This was first written in May 2021 but due to a mental block I didn’t get it uploaded until September 2021
Music has been a massive part of my life for about as long as I remember. Just now, a friend was asking her friends about their favorite songs. That sent me down a spiral about what my favorite music is. Before, I held the position that it was impossible for me to hold a “favorite song” but now, that’s changed. I came up with a short list of songs that truly impacted me and honestly made me who I am today. That may sound melodramatic, but I genuinely can’t think of any other way to put how these songs impacted me.
The songs are in no particular order. Its literally the order I came up with them at 10:30 on a Monday in May.
Parabol/Parabola – Tool
This would probably be the first song I can for sure say is my “favorite”. It was one of my first experiences with a song that lasted longer than the traditional 2:30 – 4:00 minute song. It’s a 9 minute song that has one of the greatest dynamic shifts I have ever heard in music.
The lyrics going into the concept of a body and spirit, the illusion of pain in life, and the idea of an eternal soul, and rebirth were all new to me when I first heard this song, and that whole thing combined has me coming back to this song over a decade later.
Voice of Trespass – Between the Buried and Me
This is probably the only “fun” song on this list, in that it’s not a song that is extremely emotionally charged for me. This song is just a masterful experiment with fucking heavy jazz metal. The song starts with a swing beat, but done on double bass instead of a ride cymbal, and a horn section swelling while distorted guitars chug. From there, its 8 minutes of absolute masterful playing.
I don’t know what else I can add other than if you have not heard this song, you need to. It played with the concept of genres in a wild way and opened me up to the idea that genres are not rigid and can be whatever we make them to be.
The Grid – Between the Buried and Me
The Grid is the song that comes right after Voice of Trespass, but the reason I love The Grid is far different from why I love Voice. It is another epic Prog Metal song (I sense a trend), this one almost 10 minutes long. But what Voice had in, this one has in sheer grandeur. The entire song is a journey and a soundscape like no other.
But the thing that pushes it over the edge is about six minutes in. An acoustic guitar comes in, and the vocalist just starts repeating the phrase “We are in this together.” The music keeps growing and more voices are added as that phrase keeps being repeated, a crescendo of sound happens before it all crashes down into one of the most beautiful guitar solos I’ve ever heard. This isn’t like a shredfest, it is something where you can sense the emotion, the melancholy, the energy that went into the album in every single note.
Jaguar God – Mastodon
Another long prog song. This one clocking in at 8 minutes. Jaguar God is an amazing ode to storytelling and metaphor. The song, and the album as a whole, was written about cancer and how it eventually destroys a person. The song itself I interpret as the person’s journey from diagnosis to death, in the metaphor of someone being sacrificed to the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca.
I could go on about this song, it’s probably the song I have spent the most time analyzing. I can talk about how the arpeggiated acoustic motif and 6/8 time signature represent the protagonist, how the fast 4/4 distorted guitars represent death, and the sections where there is 4/4 and 6/8 polymeter is our protagonist confronting death itself. But the part of this song that gets me is the end, when after going through the journey and essentially losing every element of the song that was present, it immediately returns to the 6/8 arpeggiated motif of the intro. Except, on this reprise, there are no lyrics. There is only a guitar solo, a sound that I hear as a person’s last cry before death finally takes them away.
I have lost multiple family members to degenerative diseases. So to hear that journey made real in a song is an impact that I can never overstate.
I Appear Missing – Queens of the Stone Age
Okay. 6 minutes, better, thats almost a normal song length. I Appear Missing came out at such a pivotal point in my life. It was when I was graduating high school and going to college. The songs is just beautiful, but the theme of feeling like you have lost a part of yourself is just so powerful. At many points in this time period, and in my life as a while, I have felt like I was a stranger staring into the life of someone else. That feeling of being forgotten, discarded, useless, its just so powerful and such a recurring theme in my life.
Like a Stone – Audioslave
I can’t do this song justice. There’s been so much written and talked about it already. If you want to know what makes this song the masterpiece it is, I cannot recommend 12Tone’s Video enough.
For me, Like a Stone is a constant reminder of the journey I’m on. I have spent many nights awake, thinking about my death, about what I have accomplished in life, what I will never accomplish, about the afterlife, and just spent some time in really dark places. The song itself has a kind of sparse feeling, there is plenty of space left
I honestly can’t say anything about this song that Chris Cornell didn’t already put masterfully into the lyrics of the song itself. Chris Cornell’s death impacted me greatly and I cannot think of this song without thinking of him, and vise versa.
everything i wanted – Billie Eilish
This song is really out of left field sonically for this list, but I think that’s what makes it stand out even more. The relaxed synth tone is phenomenal in this song, it has a strong melancholy, heavy feel without being loud or overly in your face. Billie explores the concept of fame through the framing of suicide, and how looking back, would she have made the same decisions knowing the outcome. How if “getting everything you wanted” might actually be a nightmare.
Cough Syrup – Young the Giant
Beautiful song, the dynamic shifts really make the song. The song is a sort of desperate hopelessness at not being at the point where you want to be in life. The want to escape to some temporary happiness to compensate for the happiness that has been denied from you.
Peace to the Mountain – Coheed and Cambria
There are so many Coheed songs I could pick, so why this one. Seeing the rest of my list, a song like Gravity’s Union or Welcome Home seems more appropriate. But again, this song showed up in such a key point in my life. I have always felt the desperate need to escape. To run away. To travel and go somewhere new, away from everything and everyone I know, leaving all my problems behind. The tone of the song itself feeds into this. Throughout the song there is this feeling of longing. Like the melody keeps trying to keep going somewhere but just can’t.
That’s it. This was a deeply personal list and I realize that I wrote more about the lyrics than the musical content of each song. But I’m just not well versed (heh) enough to be able to talk about how a song’s choice in key or chords or the way that a song is sang can contribute to the overall feel of the song. I tried to include it where I felt I could verbalize it.
Also this is my personal list. This is nowhere near the “greatest songs ever” list. This is a deeply deeply personal list of my favorite songs, and why they are a part of me.
Emma Celeste Abitia
Emma is a musician, photographer, and Magic player from Seattle, WA.