Not my favourite songs, but great when they come on the radio

Hammer and a Nail, Indigo Girls
Baby Don’t You Break My Heart Slow, Vonda Shepherd
Every Little Thing She Does, The Police

Aye totally subjective one mans perfecto is another’s pure mince
anyways here min(c)e
Flaming Lips- Do you realize?
Galaxie 500- King of Spain
Beatles – Ticket to ride
Neil Diamond – Solitary man
Big Star – Thirteen
Prince – I would die 4 u
Cocteau twins- Ivo
Ketty Lester -Some things are better left unsaid

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L63W_4fbJZ0[/video]

Trouble – Ray LaMontagne.

Pretty much anything off Darkness on the Edge of Town, Like a Rolling Stone & another vote for Waterloo Sunset.
Guess who’ll be in the 3rd row at Ray Davies Southampton gig this Saturday!
Woo-hoo, indeed.

ormondroyd – Member
A lot of these are longer than 1 minute 40. The rules (that I made up) are clear.

Rules are made to be broken; watch yours get smashed to pieces all over the floor…
Anyhoo, it is very subjective, but some songs are so well crafted they transcend that to become pretty much perfect examples of the song writers craft. The Beach Boys God Only Knows is a classic example, Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where The Time Goes another song that is just about perfect in every way, especially considering Sandy’s age at the time; she recorded a demo of it when she was 20, but I believe she was 15 when she wrote it. Boulder To Birmingham, by Emmylou Harris is another pretty much perfect song as well.
ABBA were masters of well crafted, catchy pop songs, but their best ones were never hits, and are very melancholy, unsurprising as they’re from near the end of ABBA’s career; The Day Before You Came, and Cassandra, both as good as it’s possible for popular music to get, in my opinion.
Others will probably not agree!
Which is the fun of threads like this one. 😀

There’s an awful lot of Motown that fulfils the criteria.

Do you play that in front of other people ??)

Can’t he just like what he likes without you insulting his taste? Eh?

DEAD KENNEDYS – too drunk to ***k !! aaarrrgh happy days

OK yes sorry mustn’t slag other people’s taste, I get enough flak for mine, which includes a lot of both types of music (Country AND Western) but c’mon, Dire Straits is just the worst Dad Music ever.

Full metal jackoff – DOA featuring Jello Biafra
Take me to the other side – Spacemen 3
Seawall – Envoy
On – The Aphex Twin
Movin’ on – Dreadzone
Mouthful of shit – Chumbawumba
Etc

Dire Straits is just the worst Dad Music ever.

There are dads here. And they were young once.

F.E.A.R.- Ian Brown
For an Angel- Paul van Dyk
Shine on you Crazy Diamond -Pink Floyd
The Boy in the Bubble- Paul Simon
Oxygene IV Jean Michel Jarre

Oh and this http://m.youtube.com/?reason=8&rdm=3979#/watch?v=CfgTlbdZzTQ

Turn it up

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LC7EYbOka4[/video]

Garbage – Special
Chemical Bros (feat Richard Ashcroft) – The Test
Flock of Seagulls – Wishing
Tears for Fears – Pale Shelter
Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil
The Mission – Like a Hurricane
Girls Aloud – The Promise*
PiL – Public Image
Magazine – the Light Pours out of Me

All cannot be improved upon therefor must be “perfect”.

*Yes I’m serious. Perfect pop song.

Yossarian. Good link. Never heard the original before, only the Chemical Brothers remix.

Magazine – the Light Pours out of Me

Absolutely perfect. As are so many Magazine tracks.

Good shout with Paul van Dyk there Teetosugars, though I’d go with Gouryella for the ‘perfect’ trance tune of that era, and as far as a ‘perfect’ dance tune goes, it’s gotta be N-Trance’s Set U Free.

My current ‘perfect’ song at the moment though is INXS’ Never Tear Us Apart, brought back to my attention by Paloma Faith’s (pretty good actually) cover on the John Lewis advert.

Edit – some great songs listed on this thread!

Sorry. Add to the list.

The Clash – London Calling

In between days by The Cure
Crawl by the Wedding Present (seeing them next month – 25th anni of seamonsters!)

OK yes sorry mustn’t slag other people’s taste, I get enough flak for mine, which includes a lot of both types of music (Country AND Western) but c’mon, Dire Straits is just the worst Dad Music ever.

It might be now, but it wasn’t back then.
I saw Dire Straits supporting Talking Heads!
And Love Over Gold is a fine album, provided you leave out the dreadful Industrial Disease!

Sparky’s dream – Teenage fanclub

Geek love – bang bang machine

Dammit, there are just too many songs to try to think of ones that really stand out, although Aimee Mann has written some crackers, her album Whatever is full of them, but Fourth Of July is as good as they get, or Coming Up Close from Welcome Home, when she was with ‘Til Tuesday. Her songs are so good a Tom Cruise movie was constructed around an album she was recording at the time.
Hmmm, Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime, Robbie Robertson Somewhere Down The Crazy River, Elvis Costello Shipbuilding, QOTSA No One Knows, Nils Lofgren Night Fades Away, Michael Nesmith Different Drum, The Kinks Days, Jeff Buckley Grace, Indigo Girls Kid Fears and Chickenman, Gnarls Barkley Crazy, Gerry Rafferty Baker Street, Whatever’s Written In Your Heart, Don’t Speak Of My Heart.
All fantastic songs, all, in their own way, perfect and sublime. 😀

On – Aphex Twin.

Yep, i’d second that…..the uziq version.

The Replacements – Alex Chilton

Gang Of Four – Damaged Goods

Carl Craig – Home Entertainment

New Order – Procession

Hammock – The Backward Step

Moby – God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters

Mogwai – The Precipice

Pearl Jam – Rear view mirror

Van Halen – Ain’t Talkin Bout Love

Black Country Communion – One Last Soul

Rush – Vital Signs

Underworld – Dirty Epic

plus many many others i can’t think of.

Under 1:40 and perfect pop

Velocity Girl, very early Primal Scream

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8KynrRA1u8[/video]

Off the top of my head at this precise moment in time,

Right on (4 tha darkness) – Silicone Soul
La Ritournelle – Sebastien Tellier
Born Slippy – Underworld
Golden – Jill Scott
Ramble On – Led Zep
Sister Morphine – Rolling Stones
Tale from Black – Tunng

Loads of others but these few are pretty much high up on my playcount at all times.

To Love Somebody – The Bee Gees
Alison – Elvis Costello
Alison – The Pixies
New Rose – The Damned
Roller Coaster By The Sea – Jonathan Richman
Rock n Roll Suicide – David Bowie

FSOL-Papua New Guinea
Glen Campbell- Witchita Line Man
Eddie Vedder- Guaranteed
Jeff Buckley- Lover, you should have come over
Billy Joel- She’s got a way / Piano man
Roy Orbison – Crying
Al Green – How do you mend a broken heart
Bee Gees- How deep is your love

Papua New Guinea is a great record but essentially instrumental so not a song in my books.

Long before my time, and I like a lot of other songs, but both of these are getting close to perfection.

Wichita Lineman – Glen Campbell
Gimme Shelter – Rolling stones

I’m only just a Dad, and I’m not that old, but Dire Straits are awesome.

Cinematic Orchestra – To build a home. – absolutely phenomenal.

Nick Drake – Time has told me

New Order – Blue Monday
Faithless – Insomnia
Nirvanna – In bloom

Pearl Jam – Alive

+1 for Ramble On
Sun Is Shining – Bob Marley
She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult
Sweet Child O’ Mine – GNR
Eject – Senser
Chop Suey – System Of A Down
Where Is My Mind? – Pixies
Tourette’s – Nirvana

Not perfect, but very amusing, imo.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkHZCSxeYwM&feature=player_popout[/video]

I got more women than the law allow

EDIT:
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvWGWzph4dQ&feature=player_popout[/video]

“Starts With One” and/or “Rainy Mondays”, both by Shiny Toy Guns

Blister in the Sun – Violent Femmes.
Paint it Black – Rolling Stones
Killing in the Name of – RATM (pure punchy aggression)
No One Knows – Queens of the Stone Age
Fools Gold – Stone Roses.
Into my arms – Nick Cave
Pass it on – The Coral
7 Nation Army- White Stripes

All tracks that i could hear 10 times a day and never tire of.