Top 1 Song Whose Title Starts with the Letter Q, Plus Re-evaluations of Some Songs I Love That Didn't Make the Cut on Earlier Lists
“Quick Canal” by Atlas Sound featuring Laetitia Sadier
I’ve never entirely understood the point of Bradford Cox’s solo project Atlas Sound, since the vast majority of songs released under that name seem like they could easily fit on his albums with Deerhunter. But this track is a glorious outlier. The mix of sculpted guitar distortion, shimmering synths, whooshing drum programming, and ethereal guest vocals from Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier make it sound like Berlin-era Bowie reinvented as lo-fi bedroom pop.
“Always Crashing in the Same Car” by David Bowie
I’ve always thought of this highlight of LOW’s song-oriented Side 1 to be one of David Bowie’s very best, but it narrowly missed my list of Top “A” songs. My original idea for organizing these lists was to designate a #1 favorite song on each and then list the next 10 alphabetically. I was also initially a little leery of giving too many (non-Frank Zappa) artists more than one spot on each list, though I’ve since loosened up on this, with Bowie himself landing three songs in the “L” list alone. But at the time I was putting that original “A” list together and whittling it down to what I then imagined would be a standard 10-11 songs I just didn’t think that this one (or LODGER’s bonkers “African Night Flight”) quite stacked up to “Ashes to Ashes.”
I still wouldn’t rank “Always Crashing in the Same Car” quite as high as “Ashes to Ashes,” but it is an outstanding song that in hindsight should have been on the “A” list. The evocative title perfectly expresses “I am so trapped in a cycle of self-destruction that I am bored by it” and Bowie’s vocal, which is acted as much as sung, absolutely sells that concept. Check out the exhausted delivery of “Jasmine, I saw you peeping,” the way his voice creaks up on “hotel garage,” and the anguished wordless wails at the end. The musical backing matches this perfectly, with the spacey synths, chintzy organ, and flat thudding percussion sounding like a robot’s soulless attempt at recreating ‘50s rock and Ricky Gardiner’s wailing guitar fighting hopelessly against its dehumanized surroundings.
SHOULD THIS HAVE MADE THE “A” LIST? - Probably
“All of the Lights” by Kanye West
Kanye West’s lunacy has mutated into something exhausting and pointless in the year 2025, but his craziness paid off 15 years earlier on this delirious attempt to create the ultimate song. A dramatic horn arrangement and electronic programming that sounds like a futuristic drumline add up to one of West’s glossiest and most exciting beats. Rihanna sounds great on the hook, and the absurd yet effective kaleidoscope effect of the army of other background vocalists1 is another bold and striking creative choice.
But are the verses about an abusive husband and deadbeat dad really worthy of these epic bells and whistles? Kanye has never been a brilliant wordsmith (despite all the help he gets from ghostwriters), but in this era he usually at least had something interesting and/or provocative to say, and this song just falls completely flat on that end despite being sonically thrilling. West’s harried vocal delivery and the maximalist beat powerfully evoke the world spinning out of the protagonist’s control, but the lyrics give us no reason to care about the loser being described and seem to have a tenuous at best connection to what the other vocalists are saying.
SHOULD THIS HAVE MADE THE “A” LIST?- No
“Careful (Click, Click)” by Wu-Tang Clan
Possibly the wildest and most experimental track in the greater Wu catalog, but it was left off the “C” list due to a combination of what kept “Always Crashing in the Same Car” and “All of the Lights” off of the “A” list. Like the Bowie song, this simply doesn’t stack up head-to-head with another song by the same artist whose title starts with the same letter (in this case that means “C.R.E.A.M.,” Wu-Tang’s most poignant moment). And like the West song, this has clunky lyrics unworthy of the adventurous production.
Although at least RZA’s “fuck…shit…huh?” is an appropriate reaction to his deranged beat. There’s English dub kung fu dialogue and watery strings that sound like they’re sourced from severely weathered VHS tapes, loud gunshot effects, rattling percussion that sounds like rain sticks and tambourines making physical contact with a microphone, and a few thrilling moments where jolly funk horns suddenly break through the dark murk before getting swallowed up again.
SHOULD THIS HAVE MADE THE “C” LIST? - No
“Hammond Song” by The Roches
Left off the “H” list by accident, as the song was not in my iTunes, having apparently somehow not made it on to the hard drive that transferred music from my old laptop to my current one (and then ultimately onto my phone). The incredibly sophisticated vocal arrangement is what primarily stands out, but Robert Fripp’s sensitive liquid guitar distortion, which is used extremely judiciously here, adds immensely to the track’s alien beauty. The lyrics are like a one-act play about conservative small-town parents regretfully disowning a child moving out to the big city.
SHOULD THIS HAVE MADE THE “H” LIST? – Absolutely, possibly bumping off The Beatles’ “Happiness is a Warm Gun” in the process
“I Need the Angel” by Alex Walton
My favorite new-to-me song I’ve heard since starting this series. It first came to my attention due to the also-great cover version on Ezra Furman’s GOODBYE SMALL HEAD, which strikingly ends that album with the sound of Furman panting from singing so hard. But Alex Walton’s original has an even more unrestrained vocal and is more sonically interesting. It’s a weird intersection of lo-fi bedroom pop, New Wave, and noise rock and it’s incredibly catchy.
SHOULD THIS HAVE MADE THE “I” LIST? – Possibly, although that one is already 15 songs deep, meeting the arbitrary song number limit I’ve mentally placed on these lists, and there’s nothing on that particular list that jumps out at me as being definitively worse than “I Need the Angel.” It’s such a great song that I might have extended the list to 16 had I heard it before writing up the “I” list.
“All Caps” by Madvillain
This was my last cut from the “A” list, left off partially because I expected at that time that plenty of MADVILLAINY tracks would be popping up on later lists anyway.2 But this one keeps coming back to me lately, both in a commercial that the instrumental is featured in and in a recent YouTube video by Cat’s Eye that breaks down where the samples come from and puts the beat back together from scratch, and it’s like I’m being taunted for my dumb decision not to put this on the list. This is one of Madlib’s prettiest and densest beats, and MF DOOM’s string of non sequitur one-liners fit the music like a glove.
SHOULD THIS HAVE MADE THE “A” LIST? - Yes
“Bring the Sun/Toussaint L’Ouverture” by Swans
Madlib and Swans are the two very disparate musical acts that I would have expected to make these lists a lot more often by now. I think in both cases I prefer to hear their music in the context of their albums rather than in isolated tracks in a playlist. Where Madlib specializes in short songs that form into an embarrassment of riches on his albums, Swans traffic in insanely sprawling music intended to overwhelm the listener. This 34-minute centerpiece of TO BE KIND is arguably the band’s most majestic behemoth. The song is never remotely dull or ponderous during its extended runtime and there are three sections in particular – the opening couple minutes of the same earth-shattering riff being pounded over and over again, the middle section of rising musical cacophony as Michael Gira growls “bring the sun!” as St. Vincent and Cold Speck chant “sssssuuuuuunnnnnn,” and the concluding minutes of extremely intense guitar freakout – that are simply some of the most powerful audio I’ve heard from anyone anywhere.
The aspect of the song that made me unsure about putting it on the “B” list is the odd shift in focus in its second half to allusions to Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture. As much as I love the song overall, and as intense as Michael Gira’s vocal delivery is, I do find his French carnival barking, particularly on the moments where he shouts “Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité!”, to be slightly goofy. It’s the type of minor nitpick that keeps a masterpiece off a list of all-time favorites. Still, the song is a remarkable journey from beginning to end.
SHOULD THIS HAVE MADE THE “B” LIST? – Not quite, but it is essential listening
Kid Cudi, Tony Williams, The-Dream, Charlie Wilson, John Legend, Elly Jackson, Alicia Keys, Elton John, Fergie, Ryan Leslie, Drake, Alvin Fields and Ken Lewis
Non-album track “Monkey Suite” did make it, but album cuts “Accordion,” “Meat Grinder,” “Fancy Clown,” “Figaro,” and “Great Day” have all been near misses