70. Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

"Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

"Over the Rainbow" - music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg
"What a Wonderful World" - written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss
Produced by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and Jon de Mello
Released on Facing Future (November 1, 1993)
Released as single on November 23, 1993
amazon spotify iTunes

I'm not sure how much there is to say about this song besides that it is a beautiful performance of a medley of two beautiful songs.

My inability to write or think may be the result of how frustrated and angry I feel right now. The anger and frustration are exhausting. The exhaustion may be more a result of a lack of sleep and too much time staring at the various screens in my apartment, but the anger and frustration are certainly not helping.

I was trying to come up with something sweet and nice to write about this brilliant performance from IZ. Unfortunately, my country is both literally and figuratively on fire, so it has been hard to focus on much of anything else.

I consider myself to be an optimistic person. I do my best to see the best in others. I try to trust people when I meet them. But I grow tired, and a bit of a rant seems like the best I can do today.

I'm tired of people tolerating racism.

I'm tired of people making excuses every time our president says something stupid or incendiary. He's the president. He should know better.

I'm tired of our president's inability to apologize or reflect or grow or empathize.

I'm tired of having a president who can't be human.

I'm tired of people making excuses for why police officers are justified anytime they kill someone, especially when they kill black people.

I'm tired of the systems in place that protect the worst police officers.

I'm tired of politicians who cannot be trusted to serve their country and their fellow citizens over their own best interests.

I'm tired of having a president who has the temperament of a small child who was never told the word no.

I'm tired of news that is skewed to fit a narrative that its audience wants to hear.

I'm tired of everything in the media being perceived as only fitting a narrative its audience wants to hear.

I'm tired of being told that I live in the richest and most powerful country in the world while too many of people within our borders die in poverty.

I'm tired of those in positions of power forgetting that they are citizens too, and that all of us are created equal, and should be treated as such in the eyes of the law.

I'm tired of systems that are skewed to help the rich get richer and keep the poor and impoverished from moving up the economic ladder.

I'm tired of feeling like everything I say will be perceived as political, even when it's not.

I'm tired.

There's not much else I feel like writing. I'm sorry if I ruined your chance to listen and reflect over such a beautiful song, but these are the times in which we live.

Right now, "Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is (probably) my 70th favorite song of all time.

71. Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue

"Home Sweet Home" by Motley Crue

Music by Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee
Lyrics by Nikki Sixx
Released on Theatre of  Pain (June 21, 1985)
Released as single on September 30, 1985
Peaked at #89 on Billboard Hot 100
Re-released as single in 1991
Peaked at #37 on Billboard Hot 100
amazon spotify music video 1991 music video

I have always loved music, but I first really fell in love with music in the late 1980's, when hair metal ruled MTV. My first musical loves were Bon Jovi, Poison, and Def Leppard. My brother was older, and he tended towards the heavier stuff. I looked up to him and tried to like what he was listening to, but none of it was as intoxicatingly infectious as that pop metal that I loved. I still remember buying a cassette tape entitled Heavy Metal Rules. While heavy metal made some appearances on that compilation, heavy metal was not an entirely accurate description. I figured I could impress my brother if I bought it because it had songs from Megadeath and Anthrax. It didn't impress him much because he knew that I mostly listened to the songs from Tesla and Poison. I knew they weren't really heavy metal, but I also knew what I liked.

As I grew older, I started to enjoy the heavier stuff more, but my attention was mostly pulled towards classic rock. Also, as time moved forward, and the grunge/alternative era took hold, those hair bands I had loved when I was younger either broke up or changed lineups, and they all pretty much stopped making compelling or interesting music. Hair metal was no longer cool (if it ever was).

Once I was in high school, my dad bought me a CD player. All of a sudden, those hair metal albums I had purchased as cassettes tapes weren't really worth listening to anymore. I think they all ended up in the trash. I eventually replaced some of them with CDs, but it was many years later. Through it all, only a handful of songs from that era continued to feel relevant to me.

While there are quite a few songs from that era that still find their way onto my playlists, this one song from Motley Crue is the only one that I felt had earned a place on this list. I considered a couple Bon Jovi tunes, a couple Def Leppard tunes, and one other Motley Crue song ("Kickstart My Heart"), but they didn't quite hold up against the competition. ("Signs" by Tesla, which took the previous spot, I don't really consider a hair metal song, and Tesla were barely a hair metal band anyway.)

What I'm getting at here is that so many of those songs that helped me first fall in love with music just didn't last. So congrats to Motley Crue for keeping my attention 30 years later. Good job!

Like most of Motley Crue's good songs, this was written primarily by bass player Nikki Sixx (in this case, with a helping hand from drummer Tommy Lee's skills on the piano). I first remember hearing this song when they re-released and remixed it in 1991 with a new music video for their best of album. Sometime after I became familiar with the song, I caught the original video on MTV. I remember the VJ introducing it by mentioning that back in 1985 it had been the most requested song on their old Dial MTV show. It makes sense because in addition to it being a fantastic song, the original video is one of those classic hair metal era videos that is a collection of scenes from their tour and live shows. Those videos were always the best and most memorable from that time. (Other great ones include: "Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi, "Pour Some Sugar On Me" by Def Leppard, "I Won't Forget You" by Poison.)

Using footage from a tour is a magical formula for music videos that is still used today. It works because it gives the viewer a taste of life on the road and life in the spotlight. Some of my fondest memories from high school and college are from those times surrounding performances, concerts, and tours. Working so closely for an extended period of time with a group of people like that always seems to lead to great fun. It's not always smooth sailing, but I mostly remember the good parts, much like the good parts that are documented for these videos. I never partook in the extreme decadence that many of these touring rock musicians were famous for, but the videos generally steered around that stuff anyway. Getting just that brief glimpse of what it must be like to be in a hugely famous band has become strangely nostalgic and inspiring for me. And that's part of the reason why...

Right now, "Home Sweet Home" by Motley Crue is (probably) my 71st favorite song of all time.

72. Signs (live) by Tesla

"Signs (live)" by Tesla

Written by Les Emmerson
Produced by Dan McClendon
Released on Five Man Acoustical Jam (November 13, 1990)
Released as single in November 1990
Peaked at #8 on Billboard Hot 100
amazon spotify music video
Warning: Explicit Lyrics

For years, I thought that Tesla had started the whole "unplugged" fad in the early 90's with their Five Man Acoustical Jam album and its top 10 single, "Signs." For me, the timeline in my head made sense since I had seen the video for "Signs" on MTV before I knew that MTV Unplugged existed. That was the history I remembered, Tesla made a live acoustic album, and MTV reaped the benefits.

It turns out the timeline actually went something like this:

• September 1989 - Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora perform an acoustic duet of "Livin on a Prayer" and "Dead or Alive" at the 1989 VMAs.
• November 1989 - The first episode of MTV Unplugged TV show airs.
• Summer 1990 - Tesla performs and records a series of acoustic shows
• November 1990 - Tesla's live album Five Man Acoustical Jam and single "Signs" are released. 
• April 1991 - LL Cool J does MTV Unplugged (and I become aware of its existence)

So, things were a little bit different from what I remember, and the internet remains undefeated in its battle against my flawed memory. It's humiliating. But, even though Tesla were not the first band to do something acoustic, the success of both their acoustic album and "Signs" certainly paved the way for other acts to seek money, fame, and glory by going acoustic.

While I enjoy listening to a number of songs from Tesla's catalog, there is a reason that "Signs" is Tesla's most successful and most recognizable song. It's awesome, and the fact that it's awesome is impressive considering that on its own "Signs" is not a very good song. It was originally written and recorded by the Five Man Electrical Band and their original recording was pretty terrible.

"Signs" is ultimately a protest song, but I still don't quite understand why they were protesting signs. I mean, signs are typically a big part of most protests. It is almost certainly a flawed concept for a song. While the lyrics tell an interesting story, the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the verses are inconsistent, and there's not much of a melody until you get to the hook. Overall, the song is a complete mess.

Somehow Tesla took an uninspired and uninspiring song and made it fun, interesting, and memorable. By performing and recording it live, they made the "Signs" swing by playing it fast and loose (literally). They also got the crowd into a song that most of them had probably never heard by throwing a few f-bombs into the lyrics. (I didn't realize they had done this until years later when I bought the album because before that I'd only heard the radio edit.)

As a band, I find Tesla kind of fascinating. The short version of their origin story makes them sound like they were just another hair metal band: They came up in the 1980's out of California. While they did play hard rock and sport long hair, Tesla didn't fit into the same mold as most of those other California bands. First of all, they didn't come up through the clubs on the Sunset Strip in LA. Rather they grew up in Sacramento. While I don't know much about California, I do know that Sacramento is physically, spiritually, and metaphorically about as far as you can get from LA without leaving California altogether. But as a California band in the 80's, even though they didn't quite look or sound like many of their hair metal colleagues, they were often lumped in with them. As a result, they faded away in the 90's once grunge and alternative rock hit the mainstream.

To me though, I was happy to listen to "Love Song" and "Signs" alongside musical offerings from Bon Jovi, Poison, and Motley Crue, and it seemed just as natural to listen to "Song and Emotion" and "What You Give" while also listening to Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden.

Right now, "Signs (live)" by Tesla is (probably) my 72nd favorite song of all time.

73. Ecstasy by Rusted Root

"Ecstasy" by Rusted Root

Music by Rusted Root (Michael Glabicki, Liz Berlin, Jim Donovan, Patrick Norman, John Buynak, Jenn Wertz, Daniel James "Jim" DiSpirito)
Lyrics by Michael Glabicki
Produced by Bill Bottrell
Released on When I Woke (August 23, 1994)
amazon spotify music video

In 1996, TriStar released a film directed by Danny DeVito called Matilda, which was based on a novel of the same name by Roald Dahl.

Roald Dahl changed my life. For most of my childhood, I avoided reading. It was not fun for me, and I did not understand why all books were not illustrated. My brother, on the other hand, would do everything he could to read. He began reading novels when he was four and never stopped.

In 1990, my family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut so that my older brother could attend a prep school where my father was taking over as food service director. I began my 5th grade year at the local public elementary.

My teacher that year loved reading and poetry. I can still recite "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost after being required to memorize it that year, and someone in that classroom suggested I check out a book by Roald Dahl. The first book of his that I picked out was Danny, the Champion of the World, and something connected for me. That year, I read almost every Dahl novel. I tried other books as well, and found quite a few that I enjoyed, but Dahl will always be first. (A close second goes to Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series.)

The reason I bring this up is that the Matilda film adaptation featured Rusted Root's best known song, "Send Me Away." When the film came out, I remember being unsure whether I should see it because I was at that funny age when I thought I might be too old for a children's movie like Matilda. Luckily, a mentor of mine nudged me in the right direction and I saw the movie. It was fantastic. It took me back to that time when I fell in love with reading. Dahl is so important, and he's one of the few authors whose books have not been ruined by terrible film adaptations (Johnny Depp's Wonka not withstanding). Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory are pure magic.

While the song I chose for my list is not "Send Me Away," just about any Rusted Root song has that loose association with my love for reading. And ultimately, "Ecstasy" is the better song.

Listening to "Ecstasy" now, it feels like I should have had a guilty pleasure type relationship with Rusted Root's music, but I don't think I ever felt ashamed of liking them. I think it helped that there never seemed to be a sense of pretense to their music. They simply wrote and performed music that they loved, and they clearly loved performing it too. It never felt like they were trying to pose or feel cool. They played what they wanted to play, and they played it well.

Last year, someone on Twitter wrote a thread revisiting the Woodstock '99 concert videos. It's a fun thread, and the author clearly had a good time poking fun at the bands, their sets, and their fans. When he got to Rusted Root, he had fun at the expense of their vibe and weird instruments, but then he came to the only fair conclusion that could be made about their set, they rocked it. I actually went back and watched most of their set, and can confirm that they were great. They rocked, their fans had fun, and the set is fantastic. When a band is that good and that genuine, you have to show them some respect.

Right now, "Ecstasy" by Rusted Root is (probably) by 73rd favorite song of all time.