george harrison

Playlist #245

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Good morning and happy first Monday of the new year. Yes, the government took some extrajudicial actions down in Venezuela over the weekend, and we’re all scrambling figuring out how to deal with that, but in the meantime I’ve got some songs for you.

  1. The Cranberries, “Salvation”: A blistering blast of punky energy and the occasional horn? Yes, please.
  2. Lyle Lovett, “Lungs”: An old Townes Van Zandt song that, according to Lovett, Van Zandt said ought to be “shouted rather than sung.” Lovett sings it here anyway. It’s good, as Van Zandt songs tend to be.
  3. Rufus Wainwright, “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”: There’s just a…sadness to this song that I’ve always felt an affinity for. Maybe it’s the line, “You told me again you preferred handsome men/But for me you would make an exception.”
  4. George Harrison, “Marwa Blues”: Just a beautiful instrumental number off Brainwashed with some absolutely perfect slide guitar from George.
  5. Tom Waits, “(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night”: I think of this one as the flipside to a Bruce Springsteen song from about the same era: there’s a yearning there, like in Bruce songs, but a bitter sadness as well, not just a sense that there is no escape from this life but that even trying to escape from this life isn’t worth the effort.
  6. Better Than Ezra, “Desperately Wanting”: Drugs are bad, m’kay?
  7. Counting Crows, “Up All Night (Frankie Miller Goes to Hollywood)”: A lot of the songs on this particular list deal with longing and loss, I think. Did I do that on purpose? Man, who even knows anymore.
  8. Billy Bragg & Wilco, “When The Roses Bloom Again”: Going off to war always sucks. Always. And there are always unintended consequences.
  9. Brian Fallon, “Forget Me Not”: Brian Fallon remains one of my favorite songwriters of the past twenty or so years. There’s some Bruce in there, some doo-wop, and a lot of joy at just making music. And I will always dig that.
  10. Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”: Again, drugs are bad. The “white horse in her hip pocket” is a less-than-subtle reference to heroin, after all.

Playlist #241

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks! I’ve returned from sunny, warm Florida to a much chillier Northern Virginia. But it was a good trip! We relaxed and had a lot of fun, I got to see a friend from college whom I had not seen in over 20 years, and I slept quite a bit. And the Wife’s presentation went over well! Here’s some songs.

  1. MGMT, “Kids”: Yeah, it’s the only song I or probably any of you have ever heard from this band, but it’s a pretty good song. The Wife likes it, at any rate.
  2. Madison Cunningham, “Hospital”: So the album this song is off of won a Grammy for Best Folk Album? But this is very much not folk? Am I missing something? I think I must be missing something.
  3. Eve, “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”: One of our Uber drivers in Florida was bumpin’ a throwback R&B radio station, and this was one of the songs that came up.
  4. George Harrison, “You”: In case your morning needed a little…extra texture (see, this is funny, since the name of the album this song came off of was Extra Texture) (explaining the joke always makes it funnier) (over-explaining the joke makes it even funnier).
  5. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Insider”: This song just about made me cry yesterday afternoon. Admittedly, I’d had a weird dream featuring my grandmother and hadn’t taken my medication yet, but the fact holds.
  6. The Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood”: A plinky little Casio cover of this song played over the plane speakers as we were boarding our flight home. The Wife and I looked at each other and immediately felt a million years old. The songs of our youth have become muzak.
  7. The National, “Rylan”: I still just absolutely love the drums for this song. As with most songs by the National, the drums are definitely the best part.
  8. Counting Crows, “Hard Candy”: The twelve-string jangle of this song heals something in my soul every time I hear it.
  9. Jet, “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”: Stomping, rollicking fun with a sleazy guitar riff. Good way to kick off your week.
  10. Traveling Wilburys, “Heading for the Light”: The second Traveling Wilburys song I learned to play (the first was “Handle With Care,” naturally) and a whole lot of fun. I should play that one again.

Playlist #237: Wrecks

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks. We’ve got a short week this week, what with Veterans Day happening tomorrow, but we’ve also got a historically-based playlist for you today. Starting with:

  1. Gordon Lightfoot, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”: Fifty years ago today, the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in Lake Superior, taking twenty-nine men with it. Lightfoot apparently wrote and recorded the song just a month later, and it was released in August of 1976, giving him the biggest hit of his career.
  2. Tom Petty, “You Wreck Me”: Is there a better Tom Petty album than Wildflowers? If so, I haven’t heard it (and neither, I’d assume, has anyone else, ’cause this is clearly his best album). That chorus is so good to sing along to.
  3. Pearl Jam, “Wreckage”: Pearl Jam’s latest studio album included this gem, an acoustic-based song that stands as one of the best they’ve written in the past fifteen, twenty years.
  4. Bruce Springsteen, “Wrecking Ball”: It’s a song about Giants Stadium in New Jersey. They were about to tear it down, and the Boss had to write a song in ode to it. It’s one of his better latter-day songs.
  5. George Harrison, “Wreck of the Hesperus”: Based on a Wordsworth poem about a shipwreck? Or a Procol Harum song of the same name? I dunno. It’s mostly George Harrison lamenting getting older, but still being able to rock out. It’s chock-full o’ puns, which is one of my favorite forms of song lyrics.
  6. Loose Fur, “Wreckroom”: Look, Loose Fur is weird. Just…really weird. But also nifty. Mostly weird.
  7. They Might Be Giants, “Wreck My Car”: Please do not wreck someone else’s car, even if they ask you to. That’s probably insurance fraud, and you don’t wanna be involved in that.
  8. Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs, “Wreckless Abandon”: Mike Campbell’s solo work is more workmanlike than anything he did with the Heartbreakers, but c’mon, not everyone is a songwriting dynamo like Tom Petty was.
  9. Emmylou Harris, “Wrecking Ball”: A different “Wrecking Ball” than the Bruce Springsteen one. It’s a beautiful song, though.
  10. Wreckless Eric, “Whole Wide World”: Featured to great effect in the movie Stranger than Fiction, it’s one of those three-chord garage rock songs that you can learn in two minutes and play all by yourself forever. We recommend turning the amplifier way up for this one.

Playlist #234

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Tuesday, folks. Yesterday was Diwali, a Hindu holiday, and one that FCPS takes off now. So naturally, I spent the day taking various individuals to the doctor – the cat, my wife – and doing laundry. So much laundry. Where did we even get all these clothes? Anyway, here’s some songs to get you through the week.

  1. The Dead South, “In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company”: Whistling and stand-up bass and a title that’s entirely too long? Yup, hits a lot of points on the checklist.
  2. The Bridge City Sinners, “St. James’ Infirmary”: I was unaware I needed to hear a version of “St. James’ Infirmary” with the word “fuck” in it. And now I know.
  3. Glass Animals, “Heat Waves”: A random student walked by while I was playing the guitar outside last Friday and asked me if I knew how to play this song. I did not, so I looked it up. Seems easy enough to play, if a bit of a challenge for me to sing.
  4. Holly Golightly, “My Get Back”: How had I never listened to Holly Golightly until now? This is some good stuff. Blues-inflected, rough around the edges in just the right way. I dig it.
  5. Jakob Dylan, “Lend A Hand”: Spent most of yesterday listening to Dylan’s Women + Country on repeat for whatever reason, and this song still grabs me by the lapels and shakes me.
  6. Radiohead, “There, There (Live)”: The live Hail to the Thief versions are all great, especially this one, but I’m a little disappointed that it doesn’t include “Drunken Punch Up At A Wedding.” Sad.
  7. George Harrison, “Stuck Inside A Cloud”: It still amazes me that Harrison was able to craft such beautiful, touching music while in the grips of cancer, dying from it. We need more folks like him.
  8. The Pixies, “Where Is My Head?”: So supposedly a Taylor Swift song sounds a lot like this song? And that’s a . . . bad thing? If she wants to become a Pixies cover act, I’d probably be okay with that.
  9. The Cranberries, “Salvation”: It’s a song where they basically chant “Salvation” in the chorus over and over again. Of course I love it.
  10. Elliott Smith, “Bottle Up And Explode!”: One of his best off XO, which is also his best album in my humble (and correct) opinion.

Playlist #197

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks! We finally made it through that nigh-unending January, sanity (mostly) intact. Here’s some songs to get us through the week.

  1. David Gray, “As I’m Leaving”: David Gray’s earlier stuff is much more striped down and folky. I kinda dig a lot of it, especially this piano ballad off the Lost Songs collection.
  2. You+Me, “From a Closet in Norway”: Maybe I’m just a sucker for acoustic-based folk-pop?
  3. Van Morrison, “Madame Joy”: This song is just so full of joy, it’s hard not to love. Van could rave it up sometimes.
  4. Wilco, “You Are My Face”: I love the breakdown in this song, where it totally changes tone and rhythm and becomes a completely different song for a couple of minutes. Great.
  5. Jackson Browne, “Downhill From Everywhere”: An actual environmental protest song, this time about the sea and how we’re all connected to it.
  6. Beck, “Lost Cause”: I know Sea Change is Beck’s big breakup album/Bob Dylan reference, and it’s good, and it sounds like he’s just being backed by the Flaming Lips the whole time (to the point that he took them out on tour as his opener and his backing band for the subsequent tour), but it does occasionally make me miss the whimsical, clearly-stoned-out-of-his-gourd Beck.
  7. Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”: Back on my folky acoustic bullshit, but it’s a damn good story song.
  8. George Harrison, “Not Guilty”: Solo George is the best George.
  9. The Gaslight Anthem, “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts”: Early Gaslight Anthem, with the band showing they have a softer, more sensitive side.
  10. Aimee Mann, “Stranger Into Starman”: A subdued ender for this particular playlist, but a perpetual favorite. Aimee Mann somehow became one of my favorite artists over the past few years, and I’m not sad about that at all.

Playlist #186

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks. Like many other individuals, I have decided to migrate from Twitter (still not gonna call it X, as that is stupid), that Nazi-amplifying hellsite, and over to Blue Sky! I have been posting regularly so far; we’ll see if that keeps up.

  1. Jessye DeSilva, “Let It Burn”: I think we can all agree that white supremacy is a huge issue in the United States today and that maybe, just maybe, burning it all down wouldn’t be a bad idea. And if that’s not a sentiment you can agree with, what the fuck are you doing here? Go away.
  2. David Gray, “After the Harvest”: It’s David Gray doing David Gray things, with delicate acoustic guitars picked over vaguely electronic beats. It ticks a few boxes in my head that give me that good dopamine hit, so this isn’t a complaint.
  3. Phil Collins, “I Don’t Care Anymore”: An effort to repeat the success of “In the Air Tonight”? I dunno, maybe. It has that same sort of minimalist drum/keyboard approach, the same dark theme, but more forceful singing (despite being about having no fucks left to give).
  4. Bon Iver, “S P E Y S I D E”: It’s weird hearing Bon Iver being almost…straightforward with a song after years of getting more and more cryptic and byzantine with his approach to lyrics specifically and music in general. I kinda dig it.
  5. George Harrison, “Not Guilty”: That little repeated guitar riff just eats its way into my head and won’t leave. I love it.
  6. The Velvet Underground, “Who Loves the Sun”: Hearing such bright, bouncy pop from the Velvet Underground always hits me weird. Like, these lyrics and those “Bop-ba-ba-ba”s shouldn’t be coming out of Lou Reed’s mouth.
  7. Patsy Cline, “I Fall to Pieces”: This woman had such a voice. And that shouldn’t be telling any of you anything you don’t already know.
  8. Lucero, “On My Way Downtown”: A song of drinking and regret and the promise of a better day.
  9. Mike Doughty, “Fort Hood”: Best use of “Let the Sunshine In” ever. Even better than the original “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” Fight me.
  10. The Mountain Goats, “No Children”: My wife’s favorite Mountain Goats song. Should I be worried?

The George Harrison Double Playlist

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks! As you read this, I am probably standing in line to ride a rollercoaster at Walt Disney World down in Florida. This week, I thought I’d make up for not doing a playlist last week and take care of this week’s playlist by offering a double playlist of my top twenty George Harrison songs!

Honorable Mentions: There are too many George Harrison songs (or Harrisongs, as I like to think of ’em) on a couple of his albums to list every single great tune. I mean, I could’ve easily just done a top ten of my favorite songs off of All Things Must Pass. That being said, here are some of the songs that don’t make the playlist proper, but are still damn good: “My Sweet Lord,” “Beware of Darkness,” “Apple Scruffs,” “Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)”, “Crackerbox Palace” (it’s a weird one, trust me), “Dark Horse,” “The Devil’s Radio,” “I Got My Mind Set On You.” Also, please note there are no songs here from Wonderwall Music, because I’m not that much of a sadist. Okay, everyone good? Right, let’s go.

  1. “Isn’t It a Pity (Version 1)”: It’s the “na na”s in the background in the song’s coda that really get to me, ’cause is George just messing with McCartney and “Hey Jude” for shits and giggles? I wouldn’t put it past him. But such a beautiful song.
  2. “If Not For You”: Hey, it’s a Bob Dylan song! If you had that on your bingo card, you can go ahead and mark that square.
  3. “Art of Dying”: So I recently downloaded the super deluxe version of the 50th Anniversary Remaster of All Things Must Pass (it has 70 tracks. Seventy! I can listen to it for like a week straight without repeating any songs), and this particular remaster (more so than the one from twenty-some years back) really clears up the sound quality on the album and makes things a lot clearer. I dig it. This song just rips.
  4. “All Things Must Pass”: If there is a single song that sums up George Harrison as an individual and as a songwriter, I would put in a word for this one. It’s stately, but also down to earth, treats with eastern philosophy while not being too preachy, and has that sense of bittersweet honesty that I always sorta associate with George. It’s a great song.
  5. “Bangala Desh”: A great song for a great cause, and let’s not dock points for the fact that it inspired the whole charity single, “We Are the World” nonsense in the 80s, okay?
  6. “You”: It’s a simple song, almost lazy in its lyrics. George had that weakness sometimes. His songs are either clever satire, deep metaphysical meditations, or slapped together at the absolute last second because he needed a peppy single on the next record.
  7. “Any Road”: Brainwashed is my third-favorite George album (after All Things Must Pass and Cloud 9, naturally), and it’s got some of his best-written songs on it. This one is simple in its formation and endless clever in execution.
  8. “Stuck Inside a Cloud”: George, towards the end, had it pretty damn rough. Cancer is not a thing I would wish on my worst enemy (well, maybe on my worst enemy). He knew he was dying. And he still managed to write and record such a beautiful song.
  9. “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”: This song is just such a goof. George loved the ukulele, and it’s front and center on this track.
  10. “Cloud 9”: From the comeback album(TM) in the late ’80s, when everything Jeff Lynne produced turned to solid gold (seriously, he did Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, the Heartbreakers’ Into the Great Wide Open, this one, and Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl, all in the space of like three or four years. And helped produce the first Traveling Wilburys record. Dude was on fire). It’s a slow burn, slide guitar seduction that would get me to drop my pants if someone tried using it on me.
  11. “When We Was Fab”: Ah, youth. The video for this particular song is great and just chock-full of Beatles Easter Eggs.
  12. “Wreck of the Hesperus”: George was funny as hell. If he wasn’t picking apart the foibles of modern society in songs like “P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)” or “Sue Me, Sue You Blues” or “Try Some Buy Some” (see further down this list for those last two), he was cracking jokes. The line “But I can still rock as good as Gibraltar” will never not be funny to me.
  13. “Not Guilty”: That little guitar riff he does in this song? Love it.
  14. “Cheer Down”: Speaking of cracking jokes, the title of this particular song remains funny to me. It’s a great pun, and the lyrics themselves are witty. This song was featured on the Lethal Weapon 2 soundtrack!
  15. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)”: Was George a little hippie-dippie? Oh, yeah. But he honestly meant it when he said stuff like this, I think.
  16. “Sue Me, Sue You Blues”: He also meant stuff like this. The modern world was too capitalistic and crass for George. We didn’t deserve him.
  17. “Don’t Make Me Wait Too Long”: George knows how to write a damn good love song (see “Something” for that), and this one ain’t half bad.
  18. “Living in the Material World”: Of all of the Beatles, George was the one most fascinated with eastern philosophy and metaphysics, as we can see in this song. He also like racecar driving. Folks contain multitudes, y’know?
  19. “Try Some Buy Some”: Consumerism is bad!
  20. “All Those Years Ago”: The song George wrote about John Lennon after Lennon was shot. It features the other two Beatles on it as well, so that’s cool.

Playlist #154 – Eclipse Music

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday and happy eclipse day, folks. The moon is gonna pass in front of the sun today, freak a buncha people out, and maybe signal mankind’s final doom and destruction? At least the weather is nice here for it, where we’ll only get 80% occlusion instead of the totality that they’ll see in, say, Cleveland. Of course, you’d have to be in Cleveland for that, so…tossup?

  1. Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”: Let’s go ahead and get the most obvious one out of the way first. Yes, this is gonna be on everyone’s eclipse playlist. Yes, it is very, very obvious. It’s still a good song, though.
  2. Pink Floyd, “Brain Damage/Eclipse”: The other most obvious choice. Well, half of it is, anyway. But I feel like you can’t really play “Eclipse” without first playing “Brain Damage.” It’s like playing “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” without playing “The Happiest Days of Our Lives.” Y’know, I’m starting to think this is a specific Pink Floyd issue…
  3. Bruce Springsteen, “Darkness on the Edge of Town”: Now, we get into some less obvious tracks. Yes, it’s more of a sunset, metaphorical darkness in the Springsteen song, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have also applied to a total solar eclipse. Springsteen’s songs are multifaceted, I tell ya!
  4. David Gray, “Red Moon”: While the occluded sun is the obvious star of the day (pun definitely intended), let’s not forget the one who’s making it all possible: the moon!
  5. U2, “Staring at the Sun”: Let us say a quick prayer for all the optometrists who will be seeing folks over the next few weeks who are complaining about not being able to see a damn thing ’cause they literally stared at the sun without any protection or forethought.
  6. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Straight Into Darkness”: Again, a more metaphorical darkness than what we’re really dealing with during the eclipse, but do you know how rarely eclipses are the subject of songwriting? There’s not a lot out there, is what I’m saying, so you take what you can get, especially if it’s a kickass Tom Petty song.
  7. The Police, “Invisible Sun”: Replaced a previous Police song on the list, “Darkness,” because I think this song is way funnier to have on the list.
  8. The National, “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness”: Well, get ready, system, ’cause in certain parts of North America this afternoon for about three minutes, you’ll be able to dream!
  9. George Harrison, “Beware of Darkness”: Some folks do think the eclipse is an ominous omen (is that just saying an omen-like omen? I feel like it might be. I don’t care. I’m leaving it in) of ill things to come. I think George Harrison just wanted a nightlight left on so he could find his way to the bathroom.
  10. Bob Seger, “Sunspot Baby”: I think Bob Seger is a criminally-underrated songwriter who’s built like the Platonic ideal of “Dad Bod” and just put together the best bar band you’ve ever heard. And did you know that sunspots are cool enough that water vapor can exist in them? Isn’t that wild?

Playlist #115

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday to all the folks who celebrate it out there. And if you do celebrate Mondays, what is wrong with you? Do you just really like new playlist day?

  1. Murder By Death, “No Oath, No Spell”: There’s is something oddly compelling about this guy’s voice. He sounds about two centuries old on their best songs.
  2. Rufus Wainwright, “Harvest (feat. Andrew Bird and Chris Stills)”: Who doesn’t love a Neil Young cover? Who doesn’t love a Neil Young cover that features Andrew Bird prominently? Communists, that’s who.
  3. Van Morrison, “Sweet Jannie”: As weird as the dude’s gotten in recent years (and he’s gotten pretty freakin’ weird), I still love his old stuff. This song is a bop.
  4. Electric Light Orchestra, “Eldorado”: I’ve been thinking about it for a while now (especially since I listened to most of their discography a few weeks ago on a whim), and I think Eldorado might be my favorite ELO album. Sure, as a concept album it falls a little short of the mark Jeff Lynne was aiming for, but the song cycle is still one of the best he ever wrote, and this – the penultimate song on the album – is a good summation of what ELO could do at the height of their powers.
  5. Elk Eyes, “It Goes Dark”: Why am I listening to guys with whiskey-dark voices sing doom and gloom this week? I dunno, I just am.
  6. Family Familiar, “I Don’t Need You”: Did you know I helped write this song, back over 20 years ago? This is my brother’s band performing it. Did you know I get a small cut of the streaming revenue for this specific song? It’s true.
  7. George Harrison, “P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)”: I know that what I need a lot of on a Monday morning is some George Harrison slide guitar. I’m sure you’ll agree it almost makes it worth waking up for.
  8. Paul McCartney, “Teddy Boy”: This version of this song is just as ramshackle as its appearance on McCartney would lead you to believe it would be. I kinda love it.
  9. John Prine, “Jesus, the Missing Years”: Was chatting with a friend on Facebook about “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” this weekend, which got me in a John Prine mood. That’s not a bad mood to be in.
  10. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, “St. Paul’s Autograph”: I swear to God, this album is just designed to make you wanna curl up on a rainy Sunday afternoon and block out the rest of the world.

Playlist #102: Memory

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks. I spent last week visiting family in Oklahoma; specifically, I went to see my grandparents. They’re all getting up there in years (all of them are now well into their 90s), and their health is in decline. They take it with the same sort of Okie stoicism I’ve come to know from them over the past 40-odd years, but it doesn’t make it any easier to see these remarkably strong people become increasingly weaker and less able to do things they used to do with such ease.

Of particular concern is my maternal grandmother. She, like her husband before her, has started to suffer from dementia. We finally got her into an assisted living center last month, but that was a trial and a half and thank God it’s over. While she seemed resistant to it at first, she seems to have settled in and is doing quite nicely. She likes all of the staff and she’s made friends and is participating in activities. Everyone keeps talking about how sweet she is, to which I replied, “Really? My grandmother? The sour-faced lady?” But she does seem to be genuinely happy for the first time in . . . years, I’d say. Since before my grandfather got poorly, at least.

Anyway, all of that had me thinking about memory and the things we carry with us and the things that we try to carry with us but, ultimately, can’t, and this playlist popped out.

  1. Glen Campbell, “I’m Not Gonna Miss You”: Glen Campbell suffered from Alzheimer’s, and toward the end of his life couldn’t really do much as that disease robbed him of everything that made him, him. But he gave us one last song, and damn if it isn’t a doozy. Contemplating life, death, and loss, he reflects on the fact that while the Alzheimer’s might be destroying him, it’s really those around him who will suffer from it.
  2. The Pixies, “I Can’t Forget”: The Pixies cover a Leonard Cohen song. About trying to remember but being unable to do so.
  3. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”: A long, sinuous jam of a song, the sort I’m usually not that in to. But this one is pretty good, as those things go.
  4. Billy Bragg & Wilco, “Remember The Mountain Bed”: Woody Guthrie’s words are so evocative here, so painfully, painstakingly clear, that I can picture the mountain bed of the title in my mind. I can picture the girl, and the leaves, and the boy lying beside her, whispering things to one another that are just on the edge of hearing. And it feels a little bittersweet. This is clearly a moment from the distant past, a stolen piece of time between two people who are no longer in each other’s lives. And it’s beautiful and ephemeral and it’s one of my favorite songs ever.
  5. Jars of Clay, “Unforgetful You”: Now, just for a minute, forget that the song is a Jesus song. I know, it’s hard to take it out of that context, but work with me here. It’s still a fun song about someone who absolutely refuses to forget about you, and we all kinda need someone like that in our lives.
  6. The Mountain Goats, “You Or Your Memory”: Once more proving the adage that there’s not a playlist yet that can’t be improved with a Mountain Goats song, we’ve got this one. As per usual, Darnielle cuts through the noise and rips out your heart, and he does it all in under 2 and a half minutes. That’s just efficient.
  7. Neko Case, “Don’t Forget Me”: It’s an old cover. It’s beautifully sung, because it’s Neko Case. I don’t know what else you need to hear.
  8. Peter Gabriel, “I Don’t Remember”: This song and the Glen Campbell song were the two that sparked this whole playlist. The Gabriel song is edgy and nervous, anxious about the loss of memory, while the Campbell song is resigned to it and leaning in.
  9. Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, “If I Am A Stranger”: There were quite a few Ryan Adams songs I could have put on this list (and more than one from the album Cold Roses), but I settled on this one because I remember my grandfather going from knowing everyone who was around him to being surrounded by strangers. I think it scared him sometimes, not recognizing our faces.
  10. George Harrison, “All Things Must Pass”: The song I always come back to for comfort. George understood the world and our place in it better than just about any other musician, and he understood that death comes for everyone eventually. And he accepted that with grace and dignity. It’s just wild to me, and helps me come to terms with things myself.