Spoiler: The Beatles didn’t make it to first place!
It’s anniversary time! Exactly ten years ago, in 2014, our prominent jury of ten people, consisting of musicians such as Lana Del Rey, Mark Lanegan, Danger Mouse, Marteria, Thees Uhlmann and Judith Holofernes, as well as authors, journalists and experts from other magazines, daily newspapers, radio stations and record labels, chose the best 100 favorite songs of all time. Curtain up for these timeless classics!
We have chosen: These are the 100 best songs of all time
100. Hot Chip – “Over And Over”
There was little left of the laid-back electro-soul of the previous record. Let there be dancing! Reason enough to play with expectations in “Over And Over”. “Laid back? / I’ll give you laid back!”, it says, while a repetitive groove, shrill guitars and a chorus that anchors in your ear ensure that DJs in (insert the name of your home club here) still reach for the record today. And the end is particularly good training for the next spelling bee: kissingsexingcasiopok-eyoumei.
99. The Byrds – “Eight Miles High”
The song is actually about the flight across the Atlantic and the arrival in rainy London, but US broadcasters suspected drug propaganda and boycotted the piece. The style-defining equation is: folk rock plus Far Eastern flair plus solo jazz fragments = “Eight Miles High”.
98. The Beatles – “Helter Skelter”
In 1968, the Beatles’ music was considered poppy, artistic and innovative; others were responsible for the harder style. Until McCartney, of all people, often ridiculed as a ballad writer, turned the corner with this piece of proto-heavy rock. Classic rock & roll is the basis, but Paul’s singing on the verge of screaming, the sawing guitar fragments, powerful runs and the archaic rolling beat sound like a template for Led Zeppelin.
97. The Supremes – “You Can’t Hurry Love”
Somehow reassuring that real, great, fulfilling love sometimes takes a long time to come, even for such a magical creature. Or? In any case, Pop’s huge deception and hope-mongering machine hasn’t run much smoother. The perfectly acted sigh of Diana Ross, who was already married to Berry Gordy at the time. The distinctive tambourine beat (see also Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life”) by the hit guarantors Holland/Dozier/Holland. This incredibly catchy hook. If you don’t want to put your arm around them for comfort, you’ll probably kick kittens too.
96. Simon & Garfunkel – “The Sound Of Silence”
The original album version – and for real fans of course only the original album version counts – is the epitome of Paul Simon’s art of processing big topics with small gestures into huge songs. The tender naivety in the lines of the then barely 20-year-old from New Jersey, who tries to bring a world-historical event like the assassination of John F. Kennedy into his cosmos in order to survive in the folk clubs of the large neighboring city, is more touching in its sincerity than disturbing.
95. Sonic Youth – “Teenage Riot”
The history of alternative rock can be divided into a time before “Teenage Riot” and a time after. The first song on Daydream Nation marks the turning point. The New York noise terrorists leave their bulkiness behind and pour their innovation and booming volleys of feedback into their first pop song: It opens the door for Nirvana, it makes 1991 – the year that punk broke, it heralds the most exciting phase in rock music since the seventies. And it’s still an amazing song that has never worn out.
94. Love – “Alone Again Or”
This song is one of the few that Arthur Lee’s sidekick MacLean wrote for Love, but as the opener of their masterpiece FOREVER CHANGES it is now one of their best known – and one of their most beautiful. The then unheard mixture of baroque melodies, mariachi elements, string pomp, quasi-punk R’n’B and folky psychedelia still sounds as if it had flown in from another reality. Lee made his second vocal louder, but MacLean’s lead vocals barely audible in the background, and renamed the piece (originally called “Alone Again”) to reflect himself and his vision of Love. MacLean left the band in 1968, frustrated with not having a career and addicted to heroin. “Saved” from a revival in the 1970s (by the same group that drove Bob Dylan into the arms of Christianity), he released music with a Christian spiritual bent and even briefly ran a Christian rock club in Beverly Hills. To capture the drama that ultimately tore Love apart and made her so artistically exciting, but also her grandeur and her impact on generations of later bands, this dreamlike song is perfect.
93. Suicide – “Cheree”
With the same attitude as The Velvet Underground ten years earlier and also in New York between seedy back alleys and high art, but with the new means appropriate to the times, Suicide invented a sound that would have far more influence than commercial success. Schooled on the melodicism and drama of early rock & roll, “Cheree” is an unabashed rip-off of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s “Je t’aime… moi non plus” (198), transplanted into the ominous backdrop of minimal electro and distorted organ. Most threatening love song in the world.
92. The Smiths – “This Charming Man”
Steven Patrick Morrissey’s sexual preferences have been debated for 30 years. “This Charming Man”, the Smiths’ second single, is about a young but penniless cyclist who, after a breakdown, is picked up by an older, rich, charming driver – and falls into severe temptation. Strong guitar, passionate vocals and lyrics that rely on sophisticated English. Swell, my dear…
91. Public Enemy – “Fight The Power”
No millions can stop Public Enemy anymore: What Rosie Perez is doing, her shadow boxing, at the beginning of Spike Lee’s film “Do The Right Thing”, while the Bomb Squad’s beat spreads like shockwaves, is a dance of war. Chuck D, as Richard III of hip hop, gives the combat speech: Elvis was a “straight up racist”! Sacred cows are slaughtered. Take that, White America! Malcolm X or Martin Luther King? That’s what Spike Lee’s film asks. Public Enemy give their answer before it even begins: rebellion without pause in the fight against those in power!
90. Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush – “Don’t Give Up”
Gabriel’s plan sounded exciting: He wanted to sing his duet, in which a desperate man is given hope by his duet partner in the chorus, together with country national saint Dolly Parton – deliberately in the tradition of American folk music. The first lines spoke for themselves: “In this proud land we grew up strong / We were wanted all along.” Parton canceled. But who wanted to talk about a compromise when Kate Bush sings the consolation: “Don’t give up / You still have us”?
89. Noir Désir – “Le vent nous portera”
The language isn’t that important: even without knowing French, you can understand what this song is about: about drifting, about love, about transience. The clarinet plays a wonderful solo, Manu Chao plays the guitar, and even if this sounds like a bad cliché: This sounds like two glasses of red wine, a few cigarettes and a warm summer evening.
88. Bob Dylan – “Tangled Up In Blue”
The sound of a broken heart – nothing else is BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, the most painful, cynical, touching and – yes – wonderful breakup album ever. Critic Greil Marcus called this series of songs a “story about an adventurer’s war with his wife,” which begins with “Tangled Up In Blue,” whose almost labyrinthine lyrics, including various changes of perspective, are contrasted by a captivating melody played in a casual folk rock mode. Domestic happiness is over, the drifter is back on the road, “headin’ for another joint”.