You can play brand new to all the other chicks out here...

So my life is actually kind of interesting right now (long story short, I'm kind of dating a prostitute... bwahahah), but instead of writing about that, I was inspired by some schoolmates (whose blogs I read even though we're not really friends) to make a list of my top 25 songs of all times. Okay, so they did 20, but 25 is all I could get my initial list of 66 candidates down to. So here, without further ado, is my list!

25. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

For the longest time (hee, to reference a finalist song that didn't quite make the cut), I was convinced that I hated Bruce Springsteen. He stood for my dad's shitty taste in music, and more generally New Jersey and the general sort of depressing sameness that I associate with most of my dad's whole side of the family. So, for years I only listened to the Boss when trapped on car trips with my dad. As soon as I started driving and being able to control the music, I quit him cold turkey. Then, for some reason, I decided to listen to his latest album, Magic, and LOVED it. I don't know what changed, but now that I'm listening voluntarily, he's pretty darn badass. I still don't like all his music, and find him a much better lyricist than... well, performer, but this song is perfectly structured and just... feels right.

24. Nina Simone - Sinnerman

The Pierce Brosnan/Rene Russo remake of The Thomas Crown Affair is among my favorite movies, but that's largely because of this song and how well they use it. Nina Simone is one of my favorite vocalists, and here her trademark growl is used wonderfully.

23. Feist - Brandy Alexander

I have very mixed thoughts about Feist. The songs of hers that I like, I love, but often she seems too wispy and self-indulgent for my taste. That said, this is among her wispier songs, and yet I love it. Of course, that may be because of my romantic circumstances during the time I first heard it (that stupid hot friend situation, ugh), but it's just such a pretty song.

He's my Brandy Alexander,
Always gets me into trouble,
But that's another matter,
Brandy Alexander

Unrelatedly, I ate at the table next to Feist at a restaurant in the East Village once. She seemed nice and I smiled at her.

22. Nick Drake - Northern Sky

I forget who it was that said this, but... SOMEONE once said that the thing about Nick Drake's music is that no matter how loud you turn it up, it will always sound quiet, and that's especially true of this song. It's a little plaintive, but entirely sweet. No matter what mood I'm in, when this song comes on, I always get at least a little bit happier.

21. Fiona Apple - Criminal

Perhaps due to my awful taste in music growing up, I never listened to Fiona Apple when she first blew up. It was only really with Extraordinary Machine that I started to appreciate her and went back and rediscovered Tidal and When the Pawn.... I downloaded a fairly recent iTunes session she did, where she performs a bunch of songs and also has plenty of patter about them, her career, and even her life in general, and she's actually very sweet and completely normal. But when she sits down at the piano and starts singing, she is a SCARY little woman. I saw her live the summer after my freshman year, and she was INTENSE. This song is really sort of a placeholder for all her work, but it's still my favorite. (Although "Parting Gift" and "Shadowboxer" are very close runners-up.)

20. Tracy Chapman - Fast Car

I put this song on a mix CD I made for driving around at home this summer, but when my mom heard it, she made me turn it off. It came out right after I was born, when my mom had some minor post-partum crap going on, and apparently whenever it came on the radio (which it did quite often), she'd burst into tears. Maybe that's why it resonates with me so much... or maybe it's just that it's a fantastic song.

19. Iron and Wine - Each Coming Night

Speaking of crying songs, there was a long period when, if I ever felt like I needed a good cry (you know, in a therapeutic way), I would put on Iron and Wine's Our Endless Numbered Days and cry myself to sleep. The whole CD doesn't quite have the same effect on me now, but this song still does it to me every time. Sam Beam's music totally embraces everything about life, so much that there's not a single love song he's written that isn't tightly wound together with death, and this is a perfect example of that.

Will you say to me, when I'm gone,
"Your face has faded but lingers on,
Because light strikes a deal with each coming night"

18. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova - Falling Slowly

Once was my absolute favorite movie of last year. In fact, it's probably my favorite movie of the past five years. I don't tend to think of it when I'm naming my favorite movies of all time, but every time I watch it it just makes me happy. Which is a little odd, because it isn't exactly a happy movie. But the fact that these two came together, made such beautiful music, and then *SPOILER* didn't conform to the typical movie plotline and allowed the story to end with the two main characters, who love each other, not together, is just so... refreshing, and beautiful. (The fact that they got together in real life doesn't hurt.) This song won the Best Original Song Oscar, and absolutely deserved it. Apparently Once is now being developed as a Broadway musical, which is a truly terrifying thought, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they somehow find a way to translate it well, or at the very least not do this perfect little movie a disservice.

17. Liza Minnelli - Mein Herr

This is the only show tune on my list, but rest assured that there are dozens of others that might make the list depending on my mood. Kander and Ebb aren't my very favorite composers, or even in my top three, because for every song of theirs that I like, there are three that I just can't get through. That said, they know (knew) how to write an awesome "Get the fuck out of my way, bitches, I'm the queen bee around here" song ("All That Jazz," "Kiss of the Spider Woman," anyone?), and when they come together with Liza it's just... perfection. This scene in Cabaret is one of my favorite movie moments of all time, because everything comes together perfectly. Liza, say what you will about her, is fabulously talented, and she was at her peak in this movie. She has a vulnerable, volatile edge to her, and with the flawless (in its appropriately unpolishedness) Fosse choreography, this song never fails to take my breath away. If I ever did drag, it would be in the costume from this scene.

16. Jimmy Eat World - Sweetness

I always feel like Jimmy Eat World should be more successful than they are. I mean, they're plenty successful, but if you ask the average person about them, they'll probably remember the ubiquitous "The Middle" and nothing else, when the band has literally never put out a bad album. Clarity in particular is, in my mind, one of the most perfect albums ever made. But this song... when I heard it the first time, I think I assumed it was a cover, because it just felt so good that I didn't think it could have not existed in the American music scene before then. But, obviously, I was wrong. It's impossible to hear this song and not sing along. Nearly as impossible as it is to sing along to it and not sound TERRIBLE. Oh well, such is life.

15. Janis Joplin - Me and Bobby McGee

I think because my first introduction to Janis was her "Summertime," which to this very day I can't listen to without wincing, I never bothered to listen to much of her work. However, on a whim I downloaded her greatest hits last year, and absolutely fell in love. I mean, the truth is that the woman, God rest her soul, was a terrible singer, but she could emote like no one else. And, when she got that in rein, she could just blow you away. This is actually one of my dad's favorite songs, further proof of the shudder-worthy fact that I'm slowly turning into him as I get older.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose...

14. Vanessa Carlton - White Houses

Vanessa's another one I think never quite hit the big time as much as she should have. Yes, "A Thousand Miles" was ubiquitous, but since then... not so much. Her next two albums were actually much better than that one, anyway. Plus, she got skinny and hot! Duh! This song in particular is just... perfect to me. Is it a typical, somewhat ham-fisted lost virginity song? Sure. But it's so good! Her thin, almost childlike voice and the piano, the driving tempo, the semi-but-not-really chorus... ugh. Me likey.

13. Igor Stravinsky - Firebird Suite (1919 version)

The only classical piece on here, but again, representing a whole genre I (sometimes) love. Stravinsky is probably my favorite classical composer, if you stuck a gun to my head and made me choose. He's just so badass. When Le sacre du printemps premiered, the audience started a RIOT it was so scandalous. How cool is that? But The Firebird will always be my favorite of his works. The very end (The "Berceuse" and "Finale") is amazingly amazing and so freaking good. Hahah, that's so descriptive, I know but... words kind of fail me when it comes to this piece.

12. Colin Hay - I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You

I have many very mixed feelings about Zach Braff (he's an asshat, but I liked Garden State for what it was, but The Last Kiss was ABYSMAL, but Scrubs has always been one of the best underrated shows on television), but I'll give him this: the guy knows how to make a soundtrack. So many of the artists that I like I've either found because of him or noticed in his stuff after I already liked them. Colin Hay is one of the former. What a career path, I mean, from frontman for a guilty-pleasure 80s niche band ("I Come From a Land Down Under," anyone?) to introspective somewhat lo-fi singer/songwriter? Unexpected, to say the least. At the end of senior year of high school, I even went to his concert at the Birchmere in Virginia, with the boy I'd been in love with since... um, realizing I was gay, actually. Nothing happened that night (although later on we had an awkward, failed quasi-romance that we got over and now we're friends and I love him dearly in a completely different way), but I still always associate this song with him, even though it really has nothing to do with any situation I might have imagined there was with him. Also, it's PRETTY!

11. Paul Simon - Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard

Again, this was one song that I really latched onto around the time I was coming out. I mean, technically what Julio and "me" did down by the schoolyard isn't ever articulated, but Paul himself said that he imagined that it was "something sexual." And considering my own experience with boys down by and/or in schoolyards (which is unfortunately rather extensive by now), it just clicked with me. It's such a joyful song, no matter what the subject matter is. And at the end of high school, finally feeling somewhat comfortable in my own skin, knowing that I'd be in New York soon, I felt that way too.

Well, I'm on my way,
I don't know where I'm going,
I'm on my way,
I'm taking my time, but I don't know where,
Goodbye to Rosie, the queen of Corona,
Seein' me and Julio down by the schoolyard

10. Elton John - Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

I don't especially know why I like this song so much. I don't really relate that much to the lyrics, although it is incredibly beautiful, melodically speaking. But sometimes, when I'm feeling... not so much lonely as thoughtful, I'll put this song on repeat and just stare at the ceiling for a while, and it just makes things better.

9. Rilo Kiley - Portions for Foxes

Hahah, it seems like a lot of these songs are about unrequited love and bad relationships, doesn't it? This, I'd say, would be the angrier, less zen companion piece to Feist's "Brandy Alexander." There's hints of both defiance and hopelessness in it, which for some reason in my more melodramatic moments I relate to. When I'm feeling less self-indulgent, it's still a fuckin' awesome song to dance around to.

8. U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name

I think The Joshua Tree is, aside from maybe two Beatles albums and maaaybe two or three others, the greatest album ever recorded. I mean, my mom's OBSESSION with U2 probably colors that opinion slightly, but still, I think the fact that it's a great album is pretty much beyond debate. This song kicks it off with a bang. When the Edge's guitar comes down out of the stratosphere and that pounding drumbeat begins... you just sit back and exist, because you're going for a ride whether you want to or not.

7. Buddy Holly - Everyday

This song is a perfect example of economy. Two minutes and five seconds of guitar, stand-up bass, glockenspiel, handclaps, and vocals make the simplest statement seem profound: "Love like yours will surely come my way." Yet again, my love for this song is a product of my dad's Buddy Holly obsession.

6. The Decemberists - Red Right Ankle

The Decemberists are notorious for their long, involved, ridiculous songs about sea captains, legionnaires, and war widows (which, don't get me wrong, I love), but this song is about as simple and acoustic as it gets. Who would have thought that the word "ventricles" would not only not ruin a love song but actually seem completely in place? Again, makes me cry every time.

5. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World

Okay, so everyone in the known universe knows or should know this song, so I don't feel too compelled to describe it, but the fact that it works is just so unexpected. A ukelele and vocals, combining two of the most renowned songs in the American canon, with little to no concern for lyrical accuracy? And yet it's certainly the best medley I've ever heard, and one of those songs that, no matter where you are or what you're doing when it comes on, you stop, you sit, and you smile.

4. Coldplay - The Scientist

Coldplay have always been one of my favorite bands. A Rush of Blood to the Head is probably their most critically acclaimed album, but it did sort of start their whole "epic melodic soundscape" thing. Which is fine, and by fine I mean totally awesome. But this song stuck more to the Parachutes slightly more stripped-down sound. It's raw, incredibly personal, and beautiful at the same time.

3. Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own

I don't mean to be a snob about it, but I definitely caught the Amy Winehouse wave a little before the majority of Americans did, at least. And I'm definitely still on it. I honestly think that Amy is the most important vocalist of the current generation of musicians out there today, drugs and all. I have every song she's ever recorded, and this is absolutely my favorite. It's funny, the lyrics themselves are rather depressing, encouraging the man she's in love with to break off their affair because she has no power to herself, but the song is so happy. Whenever I'm walking in the city and this comes on, my posture is better, there's a skip in my step, and I can't help but smile at everyone I pass. Now, Amy, give us at least one more fucking studio album before the drugs get you. I'm begging you.

2. Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day

Oh, Sufjan. I said that Amy was the most important vocalist out there today, but when it comes to overall musicality, I think Sufjan Stevens is just... perfection. From playing every instrument on his albums to RESEARCHING and writing all his songs, to his incredibly fragile voice... gahhh I have such a music-crush on him. (And kind of a regular crush, too.) Illinois is my favorite album of his, and while there are songs I listen to more often than this one ("Chicago" and "Palisades," to name two), that's probably because this song is so intense that I physically can't listen to it very often. It's so incredibly understated, from the opening lyrics ("Goldenrod and the 4H stone, the things I brought you when I found out you had cancer of the bone") to the questioning of faith that follows. I was going to call it raw, but it isn't raw, it's just incredibly honest. I've said before that there are songs that always make me cry, but this is the big one. This is the "last scenes of Forrest Gump" of songs.

1. Etta James - At Last

There are many candidates for this award, but I personally am positive that this is the most romantic song ever recorded. If and when I ever get married, this will be our wedding dance no matter how cliche it might be. The first two words of the song make me melt, and by the end of the song I'm a puddle on the floor. Per. Fection.