Music Blogs

One way or another, all music is about emotion, even when it's about lack of emotion. But some records reach the parts others never can, raising emotional intensity to a pitch that can verge on the unbearable. We here at RBP Towers have selected a ton of the most overwhelming, intoxicating, cathartic records ever captured on tape. They hail from all walks of music, from blues to disco and punk to big beat... Charlie Parker to Charlie Rich, Neil Young to Nirvana, Smokey Robinson to the Smashing Pumpkins. The criteria for all of them are simple: Does your face scrunch up into hideous contortions when you listen to them? And do they cause you involuntarily to hold your breath for much of their duration? We count down the real earth-shakers. Enjoy the ride!--Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

20 "Gimme Shelter"--The Rolling Stones, from Let It Bleed (Decca, 1969): "It's just a shot away..." The yet-to-glimmer twins' darkest moment of the benighted late '60s, a desperate and truly scary slice of gospelized rock raised to the heights of agonized genius by Merry Clayton's unfettered wailing.

19 "It's Over"--Roy Orbison, single (Monument, 1964): Over a measured bolero beat, The other Big O gives the most decimating performance of his career, defying vocal gravity with that tremulous, unearthly, man-out-of-time tenor. Is there anything more terminal in pop than that final, blood-chilling "over"?

18 "Loose"--The Stooges, from Fun House (Elektra, 1970): The greatest three and a half minutes of Iggy Pop's improbably long career: a manic three-chord grungefest that sits squarely at the intersection of the unholy trinity of sex, drugs and bludgeoning rifferama. Protopunk for peanut-butter-flavoured bodysurfing.

17 "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)"--Aretha Franklin, single (Atlantic, 1967): The first thing Lady Ree cut for Atlantic during a stormy day and night in Muscle Shoals. Although written by Ronnie Shannon, it's quite shockingly autobiographical: "You're no good, heartbreaker, you're a liar and a cheat..." Aretha sings with staggering conviction as her ne'er-do-well husband Ted White picks fights in the control room.

16 "Layla"--Derek & The Dominos, from Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs (Polydor, 1970): "Darling, won't you ease my worried mind..." An impassioned plea to George Harrison's missus just before EC opted to go slowhand and JJ Cale-laidback on us, complete with slide-god sparring partner Duane Allman. Dave Marsh called it "perhaps the most powerful and beautiful song of the '70s."

15 "Vancouver"--Jeff Buckley, from (Sketches For) My Sweetheart, The Drunk (Columbia, 1998): There are plenty of Jeff contenders for the Intensity Hundred, but none top this frenzied piece of posthumous magnificence, which piles on the emotion to boiling point--and a climax that'll leave you faint.

14 "For Your Precious Love"--Linda Jones, single (Turbo, 1972): "I especially want you ladies to listen to me..." Jerry Butler's song had already produced a few seminal interpretations when this tragic diabetic siren from New Jersey got her pipes round it. The spoken intro over and done with, Jones launches into maybe the most ravaged, harrowing howl of devotion ever committed to vinyl.

13 "Breathe"--Prodigy, single (XL, 1997): Pistols-style shock-punk returns in rave form as tabloid horror boy Keith Flint snarls drug poetry over Liam Howlett's jittery freakout beats. This thrilling sonic splurge just has the edge over the fearsome "Firestarter."

12 "Won't Get Fooled Again"--The Who, from Who's Next (Track, 1971): A shattering masterpiece of four-piece dynamics and pure electric combustibility, this eight and a half minute monster of a track remains The Who's greatest achievement, an anthem of livid defiance recorded just as rock prepared to lay down for its pre-punk snooze. Moon is unfrickinbelievable on "Fooled," and Daltrey's post-keyboard-sequence megascream is unrivalled in rock 'n' roll.

11 "Stay With Me"--Lorraine Ellison, single (Warner Brothers, 1966): On which Jerry Ragovoy takes everything he learned from Bert Berns and multiplies it by ten. The song's stately opening deceives: helped just a little by a massive orchestra hired for a no-show Frank Sinatra, the choruses simply erupt out of your speakers--blasting brass, bottomless tom-toms, the inconsolable Ellison and all. Flattens everything in its path.

10 "Only Shallow"--My Bloody Valentine, from Loveless (Creation, 1991): Opening track on MBV's mighty second opus and still breathtaking a decade on from its release. From its dreampop-shoegazer verses to its tumultuous, earth-swallowing choruses--and back again--it's truly gaspworthy. Kevin Shields, we salute you.

9 "Born to Run"--Bruce Springsteen, from Born To Run (Columbia, 1975): In which the Asbury Park bard quits faffing around, takes his bull by the horns, and goes into Spectoresque overdrive on a possessed pocket symphony. A histrionic but unstoppable hymn to the American dream.

8 "Smells Like Teen Spirit"--Nirvana, from Nevermind (DGC, 1991): The Lost Boy updates Boston's "More Than A Feeling" for Generation X and a bruising punk-metal masterpiece is the result. What's electrifying about "Teen Spirit" is that Cobain's howl on the choruses is even more savagely visceral than his guitar playing.

7 "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)"--The Jimi Hendrix Experience, from Electric Ladyland (Track, 1968): Ok, so James Marshall Hendrix was intensity, but even he never matched the magnificence of this "slight return" at the close of Ladyland. This is piercingly, savagely intense guitar playing by a demonized master, a man standing next to a mountain.

6 "Seven And Seven Is"--Love, single (Elektra, 1966): Superhuman in execution, this psychedelic cataclysm of a single exploded out of the mid-'60s like a lysergic comet. Over the crashing guitars and remorseless drumming--who actually sat behind the stool on the released take remains a minor mystery--Arthur Lee snarls mad lyrics about ice cream cones and hypnotized dogs. A crazed marvel of a record.

5 "Transmission"--Joy Division, single (Factory, 1980): A pounding industrial-disco beat, two chords over a pulsing Peter Hook bass line, and Ian Curtis dance, dance, dancing to the radio, swept into a frenzy as the song drives to its hysterical climax. Majestic and terrifying.

4 "Kick Out the Jams"--MC5, from Kick Out The Jams (Elektra, 1968): What can ya say? The most thrilling, exhilarating two and a half minutes in the damn history of rock, pop, the whole caboodle? Just pure live frenzy, two guitars 'n' three chords, up-against-the-wall mayhem... f***ing awesome. And then there's the rest of the damn record. 

3 "Cortez The Killer"--Neil Young, from Zuma (Reprise, 1975): Smoldering, passionately angry, bursting at its seams with the finest guitar playing of Young's life, "Cortez" is the slow-build greatest epic in rock history. P.S. Check out the great live version by Doug Martsch's mighty Built to Spill.

2 "Big-Eyed Beans From Venus"--Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band, from Clear Spot (Reprise, 1972): "I'll let a few out! Let 'em pass in between us!" ‘Big-Eyed Beans' is Don Van Vliet's soaring peak, the delta-blues dadaisms yielding to snarling splendour and climaxing in the most corruscatingly exciting guitar sequence in all of rock. Not forgetting Zoot Horn's long lunar note...

1 "River Deep, Mountain High"--Ike & Tina Turner, single (Philles, 1966): Phil Spector's moment of truth and hubris, beyond anything he'd ever attempted: Wagner on the Titanic, Tina Turner driven demented by the miniature maestro as he works his 80-piece orchestra into a swirling inferno of pop passion. The greatest single ever made... and a Stateside flop. Spector never recovered.

Read over 13,000 interviews and reviews with these and many other artists at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 13,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.