This week we move into the second half of our countdown of the top 100 local songs of all time: we’re in the top 50 now, and this is rare air. I can’t say for sure, but I’ve probably listened to about 30,000 songs while building our Live & Local music library – so all the tracks on this list are in the top 0.2 percent. A song might be better than 99.5 percent of all the other songs out there, and still not even make our top 100. (And believe me: those … songs … definitely … exist.)
Reminder of the ground rules: Orange, Durham, and Chatham-based artists only; no more than three songs per artist; covers are allowed but originals are preferred; and the songs have to be radio-friendly.
Forward!
50. Janxx, “Beat Down” (2016)
“Nobody’s gonna change our minds…”
Durham-based electronic artist Janxx hasn’t produced many tracks, but she makes every one count. In 2016 alone she released two of the decade’s best songs, including “Change,” a savage attack on then-Governor Pat McCrory and the general coterie of complacent Raleigh conservatives. But I’ll go with “Beat Down,” a quiet but nevertheless persistent female-empowerment anthem about a man who thinks he’s God’s gift to women and the women who know one thing he doesn’t: they don’t need any damn gifts in the first place.
49. Campfires & Constellations, “Fast Burn to Tabor City” (2014)
“Got to make it back across the line…”
Grass in the back seat, fuzz in the rear-view, the highway stretching out ahead, and the state line just over the horizon: this is outlaw country, down to the bones, and few have ever done outlaw country better than this. A hard-pounding, grungy, bearded rocker, “Fast Burn” is just one highlight from C&C’s fantastic debut album Carolina Homegrown (sadly also their only album – so far). Not sure anyone else has ever been quite so excited to arrive in Tabor City, but we’ve all felt that desperation to get out of South Carolina, am I right?
48. Steph Stewart & the Boyfriends, “Wake Me, Carolina” (2013)
“It’s a long, lonely life without you…”
Ever since “Carolina In My Mind,” it’s been a rite of passage for local artists to record their own odes to the Old North State. The even-when-I’m-far-away-I’ll-always-be-a-Carolinian-at-heart genre has quite a few bona fide classics, from Mipso’s “Carolina Calling” to Jonathan Byrd’s “Cackalack.” (Not to mention G Yamazawa’s “North Cack,” which we’ve already encountered on this list.) But Steph Stewart tops them all with this one, an autobiographical tearjerker about moving to the West Coast even while “knowing all along you’d be calling me home.” (And unlike James Taylor, Stewart had the good sense to wait till she was back in town to record it – so unlike “Carolina In My Mind,” “Wake Me” actually qualifies for this list. Sorry, Copperline.)
I still remember hearing “Wake Me” for the first time, watching them play it at Festifall; it was the first I’d ever heard of the band, but you knew right away that this song was an all-timer. (Now rebranded as Blue Cactus and streamlined down to a duo, Stewart and Mario Arnez have been making consistently great music for the last seven years. For the best of the Blue Cactus era, I’m partial to “Not Alone ‘Til You Come Home” – though some other folks at 97.9 The Hill prefer “Finger on the Button.” Either way.)
47. Holsapple & Stamey, “She Was The One” (1991)
“Dark as in thunder, deep as in my sleep…”
“Are these the same two guys from the dB’s?” Play this song and yes, it’s the same jangly guitar, the same harmony, the same musicianship – but it’s acoustic now, and slower, and sadder, and older and full of regret, though still twitching with the same vibrancy and the same life. (Critic Karen Schomer described it as “like the sound of rain after dark.”) The dBs’ first album was still only 10 years old when Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey recorded their reunion album Mavericks, so it’s not like they were that much older – but “She Was The One” (written by Holsapple) pulses with the melancholy maturity of an elder statesman reflecting on a completed life. (Which bothers me, ‘cause Holsapple then was younger than I am now. I’m still immature, right? Right?)
This is a great song, but what really breaks your heart are all the little details: Jane Scarpantoni’s cello lurking in the background; Holsapple’s minimalistic lyrics telling the whole story; the way his voice breaks on “when she left” in the closing seconds.
“Mavericks may be our most enduring record together,” Holsapple said later; “My musical partnership with Chris has yielded some fine music, and Mavericks is among the best of all.” No argument here – though of course we’ll encounter the dB’s themselves too, further down.
46. Molly Sarlé, “Human” (2019)
“You know I’m nothing other than…”
Said Molly Sarlé about this catchy, peppy, dreamy, devastating knockout of a song: “It’s about coming to terms with the end of something by recognizing that everyone is flawed, and sometimes things just don’t work. It’s possible to find joy in disappointment and letting go.”
Watch that video too, for an extra bonus: not only does it nicely capture Sarlé’s complex theme of joyously embracing the flaws and the imperfections and the disappointments in life, it also features a who’s-who of local music icons, many of whom we’ve already encountered on this countdown. (And some of whom we haven’t met yet – though that’ll change.)
45. Last Year’s Men, “I’ll Be Gone/Karma” (tie) (2010)
“It’s not who’s to blame, it’s who gets shot…”
Ben Carr and his bandmates were barely out of high school when LYM dropped their debut album “Sunny Down Snuff,” but you’d never tell. The album is a headbanging lo-fi classic from start to finish, highlighted by these two tracks (separated by just one song on the original album); Chapel Hill’s music history is a tough legacy to live up to, but these are two of the best straight-ahead rockers the scene has ever produced.
Which one’s your favorite? The harder-thrashing “I’ll Be Gone,” or the more thought-provoking “Karma”? I can never decide, so I’mma just include them both together and call it a day. It’s my list, I can do what I want.
Oh, but hey, speaking of straight-ahead rockers:
44. Pipe, “You’re Soaking In It” (1993)
“Wake me when it’s time to panic…”
Chapel Hill was known in the 90s as a rock music hotspot, and the scene never rocked harder than it does right here. Ron Liberti’s sneering vocals and Clifton Lee Mann’s guitar combine with Dave Alworth and Chuck Garrison’s driving rhythm for a banging classic about 90s slacker apathy. (Pipe had quite the pedigree: Garrison had just come over from Superchunk, while Mann co-fronted the Bad Checks, already recognized on this list. Simultaneously, Garrison was also in another iconic Chapel Hill band, Small, along with former Pipe guitarist Mike Kenlan.)
This is my choice for the best pure rock song of the 90s in Chapel Hill, and there are only a few local songs from any era that can claim to surpass it. Honorable mention, though, to Motocaster’s “The Buddha,” also from 1993 – not included on this list only because Motocaster was primarily a Raleigh band.
43. Ellis Dyson & the Shambles, “Dogfight” (2015)
“Only four men can walk away…”
The sun goes down on a sleepy Appalachian village – and then you hear an ominous banjo, a violin shivers, the hillbillies crawl down from the mountains, and what happens next you just have to hear for yourself, preferably many times over. “Dogfight” is the perfect climax to the Shambles’ self-titled debut album, a gleeful, grinning, violent, hilarious, blood-soaked Grand Guignol masterpiece that ranks as one of the best of the decade if only because they’re clearly having so much damn fun making it.
Bonus points for Dyson’s recurring banjo riff, which is about as apocalyptic as it gets. If you ever hear it start playing in real life, run.
42. Jonathan Byrd, “May The River Run Dry” (2007)
“Sure as I was born to die, it’s true…”
There’s more than one Jonathan Byrd. Some favor the earnest, empathetic Byrd of songs like “Ballad of Larry” and “I Was An Oak Tree,” but I’ve always preferred Byrd the outlaw, friendly and smiling and completely unrepentant. He’s never been better than here, in this “dark cowboy fairy tale” about a not-quite-nameless stranger and a black crow who comes bearing troubling news. Byrd’s lyrics paint a fittingly bleak landscape atop his spooky, atmospheric guitar, but of course what makes this one great is the third-act twist. Not enough songs have a really good third-act twist.
41. Mad Crush, “Stay In Bed” (2018)
“And ‘cause I tend to forget, let me tell you again…”
Too many love songs focus on the big emotions, the grand gestures, the huge life-changing events. Pfff. Real love is about the little things: the quiet moments, the shared habits, the private jokes. Junk mail piled on the dining room table. A dog that needs to be walked, some random show on TV. That feeling of not-quite-rightness whenever the other person’s not around.
And holy wow, John Elderkin and Joanna Sattin get it. Channeling June Carter and Johnny Cash, Elderkin and Sattin gaze into each other’s eyes and sing about the little things: how each gives the other “a reason to jump out of bed,” “a reason to cancel my day,” “to mow the yard,” “to race through the rain,” “to turn off the phone,” “to say what I feel.” Guided throughout by Laura Thomas’ gorgeous violin, with a peaceful beat from drummer Chuck Garrison (remember him, from three songs ago?), Elderkin and Sattin build to the simplest chorus, the most perfect expression of long-term devotion: “Let me give you a reason to stay in bed, let me give you a reason to stay in bed.” “Stay In Bed” is a song that celebrates the smallnesses of love, and so it’s one of the most beautiful love songs I’ve ever heard.
This is John Elderkin’s entry on our list, but you can’t ignore his earlier work with the Popes – a band that also featured Mad Crush guitarist Mark Whelan. Try “I Saw The Sirens Go By,” for starters.
Next week: Rapsody looks back, Hardworker looks girly, and Sarah Goss looks into the Twilight Zone.
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