Plus, scroll down for Dungeons & Dragons reflections, some good figure skating, and an exclusive cat photo!

Moving right along through the countdown (and currently way behind my queue on Bluesky), here are songs 171-180 on my list of favorites from 1977-1999. Previous installments and more information on the overall #UncoolTwo50 project:

Part One (191-200) and Introduction

Part Two (181-190) and Thoughts on Early Pixar Films

180. Common (Sense) – I Used to Love H.E.R. (1994)

Only 1994, and already complaining that rap isn’t like it used to be. And he’s not wrong. I love an extended metaphor, and this is one of the finest in popular music, a story about a girl/musical genre who’s changed so much that the romance can’t continue. Common’s actual romance with hip hop continued, of course, and he’s still writing and performing the same kind of topical, issue-driven, lyrically baroque music. Common’s flow sounds relaxed and conversational, but each syllable is timed to the George Benson sample that underlies the track. Chicago hip hop has never been perceived as a unique sound, even though some of the most inventive rappers come from my hometown. Early Common Sense epitomizes the roots of the musically hyper-literate, politically conscious Chicago scene.

It’s fascinating to see how Common has reworked this song’s arrangements over the years to comment on the current state of hip hop. Compare these live versions from BET in 1997, Yahoo! Live from 2007, and Austin City Limits in 2019 with his jazz-hip hop fusion collective August Greene.

179. Judas Priest – You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ (1982)

Queer heavy metal has existed almost as long as metal has, and Judas Priest gave us the definitive anthem before anyone except Rob Halford and Dave Holland knew what was going on. It’s a motivational jam and a cleansing shout before going out into the world as you are and refusing to back down, performed by a quintet of glam leather daddies with handcuffs dangling from their belt chains. But the song holds up as more than representation. Halford is uniquely adept at enunciating a well-turned lyric while screaming, and the interplay between Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing’s guitars is remarkably elegant.

An especially glam live performance from Judas Priest’s 1983 tour.

This 2019 cover by Mind Tangle shifts the song to a grimier subgenre of metal and showcases its intricate percussion.

178. Placebo – Pure Morning (1998)

There’s no vibe more bisexual than a song about friendship that’s frequently misread as about either accidental pregnancy or suicide. Brian Molko was one of my late-‘90s androgyny style goals, and I spent most of college with flat, dye-scarred, chin-length hair and short fingernails painted dark. As a piece of songwriting, this is the kind of driving simplicity that lodges in your brain less as an earworm than as a rhythm for all of your movement. It feels like it crawled out of ‘70s glam and punk, but it doesn’t sound like anything actually released then. It also doesn’t really sound like most other music from its own time. Placebo were their own loud, queer thing.

Placebo rocked the hell out at the Bizarre Festival in 2000.

Asami Zdrenka’s gentle soprano contrasts with feedback-heavy guitar in this 2015 cover.

177. Alphaville – Forever Young (1984)

Synth-pop at its most sci-fi, and it covers more narrative ground in three minutes than most science fiction novels do in 300 pages. It’s gloriously lush, constructed like puff pastry from many layers of monophonic synths. The fanfares sound nothing like real brass instruments, but they’re satisfying like artificial fruit flavoring – the blue raspberry of music. Marian Gold sounds like he learned English phonetically, and at least a third of the lyrics read like they’ve been run back and forth through Google Translate a few times; these are features, not bugs. Earlier versions of the lyrics were more explicitly anti-Fascist and made a little too much sense for the record company, so the ESL obliqueness disguises a message that’s at least as relevant and immediate now as 40 years ago.

Alphaville seldom performed live in the ‘80s, but a chamber orchestra and choir backed Gold for this beautiful, poignant 2022 appearance on German TV.

The Killers’ brief cover from a 2013 concert turns this into a satisfying straight-up rock ballad.

176. The Chicks – Cowboy Take Me Away (1999)

The greatest trick an outlaw country artist can play is to sound so mainstream that nobody notices their subversiveness. The Chicks got away with that trick for a solid decade before a certain contingent of their fans realized they were anti-war leftists. (Some of us knew all along, or at least for a while before “Shut up and sing.”) This song is less about longing for a man than for a paradise untouched by suburban sprawl and environmental destruction. It’s one of Natalie Maines’ most beautiful vocal performances, but the real star of the song is Martie Maguire’s fiddle, which dips in and out of the main riff, then bursts into a stunning solo.

"Goodbye Earl," from the same album, would have ranked higher on my list, but it was released as a single in early 2000, making it ineligible for this project.

The Chicks’ live performance on VH1 Storytellers from 2006 lifts Emily Strayer’s banjo higher in the mix and really lets Maguire’s fiddle wail.

Co-songwriter Marcus Hummon played his composition for The Masters Music Series in 2022.

If ever a band was made to cover this song, it’s boygenius, who played it on the Live at KEXP series in 2019.

175. Jane Child – Don’t Wanna Fall in Love (1990)

Jane Child’s nose ring chain and braid mullet aren’t quite my queer origin story, but they sparked feelings that this suburban fifth grader could not explain. That kid didn’t always have great taste in music, but they were right about this catchy one hit wonder. The lyric is a small rebellion against the sanitized pining ascribed to young white women in pop music. Child’s Tina Turner energy was enough to make this a crossover hit on the R&B chart, but her songwriting roots in soul and jazz run deeper than that. The diminished chords and blue notes, combined with Child’s innate punk style, make this more than a pop confection.

Child and Wayne Brady played this as a duet on the Wayne Brady Show in 2004, bringing out the R&B and jazz influences of the song

Hadar belts the heck out of this on her 2017 cover, and the arrangement is even Prince-ier than the original.

174. Nas – The World Is Yours (1994)

Nas flies through the political references so fast that you can’t hope to catch them all, and with such smooth and elegant flow that it’s easy to get lost in his voice. There’s a brilliant tension between the chorus, asserting that the world is yours (with the video confirming that the “you” is little Black boys everywhere) while citing a litany of examples of a world that belongs to others. As with most of the best conscious ‘90s hip hop, every injustice rings true today, from racist policing to financial success as a false signifier of equality. But it's also a lovely piece of music, with the samples and beats colliding into those magical chords that tingle the base of your spine.

In 2024, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra backed Nas as he performed this song.

Most covers avoid trying to replicate Nas’s rapid flow, instead focusing on the unique clusters of chords and rhythm that the samples create. My favorite of these instrumental covers is by Matt McCloskey (2012), who expands his interpretation into a jazz piano improvisation.

173. Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name (1992)

Gen X can never say they didn’t warn us that ACAB. Most of the lyrics are repeated chants, like a protest in the form of a rock song, and it would be an insult to the band’s legacy if “Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses” weren’t an evergreen shout at anti-fascist gatherings. The song begins as a series of instrumental solos – reverb guitar riffs, a repeated bass motif, a short drum solo – before the band unites. That is to say, the musical underpinnings of the song are as crucial to its political message as its lyrics, a testament to the power that organized and coordinated noise is capable of.

Before launching into this blistering slow-burn of a 1993 live festival performance, Zack de la Rocha’s spoken-word intro makes sure we’re all on the same page.

Tons of artists covered this song in 2020 to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, of which the most prominent was Machine Gun Kelly, who released a video interspersing his cover with images from protests.

172. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – The Ship Song (1990)

Even at his sweetest and most earnest, Cave sounds like he’s going to drag you into an ancient catacomb and sacrifice you to an Eldritch abomination. The song is a hymn to love, complete with church organ and choir-like backing vocals. Perhaps because of the music video, I thought this might be one of those love songs that’s actually about a child; it seems that’s not the case, but the images and sentiment are certainly flexible enough to apply. It’s less a song about admiring the person you’re in love with than the awe of love itself, the miraculous capacity of human beings to experience such a profound emotion.

Cave’s 1999 live solo piano performance takes the song out of church and into private prayer.

Martha Wainwright’s 2011 live acoustic cover is spine-tinglingly beautiful.

Nell Smith and The Flaming Lips’ 2021 cover takes this to outer space.

171. Maná – No Ha Parado de Llover (1995)

This rain-soaked, emotionally bare song has the wettest, nakedest music video imaginable. Maná has never been a subtle band, and this is one of their easiest metaphors: my eyes haven’t stopped raining since you left. But Fher Olvera’s reedy belting makes the tritest earnestness sound genuine, like he’s ripping his heart out of his own chest. As with all studio versions of Maná, the jam band aspect gets lost somewhat, although the echoey production on Sergio Vallín’s guitar adds to the song’s overall raininess. It’s music for swaying slowly with a lighter in your hand, and no band has mastered that genre more thoroughly than Maná.

This is not the only Maná song on the list.

The live performance from Maná’s 1999 MTV Unplugged appearance, which features co-songwriter Alex González’s virtuoso drums much more, is superior to the studio version.

Arde El Cielo’s 2020 cover is largely faithful to the original, but with electric guitar heft and an Uruguayan accent.

Something I enjoyed this week

I've been working on an original Dungeons & Dragons adventure since July, and last week, I got to run the first session. The Dungeon Master role is a combination of project management, novel writing, and improv theater. During the game, the other players see you telling the story, portraying enemies and non-player characters, and getting them in as much trouble as possible. What they don't see is the many hours of drawing maps, adding combat enemy characters into Roll 20 (a platform that, like most social apps, is an incredible mess but better than any conceivable alternative), and falling down research rabbit holes to a degree that I have not experienced since I was writing my dissertation. It's a lot of fun for a specific kind of person, and that kind of person is occasionally me, although every time I DM so much as a one-session game, I swear I'm never doing it again. Next week, five misfits are going to get on a steam train through the mountains on their way to fight an undead wizard, and I'm going to do my best to make it just challenging enough for them. For all the effort and frustration, there is nothing cooler than seeing a group of creative people play around in a world I designed for them.

This week in figure skating

At the 2024 Lombardia Trophy, reigning United States ladies' figure skating champion and bisexual icon Amber Glenn landed difficult triple Axels in both her short program and free skate. She won the competition, beating reigning World Champion Sakamoto Kaori and setting herself up for what I hope is her most successful season yet. Glenn skates with an aggressive pop diva energy, and she seems to be peaking as an athlete in her mid-twenties. Here's her Lombardia short program:

Things I read on the internet

As a child, I was great at math but seldom had it presented to me in a way that made me want to pursue it as a career. Now, I work with data and statistics. So this personal essay by a physics teacher who used to hate science really resonated with me.

Ways to approach research beyond the gender binary.

The cube rule of food identification.

And a cat photo

Thanks for reading!