The Earwyrms Canon, Pt. IV: Tension

ISSUE #181

I’m ending the year by tackling the impossible: the 100 best songs ever recorded. Not ranked from #100 to #1, but instead given their own meaningful sequence, a personal structure to reveal itself over the next six weeks. It will be a compass for navigating my sonic perspective. An Official Earwyrms Canon.

Last week, I talked about music as a manipulator, an art form adept at drawing forth emotion. But there’s another side to this manipulation: tension and the suppression of release. Coming inches from what you want, only to find you’re not going to get it—that is power in its purest form.

The ear begs for resolution. It always wants home—to go back to the tonic, the chord that represents the key of the song. Most of listening feels like waiting for this resolution. When it finally comes, be it the end of a phrase or an entire movement, it feels fantastic. It’s enough to make us hit repeat.

As a body built on the stilts of anxiety, this tension is probably my favorite part of music. It can come in many forms—suspension, dissonance, dynamic increase; the climbing of pitch, the avoidance of resolution; the timbre or tone of a freaky instrument. If this sounds dirty, it’s because it is. Musical tension comes from withholding release. It’s basically sonic edging.

It’s this tension, the journey, that’s the closest to truth, and why these songs are here today. These are my tight and tense ten—the freaky, the scary, the all-around great.

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“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.

Next week—more to come.