One of the hazards of Random Weekends is that you can wind up with a snippet of a song that doesn’t work out of context.
Such is the case with today’s SOTD, ‘I Was Wrong,’ by Badly Drawn Boy. This minute-long track segues into its companion song, ‘You Were Right,’ which I featured on the blog more than five years ago.
Today’s selection, rounding out my top five desert island songs, fits nicely into the discussion in yesterday’s comment section.
Dana might argue that I’m closing out with an R.E.M. song because they are one of my favorite bands. I would counter that R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands because of this song (which I featured in its original form as SOTD #201).
In Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, my favorite novel, the protagonist Rob Fleming is obsessed with making lists. Lists about life, love and art — mostly about art.
At one point in the book he, as a record store owner, is asked to provide his top five favorite songs for a column in a local magazine. The prospect of having one of his lists set in stone and published for all the world to see scares him to death.
As with Ben Folds, the presence of Bob Dylan on this list of desert island songs was a no-brainer, but the specific song was the struggle.
I was tempted to go with a track from one of Dylan’s early albums — specifically The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan or Bringing it all Back Home — because those are the records I devoured as a young teenager first discovering the Bard.
When picking my five desert island songs, or however you want to characterize this list of essential tracks, I knew I had to include a Ben Folds Five tune.
The harder question was which one.
Something from the debut album — ‘Jackson Cannery’ or ‘Philosophy,’ perhaps, or ‘Alice Childress’? Or one of the lush standouts from their sophomore effort — ‘Selfless, Cold and Composed’ or ‘Missing the War’?
Meet Me In Montauk 