This playlist ends the weekend before a big moment for my oldest daughter and me as we head down to the Vancouver International Film Festival for a bunch of movies. That said, this marks the first break I’ve taken since bringing this new blog of daily song selections and I have to say, I went a little bit mellower. Sure, we start with Deftones but it is one of their swankier songs and I’ve got turn-of-the-millennium nu-metalers Cold here but this was a radio song as well. Also mixed in here I have the Canadian selections of one of the greatest ever, I Mother Earth, Brave Shores and even, the Victoria queen on the verge of a comeback, Nelly Furtado to bring the list to a close. I should mention that I’ve peppered in some classics here with a 90s Ice Cube anthem and a couple from some childhood favorites. Rock along to the list and I’ll update you with more in a couple weeks!
Track #1: Deftones – Digital Bath – White Pony (2000)
We’re not messing around anymore when it comes to the kickoffs of these playlists because I’m coming through with an all time favorite song off of one of my favorite records ever made. The first song I brought to the playlist from the Deftones, one of my top groups ever, was a cover song but now I’m bringing a track that I feel also oozes sex appeal in a genre that would appear to be unable to convey that. Upon further digging into the lyrics, you find that the track is about luring a girl into a bathtub, killing her with an electrical device, and then dressing her back up which makes the song infinitely less sexy but I guess it’s all about the packaging to give it that initial feel. Chino clearly had some dark thoughts and mixed emotions while writing this one.
“You move like I want to
To see like your eyes do
We are downstairs
Where no one can see
New life break away”
Track #2: Sponge – Wax Ecstatic (To Sell Angelina) – Wax Ecstatic (1996)
I remember first hearing this song on the radio and becoming obsessed with it. It was an earworm that wouldn’t go away and I would tape it off the next playings of it, always missing that beginning guitar riff. Then I saw the video, directed by George Vale, the man behind some great Canadian music videos like The Tea Party’s The Bazaar and Our Lady Peace’s Starseed, and I was hooked. I save up my allowance and bought the CD immediately. Coming off the Detroit, Michigan bands second album, this was the first single and what I think was the defining one for their sound. Still to this day, I love this track.
“Angelina, it’ll fix your hunchback
Angelina, it’ll help your time pass
Angelina, here’s a forecast
Angelina, it’s science, we never laugh”
Track #3: Foreigner – Juke Box Hero – 4 (1981)
Ever since I was a kid, first enjoying music, I have had a deep love for Foreigner. Stemming from songs like Hot Blooded, Cold As Ice and then to ballads like I Wanna Know What Love Is and Waiting For A Girl Like You, I really found my love for them with the sax solo infused Urgent, a song I kind of became obsessed with. This track in particular was one that picked up in popularity with me as an adult and I turn it up loud every time that it comes on. The pulsing bass and drum that starts the song is truly delicious. That said, I didn’t opt to see them in concert when they passed through a few months ago. I feel like the ship has sailed on enjoying them live.
“Bought a beat up six string, in a secondhand store
Didn’t know how to play it, but he knew for sure
That one guitar, felt good in his hands
Didn’t take long, to understand
Just one guitar, slung way down low
Was a one way ticket, only one way to go
So he started rockin’, ain’t never gonna stop
Gotta keep on rockin’, someday gonna make it to the top”
Track #4: The Hunna – Trash – The Hunna (2022)
The Hunna returns to the playlist with another song off of their self titled record, an album that I consistently go back to and rock out to. This song is a quick little blip on a track at just over two minutes long but they do a hell of a job being memorable with that short amount of time. The song feels like a ferocious attack on social media trends, vapid attitudes, fleeting fandom and the old adage that you need money to make money and unless you have it, you will never get that radio single you strive for. It’s cynical, yes, but rightfully so and it rocks oh so hard at the same time. I love The Hunna and I hope they see a rise because they deserve it.
“Well, look at me, look at me, I’m the boss
I know everybody, I can take you to the top
TikTok, TikTok, or else you get dropped
I can’t dance to your song, that’s not hot
I bet you’ll never hear this on the radio, it’s crazy, though
I guess I need to start handin’ out some fellatio
Say that, do this, but don’t do that
Just don’t be yourself, ’cause that is whack”
Track #5: I Mother Earth – Used To Be Alright – Scenery & Fish (1996)
The first Canadian content of this playlist and it’s one of the greatest bands to ever release in our beautiful country, along with Our Lady Peace, who have already made an appearance. It should be noted that this is my favorite incarnation of this Toronto, Ontario band, with the original lead singer Edwin, who was like a Canuck music god to me at the time and afterward with his solo record. This song in particular was a MuchMusic favorite of mine and I used to wait so I could tape this song and their other Scenery & Fish single Another Sunday on an old VCR. That brings me back to a lot simpler times for sure because, apparently, I love the year 1996 a lot according to some of these song picks.
“Remembering the laughs, the time
We got high for seven days down
In New Orleans and it seemed like
No one else knew we were just
The moon and sun in fog before the
Heat burned it away and took
The sleep from tired heads on
Beds of reaching hands, of road trip
Breath and long tall freedom”
Track #6: Brave Shores – Never Come Down – Brave Shores (2014)
This is another track that played on our local indie rock station The Peak in Vancouver and it was a song that didn’t really have an affect on me at first but after a bunch of listens, I changed my tune. This Toronto, Ontario pop group adds more Canadian content to this eighteenth playlist and also continues to show off my adoration of bands that only consist of a duo. The main drive of this song is so catchy that I’m surprised it took so long for it to catch one with me. Now that I love it, I know the song is a summer party slam dunk.
“So sorry, I’ve missed you
Hair always whipping round
So high up, got my chin up
I don’t care if I never come down
I don’t care if I never come down”
Track #7: Cold – Just Got Wicked – 13 Ways To Die Onstage (2000)
I think my still burning love for turn of the millennium rock and metal is still very obvious because, in the case of this song, this metal band from Jacksonville, Florida didn’t really have the resonance like some of the other bands of the era. That said, I really enjoyed this record a lot and spun it pretty often and this was the first single off of the record. I remember seeing the music video debut on MuchMusic’s Loud and was totally pumped for it as I only knew about them because they opened up for and were affiliated with Limp Bizkit as lead singer Fred Durst appeared on a bonus track from their self titled debut record. Yes, there’s a Limp Bizkit connection here.
“Everyone got twisted up
Everyone got behind my back and broke it
Cause it’s my world
Everyone got twisted up
All your friends got behind my back and broke it
Cause it’s my world
Everyone got twisted up
Everyone got behind my back and broke it
Cause it’s my world
Everyone got twisted up!
Everyone got behind my back and broke it!
Cause it’s my world!”
Track #8: GAYLE – abcdefu (angrier) – abcdefu (angrier) (2021)
This is a song that I have to attribute to my wife’s TikTok feed for getting me on board as it’s one that I kept hearing over and over again as she scrolled through her feed a couple of years ago. Albeit, this is a different version than what appears on her album, hello this is the setlist for my tour, released just last year, but I kind of like the angstier or, in this case, angrier version much more. Hailing from Plano, Texas and at just twenty years old, GAYLE is a rising star who was even featured on the Barbie soundtrack with a cool use of Crazy Town’s Butterflies for her own frenetic version and I think she has a really bright future ahead of her. Plus, this track is the ultimate middle finger song as well and sometimes we all need to feel that.
“A-B-C-D-E, fuck you
And your mom and your sister and your job
And your craigslist couch and the way your voice sounds
Fuck you and your friends that I’ll never see again
Everybody but your dog, you can all fuck off”
Track #9: Ice Cube – It Was A Good Day – The Predator (1992)
This is one of those all-time hip-hop tracks and while it feels like it might not fit into this list at all, I believe the vibe at its center really does lend to the same sort of chill style I have going on here. The song has the legendary rapper Ice Cube rolling through what’s in the title, a good day. He lays out the day from the beginning, a pork-free breakfast, Yo MTV Raps!, gambling, a sexual encounter to keep the blood flowing, and, most importantly, no murders in his neighborhood. This feels like a song, when it comes on my randomizer, that is unskippable. It is a piece of serotonin that exists in a genre that focuses a little more on the other side of the coin, especially in the last twenty years, and is a reminder of the hip hop that shaped generations. It also makes your head bop immediately and thats fantastic.
“Went to Short Dog’s house, they was watchin’ Yo! MTV Raps
What’s the haps on the craps?
Shake ’em up, shake ’em up, shake ’em up, shake ’em”
Track #10: The Police – Message In A Bottle – Reggatta De Blanc (1979)
One of the greatest trios of all time makes a return to the playlist and a track off the same album I brought last time too. This is arguably one of their biggest songs of all time and that bassline that Sting rolls out with that subtle drumming from Stewart Copeland is absolutely delicious. The single ends up winning a Grammy and dives headlong into the themes of being trapped on a deserted island with themes of isolation, loneliness and desperation before ending with the downer note that all of his pleas for help that he sent away came right back to him, unread. It’s dark themes for a song with such a bop at its heart. Keep it up, indeed, eh, Sting? Man, I wish these guys could have gotten along better, they’re so genius. Also, Machinhead’s cover of this song is awesome.
“A year has passed since I wrote my note
I should have known this right from the start
Only hope can keep me together
Love can mend your life, but love can break your heart”
Track #11: The Vines – Outtathaway – Highly Evolved (2002)
There’s something about the chaoticness of The Vines that really spoke to me the first time I heard their debut track, Get Free, and I was kind of hooked into their sound ever since. Released against the backdrop of a throwback rock sound, spearheaded by bands like Sweden’s The Hives, this Aussie rock band really fit in with their own signature sound. More than Get Free, the second single released of the debut record, which I feel is the song people know more, Outtathaway is the single that charted the highest for the band and is their biggest success to date. I still listen to the album regularly and crank the volume when this madness comes on.
“Gotta get outtathaway
No time for me to say
When I speak out of line
I don’t believe in time”
Track #12: Days Of The New – Face Of The Earth – Days Of The New (1997)
This is what should have been a landmark record that sent this band into super stardom but instead revealed the ego of the lead singer and songwriter and exposed the very real notion that fame and youth can sometimes lead to an artist’s destruction. With singles like Touch, Peel And Stand and Shelf In A Room, Charlestown, Indiana’s own Days Of The New had us eating out of the palm of their hand on MuchMusic and it led to them getting that coveted opener position for Metallica on their latest tour at the time, one I had the privilege of checking out at UBC Thunderbird Stadium. They were captivating and this was my favorite track off the record, The dark melody and Travis Meeks vocals still to this day have me mesmerized and for newer generations, I feel like this song has aged really well and can make new fans all over again, even if the band has imploded time and time again.
“I’m the one receiving the pain from you
Break me down, so shove me in a shoe
You put it on and walk on me all day
Me, it wouldn’t surprise
It’s something you would do
I watch you”
Track #13: Deadsy – Mansion World – Commencement (1999)
Another turn of the millennium track finds its way to this playlist but the difference here is I never really even knew who Deadsy was at the time of the release and I’m only just discovering them now, albeit way too late and arguably when the founder of the band is in some mental distress. I feel like maybe Orgy filled this void at the time as the two bands feel very similar in sound but the emo electronic vibe is something that I’ve really picked up on and this and their song The Keys To Grammercy Park have become my obsolete go tos when it comes to this Los Angeles band. The frontman, Elijah Blue Allman, is the son of the legendary Cher and the legal battles between the two have been really heartbreaking to read.
“Now and then it comes to mind
I draw upon a long lost time
So don’t ask me why the angels won’t cry, ’cause you know what I’ve already told you
Memories of Urantia girls, they race around my brain in swirls
You never ask me why the change is in the sky bring you up which to the hole that you go through
And now you’re off you’ve done the time
Prepare for divine invasion
As the spirit climbs Morontia minds
Ascend to the cosmic nation”
Track #14: Nelly Furtado – Say It Right – Loose (2006)
And just before I leave you for a two-week hiatus to cover the Vancouver International Film Festival, I finish this playlist dropping a fantastic single from a Canadian pop queen who is hopefully gearing up for a comeback. Now, admittedly I was not too high on her work with Timbaland as I thought Promiscuous Girl was a departure from her previous image but I have come around on it, mostly because he is such a good producer and a lot of these songs are phenomenal. Yes, my tastes in pop have definitely evolved over the years, thanks to my wife mostly. The beat to this song is great and gets stuck in your head and I really love Nelly’s voice a lot.
“In the day, in the night
Say it right, say it all
You either got it, or you don’t
You either stand, or you fall
When your will is broken
When it slips from your hand
When there’s no time for jokin’
There’s a hole in the plan”
Steve Stebbing 