The 10 Best Songs Of All Time That I Don't Really Like
Taking a list of “the 500 best songs of all time” seriously, even when delivered by a brand as omnipresent as Rolling Stone, is a fool’s game. It’s absurd to get annoyed with these things even when Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” doesn’t come in several places behind Eminem' “Stan,” and more than a hundred behind LCD Soundsystem and Taylor Swift (Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy” and The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” didn’t even place!). It's just another clickable canon of songs for nerdy kids to memorize and nerdy adults to debate.
Yes, the ranking is kooky. The writing is almost eerily dispassionate and the adware just atrocious (who doesn’t love to scroll past the same animated ad of Jerry Garcia’s face twelve times before a page crashes?). But the list overwhelmingly consists of songs worth hearing if you want to know what got pretentious people’s motors revving over the last fifty years or so. If you throw all the songs in a pile, you’ve got a very respectable pile of music. I like most of the songs and can appreciate liking most the rest.
In fact, when I decided to write about my least favorite songs included, I had go about 300 deep just to find ten worth dissing! I’m truly grateful, because this is the kind of exercise that quickly gets one labeled a hater. But how can I be a hater when I’m giving the thumbs up to 97% of a list of 300 songs? (I stopped reading at #300 because it was clear I’d look like a hater regarding a couple acts if I didn’t. We’ll give Bruce a pinker belly another day).
I also hope that, by mocking songs Rolling Stone magazine has hailed among the most impressive & culturally significant of all time (all time!), I can avoid people being unduly offended by my irreverence. History is obviously not on my side, so please console yourself with that if my words doth sting. The snideness below is undeniably quixotic, if not adorable.
10. Paul Simon, “American Tune” (Rolling Stone rank: #262)
Raised on Paul’s Negotiations & Love Songs best-of, I’ve got four songs from There Goes Rhymin’ Simon memorized. I get why this isn’t one of them. It starts great, with the mellowest boy in New York describing a state of weariness and fatigue among his peers and countrymen. That sure hasn’t lost resonance today. But soon he’s referencing how good “we” had it, and wonders “what went wrong.” He also describes a dream - rarely worth doing in conversation, let alone song - before noting we came in on the Mayflower and other boats with big, bright eyes. We had it really good, but now it’s not so good for some reason, but we’ll keep at it after a nap.
Blame Twitter, but I detect privilege that needs checking.
From Rhymin’ Simon alone, I would have put “Something So Right” - a vulnerable portrait of a lover trying to explain both how grateful and how anxious he is - high above this. “Kodachrome” beats it too. Also the one about mama loving him like a rock. Anything where I don’t have to picture Paul in his jammies, soaring through the air as the Statue of Liberty floats away.
9. Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (Rolling Stone: #222)
Three half-written songs slapped together by three voices I’m rarely glad to hear in unison; they always sound like Gibbs who believe you should be paying attention, and not dancing. I’ll take anything featuring Y over it, especially if it doesn’t feature C, S or N.
8. Steely Dan, “Deacon Blues” (Rolling Stone: #214)
The Dan is one of the few groups where you can own five of their albums and still have people say you don’t really understand them. No one since Dylan has so convinced literate hipsters of their unfuckwithability as lyricists, with their commitment to jazzy, punk-free chops another sweet hurdle to keep the ignorant away (well, the ignorant kids - plenty of geriatric cheeseballs dig them). And they are great! I love Steely Dan! But my lack of truck with this song reaffirms I’ll never TRULY get it. Rolling Stone quotes Donald Fagen as saying it’s as autobiographical as they get, but the idea of Donald Fagen “crawling like a viper through these suburban streets” is hilarious. Maybe I’m just antipathetic to the “beautiful loser” mythos, while Fagen considers self-destructive jazzmatazz “the essence of true romance.” His allegedly doomed saxophonist alter ego wants a name as grand as Alabama University’s football team, while I’d rather we knock the NCAA down a couple pegs instead.
And speaking of pegs, I love “Peg.” Peeeeeeg! Multi-tracked Michael McDonalds and a beat worthy of De La Soul for the win.
7. Eminem, “Lose Yourself” (Rolling Stone: #167)
I don’t recall saying “Eye Of The Tiger” would be better if it was angrier and even more earnest. I don’t think “Eye Of The Tiger” would be improved if Survivor announced that in real life Carl Weathers does not have Sylvester Stallone’s back. I don’t plan on implying that class trumps race by competing as the passionate underdog in a black-dominated field anytime soon, but if I was, I’d stick with “Eye Of The Tiger” in my training montage.
6. Bruce Springsteen, “Thunder Road” (Rolling Stone: #111)
All I hear is “Piano Man” behind him, Meat Loaf ahead of him. And that's a shit sandwich.
5. Simon & Garfunkel, “Bridge Over Troubled Water" (Rolling Stone: #66)
I'll let Rolling Stone have the first word:
When Simon wrote this tribute to friendship, he and Garfunkel were arguing over everything, even who should sing it. “He felt I should have done it,” Simon said. “Many times I’m sorry I didn’t.” The “Sail on, silver girl” verse was Garfunkel’s idea; Simon has never liked it. The melody came from the Bach chorale, and the title phrase came from a Sixties song by West Virginia gospel group the Swan Silvertones — “I guess I stole it, actually,” Simon told Dick Cavett around the time “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was the Number One song in America, a position it held for six weeks. He later paid the Silvertone’s singer, Claude Jeter, $1,000 as a way of saying thanks.
Wow. An uncredited gospel rehash that Paul Simon regrets letting Art Garfunkel have any part of. And that’s the “pro” argument! “He’s Heavy, And He Ain’t My Brother.” Great.
4. Lauryn Hill, “Doo Wop (That Thing)” (Rolling Stone: #49)
We were all rooting for her. The world’s forever a sucker for this kind of brassy retro redux - just ask Mark Ronson. But this song is still conservative AF. When was the last time you heard Jezebel (the woman, not the blog) referenced unironically? “It’s silly when girls sell their souls because it’s in/ hair weaves like Europeans / fake nails by Koreans.” Hmm! Granted, the second verse calls out domestic violence rather than sacrilegious hussies, but it’s still a number that preaches othering and essentializing the impure (in the chorus!), courtesy of someone who projected AIDS as divine punishment on her unplugged follow-up.
So how is this the best song by Lauryn Hill, let one of earth's Top 50? You want righteous scorn? How about “Lost Ones”? You want Afrocentric religious and historical references? Try “Everything Is Everything.” You wanna feel some shit? Try “Ex-Factor.” I’d put all those, most Fugees singles and “Uptown Funk” over this.
3. Bob Marley, “Redemption Song” (Rolling Stone: #42)
If you find this especially affecting considering where he was mentally and physically, ok. But I despise the implication that Marley peaked when he dropped reggae and got Dylanesque.
2. Kanye West, “Runaway” (Rolling Stone: #25)
It’s a hell of a hook. Impressively listenable even after nine minutes straight. Did you see when he debuted this at the VMAs after Taylor Swift’s condescending “Innocent”? Brutal. But if we gotta cling to Kanye despite the ever-increasing cringe of his career, we can find an artifact less self-serving than this. “A toast for the jerk-offs/ that would never take work off” is a sexist Oliver Stone cliche. “Addicted to the hood rats” is a sexist cliche beneath Oliver Stone. One could argue that celebrating rather than heeding this song’s warning is what lead us to where we are with the guy today.
So what hit of his should we valorize instead? Well, if I recall correctly, all previous Kanye singles - all of them - managed to end without three minutes of Kanye pretending his microphone is a saxophone. The one where he claimed to be the Kathie Lee to Jesus’ Regis. The one where he identified with Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky. The one where he hated the paparazzi worse than the Nazis. All of them.
- Beatles, “Strawberry Fields Forever” (Rolling Stone: #7)
Call me a heartless, clueless philistine, but I had zero idea that John Lennon was baring his soul on this track until Rolling Stone told me. I always grasped the mellotrons and trumpets and impressive studio trickery. But I failed to grasp that “No one I think is in my tree/ I mean it must be high or low/ that is you know, you can’t tune in, but it’s all right/ that is I think it’s not too bad” was supposed to be exceptionally poignant. Lennon called it “psychoanalysis set to music,” which makes me wonder if he did much listening or just talking on that couch.
In terms of songs where the Beatles go all psychedelic kaleidoscope on our asses, I infinitely prefer the bad trip of “I Am The Walrus,” the good trip of “It’s All Too Much” and the straight-forward headfuck of “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Oh, and “A Day In The Life”! That’s a keeper. Compared to all those epics - not to mention the classics that clocked in closer to three minutes - this always felt a little drifting and diffuse. So if there’s more to this being the ultimate Beatles number than a coin toss, I’m clueless. Unless it’s that “Strawberry Fields” was their very first Beatles single to stick a stamp on your tongue and tell you to give Jann Wenner money every month to understand what’s really going down in the world. Even if that’s the case, all their songs I mentioned came out more than a decade before I was born. Why should it matter which one multi-tracked madness on 45 first?
And before you ask, Someone's Dad, yes. I prefer "Thank U, Next" to all of these.