SUNDAY 7 SEPTEMBER 2025

I’m going to be totally self-indulgent this week. About a year ago, I responded to a YouTube video by Samuel Andreyev in which he listed twenty songs he felt everyone should know, so I thought I’d do something similar as a change from my usual doom-laden stuff about humanity’s slide into neo-fascism. In choosing what to include in my top twenty, I had just one rule: each performer or composer could be included only once.

I had no idea how difficult it would be to narrow everything down to just twenty – fifty would have been a challenge – and I feel so much of the music that I love has ended up being discarded. So here are the musicians and the songs that made the final cut. To try to keep this blog to a reasonable length, I won’t go into great detail about each one but focus mainly on why I chose them.

Ant Man Bee: Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band

Since he was so important to me when I was a teenager (and still is), I had to include something by Beefheart. Although these days I generally prefer his instrumental tracks (I considered Hair Pie Bake 2 and One Red Rose That I Mean for my choice), I eventually opted for Ant Man Bee, which I love because it has a jazzy feel that is rare in Beefheart (his roots were in the blues). The bass and the drumming hold the track together and keep it tight, while allowing the Captain to turn his saxophone into something more like a foghorn. The short stretch from about 3:20 until the end of the track is as good as anything in his work in my opinion.

Surf’s Up: The Beach Boys

I’ve already discussed this track in more detail in a tribute I wrote to Brian Wilson following his death. As with Beefheart, there are many tracks I could have chosen by the Beach Boys, from the joyful surfing songs of the early days to this later expression of Wilson’s art as a composer and arranger. In the end, I chose Surf’s Up because of the final coda, which I find the most stunning passage of harmonies in the Beach Boys’ work and almost uniquely beautiful in the popular music of my day. In a world where religion is more or less dead, there is something inspirational or even, dare I say it, transcendental in those last few seconds of song.

Negativland: Neu

I am a big fan of Krautrock for its readiness to experiment and be self-consciously avant-garde without ever becoming dry and overly intellectual. This track is typical Krautrock in the sense that it is repetitive with its insistent motorik drumming while a multitude of small changes emerge and vanish above this base. The result is more like a soundscape than a song. Although I love this piece from their debut LP, I probably prefer Neu 2 as an album because, apart from Für Immer, which is classic hypnotic Krautrock, it is often playful and silly and has some really good tunes, one of which, Neuschnee, Michael Rother was still playing fifty years later when its charm and sweep as a melody was very clear.

He’s So Fine: The Chiffons

A host of girl bands and solo singers were churning out classic pop songs in the first half of the 1960s, and I wanted to include a representative of that light, frothy, commercial teenage music, the epitome of pop. Spector is generally recognised as the mad, bad and dangerous flawed genius of this genre, but I’ve chosen the Chiffons who, as far as I know, he never produced. Apparently they were discovered in a high school lunchroom (what could be more pop?) and there is a freshness about their sound which I probably prefer to the greater musical sophistication of Spector, but it’s a close call and I could equally have chosen the Crystals or the Ronettes.

Heroin: The Velvet Underground

When people think of the Velvets, raucous stuff like Sister Ray or European Son tends to come to mind, but this is only one strand of their work and there is often a soft and lyrical quality to their music (I’ll Be Your Mirror, Sunday Morning). This reflects the mix of talents who made up the band, and I’ve chosen Heroin because it contains both aspects of their work: it is a ‘well-made’ song with poetic lyrics and a clear structure in which a succession of slow openings speed up and build to a climax, yet it also has moments of pure chaos, with screeching feedback, discordant drones and maniacal drumming.

Land of 1000 Dances: Wilson Pickett

White boys like me tended not to appreciate soul enough in the musical cauldron that was the last half of the 1960s. Later I recognised my error and grew to love people like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye and so on. I have opted for this version of a song which several performers covered because it’s bursting with pure energy, most of it down to Pickett, which is clear when you compare his version with that of others. I know some people will say it’s just a dance song, but so what? People who don’t like modern popular music often ignore that the roots of so much music lie in dance, and that not all dance in the world is western ballet.

Petit Pays: Césaria Évora

There are several non-Anglo-American female singers I considered for my top twenty and I’ve included Évora because I love the gentleness of her work. It is tight, simple and pure, with an unobtrusive but essential acoustic backing band: there is no straining for effect or showing off or exaggeration. Her emotional range is limited, perhaps, to feelings of nostalgia and saudade, but what she does, she does superbly well and if you want to escape the madness that is the world in 2025, you could do far worse than listen to the album that starts with this tender song.

Fu Man Chu: Desmond Dekker & the Aces

I love ska for its energy, and most of all its exuberance and joy. Strangely, though, my two favourite ska songs are probably this and Morning Sun by Al Barry & the Cimarons, both of which are rather subdued in tone and certainly not made for dancing. If I had allowed myself fifty songs, I would definitely have included something like Monkey Man by Toots and the Maytals to represent music more typical of most ska. (I read someone argue that Monkey Man is racist and should no longer be played, even though Toots, who wrote it, was black. Can people please stop using Art as a way of showing off their moral superiority?)  

Warm Leatherette: The Normal

He was a one-hit wonder and it’s not surprising. This work is basic beyond belief, repetitive and barely musical, but there is nothing else quite like it. It was a big hit at the punk discos I used to go to and I can understand why. It’s not at all like the Pistols or the Ramones musically, but totally punk in spirit in that anyone could have made it. Except anyone didn’t, of course. Often covered since, successfully in my opinion by Trent Reznor (although his group couldn’t quite extinguish their musical ability), unsuccessfully by Grace Jones (who stripped it of its electronic brutality and ugliness).

The Look of Love: Dusty Springfield

Dusty had lots of great hits, but nothing brought out the best in her voice like this song. She caresses the lyrics with a tenderness that borders on parody, with visions of candlelit suppers, glasses of champagne, and log fires in wooden cabins in the snow, but somehow stays sincere and totally fresh. When I try to sing along as I listen, I realise that this piece is nowhere near as simple as it seems; it’s not an easy song to sing because many of the notes need to be sustained while maintaining a smoothness and gentleness of tone. Soft and seductive, it’s as good as romantic music gets.

Watussi: Harmonia

Another Krautrock selection which creates its own unique soundscape. It is very different from Negativland, though. While the latter is industrial and abrasive, this is cohesive and playful: a Jackson Pollock rather than an Anselm Kiefer. I lose myself completely in the song and despite its repetitions I never want it to end. As indeed in a way it doesn’t: it fades in at the beginning and out at the end, as if it is perpetually playing somewhere and I can tune in and out of it whenever I want. And hats off to Michael Rother, who was a key figure in both this band and in Neu (and also played occasionally with early Kraftwerk, the most famous Krautrock band).

Recuerdos de la Alhambra: Francisco Tárrega

How can music be this beautiful? I don’t have a favourite version to recommend because I don’t feel qualified to do that, although I have to admit I didn’t warm to Segovia’s interpretation, which felt over-analysed to me (but what do I know as a musical bozo?) What I do know is that this is music to loosen those obscure emotional knots that build up in us over time and if you can listen to it without tears forming in your eyes, you’re made of sterner stuff than me. A lot cheaper than therapy, and almost certainly more effective. And indescribably lovely to boot.

Sound and Vision: David Bowie

Although he switched musical styles and personae all the time, I feel Bowie’s evolution as an artist was surprisingly linear in terms of its quality, reaching its peak in Low and Heroes before rapidly declining thereafter. In general, I prefer the moody instrumental tracks on the second side of both of these albums but for some reason Sound and Vision has a hypnotic hold over me and I never tire of hearing it. The vocal variety is stunning and the arrangement is beguiling, as different elements of the song are introduced in turn against the lively background of guitar and bass moving restlessly up and down the scales. A perfect three-minute song.

Moanin’ at Midnight: Howlin’ Wolf

Blues at its most raw. I relate to this much more than I do to a lot of rural blues because it has a feel of big-city paranoia. In a lot of Wolf’s work I have the sense that he is not just fighting oppression as a black man in a white world but that the struggle is also more personal, which often gives his music a claustrophobic and hallucinatory edge which becomes quite overt in this song. There is something disturbingly contemporary about Wolf compared with many of his peers. His music may be simple on the whole, but he feels emotionally complex, and therefore so is his music. And then there’s his voice.

Frozen Warnings: Nico

Another emotionally complex artist, who I wrote about in a blog last year when I discussed her best two albums, The Marble Index and Desertshore. This song is a perfect distillation of her work because its musical simplicity enables its emotional depth to freely emerge. There is no need for flourishes or virtuosity if the core feeling is sincere, and there is an intense loneliness at the heart of this song, an existential pain that very little music ever gets close to expressing. It’s not complex, it’s not slick, but it’s naked and it’s real.

A Noite do Meu Bem: Tom Zé

A lot of Zé’s more experimental work has multiple beats and rhythms going on, vocal tricks and games, instruments fading in and out, all of which makes it feel very full: a wall of sound from a different, Brazilian landscape. This particular song, however, is atypical in its austerity: a simple mix of an organ sound and a plucked string instrument and a vocal somewhere between speech and singing. If I take its title literally, (the night of my honey/my loved one), perhaps I’m completely misreading the song but instead of romance I hear a solemnity in the music, a funereal quality, which conjures up pictures in my mind of a body in a coffin with the mourners gathered around. Even if I’m interpreting the song all wrong, I still love its fusion of a few simple elements to create something which is completely out of the ordinary.

Lili Marlene: Marlene Dietrich

Lots of singers have covered this number and they had all ‘better’ voices than Dietrich from a technical point of view, I’m sure, but no one has come close to her in capturing the mood of a lyric about a soldier who is going to die in a war and is waiting in the street for a final night with the prostitute he has fallen in love with. The futility of the war sounds in Dietrich’s voice, and the bravery of the boy who is going to die, and the randomness of a world in which each of us faces a fate that is out of our control and already ordained. While not at all explicitly political, the song sends a message all the same. The accordion, with its warmth and textural richness, is perfect as accompaniment.

Gnossienne No 1: Erik Satie

I know almost nothing about what is generally labelled classical music, and I’m not usually a great fan, but I make an exception for Satie. Like a lot of classical Spanish guitar, the Gymnopedies and the Gnossiennes have an indefinable mood that mixes beauty, calm and melancholy in music that is deceptively simple but goes deep. It is music for a starry night and, depending on my mood, it makes me either thoughtful or sad. Anyone reading this blog may have guessed by now that I’m a big fan of simplicity and I get much more from music like this than I do from work with lots of pyrotechnics but no inner soul.

It’s a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl: Faust

The last of my Krautrock choices. This song takes Krautrock’s love of repetition to its logical ad absurdum as it thumps out a beat that is even more basic than motorik and accompanies it with lyrics that are totally banal. Faust clearly had a sense of humour, as is evident from the fact that they called one of their songs Krautrock at a time when more sensitive souls were criticising this label as offensive. And at the end of this song there are a few teasing bars of a saxophone, which sound amazingly rich after the arid quality of the rest, as if to say, ‘see, we can do “real” music if you want it’. I like the sense of fun that runs through a lot of their work. (And the surface of the song has plenty of moments of interest if you tune in carefully.)

King Kong: The Mothers of Invention

I find Zappa’s work with the Mothers much more to my liking than his solo stuff because the latter always strikes me as a little cold: impressive rather than heartfelt. Uncle Meat was among the albums that I liked most of all when I was a teenager and this jazzy number which took up the fourth side of the double album was my favourite. It’s blowsy and direct and everything jazz-rock should be, with Zappa’s meticulous musicianship balanced perfectly by the freedom that he gave to musicians he trusted, who could add the texture and depth of feeling that I feel he lacked as an artist.

Best of the rest

Below is a list of music that almost made the cut, with a very brief comment on each:

Strange Fruit/Billie Holiday: Anger and suffering: this song is painful to listen to

The Sound of Music/Bonzo Dog Band: Not at all subtle, but still cracks me up

I Just Want to Make Love to You/Etta James: As raunchy as music gets

That Aint Right/Fats Waller: Too sexist to be allowed nowadays, but it’s funny

Oh Well/Fleetwood Mac: Frenzied opening, then hot & still, olé Peter Green

Un Jour Comme Un Autre/Brigitte Bardot: Oh that trumpet & acoustic guitar!

Nephelis’ Tango/Haris Alexiou: A sadness & yearning that’s almost pleasurable

Are You Experienced?/Jimi Hendrix: Love that scratching, what a debut album

Mas Que Nada/Jorge Ben: Laidback vocals, blue notes, then that sudden leap!

Marabilla/Mercedes Peón: Echoes of the ocean & a voice as pure as water

Under African Skies/Paul Simon: Evocative & Ronstadt lifts it to another level

Interstellar Overdrive/Pink Floyd: Barrett’s psychedelia before they got tedious

Why Do I Still Sleep/Popol Vuh: A song to fall asleep to, a sprinkling of snow

Surfin’ Bird/The Trashmen: Wild stuff; surf music morphs into proto-punk

Aumgn/Can: More avant-garde Krautrock: music doesn’t get much more Gothic

Dance to the Music/Sly & the Family Stone: A musical lesson to tap your feet to

El Camino Negro/Tommy Guerrero: Guitar & bass, perfect for a deserted beach

Canção do Mar/Amália Rodrigues: More saudade from the Queen of Fado