With a handful of days delay, I present to you another eclectic list of songs that made up a two-week period of my life and there is some interesting stuff to behold on it. I start by leaning into some classic hip hop with the Beasties and also the current leader of the genre in my opinion, Kendrick Lamar later on the list. I include some all time favorites like the math metal of Mudvayne, possibly my top blink singles ever released and one of the tracks that put Thrice on my radar. I have this, some classic rock tracks from Zepplin and Golden Earring and I even end it all with something absurdly fun.
Track #1: Beastie Boys – Sure Shot – Ill Communication (1994)
It was only a matter of time before the most iconic three MCs and a DJ hit the playlist and, I’ll admit, I had it set up to post in an almost cocky way. Truth be told, I was ready to post this after I passed my driver’s test but, embarrassingly, I failed, making this an ironic post. That aside, this song is still incredible until this very day and it brightens my spirits every time I hear it. Especially after a failure day, this kick-off to one of the greatest rap albums of all time hits just right.
“I’ve got the brand new doo-doo, guaranteed like Yoo-hoo
I’m on like Dr. John, yeah, Mr. Zu Zu
I’m a newlywed, not a divorcee (yeah)
And everything I do is funky like Lee Dorsey
Well it’s the taking of the Pelham 1, 2, 3
If you want a doo-doo rhyme, then come see me
I’ve got the savoir faire with the unique rhymin’
I keep it on and on, it’s never quitting time, and
Strictly handheld is the style I go
Never rock the mic with the pantyhose
I strap on my ear goggles, and I’m ready to go
‘Cause at the boards is the man they call the Mario
You pull up at the function, and you know I Kojak
To all the party people that are on my Bozac
I’ve got more action than my man, John Woo
And I’ve got mad hits like I was Rod Carew (yeah)”
Track #2: Silverstein featuring Aaron Gillespie – Infinite – A Beautiful Place To Drown (2020)
It’s about time that one of my favorite Canadian metal bands makes their first appearance on the playlist as I listen to them daily at this point. Formed in Burlington, Ontario, this five-piece has been kicking ass since their first album, over twenty years ago, and has been melting faces ever since. This record in particular is one of my favorite pandemic-era releases and this song is the second single released from it, making its debut right in the first week of that fateful year. Aaron Gillespie has also been a regular follow for me, with his band Underoath, and even more now that they denounced their religious affiliation. This song rules so click on it and turn it up LOUD!
“I gotta find some way to relate
I drew a line just so I could see straight
Erase every lie and half truth
Anything I have to”
Track #3: Hannah Georgas – Enemies – Hannah Georgas (2012)
Let’s get some more Canadian content going here and this is not just CanCon but British Columbia local and one of the most gifted singers and songwriters in the last fifteen years in my opinion. Coming from Vancouver, Hannah’s music first hooked me when I heard it playing regularly on our local indie rock radio station, The Peak, and it led me to pick up the album. Once I did, I fell in love with this other track on the album, the fourth song, and it still sticks in my brain as my favorite. It feels like an easy single that never got the chance to shine and I’m happy to share it here.
“We’re in a sea full of sharks
Just swimming around and around
If we get caught, they’re gonna taste our blood
You leave a trail and the word will get out
That we’re all lost and ready to kill
That we’re all lost and ready to kill”
Track #4: Glass Animals – Heat Waves – Dreamland (2020)
This is one of those artists that I was really late to and now, I really look forward to their music as well as the remixes that they do. If you haven’t heard their work on Florence + The Machine’s My Love, you need to fix that immediately. It’s so good! This song was floating into my ears for a while before I figured out who it was and added it to my favorites and it is all down to that main groove. It’s a “chilling on the beach” song in so many ways and it’s crazy that a pop band from Oxford, England were the ones to bring it out. Despite having a sort of sad drive of the main music, the song is about remaining strong through vulnerable moments in your life and embracing your vulnerability, which is a message I can definitely get behind.
“Sometimes, all I think about is you
Late nights in the middle of June
Heat waves been fakin’ me out
Can’t make you happier now
Sometimes, all I think about is you
Late nights in the middle of June
Heat waves been fakin’ me out
Can’t make you happier now”
Track #5: Led Zeppelin – Houses Of The Holy – Physical Graffiti (1975)
The second song from the legendary Tolkien fans, Led Zeppelin, makes its appearance this time around and it is a song that is always rooted deep in my brain for weeks after I hear it. The song’s history is a little confusing as the title was also used for an album released two years prior and this track doesn’t appear on it. There was a time when the song was going to be included but it was decided that the tone of it didn’t really fit with the record. The song was recorded at the same time as The Rover, and refers to the auditoriums and arenas in which Zeppelin performed, as if there was a sort of holy feel to the air at those venues for Plant, Page, Jones and Bonham.
“Let me take you to the movie
Can I take you to the show?
Let me be yours ever truly
Can I make your garden grow?”
Track #6: Kendrick Lamar – DNA. – DAMN. (2017)
Now that it seems the dust has settled on the war between Nobel Prize-winning artist Kendrick Lamar and Canadian whiner Drake with, I think, Kenny coming out as the clear winner, I’m adding another one of his tracks to the playlist and one with a little bit of a movie connection. The song was part of one of the greatest records in 2017, an album with track after track that you want to play at the loudest decibel but this song being used in the trailer for the Rocky franchise boxing sequel, Creed II, does what was intended and that’s to hype the audience up. The track’s title is what is at the heart of it, as Lamar celebrates, critiques, and explores his black heritage and culture, doing it from multiple viewpoints and the music video, featuring Don Cheadle, debuts his slightly comedic alter ego, Kung Fu Kenny. It’s really worth checking out, as is the whole DAMN. album.
“You ain’t shit without a body on your belt
You ain’t shit without a ticket on your plate
You ain’t sick enough to pull it on yourself
You ain’t rich enough to hit the lot and skate”
Track #7: Golden Earring – Twilight Zone – Cut (1982)
I’m going really classic for this song, an early eighties rock track that I loved when I first heard it as a kid. I’m honestly surprised I did because the song clocks in at almost eight minutes and I know I was nowhere near my later-found patience with music in the longest form as Tool wouldn’t be formed nor hit my eardrums for years. A Dutch band formed in The Hauge, Netherlands as The Tornados in 1961 and finally disbanded in 2021, Golden Earring is mostly known for Radar Love but this song always rose above that, for me. Interestingly enough the song wasn’t inspired by the legendary TV series but by a sort of throwaway line in the Robert Ludlum-written novel, The Bourne Identity.
“Help, I’m steppin’ into the Twilight Zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I’ve gone too far?”
Track #8: Thrice – Deadbolt – The Illusion Of Safety (2002)
Thrice makes another appearance on the playlist, one of my favorite bands of all time and have an album that means a lot to me in their discography. I go back to their second album for this choice, a single that was released during their heavier and more punk-influenced beginnings. This track is considered the song that established the band on the scene and is a heavily metaphorical examination of addiction, adultery and the regret that follows, you know, if you’re not a sociopath. It’s a killer song and it definitely led to my love of this band.
“I just close my eyes and I’m already here
It’s already too late
I know it’s nothing but lies
But they sound so sincere
I find them too hard to hate”
Track #9: blink-182 – I Miss You – blink-182 (2003)
I have to acknowledge at the top here, the legendary status of this trio, one that I’ve been enjoying since the Dude Ranch days and the first time I saw them, on the Warped Tour in Vancouver at a time when Travis Barker wasn’t the drummer. Usually known for kind of sophomoric little punk ditties, this song took me by surprise, a song just brimming with emotion. Like Adam’s Song, this track feels like it has an emotional depth that we usually don’t expect out of Mark, Tom and Travis but it always manages to hit me in the feels and maybe my favorite song they’ve ever done. At its heart, the song is a meditation on the effect depression can have on a relationship and its subsequent fallout, which feels like something that is vastly relatable. No matter who you are and how much money you have, depression will always lurk.
“Where are you? And I’m so sorry
I cannot sleep, I cannot dream tonight
I need somebody and always
This sick, strange darkness
Comes creeping on, so haunting every time
And as I stare, I counted
The webs from all the spiders
Catching things and eating their insides
Like indecision to call you
And hear your voice of treason
Will you come home and stop this pain tonight?
Stop this pain tonight”
Track #10: Metric – All Comes Crashing – Formentera (2022)
It’s once again time for the Canadian rock goddess known as Emily Haines to bless this playlist with another absolute banger and this time I’m pulling something from the first of album of a double whammy they gave us back in 2022. Their eighth record in a long and fantastic career dates back to their formation in Toronto in 1998, both of these records have the group really leaning into their iconic sound, including the kick-off to the record, an almost eight-minute track called Doomscroller. This is the next on the record and has a great hook along with those flighty Emily vocals we know and love. I love Metric and that just grows daily.
“Starting over when the story’s got an astounding twist
You better turn that page
When push it comes to shove we do not fall out of love
We double down, we do not fade”
Track #11: Mudvayne – Nothing To Gein – L.D. 50 (2000)
This is a record that changed how I looked at metal as a genre, a landmark piece in what formed me as a fan of this type of music. The first time I heard Dig, I felt like my mind was blown apart and rewritten in thundering guitar, almost mathematical drumming, wicked slap bass and roaring vocals, When I finally got the album, I fell in love with the whole thing, even the weird and haunting interludes but this track would constantly get the replay once I heard it. As implied by the title, yes, the song is about serial killer Ed Gein, the inspiration for film characters Norman Bates (Psycho), Jame Gumb (The Silence of the Lambs) and Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
“Cold and silent, soiled face I will wash it all away
With my love, that’s all she’s ever needed from me
It’s my time, to mother
One of my own, in my life
I am so alone, left with no one
In my life, I’m so alone”
Track #12: White Lies – Getting Even – Big TV (2013)
If it weren’t for my listening to Arcade Fire Rado on Spotify at work one day, I never would have come across this band, classified as post-punk revival, a movement of indie rock that emerged in the early 2000s which is more stripped down and low-fi than the rock that dominated the previous decade. Formed in Ealing, London, England in 2007, their sound is the perfect one to break through my tastes as it is dark and broody with synth tones and a deep and almost Morissey-like vocal lilt. This track comes from their third record and was the teaser song released just over three months before the album release but was never considered one of the singles attributed to it so I consider it an underrated b-side that should have been bigger in my opinion.
“So listen to some reason, there’s nothing in your dreams!
But if you’re getting even, you’re getting even
Trying to get even? Better start believing
I can forgive, and we can forget
Even after all this love and other nonsense we’ve made”
Track #13: Big Sugar – Diggin’ A Hole – Hemi-Vision (1996)
Adding some more Canadian content to join Hannah Georgas and Metric, this is a band that commanded radio play in the second half of the nineties with an album filled with hit singles and catchy songs to rock out to. They were also a band that commanded a really loud sound when you saw them play live. Formed in the rock mecca of Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1988, Gordie Johnson, Kelly Hoppe, Gary Lowe and Paul Brennan really landed with the Hemi-Vision record, their third record and first platinum seller. This comes after a record that Jack White has since called the best record to come out of Canada. This was the first of the four Hemi-Vision singles and it got the ball rolling big time. Plus, Gordie’s guitar? Canadian iconic stuff in my opinion.
“Got my head in a haze
Feel like a cat in a cage
I’ve been crying for days and I’m falling apart
Digging a hole in my heart
Give me the lies on page
I’m feelin’ twice my age
I’ve been crying for days and I’m falling apart
Digging a hole in my heart”
Track #14: Andrew WK – Party Hard – I Get Wet (2001)
Way to end the playlist with something absurd, right? Ruins the whole esthetic of the jumble I was going for! AAAAAAARGH!!! Oh, well, the reality is I’m a late comer to the musical art of Andrew W.K., out of Ann Arbor, Michigan by way of Stanford, California, and when he debuted, I’ll be honest, I thought it was a joke. What I didn’t see was his inclusivity, his kind nature, his drive to unite an audience and this all rises above the dirty white clothes and bloody noses. The guy was an avant garde artist and I didn’t notice that until I matured more myself. As for the song? It just rules.
“When it’s time to party, we will party hard”
Steve Stebbing 