Last year I ranked my top 10 songs at that point. So now I gotta do it again but a top 20. This is very self absorbed but you know whatever, I like to compare and always highlight what my best work at the moment is in the rare instance of someone stumbling on this thread and listening to something.
Last year's list.
This is the playlist for all the tracks.
https://soundcloud.com/barrygoldmanofficial/sets/my-top-20-songs-from-20-to-1 Spoiler
20. Sunspot
This is like the most effort I put into different guitar parts and I think for what I aimed for I did it as well as I could, although some of the lyrics and my singing are horrific here. Basically trying to be all Beach Fossils with some Wah-Wah that I liked....how that one band used...I don't know this was like the 2 seconds I was okay with modern Indie last Spring. The song sounds flat in many regards but it has that guitar power atleast. Also lyrics that well, I don't really like but it's about something I guess. I HATE the STUPID nothing is nowhere line. BUDDY. I know that was throw away and silly when I sang it but COME ON. Way to just take it over the top.
19. Seaside Hotel
I don't know what I was doing last June but it's a lot better than what I have been doing. On Black Hair Like Blood I made the bad mistake of recording "One Hopeless Buyer", because I felt angsty after watching Bobby's 65 tour doc, like man I'll never be that cool so to hell with it I'll just wreck it up, which pretty much misdirected my music entirely from how progressively better every element had been getting since I started. This set me back big time, but also made for more fun. But anyway, this is a simple loud quiet tune, but it's a magic moment, as much of these songs are. Where my Strat was so perfectly out of tune and poorly set-up that it sounded tropical in the intro. One aesthetic I go for is that picture of Azusa eating toast from the K-On! movie, it's such a mood.
18. Mari-Nation
My greatest song intro ever. One of my best set of riffs to a simple but for my standards good vocal line. The only issue is how bad my vocals are on the track, but that aside it was a good inspired track where I used the Pipe Man's suggestion of a jangle and mangle track, so it features the super charged distorted 12-string on the left channel. Lol, on the rare time someone gives me a suggestion I normally do well with it.
17. Hospitality
I used Joni's "Coyote" tuning and did something that sounded different! I just wish I spent more time on this song, it was a one time vibe, and the lead and ending sections I am very proud of. Just wish I spent more time on the guitar tone, lyrics and vocals. This could've been a much better song.
16. Divers High
The song I made when I realized my music was getting a little too silly. Vocally it shows my weaknesses very much, but it stands as something I am quite happy with in terms of theme and guitar power, especially the solo.
15. MoonPhase II
This is the Stella call out song, some of my best lyrics actually, I made it after feeling disillusioned with college after hearing out some classmates thoughts and views on day to day life. It was like, man why is everyone so jaded and everything, I don't like that. The composition is a little off in this track, but I'm happy with what I tried here for sure. I saved that riff in the end for so long just to use in the right song.
14. Zellers Heroes
Aggressively Canadian, the song where Wal-Mart must be destroyed and Zellers can reign again, basically because the protagonist is bored. One of my best Goof Rock songs with the greatest bridge I've come up with. Plus I hadn't sang about this kind of stuff 1000 times when I made this track.
13. Camp Lazlo
A song made in like 2 hours. I put some noots on, wrote the lyrics like nothing and came up with the composition just as fast. I love when a song just comes together this way, it's simple and though I messed up vocally at the end it didn't matter because it worked with the flow. This is just my inspiration having fun. Also using the drumsticks on guitar case thing I saw in the Elvis Comback special and was like "I'm doing that in my next couple songs man".
12. 309
When I do something different again, come up with an actual chorus and also some of my greatest and sharpest lyrics. One of the only times so far I've come up with sharp lyrics also. 309 is a worthless title, even in context to the album it's just the room number of the Dingus and is merely from 867-5309 anyway. I used my classical acoustic well in the end of the track.
11. Fringe
I don't know why this song just sounds better than most of the other songs. I sang well for once, the guitars came out with the right tone, and in general it's a tight track that is just far more better constructed than most of what I make. It has that Strat power sound, and showcases my rhythm playing the best. I even figured out how to use the whammy on the Strat well without making it go out of tune! Sadly I broke it off while making another song on the album, Skirted City Wonders I think which I didn't even end up using, and got a piece stuck in, I still haven't replaced it yet. This song is just me at my very very best in nearly every single regard.
10. Theme For Midnight Stella
My magic 12-string piece that I've been stealing bits from over and over. I just had a sharp of inspiration with it, and since it was Valentine's Day that I recorded it there was plenty great clips to take from the radio with. It was fun to go around and record from local radio, a thing I've done many times since. I had PPOMO in my ears when I performed it also, it's not the best sounding track but it's just a benchmark of my personal quality. Plus it's the first Stella song, where it all began right here.
9. Pinstripe Kermit
I looked at a picture of Kermit riding a bike in a pinstripe suit and found it novel enough to make a song about. One of my brightest jangle songs, and though the sound is not great it begins to mark the end of the clipping era, where everything sounded awful. Pinstripe Kermit is just a Spring song, I was just feeling it in the air man, and I wanted to make a song that was very polished. I intended it to be a collab with Lego so I worked extra hard to make a very smooth track that didn't get to crazy. That collab didn't happen here, and instead I was left with one of my shiniest moments so far.
8. Yohane's Gothic Dawn
Chester Bennington's death was the most significant pop culture event for me since Michael Jackson died. It suddenly made me realize many things like man, my generation is next. We're becoming the 90's kids and 80's kids now, the 2000's kid uprising...just seeing all the comments on how much Linkin Park meant to so many people despite all the poor albums they'd made since 2007. It made me go back and now I love the band's first three albums on the reason of just being fricking great, strong sentimental attachment to 2007 aside. and I had pushed this away and ignored the band for so long. This song reflects that and has my greatest solo. I frame a lot of these type of songs around Yoshiko because she's the chuuni character who you can assume will one day have that moment of awakening where she needs to change and become "boring". Yoshiko is a big inspiration, along with this idea, in my music.
7. Conquistador Of The Dance Floor (Feat. Lego)
Lego says he's convinced we didn't actually make this song and instead some kind of weird clones took over and created this. I almost believe him because this is for both of us nothing less than a lightning bolt of inspiration. The song is just a rock n' roll track, and the reason it's great is because of Lego's contributions, being the lyrics and vocal line. I was blown away by the bit Lego did in the bridge, and the way he sang over my track was unlike what I would of done. This song just makes me smile like a bastard man. It's so fun and has the combined powers of me and Lego at our best. Even if we both pronounce "conquistador" wrong.
6. Barely Gold, Man
This was the most angry I got while recording a track. Everything was going wrong, take after take. But by the end, while I was pissed off and resisting the urge to throw things around, I had polished the song so well that I got through it tight as I could and it turned out to be quite good. At 170 it runs fast and has some of my best twists and movements. I'm very happy with this song, it's one of my definitive tracks, even down to the name. It made me very angry to record but it turned out in the end unlike so many other songs that go bad.
5. Hyvää Joulua!
The single most sincere and real song I've made. I really tried to sing well in Finnish in the chorus, and although I didn't pull it off well, and the phrases I quickly chose a blog didn't really come together in a profound manner, it's just the perfect way to say I love my heritage and the greater story of my family. Even if I know it can be tacky I don't care because it's important to me, and that's all that really matters. I didn't even record this track knowing what it would be, it just so happened to sound the exact way I needed it to for a Suomi 100 song.
4. Kanan's School Of Sunshine
I wrote the lyrics on the first day of second semester, and when I came up with the silly pun line that sounds deeper than it is "Kanan Ball The Future" this song came to be. I was watching some lame show when I came up with the chords which do sound almost like Wonderwall which disturbs me greatly. Still this is one of my songs where I raised the bar for myself higher than before, much higher.
3. Under The Skywalk
I've tried to take J Pop sounds and put them in my music but it never worked until this song. Where everything came together and man it just felt great to record. Even though the vocals where a pain and it took me forever to get the right take, even though the one in the song isn't really that great. This is just one of those divine inspiration songs that I could only of made with a firing burning in me. It's the most recent example of me setting the benchmark higher. Now it's my current standard!
2. Magnus Bridge/Stella's Takeoff
Like what Lego said about Conquistador, I'm not super convinced that I made this song, it might've been a clone or something. Maybe an alien takeover. I used open C or G and the results where just unlike anything I've been able to muster up since then. The "you got it, take off now" part is the single greatest musical achievement of mine yet, that whole section man I don't know how it came about so smoothly. Once more, I wish I spent more time on the song to make it longer, I was so inspired and felt a rush with how well the tuning worked out, so I went on and on with the Stella's Takeoff section. It should've only been a minute and a half long, I should've shortened it by a bit for sure, but as it stands this is my greatest accomplishment in music yet and the possible peak of my one man band abilities. Though I hope that is not true.
1. Larger Than My Life
How can I make a song that is the most Canadian thing possible without being annoying and corny? This is how. I was inspired by my growing interest in the country outside my own area, and I am especially fascinated with the large and mostly empty territories. I came across a vlog series where a Japanese girl was going to school at Whitehorse to learn English. It was confusing, why would someone go to the Yukon for school? But it was nice, and I thought man, I wanna go to the Yukon. So I made a song about it. This is right when I dropped out of college because it was lame, and I had this 2 months from November to December that was a mini era in itself.
The song is simple really, I looked up Bossa Nova chords and tried to make a song around it. As it turned out, I made my most well paced song with some of my best lyrics, and of course a distinctly Canadian feel which is what I try to go for in my own way. Magnus Bridge is naturally my best achievement, but Larger Than My Life is by far my best song as a song.
I suppose it's just a lull in my music, I feel like I was really going somewhere up to when I made "One Hopeless Buyer". I had fun with my 50/90 songs, and I like many of them because it's fun summer music. I continued where I was going on Barry Goldman's World Tour anyway, and then on Skywalk. This just tells me I should work slowly on my super albums, and have my fun stuff separate. I feel like you know, I gotta keep going and squeeze it all out before I'm too old. Sure I'm only a month away from 22, but you know, time is against us all, I feel like it's a race against time or something. But I don't know what the race is you know, there's no destination either. Not like the Goldband is forming anytime...ever at this point. My last EP was not that great...that's why I'm going to try to just not do anything this month for recording new songs unless I have a really good idea. I would do myself well if I could stop thinking about/listening to my music for a month but heh. Not with my brain.
I take myself very seriously it seems! The other truth is I have a lot of time to type things and I just go off.
I feel let down. Divers High has been getting about 6-8 plays a day for the last month and I've just seen it's actually by different people from different places. I was happy like man what is this, than I realized the most recent Gundam series has an OP song called Divers High and everyone who is looking it up on Soundcloud is looking for that song and likely clicks on mine and is like "what this isn't the right song". Well Mitsuhiro Hidaka, I don't know who you are but you stole my title! Haha. Man I was so happy about all those plays to, I hope some of those people stuck around for the song. It's exposure for me anyway, I saw into the future with that title yup.
Also Catherine Wacha from FAWM puts together a collection of songs for charity every year, for Lupus, and it's mostly FAWM folk, I sent in my track "Nuevo Dia" which sits as track 6 of 40. It's neat to see my song among many others, it got played on a New Jersey internet radio to, which is you know, just internet radio, but it's still like someone not me or my friends who played my song on internet airwaves. It's exciting for to imagine people hearing my music, even though most may not enjoy it. Since it's a rare thing it's exciting you know, it's when my music leaves the bubble of my head.
https://rockthelup.bandcamp.com/album/rock-the-lup-volume-ix