1,001 songs to listen to before you die...

[Liam]

2 minutes ago, RPS said:

I prematurely shot my wad on what should have been a dry run. 

You've got something of a mess on your hands.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Stylo is a banger.

[Malenko]

I have actually listened to the 1001 songs you have to listen to before you die. All of it thanks to you.

I'd never find the will power to do it on my own.

So, even if the late 00s weren't exactly great for me, I had a great time listening to those hits from other eras/decades. Thanks a lot for all of this. *Thumbs up*

 

[Liam]

Yeah, cheers to all of you who contributed. Wasn't exactly done in a year like I set out for it to be, but I'll blame my son for that. It made it all a hell of a lot easier knowing there were people following along, chipping in with their two penneth worth, and enjoying the process for the most part.

[Hobo]

Now Liam is allowed to die having heard all the songs.

Congratulations!

[METALMAN]

well that was good.

what are we going to do now?

[Pooker]

I have no reason now to come to the music section. Great job finishing this.

[RPS]

12 hours ago, METALMAN said:

well that was good.

what are we going to do now?

Die.

[METALMAN]

But I have not tried the 1001 whiskies I must try before I die!

[gunnar hendershow]

Thank you for doing this. Was a real blast to follow. Plenty of fun discussion this helped create too.

[Hobo]

On 30/10/2021 at 13:40, METALMAN said:

well that was good.

what are we going to do now?

Fish.

[Skummy]

I love Tinariwen (actually wearing their shirt right now), but even then I'd struggle to justify them making this list.

[METALMAN]

Would you put them on 1001 shirts you must wear before you die?

[gunnar hendershow]

1001 cotton blend t-shirts to wear so you don't die on a warm summer day.

[Liam]

On 30/10/2021 at 13:40, METALMAN said:

well that was good.

what are we going to do now?

The last section of the book.

Spoiler

10,001 Songs You Must Hear…

 

[VerbalPuke]

This thread was awesome, found a bunch of new to me stuff in here. Great discussion as well.

[GoGo Yubari]

The final post of reactions to these batches of songs. Here we go!

Not a ton to add to Santigold. I'm sure she felt like a really safe bet at the time to still be a relevant artist years on. Very interesting talk in here contrasting her and M.I.A. sort of jostling over the same spot in pop culture, I'd not thought of that. "L.E.S. Artistes" is fine, anyway, but I think there's sort of an inertness to this period of indie electronica that I often don't love, in a way that makes sense in my head but I would utterly fail to articulate.

"Sex On Fire" turned up as I was basically done feeling like I needed to keep up with popular songs and just shifted to "if I hear them a lot I hear them a lot," so I definitely heard it and could ID the chorus but never really felt much for it. Still don't. Makes sense to have it in the book, though!

I've mentioned at times that I'm involved with a Twitter community that runs monthly themed song polls. In March the theme was "songs from 2008" and that's where I finally heard, or at least heard knowing who it was, this Elbow song and I couldn't stand it. Just thought it was brutally long and boring. That being said, I definitely got from the comments of some of the UK voters that this song was extremely present over there that year so it makes sense that it's here.

(For posterity, the winner of the 2008 song tourney was "American Boy" by Estelle (& Kanye West), which beat "Single Ladies" by Beyonce in the final. I believe "L.E.S. Artistes" did in fact make the top 8 of that poll.)

"Viva La Vida" is a song I will never ever deliberately seek out to listen to but I actually do like it. Coldplay are better when they're mopey in a breezier way than ballads like "Fix You," and this was definitely that. Couldn't argue with this being in the book at all IMO.

"Dog Days Are Over" is one of those songs that just embodies that moment in time for me. I was in college when that song came out and unsurprisingly drama students loved Florence + The Machine. Kind of felt like they had one more album and then faded from the zeitgest (I guess they're still around and contributed a song to the Cruella soundtrack), but man, they were huge for a moment there and I think deservedly so.

I don't think Lily Allen is a huge reach to put in this book. She wasn't like a pop star in the US but she was as much of an artist of consequence as much of the indie bands they've put in here. I still hear her in public places now (have a very strong memory of going into a Domino's last year or the year before and hearing "Fuck You" being played there by a staff in its early twenties who clearly had something to get out of their system). That being said I don't really like "The Fear" that much. It's self-aware but not in a very interesting way.

The Animal Collective and M.I.A.-featured songs are solid, the latter one of those interesting "you may have missed this" ones.

"Empire State of Mind," what can you say? That song was 2009, and probably the first half of 2010 too. Probably the song an entire generation or two will associate with NYC, I know that both times I visited there after the song came out it got stuck in my head. Some of Jay-Z's lines are shaky but who needs impeccable flow when you have that hook and that production surrounding you?

Not a ton to say on 2010, there's a bit of a grasping at straws energy to it even by this book's standards. The Radiohead is an interesting idea, the Jonsi is very Jonsi, I don't mind checking out what's going on in Mali because Mali is great. "Stylo" is of course the one most relevant to my interests as a Gorillaz superfan. I'm glad that Gorillaz's only inclusion wasn't the D12 collab that's purely there because of how they made it. "Stylo" is solid though I definitely agree that beyond a nice little central hook there the centerpiece is how damn good Bobby Womack is in it. Part of what's good about Gorillaz is the wide range of collaborators he pulls from for it and how oftentimes they're pretty foreign to what Gorillaz's core audience is, and I'm sure a lot of millennials discovered Womack through his appearances on that album. He was on the Plastic Beach tour and it was so cool seeing him come out to rapturous applause and just kill it on the songs he's featured in. My guess is in hindsight they'd probably pivot from "Stylo" to "Feel Good Inc." if they were doing it again in 2021 but I get the impulse to go for it given that they clearly had no clue what would or wouldn't be big that year.

Thanks for doing this project, Liam. I read through a lot of this book a few years ago but never finished it, and you starting this just before the pandemic hit inspired me to go check it back out from the library and then the libraries closed down and I had it for the whole year so I was able to finish it. Still not done that with 1001 Albums, though, still trudging through 1987. 1001 Songs itself has a lot of flaws (I think it's maddening that they almost completely snubbed East Asia throughout the entire book but kept going over to whatever Aussie rock band was having a moment that year) but I can't imagine not going through the whole book and finding some great new-to-you stuff and broadening your horizons at least a little bit.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Quote

the winner of the 2008 song tourney was "American Boy" by Estelle (& Kanye West), which beat "Single Ladies" by Beyonce in the final. 

Ex-squeeze me, baking powder?

[Colly]

The greatest song ever to reference Ribena.

[Liam]

American Boy is an absolute banger.