Top 20 Neil Young Songs of the 1990s

Neil Young had risen to the status of Rock God in the 70s, after riding a rising wave built with the Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills & Nash, and solo classics. But the 80s had seen him falter some, with idiosyncratic projects that had lost him a lot of fans. In the 90s he was poised to retake his throne, and he struck hard right at the cutting edge of modern music. Before grunge had even made its way into the mainstream, before Nevermind had even been recorded, Neil was already releasing furious, feedback-drenched, counter culture records that could have come out of Sub Pop or Steve Albini's studio. He rocked so hard in the early 90s that he temporarily lost his hearing, and astonishingly switched gears with soft, soulful acoustic music reminiscent of his classic 70s hits.

For Neil, the 90s was an era of extraordinary, transluscent guitar jams, hearth-warming cherished ballads, and dark, somber contemplations. It was his most culturally relevant decade since the 1970s and it's some of the most fantastic music ever put to needle.

This is part two in my six-part series compiling the 100 Greatest Neil Young Songs of All-Time. Be aware this includes material released in the 90s only, but due to Neil's live performances being so part and parcel of his triumphs in this era, and due to the sheer quality of that material, live versions of old songs are included on this list. I mean, what is 90s Neil without Weld?

Click any song's name to hear it on youtube!

#20. Guitar Solo #1
[Dead Man, 1996]

The album may be confounding for those not interested in the genre, but as a fan of noise music, I couldn't be happier to learn this existed. Superior in craft to Arc and with more complex instrumentation than Le Noise, Dead Man is easily his most fully-realized and by far his best foray into noise music. All six "guitar solo" tracks are exquisite, but this first slab is the best piece, with a split between subtle soundscape and cacophony, and just a little tease of this soundtrack's recurrent melody. It's no surprise that an artist as adept at crafting sonic soundscapes in guitar jams like Cowgirl or Hurricane would be good at making noise music, but it's a big surprise that he'd bother to, for such a little-loved genre.


#19. Welfare Mothers
[WELD, 1991]

This slab of punkish glee first came out on Neil's 1979 Rust Never Sleeps, but the rowdy, thundering Weld version nearly doubles the song's original runtime with screaming guitar solos, overdrenched feedback (bring your raincoat!) and a billowing shouting match between Neil and Poncho. It's emblematic of everything great about Weld, and irrevocable proof Neil could go toe to toe with any of the loudest, grungiest, screamy-iest rock bands from the early 90s.


#18. Mansion on the Hill
[Ragged Glory, 1990]

Ragged Glory was the dawning of a new stride for Neil and it was a welcome punch in the face to fans who might have been befuddled over Neil's experimentation in the 80s. Neil opened the 90s with his hardest rocking studio album ever, and a strong new ferver that instantly ingratiated him to the alternative rock scene on the cusp of exploding. Mansion on the Hill carries a hippie message with a joyous chorus, but it rocks a knife-sharpening riff and some licks that might cut glass.


#17. Scenery
[Mirror Ball, 1995]

After meeting up at charity concerts such as Neil's Bridge School and the 22nd anniversary of Roe V. Wade (also featuring L7!), Neil and Pearl Jam "got to talkin'" and they recorded Mirror Ball together, the godfather enlisting the new wave as often happens. As you would expect, the result is looser than Pearl Jam, but tighter than Crazy Horse. The pinnacle of the record is this just-under-9-minute expanse. Like much of Neil's 90s work it is a slow, contemplative jam, this time with a strong tinge of warm world-weariness (if you can't imagine how those two can combine -- just listen to the song!)


#16. Harvest Moon
[Harvest Moon, 1992]

You might not have noticed, but Neil Young is obsessed with dancing. We have titles like When You Dance, Last Dance, We Never Danced, She's Always Dancing, and Dance Dance Dance, plus two dozen other songs about dancing like Cinnamon Girl ("your baby loves to dance"), Hanging on a Limb ("she taught him how to dance"), You and Me ("dancing in the evening light"), and you could truly go on and on. But in Harvest Moon, Neil wrote likely his best dance song ever, a cheery waltz with an infectious, irresistible rhythm and the promise of love. A mere whiff of the track imbues the listener with vivid images of paper lanterns and a wooden deck somewhere on a warm autumn's eve, fireflies all around.


#15. Love to Burn
[Ragged Glory, 1990]

A slippery-wet lick slides on down to the beach for some surf and forms the backbone of this song. Before long, Neil's crooning about romantic ghosts and grim quarrels between broken lovers, then it turns into a ten minute guitar workout. This is one of Neil's grooviest tunes, with clever lyrics and irresistible solos, an instant classic for the Crazy Horse set. One of Neil's all-time most memorable riffs.


#14. Human Highway
[Year of the Horse, 1997]

The differences between this and the many other versions (the '76 studio original, the Bridge School version with Peggy) may be subtle, but they are significant. This slow plodding, world-weary version performed by Crazy Horse is more morosely beautiful and it's the best rendition of this mournful classic. On this one you really feel their fatigue over the broken shape of the world, as they stretch out with at least one hand, grasping for understanding.


#13. Big Time
[Broken Arrow, 1996]

The 90s were a peak era for Neil to commune with his musical cousins in the modern underground, but he was also a millionaire who had been releasing records for thirty years. The trials of youth were long over and he had achieved every measure of artistic success, plus he was back on top as one of the most respected musicians of the modern day. These attitudes show through in a lot of his 90s work. Big Time is by far one of Neil's most contented songs ever, shimmering with the low heat of no worries and nowhere to go, powered by gorgeous guitar jams that go on forever.


#12. Driveby
[Sleeps With Angels, 1994]

The intention of Sleeps With Angels was to recapture the dark and experimental concepts from Tonight's the Night. But where Tonight's the Night was an "Irish wake," full of cathartic laughter in the face of death, Sleeps With Angels was just a wake, ruminating on death. Driveby is a hauntingly simplistic song built on a funeral beat and an even more mournful vocal. "I can't believe a machine gun sings," Neil croons with palpable hurt in his voice. "Driveby... driveby... driveby..." The chorus is a chant, nearly a seance.


#11. Unknown Legend
[Harvest Moon, 1992]

With a wistful, echoing electric riff trailing off into the annals of time as the song strums along with archetypal folkiness, Unknown Legend is an ode to an unsung hero working her way through life as a waitress. As someone who works at a diner, and has seen this story pan out in realtime on a dozen occasions, it does hold extra special weight with me. But it's also one of the catchiest songs on Harvest Moon, and it articulately captures the way that life runs away with us all over time.


#10. Barstool Blues
[Year of the Horse, 1997]

Year of the Horse can be a contentious live album for Neil fans, but to me it pinpoints the pinnacle of what Crazy Horse can accomplish: rock 'n rol l bar band jams so softly lucid they start seriously rubbing up against the noise genre. Contrary to the in your face attitude of Weld, Year of the Horse is a laidback, less sober affair. It's similar to the distinction between Time Fades Away and On The Beach: one's a defiant stand against the world, while the other is content to board up the windows, forget the world and wallow in a solitary haze. Nowhere is this tapped more coherently than in Barstool Blues, already a hallucinatory drinking song from the Zuma days, now it's been run through a strainer and mixed with a quart of absinthe to become a nine minute slow-pulsing journey.


#9. Transformer Man
[Unplugged, 1993]

Neil Young's stint on MTV's reputable Unplugged series was fairly haphazard, and a lot of the tracks didn't turn out flawless. But Neil always has some clever ideas up his sleeve. Going between rancorous electric guitar rock band versions, to soft-n-sweet solo-acoustic versions, and even into piano and banjo versions for any particular song is no new phenomenon for Neil. But taking songs from the electronic and vocoder-feuled Trans album for his Unplugged performance was an inspired and daring choice that most audiences hadn't been aware of. This homey, Harvest Moon-styled rendition of Transformer Man is one of Neil's most beautiful and brilliant tracks, eccentuating the utterly gorgeous melody underneath what many had soundly written-off due to its initial genre.


#8. Pocahontas
[Year of the Horse, 1997]

Pocahontas started out as a twelve-string campfire song, something a cowboy might sing on the range. On Year of the Horse it's transmuted into an acerbic electric needle, or maybe some kind of big generator with a beautiful mural painted on it: a little harsh and a lot endearing. Its dark wit becomes stronger than ever and the new electric version smartly serves as a metaphor in and of itself, of the lost paradise and increased industrialization that killed off the early American glory, as described in the song's lyrics.


#7. Slip Away
[Broken Arrow, 1996]

The typical Crazy Horse record is maybe 70% rockin' out, 30% interplanetary travel. Broken Arrow is 90-100% interplanetary travel. Heavy riffs are exchanged for cosmic, billowing ones. Slip Away takes this trend even further with a spidery, spindling instrumentation and lyrics about a lady disappearing into the music of a smoke-filled barroom. It's one of the most perfect examples of lyrics that fit the tune, and even the album. The music from Slip Away will send you flying through the clouds, and that's exactly what the lyrics say. It's on a level of pure weightlessness equaled only by a couple of Crazy Horse jams, namely Hurricane and Cortez.


#6. You and Me
[Harvest Moon, 1992]

As someone who (clearly) prefers Neil's electric work, it took me a long time to 'get' Harvest Moon. The lyrics "I was thinking 'bout you and me, making love beneath the trees. And now I wonder, could it be?" sung in an eerie-soft whispered harmony, over a sparse, fire-lit riff? This, on a fateful relisten, stopped me dead in my tracks and made me realize there's truly something to this record after all. Aside from Will to Love, which features a literal fire crackling in the background of the recording, You and Me is the all-time quintessential Neil song for laying by the fireplace or dancing in the woods beside a campfire. It is overflowing with warmth and idyllic sentimentality, but there's nothing maudlin about it, it feels genuine. It feels less like a fantasy and more like a memory, a memory of one of the best nights you ever had.


#5. Fuckin' Up
[WELD, 1991]

The 1990s were an era of disillusionment and anger, captured notably by the decade's wave of grunge rock musicians. But before anyone outside of the underground even knew that such music existed, Neil was already playing it, and even *epitomizing it*, with this cynical, self-deprecating, roaring hard rock anthem. A pounding riff informs the track while the lyrics explore feelings of being lost and helpless. This WELD live version adds that extra fuzz and fury to make an already A+ great song into a ferocious classic.


#4. Prime of Life
[Sleeps With Angels, 1994]

In Sleeps With Angels, Neil created the ultimate, indispensable 'deep night' album, emanating with the shadowy tones of a thinly-peopled after-hours jazz club. You know the place, the kind of place where the mood lighting is turned down so low, you couldn't see five feet in front of your face even if you were sober. Prime of Life is the record's moodiest cut: incomprehensible lyrics like "footsteps run down the castle hall to the rooms of the paper doll" inform you of Neil's spaced-out intentions with a soft spoken voice, while lightly touched jazz chords pace briskly by and some kind of pan flute doles out a sorrowful whine, quite possibly being performed by a satyr from another dimension. I mean, you never know what you'll find at an after-hours club.


#3. Love and Only Love
[WELD, 1991]

With a groove-tastic bassline and choppy, tasty licks dotting the length of the tune, this is one of Neil's all-time greatest jams as well as one of his best rock songs, with a killer riff and a great melody. The emphatic, epic chorus demonstrates one of my favorite of Neil's modes and it's brimming with the power of love. It's catchy and glorious. Powerhouse may be an overused phrase, but this is a true powerhouse.


#2. Like a Hurricane
[WELD, 1991]

Inarguably one of Neil's chief classics, Hurricane's been done a lot of great ways over the years. In fact, it's one of only two songs you're going to see multiple times in this top 100 project. This 90s version is utterly essential for numerous reasons. It takes the sharper tone adopted from the 70s live versions and pushes it up to 11, then adds the feedback and intensity natural to this period. The result is the most ravenous version of all-time, pitilessly pummeling you with powerful guitar licks. The song is called Like a Hurricane, and this is without a doubt the most Hurricane-like version of the track, as Neil is yet again able to speak a song's theme both with its words and its instruments. This is also the longest released version of the song, at a delicious 14 minutes!


#1. Change Your Mind
[Complex Sessions, 1994]

Change Your Mind captures the supreme best of both Neil's great achievements in the 90s, his shadowy, subtle side, and his screaming guitar side. Hailing originally from Sleeps With Angels, it wholly encapsulates the murky-cool atmosphere of that record, plus the most serene and gorgeous guitar solos you'll find this side of Cowgirl in the Sand. At the eight-minute mark, the song slows down to a quiet crawl and enters pure transcendence, letting the band have real space to breathe and coax reluctant spirits from the ether. It's a revelation of a song, one of a kind. Helmed by award-winning film director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) who would go on to film 3 feature-length concerts films for Neil, The Complex Sessions captured an even purer, even smokier, even darker version with superior slick jams.

There you have it! Check back for my entries regarding the 21st Century, 60s/70s, and Performance Series, together forming Neil's 100 best songs!

Krampus (2015) Review

**NO SPOILERS**

The richly grim ancient Germanic myth of Krampus, the creature that tortures naughty children at Christmas time, has been increasing in popularity among Westerners over the last few years. A major release picture about him was inevitable (several more are currently in various stages of production), but luckily it was Trick 'r Treat director Michael Dougherty who was able to put together his film and make it the first (among the wide release audience).

People have a lot of highly divergent expectations coming into this film, so what'll be most helpful is if right off the bat I explain what exactly this film is, and what it isn't.

For those who don't know, Krampus is the spiritual sequel to director Mike Dougherty's previous film, Trick 'r Treat: a cult classic widely regarded as the ultimate Halloween-themed film. So for those of you wondering how Krampus compares to its predecessor, it doesn't capture the Christmas spirit quite as insanely iconically as Trick 'r Treat captured Halloween. But you should have been expecting that, because it'd be superhuman for anyone to be able to repeat something so utterly flawless. That's like asking Nirvana to do another song not just creatively or subjectively better than Smells Like Teen Spirit, but one with an equal impact on pop culture and music trends, of which Teen Spirit was in the all-time elite group to begin with.

But Krampus does deliver the Holiday Spirit, and it never needed to be THE ultimate Christmas Spirit film because we already have that, a dozen times over. Part of what makes Trick 'r Treat so iconic is the mystifyingly scarce number of films that tap into the Halloween atmosphere to begin with, so Trick 'r Treat is like an oasis in the desert. Krampus is competing in a very different arena, one flush with classic Christmas films.

The other thing that a lot of people were wondering about was the film's rating, and whether it could be adequately frightening as a PG-13. Well, make no mistake, this is a Christmas movie and a family movie, with the appropriate sentimentality for that genre. If you're looking for a purely sadistic, gruesome Christmas horror like one of those many slasher-Santa flicks, this is not the right place to look.

But is that really what we wanted out of Krampus, anyway? I'd certainly love to see a more violent version, but that's what we have been and will be getting from the many other Krampus films. Dougherty is so adept at crafting perfect holiday films, it would have been an atrocious waste of his talents to make merely a Christmas-themed horror film like your usual slasher. Instead, he made a movie that is both a great Christmas film and a great horror film, two individual genres each with their own merits. It's both a disturbing monster flick, and a great entry into the tradition of Christmas cautionary fables like A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life.

But if you're wondering about the horror, oh yes, there's great horror. This kind of just twisted, weird horror is much more affecting to me than your basic ghost, zombie, or murderer who I've been subjected to ten billion times. This movie is classic, creepy,  fun. If you like old school horror movies like Child's Play and Puppet Master then you will appreciate Krampus on an even higher level. The practical creature effects... mm-mm, so sublime! The designs are disturbing and the action is spot-on. It's also a fantastic siege movie, fondly reminiscent of recent cult-hits like Feast and Dog Soldiers. Plus the atmosphere of being stuck in a raging blizzard is both unnerving, and it adds well to the Christmas atmosphere.

Notably, the Krampus myth is handled excellently. They don't pervert or twist the general concept of the myth, which was a very valid concern. A surprisingly huge number of Krampus interpretations in the US have been quick to recast him as Santa's arch nemesis, and place them in an unending duel for the soul of Christmas, like Batman and The Joker over the soul of Gotham.

That's a fun interpretation and all, but I find the real Krampus myth more appealing because it is more primal and elemental. Like the amazing character of Sam in Trick 'r Treat, Krampus is portrayed here as a force of nature that predates Christianity and the holiday he has come to represent. Krampus works in tandem with Saint Nicholas, like a yin and yang. When you make Krampus into an anti-Christmas creature, you're losing the best part of what he does. Krampus exists to make sure you're good for Christmas, he's an altruistic force of violence. He's the symbol for those of us who love Christmas cheer AND horror, be merry or deal with his wrath! Isn't it more frightening to think that Santa is working WITH this monstrous demon, the Krampus?

Ultimately, Krampus isn't a perfect 10 out of 10 like the immaculate Trick 'r Treat, but it has already earned a rightful place in my Christmas pantheon and I'll be watching it at least every couple of years just like Bad Santa and Miracle on 34th St. Comedy isn't my main preference for horror, but the jokes here hold up and it doesn't detract from the terror. And the terror is scary good fun dripping with atmosphere and obscurity, just the way I like it. For horror fans, this will run as a great triple feature with Rare Exports and Gremlins.

In fact, I feel obliged to mention that Krampus is a decisively superior film to Rare Exports, which is exactly what I was hoping. Where Rare Exports was very cool and atmospheric, Krampus is equally so, but with a vastly superior follow through for the story, and a stronger mythos. They're both fun, dark, cool Christmas horror movies, but Krampus doesn't render the villain impotent by... well, I won't spoil Rare Exports, if you haven't seen it. It's a Finnish film about a boy who discovers the "real" Santa, a monster that punishes naughty children. You should check it out if you haven't, it's quite good. But check out Krampus first, as it's quite better. And the film seems to be doing good business, so hopefully it will help Michael Dougherty do many more projects including Trick 'r Treat 2 and possibly Krampus 2 as well.

Top 15 Neil Young Songs of the 1980s

Neil Young is one of rock music's foremost legends, as well as one of its perennial outcasts. For every beautiful lovesong he has a searing guitar jam, and for every crowd-pleasing classic record, he has a head-scratching experiment in conceptual songwriting. Today I begin my five-part series compiling the 100 Greatest Neil Young Songs of All-Time.

If anyone can claim a title like this, Neil is the musician who has been all things, tried all things. And he did most of those things in the 1980s alone. Easily his most contentious period in a career full of them, the 80s was marked by erratic 180 degree turns in style, and eccentric genre experiments. A new album meant a new style, from old time rockabilly, hardcore country & western, and big band jazz, to oddball electronica.

But those who would write-off the decade as a failed experiment will be denying themselves some of Neil's most sardonic, electrifyingly inspired, and most craftily-written material. Hidden in this strange hodgepodge is a lot of material that transcends into Neil's pantheon, with twang and wit.

So here are the 15 best Neil Young songs of the 1980s. And just to be clear, this comprises only songs that Neil Young released in the 1980s, not material recorded in the 80s that has since been released, such as the Lucky Thirteen rarities and the Performance Series live albums. That material will be included in a different list.

Click any song title to hear it on youtube!

15. T-Bone 
[Re-Ac-Tor, 1981]

Recalling the monotonous tone of the daily grind from Last Dance on 1973's Time Fades Away, T-Bone is a no-holds-barred guitar fest, displaying over 9 minutes of soloing and only one line of lyrics: Got mashed potatoes, ain't got no T-Bone. This slab of steak may be an acquired taste for many, but to us Neilheads who can't get enough of his guitar, it's an ironic classic. Hey, we can't all afford that T-Bone, Shakey's just laying some reality on us with this dinner plate metaphor.


14. Someday
[Freedom, 1989]

This calmly sentimental piano ballad is as shining & softy as Neil ever gets, but it also takes shots at disingenuous televangelists and pollution. It's smart, cool, and bound to cause a flutter in your heartstrings.


13. Mideast Vacation
[Life, 1987]

-- Over a spacey beat (reminiscent of Ment at Work's hit song Down Under) Neil paints a picture of himself as a marauder, then as a family man who goes up against middle eastern protesters who burn him in effigy. It's dark, cool, and strange, like the best of Neil's 80s material.


12. Too Lonely
[Life, 1987]

-- This is probably the most punk rock song you'll hear from Neil. He has his stable of punkish songs like Piece of Crap and Sedan Delivery, but they sound as much like classic Crazy Horse as something you might hear from a different punk band. Too Lonely sounds like it could be a Ramones acetate, it doesn't even sounds like Crazy Horse until you get to the chorus riff.


11. Sample and Hold
[Trans, 1982]

-- With the droning industrial pace and Fordian factory lyrics, this song best exemplifies the concept of Neil's synth-born Trans experiment. It's one of Neil's most unique pieces, not just an electronic track but a pounding industrial dance song, and a darn fine one.


10. Shots
[Re-Ac-Tor, 1981]

-- This nearly-8-minute chugging jam has a markedly apocalyptic sound, with screeching guitars accompanied by machine gun fire. It adds a hard rock 80s flare to The Horse's well-worn approach.


9. Prisoners of Rock 'N' Roll
[Life, 1987]

-- Defiant, simplistic, party-time garage rock; certainly no rarity from Crazy Horse. It sounds like an outtake from Rust Never Sleeps. But after spending the rest of the decade shying away from this iconic style, Prisoners of Rock 'N' Roll seems like a breathe of fresh air and a new lease on life for Crazy Horse, foreshadowing Neil's return to a more traditional form in the 90s.


8. We Never Danced
[Life, 1987]

-- This celestial slow dance is both buddingly romantic and sadly final. You get the feeling that although Neil's hopeful to reconnect with his would-be-bae, that connection is likely never to come around again. Originally written to be performed by lite pop artist Martha Davis of the Motels for a film named Made in Heaven, it's one of Neil's purest and most competent pop compositions.


7. This Old House
[American Dream, 1988]

-- Crosby Stills Nash & Young reunited in the late 80s for one of their few studio albums. Neil brought them one of his best country songs, a harmonized acoustic groove about an idyllic life and the fact that it's all about to end when the bank repossesses the house. It's the dark flipside to Graham Nash's iconic Our House, which also can serve as a grim metaphor for CSNY themselves (and that may well have been Neil's intention, considering he had recently released Hippie Dream, an angry tune about how "the Wooden Ships were just a hippie dream.")


6. Around The World
[Life, 1987]

-- After the full-on industrial style of Trans, Neil continued to flirt with electronic music for most of the 80s, but with incorporating more of his original rock style. This gem hails from his last album to incorporate electronica and it is one hell of a rip-roaring good track, his hardest rocking of that form.


5. Too Far Gone
[Freedom, 1989]

-- Another one of Neil's premier country laments; This terse, tasty ditty details the aftermath of a night of drunken debauchery and the broken nature of a relationship it illuminates. It's sad, it's sweet, it's one of Neil's smartest love/breakup songs.


4. Touch the Night
[Landing On Water, 1986]

-- Keeping the electronic pulse, dropping the robot vocoder voice, and amping up the guitars even more, Landing On Water is a pretty solid and much underrated Neil album. Touch the Night's fidgeting riff, utterly epic tone, and plasmatic lyrics fill me with emotion every time I listen. It's always been one of my dream encore songs from Neil, it just feels like a magic song.


3. Crime in the City (Sixty to Zero)
[Freedom, 1989]

-- Over a smooth as warm cream, lightly picked guitar and brushed drums, Neil spends almost 9 minutes painting an elaborate picture of cops and robbers, producers and musicians, and ultimately himself -- brooding on the pains of divorce, the complications of adulthood, and the rebellions of youth. It's touching and strong, and one of Neil's greatest acoustic epics.


2. Misfits
[Old Ways, 1985]

-- One of the most idiosyncratic and unquestionably COOLEST songs Neil's ever recorded, Misfits is an entity unto itself. A down home western prairie song about astronauts on a space station, the emphatic, rolling chorus is guaranteed to lift you halfway to space. This is a true rebel at work.


1. Rockin' in the Free World
[Freedom, 1989]

-- There's no avoiding this one. Easily one of Neil's 5 biggest hits of all-time, RITFW is a hot coookin' rocker with a catchy chorus and his ubiquitous killer guitar. A lot of the hits lose their luster after the 200,000th listen, but Rockin' in the Free World is one of the rare few that still kicks a heap of ass. And an old hit that can still stand up to the eccentric ultra-hardcore catalog of a Neil connoisseur, those are the songs you know are truly great.

Neil Young Live at the Cellar Door

Over the last few years Neil Young has released several excellent live albums from the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a couple from later, as well. Cellar Door captures Neil in 1970 performing solo-acoustic shortly after the release of After the Gold Rush, performing at the fan-famous Cellar Door, known as the double entendre from The Needle and the Damage Done ("Caught you knockin' at my cellar door..."). But this was one of the last of Neil's live archive releases to come out (at the time), and I wrote it off as soon as it was announced.

Why? In this stark 13 song tracklist most of these songs have been released not only in *several* live versions already but even from the same time period. After Canterbury House '68, Riverboat '69, Massey Hall '71, and Four Way Street '70, I just didn't feel the need to hear Neil do the same songs, the same way. Out of 13 tracks there's literally not one song on here that hadn't already been released in an acoustic live version.

But I don't mind putting new releases on the backburner. When it comes to my favorite artists, I intentionally let material fall through the cracks so that there'll be new material to explore later. When I got around to Cellar Door it was quite a revelation... holy mother of pearl, this is one of the best live albums I have ever heard!


The sound quality on this recording is out of this world. Does the Cellar Door have preternaturally spectacular acoustics? It sounds more like a live-in-studio recording than a concert venue. It's rich and it's warm and it's so clean. This is truly what it would sound like if Neil was playing for you in your living room; you can even hear him lightly tap his guitar to keep rhythm on Only Love Can Break Your Heart.

It's a more tender, gentler, more intimate record than Neil has perhaps ever recorded. It's an album to listen to while watching the sunset or drinking your morning tea. An unassuming setlist is somewhat empowered by rare interpretations such as Cinnamon Girl and Flying on the Ground is Wrong now reborn as piano ballads instead of being done on the guitar. It's amazing how he can play these same songs so many times and somehow keep doing unique versions of them. Songs like Old Man and Down by The River which have been done so ad nauseum (4 official versions of Old Man, 6 of Down by The River), somehow become genuinely meaningful again in this new setting with Neil's naked delivery.


I'm not sure if this is necessarily Neil Young's best acoustic live album. Canterbury House has long been my favorite with its stark style and adventurous setlist. Cellar Door may do absolute wonders with its material but it still could have had a better stock of material to draw from.

Cellar Door still may be the best, though. Ultimately I don't think any Neil collection would be complete without both Canterbury House and Live at the Cellar Door. But what I can definitely say for Cellar Door is that it's a marvel of intimacy, and it's the best 'album' out of all Neil's acoustic live albums. It's a record that could have come out as a "live studio album" like Rust Never Sleeps, it really works and flows in a perfect way.

Madoka Magica The Movie: The Rebellion

Non-Spoiler Preamble
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Madoka Magica ranks among the only recent anime to really capture my imagination (its only counterpart being the much fluffier 'Good Luck Girl), so I was excited to see the films as well. 'Course, you have to wonder... with a show so perfectly concluded, should they have continued the story in the first place? I mean, the TV series had one of the best, most gorgeously executed finales. Madoka Magica overall would merely rank as a great TV series, but those last few episodes would surely rank among the best TV episodes of all-time. So by giving us a movie that continues past the show's ending, you're really playing with fire.

Is the potential gain from more Madoka material necessarily worth the risk of ruining one of TV's best climaxes? I can think of at least one unnecessary coda: Gundam Wing Endless Waltz. I found that movie extremely mediocre and it robbed us of the logical stopping point from the series.

So that's the kind of fear I came in with to Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. I very seriously debated not watching the film at all, and letting the TV ending be the only ending I know. But... how could I resist. I had to see more.

Having now seen the film, I can say that while it was not necessary, neither was it a failure. In fact, it managed to recapture the soul of the series in certain ways I was not expecting.

Stylistically the movie is extremely bizarre. But often beautifully so, with gorgeous renderings of the archetypical magical girl content (the transformation scene is freaking amazing!) You could say they're even more beholden to Evangelion now, doubling down on the psychedelic antics and giving up huge swaths of the film for pure exposition and pure metaphysical dialogue -- material you probably could have worked more seamlessly into the narrative if this had been a 12 episode TV season instead of a 2 hour film.

But I honestly didn't feel like they were piggybacking on Evangelion as much here because Madoka has built up its own mythology now, and all the content in this film is connected very strongly to what has been previously established. I certainly wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone who is unfamiliar with the content of the TV series/films, because they make zero attempts to refresh your memory about anything. Instead they throw a dozen new things at you and expect you to keep up. It's a pretty confusing film, and I'm not 100% sure of everything that happened, myself. But unlike the first time I watched The End of Evangelion (granted, I was 12, and I've since come to understand the film intimately), it's pretty clear that everything in Madoka Magica: The Rebellion makes relatively good sense. And a second viewing should clear up any slight loose ends.

All in all, I don't think I can say that The Rebellion is as good as the original Madoka Magica. But what it did give me was that incredible rush, that incalculable feeling of being completely absorbed into a story -- and really being invested in how it turns out. And that's probably the thing I least expected from the film -- having been so roundly satisfied by the story's original conclusion already. The Rebellion captures some of that magic, which is something you can't put a price on.

The longer I live, the harder it is to invest on that extra, almost preternatural level. And while the film may not quite match the original, it does a good job at trying and it's a worthy successor to an instantly-classic show. So to those on the fence about whether or not they want to watch this -- I heartily recommend a view.

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Okay, from this point on it will be necessary to delve into hefty spoilers. So if you haven't seen the film, stop fuckin' readin' bro! No reason to spoil yourself, that's what grandparents are for.

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They've ruined Madoka Magica.

The series I knew and loved, it's dead and buried.

But I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way.

The best thing about these type of shows is that they can throw you for a genuine loop. And Madoka Magica: The Rebellion does that at least a few times. In the first ten or fifteen minutes everything seems hunky dory and I thought they were tailoring the film for an audience that hadn't seen the rest of the story, and that we'd get a big disillusionment moment like we've had before. But that didn't exactly happen, not until the last 10 minutes of the film.

The mystery 'city in a bottle' plot seemed pretty standard for an anime or psychological thriller, certainly not strange compared to what we've already seen from the franchise. It definitely kept me guessing, and it was very cleverly executed, but it didn't blow my mind.

Everything ramped up to a tearful, bittersweet conclusion. My biggest fear was that the new film would undo Madoka's sacrifice. But they didn't, it seemed. They added Sayaka and Nagisa ("Bebe") to Madoka's journey, which was kinda cool. I came into the film wondering if it would ruin what the series had accomplished, and it didn't (it seemed). The film seemed to be a beautiful little Coda, a long and satisfying journey to bring Homura home after her terrible ordeal, almost like the ending to Return of the King.

I was ready for a perfect, tidy coda. To make everything extra neat and extra sentimental, they even played up this kind of destiny love angle where everyone had their perfect companion: Homura had Madoka, Sayaka had Kyoko, and they even introduced this new Magical Girl character for Mami, named Bebe (Mami and Bebe -- aka "mommy" and "baby.")

And right in the final throes, right before our big cathartic release, snap! Crack! The darkness creeps in, as it is wont to do. Here I had gone through the whole film thinking "This is fucking awesome as Hell. But is there any deconstruction going on? I don't really know the Magical Girl genre well enough to know if they're subverting any tropes here or not. It kind of just seems like a regular -- albeit superior and spectacular -- Magical Girl story."

Well, there comes the trope-subversion. You expected a happy ending, but our story's heroine just turned into a demon and trapped Madoka into some sort of... limbo? Alternative state? "Maybe I'll destroy the universe," she says. Well, that's reassuring. At least there's an implied "maybe I won't."

Dark Homura

I, just a few days ago, identified Homura as one of the coolest characters of all-time. Does that still hold true with these latest revelations? I'm not sure. The sympathetic badguys tend to be my favorite characters, like Magneto and Walter White. So Homura would seem to fit, but I'm not sure I like her as a villain.

I liked her as a tragic hero. I liked her as an alternative archetype. We're not allowed to root for the single-minded obsessives anymore, because in real life those people are insane and often dangerous. But I enjoyed the old world mentality of Homura; that someone would show you just a moment of kindness and that was justification enough to dedicate the rest of your life -- in fact, dozens of your lives -- to rewriting the universe in their favor. I liked it because it was different, she was someone who made it look good, when I've been shitting on those type of characters for years (see: Aang's crush on Katara from Airbender).

Can I reconcile my reverence for the character with a now-evil Homura? Well, originally I loved Madoka Magica's conclusion for its idyllic sheen, its endearing and iconic optimism. As a child I found that same optimism from Sailor Moon but as an adult it's hard to get that feeling from it. Yet when something like Madoka Magica runs it through the ringer, brings you to the light through a detour in the dark, intuitively that feels a lot more real to an adult, because we know life isn't just hunkydory all the time.

And I'm sad to lose that. Take away Homura's purity and you're negating her whole quest, and even Madoka's sacrifice, which was resultant from that quest. But now I can try... at least try, to appreciate it in a different way. The dark side of being single-minded, the dark side of being obsessive, now manifests itself in Homura. If she would give up the world for her, wouldn't she grab her when she has the chance? This is the more true to life version, and how can I blame them for going that route? This is, after all, a show about deconstruction, a show that takes the tropes and makes them more realistic.

It'll be a process. I'll have to wait and see if I can end up liking Homura as much now that I see the full extent of her. But I'm starting to warm up to it, a little. Like I said, the villains are usually my favorites. I can relate to her in this form as well. If you gave me godlike powers over time and space? Can I say that I wouldn't do as Homura has done? No, of course not. That's exactly what I would have done in her place. That's exactly what I would have done from the start -- if Kyubey offered me a wish. Something neither sinister, nor altruistic. Something grey like Homura is doing.

I don't really need any new villains to relate to, I already have that covered. I preferred Homura as something different, and now she's kind of the same. But at least it lets this new movie stay true to the original series -- by fucking over the original series. I would have preferred the cutesy coda I was expecting before the ball dropped. But I can never, in good conscience, fault a story for taking extreme chances and daring to cross lines. By ruining the original series, the new films have stayed true to the deconstructive heart of that series, and that's something impressive; something that's still rare.

Carousel

Of course, the story isn't over yet. There's obviously going to be another Madoka film, and possibly more after that. By the end of it all, we're more than likely to get a happy ending again.

But that opens up a whole new bag of worms. Is that really a journey worth going on again, if we end up just going in a circle? The original Madoka Magica series did an utterly flawless job on that cycle, from despair to triumph. For the films to be a worthy addition to the mythos, the least they're going to have to do is add a further element onto the theme. Perhaps the idea is that the circle is inevitable, that you can keep correcting the path with Madoka's Law of the Cycle and whatever course correction they inevitably use to save and/or defeat Homura, but because grief and despair are inherent counterparts to joy, a new form of witches/wraiths/nightmares will always arise and no magical law of physics has the power to cleanse the world permanently.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. Just cross your fingers these movies keep coming out stateside, unlike the Neon Genesis Evangelion films which seem to have been stopped at the border like a shipment of drugs.

Madoka Musica

I'm not as adept at it as I am with my two other extremely bizarre hobbies (TV network programming and composing concert setlists), but another thing I like to do is make playlists inspired by stories -- generally books, but sometimes such as in this case. Madoka Magica is an incredible TV series which deconstructs the "Magical Girl" genre in a sinister and compelling way. I was thrilled to put together a ersatz soundtrack to this show.

1. I Wish... -- Drain STH

A wish can be a powerful thing. This late-90s all-female grunge band serves up the classic desire ("I wish that I could hold you...") with several heaps of self-loathing. Its dark demeanor and all-fated tone makes it fit pretty well for our ill-fated heroes.


2. Magic -- The Pussycat Dolls

It's surprisingly hard to find an appropriate song about magic. I did consider Black Magic Woman, but -- whatever the sinister implications -- it's downright wrong to call Magical Girl magic Black Magic. Magical Girl magic is pink magic. Stylistically this Pussycat Dolls song is not what I would have wanted, but lyrically it works well enough. It hints at Kyoko's advice to Sayaka about not giving a single Fuck and using her magic to break Kyousuke's legs and force him to love her.


3. Season of the Witch -- Donovan

The very first song I think of when I think of any potential Madoka Magica playlist. Shit's gettin' weird out here... must be a witch about!


4. Zombie -- The Cranberries

This alternative 90s jam just kicks ass, first of all. More importantly, it's a perfect nod to the moment of disillusion for our heroes and Sayaka's loss of faith due to her status as a "zombie." Plus its war torn imagery quite matches the bloodsoaked witch battles.


5. Time Machine -- Ingrid Michaelson

Most songs about time travel center on wanting to stop onesself from ruining a good relationship. Ingrid's take fits our story perfectly because it's the opposite, Ingrid wants a time machine so she can go back and tell herself to run, and never get involved in the first place. Well I'll be, that was precisely Homura's intention with her own time travel abilities.


6. Magia -- Kalafina

Couldn't help but to put this on here. This is the song from the show that plays whenever shit gets real.


7. Walpurgisnacht -- Bunker 66

There are many songs named Walpurgisnacht. But as you'd expect, most of them are new age fluff. This is the only one I can find which so much as hints at the inherent dread and destruction necessary for a beast like Walpurgisnacht.

8. Flirting With Time -- Tom Petty

I couldn't help but to include this underrated Petty gem (off one of his lesser records). The tone maybe cheery but it actually hits on the predicament our characters are facing very well, detailing apocalyptic visions of shadow men and an inevitable showdown. Can't help but to think of Madoka when I hear "a flash of light reminded me of you." "I've done all I can do, now it's up to you" seems to mirror the scene where Madoka gives her last grief seed up to Homura and enlists her to go back in time and stop the apocalypse.


9. Child in Time -- Deep Purple

One of the only songs in history cool enough to epitomize Akemi Homura, one of the coolest characters in history. Plus the idea of a blind man firing wildly into a crowd seems like the clear work of a witch's curse. On a deeper level metaphorically you could compare it to Homura's haphazard approach to changing history (basically just trying anything, fucking it all up and then trying again), and the ominous 'ricochete' we're listening for could be the reverberations felt throughout eternity when Homura's activity imbues Madoka with godly powers.

10. I Did It All For You -- Cowboy Junkies

Akemi Homura didn't transverse space and time to save humanity or protect the world. She did it all for one person, she did it all for Madoka. Cowboy Junkies' whispered dirge, dark and haunting and almost disturbing, matches both the content of Homura's intent, and the grim reality of re-experiencing the brutal massacre of your friends a dozen-plus times.


11. Remember Me As a Time Of Day -- Explosions in the Sky

Explosions in the Sky actually have a number of time-themed songs I could have chosen, but this one hits on a more unique concept: Madoka's transformation from girl to force of nature, law of physics, inherent aspect of space-time -- whatever the heck you want to call. "Remember Me As a Time of Day" seems to allude to this transcendence, as well as the vague, almost imperceptible way that Madoka's memory still has imprinted itself slightly unto the world, where her brother is able to conceive of her.


12. Alchemy -- Kyler England

This is Madoka's tune. "If I were a master of alchemy, I'd change everything, I'd make all the broken things beautiful." Its wistful but uplifting demeanor holds true to Madoka's bittersweet journey in becoming a force of nature and its message encapsulates Madoka's reparative mission to heal all the wounds of the world.

Struggling to Find New Music (& Exercise Tips)

Music has been an integral part of my life since I was a pre-tween, but it's always a struggle to find exciting new music to listen to. I'm someone who needs new things to discover. That new blood is an utterly essential part of my fragile musical ecosystem. The new things filter in and keep the old classics interesting as well, through the process of rotation. If I'm running just on the old stock then the system clouds up and collapses pretty quickly.

This fragile ecosystem has been thrown completely out of wack since I've started bodybuilding. With working out, I'm listening to three times as much music as I normally would per week. Which means I need three times as much music to listen to.

The confounding thing is, music is so essential to my workout. The difference between an hour workout and a three hour workout often hinges on whether I have great music to keep me motivated. I mean, when you get really into a song, when you're emotionally invested in it, you don't even feel the workout at all. Months ago when I had my heart broken I actually would intentionally work myself up into an emotional wreck because if I was stressing about the heartbreak and running it through in my mind, I could beat the shit out of my body and not even notice because I was emotionally preoccupied. Probably wasn't healthy (psychologically) but it was very effective, and for a while I had a flat stomach!

But those days are gone and I need music to motivate me. After 9 months, my catalog is really running thin. It was great for a while and I brought out all kinds of old metal, blues, deep cuts from bands I hadn't listened to since I was 14. But 9 months of this high volume play, I'm about out of ideas.

If you don't know me, I have a pretty unique music taste. Every few years when I'm just about ready to give up, I'll break into a new genre and get my excitement up again. Age 16 it was grunge, 19 it was metal, you get the idea. My last big revelation was dance pop, that was just about five years ago in 2015. So I'm hurtin' for a new phase.

Country music should be my salvation. So many of my favorite all-time albums are the ones that err very heavily on the country side, whether we're talking Harvest, American Stars N Bars, & Old Ways from Neil Young, Mudcrutch from Tom Petty, GG Allin's old school country jamboree EP called Carnival of Excess. Somewhere out there in the ether there's a country band with my name on it, a soulmate who could rival my favorites. But where the hell they are... I have no idea. For many years I've searched to no avail. I just don't know how to find the act that does things the way I like. Garth Brooks was pretty good, I got his whole discography for $30. I enjoy him but in the end he's just a couple playlists of good songs, he's no soulmate. I need somebody with the rawness of Neil, the rancor of Petty & his jammy tendencies, and the sad bastard mentality of GG.

Beyond that I'm pretty much out of luck. Anybody got any ideas on how to discover new music? Yeah I've tried Pandora and the like. Not very effective since all they can do is show you material that's similar to what you already have. And they don't do specifics, they do broad strokes. They can't make me a station based on GG's country material, they just play punk rock. And the Mudcrutch station plays classic rock. It's not about what the material sounds like, it's about what most people who listen to that band also listen to.

Jurassic World: Review

The following review does NOT contain SPOILERS. It is, however, quite cynical. So be warned that if you've yet to see the film, my toxic view could potentially poison you against its merits.

Let's start with what this film is not. If you're hoping for a smart, grounded science-fiction thriller like the original Jurassic Park from 1993, temper your expectations quite severely. Jurassic Park was astounding in part because it's one of the more realistic science fiction films in the collective canon and it has a broader point to make about technology and progress, as most good sci-fi does. Like Gattaca or District 9 it deviates from our real world only when necessary and only by extrapolating what's genuinely possible given existing technology and modern mores. Jurassic World... doesn't do that. It's more in line with Jurassic Park's two previous sequels, where the dinosaurs are mere movie monsters and the chase is the whole of the point, there's no broader issue here.

The cloning of dinosaurs isn't technically plausible due to the half-life of DNA, but there are already companies who are, today, this very moment actively pursuing the creation of dinosaur-like creatures through DNA manipulation. Hey, that kind of sounds like the gene-splicing plot of Jurassic World! But, alas, they don't really run with the premise, and it's left strictly up to the audience to connect those dots if they want any potential food for thought. Well... to be honest, there are a couple of good ideas. It's just that their impact is mired by the cheesiness that surrounds them.




Secondly, if you're hoping to gawk intently for a couple of hours at world-class special effects which wondrously bring to life creatures that exist mainly in our dreams and nightmares, like the groundbreaking work done for the original Jurassic Park, you're going to want to rent Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, because you won't get that from Jurassic World. I don't even begin to comprehend how a massive blockbuster like this can get off the cutting room floor with such unrealistic looking CGI. Wasn't someone in charge, wasn't there someone to answer to? But whatever the reason, don't expect to watch Jurassic World and think it looks real. The animals don't.

The saddest part on the FX front was the T-Rex, which supposedly (though unconfirmed) is the original Rex from Jurassic Park. To see him look so shoddy after he looked so real in the original was depressing. The explosions, though, are pretty awesome. The explosion budget must have been significantly higher than the dinosaur budget.

Also, no dilophosaurus. So minus 3,000 points.

So that covers what the film isn't. What the film is, on the other hand, is one heck of a decent action movie, with some well-placed nostalgia fodder and some surprisingly lovable characters. Sure, the dialogue by and large is atrocious. But I found Claire to be both cool and endearing, and it's truly great to finally have a woman take what is probably the lead role in a JP film. And Lowerry, the sardonic operator wearing his taboo Jurassic Park shirt on the day that shit happens to hit the fan at Jurassic World, from his very first moment he establishes himself as the audience's surrogate -- he's the guy saying what we're thinking. And that's clever, that's meta. His mere presence raised the film up a peg or two, by putting it a little closer to the film it clearly should have been.

And what do I mean by that? Jurassic World suffers from a clear conflict of goal, a split-personality. Does it want to be a serious Jurassic Park film, or does it want to be an ingenious satire ala The Cabin in the Woods? The film could go either way: there are genuinely great scenes in a serious Jurassic Park vein, and there are genuinely great scenes in a satirical way. And then there are a lot of scenes that are terrible if you're taking them seriously, but great if you're taking them as self-aware or tongue-in-cheek.

On the serious side, we get to see what a fully-functioning park would look like, and it's a pretty impressive sight. I enjoyed the early portion of the film detailing the technical aspects of day to day park operation, and Claire's involvement in the management thereof, as much as anything else in the film. You also have a couple really scary dinosaur moments that would work great in a proper Jurassic Park sequel. Dr. Henry Wu explains himself pretty well when detailing the creation of the I-Rex and there's a lot of legitimately interesting content for a sequel to explore. They did a good job of setting up a world for Jurassic World, something you don't see much of in the last two Jurassic Park movies. One thing I definitely have to say for the film is that it leaves me excited for a sequel, because the ideas they had on the backburner for this one are the ideas that are actually interesting!

On the tongue-in-cheek side, you have plenty of the most ridiculous scenes in any Jurassic Park film -- and yes, that includes defeating raptors with gymnastics from The Lost World, and the talking raptor from Jurassic Park III. I won't spoil any of JW's scenes here but there are several times when any conscious person is bound to roll their eyes. But what's so intriguing about that stuff is that there were also some highly notable trope-subversions here, some really well-done ones. Almost as if they understood what they were doing. Which points even more strongly to the possibility of Jurassic World being a tongue-in-cheek masterpiece. With a lot more self-awareness, the cheesy scenes would cease to be merely cheesy and they would rise up to the level of fuckin' awesome mayhem, knowingly executed to action trope perfection just like the gratuitous bloodshed bonanza you get from any Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez film. And there's definitely a strain of that running through this film. It's just, sadly, not allowed to come to the forefront, so you leave the movie wondering whether it was supposed to be stupid on purpose or not.

Final prognosis: You're going to need to see this movie in a theater that serves alcohol. Because the dumber you are, and the drunker you are, the more in love with this film you'll be. And I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. Jurassic World is fucking awesome. It's full of bad one-liners and likable characters and, heck, there's a brilliant film hidden in there. Just be sure you go into it the right way, and with the right accoutrements. Get drunk. Maybe get stoned. Go into this film like you would Machete 3: Dinosaur Island. And you won't be disappointed. But go into this film expecting it to be the worthy successor we've been hoping for since 1993, and you'll be scratching your head.

Honestly, as a Jurassic Park sequel, it's not bad. It's about on par with the other two sequels, probably better than The Lost World. It's just, after such a long wait, and after Colin Trevorrow's passionate resolve to return to the majesty of the original, we were expecting something on a higher tier. Instead we got something very comparable to the other sequels, and not at all like the original classic.

Battle Power 1 Million: Taylor Swift's Second Form (1989 Tour Review 6/6/15)

While it had some notable highlights, 2013's Red tour reeked of half-measure. Reaching for something new, but unwilling to give up her signature style, Red was an album which languished in mid-sentence, never fully committing to either side. With songs like I Knew You Were Trouble which added electronic elements on top of what was clearly just a typical chugging Taylor guitar rhythm, I wondered if she would ever be able to break free from her origin as a corn-fed Pennsylvanian songster, writing ditties in her bedroom on an acoustic guitar.

Flash forward two years and Taylor hits her home state again, landing so hard it leaves a crater the size of Heinz Field. This time she returns with an ethos, a fire in her eyes, and something left to prove. This isn't the earnest rocker I saw here on 2011's Speak Now tour, and it certainly wasn't the mere victory lap which was the Red tour. This is a whole new Taylor and she's waging war on her past.

If you didn't buy her new album, don't bother buying a ticket to 2015's 1989 tour. This isn't a "greatest hits" set. Out of the 16 songs on her new album, Taylor played 15 of them. That includes the bonus tracks.

From bygone days she played exactly three tracks: Two hits from the still quite recent Red, which leaves Love Story as the sole representation from Taylor's first six years (3 albums, 2 EPs) as a pop star. But her classic style just wouldn't do for Taylor's new ethos, so she reworked the songs as well. I Knew You Were Trouble reemerged as a dark, pulsing industrial track, far superior to the original version. Love Story became sort of a moody keyboard ballad, not the best take on this already often reworked song. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together fared better, becoming a rancorous electric guitar jam. I hope this tour gets a live CD 'cause some of these versions seriously need to be preserved.




For the rest of the gig, it was all 1989 -- except when she brought on country band Little Big Town to play their weird hit Pontoon. Not a favorite song of mine but it's a fun party tune and I was glad we finally got a special guest -- it's the kind of thing that usually happens in other cities but not in Pittsburgh.

Unlike the old tracks, Taylor's new songs were very faithful to their studio counterparts, except they often featured spectacular, pounding EDM intros. It's really good to hear gorgeous deep cuts like New Romantics, Clean and my personal favorite, All You Had to Do Was Stay, because you have to imagine... for the rest of her entire career, how many times will these songs ever be played after this tour? Maybe, maybe one of them might ocassionally slip in as a fringe rotating song on some 2021 setlist or they might be on the shortlist for a 2035 20th annivery 1989 tour. But those are going to be in the extreme minority if they even happen at all. And with every passing year Taylor has more and more she needs to fit into setlists that are, for all intents and purposes, of a finite, unchanging length.

And, about that... It's funny, but as the years go by, Taylor's playing less and less of her old music. And I don't mean her old music as in her first two albums. I'm talking about anything but her brand new material. The more hits Taylor has, the fewer hits she plays! By her fourth album you could already have filled an 18 song setlist with 18 top 20 singles and still leave 2 hits out. By age 25 you could fill that set with 14 bonafide top 10 singles and still leave room for 4 or 5 album cuts from the new record!

But Taylor's not going to play that game. She's not going to run these songs into the ground before she's even old. And as someone who plans to see every tour she does from 2011 to the day I die, I thank her for that. It means I'll be excited to hear the hits even ten, fifteen years from now. I've seen her three times and she's never played my personal favorite, and one of her biggest hits, Teardrops on My Guitar. Can you imagine when I finally see it, some years down the road? It may be my 10th Taylor show but I'll still be flipping out over it because there'll still be new things to discover.

The new record is spectacular and the tour is poised to match. For 1989 she's reinvented herself as a smoky dance beast and she has fully comitted to that role, fully committed to her new music. For now. What she'll change into next, time will tell. She'll obviously stick with pop for a good while but I don't believe this will be her final form. At the very least, when she grows older she'll naturally become more introspective and probably go into another acoustic phase, but in a more mature, folkier vein.

Now that Taylor has revealed herself to be a genuine chameleon, there's real potential here for me as a fan. The #1 thing that keeps me coming back, is having new material to explore. Because exciting new material reups my interest and I get back into the old material as well. Taylor's not only been putting out great new material but she does it like clockwork, too. If she can keep up this pace then she's a shoo-in for the all-time greats. Nobody'll ever beat my personal 1 & 2 (Neil Young and Tom Petty), but right now it doesn't look like Taylor has any competition for #3. Unless Ani Difranco can have a resurgence and put out something really exciting. Or if, I don't know, Pink Floyd or The Doors come back from the dead.

The only disadvantage with getting to live Taylor's career in the moment (which, granted, has so many unparalleled advantages!) is that I'll have to wait decades for the rarities box sets and live albums. And the bootleg market seems pretty DOA these days. If you can find torrents of Taylor live gigs then clearly you're a better man than I, 'cause I sure can't.

Taylor Swift's 15 Perfect Tracks

In honor of seeing my upcoming third Taylor tour next Saturday, I've decided to compile her best 15 songs. Before we start, let's state the obvious. Taylor has a lot of freakin' awesome songs. Many intriguing, unique tracks that deserve to be on this list but were just narrowly edged out by slightly superior jams. Also, as I'm a hardcore fan, you're going to see a lot of deep cuts here. And a lot of smash hits that didn't make the cut.

Keep an eye on my special category, I fitted each track with the best lyric contained therein. 'Cause Taylor's song topics may be perpetually simplistic and even at times circular (how many times as she essentially rewritten 'Teardrops on My Guitar?')... but what makes Taylor's music hit so close to home and capture the heart of the world is that she always mixes in, with the basic archetypes, a few lines that are either uniquely personal or cogently human: little bits and pieces that imbue these experiences with the genuine touch.

Now... this...!

Honorable mention: Ronan

Origin: Single (2012)

Best lyric: "(audible sigh)."

-- Much ado is made over Taylor only singing songs about heartache. Some people clearly have never heard this charity single Taylor wrote to help fight against cancer. She wrote it based on the blog of Ronan Thompson's mother, whose boy died at the age of four. It's easily as articulate as anything Taylor's written, and it's incredibly, painfully, heartbreaking. At one point the accompaniment momentarily dwindles to nothing and Taylor lets out a heavy sigh, it's the most genuine sound she has yet committed to record and it's almost enough to make me shed a tear.

#15 New Romantics

Origin: 1989 [Deluxe Edition] (2014)

Best lyric: "Baby I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me."

-- An archetypal T-Swift bouncy lament, on this tune she celebrates her perpetual unluckiness in love and resolves defiantly to make life into a dance party. It's catchy and fun and it captures the ethos of her current era flawlessly.

#14 Long Live

Origin: Speak Now (2010)

Best lyric: "If you have children someday... When they point to the pictures, please tell them my name."

-- With a sobering tone and a loitering guitar line, Long Live is a slow burn of an epic farewell, an earnest ode to the immeasurable heights and climatic cataclysms of youth: footballs games and parties, first dates and prom, LSD & Burning Man, whatever floats your boat, this heartfelt song is the anthem for you. "I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you," Tay sings. It's one of the most perfect finale songs I can imagine, I hope  Taylor will incorporate it into many of her future tours even though it was never a big hit.

#13 Fearless

Origin: Fearless (2008)

Best lyric: "Run your hands through your hair, absent-mindedly making me want you."

-- Taylor wrote Fearless as her fantasy of the perfect date. And in that, it spectacularly succeeds. It's a dreamy ditty both superfluous and strong, articulate and effortless. It really encapsulates Taylor's youthful naivete and charm, but it's also a song that lends her a fair bit of power. We could all use a bit of fearlessness, especially in love.

#12 All You Had To Do Was Stay

Origin: 1989 (2014)

Best lyric: "You had me in the palm of your hand, then, why'd you have to go and lock me out when I let you in?"

-- Taylor's first foray into true, pure pop, the 1989 album, is essentially one big effort to channel the dance pop stylings of Tegan & Sara's recent work, a duo she's actually played songs with who share many of the hallmarks she mined on this record. To that end, All You Had To Do Was Stay is her most successful song, in that it perfectly captures the exuberant restraint and audacious heartbreak of T&S's (that's Tegan & Sara, not Taylor & Swift) Heartthrob album. The lyrics hit especially home for me and it's just such a fun, forceful, bam pop slam of a lovelorn lament.

#11 Hey Stephen

Origin: Fearless (2008)

Best lyric: "'Cause I can't help it if you look like an angel."

-- Taylor's self-titled debut was a genuine country affair, but by the time her sophomore album came out she had settled on her more well-known amalgam of folk, pop, rock, and a little of her native country. Hey Stephen is something of a folk-pop masterpiece with a smooth cascading melody worthy of The Beatles, a carefree hummed vocal, a grooving bassline and the most adorable lyrics about a crush and Tay's unwavering resolve to win him yet.

#10 Haunted

Origin: Speak Now (2011)

Best lyric: "It's getting dark and it's all too quiet."

-- Despite carrying all of Taylor's characteristic flairs, Speak Now was an interesting album in that she pumped it with a lot of variety. It reminds me of (esoteric reference, but) in Megaman games how at the end you fight all these blank robots implanted with the powers & personalities of the past bosses. It's like Taylor was challenging herself to match other artists. On Haunted, she recreates the bombastic, balls-out approach to catastrophic longing which is part and parcel to 90s alternative band The Cranberries. One of her most exasperated, strongest, and just plain coolest songs, Haunted is a unique marvel in her collection, with symphonic accompaniment and wailing, desperate vocals.

#9 All Too Well

Origin: Red (2012)

Best lyric: "There we are again, in the middle of the night. We're dancing around the kitchen in the refrigerator light."

-- Brooding, bittersweet ballads have become something of a staple for Tay. And while she seems to wing them out with an effortless zeal, she managed to really tap the vein of something special with All Too Well. On this piano dirge enhanced by crawling electric guitar leads, Taylor spins the tale of two lovers who've spent much of their lives in the shadow of what seemed like the fate that they were meant for each other. But things fell apart, as things so often do, and it's a shadow that they'll never be able to outreach, for better... for worse... for life. It's almost like Bruce Springsteen all-time great haunting ballad, The River.

#8 Clean

Origin: 1989 (2014)

Best lyric: "When I was drowning, that's when I could finally breathe." {or} "When the butterflies turned to dust that covered my whole room, so I punched a hole in the roof."

-- On Clean Taylor collaborated with Imogen Heap, the #1 go-to name for hazy, atmospheric, sensually dark pop electronica. Not unexpectedly, it strikes me as one of Taylor's most mature tracks, a solid allegory between drug addiction and losing someone you've come to depend on as much as any addiction. But on a subtler level it sounds a lot like it could be about a suicide attempt, and the aftermath thereof.

#7 Highway Don't Care

Origin: Two lanes of Freedom (2013)

Best lyric: "The highway don't care if you're coming home, but I do."

-- Sure, you could argue it doesn't count as a Taylor song. But her presence on the track is absolute, and it's a pretty significant moment for her: she started out singing songs about Tim McGraw, now she's singing songs WITH him. If that ain't the definition of fame... Anyhoo, built around a clever song-within-a-song ruse (Taylor's singing the song that Tim's song's protagonist is listening to on the radio), Highway Don't Care is a pure slab of country romance and it's such a frickin' solid song. It bristles with a strong summer evening atmosphere and the taste of asphalt road, I can never get enough of it.

#6 Better Than Revenge (Live)

Origin: Speak Now World Tour Live (2011)

Best lyric: "Let's hear the applause."

-- On this song Taylor Swift does her best darn impression of Paramore. And it's a fantastic facsimile from the pounding chords, the roaring chorus, to the familiar Paramore themes of romantic rancor and battling over a beaux. It's unquestionably Taylor's hardest rocking song to date, and this live version takes it up to 11 with dueling guitar fury and an added instrumental section. Oh so fine. Added bonus: a lyric like "let's hear the applause" plays oh too perfectly for a live show, it's great to have it preserved in that form here (particularly since it's unlikely to make it onto any other Taylor setlists at least until the 2040 Speak Now 20th anniversary tour). 

#5 Forever & Always (Piano Version)

Origin: Fearless [Platinum Edition] (2009)

Best lyric: "And I stare at the phone. He still hasn't called. Then you feel so low you can't feel nothing at all."

-- When Fearless became Taylor's breakout hit album, an expanded edition became obligatory. But unlike her other bonus track versions, for Fearless she actually went back into the studio to record new tracks, and this set of songs was uncannily just as strong as the original album. The first version of Forever & Always was a decent mid-tempo rocker, but this piano version ranks as Taylor's all-time best, bleakest, and most elemental ballad. It's one of her rawest tracks to date, a sparser than sparse piano line with a lightly multi-tracked vocal that emotes such painfully acute sorrow it's almost a religious experience.

#4 Untouchable

Origin: Fearless [Platinum Edition] (2009)

Best lyric: "In the middle of the night when I'm in this dream, it's like a million little stars spelling out your name."

Well this is a surprise. Taylor's only studio-recorded cover song to-date and boy is it an interesting one. Completely, 180 degrees removed from any semblance of the modern rock slush of Luna Halo's generic original version, Tay's Untouchable is the earthiest, folkiest, most translucently ethereal ghost ballad in her discography. The somberly giddy tune calls out to the night with a spark of the divine. Pure magic... a strangely solitary moment in Taylor's entire catalog, like the pilot track of some tragically scrapped folk/seance album, in collaboration with the Indigo Girls. Where's the rest of it, Tay? It's actually folkier than her real collaboration with The Civil Wars -- a real folk band.

#3 Blank Space

Origin: 1989 (2014)

Best lyric: "Find out what you want, be that girl for a month."

-- Taylor's written a lot of songs about a lot of boys, but for this ditty she coyly turned the microscope around at the media circus surrounding her and wrote a song from the perspective of the twisted, love-crazed perversion of herself that she's accused of being! Pretty meta for Swifty and it also happens to be... holy shit, one of the best damn singles she'll ever make. Catchier than machine gun fire sprayed into a crowded room, it's also imbued with the utter glory of youth and that fun whirlwind of chaotic romance. It's Taylor's first genuine pop jingle masterpiece since her second album.

#2 You Belong With Me

Origin: Fearless (2008)

Best lyric: "Laughing on a park bench, thinking to myself, 'Hey, isn't this easy?'"

-- The first Taylor song I fell in love with and still nearly her all-time best. The soft verse, pulsating chorus and simple guitar chords harken back to the genius pop sensibilities of Nirvana, but with a 'bit' less melancholy. The story it tells of being in love with a friend who just can't seem to realize you'd be everything they could ever want if only they'd give you a chance at romance... it hits close to home for all of us, and is so eloquently worded here.

#1 Teardrops on My Guitar (Pop Version)

Origin: Taylor Swift (2006)

Best lyric: "And there he goes, so perfectly... the kind of flawless I wish I could be." {or} "The only one who's got enough of me to break my heart."

-- "Universal" doesn't even begin to describe it. Aside from being a masterclass in ear-catching popcraft, Taylor Swift's very first achey, wistful hit ranks among the all-time pantheon of unrequited love songs and, amazingly, it remains her best effort even a prolific eight years later. As Kramer once asked George, "have you ever yearned?" 'Teardrops' reminds us that we all have, even if it was just as a kid playing at crushes. Who's never played the fool for the one they love? If you've never had this experience in life, you're probably legitimately aromantic. Not that there's anything wrong with that.