My favourite songs

There are some songs that GET me. Songs that will always mean something to me, will always conjure memories, will even produce a physical reaction of some kind. Songs that I set above the day-to-day tumult of music. This is a collection of some of the songs I love - not like, not really enjoy, genuinely LOVE, songs I can't imagine having never heard - and why I love them. There are a few here for now - I'll add more as I think of them.

Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye

Listen after listen after listen, Last Goodbye still makes my entire frame clench like a motherfucker - a spasmic involuntary reaction to music that orally, literally or otherwise, I can't describe or emulate or even convey a fraction of the emotion contained within. Last Goodbye is, to me, one of the greatest, most eloquent songs ever written. Musically it's typical Buckley - it just flows, this harmonious dipping and rising of melody, soaring and nosediving in turn, whirling around your head like a seagull, unrestrained but always perfectly balanced.

I can't write eloquently about this song, I can barely write an intelligible sentence about it; I listen to it and it leaves me incredulous, dumbfounded, speechless; how does someone WRITE something like this? How does one take the violent, chaotic and uncontrollable rush of emotions that must inevitably accompany heartbreak, loss, parting, and actually control them - and more than that, channel them into something so graceful, so subtly and perfectly composed, and yet so utterly without posture, tangible design - a creation that seems to have begotten itself without the clumsy interference of man? And how does a song so flooded with emotion manage to entirely bypass mopey sentimentalism or overwrought melodrama? God knows what Buckley would have gone on to create had he lived a little longer.


Stina Nordenstam - Crime/Another Story Girl

I include these two songs because I can't write about one and exclude the other. They are from separate albums - "And She Closed Her Eyes" and "Memories Of A Color" respectively. Stina has this thing she does - I've never seen it done by any other artist, though I'm sure it has at some point. She sacrifices her own narratively ordained power, the privilege of constructing a story around her experiences. She places herself outside the frame of her words, and rendering herself, in the big picture, perhaps insignificant. In a world of self-pitying singer-songwriters who depict their woe in a million guises, she abdicates her role in her songs as the victim. It's not a selfless move, it's a clever one - and her martyred approach makes the suffering of her/her characters all the more poignant.

"Crime" does it to an extent - though I include it more for two main traits. The melody, fragile, breakable, tinkling and glassy, utterly lovely and impermanent, like a reflection in a puddle, and complemented by Stina's inimitable, whispery vocals which dust across the surface of the song like a lone, cold finger along the spine of your bare back, sending shivers through you. The other trait that marks out the song is a section of its last verse. I've quoted it on my journal before.

"You've been seen with another girl
She's in everyone you meet and I can hear your heart beat"


To me that's the most understated, heart-rending description of rejected, unrequited love that I've ever heard.

And "Another Story Girl" just amazes me. Stina's narrative character describes the experience of watching one's partner pining for a long-gone ex. She addresses the song to the ex in question, describing without visible accusation or resentment this person's effect on the pair of failing lovers. Again, the lyrics are an understated gem.

"I give him all my love I do
Like he gave his to you
You packed your clothes and things once
Now I'm thinking of it too
There was a girl her eyes were blue
He'd miss her when she'd gone
There was a boy who'd die for you
For anyone he'd want"


And she never, at any point, describes how she feels - she places herself almost outside the narrative frame, a character accepting that their presence will never truly touch the object of their affections, a surrendered admittance of futility. It's a masterpiece of passive aggression, and one of the bravest songs I've ever encountered.


The Kinks - Lazy Sunny Afternoon

Unlike most of the other songs on this page, this song has nothing to do with emotion for me. This song is a perfect, crystalline memory from my childhood. I have this tableau in my head. I lived in Reading as a child, and we had a large back garden, with a big lawn, and gooseberries growing at the bottom of the garden next to a dilapidated greenhouse. The garden approached the kitchen at the back of the house, and when the door was open, one could usually hear Capital Gold tootling out into the air from the kitchen radio. This song soundtracks one July memory, about three or four pm, I think, with a blue sky and golden air, and me, four or five years old, trundling around the patio at the top of the lawn as my parents unpacked the Waitrose shopping. It must have been a Saturday I suppose.

Unremarkable, but it means the world to me, and recalls a point in my life where tv ads for children's toys provoked huge excitement, and the worst thing that could befall my small life was having a detestable plate of lychees placed before me for pudding. "Sunny Afternoon" to me is a yellow song, that memorable, light octave-scale bassline and friendly 60s singer voice merrily providing the backdrop to my sheltered, sunny childhood.


Cursive - Staying Alive

I only heard this recently. I saw Cursive play it at the Garage in the middle of June 2003. Their gig was a little hit & miss.. some genuinely emotive moments, but also a fair amount of filler. They closed with 'Staying Alive'. By this point I was sitting down. From the moment it started, I just got this weird... sensation. The kind you get when you know every hair on you is about to stand to attention, and every note is about to rock you to your core. The song went on for about ten minutes... it started sounding like Grandaddy's 'First Movement' - this eerie, echoey, pensive sound; two minutes later it started spiral-diving... and smashed into this tremendous, crushing momentum and energy. By the end of the song, I had my head in my hands, and I actually felt dizzy. It took me 3 days to download. It was so far beyond worth it that it's not even describable. You need this song like you need oxygen.

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