Bitchfork Backlash: The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s, a Rejoinder

"Backlash" is actually far too strong a word. In fact, in terms of ambition and, more importantly, scope, Pitchfork's list of the best songs of the 1960s is pretty damn strong. To begin with, looking beyond singles to include album tracks and some left-field stuff was a stroke of genius. Naturally, singles still predominate because a) that was still the primary mode of music publishing right up through the latter half of the decade, and b) they couldn't very well pick songs no one had ever heard of before. (I mean if anyone is going to bend over backwards to jock the obscure and the esoteric it's P-fork, but in this case they considered cultural impact alongside strict aesthetic considerations. Thank Christ.) In other words, you've heard most these songs, which is good, but you haven't heard all of them, which is great. Yet admirable and entertaining as the list may be, it is by its very nature flawed. Humans, after all, are fallible. Quantitative analyses of items whose very essence is rooted in subjective experience is just plain stupid. So what's the point?

Lists are fun.

Now the *bitter defeat* obsession with lists is well documented. (An obsessive immersion in an inherently obsessive-compulsive practice... yikes.) And a list of songs offers the ideal opportunity to nitpick, argue, and (hopefully) initiate an enlightened debate because of the added distance from the near-canonical reception of the album as self-contained and oft-curated Art Object. (As I've gotten older, I have returned to the childhood obsession with songs. This is due in part to the proliferation of mp3 files as the predominate method for sharing music, but it's primarily the result of my finally shedding the high-school-bedroom idea that only albums are capable of containing truly coherent artistic statements. This idea, of course, is utter horseshit.)

Anyway, making my own list of the 200 best songs of the 1960s, while tempting, just seems too damn involved. So instead I'm gonna go through their list and pick out the most notable entries. And here "notable" can mean anything from dead-on great to good-but-misguided to give-me-a-fucking-break. Also, any non-Music Geeks out there who haven't stopped reading already... you should probably stop now. You're undoubtedly missing something really catty and hilarious over at Go Fug Yourself or Gawker.

A. General Observations

1. To begin with, the folks at Pitchfork really love the Supremes. Like, it's a good thing they added a maximum of five songs per band, because I think otherwise all 12 of the Supremes' number-one singles would be on this thing.

2. The inevitable Beatles discussion: No Beatles songs appear until #58 ("I Wanna Hold Your Hand"), and the final choices are... interesting. "A Day in the Life" places highest (at #5), which is fine, even obvious, but the other selections ("Eleanor Rigby," "I Am the Walrus," and "Tomorrow Never Knows") reveal the continued P-fork obsession with experimentation and psych-rock. Now debating over the best Beatles song is like arguing over the world's most delicious food (i.e., pointless), but in the end the Beatles' real impact was in the realm of pop. In other words, their best songs were the great Lennon/McCartney pop-rock songs. People formed weirdo bands because they heard the Velvet Undergroud, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Pink Floyd, not because "Tomorrow Never Knows" had a goddamn backwards sitar solo. The feedback at the beginning of "I Feel Fine" was revolutionary, sure, but that's not why the band sold gajillions of albums worldwide. The rest of "I Feel Fine" is why the band sold gajillions of albums worldwide. The Beatles gave us Big Star, XTC, and Blur. So why don't we just admit that, just maybe, songs like "Help," "She Said, She Said," and "Day Tripper" reveal far more about both the band's contribution to rock music and the decade as a whole. Oh, by the way, they're also better songs.

3. The inevitable (with P-fork, anyway) Beach Boys discussion. Actually, there's not much to say here. They picked great Beach Boys songs. Unfortunately, they left out what I would argue is not only the most important Beach Boys song, but a song that belongs firmly in the overall top five. Given the long shadow cast by Pet Sounds, it's easy to understand the band's earlier music getting overlooked, but no song predicted the sonic precision and obsessive perfectionism of the band's later material better than "I Get Around." Propulsive enough to be considered "juvenile" (in other words, rock 'n' roll), "I Get Around" nevertheless carries the unmistakable hallmark of the Beach Boys' "artist"period: mind-boggling four-part harmonies, a truckload of off-the-wall instrumentation, and a multi-section structure featuring chord changes and overlapping, recurrent themes. While not necessarily the "best" song I can think of, it's certainly the most technically astounding.

B. The Songs

#200 The Kinks - "Sunny Afternoon"
What can I say? The list starts off on a great note (pun!), with my favorite song by one of my three or four favorite bands. A personal aside: This is the all-time greatest song to hear in a bar... especially if it's daytime.

#197 Charles Mingus - "Solo Dancer"
This should probably be in the section above, but screw it. If you're going to include jazz on the list, how can only like five jazz tracks appear?? This is why jazz (and some other "genres"... we'll come back to this) should always be treated as its own thing; it's gonna get the shaft on this list because jazz and pop are, in terms of appreciation and public taste, apples and oranges. That's not to say that the same person can't like both (that's a stupid as the "Elvis person vs. Beatles person" dichotomy), but it IS to say that an entirely different arsenal of critical tools has to be deployed when you're discussing jazz. It's just a shaky idea... and the obvious reason why jazz ends up being horribly under-represented on the list.

#189 The Sonics - "Strychnine"
Fine. Okay. Just tell me how in the hell this is on the list instead of "Psycho." Bigger hit, better song. WTF? Just having The Sonics on the list is semi-obscure, so why rock the super-esoteric steez?

#178 Otis Redding - "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)"
Brilliant. Should have been higher. "Dock of the Bay" is higher. So what's wrong with "(Try a Little) Tenderness"? Did the whole Ducky scene in Pretty in Pink ruin it for you or something?

#170 Françoise Hardy - "Tous Les Garcons et Les Filles"
Too goddamn right. A fantastic choice.

#162 The Who - "I Can See for Miles"
The rest of the Who choices on the list are a-plus (and I totally agree with the omission of "My Generation"), but this song just doesn't have that certain something. It lacks swagger, despite its agressive lyrics. And as the Who's more sprawling material goes, it's far inferior to "A Quick One (While He's Away)." Just switch those two and you're right on track.

#159 Pink Floyd - "Astronomy Domine"
Again, great pick, but 1968's "Let There Be More Light" is sorely missed here. No other song better anticipates the Krautrock masterpieces of the 1970s by Can, Neu!, et al.

#140 Donovan - "Season of the Witch"
Great call. Donovan's best song and an easy one to overlook in the face of his more hippy-dippy megahits.

#133 The Monkees - "I'm a Believer"
(Weird... Neil Diamond, who wrote this song, appears more on this list as a composer than as an actual musician.) A fine song, but the one talented Monkee, Mike Nesmith, gets the shaft here. (Nesmith is represented, however, as the composer of The Stone Ponys' "Different Drum" at #167) Nesmith's "You Just May Be the One" is a far better Monkees song, and "the smart one" deserves his props.

#120 ? and the Mysterians - "96 Tears"
This just needs to be in the top 50. Rookie mistake.

#112 Steve Reich - "It's Gonna Rain"
See jazz comments. Experimental sound collage or whatever the hell this is... so this is the only avant-garde classical noise that could make the list, or you wanted to add some avant-garde stuff to make the list seem more sophisticated? Either way, it just sticks out like a very sore thumb. A totally egghead move.

#107 Bob Dylan - "Visions of Johanna"
Nice. Just a great pick. The ultimate solid, underappreciated album track.

#105 Simon & Garfunkel - "America"
The one band that is represented by its most painfully obvious songs. You know "The Only Living Boy in New York" got the shaft because it was in Garden State. (Editor's note: Bridge Over Troubled Water was released in 1970, so forget that last sentence. Good lookin' out, Anonymous.)

END PART ONE

Tune in Monday (or don't) for random notes on the top 100 songs, and a selection of deserving tunes that din't make the list.