It’s been a while since I have done a thought post. Just thinking, not reviewing something objectively or giving a guide to a mountain bike trail system. Just having a free thought with the only constraints being how I can articulate the idea. It’s nice writing this on a Sunday afternoon with a cold craft beer and just not having anything to do but the pleasure of writing this. So this really is my thoughts on some of the best music in my life.

This will not be some Watch Mojo Top 10 best music as recommended by TAAE, and when it may come to some objective measurements such as most played, highest grossing or even commercially best selling for the artists; these songs will not rate well. But these songs have shaped my life in some way, represent something that I do (a driving song I thoroughly enjoy, music I listen to while riding, songs that got me through a tough stage in my life) or is a really solid song that I have continued to listen to to this day. So where do I start? 2009, and some Singapore guys sliding RC cars.

Letters To You by Finch (2002)

Sometimes you come across some of the best songs in the most unlikely of places. For me, back in 2009 when I wanted to turn my electric RC car into an amazing drifting machine like the YouTubers SG Drifters, I watched their masterpiece which was SG Drifters 3. This high tempo, aggressive hardcore song by Finch featured since the camera car destroyed a Go-Pro during the filming of the video, so the song was dedicated to a Go-Pro (original mind you, that’s how old this is). And while I never turned my Holden Commodore into a Mitsubishi Lancer VII with black rims, this song has remained with me ever since.

Being the hardcore scene of the early 2000’s, everything was about missing your ex and wondering what you do now in life. In 2009, these were things that I felt and wondered what I would do in life in the later years in high school and if I would be alone forever. So the lyrics stuck with me, but the instruments are definitely a hit or miss for most. Fast paced medium-high pitch chords on a heavy bass and drums which change rhythm every so often like a heart rate speeding up and slowing down as you emotionally think about someone. It is high energy hardcore music with admittedly one dimensional lyrics (he misses his ex), but this works into why I still listen to it.

It is often in my riding playlists and when I am descending on a flow trail at high speeds and this song comes on, my mind reverts to being a teenager and watching RC cars slide around a car park and now I want to flick and flow my bike down the berms. While I may not feel the loneliness anymore, the music somehow brings me joy years later.

Savior and Audience of One by Rise Against (2009)

2010 was almost like the year before, a teenager with mixed up feeling trying to get through high school and having feelings for any music that comes his way. Savior was the first of these songs that I came across when playing a game called Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. Guitar Hero is often associated with Dragon Force and Metallica, but for me I loved playing Money for Nothing by Dire Straits and Savior by Rise Against. A few months later I would come across Audience of One and together both songs would form an impression on me.

“It kills me not to know this but I’ve all but just forgotten what the colour of her eyes were, and the scars and how she got them” and “I can still remember, the words and what they meant, as we etched them with our fingers in years of wet cement”. The opening lyrics to Savior and Audience of One respectively. Savior delvers into how you convince yourself into loving someone but then it feels shallow and empty so then you wonder how you get out of the relationship without tearing yourself apart. Audience of One deals with how two people getting into a relationship can be invested but then grow apart as one may not feel the same way as the other. These songs essentially taught me that it is okay to get into a relationship and things not work out. Being in a relationship with someone isn’t forever, and other people feel things like you do as well. And that’s cool, because not many of my friends were in serious committed relationships and half the time having a “boyfriend or girlfriend” just meant hanging out more during lunch or on the weekends. So I didn’t understand what the depth of a relationship could hold and potentially how things might not work out.

Both songs are almost “soft core” in their instrumental composition, honestly they could be released onto the radio today and people would be on board with them like Good 4 U by Olivia Rodrigo. The tracks do not demand much attention when driving or riding, and sometimes when I am descending alone while listening to Audience of One, I begin to interpret it as I am the audience enjoying this trail by myself for all the highs and lows it brings. The entirety of the Appeal to Reason album is something that I listen to from start to finish. Dealing with themes of relationships, loss, acceptance, and identity, Appeal to Reason will have significance for years to come and the instrumental work will not feel outdated. But these two songs have a habit of being in nearly any riding or driving playlist due to the instrumental composition and how they were engrained in my life during high school.

Revolution by Orange (2010)

Watching Peacemaker with the intro music of “Do You Wanna Taste It” by Wig Wam, I thought when was the last time I enjoyed theme music to a TV show or movie? My only conclusion is Revolution by Orange, for the cult classic Cartoon Network show Generator Rex. The show is a teenager that can transform limbs into robot parts to beat down mutants and save the world with Agent Smith from the Matrix and John De Maggio as a monkey with guns. Enough said.

So why this song? Well it’s fun, upbeat, the lyrics aren’t an emotional rollercoaster like my previous entries, and it once again accompanies a fun memory in my teenage life. The band sounds like a modern punk version of the Beach Boys with the aesthetics of My Chemical Romance not looking like they enjoy funerals too much. The drums are upbeat and keep a consistent rhythm throughout the song, the guitars squeal and wail through admittedly basic bridges and post-choruses, and the singer doesn’t really have much intensity as say Freddy Mercury or Adele. But who cares? It’s a song about going out on a date and having fun! And it gives you this positive vibe that you can let loose and everything will be alright. Nice!

Revolution like Letters To You is always incorporated into a mountain biking playlist due to the fun factor of the song and thinking about the cartoon. I have used it in a riding video, and for a fair while I have wanted to use it again in something like Falls Creek or Maydena. But regardless, it will somehow always remain in a riding playlist for when I need to pick up the pace and have a good time!

Tiny Dancer by Elton John (1972)

At some point, if no one is making good music that you like, go back and listen to the good stuff. This is what brought me to Elton John, Billie Joel, and Derek & The Dominoes. I had the greatest hits of all these artists, and Piano Man and Layla get a lot of replays when I am driving long distances and need something to sing along to (Piano Man) or a masterpiece to relax to (Layla). For me, Tiny Dancer fulfils both roles for not only myself, but for my fiancé as well.

For once, the lyrics don’t have to mean anything to me for this to be significant in my life, but rather it is how the song is composed that matters to me most. Before reading this, listen to Tiny Dancer. Of course you belt out the chorus when it comes on (even if you don’t sing it correctly as “lay me down in sheets of linen”) and you have a great time with it. But the structure of the song and instrumental work is oddly brilliant.

The chorus takes almost 2 minutes and 32 seconds to come in. For music in the 70’s that is something different, but in the modern age most songs will drop the chorus within 30 seconds or less so the most catchy lyrics embed themselves early on. In the Spotify world where songs are 3 minutes or less so listeners repeat as often as possible, the instruments are either fast electronic noise to shock your senses into feeling pumped up or slow trance to chill you out, and lyrics need to be about having a girlfriend or missing your girlfriend to be commercially successful (why isn’t emo more popular then); Tiny Dancer is still listened to today for doing none of this. You get two/three verses before a pre-chorus swells in emotion as the piano, vocals and soft instrumental accompaniment crescendos into the iconic chorus that is played twice in a row, and so late into the song. And the crescendo isn’t falsely generated by having a shredding guitar solo or having a bass drop like modern EDM music, the complexity of the chords deepens, notes are sustained for longer giving a larger presence, and meanwhile the vocals soften as if the song writer is being taken away by his own thoughts and feelings of both the woman and the music. It is unconventional lyrical and instrumental composure that lends itself to creating one of Sir Elton John’s most iconic pieces of music.

What this song taught me is that you don’t need to jump to the main event in life as soon as you think. It’s okay to feel things, build emotion and connection without being rushed, and ultimately everything can just feel nice once you get to the chorus in your life. It took me what felt like forever to be with my fiancé, and while things might have been slow by other people’s point of view, we took things at our pace and we love it as much as this song. Being in a relationship isn’t about making the highest of highs and being married as quickly as you can, it is about how you want to compose your relationship and what you want to feel in the end.

Song #3 by Stonesour (2015)

Out of all the songs within this piece, this is my newest addition thanks to the year it was released and the fact I was itching for a new band like Rise Against since Wolves was a bit of a let down. iTunes had a feature where you could listen to an artist and then it would populate more of the playlist depending on what likes or dislikes you gave the songs. At some point, I was presented with Song #3 and I forgot about it for two years.

But YouTube recommended it to me later on and it has become another constant in my life like Savior and Audience of One. But this time the song has a great meaning for me. The song is about an undying love, a love you didn’t expect to find, and a love where both people reciprocate each other’s feelings and pick each other up. I could quote line after line and relate that to how my relationship with my fiancé has gone, but the song is so perfect for us that one of my plans to propose was to learn Song #3 on guitar and play it for her. I teared up a bit there because it is one of the best ideas I could never do, because I have never been able to play and sing well.

Lyrically Song #3 connects with me, but the song takes on two forms with the original and the acoustic. The hard rock original lifts me up with the solid power cord rifts, strong 80’s drum track, and Corey Taylor performing like he’s in a hair metal band. The acoustic version (what I would have proposed with) has that semi-raw acoustic guitar, like percussion section accenting the delict finger picking, and Corey uses more passion and intensity with his vocals to make the profession of love to be more genuine. One is performed like the final act of a high school movie rom-com, the other is the guy is standing below her balcony proposing like everything is on the line. The original is often in my riding playlists, the acoustic version regularly appears during long drives and while I don’t belt it out like I am competing with Corey, I sing the parts that matter the most to me as if I had proposed in that way.

Patience by The Bad Suns (2016)

This without a doubt has to be one of my favourite songs of all time, has the highest play count on my phone and my fiancé’s, has been used in multiple riding videos (four times including twice at Moama), and I have never tired of it. I love riding fast with it, cruising down a flow trail, conquering climbs, walking around with it blasting in my ears, walking to the locker room at work to put a spring in my step, driving around the country, and even sitting here typing this post I am listening to it for the good times. This is one of the greatest songs I have stumbled across and almost forms the back bone of my musical taste in my late 20’s.

Is it about intercourse? Is it about getting out of a bad relationship and getting on living your life? Is it about rehabilitating himself after losing someone? I have no idea and honestly without much of a cohesive song meaning, it means the upbeat-ness of the song can’t be diminished by some secret meaning. The composition is almost like modern Beach Boys/surf rock meets soft rock and a bit of electronic trance, so it allows me to repeat it without feeling like I’ve heard the same ripping guitar solo or boring drawn out drum intro like other songs. The percussion has an upbeat pace and plays around with rim shots and the high hat to give that surf rock vibe, the high strumming guitar definitely invokes classic rock and surf rock, the vocal style lends more towards modern alternative rock, and the synth cuts in every so often to put you in a dream like trance like you were beach dude in California.

Will this be the greatest song ever within the parameters of a modern surf rock genre? No, Spacey Jane with Thrills has had more commercial success and Good 4 U by Olivia Rodrigo becoming a world wide hit with the backing band and synth exemplifying alternative rock and surf rock, plus Olivia has great vocals. But for me, listening to this song while trying to drive a 1985 Audi Quattro S1 flat out from Coober Pedy to Parkes Satellite Array (it’s a video game reference) embedded itself into my mind at one of the best times in my life after I had gotten my position at the hospital, things were going great with my fiancé, and mountain biking was this exciting thing that was going to take me to amazing places. For those reasons, it is hard for me to say if any song will have as much of an impact as what Patience does to me at any point during my day.

My music tastes have changed over the years, I still have 85% of Linkin Park’s discography (not One More Light), all of Rise Against, everything from Hilltop Hoods from Drinking From the Sun onwards, Fall Out Boy’s earlier work from Take This To Your Grave to Save Rock and Roll, the weird phase where I non-ironically listened to Adele’s 21 and U2’s Greatest Hits, and genres on my phone from eurobeat to German industrial metal. But out of all the music I have collected over the years and listen to all the time, these songs have journeyed with me and have been an integral part of my life. These songs make me feel things, resonate with parts of my past life and where I am now, beats that make me ride faster or more smoothly, or just a good song to kick off my work day. And music has this strange ability on all of us.

So until next time, keep safe and stay awesome!