Countdown Songs by Year of Release
As I said in the beginning of the countdown, the songs would tend to skew towards newer music since I am indeed a young person that has listened primarily to music from the past 25 years. The oldest song was "White Rabbit" from 1967, and the newest song was 2010's "Lisbon," which beat "Sprawl 2" by just a couple of weeks. One fun note (well, I think it's fun at least) is that the top nine songs all come from the middle three groups.
Countdown Songs by Country of Origin
Much like the last section, since I am from the US, much of the music on the list comes from the US. Canada made a good effort to keep up, but they don't have the breadth nor the depth to overtake the sheer volume of music coming from the states. Everything else from outside the continent came from various European islands, which suggests that I could probably stand to expand my reach a little. Maybe when I revisit this in a decade or so, I'll have some Boris or something like that on the list.
Countdown Songs by Length
This graph shows that a) I do indeed like long songs, and b) you can make any bar graph flat if you choose the right groupings. In all seriousness, these are the groupings I chose first, so I do think it shows the balance and variety of song lengths that showed up in my countdown. The average song length checked in at 7:50, which means it would take you over two and a half hours to listen to the entirety of the countdown. Fun fact: The two oldest songs on my countdown also happened to be the shortest ("White Rabbit") and the longest ("Dogs").
What I've Been Listening To in the Last 15 Months
I started this countdown in March of 2012, which means that I chose the songs for the countdown then. I've moved a couple of the songs up and down a spot or two in that time, but the overall contents have stayed the same. This means that everything I've discovered in the last 15 months isn't on the list. I'm not sure how many of these songs would actually make the list, but here's some things I've taken a liking to recently, in rough order of how much I like them. I'll provide just two-to-three sentence blurbs since I've written enough about music already
I See a Darkness - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Johnny Cash sure picked some great songs to cover, didn't he? Will Oldham's masterpiece album is great throughout, but the title track is the crown jewel.
The Everyday World of Bodies - Rodan
Rodan evokes the sound of Slint with a slightly harder edge to it. This makes sense, since both bands are from the Louisville area and came about around the same time. Sadly, I only discovered Rodan upon learning that founding member Jason Noble had died of cancer.
Only Tomorrow - My Bloody Valentine
MBV's return from a 22-year absence could have been disappointing, but luckily it was not. Some of the later tracks on their self-titled effort successfully reached into new areas for the band, but earlier tracks like "Only Tomorrow" play to the absolute strengths of the band in a fantastic way.
Lloyd's Register - Rachel's
Another band featuring the deceased Jason Noble, Rachel's is a far calmer outfit, featuring contributions from a wide range of performers. "Lloyd's Register" is a great example of the band's versatility, weaving back and forth between serenity and chaos with aplomb.
Katy Song - Red House Painters
I got into the "slowcore" movement not long after starting the list. "Katy Song" is perhaps one of the best examples of what this type of music could do. Mark Kozelek and friends show that the combination of precision and execution could still all the right emotional notes.
Cave In - Codeine
Codeine on the other hand, gives us the opposite end of "slowcore," which is much louder and sludgier but still just as beautiful. "Cave In" is probably their most famous song, but you can't go wrong with almost any other song in their catalogue, as they were able to consistently hone and perfect their sound.
Tragedy of the Mind - Survival
I literally just started listening to Survival a couple of weeks ago, but I am already hooked. The first track is probably the one that stands out the most now, but I'm sure this will change over time.
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