My 425 favorite songs: introduction and index

In order to push myself to write small, easily-digested blog entries -- and to serve the well-documented popularity of lists -- I hereby announce my blog's first long-running project: the countdown of my 425 favorite songs, limited to one per artist. While my blog will continue to feature other things, I will also, every day or two, post a YouTube-linked song that I love, and a couple of paragraphs about the song and artist.

This should be simple enough to not psych me out. Plus, if a few of you make a habit of listening to the songs and sending me thoughts about them, it should also be a lot of fun.

A few quick Frequently Imagined Questions with Answers:

Q: You say one per artist. How do you define the artist?
A: Mostly it's straightforward. When it isn't, I tend to define by the singer, assuming the singer has any creative role: Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry are one artist, but Roxy Music and Brian Eno are two distinct artists despite Eno's influence on Roxy's sound. Songs from musicals are attributed to their composer, unless there was a hit song credited to the singer -- e.g., I considered "Let It Go" from Frozen (hey, my kids were 4 and 6 when that movie came out), and would have attributed it to singer Idina Menzel in deference to the charts.

When a band has two or more separate singer/ songwriters, I allow the possibility of the band appearing multiple times, once for each. This only happens a few times.

Q: How the heck can you rank songs from favorite to 425th-favorite? What possible measure of quality does that?
A: Please, don't take the rankings seriously. In a vague way the list will progress slowly from Songs I Love all the way up to Songs I Really Really REALLY Love (Really!), but the daily order will mean essentially nothing. I'm considering making YouTube playlists from the countdown, so I'll arrange the list for nice song-to-song segues in case I live up to that plan. Besides, while it really will be true that I care more about whatever song's at #40 than the one at #400, my tastes are arbitrary and stupid. They just might, if I'm lucky, prove arbitrary, stupid, and fun to read about.

Q: Why 425?
A: The one meaningful rank distinction is "on the list" versus "not on the list". I could've done 100 songs -- a pure concentration on best-of-the-best -- but a longer list represents my tastes better, and commits me to giving this blogging thing a fair chance. I considered 300, and didn't have a clue what songs should or shouldn't make the cutoff. I tried 400, and that was better, but there were still a few songs that were heart-wrenching to leave off. I considered 420, then promptly remembered that's pot-head talk. I'm genuinely happy with the list of 425 -- there's plenty of songs I'm tempted to shuffle onto the list, but there are finally none I feel a need to. This also means I'm not adding anything from 2017 and beyond.

Q: What will likely bug me most about your list?
A: Depends on you, duh. Compared to other such lists, my list will have quite a few more joke songs than most: I believe humor can disguise genuine insight and/or poignancy, or then again, that it can express genuine joy that lasts long after knowing the punch-lines. My list also over-represents white people, although less than it would have a few years ago; and music from the 1990s, because I became a music fan in 1990 and was doing my impressionable-youth thing then.

Songs from the 1970s and before are given far less attention than they probably deserve -- although, then again, an order of magnitude more records are released every year now compared to back then. Perhaps it's really true that an order of magnitude more wonderful songs are, too.

Q: Will you index the entries so I can see at any point what's been covered?
A: Yep! Right under this Q/A, updating after each new entry and presenting them in rank order. Eventually I'll also create an alphabetical index by artist name, because eventually the list will be unwieldy. Enjoy!

Michael Jackson, "They Don't Care About Us" (396)
Atom & His Package, "If You Own the Washington Redskins, You're a Cock" (397)
Topher Florence, "Some of My Best Friends are Black" (398)
Die Warzau, "Shakespeare" (399)
Refused, "Old Friends, New War" (400)
Sundays, "Hideous Towns" (401)
Penetration, "Lovers of Outrage" (402)
Sloan, "Underwhelmed" (403)
Ian & Sylvia, "House of Cards" (404)
New Seekers, "Free to Be You and Me" (405)
Adam Schmitt, "Elizabeth Einstein" (406)
Emma Pollock, "Hug the Harbour" (407)
Papas Fritas, "Hey Hey You Say" (408)
Modest Mouse, "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" (409)
James McMurtry, "How'm I Gonna Find You Now?" (410)
Queensryche, "Revolution Calling" (411)
Savatage, "the Wake of Magellan" (412)
Joan Armatrading, "Tell Me" (413)
Joni Mitchell, "the Jungle Line" (414)
Xenia Rubinos, "Mexican Chef" (415)
Gloria Gaynor, "I Will Survive" (416)
Bobs, "Art for Art's Sake" (417)
Dowling Poole, "Empires, Buildings, and Acquisitions" (418)
Gentleman Auction House, "Book of Matches" (419) 
Tom Petty, "Don't Come Around Here No More" (420)  
Janet Jackson, "Velvet Rope" (421)  
Mary Timony, "Blood Tree" (422) 
Pixies, "Monkey Gone to Heaven" (423) 
Los Campesinos!, "For Flotsam" (424)
Buggles, "Video Killed the Radio Star" (425)