150 favourite songs

Not quite the 150 songs most meaningful to me, still less those with the strongest emotional associations, but not completely not either of those either. More than ever before I felt the absurdity of ranking songs against each other, even on the completely subjective basis of 'favourites'. It's 150 because that's the round number at which the list felt tight. 

Over 40% from the 90s, five each by Radiohead, R.E.M. and the Cocteau Twins and four by Cat Power, Belle & Sebastian, Aimee Mann and Patty Griffin, and that's a pretty accurate pocket history of the music I've most loved over the journey.

				2013 top 200	2006 top 100	2000 top 100
1	Useless Desires	Patty Griffin	2004
2	Hyper-ballad	Björk	1995	25	2	19
3	Fade Into You	Mazzy Star	1993	3	3	66
4	Lazy Line Painter Jane	Belle & Sebastian	1997	1	1
5	Love Will Tear Us Apart	Joy Division	1980	2	13
6	Can't Be Sure	The Sundays	1990	22	19
7	Ceremony	New Order	1981	4
8	Wrecking Ball	Gillian Welch	2003	16	6
9	Hold On, Hold On	Neko Case	2006	29	26
10	Lorelei	Cocteau Twins	1984	39	9
11	Paranoid Android	Radiohead	1997	6	8	7
12	Teardrop	Massive Attack	1998	7	31	33
13	Just Like Heaven	The Cure	1987	17	30	17
14	You're In A Bad Way	Saint Etienne	1993	15	14
15	Wise Up	Aimee Mann	1999	9	18
16	Sometimes	My Bloody Valentine	1991	14	20
17	Ashes To Ashes	David Bowie	1980	20
18	Dirty Dream Number Two	Belle & Sebastian	1998
19	Little Bombs	Aimee Mann	2005	21	37
20	Spark	Tori Amos	1998	28	21	5
21	Torn	Natalie Imbruglia	1997	36	57	89
22	Crush In The Ghetto	Jolie Holland	2006	19
23	Heroes	David Bowie	1977	44	49
24	Strong Enough	Sheryl Crow	1993	142
25	Pink Orange Red	Cocteau Twins	1985	31	33
26	Bachelorette	Björk	1997	32
27	No Bad News	Patty Griffin	2007	40
28	Heaven Or Las Vegas	Cocteau Twins	1990	80	42
29	Return of the Grievous Angel	Gram Parsons	1974	61
30	Just Like Honey	The Jesus and Mary Chain	1985	24	5
31	Body's In Trouble	Mary Margaret O'Hara	1988	115
32	Save Me	Aimee Mann	1999	75	41
33	Roads	Portishead	1994	47		27
34	El President	Drugstore feat. Thom Yorke	1998	11	28	45
35	Everlong	Foo Fighters	1997	87
36	Be Mine	R.E.M.	1996	27	62
37	Dreams	The Cranberries	1993	172
38	This Love	Craig Armstrong feat. Liz Fraser	1998	5	10
39	I Know I Know I Know	Tegan and Sara	2004	48	96
40	Cornflake Girl	Tori Amos	1994	64	85	8
41	Last Goodbye	Jeff Buckley	1994	49		48
42	Under The Milky Way	The Church	1988		92
43	Us	Regina Spektor	2003	82
44	What You Said	Laura Cantrell	2005	46
45	How Soon Is Now?	The Smiths	1984	175	80	2
46	On The Beach	Neil Young	1974	43	50
47	The State I Am In	Belle & Sebastian	1996	84	39
48	Karma Police	Radiohead	1997	35		62
49	Cowgirl In The Sand	Neil Young	1969	37	27
50	Losing My Religion	R.E.M.	1991	155	7	12
51	Gorecki	Lamb	1996	12	22
52	Little Stars	Lisa Miller	2003	33	48
53	Like A Rolling Stone	Bob Dylan	1965	162	17
54	Where Is My Mind?	Pixies	1988	104	52
55	Breakfast In Bed	Dusty Springfield	1969	85	65
56	Sea Of Love	Cat Power	2000	34	47
57	Today	Smashing Pumpkins	1993	133	86	24
58	September Gurls	Big Star	1974	8	23
59	Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops	Cocteau Twins	1984	90	83
60	You May Know Him	Cat Power	1998	132
61	Right In Time	Lucinda Williams	1998	54	40
62	Marquee Moon	Television	1977	127	46
63	Ride The Wind To Me	Julie Miller	1999	45	54
64	Talulah Gosh	Talulah Gosh	1987	88
65	Top of the World	The Chicks	2002	60
66	Wide Open Road	The Triffids	1986	119	93
67	Goodbye	Emmylou Harris	1995	131
68	In The Aeroplane Over The Sea	Neutral Milk Hotel	1998	18	45
69	Glory Box	Portishead	1994	74		10
70	Judy And The Dream Of Horses	Belle & Sebastian	1996	52
71	Faster	Manic Street Preachers	1994		98
72	Deathly	Aimee Mann	1999	135
73	Walk In The Park	Beach House	2010
74	Wuthering Heights	Kate Bush	1978	151	76
75	Greenville	Lucinda Williams	1998
76	If It Makes You Happy	Sheryl Crow	1996	168
77	Out Loud	Mindy Smith	2006	56
78	Seven Year Ache	Rosanne Cash	1981
79	American Flag	Cat Power	1998	89	34
80	Portions For Foxes	Rilo Kiley	2004	76
81	There Is A Light That Never Goes Out	The Smiths	1986	152	32	23
82	The Killing Moon	Echo & The Bunnymen	1984
83	Once In A Lifetime	Talking Heads	1980
84	Back To Black	Amy Winehouse	2006	139
85	Mimi On The Beach	Jane Siberry	1984	121	79
86	100 Million Little Bombs	Buddy Miller	1997
87	Via Chicago	Wilco	1999	70
88	This World Can Make You Happy	Amaya Laucirica	2010	94
89	Lucky	Radiohead	1997	77	35
90	What's The Frequency, Kenneth?	R.E.M.	1994	78		76
91	Fall At Your Feet	Crowded House	1991	145		95
92	Travelin' Soldier	The Chicks	2002
93	Florida	Patty Griffin	2004
94	Bizarre Love Triangle	New Order	1986			14
95	Slow Show	The National	2007	41
96	Afraid Of Nothing	Sharon Van Etten	2014
97	Musette And Drums	Cocteau Twins	1983	164	55
98	What's Up?	4 Non Blondes	1992			83
99	Seal My Fate	Belly	1995	102	25
100	Hot Burrito #1	The Flying Burrito Brothers	1969	109
101	14th Street	Laura Cantrell	2005	171
102	Maps	Yeah Yeah Yeahs	2003	199	74
103	With Every Heartbeat	Robyn	2005	184
104	Charlotte Sometimes	The Cure	1981	143
105	Happy & Sad	Kacey Musgraves	2018
106	Distant Sun	Crowded House	1993	189
107	Street Spirit (Fade Out)	Radiohead	1995
108	Monkey Gone To Heaven	Pixies	1989	159
109	23	Blonde Redhead	2007	23
110	Bloodbuzz Ohio	The National	2010	50
111	Berlin Chair	You Am I	1993
112	Passionate Kisses	Lucinda Williams	1988
113	Communication	The Cardigans	2003	130
114	Traveling Alone	Jason Isbell	2013
115	Fake Empire	The National	2007	79
116	Common People	Pulp	1995
117	Like A Prayer	Madonna	1989
118	Dreams	Fleetwood Mac	1977
119	The Bleeding Heart Show	The New Pornographers	2005	91
120	Everybody Here Wants You	Jeff Buckley	1998	10	12
121	Vice	Miranda Lambert	2016
122	One	U2	1991			40
123	Nothing Compares 2 U	Sinéad O'Connor	1990	112
124	Talk Show Host	Radiohead	1996	13	15
125	Dancing On My Own	Robyn	2010
126	Orange Crush	R.E.M.	1988			25
127	There Is An End	The Greenhornes feat. Holly Golightly	2002	55	72
128	Shivers	Boys Next Door	1979	118	16	32
129	With Or Without You	U2	1987			20
130	Good Woman	Cat Power	2003	68	84
131	Sunny Came Home	Shawn Colvin	1996
132	These Days	Powderfinger	1999	177		94
133	The Ship Song	Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds	1990	51	44
134	Everybody Hurts	R.E.M.	1992			21
135	Pictures Of You	The Cure	1989			11
136	1979	Smashing Pumpkins	1995			79
137	I Don't Ever Give Up	Patty Griffin	2007	169
138	Runnin' Just In Case	Miranda Lambert	2016
139	Ohio Clouds	Laura Veirs	2003	107
140	Jolene	Dolly Parton	1973
141	Godspell	The Cardigans	2005	111
142	All Too Well	Taylor Swift	2012
143	Wish You Were Here	Pink Floyd	1975		56	15
144	Lovefool	The Cardigans	1996		97
145	Better	Regina Spektor	2006
146	Debaser	Pixies	1989	190
147	Si Tu Disais	Françoiz Breut	2000	186
148	Daisy Glaze	Big Star	1974	57	61
149	Nobody 'Cept You	16 Horsepower	2000	129
150	Waiting For The Sun	Powderfinger	2000

2013 top 200; 2006 top 100

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Funny, good-natured, and in some ways throws back to those Charlie Kaufman / Spike Jonze films of the late 90s and early 2000s, if ultimately kind of insignificant. I don't have many opinions about Nicolas Cage but he's clearly iconic and clearly in on the joke.

Morgan Wade - Psychopath

Crisp, lively country + pop meld that sometimes sounds a bit like Miranda Lambert and sometimes a bit like Left of the Middle. The first four songs are super strong, especially "80's Movie" and "Losers Look Like Me".

Patty Griffin - Tape

Home recordings and demos, but there's an unsurprising consistency to them. Generally it's the ballads that come through most clearly in this sparse format, but the quality is uniformly high as it always is with Patty Griffin. She's just so good.

Fanny Lumsden - Hey Dawn

Neat country + other-influences record with plenty of nice moves.

Jessie Ware - That! Feels! Good!

This is a high quality album, apparent if in no other way in how it wears the clothes of disco so completely and winds up sounding like a bunch of classic tracks rather than pastiche, homage or appropriation. But honestly not really my speed, much as I've enjoyed Ware's previous work.

Nope

Really great. A strong vision - imaginative, philosophical, visual - and unafraid to tackle its subjects head-on in all three of those senses. Clear themes running through, without being over-determined. Maybe the first sci-fi Western I've seen? (Other than Firefly / Serenity) And with much more on its mind than even the richness offered by the melding of those two already highly allegorically/symbolically resonant genres.

Barbie

As much as the pre-release marketing made it clear that Barbie's aesthetic would be pretty different from that of Lady Bird and Little Women, those two previous films of Greta Gerwig's were both so flat-out stunning that I was more than willing to follow her here. 

So - it's an entertaining film, the gender politics are basically good, the way it reckons with capitalism less right-on, and those two (gender/capitalism) aren't wholly separable when it comes to Barbie/Mattel. What that means for how you score the quality and success of the film probably depends a bit on one's starting point (as a mainstream blockbuster with impressively subversive elements, or as the latest offering from an indie 'auteur' that's compromised by its corporate connection), and how much of a handicap one allows given the need for the actual Mattel to in some sense approve the film's release. 

All up I think it's a pretty impressive achievement - it speeds by without ever obviously getting tangled up amidst its many different elements, and pretty much creates its own emotional and imaginative reality (and therefore stakes), although I did reflect afterwards that while the Barbies are clearly characterised as having agency, their actual subjectivity - and interiority - was fuzzy, making the film a bit less emotionally engaging than it might otherwise have bee.

(w/ R)

Georgia O'Keeffe (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza)

Her greatness is as clear as ever. Even in reproduction.

The Witcher season 3

There's something a bit kooky about The Witcher, something unusual in its tone. It's pretty fun still - though maybe beginning to drag a bit compared to its first two seasons.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Weathervanes

Maybe I just really like Jason Isbell nowadays. Or maybe he's really that good. Either way, Weathervanes is a solid hour of high quality songs that are just as strongly in his voice as all his other ones, while feeling like a natural evolution at the same time - airier and more textured, a breath more rambling, maybe overall a bit mellower, than what's come before. I feel it in my chest. 

The front end, from "Death Wish" and "King of Oklahoma" through to "If You Insist", is particularly strong but it sustains the whole way through to epic closer "Miles". 

So good - each new album lands in its own right, and the back catalogue doesn't diminish over time (in fact the opposite - reading back over what I wrote about each of his albums at first encounter, all except the most recent in Georgia Blue have grown further on me since then).

Southeastern (2013 / 2014 for me)
Something More Than Free (2015)
The Nashville Sound (2017)
Reunions (2020)
Georgia Blue (2021)

The National - First Two Pages of Frankenstein

The National are certainly a vibe, and maybe it's devolved into one that's a bit relentlessly tasteful at this point, through no fault of their own other than consistency. You get the sense they know it too. And still, the music they make, it's still good. Frankenstein doesn't have the taste of revelation to it, but there's just enough variation, and enough songs that stand out from the throng, to have had its share of listens in recent months.

Shirkers

The appeal of this memoirist documentary for me was probably about 40% the early 90s 'alternative' youth culture milieu, 30% the indie and arthouse-film luxuriation (90s and otherwise), 20% the intrigue factor that Singapore holds for me (vague but real) and 10% the actual animating events of the older man who drew these talented, young women into his orbit, saw them produce what by all accounts may have become a genuine landmark in cinema, then disappeared with the raw cuts of the film itself.