20 Great Neko Case Songs 

Neko Case’s music is a keen blade. The deep and enduring love of humanity is on one edge. Outrage in the face of our cruel histories and tendencies is on the other. Her songs are rooted in the conviction that we could do so much better, surrounded by natural wonders and possibilities of which we are all a part and connected, if only we could see it. The human spirit in such a world in all its sublime and terrifying complexity is too big to contain in any capacity, let alone in one easily labelled genre. And what a voice hers is to convey its violent beauty. 

To illustrate the depth and breadth of her artistry, here are 20 great Neko Case songs to drop oneself into and walk around as one would in a fully realized landscape. As each one makes slender cuts to the senses in tales of love and cruelty, anger and empathy, considerations of how those forces so often take up the same spaces in a heart become painfully and joyfully apparent. 

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Timber 

After stints in Vancouver B.C. punk bands Miaow and Cub in the early-to-mid Nineties, Neko Case went down another stylistic avenue on her 1997 solo debut The Virginian. Case embraced her Patsy Cline instincts, complete with an appropriated twang. But she didn’t forget her punk energy evident on this cut, albeit channeled into the sound of Sixties-era country music.  

The metaphor of a planted tree and its ultimate fall due to unnurtured love is true to the that tradition’s songwriting form. But it would also provide an early glimpse into Case’s fascination with human affinities to the natural world, with us being as much a part of the landscape as any fallen tree. With Her Boyfriends backing band laying down an energetic country shuffle, that’s never more than a suggestion as it sits perfectly at home in your local honky tonk’s jukebox. 

Listen: Timber 

South Tacoma Way 

On 2000’s Furnace Room Lullaby, Neko Case delves deeper into more personal territory. “South Tacoma Way” is an evocation of childhood memories of hometowns, coupled with the melancholy that comes in revisiting them as an adult. The subjects of grief and of leaving things (and people) behind is, as always, open-ended. It’s the images as they’re tied to emotions that mean the most here, a familiar characteristic in Case’s material. 

“South Tacoma Way” trades in polaroid snapshots of friendship, loss, and mourning as a world once remembered fades away. The song’s melody and changes carry a story that’s less a pop music construction and more like an impressionistic indie film. The music is spacious and echoey in support of Case’s reflective vocal as emotional landscapes meet physical geography. We listeners are witness to them becoming bittersweetly entwined. 

Listen: South Tacoma Way 

Furnace Room Lullaby 

Filled with mournful murder ballad violence and regret, this song lives in the eerie stillness after the grisly deed is done. “Furnace Room Lullaby” is a story of a woman’s desperation and the lengths to which she goes to save herself from her oppressor, only to be oppressed in turn by the weight of her deed. This is older, weirder country music; the kind that wafts up through the floorboards as the furnace rumbles below. 

Case’s voice delivers the drama here as always as she captures the sound of a soul caught in a choice between two terrible realities – living with a throne on her chest, or with the punishing guilt when she refuses that burden. The story ties it to established folk traditions. But there are contemporary implications here as well, with so many women similarly caught today. 

Listen: Furnace Room Lullaby 

Deep Red Bells 

Written in response to missing women and violence in the Pacific Northwest, “Deep Red Bells” featured on Neko Case’s third album, 2002’s Blacklisted, is full of outrage and sadness. The song is not concerned with specific events so much as with the lingering effects that violence toward marginalized women has on the collective psyche – and what it says about the human lives we value, and about those we don’t.  

Musically, the song evokes the same burnished nocturnal quality that will go on to mark her output hereafter. The low guitar leads and pedal steel riding on brushed snare accompany the lyrical balance between anger and compassion. The titular bells toll for those lost on the highway, but also for those who remain in a world where it’s so easy to cast women’s lives aside as acceptable losses. 

Listen: Deep Red Bells 

I Wish I Was the Moon 

A highpoint on Blacklisted, “I Wish I Was the Moon” explores the loneliness and weariness of feeling trapped in one’s own life, wishing to be set apart from a merciless world if only for a while. The narrator’s story suggests the betrayal of empty promises, and good things turned bad as time steals youth away. It’s an interior monologue of all-too common spiritual desolation and longing told with uncommon pathos and sensitivity. 

Case’s delicately strummed acoustic guitar as a counterbalance to her keening voice is joined by pedal steel, accordion, bass, and drums that come in as if in a supportive embrace. As lyrics evoke images of distance and coldness, the music makes the song sound as warm as the light from a midnight candle burning in a window. In its seeming despair, the song’s resonance brings compassionate relief. 

Listen: I Wish I Was the Moon 

These Are the Fables 

While she built a concurrent solo career, Neko Case formed Vancouver-based The New Pornographers with bandmate A.C. Newman, a songwriter and musician remarkably sympatico with Case’s own approach to impressionistic non-linear lyrics and clear-eyed melodic intent. Case’s lead on Newman’s song from 2005’s Twin Cinema that focuses on imagery and emotional resonance is a sterling example of how her vocals bring his words and melody to life.  

“These Are the Fables” is colourful and textural, with fantastical visions that suggest the wonderment and complexity of fine details in single moments; mythical and elemental images that suggest transcendence even amid the mundane and predictable. It demonstrates Case’s artistic versatility, rooted in Sixties psychedelia as it meets with Twenty-first century art rock. Within that mix, she’s in full command of an expansive stylistic range beyond any one genre.  

Listen: These Are the Fables 

Hold On, Hold On 

Featured on the acclaimed 2006 record Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, “Hold On, Hold On” proves Neko Case to be a songwriter of keen insight on the subject of internal turmoil. A woman leaves a wedding reception, valium in hand as given to her by the bride. With these few details come the suggestion that an unpleasant scene unfolded just before, unleashing a tide of harsh self-reflection.  

The jangly folk-rock sound communicates the turbulent minor chord emotions behind Case’s lead. The song is illustrative of one who cannot thrive in the traditional world from which she seeks escape, tired of waiting to feel like her friends do about love and stability. The hold on, hold on is the song’s catchy refrain, but is also the insistent, hectoring one that the narrator wishes to expunge from her mind and heart for good. 

Listen: Hold On, Hold On 

Star Witness 

Concerning a confrontation with death, “Star Witness” is more fulsomely a love song, too. The connection between love and death is inextricable, with one tying us to the world and each other while the other takes people out of it and sometimes very suddenly. This leaves those who remain to wonder why. In this, we’re all star witnesses compelled to make sense out of senselessness. 

For such heavy subject matter, the music is delightfully light with Case’s beloved reverbed guitar echoing in a decidedly nocturnal world. Even her voice is winsome and airy as she sings the vividly lurid lyrics of glass in her thermos, blood on her jeans, and wolves around town tonight. The strings, backing vocals, and outro piano sound as if they’re descending from heaven as the lyrics scrabble in the blood-soaked earth. The contrast is masterful. 

Listen: Star Witness 

Maybe Sparrow 

There is a certain helplessness in the knowledge that one can’t keep another completely safe in an unpredictable world. “Maybe Sparrow” captures the essence of this in a world full of innocents who too often fly into territories for which they are not prepared. The natural world in its beauty and danger makes an appearance here, an enduring metaphor to the uncertainty of life found in Neko Case’s work.  

This richly arranged song features Garth Hudson of The Band adding colourful filigrees on the organ. The jangling acoustic guitar voices the rapidly beating heart of the titular sparrow fleeing in vain from diving hawks. Case’s “la di da” is a cry of sorrow and frustration in the face of cold realities as compassion for another’s fate without the power to alter it becomes less a virtue and more of a burden.  

Listen: Maybe Sparrow 

This Tornado Loves You 

Taken from 2009’s elementally-titled Middle Cylone, “This Tornado Loves You” is a unique love song that is quite literally all-consuming and full of grand gestures one dare not refuse. Is this the voice of a would-be lover in single-minded pursuit and damn the consequences? Or is it about how vulnerable human beings really are in the face of nature’s unpredictable fury? Given the choice, what difference would it really make? 

Case displays her ability to uniquely synthesize musical ingredients, supplementing the brushed drums and low-twang guitars with plucked strings and helicopter rhythms that whirl like deadly weather systems. Yet it is also crystalline in its sonic detail, belying the violence of broken necks that line the ditch, and making the invitation to run out to meet me, come into the light frighteningly compelling even if it spells doom. 

Listen: This Tornado Loves You 

People Got a Lot of Nerve 

Neko Case explores the themes of autonomy and nature on this single from Middle Cyclone. The music takes us on a jangly folk-rock flight of fancy featuring killer whales in tanks and incarcerated elephants. “People Got a Lot of Nerve” is about captivity and the common expectation that animals and humans alike should only exist to meet our expectations even at cost to their agency and true nature.  

In this, people have indeed got a lot of nerve, imposing unrealistic, presumptive, hard-coded, and downright cruel limitations on the natural world and on each other, our single-mindedness leading to pain and suffering all around. Full of ringing 12-string guitars that sound like the sun coming out, the sober subject matter becomes musically joyful, operating on multiple levels lyrically as animal captives kept in cages and tanks mirror our own imprisonment. 

Listen: People Got a Lot of Nerve 

Magpie to the Morning 

Once again, the natural world is the higher power in a song about venturing into the light when the world of night seems endless. Yet as always in Neko Case’s songwriting world, the night isn’t all bad. There are still songs to keep us company well before dawn as we crave the comfort of daylight, however fleeting that comfort may be. 

Case’s voice on this is both ruminative and insistent as she sings about being in the moment, reminded by the local corvids to not let fading summer pass her by. And yet “Magpie to the Morning” suggests how easy it is to let that happen while we dwell in dark places. In addition to the Middle Cyclone version, a stripped-down dobro and banjo bonus track version on her next record makes it sound, wonderfully, much older than it actually is. 

Listen: Magpie to the Morning | Magpie to the Morning (outtake) 

Man 

A stunning barrage of fuzzy, Sixties-influenced indie rock, “Man” is a ferocious single taken from 2013’s The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You. This is a tune about what’s allowed to one gender and denied to others; authority, ownership, credit, and equal reward in a world created primarily by men and with men primarily in mind. This is a reclamation of manhood, putting the “man” back in human where it belongs. 

“Man” is propelled by Case’s clarion vocal in a song of defiance that declares what’s true—that freedom means wielding the power to define oneself and one’s own life while allowing the same for everyone. Case makes an artistic statement about who gets to do that and who is defined as the default human within artificial, rigid hierarchies designed to keep things as they’ve been defined, not necessarily how they are. 

Listen: Man 

City Swans 

Another driving pop-oriented tune from The Worse Things Get … record, “City Swans” recalls her work with the New Pornographers as it meets with her own brand of roots-meets-art rock. This is an aural film about a night out on the town and the attempts to capture what it is we admire in another while finding out something about ourselves in the process.  

The song is both anthemic and introspective, full of reverence and a kind of amourous disorientation while touching on insecurity. These are part and parcel of connecting with others, particularly after putting in miles on personal odometers with dings in the sides to prove them. This is a song of well-earned experience. But there is a touch of lingering innocence here, too, in being surprised by something new after thinking one has seen everything.  

Listen: City Swans 

Night Still Comes 

A deeply harrowing, musically rewarding rumination, “Night Still Comes” is an acknowledgement of what the inside of chronic depression is like, plagued by dark urges that cannot be understood or countermanded from the outside. This is a song of struggle, its narrator engaged in chemical warfare with their own brain, that same creative center producing so much beauty and sense of selfhood having become a betrayer.  

“Night Still Comes” is a song about that which is impossible to accept or dismiss, never soothed even by the most loving forces in our lives. The song rests on a waltz rhythm, its tone working against that traditionally airy and open form. Its chorus is both catchy and heartbreaking; the cry of one isolated by illness, feeling out of reach as a veil of night not fully expressible or understood separates them from the world.  

Listen: Night Still Comes 

Supermoon 

In 2016, Neko Case put out a record with k.d. lang and Laura Veirs under their last names, reviewed at the time as an alt-folk answer to the Harris/Parton/Ronstadt Trio albums. The result was not the close three-part harmonies associated with those previous albums. It was more of a distillation of what each songwriter and singer is great at, all on one record. 

Written against Laura Veirs’ melody, “Supermoon” is starkly arranged, with k.d. lang’s distinctive backing vocal floating behind it among the weeping, lilting strings. The low guitar that’s a mainstay in Case’s solo work is in place supplementing her lyrics that explore humanity’s exploitative relationship to nature, driven by a pathological need for control. The result is sobering in a song about dominance over our environment instead of engagement with it, to the cost of our own souls. 

Listen: Supermoon 

Bad Luck 

From 2018’s Hell-On, “Bad Luck” explores the liminal space between the power we have and our vulnerability to forces that render us powerless. “Bad Luck” took on special resonance after a housefire disrupted Case’s life while she was away recording the album in Sweden. It was as if the event and the sentiment of the song were eerie reflections of each other which is not an ideal way to prove a thesis. 

Musically, the song injects a compelling Motown-style feel into subject matter that otherwise should sound morose. Instead, it’s undeniably celebratory. Its jubilant, layered vocals are anthemic for all who are subject to forces we cannot control. When things go wrong, it’s only because they’re bound to do so eventually. This makes “Bad Luck” a vehicle to remove fear, judgement, and self-loathing, becoming an unexpected comfort to us instead. 

Listen: Bad Luck 

The Halls of Sarah 

Neko Case provides an authoritative voice on “Halls of Sarah”, a tune concerning a facet of oppression and exploitation that’s subtle and therefore more dangerous. It’s the impulses some men follow to make a woman into his muse or source of power, doing so without her consent or ceding territory to her in return. The song suggests misplaced senses of ownership, false connection, and other destructive perceptions that weigh down and dehumanize women. 

The lilting acoustic guitar kicking the song off is coupled with a less-expected baritone saxophone lurking behind it. The sonic landscape is beautifully wintry and overcast with the undercurrent of voices that make it uplifting somehow, too. There’s anger here. But it’s mostly overlaid by sorrow, compassionate to the plight of anyone caught up in the grinding gears of someone else’s ambitions, entitlements, or senses of comfort. 

Listen: The Halls of Sarah 

Oh, Shadowless 

A new song on 2022’s Wild Creatures compilation, “Oh Shadowless” is a Lennoneque nocturne that trades in pleasant musical surprises – shifts in tone and tempo that keep us on our toes, exploring a tempestuous psychedelia-flavoured instrumental section before returning to the lullaby-like main melody. This is a late-night half-awake musing during the still wee hours when one can’t seem to fall asleep. 

As much as her work provokes one’s thinking about challenging subject matter, this one is a reminder that Neko Case’s music is just as much about the comfort that we’re all in this together as it is about struggle. The enormity of nature and the universe is present here, as always. But her voice, capable of embodying a tornado when needed, is dulcet and soothing as she sends us off for the good night’s sleep that eludes her. 

Listen: Oh, Shadowless 

Winchester Mansion of Sound

Combining a kind of East meets West melodic sensibility, this cut from 2025’s Neon Grey Midnight Green is a love song to a departed musician, Flat Duo Jets’ Dexter Romweber—and if we think she’s talking about romance, we aren’t really listening as the song itself says. A bright and sparkling piano leads this song that pulls from memory, children’s rhyme (“Down Down Baby”), and Case’s appreciation for Robbie Basho’s operatic and similarly piano-led folk tune “Orphan’s Lament”.

The tune is a collage of imagery, in part a lament but also decidedly celebratory. In the end it sounds as if Neko Case is singing this in celebration of music itself and its power to unlock feelings and sensations that cannot be accessed any other way. In this, the song is a tune of immense gratitude, not only for music from beloved musicians, but also in being empowered and gifted to make it oneself.

Listen: Winchester Mansion of Sound 

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Runners-up and bubbling under: 

• Lonely Old Lies 

• Things That Scare Me 

• Mood to Burn Bridges 

• Pretty Girls 

• Lady Pilot 

• The Tigers Have Spoken 

• The Next Time You Say Forever 

• I’m an Animal 

• John Saw That Number 

• A Widow’s Toast 

• That Teenaged Feeling 

• Nearly Midnight Honolulu 

• Bracing for Sunday 

• Wild Creatures 

• Local Girl 

• Calling Cards 

• Down I-5 

• Gumball Blue 

• Oracle of the Maritimes 

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The emotional dance that one can hear in Neko Case’s music between rage, compassion, great sensitivity, wonder, and refusal of bullshit covers a range that rivals that of the musical territory she inhabits. At the center of it all is her voice, an extraordinary instrument by any measure and one that seems to harbour all of those states of mind and of heart that we all feel so keenly, yet can’t always find the words to express. 

You can learn more about Neko Case’s newest releases and news at nekocase.com. 

Last year, she put out an autobiography, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You. You can buy it here.

To read her more personal material and get previews of her work in progress, you can visit and sign up for her newsletter, Entering the Lung. 

Enjoy! 

20 Great Joe Jackson Songs

Joe Jackson kicked off his career from the mid-1970s as a classic outsider. He was not really a snotty punk, nor was he a classically chiseled rock god. Instead, he was gifted (or burdened) with formal training in musical theory and a keen ear for composition and intricate arrangements. Even so, Jackson found himself caught in the eddies of some prevalent musical movements when he started working live dates as a jobbing musician and bandmember, those being pub rock and its tagalong little brother London-based punk rock. 

The punk scene in particular turned its nose up at any hints of musical sophistication. But as a songwriter, Joe Jackson was deft enough to capture its energy into some deceptively intricate music that still remained highly accessible. Even contending with comparisons to the Stiff Records sound put forward in the press when he started, Joe Jackson carved out his own niche anyway. Over the decades, that niche was sometimes fashionable and sometimes not. But throughout, he always explored interesting angles wherever he could find them. To illustrate this, and to celebrate him as a unique songwriter and musician, here are 20 great Joe Jackson songs that span years, genres, and musical eras. 

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Is She Really Going Out with Him? 

Derived from the spoken word intro to The Damned’s “New Rose”, that phrase in turn borrowed from the Shangri-La’s’ “Leader of the Pack”, Joe Jackson’s first big hit on 1979’s Look Sharp! established his authorial voice as a man standing out of step with his surroundings. With Jackson’s piano taking a supporting role, his band crank out a punkish attack married to a Sixties girl group feel as Jackson’s sneer of a voice sings of pretty women walking with their attendant gorillas down his street. 

Listen: Is She Really Going Out with Him? 

Sunday Papers 

Always a social critic, Joe Jackson aims his ire at the salacious British press on this cut also from Look Sharp! perhaps unaware of how well his insights would retain their relevancy. With chopping ska-inspired guitar chords and stalwart Graham Maby’s exploratory and melodic basslines, the song telegraphs barbs of cutting sarcasm and irony at the shallowness of the press and those who believe every word they print, galvanizing a whole generation’s jaded attitude around mass media spectacle. 

Listen: Sunday Papers 

I’m the Man 

The title track of his second release of 1979, “I’m the Man” continues where “Sunday Papers” left off, this time considering society’s commoditization of everything you can name. Even the record’s cover reflects sentiments of a world littered with cheap salesmen, and another example of Jackson’s displaced perspectives of the world around him which would only deepen later on. Jackson’s band rip this one to shreds, particularly drummer Dave Houghton who tests the durability of his kit with notable ferocity. 

Listen: I’m the Man 

Friday 

Joe Jackson’s interest in jazz and pop intersections was in place even from the start of his recording career. Further evidence of this would emerge soon enough. Meanwhile, “Friday” features a tight new wave power-trio arrangement that deftly streaks down corridors of sophisticated, jazzy changes. This cut is just as ready for the pub crowd, inviting happy cheers from the crowd in a song about how aspirations, energy, and senses of self can so easily evaporate in nine-to-five drudgery. 

Listen: Friday 

On Your Radio 

A pop missive with compositional sophistication that still wears a skinny tie, Jackson’s “On Your Radio” finds the narrator kicking off the dust of past hardships suffered by a boy who couldn’t fit in, establishing his niche in a world where he’s finally found acceptance – on the radio. Jackson perfectly frames his voice on this cut – always distinct with a curled lip of disdain that you can practically hear. But the song’s joy outweighs its bitterness, even if the latter remains. 

Listen: On Your Radio 

Mad at You 

Jackson contemplated a drift away from new wave’s stylistic template by 1980’s Beat Crazy. “Mad at You” is a final statement from that first phase of his career, hitting all the marks of post-punk aggression with a distinct layer of self-awareness that may or may not include a parting shot to the new wave tag by being so on-the-nose. Graham Maby’s bass provides a rhythmic anchor with a primitive, insistent riff as Jackson lays down one of his rawest vocal performances, ironic or not.  

Listen: Mad at You 

Steppin’ Out 

A move to New York City inspired new approaches to composition and arrangements on 1982’s landmark Night & Day, even if themes of displacement and alienation remained. With his massive hit “Steppin’ Out”, it might take time to detect them, full as it is with stately grand piano vistas and a scrappy little drum machine now fully embracing a nocturnal world of jazz and mythical mid-century excursions. It carried a sense of wistful nostalgia even when the song was new. 

Listen: Steppin’ Out 

Breaking Us in Two 

Where “Mad at You” approached relationship troubles like a man with a hammer perceiving every problem as a nail, “Breaking Us in Two” is the more lyrically nuanced tune. Its narrator finds himself in a world that he must confront from the inside, rather than in one he’s free to criticize from without. This shift is notable for Jackson the songwriter. Besides that, it positioned Joe Jackson’s more dominant and superb piano as a refreshing sound on mainstream radio. 

Listen: Breaking Us in Two 

You Can’t Get What You Want (Until You Know What You Want) 

If Night & Day is the New York club date, then 1984’s Body & Soul is the Broadway show. A flagship song from that record, “You Can’t Get What You Want (Until You Know What You Want)” is an irony-free and brassy jazz-pop effusion. Even if Jackson’s voice seems built to convey wryness in everything he sings, he carries off the joy and optimism anyway with a life-affirming and fulsome arrangement that beams with enthusiasm to help take him there. 

Listen: You Can’t Get What You Want (Until You Know What You Want) 

Be My Number Two 

A story of a man trying to get back on his feet with someone new after a heartbreak, “Be My Number Two” is either a defiantly optimistic love song, or a tale of a man doomed to repeat his mistakes. Either way, it finds Jackson reaching new levels of nuance and emotional resonance. His simple and melodic piano lines in a song about how complicated love can be provide stark contrast, completed by an epic saxophone reprise and finish. 

Listen: Be My Number Two 

Home Town 

A native of Portsmouth, a seaside town in England, Jackson’s song about it featured on 1986’s Big World is a classic wistful lyric contrasted with an ebullient guitar-bass-drums arrangement. By the end of the Nineties in solo piano versions, Jackson ditched the ironic distance in favour of a genuine reflection on his own complex yet still affectionate relationship to the place in which he grew up, bringing out its charms as one of Jackson’s best compositions. 

Listen: Home Town (Big World Version) | Home Town (live version) 

Down to London 

Joe Jackson takes another tack on the theme of home towns in “Down to London”, a key track from 1989’s Blaze of Glory.  A kitchen sink tale of hopefuls trying to see over their limited horizons, the setting is a city of revolutionary artistic movements and lost souls in equal measure. Spiced with a Sixties pop flavour, this cut is a celebration and a warning in a story that’s as resonant now as it was since London was first founded. 

Listen: Down to London 

Me and You Against the World 

Ending the 1980s in a titular blaze of glory, “Me and You Against the World” is the sonic equivalent of youthful fervour to change the world through sheer force of will. Joe Jackson makes us feel that it’s all possible in this tune that features a towering arrangement of brass, call and response vocals, ringing guitars, and a singalong refrain. This cut sets the scene to preserving the belief that positive change is possible, applicable to any era. 

Listen: Me and You Against the World 

Stranger Than Fiction 

A bona-fide pop single with Sixties references suitable for a new decade on 1991’s Laughter & Lust, “Stranger Than Fiction” is adorned by organ, big backing vocals, and a cornucopia of percussion. This is a grown-up tale about how the details of life in their ordinariness can reveal profundity when you’re in love. This song in Jackson’s catalogue that distinguishes itself in its contentedness would be the last of its kind for a few years from here. 

Listen: Stranger Than Fiction 

Happyland 

Removing himself from the pop landscape for a while in the Nineties, Joe Jackson continued in his neo-classical composition explorations. By 2000, he’d revisit his complicated relationship with New York City, a theme found on his Night & Day album. “Happyland” is a gem from Night & Day II finding him blending all those elements with vivid imagery and wistfulness in equal measure. Its complex emotional profile matches its compositional sophistication in an affectionate song of memory, tragedy, and love. 

Listen: Happyland 

Still Alive 

Returning to the pop-rock fold by 2004, Joe Jackson gathered his original band together that joined him on his first three records. The appropriately-titled Volume 4 has Joe Jackson and his guys combining their unique dynamics with deeper poise that takes them beyond a straightforward nostalgia trip. “Still Alive” leans into a shared love of Sixties British guitar pop with patented irony reflected in the song’s title, played as it is by his old army buddies in a new century. 

Listen: Still Alive 

A Place in the Rain 

For 2008’s Rain, Jackson retains Graham Maby on bass and Dave Houghton on drums for a collection of pop songs arranged for a jazz trio who contrarily don’t play jazz at all. Jackson’s piano takes centre stage as he sings of taking deliberate measures to change one’s place and times. Perhaps, like Night & Day before it, these themes are driven by a move to a new city – this time Berlin. “A Place in the Rain” closes the record with a hopeful note, although decidedly under overcast skies. 

Listen: A Place in the Rain 

Rush Across the Road 

Like a burst of sunshine on the Rain album, “Rush Across the Road” can be easily viewed as an almost thirty-year follow-up to “Is She Really Going Out with Him”. It has the narrator seeing the pretty woman once knew (this time without her gorilla) walking down his street as a chance to redeem past resentments and embrace affection instead. This song is one Jackson’s most good-natured, reflective of how the years can banish old insecurities much easier than we ever thought they could. 

Listen: Rush Across the Road 

A Little Smile 

Joe Jackson did the rounds for 2015’s Fast Forward, recording in various cities and with equally varied line-ups of musicians. “A Little Smile” reflects Jackson’s skill at balancing shadows and light in his arrangements. This is a song about being in conflict balanced with the belief that it only takes a little bit of love and respect to get out of it again. In this, he demonstrates another skill proven throughout – that optimism like this doesn’t have to sound saccharine. 

Listen: A Little Smile 

Strange Land 

“Strange Land” from 2019’s Fool captures the feeling that one’s time has passed without a map by which to proceed into the next era. This song updates a familiar Joe Jackson theme of being on the outside, marked by lyrical jazz textures and a stop-start arrangement that communicates hesitancy. It also reminds listeners that when uncertainty endures, an impulse to ask questions gives us the chance to gain new perspectives as old worlds pass to make way for new ones. 

Listen: Strange Land 

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Runners up and bubbling under: 

• Happy Loving Couples 

• Fools in Love 

• Kinda Kute 

• Got the Time 

• It’s Different for Girls 

• Cancer 

• A Slow Song 

• Happy Ending 

• The Verdict 

• Soul Kiss 

• Nineteen Forever 

• Evil Empire 

• The Jet Set 

• Only the Future 

• Hell of a Town 

• Awkward Age 

• Blue Flame 

• Invisible Man 

• The Blue Time 

• Fabulously Absolute 

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Joe Jackson didn’t exactly fit into any one scene or genre as he developed his career. He still refuses to stay in one artistic province for very long. Yet at the same time, he is an artist with a unique and instantly recognizable artistic voice, with a thread running through everything he’s done that make him one of the most singular artists of the modern rock era.  

Joe Jackson is an active and artistically curious artist today. You can catch up to him at joejackson.com for news and new releases.  

Also, check out this link for a whole TEN MORE great Joe Jackson songs also written by your humble Delete Bin writer and Editor-in-Chief. 

Enjoy! 

#20GreatSongs #JazzRock #JoeJackson #NewWave #singerSongwriters

20 Great Sixties Psychedelic Pop Songs You Should Hear Right Now

One of the ways great pop music of any era serves culture best is as a snapshot to where society was at the time the music was made. A striking example is the psychedelic pop music that thrived from approximately 1966-1968. This was an historical period where it felt for many people as if the world was at a sociopolitical crossroads—that we could stay on a familiar road, or we could realize that there are other ones to explore that might lead us somewhere new and more meaningful.

Appropriately then, the psych pop-rock genre centers around changes to consciousness as a way to wake up to the world as it truly could be. This was united by a shared thesis that with some imagination, a perception shift, and maybe a pharmacological ingredient or two to help things along, society would come to realize that all is not what it seems, and in the best possible ways.

In celebration of that supreme optimism, here are 20 great obscure psychedelic pop songs you should definitely hear that convey these sentiments best.

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Turn On a Friend (To The Good Life) by The Peanut Butter Conspiracy

This cut from Los Angeles psych-pop outfit The Peanut Butter Conspiracy’s must have seemed pretty shocking to any uninitiated member of the public. “Turn On a Friend (To the Good Life) from their late-1967 LP The Great Conspiracy doesn’t exactly trade on subtle messaging while it indulges in some pretty far-out raga rock meets folk group harmonies. During times of social upheaval and violence, you can’t blame a band for trying to change a few heads with the help of old-fashioned word-of-mouth.

Listen: Turn On a Friend (To The Good Life)

Keep Your Mind Open by Kaleidoscope

This 1967 cut from American psych band Kaleidoscope that adds Eastern flavour to the Western pop palette contains a distinct anti-war message. This goes along with the patented psychedelic optimism that make it a gem of the genre. The band was an early outfit for notable string-mage and sought-after sideman David Lindley, and not to be confused with the Peter Daltrey-led British band of the same name who were active around the same time.

Listen: Keep Your Mind Open

Reflections (On a Universal Theme) by The Peppermint Trolley Company

This band with a whimsical name (there will be so many more examples of this coming up) is known for laying down the theme song to the 1969 pilot of TV show The Brady Bunch. This song is from their self-titled 1968 record that was renamed Beautiful Sun when it was re-released with bonus tracks in 2009. It’s a lilting harpsichord-driven tune about the sun, the moon, the passage of time, and other evocative imagery, perfectly embodying the spirit of the age with a kind of liturgical and innocent grandeur.

Listen: Reflections (On a Universal Theme)

14 Hour Technicolour Dream by The Syn

London psych-pop outfit The Syn brings us a “14 Hour Technicolour Dream”, an R&B-inflected song concerning those colourful visions that contrast the black and white world of the straights—not a sexual orientation thing, kids, but rather a countercultural tag for those who haven’t “turned on”— also not a sex thing. This outfit was an early band of guitarist Peter Banks and bass player Chris Squire who would both later co-found another band known for its complex musical excursions—Yes.

Listen: 14 Hour Technicolour Dream

Wildflowers by The Holy Mackerel

Featuring none other than pop songwriting giant and original short king Paul Williams (“Rainbow Connection”, “We’ve Only Just Begun”) on lead vocals, The Holy Mackerel’s 1968 psychedelic pop gem “Wildflowers” bears all the hallmarks of the genre. This includes idyllic settings and imagery, phased vocals, sitar matched with Western instruments, and subject matter centred around humanity’s search of greater meaning and transformation through finding beauty in life’s details, William Blake style.

Listen: Wildflowers

Swallow the Sun by The Love Exchange

Another example of the folk-rock strain of psychedelic music in the same vein as The Peanut Butter Conspiracy (who recorded this very song under a different title), Californian outfit The Love Exchange have the prescription needed to get to the next level. Released near the end of 1967, this cut matches a Mamas and the Papas feel with even more countercultural sentiments that were designed to capture the spirit of the times, full of optimism, tunefulness, and a crazy, almost punkish organ part!

Listen: Swallow the Sun

Thing in E by The Savage Resurrection

Although the song bears what appears to be a working title, “Thing in E” by Bay Area psychedelic rock outfit The Savage Resurrection is adorned with a legitimately rocking groove with some appealingly jagged edges. It communicates the strict divide between the worlds of the turned on and that of the straight world; a recurring theme running through the genre. But The Savage Resurrection don’t forget to utterly rock out while they make their point with some Hendrix-style fuzz guitar.

Listen: Thing in E

Shifting Sands by The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band

Heroes on quests through strange worlds alone is another big theme in psychedelic rock and pop. So is the idea that no one gets where that hero is really at, man. “Shifting Sands” by The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band showcases both of these themes, with some incendiary and echoey guitar work, all set to a kind of woozy, hypnotic jazz waltz. Drummer John Ware would later work with Monkee and solo artist Michael Nesmith in the First National Band, and also Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band.

Listen: Shifting Sands

I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time by The Third Bardo

Continuing that theme of being outside of the mainstream world and in this case ahead of the times, New York psych-rock outfit The Third Bardo gives the whole narrative an R&B meets raga rock feel. This cut is their sole single, released in 1967. Despite no overt lyrics in the song, perceived drug references didn’t endear it to popular radio play. What did the straights know about being ahead of the curve, anyway? Years later, the song became recognized as a prime slice of Sixties garage punk with lysergic seasoning.

Listen: I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time

Imposters of Life’s Magazine by The Idle Race

Questioning the nature of reality itself and how mainstream society narrowly judges it is another important thread in psych pop. That’s what this 1967 single is from Birmingham, England’s The Idle Race is concerned with, taking on weighty topics with a kind of whimsy-meets-bludgeoning groove, all filtered through a murky atmosphere with just a hint of the Beatlesque to round it off. This latter ingredient would serve frontman Jeff Lynne even more so later on when he co-founded The Electric Light Orchestra by 1970.

Listen: Imposters of Life’s Magazine

Velvet Illusions by The Velvet Illusions

A part of a grand tradition of band theme songs, The Velvet Illusions from Yakima Washington build up a mysterious mood as they introduce themselves to listeners with this 1967 track. They employ a common psych-pop element to the proceedings on this cut; B-Movie science fiction-style sound effects. Weird, distorted textures like this were all a part of the genre’s key set of sounds to lend otherworldly atmospheres, here matched with phased surf guitar and foreboding minor chord mystique.

Listen: Velvet Illusions

Strange Walking Man by Mandrake Paddle Steamer

Notable for its tight harmonies, fuzzy guitar, and distinctly gothic atmospheres, this cut is a phantasmagorical excursion about a break-up with a twist ending. London-based psychedelic rock band Mandrake Paddle Steamer (aka Mandrake) put out this 1969 tune about distorted perceptions in which its narrator meets the strange walking man who mourns the loss of his love, suggesting in the end that the two men are actually versions of each other. Classic psych where all is definitely not what it seems!

Listen: Strange Walking Man

You’ve Gotta Be With Me by The Onyx

This track represents the cornerstone of psychedelic rock that only those who have had a mind-shift of some kind can see the world for what it really is. Cornwall England’s The Onyx convey the idea very well with their 1968 song about what you need to get into all the places and to see the faces – not to mention the ability to feel what you see and touch what you hear. It combines British beat group energy with Beach Boys harmony on a decidedly countercultural call for a perception adjustment.

Listen: You Gotta Be With Me

My Friend Jack by The Smoke

Delving more deeply into psych-rock’s interest in modern chemistry, British outfit The Smoke make no bones about their subject matter. In a song rife with references to sugar lumps, you decide whether they’re singing about drinking tea or not. This 1967 tune’s sonic palette is soaked in signature reverb and echo, and with the common psychedelic trope of the wandering, happy, mad hero who sees more beautiful things than most people, lost in a wonderland of colour and of sound. Far out, man.

Listen: My Friend Jack

Madman Running Through the Fields by Dantalian’s Chariot

Following a common career path among British R&B bands by the late 1960s, Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band morphed into Dantalian’s Chariot by 1967. This cut is their most high-profile in their new incarnation. The subject matter is well within keeping aligned to the genre; a madman who knows more in his insanity than he ever did when he “had so much sane”. The song is distinguished by guitarist Andy Summers‘ distinctive jangle, his membership in The Police a full decade away by this time.

Listen: Madman Running Through the Fields

Dandelion Seeds by July

Full of natural images, London England psych-rock band July contrast the freedom of a seed on the air to the hopelessness of those who are earthbound in this song they released as a single in 1968. This is another psychedelic tune that outlines the divide between one world and another, suggesting the disconnection caused by straight society. Guitarist and singer Tom Newman became a solo artist and producer in the 1970s, working with Mike Oldfield on Tubular Bells, among other releases.

Listen: Dandelion Seeds

Gone is the Sad Man by Timebox

A 1968 single by England’s Timebox, “Gone is the Sad Man” continues in this major theme in psych-pop, particularly in British strains; a childlike sense of wonder and play and the freedom to explore the world with fresh perspectives unsullied by the demands of adult society. This cut from a band that included criminally underexposed guitar hero Ollie Halsall and future Spooky Tooth singer-keyboardist Mike Patto is full of playfulness measured against a subtle social commentary on the staidness of traditional British life.

Listen: Gone is the Sad Man

Hyacinth Threads by The Orange Bicycle

Capturing the experience of a shift in perception, British psych-pop band The Orange Bicycle released this cut in 1967; a keyboard-driven rush of phased pop ear candy that features layers and layers of vocal tracks that seem to range from the joyous to the crazed. This was a pretty long way from their 1959 formation as a skiffle group! Keyboardist Wil Malone would later go on to write the string arrangement for The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony at the end of the Nineties, among many other projects.

Listen: Hyacinth Threads

Dream Within a Dream by Spirit

Revealing the contemplative and even existential side of psychedelic pop music comes Spirit’s “Dream Within a Dream” featured on their 1968 record The Family That Plays Together. The song conveys a series of images to suggest the limitations of human perception while our mortal coil remains unshuffled off, as it were. As another expression of psychedelic rock’s thesis that the nature of existence is more than what can be seen or reasoned, it offers an appropriately dreamy atmosphere.

Listen: Dream Within a Dream

Turn Me On by Rotary Connection

As if to entirely justify The Peanut Butter Conspiracy’s advice to turn on a friend to the good life, Chicago’s Rotary Connection makes the feeling mutual. Full of sitar, harpsichord, strings, and some unidentifiable discordant elements too, this cut from the band’s self-titled 1968 record is a call to get one’s mind open and world perspective shifted. Bandmember Minnie Riperton would sing of similar themes in her 1970s solo career, although maybe with fewer pharmacological implications.

Listen: Turn Me On

***

The end of the 1960s was not a groovy time, all told. Psychedelic pop and rock music music and the associated counterculture sought an answer to the destruction and unrest that was common in the newspapers and on the evening news by the late 1960s. By the time the jaded 1970s rolled around, that youthful optimism turned to adult criticism. As one songwriter famously put it: the dream is over. But for a while, the music assumed that a new and better world was definitely coming—that everyone would inevitably figure out how to stay groovy forever by replacing war and greed with peace and love just by shifting collective perceptions.

Despite that outcome not coming to pass, the music is still here as a glorious multicoloured time capsule of those hopes. Many of the musicians who made it went on to create music in other genres and eras from prog to punk and beyond that contain a seed of that same source of inspiration. Like they might have said back in those hazy times: it’s all connected, man. It might not change the world. But pop music continues to serve as a soundtrack as we contemplate what might.

For more about psychedelic music and culture, and how it impacted Western culture as a catalyst to social change, in particular from the 1960s until today, check out this 2018 article about one of the prime influences of all of that – LSD – from the BBC.

Enjoy!

#20GreatSongs #60sCounterculture #60sMusic #60sPsychedelia #PsychPop #Psychedelia

20 Great Power Pop Songs You Should Hear Right Now

Bright clanging and jangling guitars with a crunch. Ooo-ooo-ah-ah backing vocals. North American bands with British Invasion obsessions. European bands lost in a reverie of California dreaming and girl group glory. Any combination in either direction across the board.

Melodic hooks. Soaring and simple guitar breaks that hit the spot with precision and economy. Transformative middle-eight sections. Longing lyrics of unrequited love or lust or disappointment or jealousy or regret. Never being noticed by an object of affection or letting them slip through your fingers like a fool.

This is power pop.

How can a bright melody say so much when you’re feeling the rush at the height of summer, and equally so when you’re feeling awkward and invisible? Here are 20 great power pop songs that point the way to an answer, or at least provide a sympathetic soundtrack while you ponder one.

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“Starry Eyes” by The Records

With a burst of jangly glory, The Records’ hit song from their 1979 debut record Shades in Bed hits all of the power pop marks of sunshiny melody and exuberance while remaining to be a song about being left with the short end of the stick. This cut perfectly captures the timelessness of the power pop sound to defy eras. The guitars just ring out on this one to the point where we forget how much the lyrics are full of disappointment and betrayal—a classic power pop gambit if there ever was one!

Listen: Starry Eyes

“Tomorrow Night” by Shoes

Exemplars of the form by the late Seventies, Zion Illinois’ Shoes released this tune as a single in 1978, later featured on 1979’s Present Tense LP. It went on to be among the first songs on MTV when the music station launched in 1981. Breathy harmonies and jangly guitars by which power pop is identified are matched with sophistication in playing and in arrangements. In a song about entreating a lover to wait before pulling the plug on love, contrast between melodic euphoria and a heart’s desperation is striking.

Listen: Tomorrow Night

“Black and White” by The dB’s

Celebrated power pop proponents The dB’s cut this tune of love outstaying its welcome for their 1981 record Stands for Decibels. Principal songwriters Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey punctuate it with Townshend-style power chords and Byrdsian jangle. They test the boundaries of straight ahead guitar pop with some unexpected angles to offset expectations. This cut of Holsapple’s was the single that helped to make the band an instant reference for power pop as a genre.

Listen: Black and White

“Yesterday’s Love” by Any Trouble

Like many of their Stiff Records labelmates, the Clive Gregson-led Any Trouble very effectively took the energy and velocity of punk and channeled it into more classic pop song structures and themes, adding a Sixties jangle into the mix. Full of melodic longing and frenetic guitar with a triplet-infused rhythm that turns on a sixpence, this 1980 single is a prime example. It helped model a strain of tuneful guitar pop that would split off into other musical tributaries still in the decades to follow—as we will soon see!

Listen: Yesterday’s Love

“Let Go” by Dirty Looks

Another Stiff Records entry, this cut by Staten Island’s Dirty looks adds a pop sheen to punk energy in a similar way. Instead of the sneer of punk though, we get a bona fide and earnest musical call to action. This 1980 single also reveals a Sixties beat group influence with a brand of power pop aligned to The Who with a bit of surf rock thrown in, too. Matching ferocity with soaring pop hooks and harmonies, this tune proves its own thesis that rock ‘n’ roll is indeed still the best drug.

Listen: Let Go

“Rock ‘n’ Roll Girl” by Paul Collins’ Beat

Late of the seminal power pop outfit The Nerves, Paul Collins’ new band The Beat aka Paul Collins’ Beat continued to explore spirited guitar pop, with this one bearing a Bobby Fuller Four style rock ‘n’ roll edge. This cut from the band’s self-titled 1979 debut record is a music fan’s lament of being stuck in the disco era while longing to a meet a girl who’s ready to rock with him. With TV appearances and movie soundtrack inclusions in the 1980s, The Beat are remembered as first-class power pop standard bearers of the era.

Listen: Rock ‘n’ Roll Girl

“Cruel Girl” The Red Button

Listening to this cut, you might think that it’s an outtake from 1963’s With The Beatles. But it came out in 2007! Songwriter Seth Swirsky has penned hit songs for artists from Al Green to Taylor Dayne. But along with bandmate Mike Ruekberg, The Red Button is a pure power pop concern with Beatlemania on the brain. This track is a letter perfect monument to a circa 1963-64 John Lennon-style song of recrimination, released as a single from their debut She’s About to Cross My Mind.

Listen: Cruel Girl

“Time for Love” by The Pink Tiles

Power pop isn’t just an American/UK thing. Its reach and appeal stretch to the ends of the earth, including Down Under. Melbourne’s The Pink Tiles add a little Sixties garage meets kitsch to the mix on this cut from their 2017 LP (number) 1 Fan. This cut is pure 1966 with a Motown-like chug as it meets with buzzing keyboards, crunchy guitar, and pure teenage longing. Some pop sounds just keep on giving no what the era. This cut more than proves the musical point.

Listen: Time for Love

“Trampoline” by The Greenberry Woods

This Baltimore quartet’s tune of yearning reinforces the classic power pop sound after the fashion of The Posies and Matthew Sweet. It appears on their 1994 record Rapple Dapple, put out after Seymour Stein signed the band on his legendary Sire Records label. The song is a classic contrast between exuberant melodies and bright and crunchy guitars set against a downcast tale that suggests a fight against the inevitable. It’s a great example of how power pop can put wistfulness side by side with exuberance.

Listen: Trampoline

“Sucked Out” by Superdrag

Hailing from Knoxville, TN, power poppers Superdrag put out their Regretfully Yours album and had a minor hit in this song, a tune that reflects the brightness of the genre while mixing in Gen X despondency and alienation—a hallmark of Nineties power pop in general. This tune ruminates on the rigours of being in a band as the magic wears off and as rock star dreams turn into letdowns. Who said power pop couldn’t be angry? Fans of Weezer take note if you haven’t already.

Listen: Sucked Out

“She Came On” by Super Deluxe

Effervescent Beatlesque melody and harmony was alive and well by the time Seattle’s Super Deluxe put out their Famous album in 1995. They reflect and embody all that here on that record’s lead single, a song that would later to appear on film soundtracks of the era including Kingpin and Marvin’s Room. Thematically, this cut is in the classic power pop tradition of longing and regret, looking back on events and decisions that might have been life changing for the better if not for the foolishness of youth.

Listen: She Came On

“Love’s Lost on You” by The Grip Weeds

Named after John Lennon’s character in the 1967 film How I Won the War, New Jersey’s The Grip Weeds demonstrate their musical allegiances well on this song from 2001’s Summer of a Thousand Years, their third album together. Ignoring all the musical trends at the turn of the century, the band double down on classic Sixties chord changes while leaning into the fidelity and aggression of the best alternative rock records of the day. The combination of anger and ah-ah sonic euphoria is a heady brew indeed.

Listen: Love’s Lost on You

“Teenline” by The Shivvers

Milwaukee’s The Shivvers provide an amped-up Beatles bounce to this 1980 single that must be added to a list of songs that should have been huge hits. Despite their energy, The Shivvers never really broke beyond their local popularity and with only twenty recordings to their name. But this song shows that in another version of the world, they could have had hits side by side with Blondie, The Pretenders, and The Go-Go’s, with just the right balance between retro British Invasion style melody and new wave aggression.

Listen: Teenline

“Hold On To Something” by Great Buildings

Adding a bit of surf rock twang along with a new wave groove, this 1981 song from L.A. band Great Buildings is piquant pop music with a foundation of soaring harmonies and an effusive chorus. The band formed around the talents of Danny Wilde and Phil Solem, showcasing their knack for timeless guitar pop. They’d later form another band by the end of the decade, The Rembrandts, who would provide a power pop anthem to beat them all as the theme for an era-defining Nineties television show you know well.

Listen: Hold On to Something

“C’mon Everybody” by The Chevelles

Back to Australia, Perth’s The Chevelles offer this cut is from their evocatively titled record Barbarella Girl God: Introducing The Chevelles from 2008. Not to be confused with the classic Eddie Cochran side, this song is propelled by fizzy guitar and a crisp beat that makes Western Australia seem like a previously undiscovered power pop heartland. One can only assume that it must be, evidenced by this handclapping anthem to a good time out with everyone on the scene on a sultry (or even desert-dry) summer night.

Listen: C’mon Everybody

“St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” by Cocktail Slippers

In this song about a relationship with a sell-by date from Thanksgiving to the titular occasion, Norwegian quintet Cocktail Slippers presents a sound rooted in classic Go-Go’s-Bangles-Blondie pop rock. Similarly, they share stylistic DNA inclusive of The Shangri-La’s and The Beach Boys, and bring authentic Sixties energy and Spectoresque high drama with this track. Featured on the group’s 2009 album of the same name, this tune was penned by Mr. Underground Garage himself: Little Steven Van Zandt.

Listen: St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

“A Million Miles Away” by The Plimsouls

The best song that Paul Westerberg never wrote, Plimsouls frontman and guitarist, lead songwriter, and (like Paul Collins above) formerly of The Nerves Peter Case steps up. This is The Plimsouls’ biggest hit, featured on 1983’s Everywhere at Once. This song about pining for lost love is best known for its prominent inclusion on the Valley Girl soundtrack. That movie features a very young Nicolas Cage playing an alienated, misunderstood, and dreamy new wave outcast. The band even appear in the movie!

Listen: A Million Miles Away

“Places That Are Gone” by Tommy Keene

Being more of a cult figure than a household name, Tommy Keene was known among the faithful as a standout power pop craftsman. This tune is from his second LP, 1986’s Music From the Film, produced by none other than one-time Beatles engineer and renowned producer (Elvis Costello, Nick Heyward) Geoff Emerick. This cut kicks off the record as a rumination on leaving the past behind with no regrets. Perhaps ironically, this tune represents the timelessness of power pop, applicable in any era.

Listen: Places That Are Gone

Blame Game by Beach Bunny

Presenting the other side of obsessing over the girl you can’t get—a recuring theme in power pop— Beach Bunny use the musical form to convey another angle of that same theme on this title cut from their 2021 EP. This time, there’s a comment on the consequences of mistaking perceived unattainability with someone’s right to agency and bodily autonomy. Power pop grows up a bit on this cut and is the better for it, still retaining it’s sunny jangle while putting forward a serious topic.

Listen: Blame Game

“The End” by Chime School

San Francisco’s Chime School bring the jangle and the melancholy in equal measure on this cut from their 2024 record The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel. As summery as power pop tends to be, there’s always that hint of coming autumn that makes it all the more resonant. Acoustic guitar strum and a vividly ringing (chiming?) 12-string electric meets with an end of summer mood that perhaps aligns with the end of something between two people, too. This tune is as colourful and wistful as turning leaves.

Listen: The End

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In much the same way that Northern soul and punk scenes did, power pop also returned to pop music’s roots in the 1960s. Red album-era Beatles. The Kinks. The Who. The Beach Boys. The Byrds. Instead of the abstracts and ironies and impenetrable imagery of prog and glam and art rock, power pop gets to the heart of the matter with two to three-minute immediacy. Love, rejection, hope, wonder. Youthful enthusiasm. Teenage dreams and hopes. Feel-good energy and summery vibes. Joyful rage. Rushes of euphoria. Innocence and the irretrievable loss of it.

From the 1970s to today, the appeal of power pop remains. Maybe it’s because it connects with something that remains constant for anyone with an ear for bright tunes that don’t shy away from those forces in life that make us feel the most vulnerable. Somewhere in there, you can find the heart of human experience itself.

For more about power pop as a genre and in celebration of it, check out Power Popaholic for classic cuts and newfound treasures of the genre.

Enjoy!

#20GreatSongs #guitarBands #guitarPop #JanglePop #PowerPop

20 Great Songs by Genesis

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Some bands are made for their era, while others are equipped for change. Some rarified musical outfits are both. That’s where British prog pioneers and hit-making radio singles band Genesis fits best.  

From the earliest folky-prog days of their first few albums, to the deceptively complex yet radio-friendly pop rock they’d make in the Eighties and into the Nineties, Genesis was still Genesis. Each era lives on its own and also as a part of a varied tapestry of styles and approaches over the course of decades. Here are 20 great songs by Genesis to illustrate the point. 

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The Knife 

With founding member and guitarist Anthony Phillips still in the lineup for 1970’s Trespass, Genesis demonstrated their wider musical ambitions past the lighter sound of their debut the year before. Their penchant for pastoral folk-rock is in place along with their nascent impulses to stretch out into more complicated arrangements. “The Knife” is the album’s centerpiece that reveals their emerging sound and approach to the greatest effect. This includes much darker subject matter in the lyrics. 

This is the story of a rise to power based on egotism, manipulation, fear, and false promises, inevitably ending in violence. Phillips’ distorted guitar lines, Tony Banks’ portentous Hammond organ, and Peter Gabriel’s soulful bark of a voice filtered through a bullhorn-like effect are highlights to support the song’s themes. Far away from prog-rock’s reputation for escapist lyrics, “The Knife” is rooted in contemporary political anxieties related to the violence of the state. The shock of the Kent State shootings in May 1970 that also inspired CSNY’s “Ohio” is very much present here as well. 

Listen: The Knife

The Musical Box 

By the time Genesis convened to record 1971’s Nursery Cryme, guitarist Phillips and drummer John Mayhew had left the band. Steve Hackett and Phil Collins replaced them, respectively. As these new members joined with Banks, Gabriel, and bassist Mike Rutherford, they established what is recognized as the classic Genesis lineup, enabling greater cohesion between the profusion of ideas submitted by each songwriter in the band. This helped them to hone their craft for the longer and more complex pieces they’d begun to explore previously. 

“The Musical Box” is a sterling example of this progression. It reflects their interest in exploring the English identity through cultural tropes, settings, and myths, with repression, murder, and lust seething underneath it all. New guitarist Hackett shows a prodigious flair for balancing colourful sonic filigrees, strong melodic lines, and sheer muscle. And besides Phil Collins’ superb, melodically sympatico drumming here, the song also showcases how his backing vocal perfectly matches Peter Gabriel’s lead in every respect, nicely setting events up for later in the band’s career.   

Listen: The Musical Box  

Return of the Giant Hogweed 

Peter Gabriel’s common songwriting approach while in Genesis was adding elements of the absurd to daily news stories in his lyrics. “Return of the Giant Hogweed” from Nursery Cryme is one of the finest examples, infused with dry humour and an appreciation of the ridiculous. The narrative concerns the struggles to thwart the titular invasive plant (Heracleum mantegazzianum) plaguing Britain’s waterways. It’s positioned as a Day of the Triffids-style science fiction story, subtly lampooning prog rock’s reputation for the fantastical while it’s at it.  

Collins and Rutherford keep things on track between Gabriel’s wordiness and Tony Banks’ instincts for extended instrumental passages. Steve Hackett distinguishes himself via his innovative “tapping” technique which he popularized for the hard rock and metal guitarists coming up behind him. Gabriel lays down one of his most idiosyncratic vocals to date as the frenzied narrator (“Strike by night! They are defenseless!”) and the “voice” of the song’s phototoxic antagonist. He performs this while delivering bona fide botanical knowledge about the giant hogweed, Latin terms and all.  

Listen: Return of the Giant Hogweed 

Supper’s Ready 

“Supper’s Ready” from 1972’s Foxtrot album is the most ambitious piece of Genesis music conceived to date. It’s certainly the longest, clocking in at over twenty-three minutes. But that’s what you get when you want to write a romantic ballad that draws parallels to the battle between good and evil at the end of the world. Presented in seven sections and incorporating a flurry of disparate musical ideas and textures from the whole band, “Supper’s Ready” was a creative breakthrough, consolidating the band’s capacity for next-level composition as it relates to longform rock storytelling.  

Peter Gabriel’s lyrics contain several Biblical references along with symbolic, mythical and even horrific imagery. The music expands on the band’s collective ability to put across the grandiose, grotesque, and absurdist themes in perfect musical symmetry. All the while, “Supper’s Ready” really is a love song, albeit an unconventional one. It entwines the realms of the romantic, the phantasmagorical, and the cosmic over an epic-length runtime, making “Supper’s Ready” beloved by fans across generations. 

Listen: Supper’s Ready 

Get ‘Em Out by Friday 

Also featured on the Foxtrot record, “Get ‘Em Out by Friday” concerns a very real state of affairs at a time in Britain when ex-council estates in working class neighbourhoods were snapped up by private interests. Its costuming is decidedly of the Phillip K. Dick meets Jonathan Swift satirical science fiction variety, concluding with a final episode in which Genetic Control alters human DNA to make people smaller so as to pack more of them into less space. This is all in the interest of humanity, of course – and to make tidier profits.  

This cut is one of the best showcases of Gabriel’s theatrical flair beyond the outlandish costumes he’d begun to use in their live shows by this time. He seamlessly embodies all of the characters, from the callous real estate owner John Pebble, to his minion The Winkler, to the beleaguered tenants forced to move from their homes. This song is more like a theatrical event than a pop song. Also, Mike Rutherford is the instrumental MVP for his exemplary bass playing on this cut. 

Listen: Get ‘Em Out By Friday 

Firth of Fifth 

Tony Banks’ piano intro to this epic track from 1973’s Selling England by the Pound is one of the most recognized musical themes of the classic lineup era. The lyrics comment on humanity’s tendency to adhere to blinkered systems that seem so immutable to us, yet pale in comparison to nature’s grandeur. The lyrics and vocal melody are appropriately grand and hymn-like, their gravity perhaps undercut by its pun of a title derived from the name of a Scottish river estuary – Firth of Forth.  

The song connects various instrumental sections between Gabriel’s voice and flute, to the synthesized thematic reprise, to Hackett’s sustain-soaked explorations on guitar. This latter element is among the guitarist’s best and most celebrated instrumental passages in the Genesis catalogue, included prominently in his own more recent Genesis Revisited shows. Collins’ drumming is a binding force, serving the complex tempo and time shifts while always in support of the melody. As a whole or in part, the song became a live staple across decades. 

Listen: Firth of Fifth 

The Cinema Show 

Featured on Selling England by the Pound, “The Cinema Show” contains some of the same sentiments found in “Firth of Fifth”; the overwhelming presence of the natural world and our very small and temporary place in it. Starting with a conventional narrative of two lovers preparing for a date, the song connects their lives to the origins of the earth itself and the relentless passage of time that has defined it. Yet, this is no dour tune about our relative smallness in the universe.  

Instead, it’s a celebratory ode to the grandest cinema show of all; of being alive in an expansive, mysterious world where love is still possible, even under the weight and scale of history. As testament to its joyful spirit as a part of the band’s own weighty history, facets of “The Cinema Show” appeared as fixtures of their live shows throughout their various incarnations and eras. Featuring joyous melodies and playing , this is the warmest, most life-affirming song of the classic Genesis era.  

Listen: The Cinema Show 

Twilight Alehouse 

Featured as a B-side to their first hit radio single “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)”, Genesis developed “Twilight Alehouse” over the course of years from Anthony Phillips’ tenure onward, becoming a fixture in their early live shows. It reflects the band’s sound and approach by this time, with tempo changes, advanced instrumental precision, and textural variance. But it’s a unique song in their catalogue as a first-person character portrait of an estranged man whose only solace is the bottle.  

Where many early Genesis songs deal in grand themes on an epic scale, this one is earthier, and reveals an emotional involvement without the whimsy, satire, dry humour, and mythological references for which they’d become known. Instead, there is genuine pathos for its central character, and with a straightforward narrative. In support, it also rocks like nobody’s business with a driving groove and quiet-loud dynamic to contrast the band’s keen attention to musical detail. 

Listen: Twilight Alehouse 

In the Cage 

Genesis’ ambitions spiked again in 1974 as they set out to create a cinematic narrative across a whole album. The result was their two-disc concept record The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway about a New York street kid called Rael ensnared in a series of subterranean and/or subconscious adventures. The record is a grittier affair, dealing in much darker thematic territory than ever before toward the end of Peter Gabriel’s time with Genesis. 

“In the Cage” is among the band’s most lyrically harrowing cuts. On it, Rael is trapped in agony in a cage of stalactites and stalagmites, desperate to find his brother John, a figure who is possibly only a facet of his own identity. The song offers some career-best singing from Gabriel who employs his full vocal range and knack for theatricality. It features a woozy rhythm of heartbeat-like pulses against the beat in 3/4 time, the Collins-Rutherford rhythm section adding to the song’s sense of menace and disorientation in support of Tony Banks’ exemplary keyboard work. 

Listen: In the Cage 

The Lamia 

Peter Gabriel wanted to explore deeper themes on the Lamb including those of isolation, confinement, and guilt. This was possibly entwined with his personal struggles to balance his role as a family man with his demanding rock star schedule at the time. This episode in the story finds Rael in an underground pool, seduced by three serpent-like creatures; The Lamia. They all have sex and the creatures die. Rael consumes their remains, thereby corrupting himself in what becomes a turning point in the story.  

“The Lamia” is lyrically shocking, juxtaposed with its gentle palette of delicate piano, lyrical twelve-string guitar, and warm synthesizer. These visceral lyrics set in stark contrast to Rael’s higher search for identity and freedom seemingly paralleled Gabriel’s own feeling while in the band by then. For him, the lights had dimmed and the stage was set for someone else. Luckily, it turned out all right for Peter Gabriel as he cut his own path to considerable solo success post-Genesis. 

Listen: The Lamia 

Squonk 

Genesis held auditions for Gabriel’s replacement following the Lamb tour. An excellent singer in his own right, drummer and backing vocalist Phil Collins was a natural fit to direct prospective lead singers on material that would later appear on 1976’s A Trick of the Tail. “Squonk” was the litmus test. During these auditions, Phil laid down a version himself and emerged as the best candidate almost inadvertently. His connection to Gabriel’s lead voice as a backing singer and the ineffable common denominators heard within that blend likely sealed the deal. 

“Squonk” was the heaviest Genesis track up until this point, with Rutherford’s earthshaking bass mixed with Collins’ John Bonham-like drums. This more muscular feel showed their continuing evolution as musicians and writers, and also as record-makers. As for their worries about how the audience would react to their new lead singer, it’s actually hard to imagine Gabriel’s voice in place of Collins’ here. To everyone’s delight, including Gabriel’s, the band found great success (and higher record sales) than ever before hereafter.  

Listen: Squonk 

Entangled 

On this cut from A Trick of the Tail, a waltzing music box lilt from Steve Hackett’s dreamy 12-string guitar accompanies his lyrics in combination with Tony Banks’ compositional additions. The song concerns a session of hypnotherapy, possibly conducted by nefarious practitioners, with plenty of dry comedy to make this endearingly eccentric. This is one of the best examples of the band’s ability to create sympathetic music to match the subject matter; a hypnotic melody and rhythmic structure in a song that’s all about hypnotists.  

The melancholic beauty in this song really does pull a listener in until we’re entangled by its winsomeness before the lyrical hammer comes down – you’ll have no trouble until/you catch your breath/and the nurse will present you the bill.  The song’s duplicity between the way it sounds and what the lyrics tell of it adds to its charm. “Entangled” is among the greatest of the band’s ballads in this way, revealing that nothing is quite what it seems even with delicate textures and hushed singing.  

Listen: Entangled 

Blood on the Rooftops 

A highlight on 1976’s Wind & Wuthering, “Blood on the Rooftops” is a gentle ballad that suggests generations of people left behind by culture, with only stultifying television media as their narrow window to a world that no longer makes sense to them. The song is a co-write between Hackett and Collins rooted in contemporary subject matter that’s all about alienation, isolation, and loneliness, keenly contrasted by the former’s highly romantic classical guitar textures at the outset.  

This is another of Steve Hackett’s best contributions as a writer in Genesis, with his melancholy melody in the verses held in perfect balance to Collins’ anthemic chorus. By this time, Hackett wanted to stretch his compositional muscles while feeling like he had too many ideas for the band he was in. Leaving Genesis after 1977’s Seconds Out live album, Hackett continued his prolific, musically varied, and successful solo career he’d begun while still in Genesis. Decades later, he became a dedicated curator of the early-to-mid Genesis period in his own live shows. 

Listen: Blood on the Rooftops 

Turn it On Again 

Post-Hackett, Rutherford stepped up to handle lead guitar, rhythm, and bass parts in the studio. With 1978’s tellingly-titled And Then There Were Three featuring breakthrough radio hit “Follow You, Follow Me”, the pop trio incarnation of the band was born. And just in time for a new decade, “Turn it On Again” successfully repositioned Genesis during a time when their prog-rock pioneer status was out of synch with the musical zeitgeist.  

Featured on 1980’s Duke, this tune became a classic rock radio staple even in the age of new wave and dance pop. Not straying from prog entirely, the song adds an extra beat to the standard rock song chug, placing it in an unconventional 13/4 (or alternating 6/4 and 7/4) time. This made it a compelling song for dancing, but a challenge when attempting to do so. Collins lays down one of his career-best vocals in this character study about delusion and loneliness that sounded great coming out of car radios and onstage.  

Listen: Turn it On Again 

Evidence of Autumn 

At a turning point in their stylistic trajectory, “Evidence of Autumn” reflected Genesis’ pastoral roots in tone if not instrumentation. The song appeared as a B-side in 1980 and as a studio track on the North American version of 1982’s Three Sides Live. Tony Banks’ sweeping piano anchors the whole as Mike Rutherford creates compelling bass flourishes underneath. Phil Collins’ vocal carries the lilting main melody in one of his most affecting vocal performances on record. 

Rural and natural images appear again here as they did on “Firth of Fifth”. Here, the lyrics aren’t quite as cerebral in a song about idealized lost love. This is one of the band’s most emotionally charged songs, with a melody that beams with joy and aches with the pain of loss all at once. Its celebration of a memory and the mourning of it sounds like a final farewell to the past as Genesis began to turn a corner into a new musical milieu. This quality only adds to its wistful beauty. 

Listen: Evidence of Autumn 

Abacab 

By 1981’s Abacab album, Genesis established their own studio space. This allowed them to explore ideas live off the floor with greater freedom and flexibility and to be more selective as to what went on the records. They wanted to shed what they believed to be Genesis clichés to better affect the evolution of their sound. In doing so, they focused on simpler structures and straightforward grooves. This cut is one of the grooviest of those. 

Hit radio single and title track “Abacab” is derived from a common approach to arranging song sections. It doesn’t quite follow the pattern, but the groove is so strong that it hardly matters. Here, tightly interlocked, call-and-response patterns and hooks replace the more complex and eccentric arrangements of the past. The lyrics aren’t storytelling devices so much as a set of sounds that contribute to that central groove. This represented a shift for Genesis to help make them a resilient musical unit in a new era. 

Listen: Abacab 

Mama 

Genesis continued to focus on their more radio-friendly direction by the time their 1983 self-titled twelfth record came out. By this time, they’d definitively gone pop and for some, songs like “Illegal Alien” were a bridge too far. But as much as they’d become known and sometimes reviled for their more lightweight pop song approach, the band’s material still contained dark streaks under the surface. “Mama”, a radio hit, really waves the flag for that facet of their musical identity at this stage.  

Tony Banks’ genuinely spooky keyboards and Mike Rutherford’s relentless and stalking drum programming and stabs of echoey guitar really accentuate the Norman Bates in Psycho vibe here. Collins’ ha-ha-heh is a jarring vocal hook that completes the uneasy atmosphere, coupled with some of his most impassioned singing on record. “Mama” is full of cavernous dread, demonstrating that Genesis remained adept at creating ambience and true menace even as they crafted slick radio singles.  

Listen: Mama 

Just a Job to Do 

For all of its pop sheen, the value in this tune from 1983’s Genesis record is found in the details. Mike Rutherford’s detailed bass playing includes micro-melodic flourishes that reward listeners who pay attention. Banks’ brass-like keyboard accents here are indicative of their work with the EWF horns. Collins outdoes himself as a raw-throated rock singer in addition to his crisp and precise drumming, helping to make this deep cut sound like a hit single.   

The subject matter was perfect for the MTV era; a story about a hired killer on the hunt that practically plays out like a music video as one listens and with a distinct narrative to follow. Somehow though, the song escapes from being relegated to that time. Instead, it remains an example of the band’s capacity to rock out in an unfussy way, but not in a rote one. Here, they integrate their R&B influences with their unique rock-pop sound that matches immediacy with virtuosity; accessible, but deceptively complex. 

Listen: Just a Job to Do 

The Brazilian 

Instrumentals on Genesis records often help reinforce the tone of the albums they’re on (“After the Ordeal”), to cleanse sonic palettes between songs (“Hairless Heart”), or to sum up what’s come before (“Los Endos”). As the last track on 1986’s Invisible Touch, “The Brazilian” serves none of these roles on the band’s poppiest record, making it something of an unexpected addition. But it’s this seemingly incongruous placement that gives it such gravitas as an evocative coda. 

Banks’ great washes of sound, Collins’ frenetic and mechanized percussion programming, and Rutherford’s formidable skills as a background colourist make this an exceptional listen. Genesis were seasoned pop craftsmen by this point. “The Brazilian” proved that they could still pack a wallop in terms of pure composition, full of grandiosity that’s matched with an earthy warmth. Its cinematic scope inspired a 1987 Grammy win for best pop instrumental with its subsequent inclusion in film, television, and live events continuing to distinguish it. 

Listen: The Brazilian 

Fading Lights 

During more than three-years without a new Genesis record or tour by the early Nineties, Phil Collins had consolidated his solo star status with ambitions and demanding recording and tour dates of his own. Rutherford’s band, Mike + The Mechanics scored some successful radio hits. Tony Banks put out a brace of solo projects himself. Maintaining a distinct identity as Genesis must have been top of mind when recording 1991’s We Can’t Dance.  

Sitting among successfully charting radio songs, “Fading Lights” is the one that sounds most like something that they could only create together. It features their advanced instrumental prowess over an extended running time just like the old days. It matches that with the pop sensibilities of their latter period. This is a goodbye song that reflects on a beloved time one leaves behind. On this closing track to the last Genesis record to feature Collins, “Fading Lights” became a poignant parting gift as the band they’d been also began to fade. 

Listen: Fading Lights   

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Runners up and Bubbling Under: 

• Visions of Angels 
• Stagnation 
• The Fountain of Salmacis 
• Watcher of the Skies 
• Dancing with the Moonlit Knight 
• The Battle of Epping Forest 
• The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway 
• Back in NYC 
• The Carpet Crawlers 
• The Chamber of 32 Doors 
• Dance on a Volcano 
• Ripples 
• Eleventh Earl of Mar 
• Afterglow 
• Scenes from a Night’s Dream 
• Behind the Lines 
• Paperlate 
• No Reply at All 
• Home by the Sea 
• Tonight Tonight Tonight 

***

Genesis’ story follows a twisting and sometimes-complicated path, not unlike those found in their music across more than two decades. For every era of the band in that time, there is a wealth of musical treasures to be found among various lineups and styles, incorporating the same variations in tone and musical approach. They adapted as eras emerged, but stayed who they were while doing it.  

To learn more about Genesis, check out the Genesis Archive, an exhaustive catalogue of releases, show notes, interviews, and more about the band in all of its incarnations. 

#20GreatSongs #Genesis #PeterGabriel #PhilCollins #progRock #progressiveRock #SteveHackett

20 Great Songs by The Police

By the time The Police played Shea Stadium in August 1983 and with a number one album in the charts, they were the biggest band in the world. Somewhat unintuitively for fans soon after this pop pinnacle, they’d go on indefinite hiatus for decades. After a unique journey, it was a dignified way to bow out for three musicians – Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland – who’d come from such disparate backgrounds as to make their union an unlikely one to begin with.  

From their start, they borrowed from everything around them to go along with their punk-inspired energy while not fitting in with any scene or specific sound. Too young to be classic, too old to be punk, they rode the new wave with their heads down, keeping their jazz and prog chops strictly under wraps. What they also did was turn the idea of the pop rock power trio on its head, developing a unique sound never to be replicated by any other band since. And they had great songs to get them there. Here are 20 of them, hits and deep cuts alike, that illustrate their singular identity. 

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Roxanne 

Bassist and singer Sting had been writing songs for several years before co-founding The Police with drummer Stewart Copeland in 1977. Soon after, the technically accomplished Andy Summers joined the band, with his background in progressive rock adding to their sonic arsenal. It was at this point that Sting’s penchant for more sophisticated and musically varied material found fertile soil.  

For instance, “Roxanne” was a bossa nova number before they arranged it into the reggae-rock hybrid heard on 1978’s debut record Outlandos D’Amour. Sting’s clarion call voice is accompanied by the now familiar chopping chords and inverted pulse to accompany a story of obsession and control. After a slow-burn on the charts that took the better part of a year as it was re-released in North America, “Roxanne” was the initial vehicle in which they began their journey from clubs to stadiums and would become a live staple. 

Listen: Roxanne 

Can’t Stand Losing You 

“Can’t Stand Losing You” follows a similar template as “Roxanne”, and then some, threatening to betray their skills as top shelf musicians in the field of raw and elemental punk aggression. The rock-reggae dynamic is in place, but also with a kind of dub-inspired ambient middle section. Luckily, dub was the accepted form of chill out music among punks by 1978. The band would expand upon that middle section on stage where it would later morph into the instrumental track “Regatta De Blanc”.  

These musical additions of more ambient textures would inform their sound later on with their greater use of effects pedals and atmospherics. Lyrically, the song is marked by black humour, containing lines that are more of a parody of a particular kind of pop song than anything to take seriously. “Can’t Stand Losing You” eventually scored a number two position in the UK and played a vital role in convincing the record company to release their full-length debut. 

Listen: Can’t Stand Losing You 

Next to You 

Opening the Outlandos D’Amour record, this cut is a callback to their days masquerading as a punk band, with only former Police guitarist Henry Padovani having any punk cred among the three of them. Of all their fast and short early songs, this one hits the sweet spot best. Like “Roxanne” it’s also a song about obsession, a theme that writer Sting would revisit throughout the band’s discography.  

On this cut, you’d never know that Andy Summers had a well-established Sixties-era R&B, psychedelic, and progressive pedigree as he lays on the appropriate punk-oriented attack to match Sting’s growl of a voice and Copeland’s ferocious drumming. Still not exactly punk rock, it delivered the same spirit. Foo Fighters covered “Next to You” on stage a number of times in the 21st century, at least once with Stewart Copeland sitting in, proving that its immediacy and punk rock attack endures. 

Listen: Next to You 

Hole in My Life 

“Hole in My Life” breaks the pattern of The Police as a punk-inspired band with an affinity for reggae. As it turned out, they were no one-trick pony. Although that reggae influence is in place particularly in Sting’s vocal, James Brown-inspired funk is present here, too. The band build tension on a sweaty groove, accompanied by the YEAH vocal shots to make this one funky track indeed. It certainly demonstrates their cohesion as musicians, revealing the advanced level at which they were operating as instrumentalists. 

 “Hole in My Life” doesn’t necessarily find them capturing the Police sound as it would come to be. But it hints at some of the stylistic influences that would feed its DNA later found in songs like “Too Much Information” and “O My God”. It also shows how versatile they are as musicians, holding an arrangement in balance while adding dynamic flair at the same time. 

Listen: Hole in My Life 

Message in a Bottle 

“Message in a Bottle” is where The Police begin to come into their own sound, and where the signs that they’d thrown out the pop rock power trio rulebook are most evident. Stewart Copeland’s drums are way out front. Andy Summers’ guitar provides vibrancy and colour while remaining a few steps back. Sting’s bass and Copeland’s drums are often foils for each other instead of acting as a unified rhythm section.  

With those dynamics in place, “Message in a Bottle” sounds and feels like a statement of intent outside of any particular genre or scene. The song delves into more sophisticated themes of isolation and vulnerability while still retaining the appealing aggression and instrumental prowess they’d hinted at on their debut. The Police really gel here like never before on their first number one single in the UK and top ten internationally, arguably against the odds considering how many rules they’ve broken.  

Listen: Message in a Bottle 

Walking on the Moon 

Leaning into dub music even further as many post-punk bands were doing by late 1979, “Walking on the Moon” is spare and spacious, led by a low-end riff on which Copeland’s echoey drums and splashes of serrated guitar from Summers are anchored. Serving as their second single from Regatta de Blanc, and their second number one in Britain, “Walking on the Moon” suggests the euphoric feeling of being in love, and of being in the moment, suspended in time.  

This cut isn’t derived from a traditional radio-friendly pop sound at all, and even hints at Sting’s background as a jazz bassist. Yet the subject matter and the hookiness of the bass riff make it utterly compelling as a mesmeric drone that works against traditional pop immediacy. In this, it becomes something more than the sum of its parts as one listens with that low-end throb being so hypnotic as to keep us engaged throughout. 

Listen: Walking on the Moon 

Bring on the Night 

Andy Summers’ flowing guitar lines on this against Sting’s ominous bass sets the scene for this nocturnally-oriented cut with a literary angle. The opening lyrics borrow from T.S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock” in this song about retreating into the darkness of non-existence. Like “Walking on the Moon”, this cut is designed with holes in its sound that helps create the backdrop for this dark night of the soul tune, in part inspired by Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song.  

The Police go beyond a three-pronged attack found on their debut and enter into a world of greater sonic nuance. With that, they continue to redefine how a three-piece band operates to deliver more sophisticated material, going beyond the usual rock guitar-bass-drums dynamics to service the overall effect of pure atmosphere in support of a narrative.  Also – this cut was a direct inspiration to the central riff and groove to Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen”. So, there’s that, too. 

Listen: Bring on the Night 

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Deathwish 

Notable for it being one of only a few co-writes between all three members, along with the absence of a chorus, “Deathwish” is like a post-punk teenage tragedy song just before the tragedy in question happens. A companion piece to “Bring on the Night” in a way, this song deals in dark roads, fading headlight beams, and a hint of youthful nihilism that served as the last vestiges of the punk rock mentality in their music.  

The Police lock into a mechanical groove that is all about building tension. As well-known as they are as purveyors of hit singles, “Deathwish” is an excellent example of The Police as a jam band, creating a sound that is primarily about a vamping groove defined by a masterclass command of tension and release held in balance – something they’re great at which their singles don’t reveal in quite this same way. 

Listen: Deathwish 

Driven to Tears 

When 1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta came out, The Police had ramped up as a global phenomenon. The pressure was on as their first world tour kicked off in the early part of the year. Even as rushed as they were to follow up with a third record in the middle of tour dates, they were still able to create some of their most memorable songs. This was one of them, a lament to Third World poverty and with its ire aimed at voyeuristic media; too many cameras, not enough food.  

Rooted in an amalgam of reggae, dub, and rock music, “Driven to Tears” doubles down on the echoey and phased sound they’d established on their previous record, the highlights being Andy Summers’ minimalist shards of guitar and wail of a solo, sympatico with Sting’s resigned vocal, and Copeland’s percussive accents. This cut would be a precursor to the political material Sting would pursue in his solo career, with this tune remaining to be a mainstay in his setlists. 

Listen: Driven to Tears 

Don’t Stand So Close to Me 

Inspired by Victor Nabokov’s Lolita, Sting’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” is one of The Police’s most recognizable and celebrated hits. By this time, Andy Summers’ command of effect pedals begins to take a bigger role in their sound, expanding what he’s able to do with his parts to create engaging sonic environments in which to present the songs. “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” is one of the best examples of that signature set of textures.  

The low and ominous wash of sound from him sets the stage for the drama of misguided attraction, loss of innocence, and failed ethics. For a top ten hit, this is some dark subject matter. Adorned with an energetic and catchy chorus that contrasts the more sombre verses, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” is a high point that demonstrates the pinnacle of their interplay as a band in the studio. 

Listen: Don’t Stand So Close to Me 

When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around 

Contemplating the end of the world was a common pursuit by the dawn of the 1980s. This one is a post-apocalyptic story about being the last person on earth, with boredom and loneliness as more formidable enemies than zombies or giant insects. But what this song also does is to explore a common theme that Sting has expanded upon on other songs – the nature of isolation and its debilitating effects on the human spirit in the modern day.  

The R&B influences heard on “Hole in My Life” come through here again in Sting’s phrasing, even if it’s within the context of a more consolidated Police sound full of spacious echo and phasing. His distant vocal sounds like its being broadcast over short-wave radio brings the point about loneliness and a lack of connection into sharp relief. 

Listen: When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What Still Around 

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da 

For such a literary-minded songwriter, Sting takes his own medium to task on this song that was a massive worldwide hit for The Police. “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” expounds on the language of the heart being more meaningful than political rhetoric used to obscure truths. In addition to the pointed lyrical subject matter, The Police’s skills as instrumentalists were well on display with sophisticated chords, unique textures, and rhythmic complexity a-plenty that really stood out on the radio at the time. 

The middle instrumental section alone feels like they could have taken the song in any direction between the three of them. Their advanced instrumental proficiency was rightly celebrated at this point rather than denigrated as it might have been only a few years before when they were playing at CBGB for a punk audience. Times had changed and eventually so would The Police, particularly as the expectations for hit after hit plus the rigours of global tours increased.  

Listen: De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da 

Invisible Sun 

The pressures on the band would continue by the time they recorded 1981’s Ghost in the Machine. In the meantime, Sting had his eye on the headlines. “Invisible Sun” was his take on sectarian violence and military intervention in Northern Ireland at the time, those conditions making it difficult for people living there to see what the future would hold for them and for generations to come.  

The Police sound morphed here thanks to a greater use of synthesizers and with a less pop-oriented, more post-punk feel. Sting uses a lower register to deliver his vocal in the verses, then double-tracked in the chorus to communicate a cry for hope in the bleakness of the times. “Invisible Sun” is tellingly far less oriented around the ensemble playing of the three members. That’s played out in various degrees on the whole record, made during a tense time when the ties were fraying between bandmates. 

Listen: Invisible Sun 

Spirits in the Material World 

A big part of the change to The Police sound by Ghost in the Machine was a switch in the production team, with Nigel Gray replaced with Hugh Padgham. Another was Sting’s tendency to record solo demos rather than working out arrangements on the floor with the band. On this cut, that resulted in more synthesized sounds closer to his initial demos to accompany his amazingly bonkers dub-inspired bassline and almost frenzied double-tracked upper register vocals.  

Reduced in his role in the arrangement on this cut, Andy Summers still makes his mark via his almost classical flourishes in the instrumental break and into the last verse. Stewart Copeland holds down a pulse anchored to his hi-hat as the song’s complex rhythm shifts in unexpected ways from off-beats in the verses to on-beats in the chorus to accompany the themes of failure and disconnection in human systems and the spiritual malaise that results.  

Listen: Spirits in the Material World 

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic 

Sting wrote this song several years before The Police even formed, and certainly not with their sound in mind. For inclusion on Ghost in the Machine, he worked with keyboardist Jean Roussel who laid down the central piano riff around which this hit song was based. Summers and Copeland were not in favour of this outside element when it came to their material. Yet, the finished product was undeniable, even to them.  

“Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” shines very brightly – a shimmering love song that sounded great on the radio at the time, and adds important colour to the album. Copeland’s drumming in particular is exceptional, adding the edge the song needs to keep it from being too soft, and still within the realm of The Police sound as listeners had come to know it.   

Listen: Every Little Thing She Does is Magic 

Secret Journey 

In the middle of a whirlwind of becoming the biggest band in the world while the connections between bandmates were strained to their limits, Sting turned inward. “Secret Journey” is concerned with spiritual exploration, possibly to counteract the very worldly expectations set upon his shoulders and those of his band. 

Andy Summers distinguishes himself on this cut, his Roland guitar synthesizer creating the expansive introduction and atmospheric touches throughout. This tune tonally anchors the whole record which is decidedly less brightly lit and certainly more world-weary than Zenyatta Mondatta. This was during a time on which Stewart Copeland reflected in his excellent 2006 documentary Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out that “it was getting lonely in this band”.   

Listen: Secret Journey 

Every Breath You Take 

After a period apart and in pursuit of solo projects – acting, film composing, and an ambient guitar album – The Police came back strong with a new album which is arguably their best. Synchronicity stormed up the charts in 1983, with this song leading the pack. A seemingly straightforward love song on the surface, it reveals the dark theme of possession found on “Roxanne” on closer inspection, paired with yet another disturbing element – surveillance.  

Andy Summers’ arpeggiated guitar lines that cut between major and minor chords set the mood and are iconic by now, while Stewart Copeland’s drums are uncharacteristically restrained – a big part of what makes this song so tense. As much as this song is well-travelled by now, it’s easy to forget that it contains some of Sting’s best singing, making great use of his full range. 

Listen: Every Breath You Take 

Synchronicity II 

Inspired by Arthur Koestler’s Roots of Coincidence, Sting’s story about a put-upon middle-class family man told in contrast to images of a rising horror beneath the surface of a dark Scottish loch is a terrifying statement about the human psyche and its limits. This song is Sting at his most cinematic as the pressures build inside the central character and as the beast far away rises further to the surface as both a metaphor and a parallel for the man’s repressed rage. 

Musically, “Synchronicity II” is the full realization of The Police sound on an epic scale. Copeland’s drums are fully unleashed, sounding like waves crashing against a shore. Summers’ roaring riff answers Sting’s authoritative vocal, also adding in atonal squeals and bestial wails to fill in the gaps.  This is a towering rock song full of portent, which in the Cold War era certainly reflected the atmosphere of its times. 

Listen: Synchronicity II 

Wrapped Around Your Finger 

The imbalanced power dynamics only hinted at in “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” come to their maturity here in this tune about mentorship, ambition, and betrayal. With lines that reflect a kind of sorcerer’s apprentice tale, “Wrapped Around Your Finger” captures the imagination with a sense of foreboding, feeling like a whole movie inside its five-minute running time.  

This song is arguably the most detailed of all The Police’s hit singles when it comes to the arrangement. Stewart Copeland provides a whole orchestra of percussion behind the spare synth lines and Andy Summers’ portentous wash of treated guitar and echoey phrasing. Sting shows his maturity as a songwriter here in a cinematic tune about how quickly the tables can turn in a relationship, with parties often taking what they can from each other before moving on.  

Listen: Wrapped Around Your Finger 

Tea in the Sahara 

The final track on the UK version of Synchronicity, the lyrics in “Tea in the Sahara” take on the quality of a myth, inspired by Paul Bowles’ novel The Sheltering Sky that contains this tale of an unfulfilled promise. It’s appropriately accompanied by Andy Summers’ guitar effects that evoke the unspoiled dunes of a moonlit African desert with Copeland’s interplay between hi-hat and kick drum accents supporting Sting’s heartbeat-like bassline.  

Of all the songs on Synchronicity, this one reflects what the band’s sound might have been had they gathered in the studio to record a sixth record – warm, timeless, stylistically ambiguous, and wonderfully multilayered. In this expectation by 1984, we listeners were the sisters waiting in the desert for the promised prince who would never return – at least not with a follow-up album.  

Listen: Tea in the Sahara 

*** 

Runners up and bubbling under: 

• Fall Out 
• Truth Hits Everybody 
• So Lonely 
• Born in the 50s 
• Bed’s Too Big Without You 
• A Sermon 
• No Time This Time 
• Voices Inside My Head 
• Canary in a Coalmine 
• Man in a Suitcase 
• Omegaman 
• Demolition Man 
• One World (Not Three) 
• Darkness 
• Shambelle 
• I Burn for You 
• Murder by Numbers 
• King of Pain 
• O My God 
• Walking in Your Footsteps 

*** 

When the Police gathered for their reunion tour in 2007, they knew that the material they’d created no longer belonged to them, and that there was nothing more for them to add other than by playing it together again. That realization took the pressure off them, allowing them to frame the material as the star of the show, with the three musicians who created it as merely the conduits. Given the strong personalities involved, that certainly shows the depth of value of their songs – many of them driven by conflict and dark impulses that resonated with a whole generation.  

For the three musicians, the reunion seemed to do them as much good as it did for fans to hear them play these songs again. After decades of solo projects, they could view The Police in retrospect at a safe distance. It certainly underscored the point that their material stands on its own in any era whether the three play together again or not. That’s a significant achievement that goes beyond any other ambition, Shea Stadium included. 

To learn more about The Police, investigate thepolice.com 

You might also want to check out YouTube host, producer, and musician Rick Beato’s series of interviews with all three members of The Police in which each of them talk about the band and their own musical approaches while in it:

Stewart Copeland | Sting | Andy Summers

Check out Stewart Copeland’s YouTube channel on which, among other things, he hosts impromptu jams with a lot of musicians you’ve heard of. And for an added delightful bonus, here’s some footage of Stewart Copeland playing percussion on “Wrapped Around Your Finger” during the band’s 2007-08 reunion tour. It is something!

Andy Summers is active on Instagram. Check out his feed at @andysummers_official

And of course, Sting hasn’t exactly slacked off as a solo artist. His site is (perhaps predictably) sting.com.

EEE-OH-oh!

Enjoy!

#20GreatSongs #70sMusic #80sMusic #AndySummers #StewartCopeland #Sting #ThePolice

Starting as a pair of jazz snobs at Bard College in New York State, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen began an initial career as songwriters for other artists while keeping the material too idiosyncratic for anyone else for themselves. They formed Steely Dan by 1971 as a vehicle for that music that represented an amalgam of their influences; blues-rock, Sixties post-bop jazz, Latin music, and even some radio-friendly pop. But the standard band format couldn’t contain them for long. 

At a certain point, touring took too much time away from what they wanted to do; focus on intricate arrangements and meticulously-rendered production. In all of its incarnations around the two principles, Steely Dan now represents a unique body of work that endures today, remaining to be the subject of polarized discussions between music fans who cite their sound in terms of both lauded praise and disdainful derision. Here are 20 examples of their finest work in all of its sardonic and jaded glory. 

Fire in the Hole 

In retrospect, one can hear Steely Dan finding themselves on 1972’s Can’t Buy a Thrill, sounding like nothing else at the time while producing a brace of hits in “Do it Again” and “Reelin’ in the Years”. Best capturing where they were at the time, “Fire in the Hole” is the sound of a band with an unconventional but firm direction in mind in a song about being young while feeling old, out of sorts, and out of place and time. 

Donald Fagen’s barrel-rolling piano intro demands immediate attention, then accompanied by his distinctive sandpapery sneer of a lead voice. Jeff “Skunk” Baxter’s pedal steel accents and solo give this tune yet another layer of the unconventional while Fagen’s Blue Note jazz piano solo conveys sophistication matched with a brand of hip melancholy, those two ingredients being surprisingly compatible here. 

Listen: Fire in the Hole 

Only a Fool Would Say That 

Steely Dan integrated Latin textures to jazz and rock music to seamless effect, not to mention injecting brightness and shadow in the same song. “Only a Fool Would Say That” is the best example, locking into a tasty groove as if beamed directly from the sun-washed streets of Spanish Harlem. The breezy arrangement is full of popping congas, Denny Dias’ and “Skunk” Baxter’s effervescent guitars, and Walter Becker’s subtle bass signature.  

The song examines American countercultural idealism through a jaded lens. Its sublime textures belie the theme of optimism that comes to nothing, particularly applicable during the post-1960s hangover. The reality of the boy with the plan, the natural man of the beatific hippy dream, abrades against the image of the man in his brown shoes with his nine-to-five, showing that things hadn’t changed much for the person in the street as Nixon’s second term loomed. 

Listen: Only a Fool Would Say That 

Dirty Work 

A vivid story-song, and with lead vocals from David Palmer, “Dirty Work” concerns a man entangled by a disaffected married woman, called upon to see to her while her man is out of town. Both narrator and his married lover lack the courage to face what they both know will inevitably come to no good as one clings to his infatuation while the other clings to a lifestyle she doesn’t want to sacrifice.  

Accompanied by soulful organ, mellow electric piano, and a breathy horn arrangement, “Dirty Work” is a cinematically-scaled melodrama. Palmer’s pure tenor voice suggests a wide-eyed loss of innocence in the exploitative world of the wealthy, giving this song a touch of class – consciousness, that is. Palmer’s delivery makes him the obvious choice over Fagen’s musical persona who has no innocence to lose in a story like this one. 

Listen: Dirty Work 

Bodhisattva 

A highlight of 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy, this cut’s sparse lyrics are packed with meaning in conveying the careless whims of the rich similarly outlined in “Dirty Work”. Here, Eastern centeredness meets Western materialism as an entire spiritual tradition is reduced to an affectation by a narrator uniquely positioned, economically speaking, to cast off shallow materialism for higher spiritual ideals. 

The band lay down a tight and tumbling groove inside a three-line blues structure, and then careen down a corridor of jazz chords bolstered by exploratory piano and deft guitar lines. By this time, Steely Dan were still a conventional band with this song being a stalwart part of their live set. The 1974 live version recorded during a show in Santa Monica is notable for its frenzied pace, Michael McDonald’s backing vocals, and the inebriated and rambling introduction by Jerome Aniton. 

Listen: Bodhisattva | Bodhisattva (live) 

My Old School 

Making sure that the world knew their position on nostalgia, “My Old School” is Becker and Fagen’s jaundiced and autobiographical view based on true events. It tells a tale of a drug bust at a suburban college and the resulting disappointments as one finds out who one’s real friends are during heady school days. As usual, the lyrics tell one story while the music tells another to compelling effect.  

“My Old School” is Steely Dan at their most musically effusive, with celebratory soul revue-style horns as they meet with stinging rock guitar.  Obliquely, “My Old School” is about the kind of heartbreak felt when people we thought we knew take up unexpected and unreconcilable positions against us. A story of betrayal never sounded so full of the lifeforce in one of the many Dan tunes that cast aspersions on provincial attitudes. 

Listen: My Old School 

King of the World 

Steely Dan explores the end of civilization on “King of the World”, positing that the biggest hurdle beyond the basics for the last person on earth are disconnection and loneliness. With an intro that makes three notes seem portentous, “King of the World” is the sound of a man pleading for company he knows is unlikely to arrive, with any inherited kingdom in his possession being an empty prize. 

Starting with Jim Hodder’s Isaac Hayes-like high-hats, later joined by Becker’s humming bassline, this cut is built on an epic scale with layered, texturally varied guitars. The airy synth solo provides a futurist vibe, the ghostly voices in the middle-eight section sounding like remnants of a world long gone. Like so many science fiction tales, this is a warning about present-day human struggles, both spiritual and political, beamed out like a one-sided message on an old Ham radio. 

Listen: King of the World 

Night by Night 

The second track on 1974’s Pretzel Logic is a triumph of punchy horns and slinky, winding rhythms. This is the story of a down-and-out denizen of the urban underbelly hoping in vain for a way out of a world of jealousy and mayhem that’s lit up in Vegas neon. It’s a soundtrack to decadent and dangerous after-hours streets when shadowy figures come out to play.  

The guitar breaks are fiery and precise, shadowed by dexterous bass guitar, and with the intricately arranged brass playing in and out of the mix. The croaking wah-wah clavinet is the engine to what sounds like the theme song to the best TV show never made. This tune captures Steely Dan at a point when the touring was about to end as they began to shed core members in favour of studio sessioners to evolve their sound. 

Listen: Night by Night 

Any Major Dude Will Tell You 

Serving as the B-side to their “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” hit single, “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” is notable on its own for a few reasons. One of those is how lyrically upfront it is – a rarity in Steely Dan’s catalogue – even if Fagen is still singing a character. This tune finds a hipster noting the despondency in one of his compadres, then reaching out with a brand of encouragement that’s wearing shades, however genuine the advice. 

The smooth sound by which they would be most identified starts here, supplemented by Chuck Rainey’s bass while official band member Denny Dias takes the guitar solo. By this time, the one-time New York-based songwriting duo who lampooned the absurdity of West Coast lifestyles had made inroads to building on what would become known as The California Sound. Irony abounds in Dan land!  

Listen: Any Major Dude Will Tell You 

Doctor Wu 

The Katy Lied album in 1975 represented a full studio-bound focus, working with musicians who possessed the chops to contribute to whatever Becker and Fagen had in mind for each track. A highlight on that record is “Doctor Wu”, which turns down the dial on harder-edged rock in favour of a smoother, jazz-oriented arrangement. This brings a contrasting gentleness to grim themes in this character-driven song purportedly based on true events.  

On a song about addiction and the hope of recovery, Fagen’s voice is as earnest as it’s possible for it to be, lit up by a pristine backdrop of bright piano, Jeff Porcaro’s melodically-supportive drums, and even a touch of wind chimes. The alto saxophone solo from sessioner Phil Woods is vibrant and optimistic with only a touch of desperation in a harrowing story about struggle, uncertainty, dependence, and disappointment.  

Listen: Doctor Wu 

Chain Lightning 

“Chain Lightning” demonstrates Steely Dan’s love of a basic groove in an established form. This is supplemented by guitarist Rick Derringer who lays down an electrifying solo true to the song’s title. But because this is Steely Dan, this song carries the whiff of intrigue dressed up as a free and easy blues excursion in this story about infiltration and intrusion for the sheer thrill of it. 

The lyrics suggest a furtive conversation between members of the criminal, cult, or celebrity-seeking variety. Any distinctions between those are notably unimportant as they devise a plan to go beyond the barricades unnoticed and into privileged territory. Feeling so good rooted in a light and breezy blues shuffle, it’s easy to miss that there is a source of menace in this tune somewhere that seems to hint at darker intentions and nefarious motives. 

Listen: Chain Lightning 

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Any World (That I’m Welcome To) 

Since “Fire in the Hole”, Steely Dan sang of outsiders, misfits, and freaks as their lyrical homebase. This is the story of someone who is not an outsider but who perhaps wishes to be, wanting to get out of their life in favour of a world just out of their imagination’s reach. In this, “Any World (That I’m Welcome To)” is less about the freedom of an imagined new life and more about being trapped in an old one that’s all too real. 

Michael McDonald distinguishes himself as a backing vocalist on this, his first appearance on a Steely Dan record. The song’s shifting rhythm between 4/4 and 2/4 lends it a sense of restlessness true to its themes. It’s chord structure and melodic sense plays between rock and jazz while upcoming musicians like Joe Jackson listened with keen ears. 

Listen: Any World (That I’m Welcome To) 

The Royal Scam 

Where they’re famous for their character-driven stories of the seedy and corrupt underbelly of American life, the title track to their 1976 record edges on involved and even outraged social commentary. The song paints a portrait of Puerto Rican immigrants seeking new lives in New York City.  Instead, they find that American dreams are just as illusory as any, and without the heart to tell their families back home the sobering truth. 

This is another song of danger, punctuated by growling and bestial guitar licks of an urban jungle, with a chatty and panicked muted trumpet that gives voice to the immigrants’ desperation. Donald Fagen’s delivery is without its usual detachment, joined by stalwart backing singers Sherlie Matthews, Venetta Fields, and Clydie King who make this track soar as a sympathetic chorus to enhance the drama. 

Listen: The Royal Scam 

Kid Charlemagne 

Anti-heroes are Steely Dan’s bread and butter, with the one in this song perhaps their greatest creation. “Kid Charlemagne” is a little movie about a meteoric rise and an Icarian fall inside of five minutes. Once again, the music is ebullient and celebratory throughout the soaring highs and the inevitable lows in a story about an innovative hero celebrated in one era and then reviled as a villain in another, seemingly overnight; a beloved outlaw story, taking on mythical proportions.

True to the spirit of that, guitarist Larry Carlton lays down a part that’s now known as his greatest and most recognized instrumental contribution. The solo was a hard-won result, recorded in sections to the satisfaction of Becker and Fagen’s famous ears for precision, and characteristic of their reputations for taking persnickety, painstaking measures in the studio to serve their material. 

Listen: Kid Charlemagne 

Aja 

By 1977’s Aja, Steely Dan reached the pinnacle of the sound for which they’d searched since the beginning. They even managed to score a few radio hits in the process. On the title track, they go beyond the hit single format and expansively stretch out, delving into fusion-inspired instrumental interplay between musicians who were at the top of their instrumental trees by 1977. 

Nimble guitar lines are supplemented by mallet percussion that evokes the Chinese music heard in the banyan trees sung about in the verses. The legendary Wayne Shorter’s tenor saxophone solo provides a connection to the Sixties jazz that inspired Becker and Fagen from the start. On a song about brief contentment in a life that’s otherwise fraught, this tune is the most sophisticated on an album that proved the effectiveness of Steely Dan’s meticulous approach as record-makers. 

Listen: Aja 

Josie 

With its labyrinthian and vaguely menacing jazz intro, “Josie” is Steely Dan’s version of a best girl in the world-style song so common in pop. In this incarnation, she’s the local girl who makes good; formidable, but also easy to love. From where is Josie returning? The fight circuit? A world tour? Prison? It doesn’t matter. She’s the pride of the neighbourhood; untouchable and unimpeachable. 

Chuck Rainey’s bass shines like a beacon here, locked in with Jim Keltner’s drums for a satisfying and earthy R&B groove. True to form, the song slyly ventures into jazz in places, only to return to the slick rock beat that keeps everything grounded. This is one of Steely Dan’s most popular and most danceable hits, issued during the height of disco and capturing its Saturday night spirit without becoming just another stylistic interpretation of it. 

Listen: Josie 

Peg 

This jubilant 1977 Steely Dan hit single hides the seediness behind the camera’s flash, its glare outstripped by the darkness between shutter falls. Fagen voices the fawning narrator, stroking his subject’s ego as he exploits her image for his own self-serving purposes. This is a thoroughly L.A. song about wide-eyed stardom-seekers and the opportunists that gravitate toward them to take what bounty they can. 

Saxophonist Tom Scott’s now-iconic riff is actually played on a lyricon, the equivalent of a woodwind synthesizer that provides an essential layer of artifice. Chuck Rainy and Michael McDonald stand out again, contributing buoyant basslines and multilayered backing harmonies respectively. They’re only outdone by Jay Graydon’s slippery and fluid guitar solo, a part he earned after a six-hour session at the pleasure of Becker and Fagen, beating out seven (!) other top flight sessioners while doing so.  

Listen: Peg 

Babylon Sisters 

A recurring theme on 1980’s Gaucho, “Babylon Sisters” is a tale of a man who goes for a cotton candy affair with a younger woman and a life of excess well past his prime against the advice of his friends. This leads to a point of no return that will cost him more than he can afford. Another chapter in the story started in hit single “Hey Nineteen”, this track is in turn a study of a generation slipping into a world no longer made for them. 

The interplay between Donald Fagen’s lead and the dulcet backing vocals which include rising star Patty Austin is an irresistible highlight. The “you got to shake it, baby” section on the fade voices the struggle of the narrator as he fights against the inevitable. Incorporating a reggae pulse as it meets with Ellingtonian jazz, this is Steely Dan at their most refined and intricate. 

Listen: Babylon Sisters 

Cousin Dupree 

After taking over a decade off, Steely Dan returned by 1993 as a live act. Toward the end of that decade, they were ready for the studio again, producing the Grammy-winning Two Against Nature in 2000. “Cousin Dupree” found that they could still write a well-crafted sleazy dude story, this one concerning a couch-riding wastrel with (very!) unwholesome designs on his attractive cousin. 

For such an unsavoury story, the music is effusive and downright fun, with Walter Becker taking the bluesy and loose lead guitar parts himself. Fagen embodies the central character with a command of R&B and jazz singing that makes one forget about the song’s implications if one isn’t careful. This was their comeback single, a concentrated dose that comes complete with a truly dubious narrator that listeners would do well not to side with.  

Listen: Cousin Dupree 

Things I Miss the Most 

On 2003’s Everything Must Go, “Things I Miss the Most” is the perfect coda to the Steely Dan catalogue. It finds a man reviewing his once privileged and indulgent life as time’s weight bears down on him. Were this any other band, it might be a straightforward song about loneliness and even regret. But with Steely Dan, one can’t help but think there’s an element of just desserts in there somewhere. 

Walter Becker takes up bass duties as he’d done on their early albums, with guitars laying down melodic soul-jazz lines as horns breeze in an out. Teaming up with engineer Roger Nichols one last time, there’s a retrospective wistfulness here on this highlight from the last Steely Dan record, finding them in a looser mood while still presenting highly suspect characters as they’d done since their debut over thirty years before as they carved out their own niche. 

Listen: Things I Miss the Most 

*** 

Runners up and bubbling under:  

• Do it Again 
• Reelin’ in the Years 
• The Boston Rag 

• Show Biz Kids 
• Razor Boy 
• Rikki Don’t Lose That Number 
• Pretzel Logic 
• Parker’s Band 

• Black Cow 
• Bad Sneakers 
• Green Earrings 
• Haitian Divorce 
• Home at Last 

• Deacon Blues 
• FM 
• Hey Nineteen 
• Gaucho 
• Here at the Western World 

• Janie Runaway 
• Godwhacker 

*** 

Steely Dan’s catalogue is celebrated and denigrated for all the same reasons – its sonic precision, its sardonic detachment, and its obnoxiously/impressively high levels of musicianship. That’s the thing about this band. These very same elements are the things that people love and people hate about them, depending on which side of the room one is standing. It’s extraordinary how that seems to play out. 

Yet it’s this room-splitting quality that proved the validity of their path seemingly envisioned from the start to mix their influences into something unmistakable. Over a long career, it reveals that Becker and Fagen were singular musical visionaries with compelling authorial voices in both capturing and outlasting their era, going beyond the labels attached to them, and defying imitation. 

Learn more about them at steelydan.com. 

Enjoy!

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#20GreatSongs #70sMusic #DonaldFagen #JazzRock #softRock #SteelyDan #WalterBecker

A select few musicians have had several successful careers and could have made their names with any one of them. Among these musical heroes, Nick Lowe stands as a figure among figures. For his part, Lowe could have been solely known as a stalwart bass player and singer with pub rock champions Brinsley Schwarz and later with rock n’ roll revivalists Rockpile and roots rockers Little Village. Gifted with a sonorous baritone and a deft hand at choosing cover songs to perfectly suit that voice, he could have been a straight-up crooner, an interpreter of classic country, rhythm & blues, and traditional pop.  

Nick Lowe certainly could have rested on his reputation as a primo producer of the punk and new wave era. He was in the booth for landmark albums by The Damned, Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, and others. And of course, if he’d just been a songwriter, he’d still be venerated. On that front, he took everything from those various contexts that make up his unique career to create some of the greatest pop music of its kind across decades. Here are 20 examples of great Nick Lowe songs that stand as a mark of his irreplaceable musical signature. 

***

What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding? 

First appearing on the 1974 album The New Favourites of … Brinsley Schwarz, Nick Lowe’s anthem to the titular virtues was a tune he considered to be his first original statement as a songwriter. The Brinsleys single flopped. But the song was later given a boost by Elvis Costello who laid down his impassioned take during the Armed Forces album sessions in Lowe’s charge.  

The strength in the song is its directness, which was unfashionable when such sentiments perhaps felt passé in the era of jaded glam-rock artifice. Maybe this is why it failed to thrive at the time. But the song’s enduringly resonant message continues to be relevant today in an era of seemingly unprecedented uncertainty, fear, and deep-seated disappointment that the world still isn’t a much better place than it is by now. 

Listen: What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding (Brinsley Schwarz version) 

So It Goes 

Originally a solo single paired with the excellent “Heart of the City” as its B-side, “So it Goes” melds Phil Lynott-style toughness to Sixties beat group jangle. Its tearaway sound spearheaded the stripped-down, punkish rattle from artists on the Stiff Records label where Lowe would become in-house producer. This song helped to give that very label a boost as its first release in 1976, later appearing on 1978’s Jesus of Cool, aka Pure Pop for Now People. 

“So it Goes” is full of chiming guitars and with world-weary lyrics delivered in Nick Lowe’s slightly grouchy lead voice. It remains a celebratory mix of clashing musical forces distilled to their base ingredients. This makes the song a product of an era and timeless enough to sound as if it were written yesterday, too; a recurring attribute in Lowe’s work. 

Listen: So it Goes 

I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass 

Full of bassy bounce, funky rhythms, and jittery piano lines, “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass” provided Lowe with a top ten UK hit in 1978. It reflects Bowie-esque textures and (perhaps unconsciously) his song title “Breaking Glass” from 1977’s Low, a record that Nick Lowe cheekily referenced earlier still on his own EP, Bowi. In any case, “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass” is a singular song in Lowe’s catalogue. 

This is due to how unlike it is to his other work. On it, Lowe lays down a feel and a groove rather than a set of clever lyrics set to an undeniable melody. This is not to say those latter elements are lacking. But this is a song for the feet and not the head, demonstrating facets of Lowe’s musical personality beyond his pub rock roots. 

Listen: I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass 

Marie Provost 

This grisly story of old Hollywood is featured on the aforementioned Bowi EP, later to appear on Jesus of Cool. This is a sad tale of lost fame and death; a silent movie actor who falls into poverty and obscurity in the age of the talkies, dying alone and turned into a doggie’s dinner thanks to her hungry little dachshund. This is thematically unexpected territory. But the subversion of expectations certainly doesn’t end there. 

Nick Lowe turns this terrible tale of tragedy into a downright cheery song full of doo-wop style backing vocals and a truly soaring chorus. All that creates a vital wait, what?? experience for the listener by setting the happy go-luckiness of the chorus against its morbid lyrics. The combination is a dark-humoured masterwork, undercutting expectations while preserving its opposing comedy and tragedy in perfect balance. 

Listen: Marie Provost 

Born Fighter 

A highlight on 1979’s Labour of Lust, “Born Fighter” is an anthem for the determined and possibly the contrarian. As such, this song is set to a single-minded, willful chug, driven by charging drums which lend more of a gallop than a backbeat. Along with furiously strummed acoustic guitar, a wheezy harmonica solo ties it to Sixties London R&B as much as to American country rock. 

The band in support is Rockpile in all but name, with bandmate Dave Edmonds’ lead guitar solo being a rockabilly jumble of kinetic energy as the song tumbles toward its finish line. All around, “Born Fighter” is both a classic rock n’ roll rebel song and something outside of anything that’s come before or since. Its scrappy, pun-loving lyrics are just the cherry on top. 

Listen: Born Fighter 

Cruel to be Kind 

His biggest and most recognized hit, “Cruel to be Kind” made waves on North American AM radio, sliding by on its considerable charm into the top twenty. Like “What’s So Funny …”, it emerged from Lowe’s time with Brinsley Schwarz, written with bandmate Ian Gomm. Lowe only considered it as a B-side-worthy leftover until Columbia Records convinced him to re-record it as a single. 

As pop radio was transitioning from old wave to new, this tune fell somewhere in between as a tale of love’s power to confound as much as inspire. Considered to be Lowe’s one-hit wonder in North America, the song opened the door for him to write material outside of expected styles into the 1980s and beyond. Meanwhile, it made a lasting impact on generations of musicians, covered by acts including Letters to Cleo, Marshall Crenshaw, and Wilco. 

Listen: Cruel to be Kind 

Raging Eyes 

One of the areas where Nick Lowe excels as a songwriter is his ability to create sympathetic, lovable characters inside of three-minute pop songs. “Raging Eyes” from 1983’s The Abominable Showman is one of his best. It’s a portrait of a girl whose sheer bloody-mindedness becomes the source of her charm – and power. During this period, Nick Lowe had decided to be just as determined when it came to his art. 

By the early Eighties, he leaned into his passions in writing and laying down songs in a distinct old-school vein, this one being a Buddy Holly-like throwback right in the middle of the age of synthpop. There’s something distinctly punk rock about this tune, perhaps springing from its defiance of the trends. Other than that, “Raging Eyes” is one of his most rocking tunes, just bristling with nervy affection. 

Listen: Raging Eyes 

Half a Boy and Half a Man 

Continuing to reflect a retro vibe before that approach was fashionable, Nick Lowe laid down this Chuck Berryesque rocker. “Half a Boy and Half a Man” is another character song, this time focusing on one of dubious appeal. The song shimmers with 1960s beach party energy, featuring Paul Carrack’s jubilant organ that offsets lyrics about a flawed man-boy, and possibly about flawed manhood in general. 

Lowe’s pursuit of vintage rock n’ roll by the early-to-mid-Eighties was reflective of his savvy, knowing that his career as a mainstream chart-topper was over anyway. Appearing on 1984’s Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit, this song reflects a kind of liberation, finding a writer ignoring the path of least resistance and forging ahead on his own. This song certainly showcases him as a gifted singer who delivers scathing irony with sweetness and charm like no other. 

Listen: Half a Boy and Half a Man 

The Rose of England 

The title track to his 1985 record, “The Rose of England” is a power-pop song that sounds like it made a stopover in a Texas honky tonk. This tune featuring the last appearance of Lowe’s Cowboy Outfit demonstrates how Nick Lowe’s propensity for country rock shines just as brightly when moving beyond a self-consciously retro approach and into a modern, if not musically fashionable context.  

Lyrically, this song is a joyous-melody-meets-fateful-story concoction that contains a mother’s lament for a child sent to war. The big-boned guitar hook is pure country gentleman, accompanied by cascading saloon-style piano to counterbalance the drama. If the musical style wasn’t in vogue for 1985, its anti-war and anti-nationalism theme certainly was, suggesting Ivor Novello’s song of the same name while spiking its patriotic sentiments with fatal irony. 

Listen: The Rose of England 

Lover’s Jamboree 

Defiantly turning up the dial on twang, “Lover’s Jamboree” from 1988’s Pinker and Prouder Than Previous is a countrified slice of roots rock that shimmers with lingering new wave energy. The rollicking piano and stinging guitar breaks seal the deal on that front alone. If a song can be called a knees-up party tune with shades of hope for world peace, surely it’s this one. 

“Lover’s Jamboree” brims with wild abandon in an era when Nick Lowe began to slip off of the cultural radar. It’s full of zest and verve with a sardonic streak even as he sings about something in the air that’s kicking back despair. This is one of the songwriter’s catchiest tunes and among last of its kind as Lowe ended a certain phase of his career before he vitally retooled his sound in the 1990s. 

Listen: Lover’s Jamboree 

I Live on a Battlefield 

After 1990’s Party of One, Nick Lowe was in a bit of a wilderness period. That is, until Curtis Stiegers’ version of “What’s So Funny …” appeared on the gajillion-selling The Bodyguard soundtrack in 1992. The infusion of attention and royalty money enabled Lowe to carve out a niche for himself as a classic pop elder statesmen on his critically-acclaimed The Impossible Bird album in 1994. 

“I Live on a Battlefield” is a standout track on that album, written with Paul Carrack; a tale of struggle and loss so artfully realized that it’s easy to miss how harrowing it is. Lowe returns to a more direct approach to lyric-writing on a song depicting romantic torment akin to the Battle of the Somme, no less. He does so while honing his skills as a melodist and arranger with a finely-tuned sense of economy. 

Listen: I Live on a Battlefield 

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Shelley My Love 

Nick Lowe is the author of some breathtaking love songs. This is one of his best, also featured on The Impossible Bird; a low-lit, after-hours croon that demonstrates his keen ear for making every note and every lyrical syllable count. His performance displays a level of emotional candour that Lowe hadn’t previously achieved, with the irony and dark humour of the past at a distance. 

One of the qualities heard here is how real and grounded the lyrics are, delivered with such tenderness and care so as to make them more than just products of craftsmanship. His voice makes them entirely believable. His skills as a vocalist, always dependable before, level up on this cut to make him a unique and artistically formidable singer of great import. He would only get better from here. 

Listen: Shelley My Love 

The Beast in Me 

Having married Carlene Carter in 1979, Nick Lowe became Johnny Cash ’s son-in-law. Up all night trying to pull a primordial version of this very song together in time for Cash to hear it, Lowe’s voice was purportedly weak and weedy while the Man in Black himself, extended family in tow, attended the tune’s informal front-room debut the following day. Despite some initial embarrassment, Nick Lowe eventually whacked this song into shape over the years to make it one of his best. 

One can hear the spirit of the man for which it was written in the lines, with Nick Lowe’s own voice having matured to the point where he could sing it himself with such amazing gravitas; another indication that he’d graduated from being a good vocalist into a great one. And Johnny Cash would record it, after years of humourously ribbing Nick Lowe by inquiring how’s that song coming along? 

Listen: The Beast in Me (Nick Lowe’s version) | The Beast in Me (Johnny Cash’s version) 

Lonesome Reverie 

By 1998’s Dig My Mood, Nick Lowe’s approach to lean into his propensity for old-school pop music had ceased to sound like he was resisting or even ignoring the trends. “Lonesome Reverie” taken from that fine album is proof positive that Lowe sounding like a traditional pop and country-soul singer in 1962 was more about finding his happy place as an artist than in being consciously defiant of the mainstream. 

That sense of happiness and comfort comes built into this lament of loneliness that sounds as breezy as can be. And as far being contemporary or not, this song provokes another insight; that human emotion and struggle haven’t changed very much across eras. Reflecting human experience well can carry a song more than any one style or production trick ever could. That’s certainly conveyed here on a tune that sounds like it’s always been around. 

Listen: Lonesome Reverie 

You Inspire Me 

Nick Lowe established himself as an appreciator of classic soul and country music for years before he wrote and cut this tune that displays his equal affection for Tin Pan Alley pop. Flush with gentle vibraphone, brushed snare, and murmuring piano, “You Inspire Me” is a languid love song that goes beyond mushy outpourings and into feelings and sentiments which are far more substantial.  

This is a love song that moves past youthful fervour and into lived-in comfort. A leveling up in the art of love song writing for Lowe, “You Inspire Me” is about how great it is to feel supported rather than a being celebration of desire. Musically, it exemplifies Lowe’s ear for an arrangement that stays out of the way of the song and is in turn attentive to its needs as in any seasoned love affair. 

Listen: You Inspire Me 

Let’s Stay in and Make Love 

Setting a vivid scene that anchors the whole, “Let’s Stay in and Make Love” is an amourous proposition suggested by its narrator just before embarking on a night out with his special girl. The song is a sweet and comforting seduction in a life of crowded social calendars, inviting listeners to feel every emotion its characters feel, which we are hard-pressed to refuse. 

Appearing as the outgoing track on 2001’s The Convincer album, this song is lushly arranged while also holding to that same approach to instrumental economy. Its strength is in its amazing depth and scale that is never overwrought. Additionally, Lowe pulls off a powerful gambit; delivering an original song that sounds like a cover version, this time with a melody imbued with the spirit of Sam Cooke who should have lived long enough to sing it. 

Listen: Let’s Stay in and Make Love 

People Change 

Nick Lowe’s deftness at portraying a jaundiced eye on human nature remains undimmed here on this song taken from 2007’s At My Age. Through his narrator’s street smart savvy, “People Change” is a song of weary experience with just enough hurt behind its calloused message to make it emotionally complex rather than just cynical. Lowe’s seasoned voice does much to ensure the effect. 

Musically of course, it’s joyous. Between strings and horns, sparkling piano, and a crisp backbeat, “People Change” is another Lowe song that escapes relegation to any one period in pop music history. Chrissie Hynde’s backing vocal is a highlight, heard here in a song by the producer of her band’s first album recorded nearly thirty years before by then. Even if people change, then there are some things like musical chemistry that stay pretty much the same. 

Listen: People Change 

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day 

“Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day” replaces the defiance in “Born Fighter” with a great and lasting devotion instead. The story is that of an impassioned lover with a mind set on love, tempered by his capacity for patience and care. This tune is way too charming to be anything other than a playful bid to a lover who’s already been won over even as we listeners are.

The song balances love’s dedication with self-doubt until it begins to occur to listeners that this song is more about building a lasting relationship over time than it is about a one-time seduction. You can practically hear the twinkle in his eye on this cut that reflects one of his best vocal performances ever. Lowe literally puts the Rome in romance on this one.

Listen: Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day 

I Read a Lot 

On “I Live on a Battlefield” Nick Lowe describes love’s struggles and loss as trench warfare. “I Read a Lot” from 2011’s The Old Magic is quieter, gentler, and in some ways even more devastating without a foxhole in sight. This is a song about the distractions that keep one from lingering too long on their own broken heart and solitary struggles that come of being abandoned after love is gone. 

“I Read a Lot” is about the everyday routine of coping with loss, filling each moment with anything to hand so as not to think about the thing that’s slowly crushing us. For such heavy themes, Lowe injects it with airiness through its spacious arrangement and his own soothing vocal. The effect is powerful, communicating the quietly desperate efforts to move on after life-changing loss has left us bereft.  

Listen: I Read a Lot 

Trombone 

After Nick Lowe put out an excellent holiday record in 2013, someone got the bright idea to match him up with Los Straitjackets to back him on the tour. Whoever they are, they deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. The result of this completely logical combination saw Lowe revisiting his retro-rock origins as the band set him atop a surf-rock wave. Their union is something of a turnaround, with Lowe having been an influence on them first. The delight in the music shines through.  

Released as a double A-side single in 2019 with the also-excellent “Love Starvation”, “Trombone” proves the point. With Los Straitjackets behind him, Lowe is still a crooner to be reckoned with on this Latin-flavoured anthem to the healing power of sad music. Later appearing on their co-headlining 2020 Walkabout record that has the band covering Lowe instrumentally as well as serving as his backing group, “Trombone” is packed with vitality and mutual affection, too. 

Listen: Trombone 

*** 

Runners up and bubbling under: 

• Heart of the City 
• When I Write the Book 
• American Squirm 
• Without Love 
• I Love My Label 
• Crackin’ Up 
• Heart 
• Maureen 
• I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock n’ Roll 
• Faithless Lover 
• It’s Time I Took a Holiday 
• Lately I’ve Let Things Slide 
• I’m a Mess 
• I Trained Her to Love Me 
• The Club 
• House for Sale 
• ‘Til the Real Thing Comes Along 
• Love Starvation 
• Blue on Blue 
• Don’t Be Nice to Me 

*** 

Singer. Songwriter. Interpreter. Bassist. Producer. Band member. Solo artist. Nick Lowe has excelled at all of them and continues excel as a singular voice today, with decades of pop music history behind him. From pub rock through new wave, and into musical phases up until today, he followed his own path by leaning into what excited him as a musician and a music fan; great songs that are played and sung well and with great affection. His work is a sterling example of what happens when an artist can see their way through the clearest, weathering the storms of trends and changes, and remaining himself all the while.

To learn more about Nick Lowe and his approach to songwriting, check out this excellent 2013 Nick Lowe podcast episode from Sodajerker, with Simon and Brian chatting with him about his creative process over his decades-long career. 

Otherwise, check out nicklowe.com for an overview of his music, tour dates, and other things. 

Enjoy!

***

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The scene is the Newport Folk Festival in June 2022; a 79-year-old Joni Mitchell is on stage for the first time in nine years. She is surrounded by musical luminaries, all of whom owe an artistic debt to her in their own independent explorations of styles, musical colours, and emotional sentiments. The scene at Newport is a tribute concert of sorts, crucially with the guest of honour present to experience such well-deserved appreciation. A large part of the joy in the event is knowing that Joni herself finally, and undeniably, knows just how much she is loved, having lived long enough to literally sit on a throne surrounded by loving subjects and followers.

When she got her start by the mid-1960s, Mitchell had to forge ahead and make her own way through the dark forest of the music industry, employing her unique artistic vision, creative drive, and at times sheer bloody mindedness to carve her own path. This was an era when it was harder for independently-minded artists to determine what a music career can be beyond the demands of record labels and promoters and chart placements.  These were, and are, not traditionally appreciated in women artists, or in women in general. Today her songs remain undiminished, often called confessional much to their author’s annoyance who never found much value in the term. You can understand why if you love them.

In the end, they’re songs about us listeners and the human experience we share as much as they may be about Joni Mitchell. Here are 20 examples to prove the point. 

*** 

The Dawntreader 

Establishing herself in folk scenes in Canada and the United States, and as a songwriter for other artists, 1968’s Song to a Seagull was Mitchell’s initial foray as a recording artist. In the tradition of far-traveled folk songs, “The Dawntreader” is an update on seagoing themes reflected in the album’s title. On it, Mitchell weaves a tapestry of ocean-roaming scenes far from the bustle of cities, and possibly alluding to her friendship with producer David Crosby, an avid sailor.  

Beyond those associations, this early cut characterized by ghostly textures, gossamer guitar, and mythological images contains a golden thread to follow in Joni Mitchell’s artistic journey; the tension between the impulse to wander versus the pull to settle down into a conventional life. Which one might provide the greatest sense of liberation and contentment? Joni Mitchell would spend a career exploring that question.  

Listen: The Dawntreader 

Chelsea Morning 

A celebration of acoustic guitar and hammered dulcimer, “Chelsea Morning” from 1969’s Clouds is one of Mitchell’s most life-affirming songs. The title evokes New York’s Chelsea Hotel, a rock n’ roll landmark and site of many an encounter between Sixties pop music personalities. Having the eye of a visual artist, Mitchell dedicates this song not to carnality specifically, but rather to the simple beauty of the décor. 

This series of still life paintings is full of literal colours, from the sun pouring in like butterscotch to the rainbow on the wall. It’s a reflection of emotional colours as well, with a narrator flush with the bliss of what occurred the night before, and seizing the day that follows by noticing her surroundings while being conscious of her own vitality, and delighting in all of that for all she is worth. 

Listen: Chelsea Morning 

For Free 

A three-record veteran of the music industry by 1970, Mitchell considers the age-old relationship between art and commerce on this track; a fractious dichotomy that she would revisit over her career. In this case the word free holds all kinds of meaning and remains artfully unresolved as the man on a street corner plays the clarinet for free while Mitchell considers her own monetized fame as she listens. 

On this cut, she ponders the nature of music itself and how it’s often perceived; a valued commodity when paired with fame, and something to ignore when it isn’t. Her piano aches with longing in this tune that reads as one of her most autobiographical, expressing her distance from the world around her as she captures a moment of singular beauty coupled with an outpouring of melancholy; yet another important dichotomy in her work. 

Listen: For Free 

Ladies of the Canyon 

Depicted as a scene on the cover of her 1970 zeitgeist-capturing album, the title track “Ladies of the Canyon” celebrates a place and time and the ladies who embody both; Laurel Canyon in late 1960s Los Angeles. This was an artistic enclave that made international waves and, years later, inspired several documentaries featuring many of the high-profile L.A-based rock figureheads who once lived there.  

On this cut, Joni lauds those who nourished that fertile environment; the previously unsung ladies who created a soft place for those hard-hitting rock n’ roll pioneers to land. The song’s happy-sad tone is both a celebration and, underneath, perhaps a lament as she views her nurturing neighbours at a distance; they who are seemingly untroubled and content in their supportive roles. Significantly, with Trina, Annie, and Estrella in place, Joni herself is absent from inclusion. 

Listen: Ladies of the Canyon 

A Case of You 

Looming large on 1971’s Blue, “A Case of You” lives up to the promise of that album’s reputation for being the quintessential break-up record. This song contains the whole story; an emotionally complex tale of a relationship at its end for one who longs for a life beyond what a domestic one can offer, no matter how very, very, very fine a house it may be. 

All at once, the song positions lost love as a kind of homesickness, complete with feelings of displacement and transience in its absence as residual feelings endure. Mitchell proves herself as a songwriter with a keen sense of detail as to the vagaries of the human heart when it comes to love. Here on this tune, affection lives alongside an ardent need to move on; both bitter and sweet in equal measure as life itself often is. 

Listen: A Case of You 

California 

“California” remains to be one of Joni Mitchell’s most beloved and melodically playful travelogues. In it, she removes herself from familiar environs long enough to miss them and understand them all the better. Ringing dulcimer in hand, her bright and youthful vocal bursts with joie de vivre in a montage of vivid European scenes set during challenging times amid the war and bloody changes.  

From Paris to the Greek isles and onto Spain, Mitchell expounds on what insights being away from home lend to her as to her place in the world. The result is another expression of the homesickness in “A Case of You”, repositioned here for the love her adopted country and state that turns out, after long travels, to be the closest thing to home she’s got. This doesn’t mean she’s done with her tendency for wandering, of course. 

Listen: California 

Let the Wind Carry Me 

On 1972’s “Let the Wind Carry Me” from her fifth record For the Roses, Joni Mitchell considers the differences in values between her and her parents with the realization that she comes by a wanderer’s life very honestly. Her piano is a contemplative late-night bluesy excursion; a departure from folkier textures and toward the jazzier end of the musical spectrum as her role as record producer with a specific sound in mind continued to evolve. 

The song is fulsomely cinematic as she confronts her own history, examining what she really wants for herself in the present. More of an ensemble approach than the more solitary arrangements of the past, Mitchell is joined by Tom Scott’s interjecting saxophone, accompanying a chorus of Joni Mitchells in tight harmony; self-administered emotional support as she comes to a conclusion she can live with – at least momentarily. 

Listen: Let the Wind Carry Me 

Help Me 

A major radio hit from 1974’s Court and Spark, “Help Me” is another examination of love and freedom; a theme Joni Mitchell hadn’t quite put to bed. Mitchell doubles down on a more jazz-oriented sound that remains radio-friendly, exploring the increasing complexities of love and commitment. “Help Me” looks at the difference between her own drive to balance love with personal freedom versus that of her rambling and gambling sweet talking ladies’ man of a lover. 

Melodically complex, this song showcases her instincts and skills as a sophisticated arranger to buoy up her sound, which is down to Mitchell’s strength of personality and artistic vision. The result was her biggest hit single yet and one that carries Mitchell’s distinct musical signature as producer as well as singer-songwriter, leaving her image as Sixties blonde girl with acoustic guitar well behind her. 

Listen: Help Me 

The Same Situation 

The title of this song that’s also featured on Court and Spark may relate to a theme recurring in her work; the constant pull and push to balance ambition with a longing for love. In this, “The Same Situation” is something of a sister track to “Help Me”; a conflicted tale of love, freedom, and self-consciousness, with plenty of doubt and anguish in that mix to make this song a powerful statement about what lovers expect of each other, and what they end of getting.  

Another piano-driven tune, Mitchell adds subtle textures including soaring strings that captures that same cinematic quality she’s expanded on since For the Roses. Her singing on this tune is extraordinary, leaning into the themes of conflict and confusion over what it is she really wants in a lover, and what a lover might demand of her.  

Listen: The Same Situation 

Edith and the Kingpin 

On 1975’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni Mitchell became less the diarist and more the novelist, drawing from her jaded Southern Californian environment populated by hustlers and ne’er do wells. “Edith and the Kingpin” is the story of a gangster’s moll who meets her paramour eye to eye in contrast to her demure rivals. Within it, it’s a story about women’s experiences in the face of male dominance that are decidedly contemporary. 

This is one of Mitchell’s stickiest melodies despite its complexity, wrapped in jazzy changes. It’s certainly one of her most sublime vocal performances, scaling the heights while revealing hints of her lower register that would come to characterize her singing in later years. Brass and woodwind, fluid electric guitar, and murmuring electric piano provide a sterling counterpoint to this haunting tale with an equally haunting mood.  

Listen: Edith and the Kingpin 

The Hissing of Summer Lawns 

Another novel inside of three minutes and change, Joni Mitchell creates a sympathetic tale of a woman made to become part of a collection by her husband as a kind of centerpiece his own accomplishments. Leaning even further into a soft jazz fusion sound, Mitchell’s voice is an emollient supplemented by her soaring scat singing in this song about possession, appearances, and lack of agency. 

Significantly, Mitchell’s narrator isn’t judgmental of the woman herself, staying in her husband’s curated world with a love of some kind, her life still remaining to be her own choice. What is being judged is the social environment in which such tales are more common than not. “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” is a look at life in the leafy upper middle-class suburbs, hiding stories of dissatisfaction and denial amid verdant grass and cerulean swimming pools. 

Listen: The Hissing of Summer Lawns 

Coyote 

In the next few years, Mitchell was involved in a few major rock music events. One was Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. Another was an appearance with The Band on their historic The Last Waltz. Her observational eye on the rock n’ roll touring life with some of the biggest names of the era reveals that such sojourns can represent a state of moral limbo where the usual rules don’t apply. 

“Coyote” from 1976’s Hejira finds its narrator ardently pursued by a would-be suitor with his multiple irons in the fire when it comes to women. Joni sings of an unlikely affair with great bemusement, aware enough of its transient nature to have no regrets in retrospect. Mitchell’s ringing open-tuned chords and Jaco Pastorius’ warm basslines both add a kind of restfulness to a song about temporary connections in the indulgent mid-1970s. 

Listen: Coyote 

Refuge of the Roads 

A road song of a different kind, this one isn’t so much a document of a rock n’ roll life, but rather one about being in between places while one figures things out. A culmination of all of these same kinds of themes she explored on the Hejira record, “Refuge of the Roads” is an expression of Mitchell’s propensity for the heroine’s journey while expressing the longing to find a place to belong, too.  

By this time in her career, Joni Mitchell bore down on a new kind of sound that delved even deeper into impressionistic territory and further away from the right angles of most rock music. Jaco Pastorius’ bass is a multi-tonal marvel on this track, practically a second voice to Mitchell’s own, to create a kind of unresolved openness; exploring the musical in-between places in parallel to its lyrics. 

Listen: Refuge of the Roads 

Dreamland 

Employing Africanized polyrhythms against a Calypso-like melodic lilt, “Dreamland” from 1977’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter is Joni Mitchell’s mesmeric and mythical sonic tapestry of peoples and cultures in the shadow of colonialism’s violent legacy. This is a song about the luxury of enjoying a place and then leaving it behind whenever one wishes, even if those who live there must remain, burdened with the weight of history.  

Despite this grave subtext, “Dreamland” is one of Mitchell’s warmest travelogues, imbued with that same sense of restfulness we’ve heard on the album that precedes it. Former head Byrd Roger McGuinn recorded his jazz-rock version the year before. Joni’s turn is the more intimate; more a drum circle than a rock ensemble. A highlight is the backing vocal from Chaka Khan; an effusive and passionate texture that provides vital counterweight to Mitchell’s lead. 

Listen: Dreamland 

Moon at the Window 

Having worked with several prominent jazz players for many years by this time, including the irascible genius Charles Mingus, Joni Mitchell’s ear caught the radio again by 1983’s Wild Things Run Fast. The atmospheric textures in a rock paradigm presented by The Police inspired her to explore similar avenues while not jettisoning jazz completely. “Moon at the Window” is one of the best examples of that fine balance. 

This is a song about finding contentment in solitude and struggling with feelings of isolation all the while. Mitchell is the quintessential jazz singer here, joined by multitracked Jonis, and by the legendary Wayne Shorter’s impressionist soprano saxophone phrases as John Guerin’s drums and Larry Klein’s bass lock in. In a kind of turnaround, Police frontman Sting’s initial solo career would not sound entirely unlike this track, with any musical debt paid in full. 

Listen: Moon at the Window 

The Reoccuring Dream 

By the mid-to-late Eighties Joni Mitchell who’d spent a good deal of her career singing of feelings and experiences as a reflection of our own as listeners, turned her artistic eye outward to the larger culture. She also leaned into new production approaches, always vigilant to preserve her artistic voice as evolving recording technology allowed her access to new toolsets. The positive result of this was music that’s less subject to easy categorization and evidence of Mitchell’s continuing boundary-pushing.  

“The Reoccuring Dream” from 1988’s Chalkmark in a Rainstorm is a sound collage of vocal samples and snippets mixed with tightly arranged multitracked harmonies. The song creates a sense of depth and distance, as lyrics cast a satirical eye at mass media advertising in an increasingly corporately dominated world, hectoring us to dream all the wrong dreams of new-fangled kitchen appliances instead of lasting peace and justice. 

Listen: The Reoccuring Dream 

Two Grey Rooms 

On 1991’s Night Ride Home, and after spending the Eighties in more experimental modes, Joni Mitchell pulled together all of her developed interests and strengths into a unified, warmer sound. This included the painterly impressionism in her melodies, tight jazz-inspired harmonies, and with the folk-pop textures heard in her music from the start. “Two Grey Rooms” closes the album, and exemplifies a renewed focus.  

It’s also another of her songs that disproves Mitchell as an exclusively confessional singer-songwriter. It’s the tale of a privileged man who rejects his affluent life to live near the former lover of his youth whom he never got over; taking the two grey rooms near the docks to see him go to and from work each day, loving him from afar, close but also so distant. It is one of Mitchell’s most heartbreaking and heartfelt love songs. 

Listen: Two Grey Rooms 

Sex Kills 

Reflecting her continuing interest in electronic textures mingled with traditional rock instrumentation, “Sex Kills” from 1994’s Grammy-winning Turbulent Indigo is a callback to her more political Eighties period. Violence, greed, disease, and unsustainable consumerism remained in place by 1994, and were only getting worse. The song certainly stood out on the radio as a bold set of statements about where we were heading as a civilization. 

Mitchell’s textured voice is full of genuine concern, not judgement, accompanied by shards of distorted and echoey guitar that is a million miles away from her associations as a Sixties folk singer. But make no mistake: this is a protest song of epic proportions, exemplifying Mitchell’s social conscience but also her skill as a producer and songwriter as she delivers an impressionist painting of a society cast in a dark colour palette. 

Listen: Sex Kills 

Stay in Touch 

On “Stay in Touch” from 1998’s Taming of the Tiger, Mitchell showed that her ability to write intimate songs about relationships remained undiminished, centering on people doing their best to manage their accumulated baggage while seeking to connect. This tune features her use of the Roland VG-8 Virtual Guitar to replicate her open-tunings, helping her to more easily realize the chord voicings offset here by the warm textures of Mark Isham’s muted trumpet. 

This is a song infused with the wisdom that only advancing mileage can provide, and perhaps one Mitchell could only write by the late Nineties. By then, Joni had traveled far across many landscapes, with many characters joining her along the way. But this tune goes beyond Mitchell’s experiences, suggesting a good general rule applicable to all of us; to make ourselves available to each other even as we wander, which is as good a takeaway of Joni Mitchell’s work as any. 

This Place 

After decades of negotiating emotional territories between a sense of belonging and the freedom to wander, “This Place” from 2007’s Shine is the sound of a songwriter who’s come home at last. Full of brightness and loving affection for a landscape, the song is a delectable spread of guitar paired with Greg Leisz’s pedal steel and Bob Shepard’s soprano sax. But amid all of the bucolic grandeur in the first verse, there’s a catch in the ones that follow.  

The place in question in this song is Mitchell’s sanctuary on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast she purchased in the early 1970s; an arboreal landscape of forested, rocky outcroppings by the sea rich in resources perfect for Californian developers to grind down into gravel to make into soulless McMansions. After nearly forty years by then, they were still paving paradise and putting up parking lots, symbolically speaking. Luckily too, Joni remained in place to write about it.

Listen: This Place 

*** 

Runners up and bubbling under: 

• Both Sides Now
• Urge for Going 

• The Last Time I Saw Richard 
• River 
• Carey 
• You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio 
• A Free Man in Paris 

• People’s Parties 
• Raised on Robbery 
• The Jungle Line 
• In France They Kiss on Main Street 
• Shadows and Light 

• Black Crow 
• Furry Sings the Blues 
• Amelia 
• The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines 
• Night Ride Home 

• The Sire of Sorrows (Job’s Sad Song) 
• The Magdalene Laundries 
• Shine 

*** 

Listeners across generations that certainly include other innovative and influential musicians, love Joni Mitchell. The greatest part about that is this: Joni Mitchell knows it. Over years of health challenges and at least one near miss in 2015, seeing her on stage with Brandi Carlisle, Wynonna Judd, and other songwriters and players at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival was a delivery system for pure wholesome joy. Once again, you could see how Joni knew how loved she is. They replayed the scene when she received a standing ovation at this year’s Grammys in celebration of her Best Folk Album win for Joni Mitchell at Newport, that show based on her appearances in 2022.

So many artistic geniuses pass their time on earth and then away, never fully knowing the magnitude of their work relative to the many lives it’s touched and then made better. Mitchell’s hero Vincent Van Gogh is a good example. And Joni Mitchell is on that level – a creative genius never to be replicated or replaced, rightly celebrated with the tremendous gratitude that comes with the sublime greatness of work that will endure in the same fashion. 

For more on Joni Mitchell, check out jonimitchell.com for song lyrics, artwork, biographical information, and commentary. 

If you have a hankering from more thoughts (and more songs!) from Joni Mitchell’s catalogue, here’s another list of 10 great Joni Mitchell Musical Moments from the back pages of The Delete Bin.

To get a taste of Joni Fest, check out this performance of Gershwin’s immortal “Summertime” at the Newport Folk Festival 2022 in which Joni takes center stage, literally enthroned, and with exceptional accompaniment by all concerned. There are several clips of performances from that same show. Do yourself a favour; go down that rabbit hole.  

Also, Joni Mitchell and The Joni Jam are set to appear at the Hollywood Bowl in October. Keep your eyes and ears open for news and reviews.

Enjoy! 

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