Sometimes, a detour to decades past is necessary to regain your sanity
The advantage to being in ownership of children you have birthed is that you are handed pretty much a blank slate. Will this screeching baby who rejects a cot as though it were a bed of nails appreciate My Chemical Romance? Will he understand the complex guitar arrangement of Help? Will his tastes veer towards Slipknot? And if the answer is yes to Slipknot, is it too late to do anything about it?
A spouse is different. A spouse is a wildcard, (unless your vetting process includes a stringent review of their musical collection.) A spouse comes preprogrammed with their own musical tastes, and it is a risk you take at your own peril. Perhaps they are under the spell of hip-hop artists circa early 2000s. Or maybe they have loftier tastes and are enthralled by big-headed guitarists who rip into a 10-minute ego-centric impromptu solo during live performances. Whatever the case may be, by the time you get your hands on a spouse, the damage is already done. I shan’t waste any more time trying to educate mine, so instead, I am now turning to you lovely lot. Head this way if you want to take an undiscovered road filled with expertly crafted musical gems that will never fall victim to the skip button in your playlist.
The Saga Begins: Weird Al Yankovic
In my experience, spouses tend to have a very poor understanding of the unparalleled genius of Weird Al Yankovic. “What is even the point of this man?” they will say in an unnecessarily disparaging tone. “His songs are so stupid. All he does is ruin other people’s work.”
There are so many things wrong with this damning judgement that I don’t even know where to begin. How can a man who can transform Don McLean’s American Pie into a comprehensive Star Wars saga – replete with a functioning plot – be described as “stupid”? How can someone who can make rhyming couplets about C-3PO and midichlorians be deficient in the brains department? You don’t have to be a Star Wars fanatic to appreciate the genius behind The Saga Begins. You just need to recognise a wordsmith when he hits you on the head with a mallet.
Word Crimes: Weird Al Yankovic
For those who are immune to wordsmiths with mallets, it would be pointless trying to convert you to Weird Al’s other work of genius: Word Crimes. The other adult in my house does a giant eye roll when this gem comes on in the car, and delivers yet another sentence involving the word ‘stupid’. How can someone who reworks a truly awful song (yes, Blurred Lines, your day in the sun has come) into an English lesson called Word Crimes have anything other than a towering IQ? If grammar and punctuation are your twin first loves, Word Crimes will be your go-to when your blood pressure spikes at the missing apostrophe outside the Ladies Toilet. In less than four minutes, Weird Al explains the difference between a contraction and a possessive, delivers a quick lesson on dangling participles, and even calls other people a moron so you don’t have to do it. You cannot ask for more.
Bat Out of Hell: Meatloaf
If any song is going to grab you by the neck with its opening, it will be Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell. This explosive track launches into action with two very decisive guitar chords, and segues into a high-speed piano, giving way to a soaring electric guitar solo. At nearly two minutes long, the piano-guitar intro is excellent for car games such as “Will that traffic light still be red by the time the vocals kick in?” Whether or not that traffic light has it in for you, by the time Meatloaf starts telling you about the screaming sirens and howling fires, you will already have fallen, hook, line and sinker. Traffic or no traffic, your thumb will not be itching to hit skip. You are going to see this epic journey to the very end, this sordid tale about a boy, his love, his roaring motorbike, and the requisite casual attitude to health and safety. Painting a vivid picture with raw vocals, a phenomenal guitar solo and a driving percussion line, Bat Out of Hell is not unlike a Shakespearean tragedy. It has it all: high drama, bad decisions, certain doom. There is a reason Bat Out of Hell is the hit that immortalised Meatloaf, and it will live in your head long after the lingering final note.
I Only Wanna Be With You (Dusty Springfield)
Step into a sunshine-filled time machine with the opening trumpets and contrasting guitar pizzicato of Dusty Springfield’s I Only Wanna Be With You. Perhaps not quite what you need in a punishing heatwave, but here where we live under blanket greyness for the better part of the year, any song that evokes memories of sunshine will be welcomed with the very open arms Dusty sings about. That is the thing about music; it is so much more than a collection of notes put together. Until science comes up with a better alternative, music is the best time portal where you can soak in not just the memories but the sights and smells of whatever it was when you first heard it. If you hear a song when you are in your happy place, your brain will always store it for you and allow you to return, if only for a moment, whenever you hear it again.
A final note
If you are inclined to disagree with all of the above, you are not alone. My dear teenage son peered over my shoulder as I put together this list and regarded it as though it were rotting fish. “People won’t like these songs,” he explained. “I don’t like them. Seriously, these are all terrible. Except Bat Out of Hell. That one is okay. I think you need to start listening to different things.” If you side with the teenage boy, you also need to know that his current go-to music is Japanese rock – the very specific type used in anime soundtracks – so we will now have a moment of silence for both your and his musical tastes.
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