The Earwyrms Canon, Pt. IX: Histrionics

The Earwyrms Canon
Written By Jeff Lehman

ISSUE #205

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 ten issues. It will be a compass for navigating my sonic perspective. An Official Earwyrms Canon.

Music is melodrama. Pageantry, spectacle, vulgar vulnerability—the arrogant may sneer, but pain is universal, and songs are unique in their ability to immerse. The form allows us to wear the feelings of one another.

Histrionics are oft derided, and the word is used pejoratively, but I’ve always found my nest of identity in theatrical displays of emotion. It’s exorcism. It’s karaoke. It’s one of my favorite musical modes.

So, put on that feather boa and strike up the band—it’s the penultimate dispatch of the Canon.

“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.

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