I posted 1,069 songs the past few years under the year's worth of weekly mixes dubbed "2013". These are my 11 favorite, counting down to my very favorite.
11. Modern Love Greg Dulli
This series of mixes has always featured cover versions of songs, among other miscellany. So it's no surprise that the countdown for my favorite 11 songs over the last 1,069 in my mixes begins with three cover songs.
Against the received wisdom of music criticism, I like the pop song 80s period of David Bowie best, and "Modern Love" is a great example of that. While nothing can top the original, this version comes close. Recorded shortly after he died, it's hard not to feel something elegiac in this version, for him and maybe for modern love itself. Ever since fronting The Afghan Whigs and in various guises since, Greg Dulli has made himself the master of the cover song. This simple acoustic guitar version seems to unearth a melancholic beauty that I might have felt subconsciously as a kid listening to the original, but only understood after hearing it done this way. As well as growing up.
10. Solsbury Hill Lou Reed
Lou Reed does similar wonders with Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill". If it feels funereal, it's hard not to listen to it without also realizing that the man wonderfully butchering this song of hopeful future is dying.
The heavy guitar, the plodding pace and his talk-singing take the song to a whole other place. It's defiant in an entirely different emotional color, and hopeful in a way that seems even more inspiring and hard-earned than the original. The way he sings the lyric "and my heart goes boom boom boom" still gives me goosebumps.
9. I'm Not In Love Peggy Lee
I've always liked the haunting 10cc original of this song and have heard a few good covers, like Richie Havens' incongruously lush version.
But to me, nothing tops this late-period Peggy Lee crack at it. Never has exhaustion sound better as a singing technique and an apt reading of the lyric. The conceit in the original is that the singer is an unreliable narrator, that he is indeed in love. That clever construct seems abandoned here, not because Peggy Lee wasn't a sophisticated enough singer to pull that off, but because her sophistication is beyond the intent of the original lyric. She knows that one might reach a point where you really aren't, and can no longer be, in love. Something I thought a lot about over the time of this batch of mixes. Her languorous "no, no no"s are as convincing as anything on here.
8. Anotha Ho JJ Fad
This extremely rare piece of late 80s lady battle rap makes mean-spirited lyrics sound so very fun. It's the beat-boxing, the taunts against nursery rhymes and Queen samples. This is a song that actually made me gasp, laugh and turn it up really loud.
It's strange to me that in a world that seems increasingly coarse and uncivil that songs this explicitly aggressive seem to be more rare, rather than more common. And very few of them would have half the wit and musical genius in these few minutes.
7. Everybody Is A Star Gladys Knight & The Pips
Readers of this blog and collectors of my mixes would know of my deep love for the music of Sly & the Family Stone. This song is among their best, and it was so exciting to find this obscure version by Gladys Knight & The Pips. It feels, if possible, more Sly & The Family Stone than the original.
Maybe that's because of the way the Pips set it up, before Gladys comes in and just kills it. I don't know why the only version I could find through various sources has a fuzziness in places, as if it was literally dusted off a shelf, forgotten and unheralded, like much of the music I fall in love with.
6. Just Another Case Cru
When I find songs like this, I wonder how many other forgotten hip hop gems from back in the day are waiting for me to find. I love the genius of both sampling Slick Rick's most famous song but inviting him to join with new lyrics.
But the moody guitar line and Tribe Called Quest feel already have me hooked before he comes on. The Phil Collins reference is so weird and unexpectedly cool and funny too.
5. Brother Father Sister Mother Tim Maia
I loved playing this for people this year. "Who is this??" was the first question, with multiple question marks implied. It has the feel of something classic by someone famous that you should know.
Instead it was never close to an American hit by a complicated Brazilian musician with a troubled life and short, erratic career. But it's so sweet and hopeful and catchy and makes me feel as good as any song on here, which means the last few years of my life.
4. Pray Children If You Want To Go To Heaven The Nugrape Twins
This song sounds about as pure as it gets. And yet, it seems to suggest the real complicated backstory. No one is even quite sure who the Nugrape Twins were, whether they were actually twins or even really black, as perhaps they white men performing in disguise.
What is known is that they were perhaps the earliest American shills, named for a still extant soda brand in the southeast, for which they recorded a few jingles and a few gospel songs before disappearing. Of the latter, this one in particular is just incredible. The vocals are hypnotic, and I love how they change their cadence to a whisper at the end, completing the feel of a scary and moving lullaby.
3. I'll Be Around Rappin' 4-Tay
Sometimes I''ll just fall in love with a moment in a song, that elevates the song to one of my favorites. When I discovered this Spinners-sampling old school rap obscurity, I found that the single version omitted a spoken word intro over the music. I usually opt to skip that part, but the fictive phone conversation, cueing the song title, and the artist's assurance that he'll be around, "baby boy" is now my favorite part.
This is one of those unabashed samples that just plops the main part of The Spinners' "I'll Be Around" as the musical bed. Over that is a sweet plea for a better society, which seems more relevant now than ever.
2. Could It Be I'm Falling In Love (Tom Moulton remix) The Spinners
Over three years ago, when this "year's worth" of mixes, once done weekly but then resumed after a long hiatus, and then done much less frequently than weekly, started this was in one of the first batches. And even then, and for most of those three years, I was pretty sure it would be my #1.
I loved the story that Tom Moulton, who had invented the remix in the 70s, went back to some old favorites decades later and made some more. I loved hearing such a hopeful and romantic favorite song of mine extended, given a long run on the leash before Phillip Wynne's incredible voice comes in. It's a song that carried me through the last few years as much as any.
1. Six Million Dollar Fish Don Covay
This is the only song of the 1,069 that had a chance of displacing the previous one. This was not the plan. I was not supposed to hear a song this strange and beautiful and wise and funny and unique during this time.
I collect music at a pace that far outstrips my time and ability to listen to it. This is how these mixes were born, to sock away favorites in folders to revisit. I have long loved the incredible voice of overlooked soul singer Don Covay, who died during this batch of mixes. I had collected everything he ever recorded, going as far as Japanese imports, and one day the shuffle on my computer served this one up. I nearly fell out of my chair and played it about a dozen times in a row. The sheer ludicrousness of the idea, a slow jam tribute to a monster shark from a summer blockbuster against strange but empathic lyrics over a deep discofied soul arrangement expanded the possibilities for me about what music could be. And how life is.
Modern Love Greg Dulli
Solsbury Hill Lou Reed
I'm Not In Love Peggy Lee
Anotha Ho JJ Fad
Everybody Is A Star Gladys Knight & The Pips
Brother Father Mother Sister Tim Maia
Pray Children If You Want To Go To Heaven The Nugrape Twins
I'll Be Around Rappin' 4-Tay
Could It Be I'm Fallin' In Love (Tom Moulton remix) The Spinners
Six Million Dollar Fish Don Covay
