51. Wild World by Yusuf / Cat Stevens

"Wild World" by Yusuf / Cat Stevens

Written by Yusuf / Cat Stevens
Produced by Paul Samwell-Smith
Released on Tea for the Tillerman (November 23, 1970)
Released as a single September 1970
Peaked at #11 on Billboard Hot 100
amazon iTunes spotify

After 18 months, 50 blog posts, over 38,000 words, and numerous stops, starts, and calls from my mom about typos she found (thanks mom!), I'm now halfway done with this project. It has taken me much longer than I expected, but based on how much I've learned about myself, it has probably been worth it, and I will continue. I'm also hoping that the next 50 won't take me a year and a half to complete.

I now know that I'm not a writer. Like so many things in my life, I imagine writing in a somewhat romantic fashion. It feels like something I want to do, but when it comes time to actually write, I don't enjoy it enough. It's similar to how I feel about music. As much as I love music, I don't think I could ever be a music critic or a musician. I like playing music and thinking about music, but I don't love the work that would go into becoming great at either of those things.

I also do not have a great history of following through and completing long range tasks and goals. I knew this project would be ambitious and big, but part of me thought it would be easier and that I would be able to keep myself motivated enough to do it. My hope now is that things will get easier as I get further along the list. (We'll see...)

Like some other songs on this list, "Wild World" is a song that I share with my mother. She owned and loved this album long before I was around. I don't remember when I first heard this song, but one of my earliest memories is with my friend Dan Loomis. Dan is now a successful jazz bassist out of New York. I first knew him as a tall middle schooler with curly hair who played the guitar. He had a Cat Stevens song book that he would sometimes play from. I remember hearing him sing "Wild World" and enjoying it. He probably played some other Cat Stevens tunes too, but "Wild World" is the one that stuck with me.

The other song I remember him playing on his guitar around that time was the Indigo Girls cover of "Romeo and Juliet." (Dire Straits' original version of that song is one of many songs that almost made this list.) When I heard him playing it for a few of his friends, I exclaimed, "Oh, that's a Dire Straits song." Someone wisely shushed me, and I just silently listened to the rest of the song, as I should have been doing all along. If you are interested in hearing some really cool jazz covers of David Bowie songs (which you absolutely should be), and just other cool jazz stuff, check out his band The Wee Trio.

Alright, back to the song at hand. "Wild World" is a breakup song. It's sweet and sad and hopeful. It's also a song about innocence. Despite the fact that Yusuf wrote this for his ex-lover Patti D'Arbanville, it feels like it was written for me. I was a sheltered child. I played by the rules, and enjoyed spending the majority of my school age years attending a small religious private school. Going to college (20 minutes away from home) felt like a very wild world for me. There was so much that I was not prepared for.

I remember being in high school, and really thinking that I had everything figured out. I genuinely wondered to myself what more there was for me to learn. I knew the path I was on, and I wasn't sure I could deviate from it, but I really started to wonder if college was really all that necessary.

Looking back there are lots of things I've gotten wrong in my life, but this was the big one. Everyday of those five years in college, I learned more and more about how little I actually knew. Sometimes it was in the classroom, but more often it was outside with my friends, at my part time jobs, in the books I was reading, and in the life I was trying to live. I still sit here wondering, when am I actually going to really figure things out? When are things going to start making more sense? When am I actually going to feel like I've started to answer all those questions I didn't know existed when I was in high school?

Sometimes I miss that feeling of invincibility. I know it's a feeling that was never based in reality, but sometimes I just want to crawl back into that bubble, that protective shell, and dream of what life could mean without all those pesky unanswered questions. (Based upon what I've seen of reality television, there are plenty of people who manage to enter adulthood without ever breaking out of that kind of mindset.)

Yes, it is a wild world. A lot of things do turn bad out there, but sometimes I can get by with a smile.

Right now "Wild World" by Yusuf / Cat Stevens is (probably) my 51st favorite song of all time.

52. Bullet with Butterfly Wings by The Smashing Pumpkins

"Bullet with Butterfly Wings" by The Smashing Pumpkins

Written by Billy Corgan
Produced by Alan Moulder, Billy Corgan, Flood
Released on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (October 23, 1995)
Released as a single October 24, 1995
Peaked at #22 on Billboard Hot 100
amazon iTunes spotify music video

The first few times I shared an office with someone, I was young enough to think that my officemates wouldn't mind if I sometimes played music without headphones. They in fact did mind, and made that fact known. At one point, when I had something by The Smashing Pumpkins on, one of my colleagues asked me very seriously, "Why do you listen to such terrible music?" I didn't really know how to respond. I wanted to say that my music wasn't terrible, but part of me knew that it was going to be incredibly hard to justify why The Smashing Pumpkins weren't terrible, and why it might be appropriate to play in the office. So, I just played something else, or turned off the music. The next day, instead of not listening to music, I played the Garden State soundtrack. My officemate expressed genuine shock because now I was playing something that was actually pleasant, and in their opinion good. I'm not sure they ever fully rectified the fact that I could genuinely enjoy both The Smashing Pumpkins and The Shins.

The Smashing Pumpkins represent a lot about what I love about music. Music for me isn't always about beauty and perfection. I like beautiful music, but the music I love isn't always beautiful. The Smashing Pumpkins' music inspires me because they, and specifically Billy Corgan, had vision.

Billy Corgan's vision involved writing introspective lyrics and sad melodies, and then recording layer upon layer upon layer of guitars. His sound has been referred to as a "wall of guitar" sound (paying homage to Phil Specter's "Wall of Sound" production method). I love guitars. It has been reported that at least one of their songs had over 100 guitar parts layered into its final recording. Billy Corgan is clearly a gifted musician, songwriter, and guitar player, but it was his vision and the sound he created that really connected with me.

I didn't always think of The Smashing Pumpkins as a band I liked. When they were at their creative and commercial peak in the mid-1990's, I might have actually said that I didn't like them. Their biggest song, at the time, was "Tonight, Tonight." It had a pretty cool music video, and is a good song, but I didn't like it then because instead of layered guitars, it featured orchestral strings. Orchestral strings were certainly not my jam. As the years went by, I found myself drawn to their music because I was able to ignore songs like "Tonight, Tonight" and spend more time listening to the more guitar-heavy songs from their catalogue like "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," "Cherub Rock," and "Siva." When I actually saw them in concert a couple of years ago, "Tonight, Tonight" might have been their best performance of the night for me because they didn't have an orchestra with them. Instead they played it on their guitars. It was really cool.

One big question that remains is: Would The Smashing Pumpkins be better if they had a good singer? I think that's the real reason that my officemate, all those years ago was so put off by them. Maybe you don't particularly like layered distorted guitars, but you could tolerate them if there was a pleasing voice to be heard above the noise and tumult. That's a trickier question to answer. There have been many successful musicians and bands who did not have a traditionally talented vocalist. I often find it fascinating to hear cover versions of Bob Dylan's songs done by exceptional vocalists. Those cover versions often help emphasize the beautiful melodies that his limited voice often only hinted at.

Had Billy Corgan given the singing duties over to someone else, his music may have been more pleasing to the ears of my officemate, but it also may have lost something. The imperfections in his voice sometimes gave the lyrics and feel of the music a different kind of power.

That's what makes all of this so difficult. Why is this my 52nd favorite song? How can I adequately explain the feeling I get when I hear it. Is it the imperfections that make the song more perfect? There's no real way to quantify how a song makes me feel or why it makes me feel that way. Maybe it's the minor key signature or the guitar harmonies or the angry lyrics or the quiet-verse/loud-chorus song structure. It might be all of those things or maybe none of them. Popular songs illustrate the power of synergy better than almost anything else. Each individual part of the composition and recording cannot be quantified until they are put together into one comprehensive, whole unit. Once fleshed out and complete, you have something that is so much greater than the sum of its individual parts, that it's hard to imagine how it was built in the first place. 

Music does that. It is inherently impossible to quantify why it works the way it does, especially because each individual song will illicit vastly different reactions from individual listeners. All I know is that sometimes music just works, and it doesn't always have to make sense. Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins aren't the most talented or the best, but I love their music. I love how they executed their vision. I love guitars and angst and anger and vision, and this song has all of those things. Put together, they make a fantastic song. If you agree with my former officemate's assessment of this song, I get it, but...

Right now "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" is (probably) my 52nd favorite song of all time.