Five Musical Moments

Over the past decade, music publications have been all about lists. Pitchfork’s 500 Greatest Songs. Rolling Stone’s top 500 songs, albums, and top 100 guitarists. VH1’s 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs. Music Blog X’s year-end list of favorite albums. I don’t have a problem with the list phenomenon, though the whole idea of pretending to establish a definitive ranking of great songs bothers me a little. How can you really argue that Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” is better than the Beatles’ “Hey Jude”? Or vice versa? They’re both great songs that have proved to be hugely influential in the decades since their release. Ranking one ahead of the other just seems odd.

Anyways, I’d like to do a list of my own. I could list my favorite songs, or favorite albums, or favorite singers or guitarists. But I’m not going to. Rather, I’m going to list a few of my favorite musical moments. Songs can be great due to compelling lyrical content, or due to gnarly guitar work, or due to interesting song structure. But some songs come to be favorites of mine due to one transcendent musical moment within the song. It might be a surprising key change, or an arrival or resolution so satisfying that it leaves the body tingling. Maybe it’s the introduction of an unexpected instrument, or perhaps it’s a groove or beat dropping such that you’re simply forced to dance. So I’m going to list a couple of my favorite moments. This will by no means be a complete list—hell, I may come back next week, and the week after, with more of my favorite moments—but here are five, in no particular order, to start things off.


Nas – N.Y. State of Mind (YSI) (filesavr)
0:17-0:25

This moment comes from the first full track off of Nas’s 1994 debut album, Illmatic (the opening track is more of a skit), one of the most kickin’ rap tracks of all time. My favorite moment comes right at the beginning, just before Nas is about to drop his first rhymes of the album—an album that is often listed among the best hip-hop albums of all time. Just before the verse begins, you can hear him say “I don’t know how to start this shit.” Apparently he’d just written it and didn’t know how to begin. But then he bursts into the rap with this absolutely fierce flow that just grabs you and gets your head bouncing. The track’s producer, DJ Premier, describes this awesome moment during the recording process:

“He didn’t know how he was gonna come in, but he just started going because we were recording. I’m actually yelling, ‘We’re recording!’ and banging on the window…You hear him start the shit: Rappers…And then everyone in the studio was like ‘Oh, my God’, ‘cause it was so unexpected…we was like, ‘Yo, this guy is gonna be big.’”

Led Zeppelin – Bring it on Home to Me (YSI) (filesavr)
1:35-1:49

I dig this moment because it forcefully juxtaposes the blues, in which rock n’ roll is rooted, with the hard rock that Zeppelin is famous for. “Bring it on Home to Me” starts off in a traditional blues style, with a shuffling guitar, harmonica, and affected vocals. Then, all of a sudden, as a verse comes to a close, a huge electric guitar riff comes out of nowhere, bringing the song into a completely different realm. Yet the lyrics and vocal melody retain many of the qualities from the song’s opening, showing just how directly the blues influence Zeppelin’s early heavy metal.


Bob Seger – Night Moves (YSI) (filesavr)
3:40-4:00

I’m not a huge Bob Seger fan, but “Night Moves” is a great tune, perfect for a nice summer evening. The moment I’m talking about comes after the song has died down. It almost seems like the song will end sad, with Seger wistfully singing that it’s strange how the night moves, as if some clichéd moment’s passed that will never be reclaimed. And then the familiar guitar strum comes back, the snare drum builds and, at last, the female backing chorus kicks in, bringing the song to its final groove that will cause you to smile and bob your head if you’ve got any soul.


Otis Redding – Just One More Day (YSI) (filesavr)
0:53-1:00

This moment comes from one of my favorite Otis Redding tunes. “One More Day” is a ballad in which Otis sings out pained pleas that his lover just give him one more day, and that if she does, he’ll “be anything that you want me to be.” It’s one of Otis’s most sorrowful songs, and his incredible voice is a perfect fit for the sentiment. This moment comes at the beginning of the second verse. The first verse and chorus have gone by, with Otis wailing over a subdued accompaniment. The second verse begins; Otis sings the first line, and then all of a sudden a brass ensemble butts in with a rising, accented figure that lends a brash reinforcement to Otis’s plaintive message. This figure appears through the rest of the song, but this first entrance is particularly powerful.


Jean Sibelius – Violin Concerto – Mvmt. I (YSI) (filesavr)
0:04-1:04

Sometimes music makes your spine tingle. I’ve read that one scenario which frequently causes this reaction is when a solo instrument plays against a hushed orchestral backdrop. The opening of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, for me, defines this phenomenon. The piece opens with trembling, shimmery strings (make sure you turn the volume up), which set the stage for the violin’s entrance. It enters softly first, though it’s not tentative—it’s more like a pure voice at a distance, beginning its approach. The violin grows in volume, eventually rising up to state the movement’s primary, dramatic theme. It’s one of the more chilling minutes in all of music, in my humble opinion, and the whole piece is pretty killer, so listen to all 19:37 of it if you can.

So those are five of my favorite musical moments. I’ve enjoyed listening to them over and over again in the process of writing this, and hope you enjoy them as well. If you’ve made it this far and haven’t wasted enough time in reading this, feel free to share some of your favorites below.