Better than the Beatles …

Over at Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne went on an old man, get off my lawn rant about the state of modern music, listing the Beatles, the Stones, and The Band as groups that modern rock and roll simply can’t match, comparing them to an Avril Lavigne song, in this post. Then, when a lot of people said that they didn’t like the Beatles, and some did, hedecided to post his favourite Beatles song and use the title and the text to — semi-seriously, I hope — challenge people to match that song.

Okay, I’m not a Beatles fan, although I don’t hate them, but that’s not even my favourite Beatles song, so I came up with a number of songs that were, in my opinion, better, and then decided to actually post something here by listing, with links to youtube if I can manage it, my top 10 favourite songs in some semblance of order. (Some of the songs that I listed there will not be among the songs I list here. See if you can find them!).

10 Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart. I bought her greatest hits CD because of this song. This was the only song I really liked.
9 Gordon Lightfoot – The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. This was played in my grade school class as a way of examining poetry and music, and I was hooked. I still love it.
8 Chris De Burgh – Lady in Red. Surprised the heck out of the people in my group at work when I told them that I liked this song, especially since they knew I liked AC/DC.
7 Mark Knopfler – Prarie Wedding. The best song on “Sailing to Philadelphia”.
6 Meat Loaf – I’d Lie For You (And That’s the Truth). My old suitemates would never believe that that’s my favourite Meat Loaf song, since I listened to “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) for pretty much an entire semester in university.
5 AC/DC – Hell’s Bells. My second favourite AC/DC song. And yes, former co-workers, I did fib when I selected this at the Christmas activity, but this was the more appropriate song for a party.
4 AC/DC – Ride On. My favourite AC/DC song ever.
3 The Cars: Drive. The Cars have a lot of great songs. This is probably the best.
2 Amy Lee and Seether – Broken. I bought the Punisher CD for this song. I played it over and over and over again … this song, not the CD, which is not that great.
1 Better than Ezra – Porcelain. The most beautiful and disturbing song I’ve ever heard.

The top three are pretty much a wash; depending on the day, I might choose one of them over the other (today, I was leaning towards Broken being number 1, but couldn’t put it ahead of the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard).

Why most of these are on the list is that, in my opinion, you can’t listen to these songs and not be affected by them or drawn into them, while others didn’t quite have that effect despite my remembering them first. And I can’t think of one Beatles song that does that to me, and absolutely no Stones song that does that to me.

You know what? I think I’ll make a series out of this, because this one was tossed together in a bit of a hurry and a lot of my favourite songs didn’t make the list.