The Best Song Ever: KEXP Settles it Once and For All

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Planning on spending your Saturday jamming out to your favorite songs? Well, don't bother, because KEXP has discovered, through rigorous scientific inquiry, that "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by British post-punk gloomsters Joy Division tops the list of the 500 greatest songs ever.

Sorry Otis, but you're an embarrassment: you aren't much of a DJ, and you don't have cool bangs. Nice ironic mustache, though. Photo courtesy of muzzleofbees.com

The results were achieved by polling a panel of eminent musicologists, pop-culture experts, and anthropologists (by which we mean "KEXP listeners who bothered to vote"). Far be it from us to question the methodology of a list that, in our opinion didn't even pick the best Joy Division song, and listed no fewer than four LCD Soundsystem tracks as superior to Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness," but might "KEXP's 500 favorite songs" have been a more apt title for this particular scientific treatise?

To back up our point, a few other observations:

There may be a hint of local and generational bias on a list that rates Macklemore's "My Oh My" above "The Harder They Come" by Jimmy Cliff or "Somebody to Love" by Jefferson Airplane.

Appearances by Elvis Presley: 2
Appearances by Elvis Costello: 5

Appearances by the band James (Mancunian new wavers of the 1980s): 2
Apparances by James Brown (needs no explanation because he is one of the greatest, most well-known performers in history): 2

"Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees is on a list of "Top Songs of All Time" rather than a list of "Songs that Should Be Excised From the History of Music Like a Victim of Stalin's Purges from a Soviet History Textbook."

Obviously, all taste is subjective, and it would be snobbish to call our opinion "better" than those of the KEXPers who voted, but if Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" is the 79th greatest song of all time, we should all just start listening to opera and hymns, because 100 years of popular music hasn't been worth the effort.

Still, results are results. In closing, we leave you with a few songs that are worse than "Yellow" by Coldplay, and not even worthy of appearing anywhere on the list:

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band:

"Little Old Wine Drinker Me" by Dean Martin:

"Fuck tha Police" by N.W.A.

"Smash it Up" by The Damned

"54-46 (That's My Number)" by Toots & the Maytals:

"Hold On, I'm Comin'" by Sam & Dave:

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By Everett Rummage in Music on October 8, 2011 3:00 PM 0 Comments

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StayBank

Shame on them for not including Sam & Dave. Sam & Dave were one of the greatest live acts of the 1960s, with the awards, recognition and audiences to prove it. They were also an influence on many other musicians, including Springsteen, Al Green, Tom Petty, Phil Collins, Michael Jackson, Elvis Costello, Teddy Pendergrass, Billy Joel and Steve Winwood. The Blues Brothers may have cranked up their stuff, but that wasn't serious music from BB's anyway.

Steve Marseille

Am I blind, or is there no link to the full list in this article?

neilvis x

You're blind ;-) It's in the second sentence, hyperlinked in the text "500 greatest songs"

Sam Feinson

Sports fans go through this every year with the all-star picks. This kind of thing undermines my faith in the democratic process. Given the KEXP key demographic, I'm not surprised. Still, Jeff Buckley's treacle-drenched version of what isn't even Leonard Cohen's best song gets #4? Come on, people.