Friday, August 18, 2006

Pitchfork's 200 greatest songs of the 1960s


A change of pace, and back to music for a moment. Today, Pitchfork wraps up their list of the 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s. The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" comes in at Number 1. I'm glad to see that Iggy and the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" made the top 20, and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" ranked third. I'm also glad to see The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" up there. Very different songs, but all masterpieces. Check out the list, let me know what you think.

Oh, and speaking of somewhat embarrassing tastes below (and I've expressed my love for Pilot, which is another embarrassing one, but also the hipsterly acceptable Robert Pete Williams, and many others here and here), I'm now really into... Lily Allen. 20 years old. There, I've admitted it. The Pilot days wash over me again and the metalheads beat me up behind the bleachers. Make of it what you will, but first do me a favor and listen to the eminently catchy tunes, "LDN" and "Smile." I know this will come back to haunt me like my Spice Girls global groupie days or my early years buying beers at 7-11 for the Backstreet Boys.

5 comments:

Jim Anderson said...

Four Beach Boys tunes in the top 21. Appropriate.

Not only is "God Only Knows" surprisingly haunting for a pop song--at least until the "bom ba bom ba bom bommmm-pa-bom" part--it's ambitiously and subversively titled.

helmut said...

I was impressed with that too. And I've always loved "God Only Knows." I thought of it as existentialist.

As always with these things, there are a lot of great songs I'd place higher in the list. Stuff from the Zombies, Kinks, Love, etc. But these lists can also have an overemphasis on their time - so one made in the early 90s gets all these Pearl Jam songs in the top 20. 80s has Eurythmics, etc. But these guys actually scoured the history of pop music pretty well.

Anonymous said...

Make of it what you will, but first do me a favor and listen to the eminently catchy tunes

The music is pretty fun (she reminds me of Nelly Furtado), but man, that girl could use some web design help: her MySpace page nearly gave me brain seizures. More evidence, I think, that I'm getting old!

helmut said...

You're right, Matt. That page is nuts.

Anonymous said...

no shame in liking Lily Allen. Anyone who can include the line "there's a leak in your colostomy bag" in a riff on 50 cent is safely distinct from the spice girls...