The 100 Greatest Songs of the 1970s, Part XVI.

025. Elvis Costello “Alison”
(Elvis Costello)
My Aim Is True, 1977

The artist formerly known as Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus is, in my opinion (and the opinion of every right-thinking individual) one of the most creative, surprising, ambitious, intelligent, witty, and reckless in popular music — and has been for the last thirty years. This is the song that first proved he was more than just a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a sneer, the least punk song on his debut album (which wasn’t really punk either, of course; or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that punk was one of dozens of pop genres he drew on to create his music, even from the beginning), and paid the ultimate at-the-time compliment by being recorded by Linda Ronstadt. This is the real version, of course, with John McFee’s sparkling guitar work setting a cool, reflective mood and Costello’s ungainly croak tempered enough to try a little tenderness. It’s a romantic ballad in feel, but there’s still enough understated menace (“Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking/When I hear the silly things that you say”) and pugnacious attitude that his Angry Young Man reputation was preserved for a few more years. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Costello record without wordplay, and the refrain “my aim is true,” repeated so many times that it grows slightly sinister, is a perfect early example: he’s both protesting the innocence of his intentions and (potentially) threatening murder. What more can you want in a pop song?



024. Warren Zevon “Werewolves of London”
(Warren Zevon)
Excitable Boy, 1976

Just so you know, it’s not that I want to keep listing only the big hit songs for cult acts, which makes me sound like I only know these artists from the radio or some shitty $7 compilation called The Best Seventies Rock Classics . . . Ever! (And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the imputation of ignorance. Even when justified. Yes, I’m a haunted house.) It’s that, sometimes, the hit song is the best song — and also, in pop music, popularity does matter. Somehow. Warren Zevon, of course, is one of the all-time great cult acts, a man with a mean wit and the balls to use his Mellow Mafia connections in the service of cutting, vicious, visionary, and just plain wacked-out songs. This was his only real hit, a glam-by-way-of-L.A. mover, with that great minimal piano riff and a Thin Lizzy dual-guitar break — but of course, the real meat, as in any Zevon song, is in the lyrics. Just about every line here is memorable, quotable, inspired, or simply strange enough to be the making of any other song; packing them all together like this can only be described as chutzpah. From the irresistably alliterative rhythm of “little old lady got mutilated late last night” to namechecking both Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney, Jr. (oh, and “his hair was perfect”) (and “Better stay away from him/He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim/Huh!/I’d like to meet his tailor”), it’s wall-to-wall brilliance. He was often more complex, more unsparingly cynical, and more sentimental, but he was never funnier.



023. Sly & the Family Stone “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”
(Sylvester Stewart)
single, 1970

There was a period when I was at one of my lower ebbs emotionally and financially, when I played Sly & the Family Stone’s Greatest Hits (the 1970 compilation) nonstop in my car for about three weeks, never even considering changing it out (to compare, I normally get antsy if I have to listen to a single genre of music for more than an hour). Only twelve songs, and it was over in forty minutes, and I never once reached for the eject button once this song faded out, the whirr of beginning over sounded, and “I Want to Take You Higher” blasted out again. Setting aside the sheer physical impossibility of preventing “I Want to Take You Higher” from playing on, Sly & the Family Stone from 1966 to 1970 are the greatest band in the world for handling depression. It’s not that they don’t acknowledge it — it’s that they can stare it down, smiling widely, because they have distilled and bottle the very essence of joy itself, and it is in their music. There is no other band that can make that claim. None. This is their last joyful song, and its heavily funky, popping bassline points the way towards their later heavy, druggy, molasses-slow music — which is just as good, in its way, but terrible for combating depression. The sentiment of the lyrics (universal gratitude for selfhood) is, amazingly, sincere, and the quick run-through of their previous hits more or less clears the decks, and makes way for the new, different, and not particularly joyful decade to come.



022. Suzi Quatro “Can the Can”
(Mike Chapman/Nicky Chinn)
single, 1973

In the years between Janis Joplin and Joan Jett, very, very few women rocked. Loads of women sang, belted, and even shouted, and not a few played any number of instruments well and loud and fast. But only a bare handful actually managed to rawk — which, considering that it was more or less the Decade of Rock, is even more embarrassing for latter-day wannabe-feminists like me. Good thing there was Suzi Quatro. If you think of her as just a glitter-band mogul-made pop-tart riding the bubblegum-glam wave established by the Sweet, Slade, and Gary Glitter — well, yeah, she was that. But she was also an experienced rock & roller, having led garage bands in Detroit’s notoriously raucous scene (Bob Seger, the Stooges, the MC5, and Mitch Ryder were no accident) during the 60s, and her image as a sexy leather-clad bitch was of her own devising. Like the Walker Brothers, the Pretenders and the Strokes, she went to England to break huge, and it worked — the Chapman/Chinn songwriting and production team gave her of their best, which was pretty damn good. The swinging Bo Diddley toms and crunchy goodness of the guitars are what initially sells the song, but check how it just keeps rising — by the end, she’s flat-out screaming. “Honey! Honey! Honey! Honey! Honey!” It’s probably about putting out — hey, slut-pop didn’t start with Britney (or Madonna), you know — but Suzi’s aggressive presence makes it sounds like a radical feminist stance.



021. Ultravox “Hiroshima Mon Amour”
(Warren Cann/Billy Currie/John Foxx)
Ha! Ha! Ha!, 1977

They are the forgotten band, the missing link between Roxy Music and Duran Duran, the inventors more or less single-handedly of the fey, mysterious New Romantic aesthetic. And this song is where it happened. The record, which came out the same year that Never Mind the Bollocks did, is mostly unwieldy, overlong postpunk which thinks it’s more abrasive and transgressive than it is — and then this song is tacked on the end of it, and we’re in another world, a cooler, more well-designed world, with a grey frost in the air and the sound of faraway machinery. John Fox’s elegant cut-rate Ferry voice moans fragmented images inspired by Alain Resnais’ foundational text of New Wave cinema (this is where the connection lies, if there is one, between the two New Waves), and a lush synthesizer creates a vast featureless space around him. Then comes the saxophone solo. Played by a guy named cc from the incredibly obscure and apparently-unrecorded band Gloria Mundi, it’s reminiscent of Andy Mackay’s playing in Roxy Music, but it’s also astonishing how well it matches the cold, limited palette of the synthesized backdrop — never has a sax been played with so much fire and generated so little heat. It’s a groundbreaking song, taking the arty lushness of Eno, Bowie, and Roxy Music and whittling it down to fit into the smaller, less pretentious pop arena created by punk. And it just floats.


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