Guest Blog: 100/100 by Djandor

Hello, everyone. My name is Jacqui, and I am a musician and sibling to Randor. My boyfriend calls me ‘Djandor’, so we’ll go with that. Why not.

This may be a little longer than some of the broski’s posts, but it’s cuz I have a serious complaint. In honor of WTF’s 100th music post, I will guest blog about TIME Magazine’s 100 Best Songs of All Time that they put out on October 24th.

I wish you could have heard my sigh.

Originally I was going to go through it and replace all of the songs I thought should be replaced, then replace the musicians with musicians I would have put in instead. I realized before I even started this task that that would be ridiculously impossible because I disagree with a majority of their list.

I don’t know which hipster they asked to write this, but it was NOT someone who actually knew (good) music (okay it looks like it was a staff-contributed thing). To be fair, Rolling Stone’s list already came out, and it is way better (even some of THOSE songs I disagree with), and maybe they just wanted to be different… Here is a link to Rolling Stone’s list

The only song from the 2010s on TIME’s list is a song and artist I’ve never even heard of. Probably because I don’t listen to a lot of popular music these days because a lot of it is sincerely crap. Okay so I just YouTubed it… yeah, awful. I mean not awful, she’s a good dancer and whatever, but… not so much top 100 songs of ALL TIME material. I mean, I would have picked Amy Winehouse over Janelle Monae any day of the week. Songs also on the list that I have complete disagreements with include (but are not limited to): Jay-Z’s 99 Problems, Kanye West’s Gold Digger, Richard Thompson’s Black Lightning, Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road, I GOT RHYTHM (the most annoying jazz standard of all time)… I mean with names like this I’m surprised we don’t find Justin Bieber and Jimmy Buffet on here.

Just so you know, there are definitely some songs on here I totally agree with. For example, Dolly Parton’s Jolene is a mournful tune about lost love, and heck we all like some good old-style country, amiright? Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is a given, obviously. That whole album is on my desert island top 5. I can’t even believe Funkadelic and Mahalia Jackson made it on here, but yes, they should totally be on here. The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows is easily one of my favorites (topped only by Surfer Girl, my absolute favorite guilty pleasure song of all time). Lena Horne’s Stormy Weather? Delightful. Louis Armstrong’s Stardust is very in the time, for sure, though I probably would have picked a different tune for him… That’s a hard one since he did so much for music (well, another blog for another day). ANYWAY.

Without further ado (and after the break), I pick apart the list vaguely but definitely, by taking artists I agree should be on the list but making suggestions as to which songs I would have chosen instead (TIME, are you listening?!). For the full list, see the very bottom of this blog entry or go to the source itself

Randor's Song of the Week: 09.26.10

"Little Lion Man" by Mumford and Sons from the album Sigh No More. 2009.
    I must give credit to Professor Nonsense, the rarely seen third writer of WTF, for showing me this song, and by connection, this band. It's a little habit of late to pick a sort of theme song for myself and the current trend of luck/stress/etc that occurs in my life. While a time ago I once subscribed Johnny Cash's cover of "I Won't Back Down" to that role, I must admit recent events have made "Little Lion Man" more suitable. And while I certainly won't detail the personal connections here, I can still point out the merits of the song itself.

Randor's Song of the Week: 08.01.10

"Qué Sera, Sera" by Pink Martini from the album Sympathique. 1997.
    There was a time where I'd dismiss any song that was a cover of an old classic (or the one most widely considered so, such as the ever-popular Kingsmen version of Richard Berry and the Pharaohs' "Louie Louie"). I'd like to blame it on childhood ignorance, as that unforgiving attitude set me away from some amazing rewrites. Nowadays thankfully, that stubbornness has evolved into caution. In live concerts especially, covers of other artists' songs can enliven by providing familiarity with a twist. Studio recordings still catch my weary side, however. In most cases, an original song gets released in the style the artist intended it to be in, and any band mirroring that exact sound just shouldn't try to beat the original at its own hand. A copy is still a copy, regardless of a better vocalist or instrumentalist or whatever. In an exaggerated example, you wouldn't take "Anarchy in the U.K." and have Michael Bolton belt out the lyrics because, besides the deadly head-on genre-collision, making the lead singer stronger takes away the grit and appeal of the tune. ..Although, Bolton leading the Sex Pistols would make for quite a show....

Randor's Song of the Week: 03.21.10

"Ring the Living Bell" by Melanie from the album Gather Me. 1971.

Number What? pt. 1

    It's easy to look back upon the past and chuckle over what was once popular. Fashion is an oft used example, with such classics as bell-bottoms, poodle skirts, petticoats, togas, etc. and etc. into the ancients. Even in music, though, the younger generations tend to grimace at the tunes their parents once enjoyed. Now, I think a true music nerd can find credibility and respect in almost anything. Even if it stems solely from how bad it sounds :P