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.

74. Jamming by Bob Marley and the Wailers

"Jamming" by Bob Marley and the Wailers

Written by Bob Marley
Produced by Bob Marley and the Wailers
Released on Exodus (June 3, 1977)
Released as single in 1977
amazon spotify

Imagine for a moment that you are at a party at someone's house or apartment. It's chill. Everyone is just chatting and laughing and vibing. Maybe someone's grilling on the deck and you can smell the charcoal. Someone just said something funny, and everyone laughs and as the laughter dies, you become aware of the music that's been playing. What song do you hear?

It may be unfair asking that question in a blog post titled "Jamming" by Bob Marley and the Wailers, but the music playing is and always has been Bob Marley. His music is perfect for chilling, laughing, and having a good time.

Anyone who claims to not like Bob Marley is lying. There's no other valid explanation. Bob Marley's musical legacy is unrivaled. If his music isn't universally loved by all, it should be. While most music is divisive and tribal, the music of Bob Marley has always been able to bridge cultural, racial, and geographic divides. I find it hard to imagine any spot on earth where "Jamming" or "No Woman, No Cry" or "Stir it Up" or "Three Little Birds" or "One Drop" wouldn't inspire nods of the head, sweet smiles, and good vibes all around.

I know there are a handful of people who choose to ignore Bob Marley's music because of how much of his image and legacy are tied to cannabis, but if we let moral indignation decide our musical tastes for us, there won't be much to listen to because the Amish don't allow their music to be recorded.

Bob Marley created reggae. He raised it, defined it, and wrote and recorded a transcendent collection of music. My first exposure to reggae came through a friend of mine, Ben, who had lived in the Bahamas for a year in middle school. He returned to the US having fully embraced Caribbean culture and reggae music. While I'm sure I would have bought Legend at some point even without knowing Ben (like almost everyone else I went to high school with), he made sure that I was aware of the Marley that existed beyond those 14 amazing tracks on Legend. I never dove too deep into his catalog and never took the time to listen much to other reggae artists, but I do have a few, perhaps, lesser known Marley tracks on my Spotify playlists because of Ben's influence and suggestions.

Bob Marley's musical legacy, for most Americans, is primarily defined by that single compilation album, Legend. Those songs are pure magic. I picked "Jamming" as my favorite Marley song somewhat arbitrarily. I considered "No Woman, No Cry," "Redemption Song," "Stir It Up," and a few others. Ultimately, "Jamming" is perfect Marley. It's fun, it's chill, it plays. It's a party song and a religious song; it's reggae. It also, oddly enough, often makes me think of The Simpsons. There's an episode that uses it for the closing credits, and I never kicked that association. That's often the case for songs that ended up on this list, not only are they great, but they stuck with me because of being attached to a memory. Sometimes it's something innocuous like a TV show using the song, and sometimes it's something more meaningful. Whatever the reason, "Jamming" is certainly one of my favorite songs and for now takes its place on this list as my favorite Marley song.

I love Bob Marley, and his music will always be a big part of the soundtrack to that perfect party. So just lay back, chill, and let's all hope this jam is gonna last.

Right now, "Jamming" by Bob Marley is (probably) my 74th favorite song of all time.

75. Hey Ya! by OutKast

"Hey Ya!" by OutKast

Written by Andre Benjamin
Produced by Andre 3000
Released on Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (September 23, 2003)
Released as single on September 9, 2003
Peaked at #1 on Billboard Hot 100
amazon spotify music video


This is the only OutKast song on my list. True OutKast fans should probably be offended by this. Heck, I'm a little mad at myself over this. They're an incredible duo. They were fun, introspective, and made some unbelievably great music. So many of their songs are probably on many people's imagined top 100 lists.

While OutKast will always be synonymous with Southern Rap, "Hey Ya!," and The Love Below half of the Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double album, didn't really fit into that categorization. "Hey Ya!" is a pop song. (It might just be a perfect pop song.)

"Hey Ya!" was literally everywhere in 2003-2004. It was played on almost every radio station. It was the #1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 for 9 straight weeks. Maybe it wasn't quite as big as "Old Town Road," but to help put it and OutKast into perspective, its reign at #1 was halted by another OutKast song: "I Like the Way You Move." That was the winter of OutKast. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below even managed to become the first hip hop album to win the Grammy for album of the year. Not that the Grammys mean anything. If you look back at the history of that award sometime, you'll find that they missed hard on that award throughout the 90s and 00s, but in 2004, the voters probably got it right. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is a cultural touchstone, and "Hey Ya!" plays a huge role in its enduring legacy.

"Hey Ya!" is still a great song, but now it's also a time machine. It will always take me back to that time in my life, just out of college, having fun, and trying to figure out life, the universe, and everything. I'm not sure any particular song defines a time so clearly for me. It was so present and tangible then, that I can't help but feel those years in its rhythms and hear those memories in its lyrics.

That time was right around when I did something that just about every man tries to do at least once in their life: try to learn the guitar. In 2003, I bought a guitar, learned a few chords, downloaded tabs, and put in a minimal effort into becoming a guitar player for about 3 years. I still have that guitar, but it mostly gathers dust now.

So of course it made sense to learn the chords for "Hey Ya!" It was a surprisingly simple song to learn. Apparently Andre 3000 was learning to play the guitar as they were producing Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, and he wrote "Hey Ya!" based on the first 4 chords he learned to play. It's a little tricky to play and sing because of the 2/4 bar that's inserted towards the end of the verse and some of the vocal rhythms in the second verse, but the chords and the lyrics were pretty easy. And ultimately it didn't matter if you screwed up the rhythm a little bit because the song was fun.

One of the best weddings I ever attended was right around this time. It was for one of my best friends from high school on the beach in beautiful northern Michigan. The groom was a musician, so the music at the reception was basically a jam session with a bunch of his musician friends from college. At one point I was prodded into grabbing the acoustic guitar and playing "Hey Ya!" for everyone. It was awesome. Everyone danced and sang along.

Afterwards, my friend's step-mom told me how much she enjoyed the song and how everyone seemed to be into it, even though she had never heard it before. What? How had she not heard "Hey Ya!?" Who could have possibly been alive at that point and not heard it somewhere? That was when I started to really see just how fractious and specialized tastes in music have become. Even a song that had turned into a seemingly unavoidable cultural phenomenon could be completely foreign to some not insignificant percentage of the population. (Also, for those wondering, I did play it at that wedding reception before the Scrubs episode existed, and I played it as a fun song, not as a sappy ballad like they did on the show.)

As I said, "Hey Ya!" is a time machine. I have so many memories tied up in those four minutes of pure pop brilliance. I'm grateful they're good memories and that it's a good song.

Right now, "Hey Ya!" by OutKast is (probably) my 75th favorite song of all time.

76. Sober by Tool

"Sober" by Tool

Music by Adam Jones, Dana Carey, Paul D'Amour
Lyrics by Maynard James Keenan
Released on Undertow (April 6, 1993)
Released as single in May 1993
amazon spotify music video
Warning: Explicit Lyrics

I have a funny story about this song. I used to live and work at a camp in Michigan. In between seasons, I had to live in a little room upstairs in the camp's farmhouse (which also served as the camp office). To say that this was an awkward living situation would be an understatement. See, they forced me to live there during the parts of the year when I had essentially no work responsibilities, and this was not a large office. The offices were all downstairs, but I'm sure it wasn't hard for my colleagues to figure out when I got up each day. I enjoyed my time off between seasons and sleeping in is something I have always enjoyed doing during time off. But it was a job I loved, the rent was cheap, so I made it work. Living where others are working is simply not an ideal situation.

One Sunday morning, I got up and took a shower as I got ready for church. Because it was Sunday, I assumed no one was in the office. When people ask me if I sing, I usually tell them that I do, but only in the shower, the car, and at church. So I was in the shower singing. For some reason "Sober" was in my head, so I was singing the chorus (the only part of the song I know the words to). I was really going for it. When I want, I can sing LOUD. I'm not entirely sure where or how I developed this skill, but I can really project my voice when I want to. My sister used to be an opera singer. I don't know whether I could have trained my ear and my voice to sing nearly as well as her, but I'm pretty darn sure that I could sing as loud as her, if I really wanted to.

So there I was, in the upstairs shower in an empty office, singing like a madman.

After church, I was talking with a couple people from the camp. My boss mentioned that he had stopped by the office on his way to church and heard some singing. This was getting awkward, and not just because he had heard me singing at full volume. What really made it awkward was when he asked me what I had been singing. Because of my boss's age and what I knew about him, I couldn't really figure out how to explain who Tool was. So when he asked what I was singing, I lied and said that I didn't know.

I don't sing as much in the shower anymore.

Tool is great. They rock hard. "Sober" was their first song that got played anywhere, and it was accompanied by a fantastically strange and cool claymation music video. I have enjoyed other Tool songs, but none as much as this "Sober." Tool is a cool band because in addition to rocking hard, they also do cool things like mess with time signatures and song structures. In the end though, as interesting as their music is, sometimes I just want to rock, and "Sober" isn't particularly interesting or complicated; it just rocks. Interesting music is interesting, but sometimes it's OK to just want to rock, hard.

Right now, "Sober" by Tool is (probably) my 76th favorite song of all time.

77. Say It Ain't So by Weezer

"Say It Ain't So" by Weezer

Written by Rivers Cuomo
Produced by Ric Ocasek
Released on Weezer (Blue Album) (May 10, 1994)
Released as single on July 13, 1995
amazon spotify music video

If you don't know anything about the band Weezer (or even if you do), here's what you need to know:

1. Their first album, Weezer (aka the Blue album) is their best album.
2. A vocal subset of Weezer fans and music critics will try to convince you that Pinkerton is Weezer's best album. They are just trying to sound cool, and they are not very convincing.
3. Others will try to say that Weezer (aka the Green album) is Weezer's best self-titled album and therefore their best album. This serves as a reminder that some opinions are simply wrong.
4. Weezer has produced six self-titled albums. (They are differentiated by the colors of their covers.)
5. Yes, Weezer is a pretentious band. Weezer fans can also be pretentious, especially when they want to share their incorrect opinions about Weezer's music.
6. People's opinions about Weezer can never be taken at face value. There's a very good chance that anyone sharing any kind of opinion about Weezer, whether positive or negative, is just trying to seem cool.

During my freshman year in high school Weezer was everywhere. I should be more specific. They were on the radio and they were on MTV, which for a freshman in high school in the fall of 1994 might as well as been everywhere.

Their first single, "Undone - The Sweater Song," was catchy enough and gimmicky enough to fit right into the burgeoning alternative music scene. They produced a campy and nostalgic video for the song "Buddy Holly" that was a super fun. I unashamedly loved that music video. I'm not sure that was true of everyone who liked it though. There were probably people who only liked it ironically. I was probably still too young to really be aware of how liking something ironically worked, but there's a lot about the 90's alternative music scene that was all about irony. Ironically this did not include Alanis Morrissette's song "Ironic." There was really nothing ironic about that song.

This, of course, speaks to the real problem about Weezer (and alternative music in general). At some point some of my friends made it very clear to me that liking Weezer was not cool. Now looking back, it's obvious that my friends who said this were definitely not cool, but I thought they had cool taste in music. The only real reason to listen to music in high school was to seem cool, right? I desperately wanted to be cool in high school. I knew I wasn't cool, but I was looking for any kind of incremental advantage that could help me become cooler. Maybe having cool taste in music could fool a couple of people into thinking I was cool.

So when I was told that Weezer wasn't cool, I didn't try to protest or disagree. I was like, "Duh, of course they aren't cool."

Man, I was an idiot.

I love music. That's the reason I started writing this blog. That being said, I still listen to music and write about music because I am trying to seem cool, but now instead of trying to make sure I'm listening to music only because other people think it's cool, I'm trying to seem cool by not caring about what people think of my taste in music. For example, I used to have a handful of "guilty pleasure" songs that I liked, but wouldn't openly admit to liking. I don't anymore. I like what I like, and I choose not to hide it or feel guilty about it. That's apparently what cool people do: they don't care about whether or not they are cool. They certainly don't care about whether their taste in music is cool.

Of course, I'm still not cool because I'm still trying too hard. The mere existence of this blog is clear evidence of my continued efforts to seem cool. Despite my efforts, I am still very much obsessed with coolness. It's becoming the theme of this entire blog.

I'm hopeless, aren't I?

"Say It Ain't So" is a great song, and I don't care what you think about that.

Did you believe me?

Right now, "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer is (probably) my 77th favorite song of all time.