Top 10 Shoegazing Songs

Top 10 Shoegazing Songs

Written by Zeromage 71 Comments
Last Updated:: August 14, 2009

What happens when you take the production of Phil Spector, drench in pyschadelic 60’s reverb and match it with breathy and harmonious vocal melodies all done in a seemingly effortless fashion? You get the grandiose genre of Shoegazing that has been one of Pop’s best subgenres in it’s history. The original impulse for these creative masterpieces came from many different places. With Kevin Shields in My Bloody Valentine it came from wondering what it would sound like to put 50 Marshall stacks in one room and have a guitar connected to all of them with 5-10 different delays and reverbs pedals going. For Andy Bell formerly of Ride it came from an epiphany one day listening to The Beatles with a loud fan on. Combining the over layered fan with the melodies he heard on the radio gave him an impulse for noise and melody. Wherever the creative impulse came from, it always seemed to work in creating new musical experiences upon every listen.

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.

71 Comments

#1 Avi says:
March 18th, 2010 at 1:55 pm

he meant the article was gay you dumbass.

#2 jeff says:
March 18th, 2010 at 8:54 pm

Jesus, I thought I was dick, then I saw Cody.

#3 makafri says:
March 18th, 2010 at 2:41 am

very cool list… I mean if this idiots must consider this list as a good recomendation list… there are some amazings songs… and most unknow… just take a look at this songs… and you will find some good choices there

#4 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:04 am

Hey Zeromage,

what site do you go to again to put up a picture here? i want to change mine, also, i just recently got back into Magic the Gathering, do you still play? if so write more articles on it!:P

#5 Delta says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:05 am

BERSERKR, I’m not sure, but I think it’s the gravitars website

#6 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:11 am

Sweetness, thanks Delta, you always come through:P unlike someone else we know, Ahem, cough, Looks at himself in the mirror:P

#7 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:25 am

Now lets see if it worked.

#8 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:26 am

DOH!

#9 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:27 am

Staaaarting…NOW!

#10 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:34 am

now?

#11 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:43 am

BAM!?

#12 Delta says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:44 am

All I can remember is the site, sorry BERSERKR, haven’t actually used it myself to know how to use it.

#13 Delta says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:45 am

It worked!! For every single one. I thought it’d just change the new ones.

#14 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:55 am

how about? now!

#15 ADUB says:
March 18th, 2010 at 3:42 pm

A shoegaze list with no Smashing Pumpkins? I do agree with the My Bloody Valentine pick though. Interesting list.