Roads - Portishead

Portishead might be one of the saddest bands I've ever heard. Mellow, infused with haunting sounds and slow beats...it's just not the kind of thing you listen to when you want to get your party on.

I got nobody on my side
And surely that ain't right.

I love the lead singer's voice. I love the urge I feel to be dancing slowly in a smoky bar with a woman that may hate me or take me home. I love all the moods this band evokes.

How can it feel this wrong?
From this moment...how can it feel this wrong?

21/365

I Learned That From You - Sara Evans

I'm not a fan of country music. Never have been...likely never will be. That doesn't mean I think it's a useless form of music...no music is useless...some of it just makes sense to me less than others. When country took off in the mid to late 90s, I was too busy burying myself in the wonders of alt-rock. My Senior theme song was a cheesy ballad called "The Bad Goodbye."

Perhaps not surprisingly, all the country I've come across that I've enjoyed has been brought to me by a woman. (I mean that in the sense that I was introduced to it by a woman...but most of what I like is by women, as well.)

A couple years ago, I had what is still the best relationship of my life to date. I loved this woman hard and our relationship was one of the most emotionally intense I've felt. In the grand scheme, it was brief, but both of our lives were changed because of it. On our first date, I presented her with a mix CD and several more followed (she still has the record for most personal mixes from me). As with many of my relationships, music became an emotional touchstone...a way for us to say the things we felt in our hearts. We had a hard time breaking up...so hard that after doing so, we continued to see each other for nearly a month more. The morning after the last night we would spend together, she gave me the first and only mix she'd create. Much of it was music I'd given her and showed her how to copy to her computer and create such mixes, but some was from her own collection and all of it meant something in the context of our time together.

It was the perfect mix. It is our entire relationship summed up in just over an hour of song and lyric. Included were two songs from Sara Evans, this and "Why Should I Care." We'd listened to her together once, but I hadn't paid much attention to her until I heard these songs.

I didn't know much about love...
I learned that from you.

To this day...a few months from marrying the man she knows is "the one," she still credits me with helping her understand and believe in love. It's a weird feeling, but I'm taking it as a compliment. I learned so much from her as well...

20/365

Lips of an Angel - Hinder

I know. It's a fairly standard, some might say cheesy, rock ballad. But who doesn't love a good, cheesy rock ballad sometimes?

This song is so me...not so much the "I have a girlfriend, but you make me want to cheat on her" aspect. I'm thinking more of the "even though we've both moved on, we can't seem to get over each other" thing. It happens. And this song came along last year when it was happening to me. Sometimes that's what makes the best songs to me...the moment in my life it appears and how it applies.

19/365

So Cold - Breaking Benjamin

I find myself getting back into hard rock again...in a way I haven't been since my early 20s, when I was angry and depressed. Am I angry and depressed now? I don't think so.

Perhaps it's because hard rock is in the mainstream again and it's good. Since grunge died in the mid-90s and bubblegum pop, then rap, then rap-rock, took over it's been hard to find solid bands pounding on the drums, wailing on guitars and throbbing bass with deep-voiced lead singers.

Breaking Benjamin is one such band. I mostly ignored them when they started. I wasn't really into hard rock at the time, either, but I did see them in concert with Three Days Grace, Seether and Evanescence. I remember this song sticking out for me. A friend put it on a mix CD a few years later and eventually loaned me all of their albums to copy.

This is still my favorite tune from them. It builds slowly, rocks out, goes a little soft again...etc... That's pretty much the model of good hard rock. My favorite part comes after the guitar solo and another chorus. Everything goes quiet but the guitar and the singer saying "It's all right." The drums kick in and he repeats the mantra all the way to the conclusion.

By this point, I'm rocking out, especially if I'm in my car. That's rock 'n' roll...making solo drivers into rock stars.

18/365

Don't Look Back in Anger - Oasis

It's a secret to very few (and will likely become more obvious as this list proceeds) that Oasis is my favorite band. Most people know them for "Wonderwall" and maybe one or two other songs from their first two albums, but they've been going strong since the mid-nineties, releasing a two disc "best of" last year after six studio albums, a live double set and one CD of B-sides (an album as good as any official release).

My love for Oasis happened somewhat by accident. I'd enjoyed the couple tracks that got radio play from their first album, Definitely Maybe, but didn't quite get the enthusiasm that had made it the number one debut album in British history. In the Spring of 1996, I was living in a dorm by myself at college for the first time. I was a subscriber to the Columbia House music club (cassettes...I still wasn't on board the CD train yet). The mail system at my school was spotty at best and if you remember the club, you had to return the card with their "Album of the Month," deciding to take that album, pick other selections or nothing at all. Sometimes I didn't receive these cards, so occasionally albums would show up unsolicited. One month, it was two albums, Candlebox's Lucy and Oasis (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. I planned to send both back being a poor college student, but a friend insisted I listen to the second album from the British band getting big attention on the American airwaves for "Wonderwall." Candlebox went back to Columbia House and my musical future changed forever.

Several more songs from (What's the Story) will make this list before I'm done, but "Don't Look Back in Anger" has always been my favorite. Opening with the familiar piano notes of John Lennon's "Imagine," it garnered my attention for a different voice than usual lead singer Liam Gallagher. This is the first song sung by his brother Noel, who, in the early albums at least, was the real force of the band, writing most of the tracks himself. Noel's sung a lot more on successive albums and most of those tracks are my favorites, possibly because his voice is more in my vocal range (and I'm big on singing along) or maybe he just chooses to sing the best songs himself.

A concert favorite, Noel often lets the audience sing the chorus while he jams away before leading into one of the band's best guitar solos. Oasis is often chastised for blatantly lifting riffs, lines and titles from classic bands and songs (The Beatles most notably, of course), but as Noel once put it in an interview, "If you're going to steal, might as well steal from the best."

17/365

Walk the Walk - Poe

Poe's first album, Hello, was one of the first CDs I purchased when I finally joined the technological age in the mid-90s. I was enamoured of her frank lyrics and voice that could do sing-song, rap-like vocals and beautiful serenades. "Angry Johnny" was all over the airwaves and occasionally "Trigger Happy Jack." Despite the brief popularity, I thought of her as one of my "found" artists.

It was a five year wait for her second album, Haunted. I'd mostly given up on there ever being more, actually, until I saw a short review for it in, of all places, Maxim. I quickly sought out the album and rekindled my love for Miss Ann Danielewski.

Haunted is a thematic album, released to coincide with her brother Mark's convoluted horror novel, House of Leaves. Elements of that story fuel the album, but it's also an ode to their father, a film director who left recorded tapes to his children throughout their lives. His voice "haunts" the album as it progresses and as Poe explores her own growth into adulthood.

"Walk the Walk" was the catchy first single, probably the most accessible tune on the album before a remixed version of "Hey Pretty" was released featuring spoken passages from Mark's book.

I'd lay odds that this would be one of the top five albums I've listened to over and over again. Though individual tracks are amazing, the album is best experienced in one sitting. It has now been seven years since it was released and though her fans remain strong, a third offering would still seem to be some time coming, if at all.

16/365

Thriller - Michael Jackson

I don't care what you think of Michael Jackson now. In the 80s, everyone was a fan and he was putting out some of the greatest music of our generation. I confess I'm not much of an apologist for that era, but I still feel a little dance in my step when I hear Jacko getting his high-pitched groove on.

The title track from what is still the biggest selling album of all time is a "scary story" that's a cool tune on its own, featuring "rap" breaks from Vincent Price and spooky synthesizers, but its claim to fame will always be the epic music video from director John Landis. I don't know if I saw it when it first aired (MTV wasn't really a part of my youth until the early 90s), but I remember it topping "best of" lists for years.

I think it's the zombie dance I love the most. I saw a wedding video recently where the party had actually choreagraphed the whole thing with the groom playing Michael's leading role. Brilliant.

15/365

Inside Out - Eve 6

Though I do like this tune, it has no particular significance for me outside of one thing: my recent girlfriend told me to make note of the first song I heard in my new car purchased a few months ago.

This was it.

"Wanna put my tender heart in a blender, watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion..."

14/365