For the maybe two of you who followed this list on Popblerd during its original run, you may have already realized that there are songs I included on the first list that are not on this one. Times and tastes have changed, and maybe I’m a scoshe more discriminating when it comes to which songs make the cut here.
For example, 2016 (ish) list began with Vampire Weekend’s “A-Punk”. It’s not here in 2024. Do I like the song less now than I did then? No. Have I come to the conclusion that “A-Punk” is maybe a four star song? Yes. Is it weird that I feel as though VW’s 2008 debut is a five-star album without any actual five-star songs? I dunno. We’re making this all up as we go along, folks.
Moving on…
“Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” by Phil Collins (Atlantic, 1984)
I’m a sucker for songs about heartbreak, particularly songs in which the performer sounds like they’re literally ripping their heart from their chest as they’re singing. I guess some folks call that soul. I guess something that surprised folks who knew Phil primarily as a prog-rock drummer was that he had soul. And while “Take a Look at Me Now” feels like the prototypical ‘80s movie theme, one should consider that it wasn’t written as a movie theme, but as one of the many songs Phil ultimately wrote about divorce. I’ll talk more later about Face Value being one of my favorite breakup albums of all time. For now, though, let’s marvel at one of the most well-emoted power ballads of the ‘80s, believable despite (maybe because of?) the lyrics being fairly basic/trite heartbreak tropes. It’s a throat-shredder, particularly the back third when Phil belts. Let’s also give Phil props for pulling the cobwebs off a song that he’d written four years prior, shoehorn the name of a film into the chorus (and title), and somehow wind up with the biggest hit of his career to date. Although, somewhat hilariously, the Motion Picture Academy didn’t think Phil was a big enough name to perform “Against All Odds” at the Oscars in 1985. Phil got his retribution in fantastic fashion by squeezing three Number One singles off before the end of the year and bringing home the Grammy for Album of the Year the following February. Eventually, he got his Oscar performance (and an actual Oscar), too.
“Ain’t Even Done With the Night” by John Cougar (Mellencamp) (A&M, 1980)
This one was right on the edge of not being included. I’m actually still kinda on the fence, and I don’t know exactly how to justify pushing it over, or pushing it back. I guess we’re gonna have some of those.
Today I learned that Steve Cropper (of Booker T & The M.G.’s fame) produced Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did, the John Cougar album that includes “Ain’t Even Done With the Night”. So this song comes by its soulfulness naturally.
Cougar had been toiling in the rock star minor leagues for a couple of years already, and “Done” was a top 20 pop record (his biggest hit to date). The song is sultry and sexy in a way that John would never replicate. If JCM is the Midwestern Bruce Springsteen (with apologies to Bob Seger), then “Ain’t Even Done…” is his “Prove It All Night”. That chorus is total ear candy, and the handclaps are a masterstroke.
I’m fairly certain my ears didn’t discover “Ain’t Even Done” until I was listening to Delilah or one of those late-night easy listening request shows in the early ‘90s, ten years after it peaked on the charts. However, the performance I include below indicates that I might be a liar. It’s a very un-Mellencamp-like John Cougar performing this very tune on the American Music Awards in early 1981. I definitely watched this show, because the Coug’s Indiana homeboy Michael Jackson was on it (won two awards, as a matter of fact) and even at four, I was enough of an MJ fanboy that my grandma and aunts let me stay up and watch the ceremony on TV. Maybe my reintroduction to it through soft rock radio was just a memory jog.
“Ain’t No Half-Steppin’” by Big Daddy Kane (Cold Chillin’/WB, 1988)
In the summer of 1988, my cousin Nelson and his best friend Shefton came to stay with my grandparents in Brooklyn for the summer. Nelson and Shef lived in the Netherlands. They were both 17 or 18 at the time, and one of the first things they did upon settling in was go record shopping. Summer ‘88 was a groundbreaking era in Black music, because traditional soul music was beginning to seamlessly incorporate hip-hop elements (New Jack Swing) and also because hip-hop was flowering into its most creative era. The albums that my two European friends brought into my life (A Salt With A Deadly Pepa, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Don’t Be Cruel, Follow the Leader, Heart Break) rank among my favorite records even 35 years later.
Big Daddy Kane’s debut, Long Live the Kane, was in that group of records as well. Kane heralded a new era of MC. He had a deep baritone voice that even at its toughest, projected smoothness. To this day, he and Rakim (widely considered the God MC) endure comparisons. While there are vocal similarities, two things that Kane had that Ra didn’t were a sense of humor and an eye for pop culture. To this day, no one has punchlines like Kane. To make a slightly more contemporary (but still outdated) comparison, Nas is the evolutionary Rakim. Jay is the evolutionary Kane.
“Ain’t No Half Steppin’” is the typical tale of rhyme supremacy you’d hear on tons of rap records around this time. Kane sells it with his voice and a series of unforgettable one-liners: '“pick a B.C. date because you’re history”, “you’re just a butter knife, I’m a machete”. Add in a few dizzying internal rhymes like
Brain cells are lit, ideas start to hit, Next the formation of words that fit
At the table I sit, makin' it legit, And when my pen hits the paper…AW SHIT
My 12 year old mind was blown, y’all.
And we still haven’t talked about Marley Marl’s beat, smooth yet rugged. It brought together The Emotions’ “Blind Alley” (later sampled to perfection a second time by Mariah Carey), Marley’s signature cuts and scratches, and the Heatwave tune that gave the song its title (which I was already familiar with as the British band’s work was a staple of my early childhood). Who knew that it would be two Euros that made me a hip-hop head for real. This also feeds into the theory that Europeans are more reverent towards Black American music than most Black Americans are, which I think has some validity.
“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell (Tamla/Motown, 1967)
“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross (Motown, 1970)
Whenever there’s more than one perfect version of a song, I’m much more apt to give credit to the songwriters than the performer (unless the songwriter is the person who performed the song initially). In the case of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson wrote a beautiful tune; a love song that’s turned into a standard (and whose instrumentation provided the bedrock for a third song on this list…more on that later). Kudos to them for that and also for writing a song that could be so perfectly interpreted in two dramatically different ways.
When we’re dealing with peak-era Motown, though, you also have to give props to the musicians. You can’t put enough good words on a page about The Funk Brothers, and Val Simpson is an unheralded piano player (listen to her on Ross’s rendition especially). And those beautiful words have to be interpreted masterfully in order for everything to click. You can’t ask for better conduits than Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell and Diana Ross. The O.G. version is sweet, almost innocent. It conjures up the image of two lovers starting into one another’s eyes, lost in love. The grit in Marvin’s voice keeps the song grounded in soulful reality.
Diana’s revamp changes the mood of the song. I guess the mood of the song naturally had to change in the process of being converted from a duet to a solo performance. But Nick-Val-musicians-Diana almost create an entirely new song—nothing remains from the original but the words. They invented the remix?
The verses, once sweetly sung, are now spoken, stage-whispered, cooed. Then as the song reaches a crescendo, the arrangement expands, the background vocalists go from ghostly to declarative. Diana becomes…unhinged, desperate. AIN’T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH! AIN’T NO VALLEY LOW ENOUGH! AIN’T NO RIVER WIDE ENOUGH! TO KEEP ME FROM YOU-OUUUU! It’s a tour-de-fucking-force, exhausting emotional drama. Miss Ross at the peak of her powers.
Marvin and Tammi are slowly rising to the top of the mountain on a ski lift. Diana is crawling up to the top of the mountain in a sequined gown. One version is “hurry home, honey! I love you!” The other version is “YOU AIN’T GOIN’ NOWHERE, MOTHERFUCKER” (but, like, an elegant, Hollywood version of that). Both versions are perfection.
Is this where I write that I also neglected to include Jay-Z’s “Ain’t No Nigga” this time around (it was on the list last time), for a variety of reasons but mainly because 47 year old me can’t sit with the idea of a 15 year old Foxy Brown rhyming about the shit she rhymes about.
Next up? Black upward mobility, Black “greed-is-good” ethos, and two sets of covers.
Marvin and Tammi (and Nick & Val) will be back fairly soon, too.
Running tally-type shit because I like stats:
Total songs: 13
1 song from the 1960s
2 songs from the 1970s
7 songs from the 1980s
2 songs from the 2010s
6 songs by male solo artists, 5 songs by groups/bands, 1 song by a female solo artist, 1 collaborative performance by 2 (or more) solo artists