Great stuff @Kyle
1956 FFS sake.
1 Like
Could a 17 minutes 05 seconds long song from Pink Floyd qualify as the greatest song ever? I have my doubts…
It’s up to you mate.
By the way Smokestack Lightin is a fantastic call. It could be argue that rock and roll and general pop music all descended from the blues of the time. Even the most alternative artists like Captain Beefheart copied Howlin Wolf’s voice.
Listening to it you can hear it coming from the soul. The blacks. Basically at the basis of everything good about music.
Blues more or less started as spiritual church / religious music by the poor slaves in antebellum south through to post civil war …it evolved into work songs in the field.
Lots of cultures have a history of work songs but the misery of slavery obviously is something completely different. How that evolved in the early 20th century and through the migration north to industrial cities is fascinating. A music born in pain evolved to have @Fagan_ODowd shaking his bits in the national stadium 35/40 years ago.
1 Like
Two from the 80’s
Talk Talk - Life’s what you make it
Prince - When Doves Cry
1 Like
Fantastic.
I like Simon and Garfunkel, they have a lot of great tunes, I would say the only living boy in New York is my favourite
1 Like
Most music… (and i say most as a lot of modern pop is about computers generating a no.1 hit) is a call to the divine. And i dont necessarily mean god when i say divine… It’s that other realm that we know exists but can’t see. It’s god for some, energy for others. It’s that life force that connects us all. Art and music are how we communicate this.
Obviously plenty of music is shallow and just about having a good time, which is fine too. But at it’s purest music speaks to the cosmos. - classical, folk, blues… like early cave paintings around the world - it’s trying to communicate something higher than just us.
There’s also a fair chance I’ve over-thought all this also.
My serious view is that to be a contender for the greatest song of all time, a song has to fulfil a few basic criteria.
- It has to be playable at a basic level by a punter with a guitar or a piano or whatever, or singable without accompaniment.
- It has to be a song, not a “track”. There’s a difference. I love Blue Monday by New Order but it’s a “track”, not a song. I love How Soon Is Now by The Smiths but it is not a “song”, it’s a track, it’s powered by production and the electronic processing of music.
- It has to enter the canon of popular culture to a level of ubiquity. Entering the popular culture canon to the level of ubiquity is no guarantee a song is any good, never mind great. But to be considered for greatest song of all time, it’s a prerequisite.
- Most importantly, you have to pretty much never tire of listening to it, as in if you accidentally heard it on the radio in a doctor’s waiting room it would perk you up. It has to be an objectively great song which stirs something in you, which you are always pleased to hear at any random future moment.
Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger fulfil all of this to a level no two songs have come close to doing since then and very few did before them.
1 Like
What?!!
He’s having a big party next week.
Was over with him last week.
My da saying none of my mother’s family invited as they took “few shillings off the young lad” when he was 15. Meaning me.
They’ll be invited to mine she says.
You may not live that long he says
There’ll be no speeches my ma says.
There has to be fucking speeches he says. You’ve no say.
It hasn’t arrived yet she says.
3 Likes
Try playing an acoustic version of How Soon Is Now and see how it sounds.
Marvin Gaye - I want you.
The harmonies vs the beat. The purity of his lyrics. It’s like 4 different genres held together by one of the most beautiful voices ever recorded.
So what you’re saying is that the song should be able to be played acoustically?
The greatest rock n roll vocal of all time. Merry Clayton miscarried as a result of the strain the middle of the night recording session took on her.
1 Like
If you’re talking about songs that are in the frame to be considered the greatest of all time yes they should hold up acoustically or with a rudimentary arrangement. That’s the difference between being driven by great songwriting and being driven by great production.
Simplicity wins. The greatest invention of all time was the wheel.
How Soon is Now musically was created by Johnny Marr on an electric guitar with a tremolo effect and a slide guitar overdub.
He can’t remember how he did the tremolo effect as he was stoned and hence hasn’t been able to completely replicate it.
It’s no trick of great production, it’s pretty standard. Indeed the likes of Don’t Look Back in Anger has many overdubs.
Lyrically How Soon is Now is poetic.
1 Like
Get back to me when How Soon Is Now becomes a standard for buskers and pub guitar players.
That’ll be around the same time Firestarter does.