Cahiers du Musique

The Ronettes What kind of music blog would this be if we didn't even give our two cents on the greatest pop songs? A strange and backwards one, that's what kind. I'm more than okay with strange but backwards is a dealbreaker for me. It is a quality I cannot tolerate in others or myself. I took a slightly different take on the usual music list. It isn't numerical, but hierarchically grouped  under Greek mythological inspired headings. I do single out the most perfect song, but as the title of this piece explicitly states, this list is limited to songs since 1950. Perhaps a future post will focus on 1890-1949. But for now, to the business at hand. To me, a perfect pop song must fulfill three criteria: Superior production quality relative to the time-period. It's got to sound really good. This also implies it's going to be recorded at a major studio. That's just how it goes.  Themes and lyrics that focus on love, youth, freedom, subversion, def...

(Jonathan Daniels) When I hear people use the phrasing of how music is the soundtrack of their lives, I do not judge them for employing empty platitudes. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a more sincere and accurate statement. Music is the sound of our emotions, and there is a song out there for just about every emotion we are capable of feeling. Love. The grandest emotion of them all. From the first caveman's lullaby, we've been singing about love — its indescribable joys represented in music from every culture and country in the world.  As we regrettably know, too often love goes wrong. Necessity is the mother of invention, and so the breakup song was created. But there are special cases when love goes wrong because the other person is, crudely put, an asshole. These cases call for not just a mere breakup song, but a song that convincingly expresses the singer's displeasure with the behavior of his or her partner. I call this the takedown song. The...