This Is Gonna Be Tough (Tough Love) (Top 10 Singles)

Member Name: Deaner666

Product:	Top 10 Singles
Date:	06/10/01 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: rife emotions, rocks out, chills out

Disadvantages: none

I'm not a singles man. I don't buy singles unless they're from a band who's complete discography I wish to collect. On top of that, singles aren't representative of a band's body of work and thereby are not necessarily a good indicator of who you should be listening to - after all, we've all gone out and spent £15 on a CD after falling in love with a song, only to find the rest of the album is rubbish.

But ignore all that, I felt the need to forget such paltry excuses and try to distill my musical tastes into the 10 perfect songs that best sum it up. This list isn't ranked... it's gonna be tough enough to choose the 10 without ranking them as well, but is rather listed in the order in which they popped into my head; and, as I have mentioned in another of my Top 10s, that may actually mean something in a strange Freudian kind of a way.

The list has to start with Jimi Hendrix. He is the greatest musician of all time and nobody can convince me different. So don't try. But how the hell do you pick a representative song from this body of work? My instant reaction is to pare it down to three very personal choices. Firstly is Voodoo Chile - the best straight guitar track of all time. This tune is written to give space for the guitarist to go wherever the hell he wants to go. Unbelievably it's based around one chord, an E with an E/G overtone played in the Catfish Blues style. And from their, Hendrix whips out original lick after original lick (just watch the Woodstock footage). Not just within the song either, each time he played it is was new and fresh (as he could do with anything he ever played).

The second possible Hendrix track is Little Wing. This is the most moving song I've ever heard. I have a live version that brings me close to tears each and every time I hear it - that is the sign of something truly great. The most emotionally fuelled 3 minutes of music I've come across.

The
third possibility is a strange version of Hear My Train 'A Coming that I have on video. Jimi was to play the song for some art house film. He's put in an all white room and sat on a stool and given a 12-string acoustic guitar. Now bear in mind he's never seen a 12-string, let alone played one. He picks it up and plays a really inspirational little intro then bottles out and says he "got all nervous 'cos of the lights"; starts up again and plays the song in a way that is unrecognisable from his usual performance. It's very low key, subtle and understated. It's very 'shy' and as such is a performance that beautifully captures the oft forgotten real nature of the performer. It's another song that can bring me close to tears but I understand is probably far more personal to me than the other two choices.

For that reason, I'm going to choose Little Wing, Voodoo Chile is more for the guitarist's, whereas this list should go out to all people.

Whew! All that and only one down... don't worry though, that was the toughest.

For my next single I have to turn to the greatest /band/ of all time - Led Zeppellin. I could go all superior and go for something unusual and obscure here, but the fact of the matter is, I am going to have to choose Stairway to Heaven. I don't care if it's a cliche to choose this song, the reason it's a cliche is because it's so darn good and everybody recognises the fact. Paige and Plant's guitar/vocal interplay is unrivalled and is abundently evident here, carried on the back of Paige's mesmerising guitar performance, Jon Bonham providing a highly skilled percussion that mirrors the guitar for its gamut of feeling from quiet and subtle to deep and pounding. This song is the ultimate crescendo, but with a liltingly serene come-down.

Next up is Nirvana, a strange jump perhaps but this list is going to be eclectic so get used to it. The ob
vious stand out track here is Smells Like Teen Spirit, but in my opinion it isn't the best for encapsulating the reasons I love this band. Those reasons (as it is for many other people) is that Kurt Cobain spoke to me. He suffered an incredible empathy for other beings, he was a deeply sensitive and sympathetic man and thanks to that, many of us around the world felt we connected with someone whom without we would have felt very lonely. Sadly understading and empathising with all that pain became too much and he decided to end his life. The best recorded song for capturing those feelings he experienced (and we experienced) before he died has to be Lounge Act - "I found my friend's, they're in my head" and "I am ugly but so are you". The blood-curdling, nerve-shattering delivery is indicative of the incredible way Kurt could use his voice... injecting it with a supreme amount of emotion (I'm spotting a theme here). Of course, even better is to listen to live performances and out-takes to experience Kurt's voice in this regard, but they don't count for this list.

Rage Against The Machine. That's what they're called and that's what they do. The band that actually posesses the freedom fighting integrity that most other contemporary bands love to profess they posess. Just go check out www.ratm.com to see how this band spends every single day battling for what they believe in and using their music as their primary weapon. And that determination, that anger at injustice fuels an incendiary back catalogue of thumpingly funky song after song. The nature of which makes it difficult to choose a single stand out anthem. The choice comes down to Bullet in the Head and Killing in the Name Of, and I have to go for Bullet in the Head because it's going to speak to the majority of people. Zak's lyrics are spat out with utmost vehemence (there's that emotion thang again) and Morello bites back with typically
innovative guitar - heavy riffs and unusual, hip-hop like sounds.

In the same political rhetoric vein, next up is Bob Marley. There is no difficulty for me here, it has to be No Woman No Cry. Again (you're going to get bored of hearing this), this song really moves me. The vocal delivery is delicately and honestly delivered - you feel he has reached out and spoken straight into your soul and it touches your emotions like a raw nerve.

At first, the thought of choosing a single Red Hot Chili Peppers song filled me with dread. But then I realised that there is actually one song in particular that whispers to me. It doesn't shout, it creeps into my subconscious and begs to be chosen. It's Breaking the Girl. I was shocked to discover that people took this song on the face value of its title. This is one of the most sensitive songs of modern times... and sensitive to the idea of femininity (which will surprise the majority of you who see the Chilis as the ultimate machismo band). The lyrics talk of a boy who is happy with his naturally achieved integration of masculine and feminine personality - only to have it beaten out of him by a father who 'knows' (at the forced bequest of a segregated society) that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Anthony's vocal is mesmeric, but in this song, it is Frusciante's singing guitar solos that really drive the emotion. The tone is perfect, the delivery is perfect and again, it speaks to me on a primal level that moves me in a way that words are inadequate to describe (which is why we have the music in the first place).

The Holy Bible is a deeply dark album, certainly one of the darkest of modern years. Penned by the twisted soul of now-disappeared Richey James of the Manic Street Preachers, any number of these songs frighteningly accurately portray a man with serious issues. But they are all issues we can assosciate with, albeit hopefully in a less extreme context. The emotiona
l content here is more evident in the poignantly intelligent lyrics and subtle allegory whilst the delivery caters for youthful societal angst. And which song do I choose above the others? Faster. It contains many of the aspects of Richie's twisted psyche - his pro-active anger aimed at the world, his self-disgust and melancholy and his desire to have a world in which he could be accepted.

Jim Morrison was another fantastic lyricist who spoke of his personal demons, and was ultimately destroyed by them. My instant reaction here is to choose The End. And I'm going with that gut instinct. And that's what this song is - visceral, it is conceived in the gut and it is delivered from the gut, with Morrison addressing his disillusionment with the world around him and with aspects of himself. An epic (suitably brought to life by Francis Ford Coppola's stunning Apocolypse Now).

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness should be in everyone's album collection. It is a stunning concept work including everything from rock ballad to punk with prog and metal in between. One track has always stood out for me - Zero. As soon as that first riff is churned out through the highly compressed guitars it grabs hold of my head and forces itself on my attention. I swear my heart skips a beat every time. Quite simply, this song rocks.

This artist I've left to last, because I really am stuck deciding which track of theirs to choose - Stevie Ray Vaughan. Without a doubt the most talented blues guitarist of all time, SRV leaves his mark because of the nature of his genre. The blues underpins /all/ modern rock based music. Everything essentially comes down to the blues and it's important we don't forget that. SRV carried the torch for the blues into recent years, and he is sorely missed. But which track to pick? My immediate thought is Life Without You, but it is a slight departure from his usual body of work. But then, this list is about
singles as they stand on their own, not how they represent a person, so I think I'll stick with it. Besides which, it wonderfully endorses the theme that has wound itself (without me planning it) through this Top 10 - it is full of beautifully delivered emotion.

So to recap:

Little Wing - Jimi Hendrix
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
Lounge Act - Nirvana
Bullet in the Head - Rage Against the Machine
No Woman No Cry - Bob Marley
Breaking the Girl - The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Faster - The Manic Street Preachers
The End - The Doors
Zero - The Smashing Pumpkins
Life Without You - Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble

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