Photo/Five favorite 20th century songs

Five of my most favorite songs from the 20th century, compiled here for your potential agreement/disagreement:



Roy Orbison "In Dreams"
from the album 'In Dreams' (1963)

I like to think of Roy Orbison as the first 'rock n' roll' musician to inject that holy bittersweet melancholic, dreamy, floaty, and heartbreaking beauty into the form. Obviously he had too many part-time sad-sack contemporaries for this to be true, but he was the first (mostly) full-timer. This song wraps it all up in one go. Extended, multi-segmented structure, huge and sweeping vocal lines that tug at your heartstrings, and one of the finest, most tragic (But, like all of Orbison's best, simultaneously hopeful and longing) lyrics of the era.



Leonard Cohen "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong"
from the album 'Songs of Leonard Cohen' (1967)

A rigid rhyme scheme turned unobtrusive, pleasant almost. The shining golden treasure at the end of Songs of Leonard Cohen for those first-time listeners brave, curious, or patient enough to make it all the way through Lennie's debut record without copping out early. I've learned the lyric by heart several times over, but it will always sound eternal, maybe even sacred, to my ears: 'I heard of a saint who had loved you/so I studied all night in his school/He taught that the duty of lovers/is to tarnish the golden rule/Just when I was sure that his teachings were pure/he drowned himself in the pool/His body is gone, but back here on the lawn/his spirit continues to drool' . The real bonus here is the drunken-and-broken outro, where Mr. Cohen opts to wail a mournful keening melody (In a register that is entirely shocking for a man with such famously limited vocal chords) over an extended fade-out. The lonely flute and whistling accompaniment on said refrain is just to die for.



John Cale "Big White Cloud"
from the album 'Vintage Violence' (1970)

Cale's one of my biggest heroes, arrangement-wise & production-wise & songwriting-wise & fiddling-wise & singing-wise. This song is just massive, all high and droning gorgeous treble over a rock solid and steady low-end drum and bass combo that simply keeps on sailing, shining verse and chorus after shining verse and chorus. It's full of elation, release, and absolution. There is a dull, painlessness trapped in the lyric and the arch-melodic arrangement that speaks from a place not quite as wondrous as the first superficial listen would have you think, but that is the song's genius. It's full of a certain sort of surrender to the world, a baptism in the wonder and chaos of it all.




The Smashing Pumpkins "Thirty Three"
from the album 'Melon Collie & The Infinite Sadness' (1995)

Sure, Billy Corgan has a Bono-times-two sized ego and a boatload of control issues, but the man could certainly write awesome songs back in the early to mid nineties. "Thirty Three" is one of the most aching and bittersweet songs I have ever heard (The music video is one of my all time favorites in the medium), no exaggeration. Here, Corgan has studied My Bloody Valentine's 'Sometimes' and Slowdive's 'Dagger' and condensed their greatness into four minutes and eleven seconds of shoegaze-meets-chamber-ballad brilliance. Almost all of the Pumpkins' entire recorded output is heavily indebted to the sonic experimentation of the English Shoegaze scene, and this song is the pinnacle of that influence in their discography. Twinkling pianos, surging and coalescing electric/acoustic interplay (Thanks to ace production team Alan Moulder and Flood. We can thank the former for that classic Creation Records sound, and we can thank the latter for some of the grandest, most flowing production jobs 1995-present, overly-slick or not.), and that pounding, distant, looping percussive track all combine to make an arrangement equivalent to a beginner's guide to Shoegaze-hallmarks (In a great way). Plus, Corgan's often overly affected voice is in good form here, with just the right ratio of angst to nostalgia for the lyric and overall tone. Wade Linebaugh, this one's for you.



Van Morrison "Sweet Thing"
from the album 'Astral Weeks' (1968)

'I shall drive my chariot/down your streets and cry/Hey it's me, I'm dynamite/and I don't know why/And you shall take me strongly/in your arms again/And I will not remember/that I ever felt the pain/We shall walk and talk/in misty gardens all wet with rain/And I will never, never, never grow so old again'.

The master track on Van's Joycean opus, 'Astral Weeks', 'Sweet Thing' is Van's finest moment as the searching, seeking Celtic folk-jazz wonder-poet of his youth. No verbal description could do it full justice, the magic of this era of Van's work is entirely emotional, visceral even. All of Astral Weeks finds Mr. Morrison casting his memory back, searching through his memories and recollections to assemble some deep, monstrously powerful work of pain and joy. Astral Weeks, Moondance, right up until Veedon Fleece, all of these records paint a portrait of a man both haunted by and enthralled with his own past, and there's something in that predicament that we can all relate to. Right around 1974, the quality and authenticity of Van's songwriting begins to drop off from album to album, but his recorded output up until that point stands, even today, as one of the most cosmic, spiritual, and moving bodies of music yet released. 'Sweet Thing' is the penultimate composition of that period. Though it's peers are many and extraordinarily strong, it remains unflinchingly essential, perfectly timeless and astonishing.