The Earwyrms Canon, Pt. VIII: Bluets

The Earwyrms Canon
Written By Jeff Lehman

ISSUE #193

I’m 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.

When wrapped in true despair, there’s no energy for music. All our attention is stolen away. Silent are the bleakest moments—there are no birds on the darkest days.

But song ensures bad is never its worst. We sing to bring joy to shipless oceans. This batch of Canon songs carry that knowledge—flames of understanding for those thinnest wicks of heart.

“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.

Next week—more to come.

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