Welcome to the Earwyrms Canon: the 100 Best Songs Ever. Not ranked from #100 to #1, but instead given their own meaningful sequence, a personal structure that will serve as a compass for navigating my sonic perspective. An Official Earwyrms Canon.

Music is tied more to emotion and memory than almost any other art. Therefore, the judgments that go into crowning one hundred songs as “best” will always fall back to how they make me feel. There are many important dimensions to songcraft—structure, instrumentation, poetics, generic innovation—but my consideration of these aspects can never be separate from how each adds to a song’s emotional palette. I listen in terms of shivers and shakes.

Maybe you’re thinking: “That’s a stupid way of saying these are just your favorites.” Okay, wow. One of the ways we can reach objectivity is through rationed deployment of full subjectivity. Our world is an aggregate of the pure imagination of souls—like a marriage, the greatest work and reward of art is a shared dedication to honest contribution.

The Earwyrms Canon is not meant to be Sagan’s golden record, launched into space as an ambassador for humanity. This is less of a monument than it is a shoebox full of love notes and polaroids. These songs surprise me, baffle me, move me, change me—they are, again, like love. If music were anything less, I would never have started writing about it.

“Garden (Say It Like Dat)” | SZA
2017

The best songs fill you like a meal, giving you a glimpse of the sublime, like a quiet moment of satisfaction in the middle of a perfect day. When I put this on, I am immediately swept into a world with a brighter future. It can single-handedly improve my day—talk about a support system.

“Right Down the Line” | Gerry Rafferty
1978

Some songs grant me the gift of persona—I am who I want to be during “Right Down the Line,” and wherever I stand is Shangri-La. The tone of that guitar glows like skin under streetlights. With it, I have the presence to draw a curtain to the rest of the world, drape myself in the summer breeze until midnight feels as warm as noon.

“Could You Be Loved?” | Bob Marley & the Wailers
1980

A masterpiece has the patience to wait for you. Perfect songs sit for years before calling true attention to themselves, like the unseen design of your favorite armchair. “Could You Be Loved?” was hidden in plain sight—idly heard, never listened to—until the lonesome night I truly needed it. The slinky guitar ticks like a fishing reel, the back-stepping dance of a partner pulling forth my best self, giving me the space to move, to get up, get up, get up now—and the message, that question of how to accept what we’re given, is the spark for the heart’s uprising.

“Bring It On Home to Me” | Sam Cooke
1962

One bucket of my favorite songs is filled with those of naked need, the ones that speak to some shameful dependence. Like characters written to say what we cannot, love songs are a certain prayer for rain—to come put out this burning and wash everything away.

“Since I Left You” | The Avalanches
2000

One of the great openers of all time, “Since I Left You” captures movement and stillness at the same time by spinning strings over its unwavering pulse. My favorite dance songs mirror my swirling thoughts, and the knitted sampling of The Avalanches sounds like gliding from memory to mantra when you’re in the process of losing yourself.

“Ladyfingers” | Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
1965

There’s a physicality to this recording—you can hear the room as much as the players, like in the echo of that woodblock. The orchestra is one of humanity’s greatest inventions, full of voices who answer each other in tongues we don’t speak but nevertheless understand, magic that follows rules not unlike those of courtship. The composition and Alpert’s performance of “Ladyfingers” reminds me of how closely the players’ hearts must beat together.

“Windowlicker” | Aphex Twin
1999

This is a technological marvel. I have no idea how he made this. There weren’t any slick DAWs back in 1999, no paint-by-numbers software like Fruity Loops. I have no idea what the program that spit out “Windowlicker” would even look like. But here it stands, in all its slithering glory, one of the ugliest beauties ever recorded, one of the scariest songs ever danced to—and once I got over the repulsion settling in at first listen, I found myself lost in the friction of the ending, baffled by everything that just happened to me.

“Once in a Blue Moon” | Mabel Mercer
1958

Notice how this song brings forth the lurching cello on the line, “Only madness under a pale scar.” Some unnamed emotion lies between resignation, understanding, generosity, and despair, but “Once in a Blue Moon” provides the closest definition to it—how every good thing can start to feel like the last when you spend too long thinking about your blessings.

“No One” | Alicia Keys
2007

What gets me every time happens just after the chorus, when Alicia revs the voice on her keyboard into power-generator mode for those arpeggios. That’s the real clincher for “No One” to me. Writing a perfect karaoke song is an art in itself. You have to strike a balance of emotion and range, and you can’t be too esoteric in your poetry. Far from being trite, these words instead take advantage of humanity’s simple core—that we get shaped by every loving gesture, jigsaw pieces cut by those we love.

“Perfect Day” | Lou Reed
1972

I’ve listened to “Perfect Day” on the worst days of my life. Even when I press play in irony, by the time that piano starts to swing through the bridge, I feel what could faintly be described as hope. The songs mirrors the swooning of a perfect day, swaying in 3/4 time like the dizziness of love—seasick on the waves of time.

“Glory Box” | Portishead
1994

Has a song ever sounded so much like flickering flames? The strings—taken from Isaac Hayes’s “Ike’s Rap II,” already a burning portrait of contrition—squeal like they’ve been stoked with wet pine. The guitar sizzles like burning nitrate. But it’s Beth Gibbons’s voice that puts this song over the edge, sliding between seduction and sensitivity, a performance rivaling the best femme fatales in film.

“Is That All There Is?” | Peggy Lee
1969

Everything ends, and there always follows a moment of desolation. I just have to keep going now? That’s it? This song builds a perfect showtime number—arranged by Randy Newman, who also played piano and conducted the orchestra—out of that feeling, like walking out after a movie and having to figure out what to do next. It was written by Jerry Lieber and Michael Stoller, famous for many Elvis hits like “Hound Dog,” “Love Me,” and “Jailhouse Rock,” but it was Peggy Lee’s version, with her laconic delivery, that seals its place at the top. She played it despondent, but still relaxed, comforting in how cool she remains in the face of endless disappointment—until that perfect, cheeky little ending.

“Vitamin C” | CAN
1972

Damo Suzuki starts with a whisper, spilling secrets before bursting with inscrutable fervor. I lean in just in time to crack my ear drum. This was West Germany in the 1970s—revolutionary contexts often drive experimentation as the mind begs new structures of thought—and there’s something so subversive about CAN’s noise, a darkened alley in a hazy dream where any impossible thing can occur.

“The Great Gig in the Sky” | Pink Floyd
1973

The younger we get to a work of art, the stronger the shield of memory that surrounds it. This is the problem with “best songs”—how does the personal become universal? If I had to bet on a Rosetta Stone, it’d be “The Great Gig in the Sky,” with its wordless, eternal performance by Clare Torry. Over a piano progression that feels like murk, she wasn’t afraid to wail like a newborn in the face of our one true common denominator—death.

“Ocean Man” | Ween
1997

Before Old Greg or sea shanties or even Spongebob Squarepants, there existed “Ocean Man,” a pitch-perfect, myth-making parody about how fucking weird it would be to see a walking fish. A joke? In a way. But listen to how that guitar rips—of course a gilled guy would sound that sick.

“Teenage Kicks” | The Undertones
1978

Northern Irish legends right out of Derry, The Undertones wrote a self-sustaining nugget of power pop with one of the best opening drum fills of all time. Is it a sock-hop cover? Prescient hyper-punk? It’s somehow everything at once. BBC DJ John Peel famously loved this song so much that he once played it twice in a row before asking that its opening line be carved onto his gravestone. In his words, “It doesn’t get much better than that.”

“Angeles” | Elliott Smith
1997

Music and poetry were the same before they split, but some are still written as one—perfect little mysteries, notes held up by magnets on the fridge. “Angeles” is one, and Elliott Smith built worlds from only a guitar—and those are some complicated chords—and the silver cobwebs of his voice. His was one of my favorites, like the cooling skin after a shower or a light just soft enough to see—centers of all earthly knowledge.

“I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” | Whitney Houston
1987

Whitney gave us one of those songs that will never been touched by burnout, even after years of playing at every wedding. She also gives one of many perfect performances, effortless and ebullient like when she sang the National Anthem. Remember the first time you heard her jump up a key at the end? One of the best in pop history. By the time she’s firing off “Don’t you wanna dance?” the song is playing me like a drum and sorry but I’m screaming.

“Archangel” | Burial
2007

Like “Windowlicker,” this is another marvel, written using Sound Forge back in the DAW Dark Ages. That program forces users to blind-mix, cutting without visible waveforms, so Burial was matching up these pieces of Ray J’s “One Wish” in the dark. I find new things to listen for every time, reminding me of all my friends’ old basements stacked with their neon towers or dreaming of some future as I walk home in the snow.

“Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” | Broken Social Scene
2002

There’s nothing lonelier than being seventeen. You wait for something—anything!—big to happen, for your life to finally start, but instead you wind up repeating yourself, repeating the same day every day, the same old lonesome day forever. Set aside that the lyrics are now a micro-meme—the vocal effect itself is astounding, layering and layering its robotic routine, becoming more and more desperate until it’s finally frayed, begging to break out and fading away.

“Everything is Embarrassing” | Sky Ferreira
2012

Truly, everything is. Rarely do I get a day that doesn’t end with myself behind a mental fence, shooting spitballs at my daytime self for something I said. Living is a powerful impulse; mistakes are inevitable. This song, written by Dev Hynes, soothes the embarrassments of love by confessing, like the balm of his Blood Orange catalog with the addition of an icy backbeat. It remains essential VDM.

“Gypsy” | Fleetwood Mac
1982

Memory chimes like a church bell in winter’s black afternoon—sharp at first, quickly gone. Like Kane’s Rosebud, “Gypsy” is about the impossibility of return. Note the narratorial change—first-person before, third-person after—that straddles the middle eight. That section cements this song’s place in the Canon by doing what all my favorite bridges do: escorting the listener from epiphany to release.

“Hungry Heart” | Bruce Springsteen
1980

Satisfaction doesn’t come easy—running fast to what you want only dispels it as mirage. Renounce the destination for the journey and you’re in Springsteen’s domain, thundering from one illusion to the shimmering next with the top down on the open road. Never weigh one’s liberation against your loss. We all have a heart to feed.

“Me at the Museum, You in the Wintergardens” | Tiny Ruins
2014

Great chord progressions unfold like conversations, which are themselves love affairs in microcosm. This one, with its first descending half-step, mirrors the rush of being in love and the waning warmth when it’s away. It seems to disintegrate even as I listen—my favorite, crumbling love song.

“Love” | Mica Levi
2013

Under the Skin is the story of an alien who comes to Earth to harvest skin before getting infected with painful emotions—love, affection, and concern. For its score, Mica Levi used resonant violas, synthesized strings, and microphones that interfere with one other to create a sound that churns and distends. “Love” is the abject trying to be beautiful, until the listener realizes that the abject has always been beautiful.

“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” | Cyndi Lauper
1983

This is glossy perfection that snaps like bubble gum, bounces like a trampoline. The entire 80s came together in time for Cyndi’s version to loot it all. Like all my favorite dance music, it’s the happiest sad song, a liberating cry for the unfortunate ones, a clarion call to rip off the shoulder pads, to break up and break out and walk in the sun.

“Linger” | The Cranberries
1993

“Linger” is a lesson in balance: the drums roll on with a soldier’s fury, the strings take half the crying melody, but both are kept so far down in the mix that Dolores O’Riordan has room to make history. The lyrics are so heavy they could fall through the floor, but her voice lifts them up as if they were silk. Even the turn to the chorus—typically punctuated in 1993 by a Dave Grohl-style snare-and-stomp—sounds as gentle as the opening of the morning’s curtains. Songs this devastating don’t sound like the sunrise, but that lightness is the eternal magic of “Linger.”

“Crown of Love” | Arcade Fire
2004

The bravery it must have taken for these adults to plumb the depths of teen-diary sadness and pull out a marching dirge in 6/8 time. “Crown of Love” is a constant crescendo, from the funeral-parlor piano to those shivering violins. At ninety seconds in, Régine Chassagne enters like a specter behind Win Butler’s tragic hero. It’s melodrama of the highest order—my modus operandi—until finally the song catches the wind and lifts off, flies away, a heart unburdened at last.

“Marion’s Theme” | John Williams
1981

Everybody recognizes the John Williams triplet. Like his longtime partner Spielberg, he changed movies forever, which means he forever changed popular orchestral music as well. Williams’ suites are still played frequently from parks and bandshells in every state—but far from being played out like his other masterpieces, I always come back to “Marion’s Theme.” It has all of what followed with “Luke and Leia” or “Across the Stars,” only Marion was there before all the rest—and because I so rarely get to hear it, my heart always gets more than it bargained for.

“True Love Will Find You in the End” | Daniel Johnston
1990

There’s that quote from scientist Stephen Jay Gould that I’ve recently seen going around: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Stripped of pretense and the pressures of capital, outsider art is described as “pure,” but rarely is it as pure as Daniel Johnston. The immense simplicity of this perfect poem is present in our unsolicited feelings of love—Johnston, for all his struggles, saw this light and chiseled down to it. Amateur, sure, but wonderful proof that all of us are artists, all expression is worthy, and the shame surrounding what we really feel is the only thing holding us back from beauty.

“Soul Bossa Nova” | Quincy Jones
1962

I am not joking. Take the day and drive around with this song on repeat, full blast. Look at how the trees are dancing. Why is everybody smiling? Do I know that guy? Is that why he’s pointing at me? What the fuck is laughing at the start of this song? Is it possible to finally understand the word “mojo”? Is it true the greatest warriors were also the most relaxed? Why am I so dizzy?

“Human Fly” | The Cramps
1978

The Cramps invented psychobilly with their very first single—they were lightyears ahead of their time, even for the trailblazing CBGB crowd, fusing lost-highway cowboy sounds with horror movie aesthetics and saving my life in the process. Eight years before Cronenberg visually crystallized the feeling of body dysphoria, The Cramps were buzzing for the sake of the rejects.

“Dancing Queen” | ABBA
1976

This song is so fucking tense. Its structure is confounding. Listen—it starts with that demented piano slide, like you just swung open the doors to the Devil’s own saloon, before launching itself directly to the chorus and throwing itself off Hell’s highest peak. Then, it sinks back to what should presumably be a more relaxed verse—only it doesn’t relax. This baby never lets up. Warped piano chords stay the same volume, the drums don’t change at all, and at the end of every phrase you have violins going nuts. It stresses me out. Segment after segment, the floor falls out from under me, only to reveal a room of greater hooks. It’s like riding the Tower of Terror standing up. It’s sinister. I can’t listen to it on a plane. It makes me want to scream.

“Because” | The Beatles
1969

Speaking of sinister—this is the closest The Beatles got to Dracula’s castle. It sounds like a summoning. Lennon said he was reversing the chord progression to “Moonlight Sonata,” but that doesn’t quite match up when you look closely. There’s something more going on here from a musicologist’s perspective. The harpsichord itself is an instrument of absolute tension—with no way to adjust its dynamics, all phrases are sacrosanct, like some extra-dimensional herald. That’s not even touching on the well-tread tensions that were plaguing these guys by 1969. Yet everyone stuck around for this one. It took John, Paul, and George five hours to record their harmonies, and then each of them were tripled to make nine voices in total. When George comes in with the Moog at the bridge and John starts singing about the eternality of love, I can’t help it—it’s The Beatles, baby. I get it.

“He’s Got the Power” | The Exciters
1963

The heart has its hands on the wheel, whether we want it to or not. This is a stark and scary depiction of dependence, a cut-to-the-bone ditty about the nasty nature of love. While Brenda Reid certainly sounds like she’s singing of abuse, she also avoids the temptation to be obvious—this could also be about being hijacked by devotion, the submission that bubbles even in healthy love. Still, Reid’s delivery is frightening. She’s frantic and fraying at the power her partner wields. It’s a perfect song to speak to why we play with fire.

“Cherry-coloured Funk” | Cocteau Twins
1990

The tension of this beauty lies in Elizabeth Frazer’s nonsense lyrics—she makes it sound like she’s casting a spell. The melody is so enticing that all I want to do is sing, but I’m forced to test my subconscious and make up lyrics as I go. It’s different every time, but I think I’ve found it, at least on that beautiful bridge: “And should I be hugged and tugged down through this tiger’s moss? / And should I be stung and unbroken by nothing?”

“Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't’ve)” | Buzzcocks
1978

Pete Shelley and the Buzzcocks broke from punk tradition with a melody: going B major to D major at the back-half of the chorus cements this genre-less, not quite pop-punk but far from atonal. With its universal message and Shelley’s sneering voice, it’s a showstopper for sure, and starting on the relative minor (C#) to its E major key gives it the perfect tension to match its rueful lyrics.

“Buggin’ Out” | A Tribe Called Quest
1991

Tribe gets closer to the heat of summer streets than Do The Right Thing did, in my estimation. “Buggin’ Out” sounds like headache that begins just behind the eye, yet the effortless delivery from Q and Phife keeps it under control—this is no hangover that can’t be conquered. Like a snake, it’s laid back but ready to strike thanks to Q’s expert sampling fusion of “Spinning Wheel” by Lonnie Smith and “Minya’s the Mooch” by Jack DeJohnette’s Directions. It makes my mind run in all sorts of directions.

“Idioteque” | Radiohead
2000

My friend Gabe pointed out the secret genius here: that modular synthesizer loop, which pulses like coals in a pitch-black winter, climbs its crooked ladder—but at four measures, where the phrase would normally repeat, Jonny Greenwood holds for a fifth. This is what gives it that lopsided suspension, out of balance and precarious. Paired with that cavernous, icy drum machine, “Idioteque” is still sharp enough to snap a bone. It remains, for us, a favorite dance track, though impossible to put on unless it’s late and everyone’s moved from the dance floor to the kitchen—but if you ever get the chance, it’ll purge you of your inner frictions.

“Marquee Moon” | Television
1977

This is the 10-minute song that I can only assume Taylor used as inspiration for the new “All Too Well.” It’s one of those that feels like it’s always been—we recognize it even if we cannot name it, which is weird because it’s so singular. Tom Verlaine proves that punks knew how to shred too, and those fluttering guitars even mirror the “Soul Bossa Nova” flutes. The solo is endless in its soaring climb, sounding so close to the lift-off that I still think of outer space—I remember laying out on a college love’s roof and looking at the stars, sharing ear buds on a iPod Classic. It’s a big deal, baby. It totally rips.

“American Girl” | Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
1976

There’s a thirty-second chunk in The Silence of the Lambs when, in the midst of all the horror, the camera gives a woman time to sing “American Girl.” She’s driving alone down a dark road; she interrupts herself to sing backup on the chorus. The scene portrays, in one tiny gesture, this song’s innate empathy—all those moments on lonely nights, with waves of strangers passing by, “when something that’s so close / is still so far out of reach.”

“Hustle Rose” | Metric
2003

Ten years ago, almost to the day, I was driving west through Iowa in the dead of winter. I was meeting a girl on Christmas break. It’s the first time I heard "Hustle Rose,” and I almost skipped it—the wallet part was too weird, just a bit too long. If I’d acted on my impulse, I’d have missed the perfect second half. It takes patience to experience payoff, and there’s no reward like this rhythm section. It remains one of the greatest night-driving songs of all time.

“Roxanne” | The Police
1978

What a weird, slinky little song—it’s a cliché, but nothing so famous sounds quite like it. There’s that bewildering flub in the first few seconds, Sting’s laughter that cuts through after he fell on the piano. Then those pestering guitar spikes, the stutter of the pausing drums. All of a sudden, it all makes sense—we’ve turned the corner to the chorus, and the backing vocals fill out the song like stars that frame a mountain range. It’s the song’s beguiling hook—the part I end up singing, at least.

“In Between Days” | The Cure
1985

When spring comes and the weather warms, this is the song I play—for a Pisces, the first line fits so well: “Yesterday, I got so old / I felt like I could die.” (Another part of being a Pisces is my dedication to The Cure). “In Between Days” was the turning point on their path from goth to pop, sneaking morsels of gloom to the general public.

“Nothing Compares 2 U” | Prince
1984

It’s not always tempo that drives a song. Sometimes it’s simple momentum and weight—and the mixing on the guitar here is as deep as a trench. There are so many Prince songs to choose from, but what pushes this to the top for me (and what edges out Sinnead’s version ever so slightly) is the saxophone that comes at the end, cracking the song right open. It fries the air like a naked power line. The lyrics also carry the best of his mordant humor—it’s still so funny when he starts to list all his post-breakup activities: “Since you’ve been gone, I can do whatever I want. / I can see whomever I choose. / I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant.” It’s the freedoms we cling to when we’re left behind.

“Last Caress” | The Misfits
1978

All you need to write a perfect song are three chords and a hook. It’s the patented Misfits Method: belt a 50s ice-cream hook over a wall of buzzsaw guitars and the result is irresistible. It’s not precise, but it’s pure energy and still shocking after all these years.

“Enjoy the Silence” | Depeche Mode
1990

Midnight music of the highest order, this is a drive across state lines with a trunk full of every tool Depeche Mode had at their disposal—a house-inspired backbeat, guitars that shoot blacklight lasers, gasps of synthesized choirs, and trumpets, and bells. On its own, every piece would be corny, but Dave Gahan’s voice sews it all together to make a technicolor nightmare coat.

“Take Me Home, Country Roads” | John Denver
1971

It’s the catchiest melody of all time—you know it even if you don’t know it. The quiver in Denver’s voice and the echo of his track makes it sound like his voice is rolling down from the hills. The harmonies in the chorus are so dense that you can pick up any line you choose, like carving a new path through ancient Appalachia. But above all, it’s the sentiment that sticks, creeping in the older I get: the feeling that I should have been home yesterday.

“Bulletproof” | La Roux
2009

It’s easy to forget this song until you hear it again—the millennial paragon of the one-hit wonder. It’s also one of the best songs of the 21st century. How do we love when we know how bad it hurts? Don the armor, take the shot; dance in front of the firing squad.

“Game of Pricks” | Guided by Voices
1995

This is an anthem recorded like a lullaby—minus the beer, this whole record cost probably ten dollars to make. It’s lo-fi gold from the McCartney of Ohio, and catch me in the right mood and I’ll point to it as the best song ever written. The lyrics, though cryptic, hold the very definition of drive: that no one is strong enough to withstand time. The best we can hope is to always be free.

“It Was Always You, Helen” | Philip Glass
1992

Part the horror of the original Candyman comes from the danger lurking behind intense beauty, whether it’s Tony Todd’s resounding purr or Philip Glass’s bewitching score. Guilty desire strikes the match, and poor Helen is helpless as she scales the pyre. This song is playing as she climbs. Chicago looms over empty lots. A choir casts light on the ramshackle truth that lies where no one’s looking.

“The Ecstasy of Gold” | Ennio Morricone
1966

Ecstasy—that’s one way to put it. I would call it havoc. Intensity builds until it bursts, dusting the next day with fallout. Paranoia, chaos, glory, hope—all are dashing full-tilt towards the prize. Here is Morricone’s masterpiece. No resting easy once gold’s been struck. Find the treasure and you’ll be forced to run.

“First Sleep” | Cliff Martinez
2002

People visit as we sleep. Who will I see in my dreams tonight? The beautiful beings who left me? My old friends come to say goodbye? Solaris is a film about such visitors, the hauntings that come from our beating hearts. Cliff Martinez evokes this repetitive, transient state using steel drums, ringing wine glasses, and swirling xylophones. His has become perhaps my favorite score—it’s what I write to every day.

“The Carnival of the Animals: XIII. The Swan” | Camille Saint-Saëns
1886

Perfection belies true loneliness—it’s the swan who often swims alone. No one touches what’s on the pedestal. Too brilliant, too cold, too easy to break. The cello washes over these trickling pianos as love does the swans who hold each other. Perhaps it’s why they mate for life.

“Nocturne No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2” | Frédéric Chopin
1832

The 12/8 meter of Chopin’s second nocturne makes it drowsy as a midnight waltz. It’s languid like the way moths fly, heavy as the cricket’s chirp, drifting like electric light between the clouds and snow. The most famous, sure, of Chopin’s lullabies, but I also find it filled with ruins.

“Laura Palmer’s Theme” | Angelo Badalamenti
1990

Badalamenti composed “Laura Palmer’s Theme” in a way that makes mountains out of melody, but Twin Peaks always underlined the power of valleys. It begged us to notice the in-between. It matters not who killed Laura Palmer—real life is a simple rhythm. It’s circadian, seasonal, a dance of loss and love. One mountain climbed, one slow descent. Between crescendos? The churning sea.

“Suite Bergamasque: III. Clair de Lune” | Claude Debussy
1905

La Lune is our cosmic spawn, born from us through violent impact and now our closest companion. We get to see her every night and still her power never wanes. Her influence is silent, her light sad and beautiful, so soft it does not wake the birds. Notice the glow of skin beneath it. See how truth is often revealed. “Clair de Lune,” our paean to her, hooks just behind the navel and pulls us up.

“Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18: II. Adagio Sostenuto” | Sergei Rachmaninoff
1901

Rachmaninoff wrote a concerto so romantic it sounds like falling sick with pleasure. Fever ripples up our backs if something hits a certain depth. Emotional sensations cause physical reactions. Anticipation, violation, resolution—for what else was the symphony built? It’s here that we create a climax. A song of mating, like the birds.

“Auld Lang Syne” | Guy Lombardo
1929

Perhaps my favorite ever written, “Auld Lang Syne” remains a song so filled with sadness it stops time. At the depths of pain, our memory is a curse. Yet all who forget are living less. Even morsels of happiness are paid with melancholy— but just as memory makes new loves longer, a sad song makes the next year brighter.

“The Sinking of the Titanic” | Gavin Bryars
1975

This was thought to be the hymn that the doomed band played on the sinking Titanic—the part of the film that makes me cry most. Bryars applauded their dedication by recreating how it might have sounded to hear their song beneath the waves. Listen long enough and you can hear it happen. You can almost hear the lurching metal as the ship scrapes its way to the ocean’s floor. A reverse birth, and the band plays on. It always will.

“Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)” | UGK, feat. Outkast
2007

Like The Avengers of Southern hip hop, “Int’l Players Anthem” plays to the strengths of every one of its virtuosic collaborators—the playful escalation of Andre’s “keep your heart” verse, the punch of that anchor-dropping bass and Pimp C’s signature sneer, all on top of DJ Paul and Juicy J’s bright and bubbly Willie Hutch loop that doesn’t seem to have a beginning or an end. It’s a warm cruise-culture classic: the top is down, the pools are full, the players are in love.

“Let’s Get It On” | Marvin Gaye
1973

“Let’s Get It On” is a lesson in perfect orchestration, a taut and treacherous balancing act whose lyrics, in lesser hands, would put you in jail. In Marvin’s, with the strain in his throat and his schoolyard earnestness, they’re the poetry of liberation, especially with the knowledge of his repressed, religious background. A minute in, when we first hear the saxophone after “I love you,” Gaye gives a vulnerable delivery of the song’s best hook: “There’s nothing wrong / with me / loving you.” You can tell he’s convincing himself more than anyone that the feelings we’re given are not shackles, but gifts.

“Age of Consent” | New Order
1983

This is New Order’s reprise to “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” from the synthesized strings that make up hook to the drum line that was lifted from an alternate take of Hannett’s original for Joy Division. Bernard Sumner’s rendition of the emotion at hand has him hitting the ceiling of his upper register, making “Age of Consent” the most overlooked of emo’s early songs.

“I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” | Daryl Hall & John Oates
1981

At the end of a recording session for Private Eyes, Daryl Hall was messing around with a preset on the Roland CompuRhythm. He liked what he heard, made a bassline, and called out for Oates, who quickly worked out that slinky guitar line. A minimalist classic was born in a few hours. This is leather jacket midnight music—until the pre-chorus opens up with that hook and those doo-wop backing vocals. The sunglasses come off with a twirl and a perfectly synced toothpaste-commercial smile.

“Groove is in the Heart” | Deee-Lite
1990

On the other hand, there’s the maximalism of “Groove is in the Heart,” a funky 90s collage of a song that sounds like a child slamming their hands on the most expensive sampling equipment in the country. It’s house, it’s salsa, it’s disco. There’s a slide whistle, there’s Q-Tip. I once heard this playing from a front lawn in Home Park at summer’s balmy midnight—I was walking like a duck for the rest of the week.

“Heart of Glass” | Blondie
1978

Debbie Harry was in her late-thirties by the time “Heart of Glass” hit #1. She’d already been a secretary, a Playboy Bunny, a high school dropout, a go-go dancer. She named the band after a catcall she used to get from truckers after she’d dyed her hair. She’s always been untouchable, writes songs like they’re mirages—prismatic, hypnotic, 360-degree camera spins in the middle of the dance floor. One of the women who rocks the most.

“American Boy” | Estelle, feat. Kanye West
2008

This song came at the perfect point in history, an antidote to the 00s belchy pop. Finally, a tune that wasn’t touched by Max Martin. Estelle sounds sexy in a way that’s truly fun—not mysterious, not fake-bubbly, but fun, they way the desirable say everything with a smile, with a voice that sounds eternally approachable. The guitars shimmer like an Italian vacation until they blow the fuck out into a buzzing chorus. This song reminded me what real fun sounds like—Kanye certainly sounds like he’s having it for once.

“Xanadu” | Electric Light Orchestra, feat. Olivia Newton John
1980

Jeff Lynne of ELO—one of our best Jeffs—calls this his favorite song he’s ever written. It made me reconsider what was once a curio. It has the wonderful pop-galactic instrumentation that he’s best at: those space-age phasers, the dramatic cello flourishes, the glimmer and flash of oscillating keyboards. Xanadu has a successor now—Annette owes a debt to this crazy flop by taking some of pop’s biggest weirdos and signing them up to score a fantasia too weird to be truly bad.

“Juicy” | The Notorious B.I.G.
1994

The way each instrument Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit” is isolated and introduced at the perfect time here is a masterclass in sampling. It metes out what we need like a four-course meal. Biggie never had to go too hard—he lays back on his throne, just behind the beat. His lyrics are both inventive and emotional, perfect short stories, an imagist poet doing rhythmic acrobatics and making it look easy.

“Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik” | Outkast
1994

If G-funk had the Pacific breeze reflected in its samples and synths, Outkast evoked the beauty of the heat, baking hotter and hotter as the track plays out. It’s a humid sound, like the mirage that shimmers above cement at 3 p.m. Nothing to see here, just an all-time dynamic duo—a dreamer and a realist—bringing an entire region to the musical forefront and pioneering popular hip hop for the 30 years to come.

“Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” | Spiritualized
1997

Before we knew space for the vacuum it is, we once looked up and pictured heavens. Choirs sang somewhere above the sky. This masterpiece is now the closest we get, with its gospel finale of "Can't Help Falling in Love." Many songs are beautiful, but few are this much so.

“1979” | The Smashing Pumpkins
1995

The grass makes a special sound when it waves at passing cars. I learned this from sitting on my Iowa lawn. The swish is like skin brushing another’s skin, always louder for those speeding hearts—teenagers in a pickup’s bed, third-shifters making their ways back to love. This was all a prairie once, before bricks were baked by human hands—each a sculpture all its own.

“Hard Times (No One Knows Better Than I)” | Ray Charles
1961

Bad things happen, and they happen a lot. Charles’s knowledge of that truth is what keeps this sounding so desperately modern. Even Sam Cooke on “A Change is Gonna Come” can’t reach what Ray is plumbing here—it’s maybe the weariest voice of all.

“Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” | The Smiths
1984

If you’re feeling a bout of acute self-pity, put this on and take a shower. You should release your soul of blame—too stiff an upper lip will give you lockjaw. The song works because it’s not as heavy as it feels to hang your head. It’s simple as the core of circumstance and gentle as the rain.

“Master of None” | Beach House
2006

Haunted house music is hard to make. It’s easy to lean too far into scary, to forget that houses spend most time in the sun. It’s about building a structure for feelings, and that’s exactly what the organs do here. It’s the ineffable that makes good music so good—the spirit of a staircase or stained-glass window.

“I'd Rather Go Blind” | Etta James
1967

Love is the brighter end of addiction, but they’re born from the same emotional beast. We need to replace unfulfilled desire with something else that will quench us. Never has there been a starker picture of that jealousy than this. 

“Inchworm” | Danny Kaye
1952

This proto-Schoolhouse Rock ballad from a bizarre film called Hans Christian Andersen is my go-to anthem for resilience. It’s a lush bit of Disneycore that I first heard from a DJ stint that David Bowie did for BBC in 1979. It’s less about arithmetic and more about will—the drive we need to get through a day, the strength to get inch-by-inch through muck.

“Ooh La La” | Faces
1973

Spend enough time stitching your heart back together and you have to laugh at the shape it takes. That’s the tone that Rod Stewart strikes in this musical version of “so it goes.” Save it for those brighter days, when that boogeyman Regret looks like nothing but nonsense.

“Song to the Siren” | This Mortal Coil
1984

In this version covering Tim Buckley’s original, Elizabeth Fraser sounds like the voice of God. It’s quintessential ethereal goth—no surprise that it’s David Lynch’s favorite. One of music’s strongest metaphors and one of the greatest pop poems to boot, it’s simple enough to glean at first reading but deep enough to plumb for years. It’s gotten me through my darkest times.

“Flightless Bird, American Mouth” | Iron & Wine
2007

Not even Twilight can sandbag this song—in fact, its legacy is bolstered from it. Guarantee it'll still make anyone cry.

“I Put a Spell On You” | Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
1956

That cackle, that gargling, that sputtering, spitting freak-out. The whole band was drunk when they recorded this, and Jay Hawkins had to listen to the recording to remember it. Whether or not that was their secret, the result is this demonic burlesque. It’s contemporary beyond belief, one of the most delightfully macabre recordings in existence—oh, that inimitable cackle!

“Part of Your World” | Jodi Benson, Howard Ashman, & Alan Menken
1989

In musical theater parlance, the “I Want” song is the number in the first act that explains a character’s desire. This, I think, is the “I Want” song in purest form. Howard Ashman’s lyrics don’t adhere to conventional song structure, but instead unspool like a film reel, the brain’s projection on a sea-cave wall. One of two jokes that will always be funny—along with the big suit from Stop Making Sense—is when Ariel can’t remember which word to use. I’m laughing with her, of course, and not at her, and Benson’s performance is so light and graceful as to be a model for every honest mistake.

“Sound and Vision” | David Bowie
1977

As audio fidelity goes, this might be the best achievement in recording history. The crash cymbal—or the hiss that takes its place—sounds more like a steam valve’s release, or the sizzle that coffee makes splashing the hot plate. It’s all in the zone-out, the sensory withdrawal, those afternoons where bliss becomes a prison. It’s Bowie as drugged-out Muppet master, years before he stepped foot in Labyrinth.

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” | U2
1987

Some weirdos are simply compelling, undeniable—and Bono is the Tom Cruise of music. He and The Edge pay their debts to gospel without the hack inclusion of the gospel choir. Instead, it’s an Irishman’s view of our vast America: it’s rolling through the foothills of Pennsylvania, or stretching your legs in Monument Valley. It reached #1 without conceding to trends, sounding like nothing but U2 could—yearning, corny, unmoored from time.

“White Ferrari” | Frank Ocean
2016

The mystery of Frank is neither trivial nor P.R. His lived philosophy is stated outright: “bad luck to talk.” Thank God he never tweets himself into trouble. His silence gives us room to bask in his choices—sporadic bursts of static, backbeat beneath the guitar track, collage of perfect voices, “taller in another dimension.” “White Ferrari,” carry me home.

“No Children” | The Mountain Goats
2002

John Darnielle is a troubadour, and The Mountain Goats catalog is littered with flash fiction—but no story hits home like their ode to dysfunction. Repression leaves us lashing out, like trying to keep a beach ball beneath the waves. Singing a refrain as bravely shameful as the one in “No Children” is instead an exercise in true catharsis.

“Sea of Love” | Cat Power
2000

Sure, there’s the Juno of it all, but also the dozens of panic attacks this song has walked me back from. Cat Power’s gave us a perfect cover song: her expansive, intimate vocal performance, the mandolin, those simple strums. It’s about wanting to say something for which there are no words—the minute they tumble from your lips, they lie terrible in their plainness.

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” | Bonnie Tyler
1983

Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler reached out to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” songwriter Jim Steinman after hearing what he wrote for Meat Loaf on Bat Out of Hell. Steinman rules because he wrote rock hits that, on their face, were antithetical to rock music. This one even hit #1. It’s a testament to a collective truth—we’ll always need new songs to scream. This one screams for seven minutes.

“The Only Thing” | Sufjan Stevens
2015

Rarely does art so bravely face that “one truly serious philosophical question.” We picture afterlife as pure beauty, but truly it’s beyond our purview. We know no true beauty except that of this earth. All that we need is under the sun, from sea-lion caves to our blanket of stars.

“New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” | LCD Soundsystem
2007

Of postmodern ennui, this song is the essence—alpha, omega, big rock ending.

“Inside Out” | Spoon
2014

It’s true, I’ve written about this before. I said:

"Inside Out" has gravity. That drum groove is so tight—88 BPM, a heartbeat running just a little fast, the surefooted stomp of a walk with purpose. The band is so in the pocket they're almost indifferent; the drama all comes in the fraying of Britt Daniel's voice. Those fluttering harps sound like passing comets, and soon you remember that time is affected by gravity as well, and your heart is orbiting something too.

Yeesh—well, back then it was only #44, but today I find supreme comfort in its rhythm. It soothes me on my long commutes. I put it on almost every day and it always works the same—like timing the tick of some divine clock and hiding in its wake.

“Lost in the Supermarket” | The Clash
1979

This was one of maybe four songs I would take my headphones out for when I was stock boy at Forever 21. The way those phrases fall off the guitars makes me think of rain. For as virtuosic and varied as London Calling is, this is the closest the album gets to a slow song. Commercial rot was all-consuming even back then, decades before those garish aisles were baked into every screen.

“This Magic Moment” | The Drifters
1960

There are plenty of perfect soul and doo-wop songs to pick from for the list, but my soft spot for this one comes from its witchy sensibility. Enchantment was all over those 60s pop songs, when songwriters streamlined the power of melody and used it to conquer the world, but never so explicitly as “This Magic Moment.” Love is often compared to a spell, but the subtext-is-text of those shivering strings and the wide-eyed charm in Ben E. King’s voice place this firmly in my Halloween canon. Even the Misfits gave it a cover.

“Sometimes” | My Bloody Valentine
1991

The unique sound of Loveless conjures new images, invents a new way to measure dynamics. A sea of static, a comforting hum. I once said, “in headphones, it swirls like the arms of another galaxy, its pulsars beaming through clouds of space dust.” It’s the soundtrack to a forehead pressed to the window’s glass.

“The Killing Moon” | Echo & the Bunnymen
1984

In 2012, I got a job at an Iowa City Spirit Halloween that was run by two party bros who drove in from Fresno. My first week, while I was hanging foam hatchets and building animatronic cockroaches, all Gabe and Jameson would play was Hall & Oates and Prince. Could be worse, to be honest, but when it came time to open, Gabe got nervous and wanted me to make a Halloween playlist. The first thing I thought of was “The Killing Moon,” a gothic anthem full of dark poetry, brush-stroke drumming, and mesmeric guitar. That autumn, I heard it thousands of times over the speakers, walking amidst the dust and dolls—and I’ll hear it every Halloween to come. I’ve often called it my favorite song. I’ll love it every time.

“Love Will Never Do (Without You)” | Janet Jackson
1989

Huge soft spot for this one, an instrumental marvel. It’s swooning, but it’s never twee; exuberant, but not without hints of the void. It low-key goes hard—I love the thunder of that kick drum. And those horn stabs that come in? Herb Alpert, also on the Canon. It was originally written to be a duet, which is why Janet sings the first verse in lower register (she’s playacting as her missing partner). All that lays the groundwork for my favorite part—when she jumps up an octave in the second verse, which mirrors the rush of falling in love.

“Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)” | Stevie Wonder
1970

It’s all right there on the album’s cover—Stevie Wonder popping out of a man-sized box, pointing a finger at something off-screen. Where did they get that box that size? Nobody ever comes out of my mail. That’s what’s so special—this song is an occurrence. It ought to be turned the hell up. I’m always shocked it’s not a wedding staple. Someone mail the DJ a Stevie!

“This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” | Talking Heads
1983

Want an impossible writing prompt? Give me a love song without clichés. Yet somehow, in 1983, the Talking Heads did it. Byrne’s voice oscillates between gentle and palpitating, thrillingly liminal, like the time we spend in love. I once danced to it at 3 a.m., in a stranger’s rental living room, with red velvet curtains and burn marks in the coffee table. The room was full of dancing partners singing into each other’s mouths—even when you’re sick of all that, this thing still works.

“Mr. Tambourine Man” | Bob Dylan
1965

When my cohost Ben gave me this challenge, “Mr. Tambourine Man” was the first song that came to mind. It was always at the top of my working playlist. It’s the epigraph to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and there’s a reason Thompson called back to it. It’s a lullaby for the speedsters and insomniacs, for everyone forced to sleep with eyes open, those poor, unfortunate byproducts of the Culture of Grind. Make fun of Dylan’s rambling all you want—and Walk Hard does so perfectly—but play “Mr. Tambourine Man” after a long day of living and you could light a campfire without a match.

“Watermelon in Easter Hay” | Frank Zappa
1979

Any thing can speak: waterfalls, clocks, microchips, grass. Music has no inherent meaning, just like anything else—it contains only what we can bring to it. That’s key to the concept of instrumentation. Some A.I. program already, I’m sure, is able to play something as beautiful as “Watermelon in Easter Hay,” but it’s only the knowledge that there are fingers on that fretboard and a thumb on the back of that guitar’s neck that gives us the ability to pull music out of sounds. Yes, sounds are beautiful, but there’s no meaning without humanity. Banding together is how we’ve survived. Music is the path to a lattice of empathy. The meaning behind nine minutes of guitar solo is whatever you think during the time you spend listening. These thoughts are the most—the best—of who we are.

When I released the first issue of the Canon last November, I was in sitting alone in a hostel in Ireland. I’m a different man now, in many ways regressed—sometimes, this whole thing feels like a bad idea. It has consumed me as a person, in many ways: I often hear a song and find myself blurting out, “This is in the 100!” or “This almost made the list.” The silence or the awkward acknowledgement from those around me can be, in a word, embarrassing. But nothing can stop me from hearing my songs almost everywhere I go—and the songs themselves are my favorite thing in the world.

Strangely, very few made their way onto the list late. The final delays were mainly me agonizing over how much I trust myself, second guessing things I always knew would be there. I tried my best, and I knew it was folly. Intuition is our greatest benefactor and our greatest betrayer. It needs tuning, like an instrument, and constant calibration. But follow it without malice and there is no sin. But a life, which is little more than a collection of moments, is no life without the things you love—so why not gather them all in one place?

I’ll likely redo this list in the future. For now, I’m glad I have something to listen to. It’s the fun of being alive.