Yellow

Song: Yellow
Artist: Coldplay
Album: Parachutes
Released: July 2000

Alright all you Coldplay haters, just simmer down when you feast your eyes on this entry. How can a band help the fact that their songs are so infectious that radio stations refuse to stop playing them? Sure, sure many of their songs were over played, and most of them are fairly repetitive, but when your songs are this good, repetition should be encouraged.

Okay, so lets look past the fact that my first make out was experienced with this song playing in the background of my parents' Dodge Intrepid (while they were driving, ba ha ha ha ha). Apparently they thought we were asleep, since it was late and on the way home from a long trip. Yes, I did reluctantly tell my wife about this experience long before I wrote this entry, and as you can imagine, her jealous mind has pushed this particular song out of her own top 100. Standing on it's own it is as good a love song as you can get. In the intro to the song a clean guitar gently clangs and then bounces into a simple and distorted riff, that then transitions into the verse. I love the lyrics, they aren't really a story, but more of a narration of a single moment. Chris Martin's voice sets the mood as he moves in and out of falsetto with all the effort of a bird soaring on the wind. Every note of the verse and chorus is an expression of the feelings he has for his love. Again the lyrics are vague enough that anyone can claim ownership, but explanatory enough that it can fit your situation perfectly. If you ask me that's the very essence of a great song. It's what music should be if you ask me, like a photograph of a feeling, or a memory.

Yellow doesn't really ever hit a peak, instead it follows a smooth figure eight track, from verse, to chorus and back again, avoiding steep hills and valleys. It weaves its way the same way a great love should, consistently. Not to say every relationship doesn't have peaks and valleys, they do, but the love you feel in a great relationship I think, is very consistent from day to day, the big waves can't break it, and strong winds of change can't move it. True love remains the same through all trials. This is what Yellow has become to me, a steady beautiful narrative of the emotion of love. Enjoy

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah they were all yellow,

I came along
I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called yellow

So then I took my turn
Oh all the things I've done
And it was all yellow

Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know you know I love you so
You know I love you so

I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh all the things you do
Cause you were all yellow

I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all yellow

Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know for you i bleed myself dry
For you i bleed myself dry

Its true look how they shine for you
look how they shine for you
look how they shine for you
look how they shine for you
look how they shine for you
look how they shine
look at the stars look how they shine for you

Selling the Drama

 Song: Selling the Drama
Artist: Live
Album: Throwing Copper
Released: April 1994

Ah, just seeing that album cover makes me happy. It just screams quality right from the get go. This is easily one of the best album covers of all time, which is fitting for the best album of all time! Well that's my humble opinion anyway. It is seriously hard to limit myself to the number of songs on this list that come from this album. It makes me want to shake my head in unbelief that I even had to rank "Selling the Drama" this low, but every song on Throwing Copper (and what a freakin' awesome name for an album) is just so dang good!

At any rate, number 91 is "Selling the Drama". The first three notes of the song are classic, they just make you feel good, and they bring a flood of great memories to mind. Memories that are both new and old, from my childhood, to high school, to the very recent. For many years I skipped over "the dam at otter creek" (the album's opening track) when listening to Throwing Copper, and so "Selling the Drama" was the opening track for me for a long time. There are too many things that I relate this song to, for me to pick just one to elaborate on. Rather it represents a kaleidoscope vision of, good times with good friends, and family.

"Selling the Drama" is probably the most controlled song off the album, and that's probably why I ranked it lower than any of the other songs from Throwing Copper. I love the passion that Live put into each of the songs on Throwing Copper, and while "Selling the Drama" gives you a sample of their exemplary freak outs at the end of the song, it is short and at the very end of the song, which makes it short, and in my book just not as good. "Selling the Drama" is the perfect opener for the CD though. I still call it the opener because "the dam at otter creek" is more like an extended introduction to the album as a whole. "otter creek" is one big crescendo that is very rough and raw and it transitions perfectly into the beauty of "Selling the Drama".  The song has very poignant lyrics, that question much larger subject matter that I care to take on right now, but they are worded perfectly. The song is highly polished and perfectly represents the quality the album has to offer. From start to finish, this song is simply timeless.

and to love: a god
and to fear: a flame
and to burn a crowd that has a name
and to right or wrong
and to meek or strong
it is known, just scream it from the wall

I've willed, I've walked, I've read
I've talked, I know, I know,
I've been here before

hey, now we won't be raped
hey, now we won't be scarred like that

it's the sun that burns
it's the wheel that turns
it's the way we sing that makes 'em dream

and to christ: a cross
and to me: a chair
I will sit and earn the ransom
from up here