rockitscientist's 15 Most Influential Songs

I have to let this list go. I've been working on it for months and will never stop editing it unless I post. I'm happy with my choices for the moment and don't feel as embarrassed as I expected. I am feeling very self-revelatory releasing this onto the internet, but I hope you enjoy it.

1 – The Beatles - Octopus’ Garden
All I have to hear is that opening guitar riff to be transported back to age 6 with my brown FisherPrice record player. At some point my parents figured I should graduate from Bert and Ernie’s hit “Doin’ the Pigeon” (as heard on “Sesame Street Fever”) and gave me a copy of The Beatles 1967-1970 (the blue album) on vinyl. So began a lifelong appreciation of the Fab Four. Octupus’ Garden was my favorite track and I remember sitting on the floor with the record sleeve singing along. Surely I was exposed to the Beatles in other ways at that age but singing along to this track was probably my first experience with non-kiddie music, and the first time I discovered a song that I liked without being told that I must like it!

2 – The Monkees - (I’m Not Your Steppin’) Stone
Christmas 1987: my cousin and I receive matching pink radio/tape decks. As I remember, we both get one tape: she Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and I The Monkees Greatest Hits. I am at the age where fictional Barbie/Ken relationships are acted out during after school playdates. This song was the first adult-themed song that I actually listened to the lyrics of and somewhat “got” the message of. Ken wasn’t going to be Barbie’s stepping stone anymore after this song… or vice versa. “Barbie, those clothes you’re wearing are causing public scenes!”

(I almost didn’t include this, mostly because even I admit that the Monkees are cheesy, but I have to own up to my love of this song and the doors it opened.)

3 – Janis Joplin - Mercedes Benz
The St. Louis radio station that my parents listened to had a Saturday morning classics show that, looking back, was really phenomenal. It exposed me to Jackson Browne, Elton John, the Allman Brothers, and a wealth of other 60s and 70s rock legends. At the end of each show they played a Janis Joplin cackle and this song is a really strong childhood memory for me. Mom, Dad and I hanging out in the house or driving in the car. It was years and years before I knew who Janis Joplin was and I was stunned to see a big crazy haired white woman was the person who created that unique vocal sound.

4 – Ben Folds Five - Kate
Driving to a swim meet in a white Volvo station wagon with some girls who were, admittedly, infinitely cooler than me, I heard this song for the first time. It’s not a great song but I really liked it and it opened me up to Ben Folds Five and made me realize that not all of a band’s fun or good or interesting songs make it onto the radio. I was tired of hearing their Brick song played incessantly by radio DJs, and had written them off to some degree. I didn’t buy much music in high school – I depended on crappy radio stations for music. This was the beginning of the end between radio and I.

5 – Daft Punk - Da Funk
I had a lame pseudo-boyfriend for a short time in high school who had pretty bad taste in, well, everything. But I was too excited by the fact that I actually had a cute guy to stick up for the fact that I thought the things he liked were lame. However I have to give credit where credit is due and admit that he introduced me to Daft Punk. He went away to school and I didn’t listen to Daft Punk again until maybe a year later when I realized that unlike the rest of his music, Daft Punk was actually really interesting and cool. Around the same time I came across a track from Air, and as I see now they aren’t all that similar, but they’re also French and I like them.

6 – Liz Phair - Supernova
The first time I experienced belligerence of the drunken sort was at a festival concert I attended with a bunch of my friends. We were a bunch of naive sixteen-year-old private school girls being bullied by two 30+ year-old assholes who wanted the sound guy to turn up the volume during the Liz Phair set. And when they gave up on that they decided to start yelling obscenities at my friends and I because we were ignoring their attempts to hit on us – to the point of being really afraid of them. So I don’t remember much about seeing her live, I remember the faces of those two assholes that said all of those nasty things. I was completely turned off from anything having to do with Liz Phair. Now I don’t think she has put out anything worth listening to in the last 9 years, but when I finally listened to her Whip Smart and Whitechocolatespaceegg albums a few years later, I realized how fitting it was to have had that experience with bad men at her show. And I loved that that female angst could be expressed in a snarky strong intelligent manner through music. I think that has a lot to do with how much I enjoy Lily Allen today.

7 – Beck - Where It’s At
It was early 1997 and Beck was on Saturday Night Live as the musical guest, promoting Odelay. My dad and I were the only ones still awake, and we were laughing hysterically at his look and this silly song; it remains an inside joke between us. Two turntables and microphone, dad. A few years later I had several Beck albums in my collection when he was driving me back to college and I played some for him. Surprisingly, he actually appreciated it! Good times.

8 - Apples In Stereo - 20 Cases Suggestive Of
Being introduced to the Apples In Stereo in 1999 had an important impact on my musical tastes. Listening to this album (The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone) led to discovering fellow Athens, Georgia band Of Montreal and making the connection to the Athens sound with REM (helped along by this blog’s owner, illgomine). I also really noticed and picked out some of the more electronic sounds in their songs (for instance, the main melody in the beginning of The Bird that You Can’t See) and soon after found myself revisiting Daft Punk, Underworld, and exploring the groups featured on the Trainspotting soundtrack. Coincidence? I think not.

9 – Paul Simon – Graceland
This song reminds me of falling in love, even though it’s about the opposite. Or maybe it’s just about looking for something and having faith that you are going to find it. Faith is just believing in something for which there is no proof, and I had no proof that love was going to work out. Regardless, I was headed towards my own Graceland. The whole album recalls images of rural Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas and we still pull it out as required listening on any road trip, however few and far between they are these days.

10 - Badly Drawn Boy - Shining
The warm sound of this song still makes me melt. I don’t listen to this album much anymore, but in making this list I dusted it out of my iTunes and this song remains one of the most affecting tracks I own. It was the end of 2000 and I was bored with school and my dismal music collection. Looking at some random UK blogger’s list of top albums of the year, Badly Drawn Boy stuck out and I downloaded (think Napster’s big days) the tracks. Love at first listen. Early on I really only enjoyed the first half of the album, more melodic, less stream-of-consciousness. But as I embraced the sound of the second half, those tracks became some of the first trance-like musical feeling driven (as opposed to primarily lyrically driven) tracks that I came to truly love.

11 – Belle & Sebastian – The Boy With the Arab Strap
Not recalling which Belle & Sebastian track I enjoyed first is dismaying, but the Boy With the Arab Strap and If You’re Feeling Sinister albums were the first ones I owned and they remain in heavy rotation. Growing up sheltered in Catholic schools and suddenly having homosexual friends in college wasn’t a difficult transition for me but I loved the unabashed boy-to-boy love themes of Belle & Sebastian. A breath of fresh air after a childhood filled with sexuality courses that told us people would go to hell for those sorts of things.

12 – James Brown – The Payback
I love James Brown; rest his dancing bones. After hearing “I Feel Good” my entire life I was re-introduced to him via the Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels movie soundtrack. He is the reason I find myself drawn to soul and funk and lot of African popular music. Which leads to a general love of a lot of world pop music like Konono No 1 and Kid Albeha. While those genres make up only a very small portion of my music collection it is a portion I plan to expand.

13 – Wanda Jackson – My Big Iron Skillet and Wilco – Pick Up the Change
I’m cheating with two songs here, but I think I have a legitimate reason. First, Wanda Jackson made it OK for me to like country music. She was one of the first female rock and rollers in the 50s (touring with Elvis) and also sang country tunes. I am not the world’s biggest country fan today, and I abhor 99.9% of all popular country music, however without laughing at Wanda’s songs about cheatin’ husbands I strongly feel that I would still be adverse to all country today. Second, Wilco made it OK to like a contemporary alternative-country band and opened the door to others like the Jayhawks, Granddaddy, Ryan Adams, and more recent discoveries like the Amity Front and the Avett Brothers. Additionally, I feel confident saying that Wilco is the best live band touring today and I just could not bear to leave them off of this list.

14 – David Bowie – Suffragette City
This is an AH HA! moment. Fellow blog member Total Blam-Blam introduced me to David Bowie and when I was looking for a song to represent the importance of Bowie on this list, I realized where the pseudonym comes from. This song! How very appropriate. Exiled for a few years in eastern Connecticut, I had a long commute to and from work every day. This being pre-iPod days, I had CDs in my car but was notorious for not rotating the selection; for perhaps as much as a year there were at least 3 Bowie albums in my 12 CD visor case: Diamond Dogs, Ziggy Stardust and Space Oddity. I still go back to Bowie when I need a pick-me-up in the morning… he’s as good as coffee, I swear. And to top it off, he’s still sexy at 60. What more could you want?

And finally, a recently influential song that I may regret including but...

15 – LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends/Yeah
Seeing this band at Randall’s Island Summer 07 was pretty much a music-life changing experience. I wasn’t listening to much electronic music prior to the show and when a fellow music friend introduced me to LCD a few months before the concert, for some reason I wasn’t motivated to listen. And then they played these two songs back-to-back live, going into an extended freeform trance inducing techno love fest on Yeah. And hello electronic dance music, rockitscientist is back and loving you. Where are my friends tonight? Let’s dance.