1. Swingin’ Party – Lorde – The Replacements greatest song because it is its most inclusive song,so much so that a 16 year old from New Zealand recorded it to great acclaim because it fit, because “if being afraid is a crime we hang side by side” is an aphorism, it is an aphorism that has the particular inside it. Lorde’s version is just a heart beat and Lorde singing the entire melody herself, but it isn’t disaffected (she is never disaffected), rather it is inclusive No, not warm, but with the possibility of futre warmth down the line.
2. Pyjamarama – Roxy Music – Here is a barely remembered quote, I thought it was Oscar Wilde but I can’t seem to confirm, and I am paraphrasing it: people think that when they are in love with someone, they don’t see the person they love correctly. They only think they see em but they don’t really see them at all. And when they fall out of love, it is like a veil is lifted and they see the person for the first time. But the opposite is the truth, when we love someone we see someone the way they truly are, their divinity, their immortal souls. It is when we fall out of love that the material world gets in the way.
3. Disorder – Joy Division – So far ahead of its time that with a remastered sheen it would sound as big a bazooka bass as any song on the scene but that isn’t all “Disorder” is. At its heart, this an anthem about the release of all passion, and when Ian screams “I’ve got the spirit, don’t lose the feeling” and ends off with “feeling feeling feeling”, If you’ve heard the live version on Les Bains Douches, the passion has an epileptic illness, a drastic end of the road need to express how music, how life functions. If you can’t feel you can’t matter.
4. Tokyo Storm Warning – Elvis Costello And The Attractions – Ah yes, “death wears a big hat because he’s a big bloke”. Hard to deny and harder to embrace, consider it high end protest music with a bullet in the punchlines. “some people can’t be told, you know, they have to learn the hard way” elvis warns just before a Beatley psychedelic 30 second solo, “don’t ever mention my name babe or talk of all the nights we’ve cried, we’ve always been like worlds apart now you’re watching two nightmares collide”is a line that lasted me a year, and the end? “we’re only living this instant” is simply the truth.
