We Virgos are known for two things: avoiding conflict and making lists. A strange pairing, since they are often at odds. Any attempt to list the Top Ten Flermits or Seven Best Bluples will invariably inspire outrage because of the inclusion of this flermit or the exclusion of that bluple. But the urge to create is a compulsive one. The tension between opposite impulses must be resolved for a Virgo, or any human being really, to know peace.
Lowering the stakes would help in theory. Instead of listing the Five Worst Presidents, why not the Five Best Toilet Brushes? People might, for obvious reasons, have vast gulfs of opinion regarding Social Security policies. But relative bristle length and density would seem to inspire less passion. Plus, you could make a joke about how eventually they all turn out to be full of shit anyway.
However, as Sayre’s Law suggests, the most bitter disputes tend to erupt over the most trivial of matters. I believe this is because such disputes are expressions of vibe more than anything else. When we bicker over a list maker’s decision to rank Trivial Thing X above Trivial Thing Y, we’re not really taking issue with their analysis of objective facts. What sticks in our craw is the list maker’s whole general thing they got going on. They annoy us on an existential level. That we seldom recognize this feeling for what it is doesn’t make it any less true.
Why do we frequently find other people’s vibes so distasteful? I would suggest it’s because most people’s vibes are a mishmash of apparent contradictions (picture the father who loves capitalism but hates consumerism, or the son who loathes authority yet seeks control over others). Recognizing this inconsistency in others is uncomfortable because it tends to make us more conscious of our own confusion. Yet for some reason we are drawn to this rhetorical dance anyway. To be alive is to be all mixed up, and to need to tell somebody about it.
This is fine. The deepest pleasures are messy ones, and trying to “understand” them in the conventional sense is a fool’s errand. Instead, we should celebrate the contradictions. Let us shake off the icy grip of consistency and embrace the mismatchedness of life! And let us create a list of songs that symbolize the essential dissonance of being a human!
The Musical Trash Sculpture All-Stars
In an episode during the tenth season of The Simpsons, Homer attempts to build a barbecue pit. Instead he creates a mangled heap of pipes and cement—which is far more beautiful than any barbecue pit. Homer’s heap sells for a great deal of money and briefly makes him a famous artist.
Those humble materials were bound together by a majestic and ineffable essence, and the same is true of the Musical Trash Sculpture All-Stars. These are songs chosen on the basis of two equally important qualities:
The beats are very, very good
The lyrics are very, very bad
“Bad” does not mean “silly.” Truly bad lyrics have to demonstrate a certain carelessness toward the craft, whether intentional or not. For example, the Four Deuces’ “WPLJ (White Port Lemon Juice),” which was later covered by Frank Zappa, would not qualify for the Musical Trash Sculpture All-Stars despite its absurd premise because it’s entirely in on the joke:
You take the bottle, you take the can
You shake it up fine, you get a good good wine
But bad lyrics alone do not make a Musical Trash Sculpture All-Star. It’s the marriage of garbage-ass words with savant-level beats that make these songs so sublime, like a tiny bit of skunk musk in an expensive perfume. You’ll know it when you hear it, so on that note:
Biz Markie, “Just a Friend”
Have you ever met a girl that you tried to date?
But a year to make love she wanted you to wait?
Lemme tell a story ‘bout my situation
I was talking to this girl from the U.S. nation
The undisputed captain of the Musical Trash Sculpture All-Stars, “Just a Friend” is one of the greatest artistic creations of the 20th century. The ping of the piano key at the song’s beginning is instantly recognizable to anyone between the ages of 32 and 46. To hear it is know you’re in the presence of greatness.
So intoxicating are the simple, joyful twinkles of “Just a Friend” that they render one’s brain impervious to the nonstop knife attacks of the song’s words. There is no way three solid minutes of this should be endurable:
I arrived in front of the dormitory
Yo, could you tell me where is door three?
They showed me where it was for the moment
I didn't know I was in for such an event
And yet it doesn’t matter, because the song has what we need: a pure and raw expression of hope that fulfillment is possible, so long as you “never talk to a girl who says she only has a friend.”
Bob Dylan, “The Man in Me”
The man in me will do nearly any task
And as for compensation, there's a little he would ask
It take a woman like you
To get through to the man in me
Bob Dylan wrote “The Man in Me” in 1970, nearly 30 years before the release of The Big Lebowski. But like some long-dormant cicada, the song didn’t reach its full potential until it became the anthem of a man who, well, was the man for his time and place.
The proud march of the keyboard, the joyous swirl of the organ, the hum of the choir rising to an ecstatic crescendo: “The Man in Me” is a hymn of love that overflows the vessel of words which carry it. It predates the Dude while also presaging him—a hint of a higher power that, were you to contemplate it in any direct or traditional sense, would reduce you to a drooling cannabis-addled goon:
The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from bein' seen
But that's just because he doesn't wanna turn into some machine
It take a woman like you
To get through to the man in me
While Dylan remains one of the most bafflingly overrated artists in human history, this should not diminish the power of “The Man in Me.”
Texas Tornadoes, “A Little Bit Is Better Than Nada”
Moonlight hits the Rio Grande
And the touch of her hand
It makes me high
Like the Fourth of July
“A Little Bit Is Better Than Nada” is a plate of week-old chicken fillets revived by the greatest salsa verde you’ve ever tasted. It’s a goblet of RC Cola encrusted in jewels and served with ice cubes of the perfect size and number. It is such a convincing simulacrum of flavor that you don’t miss the real thing even a little.
The accordion is the key. Most musical instruments are capable of evoking a range of emotions, but few hit the extremes quite as hard. Here, it’s the engine that drives the song forward with reckless joy. Huffing and puffing toward a euphoric horizon, who has time to look down at the clouds on which we walk?
A little bit is better than nada
Sometime you want the whole enchilada
A little bit is better than nada
A little bit or nothin' at all
A wry grin. A world-weary sigh. A sparkle in your eye.
The Aggrolites, “Countryman Fiddle”
Deep down south in the thick boondocks
There lived this boy named Nick Bob Cox
Today was daddy's special day for him
He brought home son his first violin
Ska is the Gob Bluth of musical genres, in the sense that few openly admit to caring for it. In both cases this distaste is easy to understand. These entities are loud, garish, and inextricably linked in popular imagination with the ungraceful aging of mediocre white masculinity.
But they’re also fun. Like Gob himself, “Countryman Fiddle” is not original or brave. It channels a certain energy, though, that can be wonderfully invigorating so long as you don’t pay too much attention to it.
Nick Bob left, came back with a radio
And said, "Now here's something poppy you gotta know:
Some heavy drums and some heavy bass
And that social message that could set that face"
And then poppy got up, he began to move
He said, "I feel it son I, feel the groove"
What the fuck is going on here? Who cares. It doesn’t matter when the keyboard hits that magic squeal.
Betty Wright, “Clean Up Woman”
A clean up woman is a woman who
Gets all the love we girls leave behind
The reason I know so much about her
Is because she picked up a man of mine
The quintessential Motown hit was a cocktail of excellence: poignant songwriting, exceptionally evocative vocals, instruments played by the gods themselves. And such was the quality of each premium ingredient that a song could still bang if one of them was missing.
“Clean Up Woman” is such a good idea that the actual execution doesn’t matter. Betty Wright is such a force that she could be singing the Kelley Blue Book and you’d feel it in your soul. This is a tremendous breakup song and a tremendous hookup song. It defies and fulfills all your expectations at once.
So take a tip, you better get hip
To the clean up woman
'Cause she's tough
I mean, she really cleans up
Baptize me in these waters. I am ready for the cleansing. Here’s to 2022, may its vibes be better in all ways.