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Middle-aged teenager picks his albums of the year (2011 edition)

By Tim on December 27, 2011

Music aficionados who are a lot smarter than I will ever be have already made the point that this year was one full of lots of really good albums, but not that many truly great ones. That made coming up with my top ten even harder than usual. But here goes:

• The Whole Love

Wilco
Yeah, yeah, middle-aged guy picks dad rock for his top album of the year. Piss off. This album—which is adventurous, yet familiar—shows that Wilco isn’t content to coast. Here’s a cool stop-action video for the album opener, “The Art of Almost,”:

 

• Helplessness Blues
Fleet Foxes
This was my album of the year until The Whole Love came out. A delightful and highly listenable mix of gorgeous and quirky. And speaking of gorgeous and quirky, watch this stunning video for “The Shrine/An Argument”:

 

• The Old Magic
Nick Lowe
In the last four decades, this guy has written one of the great anthems of rock (“(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”); had a brief turn as a pop star (with “Cruel to Be Kind”); produced plenty of brilliant albums (Elvis Costello’s first five, for example); made a whack of dough (when Curtis Stigers covered “Peace, Love and Understanding” for the My Bodyguard soundtrack) and then started doing whatever the hell he wanted—which, as it turned out, was to prove again and again that he is one of the great songwriters of his generation. And yet, when he opened for Wilco at Massey Hall, it was clear that many in the audience had never heard of him. Still, it was heartening to see him get a standing ovation and then hear so many people say they wanted to check out his music. (I created this Nick Lowe Starter Kit to help them.) When The Old Magic came out, I initially thought it was a little too mellow, but it has really grown on me. Listen to “House for Sale”:

 

• Thao & Mirah
Thao & Mirah
This album didn’t get anywhere near the respect it deserved. And Lee’s Palace wasn’t full when these two women played it, but if there’s any justice, it will be the next time they come to town. I couldn’t take my eyes off Thao Nguyen—not because she’s gorgeous, though she is, but because she’s such a compelling performer. Here’s “Eleven,” which they did with Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs (whose W H O K I L L album almost made this list):

 

• The King of In Between
Garland Jeffreys
His Ghost Writer is one of the classics of the 1970s and this album, which came out after a thirteen-year silence, shows this legend still has it after all these years. What a shame that only about 100 people showed up for his show at the Mod Club, but Jeffreys played as though the place had been sold out for months. What a performer. Watch the video for “Coney Island Winter”:

 

• El Camino
The Black Keys
These guys are good. But you knew that. Enjoy this charming video for the infectious opener, “Lonely Boy”:

 

• Yuck
Yuck
An impressive debut. Here’s the video for a damn fine pop song called ”Suicide Policeman”:

 

• Slave Ambient
The War on Drugs
Layering guitar rock and atmospherics on top of Dylanesque songwriting isn’t exactly an obvious formula, but it works. Really well, in fact. Here’s “Your Love Is Calling My Name”:

 

• Smoke Ring for My Halo
Kurt Vile
The guy who left The War on the Drugs also put out a fine album. Watch the video for “Jesus Fever”:

 

• Bon Iver
Bon Iver
I have to admit I go back and forth on Justin Vernon. Some truly fabulous songs, but after I hear several in a row, I start to get annoyed and want to hear something different. And all those shrieking teenager girls at his Massey Hall show were super annoying. But then I listen to a song like “Holocene” again and, well…

 

Missed it by the much (in alphabetical order):

Burst Apart, by the Antlers; Metals, by Feist; Circuital, by My Morning Jacket; All Eternals Deck, by The Mountain Goats; Creep On, Creepin’ On, by Timber, Timbre; Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, by WU LYF; W H O K I L L, by tUnE-yArDs, Civilian by Wye Oak; The Year of Hibernation, by Youth Lagoon; Strange Mercy, by St. Vincent. And a bunch of others (some of which, I’m sure, I haven’t even heard yet).

 

 

 

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A fond farewell

By Tim on December 21, 2011

 

Over the last four years, I’ve spent a lot of time in the magazine lab at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism. That’s because I’ve been the instructor on five issues of the Ryerson Review of Journalism (Summer 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Winter 2011 and Winter 2012). The job is an unbelievable time suck, there are moments of ridiculous stress and the pay is an insult, but each issue has also been an incredibly fulfilling experience. I’m always really proud of what my fabulous students accomplish and it’s a genuine pleasure to watch them grow as journalists, as leaders and — I hope this doesn’t sound too mawkish — even as people. Right before my eyes. I’m also often awed by how smart and talented they are and I just hope they remember me when they run the world (or at least run the world’s news outlets).

So I’ve done five issues now (the only people who have survived more are or were full-time faculty members) and I know I can’t do the Winter 2013 issue because of my upcoming stint as writer-in-residence at Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon. Never say never, of course, and Haley Cullingham, the editor of the new issue, was recently on Twitter taking bets that I would return because, she claims, I take a certain “masochistic pleasure” from the experience. But I figure this is my last issue. And I’m delighted to be going out on such a strong one.

Thanks to everyone I’ve worked with over years, especially the five super talented editors who managed to put up with me: Canice Leung, Marit Mitchell, Katherine Laidlaw, Liam Casey and Haley Cullingham. It’s been a fun ride and, really, a guy can’t ask for anything more than that.

 

 

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Nick Lowe Starter Kit

By Tim on September 17, 2011

 

Nick Lowe, a 62 year old with a shock of white hair, is the opening act on the Wilco tour. And if last night’s performance at Massey Hall is any indication—he earned a standing ovation—a lot of people will be checking out his music for the first time. If you’re one of those people, here’s an eleven-song Nick Lowe starter kit:

“House for Sale”
From The Old Magic (2011)
One of many examples of how Lowe makes songwriting seem easy: DtYOh_UpWeM

“Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day”
From At My Age (2007)
My second favourite Lowe album—after The Convincer—is At My Age and this is just one of the many wonderful songs on it. Here he is doing it as part of an NPR Tiny Desk Concert: 8_iFgtf2Ag4

“Lately I’ve Let Things Slide”
From The Convincer (2001)
Anyone who’s ever had a broken heart will know what Lowe is singing about in this sadly gorgeous song about a man’s “exquisite hurt”: watch?v=1HO4mTPJUMw

 “Poor Side of Town”
From The Convincer (2001)
Although he’s one of the finest songwriters around, Lowe is also a fabulous interpreter of other people’s great songs. He says he keeps working away at a tune until it feels as though he wrote it. If this brilliant cover of Johnny Rivers’s 1966 hit is anything to go by, that’s an excellent approach. Love, love this song: watch?v=da-Is1lZOS0

“The Beast in Me”
From The Impossible Bird (1994)
Lowe wrote this for Johnny Cash who was, for a time, his father-in-law. You may also know it from The Sopranos: watch?v=hlQ3RumReqU

“12-Step Program (to Quit You Babe)”
From The Impossible Bird (1994)
One of my wife’s favourites (should I be worried about that?): SaGOH_fMkwM

“All Men Are Liars”
From Party of One (1990)
A song that makes fun of Rick Astley while admitting men aren’t perfect: watch?v=m6hzkBihaew

“I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock & Roll)”
From The Rose of England (1985)
A rockier tune from a really good country album: watch?v=Kn1CXbf2xF8

“Cruel to Be Kind”
From Labour of Lust (1979)
This bit of pop perfection was a big hit during Lowe’s brief pop star phase: watch?v=b0l3QWUXVho
 
“So It Goes”
From Jesus of Cool; released in North America as Pure Pop for Now People (1978)
Lowe’s solo debut had great titles on both sides of the Atlantic, didn’t it? This song is one he recorded with Rockpile, the band he was in with Dave Edmunds: 7O4GagrfqO8
 
“(What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”
From The New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz (1974)
This song, which many people assume Elvis Costello wrote, is now something of a rock anthem and I’ve seen artists as varied as U2, Steve Earle and Midnight Oil perform it live. But Lowe wrote and performed the original when he was in seminal pub rock band Brinsley Schwarz. Costello made it famous, but Curtis Stigers made Lowe a rich man when he covered it for the soundtrack to My Bodyguard. A live BBC version: watch?v=_l_lPhUcBR8

 

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Jobs, like the legendary magazine editors, trusted his gut

By Tim on August 27, 2011

My first journalism  job was at a magazine called InfoAge, which was all about what we then called microcomputers. I went to a lot of press conferences where hopeful manufacturers launched new models; the release of the Apple II in 1977 had turned a hobbyist gadget into something surprisingly powerful and then IBM’s introduction of its PC in 1981 made the “home computer” a legitimate business tool — and created a mad scramble of other companies that saw money to be made. At the time, I owned a machine that ran on an operating system called CP/M (don’t ask) so I wasn’t in the Apple camp or the IBM one, though Big Blue’s dominance of the computer industry frightened me (funny how that sounds now). But, in December of 1983, Apple gave me a sneak peak at a computer it was about to release.

I’d played on the Lisa, a graphical interface computer that had bombed for the company. But the Macintosh astonished me. And I’ve been an Apple guy ever since. By Easter, I owned a Mac and I kept it for nine years (though I did upgrade the original 128K of RAM to 512K). When it died, I switched to a PowerBook and then, in 1998, the original Bondi Blue iMac. Just about everyone I knew used PCs, but I argued, “Why would you drive a Dodge Dart when you could be behind the wheel of a Porsche?” As a Mac user and music lover, I downloaded iTunes early in 2001 and then heard about the iPod. I begged my wife to buy me one for Christmas and ever the enabler, she did, even though she wasn’t even quite sure what it was — and it cost $600 in Canada. I adored that thing. It was the one possession I wouldn’t have given up for anything. My five-gigger died a while ago, as did the 10GB model I bought my wife the following Christmas. But my 20GB and 80GB models are still going strong and my wife uses a Nano and a Touch. I also have an iMac, a MacBook, an iPhone and an iPad. I guess I’m a good customer.

My first iPod: five gigabytes of amazing

Although I never met Jobs, I was lucky enough to interview Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Along with three or four other computer journalists, I sat down with him in a room in Toronto’s King Edward Hotel. Fortunately, my story on The Woz is not online — the writing is surely cringeworthy — but I remember two things from that meeting. First, I pissed off my colleagues by asking several questions about the Clash’s performance at the second of the two US Festivals that Wozniak had sponsored. (After arguing with Van Halen backstage and demanding hefty donations to charity before they would play, the angry members of the Clash hit the stage and, apparently, delivered an incendiary set.) The second was what he said about design: he and Jobs had really studied Braun because they loved the design of its products. This was an astonishing thing for someone in the computer industry to say in 1984.

Needless to say, I’ve been reading many different takes on Steve Jobs’s resignation as CEO. Many have been excellent — The New Yorker had several good pieces on its site — but “What Makes Steve Jobs Great,” by Joe Nocera in The New York Times is perhaps the best of the lot. Nocera, who spent a week with the man for a 1986 Esquire profile, writes, “The Steve Jobs I watched that week was arrogant, sarcastic, thoughtful, learned, paranoid and ‘insanely’ (to use one of his favorite words) charismatic.” He goes on to say that what Apple will miss most is Jobs’s instincts.

I think that’s exactly right. After all, talented designers, visionary business people  and even charismatic leaders, while not exactly plentiful, aren’t that hard to find. But a guy with such great instincts, and the courage to trust them, is something else entirely. In fact, Jobs strikes me as similar to a great magazine editor, the kind who never needed consultants, readership surveys or anything else. No one told legends such as Time‘s Henry Luce, The New Yorker‘s Harold Ross or New York‘s Clay Felker what to put in their magazines, they just knew. That’s a truly rare gift in any industry.

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“You’re lucky to be alive, asshole”

By Tim on August 26, 2011

I wrote my first piece for The Toronto Standard last week. “No City for Middle-Aged Men” tells some funny (I hope) anecdotes about my experiences as a middle-aged guy who goes to lots of club shows full of lots of young people, while also trying to make a point or two about something or other.

And now, I see that Will Sheff, frontman of the indie band Okkervil River, and a truly fine songwriter, has told Pitchfork:

One of the most depressing things in the world to me is how people start to get frozen in their 30s. You’ll hear your friends say, “I don’t know any new bands,” or, “Oh, did you hear there’s a new record by this band?” And it’ll be some indie rock band where it’s like, “Really? They’re still around?” [laughs] Some people might snarkily say that about us. A music fan that doesn’t have it in them to find new music anymore is like absolute death to me. What are you even doing being alive if you’re not trying to constantly grow? And I don’t mean just in terms of music, but in terms in pushing yourself to try different foods and watch different kinds of movies. The world encourages you to lock into a particular routine. I fucking hate when I hear people in their 50s say, “I’m too old to change.” Fuck you, you’re lucky to be alive, asshole. Why don’t you try to grow? It’s a gift to get to be born and not suddenly die of cancer or get hit by a car. One day, you’re gonna be a rotting body in the ground and you’re gonna be like, “Wow, I kinda wish I listened to new music from ages 30 to 70.

I love that. Sure, you can dismiss those words as the self-serving comments of a 34-year-old musician and you can dismiss its resonance to me as a classic example of confirmation bias. But the truth is music, especially good new music, brings me so much joy. And I do feel lucky to be alive — especially after seeing two friends die from cancer in the last eight months as well as, this week, the death of NDP leader Jack Layton and the news that Steve Jobs is stepping down as the CEO of Apple. After all, I am, alas, not that much younger than those two men and, anyway, when I was a teenager my family told me I would be dead by 30 so I figure every day now is bonus material.

My motto used to be: “No guy on his deathbed ever says, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’ I’m hoping to be the first.” Lately, though, I’ve been spending too much time at the office (enjoying it more than I ever thought possible, but still). That’s why I’m glad Sheff has reminded us all about the luck of the living. And tonight, to celebrate, I am going to the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern to see Justin Townes Earle.

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Fact Checking the Fords

By Tim on July 26, 2011

I’ve launched a new side project: a Tumblr that will aggregate the fact checking of Canadian politicians of all stripes. I call it Fact Checking the Fords because I am expecting Toronto’s Ford brothers will provide a lot of the content. More than just calling out the politicians, I want to honour the journalists — professional or not — who not only refuse to take our elected representatives at their word, but actually do the research to prove them wrong. Wish more reporters would do that.

If you see anything worthy of inclusion, please let me know here or on Twitter (@timfalconer).

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Vengeance is Ford’s

By Tim on July 17, 2011

My old friend @cityslikr runs a great blog called All Fired Up in the Big Smoke, which is all about Toronto politics. He claims he will buy me two drinks for every guest post I write and you can read my latest offering here. It’s about Mayor Rob Ford and the triumph of vengeance over vision. I also mention my great-great-grandfather, who built a mansion on Jarvis St. in 1875. (No, I never met him.)

Update: Sol Chrom has already responded to my post. He ain’t buying my long-term optimism and cites several good examples of destructive leaders who were followed by managers, not visionaries.

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Ryerson Review of Journalism wins six AEJMC awards

By Tim on July 2, 2011

The Winter 2011 issue

My fabulous students, who produced the Winter 2011 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism, just won several awards in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Student Magazine Contest:

  • Winter 2011 issue (editor: Liam Casey) — First Place, Single Issue of an Ongoing Print Magazine: Editorial  
    Judge’s comments: The depth and breadth of stories covered with top-notch, professional work. I wouldn’t have known this was student journalism had I just picked it up and started reading. The stories were so compelling I could hardly put it down. The story about Esquire’s Chris Jones was just as intriguing as Jones’s work itself. And the clean yet appropriately creative design simply elevated the copy to its highest level. Nice work!
  • “Suicide Notes” by Liam Casey — First Place, Consumer Magazine Article: Investigation and Analysis  
    Judge’s comments: Well written and researched. A look at suicide and cultural shame in the decision that faces the media in choosing to (or not to) to write about suicides. The writer brought first person insight and passion to the investigation without over-playing the dramatics.
  • “140 Characters in Search of a Story” by Ashley Csanady — First Place, Consumer Magazine Article: Feature  
    Judge’s comments: This piece has all the ingredients of an ideal magazine feature: It explores the big- picture impact of Twitter on the world of journalism through a sharply focused examination of local political coverage in Ottawa. Its portrayal of the changing news business is lively and engaging. The writing is smart and creative, but not at all overwrought. The piece is impressively reported and clearly organized. It is thoughtful and analytical, but lets the facts and carefully constructed anecdotes tell the story.
  • “Not All Smurfs and Sunshine” by Matthew Scianitti — Second Place, Consumer Magazine Article: People  Judge’s comments: Stories about writers and why they write can often be painful reading. This is an outstanding exception. It details the career of Chris Jones and his long-form journalism in Esquire and other major magazines on such diverse subjects as the return home of an Iraqi KIA, Tiger Woods and movie critic Roger Ebert who was rendered mute by cancer. The author reveals Jones in all his aspects: his ambitions, both his temper and his patience, his honesty (his brother hasn’t spoken to him since he revealed the sibling’s infidelity in the Tiger Woods story), and most of all, Jones’ obsession with factual reporting. “In journalism,” the author quotes Jones as saying, “objectivity as this ideal should be replaced with truth. As long as your story is 100 percent accurate, no one can question you.” These are words for all of us to live by.

Meanwhile, the Summer 2011 issue, produced by lovely and talented people who were not my students, picked up two awards:

  • “War Torn” by Vesna Plazacic — Third Place, Consumer Magazine Article: First Person  
    Judge’s comments: A combination of memoir, reporting and analysis, this piece stands out for its ambition. The author—a daughter of a Bosnian Serb and a Bosnian Croat—uses her own divided identity to question why the world media (actually, the Canadian media) did not successfully pursue and report the Bosnian war and atrocities. The writer is most comfortable with the memoir part—and that makes it fresh—and the reporting, through key journalists who covered the war, gives a truth-in-hindsight understanding. I was not convinced by the question at the core of the story: the writer asking why the media didn’t do its job. The question felt contrived. And the resolution—that it was hard to cover the war—seemed too easy. But overall, the piece is a complex work of a careful writer willing to use her personal life as a journalistic lens.
  • “Vice Goes Global” by Stephen Baldwin — Third Place, Consumer Magazine Article: Feature  
    Judge’s comments: Who knew that Vice magazine had such an interesting history? This business feature about a media conglomerate is told with such color and detail that it makes the subject come alive in a totally engaging way. The depth of reporting, the clever organization and the intelligent, thoughtful writing combine to make this a completely professional feature article from start to finish.

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If Toronto’s Mayors Were Maple Leafs

By Tim on June 14, 2011

Last September, during the municipal election, Shawn Micallef wrote a perspicacious open letter to George Smitherman in Eye Weekly (now known as The Grid). Micallef urged the Toronto mayoral candidate to be more like Wendel Clark and less like Tie Domi. Although I am not a Maple Leaf fan, I’ve watched the team for decades and inevitably started wondering what Leafs our former mayors most resemble. So I wrote a guest post for the All Fired Up in the Big Smoke blog. Now that I’ve seen [seen enough, surely — ed.] Rob Ford in action, I’ve updated the list:

* David Crombie = Ted Kennedy

Okay, I never saw Kennedy play—I’m not that old—but many hockey historians consider him the greatest Leaf ever. Captain for eight years, “Teeder” helped the team win the Stanley Cup five times and was the last Leaf to win the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league’s most valuable player. Mayor from 1972 to 1978, Crombie led a reform council that left a legacy the city has coasted on for decades. We still remember him fondly as Toronto’s Tiny Perfect Mayor.

 

* John Sewell = Frank Mahovlich

A big, supremely talented player, the Big M helped the Leafs win the Stanley Cup four times. And yet, management mistreated him and fans booed him. Sewell had been a smart and scrappy activist alderman, but after he had the temerity to suggest Toronto cops were anything less than tops, he lasted just one term as a bike-riding, rights-defending mayor. Pearls before swine, I guess.

 

 

 

 

 

* Art Eggleton = Inge Hammerstrom

An ineffectual player, Hammerstrom could, according to owner Harold Ballard, “go into the corners with eggs in his pockets and not break one of them.” Eggleton was equally ineffectual. Unfortunately, he lasted longer as mayor than the Swedish winger lasted as a Leaf—and a lot of things broke in Toronto while he was in office.

 

 

* June Rowlands = Tie Domi

A classic NHL goon, Domi served as Leaf enforcer. Rowlands ran for mayor on a law and order platform, but is best remembered for banning the Barenaked Ladies, an innocuous Scarborough pop group, from performing at Nathan Phillips Square. While both Domi and Rowlands were embarrassing, the big difference between the two was that Domi was, inexplicably, wildly popular in Toronto.

 

* Barbara Hall = Mats Sundin

The only Swedish player to score 500 NHL goals, the talented Sundin was a rare likable player on a team full of unlikable ones (Tie Domi, Darcy Tucker, Shayne Corson). Hall was mayor during Premier Mike Harris’s war on the city. Like Sundin, she served with class during a difficult era.

 

* Mel Lastman = Tiger Williams

A notorious bad boy, Williams remains the NHL’s all-time penalty leader. Some hockey fans thought he was a goof; others found him entertaining. Ditto for Lastman.

 

* David Miller = David Keon

When I was a kid, the hockey magazines I devoured regularly referred to the small, skillful Keon as “pound for pound the best player in the NHL.” Although he was one of the greatest players to ever don a Leaf sweater, his relationship with the team eventually soured and he split. As mayor, Miller had smarts, skill and vision—and was equally underappreciated. But many of the mayor’s supporters have a nagging suspicion that, like Keon, who won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy as the league’s most gentlemanly player, the mayor would have been even more effective if he’d had Gordie Howe’s elbows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Rob Ford = Harold Ballard

Yes, I know as owner, Ballard never dressed for the Leafs, but as we’ve already started to discover, Rob Ford doesn’t do much either. Instead, his brother Doug is the player while Rob sits in his bunker and throws temper tantrums. Oh, and Pal Hal was a buffoon too.

 

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Car Songs

By Tim on June 7, 2011

Spacing magazine, which launches its first national edition tonight, is holding a road trip mix CD contest. Make a CD for Matthew Blackett’s cross-Canada drive and get a free subscription. Gotta like that.
To get you in the mood and give you some ideas, here’s the Car Song Appendix from my book Drive: A Road Trip through Our Complicated Affair with the Automobile. But please don’t steal too many of the songs from this list.

 

No matter what the audio system is, music rarely sounds better than when it’s cranked up during a road trip with friends. And automobiles never seem more full of promise—more essential—than in the lyrics of a good song about a beloved set of wheels, driving or the road. And there are a lot of them. I aimed to craft a killer playlist of car tunes, but that’s no easy task, especially since I wanted them all to fit on an eighty-minute CD, a limit that turned out to be quite painful. I ended up cutting a lot of tracks I didn’t want to lose. That caveat aside, here is an annotated version of my completely idiosyncratic playlist of the most indispensable car songs:

“Rocket 88”
Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats (1951)
This may be the first rock ’n’ roll song. Even if it isn’t, it’s a classic about cars, boozing and cruising. (Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm actually made the recording, but since Brenston, normally the group’s saxophone player, did the singing, the band used the Delta Cats moniker.)

“No Particular Place to Go”
Chuck Berry (1964)
Although Berry, who worked on an auto-body assembly line, recorded several noteworthy car songs, including “Maybellene,” “No Money Down,” and “You Can’t Catch Me,” I’ve chosen this rocker about a guy and a girl “cruising and playing the radio.” They park but the girl has a “safety belt that wouldn’t budge.”

“Little Red Corvette”
Prince, 1999 (1983)
Sure, using a car as a metaphor for a woman is nothing new, but this funky pop song is Prince at his best.

“Low Rider”
War, Why Can’t We Be Friends? (1975)
This Latin rock take on lowrider culture is hard to resist.

“Little Deuce Coupe”
The Beach Boys, Surfer Girl (1963)
No car song playlist would be complete without the Beach Boys. Although the great American pop band has plenty of automobile-related material to choose from—“Fun, Fun, Fun” and “409” would also have been fine selections—I’ve chosen this hot rod ode because of the stunning vocal arrangement.

“Driving Sideways”
Aimee Mann, Bachelor No. 2 (2000)
A lovely song about travelling with a woman who won’t navigate because she’s afraid she’ll be wrong. A metaphor for a doomed relationship.

“Brand New Cadillac”
The Clash, London Calling (1979)
Although Vince Taylor wrote this song, the Clash recorded the definitive version. A great tune from what may be the greatest rock ’n’ roll album of all time, so of course it’s going to make this list.

“Roadrunner”
The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers (1976)
This infectious garage rock anthem is about avoiding loneliness by listening to the radio and driving fast in Massachusetts. “Radio on!”

“The Passenger”
Iggy Pop, Lust for Life (1977)
My playlist includes more songs from the 1970s than any other decade. Perhaps that’s because I was a teenager back then and not because the era was the high-water mark for car music. Still, this popular proto-punk song about cruising around at night, when the city is asleep and the stars are out and “everything looks good,” is an obvious choice.

“Autobahn”
Kraftwerk, Autobahn (1974)
An improbable hit on both sides of the Atlantic, this hypnotic bit of electronic pop—complete with cars zooming by, squealing tires and other road sounds—captures the exhilarating monotony of long-distance highway driving. The fact that most English-speaking listeners misheard the song’s oft-repeated line “Fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn” as “Fun, fun, fun on the autobahn” only makes it better. (Fahren means driving in German.) There are various versions available, ranging from three minutes to nearly twenty-three minutes in length—I’ve chosen the nine-and-a-half minute one so this playlist will be burnable on a CD.

“Radar Love”
Golden Earring, Moontan (1973)
Widely considered the best driving song of all time—just try sticking to the speed limit while this song blasts from the car stereo. Just try.

“Crosstown Traffic”
Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland (1968)
Cars as sexual metaphor again—this time from one of rock’s most revered guitarists. The narrator, who will only drive ninety miles an hour, compares a “hard to get through to” woman to heavy traffic because she is slowing him down.

“Old Blue Car”
Peter Case, Peter Case (1986)
Although it earned a Grammy Award nomination, this song from Case’s solo debut is perhaps the least known on this playlist. But everyone can relate to what it’s about: he and his friends pile into an old car that will take them anywhere they want to go.

“Long May You Run”
The Stills-Young Band, The Stills-Young Band (1976)
Today, Neil Young is a devoted car collector. But back in 1965 (not in 1962 as the song suggests) he had to abandon his beloved first car—an old hearse nicknamed Mort—after it broke down near Blind River, a small town in Northern Ontario. This is his elegy to Mort.

“Passenger Side”
Wilco, A.M. (1995)
A whimsical alt-country ballad about a driver who has lost his licence and must rely on his friends to drive him around. The wasted passenger doesn’t like riding shotgun—or that his equally wasted designated driver is swerving all over the road.

“Windfall”
Son Volt, Trace (1995)
The narrator of this alt-country anthem sure loves the road trip he’s on. I’m particularly fond of the part where he finds an all-night AM radio station from Louisiana that reminds him of 1963 and “sounds like heaven.”

“This Year”
The Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree (2005)
This song is not about cars; it’s about a seventeen-year-old kid determined to survive one more year with his abusive stepfather. But I’ve included it here because songwriter John Darnielle does such a masterful job of using the car as a narrative vehicle. On Saturday morning, he finds freedom by getting in the car and driving away, fast. He gets drunk, plays video games and then meets his girlfriend (they are, he sings, “twin high maintenance machines.”) The car, stuck in second gear, screams as he turns into the driveway when he arrives home at dusk to face another inevitable ugly confrontation with his stepfather.

“(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night”
Tom Waits, The Heart of Saturday Night (1974)
I’m tempted to pick “Ol’ 55,” from Waits’s Closing Time album, but I ’m going with this tender, melancholic ballad about cruising around on a Saturday night in an Oldsmobile.

“Racing in the Streets”
Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
Given that The Boss grew up in New Jersey, it’s no surprise that cars make appearances in many of his songs, but this one from the last of his four great albums is my pick as the best of the genre. Springsteen often masks dark lyrics with rousing music, but this is no rocker; it’s a slow, seven-minute masterpiece and an unabashedly poignant portrayal of adult despair and what a car can really mean to someone. Springsteen’s working-class characters rarely see cars as simply freedom or adolescent salvation despite all their talk about promised lands: the man wooing the porch-bound Mary in “Thunder Road” knows any redemption from their loneliness that he and his car can offer will be only temporary and the cruising kids in “Born to Run” have nowhere to hide on the broken hero–jammed highways. But the narrator in “Racing in the Streets” is past even that; for him, the car represents survival. Unlike other men his age—most of whom have given up and started slowly dying—when he’s finished working at his dreary job he goes out and races his souped-up 1969 Chevy for money. His aging girlfriend wallows in her shattered dreams and even when he says he’ll drive her to the sea to wash away their sins, it’s hard to sense any optimism about it. His car and his ability to beat other drivers are all he has left.

 

 

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