Top 40 at 40

Happy Birthday to me

Nov 03, 2023

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It is my birthday today, so I thought I would capture my 40 favourite closing tracks of the 178 I’ve covered so far here. This is based on whatever subjective qualities I felt they had this morning.

Don’t forget the index is available to look through that back catalogue here. Normal service resumes next week.

40. ‘In The Backseat’ - Arcade Fire

Alice died in the night

Mitchell Stirling

September 9, 2022

Our previous entry from Patti Smith’s debut, Horses, left us on a note of sadness, dwelling on what happens when friends, colleagues and contemporaries can no longer be with us. On Funeral, Arcade Fire, or specifically Regine Chassagne, tell us what it is like when a family member is no longer with us.

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39. ‘Mr. November’ - The National

38. ‘Closing Time’ - Tom Waits

37. ‘Champagne Supernova’ - Oasis

36. ‘The Back Seat of My Car’ - Paul and Linda McCartney

35. ‘Hurt’ - Nine Inch Nails

34. ‘When the Levee Breaks’ - Led Zeppelin

33. ‘I Know The End’ - Phoebe Bridgers

The billboard said "The End Is Near"

Mitchell Stirling

August 23, 2022

For weeks and months in 2020, we all wanted to scream. We needed to scream. This tweet, from the anonymous confession account Fesshole, sums it up rather succinctly.

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32. ‘Voodoo Child (Slight Return’) The Jimi Hendrix Experience

31. ‘New York, I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down’ - LCD Soundsystem

30. ‘Stars’ - The XX

29. ‘When an Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease’ - Roy Harper

28. ‘Oh! Sweet Nothin’’ - The Velvet Underground

27. ‘Still Life’ - Suede

26. ‘Cop Shoot Cop’ - Spiritualized

There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes

Mitchell Stirling

February 10, 2023

There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes

These days, when I think about the closing track of Spiritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, the other all-time classic released on 16th June 1997 in the UK, it brings to mind two different types of needles; one should be evident to anyone familiar with the song, the album and the band, the other is more of a time and place-bound m…

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25. ‘Tower of Song’ - Leonard Cohen

24. ‘A Certain Romance’ - Arctic Monkeys

23. ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’ - Joni Mitchell

22. ‘Torn Curtain’ - Television

21. ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ - The Pogues

20. ‘I Can't Give Everything Away’ - David Bowie

Seeing more and feeling less

Mitchell Stirling

January 18, 2022

Before my children were born, my wife and I woke to the sound of BBC6 Music on a DAB radio. This alarm call was just before 7 am; we still had work offices to attend physically, back then. A few mornings had entertainment news breaking overnight, and I remember several of them clearly.

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19. ‘It's All over Now, Baby Blue’ - Bob Dylan

18. ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ - Radiohead

17. ‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse’ - The Beastie Boys

16. ‘Debra’ - Beck

15. ‘He's Misstra Know-It-All’ - Stevie Wonder

14. ‘All Apologies’ - Nirvana

All in all is all we are

Mitchell Stirling

September 23, 2021

For a band as famous and influential as Nirvana, there’s never been a definitive goodbye as a piece of musical output. In Utero is, of course, their third and final studio album, but it doesn’t function in the way a planned last album or something like Joy Division’s

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13. ‘Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)’ - Marvin Gaye

12. ‘Is This Music?’ - Teenage Fanclub

11. ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ - Carole King

10. ‘One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)’ - Frank Sinatra

09. ‘You Can't Always Get What You Want’ - The Rolling Stones

08. ‘Echoes’ - Pink Floyd

07. ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ - The Chemical Brothers

And the way I feel just makes me want to scream.

Mitchell Stirling

January 17, 2023

And the way I feel just makes me want to scream.

There’s a point around the three-minute mark into The Chemical Brothers’ song ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ where what sounds like a Formula One car comes careering into earshot and then pans across from right to left, complete with Doppler Effect. If you listen to this on headphones, it sounds like a tiny car driving at 200 mph around the gap between …

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Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders

Mitchell Stirling

March 24, 2022

Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders

There were many possible epitaphs for Ian Curtis after he died. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ was released a month afterwards and is the obvious one most people will know. ‘Atmosphere’ was released as a single in the UK that September and features prominently in

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The whole Substack Playlist is below

Justin Steiner

Shooflypie

Nov 4, 2023Liked by Mitchell Stirling

Happy birthday!

Really cool list. "Is This Music?" was the first Teenage Fanclub song I was exposed to, back in the late 90s. They have since grown into one of my favorite bands. What do you think about Nothing Lasts Forever? Pretty good closer on there.

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Bernard O'Leary

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The Run Out Grooves

Alice died in the night

The billboard said "The End Is Near"

There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes

Seeing more and feeling less

All in all is all we are

And the way I feel just makes me want to scream.

Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders

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