"Curley Locks" by Junior Byles

I don't know that much about reggae. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert just in order to make this list as 'international' or 'eclectic' as possible. I like a lot of the reggae I've heard, but again I'm not an expert. This means, of course, that in including reggae on this list I run the risk of either choosing some incredibly wack song that happened to 'cross over' or genuflecting to reggae tastemakers to the point of convincing myself that some song with suitable cred is good - that is to say one of the 'best songs ever'.

So I include this without knowing much about it for the simple fact that I love it extremely. In fact, I've been quite obsessed with it lately, to the point of listening to dozens of versions of it to see which one I like best. I've settled on this one. The different versions, by different performers, range a lot in style but they all seem to have a certain beguiling sweetness to them.

So I guess that our protagonist has become a Rastafarian. His childhood sweetheart has been told by her father (presumably a Christian) to stay away. He is singing his heart out to her in an attempt to win her back. The balance between the never-mind sweetness ("The sun is shining...") and the trouble's-brewing warning ("Two roads before you...") is very delicately struck, and yet the overall feeling coming from the boy (who just might possibly be in prison or some place like that if I'm to understand anything from the "Thank you for the letter" part) seems to be a delicate, loving sensitivity. The end result is really very powerful - where so many political songs (and a song about religious conversion and family pressures is political) are strident, this one just seems to envelop its message in a kind of sweetness that proves its righteousness by not being consciously righteous.

It's difficult to imagine the Curley Locks in question not being swayed by this paean into ignoring her father and running away with the protagonist.

Wikipedia tells me that Junior Byles recorded this song with Lee "Scratch" Perry, who also has a version of it released in his own name which seems to bear more of the "Scratch" Perry sonic trademarks that I'm familiar with. I mean, "Scratch" Perry songs don't all sound the same, but I always associate him with dub, and this recording (which I believe is in the genre called 'lovers' rock') doesn't bear much of a dub feel to it. Instead, its gentle skank plays like a lullaby, lulling its message into the Curley Locks' heart...

"Brass in Pocket" by the Pretenders

The sound of self-confidence. This amazingly sexy track gets where it’s going not by being kittenish or by being coy or by being in any way demure. This song is sexy because Chrissie Hynde demands that you find it sexy. She doesn’t holler or scream, she doesn’t even try very hard. She just has a gleam in her eye and a confidence in her stride that removes all doubt.

Chrissie Hynde is interesting. By now she’s been unimpressive for so much longer than she was ever impressive that it’s difficult to remember how high she once flew. For years and years now it’s been just one of those revolving-door ‘bands’ (like The Cure) playing MOR that pretends to be ‘alternative’ merely because its singer used to be.

How alternative did she use to be? Well (despite being from Ohio and despite being even older than Sting) she’s filled with stories about hanging with the Sex Pistols, the Clash and all the whole British punk aristocracy. Yet this song, which was released in 1979 just two years after “Never Mind the Bollocks…”, has no relationship that I can see to punk music, sounding much cleaner and more musical. It’s actually difficult to pinpoint quite what genre this song is, and thus it can feature quite comfortably on almost any rock-centred playlist. While her vocals undoubtedly steal the limelight, it most definitely is a ‘band’ performance, and in fact the musical equivalent of that confident walk is really what makes the song so memorable: a simple guitar riff over a basic clip-clop rhythm section (with cowbell!) recorded at exactly the speed somebody would walk down the street, head held high.

The verses aren’t up to much, really. It’s all just a build-up for when we get to Chrissie delineating what parts of herself she’ll use to ‘make you see’, peaking in a great phrase where she sings, ‘gonna use my… my… my…’, baiting you into expecting something perhaps dirty, ‘imagination!’ she calls out, cool as a cucumber, and the joke’s on you because your imagination’s in the gutter.

She then points out what’s blindingly obvious, that she’s ‘special’, and a bunch of anonymous male voices (the remaining Pretenders, presumably) parrot it helplessly until she practically reaches out of the speakers, grabs you by the necktie (for this is a song from 1979, and thus you are wearing one, and a skinny one at that) and forcefully demands of your attention, “give it to me!”

Yes ma’am.

And we did, for several years more as she insisted on making further good music despite all kinds of tragedy in her band. Eventually, as must happen to all good things, she ceased being special.

Yet the amazing thing about having once been so clearly special is that the allure never truly goes away. It doesn’t matter if she never releases another good song; decades later when Chrissie Hynde dies, she will still be special.

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" by Elton John

“There was once a time when Elton John was wonderful – putting out amazing songs that weren’t in the least contrived and hackneyed at a rate of two albums a year or more.” Tell it to the kids of today and they won’t believe you…

Hell, tell it to the parents of the kids of today and they’ll have no reason to believe you. The Elton John I grew up with was a terrible embarrassment, chirping out meaningless drivel like “I’m Still Standing” or – gag – “Nikita”. He just seemed to get worse and worse. So logically, I presumed he had always sucked.

Not so, as present evidence can confirm. I may have heard this song a million times, yet every time it manages to take me by surprise. The emotional depth it presents still continues to stun. The dynamics it possesses, the tension and release. Elton sings it like he means it, and as far as I knew in the 80s, Elton didn’t mean anything. To anyone.

Elton was not completely innocent of suckage in his glory years. (“Bennie and the Jets”, anyone?) This song comes from an album that apparently is a ‘semi-autobiographical account of he and his songwriting partner’s lives’. The cover is all done up to look like a superhero comic and it has a similarly crap title that I can’t be bothered to Google at the moment. It didn’t have any ‘hits’ on it, so I never gave it a second thought. I don’t even know under what circumstances I first heard this song, but it left such an impression that I immediately hunted it down. Apparently, I have since learnt, it’s based on a true story in which Elton’s life was saved, from a suicide attempt or an overdose or something, by his brave and gallant lyricist Bernie Taupin (the songwriting partner I mentioned above).

To write a song, and a magnificently beautiful one, as thanks is a lovely gesture, except… well, Bernie Taupin is the lyricist. So if this is true, then Mr. Taupin saved his famous friend’s life and then composed a song of gratitude about it for that friend to sing back to him… masturbatory, anyone?

Doesn’t matter. If it is a true story, perhaps it cuts deep, and perhaps that explains why Elton here managed such a bravura performance, making you feel both the desperation and the gratitude. Or perhaps it’s just that Elton had yet to blow his emotional depth away with mountains of cocaine. Who can be sure?

In the end, what matters is this seven-minute slab of beauty and the emotional weight and ense of drama it carries. If it took Bernie Taupin saving Mr. Reg “Elton John” Dwight from an early death to bring that to life, then I guess the 30+ years of maudlin ick that followed it are worth it.

"If I Were Your Woman" by Gladys Knight and the Pips

Okay. I do admit it – my musical tastes have, on more than one occasion, been described as ‘gay’. It’s all good. I don’t happen to be gay, but as there’s no proven link between sexual preference and musical preference, all innuendo just washes off.

See, it’s all about the divas. I, you see, am a bona fide fan of divas. Not Mariah Carey – can’t stand her. Just the old school ones. Even at that, I am rather discerning with my divas. Allow me to elucidate.

I recently saw an ad touting a new season of “Canadian Idol” (the Canadian version of, surprise surprise, “American Idol”). Among the wannabes soundbited on the ad was a particularly histrionic woman screeching (as opposed to singing) “Come on and take it” (presumably to be followed, post-soundbite, by “Piece of My Heart”. We’re meant to watch and say ‘Hey! She can’t sing! She can only screech!’

People worldwide will hate me for saying this, but… That seems like a pretty decent imitation of Janis Joplin. I’ve never understood the appeal of Janis Joplin. She is, to me, what a diva should not be – aggressive, dissonant, indeed histrionic. What a diva should be… I’ve heard it said that power without strength is nothing. Having the pipes is nothing if you don’t know how to use them.

Observe Gladys Knight. With or without the Pips behind her, Gladys Knight can sing (so well, I’m tempted to spell it ‘sang’). To me, that means having a great instrument and having expert control over it. Diana Ross can exude personality, take you on a journey with the way she sells a song. But her pipes are not the most powerful. Aretha Franklin can tear the roof off of a church merely with her voice. But… wait. I can’t criticise Aretha Franklin – that’s a crime in certain jurisdictions. In any case, what Gladys has is the power and the glory. You can hear, or could at one point, an a capella version of this song on YouTube. It is a thing to behold. The girl can sing like hell. She’s broken hearted, she’s triumphant, she’s wilful, she’s dreamy. She sells it all so convincingly that you want to throttle the bugger that’s choosing some other girl over her. I mean, what, is he deaf?

There might be many out there who deride Motown and say that Gladys was at her best after Motown. I do know, especially from an instrumentation point of view, what they’re saying. But what Motown could do better than anyone out there is chain enough monkeys to typewriters that stunning compositions like this would come along often enough to keep everyone on top of their singles games (albums? Well… that’s what ‘greatest hits’ compilations are for…). In this particular case, the song is heartbreaking. The melody is as evocative as any screenplay and the dynamics tell as much as the words could ever hope to. For anybody suffering from a severe case of Jon-Cryer-as-Duckie-style unrequited love, this song couldn’t ring truer.

Difficult to imagine it happening to Gladys, mind you.

Lastly, the Pips, frankly more often an anchor than a set of wings, are perfectly fine in this song, staying to the background and making the gender-shift a little less annoying than it otherwise might be.

"Marquee Moon" by Television

Have you ever met the kind of music obsessive who seems dedicated to liking whatever critics like and hating whatever they don't? I've met a million of them - gritting their teeth while pretending to love Ornette Coleman, instinctively dissing anything by Britney Spears (some of whose songs are, in my opinion, great). I don't really get it, to be honest. I mean, just like what you like, right?

Having said that, however, I've been guilty in the past of taking critics too seriously - on more than one occasion buying an album without having heard a note just because critics seemed to like it. I have my requisite Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth CDs as well...

So, even though I would have been an infant and/or foetus at the time, I had, by my teenage years, educated myself enough about the CBGB 'scene' in New York to be able to fake it. I allowed myself to truly believe that a band like Blondie were in any way 'punk' (because CBGB was a proto-punk scene, right?)

I heard and loved the Talking Heads. I heard and liked Blondie and the Ramones. I heard and tried to like Patti Smith. I got the "New York 1970s" badge sewn onto my hipster-cred blanket. I knew, man.

Yet somehow Television eluded me. I mean, I'd read the magazines, so I knew who they were, but I'd never heard a song by them. Not until just a year or two ago, when finally I had the chance to hear this song.

By that point in my life, I was feeling rather bored with a lot of music. I found that, among current music, very little outside of the most mainstream pop moved me at all, and I found that I had pretty much no patience whatsoever for two-guitars-bass-and-drums - whatever the genre, if that was the instrumentation, it bored me.

Long wanking guitar solos bored me. Adenoidal male singers bored me.

Frankly, I wouldn't have expected to do anything but hate Television, even though the knee-jerk impulse to respect them because they were 'formative' or 'seminal' or whatever still remained. I won't say anything as banal as "they showed me the light" or whatever. After all, it was still just a song. Yet somehow, "Marquee Moon", two guitars, bass, drums, bad male singer, eleven minutes long, guitar solo more than four minutes long... somehow, unlikely as it is, moved me. Thirty years old, yet it still felt new. Seemed to suggest to me that you can do different things with two guitars, a bass and drums.

I'm not sure what it is actually. I'm not sure what seems so new or fresh. Perhaps it's the lack of pretense: the guitar solo goes on for minutes, but you never sense that the guitar player is arching his back and scrunching up his face like guitarists who are just so into the moment do. Perhaps it's the song's dynamics: the way it builds up and breaks down in a way that makes the minutes seem way, way less agonising than 10 minutes 40 seconds of, say, Phish would be. It could very well be that bass, flying all over the place unexpectedly (I love creative bass lines). Whatever it is, it hooked me. And it had been a long time since anything, especially guitar-based 'rock', had done that.

Although I still can't even begin to comprehend what on earth this possibly has to do with 'punk'.