90. "Far Away" by Junip

Occasionally I do Spotify dives, and interesting sounding songs I'll drop into a playlist to keep around. On one of my excursions, I ended up hearing "Far Away." I had no idea it was a soundtrack song for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Red Dead Redemption, or had any other associations. All I knew was that this was a song I would be listening to for years to come.

Just a blues-based song with a one-chord main guitar part, this song could have ended up sounding many different ways. Some key decisions make it stand out.

To open with some random warm-up noise is cool. And it pays off when the song kicks off, suddenly so extremely focused.

The electric guitars have some gain on them, and they could have been heavy rock guitars if they were attacked harder. Instead, the guitars stings are barely grazed, creating a meditative pulse so restrained that a finger-plucked nylon string classical guitar can play lead licks over them.

The drums also dare losing control, setting a fast pace that usually means some loud dynamics are in order. But like the guitars, as they drive forward, they are doing so with the softest touch. The organ solo is again this opportunity to blow out, but instead we get this low-key bending, descending series of chords. 

No sooner does the organ solo resolve than we embark on the payoff, this deep, dark 5-3-1 progression, a peak of such minimal delight.

The whole song, the vocals are so sparse, just these drifting little lines sung in a handsome, plain voice. They come in and keep this song going. Underlying the melody, the chord changes are rare enough to be notable moments.

2.5 minutes and done. The economy in every phrase is so charging. The quality of the instrumental parts and vocals make the formal choices look so smart.

Junip is a Swedish folk duo who employ backing musicians as needed. The organist is named Tobias Winterkorn. The lead singer/guitarist for this band is named José Gabriel González. Curious why the vocalist of a Swedish folk duo has a patently romantic Hispanic name?

Mr. González's family fled to Sweden from Argentina to escape the takeover of a right wing military junta in their country. The right wing takeover led to the "Dirty War," which I'll just let Wikipedia summarize for you: 

"The "Dirty War" (Spanish: Guerra Sucia), was the name used by the Argentine Military Government for a period of state terrorism in Argentina from roughly 1974 to 1983 (some sources date the beginning to 1969), during which military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A) hunted down and killed left-wing guerrillas, political dissidents, and anyone believed to be associated with socialism."

Now a Swede, González is responding to his displacement due to extremist anarchy with nothing other than excellently calm, composed rock folk. And the only reason he's not a "typical" peaceful refugee is because nobody of any kind usually writes music this well.

89. "Faith" by George Michael

The 1960s were a golden era of songs that built through excellent construction into well-earned choruses. This is why there are so many lovely minor chords in these happy 1960s major key verse progressions - the harmony was still functional in a classical sense, where the full range of chords in a key were utilized to build toward a resolution.

The 1980s were a golden era of addictive melodies. Verses became less about setting together a chord progression to properly build the song and more about devising independent melodies as catchy as chorus melodies. The verses hooked increasingly attention-challenged kids long enough for the choruses to really hook them deep.

What we got out of it were a handful of hall of fame melody writers. We got Michael Jackson. We got Madonna. And we got George Michael.

And "Faith" is George Michael's "Beat It," his "Like a Virgin," his breakthrough hit.

It's just a simple rockabilly tune with big drums and George Michael's beautiful voice, but its melodies are refined to crystal. This song has essential verse, pre-chorus, and chorus melodies. Three sections, each iconic. Throw in a fun, butt-shaking rockabilly guitar solo to lock up its greatness. The song wins, smiling at us through silver shades.

88. "Exodus" by Bob Marley

A trekking, serious epic written by Bob Marley while exiled in England after surviving an assassination attempt in Jamaica. This restless, drastic song (invoking the Biblical exodus of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt) and "Three Little Birds" (chiding us not to worry about a thing) are somehow on the same album.

This music can come on, and I'm in a trance. It could go on for an hour; I would just keep moving to this bass line, singing the stirring refrain, picturing an unbroken line of human silhouettes striking out for the promised land, dreaming to join them.

87. "Everything's Alright" from Jesus Christ Superstar, by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice

The ever-fascinating Jesus Christ Superstar was a 1970s rock opera album, musical, and film that dramatized the last days of Jesus Christ and his betrayal by his own disciple, Judas Iscariot. The twist: Jesus's ministry is portrayed as a modern counterculture movement, mixing period dress and setting with dozens of modern anachronisms. I am going to focus on the film version, which I consider definitive.

In trying to explain Judas's betrayal of Jesus as something other than magical satanic possession—a common explanation for Judas's actions—Weber and Rice find themselves examining instead how social and political coalitions can fracture based on seemingly minute ideological divides. Hence this pivotal scene and song early in the film, a scene which the Bible itself has no semblance of an equivalent. It took a hippie rock opera in the mid-20th century to finally visualize this central event: Jesus and his most forceful, purist disciple fatefully falling out before our eyes. And it throws into question whether Jesus's eventual death was prophecy or self-fulfilling prophecy.

The three-part lead vocals—shared in the film by Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene, Carl Anderson as Judas Iscariot, and Ted Neeley as Jesus Christ—are musically excellent and overflowing with characterization in their performances.

Mary Magdalene's lines are sweet and soothing, only growing slightly more urgent in attempts to calm Judas out a little. Her performance is the heart of the song, beautifully sung, her song intended to comfort her leader and friend at a time of quickly rising stakes in his ministry. It also establishes the central melody for Jesus and Judas to take over and escalate in their debate. The descending line resolving her part—beginning in a minor phrase and finishing in sublimely turned major—is one of my all-time favorite passages. And the backing voices that rise behind her are cooing angels. It's musically striking, and if you know her background, you are aware of the juxtaposition at play.

Judas's performance is a developed countermelody to Mary Magdalene's, perhaps more sophisticated but darker, increasing the tension, as he seems to do in everything of which he is a part. He cannot bring himself to share the sentimental phrase of Mary Magdalene. My god, Carl Anderson's ability to shriek to the heights of his range is the leading edge of this whole film, and he really gets into it here—quickly peaking in this actually quite short song, this compact, compressed situation in this claustrophobic subterranean setting.

Jesus's performance is all expertly interpreted reaction by Ted Neely. Vocally, his tone and delivery are incredible. Can you believe he was only the understudy for the Broadway production? Now, notice his facial reaction while Mary is singing the introductory verse and producing the expensive ointment at the heart of the confrontation. He himself is a little taken aback by her gesture, his eyes grow just slightly in shock as he sees the ointment. But he couches his reaction in a neutral poker face. This is how quickly he can observe and intuitively understand the basis of her actions, determine their good intent, and pass no further judgement on her. It's a capacity for acceptance that lesser leaders lack, leading them into abstract battles that distract from ultimate aims.

When it is his turn to sing, he responds to Judas using Judas's melody, communicating with him on his terms but with a much more staggered delivery, a far calmer voice. His staggered delivery is really a great touch because it shows a kind of patience, a kind of peaceful confidence to take his time and not feel rushed to smack every note down on top of the beat. He expresses himself with the license of the inspired. It's one of two of Jesus's best rhetorical devices in his ministry: Speak to someone on their terms but subtly explode those terms with his own personality, teaching with the example of his attitude—literally using the musical concept of theme and variation to educate by means of that variation.

His other top rhetorical tactic is guilt. It's fairly the basis of the whole Jesus story (and many others): Watching this one man/demigod go willingly to his known death as a sacrifice to atone for the arrogance, avarice, and failing humanity of a nation drunk on its own power. The theory being that, in feeling guilty for his pain and loss, the descendants of that world who learned his story would have their consciences re-activated and recover their lost humanity.

And what line is at the peak of Jesus's vocal in this song? "You'll be lost and you'll be sorry when I'm gone."

Mary Magdalene wants to soothe Jesus, giving him some momentary comfort not knowing the torture he is on the eve of enduring. Judas, ideologically purist, loudly disapproves. Jesus is now forced to take this one moment of down time to teach his disciple a lesson in appreciating genuine, if imperfect, gestures of kindness. And in the back of his mind, he also knows this squabble will seem awfully small in the scheme of the next few days. So he plants these seeds of guilt in Judas's mind, maybe only just trying to urge his patience in the moment, but maybe aware that these words will eventually ring loud in Judas's memory; as it turned out, too loud for him to bear.

But one person's appeal for patience can be another person's feeling of being minimized, depending on the person. In this case, Jesus almost guarantees Judas's quitting of the ministry by taking this line of argument. Literally by attempting to warn him about the guilt Judas may feel, Jesus may have pushed Judas onto the path of betraying him.

It really is a no-win situation when you are dealing with the non-compromising.

And that is why the wise sometimes have to die.

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.