**Notice: some of the songs in this article contain language that earned a "parental advisory" on the albums they are included on. The lyrics of some of these songs are also discussed in the article. Reader discretion advised.**
I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and I came across this photo that one of my friends shared:
I had what you might call one of those "hashtag-truth" moments. Except that, as I kept thinking about it, I realized that even though I think "Mr. Brightside" is probably the best Killers song I've heard (though I like a slew of others, don't get me wrong), I could think of at least a handful of others that I still turn up the volume of whenever I hear them.
And thus, this article was born!
So I turned on some old-school Cake (a fact I definitely didn't include just so I could sneak two extra songs into this article--I would never do such a thing!) and found 10 songs that were awesome when they were released, are still awesome today, and will continue to be awesome no matter how many times I listen to them.
10. "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers
Okay, come on, this one was obvious, especially considering the above graphic. A single from the Killers' debut album "Hot Fuss" and now more than twelve years old, "Mr. Brightside" continues to be one of my favorite songs by the group, even as it brings to mind lying exes and even though half the video is women flashing their panties.
9. "Sugar We're Goin' Down" by Fall Out Boy
One of the reasons I think this song, the first single from Fall Out Boy's 2005 album "From Under the Cork Tree," is always going to be something of a "classic" for me is that I am never going to know the real words. But isn't that part of its charm? And the charm of every Fall Out Boy song, really--that we don't really understand most of the lyrics, but we more or less get the emotion of the song?
Truth.
More, I hadn't actually seen the music video for this one until I looked it up for this article. Some of these music videos are actually pretty deep--except the deer feet in this one are a bit creepy. The message is cool though.
8. "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" by Panic! at the Disco
This one was obviously going to be here, too--how could it not be? Not only do I find myself singing this one under my breath more often than I should admit, I love the way that they censor the music video, like it's a scandal to say what they're saying. Additionally, while I know of other songs that do the same, the audio censoring they do seems so cheeky to me, censoring "God" instead of "damn" or the entire word, like it's a jab at the censorship system. Especially considering that this is from P!atD's first studio album, which was written shortly after the guys graduated high school (way to rev up my inferiority complex), that's pretty clever. If it's true--I could totally just be over-interpreting it. In any case, this was my first-ever Panic! at the Disco song (by the way, was I the only one who missed the exclamation point when they decided to nix it for an album?) and I will always love the nostalgic feeling I get when I hear it.
Also, this is totally relevant. Definitely. But actually, there are a lot of really funny things one can find on the interwebs completing this lyric.
7. "Here We Go Again" by Paramore
This might be the only song on this list without an official music video (trust me, I looked, and if Wikipedia says it then it must be true). It is how you know that this list is in no particular order (with the possible exception of #1): if it was, this song would be much closer to the top. My Paramore obsession started a little backwards, with "Misery Business," the lead single from the 2007 album "Riot." This song, however, was a little earlier, from their 2005 debut album "All We Know is Falling," which overall I think I actually like a little better, but I digress. One way or another, I couldn't leave Paramore off this list, especially since I always find myself listening to them whenever anything--good or bad--happens in my life.
6. "Megalomaniac" by Incubus
Okay, so this song, from Incubus' 2003 album "A Crow Left of the Murder..." might seem like sort of an outlier here, but I did hear it on an alternative rock radio station, so I'm going with it. I'm giving albums and years for reference, but this one actually has an interesting story behind it: evidently, people thought this song was a message to then-President George W. Bush, telling him to "step down, step down," especially since he would soon be up for his "four more years." Although this was the way that much of the public saw it--so much so that, according to the band's Wikipedia page, the music video for "Megalomaniac" was delegated to night-only showings on MTV--Incubus "never set out with any political agenda." In fact, vocalist Brandon Boyd remarks that the song was influenced more by the concept of the bad guy in the movie "The Three Amigos" than anything else, and that's always how I've heard it, especially when thinking of my own bad guys.
5. "Sweetness" by Jimmy Eat World
I knew Jimmy Eat World had to be on this list, but this was definitely a toss-up between this song, from their 2001 album "Bleed American," and "The Middle," a song I've also loved for a long time (coincidentally from the same album). But the lyrics "So tell me what do I need / When words lose their meaning?" hearkened back to a time in high school when I was questioning what I was doing, when every class I took seemed pointless because I was being confronted with my future and I didn't know what I wanted that future to be. I think a lot of people are faced with this: we expect 17-year-olds, whose brains are about eight years away from being fully-developed, to choose what they want to do for the rest of their lives, and then to spend oodles of money on it, only to potentially discover that it isn't for them. It's kind of a crappy situation, and I felt like I was in it. I related to this song a lot then, and occasionally I still do, when the old depression kicks back in and things don't seem to matter for a time. Fortunately, this song doesn't lose its meaning.
4. "The Rock Show" by blink-182
Because blink-182. Do I really need more explanation than that? They're pretty much the essential band to listen to in adolescence. And beyond (because come on, I still do. And admit it, you do too). And this song is awesome!
3. "The Kill (Bury Me)" by Thirty Seconds to Mars
I really liked the song when I was younger, but this music video, guys. I'm about 99% sure it was based on "The Shining," and minor continuity errors aside, it is fantastic. From Thirty Seconds to Mars' second studio album "A Beautiful Lie," a.k.a., Jared Leto in his younger, pre-hipster/hippie/mountain man days...
Really, Jared, please go back to the eyeliner and the tux. It was so much prettier.
This music video has stuck with me for years. Perhaps, given the setting and the plot, "haunted" is a better word, except that I love it. When you're feeling slightly crazy about a relationship gone bad, too, this feels especially appropriate... even so many years after hearing it for the first time.
2. "American Idiot" by Green Day
Green Day was really the band that started it all for me, getting me into the kinds of music that I now listen to (rock, alternative, man-the-world-sucks-right-now-I'm-gonna-criticize-it-with-my-guitar, etc). And I'm still a pretty big fan. So "American Idiot"--the song as well as the album of the same name--holds a special place in my heart. I think one of the things that drew me to the album "American Idiot" was that the songs were more or less connected in what I believe they called a "rock opera," and I had never heard anyone do that before. I still think it's very cool, and that impression sticks with me, as does the memory of listening to the CD on repeat for hours before having to return it to the library.
1. "Welcome to The Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance
Admit it: you can still hear that first piano note, anywhere, and immediately break out into all the feels. You instantly become the moody, emotional teenager you were when you first heard this song, and no one can understand your emotions quite like this band can. I get it, because me, too. (I even had a Tripp jacket from Hot Topic that looked like the Black Parade jackets the guys wore. I still have it, though it doesn't fit quite as well now.) While "Welcome to the Black Parade" is probably not my favorite My Chemical Romance song (I couldn't even begin to try to give that title to a single song, much less make it stick for much more than a week), I find myself humming it a disproportionate amount for someone who has left her "goth phase" behind her, and you know, I find the notion of "carrying on" actually rather uplifting, despite what my mother thought about the band when I was more actively listening to it. The title track of perhaps the biggest My Chemical Romance album and the song that shaped the band's persona for years, this song will never die.
Bonus! -- "Weightless" by All Time Low
I don't actually know that this song gets airtime on radio stations, but this is pretty much my personal theme song, driving me forward when I want to give up, flop down on my bed, and not do anything. That was why I had to share it. I also didn't know this had a music video until I went to find it for this article, and it's surprisingly funny. With a special cameo from Mark Hoppus, even (saying everything we've been thinking all along... I'm kidding, but I'm sure there are people who do think every punk/pop-punk/etc. band is just ripping off blink-182). From All Time Low's album "Nothing Personal" (as you might have been able to guess from the repetition of the phrase in the music video), I think the best lyric in this song is the best takeaway, and the one that I repeat to myself often:
