337. "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath

"Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses"

Just think on those two first lines of this song, think on them for a good while. Sometimes it takes a quintessential metal band to express ideas with the proper trope.

Black Sabbath was not out to reform society. They wanted to rock. But even these chaotic-neutral '70s sludge-metal savants knew the difference between wisdom and folly, valor and viciousness. As artists, they understood the craft of creating illusion, allowing them to see through the rhetorical patterns and audacious emotional appeals that tended to lead most folks into danger and disarray. And they had the angsty vehicle of metal music to comment on it.

Give credit to Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, who was the band's lyricist. You can find quality lyrics in most Black Sabbath songs. They delve into complete concepts with developed themes and considered points of view. It's not just a bunch of metal-sounding language, verbal pyrotechnics. Black Sabbath deployed the typical doom imagery of metal culture in a way that utilized its assertiveness for impact and resonance.

Musically, this is a 10-pound baby. Many very fine songs are born to be slight, concise things. But occasionally, a song is born to be a giant. It's not every day a band feels like starting music off with a swirling, bluesy instrumental, coolly jamming long, sustained chords beneath the plaintive wail of an air raid siren. It's not common to then whiplash into a verse of thudding accents punctuating a vociferous vocal solo. The chorus instrumental is common Sabbath-style riffing and interplay with soloing drums, but it's one of their best. 

Yet it's only after all of this magic that you begin to understand this song is a big'un. The moment comes when it doesn't just revert into identical verse #2, the easiest thing to do and a songwriter's first impulse. Instead, a completely new part takes over, a beautiful droning groove, perfect for a melodic singing part.

The form of the song is not typical: 

Intro
Verse A 1
Chorus/instrumental
Verse B 1
Interlude instrumental
Verse B 2
Chorus/instrumental
Extended guitar solo
Verse A 2
Chorus/instrumental
Extended guitar solo/ending

For as great as the vocal sections of the song are, "War Pigs" makes its mark with those extended solo sections. They are their own detailed compositions, less pure guitar solos than combined soloing by all three instruments. In fact, the ending instrumental is a composition with a name of its own: "Luke's Wall." These sections are meditations on the possibilities of heavy rock sound, still studied today by legions, like Shakespearean soliloquies.

This is an 8-minute behemoth of an effort, from the slow-motion open to the fast-motion finish.

Forget "Iron Man" or "Paranoid" or any other Black Sabbath classic - "War Pigs" is the best thing Black Sabbath ever did. This is music's Apocalypse Now.

336. "Wanna Be Startin' Something'" by Michael Jackson

The sessions for the Thriller album were like a musical Apollo program, but instead of sending humans to the moon, Michael Jackson was trying to send music into the collective consciousness of the global human species. Even in the 1980s, when there was a relatively narrow series of channels that entertainment could reach the masses, that was proving to be a Promethean task.

Over the course of the '60s and '70s, people had already burrowed themselves into micro-identities based on entertainment genres. A person into disco music didn't necessarily find an interest in hard rock. A fan of soul music maybe wasn't up on the trends of New Wave pop. By the 1980s, the idea that everyone could collectively enjoy a single artist was already seeming like a lost ideal.

Michael Jackson grew up as an entertainer in this world of fracturing audiences, and for some reason, he took it upon himself to create the maximum crossover music. His first experiment in unlocking uber-music was the 1979 album Off the Wall. From what I've read, sessions for the album were maniacally detail oriented, putting every best effort forward in every aspect of the songs. And while a classic, its sales still stalled far below the level of a true collective event. While very fun, it's still at its core just a disco album. His scope was still too shallow.

For the Thriller sessions, Michael Jackson got philosophical, sociological, even scientific about the "songness" of his songs.

The music couldn't simply be good; it had to be calibrated to activate the deepest musical receptors in the human brain. The album's DNA had to feature the most appealing traits shared in all of the most established genres.

"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is the opening mission statement of the album, and it says everything about why Thriller was the generational, international crossover musical achievement that it was.

What is "Wanna Be Startin' Something'"? Disco? Pop? Funk? World beat? The brass section sounds like a Latin big band. There's a rock-styled electric guitar solo in there too. It's all the compass points and none, and a trajectory to the stars.

335. "Waltz #2" by Elliott Smith

Everything that Elliott Smith's music succeeded at is in this song: Skillful, extended instrumental sections; long, continually morphing verse passages; impactful, emotional use of special instrumentation (piano, strings); fascinating vocal melody craft and layering.

The lyrics are maybe some of the most revealing and consequential of his career. Read this: http://www.slate.com/…/elliott_smith_waltz_2_x_is_the_best_…

It's an air-tight composition, a perfection, an achievement.

334. "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits

This song makes me thankful for the organ.

It's the cheery soundtrack of my summer days living in Minot, North Dakota, at 5 or 6 years old. Up there on the tall hills of the northernmost American Plains, under an omni-sun, we had a fun, outgoing community. People filled the city parks, and I remember happily walking under these rare collections of cottonwood and oak, past everyone tossing frisbees and kicking hacky sack and bullshitting. The state fair is held in Minot rather than larger towns in North Dakota, I assume because Minot knew and continues to know how to have a good time. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's also one of the most diverse towns in North Dakota due to the presence of Minot Air Force base. When I moved down to state capital Bismarck, ND, at 7 years old, I was bummed by how their parks, larger than Minot's, tended to sit empty. When I moved on my own to Minneapolis, a city with the best and most-beloved parks on the entire planet, full of souls, I felt I had again found home.

333. "Walk" by Pantera

Headbanging is fun!!!

I got to headbang to "Walk" performed by Pantera live during the peak of their run. I have that, and most of you don't. I was 16, my hair was so long, and I wasn't even sore the next morning.

The tone of the guitars is so sharp it can split the atoms of sound.

The guitar solo by Dimebag Darrell is madness.

The drumming by Vinnie Paul is possession. 

The screaming by Phil Anselmo is mastery.

The bass playing by Rex is underrated competence, especially supporting the solo.

Will we ever have metal this catchy but pure again?