We are on to the finale of my little side project. I'll link Parts one and Two for anyone who hasn't read them yet, but the short of it is I'm doing my favorite songs of every letter. Anyway, here are the links and on to the list.
D
In my little prelude to the best pick for a letter, how could I not mention Don't Stop Believin'? I miss the days where we had bands like Journey who could get by on the charm of just how lame and cheesy they were. Throw in a mention for Disease by Matchbox 20. Easily their best song. Same with Dance, Dance by Fallout Boy, I like how they just kind of revel in the more negative feelings and emotions people have and willing to cast themselves as assholes in most of their earlier songs.
Drunk Daddy, I want to mention because, despite having a gloriously silly name like The Cherry Poppin Daddies, songs like Drunk Daddy and a few others do a great job at touching on some fairly dark subject matter. Drunk Daddy being the effect of raising a child in a broken home can have. It is not a happy story. But the best track goes to...
Dancing Mad – Black Mages/FF VI OST
Played during the final fight of Final Fantasy VI, Dancing Mad is a glorious multi-part song that is an absolute gem. The ever-building sense of dread at the beginning to the higher energy of the final segment is everything you could ever want out of a final boss song. Though much like Clash on the Big Bridge before, I don't have a whole lot to talk about here. You can take either the orchestral version or the Metal Version by The Black Mages, either one is amazing. That said, because we don't have any lyrics here, I find it hard to get describe much about the song.
G
There are a lot of great tracks here, and it's another one that was hard to cut some of these. Give me One Reason by Tracy Chapman once again shows how great her lyrics are, Good Girls Go to Heaven by Meatloaf is just a kick-ass rock song (Though the opening horn section is a bit odd), and I bring up Get it Up by Mindless Self Indulgence for just being a wonderfully bizarre song about how he can't get a boner. The hardest cut was Gotta Knock a Little Harder, the ending theme for the Cowboy Bebop movie. But while the tracks are all fantastic, I think for me the winner was always going to be...
Ghost Opera – Kamelot
This is the song that made me love this band. At their best with Roy Kahn as the lead singer (The new guy is good, but it's not quite the same for me) the songs of the Ghost Opera Album have all the grand statements and imagery that makes Power Metal an interesting genre, but all the songs are tied to reality by depicting some kind of situation that the listener can wrap their head around.
Focusing a bit more on Roy himself, he is probably my favorite vocalist of all time. I just love this man's voice and the emotion he can put behind everything he does. Throw in an appropriately haunting melody and vivid lyrics, you have one of my favorite metal tracks of all time.
L
Like a Virgin stands as one of the examples of what a Pop song should be with how sincere and bouncy the song is. That said I never really liked most of her other songs, at least until Jay Smith covered Like a Prayer which added power and passion the original lacked.
The only other song I want to mention here is Leather Rebel, my favorite Judas Priest song. It's good for all the same reason's 'You got Another Thing Coming' is great, but just better in every way. And my pick for L is...
Loss of Me – FF IX OST
I rarely like singe instrument melodies, but somehow this song does it for me. I mentioned before this composer's ability to bring out emotions with nothing more than music, and this is probably the best example of it. It's a very simple melody, exceptionally beautiful, and also inexplicably sad. I don't know what else to say here, the entire song is nothing more than a piano piece.
The rest of this list could honestly be changed to any order and I'd still be happy with it. I used a few things outside of the song itself to finally come down on the order because I really couldn't determine which ones I just liked more than the others. With that said, on to the last few songs!
I
This is going to be the only time I mention Cher with 'If I Could Turn Back Time'. It's not a song that had any hope of winning, even if it were lower in the list, but I still always really liked Cher and her powerhouse of a voice. Also a nod to Ill Mind of Hopsin 6 as one of my favorite rap songs of all time. I'd put it on part with Juicy.
Insanity – Oingo Boingo
I opted to put this at five because there are some lines in the song that date it, and I don't know if it's generally considered one of their best tracks by the fanbase. That said it's the best song they ever did for me. It gets props for being one of two songs to have a fantastic child chorus (The other one being The Wall by Pink Floyd), and somehow managing to remain lyrically engaging for such a long song.
Then of course are all the different instruments Oingo Boingo employs, mixed with how most of their songs always sound like they are written from the point of view of someone who doesn't understand the society around them. The whole song is about a guy who looks at the world around him and sees all the blatant hypocrisy, but at the same time, it seems like he is so outnumbered he begins to feel like he might be the one who is crazy and losing his mind. The whole song feels borderline psychotic as he can't reconcile the two different thoughts.
T
The only mention on this list of The Doors, another great band it feels bad to not include at the top of any entry, The End is easily my favorite song by them. The same with 'The Show Must Go on' by Queen. I know I technically included Under Pressure Retroactively in part 2 (If you didn't read the previous entries, I screwed up and forgot to take it into consideration entirely) but as great as that song is, The Show Must Go On is my favorite Queen track.
That Bastard Son is my favorite Blue Grass Track of all time, and The Dead South are just a generally good band overall. They won me over despite being a genre I don't care much for. And of course I have to mention The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News. I love me some Journey, don't get me wrong, but for me this song is peak 80's cheese. That said, on to the winner....
The Real Folk Blues
Aside from being connected to one of my favorite shows of all time, The Real Folk Blues is just an amazing song outside of the context of Cowboy Bebop. While we are in another situation where It's hard to talk about because it's all in Japanese, so I don't know what the singer is saying, she does a great job at projecting emotions. Despite the sad and somber tone of the music, there is a certain feeling of triumph in her voice. The song has a feeling of trying to overcome one's own sadness because of it. I don't know if that is the intent behind the song, but that's just my view on it. I don't know if that's the intent behind the lyrics proper or not.
M - Mourning Star – Kamelot
I don't have any songs to mention that aren't bands I've already talked about in previous entries, so I'm going right into Kamelot here. While I've already talked about Kamelot a few different times on this list, I do have a few things to add about my favorite song by them, Mourning Star.
I don't think any of their other tracks do so wonderfully in regards to painting a picture. Very specifically Mourning Star starts by showing a soldier on the battlefield. Overcome with fear and confusion, he tries to convince himself that there is something more, some reason to all this.
Not much more to say as everything I've said about them previously applies as well. Just a fantastic band, and under the Kahn years one of my favorite bands ever.
The only reason I chose to place this above The Real Folk Blues is I can actually sing along to it.
E
The only song I'm going to be mentioning here is Everywhere by Michelle Branch, not because it's her best song or that any song of hers would have had a good chance at winning any category, but because this is some of the earliest modern music I enjoyed when I was younger. Bought both her first two albums, enjoyed them a lot. This is just a nostalgia mention really. Anyway, no bands to talk about I've not really spoken of before, so on to the winner.
Evil Eye – Franz Ferdinand
The fourth Franz Ferdinand Album may be my favorite Album of all time. I realize I am going to be in the minority here, but this whole album seemed tailor made to make me happy. And easily my favorite song is this one. The whole album has a kind of retro-rock feel too it, as well as a lot of the negativity and pessimism of post-punk music. Evil Eye, depending on how you look at it, is a bizarrely upbeat and positive song, something that applies to the whole album. It's about taking on the labels those around you give you and embrace them. The reason I describe it as bizarrely positive is because the song basically says you do this not because it's nescessarily a good idea, or that it will make others look at you different, but excepting it is the only thing you can do, it's basically a choice forced on you by circumstance. Really the song comes across to me as the moment you learn to be okay with that situation and just have fun with it.
The way I decided to place this above Mourning Star was..... I couldn't think of a reason and this is the order I happened to have them written down at the time I was deciding the order.
S
I mentioned I am using things outside of the song itself to decide the order of these last five, and deciding why I put this song as my favorite of all time came down to two factors. The first is, and less of the two, is I picked the song I think most people would likely look at and go 'That is a good choice'. The second is I took a look at which songs had the strongest competition. I won't go into each of these songs specifically, and there are more fantastic S songs I've not included. But S holds a lot of songs that I could see people calling some of their favorites of all time. More than a few of these songs, were they under just about any other letter outside of the top five had a really good chance of winning.
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting – Elton John
Say Goodbye to Hollywood – Billy Joel
Shadow Guide – Unleash the Archers
She's an Angel – They Might Be Giants
Skin – Oingo Boingo
Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel
Smooth Criminal – Michael Jackson/Alien Ant Farm
Smooth – Santana ft. Rob Thomas
Smut – Tom Lehrer
Someday Never Comes – Credence Clearwater Revival
Stay – Oingo Boingo
Superstition – Stevie Wonder
This is a hell of a line-up, but despite that, I don't know if I would say it was a hard choice to pick my number one. So what song tops this list?
Sittin on the Dock of the Bay – Ottis Redding
I don't know if there is anyone alive who has listened to this song and not enjoyed it. A story about a man who is tired and beaten down by the life he's living, feeling like he has little control over anything, has found something that brings him joy. Yes, it's a very simple thing, sitting back on the bay and watching the waves and ships, but due to one of music's best vocal performances, he captures all the feelings so wonderfully. The relaxed and calm joy in his voice at the song's beginning, later on, the stress and frustration of life he feels he has almost control over, and everything in between.
It's backed up by a simple and cheery tune that manages to match the changing tones of the song throughout. It's borderline a perfect song that pretty much anyone can relate to on some level.
With that, my list comes to an end. Thanks for indulging me in something completely unrelated to my normal game and anime output, especially since I'm not the most qualified person to be discussing what makes a song good or not. I look forward to going back to my normal content now.