10. Blues fans

Let it go, seriously. Who goes to these blues festivals? Who the fuck could have the blues anymore? The blues over what? The fact that you’ve lost your enviable retirement supplement? The fact that the world is currently in a state of “disharmony”. Do people just like the style? How do people still want to go to the bar to hear random generic blues? It’s the same thing over and over again. How can anyone be satisfied with this? Just listen to a Robert Johnson box set and get over it. The blues were born in a context that has long since past. You can’t relive the blues that someone like Robert Johnson felt and you will never hear it again, so why are you going back to it? The comfort in the past never visited; the identities first attempt at self-idealization.

9. Jimmy Buffet Fans (Parrotheads)

It’s actually difficult to criticize “Parrotheads” because they’re so unselfconscious of their own actions that they’re sincere.  Regardless these people are annoying to be around.  You find them in hotels following around Jimmy Buffet, drunk 24/7 singing the same 2 or 3 popular Jimmy Buffet songs that I don’t care to go into now out of the unwanted grimace of recognizing those songs.  These fans are well beyond their middle age and are trying to live young again.  People say age is a state of mind…not when your face looks like leather and you spray paint your beard white.  You’re very much your age.  An age that is very much old that is giving it’s last shot at being young.  Hopelessly romantic, or just hopeless?  Either way, there’s an alternative graceful-aging that should be the hope of those young.

8. Heavy Metal fans

Heavy metal fans are a lot like video game nerds.  Where some people drown their sorrows in their parent’s basement by playing video games, some go out to heavy metal shows, dressed in the stereotypical all black, and mosh or headbang. When you think about moshing, its just a bunch of guys rubbing on each other, which, if you think about it, is kind of gay. Just like the hardcore gamer there are very few girls at these events, as most girls don’t like heavy metal. This further frustrates the heavy metal fan and leads to further violence amongst them. The heavy metal fan also likes to claim that they are railing against the life of the common man, the average, or the normal people. They do this by dressing exactly the same, wearing the same color, growing their hair long, and doing whatever they can to become indistinguishable from the next fan. This little contradiction never cross the heavy metal fan’s mind. Sadly, we here at OW love a number of heavy metal bands and have been to a number of heavy metal shows. Oddly enough we dressed in our typical jeans and a t-shirt where the most unique people at the show. One time I had to go straight from work which had me where a white polo. For those who don’t know white is the only color that can physically harm the heavy metal fan. Anyway I got a lot of bad looks at that show.

7. Ska Fans

You don’t find ska fans many places and this is a good thing, because if you did the world would be a massively annoying place.  Instead you find them in the confines of small clubs with mobster top hats on and suspenders mimicking the style of The Specials.  They dance like assholes.  They don’t know how to dance.  The music is goofy and so are they.  Where does the instinct come from to enjoy this music?  Where was the instinct to transfer the horn sound into pop music?  Out of all the orchestral instruments that made the transition to pop music, the horn played in staccato has to be the most annoying.  I claim no understanding in the instincts of where people start liking this music.  I just know I don’t like being around it nor it’s fans.

6. Rap fans

Yes, you’re tough.  You look like you’ve come from “the streets” even though your street is blooming with evanescent willows.  Yes, your pants are falling off your legs.  Yes, you have a scar on your face that you probably gave to yourself because you saw that Eminem gave one to himself.  Yes, your car speakers has no frequency higher that can be heard higher than 25 HZ.  Yes, your car sounds like it’s about to explode.  Yes, you wear your hat backwards late at night in attempts to court trampy women.  Yes, all these signs point to the fact to that you’re tough.  Yes, you need all these signs to point to the fact that you’re tough.

5. Dave Matthews fans

Have you ever been to a Frat party? How do you feel about Birkenstocks? Backwards hats with curved brims? Greek letters? Chugging terrible beer? Keg stands? If the answer to each of these questions is resoundingly positive, then you may be  fan of the Dave Matthews Band. What is more interesting is that DMB is actually a talented band, with a  world renowned drummer, bassist, and saxophone player. Oh they also have this gigantic dude that plays violin. I don’t know if he is any good, and I don’t want to be the guy who tells him otherwise. In any case we here at OW generally like this band but boy do we hate the fans. They are either insanely obsessed or drunks looking for a party. Or sometimes both. We have even heard of DMB fans who will only listen to DMB because they claim nothing else is even worth it. Further research has even shown that there is an on going feud between DMB fans and Blink 182 fans. Why is completely beyond us. Going to a DMB show is like watching every jock, frat boy, and sorority slut get so hammered they forget they were even at the show. But don’t worry they have pictures on facebook to prove they were there.

4. Punk fans

Punk fans don’t like music.  At least they don’t like anything substantial in music. They are more interested in the style of the music, meaning how the band appears aesthetically on stage and the quantity of pierced rings are on the band members faces.  When punk isn’t so obviously expressive in it’s aesthetic repugnancy, it relies on a supposed understanding of anything political.  In comes The Clash, one of the most Overrated Bands of all time.  Instead of wearing your heart of your sleeve physically, you wear your heart on your brain disingenuously.  You read the most superficial account of the Sandinista revolution and somehow equate it as a total repudiation of American foreign Policy.  Anything that can decenter you to others is what’s more important for you.  This argument is tired.  It has to go without saying at this point.

3. Emo fans

Drooping razor edged hair, an operable-to-all sulk, a little eye liner below the eye, the Emo fan wants you to know about them.  Nobody else wants to know about them and never did, so that’s when they turn towards the appearance, the appearance that wants attention, needs attention, and seeks it in the hidden corners of the most marginalized places of modern suburbia.  One day maybe someone will come around and truly understand your plight of always being misunderstood, or rather, never trying to be understood because you weren’t important enough.  Either way, sympathy for the sake of sympathy may come along with another is bored, and together you can feel sorry for yourselves feeling sorry for yourselves.  Objectless, without any idea, the height of egoism is Emo’s inner soft shell.

2. Phish fans

What’s the difference between a  DMB fan and a Phish fan? Drug use. Your average DMB fan drinks a lot of beer, smokes some weed, and depending on how rich and white they are, do a little coke. Your average Phish fan is on everything from LSD to Heroin almost all the time. Where the DMB fan wears clean pressed button up shirts, the Phish fan might change cloths once or twice a year and generally walks around smelling like patchouli oil. Which, by the way, barely covers up the constant weed smell, since they smoke pot like cigarettes. Much like the DMB fan they are obsessed with all things Phish. I have even heard stories about fans doing Heroin because lead singer Trey Anastasio was doing it. The difference being they were dirt poor, couldn’t afford it, and generally don’t have jobs. Much like the DMB fan, we here at OW enjoy most of Phish’s albums but, once again, their fans are terrible people who try to pretend it’s still the seventies. If it wasn’t for this band the tie dye industry would have disappeared years ago. Yet despite OW’s best efforts people still buy these terrible t-shirts.

1. Indie Fans

Indie fans are the worst fans of any genre in the history of music.  They wear the tightest jeans imaginable to the point of buying woman’s jeans if it’s possible.  They walk like storks with their elbows always turned behind their hips.  They wear tight ass T-shirts with some logo on it representing something either socially perfunctory (that they think is significant) or something in the guise of an absurdity in the attempts at making another laugh.  The craving of attention inside the Indie Fan is much like the emo fan except with the ostensible hope that their attention-seeking is methodologically more sophisticated.  This is more gross than the Emo fan when the mask of ball hugger sized jeans is unmasked and the secret loser is revealed.  Only someone of this disposition could listen to such abominable  music that loves to think it‘s quality in it‘s unchecked “creativity“.

10.Will Sergeant

Will Sergeant of Echo and The Bunny is an often overlooked guitarist.  One listen to their album “Ocean Rain” though and one will hear some of the most innovative and neurotic guitar playing of the 80’s. His classic delay used on their previous album’s was overwhelmed by spontaneous creativity on every single song off of Ocean Rain; more specifically the song “Thorn of Crowns”. It’s hear that Sergeant matches the Voltairian madness of Ian McCulloch’s vocals delivery to a song that exists somewhere in the sadistic reaches of and 18th century romantic comedy. Beyond the brilliance of his work on Ocean Rain is his work on subsequent singles like “The Cutter”and “Lips like Sugar”. He could play pop, spontaneous guitar madness; everything under the sun but his work always sounded distinctly his own. Break out Ocean Rain to hear what creative guitar playing sounds like.

9. Noel Gallagher

Hmmm…Noel Gallagher on the greatest guitarists of all time list?  Well, this is Old-Wizard’s list so we didn’t have a choice so we might as well start going into his great solos and ending it like that. First off, listen to the solo in “Live Forever“. Simple, but emotive and perfect in the context of the song. Listen to his massive amount of guitar overdubs in “D’Ya Know What I Mean”; That was certainly a new sound for the time regardless of how much someone would like to simply call it psychedelic. Listen to his hypnotic guitar lines in “Up in the Sky” and “Columbia” and one will find further evidence of a man who just had a sense for what a tune was and what a guitar needed to do to carry that tune. Alright, that’s it.

8. Jonny Greenwood

Since The Bends onwards, Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead has established himself as one of the greatest guitarists of his generation. Whether it’s in alt-rock modes like “Just” or the twiddling heard on “Paranoid Android“, Jonny Greenwood is always looking to expand the sound of the guitar, and when he couldn’t anymore he turned to the programming for his sounds. But between The Bends and Ok Computer, he exhausted all the emotion out of the guitar that there could possibly be. Beyond his actual playing is his striking sound that pierced the listeners ears especially during a solo. He moved across the fret board with a feeling of limitlessness not seen in most guitarists. His expansion of what the guitar can sound like puts him in high rank among the endless list of guitarists through the instruments history.

7. Kevin Shields

Kevin Shields, leader of shoegazing’s most coveted band My Bloody Valentine took the guitar and made it sound like something it never sounded like before. Forget the simple overdrive and sometimes guitar interplay of his “alternative-indie” contemporaries. He made the guitar sound like flowers and volcano explosions at the same time utilizing the whammy bar of a fender Jag more creatively than any guitarist before. It was with Kevin Shields that the obsession with guitar pedals became enormous for better or worse.  What many people didn’t understand though was that Shields got his sound from the way he played his guitar, the way he would exaggeratedly bend notes on entire bar chords with countless amounts of amps portraying the sounds. The sound of the guitar had never seen it’s most outward limits since Kevin Shields and no one has come close since.

6. Jimmy Page

There is no guitarist with as many recognizable riffs as Jimmy Page. No matter how queer it sounds, he is the “riff master”. It would be too obvious to name the obvious songs that one recognizes immediately by his playing. Beyond his penchant for creating memorable guitar riffs though was someone who commanded the guitar itself like a toy. Watch him during the early days in the DVD “How the West was Won”. Watch his playing during “Misty Mountain Hop“. He has total control over what he’s playing that answers every musical move by the rest of the band with an ease unseen by any guitarist before or after. He just knew what to do with the guitar at every second and created memorable lines in 80% of the songs in the band. He is THE hard rock guitarist of all time.

5. John Squire

John Squire of The Stone Roses may be more recognized by “GUITARISTS!” for his second album “The Second Coming” which perfectly updated Jimmy Page’s style into a 90’s alternative sound, but it was with their debut album that John Squire will always win his legacy. Every one song on The Stone Roses debut album was sprinkled with the shine of the best Byrdsesque guitar playing and sound. When he wasn’t sprinkling sunshine on the groove of these songs, he was going to subterranean Caribbean guitar styles that took this pop music into a completely different place never occupied by pop music before. Take a listen to “Bye Bye Badman”. Listen to his solo at 3:00 minutes in and think about the style he played in the entire song before.  Combining this Caribbean shuffle with guitar lines that literally sounded like a sunny day made for one of the most enjoyable guitar experiences put to record. Whatever Squire was being influenced by at the time, we were the beneficiaries

4. Jimi Hendrix

What Jimi Hendrix did with the guitar influenced so many guitarists afterwards. It would take an endless amount of time to list all of them. He not only influenced guitarists who concentrated on their musicianship, but all those other guitarists who wanted bend the living shit out of the guitar string, the other guitarists who wanted to make one note sustain for five minutes, the other guitarists who wanted to combined 10 delays with 20 reverbs to see what massive sound would come out of their Marshall Stack after all this work. Hendrix epitomized a figure who influenced the most disparate amount of guitarists of all time. Think about it. What other guitarist could both influence Eric Clapton and Kevin Shields? The legacy of Jimi Hendrix is without question. You know him, you hear him, you know what he does. It’s pretty simple actually.

3. Johnny Marr

The jangly guitar is owned by Johnny Marr. Listen to the entire Smiths catalogue and at every turn you will find Marr coming up with the most creative guitar lines that was perfectly complimented by Morrissey’s idiosyncratic lyrics. But this is what makes Johnny Marr such a great guitarist. It was never just guitar wankery. Every song had to be tuneful and melodic guitar lines. Everything popped out in Johnny Marrs pop playing. Listen to “This Charming Man” and “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” to get a glimpse at the quality that Johnny Marr put into his guitar work. Every note meant something. There was no chugging or power chords; it was all just melody that never got in the way of the vocalist. This sense for restraint and melody puts Johnny Marr as one of the greatest guitarist of all time.

2. David Gilmour

One feels like a charlatan putting David Gilmour as the 2nd greatest guitarist of all time because of not including Syd Barrett with his psychedelic musings that must have influenced Gilmour. But when one listens to Gilmour, one hears a guitarist more controlled while still retaining the intensity that Syd Barrett originally brought to songs like “Astronomy Domine.” One hears this equal control and intensity in Gilmour’s guitar playing on “Meddle“, especially “Echoes” which is listed on our greatest songs of all time list. It’s hard to argue the greatness of Gilmour during the solo of Echoes. He pulls something off that’s unspeakable from any guitarist before or after. It’s unfortunate that Gilmour turned into such an average musician ‘rehashing the classics’ in his old age when he was at one time operating at such a primal level in his guitar playing. It’s hard to think of a guitarist who just understood the instrument more naturally than Gilmour.

1. Keith Richards

Keith Richards certainly wasn’t the best technical guitarist of all time but we already said in the introduction that we could care less about that. What we do know about him is that he wrote the beginning guitar line to “Gimme Shelter.” What we know is that he wrote the riff to “Brown Sugar.” What we know is what he played in “Can’t you hear me knocking.” We know how he responded to all of McJagger’s vocal lines. What we know is that we listen to him and we hear someone playing the guitar in a way that evokes more soul than any guitarist before or after. He has an instinct for knowing when to make his playing sound haunting. He has an instinct to know when to make his playing sound more raw than any player in guitar history. 2 albums; Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. Listen to these albums, and you will hear a guitarist with the most instinctual sense for the guitar. He is the rock guitarist who matters most. The guitar was more than a guitar for Keith Richards. It became his body and something more.

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10.Robert Smith

Why does The Cure get listened to so much? There are no good songs in the catalog. There are no choruses. There are basic attempts at sounding pop sometimes, probably one chorus in their biggest single to date, so why the fuck is this fat vampire considered a good songwriter? Is it because the makeup he wears? Is it because he’s fat? Is it because he sings in a voice that’s overly-emphatic, probably due to the fact that he couldn’t get girls because of his appearance. Shit, there was always a weight room in the high school. There was always at least a treadmill. Just think, one treadmill and no one would have been duped into thinking that Roberts Smith’s foray into pseudo-romantic tragedy would have had it’s legacy.

9. Sheryl Crow

THE female American songwriter. She once appeared as credible to people who thought they knew what credible was and then she released that “Soak up the Sun” song and somehow this took away her credibility because a chorus came too quick and the melody was too breezy, but before this, she was the Aphrodite of modern songwriting. She couldn’t write a bad song. Her unabashed self-expression had to be heard as good, especially by those who needed some auxiliary human being to affirm their own self identity. Shit, when I listen to her self-titled album though, all I hear is woman-power rock on par with Meredith Brooks at the time. Is something this culturally relative good? If it’s good at the time, is it good later? Can people still listen to “A Change will do you good” without cringing? Can they do the same with “Redemption Day”? Only a dogmatic acolyte won’t admit this.

8. Bob Dylan

How many times do we have to hear that Dylan is be all and end all of music? What is with all this idolization? And how come every time these Dylan idolizers are called out on why they like Dylan they give the same banal reasons for idolization like “He was one of the great American Poets”. How come when you ask one of these buffoons on the spot which Dylan album inspired them the most, they can’t respond? They can’t even name one Dylan album let alone a favorite album! They know a few select songs and relegate the rest of their opinion to popular mainstream media’s coverage on tradition, whatever that is supposed to mean. Pedestrians, pure and simple…easily satisfied. The human being at its worst.

7. Pete Doherty

The best word to describe Pete Doherty’s songwriting with the Libertines and Babyshambles is boring. Listen to his live solo output and it’s even more boring. It’s a man with an acoustic guitar talking about the basic day of an English life without noticing the subtleties of a conversation that would often appear interesting as is the case with Lee Mavers. Instead we get cockney bullshit about storefronts and hooligans, and everything that sounds cool to the NME. Pete Doherty is the print machine for the NME; someone operating on a visceral level on what English coolness is. See, this is the problem by being influenced by any music. There’s an unlucky chance you might be influenced by The Clash.

6.Paul Westerberg

This dick has the gumption to call out Ryan Adams as being shit. Paul Westerberg in his lifetime won’t write a song half as decent as Ryan Adams worst song, but because Paul Westerberg appeared “hardass” in The Replacements (with their overly mundane punk-turned rock n’ roll exigencies) and his subsequent solo career, he could get away with criticizing a good songwriter. What is one good song that this Paul Westerberg wrote? “Satisfied?” This shit should be relegated to the highschool gym concert series, not a professional band. You won’t find anything better on his Stereo album no matter how much he distanced himself from big name producers to produce a more raw “songwriter in a basement” sounding production. Bad production on top of bad songwriting. This was Paul Westerberg’s next step after his major label stints. It only made sense with the coming of the indie crowd.

5. Frank Black

Frank Black’s macabre style of songwriting would have it’s crowd. Basically, those who liked The Pixies. From all his albums there’s about two choruses worth listening to, but you would still have to endure his painfully overbearing vocals throughout the song. Did anyone ever tell this virulent piece of crap to shut the hell up? Speak softly and carry a big stick (not in Simon and Garfunkel’s way though; which was speak softly and carry no sticks). This didn’t happen because the pretend that people played in liking The Pixies or maybe it was simply a dialectical reaction to the harmonious sounding music of the 80’s. A good reason to never be interested in the sake of liking something for the sake of reaction alone: one day realizing that the man you thought was an amazing songwriter was really complete shit.

4. Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton made blues for white men. If one was enamored by white man blues solos then they may like Eric Clapton. If not, they you would have disliked most of his songwriting. It was generic blues at its worst. Who gives a fuck about his overly sentimental “If I can change the World”, which should be the textbook definition of an unctuous musical delivery? Can’t though. This dude went through a lot of shit. He actually did though. He lost his son, and cashed in on it by writing a song about his loss that made him millions.  Loss and Bluesmen; what the fuck is with these people? Have they ever thought about a type of losing that isn’t existential, that isn’t so tied to the human death? Eric Clapton didn’t, and he cashed in on it. Not even a greatest hits of his can be listened too. It’s generic wanking inside generic songwriting. The dude even looks generic.

3. Simon and Garfunkel

It’s hard to understand why Simon and Garfunkel are known as some of the greatest songwriters of all time besides by some of old farts who only passively read Rolling Stone magazine when they’re at the local book store. These songs put you to sleep, and not in the good way. They put you to sleep in the way that you think to yourself “shit, this is sucks, I’m going to sleep”. Except for the smashing drum in “The Boxer“, Simon and Garfunkel never deliver any song with any vitriol. Call it a style. We call it the emasculation of a sex who no longer exercised the power it once had over the world. So the reaction would be a sensitive delivery in it’s period of settling down. Whatever was, it was inordinately soft, or to be even more precise, mawkish in every sense of the term.

2. Lou Reed

This pile of piss songwriter can’t sing, and writes songs that sound dumb but sound interesting to him, and therefore sound interesting to everyone else because he insists on perennially coming from a different place sonically. Who gives a shit about the Sonics (some Old-Wizard pun intended) when the songs are this shit? Yes, he goes up and down on his vocal range, often sounding like a chimp which relays a sense of primordial delivery to a music listener who got beat up too much at school. Rarely will you find a catchy chorus. You will find songs that elaborate on a solipsistic level which obviously means he’s usually talking about drugs or some vulgar conception of metaphysics that’s parasitically tied to a contemporary politic. This dude’s pulled a fast one of those who “love” him. He’s made actual shit that people love. Do people just love shit? Nah, they just can’t tell the difference anymore.

1. Paul McCartney

If there is one signature songwriter who’s absolutely overrated because of the quality of songwriters in the band he’s in, then it has to be Paul McCartney. Let’s list them. “Got to Get You Into My Life“; no soul whatsoever. “The Long and Winding Road” (which we listed as one of the most overrated songs of all time); a poor attempt at Bacharachian appurtenance (and this was when McCartney was supposed to be “coming into his own!”). How about the unbearable “The Night Before” off of Help. How about “Your Mother Should Know”. I can seriously go on and on with the sheer amount of shit songs this man released, and this was just with the Beatles. All his post-Beatles work was even worse, except for the Nigel Godrich produced “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard“, because McCartney actually allowed himself to be challenged by a producer. Paul McCartney is like an average basketball player who thinks he’s a star but knows he really isn’t so tries to get traded to the bad team in the league so he appears as a star there.
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10. Sam Roberts – Brother Down

Now that Sam Roberts has become somewhat popular and a major live music attraction, no one remembers what started him off on his path to great music. It was a call to existential despair in “Brother Down” that paved the way for the spirit of Sam Roberts. If you want to find the origins of where Sam Roberts comes from, you have to return to this first single. This song was recorded in an 8 track but busted open the doors of Canadian radio to a new style of quality songwriting, a style that would trump all those other shitty Canadian indie bands that came after. For any Sam Roberts fans out there, don’t forget this song.

9. Kenny Logins – I’m Alright

This song is seen as a joke by everyone who hears it probably because it was always going to be tied with one of the funniest movies of all time in Caddyshack. But try to distancing yourself from any idea of the movie and one will hear an amazing cheesy 80’s song with an absolutely ripping chorus that is as odd as it is poppy. The lyrics speak for themselves but not so much to the point of blatant obviousness. It’s at 1:44 that the song takes an incredible turn with a stop in all the instrumentation. It’s perfectly ung vocal harmonies arranged in a completely unexpected way. This song is one of the most odd and blatant pop songs you could hear. Everyone needs to hear it.

8. Suede- Electricity

No one talks about Suede’s “Electricity” off their rippin “Head Music” album. This song grooves like no song after. The bass line is strange. It’s sort of dumb sounding with the drum rhythm in the verse but conveys a feeling of unease. Wait till this fucking chorus hits you though. If you want to know what a great chorus sounds like, listen to “Electricity.” You could listen to this damn chorus for a year straight and never get sick of it. How this never went #1 in the British charts is beyond me. This is the music that is meant to go #1 all over the world, not just in your native country. This is Suede doing more perfect pop.

7. Oasis – D’ya Know what I mean

How easy it is to forget this amazing first single off one of the greatest albums of all time? “D’Ya Know What I Mean” kicked the ass of the listener into listening to good music. The beats were heavy and compressed, Liam gave a perfect vocal delivery, and Noel experimented with guitar overdubs on par with Jimmy Hendrix. In short, this was a psychedelic maelstrom. This was Oasis at their finest. Massive sounding, unafraid and enveloped by a great chorus. That this is never named in Oasis’s greatest songs is beyond us at Old-Wizard. This shit dominates 90’s rock.

6. The Vandellas – Come and Get these Memories

The Vandellas, like The Supremes seemed to have a never ending amount of great songs (much due to the DHD songwriting combo). People forget this early single from The Vandellas though. It barely made a dent in the charts but after a couple listens this may just be The Vandella’s best single. It’s starts off big, and ends off just as big. The chorus is big while still retaining an easygoingness that’s known to the best of Motown. The song rhythmically moves well and doesn’t reach too far lyrically which is to the songs credit. It’s simple and great, like most great pop songs.

5. Kasabian – Processed Beats

Kasabian are the shit. Their first album was one of the best albums of the new decade, but people never mention “Processed Beats” as being one of their great songs. This song grooves with the best R and B ever made while still retaining it’s cool from songs like LSF. It’s vocally delivered with a rawness that only Tom Meighan knows how to deliver. And what about that chorus? This thing is slinky and sensuous. Imagine getting in on this at a dance club with people who actually had good taste in music. A dream come true if only others had good taste in music. Kasabian may have had more popular songs but none ripped the groove harder than “Processed Beats.”

4. Shed Seven – The Heroes

Listen to this song and you will wonder why you never heard of this band, let along this song. How could a song be so good and the band isn’t even popular. How can a production be this smooth and melodically so perfect without anyone knowing about it? How is this song not going to be remembered for decades to come? How is this band not going to be remembered for decades to come? Unfortunately for them, they were competing within one of the greatest musical movements ever in Britpop where every song was a single. The thing was, Shed Seven’s songs were just as good as the “first rate” bands as proved on this grand sweeping waltz of a song. All Old-Wizard readers, download this song, down this album “Let it Ride.”

3. T-Rex- Dreamy Lady

Has there ever been a song with better sexual lyrics than Dreamy Lady by T-Rex? Bolan of course was the master of turning on everything under the sun, but with this song he goes all out. “Oh, dreamy lady, won’t you come to my bed…night is the right time, to get acquainted, with my head, in my bed”. Just barely a metaphor, the obviousness of this line is hilariously executed. The song itself is a super melody of sass and passion. For all it’s sexuality it still retains it’s innocence which is one of Marc Bolan’s greatest traits. It’s a shame that all his later work became ignored because it was just as good as early work even if more dramatic. The songs were still there and is exemplified best by this oddity of a song.

2. Happy Mondays- Dennis and Lois

This song starts off like your watching the beginning of Wheel of Fortune and that’s great! Whenever “Pills Thrills and Bellyaches” is mentioned, this song is never mention as being one of the standout songs on the album, but this is one of Shaun Ryder’s best vocal deliveries in the Happy Monday’s history. Never mind the vocals though, listen to the song. This song has got spirit. The chorus is made for a stadium but not in a cheesy Bon Jovi way, but for the way the British know how to make timeless songs that can be sung by 100,000 people in an arena. “Dennis and Louis” was never released as a single and was in the middle of this timeless album but it can’t be forgotten as an incredibly good song.

1. Stone Roses- Bye Bye Badman

The Stone Roses debut album is certainly not underrated, not in Britain at least. It has been listed as the greatest album of all time by publications in the UK. Never though is Bye Bye Badman mentioned in the reviews of the album and it’s arguably the best song on the album. The song is strangely excluded from their greatest hits album also. This song defines what makes The Stone Roses debut album probably the greatest debut album of all time; An insatiable rhythm section, Ian Brown’s lyrics that are full of bravado while never feeling forced, John Squire’s indelible guitar playing that shows his greatest guitar work in The Stone Roses history at 3.00 minutes in. This song says everything about why The Stone Roses are a band that will never happen again. That these elements can combine into this one sound is an anomaly, one for better or worse is only reserved for the nature of pop music’s flexibility.

10. The Catherine Wheel – Black Metallic

Catherine Wheel were always going to be an underrated band. The vocals weren’t a traditional timbre and the style was always just too pop to be considered “credible” by underground publications but too indigenous to ever become a high selling pop band. Existing in-between this line is a difficult way to success, if that’s even what The Catherine Wheel wanted in the first place. With the delivery of “Black Metallic” though, one could tell that Rob Dickinson and co didn’t really care. Whether they cared or not, this slice of guitar wash and perfect pitched vocals created a space for Catherine Wheel as a band that would be looked upon nostalgically forever. When listening to this song, you will always be forced into previous memories.

9. Chapterhouse – Pearle

Chapterhouse is often forgotten in the Shoegazing crowd for worse. They created a collection of songs that would all be signatures of the Shoegazing genre. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than on their album “Whirlpool”; specifically on the song “Pearle.” The vocals are as dreamy as Shoegazing vocals ever became. The drumbeat is hypnotic, the lyrics are quixotic, and the song is overdubbed with anything that could possibly create a pure atmospheric experience. In some ways, “Pearle” is Shoegazing in it’s most cliché, but that is to it’s credit because the song was executed sincerely; meaning this is a good place to start off for anyone wanting to invest their musical experiences in the Shoegazing genre.

8. Oasis- Columbia

Shoegazing found its best bastard child in Oasis, especially the Oasis of their first album Definitely Maybe. Any number of songs on Definitely Maybe could be considered Shoegazing classics, but it was “Columbia” that inherently understood the musical hypnosis of Shoegazing and gave it a blistering rock vocal delivery and Bolan swagger combining the pomp of past rock and the nuance of the Shoegazing genre. There’s no space for dynamics in this song; which is the heart of most great Shoegazing songs. The marginalization of the “need for dynamics” that was always privileged was destroyed by Shoegazing. Along with Rave culture in the late 80’s, the never ending Ecstasy filled groove became the hallmark of musical spirituality. Oasis took these styles and filled them with Lion’s teeth.

7. My Bloody Valentine- Only Shallow

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 20 years, My Bloody Valentine is the first and foremost recognized band in the Shoegazing movement and deservingly so. Without My Bloody Valentine, there would be no Slowdive, Lush, or Chapterhouse, regardless of the fact that either of those later bands may have written better songs than My Bloody Valentine. When Loveless came out it was one of the most unique musical experiences to ever be heard in the pop music medium. Everything was faded into each other. Nothing was spaced out. Everything was pushed into an atmospheric medium that at any moment sounded like it was going to explode, and it did explode on “Only Shallow”, the title track on Loveless. Listen to this enough times in your car with speakers up and you will lose your hearing before your 30. See this song live and you will become physically sick by how much headroom the music takes up. Talk about musical experience.

6. The Telescopes – The Sleepwalk

The Telescopes were a band who started off as a band basically sounding like Spaceman 3. It were punk vocals and sped up songs that tried to mesh punk with psychedelic, without the inherent privileging of psychedelic over punk that Spaceman 3 always operated under. As The Telescopes career moved on though, they got the beat, literally and figuratively. They expanded their sound into a massive guitar clash that was more raw than dreamy combined with beats as grooving as songs off The Happy Mondays “Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches”. It was a perfect combination of dance, caustic vocals, and massive guitar production. They were the only band to accomplish this and it’s perfectly exemplified by The Sleepwalk. Their was a band from California (in the name of Casper) who recently was making music like this without even knowing about the Telescopes, but their want for stardom turned their beat into a Killers copycat. If they only knew, and if they only begin to realize what they once had, stardom would pale in comparison to the music that they once created, which was a new form of The Sleepwalk.

5. Ride- Vapour Trail

The shamelessly romantic “Vapour Trail” always had to be on the best Shoegazing songs of all time list. It’s hard not to be hit by this song in a profound way. It’s hard to not believe in the un-believable and culturally relative concepts of love when listening to Vapour Trail. It sounds more meaningful than any explanation of what the sentiment could ever convey in words. It’s distance, it’s confusion, it’s problems with a romantic musical accompaniment serving as the background to arguably Andy Bell’s best vocal delivery. If there has to be the one song that epitomizes a vigor to traditional romantic love, it would be Vapour Trail. It’s expansively heartening without sounding unctuous. It’s a true accomplishment for a concept that has become so consigned to meaninglessness.

4. Lush – Monochrome

When listening to Lush, one really feels that credit first has to be given to the Cocteau Twins for creating a genre (without their wanting to) in the name of “dream pop” which sometimes can be seen synonymously with Shoegazing, but not quite. This is proven best with Lush’s best song from Spooky and arguably their career. “Monochrome” is a perfect dream with perfect vocals and when the song hit’s the pure instrumental at 2:39, one can’t help but feel that the northern climates will always have a more profound spirituality than any of the southern climates regardless of our history. The world begins in ice, water and snow. The dance of the world begins with primordial ice skaters figure-8ting a sweeping design in the world bestowed upon what was once nothing. This feeling for northern spirituality has never been captured as perfectly as this masterpiece by Lush.

3. Slowdive – Allison

The first song from their “Souvlaki” album, the song starts off in an instrumental haze. The vocals come in that are even more hazy. It’s almost like someone took the tape machine and used a tool to slowdown every track on the record, or it was a band who was operating under a disposition of “just floating”. The haze slowly pushes into a chorus that’s one of the most catchy in the Shoegazing genre. Sisters are spinning, but she’s just fine, she’s just out there somewhere. It’s this sentiment that perfectly captures the spirit of the Shoegazing genre; absolute vagueness but a realization that something is still going on that is always on the verge of barely being understood, to eventually understand it’s superfluous to even try to get by the “barely-being-understood” and the vagueness that points to a more grounding reality than one of reason and enlightenment could ever hope for.

2. Swervedriver- Duel

This song is never even recognized in the Shoegazing genre and it’s more powerful than most every song in the genre. Maybe it was because the guitars were too overdriven with masculinity, maybe it was the masculinity of Adam Franklin’s voice that made this song seem more rock than Shoegazing. Either way, both genres were always closely touching each other. This is nowhere more recognized than on Swervedriver’s Mezcal Head and Oasis’s Definitely Maybe. But with Swervedriver’s “Duel,” Shoegazing was taken into something that was even more transcendent than the laters previous forms. It was taken to an affirmative space where the nebulous center of Shoegazing was no longer falling into a relaxed complacency; it was taken to ages beyond itself, still going for a thousand years, going to the absolutely general “marketplace”. This song was not just the negation of the world that Shoegazing found in it’s most stoic and dreamy acceptance, it was the negation of the negation; it negated the fact that there will ever be a point in which a “pure” reality will ever be realized. The circularity of eternity found it’s most perfect musical example in “Duel” by Swervedriver.

1. Ride- Leave them all Behind

Everything perfect about the Shoegazing genre was found in Ride’s “Leave them all behind.” This is their second place in the list and they earned the number 1 spot for this beast of a song. Listen to it once and you know something’s going on. Listen to it two or three times, and for some reason you listen to it a 4th and 5th time. It’s that 5th time that this song becomes absolutely addicting and hypnotic without utilizing the traditional modes of pop music. This song is grand in sound and lyrics. What starts off as a simple synth turns into a massive wall-of-sound guitar cornucopia. With Mark Gardener and Andy Bell’s duel vocaling, the vocals sounds as hypnotic as the music itself. Like all great songs, the vocals match the vibe of the song. It’s in space, in purgatory, and the vocals match this perfectly. This space though is not something that just sounds “floaty.” It’s heavily intense and commands the listeners attention at every second. The lyrical sentiment speaks for itself and is arguably the most profound in all of Shoegazing proving this time that laconic style, when done right, trumps detail and complexity. This song ends in an explosion and the listener is left with nothing left than something that has just happened to them.

Who were the trendsetters in music?  Well of course the British.  Everyone followed the style of British musicians and they still do today.  When Liam Gallagher grows his hair out so does a nation.  When Pete Townsend develops mod culture and style that goes along with it, a nation wears the style.  When The Stone Roses epitomized the “baggy scene” in loose pants, everyone started buying them.  No American band inspires this kind of mimicry.  The British know what great style is and combine their great songs with it.  The Americans write average songs and wear straight legged Levi jeans.

9. Better Haircuts

This is obvious.  Check out George Harrison’s hairdo.   Check out Robert Plant’s blonde curls.  Look at Liam Gallagher’s Zeus like hair.  What do musicians haircuts from America look like?  They’re thick dark pieces of shit and more often than not look dirty.  The Brits would never allow themselves to get away with having dirty hair.  Their rock stars; they’re the God’s of the modern age.  They can’t appear at shows with crap hair.  When style has been made by musicians, even in more blatant pop (E.G. Lilly Allen) it’s always been from British musicians.

8. The Birth of Rave Culture

Could you image a world without rave culture?  A world without DJ Shadow or Aphex Twins?  A world without the Chemical Brothers or Massive Attack?  Where would the beat be in music with Rave Culture?  Thank God for Tony Wilson and Factory Records for putting this absolutely essential music genre on the map.  The birth of the DJ was the birth of music as the groove, as it always should be.  The British bands that have spawned from this style are innumerous from The Stone Roses to The Happy Mondays, to New Order, to Monaco, to The Space Monkeys…all British bands…of course.

7. More Ambition

The Brits aren’t afraid to be big.  Starting with Lennon’s quote of being bigger than God which he stated simply as an empirical fact at the moment, The British weren’t afraid to take their music to the masses.  They weren’t afraid to dream beyond their bedroom and the music from Brits benefited from this attitude.  American music is afraid of ambition probably from some reaction to its cultural political surroundings that places itself in a position of manifest destiny.  So because of this we get lo-fi shit or boring bitch fests.  It’s time to turn modesty on it’s head and there’s no better place start than British Music.

6. Shoegazing

Britain gave us one of the best music genres in the past 20 years in Shoegazing.  Do you think Americans would be creative enough to come up with the sounds you hear out of “Loveless” or “Nowhere”?  Do you think an American could create a song like “Leave Them All Behind”?  They could copy it and it wouldn’t be good enough to even be covered by a small American “zine.”  Because of the Brit’s the music listener was able to enjoy Lush, Slowdive, and Chapterhouse.  There’s something distinctly British about these bands;  they all have imaginations, something lacking in most American music.

5. Oasis

In case anyone didn’t know.  Oasis came from Manchester England.  That’s a northern city in England.  Oasis is one of the greatest bands of all time if not the greatest band of all time.  America doesn’t have an Oasis, nor did they ever have an Oasis or any band that could compete with Oasis.  Take whatever America’s best band has ever been (can’t think of many) and match it up against Oasis’s songwriting catalogue and Oasis will undoubtedly win.  In fact, take Americas top 5 bands and put their songwriting catalogue against Oasis’s.  It’s still a no-contest.

4. Better Record Labels

This is certainly a difficult task to list all the great record label that came out of Britain.  For starters, there was Factory Records who hosted The Happy Mondays, Joy Division and The Inspiral Carpets just to name a few.  There is Creation Records who hosted Oasis, Ride, Swervedriver,  and Hurricane #1 just to name a few again.   There was 4AD which hosted the Cocteau Twins, Lush, and Slowdive just to name a few again.  Nude Records had both Suede and Geneva.  The list could keep going on.  No American label could match the quality output of bands on any of these British labels.

3. Condemns the awful indie genre.

British bands correctly condemn indie music whether it be American (which it is most of the time) or British (when some publication tries to tie them into that tag).  The greatest bands wanted nothing to do with it.  Ask Oasis if they’re indie.  They’ll laugh at the word.  Ask the Stone Roses if they were indie and Ian Brown will say “The indie scene is shit”.  Ask Brett Anderson about the word “indie” and he says “It’s a dirty word to me.  A word that means people who don’t know how to play their instruments or write songs”.  This penchant for criticizing indie music has gone a long way for making British music bigger and better sounding than American music.  American music has it’s head up its own ass too much too see that their own self-reflection and loathing is superfluous.

2. Better Bands

Think about it.  The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Oasis,  Pink Floyd, T-Rex, The Kinks,  The Stone Roses?  What does America have besides The Byrds and The Beach Boys?  One can make an infinite list of all the great British bands and barely be able to make a top 10 list of the greatest American bands of all time.   Who are the top 10 greatest American bands of all time?  We can’t even think of 5 off the top of our head right now.  This is a no-brainer.

1. Better Songs

The most obvious reason why British music is better than American music is the songwriting.  C’mon now,  Oasis, Radiohead, The Verve, The Stone Roses, Suede, Dodgy, Coldplay, Shed Seven, Travis?  These are bands that mastered songwriting craft to a T.  There isn’t one American band out right now that could come close to the quality of songwriting produced by these bands (except maybe for Wilco), and these are just the modern British bands.  We aren’t even putting Zeppelin, T-Rex, The Who, and Bowie on this.  There are too many no-brainers on this list.

5. The Musicians smell

Ever have to walk by one of these messy loafs?  They smell like ass.  They probably ate at some shithole pizza place “in the city” and haven’t showered in days.  Dirty fuckers.  But that’s the way its supposed to be.  Ultimate freedom in smelling like ass, and if you can’t relate to their smelliness then you’re the guilty one for not understanding their stink fest which masquerades as some gesture for purity.  Don’t let the stink fool you.  Just because a musician smells like shit doesn’t mean they make good music.  It just means they want to make good music but can’t, so decide to smell like shit instead.

4. Bad Musicianship

The musicianship in these indie bands is abominable, and some jackass producer lets them get away with it because they know it will sell well to some mentally challenged group of people who think that bad musicianship means authenticity.  No it doesn’t.  It means they suck ass.  Because you suck ass doesn’t make you good.  By liking shitty musicianship, it encourages others to think that not knowing how to play their instrument is a good thing which produces more shitty unmistakable indie rock.  The only people who are listening to it are the people who are saying “HEY LISTEN TO THIS PART!”, which is probably some discordant bullshit.  It’s basically people catching the bad musicianship in a song and liking it because it’s different from what’s inherently harmonious.

3. The Worst Fans

Oh lord.  The fans, those indie fans.  The clothing they wear.  All those ripped tight ass shirts from the salvation army that have emblems from some old sports team or some saying from a charity organization that’s supposed to be funny in it ostensible “irony” (ostensible because it’s not irony.  It’s just people trying to be funny and not being funny).  These people ejaculate when they hear their shitty songs they think they love around other people because they know no one else knows the song but them making them feel different and therefore important.  Fat bastards; get rid of your tight clothes, lose some weight and go listen to Oasis’s first album and you’ll lose your arrogance in the guise of humility.

2. Bad Songwriting

I don’t know how to go about writing on the songs from the indie genre.  They’re not really songs.  They’re a mess of things put together.  You can list an entire bands catalog from the indie brand and they’re all bad.  These bands don’t know how to write a good chorus, never get to a chorus, or if they do, it’s usually indistinguishable from anything else in the mess of a song.  There is no song craft, probably because there’s a sense that song craft is something “limiting” to the much better unlimited songwriting of throwing shit together and thinking it sounds good because it was thrown together.

1. Cacophony

When the classical movement of expressionism became somewhat popular it paved the way for a style of music that focused not on tragedy, but was border line hard to listen to. Schoenberg though still operated under musical modes that required strong musicianship.  He would often tell his musicians “No No.  You’re playing it wrong, but it’s still not right!”  If only the jackass indie rock musicianship could take this aphorism and staple it to their forehead and on their ass every minute of the day then maybe we wouldn’t have to bear the ridiculous gestures of The Pixies, which to be sure are gestures, not music.  As was said before a million times in the past music articles written on Old-Wizard, difference for the sake of difference doesn’t equal quality.  It just means that you suck at music and have to rely on a mode of being that is infinitely flexible.

10. Sam Roberts Band

Sam Roberts is Canada’s answer to Oasis. It wasn’t their first album that established them with the power of Oasis (although their 1st album certainly had quality songs on it). It was their 2nd album “Chemical City”, specifically the first song off the album in the name of “The Gate” that took the Oasis sound and gave it a Canadian Rustic aesthetic to it. It’s as if a bunch of lumberjacks were listening to Oasis for 5 years and then started a band. It’s hard to think of a band that comes across as earnestly as Sam Roberts. Sam Roberts’ lyrics are as heart on sleeve as they come without ever falling into banality. Sam Roberts passion is unlimited. All their songs are on a quest for infinite spirituality and their sound is as huge as their quest sounds. One listen to Chemical City and you will understand the importance of this band.

9. The Space Monkeys

The Space Monkeys flew under the radar in the late 90’s influenced by a ton of music but their Manchurian roots were undeniable. Much like Kasabian, they took the pulse of Oasis and quickened it with acid house. Their first track off their debut album “The Daddy of Them All” in the name of “Acid House Killed Rock n Roll” is a raucous speed drenched song with Richard McNevin-Duff singing with more vitriol than Liam Gallagher at times. This song setup the rest of the album full of great songwriting across the board and factory-records-beats behind all the great melodies. Equally Oasis, The Roses, and The Happy Mondays; The Space Monkeys never got the recognition they deserved, but their debut album is of great importance. It will be rediscovered some day by a generation of kids looking to find bands that mean more to them than Oasis. They may find it in a band like The Space Monkeys.

8. The Strokes

The Strokes were a maelstrom for rock music when they released their first album “Is this It”, more specifically their first single “The Modern Age”. The last time a song was this hypnotic was Oasis’s “Columbia”. This song grooved with the best rock music ever released. It was hard and slow at the same time. Lead Singer Julian Casablanca crooned like a Jersey singer from the 50’s. The sound of the album was aesthetically on the level of Oasis’s “Definitely Maybe“. When a band captures this spirit it shows a direct signification for being timeless. The rest of the album followed suit with even stronger singles like Last Night and Hard to Explain. If you were in college when The Strokes came out, it would mean your memories of that time would always be tied to this album, and this is just their first album. They would continue the quality of their first album with “Room on Fire“ and more specifically “Under Control“; finally a song that dudes could think about girls to without feeling so fucking gay. The album “First Impressions of Earth” transformed The Strokes into an even further musical powerhouse showing a technical musicality that surpassed every band on this list. The Strokes will be remembered for some time to come. They have yet to release a bad album and is unlikely they will in the future.

7. Travis

With the release of “All I wanna do is rock”, it was pretty evident for the time being who was going to have filled the shoes of Oasis. This song was sung by Fran Healy with the exaggerated snarl of Liam Gallagher. One wonders how much Liam Gallagher must have wished Noel wrote this song for him. It wasn’t just their first album though they gave Travis their importance. It most importantly came from their 2nd album “The Man Who” which was filled with some of the best singles of 1999. “Writing Reach You” was a ballad that you could listen to without feeling sick. Their was a purgatorial sense of tragedy to the song and the chorus was catchy, but in a very curious way. It wasn’t predictable, but incredibly satisfying to listen to. Certainly having Nigel Godrich behind the boards on this album helped with the amount of great songs on this album. Travis continued to consistently make good to great albums all in the footsteps of the great Oasis.

6. Idlewild

Idlewild has the production pomp of Oasis but took the sometimes effortless stream-of-conscious lyric writing of Noel Gallagher and brought it into an caustic critique of modernity that was neither political nor cultural, but much more metaphysical. Attacks on self-identity, post-modernism, and thinking in general were enveloped by stellar musicianship that was abrasive and sung with fire by lead singer Roddy Woomble. Oasis for intellectuals? It would be more accurate to call them the Oasis for James Joyce and Jean Genet lovers. Roddy Woomble made the sound of Oasis sound much more poetic without losing any of the bite of Oasis’s vocal delivery and sound. Check out their album “100 Broken Windows” to see how strong of a band Idlewild are.

5. New Pornographers

Whether A.C. Newman admits it or not, he was influenced by Oasis. One listen to the incredible “Twin Cinema” (one of the best albums of the decade) will show a taste for perfect pop that was very much it’s own sound though. Listen to “Sing me Spanish Techno“, “Bones of an Idol“, “Jackie Dressed in Cobras“, and the song “Twin Cinema” and you will find a band operating under a very classic mode of songwriting but integrating it in less obvious changes and chord progressions than the rest of the bands on this list. It wasn’t just Twin Cinema though that makes The New Pornographers an important band, it was their debut album Mass Romantica with incredible songs throughout the whole album. “Letter For an Occupant” and “Slow Descent into Alcoholism” are some of the most catchy songs of the decade but they don’t sound like normal pop songs at all, but certainly operate under the traditional structure. This slight bending of the rules of what quality songwriting is puts The New Pornographers in their rightful place as one of the most important bands since Oasis.

4. Coldplay

Coldplay has been called every derogatory term by the indie crowd from generic to bed-wetters, to soft. You’re not getting away from the fact that Chris Martin writes great songs. This is undoubted, and anyone who questions this quality in Coldplay doesn’t listen to music for good songs. Chris Martin consistently spreads his love for Oasis by covering a song from every new Oasis album that comes out. The highlight of them all though was his live version of Liam’s songbird. For better or worse, Coldplay took the pure songwriting quality of Noel Gallagher and made it even more crafty and pop, but never enough to be considered a “guilty pleasure” except by the queer indie crowd. No one is arguing “Yellow“, “Lost“, “Talk” (Regardless of it’s obvious Kratwerk affectations), “Shiver“, “The Scientist“, and “In My Place” are not great songs. You just cant argue that these are not great songs after only 1 or 2 listens. Oasis paved the ground for this songwriting craft that had to always reach a certainly quality.

3. The Thrills

Like many bands on this list, The Thrills took the pure songwriting quality of Oasis and put it into their own sonic style. In the case of The Thrills it was the sunkiss sparkle of Southern California that made a bunch of Irish boys leave their country to live in southern California soaking up the sun and all the influences around it from smooth relaxed backup vocals to lyrics about the “Big Sur” and the California sun. Their sound wasn’t timid. It was mastered hard, it was layered pretty heavily. This band may have come across sonically and aesthetically as breezy and laid back, but their ambitions and songwriting were as big as Oasis’s. It had to be. They toured with Oasis multiple times. Noel Gallagher was seen whistling and singing “Big Sur” by himself walking to the supermarket one day in London. The ultimate approval for any band.

2. Kasabian

Kasabian IS the most important band since Oasis. They have carried Oasis’s bravado to a new level and layered it with a newage-electronica that sounds like a combination of Oasis and The Chemical Brothers. All their songs have grit and sass known to the best Oasis songs. Lead singer Tom Meighan spews out vocals as resonant as Liam Gallagher and as loose as Shaun Ryder. The lyrical output of Serge Pizzorno is that of a boxer fighting a heavyweight, not some small personal battle against personal demons but a fight to take over the world. This shits like a Martin Scorsese film. Kasabian is like Napoleon on the battlefields and even more ruthless, on par with Vlad the Impaler which they actually wrote a song about (the best song on their new album). See them live and you will seen one of the best live shows of your life. Pure Energy, pure groove at wall of sound levels. Kasabian is the true heir to Oasis’s crown.

1. Oasis

For better or worse, Oasis have still made at least average music into the new millennium. Their album “Don’t Believe The Truth” still showed that they could make a rock album better than any rock band in the genre today. They still tour non-stop selling out stadium everywhere they go. With the additions of Andy Bell and Gem Archer to the band, Oasis has become a force to be reckoned with. The only band that could compete with them is the Oasis of the 90’s so it makes sense that Oasis’s only competitors are Oasis themselves. The only band that can come close to their crown is Kasabian listed at number 2 and they haven’t put out enough albums yet to take Oasis from the kings chair. Hate to say it, Oasis are the best band since Oasis.

10. The Jayhawks – Blue

The modern ballad of country music belongs to The Jayhawks in Blue. This is country that went pop without sacrificing quality. The loose acoustic delivery was augmented by Mark Olson and Gary Louris’s pop country vocal delivery that relied heavily on both traditions. The chorus flys on this song which everyone knows who has heard it. The piano is charmingly country in it’s ragtime delivery (the piano delivery that country music always borrowed from ragtime music) and the lyrical sentiment is simple. Blue is a simple song. The Jayhawk’s in general are a simple band but they’re always pleasurable to listen to proving that simplicity still has it’s place in music and songwriting regardless of how much it’s been used to create regurgitated modern music. Blue epitomizes this quality for simple song craft and a heart-on-sleeve sincere delivery.

9. Drive By Truckers – Never Gonna Change

The Drive by Truckers took country music and made it the most rock it had ever been. This is shown nowhere more clearly than “Never Gonna Change”. The music and lyrical theme stayed within traditional country but the overdrive was pushed to toughen up the sound that it never experienced before. Hard driving guitars replaced light sounding slide guitars and soft heartbreaking vocal deliveries. The Drive by Truckers were a band let on the loose of their creative desires to modernize country into something much more rock and consistent with it’s context. Traditional country could actually retain it’s original sentiment in the Drive by Truckers without sounding antiquated by their insistence on raw power in their live sound that was never sacrificed on record.

8. Neko Case- Deep Red Bells

It wasn’t until “Blacklisted” did we hear the power of Neko Case’s voice and soul.  This second track has a depth unknown to whatever is called “real country”.  The vocal is as expansive as a country voice has ever been when the chorus hits.  The haunted backup vocals bring in an element to the country medium that it was once afraid to touch because it didn’t like touching anything that was haunting and not limited to to usual country tropes.  Neko Case’s entire output can be seen as an expansion of country music with a grit and determination that tradition contry music thought it owned.  Take one listen to “Deep Red Bells” though and the listener will realize where the real balls are are in country music.  In this case, it took a women.

7. Wilco- I Must be High

Little known fact about Wilco. They made a straight up country album in their first album A.M. Coming from his previous band Uncle Tupelo, Jeff Tweedy took the some of the “down-south” out of the alt-country Uncle Tupelo was making and infused it with the best aspects of pop/rock music. With the help of the recently deceased Jay Bennett, Wilco created a classic example of alternative country for the 90’s that everyone forgot about when their subsequent album “Being There” was released. The country slowly faded into more rock and then eventually into experimental and folk with Wilco. While this music was arguably Wilco’s best, their first album with this first track still remains as classic sounding as the first listen. The song is loose, Tweedy’s gritty voice favors the style of country more than his former band mate Jay Farrar who’s more traditional country voice couldn’t cut through a mix like Tweedy’s could. This song is perfect example of relaxed country music doing what it does best; making the listener loose.

6. Old 97’s – Won’t be Home

A strange progression for the Old 97’s. Starting off as cow punk, then becoming straight up pop (with only the most subtle hints of country) and then finally arriving at the alt-country they were always tagged with their album Drag It Up. The glossy production (for it’s credit that created some great singles on Fight Songs and Satellite Rides) was gone for a live produced album that started off with this blistering country anthem. Country Shuffle and Rhett Millers effusive delivery were kept in check for an honesty owned by country music. Maybe it was Miller’s vain attempt at going solo (that financially failed) that made him realize that quick success was diametrically opposite to the honesty that makes memorable music, or maybe it was just the band hitting their musical apex that created this intense delivery, whatever it was, it was Old 97’s finest moment.

5.Ryan Adams- To be Young

The first song in Ryan Adams rollercoaster ride of a solo carrier, this established Ryan Adams has the figure mark of a form of country that was always straying from it’s roots much in the vein of what Gram Parsons was doing in the 60’s. The themes were simply never “good” but the taboo notions that were raised to the forefront much from the rock star life style that these country influenced songwriters were living. This attitude is displayed perfectly on this rambunctious opener by Ryan Adams. Not only was the style in the lyrics, but it was in the production as a whole. Ryan Adams vocal was loaded with a noticeable delay that made the music sound bigger than country ever sounded before. It simply sounded like the wild ride that Ryan Adams was about to embark on; a ride that hasn’t stopped and has had as many twists and turns than one person could possibly handle.

4. The Byrds- You ain’t going nowhere

The Byrd’s went from the most noticeable psychedelic pop band in the late 60’s to a band immensely inspired by the country music of the south-western style exposed by Gram Parson’s and co. His accent was mimicked in this song. It must be said that this song was originally written by Bob Dylan, but the Byrd’s took it and made it into something completely different; a form of country that was smooth and relaxed without sounding lazy. The rhythm section was undoubtedly influenced by classic country with a slight hint of folk. Like The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Byrd’s (specifically on this song and album) paved the way for a new country that was more representative of it’s original intensity than it’s more popular offshoots that repeated the same themes with the same style from the late 50’s and early 60’s. There’s a sense of purity in this song not heard by anything in the modern country era.

3. The Flying Burrito Brothers – Devil in Disguise

If there was any song that so defined what would become of creative country in the future, it would be this classic by the Flying Burrito Brothers vocally delivered by alt-country’s favorite and most tragic son, Gram Parsons. His country voice wasn’t low and rumbling without inflexion. It had hints of psychedelic pop to it that gave the genre of country a new flexibility unknown to it until the emergence of The Flying Burrito Brothers. Not only was the vocal inflection different, but the style was more creative and lyrics covered more details on what made the female the ‘Devil in Deisguise’, rather than just generalities that everyone experienced, these were personal experiences in this song. This creative leap by the FBB’s created a space for country music to evolve into something that more than just country fans could listen to.

2. Uncle Tupelo – Slate

By far Jay Farrar’s best song ever written, the nostalgia of this song and “Anodyne” in general proved to be consistent with the fact that this was their last album. Slate was folk and country without ever sounded exactly like either genre. Jeff Tweedy’s back up vocals sat perfectly with Farrar’s big country bellow. No percussion (except for tambourine); just a driving acoustic and a fiddle, with Farrar lyrically at his best and most reflective. Slate is one of the few songs that uses the fiddle in a folk style that accomplishes not sounding overly sentimental. The song just moves forward reflectively without having anything for looking back. The nostalgia on this album and this song isn’t one that brings-people-together, but feels a way without necessarily wanting to….or not wanting to. This is what makes Slate one of the few nostalgic songs that can be listened to, because it’s wasn’t it’s intent to be that way.

1. Beachwood Sparks- Silver Morning After

That no one knows about the Beachwood Sparks is a crime. Do they care? Probably not, and this is why this band can create such great music. Obviously inspired by the innovative country that was being made in the late 60’s spearheaded by the Byrds, The Beachwood Sparks took this innovation and put it into clean production with unparalleled musicianship. This song is mysterious, distant, and somewhat confused (in lyrical substance, not in it’s musicality). “Alternative Country” is an inappropriate tag to place on this song and band. “Post-Structural psychedelic country pop” may work better if the tag wasn’t so long which is to the credit of the band. Regardless of the individuality of the band’s sound, there was something very country about it and heard best in this song. There was a slide guitar, but it was everywhere. There were slide guitars being layered over other slide guitars and soaked in delays along with a vocal delivery from somewhere in purgatory. This is the best country has done for itself in it’s new version started in the early 90’s. This band is the band to follow. There is no other that is bending the ideas of country while still retaining it’s best pop instincts from the past.

10. Columbia

Oasis’s first album. What an album it was. What a song Columbia was. This massive hypnotic trance was part fuelled by Swervedriver slow drive and part fuelled by the psychedelic of Tommorrow Never Knows. This song keeps on moving. When this shit kicks in you’re in a swirl of massive guitars, pounding beats and modern psychedelic; in other words, everything that made Oasis the greatest band of the 90’s. These often forgotten songs are never mentioned by critics of the band, because they would rather dislike the band than see how much more powerful they were than American suicide artists of the time. The ones who know, the ones who hear, hear this, and when they hear it, they turn it up to deafening levels.

9. Cigarettes and Alcohol

When you see Oasis live, this is the song to see. Noel starting off with Bolan’s riff times 100 in overdrive, the pounding bass drum building up the vibe, and then all the instrumentation smashing in creating a raunchy and loose groove for the whole audience to jump too. The gig becomes a cult when Oasis play this song live. The moment is won for the life thrown into the debauchery of Cigarettes and Alcohol. When nothing is found and everything in life is lost, there are still cigarettes and alcohol to cool the brain from mundanity. Being inebriated enough will make for more than just a relaxation but a grand stupor around the gig telling everyone how amazing Oasis is, or just yellow “Oasis”. Soccer culture aside, this song defined a generation that just let loose in the most nonchalant albeit radical way possible.

8. D’ya know what I Mean?

The great Be Here Now’s opening track. Who waited until midnight that fateful night when “D’You know what I mean” was premiered on MTV. Out came Oasis and in came the heaviest of drum beats taken from the best beat makers of a generation (Public Enemies “It takes a nation). Then came in Liam’s vocals that were as crisp and raw as they had been to that point but slightly polished to the degree of their popularity at the time. Guitars swirling around at every second, Noel’s vocals recorded backwards into chorus’s, Noel’s ripping guitar solo. This song just beat the shit out of every other song on the radio at the time. All with the cool demeanor known only to Irish Manchunians.

7. The Girl in the Dirty Shirt

Why don’t songwriters write songs this good anymore? Does everyone realize how sick of a chorus is in this song? This shit’s like top 10 radio if the world only listened to psychedelic music. It’s classy and bombastic at the same time; a feat that could only be accomplished by Oasis. This song was modern R and B (R and B from the 60’s, not the soft 90’s shit) with Phil Spector turning up the overdubs with max compression. You could dance to this song, you could sing to this song, you couldn’t get this song out of your head once you heard it, and it wasn’t even a single. Noel Gallagher’s knack for amazing hooks is illustrated perfectly in this song. This is memorable beyond what people hear, or rather think about Be Here Now.

6. Champagne Supernova

What’s the Morning Glory was arguably the best album of the 90’s. With as many credible and successful singles off the album, how couldn’t it be? The most substantial of these singles was Champagne Supernova. To this day, this song remains Oasis’s finest creative moment. Not settling for the great songwriting that we all knew Noel could write in less than a minute, but expanding into something larger, something neo-psychedelic, something that was just beyond anything else heard on the radio at the time. The production in the solo kicks up to a level that was never owned by any other band besides Oasis in the 90’s. Never afraid of overdubs or sounding bombastic at the sake of some presupposed ideal of humility, Oasis road to the castle and took over the crown of best band on the earth with this song. Nothing at the time or even afterwards sounded so glorious, majestic, an unafraid.

5. Underneath the Sky

The flow, the move, of Underneath the Sky; the play of Underneath the Sky, could only be captured by Noel Gallagher’s stream-of-conscious spiritual songwriting. The life, the moment, the moment after the moment and the moment forever deferred for the memory of a past, all Underneath the Sky again. “All he needs is his life in a suitcase, it belongs to a friend of a friend”. In this one statement Noel Gallagher explains the never stable subject who is in debt to someone always and already. All within a mathematical machinery; an operation; Underneath The Sky? Not simply Underneath the Sky, but Underneath the Sky again. The indefinite circulatory state of the universe, captured in a pop song under 3 and half minutes? Reserved for one man from Northern England.

4. Don’t Look Back in Anger

Respectable Arena Rock, or just a great song? However you see it, Don’t Look Back in Anger changed a nation. It made them sing again. It made them sing loud, it made them sing inebriated without care for their horrendous jobs they would have to go back to after the weekend getaway to the Oasis show. That moment the chorus came in, that massive drum fill, no matter how predictable it was; it inspired not only the moment of the crowd but a bunch of kids looking to do something with their life besides sit on the dole like their dads. This kind of inspiration comes once in a lifetime. The gift came to Noel Gallagher and he delivered it in spades only on his second album.

3. Live Forever

If there had to be a greatest love song of the 90’s it would belong to Live Forever. Never overly-sentimental or servile, Live Forever wished for a love that was not only more realistic, but more spiritual at the same time. Not aiming at the Disney fantasy nor glamorizing tragedy, Live Forever escapes the traditional signifiers of the concept of “Love” for an unmediated version that only answers the moment, to the wish and hopes of a people in general beyond the concept of love. The other though is included here without any effort as if the other is always needed for inclusion into one’s life. The success of this song lies in this stream-of-conscious delivery that doesn’t think about the generalized concepts that are consistently taken for granted, but takes them for what they’re worth at the moment; a delivery that is neither cliché, nor analytical…it’s just there.

2. What’s the Story Morning Glory

90’s rock is defined by one song and one song only. “What’s the Story Morning Glory” is the best of 90’s rock. It’s loud, abrasive, lyrically poignant, and one of Liam’s best vocal deliveries put to record. The song is just a massive blast in your stereo. After 2 listens you’re shouting the chorus at the top of your lungs experiencing the ecstasy of the song (or rather we should say the charly induced high of the song). The song never gives any space for dynamics which Oasis mastered perfectly turning music on it’s head of presuppositions for a type of good musicianship that often had to be equated with dynamics. “What’s the Story Morning Glory” smashed these pretensions out of the water and anyone who could try to criticize it.

1. Masterplan

The British have a keen sense for historical consciousness; European thought in general since the 19th century has been aware of it’s historicity. This is exemplified perfectly in Oasis’s most teleological song in the name of The Masterplan. Without heeding to over-generalization, the senior Gallagher simply tells it like it is with an impartial bias that’s so powerful that it transcends subjectivity; the subjectivity that would like to think it actually matters in the grand scheme of the things. But at the end of The Masterplan, you are in the grand metaphysical machinery, irreducible and inescapable. The trembling guitar finish leaves the listener neither in happiness nor tragedy, but in an unchangeable destiny, a master plan that humans can only observe, and only the most humble ones, which ironically belongs strongly to Noel Gallagher with the delivery of this song. The critics have never understood that bravado and “arrogance” are just masks for a protected purity not in want of being contaminated by material.