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Favorite Music
- Ah, now this was a lot of fun. A labor of love it was. Compiling a list of my all-time favorite jams! Certainly not to be confused with Misakman's 50 Most Annoying Songs Of All-Time, these awesome songs hit me right in the gut with the most impact. The composition of the 1001 ditties is dominated by Funk and R&B (my fave genre) but you'll still find plenty of rock, some blues, gospel, country, and even some easy-listening soft-rock. There's even smidgens of reggae and rap. I'm a drummer so it seems that selections featuring a strong beat tended to predominate.
- The selections on this mighty list are from the era of the '50s thru the '90s with a tiny of bit of '40s thrown in. Anything I found that truly caught my ear from the year 2000 onward will be at Misakman's 180 Greatest Songs Of All-Time...21st Century. In my not-so-humble opinion I'd have to say they haven't been cranking out much great stuff since the turn of the century though once in a while something cool comes along. It was too agonizing being forced into bumping things off the 20th Century list to make room for new stuff so I started a separate 21st Century list.
- Once I completed the list of my elite 1001 songs I couldn't help but wonder what the breakdown was for the different decades. I went back and researched very carefully the release dates of each song and this is what I came up with...roughly 40% from the '70s, 25% from the '60s, 20% from the '80s, 10% from the 90's, then 5% from the '50s (and a little '40s). So that should give you a good idea of what to expect. The '70s was the funkiest decade and the '60s was the most soulful so it makes sense considering my tastes. It's funny the '80s fared lower considering that's where most of my young adult years were and I was no longer a little kid but hey, the newer stuff just didn't blow me away like the older stuff. The '90s fared even worse but I did find some gems. Since rock 'n roll was just getting under way in the mid to late '50s and R&B was mostly smooth doo-wop, beautiful stuff but not necessarily my favorite for getting my groove on, the '50s decade didn't generate huge quantity for my list but Oh the quality!
- I had more rap tunes included in the list prior to posting here. Once I listened to them again, I remembered the main reason I got hooked on them in the first place. They were re-workings of (sampled heavily from) old funk classics that I had almost forgotten about. For instance, I originally was going to include Roxanne Shante's Go On Girl but realized I had neglected Lyn Collins' Think (About It). Same thing for Salt&Pepa's Let The Rhythm Run (The Meters Cissy Strut and the JB's Damn Right I Am Somebody) and Def Jef's Downtown (Billy Preston's Will It Go Round In Circles). Then when I checked out those originals again, the songs in the parentheses above, I decided I did like them a little more than the newer rap versions and so since there's only so much room on the list, I made the switches.
- I realize that every individual's Top 1001 list would be much different from mine so please remember it's simply a personal (Misakman's) 1001. I could care less if my 1001 personal selections appear/don't appear on other official All-Time lists which generally focus on songs critics deem to be historically important and innovative. For instance, A Day in the Life by the Beatles and Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley & the Comets are certainly great even groundbreaking tunes, but they just don't do too much for me anymore.
- Likewise, there are many songs that are true classics which may be considered the signature song of an artist and probably their biggest hit, but that doesn't mean it got included here. For instance James Brown, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple appear on my list but you won't see Papa's Got A Brand New Bag (or 1965's I Feel Good), Dream On, Stairway To Heaven, or Smoke On The Water. Those tunes got overplayed on the radio, especially once the oldies and classic rock stations came along with their repetitive song rotations. That kinda killed 'em for me. Diluted their impact.
- It also seems that songs that wind up being used on commercials (which run ad nauseam) risk losing their punch with me. For instance, Signed Sealed Delivered by Steve Wonder got looped over and over during a car ad and that ruined it for me. I also lost my special feeling for Hush by Deep Purple when it showed up on a car ad as well. Thank you Corporate America. I nearly tore my hair out when I heard Kool & the Gang's Jungle Boogie on a credit card ad. I love that slammin' tune so much that the desecration didn't result in me dropping it from the 1001 like the others.
- The links used to go to a variety of places but now that mostly go to Spotify. At the other places I used to use like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, I-tunes, and even some others they made it so links don’t work anymore. You can join Spotify for free and enjoy my 1001 though it’s better to just subscribe to Spotify for short money and avoid ads and be able to download among other things. You don't have to join Spotify at all actually but then you will only hear a small portion of the song.
- The links that don't happen to go to Spotify will go to my You Tube channel instead. This was done for the songs that weren't on Spotify which has most everything but not absolutely everything. For those songs (at which you will see a (YT) to the left of the song tile) I dug into my personal archives of CDs, Vinyl, and Casettes and downloaded them onto my computer and then got them up on my You Tube channel. You don't necessarily have to subscribe to You Tube either but it's well worth it. Once you do that you can create your own channel, subscribe to your favorite channels, and get your home page fed with videos they figure will match your interests along with more benefits.
- OK MUSIC LOVERS! Click on all the audio links and enjoy! No you can’t download ‘em. I’m not selling anything. Just have a ball listening to the tunage!
- The Elite 1001!!! -- In Alphabetical Order (by Music Artist):
Misakman (and music) fans please note:
15 of the songs need links and will not play at present. The rest are fine and you can enjoy the awesome music by just clicking on the song title. Misakman is currently working on his Letter O Alliteration Overkill passage (working on the vowels now that all the consonants are done) and will attend to the non-linking songs in black type right after that. Like some mad scientist or assiduous monk scribe he will not take time away from the "Allit project" for other pursuits so single-minded is he about finishing his epic tome and entertaining millions. So stop complaining already about this music matter. Thanks for your patience! Thanks to others for your lack of patience for if you weren't like that then the patient people would be no big deal and they do like to think they are hot stuff and be complimented a lot.