It's that time already - I'll have to get a move on...

Oy veh -- I just about completed an albums list for Anthony (now I just have to make up my mind to send it off rather than fiddle around with minor ... or major ... changes till new year's eve :-)

And along comes Moonbeam. Well, heck, it'll be fun.

Do you prefer an Excel file like Anthony, or doesn't it matter?

I got my list ready, but if you don't mind I'm gonna send it as close to January 31st as possible.. in contrast to the albums list I keep making changes.

Thanks for opening the thread, Moonbeam. You're gonna need some patience, though, I just started this hell of a job.

Happily, I could send the 100 albums list to Anthony yesterday, and my Pazz&Jop contribution is ~90% ready, but the 200 all-time favorite songs is definitely gonna take some precious listening time. Great fun though!

same for me
hard list to make but it'll be ready in time

Excel format is preferred, but I don't want to exclude anyone's list if it isn't possible.

Take your time with the lists- there is no hurry. I just wanted to start this thread to remind everyone that it is on the horizon.

Have a great holiday season everyone!

To me it will be easier to make this one than the Albums Poll... well, at least it will be easy to pick my 200 favourite, maybe choosing the definitive order will take more time.

yes, this final part takes a lot of time

To me, it'll be the other way around: Much harder than choosing albums. I'm an albums guy, I guess.

Might be an idea for a thread: What's your top 10 favourite AM songs NOT available on a regular album by the artist?

Is it okay to send an unordered list?

The songs list will definitely be easier to come up with I think - since I got an ipod,I'm much more of a songs guy and don't listen to many albums as a whole...

Ipods/MP3 players have done the opposite for me. I've been a part of the MP3 generation from the beginning- my freshman year of college (The year Napster really broke into the mainstream). Because of that I tended to make more mix cds to explore various singles. Now that IPods are so large in terms of hard drive space, it's easier to listen to albums because I always have them at my fingertips. I've always preferred albums to singles, but Ipods made it easier to do that.

I was never really part of the CD era. I'm 27 so really I had about 3-4 years in high school when I bought CD's: most of them not very good. I probably could have saved a lot of money for college and not been in debt up to my nose if Mp3's were big when I was in high school.

I've never been able to differentiate the quality of one song from another. There's like a thousand that I love and a billion that I like. I can't get more specific than that. I'm better with albums.

Yeah I think I'm the same way. A good song is a good song. There are some that are classics that are easy to differentiate, but there are literally millions of good songs. I think my list will be 4 or 5 songs that I listened to a ton and an assortment of various others that were good in a "how I feel that day" order.

Speaking of 2007 songs, I'm really disappointed by the song lists that have come out. All the songs I like I've already heard. Usually there are at least 5-6 gems that I missed out on during the year but I haven't found a single one yet.

It probably helps to look at your ipod playcounts because (obviously) your favourites will rise to the top - my top 4 favourite songs are my top 4 most played(but in a different order)

I have 1013 songs right now...and collecting them for a few years have helped me to point out a kind of direction...still asking myself if there is a song from "Pet Sounds" that will make the list, though :)

Today I'm trying to destill something out from Sigur Ros to include, except Svefn-G-Englar, of course...should I feel boring for including "Picture This" by Blondie or "Fade Away" by Blur

Life is not difficult. Like if I had one in the first place...

Life IS difficult, nothing else...

John!

01 Sunset Rubdown - For The Pier (And Dead Shimmering)
02 New Pornographers - All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth
03 Rose Tattoo - Black Eyed Bruiser
04 Marissa Nadler - Diamond Heart
05 Maps - It Will Find You
06 Glass Candy - Rolling Down The Hills
07 Gowns - White Like Heaven
08 Warlocks - So Paranoid
09 Of Montreal - The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
10 Hot Chip - My Piano
10 Panda Bear - Comfy In Nautica
11 Odawas - Alleluia
12 LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
13 Rufus Wainwright - Going To A Town
14 Battles - Atlas
15 Besnard Lakes - For Agent 13
16 Richard Hawley - Tonight The Streets Are Ours
17 The Coral - Music At Night
18 Jom James & Calexico - Goin' To Acapulco
19 Bruce Springsteen - Livin' In The Future
20 Feist - 1 2 3 4

Merry Christmas!

Since Twister is asking, lets bring this back up to the top.

On to this beast. This is going to be tough but I'm starting the process tonight!

Holy cow, I just realized how hard this is going to be for Moonbeam to compile. Good luck!

Yeah, it's going to be a bear.

1. The field of potential choices is vastly larger, of course. Especially for me. iirc, I had two albums in my top 100 which aren't ranked on this site. In my top 100 songs, I'd guess there'll be at least 20 songs which aren't ranked here.

2. My taste in songs is much more mercurial. By which I mean that my top ten albums in the list list I submitted to Anthony are pretty darn close to what they would have been five, maybe even ten, years ago. My top ten songs change from year to year (if not from week to week).

3. I'm a song guy, which makes it (in my case) a lot easier to pick albums. If an album really catches my attention, I'm very comfortable acclaiming it--since that doesn't happen very often.

All of which leads up to this question: Moonbeam, what's the deadline? I need the pressure to get started on this monster.

Moonbeam wrote:
I will accept lists up to and including January 31st, and I look forward to compiling them!

So schleuse, you got 23 days left to nominate a couple of hundred songs out of the thousands (or millions?) of songs that you know, select let say 200 and put them in an order that resembles you actual musical taste in a kind of proper way. Preferrably you first listen to all these songs before nominating ...

Enough pressure?

très bon !

(I'm laughing yellow, like we say in French, if you know what I mean)

If you don't : rire jaune = to force a laugh (you're laughing, but your bottom is hurting)

Well, I'm running a marathon this Sunday--that'll give me time to review 80 or so songs on my iPod...

80 songs ? Man, you're fast ... especially if the songs are by the Ramones

Actually, that's assuming they're all the length of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"...

How many songs will you include in the all time songs poll?

I am stuck between 500 and 1000...either way I plan to have The Doors - The End at the end :)

Or maybe second last...in favor of Bill Lovelady's "One More Reggae For The Road".

Or Descendents - Wienerschnitzel...

I'm sending 200, no use sending more than will be included.

Neo, I'm curious which 26 songs you're gonna pick besides the 174 Britney songs.

I'm thinking some of the Dutch classics like Andre Hazes.

schleuse, good luck with the marathon!

I'm impressed already, but please let me know (afterwards) how impressed I really should be.

Thanks, Henrik. But I'm no speed demon--this will be my fourth time out, and I'm shooting for a time of about 4:30 (I hope to qualify for Boston by 2010, but I'll have to shave another hour off my time).

By the way, I was serious about reviewing songs for this poll while I run--anybody have any suggestions for the playlist? Uptempo stuff only, please--Nick Drake won't really work.

I've got the perfect 10!

1) Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
2) Cat Power - Keep On Runnin'
3) Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill
4) Liz Phair - Fuck And Run
5) Moby - Run On
6) Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell
7) Sly and the Family Stone - Runnin' Away
8) The Beatles - Run For Your Life
9) The Velvet Underground - Run Run Run
10) Van Halen - Running With The Devil

Breakaway from Tracy Ullman is quite uptempo, but might get on yr nerves after the 3rd rerun.

More serious: Tribulations from LCD Soundsystem?

BTW, nice smily, Henrik!

I got some more:

Iron Maiden - Run to the hills
John Lee Hooker - Run on
Shirley Bassey - Run on and on and on
George Jones - Run Boy
Eagles - Long Run

Ho ho ho. Thanks, guys. You forgot:

Modern Lovers, “Roadrunner”
Jackson Browne, “Running on Empty” (hmmm...maybe that one’s not so good)

I've got a couple of LCD Soundsystem songs in there, but "Tribulations" would be a good add. Thanks, Andre.

The ultimate finish: Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now" (the Rocky theme)

On a more serious note, I always find Paul Engemann's "Scarface (Push It To The Limit)" quite good to run on.

Uch. This reminds me of that awful sequence eight hours into the interminable Forrest Gump where he's running accross America and it just keeps going on and on. And not only do they need to set it to Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty," but they throw in the Doobie Brothers' "It Keeps You Running."

I like to run on the treadmill (sorry, not as ambitious as you Schleuse ) to Ned's Atomic Dustbin's God Fodder album. On second thought it might be a bit to uptempo for the pacing in a marathon.

Prodigy - "Firestarter".

A great up-tempo tune to kickstart any race. It's been the first song on my playlist for one marathon and two 10K's.

Nice to see a few runners on here!

I'll probably send one, but I won't but as much care into it as I did my albums list. I'll use more a 'Whatever I think of when I sit down to write the list' approach.

I'm probably not going to do a song list. There's way too many things to rank. Their appeal to me changes considerably from day to day based on my mood. And I have a really hard time comparing songs from different genres (or weighing the merits of a fun song vs. a serious piece). I liked bracketology because you only had to rank four...

I thought albums were harder. Maybe because I'm more of a songs person, but for an album you have to take several things into account. The songs, the coherence, cohesiveness, whether or not there's filler, etc. For songs it's just "how much do I like this song?". After a top 100 it gets a little blurry because my #120 could probably be interchanged with #125.. but that's about the only problem I had.

I'm much more of a song guy, so I love making these. However, my final list will be a nice even 1000 (and I'm gonna have to cull about 500 from my current preliminary list).

What's the cutoff for what gets counted? I presume to keep a level playing field all Nos. 1-??? will be counted the same -- just wondering where it will end.

Hi everyone! I'm back from my vacation to the States! I've received a few lists already, and I can't wait to get some more! For those who have asked, I will count the first 200 entries, but lists longer than that are greatly appreciated! I, for one, will be using this exercise to make a longer personal list. I hope everyone had a great holiday season!

1000 songs?!? Really?

I think we will all have a different idea of what a great song is, but I decided to make my list by writing down every song that I think is “timeless”, which to define exactly would take a long essay, but I know it when I hear it. I had a little over 100 timeless songs. Now I consider myself quite the music aficionado, so of course I probably enjoy 1000 songs, but just as some initially good albums fade over time, so do lots and lots of individual tracks. I also might just be an album-oriented listener.

I could probably put a 200 list together, but I’m very happy with my core 100 list. For those with 500-1000 song lists I’m curious as to what makes the lower songs list-worthy. Is anything below 1000 horrid?

Is anyone just taking their entire music collection and ranking it?

Of course, I respect whatever works for you.

Hi Jonah-

I probably like well over 20,000 songs, so limiting a list to 1000 (my ultimate goal) still sees the cream rise to the top for me. The longest song list I've made before is 500, and each of those songs is absolutely essential to me.

I decided to go through my Itunes collection and rate 5 star, 4 star and 3 star songs to get a list down to 200. I'd never really wanted to take the time to rate them before this. I realize now that any song I labeled with 3 stars is not making the cut and about half of the 4 star songs aren't either. Now I know why my wife says I have a million favorite songs.

Welcome back Moonbeam, how was your holiday?

It was very nice, Neo! My wife and I had never spent Christmas with my family, so it was really special. Plus, she got to see a white Christmas for the first time.

Welcome back, Moonbeam!

Like you left the summer atmosphere to have a family Christmas and to see the snow, I will soon do the opposite. In exactly 3 weeks from today my wife and me are flying away to enjoy a well-deserved holiday in New Zealand. It's gonna be some driving around, 'cause we wanna see lots in only 4 weeks on both South and North island. As you can imagine, we're reeeaaaallllyyy looking forward to it.

It also means, that I will be gone for a while on this forum. Sorry schleuse, no Survivor input from my side then ...

You're lucky André !
Me & my wife used to travel a lot (India, Ladakh, West Africa, Indonesia, Morocco) but now we heve kids it is not possible for at least 4 or 5 years
I miss that a lot (although kids are alright)
I'll make up for that when they are old enough to travel (or stay with relatives for a couple of weeks)
Enjoy your trip, I think NZ is a great destination

Merci, nicolas, and yes I'm quite lucky ...

For us, this is just the start of hopefully a series of nice trips. We got some other destinations on our wishlist, like Ecuador or Japan (friends living over there), Thailand, China or South Africa ...

Back to the music ... this songs poll is really getting more and more difficult. I'm more of an 'album' person, and like Loophole I change my mind on songs on a daily basis. This week, I finally came to a selection of 200 songs, but I already have some doubts ...

Well, just have to decide sometime and live with it, I guess. Either way, I think the results of this poll will show some fine surprises, more than we saw in the albums poll results.

I've just realised that 10 songs of my list are on one of the Guitar Hero game.
So here it is, the useless stats of the day !
In Guitar Hero I, there are 11 songs of the AM3000 + 1 bubbling under + 1 cover of an acclaimed song (Higher Ground by Red Hot Chili Peppers)
In Guitar Hero II : 13 AM3000 songs + 1 bubbling under + 1 cover (You Really Got Me by Van Halen )
In Guitar Hero rock the 80's you have 3 AM3000 songs and 1 bubbling under
And in Guitar Hero 3, there are 16 AM3000 + 4 bubbling under

The 3 highest ranked songs being :
Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK (#10)
Franz Ferdinand - Take me out (#70)
Guns 'n Roses - Sweet Child O'Mine (#90)
(I thought Ziggy Stardust would reach the podium but it has a lower rank than what I thought.)

You can also notice that they have succeeded in choosing 2 Aerosmith, 1 Rolling Stone and 1 Who song which are not in the AM3000 !

I could probably put a 200 list together, but I’m very happy with my core 100 list. For those with 500-1000 song lists I’m curious as to what makes the lower songs list-worthy. Is anything below 1000 horrid?


No, 1001-2000 on my list, were I to expand it, would be wonderful, not horrid! I guess via collecting music non-stop for a couple decades now, my list of things I love has grown. But I HAVE to include 1000, lest I leave out things I love. My list is entirely personal though -- timelesness and historical value are of little import to me.

But yeah, 1000 is the tip of a very large and very satisfying iceberg.

To be able to save time for the compiler and to create a homogenous spread sheet I think we should create our list in the same way.

IF you create a word document, how should it be done?

And if you create an excel file, is two colums ok?

Is it fine with most of us if we use small letters but with the first letter in every word a big one?

What size of letters should there be, or doesn't it matter?

I think these questions are up to the compiler, but feel free to share... :)

I personally have artists (obviously capitalized) in column A, songs (all words capitalized) in column B and year in column C.

I was planning on doing it similar to how I submitted the albums list to Anthony: Artist in column A, song in column B and comments (for the first 10 or so) in column C. Artists and songs capitalized, like Neo does.

Hmm, to correct myself: Column A is for the rank number, before mentioned columns B-D shift to C-E.

This is really a hell of a job! Listening and clustering, listening and clustering, getting annoyed with earlier selections, further listening and clustering, etc. Who came with the idea to do this TORTURE game?

Batting average:

23 songs on my top 1000 list is included in the All Time Top 3000 Songs list in the position intervalls of 1-200 and 2801-3000. That means my 23 songs will swell to a whopping 172 (songs in the top 3000) if my sample is representative. And of those 1000 songs there will be 828 not on the top 3000 list! That's 83%.

What's your batting average?


PS

Does AMG work ultraslow for you too? Have to check all those year datas...

Any other source you can recommend instead?

The way I listen to albums is like this.

I have a 60 CD changer. I pick whatever I feel like listening to, and just load them in. Then, I press play.

Rarely do I look at song names. There are a few songs I definitely know I like the most, but usually it's the whole experience of the album that affects me.

That's why the album list is easier for me. All the factors that go into them, I know exactly which ones excite me the most, so it's just a matter of sorting between them.

For songs, I'll have to not only go over my favorite albums and really think about which ones are the best, AND I have to go figure out the song names, probably by putting the CD in, pressing forward until I find it, and then indexing with the back of the album. I'll also have to scour the weak albums with one great song that I don't listen to that much.

Does AMG work ultraslow for you too? Have to check all those year datas...

Any other source you can recommend instead?

RYM (rateyourmusic.com) has become a much more trustful site than AMG. Has Moonbeam asked us to send him year data as well?

Year datas are not required to my knowledge!

Nope, but for statistical purposes it would be nice I suppose. Not that much work to find a few release dates. It would be much more work for Moonbeam to find them for all the songs submitted, but if we all put in that little extra effort we could get a more detailed overview perhaps.

OK, I'm going to follow that and do it like this:

In my list I have songs listed in the AM top 3000 and/or bubbling under, and songs not listed here.
1) For songs listed, I take the corresponding year as mentioned on this website.
2) For songs not listed, I usually have them on some album and take the year of the album release. If I can't find that here on AM, I use RYM as source.

BTW, 1983 is apparently 'my' year. Not less than 12 songs from that year in my top 200!

I did the same. And I've got 12 songs in a single year too. And a year very close to yours has 9.

Have to confess, that there are a few 'quilty treasures' in my list as well.

Oh mine definitely has some as well. I even considered listing "We Built This City" but I just couldn't.

I'm gonna have two absolutely guilty pleasures in my top 3.

How is everyone compiling their list? I'm doing mine from iTunes by multiplying the song's length to a 5/4th exponent by the playcount to a 5/4th exponent. I figure I listen to long songs less than 3 minute pop songs, although I don't love them any less.

I'm doing my song top 100. Great experience !
What is amazing is that a lot of "album songs " I like can't compete with singles because when I listen to them they are like a fish out of its aquarium compared to the singles.

Right, it was guilty pleasures, not guilty treasures. Well, works too I guess.

Not in the top 3, but I do have some of them in the first 20, probably noone else dares to vote for ...

Quick update and request!

So far, I have only received five lists, but they have been fascinating! 816 different songs have received a nod out 900 total songs submitted, meaning there isn't a lot of crossover! We need many more submissions to arrive at some form of consensus!

I'm having fun compiling these, but I do have one request. Excel submissions are greatly appreciated, with artist in one column and song in the next column. I would request that if the artist is a band whose name starts with "The", please put that part last. For instance, if you want to nominate a Rolling Stones song, put "Rolling Stones, The" in the appropriate column. It makes it a lot easier to compile the list!

they are like a fish out of its aquarium compared to the singles

nicolas, I assume you mean the singles are the aquarium, the album songs the fish?

For some albums, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Example: Talking Heads' "Remain In Light" is my favorite album, but no track on that album is going to make it to the songs poll (not even Once In A Lifetime). Example the other way around: New Order's albums are okay, but far from my 100, whereas they have some excellent singles to lick off your fingers.

no, I meant the fish are the album songs I love (which are not singles)
the aquarium is the album

Will do so, Moonbeam, especially with songs from The The.

Hopefully, I can submit my list before the end of next week.

Whew, never knew I had that much artists with "The". I'll just send my list now, the minor changes I'll probably make over the next few days aren't gonna matter anyway. I might think of some comments and send you those later, but it's not easy coming up with worthwhile comments for songs. Not for me anyway.

I finished mine a few days ago, now I just have to put it in Excel, so expect mine in sometime this coming week.

I'm getting slammed at work, likely to last until mid-February. But I make this solemn vow: I will have my poll in before the deadline!

Small question with big implications:

Is the "The" after the band name preferred or unnecessary?

Night Owl

Hi Fred, it's not necessary.

In terms of the format question my list is of the form
"Clarkson, Kelly" not "Kelly Clarkson" is this preferable?

Not including Kelly Clarkson at all would be the most preferable, but "Kelly Clarkson" will do.

There's no Kelly Clarkson on the list, don't worry. A 500 list for the decade would be different though.

Ten days to go and my list still doesn’t resemble anything close to satisfying.

This project is proving to be quite excruciating. Like a few people noted earlier, I’m just finding it impossible to discern my personal preference of certain songs from others. I started with a list of 1795 songs (from a rated playlist that I exported from iTunes) and I somehow managed to whittle it down to 300. So at this point, not only do I need to give another 100 songs the proverbial boot, but I need to rank the remaining 200 too. F$%k.

Anyone else in the same boat?

I started out with 100 songs and added another 100, then another 50 and then another 50. Meanwhile I switched some choices around, but I've been working on it since November or so.. so I guess if I had to do it in 1 month it would have been fairly hard. I'm still switching them around every day, because it's hard to come up with a definite ranking, but I figured whether I place Nickelback at #11 or #30 won't make much of a difference.

Oh, yes. I am in that boat. I began with my entire iTunes library, spent several hours culling, and still had 600 songs...then I added about 100 songs I don't even have there. I'm down to a little over 400, and I haven't even started ranking them yet.

For me it was surprisingly easy.
During the album polls i had given each song a mark between 1 to 5 stars on my music library.
Then I added some other and had a total of 350.
After that I separated the songs into 2 groups, the each group in 2, until I could make my choice.
I used a no turning back approach; or else you're lost.

I had done part of the job 12 years ago when I wrote my book. I had picked 100 songs to build a sort of soundtrack. Then I added the songs I discovered or learnt to love since.

It’s nice to know I’m not alone.

I took a cue from Jonah – his remark about picking “timeless” songs is something I’ve kept in mind over the last few months I’ve been slaving away on my list, and it’s helped enormously. Like him, I’m unable to define the qualities of “timelessness”; I only know it on a visceral level. But it’s the songs that don’t quite achieve that height (perhaps because they haven’t been around long enough) that are really pesky. And don’t even get me started on the classical pieces I’ve included…

All in all, I just feel the weight of a rapidly approaching deadline bearing down on me. Isn’t a task like this supposed to be pleasurable? Or did I miss a memo?

It's all about the satisfaction of completing the project.

I'm *almost* down to my 1000. How I'm gonna separate the Top 200 from that, I really don't know. Might just come down to my mood that day...

I end up doing a top 500 for another website each year so this wasn't too hard for me as I only just finished one in November, a slight re-jig was in order and I've now sent it.

Breakdown wise I had 11% 2000's, 30% 1990's, 17% 1980's, 37% 1970's and 23% 1960's. Nothing before 1961 made the cut of the top 200. 1997 was my most popular year with 14 picks followed by '67 with 13, '64 with 10 and '68 with 9. My average year was 1983, which was coincidently the year I was born. The most selected artist was predictably The Beatles with 7.

I used a no turning back approach; or else you're lost.

Aha, nicolas, so that's the secret to success ... and the reason why I'm still lost.

It has become a long, never-satisfying struggle to get this list together, and I'm still not there.

100 albums? Difficult, but not impossible. I have my set of long-established favorites (as I said elsewhere, basically the top 25 of my personal list), and from there it was just a matter of filling out the rest. Any list like this is very much a matter of "what-am-I-thinking-about-today", but looking over my top 100 I'm happy with it.

200 songs, though?

I love all these polls, and I am looking forward to the results of this one. But as far as my own participation in this one goes, in the immortal words of SEINFELD's Kramer in "The Contest": "I'm out!" It's just too herculean a task. Sorry.

That said, I reserve the right to have a sudden burst of inspiration within the next ten days and slide in a list at the last minute. But I don't really see that happening.

Harold – I know where you’re coming from. Your admission is admirable.

Now, while I’m not prepared to throw in the towel just yet, in all honesty, I’m not sure how much longer I’m willing to slave away on a project that isn’t showing even the slightest hint of a conclusion. With every glance at my spreadsheet, the dismay grows larger. This task just isn’t fun anymore.

Of course, it’s just a poll and shouldn’t be taken that seriously. But, I just can’t (in good conscience) submit a list that fails to meet my personal standard in terms of order, inclusiveness and overall satisfaction.

It's true - the initial data accumulation is by far the most daunting task. It's a living document for me, but once I got the base data included, it's not a big deal tweaking, especially the order. (Hardest part is deciding what to eliminate -- so much great stuff out there!)

Well, why would you eliminate anyway ? It is not written anywhere that a list must have a multiple of 100 items to be a real list...
My problem is the order of the songs, quite easy for the top 10, much harder after.

Well, why would you eliminate anyway ? It is not written anywhere that a list must have a multiple of 100 items to be a real list...
My problem is the order of the songs, quite easy for the top 10, much harder after.

I was actually considering something like 1111, but I have to enforce some sort of discipline on myself.