181. "Light My Fire" by The Doors

One of the sonic booms that burst from the better angels of our nature.

This song's sense of enthusiasm and discovery is infectious. You can almost hear the lines of the song as directed not to a love interest but to Morrison himself, somebody who had dabbled with writing, art, film, and music before forming the Doors, but somebody who probably realized that this was his best chance of going from coolest dude on the beach in L.A. to legitimate rock star.

"The time to hesitate is through."

What a weird band. A sound unto themselves. How must this unwieldy beast of a song have sounded next to everything else on the pop radio of the time? What a pluralistic experience.

180. "Life on Mars?," performed by Seu Jorge

I like David Bowie just fine, and the core of the brilliance of this song are all the intelligent chord leaps on and on, up and up, that he wrote. But there are few performances as cool as Seu Jorge as a character in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, where he turns the Bowie song into a Brazilian acoustic guitar performance accompanying his deep, calm voice. He does this with a number of Bowie songs throughout the film, but this is my favorite. It's such a surreal aspect of a totally surreal film, but you maybe get the biggest feeling of impact from listening to the soundtrack album, where all the Jorge performances are collated together with a collection of other movie tracks and score pieces. The soundtrack album turns into an underrated concept album that richly parallels the film, evoking a kind of wistful out-at-sea vibe that makes the album a perfect choice just to have running quietly over a sunny summer afternoon - or a winter afternoon where you need to remember.

179. "Let's Stay Together" by Al Green

In my last entry, I discussed hedonist Prince playing the part of some phosphorescent, purple pastor preaching a pile of pseudo-coherent beliefs he probably barely understood himself, beyond his own hyper-confidence in himself.

In this entry, I will discuss actual pastor Al Green, whose song "Let's Stay Together" couldn't differ more in philosophy and approach.

Prince was the player, Al Green was the preacher. We have to learn the difference.

Al Green's song is not a hyped series of grand statements about "life" or anything else. It is one of the most graceful, cool, beautifully written soul ballads of all time - those dawning choruses! And it shows us a man willing in every way to humble himself to the recipient of this song, with only one ideal in mind: to stay together. You could say it's a love song, but even that is a hyped version of what it is. It is a "staying together" song. It's a song about the compromise and respect that relationships require to persevere. It's the attitude of a balanced, spiritual man who accepts the ups and downs of daily life and sees the greater long-term beauty. This, it turns out, is love. Actual love, in action, not as a mission statement. Prince and his adrenaline-fueled, messianic ravings are not on the same planet.

The music itself: Can't we still occasionally track songs like this? There is such immediacy in the sound of the brass instruments, the voices, none of them polished in the echo that modern techniques would demand them to be. What happened to this simplicity? It creates an intimacy we don't know anymore in music recordings. Maybe it would just come off as affected these days, but I doubt it. Think of it as an Instagram filter for your songs.

178. "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince

What preachy, pontifical, pompous, pretentious, presumptuous prattle Prince purveyed on the pure, passive public with this performance, primped and purple.

And we prefer it. We perpetuate it. 

Where does he get off unloading a speech like that in the song's opening? Church organ and all, goodness. What fills some people with the assurance, the surety, that their words will be welcomed in by ears needy to hear them? It's one of the great phenomena of the human will, what enables some to declaim to many. There will always be the needs of the many to be shepherded along by the words and hype of the hyper few.

Of course, every cult leader needs to have the dazzle to make the minds go along. For Prince, he followed up that speech with dizzying display of guitar talent, building to a soloing climax that seals the status of the Purple One as a figure to be revered and believed. In older times, prophets had to perform other kinds of miracles. Even today, your extreme fitness instructor has to have a messianic, life-changing character before you welcome the self-flagellation they command of you. It helps to have a common group to strive and believe along with you in a way that "nobody" else understands. That starts to answer why there are always many followers compared to the ones giving orders.

Prince himself maybe came to believe his own words more devoutly than any of his most devoted superfans. I think his self-made success convinced him of his infallibility, and he became a person so confident in himself that he could accept no conflicting information. Stories of his obliviousness to criticism or even basic warnings have become legendary. After all, in the American paradigm of success, there is no challenge that cannot be defeated with the proper positive thinking. Failure is a matter of will. Compromise - weakness. (And that's not even considering the "positive" influence of antidepressants and other de-inhibitors.)

And so Prince rode the wave of the massive crescendo of this brilliant song down through the years, high above sea level on his self-assurance, until it dashed him upon the rocks.

Of course, he died in an elevator, fitting perfectly with the lyrics of this song, a haunting coincidence. Even in the moment that should have been his ultimate unmasking, he performed one more "miracle" that made his failure seem prescient. This is the hall of mirrors that is the mind. Crazy.

177. "Let Me Drown" by Soundgarden

If I point out the singing of this song, it insults the drumming. If I point out the songcraft, it insults the production. If I point out the talent replete throughout this song, it insults the rawness.

If you favor heavy rock, just take it all in equally please. Open your ears wide and become perceptive to the spectrum.