I could have done another fifty, but I’m sure everybody says that. These aren’t in order of preference as much as the order I remembered them; I did a similar list when I turned 50 so this cannibalizes that a bit. As my friend Chris Buck said about his list, the period when I really, intensely connected to music lasted roughly from the ‘70s till … Continue reading Top 50 Favourite Songs: Rick McGinnis

This is not a very Rock Critic list of Favourite Songs. No Dylan, Stones, Joni, Clash, Prince, Husker Du/Sonic Youth, Beefheart, Bowie or Bubble Puppy (or even my friends Skinny Puppy). No Puppies. But on reflection I always thought my role was more of an editor/organizer than a cutting edge music scribe, even though NME / Sounds / CREEM / Trouser Press got me into … Continue reading Top 50 Favourite Songs: Dave “Rave” MacIntosh

I thought of numerous ways to attack this. One included a single track from every genre or sub- genre I could think of. Another was three tracks from every four year period to sort of evenly cover 1955-2021. Tried to be eclectic. Thought of including jazz and classical. But it just all got too hard (at least for now), and in the end decided to … Continue reading Top 50 Favourite Songs: Mark Fichera

So hard to choose! I am a bit sheepish that there are so few songs from the current century, but these are the ones that magically alter my mood and my heartbeat. Is it true that songwriting was that much more magnificent when I was young, or is it just because I was discovering new sounds and everything felt more exciting as opposed to my … Continue reading Top 50 Favourite Songs: Mary Dickie

These “Best Music” lists are off-putting, whether they’re from Rolling Stone (that still feels like a boomer relic) or Pitchfork (that more closely aligns with my taste), or any other institution. But they’re damn fun to make, so here is mine. I was born in 1964 in Canada, then moved to New York in 1990. My window of following rock music closely ran from about … Continue reading Top 50 Favourite Songs: Chris Buck

So, I live in Los Angeles, which means I spend an inordinate amount of time in the car. So my favorite songs are really my “favorite songs to listen to while I’m driving my car…dangerously fast,” because I used to drive an ambulance, and still have a weird addiction to driving too fast while playing good music real loud (which we did in the ambulance … Continue reading Top 50 Favourite Songs: Lou Noble

Making this list was too much like an evening spent looking at the mirror. B-but I really do like and listen to and remember a lot of other kinds of music, honest! Most of it I get better in the context of an album, however uneven, as I imagine making a mix, a playlist, and now I see that habit in the segmentation and subsets … Continue reading Top 50 Favourite Songs: Don Allred

Rolling Stone’s latest list was an update on their 500 Greatest Songs Ever (last published in 2004). As I did with their 2020 all-time albums update, I’ve decided to list my own favorite songs. While I wasn’t a voter, those who did all received a ballot with instructions to rank their favorite songs from 1-50. Unlike that ballot, I’ve left mine unranked. Thirty-two of my … Continue reading Top 50 Favourite Songs: Tom Lane