, Young was primarily seen—to the casual music listener—as: one-fourth of the superstar group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and one-third of the band Buffalo Springfield. To be sure, he was an immensely talented musician and songwriter but he seemed destined, as a solo artist, to be highly respected by other artists but never achieve household name status. “Heart of Gold”—and Harvest in general—transformed Young, seemingly overnight, into a very definite kind of successful solo artist, and he resented this. (Well, until he decided to revisit the album in 1992 by releasing Harvest Moon.)

Harvest is the quintessential Breakout Album, and Breakout Albums are oftentimes a curse (just like multi-platinum debut albums can sometimes be a curse). A fear that connects all of us—whether we are a layperson or a high-profile celebrity—is the fear of being misunderstood and the Breakout Album, for the artist(s) who produced it, can suddenly make one feel misunderstood. The audience will now have expectations of your work, and that can put the screaming fantods into some artists.

And so Neil Young, in working with James Taylor and Linda Ronstandt, created the sign-of-the-times hit “Heart of Gold,” and it was damn near perfect. “Old Man” was another pitch perfect single, a concise and minimalist masterpiece that deals with age and hindsight; a terrific metaphor (even if it was ultimately inadvertent) that captured the crossroads of those who lived through the fantasy of the late ’60′s and were now a few years into the oblique reality of the early ’70′s. “The Needle and the Damage Done,” taken from a live performance from UCLA in 1971, a beautifully painful song about the destruction of heroin. Three outstanding songs that when taken together cause us the listener to have a readymade picture of what Young’s next albums should sound like. Young would have none of it throughout most of the rest of his career.

The back cover of the 33 1/3 book on Harvest asks the following question as it pertains to the critics who initially panned Young’s album and the audience that bought the album regardless of what the critics wrote:

“[...] who got it right: the critics, or the millions who have bought Harvest in the 30 years since its release?”

Even though the question is rhetorical it is my belief that the correct answer is the millions who bought the album. There is a lot to love about this album. It’s one of the best flawed albums ever made. It’s the only album by Neil Young that I love (or for that matter like) and because of this I will admit that I am biased towards it. So you will have to excuse me for excusing most of Young’s catalog when I declare that the self-titled song “Harvest” is the best song he ever produced.

While “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done” are all great songs, and are great representations of Harvest as a whole—and Neil Young’s solo career in general—the soul of the album resides in this song. And while Young’s legacy might be more in line with his unofficial status of being the godfather of grunge music and his penchant for raw power of the non-punk variety, I think that it is “Harvest” that ultimately defines Neil Young.

Young’s voice, while unique, isn’t really made for mellow songs; he can sound too whiny too easily. But on “Harvest” Young’s vocals sound perfectly at home amongst the gorgeous music that encompasses him. Musically, this song is absolutely beautiful and it contrasts wonderfully the song’s sad and downbeat lyrics. It is a rainy day song that can be enjoyed when the sun is out. The music is like an Andrew Wyeth painting, its lyrics like an Edward Hopper. It encompasses everything that is brilliant about the album, and about Neil Young the Musician and Neil Young the Songwriter. “Harvest” may not be Young’s most recognizable song but it is his most beautiful.

So, with all due respect to “Heart of Gold” and “Tonight’s The Night” and “Old Man” and “Rockin’ in the Free World” I will take “Harvest” and its windblown acoustic guitar and campfire-warm arrangement of instruments any day. And besides, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Wyeth and Hopper anyway.

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On May 13, 1950, Stevland Hardaway Judkins was born in Saginaw, Michigan. Later on in life he would officially change his last name to Morris, his mother’s maiden name. Shortly after he was born he became blind in both eyes, his blindness due to his being born six weeks prematurely. While still a child his parents separated and he moved with his mother to Detroit. He began singing in church choirs and caught the attention of many adults. At age eleven, he was signed to a label that Motown Records owned. By thirteen he had a national single. And by age twenty two Stevie Wonder released Talking Book, one of the greatest albums of the ’70′s and the second in Wonder’s string of five albums that make up what is sometimes referred to as his “classic period.”^[1]

The lead single off of Talking Book, and the song that opens up side two, is “Superstition”—a song that not only hit #1 on the Billboard charts but also featured prominently Wonder’s pioneering use of a Hohner clavinet. The use of the Hohner clavinet in and of itself laid the groundwork for a new era of funk and soul music in the ’70′s. The clavinet’s sound is like that of a cross between a bass guitar and an electric guitar being fed into a distortion box. The end result are notes that have an almost sticky quality to them when played. And while the clavinet is undoubtedly the star of this song, the drums (especially their indelible intro) and the horns throughout cannot be overlooked either as everything comes together so perfectly on this song.

**********

Oftentimes great art is only considered to be truly great by many if it can exist outside itself, if it can provide a commentary or add to a personal and/or public context. And it is this potential commentary that typically separates the casual music fan from those who are critics. To the former, they may like Dark Side of the Moon for a myriad of personal reasons ranging from “It was the first record I bought” to “I used to love to get high and listen to ‘Time’” to “It’s just a great album, period.” To the latter, to the salaried critic or to someone who just enjoys writing about music, Dark Side of the Moon to some degree has to be more than just a great album, period. It has to somehow exemplify the ’70′s as a decade (or 1973 as a specific year); the production quality and the touches of Alan Parsons has to be mentioned in some capacity; its standing within the concept album genre should be discussed. And so on and whatever.

And to the casual fan, rock criticism (like any form of criticism) can at times seem self-righteous and pretentious. Or at the very least unnecessary. It is probably human nature to think that way. But if you allow yourself to think for a few moments about your favorite song, movie, television show, or other piece of art you would most likely not just say something as simple as It’s really good, I like it when asked about it. No. You would probably have to explain why the thing’s greatness is important to—and possibly why it is important to the period of time from which it was released.

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I bring all of this up because when it comes to “Superstition” (and to Stevie Wonder in general) I find myself at a loss for trying to put this song and Wonder himself into the larger context that he and it belong to. And so I thought about it a lot recently and I still came up with nothing very spectacular to write. I mean, the guy was a prodigy and would be a confirmed genius in many people’s eyes. And then I realized how to properly define Stevie Wonder’s greatness.

He is the Tim Duncan of modern musicians.

All Tim Duncan is is arguably the best power forward in NBA history; all Stevie Wonder is is arguably the best R&B/soul of the last forty years. Both men are great at what they do, and they are both very well known outside of their profession for their philanthropy. Both men have a quiet brilliance about them. (Seriously, can you recall any one thing you have ever heard about Tim Duncan away from a basketball court? As for Wonder, how many people do you think actually know that his first birth name is Stevland?)

Whereas Wonder’s music can actually make you move (as opposed to Duncan’s proclivity to always being businesslike and rarely showing emotion), his music is as such that you almost expect it to be great. It is not surprising to hear a great Stevie Wonder song, just as it was not surprising to see Tim Duncan quietly play sound basketball during his prime.

So, as much as I would love to be able to write a William Miller-inspired “think piece” about Stevie Wonder and “Superstition,” I am unable to despite my best intentions.^[2] I’ll keep it simple instead. “Superstition” is one of the best #1 singles of the ’70′s. Using the Hohner clavinet in a funk song was similar to Jimmy Page’s idea to use a violin bow with a guitar: it was genius in delivering what it was aiming for. This is the type of song that does a tremendous job of summarizing the R&B of the early ’70′s. This song isn’t as intergalactic as P-Funk are as polished as Isaac Hayes and James Brown, but it is inherently perfect. Because that opening drum beat and first notes of the clavinet let you know of its perfection right away.

Stevie Wonder may not inspire volumes of books and essays deconstructing his genius and his catalog of music. He’s (mostly) quietly brilliant and his music, for the most part, does the talking for him. Exhibit A: this song. If you can listen to this song and not be moved by it in any way then I don’t know what to tell you.

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[1] The “classic period” is generally considered to consist of the following albums: Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life.

[2] And, believe me, I tried. I had a whole abstract outline of how I could tie this song and its lyrics with Richard Nixon and the general distrust Americans had in everything post-Vietnam War but ultimately it just didn’t fit right.

The two most recognizable nicknames ascribed to James Brown are “The Godfather of Soul” and “The Hardest-Working Man In Show Business,” both of which are exemplary descriptors befitting a man whose iconography is tied to his self-marketing almost as much as it is to his extraordinary musical and vocal gifts.

It is almost impossible to convey the significance that James Brown brought to the table with regards to modern music. If one were to construct a What Makes James Brown Significant? pie chart you would most likely point to his voice first to be the thing that occupies the majority of the chart. Brown’s voice was… powerfully exotic. Never as polished as Sam Cooke’s and not quite as flamboyant as Little Richard’s, Brown’s voice had a power that was so raw yet natural that even though you knew it wasn’t technically the best voice you ever heard, it’s uniqueness floored you to the point that actually, yes, it might just be the best voice you’ve ever heard.^[1]

The second largest piece of the What Makes James Brown Significant? pie chart would probably be his showmanship. The obvious thing that reinforces this point is how Mick Jagger’s stage presence is essentially that of a White James Brown. Brown not only had an arsenal of dance moves, he also had an Elvis-like ability to choose the best and most preposterously (but still somehow appropriate) complex suits and get-up to wear. Brown also had some of the best moves while singing a song too, adding to the mix an update to how soul and R&B artists should carry themselves on stage—which begat how bands like The O’Jays danced, which begat how the early era of rappers danced. Black artists always seemed to want to one-up other artists in terms of movement and dancing during a show, but James Brown changed the game entirely. He was a maniacal performer: a man who sang his lungs out and danced his legs out, all while looking so damn cool and so well dressed. Before James Brown there was an “either/or” within the world of entertainment (and especially soul and funk music): you either had the voice or you had the moves. James Brown had both. (And really no one else did on a mass scale after Brown until Michael Jackson showed up.)

The other pieces of the pie chart? A veritable hodge-podge of a few things that probably would make up the remaining 15-20%. To me, though, the thing that would make up the largest chunk of that small remainder would probably be “James Brown Was A Badass.” And I mean badass in a Frank Sinatra kind of way. You could picture Brown or Sinatra bullshitting with people at a casino. But they were also badasses: you could also picture both of them pointing out a guy to one of their handlers and saying That’s him and within a few minutes that guy is getting punched repeatedly in the face out back.

Of all of the white Icons in modern music I think most people would try to assimilate James Brown to Elvis Presley. And you can definitely do that to a degree. (Hell, I have already referenced Elvis in this post already when talking about Brown’s attire choices.) Personally, I think there is a better connection between Brown and Sinatra and it stems from the fact that both men knew exactly who their audience was, and they were the best at honing in on their audience. In his obituary to Frank Sinatra, Robert Christgau wrote that “with every phrase, he turned English into American and American into music” and to a large degree I think James Brown did that too.

Brown’s earlier songs are coursing with Zeitgeist-ian elements within not only the black community but the mainstream as a whole: “I Got You (I Feel Good),” “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag, Pt. 1,” “Say It Loud (I’m Black And I’m Proud)”—they all possess a language that cuts through the bullshit and hits you at a primal level, whether it’s an exclamatory Wow! or the smooth delivery of I feel nice, like sugar and spice. Both Sinatra and Brown had their own distinctive language, and both men’s voices were born effortlessly out of their surrounding music: Sinatra’s crooning that materialized out of horns and jazzy percussion, Brown’s shouts and vocal energies born out of the foreplay between bass line and drum beat.

And like Sinatra, James Brown’s career spanned many decades and contained different eras. Which is to say that both men had their musical primes followed by a span of perceived musical failure. They had to depend on, like so many Icons before them, a rebirth to reinforce their legacy.^[2] Sinatra still had his image and blue eyes and accent as he aged, and Brown still had his voice and style as he aged but Brown’s rebirth was given form because of rap and hip hop.

The first era of rap embraced Brown through sampling, and it revisited his catalog to confirm that, yes, much could be learned/borrowed with regards to his structure and the aforementioned foreplay between bass line and drum beat. The second era of rap embraced Brown through the prism of Brown as a badass. And while you can certainly debate the merits (or lack thereof) of the ethos of the second era of rap and its “stop snitching” and other macho provincial bullshit, it would become a strong social force to reckon with. It was the culmination of a natural change.

When it comes to picking out a single song to try and define James Brown, his earlier masterpieces are definitely worthy of the Pantheon label. But I am really partial to “The Payback” and its minimalist—but still really really polished—sound. I am partial to James Brown the Badass too. “The Payback” is about how Brown’s friend betrayed him by taking his money and his girlfriend, and now he’s after them (“I don’t know karate, but I know ke-razor!” Brown screams, followed by the female backups: “Yes we do!”). “The Payback” was the culmination of a natural change.

“The Payback,” to me, is not only the best song James Brown ever produced but it is easily one of the five or ten best funk songs ever made in general. It is an outstanding badass song, a terrific progenitor for gangsta rap and modern hip hop; an auditory Scarface without the cocaine and the automatic weapons. And then from a musical perspective, when Brown asks for those hits towards the end of the track and lets out those screams afterwards—those few seconds there encapsulates the magnetism and power that resided naturally within him. It’s hard to adequately explain Brown’s overall significance, and it’s hard to select just one song that sums up Brown’s iconography. “The Payback” does a damn good job at trying to provide an answer for both.

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[1] The easiest comparison here is Janis Joplin. When you heard Janis Joplin for the first time you knew full well that others (Aretha or Etta or Dolly) have better technical voices. But Joplin’s is so unique that you cannot help being attracted to it more than you would Aretha’s or Etta’s or Dolly’s.

[2] Yet another thing that tied the two together: they were both immortalized on a completely different scale on Saturday Night Live; Brown by Eddie Murphy, Sinatra by the late Phil Hartman.