The granddaddy of titanic metal riff songs. Each riff individually should be preserved in the Smithsonian.
150. "Interstate Love Song" by Stone Temple Pilots
The three core Seattle grunge bands (Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam) released their most accomplished albums in close succession across 1993 and '94. During this highly unique creative surge, several key peripheral bands also contributed their best work. Stone Temple Pilots' 1994 album Purple has to top that secondary list.
"Interstate Love Song," off that album, exemplifies what tuneful, catchy music STP could write.
There is still an edge and a heaviness to the song, as airy and pop-friendly as it is. It's no Gin Blossoms fabrication. The growly vocal of Scott Weiland helps ensure that. The wistful, sophisticated choruses also set it far out of reach of most songwriters' capabilities. It was a impressive time for proudly thoughtful, listenable, hearable heavy rock.
149. "Instant Karma!" by John Lennon
John Lennon continues to run up his transcendent total on this list versus his supposed "rival" Paul McCartney...
Note: I do love Paul.
There is a lot of fun in parenting. It's fun because it is so, so difficult and thoroughly, inescapably creative. The first years with your child are what I resolutely and respectfully think of as "soul orientation." You are not helping a child take steps - you are are hoping you help them find and trust in the love and vision for which the steps are taken, and the physical milestones are the flowers on the nurtured branches. It is a daily, hourly metamorphosis to take part in. (And it alters you in return.)
It's fun because you have to try so hard to find simple ways of explaining great lessons, lessons of happiness, lessons of meaning, lessons that are not arrogant or self-righteous or blind but build pride.
I have been playing "Instant Karma!" for Julian and Xavier for a while. Once they were able to understand, we listened to the words of this chorus.
"We all shine on like the moon and the stars and the sun."
We make little comments about it. We talk about the moon and the stars and the sun, how cool they are. We talk about the ways we are cool. We talk about what our planet and bodies are made of, matter born in our universe, just like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Sometimes the best "soul orientation" is simply orientation. Know the amazing things we are connected to. Physical reality is its own magic.
It helps when the melody is sweet.
148. "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" by Marvin Gaye
Sing it, Marvin.
Maybe we'll hear it.
147. "Independence Day" by Elliott Smith
How can I avoid sounding totally slavish when I'm writing about my favorite song?
We have reached the mountaintop of this list. Everything else slopes away from this song, sublime for sure but assuredly breathtaking valleys in every direction.
You can disagree. You are wrong.
Elliott Smith was not a folk singer-songwriter. He was a minimalist, and that is a colossal difference. His first two albums almost completely consisted of guitar/voice arrangements with only the sparest of extra instrumentation. But even for guitar/voice combos, Elliot Smith's style was contracted, with a whispered, slithery voice and a guitar he preferred to only strike a few strings at a time, forming spindly, highly unique chord structure webs. He had no reliance on folk or roots concepts; theoretically his music was militantly modern.
For his third album, Either/Or, he began adding drums and other traditional rock instruments to a handful of songs, with some decent results, though in some cases the drums seem overt, even a bit conventional. Between his third and fourth albums, his song "Miss Misery" was nominated for an Oscar as part of the Good Will Hunting soundtrack; it was a shock, fleeting brush with wider fame. He personally performed the song on the 1998 Oscars, painfully shy in the spotlight.
To capitalize on this leap in profile, his fourth album benefitted from a noticeably bigger budget. The instrumentation continued to expand, the production was better, and he had clearly given much more thought to how these new instruments would belong in the mix but also allow the airy space that defined his minimal sound. Minimalism is a work-intensive aesthetic, hellbent on removing every last sign of being work-intensive. The result must be exquisite.
"Exquisite"
- Of particular refinement or elegance, as taste, manners, etc., or persons.
- Carefully sought out, chosen, ascertained, devised, etc.
As with all his bigger production albums, on that fourth album (XO), there are victories and failures. But the victories are fantastic; one of them is the greatest victory - "Independence Day."
In the opening guitar passage alone, the song moves through ten chord changes (Cm9th, Dm13th, C, Bb6th, G#, C, Fadd9, G, G#, C). He is not filling a quota. This many chord changes are necessary and logical because the melody minutely weaved into the finger picking is devised to accommodate all these transitions and audacious cadences.
A drum set, bass, and keyboard enter. But all have restrained voicing, fitting in with the gossamer guitar as new threads, avoiding "rock" full saturation.
The three transition chords into the verse are dissonant but also modulate the song with a baroque confidence. The verses emerge from this oddest of cadences and chart an even more ambitious course. The verse vocal melody is a long, unbroken idea skipping and soaring through almost tortured leaps in chord arrangement, a high wire act of orchestrated tension before eventually allowing a merciful resolution.
The reward is a return to the intro guitar pattern, this time with a hypnotic, catchy, sleek vocal harmony. No lyrics, just "Aah."
The verse progression returns with an added voice harmony, there is a short break for a second chorus, but after only one measure of it, we launch into the middle bridge.
The heights attained in this middle bridge are so sweet, honest, pure, vulnerable, and correct. The bass finally hits a low register to underscore the import. The vocal line is so intensely beautiful, emphatically repeating its melody ideas over shifting chord fingerings. The chords do not repeat; it is a one-time shot through a sequence of unexpected, inspired choices, just like the verses are, just as is a life.
"You only live a day," sings Elliott Smith, who is dead.
The song isn't over. It hasn't even peaked. IT HASN'T EVEN PEAKED!
The intro/chorus progression returns, but the song doesn't just snap back into it. The level of transition out of the middle bridge is elite-order composition. The final bridge line peels off into a descending set of transition chords that eventually bring us to the familiar opening guitar melody. But even then we're not done with the transition. The frequency-smashing three-chord cadence that rings out here is one of my favorite sequences of sounds.
The intro/chorus progression gains a counterpoint double vocal in unison octaves - a low and high register singing the same thing. Elliott Smith, the minimalist, doesn't really do triumphant, but this is as close as he'll fly to that sun. The high register voice, especially, sears.
The ending line is uttered in defiant, fiery repetition: "Independence day."
That was a good day.
The song is just three minutes long, non-stop with ideas, care, strangeness, and edifying peace.