If one thing has become apparent from the lists that have appeared on these pages and the, not unsurprisingly, incredibly wide range of songs that have featured to date, it must be that it seems highly unlikely that there will be a runaway winner here. There appears little broad consensus, something that reflects, almost inevitably, on the equally broad range of ages asked to offer up their opinions for this feature.
The artists featured below all have bodies of work that stretch back decades so, while some may agree with the selection of the artists, there will, undoubtedly be many more who disagree on the song selection. We are, after all, bound to have our individual favourites. So, a broad category gets stretched ever further, making that consensus even more unlikely.
With, perhaps, just a couple of exceptions, on another day the songs below might have been nudged aside and replaced with something equally as memorable from the artist concerned. So, as fun as compiling these lists might be, as far as homework goes, the task sits firmly within the ‘Too Hard’ basket.
Number 10. Rodney Crowell ’40 Miles From Nowhere’ from “Close Ties” (2017)
Rodney Crowell admits to writing a lot about death. For this song Crowell placed himself in a future reality that he hoped he would never have to face, that of losing the love of his life and reflecting on the loneliness left behind. Using his partner and best friend Claudia as the driving force for what Crowell called a piece of emotional fiction, as he wrote it and set it amongst the reality of his house on Cedar Grove, Crowell felt a strong emotional attachment to the song. That emotion is writ large in this heartbreaker of a song, “So it’s me, your little lapdog and that old brindle cat trying to keep this place in line. I weep for you, it’s what I do……Forty miles from nowhere, at the bottom of the world”.
Number 9. Patty Griffin ‘Useless Desires’ from “Impossible Dream” (2004)
In our Essentials: Top 10 feature for Patty Griffin in 2024 this song, from an outstanding selection, was picked as the pinnacle. https://americana-uk.com/essential-the-top-ten-patty-griffin-songs. There are other, more celebrated Patty Griffin albums including her 1996 debut “Living With Ghosts” but, in a career studded with highlights, “Impossible Dream” is an album that warrants nomination as her best. ‘Useless Desires’ is Patty Griffin at her most affecting and intense, it is a voice quivering with emotion on an album full of brilliantly crafted songs.
Number 8. Natalie Merchant ‘River’ from “Tigerlily” (1995)
“Tigerlily” was Merchant’s first solo album after her departure from 10,000 Maniacs. Merchant crafted ‘River’ as a tribute to the late actor River Phoenix who died at the criminally young age of 23. Talking to Los Angeles Times prior to the release of the album Merchant explained the motivation for the song. “I didn’t know River very well, to be honest,” Merchant says, “But I respected him. He had such an amazing energy and vitality. He’s a person I thought was living really fully and challenging boundaries. But I think what hit me hardest was that there were so many judgments being made about him, based on how he died–as if that negated all the good that he had done or made him unsuitable as a role model for the youth of America. I didn’t think that children should be chastised for mourning someone who had died by his own hands. I felt the same way about Kurt Cobain. You wouldn’t chastise your son and daughter for responding like that to the tragic death of a classmate. That’s why I wrote the song.”
Thirty years on “Tigerlily” sounds as fresh and honest as it ever did although Merchant must despair that the intrusive media frenzy of those times is, if anything, even worse today. “Why don’t you let him be? He’s gone, we know, give his mother and his father peace. Your vulture’s candour, your casual slander, you murder his memory. He’s gone, we know, it’s nothing but a tragedy”.
Number 7. Mary Gauthier ‘Mercy Now’ from “Mercy Now” (2005)
‘Mercy Now’ was released twenty years ago and remains Gauthier’s most requested and streamed song. Although labelled by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the saddest songs ever recorded, Gauthier has always insisted that it is a song of hope more than anything else. “The song came to me as a prayer and as an act of desperation. I wrote it in a time when the world around me was collapsing into darkness. The song brought catharsis and then, unexpectedly, it brought something else. The desperation I’d felt, laced with anger and fear, began to give way to a new calm. I began to feel connected.” She sings “Every little thing could use a little mercy now, …and life itself could use a little mercy now, …yeah, we all could use a little mercy now—I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow… And every single one of us could use some mercy now”.
Number 6. Mary Chapin Carpenter ‘Stones In The Road’ from “Stones In The Road” (1994)
The title track to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s finest album is beautifully crafted and sung; it was written as a reminder of the role models that she grew up with in the 60s. A message to the current generation that the principles of men such as Martin Luther King and JFK should not be forgotten and instilled in each subsequent generation. It is a sublime piece of songwriting and imagery that remains, almost thirty years later, a warning against selfishness and greed “We pencil in, we cancel out, we crave the corner suite, we kiss your ass, we make you hold, we doctor the receipt”.
Number 5. Poco ‘Rose Of Cimarron’ from “Rose Of Cimarron” (1976)
In 1973, on tour in Oklahoma, Poco pedal steel player Rusty Young picked up a brochure explaining the legend of Rose Dunn, a young woman accomplice of outlaw George Newcomb. Legend has it that Dunn, also known as Rose of the Cimarron, took in outlaws in the 1800s, fed them, tended to their wounds and sent them on their way. The subsequent song that the legend inspired, written by Young and fronted by future Eagle, Timothy B Schmit, and Paul Cotton has become a much-played classic of its time despite the modest sales and chart impact of the album at the time.
Number 4. Trio ‘After The Goldrush’ from “Trio II” (1999)
Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris won a Grammy for their version of the 1970 Neil Young classic. Parton allegedly stated once, “When we were doing the ‘Trio’ album, I asked Linda and Emmy what it meant, and they didn’t know. So, we called Neil, and he didn’t know. We asked him, flat out, what it meant, and he said, ‘Hell, I don’t know. I just wrote it. It just depends on what I was taking at the time. I guess every verse has something different I’d taken‘.”
Maybe some songs don’t need a meaning, they just need to be savoured for the end product. And what a brilliant interpretation by the three country legends. The harmonies are so gorgeous that meaning becomes irrelevant.
Number 3. Eagles ‘The Last Resort’ from “Hotel California” (1976)
Way back in 1978 Don Henley told Rolling Stone magazine that ‘The Last Resort’ was one of his favourite songs. Henley said, “I care more about the environment than about writing songs about drugs or love affairs or excesses of any kind. The gist of the song was that when we find something good, we destroy it by our presence — by the very fact that man is the only animal on earth that is capable of destroying his environment”. Although credited as a co-writer Glenn Frey deflected the credit wholly towards Henley. “That song” he said, “was Henley’s opus.” Expounding on Henley’s environmental focus, Frey was quoted as saying “We’re constantly screwing up paradise, and that was the point of the song and that at some point there is going to be no more new frontiers”. Wrapping up the album in a little over seven minutes it is, arguably, the track that cements the album’s status as a 20th Century classic.
Number 2. Jason Isbell ‘Elephant’ from “Southeastern” (2013)
That a Jason Isbell song appears here really shouldn’t be a surprise. Surely one of the greatest songwriting talents to emerge over the last couple of decades, Isbell is a regular in these pages and is a ubiquitous presence in whatever features list you may care to peruse. That said, how to select just one track from such a standout album? The fact that ‘Elephant’ has such an unpromising subject matter, the observation of a loved one’s life slowly being eroded by cancer, is, perhaps, why the song leapt out on first listen. Searingly honest, it is such an emotionally moving song, sung with so much feeling, it left an indelible mark on first hearing that doesn’t lessen on repeat hearings. A masterpiece.
Number 1. Jackson Browne ‘The Pretender’ from “The Pretender” (1976)
An overview of why “The Pretender” is such a classic album is better served by delving into our archives here but it is with a fondly reflective look back that I recall this being my first introduction to Jackson Browne and helped a naïve 16 year old breathe a sigh of relief that there was something more intelligent and rewarding than the standard TOTP fare he was brought up on. Whilst always having traces of cynicism in his writing, particularly when trashing the establishment, Browne remains a romantic at heart. ‘The Pretender’ is a song that brings the two into conflict, as our protagonist abandons the prospect of love for the lure of the dollar. “I’m going to be a happy idiot, And struggle for the legal tender. Where the ads take aim and lay their claim, To the heart and the soul of the spender. And believe in whatever may lie, In those things that money can buy, Though true love could have been a contender”.
