It’s time to go back in time and bring out those sexy memories. Was there a song that made you want to crawl across the bed like a tiger even if you were only 15? What was playing on the car radio when you lost your V-card in the backseat? Did you blush when a certain video came on and your parents were in the room? Remember, we’re not talking about songs from last year, but those of yester-year.
George Michael’s iconic video for Freedom is so impossibly and undeniably sexy given that it featured the original supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, Cindy Crawford, and hot menz, John Pearson, Mario Sorrenti, and Peter Formby all half-naked and slinky. I wanted/want to lick the screen.
Chris Isaac’s Wicked Game featured another uber model of her time, Helena Christensen. Smart guy – I bet he had a fun afternoon. She probably single-handedly (heh) started the boy-shorts trend. He’s kinda hot, too.
*Keep it safe for work and remember the rules – no lady nip (PATRIARCHY!), ding-a-lings or vagine!
With the recent success of the PLAY! concert series and a Grammy win for Civilization IV’s theme song “Baba Yetu“, it would seem that video game soundtracks are finally beginning to be taken seriously as music. But whether this heralds an era where video games themselves are considered a legitimate artistic medium on par with film remains to be seen. After all, the pieces of video game music that have received the most attention so far have been the classical and New Age-style compositions of Civilization and Final Fantasy rather than the iconic looping synthesized tracks that have long been admired by video game nerds, spawnedcountlessremixes, and influencedandinspiredvariousmusicsubgenres.
It is the firm belief that these are just as deserving of recognition that inspired me to create this list. And while it would be pretty easy to throw together a list of the most well-known and acclaimed pieces, I wanted to highlight some amazing tracks you may not have heard from some rather obscure games, lesser-known sequels to classics, and Japan-only exclusives. In the spirit of my own generational prejudices, I’ve also attempted to limit the list to games from the nineties. Some of these games are great, others are laughable, but all of them are rockin’.
*****
10. Captain Commando: Enemy Spaceship
Conceived as a brilliantly cheesy homage to classic pulp sci-fi and B-movies, this Capcom beat-em-up featured a mummy, a ninja, a mecha-piloting baby, and the titular Captain fighting hordes of scuba divers, aliens, cross-dressing samurai, mad scientists, and fire-breathing homeless people. This invigorating track follows the common trend at the time of video game composers mimicking the sounds of progressive rock and 80’s metal, which is a pretty good fit for walking down the city streets and beating the crap out of everything you see.
9. Skyblazer: Storm Fortress of Kh’lar
Aside from being one of the best games on the Super NES that no one played, this criminally overlooked action-RPG was one of the few games of the time to utilize a Middle-Eastern motif, which made for some amazing boss monsters and a uniquely beautiful score, particularly here and in the end credits.
8. Alisia Dragoon: Stage 1
This beautifully designed game was animated by a little studio called Gainax, later responsible for a little series called Neon Genesis Evangelion. Although the repetitive and limited arcade-style gameplay didn’t quite live up to the quality of the art, ethereal fantasy-themed tracks such as this one did wonders for the game’s atmosphere.
7. The King of Dragons: Cave of Hydra
The music in this completely cliched and thoroughly enjoyable fantasy hack-and-slash is exactly what you’d expect, which is to say it’s awesome medieval-style fanfare that will make you want to draw your sword and charge forth into battle.
6. Gourmet Sentai Bara Yarou: EXBunny
In this bizarre game that only the Japanese could make, an odd assortment of flamboyant villains has taken over the world’s food supply, and you must defeat their hordes of walking light bulbs and giant heads that sneeze on you in order to obtain ingredients that you will then give to your robot cook to turn into delicious meals. Here I am fighting a playboy bunny that turns into a power ranger that turns into a giant tanuki, complete with giant testicles, all set to a keyboard-laden speed metal soundtrack. There isn’t much more I can say about this.
5. Eternal Champions: Character Bios
Some of you may recognize this track as the one sampled by a certain Bone Thugs-n-Harmony in their song “Eternal“. In fact, they loved this game so much that they sampled another track from it for the more well-known “Crossroads“. Not only was Eternal Champions chock full of great tunes, but it boasted a great storyline, unique characters, a complex fighting system, and a Sega CD remake with gruesome fatalities that made Mortal Kombat look like Sesame Street.
4. Streets of Rage 3: Yamato
While the first two Streets of Rage games are considered Sega classics, few cared for this final installment, released late in the 16-bit era and lacking the stylish spark of its predecessors despite having superior graphics and a wider variety of moves. One of the main targets of criticism was acclaimed composer Yuzo Koshiro’s decision to shift to a more aggressive electronic industrial sound rather than the upbeat and melodic club disco tracks that had made the first two games so memorable. Nevertheless, there are a few gems in here, such as this killer Japanese-flavored techno track that serves as the theme for one of the game’s most annoying bosses.
3. Segagaga: Final Battle, Part 2
If you so much as think about making a Lady Gaga joke, I will end this article right now. I’m not kidding.
A strangely prophetic game released in Japan shortly before the Sega Dreamcast’s unfortunate demise, this simulation RPG has the player attempt to guide a failing Sega Corporation back to market dominance, though I’m not sure why that would involve blasting your own company’s gaming systems. Anyway, this sweeping neoclassical metal track was originally written for the cancelled Dreamcast release of Thunderforce VI, later released on the PS2. Listen to this every morning when getting out of bed and be inspired by the notion that even if you fail in your endeavors, you probably won’t fail as badly as Sega’s last two consoles.
2. Guardians/Denjin Makai 2: Stages 1 and 2
Both the best and most obscure game on the list, this stylish mid-nineties arcade beat-em-up boasted seven selectable characters and more combos and special moves than any fighting game of the time. The stage 1 and stage 2 BGMs at 0:14 and 3:35, respectively, perfectly complement the insanely fast-paced futuristic anime-style gameplay with dueling guitar harmonies and wailing crescendos.
1. Golden Axe 2: Boss Theme
Though this console-only sequel failed to attain the classic status of its predecessor, it was an improvement in almost every sense, including the soundtrack. This hair-raising boss music will immediately make you dread the coming battle. The only drawback is that they will probably never make a boss epic enough to deserve this dramatic an introduction.
*****
Well, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed reading this list as much as I enjoyed making it. Just remember – no matter how good these tracks are on their own, they are almost always better combined with the sounds of you kicking the enemy’s ass.
The first two cassettes that I owned, having paid for them with my paltry allowance money, were singles: Tom Cochrane’s 1991 one hit wonder Life Is A Highway and U2’s Mysterious Ways. Coupled with my first CD–Jagged Little Pill, which still holds up as a chick-rock masterpiece–the “alt rock” genre holds a sentimental, un-ironic place in my heart. Listening to “the best of the 80s, 90s, and today” over the loudspeaker while swimming at the local water park; watching and re-watching early-morning broadcasts of VH1’s Top 20 video countdown; noodling with an acoustic guitar of my own, determined to give Toad The Wet Sprocket a run for their money and failing giddily–alternative rock music of the adult-contemporary variety may be a maligned genre, but it’s an important genre to me all the same.
Here then are a few of my favorites to which I apply the label of “guilty pleasure” somewhat reluctantly, but I’d rather we all have a good laugh about them than attempt to introduce them into any serious musical discourse. But no, I’m not ashamed to like any of these.
Fastball – “The Way” (1998)
The changing-the-dial intro is appropriate, as this song was a massive radio hit. Its ubiquity was a bit unexpected; after all, this is an ode to parental abandonment and “eternal summer slacking” with none of the commercialized sentimentality of, say, Everclear’s “Father Of Mine.” Nope, this is a jaunty, piano-driven tune that’s more than happy to rhyme “day” with “the way” several times. Maybe it’s the spaghetti-western-meets-Dirty–Harry guitar outro that made this such a pleasure to listen to in the car, hoping to cruise down the freeway but actually just getting stuck in rush-hour traffic, crawling past the second McDonald’s in ten minutes while wondering if there’s anything more to life than Best Buys and Top 40 radio, secretly fantasizing about giving it all up and running off to some unidentified tropical paradise where the women are well-endowed and the drinks are always strong. My dad loved this song, and while I’m hesitant to pin a failed marriage on a throwaway pop-rock 90s track, sometimes it simply “is what it is,” and all we can do is drink up the wine and ponder the necessity of getting a larger suitcase into which we may stuff our wares on that fateful cloudy afternoon we decide that we need to start over. Oh Fastball, I wasn’t planning on waxing philosophical but you couldn’t resist, could you?
Smash Mouth – “Walkin’ On The Sun” (1997)
That’s “walkin'” with an n-and-apostrophe, thank you very much. The grammar is crucial; it explains so much. The unabashed go-go organs, the Austin Powers guitar, the fifties-commercial jingle-jangle chorus, Steve Harwell’s generous (and Coke-aping) offer to “buy the world a toke,” the follow-along-with-the-Monkees bass line: these things don’t waste their time walking. There’s walkin’. With an apostrophe. You can keep your “All Star” and your fucking Shrek soundtrack; I’ll take this delicious slice of late-90s alternative pie with a side of NBA Jam-sanctioned “boom-shaka-laka,” thank you very much. In a twist of synesthetic serendipity, hearing this song evokes within me the smell of new furniture. We’d just moved into a new house when this song got popular; leather couches and ficus not yet damaged by the hands (and juice spills) of curious children, I’ll forever associate Smash Mouth with the sight of perfectly arranged throw pillows and sparkling-white kitchen counters. Walkin’ through Jennifer Convertibles, buyin’ stuff for our family’s new abode; some of my most vivid childhood memories feature me helpin’ my parents with new-house-decoratin’. I hope there’s a Smash Mouth equivalent when I go furniture shoppin’ with my kids in twenty or thirty years.
Matchbox 20 – “3AM” (1997)
WellIcan’thelpbutbescaredof itallllllsometimes. Yes, that’s all one word, LyricsFreak be damned. Within this breathless admission of quarterlife ennui (Rob Thomas was 25 when this song was released) lies the secret to the magic of 90s alt rock: the world–specifically, Kosovo and Cuba and the Middle East and Oklahoma City–was sincerely fucked up, so all we could do was strap on our guitars like musical shields and make love to the mic until we forgot where we were and why we felt so anxious about the imminent new millennium. Matchbox 20 was one of the last great dependable bands; you knew what you were getting when you bought one of their albums, and you could count on their style to happily refrain from evolving, because hey, why fix it if it ain’t broke, right? Some bands can explore many genres with equal aplomb, while others only did one sound but did it well. Matchbox 20 did this particular, indelible strain of post-grunge rock music exceedingly well, so much so that two years later Thomas would paste this inoffensively rockabilly style onto Carlos Santana’s smooth guitar pickings, to massive commercial success. Convincing a guitar legend to adopt your musical style? If that’s not a sign of cultural influence, I don’t know what is.
Tracy Bonham – “Mother Mother” (1996)
“Yeah, I’m working, making money / I’m just starting to build a name,” Bonham spits, voicing the post-collegiate frustrations of a generation of slackers who constantly claimed they were “really trying, man, but it’s tough” as they headed to Western Union to get their parents’ latest money wiring. The screaming chorus might suggest some kind of emocore, but really, this song transcends that Hot Topic genre; this ain’t the sort of single you listen to at the mall. No, this was the song your older sister would play on her shitty sedan’s cassette deck as she dropped you off at soccer practice before her weekly poetry session (or whatever it was that she did on Tuesday afternoons). Yes, Tracy, you’re “freezing,” “starving,” “bleeding to death,” but tell us how you really feel. If brevity is the soul of wit, then it’s also the soul of twenty-something angst, a rallying cry against the placating soma of Mad About You and Miller Lite. During the second verse, the video for this song shows Tracy playing a violin, but I always thought it was an oboe. I don’t know, there’s just something quirky and fascinating about reed instruments in rock songs; a violin just seems so easy, doesn’t it? Come on, Tracy, what would your creative writing teacher say about turning to such a cliched melodramatic instrument? Give us our oboe, and everything will indeed be “fiiiiiiiiiine.”
Alanis Morissette – “Thank U” (1998)
Yes, yes, the nude video. I couldn’t find a version of the official video that allowed embedding, so you’ll just have to recall the sight of Alanis’s digitally censored vagina hangin’ out in the supermarket in your head. Or Google it, whatever.
So yes, as I mentioned earlier, I will stand by Jagged Little Pill as one of the nineties’ crowning artistic achievements. But the followup album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie? Eh, not so much. Even the title is pretentious, the kind of thing you might expect to see scrawled atop a high school drama nerd’s marble notebook in neon pink highlighter. And were it not for the crunchy guitars and angry guitars during the song’s climax, I’d be hard-pressed to call this a “rock song” at all. But here it is, and in weaker moments it makes me cry, and I’ll be happy to keep on crying for Alanis’s musical dangling carrots as long as she keeps on writing melodies this irresistible. New age schlock? Hardly. This is the stuff of real teenage dreams, and it’s cheesy but also tragically beautiful, like a porcelain angel figurine with one wing broken off.
So Thom Yorke and company have finally released the new Radiohead album. Depending on who you ask, The King of Limbs is either “an understated masterpiece” or “the biggest turd since Pablo Honey.”Also, fans and critics alike have already rushed to make judgments and pronouncements about the album, despite the fact that it’s only been available for public consumption for about 24 hours now.
I’m not going to “review” the album here, because taste is subjective and I truthfully don’t know quite what I think of it yet. The King of Limbs is good, don’t get me wrong, but whereas In Rainbows was an amalgamation of the band’s manifold strengths–pulsating electronic beats, undulating guitars, soaring synths, lonely piano, tightly-constructed songs containing seemingly elements that fit together naturally and strangely like soggy puzzle pieces–this album seems to be hiding underneath the covers, shouting muffled ambient noises at a darkened, empty room. The King of Limbs the most abstract thing the band has done since Amnesiac, and as someone who loves Amnesiac, I’m intrigued by its mysteries.
That said, the timing of this release was inevitably going to be unfavorable, which is why I suspect the band announced its imminent release swiftly and suddenly. See, just about every music publication made a “Best of the 2000s” list back in 2010, and Kid A was pretty unanimously selected as the greatest album of the decade. Listeners were reminded of Radiohead’s peak levels of greatness; all that talk about its “masterful combination of rock and electronica” and “uneasy relationship with the technology that would define the following ten years” raised the cult of expectations for the next Radiohead album to obviously unrealistic heights.
The musical landscape onto which Kid A appeared is all but extinct in 2011. There will never be an album–by Radiohead or otherwise–with the same kind of techno-industrial impact; nothing will sound as new and menacing as “Everything In Its Right Place,” because we no longer live in a world where the Rise Of The Machines peeks above the distant horizon–that Rise has risen, and we’re now fully immersed in the kind of world where, thanks to the internet, we are “allowed everything all of the time,” as Yorke predicted on “Idioteque.” Twitter and Tumblr are our “unborn chicken voices,” shooting across cyberspace “at a thousand feet per second.”
All of which is not to say that The King of Limbs is “devoid of messages about society” or “navel-gazing instead of outward-looking.” This is Radiohead; they always have something to say about all of us. But when you listen to this new album, resist the temptation to “expect something grandiloquent.” I’ve only given the record a couple spins so far, but it’s clear that this is meant to be an immersive, not instructive, listening experience.
I listen to music constantly, and I’m constantly acquiring new things. So much, in fact, that serious evaluation on an album-by-album basis is impossible. To ensure my musical hoarding doesn’t amount to too much waste, I’ve elected to begin picking out choice tracks from my catch and reviewing them, here. I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, every Thursday or Friday night, mods willin’.
This week yielded a bumper crop of drone-folk and neoclassical records that I’m falling in love with, along with my usual assortment of House and club music oddities. We start out with Portland, the whitest town on Earth, and its lovely indie-folk.
Laura Gibson & Ethan Rose – Younger (from Bridge Carols on Holocene Music)
Hate to say it, but there’s only one thing remotely problematic with Laura Gibson & Ethan Rose’s Bridge Carols music, and that’s Gibson’s vocal similarity to a great many other indie darling folksters, particularly Joanna Newsom or Regina Spektor (it’s the heaviness of the “ah” and “aw” sounds, I think). It’s not a terrible detriment by any means – indeed, while it wears a bit thin over the entire album, it’s quite effective on a song-to-song basis, particularly in the LP’s first three tracks, the last of which is “Younger”. Ethan Rose’s bed of warm, swooning woodwinds, electro-acoustic trickery (chiming guitar and a bit of… jangling keys, sounds like) and sparingly applied brass evoke the dream-like feel of some of Grouper‘s more romantic tracks, but it only lasts for about half the song – the final 3 minutes are bog-standard, if pleasant, acoustic folk.
Gibson’s lyrics are nonsensical, all stars and fighting and dark places, but it’s fairly difficult to focus on them – the purpose of the song is the mood it creates, and every element of the song sheds definition in service to it. Not the strongest track on the album, but a beautiful and relaxing one all the same.
(“Bridge Carols” looks to be unavailable for purchase in the US on Boomkat, but it’s apparently available via 7digital.)
FaltyDL – Hip Love (from the Hip Love single on Ramp Recordings)
FaltyDL (ne Andrew Lustman) is one of the more prolific producers operating at the moment, releasing some new remix every few weeks and dropping an album or a clutch of EPs (or both) on a yearly basis, and perhaps as a result of that his sound hasn’t really grown in some time. Sure, he’s changed things up a time or two, but ever since he dropped the weirder, more melodic elements of his full-length debut Love is a Liabilityin favor of straightforward NY Garage revivalism, all his tracks have been either somewhat samey (most every single he’s released in the last year, plus the Phreqaflex EP) or nondescript (Endeavour, a slo-House experiment that should have been much more effective than it ended up being). One gets a sense there’s a definite “quantity over quality” problem occurring here.
While “Hip Love” has all the same elements that make up Lustman’s lackluster tracks (the shuffle in the rhythm and his signature snare / hi-hat sound) it’s apparent that something is just a bit different this time around, and it doesn’t fully register until about the 1:45 mark, when he launches into a jazzy drum machine solo that belies Lustman’s hidden love for jungle. It perfectly fits in with the smoky NYC soul aesthetic articulated through the chanteuse vox and horn brass samples that pepper the track. It’s easily the best thing Lustman’s done since All in the Placedropped almost a year ago.
(You can grab the “Hip Love” single, featuring a remix from Jamie xx of The xx fame, for download over at Boomkat)
Mountains – Map Table (from Choral on Thrill Jockey)
I like drone music of all kinds. Most people, I think, get apprehensive when they hear the term “drone” being thrown around, and not without good reason – the sort of dense, academic tone-music that someone like, say, Keith Fullerton Whitman routinely creates will only appeal to certain people. But there are many disparate and distinct schools of drone music, and perhaps the most accessible of these is folk-drone. Where synth-based drone is often alienating and esoteric, folk-drone tends towards the sort of uplift and sustained bliss that’s commonly associated with its stylistic cousins in post-rock and ambient music. The focus on acoustic instrumentation is a big part of it – there’s a certain vital element introduced in folk-drone that is often missing in more experimental variants of the form.
Mountains’ Choral is a good example. Many otherwise drone-averse listeners will be immediately struck by the sustained, undulating organ (is there a more beautiful sound?) upon which the title track slowly build into a vibrant wall of sound. An entire album of this sort of composition would end up rich but ultimately a little daunting, and Mountains subvert expectations to some extent with the launch of their next song, “Map Table”, which is built almost entirely around an evocatively played acoustic guitar. Comparisons to neo-folk artists like James Blackshaw are probably inevitable, but ultimately the track avoids the sort of showboating that virtuosos like Blackshaw sometimes fall prey to. A little after the 3 minute mark the melody is dropped and the guitar becomes a percussive instrument, creating a sound like bicycle spokes clicking erratically as lulling, murky piano comes to usher the song towards its end. The attention paid to the acoustic guitar is sustained over the next few tracks, holding the otherwise effervescent album together. A little bit of variety goes a long way.
(“Choral” is available digitally from the Fina store. I would strongly advise tracking down a vinyl copy, as it includes two excellent extra tracks)
Deaf Center – The Day I Never Would Have (from Owl Splinters on Type)
I have to credit Svarte Greiner (ne Erik K. Skodvin) and Otto Totland for, in large part, introducing me to “modern classical” fandom. Greiner’s “doom folk” (his album covers are art in themselves) and Totland’s cinematic piano pieces (check out his Nest project’s Retold, you won’t regret it – my favorite record of 2010) helped me develop the patience that’s often required to digest the more deliberate compositions that I seek out in the present day. Their second collaborative LP as Deaf Center, Owl Splinters, is one I plan on reviewing in full at some point in the near future, but I thought I’d take a moment to focus on the album’s centerpiece, the grand epic “The Day I Would Never Have”.
At 11 minutes it seems daunting, but from the moment Totland’s grand piano first makes its appearance the song begins to slowly gain an undeniable momentum. Skodvin’s elegaic, quietly wailing strings surface and they build and build up in intensity, endlessly, upward until the song becomes a seething mass. Then it drops, like a continental shelf, leaving Totland to reintroduce his flitting, graceful piano in an open expanse. It’s a breathtaking piece, almost too effective for the album as a whole to hold, and it delivers fully on the promise of Skodvin and Totland’s collaboration.
Whew! That took longer than I expected. I might have to stick to 3 or so songs a week or at least work on my brevity problem. Hope you liked some of this stuff! I’ll be back next week, barring excessive school obligations, with more.
It’s Friday morning, so you know what to do. Take us way back (or as far back as you can go). What song did you play in the when you were getting ready for school in junior high? What song did your older sibling make you listen to that you hated then and love now? That song that made you run to the radio so you could record it on your cassette tape, what was it? Ready? Go!
Hey, remember mix tapes? (If you said “no,” get out.) Remember how great it was to spend hours upon hours sitting by the stereo and waiting for the right moment to hit “record” so you could pick the perfect songs for the perfect occasions? When the right combination of Savage Garden and KC and JoJo was going to make Amanda see right past your braces and eczema and fall madly in love with you?
Since then, we’ve gradually evolved into the mix CD, followed by the hilariously short-lived minidisc era, and finally landed on the MP3 playlist, a process so quick and easy that it takes all of five seconds to create “Songs to Drop Amanda’s Pants.” But no matter how much technology improves over time, there’s only so much it can do to provide the perfect music for those not-so-perfect occasions.
Sure, it’s easy to figure out what to play for the big things, like sex (NIN’s “Closer”), break-ups (“I Will Survive”—whether Gaynor or Cake is obviously a personal decision), and long car rides (“500 Miles” by the Proclaimers, played on heavy repeat). But what about those non-milestone moments? What to play during those most awkward of awkward silences?
To that end, we present: The Soundtrack of Your Life, a playlist designed to help you get through those times when a simple mash-up of Tom Jones and Metallica just won’t suffice.
When You Need to Tell Your Coworker That You Accidentally Grabbed His Wife’s Boob at the Company Holiday Party:
When You’re About to Accidentally-On Purpose Walk in on Your Roommate Having Sex:
When the Cops are Closing in and You Know it’s Finally Time to Let Your Prisoner Out of the Basement:
When Your Homophobic Coworker Ambles Over to Discuss Prop 8. Again.: (Video NSFW)
When You Have to Inform Your Partner That You’re Giving Him or Her a Venereal Disease:
When You’re Shopping at Babeland:
When You Need to Tell Your Girlfriend You’re Actually Gay:
When You Need to Tell Your Boyfriend You’re Actually Gay:
Remember: just because Hallmark doesn’t make a card for it doesn’t mean you won’t get through it.
DahlELama and The_Obvious are BFFs who spend a lot of time yelling at the TV, thinking that they’re hilarious, and marveling over the fact that they both eat Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches for lunch every day. This is their first collaboration. They promise the next one will be funnier.
Oh ladies, it has just been been one of those weeks for me, you know? And it’s only Wednesday! I need pop music. And not just any pop music–no, I need the best of the best. Or the worst. I can’t tell which, and frankly, I don’t care.
These songs have a certain magic to them, a timeless uplift that transcends ironic appreciation and nostalgic memory. Paradoxically, one is both reluctant to public admit enjoying these songs and compelled to sing along with them whenever they play on the bar jukebox, emphatic shouts betraying an ingrained love for these decidedly unhip bursts of melody and enthusiasm, pop cultural gift cards charged straight at the soul whose sonic brethren we claim to loathe as they come on the pharmaceutical Muzak radio stations played at CVS and the dentist’s waiting room–yet we inevitably remind ourselves to let curiosity get the best of ourselves and listen to these tunes on YouTube when we get home later, just for old time’s sake. But these rusted old culture-junkie antiques? These are even better than that. You can’t judge me, for as guilty pleasures are concerned, we are all one.
Phil Collins – “You’ll Be In My Heart” (1999)
Starting off your playlist with a Phil Collins song says many things: “I am sufficiently emotionally fragile so as to allow a hackneyed series of chord changes to noticeably lighten my mood,” “I spend a lot of time wearing sweatpants,” and most of all, “I really don’t care what you have to say about my playlist, because I’m too busy being vocally spooned by the lead vocalist of Genesis.”
Just admit it, this is beautiful. “Don’t listen to them, ’cause what do they know,” he assures us during a particularly soaring bridge. “Don’t let soulless detractors diminish your fervent enjoyment of the best male-pop-star-christened Disney song of the 90s.” They’ll see in time. Alone, they’ll be comparing wine cooler prices at Duane Reade one day in the sad future when–just as the hourly announcement touting the benefits of opening a FlexRewards account today are wrapping up–this song starts to play and it soars through the air like Tarzan himself.
Stars on 54 – “If You Could Read My Mind” (Gordon Lightfood cover; 1998)
Here are some of the wonderful couplets this song’s lyrics bequeath to you: With chains upon my feet / You know that ghost is me; What a tale my thoughts would tell / Just like a paperback novel, the kind that drugstores sell; What a tale my thoughts would tell / Just like an old time movie ’bout a ghost from a wishing well,” the latter two establishing a wishing-well motif that sticks with the viewer sticks with a child stuck to the gooey shame of being trapped down said wishing well. And why was that kid even playing by a well in first place? Where are we, fucking Narnia? No, bitches, listen up. This is Jocelyn, Amber, and UltraNaté’s world–we’re just getting our nails done with our moms in it.
Michael Jackson – “You Rock My World” (2001)
No, it’s not the next “Thriller.” There will never be another “Thriller,” something I think even Michael figured out by the late nineties. So despite the overblown music video that all but throws a veil over Jackson’s supposedly spooky visage and his most nonsensical lyrics since “Your butt is mine,” it’s a testament to how solid the song is, the grooving bass line mingling with mid-90s R&B piano in the smoky bar of Jackson’s psyche, that I’m so readily willing to accept it as MJ canon. But since it came out during the awkward dozen years between Michael’s molestation trials, any potential coolness the song might have offered present-day listeners was forever lost in the black hole of public resentment that only recently–and, unfortunately, posthumously–fell out of favor. And that’s a shame, because Michael’s smoothness here is on par with Frank Sinatra’s. Now, if only the video showed us his face at all so that we could actually watch him sensually lip-sync.
Lonestar – “Amazed” (1999)
The rare song that succeeds not because it attempts to break any new ground but because it does precisely the opposite; it never breaches the perimeters set by the most well-known genre signifiers, but it looks mighty good staying in one place. All of the elements in this song–from the lyrics and the structure to the Chinese-restaurant piano cascades and the piercing high-pitched organ during the grand finale–have been done many, many times before, but Lonestar do all of them really well here. The quickly disappearing mainstream-country market never looked quite as sweet or lucrative as it did back in the late 90s, and “Amazed” lacks the self-conscious ironic detachment it would surely be required to possess in order to achieve mainstream success today. This is also the rare prom ballad that could, once upon a time, be played at any high school gymnasium in the country and receive an equally warm reaction by the couples in attendance.
Céline Dion – “That’s The Way It Is” (1999)
Céline was only a young thirty-something when she released this self-empowered victory lap of a track to accompany her greatest hits release All the Way…A Decade of Song, but boy does she sound wise as she belts out musical epigrams about love and accepting fate and punctuates every other line with a warbling “yeah.” Another song relegated to the pits of the bargain bin because of its singer’s decidedly uncool (at least to young people) status, this is one of the few songs I can play while I work out that distracts me from wondering why the fuck I decided to give these treadmills another try because I just know that I’m gonna get leg cramps tomorrow and you watch, the subway will be running late too, because when it rains it pours, right? Right, and Céline is raining down buckets of gooey, feel-good sentimentality with such flair, such gloire, as though God Almighty were spilling pancake syrup all over my very soul.
So these songs are amazing, but five is never enough. Sare your favorites with the rest of the class, and remember that you get no bonus points for feigned shame.
Music is highly valued across all human societies. The specific sounds vary widely, even within cultures. My mom loves to listen to Gregorian chanting; I’d rather be involved in an automobile accident, but I do love The Strokes. The concept is the same, though: an abstract stimulus invokes a pleasurable response.
So is music a drug? New research published last month in Nature Neuroscience(1) indicates a strong similarity. Drugs, sex, and eating have long been known to produce pleasure by releasing dopamine in the mesolimbic system, commonly thought of as the “reward pathway.” These are tangible stimuli that promote (or, our bodies think they promote) survival. Music, though, is abstract. It feels good to listen, but it doesn’t provide us with safety, nutrition, or reproduction.
To test what neural pathways are engaged during musical enjoyment, researchers first had their test group select their favorite music. A “musical frisson” test was used to identify moments of peak pleasure – if you get “chills” on hearing “DON’T STOP – BELIEVING,” you’re actually experiencing a measurable physiological response.
Brain activity was then measured as subjects listened to their chosen piece. Two types of brain imaging were used: PET scans were used for their precision over time, while fMRIs were used for their neural precision. The results were combined to accurately determine exactly what the brain was doing at what point in the listening experience.
Two different neurochemical responses were discovered. In the anticipatory stage – leading up to the subject’s favorite part of the song – dopamine was released in the dorsal striatum. In previous studies(2), the dorsal striatum has been linked to learning and action selection. Researchers at UPenn have specifically linked it to cocaine cravings in addicts.
During the peak pleasure stages (measured by the musical frission response), dopamine was released in the ventral striatum. A previous study(3) strongly linked the ventral striatum to sensations of euphoria associated with amphetamine use in non-addicted individuals .
This biological parallel between drug use and listening to music makes sense, especially if you’ve ever tried to turn off someone’s favorite song “right at the good part.” Only an addict could respond so violently to a 60-second pleasure delay.
1. Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Et. al. (2011, January 9). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music [Electronic version]. Nature Neuroscience.
2. Volkow, N. D., Wang, G., Et. al. (2006, June 14). Cocaine cues and dopamine in dorsal striatum: Mechanism of craving in cocaine addiction [Electronic version]. The Journal of Neuroscience, 26(24), 6583-6588.
3. Drevets, W. C., Gautier, C., & Et. al. (2001). Amphetamine-induced dopamine release in human ventral striatum correlates with euphoria. Biol Psychiatry, 81-96.
I hate the Grammy Awards and usually ignore them, but I’m crashing at a friend’s place tonight and she hosted a little Grammys party so I had to sit through the whole thing…and it wasn’t bad! That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of boring and/or awkward moments to be had–and Katy Perry’s wedding-video montage was just the most mawkish thing–but they also got some things right this year, which was definitely a pleasant surprise. Here are some examples:
Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs wasn’t necessarily the best album of the year, but it was certainly better than the other nominees. And before you object, “But what about Gaga!” please remember that she was nominated for an 8-track EP, which was very enjoyable but hardly “long-playing.” Speaking of which…
…Lady Gaga’s red carpet entrance was phenomenally bizarre, but “Born This Way” is–at best–a mediocre dance-floor anthem and certainly not the stunning first single we were expecting from her new album. She’s a great singer and it shows in her live performances, but once hers was over the night was refreshingly non-Gaga-centric. For all the Gaga hype with which CBS surrounded the Grammys (i.e. the one-hour Anderson Cooper interview that aired before the show), she didn’t dominate the evening. Not to sound petty, but this was a relief. Girl’s talented, but backlash doesn’t discriminate.
About forty minutes into the show, there had been one award presented and four performances. This was pretty silly–it’s an awards show, after all–but frankly, I’d rather watch a string of engaging performances than a string of self-congratulatory acceptance speeches. Jagger was spry, Bruno Mars and company had me enjoying their music for the first time, and Usher’s dancing during “OMG” was top-notch. Like all awards shows, the Grammys started to drag by the final half hour, but this year’s ceremony wasn’t nearly as excruciating as in previous years.
Older artists didn’t seem totally irrelevant this year! I already mentioned Jagger, but two other performances from industry veterans are worth noting: Babs and Bob. Barbara Streisand doesn’t need a “reason” to perform at the Grammys, and when she got on stage, I imagine that gays and Long Island soccer moms alike paid attention. She started off a bit wobbly but really hit some of her notes beautifully through the majority of “Evergreen.” And while Bob Dylan’s pretty unintelligible these days, he seemed surprisingly charismatic during his performance and his mere presence was clearly a huge moment for all the younger musicians on stage.
I feel really bad for Aretha Franklin. Something tells me she didn’t stay home simply because she’s “getting better.” I obviously hope she can beat this pancreatic cancer, but it’s not an easy thing to do. The tribute was rockin’, though; each of the ladies on stage sounded great. And after her little national anthem bungle at the Super Bowl, it was nice to see Christina Aguilera remind everyone why she got famous in the first place–that voice!
Okay, it’s worth mentioning again. ARCADE FIRE WON ALBUM OF THE YEAR. My friend put it well: “When you first listened to <i>Funeral</i>, could you ever imagine them winning the top Grammy award?” While a band that sells out Madison Square Garden and appears on the cover of TIME is definitely not “underground,” Arcade Fire is still an indie band, and it was awesome to see the Grammys finally recognize the nebulous but notoriously overlooked category of “indie music.”
What did you all think? Who on earth is Esperanza Spalding, and why have I never heard of her? Could Justin Bieber have looked more ridiculous in his lil’ white tuxedo?
