The Earwyrms Canon, Pt. V: Drive
ISSUE #182
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 few weeks. It will be a compass for navigating my sonic perspective. An Official Earwyrms Canon.
Time is not a sensation. Other forces we feel in some part of the body, but time we note through routine observation—we see by leaving and returning. To actually feel it, we must mark it first. We blot it with patterns, breadcrumbs on the trail.
Time doesn’t register as a sensation until we notice the rhythms that power us, like our heartbeats or the steps we take. When we speak of desire, we speak of this movement—the rhythms within us that drive us to freedom. Every atom is a metronome; the world is a spinning clock.
These are songs that represent this kind of drive: the wrangling of time, the freedom of the future. Through tempo, these songs can change our heartbeat, grant us the energy to hit the road. It’s the inherent power of keeping time—it’s fuel for the engine of hope.
“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.
Next week—more to come.
Technically, halfway through the year is next Monday, July 1st. This is a leap year, after all. They’re the only years where there’s an even split in days; the only times the divide falls at midnight, not noon.