My Personal Spotify Song Analysis

Ok, I've been using this Spotify thing since it began its service in Australia in 2012.

Every month, I make a playlist that collects a song, or maybe two, by an artist from every album I've listened to during that period. It may even include songs that I occasionally hear in my head - my earworms, or they may be songs I've heard in passing, for example at someone's house, in a movie or over a shop PA, whatever and wherever, but only for the month of the playlist.

And once a song is added to the playlist for the month, it's my own little rule that they cannot be added again until the next year. This way we build a library of songs across a year with no repeats at all.

These are the playlists I share with you, dear reader, every month in these pages. They can include up to 300+ songs on them, and all of them unique.

In light of the fact that a song can only be added to a playlist once in any calendar year, I thought it would be interesting to look at the songs that have been added across the 2 and a half years of Spotify's existence to see which songs keep reappearing every year. This list would give anyone with a passing interest an idea what songs I consider to be classics. Well-worn standards that stand the test of time. As a discerning listener and one who takes music choices seriously, I would have thought you could take a list like this as a indication of quality, a list of songs that warrant repeated listening. Almost a list of songs to take to a desert island...

...well sort of. It's not quite the list I was expecting. And while there are many songs here that I would consider "Desert Island Discs", it's not an exhaustive list of said songs. It is NOT a list of how much I have played these songs, but rather how often I have returned to them and have had them important enough to be added to the playlist to take with me wherever I go.

The list does actually contain quite a few surprises. The criteria I looked at was if, in a list of over 7000 titles, how many appeared on the list three times (one for each year from 2012 to 2014 inclusive). I have no idea why "Dare Me" by the Pointer Sisters appears on this list three times. Or how anything by Motley Crue has ended up on here once in every year, let alone the same track three times. And why, out of all the Aerosmith tracks I adore, did the title track of a fairly mediocre album become the most selected song from them on here?

Take a look at the list below and have a listen to the Spotify playlist below. Let me know if you think these are the most worthy songs you've ever heard. What songs would you include by a band if not the ones listed here?

Enjoy!

Aerosmith	Get a Grip
Audioslave	Cochise
America	Sister Golden Hair
Anthrax	Time
Bad Books	You Wouldn't Have To Ask
Bernard Fanning	Songbird
Billy Bragg	Between The Wars
Blind Melon	No Rain
Blondie	Atomic
Bruce Springsteen	Lucky Town
Cast	Alright
Cats and Jammers	Spitball
Cheap Trick	Mighty Wings
Cosmic Rough Riders	Justify The Rain
Cowboy Junkies	Sweet Jane
D.R.I.	Marriage
Dan Reed	Brave New World
Donovan	Sunshine Superman
Eddie Floyd	Knock On Wood
Extreme	Stop The World
Faces	Ooh La la
Icehouse	Walls
Focus	Anonymous
Fountains of Wayne	Stacy's Mom
Gary Clitter (aka HeeBeeGeeBees)	Gary Clitter is Back
Genesis	Turn It On Again
Guns 'n Roses	Estranged
Holly and the Italians	Tell That Girl To Shut Up
Icehouse	Street Café
Iggy Pop	I'm Bored
Joni Mitchell	Come In From The Cold
Judas Priest	The Green Manalishi
Liam Lynch	United States of Whatever
Little River Band	Help Is On Its Way
Models	I Hear Motion
Models	Local and/or General
Motley Crue	Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)
Muse	Supermassive Black Hole
Paul McCartney	Coming Up
Paul Simon	50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
Pete Townshend	Face The Face
Pharrell Williams	Happy
Powderfinger	Turtle's Head
Powderfinger	Up and Down and Back Again
Queen	Scandal
Ramones	Sheena Is A Punk Rocker
Redgum	The Drover's Dog
Relient K	Chapstick, Chapped Lips and Things Like Chemistry
Santana	Well All Right
Screaming Trees	Nearly Lost You
Small Faces	Tin Soldier
Spiderbait	Sam Gribbles
SpizzEnergi	Soldier Soldier
Split Enz	Nobody Takes Me Seriously
Squeeze	Pulling Mussels From The Shell
Starship	Sara
Steve Vai	I Would Love To
Temple Of The Dog	Hunger Strike
Ten Years After	Positive Vibration
The Angels	Mr Damage
The Byrds	Welcome Back Home
The Damned	Neat Neat Neat
The Gaslight Anthem	Here Comes My Man
The Go-Gos	Our Lips Are Sealed
The Hummingbirds	Two Weeks With A Good Man In Niagara Falls
The Killers	Mr Brightside
The Lemonheads	Into Your Arms
The Lovin' Spoonful	Summer In The City
The Master's Apprentices	Rio De Camero
The Pointer Sisters	Dare Me
The Promises	Baby It's You
The Records	Starry Eyes
The Rolling Stones	Little T&A
The Roots	The Seed 2.0
The Rubinoos	I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
The Runaways	Cherry Bomb
The Saboteurs (aka The Raconteurs)	Steady As She Goes
The Saints	Just Like Fire Would
The Saints	This Perfect Day
The Sports	Don't Throw Stones
The The	Infected
The Who	Love Reign O'er Me
Todd Rundgren	I Saw The Light
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers	American Girl
Toto	Africa
Warhorse	St Louis
Warren Zevon	Tenderness On The Block

The Sound and the Fury's Best of 2014

Welcome to 2015. 2014 was an interesting year in music, with heaps of great new music and lots of new discoveries. And a lot of sad departures to the great gig in the sky as well.

I'm not about to summarise the year or post the 10 best albums or whatever.

I'll let the playlist below do that for me. Where Frank Zappa once said "Shut Up and play your guitar", we'll let the music do the talking.

Here is the highlights of all our playlists from 2014. 256 tracks to highlight all the great music and classics from artists who have moved on from this life.

Turn it up and play it loud.

Enjoy!

August 2014 Mixtape

We've hit Spring on the east coast! But it's still bloody cold and wet. Time to heat things up with another great mix tape.

200+ songs including great tunes from:

• Bellowhead
• Richard Clapton
• Gaslight Anthem
• Weird Al Yankovic
• Free
• Sensitive New Age Cowpersons
• The Hummingbirds
• Phil Ochs
• The Sundays

and heaps heaps more.

Set it to shuffle, crank it up and ENJOY!!!

July 2014 Playlist

Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for the Sound and the Fury Podcast July 2014 playlist. A selection of carefully chosen songs to illuminate your living room, or wherever you feel like listening to it.

This month you get over 200 songs featuring:
New music from: Little Bastard, Dick Diver, Calling All Astronauts, Manchester Orchestra, Iron Reagan, Gaslight Anthem, Ed Sheeran, Courtney Barnett, Bully, Bellowhead and heaps more
Classics from Led Zeppelin, Fifty Foot Hose, Queen, Show of Hands, Liquor Giants, Miles Davis, Sebadoh and heaps more.

Set the list to shuffle, crank it up and ENJOY!!!

June 2014 Playlist

It's the first day of the month, and you know what that means, right? A new playlist. Hand-picked from over 20 million tunes on Spotify.

This is the June 2014 one (sorry it's late) and it features:

New music from Drawn From Bees, Parquet Courts, Bob Mould, New Pornographers, Sheppard, Royal Blood, Milky Chance, Hurray For The Riff Raff and heaps more
Classics from The Yardbirds, Longpigs, Black Sabbath, Faith No More, Graham Bonnet, Stan Ridgeway, NOFX and heaps more

Look out for a total nutso track from Fat and Frantic called "Last Night My Wife Hoovered My Head", as well as copious amounts of tunes from the legends we lost during the month: Doc Neeson (The Angels), Jim Keays (Master's Apprentices) and Gerry Goffin (Drifters, Carole King and various others)

Set the list to shuffle, crank it up and ENJOY!!!

May 2014 Mixtape

First day of the Australian Winter and it felt a lot more like a nice Autumn day, the rain notwithstanding!

Anyhow, here is the hand-picked collection of songs loving compiled for you, gentle listener, by yours truly throughout the month of May.

This month you get:

Australian Gems from The Mavis's, Little Bastard, Johnny Diesel, Icehouse, Iron On, Giants of Science, Ghostwriters, Divinyls and heaps more
Classics from Electric Banana, Eagles, Dusty Springfield, Faces, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, John Hiatt, J Geils Band, and heaps more
New Music from Iron Reagan, Jonathan Wilson, Lindi Ortega, Mark Kozelek, Architecture in Helsinki, The Black Keys, Declan Kelly's Diesel 'n' Dub and many more
Jazz with Al DiMiola, Paul Desmond, Abdullah Ibrahim, Miles Davis, Eddie Roberts, Ella Fitzgerald, Mamiko Kitaura and more

All told, there's plenty of awesome music here to keep you warm this month. Discover your new favourite song here.

Set the button to random, turn it up and, most importantly, ENJOY!!!

Toto - Hand Picked

Image Source: Smooth Vibes

Toto is a band made up of some of the most prolific session musicians in the Los Angeles music scene. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s they played on countless albums of all genres, but probably the most famous was Boz Scaggs' massive million seller "Silk Degrees" in 1976.

Being musicians for hire before forming the band made them critics targets. As William Ruhlmann writes in the Allmusic Guide:

Toto's rock-studio chops allowed them to play any current pop style at the drop of a hi-hat: one minute prog rock, the next hard rock, the next funky R&B. It all sounded great, but it also implied that music-making took craft rather than inspiration..."

There is an element of truth in that: in a career spanning over 30 years, there's very few recordings they have made that sound distinctive and idiosyncratic. It's too easy to confuse their music for something by Boston, Kansas, Journey, Foreigner or, in some cases, Little River Band. They know exactly how to make music that is user-friendly, radio-friendly, catchy and familiar that is not daring enough to be challenging for the listener, but familiar enough to be catchy, marketable enough to sell records by the bucketload.

It is competently played, slickly produced and, at times, bland and soulless. That said, there are moments where the music is sensational.

Musically they were perfect for commercial radio, and considering this their commercial fortunes were quite unpredictable. Their first record sold millions, while the far superior (in my view) follow up "Hydra" only went Gold in the US. Third LP "Turn Back" fared worse, while "Toto IV" sold 10 million. Subsequent records never hit those lofty heights every again.

The band were capable of playing almost any style of music you could ask for. They could do outright pop fluff like "Rosanna" (one of a long line of pop songs where the female protagonist is named in the title, like "Angela", "Lorraine", "Hollyanna", "Goodbye Eleanor"), solid rock like "Hold The Line", and then turn out a totally sublime and moody piece like "Africa" - probably the most identifiable song they ever recorded.

And then, on occasion they could turn out a song like "99" and manage to confuse the hell out of everybody. A stunning piano piece, it is apparently a love song to Maxwell Smart's sassy female offsider. Few people apparently got the hint and it killed their fortunes at radio at the time. Luckily they had their session work to fall back on....

The selections in the playlist below are cherry picked from Toto's first four LPs. This playlist has its roots in a mid-priced compilation called "Hold The Line" that I owned on cassette for years. The album selects tunes from the band's first three albums, including the massive hit title track, a few lesser singles and a swag of interesting album tracks. When I transferred the cassette to CD, I dropped a few lame tracks, added a bunch from "Toto IV".

The great thing about a Spotify playlist is that the length is not confined to the limitations of a physical medium. I have only ever heard the first few albums, and I intend to add to this list as time goes on, once I go back and listen to the rest of their catalog. Subscribe to the playlist to hear the rest of the playlist as it continues to be built.

Tracks 1-3 from "Toto"
Tracks 3-9 from "Hydra"
Tracks 10-11 from "Turn Back"
Tracks 12-18 from "Toto IV"

Take a listen and let me know in the comments what tracks need to be added.

April 2014 Playlist

Welcome to the start of a new month. The air is getting cooler here on the east coast of NSW, and so we bring you a new playlist to warm up your heart and raise your blood pressure.

Taking in tracks from artists as diverse as Miles Davis, Do Re Mi, Swoop, Osibisa, Babaganouj, Nirvana, Killing Joke, Charlie Hunter and heaps more.

There's over 250 songs within to heat the home with. Set the playlist to shuffle, crank it up, pour out some of your favourite vino and ENJOY!

March 2014 Mixtape

image source: The Meaning of Larf


On this rainy Sydney Sunday afternoon, here for your wet weather enjoyment is 200+ amazing songs that constitute the March 2014 Sound and the Fury Spotify playlist.

Here's a sample of what you can expect:

• Brilliant Australian music tunes from: The Bamboos, The Beards, The Angels, Bored Nothing, Chase The Sun, a brilliant rarity from Cold Chisel, Easybeats, Flash In The Pan and heaps more.
• Jazz and Funk from Billy Cobham, Osibisa, The Lafayaette Afro Rock Band, Polar Bear and more
• Classics from The Yardbirds, ZZ Top, Status Quo, The HeeBeeGeeBees, The Jam, Jefferson Airplane and heaps more.
• New Music from Eagulls, Evil Blizzard, Real Estate, War On Drugs and heaps more

As per usual, play on shuffle, get your favourite food out, crank the volume and ENJOY!!!

10 Songs that Describe the 1980s

The 1980s were the "Me" decade, which came with two sub-themes to it:

1. "Look at me!"
and
2. "It's Mine. What's mine is my own, and whatever else I can get, by any means legal or otherwise, is mine as well".

Point 1 explains the outlandish clothes, the big hair, flashy cars and the like that was the fashion. But along with point 2 there was a real developing sense of corporate greed during the period, which culminated in the stock market panic of 1987.

In the early 1980s I was in grade school in Newcastle, NSW, but it seemed everybody between the ages of 18 and 24 all worked at the BHP steelworks, or steel-related industries in town.

The times were marked in other countries (less so than here) of a real rift between the Haves and the Have-nots. Thatcherism and Reaganomics seemed to push the concept of open markets and a sense that whoever earns it, gets to keep it. Whomever is cunning enough to play the game right and gets to the top first wins the lot. It also meant a lot of pain for smaller families, especially when interest rates in Australia hit 17% in the late 1980s...

Midnight Oil – Don't Wanna Be The One
There could have been a number of other Oils tracks I could have chosen, but this one speaks volumes on the realities for those at different positions on the corporate food chain. "We end up in home units with the brick wall view..."

Redgum – Lear Jets Over Kulgera
This song heralded the start of the resources boom in Australia, with foreign investment making a motza out of the "poor young mineral-rich country". This track wins an extra credit badge for working the word "giegercounter" into the lyric.

Billy Bragg – Between the Wars
A vocal critic of Margaret Thatcher, Billy Bragg sang songs in support of ordinary workers lost in the shuffle of the push towards corporatisation and privatisation. This didn't just happen in Britain, but all over the world, and this is a timely reminder without the workers, executives and upper management don't make a profit.

Warumpi Band – Blackfella/Whitefella
Indigenous people of Australia, up until the 1980s were un-mentioned, under-represented sub-class who struggled to get their voices heard in the media. Some bands prior to Warumpi were making noises along similar themes (Goanna's "Solid Rock" being one example) but this one is the most powerful and influential. This begat "Beds Are Burning" by the aforementioned Midnight Oil.

Spandau Ballet – Gold
The 80s were characterised by the chase for money, and more of it, heralding a new age of decadence and excess.

Tears For Fears – Shout
For all the money, parties and celebration, a lot of people still weren't happy and the rise of the expensive therapist started.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Two Tribes
This track is included because during the 1980s you had two superpowers, the USA and the (then) USSR flexing their collective military muscles in each others direction, daring each other to push the button that could blow the planet into smithereens.

Frank Zappa – Valley Girl
The "look at me" culture of the San Fernando Valley can be seen as a metaphor for the the fashion of the times - big outfits and even bigger hair. This Zappa parody was is precisely what "Clueless" was in the mid-1990s.

Metallica – Master Of Puppets
The corporate drug culture is probably something that was not openly discussed at the time, but it was prevalent. This theme was tackled by Frank Zappa on "Cocaine Decisions" but Metallica did it the best with this powerful and emotive anti-drug anthem.

Prince – Sign 'O' The Times
Touches on the fallout of era's behaviour: drugs and hedeonism, AIDS and poverty, bad hangovers and money going around and around and around and.....

February 2014 Playlist

Welcome to the latest Sound and the Fury Playlist, loving curated by hand and ear during February 2014.

This month, you get:

Aussie gems from: Australian Crawl, The Butterfly Effect, Custard, Chad Morgan, The Cruel Sea, Delta Riggs, Even, INXS, James Reyne and more
Punk bashers from Bracket, Asteroid B-612, Green Day, Slapshot, Six Ft Hick and more
Awesome jazz from Dave Brubeck, Larry Carlton, LA Express, Ahmad Jamal,

and a whole mountain of other great songs.

Crank it up and ENJOY!!!

January 2014 Playlist

Welcome back to the first monthly playlist for 2014. Contained within is a bunch of killer tracks from:

• Redgum
• iOTA
• Mama Cass
• Evan Foster
• Anthrax
• Black Cab
• Andy Prieboy
• John Williamson
• Born Ruffians
• Philip Sayce
• Peace
• Beechwood Sparks
• The Mermen

and heaps heaps more.

Put it on random and crank it up. Enjoy!

Our 300th Post! The Best of 2013

Image with thanks to Michele Woodward

Wow! Our 300th post!

Who'd have thought we'd make it this far?

It's been a hectic year thus far and I've been a bit behind the 8-ball in getting this blog updated, but hopefully we'll be back in the swing of things shortly.

To celebrate, here is a belated playlist of the best tunes from 2013, with lots of great new music from the year, including the latest from Hottest 100 winner Vance Joy and heaps of other great stuff.

Get into it!

December 2013 Playlist

Happy New Year! I hope we all made it to the beginning of 2014 safely and without incident.

This is the last one of the year. Look out for a Best of 2013 playlist coming up in the not-too-distant future. For the moment, here's what you get:

Classics from REM, Bruce Springsteen, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Bowling For Soup, Cracker, Bon Jovi and heaps more
Aussie Greats from Choirboys, Declan Kelly, Paul Kelly, Powderfinger, Moving Pictures, iOta, Icehouse, Architecture In Helsinki, The Jezabels, Lurch and Chief

and heaps heaps more.

Check it. Catch you again soon.

November 2013 Mixtape

For the first day of the southern hemisphere summer we've had weather consistent with the last few weeks...in other words, Four Seasons in One Day. For a summer's day it's a remarkable 23 degrees centigrade.It's normally a hell of a lot hotter!

Still, there's a new playlist from The Sound and the Fury Podcast waiting in the wings for you to check out. It features:

• Classics from Johnny Moped, Supergrass, Pretty Things, Machinations, Split Enz,
• Obscurities from Olivia Neutron Bomb, Youngblood Hawke, Permanent Me, Ember Swift, iOta, Art Blakey and more
• Punk screamers from Negative FX, The Normals, OFF!, The Tunnel Rats, The Damned, The Saints, The Randoms, The Zeroes and more
• Aussie Classics from Even, The Birthday Party, Mondo Rock, Paul Kelly, The Reels, Regurgitator and heaps more.

Here it is below. Dig it!

October 2013 Playlist

October has been a turbulent month for all of us here on the east coast, with all the local bushfires and the unseasonably extreme weather. With all that in mind, here's a new playlist!

Featuring tunes from: New Order, The Cult, Screaming Trees, Nobunny, Broken Bones, Pretty Things, Bobby Bare, Oasis, Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, James Brown, and stacks more.

Crank it up and ENJOY!!!

September 2013 Playlist

How remiss of me! I forgot to post the playlist at the start of October!

Ahh well, in time for November, you not only get September, but also the October one as well.

Let's start with September, however. What you get in this month's playlist is:

• A few songs in honour of the Australian federal election from the likes of Billy Bragg, Midnight Oil, Redgum, Reset and more
• Classics from The Band, Pink Floyd, The Police, Motorhead, MC5, Infectious Grooves, Meat Loaf, Janis Joplin, Jerry Reed and more
• Australian rock from Motorace, Master's Apprentices, INXS, Chain, Hunters and Collectors, Frente, The Dugites and more
• New tunes from Arctic Monkeys, Diesel, Cactus Channel, Ice Sea Dead People, The Public Opinion Afro Band, Shat Shorts, Spiderbait and more
• Oddness from The Dumb Earth, Captain Everything, Muhal Richard Abrams, Notorious Cherry Bombs, Yellow Scab, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy and heaps more.

ENJOY!!!

August 2013 Playlist

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there.

Here's a present for you all: The latest mixtape/playlist from The Sound and the Fury!

Featured this month is some rocking new tunes from Ice Sea Dead People, Destruction Unit, Super Best Friends, Shiny Toy Guns, Scott and Charlene's Wedding, Potty Mouth, Little Green Cars and heaps more

Classics from REM, George Formby, The Oils, Bob Dylan, Zappa, The Everly Brothers and heaps more

and is bookended by a couple of classic 12-inch mixes from Blondie and the Pointer Sisters.

Put it on Random, crank it up and ENJOY!!!

July 2013 Mixtape

Happy birthday to all the horses in the world, for the first day of August.

As usual, new month, new playlist, wrapping up all the cool stuff we listened to and blogged about in July 2013.

We include tracks from:

Ed's Redeeming Features
The Vaccines
Foot Village
Johnny Vomit
The Who
Area-7
Black Box Recorder
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
Tumbleweed
the latest from Pearl Jam
Icecream Hands
Glass Towers
The Olivia Tremor Control

and heaps more.

Put it on random, crank it up and ENJOY!

June 2013 Playlist

Greetings to whomever is in a summer place right now! I hope you are enjoying the sunshine!

In the southern hemisphere we're currently freezing our tits off in the throes of winter.

So I guess that means that, now we are one month into the thick of it, let's have the month's playlist.

June was a busy month, but especially for the accountants of the world. In fact, happy new year to all the financial people, as your new fiscal year starts today!

But enough of the crap. In this month's playlist you get:

• New music from: Wardell, Baby Animals, Bernard Fanning, Birds of Tokyo, Black Sabbath, China Rats, Cloud Control and more
• Classics from Bachman Turner Overdrive, Boomtown Rats, Cream, Custard, Christine Anu, Dinosaur Jr, Georgia Satellites, Iggy Pop, Green Day and heaps more
• Aussie awesomeness from Hunters and Collectors, The Grapes, INXS, Little Birdy, You Am I, Magic Dirt, Missy Higgins, Rob Clarkson, The Saints, Sherbet, Sarah Blasko, Spiderbait, Youthu Yindi, Dragon, Drawn From Bees and heaps more
• Esoteric goodness from Kasai Allstars, Osibisa, Cattle Decapitation, D.R.I., Blaster The Rocket Man and more.

Chuck it on Random, crank it up and most of all, ENJOY!