236. "Oye Como Va" performed by Santana

If I were to start another band, it would be purely to feature percussion with the fun spirit of "Oye Como Va." Few things these days serve me as a performance muse, but Latin percussion is one of them. That cha-cha beat in particular, I could construct an entire set around it.

It may not take over the clubs, but I want to make people move, not just peer over their glasses frames from their static tables.

As with this song, the music I want to hear isn't Latin jazz, with its inscrutable virtuosity, nor something intently folksy traditional. It's a simplification and a modernization. It's maybe nothing at all.

235. "Outshined" by Soundgarden

Many of you have heard the line "I'm looking California and feeling Minnesota." Well, if you didn't already know, that's from this song - the ultimate modern blues song, washed in a Black Sabbath bath.

Personally, I know that Minnesota is a beautiful place to live, winters included. But I know what Chris Cornell was saying. I'm sure he would've said "Feeling Washington," but he's from there and disregards the equally negative popular image of their gloomy weather. Plus, "Washington" rhymes with nothing.

Here's a cool interview snippet from Cornell about that line:

"One of the first times I remember writing something personal was on tour. I was feeling really freaky and down, and I looked in the mirror and I was wearing a red T-shirt and some baggy tennis shorts. I remember thinking that as bummed as I felt, I looked like some beach kid. And then I came up with that line—’I’m looking California / And feeling Minnesota,’ from the song ‘Outshined’—and as soon as I wrote it down, I thought it was the dumbest thing. But after the record came out and we went on tour, everybody would be screaming along with that particular line when it came up in the song. That was a shock. How could anyone know that that was one of the most personally specific things I had ever written? It was just a tiny line. But somehow, maybe because it was personal, it just pushed that button."

My takeaway: In art, in anything, be yourself and don't worry about achieving a popular affectation. Honesty is always more attractive.

That's a bigger lesson than maybe it should have to be. But the pleasant surprise of its truth, as Cornell experienced, is a good moment.

234. "One Word Extinguisher" by Prefuse 73

I will not forget the sunbleached afternoon I was dancing to this song with my friends on a treeless, infinite prairie.

233. "One More Night" by Phil Collins

I used to listen to this one repeatedly on my parents' record player when I was five or six. The chorus melody struck me in such a curious way. It was one of the first songs I can remember singing along to, with tonality.

Now an old guy, I still love the chorus, but I most love the upper-register web of keyboard, bass, and vocal criss-crossing each other in the verses. The middle bridge takes a cool turn, then resolves in kind of a sweet blunt way back into the chorus.

There is not much else to this song. A sax solo comes in at the end due to contractual obligations with the '80s. 

If you had a smooth little drum machine part and just a few other instruments to spare, there is no chance you assemble them all into a song this good. Hand a songwriter like prime Phil Collins just a tambourine and a kazoo, and you would get at least a quality B-side.

232. "One By One All Day" by The Shins

Forget the unreal long vocal melodies and their impressive harmony ideas, and where these adventurous lines force the chord sequences to go. Downplay the catchy, creative drum triplets bouncing perpetuity under the jaunty mix.

It's the lyrical command that is so reassuring:

"I smell the engine grease and mint the wind is blending
Under the moan of rotting elm in the silo floor"

"Down a hill of pine tree quills we made our way
To the bottom and the ferns where thick moss grows
Beside a stream"

"If every moment of our lives
Were cradled softly
In the hands of some strange and gentle child
I'd not roll my eyes so"

These focused, economical, complete sequences of images and concept constructions don't just fall out onto the notebook after one go-around. These are verbal bonsai, shaped to utter potency.

The fact that they are sung, not just idle words on a page, shows me what poetry has evolved into. But no awards exist to recognize them. No National Book Award comes knocking.