What I Like In Music

Every so often I like to think about why I like what I like , the meta-cognition, as it were, as to my sense of taste. I like thinking about this because I do wonder how much my tastes have changed over the years. But I also think it’s helpful because I have strong opinions - though less strong than they used to be - and I like to think they are justified.

And because you’re a subscriber, you get the pleasure of this exercise. (Hooray.)

But before I get to that,

Riley’s Greatest Covers of All Time:

I am in the process of improving my Greatest Covers of All Time list. Specifically, I am breaking up the decade pages into year pages so they will load faster. (This is more of a problem for me editing those pages than you viewing them, as far as I know, but it should make it easier to listen as well.) If you are a YouTube Music subscriber, you can find the covers in a playlist there which is probably a nicer way to listen to them. I also have some news on the covers front that I am not at liberty to disclose at the moment but, rest assured, when I am allowed to tell you, I will.

And now back to your scheduled newsletter.

What I Like in Music:

When I think about how I appreciate popular music in particular, I like to break songs down into component parts:

• Music

• Lyrics

• Arrangement/performance

• Production

So I will do that here. This is really about how I think about popular music and doesn’t apply as much to jazz and even less to “classical.” It’s not like my feelings aren’t similar with these other genres but more that some of the aspects I talk about below basically don’t exist in Western art music.

Songs

Intellectually, at least, I like weirder songs. I like songs that violate rules. Like anyone who listens to lots of music, I like plenty of verse-chorus songs (hundreds! thousands?) and plenty of AABA songs or other common forms. But I also like songs which play with our expectations.

For example, for some reason I love a song with a big chorus that never repeats that chorus. So here is the British blues rock band Humble Pie giving you one hell of a chorus that never repeats:

And here is the alternative rock/alternative metal band Tomahawk doing something similar 30 years later:

I also like ambition. One reason I was drawn to prog rock initially is my interest in these rock musicians trying to write these ridiculously long pieces (or, really, suites of pieces) that didn’t belong in rock music. To this day, my favourite “side long” (as in LP side) piece of rock music is an elaborate suite of related and unrelated pieces of music by Genesis:

Now, I would probably like this a lot less if the musicianship wasn’t so good - try concentrating on “Apocalypse in 9/8” and not getting a knot in your stomach - but I still admire it as a composition.

And of course I like all sorts of things, from tossed-off song fragments to extremely sophisticated, well-crafted songs working within a grand songwriting tradition.

For me I think there are two main things that draw me to a songwriter I don’t already love:

• The ability to write a good song more often than they write a mediocre or bad song and

• Variety.

To me, variety really is the spice of life. If someone writes the same type of song over and over and over again, those songs have to be really, really good in some other way to win me over. I’m much more inclined to like someone who futzes with the form, so to speak, who doesn’t always write a song the same way every time out. (The exception is, of course, if I grew up with the songwriter(s) in my formative years.)

I also want to say that find melody kind of the least interesting thing about songs. This isn’t fair - as a friend once noted when I complained about melody, melody is literally the basis of all music. But what I mean is that I don’t love songwriters whose primary goal is to write catchy melodies and everything else is secondary. I like experimentation with form - I like to be surprised. I also like a songwriter to show that they can write a catchy melody but they can also do other things, such as coming up with a compelling rhythm, or creating or leaving space for someone - the songwriter, their bandmate, a session musician - to do something interesting. One reason I am mostly bored by pop music is that it is - or was, rather - all about having as many catchy melodies as possible and that’s it. (I think the influence of hip hop has greatly helped pop music in this regard.)

You probably already know I think Bob Dylan is the greatest (English language) songwriter of all time but that’s almost entirely because of his lyrics. (He has cribbed a lot of music from other people.)

My favourite songwriter of all time is Neil Young, and this is my favourite Neil Young song:

(If you want to go crazy, I once created a Top 100 Neil Young songs list. Let me know how many videos don’t load.)

There are many reasons why I love Neil Young and this song in particular but a lot have to do with his lyrics, which should be a good segue to the next section. However, I did want to leave you with a list of those people who I think make up the great English language songwriters of the “rock era” (for lack of a better term).

Here they are in alphabetical order. (I am thinking of people who are often credited as the sole writer of songs - as opposed to collaborators. And before you object, Lennon and McCartney stopped routinely collaborating pretty early in The Beatles’ career despite the joint credit.)

• Fiona Apple

• David Bowie

• Nick Cave

• Elvis Costello

• Bob Dylan

• Peter Hammill

• P.J. Harvey

• John Lennon

• Joni Mitchell

• Will Oldham

• Lou Reed

• Jeff Tweedy

• Tom Waits

• Neil Young

(Apologies to Tori Amos, Janis Ian and Laura Nyro, who might make it on this list if I’d only heard more of their songs.)

I’m sure I’m missing a few. Also, this clearly dates me (and my listening habits) so I’m sure there are plenty of good candidates who have emerged in the 21st century that I am just not aware of.

And while I’m at it, I might as well mention that I think Paul Simon is extremely overrated as a songwriter and, for a while there, I got very annoyed at how I was supposed to think highly of Paul Simon as a songwriter. (I grew up with Simon & Garfunkel and so much of my objection to him is probably more as a producer than as a songwriter. )

So let’s go to lyrics.

Lyrics

I have a confession to make: I really don’t pay a lot of attention to the lyrics of songs I am listening to when I am first listening to them, most of the time. (More on that in a moment.)

I am currently in the middle of a deep, terrible obsession with YouTube album reactions and one of the things that might help me quit this terrible obsession is how often these reactors just obsess about the meaning of the lyrics. I mean, this is the first time you are (supposedly!) ever listening to this song. You will probably not figure out what it means based on one listen! Right?

Ahem.

Anyway, there are so many songs I’ve come to love only to realize later that the lyrics were, um, not amazing. That’s because lyrics are usually not my priority. I mostly really don’t care if I like other aspects of the recording and I often don’t even know what they’re about for multiple listens, sometimes even years. (I’m sure multiple favourite songs of mine I still mishear lyrics in.)

That being said, sometimes, especially when the vocal is mixed super far forward, as it often is, a lyric rubs me the wrong way or makes me cringe. Often, I already don’t like some other aspect of the song so I’ve started listening to the lyrics to find something else to get annoyed by. That’s hardly fair but it’s just the way I am. If I like the song for other reasons (see below) I will usually not give a shit about the quality of the lyrics and I usually won’t even think about them until later on, on my, like, 17th listen (unless I’m trying to write a review). On the other hand, if I don’t love the song for emotional immediacy reasons (see below) I will start trying to pick the lyric apart.

Probably my favourite terrible lyrics from a massive hit were written by Kritian Lundin and Max Martin:

“I don't care who you are
Where you're from, what you did
As long as you love me.”

“As long as you give me the emotional gratification I need - i.e. sex - you could be literally anybody from anywhere. And I’m certainly not interested in you as a person. Hell, you could be serial killer, as long as you’re good in bed.”

Ahem.

You may be wondering how I can have favourite songwriters if I don’t care about lyrics or how can I put a list of great songwriters in this newsletter if I don’t care about lyrics.

So of course I care about lyrics sometimes, but it’s usually after I’ve listened to someone’s music rather a lot. Everyone on that list above I would consider a great lyricist. And the reason why Bob Dylan is the greatest (English language) songwriter of all time is his lyrics, not his melodies. (Again, many of those are lifted/stolen.)

Dylan transformed English language lyric writing from “baby please dance with me” or “I love you baby” or “Baby please get in/check out my car” or “My boyfriend was great but he died in a terrible motorcycle accident” to lyrics where you need a fucking codex to figure out what he’s singing about. (That mostly only applies to his songs from his peak period. I would argue he’s been much more explicable, much of the time, since his own motorcycle accident in 1966.) Much like there’s no going back to before The Beatles brought ambition into popular music, there’s no going back to English lyrics before Dylan told people they could use modernist poetry and sing about literally anything they wanted to.

But the lyrics I like I like for more personal reasons, usually. The reason Neil Young is my favourite songwriter is because he’s an impressionist much of the time and, much of the time, those impressions resonate with me more than other impressionistic songwriters. There are many lines of Young’s that feel like they capture something about me or something about the world I know in a way that other songwriters only occasionally achieve.

For example, “Helpless” is about “north Ontario,” somewhere I spent a lot of time in my childhood as Neil Young did.. (Like any good Torontonian, Young’s northern Ontario begins as soon as Toronto ends.)

For another example, though I don’t resonate with every line in “On the Beach” (as I don’t spend much time on our beach), the line “Though my problems are meaningless, that don’t make them go away” appears to capture so much of our modern predicament.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve “felt seen” (as the kids say) when listening to a Neil Young song. (You could probably get some idea by checking out my list of Top 100 Neil Young songs.)

But, all that being said, lyrics are probably the last thing I think about in a song I like. I worry about them later. And sometimes I won’t even try to figure them out because I like other aspects of the song too much. (I am routinely disappointed by song lyrics, I should point out. Routinely.)

So let’s move on to something I care about much more.

Arrangement

What I mean here is the choice of instruments.

I do think you can include tempo and even rhythm in this if you want. As to the former, I’d say I think there are some songs that are served better by a faster pace and some which are served better by a slower pace but I’m not always sure about which until I hear someone do the other tempo. (That’s probably one reason I love so many idiosyncratic covers.) As to rhythm: I do think songs can often suffer from de-emphasizing rhythm, and some songs are just more interesting by virtue of the performers straying away from 4/4 or ¾ or whatever.

Much like with songwriting, I like unconventional arrangements. Sure, I love plenty of songs that are just vocals, guitars, bass, drums but I’m always intrigued when someone does something to subvert that, either by adding instruments or, especially, by subtracting.

(I do understand that, in popular music, we’re now far removed from the world of vocals, guitars, bass, drums. But this is the world I grew up in and became a music fan in.)

How many songs are better because only one person performed them?

I think of every Nick Drake song where it’s just him but so many other songs that work well in part because it’s a sole performer.

Here’s Neil Young with an unconventional two-person arrangement:

That’s Young on vocal and banjo and his slide guitarist Ben Keith on dobro and vocal. No other instruments. I think the song stands out in his catalogue in part because he basically never recorded another song like this - he rarely played banjo and he rarely had a co-lead vocalist.

And since I mentioned Nick Drake, here’s him with a small group consisting of him on guitar and vocal, plus cello, bass and congas.

This, to me, is a marvelous arrangement made by only four people with multi-tracking:

Listen to how full that sounds.

Of course I’m not opposed to larger ensembles.

This one is really obvious but I think it’s one of the finest string arrangements ever written for a pop song. (Very Bernard Herrmann)

Or check out Peter Gabriel’s 2011 album New Blood where he covers himself if you want to hear some great orchestrations of songs where Io think the orchestral version is often preferable to the original “contemporary” arrangement where Gabriel used what was then cutting edge musical technology that I feel like mostly really dates his music to a certain era.

In sum, I think you can do so many things and it’s more interesting if the artist doesn’t use the same instruments on every single song. Of course, there are plenty of great albums where an artist or band uses the same instruments for each song, but I do like when people think outside the box.

Performance

This is probably the biggest thing for me for my enjoyment of music, at least when it comes to popular music and jazz. Pete Townshend has a line in a song that goes “It’s the singer not the song.” And though that line has made me very mad - there are truly great songs that exist regardless of who is singing them - I kind of think he was right about your average song performance. For a given song - any song that isn’t an all time great song - it matters more who is performing it. Its the performance that carries or loses the day.

For me, the biggest thing in performance is probably energy and/or passion. Energy can solve so may problems, as can emotional force in a song that is otherwise lower energy. Energy or passion can make me like a bad song - it can make me not even notice it’s a bad song. Energy is crucial to much (though hardly all) great music in my opinion.

One reason I love a lot of punk music is energy. I love (some kinds of) soul for the passion.

Skill is second, though it’s a close second. I want virtuosity in my the musicians I listen to, at least much of the time. To me, virtuosity can sometimes make up for other things but more importantly it can elevate something that is already good to something great.

So, I like a lot of metal because it combines virtuosity with energy. Not all metal, obviously, but lots of it.

My favourite rock guitarist is Robert Fripp. He is my favourite for a couple of reasons, one of which is his sheer technical ability, on display perhaps nowhere better than here:

And here’s Fripp and another incredible guitarist in a new version of King Crimson from the early ‘80s:

But he doesn’t just play like this. He plays all sorts of ways. You know him from the guitar in ““Heroes,”” which sounds nothing like “Fracture.”

Unless you are really familiar with Fripp’s various styles of play, it likely sounds like a different player. Along with Brian Eno, he essentially invented guitar looping.

It’s for me to think of what other Fripp tracks to put here because he has so many stunning solos and lead parts, whether with King Crimson or as a session musician for Bowie, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, etc. So here’s him playing acoustic, something he stopped playing publicly (outside of his League of Crafty Guitarists) 50 years ago:

Of course it’s not just showy playing that’s a sign of virtuosity. This is an obvious one but the best players can elevate a song without just showing off like Fripp is doing in “Fracture”:

So I admire skill and I admire range. And I’m not sure there’s anyone who embodies both like the man I considered the Greatest (Rock) Singer of All Time:

(I could have put an entire playlist in here of all the styles he sings but that could get ridiculous.)

And while I’m at it, it would feel weird to not include at least one song featuring the man I consider to be the Greatest [Rock] Bass Guitarist of All Time:

Tied with skill is unconventionality. To use Neil Young as an example again, he is not a technically skilled guitar player compared to the best rock guitarists - though he is fine - but his playing style is infamous and he has many famous solos because he decided to play differently. There are many players who opt for this but Young is a good paragon. The most famous examples are all on Everyone Knows This is Nowhere (“Cinnamon Girl,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Down by the River”) but my favourite example is this:

You have to listen for that solo, it’s mixed so low and is so low itself. Why did he do it? Who knows?

(Speaking of Pete Townshend, he’s another guy who some times does these unconventional guitar solos that don’t make a lot of sense. But they are far more conventional than Young’s weirdest.)

Another great unconventional guitarist was Robert Quine. He did some wild things in the Voidoids.

Here’s Iggy Pop using his limited vocal ability to incredible effect:

What’s really cool is when someone combines virtuosity with unconventionally, such as in The Greatest (Rock) Piano Solo of All Time (TM):

Here, Mike Garson combines his skill as a pianist, and his knowledge of many different style of music with atonality from free jazz or contemporary classical to play a piano solo unlike anything else in the history of rock music. Having just spent too much time listening to Wolfgang Rihm’s piano music, I can tell you that this solo also swings in a way that Rihm’s music, for example, rarely does.

Robert Fripp’s guitar playing here is also a great example of a virtuoso playing unconventionally. In the build up, he’s playing like he’s Neil Young even though he’s one of the most technically capable guitarists of his generation.

Production

So first off, I hate production that removes all human error. I absolutely hate it. To me, Jimmy Page was a great producer specifically because he let accidents happen and left them in. When you listen to Led Zeppelin songs, you hear them make mistakes! And guess what? It didn’t keep them from success.

Listen to that drum pedal (or whatever that squeaking is):

To me, leaving in mistakes is so much more human, so much more authentic than trying to correct them out. Of course the take should be good, but sometimes the best take has more energy or emotion in it than a “perfect” take.

Here is an example from someone I think is one of the worst Most Successful Producers of All Time:

I hate everything about this song and this album and I hate Mutt Lange’s work most of the time. I think he doesn’t actually like rock music. (I will say I cannot object to anything he did on Back in Black but I guess he hadn’t gone crazy yet.)

Mistakes are human, they are good! The warts are good!

Now, with that out of the way, I am of two minds about production more broadly.

On the one hand, I think that if you have a really great songs the goal of the recording should be to not be obvious. If the song is truly great, the listener shouldn’t be thinking about the recording, right? So I think if the song is truly great the recording shouldn’t get in the way, it shouldn’t be obviously noticeable.

On the other hand, I do think different recording techniques can absolutely improve songs in certain contexts. Historically there was a time rock music and in jazz when the innovative thing in music was to do interesting things in the recording process.

A great example of how time changes the context for me is flange. I don’t like the sound of flange. I think it kind of sucks and it dates records that use it even if they are using it in 2026. But I can’t dislike flange on ‘60s records because it was a new technique. The first records with flange on them were literally pioneering something. Now, if you go heavy on flange in the late ‘70s, like one of my otherwise favourite albums of that era does, I don’t really know what to say. That is a real choice, and a weird one.

In general it does feel like making your instruments sound weird is now way too easy, so everyone does it. I regularly try to figure out which instruments are on a song when I’m listening to it for the first or second or third time and I must say I have no idea sometimes with 21st century music because anything and everything can be altered with a mouse click or a dial. With analog technology, effects and tape editing were deliberate choices, because they required a ton of effort. (It was listening to a young music producer react to The Dark Side of the Moon realizing that it was all done manually.)

Much like with arrangements, to me variety is a good thing. I kind of get annoyed with the same album, if the production is all over the place from track to track, but I think it’s good for artists to try different approaches - different studios, different recording technologies, different mic placements, effects vs. no effects, editing vs. live performance, etc. - over their career. Thinking consciously about how you record is only going to make the music more conscious.

Here is a Neil Young song that combines extremely interesting choices in the arrangement with what was then the somewhat radical idea of splicing sections and unrelated musical sounds into a song:

Historical Context Just Matters a Lot

“Broken Arrow” was pretty revolutionary when it was recorded in the summer of 1967. Yes, other bands had done this already but only for about a year or so and nobody was really doing it with folk rock.

I like “Broken Arrow” as a song but I also know about its history.

If I listened to something in 2026 that did this, I just wouldn’t be impressed unless the song itself was incredible or the additional sections were really unique or some combination of both. People have been doing weird shit with studio editing in popular music since the mid 1960s and it’s just no longer original.

Though I couldn’t use musical theory to explain why, I do think there are songs that are obviously better than others. Every year many people write songs using traditional forms that fantastic (though I don’t usually hear them) because of how they satisfy our particular desire for musical harmony or what have you.

And though I am often bored to tears by the recycling of old rock music genres - psychedelia, punk, new wave, post punk, pop punk, alternative, indie [insert second word here], emo/screamo etc. - a band or artist doing something in my wheelhouse can still excite me. Like so many others, I heard Geese (thanks Den!) and I was like “Now how come I didn’t know about this yet?” Geese remind me of so many of the things I like in rock music, even if they are hardly original.

But so much works for me only the first time, or only a few times.

I grew up reading history books and I am obsessed with history, particularly music history. I have listened to enough music now that I usually know where a particular sound comes from or have some idea. And so when I hear something I’ve heard over and over and over again - especially if the warts are ironed out completely - then I’m really not interested. For years I used to read Exclaim! regularly and would get so annoyed when I got around to listening to the music they gave raves to, because so much of it sounded derivative to me.

I’d love to be able to say something like “good music is just good music” but that’s not entirely true. Sure, there is some truth to it but there’s also the other side of it: if someone does something first, or they do something for the first time in a really long time, or they take something and change it in an original way, that to me is good. And it’s hard for me to escape that way of thinking about music (or movies or what have you).

As much as I really enjoy Geese’s music that I’ve heard, I’m never going to rave about them to the degree that their biggest fans do. I can’t. I’ve listened to (and enjoyed) too many of their influences too much.

Though some of this is sort of set in stone at this point, I do find my tastes changing. I am more open to the virtues of pop music and hip hop than when I was younger. And I know that, the moment I press send, there will be all this music that floods into my head that I feel like I should have mentioned. Ah well.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me.