Hi! Dana's a friend of mine who has a passion for music. Here's a place where I'm sharing some playlists they've made and their commentary, with permission (of course). Thanks for checking this out! Also, hi Dana!
Diamonds and Rust - Joan Baez (1974): Baez always has had a wonderful folk sensibility and the vulnerability in this song has always stuck with me.
Different World - Iron Maiden (2006): Probably one of Iron Maiden's most commercial singles they've ever made, but it manages to be a nice and catchy tune with a theme of optimism of a protagonist being alienated from the society.
Storm in a Teacup - Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006): ROWDY. Very fun tune with a modern funk twist.
Soldier Side - System of a Down (2005): A solemn song about the burden of sending young people to certain death with the hope that their faith can comfort the reality that they very well will not come back. In this case, it does not.
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - Black Sabbath (1973): The title track to the album of the same name is a wonderful combination of a harder chugging verse, with a soft dreamlike chorus.
Especially in Michigan - Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006): I always really enjoyed this song because even as a kid, it felt like I could see the lyrics playing out in a liminal overcast skied dream.
Silent Voice - Jun Hiroe (1986): The second OP to Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ. After the grim ending to Zeta, producers at Sunrise forced Tomino to make the follow-up have a cheery, goofy vibe that gave viwers tonal whiplash for the first 15 or so episodes. The second OP marks a clear delineation where Tomino's story for ZZ was finally getting more serious and the stakes were raised notably.
Nothin to see here folks!
Not here either!
Reapers - Muse (2015): By this point in his career, you’d think frontman Matthew Bellamy would have maybe evolved some of his themes in his songwriting, and while he has in some respects and has explored various topics, this is definitely another song about being on the receiving end of a controlling, manipulative relationship. The guy seems to have some unresolved trauma of some sort. Playing on themes of controlling relationships being similar oppressive governments and shadowy agencies is one of the big thematic staples of the Drones album, and a lot of the time it comes off as a bit half baked, considering the songs on the album that are actually about being critical of government, don’t really make any meaningful effort to stand out compared to the other more love focused songs. I think Reapers is really well composed and has some killer instrumentation, even if the lyrics come off as somewhat uninspired at times. Fun song, even if it seems like it takes itself a bit too serious.
Picture That - Roger Waters (2017): Pink Floyd’s primary lyricist/songwriter from 1969-1983 is known for his embittered outlook on the world that only became more apparent with time– really shining through in full view on Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals. Flash forward 40 years to 2017’s solo record Is This the Life We Really Want? and we see Rogers going between tender compassion on some songs to full tilt rage at what at the time was the start of the Trump presidency. Picture That doesn’t mince words and it serves as a reflection of his frustration of how the society he criticized 40 years prior on Animals has only gotten worse.
Rapid Fire - Judas Priest (1980): While often considered Heavy Metal as far back as their roots in mid-70s, Judas Priest opens 1980's British Steel with a focused intensity that would herald the birth of modern Heavy Metal as we know it. Rapid Fire is concise, focused, and would introduce a wider mainstream audience to Heavy Metal: The New Wave of British Heavy Metal had truly begun.
Sad Statue - System Of A Down (2005): Released in the midst of the Iraq War, SOAD comments on the division between Americans and the failure of maintaining the illusion that this is supposed to be a free, unified country, revealing a self-interested government operating on the ignorance and jingoism of uninformed masses. In the case of the period in which it was released, specifically about the government pursuing what was becoming an increasingly unpopular war. It’s a theme that has only become more prescient today as extreme polarization has become more and more common as blatant continued support of not just things like mass human-rights violations abroad, but also because of increasingly dangerous policies that strip away the rights of women, queer folk, and people of color.
LEAVE IT ALL BEHIND - Bodyslam, F.HERO, Babymetal (2024): A fun collab between Babymetal and two Thai musical acts, rapper F.HERO (who Babymetal have collaborated with before) and Thai rock band Bodyslam. Really fun song that kinda has a Linkin Park vibe to it.
Solitude - Black Sabbath (1971): A gentle, solemn tune that is pretty much what it says on the tin. Solitude and the consuming loneliness it brings in the absence of the love and support of others.
No Quarter - Led Zeppelin (1973): An incredibly atmospheric and beautiful soundscape that’s….about Vikings??? Yea, it’s kinda weird in that sense, but it holds a certain gravitas because of vocalist Robert Plant’s impassioned performance. Bassist/Keyboardist John Paul Jones absolutely kills it with the keys in the song, especially in the very moody introduction. Jimmy Page’s soloing is surprisingly restrained, letting other aspects of the songs really shine.
Aurora - Shigeaki Saegusa (1988): The beautiful closing track for the film Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack. As the song begins to play, an unexplainable miracle occurs, fueled by an immense sacrifice that no one on the Earth will ever know. Vignettes of the Earth are then shown:
Two siblings look out their window at the sky to witness the powerful glowing ribbon above them–Their futures no longer in immediate peril.
An old woman near the end of her life peers out her window from her bed and will get to live out the rest of the time she has peacefully.
A quiet Forrest shimmers under the glowing ribbon.
A sleepy, ancient castle village in the mountains peacefully rests under the glowing sky.
A pair of elephants in the African Savannah get to live free from the cruel self-judgement of humanity that almost just led to the mass extinction of life on Earth.
The outside of a remote home is shown. A baby begins to cry–Its newly started life is given a chance to exist and become a better future for humanity.
In space, a 14 year old boy sits looking out from the open cockpit of his mobile suit. He has made a mistake he can never take back. He helplessly looks at the glowing ribbon enveloping the Earth. He is one of the only to bear direct witness to the sacrifice that has just occurred.
On Earth, his mother and sister change the tire on their car in a dusty desert. Their journey to safety no longer needed with the aversion of disaster.
Some youths seen at the beginning of the film are now traveling the Tibetan plateau. They continue their nomadic journey, completely unaware of the fate that has befallen their friend they were with less than two weeks prior.
Humanity is given the chance to continue.
Which directly leads toooooo….
BEYOND THE TIME (メビウスの宇宙を越えて) - TM Network (1988): The members of TM Revolution were given almost no plot information when they were asked to write the closing/credits song for Char’s Counterattack. As a result of only vague themes and ideas being given to them, they wrote a love song about hope, change, and reconciliation, which while pertinent to the themes of the movie, ends up being easily re-contextualized as just yaoi, lmfao.
Summertime Blues - Blue Cheer (1968): This cover of the 1958 original by Eddie Cochran cranks the distortion, adds a bass solo and a searing lead guitar sound that isn't too dissimilar from what would be Judas Priest's output in the mid-late 70's.
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (single version) - Iron Butterfly (1968): This absolutely monstrous 16-minute jam-epic is a fusion of psychedelia and hard rock that proved to be influential to many early metal musicians, from the marching main guitar riff to the melodic lead of the keyboard/guitars that would inspire the virtuosic lead guitar aesthetics of the genre in the future. I have included the 3-minute single cut to provide a condensed excerpt of the song considering the length of the original is pretty long for most people.
Stone Cold Crazy - Queen (1974): Frenetic from start to end, this often-overlooked Queen classic was a glimpse into the energy that raising the tempo and melodic complexity could bring to rock music.
Communication Breakdown - Led Zeppelin (1969): The opening track to Led Zeppelin's eponymous debut doesn't mess around. A cranked fuzz on Jimmy Page's guitar sets the mood as drummer John Bonham begins to pound the living shit out of his drumkit. Bonham goes so hard that you can actually hear some distortion and clipping from the cymbals because the man was absolutely going to town on them. This is something that would define Bonham's career as he would expertly maintain a tight focused precision with his drumming, yet maintain a power/force when playing that most drummers could only do at the expense of playing sloppier. Jimmy Page's guitar solo flies off the fretboard and showed the world that Led Zeppelin wasn't just another English Blues band, but a force to be reckoned with. Their first three albums would be released all within the span of a year.
Symptom of the Universe - Black Sabbath (1975): This one is slightly cheating. The Sabotage! album is straight up considered (early) metal to most fans of the genre, but Symptom of the Universe serves as a template for the subgenre which exploded in the early to mid 1980s: Thrash Metal. The relentless speed of the main riff and Bill Ward's thunderous drumming almost make it feel like the tempo of the song is being pushed harder and harder (without ever actually doing so). The song comes to a head in the latter half with a spacy acoustic section that feels like an entirely different song. The built up anxiety and frustration of the beginning half gives way to joy and peace. One of my favorite Black Sabbath songs ever.
21st Century Schizoid Man - King Crimson (1969): Opening the seminal and incredibly influential In the Court of the Crimson King, King Crimson's boundary-pushing prog-rock sound transcends the moniker with touches of Jazz and Classical composition interweaving with the heavy sound constantly shifting tempo and feel of the music, it creates an incredibly dense and complex sound that feels at times overwhelming...but then again it was the purpose wasn't it? King Crimson's influence on the compositional complexity that a lot of metal music would follow, was immense and cannot be understated.
Hush - Deep Purple (1968): Coming from Deep Purple's first album and lineup as band, Hush sounded notably different from other English groups of the period. The heavy blues sound with a cranked tempo was something that they would share with peers Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, but Deep Purple released their album first.
Jailbreak - Thin Lizzy (1976): Thin Lizzy represents the shift of mainstream rock music becoming heavier without having to adhere to the more macabre, controversial topics of bands like Sabbath and Judas Priest. The mainstream was starting to accept heavily distorted rock music as more than just unsophisticated noise by executives and music critics.
Let There Be Rock - AC/DC (1977): The boys from down-under cranked up the intensity on their 1977 album of the same name. The speed, the distortion, the complexity. Everything. The title track encapsulates all of this perfectly and what we're given is a fun, raucous retelling of the birth of the rock and roll genre.
Crash Course in Brain Surgery - Budgie (1971): This criminally underrated Welsh group has become more known in the last couple decades thanks to more well-known bands like Metallica gushing about them and covering some of their songs in the late 80s as B-Sides for some singles. Budgie sounds heavy for the period and it's contrasted nicely by vocalist Burk Shelley's lofty, high-register vocals. At the time, the only other group making music as heavy as Budgie, were Sabbath.
Cities On Flame With Rock and Roll - Blue Öyster Cult (1972): Coming from Long Island, BÖC were one of the first American bands to look at what bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were doing and going, "Holy shit. that's fucking cool." Their unique blend of heavy hard rock, occasionally spacy lyrics, and irony made them a popular underground group until hitting immense heights of popularity with 1976's Agents of Fortune featuring the still enduringly popular (Don't Fear) The Reaper.
Born to Be Wild - Steppenwolf (1968): Peak boomer dad-rock? Absolutely. This hard rock classic from the end of the psychedelic period of mid 60s would return a lot of the aesthetics of 1950s rock and rock back into the conversation: loud music, fast cars and bikes, leather jackets, and attitude. Not to mention, it is the first use of the words "Heavy Metal" in a musical context, from the lyrics:
"I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
A-racing with the wind
And the feeling that I'm under"
Piss fast and shit hard.
The Ripper - Judas Priest (1976): This is it. The line between hard rock and what would be later named heavy metal are so blurred on Judas Priest's second album Sad Wings of Destiny, that it almost feels like cheating having them on the list at all. The twin guitar harmonies, the speed, the heaviness, the at times gloomy lyrics: It's all here. Black Sabbath made music their way and let it speak for itself. They had no interest in what others labeled them as (even to this day guitarist Tony Iommi insists Sabbath is just a rock band). Judas Priest though? People started labelling them as heavy metal in the mid-late 70s and they ran with it. They proudly ran with it and helped develop a lot of the sound and aesthetics of what would be not just Heavy Metal, but metal in general.
Blood and Thunder - Mastodon (2004): Mastodon's 2004 album Leviathan is a concept album mostly based on Herman Melville classic novel, Moby-Dick. Blood and Thunder is the perfect encapsulation of Captain Ahab's all-consuming obsession for revenge against the white whale which took part of his body from him.
Animals - Muse (2012): Matthew Bellamy channels his inner Roger Waters in the aptly titled Animals as he lambasts bankers, the madness of the stock market, giant corporate interests and their self-interested billionaires that run them with little regard for the well-being of the everyday person and the environment. The outro of the song features a recording of the last minute of the New York Stock Exchange being open on a normal day: The screams and clamoring of the stockbrokers making deals as quickly as they can in the last minute is a complete cacophony and a grim reminder of the true nature of the corporate world. Bellamy succinctly states his case to them in the closing lyrics to the song: "Kill yourself Come on and do us all a favor"
Back to Black - Amy Winehouse (2006): The title track to Amy Winehouse's swansong album is a reminder of the earnest, occasionally snarky, emotional turmoil that permeates so much of her music. A certain optimism, toughness, and pride shines through, but the hurt is clearly stated and visible for all to see. Her art an expression of herself and a sanctuary to her love for the genres she lovingly paid tribute to with her music.
Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden (1994): Chris Cornell stated numerous times that the song has no real identifiable message or theme and likened it to an "esoteric word painting." Despite this, it's hard not to see the introspective, permeating melancholy that would be seen in other songs he would later write like "Like a Stone" with Audioslave.
Voice of the Soul - Death (1998): Compared to other songs on the album lengthwise, Voice of the Soul is an instrumental breather in what is otherwise an auditory onslaught of an album. It's warm acoustic guitar flutters like a boat gently rocking on a windless sea. There is no bass guitar or drums. It's high-gain twin electric guitar harmonies contrast with the gentle acoustic and paint an angsty soundscape.
With each album, Florida Death Metal outfit, Death, would increasingly up the intensity and complexity to their music. From the horror movie homages of their first album 1987's Scream Bloody Gore to their final album, 1998's The Sound of Perseverance, an immense difference can be seen. The songs have complicated rhythms and time signatures that shift suddenly, key changes can be abrupt and easily change back in a few seconds, tempo changes equally erratic, the lyrics no longer about horror movies but about mental health, religious hypocrisy, suffering, and societal woes. Band leader Chuck Schuldiner's entirely new lineup of musicians for the album were all carefully selected for their skills. The incredibly tight playing from all the musicians on the record is truly astonishing. The album is pure refined ferocity.
Schism - Tool (2001): Every high school hard rock / metal enthusiast that smoked a lot of weed and probably also skateboarded knows Tool's 2001 album Lateralus front to back. With good reason to be fair. The album is deeply introspective and explores themes of spirituality, personal growth, interpersonal relationships, consciousness and more. The album features many interesting musical ideas, most famously, the Fibonacci sequence being use in the title track for the meter changes. Schism however is one of the more straight-forward tracks compositionally but manages to retain that Prog element that makes Tool, Tool. Its lyrics dealing with themes of separation and deterioration of communication and understanding between two people.
Bring Tha Noize - Public Enemy / Anthrax (1991): Story goes that Anthrax's lead guitarist Scott Ian wearing Public Enemy shirts during concerts caught the attention of Public Enemy's Chuck D which led him to shout out fellow New Yorkers Anthrax on the 1987 original recording for Bring Tha Noize. As a result, Anthrax would occasionally instrumentally cover the song live in their shows. Fast forward to 1991 and the two groups would decide to collab a version of the song together which much to the surprise of Chuck D, would come out much better than he thought it would. This partnership would lead to an unorthodox tour where Anthrax and Public Enemy would co-headline shows together. You can tell Anthrax had a lot of fun making this metal fusion cover of the song.
Famous Blue Raincoat - Leonard Cohen (1971): A song about a painful love triangle; about uncertainty and resignation. Written out as a letter to an unnamed man, the song is incredibly vague and gives little information on the past affair being mentioned. Speculation on the nature of the song has persisted for decades and while Cohen passed in 2016, some people have speculated that the song is written to himself. The speculation comes from people piecing together aspects of Cohen's personal and public life, saying that the depression the songwriter suffered from throughout most of his life may have likely been bipolar depression. Additional circumstantial evidence for this interpretation is the fact that the titular "Famous Blue Raincoat" was a real coat that Cohen wore often. This interpretation implies that the disconnect between Cohen's emotional states often felt like separate individuals internally, and that his manic state was the one his wife seemed to cling to emotionally more than his depressive state. "And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer? What can I possibly say? I guess that I miss you,I guess I forgive you I'm glad that you stood in my way[...]"
Wild is the Wind - David Bowie (1976): By 1975, Bowie was in a downward spiral of drug addiction and paranoia. He infamously sustained himself on cocaine, bell peppers, milk, and ice cream. He had become immensely paranoid, hyper-fixated on the occult, and physically emaciated. Station to Station's character of the Thin White Duke is the conscious facade of pop stardom being turned into a cold, detached machine-- interspersed with songs of longing and blind optimism in the face what was the reality of his crippling drug addiction, collapsing marriage, and immense pressures of constantly being under a spotlight. A cover of the Nina Simone song Wild is the Wind closes out the album and shows a vulnerable Bowie making a last call for love to save him from his emotional burdens. His performance is incredibly moving and the helpless tone of his voice cries out in the final vocal line for an outcome that will not happen. 1977 would see Bowie move to Berlin with friend Iggy Pop in an attempt to achieve sobriety together. After nearly 4 years of separation, Bowie and his wife would officially divorce in 1980. Bowie later in his life would claim he had no actual recollection of making the Station to Station album.
Achilles Last Stand - Led Zeppelin (1975): One of Zeppelin's longest songs in their repertoire, but one of the most ambitious for sure. The track features one of the best performances put to record by drummer John Bonham as he meticulously propels the song forward. The songs infectious gallop is legendary.
Duncan Hills Coffee Jingle - Metalocalypse: Dethklok (2006): What a perfect way to introduce the fictional band, Dethklok, in their show Metalocalypse. They are the largest band and the seventh largest economy in the whole world, yet they grace a coffee company by making a sponsored jingle for them which they then perform live. As usual, hundreds perish in the ensuing performance as hordes of people are burned alive with a tsunami of boiling coffee.
Rocky Mountain High - John Denver (1972): It is impossible to dislike or hate John Denver. The man was the definition of a saint. He championed environmental causes, rallied support for charities for the AIDS crises domestically and abroad, causes for the homeless and the hungry. He supported LGBTQ+ rights and fought against discriminatory bills that were proposed in his home state of Colorado. He fought against the censorship of musical artists in the US and testified in front of a congressional hearing along with Frank Zappa and Dee Snider. He disparaged the Reagan administration for their domestic and international policies and their handling of the Cold War, to the point where in 1985 Denver was the first American in more than a decade to play in the USSR. He would play 11 shows there and would later be a big part of the charity concerts that raised money for disaster relief after the Chernobyl disaster. Denver would also be one of the first Americans to tour modern China in a concert tour in 1981, seen as another effort to unite the east and the west during the Cold War. The man genuinely wanted to try and unite the world under love and peace and wanted nothing more than for us as people to take care of the planet we call home.
Head Like a Hole - Nine Inch Nails (1989): Trent Reznor's NIN would burst onto the scene with a slick industrial production supporting the angsty lyrics of featuring themes of jealously, self-loathing, and pining. Reznor famously didn't think anyone would even listen to Pretty Hate Machine, and as such the lyrics are often very ugly and honest, something that would play into the album's success. Reznor had so little faith in the project gaining any sort of recognition, that he actually didn't even have a band and had to put one together quickly to do a support tour for the album in 1990. This would also repeat itself with 1994's The Downward Spiral, an album so grim and negative that even the record producers thought it was going to be DoA. Reznor would be flabbergasted by the immense success of The Downward Spiral and it propelled NIN into a household name.