86. "Everything Means Nothing to Me" by Elliott Smith

Dude had a destroyed childhood, no support network, drug and depression problems, no ability to do normal work aside from his ingenious musical calling. So he wrote songs with thoughts like this. What else was he gonna do, sit around and eat Wendy's till the end of time?

Despite his problems and inefficiencies, he worked hard. He gave us this gem, starting it out so minimally, yet with a byzantine stretch of chord changes and melody accompaniments. The second refrain is the ending - the song is a fragment. The ending blooms with suddenly full instrumentation, an excellent bit of late-'90s space.

Then it's gone. Two minutes and done, long outliving him.

48. "Christian Brothers" by Elliott Smith

A good Sunday morning coffee song. Quiet, airy, barely anything to the sound except the errant f-bomb whining out here or there. These are oddly aggressive lyrics from our man Elliott.

I'll tell you what I'm listening to. The opening guitar is beautifully abstract, running this cool escalating pattern of six chords that seem incapable of resolving until they do. The chord progressions in this song, in general - these are not your usual, taken-for-granted changes. This song will not just give you the comforting ear routines.

There are at least two guitars playing here, I think, but they all seem to be playing about 20 feet from the microphone. The sound of Elliott Smith at this early point was so tiny; it's all about what can happen within that minimalism. Other than the guitar, there is a drum set consisting of snare and cymbal. 

The verse is a simple pattern between singing with a cool little descending guitar part and a folksy little guitar lead. It's all carried by the voice. Then the short passage that bridges down into the chorus is an arresting, dark little moment.

That chorus singing melody - at once such a John Lennon idea and something I loved about Elliott Smith's music, this cooing voice on a long, delicate phrase. 

Pure extravagance is a 12-string guitar solo.

22. "Baby Britain" by Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith's first two albums were almost completely guitar and voice, with a few minimal instruments in support. For his third album, he started to evolve his sound to include more instrumentation. For his fourth, he really embraced a fuller sound, especially writing for a band again. (He started out in a band in the early '90s only to go solo when his independent work became so popular.) He also went out of his way to write music with a bit more brightness, if only a bit more. 

This is where "Baby Britain" fits in his evolution. 

Smith was a Beatles fan - apt with his John-esque kind of voice. And the more instrumentation he brought into songs, the more I think he tended to emulate the Beatles. "Baby Britain" has the feel of "Getting Better," chiming, chopping guitars and all.

Even with a broader sound, there is a commitment to minimalism. The singing melody is the star, and the chord structure is clearly labored over but not embellished; the extra instruments do their simple jobs nicely. 

For someone suffering from hard drug and alcohol addiction and possibly scarred from child abuse underneath it all, a song that seems to make fun of an alcoholic kind of counts as lightening up.

20. "Angeles" by Elliott Smith

Still not in the mood to talk much about Elliott Smith. His modesty fills me with modesty. He wrote quiet, highly intelligent tunes with beautiful, active melodies, top-order chord development, and played excellent guitar patterns. And he mostly left it at that. This was at a time Radiohead was adding the 42nd track to one of their recordings.

16. "Alphabet Town" by Elliott Smith

Fun song to play and sing. I love the vocals if not the lyrics; Elliott Smith always turned words into utterance more than just melody. But the melody is also top-level.

This whole album is minimalist mastery, but this song about tops it: A hushed guitar that is both folk and futurist, a soft voice, a harmonica sighing.