After eye-spying Stephen King's "My Real Top 20" list at the back of my newly arrived Entertainment Weekly, I was inspired to make a list of the same. So, here are the most-played songs on my iPod according to the play count feature. The numbers in paranthesis are the number of times the top 20 songs were played since the unfortunate TMI incident in November ...
20. Dave Matthews Band, "Shotgun" (22). Issued on a pre-order bonus disc for the Live at Piedmont Park album and film, this live cut of an as-yet-unreleased-in-studio-form track peddles through a quiet introduction and contemplative verse riff played on a veilette soprano guitar before building to showstopping wails. "Shotgun is for putting in your mouth, babe," chimes Matthews. Ain't nothin' "Mellow Show" about it, son.
19. Flogging Molly, "If I Ever Leave This World Alive" (22). Spooked out, laid back experiment shows tender side of SoCal Celtic punkers.
18. Radiohead, "House of Cards" (23). Haters be damned — this song is so irresistible, they played it on Conan. That little wheezing sound when Thom Yorke sings "And faaaall off the taaaable" slays me every time.
17. Pearl Jam, "Man of the Hour" (23). Reflective Big Fish soundtrack number shows the more we try to run away from being like our parents, the more we become them.
16. The Moldy Peaches, "Anyone Else but You" (23). There's just such a little-kid charm in Kimya Dawson's voice that conjures up the image of Ellen Page's naive strength in Juno.
15. The Mars Volta, "Asilos Magdalena" (23). One of two songs from the maligned Amputechture in the top 20, this one survives its psychedlic beginning before settling into a quiet, acoustic-guitar driven middle section. All sung in Spanish, the tune eventually breaks down into typical Volta-like weirdness.
14. Jim James and Calexico, "Goin' to Acapulco" (25). So good, it puts Dylan's Basement Tapes original to shame. And it's not even the best cover on this list.
13. Green Day, "Working Class Hero" (25). I've listened to this 25 times? It rechannels all of Lennon's verbal venom into the guitars without losing any credibility. And it's so befitting of Green Day's political pop/punk 21st century makeover.
12. The Fray, "How to Save a Life" (25). A little poppy for my usual fare, but it has a sweet spot. The biggest band to ever come out of my home state, Colorado, that sappy piano lick recalls my vacation in England last spring, when I heard the song on BBC1 and smiled at the symmetry — more Centennial Staters who made it to England at the same time.
11. Radiohead, "15 Step" (27). I've pissed people off by humming its catchy faux-disco beat.
10. My Morning Jacket, "The Way That He Sings" (29). Fried country rock flies to the Andromeda galaxy and back before getting to the speakers, a chamber of echo and reverb gliding on a graceful rural plane. "Why does my mind blow to bits every time they play that song?" Well said.
09. Kanye West, "Stronger" (30). 'Ye at his Spaceman Spiff-tacular best, even if I cringe every time I hear the un-P.C. "Well, I'd do anything for a blonde dyke." He redeems himself with the Nietzschian chorus and bumpin' beats courtesy of Daft Punk. If this don't get your booty movin', your booty must be dead.
08. Ziggy Marley, "True to Myself" (32). So much of music is so latently codependent that anything trumpeting the values of self-worth and self-reliance can become tantamount to a personal anthem.
07. My Morning Jacket, "Anytime" (33). The same group that traveled to Andromeda and brought back its take on country in No. 10 busts out its rock chops for this ode to failed communication. "Anytime is a good time to move on," emotes a nearly indecipherable Jim James. He also gives the material girl some praise before they chug into the four-alarm bridge: "What Madonna said really helped / She said boy you better learn to express yourself." Amateurs beware: This is cheesy in anyone else's hands.
06. The Mars Volta, "Viscera Eyes" (34). Half Spanish, half English, all balls-out rock. I've listened to it at least 100 times if we go back to the old iPod stats, and I'm still not sure I know for sure what it's about. "There is a venom in numerical lies / Your convalescent thorns / Are but a crown of magnets / They fold the shakes inside that third glass eye." Oh, neo-prog thesaurus rock, how I love you.
05. The Shins, "New Slang" (38). This is all Zack Braff's fault.
04. R.E.M., "Let Me In" (38). Entombed an impenetrable fortress of fuzzed out distortion is a call to the then-recently deceased Kurt Cobain, played on a custom-made guitar his widow gave the group. The eerie keyboard section enters with "I had a mind to try to stop you / Let me in. Let me in." Simply haunting.
03. Josh Ritter, "Thin Blue Flame" (38). It's so incredibly easy to invoke the name of a still-living Minnesotan singer/songwriter who's made a nearly 50-year career out of being a lyrical bad a**, but Ritter shows a gift for gab and imagery on this nearly 10-minute opus. Pianos crash and basses swell and "the whole world was looking to get drowned." You've gotta hear it to believe it.
02. Josh Ritter, "To the Dogs or Whoever" (42). Same artist, different flavor. This time, Ritter rattles off lyrics like a semi-automatic weapon, wrapping tropes about Joan or Arc and Casey Jones around a thunderous countrified stomp.
01. Iron & Wine, "Such Great Heights" (101). Though I do really love this version of The Postal Service's song, the number is quite skewed — I'd used Podworks to blast it off of the iPod before the big crash in November.
The best covers make you reinterpret the original. I&W's "Heights" takes all of the Postal Service's pulsing optimism and flops it on its head, making for a melancholic, meditative punch in the gut. You're almost reading the relationship from the original singer's doubtful significant other — "When you are out there on the road for several weeks of shows and when you scan the radio, I hope this song will guide you home" is a desperate plea to return instead of a reminder of love in Iron & Wine's hands. Reinterpretations rarely get better.
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