The Must-Listen-To List for Musical Excellence and Diversity

[Forza SoundFire]

So, I thought I'd start community a list of pieces that we think are absolutely definitive of a genre or era, or indeed break the moulds and restrictions of the time/genre.

Rules are, from any time, from any artist, but it must be a gem among gems, and, most importantly, will add musical enrichment to the listener.
Suggest away!

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I'm going to start off by suggesting a long piece. It is long, but I do highly suggest listening to the whole thing;- this is, after all, about enrichment. You'll need to plan and set some time aside for this one.

Dream of Gerontius (Edward Elgar)
Nearly an hour and a half of thrilling, hair-raising sounds from one of the most expressive writers of all time.
Luckily there's an ok version up on youtube (excluding infrequent pops and stutters).

Part 1


Part 2

[Sugarholik]

Beethoven was Da Man of late classical/early romantic era. You have probably heard of Ode to Joy?
It's the last movement of this one. When he composed this he was deaf by the way.

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Fast forward to 70s, golden era of progressive rock.


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From 90s begins IMO the most bestest thing ever. Happy hardcore! Nowadays this is called Oldskool Happy Hardcore.

[topitmunkeydog]

Minimalism in Contemporary music!!


More awesome contemporary classical.



Yeah, I really prefer contemporary/modern classical to any other sort of classical music. The Romantic period is also really nice but everything before that is just "meh."

[Conduit]

Jason Becker - Perpetual Burn
He wrote and preformed this when he was only 18, and was shortly after diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease and because unable to play. He still composed music using his eyes, since the rest of his body was paralyzed. Anyway, this album completely defined the neo-classical style of metal, and this piece remains one of the best of all time.

[Sonarch]

Being a musically uncultured swine, shall I take it that I ought to add the songs that are posted here into my music suggestions list?

[CDPP]

Doubt these guys were legends of their genre, just really fancy their music:







Jarvis Cocker is a lyrical genius, he needs way more recognition. Someone please tell me I'm not mistaken.

[colortwelve]

Here's a bunch of random, awesome crap that I think every human being should listen to.

Lateralus, by Tool - A shining example of progressive rock, complete with odd time signatures, epic solos, etc. Easily my favorite song by one of my favorite prog bands, but no one song does it quite as well as this. And the rest of the album is pretty fucking perfect too.


Hell of a Life, by Kanye West - Say what you want about Kanye, he's a hell of a producer, a hell of a rapper, and he can sing to boot. This one shows off all three perfectly, without any bullshit verses from guests or any pretense of talking about anything important. It's absolutely not profoundly written, but in spite of that, it's a profoundly good piece of music.


The Number of the Beast, by Iron Maiden - This entire album is pretty much the high point of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and it helped carve out Iron Maiden's place in metal history. They've come far since this album, but even now they open their encores with this song, because it's such a perfect expression of this style of metal.


Digital Love, by Daft Punk - Yes, it's a cheesy love song. Yes, it's still fucking perfect. The way this track in particular manages to flawlessly integrate such beautiful, emotional guitar work in over a typical house base easily sets it apart from the rest of its genre, plus it's got a solo! Holy shit just let me gush about my favorite Daft Punk song ever and go listen to it, God.


Green and Blue, by KOAN Sound - If KOAN Sound are remembered for anything, let it be this. It's nothing less than a flawless integration of two really disparate styles of music; I was pretty shocked just seeing their name next to 'Halo 4 OST,' but only the song itself can do justice to what a brilliant combination of styles this is. The characteristically punchy percussion of KOAN does nothing to detract from Neil Davidge's beautiful score - in fact, it adds to it in its own weird kind of way.


Froggin' Bullfish, by Periphery - Everyone else who thinks they can djent can go home and think about this song for a while.

[ganondox]

If you haven't listened to this than you are among the uncultured swine.

[ghelded_kultz]

As my first contribution to definitiveness and excellence, I will tackle hardcore. The original hardcore, that is.

Hardcore is a genre defined by its aggression and speed. Other characteristics associated with it are simple riffs/progressions, shouting, politics and/or angst, distortion and even frequent rhythm and tempo changes. As such to find a song that is definitive of the genre, one should look for as many of these as possible. This leads me to my (and many other people's) nomination, Filler by Minor Threat.

1) Minor Threat is often considered the definitive hardcore punk band and is almost universally considered part of one the most important early hardcore bands, along with Black Flag and Bad Brains. These would mean that one would hope that at least some of their songs would fit the title "definitive hardcore punk song".

2) The song itself, at least to my ear, contains many characteristics of hardcore. The song is based around a couple of fairly simple, heavily distorted guitar parts. The fairly angsty lyrics are delivered by shouting as opposed to singing or growling. The song is fast, but drops and regains the tempo numerous times (Maybe. At least that is what it sounds like). The song itself is only and minute and a half yet I feel it easily has more energy and feeling than a song twice its length.




PS- Could people try to limit themselves to only one or two embeds per post. Otherwise the page is going to quickly take forever to load.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

I'll give this a toss, yeah?
yeah.

Starting with Electronic because I'm a clubtard.



Bang-9 by Re-Con.

Aside from telling us that the guy who made this really likes hyphens, this is kind of a song about how a lot of music doesn't have the same feel that a lot of older stuff did.



Language - Porter Robinson

I think Porter is a great musician and a great person. He approaches EDM (especially live shows) as something that should leave someone feeling like you just had a spiritual experience. Which reflects in his music very clearly.



Freakin' Daft Punk. I say no more.



She - Break the Silence.

if ever I were to point to the perfect example of Drum and Bass, I would point to this.



Can you tell that I'm a raging Porter Robinson fan? Throw Mat Zo in and you've got a song I'll be showing my grandkids.



Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek

The emotionality of this song is what strikes me the most. Even through all those vocoders and processors, you can still tell that Imogen really means what she sings.

Onto some more traditional stuff!



Queen and David Bowie - Under Pressure.

I grew up with this song. To this day, it still puts a big goofy smile on my face and brings a tear to my eye. I can't help but feel like getting up and doing something meaningful every time I hear it.



Gotye - Heart's a Mess

This song is utterly brilliant.
I mean, the music video makes a lot of statements about the world, the song is beautiful and Gotye's voice is amazing. This man has made success for himself by being an artist, which is fantastic!



Pachelbel's Canon in D.

This. Just this...I can't say much other than I've got some really good memories with this song.
A few years ago, me, my mum and my step dad went to Uralla. A small town in the south of the east side of Australia, with the intent of filming some footage for a documentary. We stayed with some friends of the family, The Nolans.

These people were by far the most welcoming people I had ever met. They accepted me as part of the family, included us all in their celebrations and were all around fantastic people with a wealth of stories to tell.

The man of the house often made a point of playing classical music to make sure everyone was calm and happy in his home, he took that extra step to make sure everybody felt welcome.
One of the songs he plays is this, and every time I hear it I think back to the time I spent with the Nolan family in that cold little town and smile.