31. "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen" by Santana

I close the first month of this challenge with a song in the Great Song Pantheon.

Say, did you know that "Black Magic Woman" was actually written and first recorded by Fleetwood Mac? Their song only lacks the two key features that make the Santana song iconic: Santana's guitar, obviously, and the percussion section. It's amazing how a song can change by just executing it all wrong.

Santana took this smarmy "Latin" number by an English pop group and turned it into one of the coolest songs we have produced as a culture.

I'm really at a loss talking about the guitar. I play guitar, but I am very limited. In my experience, I write music (I should say wrote because I haven't written a song in 10 years), work super hard on the changes, the singing melodies, lyrics, percussion... and then I have to beg competent guitarists to collaborate with me and make it whole.

So how can I comment on the guitar work of Carlos Santana? I'll just say he covers a lot of ground in a three-minute song. He brings us into this song with allure, arrives at the signature opening melody, and then is content just to embellish around the verses, before he flies off on the fantastic solo. (There are no choruses in this song! Just the intro, three smokey verses, and the dynamic middle instrumental, with the extended "Gypsy Queen" jam to end. That gets me geeking out.) Every note is expertly fluid and interesting far beyond being finger gymnastics.

What truly hit me was the conga. The conga player's name is Michael Carabello. When I was young, his work on the this song, especially the "Gypsy Queen" section, legitimized this instrument for me as not just a drum but a study. I picture the Woodstock footage of this band, ecstatic, sweating, eyes closed, these thin young boys with billowing hair. I hear those congas, that life force, the blurred hands popping the skins awake. What fun music is to play... just the single definition of fun. I don't look down on non-musicians, but I honestly can say you don't know what you're missing if you've never been able to release in song with a group of like-minded individuals. And to be lucky enough to be able to participate in a group like Santana back in the original flush of genius... What certain, unknowable fun.

30. "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden

Where is the rock vocalist today with the bombast and dexterity of Chris Cornell, far, far less the songwriting chops?

What songs do you hear on the radio today where some virtuosic rocker with a pop-worthy melodic ear is on there singing about black holes and suns, and a litany of other surreal images and idea fragments? Maybe this is just a really strange song of relationship strife, and we can all just relax.

Much was made about the guitar effect on this song's verses, its calling card, maybe its gimmick. I'll tell you what, the drums are the value of admission here, the thundering, ever-thinking drums of Matt Cameron. He never takes a measure off.

Some people love labels like "grunge" to describe any heavy rock coming out in the early/mid '90s. Fine, but if you are one that likes to call "grunge," you are allowing marketers to simplify your appreciation of essential, ambitious sonic sculpture like "Black Hole Sun" in the process.

Hug a guitar today.

29. “Black Heart” by Calexico

I had a friend go see the Shins, and he came back raving about the band who opened for them, this incredible, virtuosic group from Tucson called Calexico.

We listened to their album, 2003’s Feast of Wire, and found a bold mix of modern and traditional sounds. It is an album you don’t skip songs through, filled with excellent modulations of waltzes, rock, mariachi, solo piano, both boisterous and small. Towering over the album, in my opinion, is this epic, “Black Heart.”

The song is like a dark cloud settling over the top of you. The resilient choruses are bursts of bravery. The strings go beyond excellent orchestration and become a character in this song’s panoramic southwestern landscape: Their excellent screaming and wailing finale is the cloud touching the horizon, light winking out, and your final regrets only then occurring to you.

28. “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson

That is a custom-made drum set that opens this song. As in, the materials of the set were assembled to have the unmistakable sound we all know.

Michael Jackson had the bassist play the bass line on every bass the guy owned before selecting one to be on the recording.

Every song on the Thriller album had this kind of insane attention to detail. It was like a NASA mission, for tunes.

That is why every person who sees this post knows every detail of this song. We all love the drum and bass, the keyboard, the funky guitar. We have all sung every note, even tried our hand at some of the impossible-to-imitate little embellishments he obsessively dropped everywhere.

Have we all attempted to moon walk to this song? I admit I haven't. I could maybe keep up with the voice of Michael Jackson, but the moves were best handled by professionals.

Michael Jackson wanted Thriller to be massive, successful, a crossover between cultures, all of that. It was also just one of the greatest tributes to the human imagination, with songs like “Billie Jean” an absolutely unique vibe, vision, phenomenon, memory, leap.

27. "Big Empty" by Stone Temple Pilots

Heavy, or even somewhat aggressively performed music has largely fallen out of the mainstream zeitgeist. When Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland died in 2015, the cultural arbiters of our time treated their rememberances of him with embarrassed bemusement, like priests trying to explain kickboxing to preschoolers.

But heavy music is like any music - eternally relevant if done well. It is brave, and bravery tends to unsettle. 

Most first wave grunge bands built their heaviness on a headbanging, moshing model. You could argue where STP fits in this chronology - they were contemporaries with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc. but they have been accused of appropriating those bands. But I submit that their style of heaviness is unique from those groups. "Big Empty" draws on the Led Zeppelin school of heaviness: Acoustic blues verses, astute slide guitar, drumming layered with soft rolls and ghost notes; Choruses of exultant open chords, eschewing just driving the low fifths. The middle instrumental is also of the Zeppelin school, something "Whole Lotta Love" did with a more playful attitude. 

"Big Empty" is not playful. It is earnest to the point of being mockable by those who like to poke holes. It is a Great Song. Maybe fewer can feel it today.