About pumpkins etc

Far from new, stolen from Facebook, but it belongs here, I think.

And while we’re here, this can come out to play as well.

And then...

(And all the time I’m simultaneously worrying about and luxuriating in the exclusivity of all of these. Are they funny in spite of the fact that a lot of people won’t get the gag, or because of the fact? And somehow this ties into the most depressing article I’ve read this week, Elle Griffin on how nobody buys books any more.)

About Bernie memes

So much of the tension that’s sprung up around both Trump and Brexit is cultural rather than explicitly political, revolving around assumptions (some of them justified) about what people think and do and know, and the extent to which those things place them on a binary divide. So I’m risking accusations of being a snooty, metropolitan elitist remoaner if I post my favourite of all the memes dealing with Bernie Sanders’s grouchy, bemittened appearance at Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony – simply because the most delicious thing about it is that Trump Won’t Get The Joke.

(If he’s reading this – maybe it’s raining on the golf course – full explanation here.)

About sea shanties

Sea shanties are suddenly in the news, apparently because somebody started performing them on TikTok. But it’s telling that many of those detailing the phenomenon in the news media feel the most pressing need is not to explain what TikTok is, but what sea shanties are...

About the humanities

Also:

About analogue memes

In a plague-ridden world where physical contact is taboo and We Are All Digital Now, it’s comforting to note that analogue culture is still thriving and even reproducing.

About #OKBoomer

I first noticed the phrase “OK Boomer” a few months ago, but didn’t really get it. I’m neither a boomer nor a millennial; I believe I fall into the sociological sweetie jar called Generation X (named after the Douglas Coupland novel, not Billy Idol’s band or the Deverson/Hamblett book about 60s kids) so I believed that I had no particular skin in this game.

But I’m being pedantic, aren’t I, and referring back to books and music from the seriously olden days, which is exactly the sort of behaviour that prompts the phrase in the first place. It’s a non-specific “you wouldn’t understand” whine, just the sort of thing I probably wielded towards my own parents when I was about 15 and had been listening to Joy Division and writing some bloody awful poetry when I should have been doing maths revision.

What is interesting though, is that, by undergoing the intense analysis its suffered in the past few days, the #OKBoomer meme has immediately lost its special power, its ability to act as a secret code between the young, something that the old farts won’t get or even notice. It’s like a long-lost film or album that held us all in special thrall because nobody had ever seen it – A Clockwork Orange, for example, which couldn’t officially be shown in Britain for decades – that reveals itself to be pretty ordinary in daylight. But that was before your time, wasn’t it?

About #jokerstairs

I still haven’t seen Joker but it’s had so much coverage and analysis that I almost feel I don’t need to. It seems to have transcended its identity as a mere film and become a commentary on fragile masculinity, urban decay, Trumpism and, thanks to its explicit nods to Martin Scorsese (who has helpfully dissed the superhero movies that provide the mulch in which Joker grew), film itself.

In The Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi describes the tensions created by people (or, as she describes them, “influencers and imbeciles”) visiting a particular flight of stairs in the Bronx that features in the film, just to take selfies as part of a phenomenon that’s now known as “meme tourism”. I have no doubt that she’s right, if only because pretty much the same article has appeared in USA Today and Esquire and Vice and the Daily Mail and Wired and any number of other outlets, all falling over each other in a manner that’s no more dignified than the gawping phone-wielders currently attracting the derision (and eggs) of the locals.

Meme journalism, anyone?

PS: I’ve seen it now. It’s pretty good.

About memes

An interesting piece by Kathryn Watson about how memes actually happen; and, bouncing off Iain Macmillan’s Abbey Road cover, a reminder that they’ve been doing it for years. (Although how many of them have actually listened to the album, I wonder?)

About Godwin and Streisand

Went on an interesting diversion in class yesterday about memes, touching on the idea they have to start somewhere, even if the originator is anonymous, maybe even blissfully unaware of what s/he spawned. That said, when there is a definitive patient zero for a digital phenomenon, the rewards tend to be a wee bit abstract, as witnessed by this encounter between the man who identified The Streisand Effect and the man who gave his name to Godwin’s Law.

Pete Ashton, Alvin Lucier and the futility of originality

Pete Ashton’s Sitting In Stagram is a digital art project that takes as its starting point the absence of a repost function in Instagram; users have to create a fresh screen capture when they send an image, causing subtle, cumulative deterioration each time. Ashton’s work was also inspired by Alvin Lucier’s sound piece I Am Sitting In A Room, in which the repetition of recorded speech degenerates into incoherent noise.

Of course, repetition doesn’t necessarily always mean a downturn in quality but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb — just look at the trajectory of most movie sequels. And even when a project doesn’t become objectively worse, we seem to lose interest ever more quickly. Think how fast memes die away these days; how soon did the various iterations of the Harlem Shake lose their charm? Inevitably it turns out that Ashton’s idea isn’t a new one, a fact that he readily acknowledges: “There are no original ideas and that is an awesome thing.”

So does Sitting In Stagram become less good as its originality recedes? Does it transcend the process of representation and become the very thing it’s depicting? There’s one thing to be said for it in this age of stunted attention spans, at least by comparison with the Lucier piece — it’s a damn sight shorter.

Cats and guns and MK Dons

Meanwhile, it’s still August, and reality is in retreat. We learn that Hello Kitty is not a cat (she’s actually a 40-something woman who lives in the Home Counties); China tries to calm down its fractious minorities with a cartoon concubine; the strange tale of the Japanese oddball who joined ISIS; the newsroom at The Times is alive with the sound of typewriters; and, hot on the heels of a 9-year-old girl killing her shooting instructor with an uzi, an audio technician on the TV show Cops is killed by, uh, cops. And Manchester United getting beaten by a team that, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t really exist. And Kate Bush. Oh, and this:

PS: And this, by Jopsy, via Valerie:

PPS: The New Yorker responds to the Kitty bombshell.

Narration

The meme revival carries on apace as Philip Willey asks me to muse about writing (rather than blogging per se, I guess, although obviously the two overlap). The deal is that I answer four questions then nominate three people, so keep reading to the end to find out whether you’ve been handed the black spot.

Why do I write what I do?

I write different things for different reasons. Sometimes I’m paid to write and although I often have little or no say on what the subject matter is I do try to make it a bit more than mere hack work, although I may be deluding myself. The problem is that very often when the work-writing is done for the day I’m not terribly inclined to do any non-work-writing — and no, live-tweeting The Archers doesn’t count as writing.

When I do stir myself from this torpor, my main outlet is this blog, which I write simply to get ideas of mine out in the open. I’ve noticed in recent years that the communal, rhizomatic, conversation-driven spirit that encouraged my blogging when I started has receded quite a bit; it’s more a matter of putting up a discrete essay now and again and occasionally someone bothers to respond (and thank you if you do). Sometimes I wonder why I still do it. But I do still do it, which must mean something.

I do have about half a dozen barely-started novel(la?)s knocking around my hard drive, most of them with splendid beginnings, tolerable endings and a big gaping hole where the middle should be. Why do I (try to) write these, when the word on the digital street is that The Big Serious Novel Is Dead? Maybe because I’m and old fart — now officially in my late 40s — and still wedded to the idea that a book on a shelf is somehow more worthwhile than a fistful of ones and zeroes.

Back in the olden days, I used to write books and other things about popular music, but I don’t do that very often now. Partly because I’m less interested in it, but also because I get the feeling that people are less used to what I think about it. I’m not quite clear which came first.

Incidentally, this is a pleasant elaboration on the usual question – “Why do you write?” – to which the answer is essentially that I can’t really do anything else.

What am I working on?

If by “working on” you mean “things upon I haven’t yet quite given up” the various fiction bits and pieces include (forgive me if I don’t give away too many secrets) something farcical about a restaurant critic; something terribly postmodern with lots of footnotes about a book that doesn’t exist; something absurd about occupied France during World War II; and something a bit mid-life-crisis-y. Then there’s this blog post and further episodes of aesthetic edification in Japan, following on from the previous blog post. Well, you did ask.

What is my writing process?

It depends on the subject matter and the medium for which I’m writing but usually I write a number of subject headings – either on paper or directly into my laptop — then juggle them around until they achieve some sort of coherent structure. It’s similar to the initial sketches before you begin a painting. Once I’m happy with that I start writing.

How does my writing differ from others of its genre?

I’m not quite sure what my genre is, to be honest, but if you can be bothered to Google me, most of the references are to things that I’m written about music. So, looking back at what I did write when that could conceivably have been described as my genre, I’d say I rely far less on primary sources and interviews than other writers, more on critical analysis and theory with a bit of taking-an-idea-for-a-walk whimsy. I guess my approach owes something to the likes of Greil Marcus and Morley/Penman in their pomp. Of course this type of book is unpopular with those readers who prefer their books to be variants on either “and then Thom Yorke out of Radiohead did this and said this” and/or “and this is why Leonard Cohen is brilliant. The End.” Well, tough, frankly.

The writers I’ve decided to lure into this particular web are:

Madeleine D’Arcy, who writes short stories and used to say “aargh” a lot. Maybe she still does.

Ian Hocking, who writes SF sort of things and also teaches.

James Henry, who writes stuff for kids and stuff for telly, sometimes both at once.

Blog your heart out, if you still have one

Swazi from Chocolate is not the only fruit – that rare thing, a blogger I knew in meatspace before either of us started to blog – tagged me to “blog my heart out” — a blog post that tells readers more about me and my blog. The idea is that I answer five questions and then tag five other bloggers to do the same. Which will give a brisk gust of nostalgia to one or two readers as it’s the sort of thing we were doing back in about 2007. But hey, with everyone from Kate Bush to Menswe@r back on the road, what’s wrong with dusting off a few fondly remembered b-sides once again? Tags and memes and endless ruminations along the lines of “what is blogging?” Them was the days...

Here are the questions:

Who/what encouraged you to start blogging?
I’d completely forgotten about this until a few months ago: I just used to say that I’d read lots of articles about blogging and thought I may as well give it a go, little suspecting that I’d still be at it more than eight years later. But there was a specific moment in 2005 when a colleague asked me to explain what a blog actually was. I gave the standard schtick as I understood it (it’s an online diary and the posts appear in reverse chronological order) and immediately thought that there had to be more to it than that. And I realised that in all the pieces that I’d read about blogs, the positive stuff came from people who were involved in their creation and the negatives were from people standing on the sidelines – at the time, mainly broadsheet columnists who could see the potential for their cultural and economic privilege to be eroded. Under normal circumstances I would have sided with the sneerers but I did get the feeling that a standpoint of ignorance and fear isn’t that sustainable so I ought to at least find out what this whole thing was about. And here I am.

How do you choose what topics to blog about?
Once I got the hang of metrics and worked out how to see how many people read which bits I saw that my most popular posts were those about stuff that was somehow newsworthy – the Olympics, Jimmy Savile, most recently the MH370 disappearance – and if this had particularly bothered me I’d just be plucking stuff from the headlines. (To be honest, the truly popular posts are those that feature certain actresses in states of undress, but that may be another story.) But I’m just as likely to write about a book I’ve just read or a film I’ve just watched, even if it’s something that’s five months or 50 years old. But I have to have something coherent to say about it, other than “I just read this book”. So maybe it’s the opinions, the angles, that drive the choices, rather than the topics themselves.

In fact my original plan of action was simply to write a review of each thing I read or watched or listened to. That’s how the name of the blog came about: it’s from a passage by Haruki Murakami in which a critic bemoans the tedium and banality of his art – scroll to the bottom of the page to see the full thing. The funny thing is, Murakami’s critic specialises in restaurants and that’s something I’d never actually done when I started blogging. Here’s my first attempt. Now it’s pretty much the only thing I write about outside the confines of Cultural Snow.

What is something most people don’t know about you?
I once auditioned to be a presenter on the early-1990s TV show The Word.

What three words describe your style?
Sarcastic, neurotic, rhizomatic.

What do you love to do when you’re not blogging?
A few months ago I was self-diagnosing myself with anhedonia – that is, the inability to experience pleasure. Now I’m not so sure. My problem is that I go through patches where I dislike several books or films or meals on the trot and I think I’ve stopped enjoying reading or eating or whatever. But in fact I’m just reading bad books and eating bad meals and then I come upon a good one and I realise that all the bad stuff is just part of the process and makes the rare good ones seem even better. Which is something to do with being a critic, I guess. Sorry, this is a roundabout way of saying that I still love the overall ideas behind art, books, films, music and food even if I’m not actually loving doing any of them right now. I’m working on it, though.

Now it’s my turn to nominate five bloggers to do this. It may have been a different list way back when, as many of the people who used to lurk in this vicinity have been lost to Facebook or Twitter or work or babies or ennui or death. Others have hung around but narrowed their scope so there’s no longer any place for such tomfoolery. Whatever, here are five people who blog, or who were at least still blogging when I last checked. Let’s see what they make of this deeply retro challenge:

• Cath Elliott
• Fat Roland
• Namwan
• Valerie
• Vicus Scurra

Turkey: memage à trois

For a cultural meme to survive, it needs to adapt, retaining the power of surprise; otherwise it’s just a cliché. Inevitably, this process of evolution is often propelled by a dialectical form of sexual reproduction, as two memes mate to create something new and (potentially) interesting. It’s still not that common, though, to see the offspring of a threesome; especially a threesome that combines a meme that’s very old and tired, one that’s getting that way and one that’s brand spanking new. Respect, then, to the Turkish capulcu, or looters; full story here.

Harlem Shake, makankosappo and the death of the dream

Well, it was fun while it lasted. That brief, glorious window when web culture was all about happy, random accidents and people having fun for the hell of it is officially over; although people will need to be conned into thinking they’re still free agents or the whole edifice will fall over, probably taking what remains of consumer capitalism with it. This article identifying the people who really benefited from the Harlem Shake phenomenon is a sobering read, not because I ever gave much of a damn about the meme itself but because of the whole end-of-innocence vibe it represents; the Altamont of Web 2.0, maybe. Of course, people will still do daft, innovative things and bung them up on YouTube; but by the time most of us see them, the pimps will have got to work. “The world is divided into two categories,” said the Dadaist Francis Picabia, “failures and unknowns.” Yup.

So there’s just time to say that I rather like this most recent daft meme, makankosappo, which basically involves Japanese schoolgirls pretending to have superhuman powers. But since its arrival mysteriously coincides with the imminent release of a new movie, maybe I’m already going off it.

Not yet retro

 

If you’re not on Facebook you may not have encountered the above image or its many, many variations: essentially someone picks a job or a location and finds six pictures that illustrate six different perspectives on it. I think I first saw it on about Tuesday or Wednesday, and it was already getting tired by Thursday evening. If there’s a single phrase that seems to characterise modern society, it’s “easily bored”. Remember Benton/Fenton the out-of-control labrador? Within days of his arrival on YouTube the very mention of his name was enough to provoke guffaws from the audience of Radio4 comedy shows; a week later, he was utterly forgotten. If you go for a more-leisurely-than-normal poo, it seems, you’ll find you’ve missed seven flavours of the Zeitgeist by the time you’re finished. Actually, do they still have Zeitgeists?

It’s all about meme meme meme

As AnnaLittleRedBoat suggests, the blogosphere isn’t – notwithstanding the haters – dead, but every now and then you do wonder whether it might be a bit kinder to whack it over the head with a shovel. (Whether or not it’s still social media or not I’ll leave to Patroclus.) Who remembers how it was in the olden days, like 2007 or something, when Amy Winehouse was always in the News of the World and we bloggers used to exchange memes? Well the dangerously brilliant and devilishly cute Annie Bookcrossing Slaminsky has deposited a new one in our collective digital lap. Feel free to pick it up and run with it:

1. Movie you love with a passion.
Casablanca. For all its flaws. Damn it, because of them.

2. Movie you vow to never watch.
That new Planet of the Apes thingy. The trailers seem specifically constructed to dissuade me.

3. Movie that literally left you speechless.
Festen. The whole audience stumbled into the light, as if we’d all been kicked in the face for the duration of the film.

4. Movie you always recommend.
Tampopo, because everyone who watches it feels hungry and frisky at the end, and they can’t decide which urge to satisfy first, which is a pleasant dilemma to have.

5. Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie.
A whole load of British character actors, especially those who were good at underplaying; let’s say Denholm Elliott. No, John Le Mesurier.

6. Actor/actress you don’t get the appeal for.
Jennifer Aniston. I don’t even get her hair.

7. Actor/actress, living or dead, you’d love to meet.
Orson Welles. Damn, that man could racont.

8. Sexiest actor/actress you’ve seen (with picture).

9. Dream cast.
The Misfits was a pretty good combination, although most of the actors had at least a toe in the grave.

10. Favorite actor pairing.
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Brainy sex.

12. Favorite decade for movies
The 1940s.

13. Chick flick or action movie?
Action movies can distract you from their essential crassness with a big explosion or the like. Chick flicks can only deploy yet more crassness.

14. Hero, villain or anti-hero?
Anti-hero. Jean-Paul Belmondo in A Bout de Souffle.

15. Black and white or color?
Black and white; specifically, black and white films made from about 1960 onwards, when going mono became a conscious decision rather than a default position. (Whistle Down The Wind, The Manchurian Candidate, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Branded To Kill, The Last Picture Show, Eraserhead, Manhattan, Down By Law, Clerks, Ed Wood...)

Your turn.

PS: Only just realised that I missed out question 11, which is:

Favorite movie setting

The Dali-designed dream landscape in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. I’m not a huge fan of Dali’s paintings, to be honest, but this makes me wish he’d done more set designs. 

The garden of forking streams

Chilean author Eduardo Labarca has declared that pissing on the grave of Jorge Luis Borges (or at least pretending to) is “an artistic act”. Although it turns out that the act was motivated not by any disapproval of Borges’ writing, but as a response to his support for General Pinochet and other reactionary leaders in South America, which surely makes it a political act. Now, is that better, or worse, or at least less messy? And would I be able to justify vomiting on the mausoleum of Martin Amis (who isn’t dead, as far as I’m aware, but he hasn’t  written anything this century that particularly excited me) on one or other or both grounds?

Feel free to add your own author-death-bodily function combo in the space below. Bloody hell, is this a new meme?

I am, I said

I don't know whether it's prompted by a genuine sense of curiosity, or a brazen desire to rack up a whole load of comments, but Scott Pack has asked his readers to provide links to their blogs and (here's the tough bit) brief descriptions. In return, he's promised to visit each one.

I'm not sure if it was meant to be a meme, but I'm nicking his idea. If you're a lurker who blogs, make yourself known; even if you're one of the usual suspects listed to the right, a succinct summary of what you (think you) get up to in your sector of The Blogopolis would be fascinating.

PS: I'm especially keen to hear from the previously silent visitors who, according to my NeoCounter, come from such unlikely corners of the globe as Mongolia, Guam, Belize and, uh, 'Europe'; if only to disprove my hunch that you're really soulless bots. On second thoughts, if you're a bot, I'd be fascinated to meet you.

Your 100 best tunes (or not)

I rather thought that memes had gone horribly out of fashion, until Kek-W kicked off his take-a-passing-fancy-for-a-blindfolded-walk 10cc Top Ten idea. The gist of it was that you didn't actually need to provide a 10cc Top Ten; simply something that began with the notion of a 10cc Top Ten. It was the thought processes he was after, not whether anyone would be brave enough to admit they loved 'Dreadlock Holiday'.

(Brief conceptual aside... If we're doing the free-form, rhizomatic thing, is this a new meme, or is it a continuation of Kek's orginal meme? In fact, are all blog memes simply a continuation of the first time one blogger asked another blogger to do something, then pass it on? Are they all part of one vast MemeBorg, neither collective nor individual? Oh, just nod, I'm not a stalker or anything.)

What I've done is to list my 100 favourite choonz, as young people probably no longer say. I tried not to think too hard, simply jotting them down until I got to a hundred, then stopping; as a result, I now disagree intensely with about 10% of the inclusions, but there it is. I'm surprised to see that Camera Obscura haven't made an appearance; and there's nothing from the Two-Tone stable. No T. Rex, no XTC, no De La Soul, no Buddy Holly, no Nurse With Wound, no Louis Jordan, no Siouxsie, no Ian Dury. I feel as if I should be writing letters of apology to a few people.

Random as it was, I did stick to a few self-imposed rules. No artist could have more than one song on the list; indeed, if a performer played a prominent role in more than one act, only one of those acts could appear. (So the presence of Pink Floyd prohibits the inclusion of any Syd Barrett solo stuff; Mark E. Smith's shouty bit at number 31 means The Fall are disqualified). No song could appear in two different versions, although strangely, there are three different songs with the same title, and two more with a very similar title to that. And no classical music, because that raises too many questions about what specifically it is that you're selecting (A whole symphony? A movement? The twiddly bit from that lager advert?) and issues of attribution. (Are the Goldberg Variations 'by' Bach or 'by' Glenn Gould?)

But none of that need concern you. What I want is not necessarily your 100 fave platters with the above restrictions, although if that's what happens, that's fine. It's what you concoct on your own blogs in response to this, and what happens afterwards.

Anyroad up, here's the list:

1. Abba, 'The Winner Takes It All'
2. Air, 'Playground Love'
3. Al Green, 'How Do You Mend A Broken Heart?'
4. Aretha Franklin, 'Don’t Play That Song'
5. Associates, 'Those First Impressions'
6. Beach Boys, 'God Only Knows'
7. Beatles, 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun'
8. Beck, 'Totally Confused'
9. Belle and Sebastian, 'The State I Am In'
10. Blur, 'You’re So Great'
11. Bo Diddley, 'Who Do You Love?'
12. Bob Dylan, 'I Want You'
13. Buzzcocks, 'Love You More'
14. Chavela Vargas, 'Paloma Negra'
15. Chic, 'I Want Your Love'
16. Creedence Clearwater Revival, 'Traveling Band'
17. Darlene Love, 'Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)'
18. David Bowie, 'Be My Wife'
19. Dolly Parton, 'I Will Always Love You'
20. Drifters, 'Save The Last Dance For Me'
21. Duke Special, 'Last Night I Nearly Died'
22. Dusty Springfield, 'I Close My Eyes And Count To Ten'
23. Ella Fitzgerald, 'How High The Moon'
24. Elvis Costello, 'I Want You'
25. Flaming Lips, 'Do You Realize?'
26. Françoise Hardy, 'Comment Te Dire Adieu?'
27. Frank Sinatra, 'One For My Baby'
28. Go! Team, 'Everyone’s A VIP To Someone'
29. Guillemots, 'Trains To Brazil'
30. Ink Spots, 'Don’t Get Around Much Any More'
31. Inspiral Carpets w/ Mark E Smith, 'I Want You'
32. Jackie Mittoo, 'Get Up And Get It'
33. Jackson Five, 'I Want You Back'
34. Jacques Brel, 'Ne Me Quitte Pas'
35. Jane, 'It’s A Fine Day'
36. Jesus & Mary Chain, 'Just Like Honey'
37. John Holt, 'Ali Baba'
38. Johnny Cash & June Carter, 'Jackson'
39. Judy Street, 'What'
40. Kinks, 'Victoria'
41. Lorraine Ellison, 'Stay With Me'
42. Lovin’ Spoonful, 'Darling Be Home Soon'
43. Magnetic Fields, 'How Fucking Romantic'
44. Maher Shalal Hash Baz, 'Post Office'
45. Mamas & the Papas, '12.30 (Young Girls Are Coming To The Canyon)'
46. Manic Street Preachers, 'Faster'
47. Marvin Gaye, 'Too Busy Thinkin’ ‘Bout My Baby'
48. Maurice and Mac, 'You Left The Water Running'
49. Moldy Peaches, 'Nothing Came Out'
50. Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, 'Summer Wine'
51. Neil Innes, 'How Sweet To Be An Idiot'
52. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, 'Into My Arms'
53. Nirvana, 'All Apologies'
54. Otis Redding, 'Shake'
55. Pet Shop Boys, 'Your Funny Uncle'
56. Pink Floyd , 'Jugband Blues'
57. Pixies, 'Debaser'
58. Pizzicato Five, 'Twiggy Twiggy'
59. Pogues, 'Rainy Night In Soho'
60. Primal Scream, 'Star Fruit Surf Rider'
61. Prince, 'Temptation'
62. Prince Buster, 'Girl Why Don’t You Answer'
63. Pulp, 'Babies'
64. Radiohead , 'Climbing Up The Walls'
65. Ramsey Lewis Trio, 'Wade In The Water'
66. Randy Newman, 'I Think It’s Going To Rain Today'
67. Rascals, 'Good Lovin’'
68. Rolling Stones, 'You Can’t Always Get What You Want'
69. Roxy Music, 'Remake Remodel'
70. Sebadoh, 'Willing To Wait'
71. Sex Pistols, 'Pretty Vacant'
72. Shirelles, 'Baby It’s You'
73. Shonen Knife, 'Top Of The World'
74. Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, 'Kites'
75. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, 'This Train'
76. Small Faces, 'All Or Nothing'
77. Smiths, 'You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby'
78. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, 'I Second That Emotion'
79. Soft Cell, 'Say Hello Wave Goodbye'
80. Son House, 'John The Revelator'
81. Standells, 'Dirty Water'
82. Stereolab, 'French Disko'
83. Stooges, 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'
84. Sugarcubes, 'Birthday'
85. Super Furry Animals, 'God! Show Me Magic'
86. Swan Silvertones, 'Trouble In My Way'
87. Sylvian/Sakamoto, 'Forbidden Colours'
88. Temptations, 'I Can’t Get Next To You'
89. Tom Lehrer, 'National Brotherhood Week'
90. Tom Waits , 'Johnsburg, Illinois'
91. Toni Harper, 'Candy Store Blues'
92. Toots & the Maytals, 'Monkey Man'
93. Urusei Yatsura, 'First Day On A New Planet'
94. Velvet Underground, 'The Gift'
95. Vicky Leandros, 'L’Amour Est Bleu'
96. Wah!, 'Come Back'
97. White Stripes, 'In The Cold Cold Night'
98. Willie Nelson, 'Bring Me Sunshine'
99. Wilson Pickett, 'Land Of 1,000 Dances'
100. X-Ray Spex, 'Oh Bondage Up Yours'