2007年 01月 21日 日曜日 01:20

Been looking for an excuse to start this thing, and I found a pretty fun format to go with. Top 25 artist slots, first song of theirs I heard, favorite song & album, and does their position indicate my taste for them? Hm, good question. I'll get started on that.

1. The Beatles
• First Song: Yellow Submarine
• Fave Song: I'm Looking Through You
• Fave Disc: Rubber Soul
• Accurate? Hell yeah. Beatles are #1 in my book, always have been, probably will be for a good long time.

2. Green Day
• First Song: When I Come Around
• Fave Song: Minority
• Fave Disc: Insomniac
• Accurate? Don't get me wrong. Love these guys. But still, #2 seems a bit high. They might be closer to #5 or #6.

3. Sonic Team
• First Song: Green Hill Zone
• Fave Song: Flying Battery Zone Act 2
• Fave Disc: Sonic Adventure
• Accurate? Why not? I've been listening to Sonic music as long as I've been playing Sonic games, and I got my start making up lyrics on the spot to these tunes as I played. Did it help the quality of my gameplay? No, not really. Not at all. But damn if it wasn't fun.

4. The Offspring
• First Song: Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)
• Fave Song: Spare Me the Details
• Fave Disc: Ixnay on the Hombre
• Accurate? I'm shocked these guys are as high as they are, but I shouldn't be. A strong catalogue of consistent album tracks + insanely hooky singles here & there that spawn dozens upon dozens of plays = top five.

5. Fountains of Wayne
• First Song: Stacy's Mom
• Fave Song: Mexican Wine
• Fave Disc: Welcome Interstate Managers
• Accurate? Maybe should be a smidgen higher. I got Welcome Interstate Managers as a much appreciated Christmas gift, and every time I got itchy for their next album to come out, I bought one of their older ones. I just finished acquiring their entire catalogue, and they have a new album set for release in early April. I timed that well.

6. Ben Folds
• First Song: Rockin' the Suburbs
• Fave Song: Hiro's Song
• Fave Disc: Rockin' the Suburbs
• Accurate? This guy constantly leaves me in awe. Pretty good place for him.

7. Weezer
• First Song: Buddy Holly
• Fave Song: Photograph
• Fave Disc: Weezer (Green Album)
• Accurate? I was kind of ashamed to have these guys seem to be stuck in my top ten, since the stereotypical Weezer fan tends to irritate me. I became cool with this upon realizing stereotypical Weezer fans (SWF's, for the remainder of this paragraph) seem to have pegged Cuomo's evolution from a young alt-garage-rock musician and diary-style lyricist to a majestic, witty and cunning pop songsmith between Pinkerton and the Green Album as one of music's greatest tragedies. Since this playcount borrows pretty equally from all five of their albums, I feel I have enough degrees of separation from the SWF's to comfortably offer up this slot to the boys.

8. Bowling for Soup
• First Song: Girl All the Bad Guys Want
• Fave Song: High School Never Ends
• Fave Disc: A Hangover You Don't Deserve
• Accurate? Yep, this is about right. Saccharine at best, but damn good saccharine at that.

9. Flashlight Brown
• First Song: Sonia Bianchi
• Fave Song: Sicker
• Fave Disc: My Degeneration
• Accurate? I don't like letting people know my cousin was a part of this band for three albums (Flashlight Brown, My Degeneration, Blue), since it gives the impression that he's the only reason I have any interest in these guys. Let the record show that while he was still in the band, FLB wasn't yet in my top ten. Matt Hughes is a sharp songwriter, and he just makes for some insanely fun and loud tracks. Please check them out.

10. Billy Joel
• First Song: We Didn't Start the Fire
• Fave Song: Captain Jack
• Fave Disc: Piano Man
• Accurate? He deserves to be higher, and most likely will be once I expand my collection past Piano Man and his greatest hits.

11. Barenaked Ladies
• First Song: One Week
• Fave Song: Falling for the First Time
• Fave Disc: Stunt
• Accurate? Stunt's a great album. Gordon's a good album. Maroon's an okay one. But I just don't have much of a vested interest in what these guys have done recently, so they'll probably just continue to slip unless they're able to put another awesome album together that grabs my interest.

12. DackAttac
• Accurate? Good gravy, am I that much of an ego-freak?

13. Fastball
• First Song: The Way
• Fave Song: You're An Ocean
• Fave Disc: Keep Your Wig On
• Accurate? They really oughta be in my top ten, but damnation in a canoe, it can only hold ten artists.

14. Kay Hanley
• First Song: Follow Me
• Fave Song: Lullaby Lucky
• Fave Disc: The Babydoll EP
• Accurate? Yeah. As soon as her next album comes out, she could be due for a jump, though. Especially if the songs on her MySpace are any indication.

15. Smash Mouth
• First Song: Walkin' on the Sun
• Fave Song: I Just Wanna See
• Fave Disc: Astro Lounge
• Accurate? If AudioScrobbler had the supernatural ability to count all the tracks I played on CD back before I used the computer for audio, these guys would be in my top five, hands down. I listened the hell out of Astro Lounge, and their self-titled got some play, too. Of course, Summer Girl's such a great record, top five status might not be out of the question for these guys quite yet.

16. Tom Petty
• First Song: Don't Do Me like That
• Fave Song: Saving Grace
• Fave Disc: Full Moon Fever
• Accurate? I'm really kind of a Johnny-come-lately to all things Petty and/or Heartbreakers, but nonetheless—this is really rock 'n' roll at its purist.

17. Aerosmith
• First Song: Livin' on the Edge
• Fave Song: Just Push Play
• Fave Disc: Just Push Play
• Accurate? Speaking of rock 'n' roll at its purist… I really should have more of their songs, but I really couldn't figure out where to start with these guys. Usually when bands have inconsistent careers, they peak and decline. Aerosmith has had, like, six comeback albums.

18. Crush 40
• First Song: Open Your Heart
• Fave Song: Live & Learn
• Fave Disc: I'm leaving this blank, since their soundtrack contributions just run circles around their lone album.
• Accurate? More or less, I'd say so. Jun's a master of melodies, and Johnny's the king of the overdub. Really. Here's a guy who probably heard Billy Joel did all four parts of the barbershop quartet on The Longest Time and thought, "Shit, I could top that!"

19. The High Speed Scene
• First Song: The IROC-Z Song
• Fave Song: Assingear
• Fave Disc: The High Speed Scene
• Accurate? I sadly completely forgot about these guys until now. But I must have loved this album for it to be this high, but the truth is I didn't love the album as much as the tracks on it. Which is fine, in my book. You need a few artists who you think of like that in your library.

20. matchbox twenty
• First Song: Real World
• Fave Song: Bright Lights
• Fave Disc: More than You Think You Are
• Accurate? Really? MB20's this low? Shocker. OK, these guys might sing with their poker faces on a bit too often, but they're just excellent songwriters. I'll never understand how MtYTYA got lampooned by the critics.

21. OK Go
• First Song: Get Over It
• Fave Song: Don't Ask Me
• Fave Disc: Oh No
• Accurate? Feel free to lump me in with the fans who only liked them when they saw the Here it Goes Again video if you want. In fact, in a way I'm worse since I had been listening to the three singles from their eponymous since it came out and never got an album from them until I saw the video. To be fair, I was scared off by the abrasive production, but the melodies are just too bright to be subdued that easily.

22. U2
• First Song: With or Without You
• Fave Song: I Still Haven't Found what I'm Looking For
• Fave Disc: The Joshua Tree
• Accurate? I'm not a rabid U2 fan, but I do like them. I have a ton of these guys' albums (or rather, my dad does, and I have a CD drive) and they fit into shuffle so tranquilly they can get a lot of plays.

23. Garbage
• First Song: Androgyny
• Fave Song: Why Do You Love Me?
• Fave Disc: Beautiful Garbage
• Accurate? Huh. I'm looking at some artists that I'm not going to get to (Pink, Butch Walker, Buckcherry, Bon Jovi, Eminem, Jimmy Eat World, Brad Paisley, Bad Religion, etc.) and can't believe I listened to Garbage more often than them. It's not that I don't like Garbage, it's just that I have no memory of listening to them that much.

24. The Lovin' Spoonful
• First Song: Summer in the City
• Fave Song: Pow!
• Fave Disc: I just have this nice "best of" my uncle burned me. It's pretty complete, though.
• Accurate? Love the Spoonful. In my heart, they did to folk-pop what Dylan did to folk-rock. Maybe they should be a little higher. In turn, I also should listen to them more.

25. Reel Big Fish
• First Song: Take On Me
• Fave Song: A-W-E-S-O-M-E
• Fave Disc: Why Do They Rock So Hard?
• Accurate? Sure. I don't know what else I can say about these guys, they're so outspoken there's really no point.

Well, that was delightfully time-consuming. I'll probably do another one of these things in the near future. Peace!