Should be clear I didn't mean it as fraud
C doesn't have to think they are an expert on the subject to suggest some songs they personally think are great.
Greatest Songs Of All Time
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C doesn't have to think they are an expert on the subject to suggest some songs they personally think are great.
EgonSpengler
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A quick 10-song playlist of some of my all-time favorite "Chillin' on a Sunday Afternoon (or whenever)" songs:
"Cry Me a River" (1955) by Julie London
"Feeling Good" (1965) by Nina Simone
"Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" (1966) by Nancy Sinatra
"Walk on By" (1969) by Isaac Hayes
"Pink Moon" (1972) by Nick Drake
"Love and Happiness" (1972) by Al Green
"Marlene on the Wall (1985) by Suzanne Vega
"Glory Box" (1994) by Portishead
"Lebanese Blonde" (1999) by Thievery Corporation
"Destiny" (2001) by Zero 7
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"Cry Me a River" (1955) by Julie London
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I would participate in that thread.
These are all subjective opinions. You're not being graded on this.
Pop music is more about packaging the product, which can have incredible effect. This includes that song by Britney Spears, which of course was a mega hit. But the song, there, is contextualized by how Spears looked at the time; the video sells teenage apogee 
No one would want to look at Prokofiev's face.
Here's his face, btw. And his most famous composition.
No one would want to look at Prokofiev's face.
Here's his face, btw. And his most famous composition.
Well, since we're getting into instrumental music now, this piece, "Within Attraction", just blew me away when I first heard it. I'd turned on PBS to watch an astronomy documentary, not realizing it was a pledge weekend.
Instead of my documentary, this is what was on:
Mind. Absolutely. Blown. Even before the end of this, I knew I wanted more of Yanni's music.
The male violinist is Shardad Rohani, who was actually the conductor, in a violin duel with Karen Briggs (aka "the lady in red"). This whole piece is a playful duel between similar types of instruments - strings, keyboards, percussion, and every one of them absolutely nailed it.
I've talked before about how necessary it is for a performer to put some of their own genuine emotion into that performance. I never really appreciated piano music until I heard this:
Instead of my documentary, this is what was on:
Mind. Absolutely. Blown. Even before the end of this, I knew I wanted more of Yanni's music.
The male violinist is Shardad Rohani, who was actually the conductor, in a violin duel with Karen Briggs (aka "the lady in red"). This whole piece is a playful duel between similar types of instruments - strings, keyboards, percussion, and every one of them absolutely nailed it.
I've talked before about how necessary it is for a performer to put some of their own genuine emotion into that performance. I never really appreciated piano music until I heard this:
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
angst-rant.
greatest songs of all time implies some sort of impact or scope or vast cultural importance but the vast majority of musical purpose - not in the sense of commercial or practical or whatever - but its actual artistic point, is its use. which is often tiny, infinitesemal, localized, and not really particularly "great" as to how we conceptualize it. felt comforted by your mom singing you a lullaby when a kid? extremely important, if not moreso, as a practice, but it cannot really be argued as the "greatest song" because it doesn't align with that frame of thinking. it's not even a piece, it was a moment, others can't ever listen to it.
this very problem is kind of hinted at in the OP itself. since one always looks over the rolling stone listmaking and goes like... i'm not sure this is the greatest song. is it the best song? the song most people have as their favorite? the song most people hold as most important? the song that just factually can be measured as the most important?
thing is, none of this really matters to the point of music.
greatness implies great movements, great minds, great genius, great art, particularly something recorded or materially solid-state; as if other, more immediate and more used art, is lesser in spirit. however the point of music is to feel it, not to get Culture Points in Civ. a lot of these lists - and i do very so like listmaking - is so detached from what music actually is, and it's not incidental that this is from the rolling stone. because even stuff like "greatest songs" and even listing, often, a "varied" swathe of releases goes into this logic. it's so damn post-grammophone thinking, too.
sidenote on rolling stone: ever since white people overtook rock & roll (sorry about everything in that context) there's been this active attempt to uplift it to the "level" of classical and jazz. to make it great, work it forward, vindicate it. it was the whole point of progressive rock, and its aftermath of stadium rock. sheer size. it's great now, right?. the rolling stones (the band) themselves part of this expansion of concert size, crazy commercialization and vastness of industry that rock - and music - is so tied in today. it needs to be cultural movements and progress of art, if it's not grandiose and society-forwarding, it's vapid, right? but mind you; even the cultural movements needs to be pieces, not practices, so they can be sold.
and no, going back before the grammophone doesn't distance ourselves further from the material and artistic point of music, beethoven was not representative of the vast majority of stuff people listened to. the classicals were also explicitly commercial. it's absurd that people can look at petit-aristocracy and think it has everything to do with art, and nothing to do with money.
long rant, but point is that this kind of doesn't mesh with the way i think, but... music is something that's dear to my heart, something i've spent years practicing and studying, academically even, so i'm going to mention two pieces anyways because i can't goddamn help it. so i'll list two songs (or rather, pieces) that are materially large-sounding (this is a preference of mine for me to be able to classify it as "great"), arguably has some impact on the commercial musical landscape, has something real to say (whatever that means), and something i just really like.
-
well, if i were to choose, i'd just line up the Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion discography (there are some misses of course, most of it is The Greatest). the thing is... so these are sister bands, and the actual real world is kind of going to "end", at least as we know it, with the climate crisis.
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor's music is this apocryphal-biblical massive rock-orchestral soundscape, both grandiose as an amalgamation of the Western history of music exactly as the endpoint of all these "great" ways to play, kind of being an eulogy to the absurd situation we're in. mostly instrumental music, very loud-sounding. it's sublime sound incarnate (in the kantian sense; means feeling unfathomly large; many things are kantian-sublime)
- Silver Mt. Zion is more of a personal thing of one of GY!BEs guitarists, that started out with him just writing some songs in the vein of gybe, but eventually coalesced into some really interesting stuff with deliberate punk vocals and amateur choir. a good comparison i saw was that SMZ was basically riffing on the same worldview, but with the uses of chorals and drawing more from eurofolky traditions they kind of embody the people looking up at the burning sky, while GY!BE is the sky itself.
those are the "greatest" if we are to buy the logic i ranted about. because both are (actually, really) prominent in the music world, influential, respected, artsy, and there's nothing more grandiose than the coming apocalypse during fukuyama's providence of End of History. that's just how it is. they make the best apocalypse noise that's also bearable as a listen.
listing these two bands also means i get to hit both ends of the "great" spectrum, like, the one is a greatly grandiosely super duper alexandrous artiste instrumental piece; and the other is a good singer-songwriter thingy with some guitar dude and some choir. both sizes of great are covered!
i wonder which pieces though.
probably these.
godspeed you black emperor (the ending world)
silver mt zion (people watching the world end)
both are really album bands. the two important-esque godspeed albums are F# A# Infinity and Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas, To Heaven. the important-esque smz album is Horses In The Sky.
-
NARRATOR VOICE
"next on angst-rants: angst will just actually chill out and just post some of his favorite songs in a thread asking for it (none of these are his favorite song)"
greatest songs of all time implies some sort of impact or scope or vast cultural importance but the vast majority of musical purpose - not in the sense of commercial or practical or whatever - but its actual artistic point, is its use. which is often tiny, infinitesemal, localized, and not really particularly "great" as to how we conceptualize it. felt comforted by your mom singing you a lullaby when a kid? extremely important, if not moreso, as a practice, but it cannot really be argued as the "greatest song" because it doesn't align with that frame of thinking. it's not even a piece, it was a moment, others can't ever listen to it.
this very problem is kind of hinted at in the OP itself. since one always looks over the rolling stone listmaking and goes like... i'm not sure this is the greatest song. is it the best song? the song most people have as their favorite? the song most people hold as most important? the song that just factually can be measured as the most important?
thing is, none of this really matters to the point of music.
greatness implies great movements, great minds, great genius, great art, particularly something recorded or materially solid-state; as if other, more immediate and more used art, is lesser in spirit. however the point of music is to feel it, not to get Culture Points in Civ. a lot of these lists - and i do very so like listmaking - is so detached from what music actually is, and it's not incidental that this is from the rolling stone. because even stuff like "greatest songs" and even listing, often, a "varied" swathe of releases goes into this logic. it's so damn post-grammophone thinking, too.
sidenote on rolling stone: ever since white people overtook rock & roll (sorry about everything in that context) there's been this active attempt to uplift it to the "level" of classical and jazz. to make it great, work it forward, vindicate it. it was the whole point of progressive rock, and its aftermath of stadium rock. sheer size. it's great now, right?. the rolling stones (the band) themselves part of this expansion of concert size, crazy commercialization and vastness of industry that rock - and music - is so tied in today. it needs to be cultural movements and progress of art, if it's not grandiose and society-forwarding, it's vapid, right? but mind you; even the cultural movements needs to be pieces, not practices, so they can be sold.and no, going back before the grammophone doesn't distance ourselves further from the material and artistic point of music, beethoven was not representative of the vast majority of stuff people listened to. the classicals were also explicitly commercial. it's absurd that people can look at petit-aristocracy and think it has everything to do with art, and nothing to do with money.
long rant, but point is that this kind of doesn't mesh with the way i think, but... music is something that's dear to my heart, something i've spent years practicing and studying, academically even, so i'm going to mention two pieces anyways because i can't goddamn help it. so i'll list two songs (or rather, pieces) that are materially large-sounding (this is a preference of mine for me to be able to classify it as "great"), arguably has some impact on the commercial musical landscape, has something real to say (whatever that means), and something i just really like.
-
well, if i were to choose, i'd just line up the Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion discography (there are some misses of course, most of it is The Greatest). the thing is... so these are sister bands, and the actual real world is kind of going to "end", at least as we know it, with the climate crisis.
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor's music is this apocryphal-biblical massive rock-orchestral soundscape, both grandiose as an amalgamation of the Western history of music exactly as the endpoint of all these "great" ways to play, kind of being an eulogy to the absurd situation we're in. mostly instrumental music, very loud-sounding. it's sublime sound incarnate (in the kantian sense; means feeling unfathomly large; many things are kantian-sublime)
- Silver Mt. Zion is more of a personal thing of one of GY!BEs guitarists, that started out with him just writing some songs in the vein of gybe, but eventually coalesced into some really interesting stuff with deliberate punk vocals and amateur choir. a good comparison i saw was that SMZ was basically riffing on the same worldview, but with the uses of chorals and drawing more from eurofolky traditions they kind of embody the people looking up at the burning sky, while GY!BE is the sky itself.
those are the "greatest" if we are to buy the logic i ranted about. because both are (actually, really) prominent in the music world, influential, respected, artsy, and there's nothing more grandiose than the coming apocalypse during fukuyama's providence of End of History. that's just how it is. they make the best apocalypse noise that's also bearable as a listen.
listing these two bands also means i get to hit both ends of the "great" spectrum, like, the one is a greatly grandiosely super duper alexandrous artiste instrumental piece; and the other is a good singer-songwriter thingy with some guitar dude and some choir. both sizes of great are covered!
i wonder which pieces though.
probably these.
godspeed you black emperor (the ending world)
silver mt zion (people watching the world end)
both are really album bands. the two important-esque godspeed albums are F# A# Infinity and Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas, To Heaven. the important-esque smz album is Horses In The Sky.
-
NARRATOR VOICE
"next on angst-rants: angst will just actually chill out and just post some of his favorite songs in a thread asking for it (none of these are his favorite song)"
EgonSpengler
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There's a lot to be said for music just as an experience. I think there are a lot of people who aren't big fans of music, who nevertheless have had great experiences where music was a feature. A colleague was telling me just yesterday how much fun she had with her 12-yr-old daughter at Taylor Swift's 3-hour concert in the pouring rain with 70,000 people. I have to admit that the appeal of Swift's music kind of escapes me, but I do understand the fun of seeing her perform a memorable concert with a good crowd. For me, as a music fan, "best concerts" is a completely different thing from best bands, best songs or best albums, but I'm not sure my work-friend and her daughter care to make that distinction. I don't know if my work-friend could even name a single Taylor Swift song, and if I asked her to rate her against The Andrews Sisters, The Supremes, and Madonna, I think she might look at me like I had two heads (and I suppose her daughter wouldn't even know who any of those people were).
My favorite concert might've been Poison Idea in a basement club with a couple-hundred people, but I don't know if I'd cite P.I. in a list of songs or albums, unless we were just talking about punk.
My favorite concert might've been Poison Idea in a basement club with a couple-hundred people, but I don't know if I'd cite P.I. in a list of songs or albums, unless we were just talking about punk.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
This might fascinate you.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
thanks! and i don't mind your taste!, but bolded...@Angst
Like Antennas to Heaven: the first minute was simply wonderful. The next six were not even music, so I stopped listening.
Horses in the Sky: Ho hum
Your commentary: worth reading.
you sure you wanna go down that road with me?
<3
EgonSpengler
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I was thinking about "East Hastings" in my earlier post, when I had to force myself to stop.
Hm. I've only read the abstract. I'll have to think about whether I agree.
"The essence of music lies not in musical works but in taking part in performance, in social action. Music is thus not so much a noun as a verb, ‘to music’. To music is to take part in any capacity in a musical performance, and the meaning of musicking lies in the relationships that are established between the participants by the performance."
If listening to a recording of a song would fall under 'taking part in performance', then maybe. The joy I get from music is not primarily from the live performances, which, despite how many concerts I've seen, still represent a tiny percentage of my overall consumption of music. I suppose the 'relationship established between the participants' could also include any connection made with another person by way of music, which would include a shared appreciation for a song, musician or even a genre of music, with any other person, not just with the musician. That is, any time you meet someone and discover you like the same music or musician, or any time you and a friend enjoy music together. Still, even if we count all of those experiences, I'm still not sure that's a big portion of the enjoyment I get from music. To fit within the author's hypothesis, we'd have to stretch the definition of the social act to moments where I listen to music by myself and am thus connecting somehow with the musician who originally conceived of and recorded the music. But maybe that's valid. If we read a book that was written by someone we've never met, possibly before we were even born, and possibly by someone who's no longer alive, and possibly by someone whose life and experiences were nothing like our own, are we 'connecting' with that person through their writing? Some would say absolutely. In that sense, perhaps music is similar. Am I somehow connecting with Julie London by listening to a song she recorded in 1955? Maybe so.
Boy, some of the stuff I listen to would make your hair fall out. (Some of the stuff I listen to almost makes my hair fall out.)
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
i was considering that. it's probably the most iconic thing they did. so that one's on me i think.
there's some things in the article i don't quite agree with - if not a lot, been ages - but there's some good takeaways that stuck with me, some of it was really eye-opening for me. musicking is a well-known idea in musicology; it's not the set-in-stone standard of ideas but i think most appropriate scholars have at least made some takeaway from the idea.
one of the part takeaways is what you're talking about - the idea of music specifically the act of engaging musically as opposed to music existing intrinsically as an object of experience - it is indeed not social in a sense that it can be done with others - but i would say it's social in the sense that our engagement with it shares more with the experience of ritual than say... the experience of learning. it's a mode of engagement that has a lot in common with what you'd think about when i say "ritual" over things like "i recognize that this is music, yes", at least if you enjoy it, you know, if you participate in it. if that distinction makes sense. that music is sound arranged in such a way that it's conductive to such an experience is of course important - animals enjoy music too. so it is material.
indeed one of other the takeaways (that i'll muse shortly about to not derail the thread) is the materiality of music. we normally conceptualize songs as representations of either a phenomenon they all draw from if not some platonic idea of a song or piece. this is most prevalent in classical, where there is mostly, primarily, some centrally-placed conception of what a symphony is. the notation is in a sense the guiding lens to some ideal object of what a symphony is. small nuances this, and notes that - even after we started recording - musical pieces are in a sense their own events. they share structure of how they are organized, sometimes quite loosely, and can be recognizeable as such, but the idea of the commonality and the ideal form of the music, even if it exists, is by far secondary to the act of actually listening to the sound, where any body involved is an extended part of the ritual.
and last takeaway (no more derailing, i promise, but also something you touched on) is the notion that musicking is not actually limited to the performers and listeners (and dancers and whatever). at a concert - not all, but you'll know what type i'm talking about - the ticket company, the doorman, and the barman are part of the ritual engagement in sound, in a sense they are part of the performance. they are not extrinsic or incidental, they are part of it. this also extends into other forms of listening; because engagement with music is quite diverse. most of my listening is solitary as well (i don't like going to most concerts), then my listening, what i do, is part of the performance; so is the sound engineer, the recording studio, and even those that made my headphones. without them, the material conditions for the presence of the practice would not be possible. they're intrinsic to that mode of musical experience. without them, that wouldn't be.
interestingly, i think of reading as highly ritualized too. i think that way of a lot of art engagement; i think art is more a mode of engagement with the world that something that can be pinpointed. art galleries, in this sense, are a temple.
it's not like it doesn't actually "touch" us when we engage with it, of course. or that the way it touched us isn't incredibly compelling. both are true. i saw someone once (on tumblr i think, ages ago) noting that they liked to pick up a dead piece of wood and look at its imperfections to hallucinate for a couple of hours. that was reading.
This song was mentioned in a post on the Heinlein Society FB group. Funny how I've heard bits of it over the years, but never actually listened all the way through. It's both beautiful and depressing at the same time.
Rituals are found in so many aspects of life. One of the questions someone asked on the NaNoWriMo forums is whether we have any rituals we do before our writing sessions. Mine is pretty simple. I make a note of the word count total as of the previous day. Then I type: "Day ___ goal: _____ words." Then I insert two blank line spaces to separate this from the story. At that point I begin my current writing session and will not consider it finished until I've reached a minimum of the number stated as my goal, and preferably another hundred (if doing Camp) and preferably another couple of hundred if it's November. I don't want to go too much farther, since pacing is important.
Music rituals? Make sure whatever materials I'd need are at hand - music books, manuscript paper if I'm composing something, pencil, sharpener, eraser, proper shoes to wear for the organ, make sure no food or water are near enough to be spilled, have the lights on as needed, curtains shut so the sunlight doesn't distract, headphones handy if they're to be used (some of the songs I played got rather loud), and let anyone else in the house know if I'm practicing for an exam - absolute quiet was needed for that. I couldn't let any stray sounds distract, not talking, nothing from anyone's TV or radio. This was my time for training my entire body and mind to KNOW THIS SONG so thoroughly that I wouldn't need the crutch of notes at the exam.
Of course, start with warmups - there's actually a reason for those scales the music teachers make you learn. You're learning the anatomy of a scale, but also warming your fingers (and feet) up for a couple of hours' worth of exercise.
Rituals are found in so many aspects of life. One of the questions someone asked on the NaNoWriMo forums is whether we have any rituals we do before our writing sessions. Mine is pretty simple. I make a note of the word count total as of the previous day. Then I type: "Day ___ goal: _____ words." Then I insert two blank line spaces to separate this from the story. At that point I begin my current writing session and will not consider it finished until I've reached a minimum of the number stated as my goal, and preferably another hundred (if doing Camp) and preferably another couple of hundred if it's November. I don't want to go too much farther, since pacing is important.
Music rituals? Make sure whatever materials I'd need are at hand - music books, manuscript paper if I'm composing something, pencil, sharpener, eraser, proper shoes to wear for the organ, make sure no food or water are near enough to be spilled, have the lights on as needed, curtains shut so the sunlight doesn't distract, headphones handy if they're to be used (some of the songs I played got rather loud), and let anyone else in the house know if I'm practicing for an exam - absolute quiet was needed for that. I couldn't let any stray sounds distract, not talking, nothing from anyone's TV or radio. This was my time for training my entire body and mind to KNOW THIS SONG so thoroughly that I wouldn't need the crutch of notes at the exam.
Of course, start with warmups - there's actually a reason for those scales the music teachers make you learn. You're learning the anatomy of a scale, but also warming your fingers (and feet) up for a couple of hours' worth of exercise.
Caesar of Bread
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I love “Dust In The Wind”
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Yup...great song
H4run
Deity
I haven't read much, I just see peoples' music selection. Song is a subjective thing so the way I understood is it is the greatest of all time according to me, and it has to be "one" song. I'm an avid Beatles fan, but for the greatest song in my view, that one song that send me fly and numb, that will be Nude by Radiohead. Too lazy to explain, just listen it.
