It was not because of the houses that no longer had their lights up (man, that was fast), or the storefronts now emblazoned with large red hearts (man, that was faster). It wasn’t because of the relatively warm temperature outside, at a balmy 38 degrees heading for a high of 52 for the day. I say balmy because, as the Northeast U.S. will recall from 2010, the day after that Christmas was one of the worst snowstorms the region had seen in years. By contrast, this is beach weather.

I rolled into the 7-11 for a morning cup of coffee and, instead of the surplus of holly-jolly being played over the radio for the past month, it was Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” I’m not sure if that is progress, switching out a playlist endlessly on repeat for one of the most-played songs in pop music history, but it was a change. At first it went by almost disregarded, but by the time the line “Bill, I believe this is killing me…” emerged, I finally felt it. I knew it was coming, but here is was, bold as life and twice as dark.

Christmas 2011 was done.

All in all, I think it was okay. I had to deal with the usual cranks that hate the holidays and seek to sabotage it in ways both small and great, but I did so while working at the job I was hired onto in April; a job which has brought me to a level of stability I haven’t had in years. Their Christmas party seemed to go on for many happy days, enthusiastically rolling out bit by bit. What a relief to be around people that actually enjoyed the season–a far cry from my retail years where the food, while appreciated, was a preface for some of the most hateful, egregious behavior exhibited in Christ and Santa and the little Indonesian kid what knitted those snowflake socks’ name. Did I ever tell you the story of the two old ladies fighting tooth and nail over the last pair of holiday-themed socks? I should; it’s a good one. The balance my co-workers provided this year offset the usual imbalances of people so scarred by the holidays they can’t help but wreck them. I appreciated that immensely.

My grandmother has been on hospice for the past couple months. I visit her every Sunday and have done so for three years now. Last year I was able to get her in a wheelchair and take her out to eat. The year before that, she could get in and out of the car on her own, and before that she wasn’t in the nursing home. Nobody has viewed this as speedy a decline as I do, and maybe this is because I’m so close to the event. Still, she has made it through this Christmas. I believe it is her last and, if so, 2012 is going to be fairly hard on me.

I find as I get older that I’m missing the thrill of the season while it is on and mourning its passing after it is too late to appreciate it. In the three weeks I’ve had the tree up, I’ve turned the lights on probably less than ten times. On New Year’s Day, I’ll strip it down, disassemble it, and jam the boxes back up into the attic. It’s a very mechanical process. I wasn’t really intending to put it up, but when it was determined there would be guests on Christmas Eve, and they would be my young nieces and nephew, it just seemed right.

And it was. In spite of the lyrics that insist Christmas is for everyone, it is mostly for the kids, and if you have kids around you to experience it, without the preconceptions and expectations but with the wide-eyed joy one gets from crawling under a tree to stare at the column of lights, you are blessed. I haven’t a wife, girlfriend or kids. The three can be, in this age, mutually exclusive or completely intertwined, and during the holidays, if you haven’t one or two (but not all three, you cad) in your life, this is kind of what the celebrations become. You live for the moments when you can give and that gift is received with an expression of gratitude, not of disappointment or, worse, disdain. That is what my nieces and nephew bring to me. Sure, the back-pocket romantic in me still thinks maybe someday I will find Miss Right who finds me, but this is becoming more and more of a longshot. People enter into your life that are everything you could ever hope for, and consequently, others already have entered theirs and their hopes have been rewarded. That’s how it goes.

The holidays and romance seem to work together, but isn’t it funny that some polls say many breakups happen between Thanksgiving and Christmas, partly due to anxiety based upon an inability to please his or her partner, but just as often because they don’t want to be attached at that time? I can’t think of a better time for that attachment, but of course that’s what I would think. You don’t miss your water t’il your well’s run dry.

So I was aware this morning that the roads seemed just a little darker, having gotten used to the holiday lights’ extra illumination. I saw the windows of the stores in their endless evolution of commerce and thought, “Gee, so soon?” Then I heard “Piano Man” and realized where I was standing, feeling like I had been picked up in one spot and dropped in another, straight over a whole chunk of celebration, and not fully appreciating whatever it was I was promised as a takeaway. My shoes felt funny, like I was standing in a river with water running past my kneecaps, but the 7-11, and my feet, were bone dry. Billy Joel was singing about tips and beer, and inside I was longing for a do-over.

And that’s when I fully knew that Christmas 2011 was over.

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Every year Hollywood gives us at least one movie where our world is greeted, confronted or otherwise engaged with forces not of our earth. It’s a fascinating plot device even though, deep down, I don’t believe we will ever make contact with interstellar life, if there is in fact interstellar life to make contact with. I’ll explain how I’ve come to this personal absolute, but first I need to come clean. This is all speculation based on the minuscule amount of information I know. I am not an astrophysicist although in the next few paragraphs, I will pretend to be. We’ll begin this thought game where we assume it all began.

The Big Bang in a ridiculously simplified state.

The Big Bang All was void and emptiness. The point when nothing became something has hounded scientists, theorists and religious scholars for as long as we’ve been here, but science’s generally accepted notion is that somewhere within this nothingness, something occurred, creating the massive universal explosion from which everything began. The stuff of the universe was thrown out into the blackness in all directions with a force, they say, that continues to keep our cosmos expanding. In space there is no direction and no resistance, so that which goes out continues to go out unless there is something in the way to slow it down. If we’re talking about new something exiting into old nothing, then there’s no obstacles.

If something explodes in space and the explosion sends matter in all directions, we’re talking up, down, left, right, toward us and away from us – a spherical trajectory in all directions except inward. Is there something inside, at the point of the initial Big Bang, that even now prevents inward trajectory?

The Mandelbrot Set

The Spherical Universe If the universe is still expanding, where is it expanding to? It’s really hard for the human mind to conceive of something without a barrier or borderline, but all the top astrophysicists seem to agree that there is no edge, nor a center, to ours. If it is expanding, like a puddle, the only sure way we rate that expansion is by the barriers around it – the width of a street, or a hole, or a field, but there is a physical surround by which we measure the expansion, but that’s if we see the universe as a flat plane, an expanding puddle. We create the understanding by placing things in definable shapes.

The stuff of our world, and understanding thereof, constantly negates the plate-theory of universal form, the natural physicality constantly pointing to spheres and things that orbit around them. Electrons orbit the nucleus. The moon orbits us. We orbit the sun, and all these seem to occur in circular arcs. At the same time, we look at water droplets, soap bubbles, and so much more that automatically takes the form of a circle. The sphere is a perfect, natural shape and if you happen to be living on the sphere itself, you never truly discern an edge even though, theoretically, each one of us is on that edge at all times. It’s not a stretch to think, just maybe, the whole of the universal body is like a surrounding atmosphere. It’s also supported, in part, by the phenomenon of self-similarity, found in fractal geometry and the famed Mandelbrot Set put forth by Benoit Mandelbrot. After mapping his peculiar equation as a graphic he found the shape, like a black beetle, was comprised of smaller versions of the same shape. The deeper you look at the graphic, the parts are revealed to be the same shape in multiples, over and over again. Fractal geometry has been found to explain many natural structures, from the branching of trees to composition of snail shells and so on. It is not too far out to think of atoms, planets, moons, suns and maybe even a much larger unit like a spherical universe, all being a chain of self-similarity. Perhaps Earth is simply another piece of a set that closely resembles that which we already know.

Benoit Mandelbrot

Surrounding What? Only 4.6% of the universe is matter, 23% is the nearly unquantifiable nothing that is called “Dark Matter”, most details of which still fall under the umbrella of speculation.  That 4.6% is the stuff cast outward from the Big Bang, creating planets, stars, nebulae, even the elements that make up those things, and as vast as that all is, it accounts for a mere pittance of the “is” that we understand to be. The logic leap then could be that, having decided the stars, planets and all the rest swirls along the skin of this massive soap bubble, all that is inside it is dark matter, and at the center of that is the exact point where the Big Bang initially occurred.

This is a sticky point to make since cosmologists have already decided they know where the point of creation took place, but there is a verisimilitude to how the order of the universe might be in relation to how our own planet’s order is, and how atomic and sub-atomic order is. I may be making a leap, but the patterns do line up. The effect of this is that we’re not plotting charts on a map from point A to point B. In order to grasp what it might take to find intelligent life out there, or for them to find us, it would be like you, dear reader, plotting a course that’s not down the street but on the other side of the planet, but extended more times than imaginable.

What Of The Distance The fourth closest star to Earth is Zeta Tucanae in the Tucana constellation. It is a neighbor to you as your neighbor is four houses, or four apartments, or four streets away from you; relatively close. It would take 28.0 light years to travel from Earth to Zeta Tucanae, or roughly thirty-thousand years traveling at a million miles an hour, so the cake you’re baking with the sugar you’re borrowing from your Zeta neighbors better be damn good. These are big numbers to be tossing about, and big numbers tend to conjure big pictures, so let’s put it on a picture.

(You are here on Earth right now. If you take the trip and are able to make up the necessary speed… You are there on Zeta Tucanae. 30,000 years later and you've barely stuck your head out the window to shout at your neighbor.)

At the same time, because space-time is such an odd, quirky thing, our potential visitors have several bad outcomes if they decide to stop by. They could show up, potentially, before Earth even exists or overshoot our corporeal lifespan entirely, only the radio waves we sent out eons ago alerting them that we ever existed. Bummer.

The Black Hole as a fissure where "light" matter is transformed into dark.

Black Holes It has been long speculated that black holes and wormholes might be harnessed to get us from here to there, provided we could ever build a craft that could withstand the pressures these phenomena cause, which we never could. Ever. Black holes are super-compact mass that warp the fabric of space-time, creating a vortex from which nothing, not even light, can escape. In a sense, these bodies are fissures in the skin of our soap-bubble universe. It could be said that instead of the common belief, that the gravitational force is so great that all gets destroyed in its wake, it isn’t destroying but transforming the stuff of the cosmos, that puny bit of the 4.6% back into the dark matter from whence it came, channeling it into the center of the bubble, causing the core and the universal skin around it to expand, thus furthering the ever-expanding universe we know. At the same time, there is an elegant commonality to all of it. Man arises from “ashes” then returns to ashes. All that is arises from the blowout of dark matter, becomes stuff essentially composed of the ashes, then returns to the dark matter it sprang from via the black hole. There is a cycle here that ought to be reckoned with.

All this means, in relation to our original question, that with every passing light year, black holes feed the dark matter core, expanding the bubble universe farther and farther. Even if our space-brothers and space-sisters have superior technology, they may well be racing on a highway that’s only getting longer as they run on it. It’s like those primal nightmares everyone have of finishing lines that grow more distant as you race toward them, or staircases that constantly add stairs as you climb them.

Brian Greene

Was It Always This Way? If the Earth had sentient life and technology way back at the dawn of man, there is a feasible possibility that the pipsqueak soap bubble universe could have been circled, and it might have only taken a thousand years or so to do it. Smaller roads means less distance to travel. The longer “it” lives, the more “it” expands, the longer it would take, the less likely it would become in spite of advanced technology. Passing through the soap bubble universe wouldn’t work either. If we passed through the Earth, from America to Asia, we could never get near the molten core of the planet, much less penetrate it and pass it by. Even if we could, the gravitational pull would create speeds that would obliterate the craft and us inside it.

Applying the Earth analogy, if a superior technology pierced the soap bubble skin to pass through, that piercing would create an equivalent gravitational pull, except scaled to a massive degree. It would create a black hole that would reduce such spacecraft to dark matter, feeding the core. If the brilliant minds were able to apply ‘slingshot physics’ to their travel, such as the type that helped a disabled Apollo 13 get back home in 1970, by using the opposing forces of the moon’s gravity against the Earth’s to whip the craft around it and back toward Earth’s trajectory, there’s still the problem of time. Yes, they’re going faster, but they’re taking the scenic route to do it.

There’s also a huge problem with my theory in that a few of the best scientific minds currently trying to make sense of it all would never cop to it. Brian Greene, professor at Columbia University, theoretical physicist, author of The Elegant Universe, a treatise on String Theory, and a proponent of mirror symmetry believes in the disc-shaped universe. His idea of the universe having no edge is bolstered by the belief that, in an infinite cosmos, there could never be an edge. You just keep going and going, which is a hard notion for most of us to wrap our heads around. Having spent our adult lives with ends of rooms, roads, continents, and even lives, the thought of a neverending field that only becomes more as you go brings us back to those primal dreams I spoke of earlier.

Here’s the big difference though. I’m putting forward the concept that there may be life out there but their technology, even superior technology, still has billions of variables going against them and the likelihood of them overcoming the variables for a visit is more and more unlikely with every passing minute. The squid people will have to just keep going awhile longer, I suppose. Meanwhile, as a fringe complication of Greene’s mirror symmetry seems to indicate, in an infinite universe there are infinite possibilities of running into ourselves – not just people like us, but us, down to the t-shirt and jeans we’re wearing, the words we’re reading off the computer screen right now, right to the very thoughts in our heads. There’s also a shot at infinite permutations such as all elements are the same except the color of your t-shirt, the ratio of milk in your coffee, in some of these alternate Earths you are the only person there, and in others you’re the only person not there.

This is a severe kick in the crotch to those who believe in the irreducible individuality of the singular person, knowing there might be untold numbers of you’s and me’s all running on the same, or mostly similar, algorithms of action and thought, down to the tiniest synapse-firing. It supports, nonetheless, my assertion that we could never be visited by stating that if it were possible to bridge the immensity of time and space, what we would most often find is us, or a permutation thereof. If we can’t concoct a way to go see them, it is most probable that they cannot concoct a way to see us. Checkmate. (A tip to my universal friends out there reading this, as it has been written by my infinite number of doppelgangers, why don’t you turn off Facebook and go for a bike ride. It’s a nice day out there.)

There is still something comforting in the idea that we’re not looking for our alien neighbors anymore but, in these mirror universes, we are our neighbors. Some of them will make the exact same mistakes we will, some will take a different path and avoid those bumps in the road, but all in all we aren’t alone. Maybe we don’t have to travel out there because we’re already there. I’m personally hoping that, in one of these strange, different mirror-Earths I’m taking Kristen Wiig out to dinner tonight. It can’t happen here, but maybe it can out there.

Science Fiction As a kid, I enjoyed science fiction as much as the next raving geek. Of course, the science fiction we got was more the latter than the former. My obsession with Star Wars didn’t yet diminish under the weight of the facts: no sound in space, a body in motion tends to stay in motion for a hell of a long time and, most importantly, girls simply aren’t interested in dressing in metal bikinis for you. What it did for me, however, was instill in my mind a ‘what-if’ sense of wonder that has served me fairly well.

When confronted with hard numbers though, even with my flights of fancy such as the totality of this speculation was, nothing can fully explain the immenseness, the strangeness, the absolute mystery of this entity we’ve found ourselves in. We may never know if there’s anybody out there, like or unlike us, but our consciousness expands simply by thinking about it, and how could that be a bad thing? And as for my reconciliation of these ideas with the fact that I consider myself a Christian, well, that’s a tale for another day.

__________________________________

I’d like to thank the following for helping me formulate this awful mess:

Wikipedia pages on Apollo 13, dark matter, black holes, and Zeta Tucanae.

Nova Science Now, hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson on PBS.

WNYC’s RadioLab hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, available on most public radio stations and as a podcast via the site or through iTunes.

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I’ll cut to the chase. It’s Hitler. Adolf Hitler.

Yeah, I’m rather shocked myself, but it seems like Herr Fuhrer is YouTube’s latest viral go-to guy. The new black is “reich,” as it were.

If you have no clue, or you’re still digesting the last of Tay Zonday mania (remember him?), then you’ve been away from the Web for a long time. On the sliding scale of the Internet time-space continuum, a long time is equal to the distance between last Wednesday and the Wednesday previous to that multiplied by the rate of your Twitter tweeting frequency, wOOt, and ROFLMFAO, and cubed at the rate of EPIC FAIL.

The specific scene used in these YouTube videos comes from a 2004 German film called Der Untergang, or Downfall, as it’s known in English-speaking countries. Hitler is portrayed by Bruno Ganz in a bit of foam-frothing scenery munching, and in the specifically co-opted scene, he’s being debriefed by his staff. Much to his chagrin, bad news has been delivered. He summons all but his inner circle to leave the war room and, upon their exit, goes absolutely apeshit.

I attempted to find a word that’s more becoming of a respected writer. Something less crude. Something with more imagination and depth. But it can’t be done. Hitler goes apeshit, and that’s all there is to it. And therein lies the fun — I couldn’t find a better word, but because everyone in the film is speaking German, anyone with a video graphics program can find their own words, plop them on-screen as subtitles, and make Adolf into whatever they please.

For example, he can be a Taylor Swift supporter …

Or a man without a car …

A Sarah Palin devotee …

Or a Michael Jackson fan …

And ultimately, the meta version:

As you can imagine, some of these are funny, a few are just excuses to have Hitler “saying” very un-Hitler-like things, and a high percentage aren’t very good at all. Yet there’s an underlying vibe within these videos that hasn’t been addressed yet.

In a way, Quentin Tarantino already addressed it with his late-summer hit Inglourious Basterds. In the film a small cadre of Nazi hunters infiltrate the halls of the third reich to exact bloody revenge. After all this time, and considering how much the world has changed, including the once united, then divided, then reunited Germany, people are still haunted by Hitler.

I know some aren’t. We hear about them from time to time, we know they exist, and we sometimes have to confront the ugliness of a swastika splattered across our supposedly learned culture. But for the majority of people around the world, the specter of this man with the chop-shop mustache ascending the steps of Albert Speer’s architecture still sends chills down spines. He’s our real-life Darth Vader, our Freddy Krueger, our boogeyman who once walked the earth. His suicide pact with his mistress, Eva Braun, robbed the world of the main thing it craved throughout the final days of Nazi Germany: closure. That even the gunshot-and-cyanide scenario can’t be fully determined or verified leaves us adrift.

You could argue that by taking his own life, or by dying in a bunker explosion, or even choking on a chicken bone while hiding in Stuttgart, Hitler was elevated to this scary, mythic place because he never was forced to stand before a tribunal to espouse his opinions and rhetoric, never had to look his judges in the eyes.

We can be fairly sure he wouldn’t have offered up any words of repentance. Instead he would’ve used his perch on the stands, like Saddam Hussein, to proudly, blindly, and flaccidly “rip us a new one.” Meanwhile, the world had a chance to reconcile their fears of the Butcher of Baghdad in 2004 upon seeing the captured dictator’s disheveled beard, his scattershot bark of a voice, and, without a gun in his hand, no power to wield over fearful masses.

We remember Hussein that way now. I’ve written far too many words about how I disapproved of the Iraq war and the contrivances that got us in, but the one good thing that came of it all is that we got to see the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain — and he turned out to be no big deal.

Hussein’s ghost has been expunged from our collective psyche, but Hitler never allowed us even that, so in a way he’s as present in our minds as he ever was. And with each new YouTube “remix” of Downfall, we laugh at the incongruities and anachronisms, and how this ravaging, raging, small person is crippled by the stupidest nonsense of our modern culture, reduced in his chair to a defeated hunch. Somewhere inside we feel a “win” against him, if only subconsciously, because we’re not really looking for it. But it is there.

Probably not for long, though. If I’ve learned anything about ‘Net culture, it’s that the next viral trend is just around the corner.

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(“You bastard” still counts as witty, right?)

Join us now as we enter into the Popdose Interview with the one and only Andy Partridge…

Popdose: Hello, may I speak to Andy?

Andy Partridge: That’ll be Will!

It will be!

Ah, knock twice and ask for Will! (Laughs) Let me put down my cheap little guitar that I treated myself to about two weeks ago. I didn’t even intend to buy a guitar. I went to buy a pair of trousers, and I just saw this guitar on the wall, and I’m a real sucker for little-body guitars. It just sort of whimpered to me.

You musicians have no restraint.

(Laughs) Well, it was the first one I’ve bought since 1983, so come on, that’s pretty good restraint. That’s restraint into tight-fisted, I think! So…you’ve got your recording device going?

I do. It’s already rolling along.

Oh, good man!

And I’ve got plenty of reader questions for you as well.

Yeah! Don’t hold back; let them all go. I’m sitting here in a small model of a dreadnaught made entirely out of candyfloss, floating on an indoor lake, so I’m relaxed and ready to go.

And totally living up to my expectations.

Ha-ha! Well, you’d do best not to have any!

Well, the first question is only appropriate, since this conversation came about because of the Dukes of Stratosphear reissues:

* Is it true that “you can’t get the buttons these days”?

Well, the thing is, we’ve just put a set of buttons out! If you order both of the Dukes reissues from the site, I think you get a set of buttons with them. In fact, I’m convinced you do get a set of buttons. But, yeah, I actually said that because a puffin would say something like that. D’ya know what I mean? In the Victorian world of psychedelia and all that kind of stuff, then that’s the sort of thing a puffin would say. And a puffin is a suitably psychedelic animal. Manatee, walrus, kiwi, dugong, puffin…maybe rhinoceros, actually. That’s a pretty psychedelic animal.

If you can imagine it in a Lewis Carroll story, it’s usually safe.

Exactly. In fact, there was a pipe and a waistcoat and a monocle, maybe.

So had you been hankering to reissue the Dukes albums for quite some time?

I had. I’d liked the idea of doing them really properly, because Chips from the Chocolate Fireball is a good compilation, I think, but the sleeve art was really crap. It was not what I asked for, and, of course, knowing Virgin…like, I said, “I want a solarized photograph…this photograph, solarized on that background. We want all the lyrics.” What happened? They printed it in the negative, no lyrics… (Growls) So we actually got the use of those records back again, and I don’t know how the hell we managed that, but we did, and it was a case of, “Well, let’s do them how they really should have been done.”

* There are some obvious musical touchstones on the songs, but who are some of your favorite semi-obscure psychedelic artists that we might not be recognizing?

I was greatly affected by a band called the Moles. There was a little sort of mystery story behind them, because a big DJ on the BBC in England…Alan “Fluff” Freeman, his name was…had this show late on a Sunday afternoon called “Pick of the Pops.” And every teenage kid listened to it, because that’s all there was, literally. And one Sunday, he said that he’d been sent a key to a locker at Paddington Station, and he’d sent somebody to go to this locker with this mystery key, and there was a disc in there. And he took the disc out, and he played it, and…I think he came to the conclusion that it was Ringo singing, with the rest of the Beatles backing him up. This was about…I dunno, late ’67, early ’68. Something like that. And, of course, this sort of entered the mythology, that this was the Beatles with Ringo. It had all of the sort of psychedelic effects on it, y’know, singing through a Leslie cabinet, and it just extremely of the time. With a stretch of the imagination, you could say, “Well, maybe that is Ringo,” but it was actually the group that became later Gentle Giant. They were called Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. It wasn’t the Beatles at all…as we suspected, really. But I’d gotten wrapped up in the mystery of it, and I think psychedelia has that thing of Edward Lear / Lewis Carroll nonsense mystery about it. The Rolling Stones, who did it pathetically and beautifully wrong with the album Satanic Majesties, did one thing perfectly by putting a maze on the album sleeve which couldn’t be completed. I thought that was…I thought, “Yeah, that’s the spirit!”

The last time you and I talked, you said that Rhino had never actually asked you to include the Dukes of Stratosphear songs on their Children of Nuggets box set. Did they get around to sending you a copy of the box set, at least?

They did. Only after we complained, I think. They never asked. They actually put two of our songs on there, didn’t they? “Vanishing Girl” and “25 O’Clock.” But nobody ever asked us. That doesn’t surprise me, in the wide world of record companies.

* Do you ever miss the psychedelic days of the Dukes, and have you – either now or in the past – ever seriously considered resurrecting them?>

Well, I got to be a Duke last year with the track “Tin Toy Clockwork Train.” I don’t know whether you’ve heard that or not; that’s on one of the reissues. I was asked by a French advertising agency…the fellow in charge of this agency was a huge Dukes fan, and he said, “Could you sort of imitate yourself imitating other people?” So I did. I wrote a “missing” Dukes song and recorded it all in my little garden shed studio, only to find out that he was the same person that, a couple of years earlier, had instigated a big ad campaign in stations in London…well, certainly at Waterloo Station, where the Eurostar used to depart from, they had a big 50 foot by 50 foot ersatz cover of 25 O’Clock stuck to the floor. I mean, it was almost identical. They’d just changed a few things. That was his sort of homage to the Dukes, to use it in an ad campaign. So, no, the Dukes were the Dukes, and they were of their time, and we should leave them to be fertilizer now, I think.

* Will you please consider reviving the bubblegum album idea? Not as an XTC thing, but as an Andy Partridge with maybe some special guests thing.

Well, it broke my heart when I changed computer formats, actually, and I lost quite a few of the recordings I’d done. I managed to save a couple. I managed to save “Cave Girl” and “Licky Licky Liquorice.” But…I dunno, that was something I wanted to do in the early ‘90s, and… (Sighs) …again, you know, if you don’t serve the meal when it’s hot, it sort of congeals, and there’s nothing as stale as the recently-stale, but now I guess it’s getting to the point where it’s not recently stale and it’s becoming a museum artifact. So maybe I’ll look at it again. But I don’t have the jones, I think you say, for doing the bubblegum thing at the moment. Lots of other things, but not the bubblegum thing.

* When is your solo record coming out?

Oh, gosh. A few people have started asking me this, and right now I have loads and loads of bits of songs, something like 350. I haven’t pegged it exactly, but they’re in that sort of number. And I just haven’t mentally felt like finishing any of them off. If I go down this route now, you’re going to end up being my psychiatrist here, so I’ll just touch on it quickly, but…I just don’t know if any of them are looking to me to be better than anything that I’ve done in the past. And I would rather not put out records rather than putting out records which I consider to be not quite as good. Does that make sense?

Yep. I can understand that.

I would rather stop until something says to me, “Okay, this is better than what you’ve done, or certainly on a par.” I hate the idea of going down and decaying aurally in front of people’s ears. I wish a lot of other bands would do that as well.

Precious few do, though.

And that’s the problem.

* Are you planning on working with Barry Andrews again?

I’d love to! I like working with Barry. I find his intellect stimulating. I walked past his house a couple of days ago, and I’ve noticed that he’s got this ever-changing window display that just boggles my brain beautifully. I noticed that…do you know what a Dalek is?

Absolutely.

He’s got about eight gold Daleks on his windowsill, stood in front of a lot of yellow and orange flowers, and with a sort of purple-y backdrop. And I thought, “Yep, there they are: Daleks of the Lord.” A shrine laid out. But, yeah, I find Barry immensely stimulating.

What were your thoughts about how the Monstrance album turned out?

I liked it. And I occasionally play it. Actually, it could’ve been odder. It could’ve been weirder. I think it tended to gravitate a little towards the straighter side of things, but, then again, Martyn (Barker) is more a sort of groove drummer than an exploratory drummer, and Barry…well, I mean, I think what Monstrance is is the three of us at the point where our personalities meet. I probably bring the weird stuff, Barry brings the dramatic stuff, and Martyn brings the groove, if you see what I mean. I enjoyed it. I thought some of the things on there were as good as anything I’ve done, actually. I thought “I Lovely Cosmonaut” came out just wonderfully.

I had a bit of struggle with it, but I’m sure you’ve heard that from a lot of XTC fans.

Oh, sure. And it’s nothing like anything XTC have done, apart from maybe some of the dub things. That’s probably the nearest I can suggest.

* Would you ever do a kids record?

I’d like to. There are several things I’ve got on my sort of mental list of things to do if I can get back to loving music, which I’m sort of a bit out of love with music at the moment. But I’d love to do a kids album. I’d like to do an opera, because I can’t stand opera, therefore I think I feel the need to defeat it, if you see what I mean. Just the noise of it… (Makes a high-pitched siren-like sound) …and all that sort of thing. Usually, 90% of operas have crap songs! It’s, like, you know, get rid of all of that singing, and is the song any good? No! It’s shit! There are very few operas with really good songs in them. And I would love to do an opera, and I know the subject I would do it about: Cortez and Montezuma. I’m also working on the idea of doing a cross-dressing Western musical. So lots of sort of silly irons in the fire, but I don’t know whether any of them will come to fruition.

Well, funny you should say that …

* If I get myself to Swindon somehow, will you co-write some songs with me? I’m unvirtuosic but persistent.

No. No, no, no! Do not chat with me! Go away!

Oh, but he says it’s probably time he wrote another musical! So I’m sure he’d be ready to collaborate with you on yours.

And who is this?

One of our readers. That’s all I can tell you definitively.

So it’s not Mr. D. Bowie or P. McCartney or E. Costello?

Sadly, probably not.

Oh, okay. No, I don’t like people turning up and A) wanting to stare at me, B) wanting to play me their music, C) wanting to be my best friend. You see, I just…I’m very private, and I hate all that. I usually try and be pleasant to them, but inside I’m going, “Fuck off and die! Fuck off and die!”

(Laughs) So this next offer, then, is probably off the table for you…?

* Would you consider enjoying a spot of homemade macaroni-n-cheese, my treat, if I ever make it back to England?

No. I can’t stand macaroni and cheese. I don’t eat cow cheese anymore. I only eat sheep’s cheese. And I never had a thing for macaroni and cheese. They seem to not complement each other. It was like some down and out had thrown up on lots of bits of rubber tubing that you’d just finished an enema with. “Here! Here’s your dinner! Enema tube and tramp vom!”

Tasty.

Read me some more questions. Just go through the lot of them!

* Are you, in fact, the man who murdered love?

No. It was the man next door.

* What do you think of the covers of “Scissor Man” and “Making Plans for Nigel” by Primus, and what are some covers of your work that you’ve heard and liked?

I thought the Primus ones were okay. I didn’t write the songs, so they can murder them how they want. I don’t care. But what ones did I hear that I liked? Oh, there was a band called 4DB that did an acapella version of “Rook” that I thought was beautiful. You can find that on YouTube somewhere; somebody’s cut “Harry Potter” film to it. (Writer’s note: one presumes that the copyright police took care of that particular footage, but you can still hear the track over top of the closing credits to an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None.”) It’s a lovely version of “Rook.” And there’s a choir…though I can’t remember the name of the choir…who do “River of Orchids,” and I thought that was pretty interesting as well. What other covers? Oh, there was a band that did a real shit-kicking hoedown version of “Complicated Game,” but, again, I can’t remember the name of the band. I’m sure the people that are into all of this stuff will say, “Oh, he’s talking about…” And then fill in the blank.

(Writer’s note: though I’ve no clue about the name of the choir, a reader has kindly corrected my theory that the “Complicated Game” covered was done by the Poster Children. While the band did cover the song, this “hoedown version” appears to have been the work of Moonshine Willy.)

* How do you feel about the Testimonial Dinner tribute album?

Never saw a penny from it. I think it would’ve been nice if Terry and the Lovemen saw some accounts and saw how many copies sold, whether they actually had a pitiful royalty or not, ‘cause they never got an advance, and I’m sure that none of the other bands that covered the stuff beautifully never saw any royalties or accounting. So I think the record label that did it are assholes, but the bands that did it are wonderful. Especially…oh, Jesus, my brain’s not screwed on today! Um…”The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul.”

Ruben Blades.

Ruben Blades! Or Ruben Blah-Days, I think, if you do the Spanish pronunciation. No, the band that did it are rather lovely, but the record company, I think, treated everyone very poorly and, I’m sure, have ripped them off, Terry and the Lovemen included.

* Would you consider working again with Todd Rundgren?

Yes. But he would never work with me again, ‘cause I’ve said some really shitty things about him in the past. But if I worked with him, he’d have to be the arranger. He wouldn’t be allowed to be engineer, and he wouldn’t be allowed to be the mixer. But as an arranger, he’s faultless. But he would never work with me. Although Dave (Gregory) saw him recently…he went to see him at a show…and, y’know, hopefully, the axe is well and truly buried. And I don’t mean in my back! It was really difficult, but the finished project is fine. (Chuckles) The birth was painful, but the baby is beautiful.

* I heard it reported that some new recording was done by you and Colin on some uncompleted XTC demos, for upcoming reissue packages. Is that true?

No. Not at all. I’ve been mixing some outtakes from English Settlement. Virgin are doing an expanded English Settlement in a couple of months, and I’ve been mixing a couple of tracks for that. But I haven’t been really recording anything.

*Would you please kiss and make up with Mr. Moulding so we can have the pleasure of listening to another XTC album?

Um…no. No, not at the moment. We’re going through divorce at the moment. So he’s not my favorite individual, and I’m sure I’m not his.

Has there been any further conversation? The last time I talked to you, he had pretty much gone on silent running.

Yeah, but we just send bad-tempered E-mails to each other at the moment. But we seem to be in some sort of agreement as to how to put out what access we’ve got to certain tracks in the back catalog. We got access to a little bit of the back catalog. Not the main big selling ones, unfortunately. Virgin still have those forever. But we’ve got access to the Dukes and some other bits and pieces, so it’s, like, “How best to work those?” We seem to have painfully come to an agreement on that. But, no, there won’t be another XTC album. (With mock gruffness) Is 25 years of magnificent albums not enough for you?

* Now that you’ve resumed working with Virgin, will we see a career-spanning DVD of promotional videos?

There’s a plan for Virgin to put out a compilation album called Poppycock, where one of the discs in the set will be a DVD of the singles. But I would imagine that they’re not spending much on sort of cleaning it up. It’ll just be the copy they grab, and away they go. It won’t be a sort of draughtman’s contract, getting digitally restored or anything

* A lot of us see Oranges and Lemons as seminal work. What, if anything, would you have done differently with that record in hindsight, and how does it hold up in your mind?

Orange and Lemons is okay. I’d put it at about #4 or #5 in my favorite albums of ours. I wouldn’t say it was one of the top three, but I think it’s got some good stuff on it. It is a little long. Maybe we should’ve, to be truthful, written a few more songs and made two different albums, maybe a year apart. But it seemed to come out okay, and I think it was of the time, if you know what I mean. It was what we wanted to be at the time: we wanted to be brash and bright and citrus and very precise. Which it is. It is all those things. Now I wouldn’t want to make a record like that, but in 1988, I really did.

How was Paul Fox to work with as a producer?

Excellent! A really very happy sort of person, and a very good midwife. Mid-husband. Is that such a term? Are there any male midwives?

If so, you never hear about them.

No! “Up to his elbows in work!” (Laughs) Yeah, he was very good and very sort of caring. I suppose my only one criticism would be that he was such a big fan of the band that we would fire a load of ideas at him, and rather than picking one and saying, “Okay, let’s go with this,” he would tend to try and accommodate everyone’s idea, so the tracks do sound a little fuller than maybe they should’ve been. But, hey, it was the ‘80s. You’ve got to figure that in.

This one has no back story accompanying it, but…

* Do you remember taking a few Polaroids during the Oranges and Lemons sessions?

(Exuberantly) Yes! I should imagine that one of them is of me wearing the Colonel Cunt hat. Because I’d be ordering people around, saying, “Look, come on, can we do another take, let’s try this again,” there’d be lots of muttering under the breath of the band, you know. I guess I got into the bandleader role a little bit stronger on that album than on previous albums. But I thought to lighten the mood…we’d always had loads of porn mags around the studio, so I cut out a particularly well-photographed close-up of a pudenda and made a real sort of Russian commissar’s peaked cap and stuck that where the badge should be on the front. And we had this hat on the mixing desk, and if I suggested or if anybody suggested anything that was a little dictatorial, everyone would point to the hat, and they had to go and put on the Colonel Cunt hat.

This one comes from one of my Facebook friends.

* Simon Tedd says to say, “Hello.”

Simon Tedd! Yes! He used to be in a band…that had a really pathetic wet girl’s name. And they played a few gigs in the miniature version of the Hollywood Bowl, which is in the town gardens in Swindon. They have, like, a 1/3 scale Hollywood Bowl. And in the early ‘70s, him and this band, who I seem to remember having a particularly wet girl’s name, used to play a few gigs there. And for some reason, I ended up getting to sort of vaguely know him.

He said, “We were mates way back in the Helium Kidz days, Swindon Town Gardens and Swindon Viewpoint Television. I lost track of him around the time of Big Bam Boo.” That was his band.

That was a later band of his.

Right. He also said, “I remember having a long phone call with him about the merits of Paul Fox, the producer of Oranges and Lemons. Fox was being foisted on us by our record label for the second BBB album. It never happened.”

That was probably the last time I ever spoke with him. That was quite some time back.

Well, he says to say, “Hello.”

Right! (Pauses) What else have you got?

* Did you have anything to do with the Scrotal Scratch Mix from Johnny Japes and the Jesticles?

Well, there was no B-side for that disc, and I can’t remember who suggested it, but it was decided that we would do a Scrotal Scratch Mix. And, basically, it’s just the backing track with…I can’t remember, but I think we auditioned who had the noisiest trousers at the recording session. It was myself, Dave Gregory, John Otway, and Neville Farmer, who is sort of a writer/editor of a music magazine, that sort of thing. And we just auditioned who had the noisiest crotch. We put a mike about crotch high, and everybody had to stand and scratch their crotch, and whoever had the noisiest crotch…I think it was somebody with corduroys on…they just got to scratch their balls, really, over the backing track.

* Thanks for cluing us in to the Milk and Honey Band. How did you first come across them?

Purely by accident. Bob White, the Milk and Honey Band main songwriter and singer, posted me an album they did on a small label called Ugly Man…which I think they sold about two copies of that album on the Ugly Man label. He said, “Look, here’s an album we hand out, lots more where this came from, can we be on your label?” And I thought, “Well, this is not going to be any good, because the previous 99 discs I’d just suicidally trolled through…well, all these other bands haven’t been any good, so I’ll just play one or two tracks and see what I get out of this.” And I played one or two bits of track, and usually within a few seconds I know whether I’m going to be interested in something…and I just thought it was marvelous! (Laughs) And I thought, “Whoa! I must get in contact with this chap!” And I rang him up, and he had about three or four albums worth of recordings. And it was a case of, “Right, let’s go! This is brilliant stuff!” So it was just happy happenstance, you know?

* How the hell do you play the opening riff to “Meccanic Dancing”?

Oh! Well, I’ll put the phone on the table for a second. (Pauses) There, you’re on speaker now. And you play it like this…! (Plays the riff on his aforementioned new guitar) There you go. But I could describe it. Here you go: top E string and G string, slid up to the A position, with the B string ringing open. Now let me just make sure that’s correct. Hold it. (Plays the riff again) Yeah. And the second chord is…top three strings, open E, open G, and… (Plays another chord) …D on the B string covered. So it’s just those two positions. Well, it’s only the top three strings of the guitar, and…yeah, what I said earlier.

* Where does your inspiration come from, especially this late in the game? For instance, I know the back story, but “I Can’t Own Her” and “Harvest Festival” still just reduce me every time I hear them.

Loss, probably. And never being able to attain something. “I Can’t Own Her” was a realization that you don’t own people. I’d just been divorced somewhat against my will, and somebody just walked out of my life, and I couldn’t own them. And somebody was just walking into my life, and I couldn’t own them, either. And it’s that realization that you can’t own people. You can love them, but it is an amazingly solitary feeling. You can love them and try to express that you love them, but there’s nothing to stop them from wandering off or dying or…well, do you see what I mean? You just can’t own people. Love is an incredibly solitary sensation, I think. So that was that one. And I always wanted to write a song that had kind of Burt Bacharach chords, and “I Can’t Own Her” is a little bit Bacharach in chords.

So is that where your general inspiration comes from, then? Real life events combined with a desire to write your own versions of other people’s songs?

Yeah! That’s where a lot of songs are started. You’re dicking around, and…actually, “Wrapped in Grey,” that was more ersatz Bacharach. Maybe “I Can’t Own Her” had a little dollop of Bacharach. But, yeah, I get a lot of ideas for songs by fucking up other people’s songs. ‘Cause I’m no good at learning stuff. Like, “Knights in Shining Karma” came from dicking around with “Blackbird” and getting it wrong. Or “All You Pretty Girls” came from mucking ‘round with a Hendrix riff and getting that wrong. And you just sort of stumble across these things, and you think, “Hey, that’s good! Nobody’s found that. Oh, of course, it’s a bit like that, but I’m messing it up here. But that’s fine, it still sounds good!” So, yeah, I get a lot of inspiration from messing up other people’s songs. (Laughs) And I don’t mean intentionally. I’m just not a great learner!

* Can you describe your demo process and how it’s evolved? I know your early demos were you stomping and strumming, and they’ve evolved into very well developed recordings.

Yes. (Goes silent)

(Laughs) So how has the process evolved over the years?

Just technology. Being able to afford a machine where you can multi-track yourself. Like, a four-track cassette machine. Then I leapt up after a few years to an eight-track cassette machine. Then I thought I was leaping up, but I probably leapt down in quality to an ADAT eight-track digital machine. Then I got into recording on computer, and there we go. That’s sort of where I am at the moment.

* What do you record first? The drum track?

Usually some sort of rhythm thing. I usually record the bass last, and that’s a habit that Colin also caught, because some bass players can overplay and play too much. And if they listen to what the drums are doing and what the chord instruments are doing, they realize they don’t have to play so much, and they can be much more selective and much more melodic in their playing. McCartney does that. From ’66 onwards, he was putting his bass on last. And I used to do that with my demos, and Colin got into doing that. I think it’s a very good way of approaching the bass, ‘cause so many bass players are, like, “Okay, let’s put the bass and drums down first!” And, of course, there’s no other instruments…or, y’know, they aren’t very loud in the mix or whatever. Bass players are just filling up all the holes, all the time, and it’s horrible. They don’t need that.

* How do you know when a song is “done”?

It’s never done. You just have to abandon it. You have to say, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, that’s good enough awful.” If you see what I mean. And then you just have to walk away from it and try not to return to your vomit too much. You really have to…there’s somebody who said, “Great art is knowing when to abandon it.” That’s completely true. You do have to say, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, that’s gonna have to do.” And, you know, sometimes you can work things to a peak of perfection and sort of not realize it and go through and start spoiling it. It’s a bit like overegging a pudding, or crushing the cake with the weight of icing, or something like that. That’s a bit of an art, doing that. But you do have to sort of throw it away, really, at some point, and shove it out into the world and say, “You’re old enough now, get out and stop sponging off of me, you layabout!”

* Do you have the ability to release any more of XTC’s live recordings?

Not really, although, thinking about it, we may have the rights to some of the live things that have come out already. We’re looking into doing a complete box of everything we did for the BBC. So that could be good.

* When did you first become aware of guitarist Ollie Halsall and in what ways has he influenced your playing?

Oh, he’s an enormous influence! He’s one of the top three influences, I think. I first discovered him with the first Patto album, and I heard the track “The Man.” I don’t know whether you know Patto, but they made, I think, two and a half really excellent albums. And some of the tracks…I’d say three or four of the tracks on each of those albums…are just stunningly wonderful, with the other stuff just being sort of okay. Certainly very good for the time. I’m not sure when the first album came out. ’70, ’71, something like that. And I heard a track called “The Man,” which is very slow and very empty, and I loved the sort of…this sounds rather rude, but I loved the aching holes in it. There were some great holes in the funk of this track, and it just seemed to ache. And I thought, “Wow!” And I was only a young kid, but that was very impressive. And then when I heard the complete opposite of that, tracks like “Air Raid Shelter,” where the guitar plays such inventive runs, not your standard blues stash of things, your standard blues licks that absolutely everybody was doing, the kind of cheap copy of Clapton. He didn’t play like that. He just played it like…he made the guitar sound more like Albert Ayler or John Coltrane, more like a sort of fluid piano player. Once I heard his guitar playing, I was, like, “Oh, I need to be able to play like that!” And I still catch myself…if I sit with a guitar, which I do most evenings, I still find Ollie-esque things falling under my fingers.

* What is it about Ollie that you took into your own music?

Surprise. And the element that walls are for breaking down, and that scales are for wrecking. But the sense of surprise, which for me is a lot of joy. It’s like a beautiful gift, where you’re opening a box, and you think you know what might be in it, but then you’re, like, “Oh, that is phenomenal! Wow! Look at that! How did that get in there? What a lovely little surprise!” His playing is full of that, and I try to do that…or I have tried to do that…with my songwriting and playing to date. But if you don’t know Patto, they did make some stinky records, but the first two…I think it’s just called Patto, and then the second one, I think, is called Hold Your Fire. Patto was the name of the singer: Mike Patto. A very tragic band. Mike Patto died of cancer to the throat, Ollie Halsall died, I think, of an overdose, and the bass player (Clive Griffiths) was in a car crash, has no recollection of having been in the band, and is in a wheelchair. The only member that’s sort of together is the drummer of the Rutles! The Barry Wom character, whose name is John Halsey. So it’s Ollie Halsall and John Halsey. It was a tragic band, but Ollie’s playing…there’s a couple of bits of Ollie on YouTube. They’re not fantastic, but you do get a sense of how he was quite willing to break stuff down musically.

The person who actually posed the question made note of the semi-similarity between the Rutles and the Dukes of Stratosphear.

Yeah, we like to think the Rutles copied everything we did!

Another person simply asks the following:

* Fanno vs. Ibanez?

Ibanez, definitely. I really grew with that guitar. That’s really sort of my wife in guitar terms, I guess. And I don’t own a Fanno! I only owned a Fanno for about six months. He took it back because he said he wanted to make some adjustments, and I never, ever saw it again. So I don’t own a Fanno. Dave Gregory does, Colin Moulding does, but I don’t. So Dennis, if you’re reading these, d’ya think I could have my guitar back, please?

I’ve just got a couple more here…

Oh, no, you can ask me as many as you want!

Well, okay, then. Next up…

* What the hell is a butter pie?

A butter pie is…isn’t that the side dish you have when you have a four of fish and a finger pie? I think you have to have a butter pie to lubricate the sensation of four of fish and a finger pie.

* When writing “Dear God,” did you really mean what you wrote, or is it just a song?

It’s just a song, and I was examining my attitude toward it all.

* Do you believe in God?>

No. Not at all. There is no aging English actor in white sheets sitting in the clouds. I think the truth is unbearable for people, so they tend to make up fairy stories. There is no God. And why should there be? There’s no reason for God. Mother Nature has no reason for God.

* With the upsurge of atheism as a kind of movement, are you getting different reactions or more reactions to “Dear God” these days?

No, it just seems to keep bobbling along, pissing off Christians and giving some sort of hoorah for people who tend not to believe. But I was wrestling with the tail end of my belief when I wrote it, because as a kid, I was really…I got myself worked into such a sweat over religion. I remember that, about the age of eight or nine, one afternoon I had visions in the sky of clouds parting, and there was God on His throne, surrounded by angels, talking to me and grinning at me. I mean, if I lived in a Catholic community, I could’ve milked that and made myself a fortune! But, no, I think it happened because I was in such a hysterical state about religion as a child, and about the existence of God and that sort of thing. Religion is a source of a lot of problems, and if there is a God, he would hate Christianity, he would hate Islam, he would hate Buddhism, he would hate everything that’s done in His name, because nobody behaves in a way that you’re supposed to behave. If you see what I mean.

* Will you ever consider selling your art, drawings, paints, etcetera?

I’ve given a few away. In fact, an ex-manager of ours, Tarquin Gotch…yes, that’s Tarquin Cedric Gotch, the silliest name in manager-dom…I gave him one called, I think, “The Yellow Archer.” And I’ve given a few others to people in the past. But, you know, they’re not great, and they’re not…I dunno, I think if I painted for a living, I’d have to get over that. I’ve actually considered it lately as a way of running away from music, to paint. But I don’t know if I could make a living doing it. I mean, it’s nice and romantic, but, you know, you’ve got to make yourself some money!

* When are you coming back to Chicago? If it’s summertime, we’ll take you sailing on Lake Michigan.

Make sure I’ve got plenty of lifejackets on, if that’s the case, because I don’t swim! It’s not that I don’t swim out of choice; I just can’t. I wade phenomenally. If the water’s about three feet deep, I’m just the best wader. But I can do the brick stroke better than anyone else! I don’t know when I’m coming back, but I have some fond memories of Chicago. One of them is of a little bar called the Bucket O’ Suds, where the squeaky-voiced old fellow that ran it actually brewed some of his own booze. And he had bottles of this deadly stuff behind him on the shelf. I went in there one night after a show, and this squeaky-voiced character, this squeaky-voiced barman, said, “Welcome to my bar!” And I said something…and I was really croaky after this show, so I said, “Well, I’ve just done a show, and I’m rather croaky, and I think I’ve got a cold coming.” He said, “I’ve got just the thing for you!” And he poured me a couple of glasses of this homemade liquor that he did, and it was fantastic! I’ve no idea what was in it, but, hey, I forgot my cold! I don’t know whether the Bucket O’ Suds is still there, though.

Nor do I, but I’ll certainly find out. (Writer’s note: sadly, the Bucket O’ Suds closed in 1998 when the health of the aforementioned “squeaky-voiced” proprietor, Joe Danno, began to fail. He died in 2002, but his liquor lived on for a few years afterwards via the BOS Distilling Company. Alas, it too has since gone out of business.) Do you get Stateside very often?

Not so much these days. I’m a little bit phobic about flying these days. The last time I flew was actually about nine years ago. I sort of think that if God had meant us to travel at those speeds, he would’ve given us wheels. No, wait, that’s not right, is it? (Laughs) He would’ve upgraded us! No, I just prefer not to fly if I can help it. That’s so cowardly of me. But, no, I don’t get Stateside.

* When are you going to make another good album like Nonsuch?

You bastard! I’m not calling you “you bastard.”

(Laughs) I understand.

But this person…you bastard! What was wrong, dear boy, with Apple Venus, Vol. 1?

I must tell you that, within his question, he used the word “overrated.”

Of what?

Of Apple Venus. And Wasp Star as well, actually.

(Gasps) My favorite album, Apple Venus. My favorite album that we did. But Nonsuch is my second favorite, so he’s not too out of whack.

And then I had a couple of follow-ups to questions from the last time I interviewed you. Did you ever hear from Dave Balfe of Food Records? (Writer’s note: Balfe reportedly never paid Partridge for the sessions he produced for Blur.)

(Sighs) Jesus Christ. I never want to hear from that twerp again. Yeah, he never paid me. It was five hundred pounds and a penny, those were my expenses. I just remember the penny on there. It made the amount indelible.

Yes, that was one of the pull quotes from our last conversation: “If Dave Balfe from Food Records ever gets to read this, pay me my expenses, you bastard!”

Five hundred pounds and a penny! Funnily enough, Virgin approached me recently and asked, “Were there any outtakes or finished things from that Blur session?” Because they’re doing a Blur retrospective. And I said, “Yes, there are three tracks, one of which has never come out in any form at all.” It’s called “Seven Days,” and it sounds fine to me. I played it a couple of months back, just to check, and it sounds completely fine. So who knows? Maybe some of my Blur productions will see the light of day!

What is the status of the Robyn Hitchcock collaborative album?

Oh, fuck knows, honestly. He’s just too busy running around the planet. We started this a couple of years back, and he’s just been so busy running around doing other stuff with other people. I feel very much the ignored party in all this, actually. I sent him an E-mail about six weeks or so ago, saying, “Look, I think this thing’s died of apathy, don’t you?” And he then sent me a postcard from on tour, saying, “Hey, we’re just getting into San Francisco, and, yeah, let’s record when I get back!” And, of course, I’ve never heard anything from him, so I guess he’s off on tour with somebody else again. He just seems to like touring and hanging out with other people, so I think the project seems to have died of apathy.

Are you still Andy “Two Sheds” Partridge?

I’ve still got the two shed. I’m looking at them now through the window. There they are, basking in the dusk. Actually, what does one do? One basks in the sun, but one really just gasps in the dusk, I think. (Pauses) So, what, is that all the questions, then? I thought there were tons!

Well, there were quite a few of them, but we blew through them rather quickly, so that’s all of them. Perhaps you’d like to offer up some fake information to place on the internet…? If so, feel free!

(Laughs) Yes, let’s start some lies! Do you realize that, from the top of my house, you can see all nine continents?

I did not realize that. And would you care to comment on the status of the unreleased album you recorded with John Lennon?

Yoko had it made into a hat.

Oh, dear.

Yes, she had the tapes knitted into a fur coat. Is it true that she had vast refrigerated warehouses full of fur coats?

I don’t know. It sounds viable, but I’m not sure if it’s actually true.

I was reading something, and someone said she was to fur coats what Imelda Marcos was to shoes.

Well, we’ll certainly be adding credence to that theory by putting it online.

Right! You know, I’d love to see a mash-up between her and Brian Eno. Brian Ono! Yoko Eno! Think of the music! (Offers an imitation of the possible shrieking sound) Like that, but very quietly. More ambient.

Actually, that reminds me, though: I was wondering if you yourself had any collaborations coming? The last time we spoke, you had worked with Jamie Cullum, and you’d just finished writing with Charlotte Hatherley.

Charlotte Hatherley…I don’t know what she’s doing at the moment. She sent me a burn of her soon-to-be-released album, and I’m afraid I didn’t like it much. And I was very bad. I was bad Uncle Andy, and I didn’t get back to her, ‘cause I couldn’t think of a nice way of saying, “I don’t really like your new album.” But as for collaborations with others, is there anything on the cards? Yeah, I seem to be doing most of my collaborating with a chap called Stuart Rowe, who’s a re-mixer cum producer cum musician, and he’s got a project called Lighter Thief. And I go to his studio and just improvise things, and he tends to chop them up and sort of make strange songs out of them. We just put out an EP, a three-track EP, of some of these things. It’s called Maximalism, and I’m really proud of one of the things on there. It’s called “Falling Into the Future,” and that was literally just improvised at that moment in his shed and tweaked into becoming a whole thing, if you see what I mean. You can hear part of it…actually, part of it is up on the XTC MySpace. The first two minutes of it or something is on there. But that was a great experience. It was fun doing that. We’re actually going to be putting out a whole album of these things later, but on the run-up to that, we’re putting out a series of EPs. I enjoy working with Stu because I never intend to do anything, and I just get down there, and if something boils to the surface, we record it. It’s like making music where you don’t intend to make it, if you see what I mean. It’s not like writing a song and then, okay, now let’s record it. It’s, oh, I’ve got a idea, quick, now turn that microphone on. And then we shape that into a piece or a song or a landscape of some sort.

Well, Andy, I think you’ve covered them all.

Grand!

It’s been good talking to you again.

Alrighty! Well, I always enjoy it. Let’s ask people for some more out-there questions. They were all a little conservative.

(Laughs)Well, thank you, Andy, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed that we do see some new music from you soon…at your leisure.

All righty! Cheers, Will!

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Sometimes an ideal Broadway cast is assembled: they command the stage with such presence and work together with such ease that you lose yourself completely in what’s unfolding before you. Part of the reason live theatre is so amazing is because when talent presents itself right there in front of you, you can’t help but feel its energy radiate through the audience. For these reasons, as well as a fantastically edgy script, Speed-the-Plow is one of the best shows on Broadway this year.

Raul Esparza and William H. Macy in Speed-the-Plow.

Written by David Mamet, a mogul among American playwrights, Speed-the-Plow chronicles 36 hours in the lives of three characters: Bobby Gould (William H. Macy), a recently promoted movie executive at the top of his game; Charlie Fox (Raul Esparza), his coworker and longtime friend; and Karen (Elisabeth Moss), the temporary secretary working at Bobby’s office that particular day. The banter, scheming, and power plays that subsequently occur are the result of everyone’s desire to move ahead professionally in a cutthroat industry. None of these people are inherently bad — they just embrace a dog-eat-dog lifestyle. Charlie explains to Karen, “Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it’s full of surprises, and you’re constantly getting fucked.”

Although Speed-the-Plow takes place in the ’80s, it’s in no way outdated. It was originally staged on Broadway in 1988 (fun fact: Madonna played Karen, in her only Broadway credit to date). This revival feels perfectly at home in 2009; really, the clothes and the ’80s technology on hand are the only aspects that date it.

Macy, Esparza, and Moss are a fantastic threesome. Although Speed-the-Plow has been running for months now, all three actors performed with the utmost professionalism, energy, and attention the night I saw the show. The revival saw its share of drama with an out-of-the-blue cast change in December: as you may have heard, thanks to plenty of coverage in the world of celebrity gossip, Jeremy Piven, who was playing Bobby, dropped out of the play without warning after he reportedly got mercury poisoning from eating too much sushi. The press had a field day, labeling Piven a diva and a pain to work with. Esparza was outspoken about Piven leaving the play, saying it was a much more pleasurable experience without him.

I didn’t see Piven’s performance, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt — there must’ve been a good reason he was cast as Bobby in the first place. Luckily, his replacement is nearly perfect. You couldn’t possibly miss Piven since Macy does such a superb job, adding panache and deftness to a script you know he totally “gets.” (He’s been working with Mamet since the ’70s.)

Mamet’s plays are usually biting and witty, and his characters know their way around a conversation. Speed-the-Plow is no exception — one-liners are thrown across the room like curveballs, and the enthusiasm remains consistently high throughout the play’s intermission-free 90 minutes. These characters are high-strung, and their urgency is reflected in director Neil Pepe’s pumped-up pacing.

Speed-the-Plow is expertly executed both onstage by the cast and offstage by the production team. It’s a joy to see such talented actors play together in a production they clearly love being a part of. And Mamet’s script is funny, sincere, charming, and full of surprises. Speed-the-Plow closes February 22, so there isn’t much time left to check it out, but if you can, I recommend it. It’s what a night at the theatre should be.

Speed-the-Plow plays at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St. Showtimes are Tue 7 PM, Wed-Sat 8 PM (also Wed and Sat 2 PM), and Sun 3 PM. Tickets are $49.50–$116.50 and can be purchased at telecharge.com. For more info on the play visit speedtheplowonbroadway.com, and for more New York theatre reviews visit theatreiseasy.com.

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Hollywood has made dozens of football movies in recent history. Every year at the studios churn out least one football film – and some years will see as many as four or five football stories committed to celluloid. With Hollywood’s recent love of biopics, it’s safe to assume that more than a few famous players will see their lives and careers dramatized on the big screen. And few things satisfy an audience like the rags to riches story of a league doormat surging to the championship. But as much as the studios love to bank on an underdog story to fill out their quarterly income statements, few football films have actually managed to appeal to more than a niche market. And fewer still have managed to garner any kind of critical acclaim.

But Hollywood has learned that even if pure football can’t deliver box office rewards, the game of football is exciting to watch. And the techniques used by football players can be used to deliver some terrific sequences. This countdown takes a look at some classic techniques used in football and how Hollywood has managed to capture the essence of what makes it so very entertaining to watch – and used this to enhance their own unique stories.

Follow me through the hole to see the top ten techniques that Hollywood has learned from the NFL…

10. Run Blocking

The objective of run blocking is to build and maintain forward momentum and clear a path for the ballcarrier. Run blocks come in all shapes and flavors, with such terms as drive blocks, trap blocks, scoop blocks, angle blocks, fold blocks, and alley blocks. But on a fundamental level, they’re all the same – taking someone and getting them to move the fuck out of your way, so your more athletic teammate behind you can burst through the hole, score a touchdown, and get all the glory. Later on, while he’s banging the head cheerleader, you get to enhance your draft potential by downing pint after pint of tasty chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream. Everyone wins!

In The Bodyguard (1992), after an impromptu performance in a nightclub by Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) has disintegrated into complete chaos, her security team moves in to whisk her away to safety. The Danny Aiello doppleganger Mike Starr, whose character was great at hurting people but apparently never understood the nuances of personal security, uses his 6’3″ frame and considerable bulk to tunnel his way through the crowd and create an escape route. Then he turns to find that that Frank Farmer (Kevin Costner) has cut the opposite direction and isn’t even on the same side of the field. Then later, Farmer has sex with the football.

NFL Example: Damien McIntosh – Kansas City Chiefs

9. Pass Blocking

The purpose of pass blocking is to protect your quarterback from harm. It’s a slow retreat, a controlled backpedaling that enables you to react to the maneuvers of a defensive lineman and hold him at bay until the ball has been released downfield. Good pass blocking is something of an opposite to run blocking – rather than building forward momentum, it’s about absorbing an opponent’s momentum and thus neutralizing his charge.

At the end of Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Boromir (Sean Bean) attempts redeem himself for his moment of weakness that led to his attempt to take the one ring from Frodo. Confronted by a horde of blitzing orcs, hobbits Merry and Pippin are effectively helpless. But Boromir steps in and demonstrates a variety of pass-blocking techniques, including a chip block, a cut block, and the currently defunct (and illegal) throwing-a-knife-into-the-opposing-player’s-neck block. But then some snaggle-toothed, nappy-haired Polynesian beast comes in late with a cheap shot and ruins what otherwise would have been a spectacular effort.

NFL Example: Chris Samuels and Clinton Portis – Washington Redskins

8. Punting

Punting in football is a bit like editing in the movies – it’s something of an “invisible art.” It’s rarely celebrated, and in general you only notice it when something goes wrong. But it’s also one aspect of football where acting ability comes into play. Whether trying to sell a fake punt to a wary defense, or taking a dive to draw a fifteen-yard roughing the kicker penalty, punting is one aspect of football where budding thespians can audition for the world at large.

In The Dark Half (1993), an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name, Timothy Hutton plays two characters, the serious writer Thad Beaumont and his own murderous evil twin. Beaumont, who had been writing crime fiction under the pseudonym George Stark, holds a symbolic funeral for Stark after the subterfuge is exposed in a foiled extortion attempt. But Stark manages to take physical form and rises from the grave, systematically using his trademark straight razor to slaughter everyone who was even tangentially involved with his burial. After Stark, clad in pointed cowboy boots, tracks down the magazine photographer Mike Donaldson (Kent Broadhurst), he chases him through a hallway and slashes him a few times before ultimately dispatching him with a very solid punt to the head. Is it a coincidence that a football is the approximate size and shape of a human head? Well…let’s hope so.

NFL Example: Filip Filipovic – Dallas Cowboys

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If you aren’t a longtime reader of this space, you may not even know who I am, so let’s start with an introduction: My name is Jeff Giles, and I’m the editor-in-chief of this establishment. Popdose rose from the ashes of my old site, Jefitoblog, after it was cruelly eaten by a ne’er-do-well hosting company by the name of Jatol (which is, I believe, Latin for “motherfucker”). I was all set to cash in my bloggin’ chips, but due to the gentle persistence of some friends and colleagues, I asked some of my favorite writers if they’d be interested in joining forces. Voila! Popdose was born.

Anyway, the thing is, Jefitoblog was basically an accident. When I started the site in 2004, I was five years removed from a career in music journalism that had seen me go from a young, wide-eyed music fiend to a jaded, not-as-young crank in the space of a decade. Jefitoblog wasn’t supposed to be a continuation of that career — it was just a lark, a way of talking about music with people who loved it as much as I did. I really only had my own domain because I couldn’t track stats through my LiveJournal account — and I’d only opened that because there was no other way of leaving comments on my old friend Ben’s journal.

And now look at us. Hell, Ben writes for Popdose now! (He’s the man behind our excellent Test of the Boomerang series, which would be one of my favorite weekly reads even if I wasn’t involved in publishing it.) In just a dozen short months, our cheery gang of pop culture mavens has steadily expanded its ranks and its stats, to the point where we are now reaching over 5,000 unique visitors a month — and over 3 million hits. To celebrate our birthday, we’ll be giving the site a facelift, turning the front page into more of a magazine-style table of contents that will allow us to give you easier access to the heaping loads of awesome content we’re churning out on an hourly basis.

All of which brings me back to my point, which is that it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya. Getting Popdose off the ground has been no easy task; without our army of terrific writers, and the tireless assistance of Senior Editor Robert Cass and Managing Editor Jason Hare — not to mention innumerable instances of above-and-beyond aid from everyone on the staff, as well as the vital backing we’ve enjoyed from our benefactors at Pressing Needs — it would have been simply impossible. A lot of hours have gone into the more than 2,800 posts in these archives — hours that have slowly but surely kept me from doing what got me here in the first place: talking about music with people who love it as much as I do. When Jefitoblog went off the air, I was posting twice a day; these days, most of my work for Popdose is behind the scenes. I’d like to change that a little.

So here’s the deal: from here on out, I’ll make it my business to communicate with you guys via an ongoing series of Letters from the Editor like this one — letters which will address a wide-ranging variety of topics, just like I used to. It’s my plan to get them out on a weekly basis, but I know better than to make promises I may not be able to keep. Point is, you’ll be hearing more from me in ’09 — and oh man, the site is going to get even better, just wait and see.

See you soon!

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Welcome to 2009!  I know this matchup isn’t entirely appropriate, seeing as we’re not hitting a new century, or even a new decade, but the editors would probably spank me if I left something in the queue for 91 years (they seem to use just about anything as an excuse to slap me around).  So here you are, the battle of Boys Who Represent Particular Centuries.  We here at Popdose are well aware of the perils of knowing in advance that you’ve got a full three days to recover from your hangover, so we sincerely hope that you had a safe and happy New Year’s Eve celebration, and that you’re not suffering too much today.

T Rex – “20th Century Boy”

Bad Religion – “21st Century (Digital Boy)”

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Last year, Shane MacGowan and the Pogues paraded in style, as their masterpiece “The Old Main Drag” knocked off Colin Meloy and the Decemberists by a score of 60% to 40%. Next week, we’ll be addressing the ongoing saga of (technically still) Governor Rod Blagojevich by taking on the subject of Wrongful Accusations.

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Seriously, we’ll update Tweeters on a regular basis regarding just posted stories, breaking news of interest to our readers, and perhaps a sneak peek at things to come.

There’s no use denying it. The future is now. Join us on Twitter.

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It all started back in September, when Robert Cass sent an e-mail to the staff telling us Billboard had announced that Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” is the top song of the Hot 100 era. The reactions were swift and predictably shocked, ranging from “There must not be a God” to “That is one brutal list” to “Just as a general rule, I don’t think an artist is allowed to complain about a lack of respect once they’ve recorded a duet with the Fat Boys.” And just as swiftly, an idea was born: what if we all ranked our favorite songs of the era and shared the results with all of you?

So here it is — the Popdose 100. We limited our choices to songs from the last 50 years, and in the interest of establishing some kind of consensus, we tried to stick to singles that actually charted on the Hot 100. Some of us limited the number of times we could pick a single by any particular artist, but for the most part we kept it as informal as possible — and wouldn’t you know it, “The Twist” is nowhere to be found.

Now, this being the Internet and all, we know two things: 1) people love lists; and 2) they love to complain about what’s on them. So we expect a fair amount of grousing about what made our list; hell, even some of the writers who participated were a little perturbed by the final results. Where’s all the rap? Where the hell are the women? So on and so forth. Every list is flawed, and ours is no exception, but remember, this isn’t meant to be a list of the “best” or “top” singles of the era — only our favorites.

Now that we’ve gotten all the background info and caveats out of the way, thanks are in order: to David Medsker, for tabulating the results; to Robert Cass, for editing it into something legible; and to the Popdose staff — not to mention our friends Peter Lubin, Amy Davis, Carl Abernathy, and Mike Heyliger, who added their votes to our own. Let’s take a look at the results, shall we?

1. The Beach Boys, “God Only Knows” (download)
It starts with what superficially should be the least cool combination of instruments you could conjure up in a pop song: accordion and French horn. Then comes the horse-clop percussion and the sleigh bells. The lead vocalist is singing up front for only the second time in his life. And he’s singing about God. In a pop song. In the middle of the ’60s. This doesn’t seem like revolution. More like Ozzie and Harriet. Warm apple pie and sock hops. This is the greatest single of the rock era?

In a word, yes. Because the man who put it all together — the man who composed and arranged and produced this work and plucked a midlevel advertising copywriter out of obscurity to write the heartbreaking, shockingly honest lyrics for the song — is also the greatest American composer of the last 50 years: Brian Wilson.

There are a few moments in this life that are both exhilarating and sad at the same time. The first time I listened to “God Only Knows,” in 1991, was one of them. Exhilarating because from the first notes I had goosebumps: it is simply one of the most beautifully composed and arranged songs in the history of not just pop music, but Western music. To place “God Only Knows” in its proper context is to compare it not just to 1966 Paul McCartney, but 1836 Frederic Chopin.

And the sadness? It’s the realization that, like with a drug, the first high is the greatest. Unlike a drug, though, the trance that “God Only Knows” leaves upon the listener does no damage; it only elevates, leaving the listener wanting more. A gateway drug, as it were, to the rest of Pet Sounds (see also #22 below), and Wilson’s artistic legacy. –Matthew Bolin

2. Stevie Wonder, “Superstition” (download)
Even when it was bad, funk was good. And when it was good, it was sublime. And when it was created by an absolute musical genius at the peak of his musical powers like Mr. Stevie was in 1972, funk could fuse rock, soul, and pop, making its groove somehow greater than the sum of its parts.

“Superstition” was pivotal in Stevie’s career; like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, he’d been a popular soul figure but was in the process of evolving his music into a heavier, more socially conscious style. The album it sprang from, Talking Book, was something of a coming-out party for the new Stevie, with Jeff Beck contributing guitar parts on several tracks. In fact, Stevie wrote “Superstition” for Beck but recorded it first because his manager, knowing a hit when he heard one, pressed him to do so. Allegedly, that caused some bad blood between Stevie and Beck, who eventually recorded his own version.

Stevie performed “Superstition” live on Sesame Street, and it’s been covered by countless bands since, its brilliant trademark clavinet rhythm line and dramatically chorded chorus part of one of the most unforgettable songs of the 1970s. –Mojo Flucke, Ph.D.

3. Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (download)
You turn on the radio and hear this monster breath of venom, William S. Burroughs-esque wordplay nearly sliding off the rails, and you wait for the “baby” that never arrives. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991) was both the beginning of a new phase of hard rock and the end of one. Nirvana introduced a stream of consciousness that had been flowing in the underground for a while, but until it found its way onto the airwaves, it seemed an impossible feat.

Could you tear into the pop culture without the face paint, the male chauvinism, and the rest of the hard-rock trappings? Was the youth of America prepared to take to heart such a raw, almost dissonant sound? Millions of sales later and what seemed like as many imitators, the answer was a resounding “Yeah, what-ev-urrr …” The double-tracked force of Butch Vig’s production, the pummeling combination of Krist Novoselic on bass and future Foo Dave Grohl on drums, and that scabbed, sleepwalking scream of Kurt Cobain was nothing anyone expected, but it was, invariably, exactly what they were looking for. –Dw. Dunphy

4. Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On” (download)
In your face, Berry Gordy. The Motown brass famously quarreled with Gaye over his leap out of the bedroom and onto the six o’clock news with “What’s Going On” (1971), and Gordy only released the single after all manner of prodding from Gaye, proclaiming it a flop before it even reached the shelves. It’s hard to question Gordy’s ears, but he’d heard “What’s Going On” — whether it fit within the Motown sound or not, he was a fool for trying to prevent its release. The outgrowth of Gaye’s grief over Tammi Terrell’s death as well as his distress over the letters his brother was sending him from Vietnam, “What’s Going On” combined Gaye’s predilection for the deeply personal with a burgeoning social conscience, and shocked fans and critics alike. It was an instant hit, and whatever Gordy’s prerelease qualms were, he wasn’t too proud to eat a little crow — after “What’s Going On” broke sales records for Motown, he swiftly ordered the full-length album that would become one of the label’s enduring classics. –Jeff Giles

5. John Lennon, “Imagine” (download)
Ladies and gentlemen, the most subversive pop single of all time! It’s an extraordinary contradiction: a song that plaintively argues against capitalism, nationalism, and organized religion — a song that Lennon himself referred to as “virtually the Communist Manifesto” — remains beloved throughout the Western world to this day. In many ways an elegy to all that wasn’t quite accomplished during the ’60s, “Imagine” (1971) has outlasted its association with the antiwar movement. A decade after its release, the song served as the perfect argument against religious-right censorship in a brilliant episode of the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati that aired four months after Lennon’s death. Twenty years after that, Clear Channel blacklisted “Imagine” in response to 9/11, and the circle was complete. The ensuing public ridicule made it clear that “Imagine” will vanquish all foes foreign or domestic, dogmatic or jingoistic. Bigger than Jesus indeed. –Jon Cummings

6. Otis Redding, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” (download)
Arguably the best song from the Memphis Stax era’s most powerful and talented singer, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” (1968) takes everyman’s frustration with past decisions, couples it with worries about living up to your family and friends’ expectations, and wraps it up in the most beautiful vocal performance of which mankind is capable. Even on the 3,000th play, this song can send shivers down the spine of anyone who’s grabbed a mike and attempted to sing. But ol’ Otis didn’t do it all by himself: he had Booker T. & the M.G.’s keeping the beat in the background, helping the singer reach sweet soul perfection. For those of you playing Trivial Pursuit: recorded three days before Otis’s untimely death in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, Stax released “The Dock of the Bay” — his only #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — posthumously. –Mojo

7. Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come” (download)
Derided throughout his secular career for wasting his extraordinary voice on frivolous dance tunes, Cooke tragically was gone before this song — written in response to Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” — turned him into a civil rights icon as well as a soul progenitor. His death just as “Change” (1964) was finally seeing commercial release (as a B-side!) shaped the song’s legacy as a harbinger of dreams not fully realized, of great men destroyed before their work could be completed. Its use in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) and Michael Mann’s Ali (2001) enhanced that bittersweet legacy; it took Barack Obama’s election to finally bring it all back home. “It’s been a long time coming,” Obama said during his victory speech, “but tonight, change has come to America.” –JC

8. Prince & the Revolution, “When Doves Cry” (download)
Though it was the first single released from the Purple Rain soundtrack, “When Doves Cry” was actually the last song to be written and recorded for the film. It was an unconventional choice for the first single, as it had no bass line and sounded very different from all the other pop songs on the airwaves at the time. But Prince loved that about the song and was sure it would be a hit. In Per Nilsen’s excellent biography Dance Music Sex Romance — Prince: The First Decade, Prince’s former sound engineer, Peggy McCreary, remembers mixing the song with him: “Finally, he reached over and punched out the bass track. That’s when we knew we had something special. He said something like, ‘Nobody would have the balls to do this. You just wait, they’ll be freaking.’” And freak they did. “When Doves Cry” was released in May of 1984 and was an instant smash, remaining at the top of the Billboard charts for five weeks straight that summer and becoming the best-selling single of the year. With the success of “When Doves Cry” paving the way, Purple Rain, its soundtrack, and the subsequent world tour cemented Prince’s status as a pop superstar. –Kelly Stitzel

9. Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody” (download)
During January of my sophomore year of high school, our choir director announced that we would be performing “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) for our spring concert. I had discovered Queen the year before, thanks to the miracle of a dubbed 90-minute cassette featuring Queen’s greatest hits. I have countless memories of rehearsing the piece. I tried out for a solo, attempting to sing the part of an alto in a humiliating attempt at falsetto. Mr. Zysk, the choir director, referred to the lyrics as “can’t do this to my baby.” A freshman was given a chance to play the guitar solo and brought in a hot pink, C.C. DeVille-style guitar. And by some miracle of luck, the film Wayne’s World (1992), featuring the unforgettable Mirthmobile sequence, was released less than a month prior to our performance, which meant that an auditorium full of listless boomer parents actually started acting like they were at a rock concert — headbanging and all. –Zack Dennis

10. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, “Born to Run” (download)
It’s a rare kind of song that I can sing to mourn my father and lull my newborn daughter to sleep. It works as a powerhouse set-closing rocker or a tender acoustic ballad. “Born to Run” (1975) was etched on my consciousness at an early age — on my parents’ stereo, the car radio, dad even had a “Born to Run” pin on the hat he wore to work. The breakthrough tale of cars, glory, and a girl named Wendy offering the only salvation from the death-trap town is but one of Springsteen’s rock ‘n’ roll parables. For the chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected protagonist, the search for the “runaway American dream” is never truly over, nor is it won in the end. Before the incendiary live version of “Born to Run” on the Live 75-85 box set, Bruce tells us, “Remember, in the end nobody wins unless everybody wins.” But it doesn’t matter. So long as love is wild and love is real, we can still walk out on the wire and get out while we’re young. –Ben Wiser

11. XTC, “The Mayor of Simpleton” (download)
An upstanding showing for a preposterously unlikely entry in the almost-top-ten! What is the magic that propels this track from 1989 above most others and causes it to shine so brightly in the extensive Partridge catalog? It’s the bass line, stupid. Well, that and the slamming drums courtesy of Pat Masteletto. Well, that and the couplets, rhythms, and rhymes, plus the two bridges, the refrain, the melody, the harmonies, the chord pattern, and, of course, the tambourine (from back in the day when you didn’t just take two good bars from the performance and cut-and-paste them in across the length of the track — this one is played in its artful totality).

There’s a saying in comedy: “If you buy the premise, then you’ll buy the bit.” Well check this:

I don’t know how many pounds make up a ton
Of all the Nobel prizes that I’ve never won
And I may be the mayor of Simpleton
But I know one thing
And that’s I love you

So in the end, when all logic grows cold and all thinking gets done, where better to wind up than warm in the arms of the mayor of Simpleton? It’s just chockablock full of fun — more than should be allocable in a mere three minutes and 58 seconds. –Peter Lubin

12. Marvin Gaye, “Sexual Healing” (download)
Marvin had been absent from pop radio just five years when “Sexual Healing” glided onto the scene at the tail end of 1982, yet even then the song felt less like a comeback than a valedictory. “Here’s one more,” he seemed to say, “just in case you need reminding.” We did — and Marvin seduced us with one last, slow-building orgasm of loverman soul. It felt just as good as it ever had, which is amazing, considering the passage of time; on the other hand, we were still smoking our cigarette (metaphorically speaking) when we heard the news of Marvin’s death 16 months later. –JC

13. Ray Charles, “Georgia on My Mind” (download)
“Georgia on My Mind” was 30 years old by the time Ray Charles covered it in 1960 — and it had already been recorded by a number of other performers — but he was the first to turn it into a bona fide hit. It’s fitting, since Charles’s version is inarguably the definitive one, not only because of his typically impeccable performance but because his recording became something of a symbol for the post-civil rights era in Georgia, culminating in his performance before the Georgia General Assembly in 1979, shortly before the state adopted “Georgia on My Mind” as its official state song. That was just a formality, though — Charles’s “Georgia” was an anthem long before any politicians put their stamp of approval on it. Even if you’ve never been to Georgia — or known anybody named Georgia — hearing him bleed out those lyrics will simultaneously break your heart and make your spirit soar every single time. –JG

14. Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue” (download)
To me, “Tangled Up in Blue” (1975) is a well-worn and wine-stained great American novel. I want to be the protagonist in the song — rising up from the wreckage of a failed relationship to drift from one end of the country to the other, until after a night in a seedy strip joint I would rediscover my true love over a book of Italian poems and a proto-pipe. In the end, after the bottom falls out, we’re all heading back to one true love. A constant. Home. Everything else is an illusion. Everything else, just drunken dumbshow. –BW

15. The Band, “The Weight” (download)
It missed the Top 40, but “The Weight” has enjoyed a long and fruitful life since originally appearing on 1968′s Music From Big Pink, inspiring so many covers that you may very well have thought it was a standard poached from an old hymnal. Like all of the Band’s best work, it feels timeless, like something that’s always simply been here, played by men who’ve always simply been here too. It’s got an instantly memorable chorus and a gang vocal that practically dares you not to sing along, and although the people mentioned in the lyrics were friends of the band, the story — about a traveler whose good deeds get the best of him — is universal enough to transcend its pompous origins: Robbie Robertson claims to have been inspired by the films of director Luis Buñuel. It isn’t my favorite Band song — in fact, I’ve heard it so many times that I confess to skipping past it occasionally — but when you’ve got Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel putting their voices together, you can never go too far astray. –JG

16. U2, “One” (download)
The magnificence of this song is how it transcended its original intent and became something much more profound. Written as a message from Bono to the Edge, “One” (1991) is about the troubles and pain U2′s guitarist was going through as his marriage was hitting the rocks. However, in 1992, when the song reached its chart peak, “One” stopped being U2′s song and became the world’s. With the world recovering from the first Iraq war, and the AIDS epidemic on the front page of every newspaper, the song’s message of inclusion took on new meaning. Bono has often cited John Lennon as one of his major influences; with “One,” he and U2 wrote the next generation’s “Imagine.” –Scott Malchus

17. Nick Lowe, “Cruel to Be Kind” (download)
Nick Lowe has become known for many things in his time: writing “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” one of Elvis Costello’s signature songs (see #88 below); earning a cool million in royalties when Curtis Stigers covered it for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard in 1992; having his single “Heart of the City” be the first ever released on Stiff Records; producing the first British punk album ever released (the Damned’s Damned Damned Damned); being Johnny Cash’s son-in-law; and rhyming “Rick Astley” with “ghastly.” For the members of the general populace who aren’t card-carrying music geeks, however, Nick Lowe is just the guy who sings “Cruel to Be Kind,” but, really, that’s a pretty decent credit to have on your resumé in and of itself. Backed by fellow former Rockpile members Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner, and Terry Williams, “Cruel” — which he cowrote with another Brinsley-Schwarz alumni, Ian Gomm — possesses a hook that has been stuck in people’s heads since they first heard in 1978, but it also has lyrics that sneak up on you with their profundity about the cyclical nature of a love-hate relationship. “You say your love is bona fide, but that don’t coincide with the things that you do,” sings Lowe. “And when I ask you to be nice, you say you’ve gotta be cruel to be kind in the right measure.” Although this is ostensibly “a very, very, very good sign,” our hero continues to pick himself back off the ground, only be knocked back down again and again until the song fades to a close. So does that make us romantic sadists for wanting to sing along? –Will Harris

18. Van Morrison, “Moondance”
Just like so many of his peers during the ’60s, Van Morrison’s music went through a lot of dramatic changes — in his case, moving from the Stonesy R&B of Them (“Gloria,” “Here Comes the Night”) to bubblegum pop (“Brown Eyed Girl”) to lengthy, poetic ruminations on life and love (Astral Weeks) — in just six short years. Then, in 1970, he hit on something that was, well, magic (see also #48 below). “Moondance” swung like a jazz standard, teemed with drunken yet restrained horniness, exuded sweet romanticism and oozed cool all at once. And most remarkably, it never got old. Girls love it, and guys can proudly enjoy it without their manhood ever being called into question. “Brown Eyed Girl” might be more popular, and the songs that make up Astral Weeks might be more acclaimed, but when it comes down to it, “Moondance” is by far Van the Man’s greatest moment. Dig it. –Michael Fortes

19. Aretha Franklin, “Chain of Fools” (download)
I don’t care how many people think “Respect” is Aretha’s best song — “Chain of Fools” outshines any of her up-tempo numbers from the late ’60s. Written by Don Convay, the song came out in 1967 and became an instant sensation. It has everything you’d expect from the Queen of Soul: a tight band behind her, her backup vocalists singing in perfect harmony with plenty of sass, and so much attitude we all overlook that she’s willing to still get some from this scoundrel of a man for as long as she can, even though she’s just a link in his chain. Ah, but that’s how Aretha turns the song, isn’t it? She’s telling this no-good guy that she knows his game and she’s taking control. If he wants some, she’s available, and if he doesn’t want it on her terms, then f**k ‘im. All of this context plays out over one of the most danceable songs of the era. I guarantee that if you put on “Chain of Fools” in the middle of a party, booties will start shaking. –SM

20. Crowded House, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” (download)
Neil Finn’s brilliance as a tunesmith, honed during his apprenticeship in his brother’s band, Split Enz, emerged in full flower on Crowded House’s debut single. Most listeners probably responded first to the organ solo, which tethers the song eternally to Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (see #84 below). But it was the lyrical imagery of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” (1986) that marked it as an utterly unique presence on pop radio in the mid-’80s. “Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup,” Finn sang — a line that would come to define Crowded House’s entire oeuvre, which proved too smart and too emotionally complex for the pop charts. Is Neil Finn the most underrated songwriter in rock history? –JC

21. Prince, “Little Red Corvette”
Released as the second single from 1999 (1982), “Little Red Corvette” was Prince’s first top-ten hit and the most rock-oriented single he’d released up to that point. As a result of its success and the video getting heavy airplay on MTV, he started to see a more diverse (read: white) audience at his concerts. Considered his breakout, it paved the way for the monster success he would achieve over the next few years. –KS

22. The Beach Boys, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”
There’s no other song that so perfectly captures the idea of innocent love. But for such a simple lyrical sentiment, the opening track of 1966′s Pet Sounds is musically sophisticated, almost dense, artistically packing so much — crazy instrumentation, a beautiful bridge, signature Beach Boys harmonies, and a big tempo change — into just over two minutes. –Amy Davis

23. The Impressions, “People Get Ready” (download)
Arguably Curtis Mayfield’s finest hour, this 1965 gospel number should have its own McDonald’s marquee updating how many millions of times it’s been covered. –Mojo

24. Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”
The single from Thriller (1982) that turned Michael Jackson into MICHAEL JACKSON. The landmark video and the assault on all-white MTV; the Jheri curl and the single white glove; Motown 25 and the moonwalk; and, in the lyrics, a denial of untoward sexual activity. Oh, yeah, the song’s awesome too. –JC

25. Ray Charles, “What’d I Say”
The film Ray surely put the “hack” in (director Taylor) Hackford, but the scene in which Ray Charles, his band, and the Raelettes conjure “What’d I Say” (1959) on the spot is perhaps cinema’s finest showcase of the glory of improvisation. –JC

26. The Beatles, “Hey Jude”
One of my fondest musical memories will always be sitting on the Spanish Steps and watching one man with an acoustic guitar spark an impromptu 20-minute “Hey Jude” (1968) sing-along with dozens of random strangers. Now that’s the mark of a classic song. –JG

27. The Spencer Davis Group, “Gimme Some Lovin’” (download)
The scariest part about “Gimme Some Lovin’” (1967) isn’t that it’s as fun and booty-shimmying good as it was when it came out, but that it features Steve Winwood singing when he was a teenager — and he sounds exactly the same to this day. –DD

28. America, “Sister Golden Hair”
I’d go so far as to say “Sister Golden Hair” (1975) is America’s best moment — a countrified pop tune with hooks for days and nary a no-named horse or tin man in sight. Just a straight-ahead sing-along about cold feet. –DD

29. Isaac Hayes, “Theme From Shaft“
As a piece of music, the theme from 1971′s blaxploitation classic Shaft gets bogged down by its status as something of a punchline. “They say this cat Shaft is a baaad mutha–” “Shut yo’ mouth! “Well, I’m talkin’ about Shaft …” And we can dig it. It also loses focus after all the blurbs about how Isaac Hayes was the first black artist to win the Oscar for Best Song, shattering a decades-old Hollywood color barrier. If you actually listen to the song, though, for the funky build as well as for the complex arrangement and skill behind it, you realize why it won. It’s tightly constructed, as orchestrated as anything John Barry and Maurice Jarre were doing at the time, and dayum, it grooves. –DD

30. Bill Withers, “Ain’t No Sunshine” (download)
It isn’t the lyrics, per se, that make this song so special, but their economy. If you listen to “Ain’t No Sunshine” (1971), you could write all the words on the back of an envelope and still have room for an address. It’s how Bill Withers sings them, that rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed, racked with anxiety in thinking that the only happiness in your life is lost forever: “I know, I know, I know, I know …” If you haven’t lived this song at least once in your life, you haven’t lived at all. –DD

31. Derek & the Dominoes, “Layla”
Just to be clear, we’re talking about the original “Layla” from 1970, not Clapton’s Unplugged version from ’92. Not many artists could articulate so well, both musically and lyrically, the simultaneous thrill and angst of falling in love with a friend’s wife. It’s also the only song in the Clapton catalog for which another guitarist — in this case, Duane Allman — does the heavy lifting. –AD

32. George Michael, “Freedom ’90″ (download)
Heaven knows you were such a mature boy, George, breaking so completely from your past. Insufferable too. But damn if this song isn’t the greatest thing you’ve ever done, and that’s saying something. –JC

33. Queen, “Another One Bites the Dust”
Before the release of 1980′s The Game, Queen was merely an extraordinary rock band. Bassist John Deacon, lyrically inspired by spaghetti westerns of the ’60s and musically inspired by an evening hanging out in the studio with Chic, brought the band their first crossover success, with “Dust” reaching #2 on the Billboard R&B and disco charts. With an unbelievably tight rhythm section (almost all the instruments were played by Deacon in the studio) and Freddie Mercury impeccably adapting his aggressive vocal quality to the funk genre, “Another One Bites the Dust” remains one of Queen’s most iconic tracks — even if it did unfortunately lead to many of the clunky dance tracks on 1982′s Hot Space. –Jason Hare

34. Elvis Costello, “Veronica” (download)
The greatest pop song ever written about an Alzheimer’s patient, the biggest chart hit of Costello’s career (it reached #19 in ’89), and one of the finest post-Beatles works to bear the name McCartney. –JG

35. Jackie Wilson, “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” (download)
The second — and best — of Wilson’s late-’60s trio of comeback singles, “Higher and Higher” (1967) matches up Mr. Excitement with the Funk Brothers to produce undeniable results. –JG

36. Def Leppard, “Photograph”
It isn’t cool to like this song now. It’s not rock or metal, it solidified Mutt Lange’s production style into a globulous parody, and it conjures a thousand images of mullet haircuts and “rat tails” circa 1983. But underneath it all, it’s pure pop music. –DD

37. New Order, “Bizarre Love Triangle” (download)
New Order’s most accessible moment, and perhaps the greatest of all synth-pop singles (1986). Now, could someone tell me what it’s about? –JC

38. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “The Waiting” (download)
In a hundred years, when some snot-nosed kid wants to know what stadium rock was all about, this 1981 single will be the answer: anthemic lyrics, air-guitar-worthy power chords, defiant vocals. –JC

39. Joe Jackson, “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”
This is a song I would love to see someone try on American Idol. Because if they got it right (which would be highly unlikely), I would do something I’ve never done before — pick up the phone and call in my vote. It’s both a snapshot of 1978 new wave and a timeless pop song. –AD

40. Elton John, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”
The brilliant 1973 title track to one of the only worthwhile double LPs in rock ‘n’ roll history, and proof positive that Bernie Taupin can, when the mood suits him, pen a lyric that actually makes a lick of sense. –JG

41. Guns n’ Roses, “Welcome to the Jungle”
When I was in sixth grade, two of my good friends were girls who lived on my street: Kristy and Rachael, who were three and five years older than me, respectively. Kristy already had her driver’s license, and in the summer a bunch of us would pile into her black Firebird and go driving around town, windows rolled down, music blaring. Kristy loved anything remotely considered heavy metal; our typical cruising soundtrack consisted of Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Motley Crue, among others. The night she bought GNR’s Appetite for Destruction (1987), we all went for a drive in one of the worst parts of town. She put the tape in the cassette player, turned the volume all the way up, rolled down the windows, and proceeded to almost get us shot. “Welcome to the Jungle” indeed. –KS

42. Otis Redding, “Try a Little Tenderness” (download)
Though Otis Redding wasn’t the first or last to record this song, his 1966 version is arguably the best. It has a smooth, soulful start that slowly builds to an intense, frenzied ending. To say that Otis tore “Tenderness” to pieces in concert is an understatement. And I wouldn’t be a good child of the ’80s if I didn’t at least mention my love of the scene in Pretty in Pink when Duckie (Jon Cryer) lip-synchs to it in the record store. –KS

43. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “All Along the Watchtower”
Other than the words, virtually nothing in Hendrix’s 1968 reimagining of Bob Dylan’s song resembles the original. From the way he howls and cries out the lyrics, to the way he makes his guitar sing and weep and moan, Jimi owns the song. While others who’ve covered Dylan have often approached his music with a reverence that castrates the intent or turns his songs into weak folk music, Hendrix was bold enough to reinterpret “All Along the Watchtower” and make it a psychedelic anthem for the ages. He was on a different playing field, and most of us are still trying to catch up. –SM

44. The Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations”
It cost $50,000 to record in 1966, and it was worth every penny. When you hear Wilson apologists wonder what might have been, these are the three minutes and 39 seconds that keep them dreaming. –JG

45. R.E.M., “Losing My Religion”
The culmination of an “alternative” band’s ten-year climb to the mainstream pinnacle, “Losing My Religion” (1991) is one of pop’s greatest paeans to unspoken, unrequited love. “That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight.” Michael Stipe may never have written a more resonant lyric. –JC

46. LL Cool J, “Mama Said Knock You Out” (download)
For some reason people thought LL was washed up by 1990, before he decided to show the world how it’s done. Gangsta rap? Damn, no problem. He beat that beat like a skull and created enough damage (unh!) damage (unh!) damage (unh!) damage to revive his career and make him one of the most important rappers of all time. –SM

47. The Doobie Brothers, “What a Fool Believes”
Michael McDonald and Ted Templeman gave the Doobies a badly needed, funky kick in the ass in 1978 with this track, which no doubt made Jeff “Skunk” Baxter want to stick his head in the oven. From a musical standpoint, it’s so well written that even most covers do a respectable job (although you’re advised to stay away from cowriter Kenny Loggins’s live version on Outside From the Redwoods). I tried to write something objective about “What a Fool Believes,” but the truth is, if you don’t love it I will hunt you down and shoot you. –JH

48. Van Morrison, “Into the Mystic”
I love everything about “Into the Mystic” — the gorgeous lyrics, the earnestness of Morrison’s vocals, the amazing sax solos. Included on 1970′s Moondance, it wasn’t a hit for Morrison, though a cover by Johnny Rivers did make it to #51 that same year. Other excellent covers include one by Ben E. King and a version performed by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, which is included on the collector’s edition of the soundtrack to their film Once (2006). –KS

49. Elvis Presley, “Suspicious Minds” (download)
There’s nothing about Presley’s 1969 cover of Mark James’s song that makes much sense — not the intrusive female backup singers, not the blues breakdown in the bridge, not the fact that Presley’s private life contradicted the sentiments of the damned thing entirely, not even that the thing reeks of the Vegas vibe that would be the death of the King. So why does “We’re caught in a trap, I can’t walk out, because I love you too much, baby” satisfy so completely after all this time? –DD

50. Peter Gabriel, “Big Time”
Gabriel’s So (1986) is the most-represented album on this list (see also #61 and #66 below), and its third single felt like both a symptom and a celebration of the album’s surprising, outsize success. It’s also a biting satire of over-the-top, Reagan/ Thatcher-era ambition, but how many Masters of the Universe noticed “how my life is one big invention”? –JC

51. Simon & Garfunkel, “The Only Living Boy in New York” (download)
According to our very own Jon Cummings, based on an interview he did with Paul Simon, “The Only Living Boy in New York” (1970) is one of the few Simon & Garfunkel songs Simon can still stand. It’s not hard to see why, as it’s almost hymnlike, with Garfunkel’s harmonies in the background nearly holding up the church pillars with “Here I am …” The lyrics seem to be from the perspective of the last member of the gang, who stayed behind even after his friends moved on. Considering the song came out during the Vietnam war, those friends didn’t necessarily move on to a better life. –DD

52. Pink Floyd, “Comfortably Numb”
Barring however you may or may not feel about The Wall (1979), Pink Floyd’s double-thick concept album of daddy issues, war, fascism, megalomania, and groupies, it’s impossible to deny the absolute power and beauty of David Gilmour’s guitar solo on “Comfortably Numb.” The song is a defining moment not only for the work’s fragile protagonist but for the band itself. –BW

53. The Rolling Stones, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
A lethal guitar riff that came to Keith Richards in a dream, some of Mick Jagger’s most pointed lyrics, a seductive bass line by Bill Wyman, and a driving beat from Charlie Watts that got asses shaking on dance floors and in bedrooms and backseats around the world make “Satisfaction” (1965) one of the most unforgettable songs ever. This is rock ‘n’ roll in its rawest, most primal form, and it still generates excitement 40 years after its release. –SM

54. The Beatles, “Come Together”
Never mind the double entendre — the last of John Lennon’s great nonsense songs, and the last of his singles for the Beatles, put a shot of danger (and a dose of blues) back into the band’s oeuvre just as things were winding down. “Come Together” (1969) was actually side B (or maybe side A-minus) of the greatest two-sided single of all time (see also #57 below). –JC

55. Queen and David Bowie, “Under Pressure”
After Bowie showed up in Queen’s studios to put some backing vocals on an awful track called “Cool Cat,” a random late-night jam somehow evolved into yet another track that sounded unmistakably like Queen, while remaining absolutely unique of anything released before it. If you think about it, “Under Pressure” (1981) is really a strange song, with a structure that’s almost impossible to follow, yet the final result — a combination of a driving, cohesive rhythm section and the impassioned vocals of Bowie and Mercury — is incredibly powerful and moving. I just regret that the first time I heard that bass line it was being used in, um, another song. Word to your mother. –JH

56. Bruce Springsteen, “The Rising”
The brilliant title track from Springsteen’s meditation on America in the post-9/11 world (2002) is a moving number from the perspective of a fallen firefighter. As this man sees his wife at his graveside, he joins the souls of the departed on their way to heaven. Only Springsteen could take a song about the tragedy of the falling towers and still give it a sense of hope and community. –SM

57. The Beatles, “Something”
It’s hard to imagine a time when George Harrison’s contributions to Beatles albums were seen almost as concessions. It was one of the tensions within the band when he was coming up with things like “Taxman” and, eventually, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”; his songs were regarded by die-hard Lennon-McCartney fans as less than utterly brilliant. Abbey Road‘s “Something” is a big middle finger to the doubtful. –DD

58. Sly & the Family Stone, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” (download)
Can you call Sly Stone the progenitor of the funk? Maybe not, but he certainly was the craftsman of it. The shout-out vocals, the shimmy in the guitar, that knockabout bass line: “Thank You” (1970) is imminently crankable to the present day. –DD

59. Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone”
A snare-drum hit, a couple bars of Al Kooper’s swirling organ, jangling electric guitar (?!?), and a snarling “Once upon a time you dressed so fine.” “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965) proved that Rock ’n’ Roll Would Never Be the Same™. –JC

60. George Michael, “Faith”
George went back home and got a brand-new face for the boys at MTV, but what we remember best about his second post-Wham! single (1987) is his ass. That, and the most indelible rockabilly-influenced hit since “Jailhouse Rock” (see #70 below). –JC

61. Peter Gabriel, “In Your Eyes”
A boy. A meadow. A boombox. And the greatest love song of the ’80s. –JC

62. Elton John, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”
The only single released from 1975′s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” is said to be based on a very difficult time in John’s life that included a failed engagement and a suicide attempt. The first time I heard it, I was probably seven years old. My father had gathered me and my younger brother around the record player and said, “I want you to hear this song.” The three of us sat silently as it played, and when the needle lifted from the record, signaling both the end of the song and side one of the album, I looked at my father and said, “Play that again, Daddy.” One of my favorite memories from childhood and the first time a song had affected me that way. –KS

63. Johnny Cash, “Ring of Fire” (download)
The younger me couldn’t get past the mariachi horns and repetitive burn burn burns and down down downs so I could appreciate the poetry and passion in the lyrics. And while the image of love as a fiery pit is still difficult for me to grasp, I’ve grown to treasure this signature Cash song (1963). –AD

64. B.B. King, “The Thrill Is Gone”
“The Thrill Is Gone” (1969) is the archetypal blessing/curse song. It brought B.B. the mass exposure he needed in order to rise above the stigma of “soulful, unheralded blues man,” but let’s be honest — it’s almost the only thing anyone knows by him. Sure, maybe you recognize him from U2′s “When Love Comes to Town,” and maybe you know him from his stirring on-screen work in John Landis’s Spies Like Us (“Would anyone care for a Pepsi?” gets me right here, man), but “Thrill” is a given. It isn’t a bad thing, though, as King’s strident voice and the wailing licks coming out of his trusty guitar, Lucille, deserve every ounce of regard. –DD

65. The Temptations, “My Girl” (download)
If it’s packed with brilliantly simple lines and set to a melody you can’t forget after the first time you hear it, it must be a Smokey Robinson song. And if the vocals are delivered with soul-shattering perfection, it must be the Temptations at their peak (1964). Perfection. –JG

66. Peter Gabriel, “Sledgehammer” (download)
The greatest music video of all time (screw “Thriller”!) supported Gabriel’s blatant yet somehow ironic grab for the pop brass ring. Thanks to the Memphis Horns, a synthesized shakuhachi flute, a litany of phallic references, and a balls-out vocal few knew Gabriel was capable of, he got us all to show him ’round our fruit cage. –JC

67. The Dave Brubeck Quartet, “Take Five” (download)
This snazzy little number in 5/4 time bum-rushed the show back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (1959 A.D.) and jazz songs could infiltrate the Top 40. –Mojo

68. X, “4th of July” (download)
Dave Alvin infused his own brand of smoky poetry into X’s 1987 outing, See How We Are, and penned the lyrics to “4th of July,” a Los Angeles love story crammed into three and a half minutes of big guitars and X’s new, rootsy maturity. –BW

69. The Beatles, “Ticket to Ride”
A key step along John Lennon’s path to maturity as a songwriter, “Ticket to Ride” (1965) is one of the Beatles’ hardest-rocking singles. Opening with one of George’s signature riffs and rumbling across the radio with thunderclaps of bass drum from Ringo, it rendered the word “moptops” obsolete. –JC

70. Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock”
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, rock’s first great songwriting team, penned what may have been the perfect rock ’n’ roll movie theme — and Elvis sang the hell out of it in 1957. (Yes, we’re cheating by including this 51-year-old song in the Popdose 100.) The legendary production number in the film of the same name provided an early template for music videos. –JC

71. Brook Benton, “Rainy Night in Georgia”
Someone said Johnny Ray was the sound of heartbreak, but I submit that “Rainy Night in Georgia” (1970) trumps any of Ray’s often overwrought melodrama. You’d have to be cold-blooded not to be moved by Benton’s smooth but certainly influenced delivery. –DD

72. Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (download)
The lyrics aren’t as universal as you’d expect for a song with the word “everybody” in the title, but that gently loping riff and plangent melody are thoroughly irresistible. Plus, Tears for Fears’ first U.S. hit (1985) played over the closing credits of Val Kilmer’s finest cinematic effort. What else do you want? –JG

73. The Monkees, “Daydream Believer”
In the original version of “Daydream Believer,” recorded by its composer, John Stewart (of Kingston Trio fame), there’s a lyric that goes, “Now you know how funky I can be.” The Monkees’ decision to change the word from “funky” to “happy” wasn’t just a good idea — it was an absolute necessity. Producer Chip Douglas turned the fairy-dust dial up to 11 and, with the help of Davy Jones’s sunshiny lead vocal, created one of the cheeriest pop songs of all time. Guilty pleasure, my ass: the Monkees put out some of the best songs of the ’60s, period, and “Daydream Believer” (1967) is right up near the top. –WH

74. Marvin Gaye, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”
Marvin’s version of “Grapevine” (1968) wasn’t the first to reach the top five, but his slowed-down arrangement and piercing vocal left poor Gladys Knight in the dust, earning him a guaranteed spot on lists like this one. It also heralded a new era of moodier records and serious themes at Motown. –JC

75. Aretha Franklin, “Respect”
It’s difficult to overestimate the impact of “Respect’s” (1967) rambunctious, riveting performance — on Aretha’s career, on Atlantic Records’ profit margin, on the women’s liberation movement, on Laugh-In’s “Sock it to me!” shtick, and on songwriter Otis Redding’s bank account. “That girl stole my song,” he famously said. Too bad he didn’t live long enough to enjoy the royalties. –JC

76. Aretha Franklin, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”
Even by the Queen of Soul’s rigorous standards, “Natural Woman” (1967) is a marvel: one of her most cutting vocal performances, set against a beautifully tender arrangement. Simply stunning. –JG

77. Bob Marley & the Wailers, “Roots, Rock, Reggae” (download)
In 1976 Rastaman Vibration broke through in the U.S. with this mighty single. “We bubbling on the top 100, just like a mighty dread” was something that no one in the States was prepared for. That dready rhythm and Marley’s vocals, as sweet as ganja smoke and as precious as Jah’s love, brought Zion by way of Kingston into our daily lives. –BW

78. Prince & the Revolution, “Kiss”
“Kiss,” Prince’s third number-one single and the only major hit from 1986′s Parade, was originally given to Revolution bassist Brown Mark’s side project, Mazarati. Prince had quickly recorded a demo of the song with just an acoustic guitar and gave it to Mazarati to work on for their first album. But when he heard the funked-up groover “Kiss” had become after Mazarati and producer David Rivkin were finished with it, he decided to reclaim it for himself. A few changes were made to the Mazarati version before its inclusion on Parade, but the bulk of their work, including the backing vocals, remained untouched. –KS

79. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Ohio” (download)
Darker than any shadow of Altamont and released just one month after the Kent State killings, “Ohio” (1970) is an angry and visceral call to arms. David Crosby felt Neil Young’s lyrics were the bravest he had ever heard, but Young would regret the song later, feeling he had profited from the deaths of the four protesters. –BW

80. Blue Oyster Cult, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”
Once upon a time, this 1976 single was celebrated for its memorable guitar solo — and derided by the religious right for supposedly advocating suicide. It still gets folks hot under the collar; in fact, “I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription … is more cowbell!” –JC

81. The Hues Corporation, “Rock the Boat”
This early disco hit (1974) is just too fun to refuse — especially with the low-register piano holding the bass line, and that harmony in the chorus — even though it is slightly silly. But remember when slightly silly wasn’t such a bad thing? –DD

82. The Band, “Up on Cripple Creek”
Stevie Wonder goes to Mayberry and raises some good old-fashioned hell (1970). Every time I think about what Robbie Robertson did to this band, I get pissed off all over again. –JG

83. Roy Orbison, “In Dreams”
The voice. That’s all one needs to know about Roy Orbison and his lasting influence. With those velvet pipes he invoked so much pain and loneliness on “In Dreams” (1963) that millions of young boys who thought they were the only ones with broken hearts realized they weren’t alone. From Springsteen to Petty to Chris Isaak and Raul Malo, Orbison’s legacy will continue to live on for generations to come. Oh, and there’s that David Lynch film that uses it too. –SM

84. Procol Harum, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (download)
It’s easy to dismiss Procol Harum as a one-hit wonder. When you say the band’s name I doubt “Conquistador” or “Bringin’ Home the Bacon” snap to mind, but Keith Reid’s seriously bizarre lyrics matched with Gary Brooker’s smoke-and-Irish-whiskey voice and funeral-dirge organ combined to proclaim the death of innocence and the love generation in 1967, before the movement even knew it was on life support. A small piece of brilliance. –DD

85. AC/DC, “Back in Black”
With its classic guitar hook courtesy of Angus Young, bloodcurdling screams from Brian Johnson, and the perfect marriage of band and producer (“Mutt” Lange), “Back in Black” is the song every heavy metal band has been trying to write since it first entered the public consciousness in 1980. But it’s impossible to duplicate the sound and fury of AC/DC. Any normal band would have crumbled after their lead singer (Bon Scott) died and they’d just achieved their major album breakthrough (1979′s Highway to Hell). But AC/DC hired Johnson, recorded the Back in Black album a few months after Scott’s death, and acheived their greatest success proving they still had the biggest balls of them all. –SM

86. Joan Armatrading, “Drop the Pilot” (download)
Joan drops the introspection (not that there’s anything wrong with introspection) on her minor hit from ’83 and unleashes an exuberant, glorious plea for submission. How can love fail when it sounds like this much fun? –JC

87. Simon & Garfunkel, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”
Aretha made it work as gospel, Simon later refashioned it as reggae, and Clay Aiken belted it a la Barry Manilow. But when Art Garfunkel traversed this “Bridge” for the first time in 1970, he crossed into immortality. –JC

88. Elvis Costello & the Attractions, “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”
Sometimes artists write songs that end up being much more successfully interpreted by another. It happened to John Hiatt with “Thing Called Love” (Bonnie Raitt). It happened to Bob Dylan with “All Along the Watchtower” (Hendrix; see #43). And it happened to Nick Lowe in 1979, when Elvis Costello made a hit of “Peace, Love and Understanding,” preserving the song’s purity and idealism without coming off like a schmuck. –AD

89. Roxy Music, “More Than This” (download)
Before the Avalon album (1982), Roxy Music was seriously fringe: too weird for the pop charts, too pop for the art-rock crowd, and Bryan Ferry was scarily slick, suave yet still projecting an undercurrent of sleaziness. By all accounts, Roxy Music should have stayed a cult band until their demise. Then came “More Than This,” as smooth as expected (since Brian Eno had taken the edge off years before) yet earnest. It teeters perilously close to smooth jazz, but the synth-y atmosphere saves it. There isn’t a bum moment in the song, but then again, there isn’t a bum moment on all of Avalon. –DD

90. The Police, “Message in a Bottle”
It isn’t just Sting’s lyrics that make this song so great. It’s the aching in his voice when he sings “A year has passed since I wrote my note.” It’s Andy Summers’s intricate guitar licks and full-frontal attack on the power chords. And it’s Stewart Copeland’s impossibly difficult drum part during the chorus that keeps the mind spinning. Sting may get sole credit for writing “Message in a Bottle” (1979), but this is a song by a band, and no one should forget that. –SM

91. Etta James, “At Last”
Not even Christina Aguilera’s histrionics could spoil this elegant, oh-so-timeless ode to first, true love (1961). It never gets old. –JG

92. The Kings, “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide”
It figures that the only genuine one-hit wonder on this list should be represented with two songs (1980), bridging new wave and “96 Tears” and cramming in a smorgasbord of sing-along lines (“Lunatics Anonymous, that’s where I belong”). How did this not rocket straight to #1? –JC

93. Chuck Berry, “No Particular Place to Go”
By all rights we could have just as easily included “School Days” in this spot, since it doesn’t take a great deal of examination to realize that, once you set aside the lyrics, it’s the exact same song, but provided that you’re indeed capable of setting aside Chuck’s tendency toward self-plagiarism, “No Particular Place to Go” (1964) easily warrants inclusion for its historical importance. After all, how many other top ten hits feature a tale about a guy being cockblocked as a result of his girl having buckled up for safety? –WH

94. Scritti Politti, “Perfect Way” (download)
How much did I love this song? I heard it while I was doing a newspaper internship in Roanoke in ’85. When I rented a car on weekends I would change stations frequently, impatiently, hoping to hear it, again and again. It was the sonic equivalent of crystal meth. Decades later I love it just as much, but I no longer pose a threat to Virginia drivers. –Robert Cashill

95. Glen Campbell, “Wichita Lineman”
For years I thought Campbell’s 1968 hit was about a football player. It’s even better once you realize it’s not. –AD

96. The Beatles, “A Day in the Life”
Entire books have been written on everything that “A Day in the Life” epitomizes. It’s the last song on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), but it’s the first song of everything else that would follow. –BW

97. James Brown, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”
The 1965 song that originated not only a sound — Brown’s funky call-and-response duets with his horn section — but also a groovy ’60s phrase! As with most of Brown’s greatest hits, the subject matter (an old dude who can kick it on the dance floor) is far less important than random snippets of memorable lyrics (“Ain’t no drag — papa’s got a brand new bag”) and that undeniable groove that makes you want to move your feet like … well, like James Brown. –JC

98. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, “The Message”
One of the first rap hits from pioneers of the genre, “The Message” is widely considered to be a hip-hop masterpiece. Though they were written more than 25 years ago, the song’s lyrics, which matter-of-factly describe inner-city life, are just as relevant today as they were in 1982. “The Message” was the biggest hit for Flash and the Five, reaching #62 on the pop chart and #4 on the R&B chart. Disagreements over business matters, which included a lawsuit against record label Sugar Hill, eventually led to the group’s split in 1984, though they did briefly reunite three years later. In 2007 Flash and the Five became the first rap group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. –KS

99. R.E.M., “Radio Free Europe”
Mumbles’s first strike is best remembered now for the cleaned-up, echo-laden version on 1983′s Murmur rather than the raw (yet still incomprehensible) single from two years earlier. The inscrutable lyrics amped up the mystery factor and forced listeners to focus on Stipe’s tone, Mike Mills’s melodic bass, and Bill Berry’s blistering drumming. Thus the ultimate college-rock band was born. –JC

100. Tears for Fears, “Sowing the Seeds of Love”
Time to eat all my words and swallow my pride: For the longest time, I thought this song was called “Sewing Machines of Love.” Years later, after I had the CD and realized my error, I found a website that confirmed I wasn’t alone in my delusion. Whatever. With this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink hit from the fall of ’89 — a Great Wall of Sound to dwarf Phil Spector — ’80s pop basically imploded, and from the rubble emerged ’90s grunge. –RC

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