Top 8 Albums I Consider Perfect

I think that everybody has--in music, books, movies, or anything else a they really like--a few examples of what ideal or near-ideal success in that medium is.  These are the music albums by which I rate all others.

8. Brian Eno and David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

A weird start to this list, I know, but if you're like me, you pretty frequently get frustrated with  music and wish you could hear something that not only

1) wasn't like what you'd heard before

but also

2) was GOOD

This album isn't quite like anything Eno had done before or since, solo or with other groups or as a producer.  It's also not like anything Byrne had done or has done since.  But it manages to be interesting, compelling, hypnotic, and even CATCHY, in the absence of any clear melodies, or chord progressions, or anything that you previously thought  music needed to have.  I don't mean to kick this off by being so pretentious, but really, this album is incredible.

7. Nas - Illmatic

When the dust settles on hip-hop many years into the future, some album is going to end up representing "rap" in its most fully realized, essential form, the way that, say, Exile on Main St. represents "rock 'n roll" or London Calling represents "punk," or Nevermind represents "grunge." None of those are the first in their respective genres or subgenres, but they've come to be something more than just pioneering or excellent--they're emblematic.  Maybe I'm a hypocrite for not putting any of those albums on here, but that's just because I don't think any of them are as good as this one.

The production, by DJ Premier and Q-Tip, among others, is about the best example of production matching a rapper's style that exists.  Nas's rhymes and flow manage to be just about as technically proficient and complicated as any rapper ever on record as well as being eminently and immediately listenable.  And the guy was NINETEEN when he recorded it.  This is about the most genuine prodigy story of modern music I have heard.  Here's hoping that Illmatic is the album that makes that slot for the admittedly broad category of "rap."

6. Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Here's the pitch for this album--the sloppiest, goofiest, most fun band of slackers in the world make a perfect pop record.  I don't know if it was magic, or what--and I know it's on the poppy/catchy side for some Pavement fans--but this album strikes one of those balances that you feel like almost never happens, and when you're listening to it, it feels serendipitous.  They're more calculated than they seem, I'm sure--but it sure does feel like they just walked into a studio, pounded out 14 absurdly catchy tunes with sometimes-meaningful sometimes-nonsense lyrics, then walked away with the guitars still ringing.

5. Miles Davis - Miles Ahead

I feel a little guilty for not putting more jazz on here--especially because I used to listen to more jazz than I do now.  But in any case--this is my #1 Miles Davis album, and it probably always will be.  The Gil Evans/Davis collaborations are my favoite of his albums, and this one is just so perfectly playful when it needs to be and somber when it needs to be and showcases Miles when it can and brings out the ensemble when it can.  Just listen to the first track--"Springsville."  Isn't that exactly what you always wanted to find in a jazz album?

4. Neil Young - After the Gold Rush

What's the best way to talk about this album?  Do you go track by track through it, stopping on EVERY SINGLE song, all of which are about as purely wonderful nuggets of folk/rock/country/pop ever written (and by that I mean all four genres, not just the meld), or do you talk about how the whole thing ebbs and flows and seems like it has written in it some higher purpose without that purpose being yelled at you?  (Okay, it's yelled at you a little in the title track, but it feels right when it is.)  All this, and it was made by a CANADIAN?  I am so gay for Neil Young.

3. De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising

I know I already said that I hope that Illmatic goes down as the most definitive, pure example of what good rap/hip-hop is.  So what is a different album doing higher on this list?  Well, 3 Feet High and Rising is in no way a definitive, pure, example of anything, really.  It's a collage of tons of different ideas and samples, and somehow, impossibly, it coheres into this big mess of goofy fun, Steely Dan, numerology, transmissions from space, and lyrical brilliance.  It's older than Illmatic but certainly younger than hip-hop itself--and it's responsible for a lot of the different directions the genre went in since.  And it's a fucking GREAT album.

2. The Replacements - Let it Be

Let's see.  Did I already use my "sloppy heros make incredible pop album" line on something else?  Damn.  I did.  Well Let it Be is like that, but then some.  Because Let it Be isn't just about pop perfection, it's also about the most eloquent, poetic, and emotionally compelling narrative of teen years ever put down.  One of their songs is here, for that reason exactly.  If you've been a teenager, you've felt everything in this album.  It's fun and it's wacky and it'll tug ya heartstrings LIKE YA WOULDN'T BUH-LIEVE.

1. Joni Mitchell - Blue

When I set out to make this list, I knew this would be number one.  I think it's a little goofy to have a "favorite" when clearly the albums here on this list are all my favorites--but I think this album provides maybe the best example of setting an artistic goal, then achieving it, then going above and beyond.  This album's lyrics have some of the most dense and brilliant turns of phrase ever put to record ("Just before our love got lost you said / I am as constant as a northern star / And I said 'Constantly in the darkness, where's that at?' / If you want me I'll be in the bar"), and at every step of the way you feel like Joni's showing you something that she couldn't possibly show you any other way.  And she couldn't--that's what great art is.

But look at me, I'm gettin' all gay over music.  Over GIRL music.  Seriously, though, if you don't have any of these albums, please get them.  If not for yourself, FOR ME.

The 15 Minnesota-est Songs, on a Minnesota Music Mix I Made

OKAY I spent a bunch of time on this the other day when I didn't really feel like doing work.  In general, I'm a really big fan of music from and about Minnesota, being from there myself and having the personal belief that it's just the right size for a "music scene": there are coherent movements and ideas that you can follow, but not so many of them that it's almost impossible to have a finger on the scene's current pulse (as it is in New York, say).

Download this mix here!!!  This is the most important part!  Listen to it while you read this!  You may have to retitle some of the songs or something because I don't really know that well how to megaupload mixes!  But that's okay!  Because free music is worth it!  This album is also really well-sequenced.  And I worked a LONG TIME on that.

(Apologies to the following musicians, whom I like but CUT: Run Westy Run, P.O.S., Soul Asylum, Kid Dakota, Trip Shakespeare, Haley Bonar, Tapes n' Tapes, and Mark Mallman...also had I room I might have had a third Replacements song which would've been "Run It" and probably a second Jayhawks song too.)

1. The Hold Steady - "Stevie Nix"

The Hold Steady probably name-drop Minnesota locations more frequently than any other musician in history.  This opens the mix because of the line, "When we hit the Twin Cities, I didn't know that much about it / I knew Mary Tyler Moore and I knew Profane Existence."  Well, unless you are a hipster in the 80s, you don't even know Profane Existence, but this song starts out the mix because right now you DON'T KNOW MUCH about the Twin Cities, but you will by the end!

(I am being up on pop culture right now and it feels good.)

2. Prince - "Uptown"

Maybe the musician most associated in the typical public mind with Minnesota, Prince pioneered the Minnneapolis sound of funk/R&B, and he's catchy as hell and great.  This song is about the Uptown area of Minneapolis, which in the world of the song is some sort of happy-land where prejudices and hatred disappear.  This is a fact.  They do.  Uptown is made of magic.

3. Atmosphere - "Say Shhhh"

Atmosphere is the biggest name in the new-ish Minneapolis hip-hop scene, and this song is his sort of love-letter to Minnesota and the midwest.  It's maybe a little bad that he seems to think that a natural reaction to telling people that you're from Minnesota is laughter, but fuck 'em man, he tells 'em "Shhh!" so it's all good.

4. The Jayhawks - "Blue"

As I mentioned above, I really wanted to fit two Jayhawks songs on this, but I didn't.  Though they never got huge, The Jayhawks kind of typify a lot of what I love about Minnesota music.  This is incredibly catchy, with straight-ahead lyrics, rootsy, emotional and evocative but without pretension to be more than just a great, great pop song.  Unfortunately, they basically never sing about Minnesota, which kept them to one track.

5. Lucinda Williams - "Minneapolis"

Here's the first song on here that's by a non-Minnesotan artist (she's from Louisiana), but she's one of my all-time favorite songwriters and she captures Minneapolis really well here.  Seriously:

I've been waiting for you to come back
Since you left Minneapolis
Snow covers the streetlamps and the windowsills
The buildings and the brittle crooked trees
Dead leaves of December
Thin skinned and splintered
Never gotten used to this bitter winter

If you told me she was a native, I'd believe it.

6. Bob Dylan - "Girl from the North Country"

DUH-UH!  Everyone who knows good old BobDy well enough knows that he's from Minnesota, but it really doesn't figure into his music much.  This is about the closest he gets, and it's more of a folky, mythical depiction of Minnesota than a really resonant one, at least for me.  Still, he's fucking Bob Dylan, he's awesome, and this is a great song.

7. The Replacements - "Here Comes A Regular"

Not only probably my favorite Minnesota band, but also in contention for my all-time favorite band, The 'Mats get everything right about growing up in Minnesota.  This song is apparently about a certain bar called the CC Club, to which I've never been, but I plan to solely becuase I love this song.  Peter does as well, naming it the seventh best closing track.

8. Tom Waits - "9th and Hennepin"

A strange choice, maybe, because it's in the kinda out-there category of Tom Waits' spoken word ("Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" is a li'l more accessible as far as Waits on Minneapolis), but I like this one a lot because I know the specific location, and nowadays it's nothing like how it's described here. (I've heard a live version where he mentions this fact as well.) Waits, however, is so good with words that you can go there and imagine how it used to be that way perfectly.

Waits, incidentally, is also not from Minnesota, but spent some time there, I believe.

9. Low - "Dragonfly"

These guys are fantastic, and some of the most underappreciated people making music right now.  Somebody declared their genre to be "slowcore," which makes it sound horrible (because it's a horrible name for a genre), but it's not.  They don't really make music about Minnesota, but they're from Duluth and I fucking love them.  Saw them live once in Minneapolis, and for extremely downbeat music, they put on a hell of a show.  Anyway, check these guys out if you like this song, you won't be sorry.

10. Semisonic - "Sculpture Garden"

One of the bigger bands to come out of Minnesota in the last ten or twenty years, you know these guys for "Closing Time."  They're a solid, smart pop-rock band (formed from the ashes of the aforementioned Trip Shakespeare), and this is a great song about this place.

11. The Hold Steady - "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"

One of only two bands I deemed SO Minnesota as to put on here twice, this song is a character study of a type of person whom I think is a pretty uniquely midwestern phenomenon.  The key is, I think, amid all the weird punk aesthetic, etc., of the girl described, the intense and unironic Christianity.  I don't get it either.  I'm kind of convinced that Craig Finn made up the slang term "hoodrat," 'cause I've never heard it, and I've never heard Loring Park called "Penetration Park" either, but I'll give him that it was probably some local/friend slang of his.  Also in this song: Osseo, Stillwater, and Claddagh rings (which I think I've only ever seen in Minnesota).  Also: I just spent a bunch of time trying to figure out which railroad bridge I thought he meant, but I'm not sure.  One of the candidates is right by where I live now, but one of the others actually seems more likely.

13. Brother Ali - "Truth Is"

Probably the best rapper to emerge out of the current Minneapolis hip-hop scene, this song isn't connected to Minnesota, but similar to Low, this dude deserves more exposure than he's gotten.

13. Husker Du - "Never Talking to You Again"

One of the most important bands to come out of Minneapolis in terms of rock history, but I don't know shit about rock history, I just love this song.

14. The Replacements - "Skyway"

If I were to pick the all-time Minnesota-est song, it would be this, about this, the largest skyway system in the world.  It's specific in scope but manages to say so much about Minneapolis and Minnesota:

You take the skyway, high above the busy little one-way
In my stupid hat and gloves, at night I lie awake
Wonderin' if I'll sleep
Wonderin' if we'll meet out in the street

But you take the skyway
It don't move at all like a subway
It's got bums when it's cold like any other place
It's warm up inside
Sittin' down and waitin' for a ride
Beneath the skyway

Oh, then one day, I saw you walkin' down that little one-way
Where, the place I'd catch my ride most everyday
There wasn't a damn thing I could do or say
Up in the skyway

That's it.  That's all the lyrics.  The invention that keeps us warm but separates us from each other.  If you don't get it, you've never been to Minnesota.  But maybe now you get Minnesota a little.

15. The Time - "Jungle Love"

Aw shit, I bet you thought this mix was gonna end all mellow and acoustic after that last track, didn't you?  No, mothafucka, get up and dance!

Top 25 Closing Tracks

OH MAN! This took TWO days! My next list is going to be simple as dirt... Top 5 Grilled Cheese Cheeses or something.

25. Train in Vain - The Clash
from the album London Calling.
I was in a bar one night, getting a drink with an ex, and this song came on. No one says it like fuckin' Joe Strummer, man... ("Well, some things you can explain away / But my heartaches in me till this day"). That really killed me dead. To be honest, this track feels a little weird coming at the end of this particular album--after all the jazzy, angry, socially conscious punk, here comes this heart-broken gem. But they're The Clash, man; they're the only band that matters.

24. Lawyers, Guns, and Money - Warren Zevon
from the album Excitable Boy.
Here is my unabashed declaration that Warren Zevon is the most underrated musical artist of all time, beyond The Mountain Goats, The Replacements, and Frederic Chopin. (Okay, Chopin's pretty rated.) His songs work because they are experientially layered. You listen to it once because it's got a catchy melody. You listen again because the lyrics are witty and the general vibe is fun. You listen again because you've formed a bond with the characters. You listen again because you've come to identify with the ebulliently dark (or darkly ebullient?) themes that run through Zevon's lyrics. You come back and you come back and you keep coming back because these are not songs, they are brilliantly crafted novels set to music.

23. It Ain't Hard to Tell - Nas
from the album Illmatic.
Rob and I were having a mini-debate (read: gchat conversation) about what the greatest hip-hop album of all-time is, and Rob brought up Illmatic. (Actually, I think he led with Illmatic and the discussion sprang from there. Anyway.) It's a pretty worthy submission, eh? Now, I know people complain about rap songs that exist solely to extol the lyrical virtues of the artist, but when done right, it's hard to argue. Plus, the placement of this song at the end of the album justifies all of Nas' comparisons (beginning like a violin, ending like Leviathan, deleting stress like Motrin, etc.); after hearing now-classic tracks like "NY State of Mind", "The World is Yours", and "Life's a Bitch", well... you kind of have to agree!

22. Reservations - Wilco
from the album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
This from Rob Trump (because he is awesome and I am lazy): "When you wind up at the end, at "Reservations," it's not unreasonable to feel like you've been put through about everything a relationship and life can put you through. So when Tweedy expresses his inability to adequatly express himself--"How can I convince you it's me I don't like"--it's relatable. And when he expresses his inability to even make sense of himself--"I'm bound by the feeling so easy to fake"--it's even more relatable. But when he lets us know that no matter how arch- or meta-analytic he's going to be, that "None of this is real enough to take me away from you," that is beautiful and cathartic. And next are the best lyrics on Yankee and some of the best he's ever written: "I've got reservations / About so many things / But not about you / But not about you." To go through everything that Yankee signifies and end on this statement...that's one of the strongest declarations of the power of love in any art I know."

21. This Is Not What You Had Planned - The Wrens
from the album The Meadowlands.
On a purely elemental level, this probably isn't a great song. I never find myself saying, "Um, shoot... I really want to listen to 'This Is Not What You Had Planned', that great, good catchy tune. It is probably the perfect pop song!" But on a purely performative level, this song does what every song should do: it crystallizes the artist's emotions and superimposes them into the consciousness of the listener. It's like forced empathy. According to an interview in Stylus (seriously one of the best interviews I've ever read), the track was the product of the bassist breaking up with his girlfriend, getting drunk as a cougar, and stumbling into the studio, ready to improv.

20. Sleep of the Just - Elvis Costello
from the album King of America.
I was really tempted to put "What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding" on instead (and not just because it's my karaoke song!), but I like to take every chance I get to pimp King of America. This is the most criminally underrated album of the 1980s. You simply will not find a better appropriation of the country western ethos.

19. Play Your Part (Pt. 2) - Girl Talk
from the album Feed the Animals.
This is kind of cheating, but maybe not? Like "Faithfully" and "International Players Anthem" are both great songs, but I dunno if they'd make this list if they were last tracks. (Okay, they totes wouldn't.) But, man... mash 'em up and Jesus God it is bombastic brilliance.

18. How a Resurrection Really Feels - The Hold Steady
from the album Separation Sunday.
The Hold Steady are the hardest-working, hardest-rocking, hardest-drinking band in the world. They come from Minnesota and love baseball and America and adolescence. Stay Positive is my early favorite for album of the year, by the way. This song, the closer to the quasi-concept album Separation Sunday, is what I listen to when I think about going to church. In this album, a Minnesota heroine (Holly, short for Hallelujah) falls in love with the wrong crowd, does a bunch of drugs, has sex for money (?), falls in love, listens to some tunes, gets born again by the Mississippi River, and ends up in Ybor City, FL. She may or may not die at some point, she ping-pongs between Hold Steady regulars Charlemagne (her sometime pimp, sometime lover) and Gideon (sometime lover, sometime cowboy skinhead?), and finally, in the end, finds God. She literally climbs a church crucifix and finds him. Fuck the perfectly crafted pop song. Give me a story like that.

17. Videotape - Radiohead
from the album In Rainbows.
I had no expectations for this album, I'll be honest. I wasn't a huge Hail to the Thief fan, I heard the early buzz and was ready for a letdown, but then, after 2 of the best dollars I've ever spent, I ended up loving every minute of In Rainbows. Looking back, this track is probably 65% responsible for that adoration. It's an acknowledgment that all things, good and bad, come to an end, and that in the final moments, all we have are, well, moments.

16. The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - The Pogues
from the album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash.
If I was writing a list of story songs, this would be near the top. A harrowing depiction of the Australian involvement in the Battle of Gallipoli, this song has probably my favorite lyric about war ever... "I looked at the place where my legs used to be / And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me / To grieve and to mourn and to pity". Though the lyrics are borrowed, Shane MacGowan's bitter delivery puts a dour, decided cap on the greatest Irish punk-folk record ever recorded.

15. Is This Music? - Teenage Fanclub
from the album Bandwagonesque.
This popped up on the AV Club's list of the best instrumentals by mainly non-instrumental bands and I think it was their best inclusion. This is a ballsy song, full-stop. Eleven glowing, fluorescent, Alex-Chilton-on-ecstasy tracks and then... bam! You get this electric elegy that feels like it's about to burst into more poetic lyrics but never does. In fact, it's somehow distant and withdrawn; it manages to undercut the cheer of the previous songs, but still brings a smile to your face.

14. Scenario - A Tribe Called Quest
from the album The Low End Theory.
Hahahahahah... I love this song. I love Tribe. I used to this while mowing lawns all the time. This is probably my favorite hip-hop album, too... so there's that. There that is. Yeah, yeah, it's about how good they are at what they do, and about what sorts of things their raps are like, and who they are better than, and what kinds of unpleasantries and unmentionable acts they will perpetrate on your person if you step to them, but come on... this shit is as fun as it is sophomoric, as funny as it is scatological.

13. Butterfly - Weezer
from the album Pinkerton.
There's a great moment in one of my favorite films, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, where the narrator (Robert Downey Jr.) is talking about the author of a pulp crime serial, who is quoted as saying that his creations were just bullshit. RDJr responds to this sentiment bitterly: "What did he know; he was just some writer." That's how I feel about Pinkerton and about Rivers Cuomo selling his heart-on-sleeve paean down the river. You made yourself vulnerable and it was beautiful, dude. Deal with it. Yeah, songs like this one make you sound like a stalker, a sketch, even a misogynistic bastard--but that's the hard part about love. It's a bold statement, be proud of it.

12. Say Yes - Elliott Smith
from the album Either/Or.
Rob said he'd kill me if I didn't put this on... want to know a secret? I KIND OF DON'T BELIEVE HIM, BUT I LIKE THIS SONG ANYWAY. My roommate for the first two years of college would play this whenever he broke up/was falling for a girl. Somehow, it really does manage to capture both feelings. Also, and this is amazing, check out this quote from the Wikipedia article: "In an interview, Smith said that the song was written about 'someone particular and I almost never do that. I was really in love with someone.' It is also the greatest song ever written. Ever." If they said it, it's true!!!

11. Come On Up To The House - Tom Waits
from the album Mule Variations.
Far and away my favorite Tom Waits song. (And I have many, many runner-ups.) The album positively tornadoes upwards into "Come On Up to the House". Triumphant and yet damned, this is a shining moment in career full of shining moments. (Aaaah, I am talking about moments again!!! Why can't I be more like Rob and write about stuff I don't like! Um, here's one... rap skits! Como te fuck, man? Way to break up the flow of your album with "humor"... it is in quotes because it's actual funniness-content is dubious!)

10. Desolation Row - Bob Dylan
from the album Highway 61 Revisited.
This was my favorite song in the 8th grade. My mom made fun of me because it doesn't really make sense, but I didn't listen. Like a lot of Dylan story-songs, he rambles through characters and images as though he's lost in a museum, but he sure isn't looking for the exit. You catch vague whiffs of an arc, you get the sense that you're supposed to identify with certain characters, but by the end, you don't really know what happened. What matters is that the song has happened to you; you are left living in some emotion.

9. Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen
from the album Darkness on the Edge of Town.
I would listen to the Boss sing the phonebook. Actually, I bet that'd be amazing. "Adams, Amy... whoa-whoa-uh-oh! Adams, Andy... Andy and Amy... woo-oo-oh-oh!" But this song chilled me to the core when I heard it for the first time. It has all the escapist fantasy of "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run", but it's got a brutal defeatist streak, too. Perfect for night-time drives.

8. Rock N' Roll Suicide - David Bowie
from the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
Sometimes, this song is too painful to listen to, frankly. It peels all the braggadocio of the previous tracks and reveals a shaky, vulnerable Bowie/Ziggy, too famous to live, too young to die. This is what a good closing track should be, both a commentary and an expansion on the rest of the album. Here, it's perfectly executed.

7. Here Comes a Regular - The Replacements
from the album Tim.
Rob was telling me about how he thinks this should be the theme song for How I Met Your Mother and THEN it showed up in the season three finale. How is that for the universe speaking?! I was telling Eva earlier about what it's like to live in Buffalo, about high-schoolers drinking in parks, about the smart kids growing up and leaving, and the rest taking over the family businesses... about long weekend days spent in bars, thinking about being back in high-school, drinking in the park. Maybe this song should be the theme song for Buffalo.

6. Party For Your Right to Fight - Public Enemy
from the album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
What up, titular line. What up, battle-cry. This song is a call to arms. This song doesn't pause to crack wise or to ref the rapper's lyrical prowess, and the only names it drops are slain Black leaders. This song is determined to burn a message into the auditory cortex of the listener, and to prevent it from fading into obscurity as you go searching for the next tape to play.

5. This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) - Talking Heads
from the album Speaking in Tongues.
So, you might be wondering, "Hey Peter, why is your favorite song number five and not number one?" Thanks for asking, faceless internet person! Well, I don't know. What I do know is that this a seriously sick top five. Is there a better portrait of longing than the lines "I'm just an animal looking for a home / Share the same space for a minute or two"? Well, sure, maybe you could find one, but goddamn, that's timeless.

4. You Can't Always Get What You Want - The Rolling Stones
from the album Let It Bleed.
This is hardly just a song anymore. I can't listen to it without seeing that scene in The Big Chill, the subsequent discussion in High Fidelity, the opening/closing scenes of Californication, or, y'know, every time someone says "you can't always get what you want." But stripped away from all of that, this is song, in its heart of hearts, is still a fucking carnival. It's such a simple sentiment, but it still manages to be both a tribute and a death-knell to the 1960s. The party's over, the 70s are here, the war is still on, we've got each other, and yet...

3. Two Headed Boy, Pt. 2 - Neutral Milk Hotel
from the album In the Aeroplane Over The Sea.
I know a guy who can only listen to this album once a year. I have to say, I totally understand. Most of the album is obscured by a Dylanesque haze of half-images and amorphous narrative, with modest smatterings of WWII/Anne Frank references and then, all of a sudden, out tumbles the closer. I don't want to break it down too elementally and miss the beauty of the forest, here... but just take a look at the closing lines of the last three verses: "I’m still wanting my face on your cheek", "God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life", "But don’t hate her when she gets up to leave"... in the midst of the other (sometimes inexplicable) imagery, here are perfectly condensed statements on the truest pains/pleasures of life: love and loss, faith and disillusionment, companionship and loneliness. I know I'm not saying anything new, but when you listen to this song, especially when it follows the other ten tracks, you will need a moment to recuperate.

2. A Day in the Life - The Beatles
from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
On any other list, this would probably be number one. This was my first favorite Beatles song. Unfortunately for those guys, I am a bigger Pavement fan than I am a Beatles fan. (Sorry, America!)

1. Fillmore Jive - Pavement
from the album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.
When I get to the end of an album and things kind of fall flat, I usually think to myself, "Well, they can't all be Fillmore Jives." I sincerely hope I'm not stealing that from somewhere, because I really, really like it. I heard this song for the first time while sitting in the back row of a bio class in a big, collegiate lecture hall. (Shame on me for not getting to this sooner.) It is the first and only time I have ever cried during a lecture on gas exchange.