Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen (1975)
Sweet Jane - The Velvet Underground (1970)
Train in Vain (Stand by Me) - The Clash (1979)
Gimme Danger - Iggy & the Stooges (1973)
Baby Please Don't Go - Them (1964)
I Want More - Can (1976)
Everyday - Buddy Holly (1957)
Young Americans - David Bowie (1975)
All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix (1968)
When the Night Feels My Song - Bedouin Soundclash (2004)
Danny (Lonely Blue Boy) - Conway Twitty (1959)
Darlin' - The Beach Boys (1967)
Concrete and Clay - Unit Four + Two (1965)
Once in a Lifetime - Talking Heads (1981)
Close to Me - The Cure (1985)
Bankrobber - The Clash (1980)
Reach Out, I'll Be There - The Four Tops (1966)
Wichita Lineman - Glen Campbell (1968)
In Dreams - Roy Orbison (1963)
Wicked Game - Chris Isaak (1989)
Old Cape Cod - Patti Page (1957)
Sound and Vision - David Bowie (1977)
Shangri La - The Kinks (1969)
Old Man - Neil Young (1972)
Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight & the Pips (1973)
Oh! Sweet Nuthin' - The Velvet Underground (1970)
The Only Living Boy in New York - Simon & Garfunkel (1970)
Late for the Sky - Jackson Browne (1974)
Seabird - Alessi Brothers (1977)
Midnight Cowboy - John Barry (1969)
These are the songs that sound good to me no matter what the situation, whether they are played loud on a top of the range sound system or through tinny laptop speakers. The songs that I will never skip if they come on shuffle, that are just as enjoyable accompanied by the background sounds of modern life; traffic, trains, screaming kids etc. as they are listened to in silence.
Looking at the list now the first thing that strikes me is how unrepresentative it feels of my taste in music and my listening habits. I tend to spend most of my headphone time these days listening to recent work by the likes of Four Tet, Caribou, LCD Soundsystem, Kanye West, The xx, Hot Chip et al. And yet there isn't a single track by any of these artists I would take with me to a desert island. And many of my favourite artists are absent from the list. There is nothing by Stevie Wonder, Sly & the Family Stone or Prince. No Beatles or Stones, no Blur, no Radiohead. In fact about half the list is made up of artists that I know very little about other than the one song. I don't think I've ever heard anything else by Unit Four + Two, Patti Page or Conway Twitty.
Bedouin Soundclash's 'When the Night Feels My Song' from 2004 is the only track from the last decade and there are only four others post 1979, yet in a way analyzing the age of the songs is futile since to me each of them is timeless.
So what makes these songs timeless?
Many of them are hard to categorize and difficult to place within the history of popular music. Bowie's 'Sound and Vision' and Can's 'I Want More' in particular sound like nothing else released in the 70's or indeed since. Many of the songs are untypical of their performer's output and the genre they are defined by. You wouldn't call Buddy Holly's 'Everyday' a Rock 'N' Roll number, the two Clash songs could not be labelled Punk and 'Close to Me' by The Cure is definitely not a Goth song.
Despite some complex recordings here (again Bowie's 'Sound and Vision' a prime example) there is an element of simplicity that flows through the list, from the drummer Jerry Allison achieving the percussion sound on 'Everyday' by slapping his lap with his hands and the childlike xylophone melody in 'Close to Me' to the primitive drum machine and simple lyrics of 'Seabird'.. Seabird, seabird, fly home. Like a lonely seabird you've been away too long, oh too long.
When song lyrics are removed from their musical context they often seem a little dull, sometimes even ridiculous and yet some of the tracks here contain magnificent poetry.
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
This is an example of a track that has it's vocals pushed to the front, propelling the song forwards, but there are other songs on the list with a more subtle blend of voice and music where the words themselves become absorbed on a subconscious level. Robert Smith's breathy vocal on The Cure's 'Close to Me' is used more like a musical instrument in the way it embeds itself within the track. The sound the words make are in a way more important than the meaning they take on.. Just try to see in the dark, just try to make it work. Feel the fear, before you're here.
All of these songs sound fantastic blasting from the car stereo - I often find that the best songs are those that come to life when you drive to them.. the ever changing landscape making them the soundtrack to an imaginary film. 'Baby Please Don't Go', 'Wicked Game' and 'All Along the Watchtower' actually accompany driving scenes in real films; the first two in David Lynch's Wild at Heart, the Hendrix track in Withnail & I, and many of the others appear on soundtracks; 'Everyday' in Gummo, 'Young Americans' at the end of Dogville, 'In Dreams' in Blue Velvet and of course John Barry's Theme from Midnight Cowboy.
The way that music works is incredibly complex. As Philip Ball says, 'everything we value in a melody comes from the relationships between the elements that constitute it, and the context we create for them from the knowledge and expectation we bring to the experience of perceiving it.'
The way that the interaction between all the individual sounds is translated by the brain makes listening to every song a unique experience for each of us.
For me each of these songs contains something magical that elevates them from very good to sublime. The list is constantly evolving as I go through my life. I'll try and revisit it every few years 7-up style to see how it's changed.
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