#23 The Pretenders - 2000 Miles

(Winter/Christmas playlist, #2)

Album: Learning to Crawl (1983)

Lyrics excerpt:
In these frozen and silent nights
Sometimes in a dream
You appear
Outside under the purple sky
Diamonds in the snow sparkle
Our hearts were singing
It felt like Christmas time

Reasons to love this song:
For me it is one of the two best non-religious Christmas songs (the other one being The Pogues' Fairytale of New York). It perfectly captures the melancholy feeling of separation from a loved one as Christmas is approaching (regardless of whether the loved one is physically far away or even dead -- the song is said to be inspired by the 1982 death of The Pretenders' guitarist James Honeyman-Scott.
2000 Miles was used in the series Beverly Hills, 90210, in a scene in which the character Steve Sanders leaves to search for his real mother. I remember that, even though I didn't like the series very much and I thought Steve was an unsympathetic character, the song gave poignancy to the scene and almost made me cry.

Link to Amazon preview:
2000 Miles

YouTube link:
A live performance from 1995:

#22 Thea Gilmore: Sol Invictus

(Winter/Christmas playlist, #1)

Album: Strange Communion (2009)

Lyrics excerpt:
Come the dawn, come the call

Come, the beating air
Chill the night, soldier light
We'll be dancing there
And rise up, rise up
Day stretching weary wings

Reasons to love this song:
Sol Invictus is the opening song of The Gilmore's excellent Christmas album. In contrast to most of the other songs, which are much more upbeat, Sol Invictus is an a capella choral prayer to the sun and the day. Sol Invictus was the late Roman sun god, celebrated on December 25th; while listening to this song, I can easily imagine Thea Gilmore as his priestess, leading the believers in prayer while waiting for the sun to rise after the coldest night of the year. This is a truly heartfelt, spiritual song about longing for light.

Link to Amazon preview:
Sol Invictus

#21 Nico - Afraid

Album: Desertshore (1970)

Lyrics excerpt:
Cease to know or to tell
Or to see or to be your own
Have someone else's will as your own
Have someone else's will as your own
You are beautiful and you are alone

Reasons to love this song:
A few times I've come across music critics saying something along the lines of "The Velvet Underground were a great band, too bad Andy Warhol forced them to perform with Nico". I would take it as a sure sign that I need not pay any attention to any of their reviews. Yes, Nico was a beautiful woman, but she was far from "just a pretty face"; she had a unique, warm and deep voice coloured by her German accent, a way of singing I've seen compared to a priestess chanting, and she developed a songwriting style that sounded timeless and didn't fit into any existing genre.
I've always understood Afraid to be similar to Tori Amos's Girl -- the artist addressing and comforting her younger and more insecure self. Nico's chant-like way of singing gives the impression of a prophetess or deity comforting a mortal.

Link to Amazon preview:
The album version by Nico: Afraid
A lovely cover by Espers from The Weed Tree (2005): Afraid

YouTube link:
Nico performing Afraid live in Manchester in 1980:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG2JNv5r6yE

# 20 Madonna - Mer Girl

(Halloween playlist, #5)

Album: Ray Of Light (1998)

Lyrics excerpt:
I ran past the churches and the crooked old mailbox
Past the apple orchards and the lady that never talks
Up into the hills, I ran to the cemetery
And held my breath, and thought about your death

I ran to the lake, up into the hills
I ran and I ran, I'm looking there still
And I saw the crumbling tombstones
All forgotten names

Link to Amazon preview:
Mer Girl

Reasons to love this song:
A rather simple, bleak and poignant song about death that concludes Ray Of Light. I've noticed that, when I play this song to friends unfamiliar with Ray Of Light or quote a part of the lyrics, they often seem surprised it's a Madonna song -- and yet, it's probably one of the most personal songs Madonna ever made.
I've seen some conspiracy theories about an alleged deep occult meaning to this song (an example can be seen in the comments to the YouTube video linked below), but I firmly believe they are rubbish. There is no need to look for hidden meanings if there is an obvious meaning -- the singer's thoughts about her mother's death and about her own mortality.

YouTube link:
A fragment of the song with the (beautiful and disturbing) backdrop video made for the Drowned World Tour:

#19 Emilie Autumn - Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches

(Halloween playlist, #4)


Album: Opheliac (Deluxe edition, Disc 2) (2010)

Lyrics excerpt:
Lunatics are dangerous
And doctors are obeyed
They also go together just like toast and marma-

Ladies are like children
With brains the size of squirrels
Lets give clitoridectomies to all the little ...

Girls are helpless trasures
That daddies must protect
So lie upon the table for the doctors to in-

Reasons to love this song:
I can't imagine a song with more dark humour than this one. It's a parody of a children's clapping song with many variations (Miss Lucy Had a Baby/Miss Suzy Had a Baby/Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat), describing the mistreatment of women in 19th century medicine and psychiatry. As in some versions of the children's song, the last word or syllable of each stanza is missing, but it is implied by the rhyme and by the first word in the next one. The simplicity of the tune and Autumn's cheerful voice make the subject matter even more terrible -- and yet, you can't help laughing. I wasn't able to get this song out of my head for days after I first heard it.

Link to Amazon preview:
Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches
Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches (Live)

YouTube link:

#18 Charlotte Martin - I Am Stretched On Your Grave

(Halloween playlist, #3)


Album: Reproductions (2007)

Lyrics excerpt:
I am stretched on your grave
And I'll lie here forever
With your hands in mine
I'd be sure we'd not sever

My apple tree, my brightness
It's time we were together
For I smell of the earth
And am worn by the weather

Reasons to love this song:
Although I have labelled all songs from my Halloweeen playlist as "halloween: creepy songs" for simplicity's sake, there is nothing creepy about this song. It's a passionate song about longing to be united in death with a dead lover, in a similar spirit to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights or Patrick Wolf's Damaris.
The lyrics to the song are a translation of an anonymous Irish poem from the seventeenth century, and the tune is traditional. Charlotte Martin's version is a cover of Sinéad O'Connor's version from I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (1990), and O'Connor in turn credits Phillip King, who recorded the song in 1979.
Personally I prefer Charlotte Martin's version to O'Connor's, because it is more passionate (strangely, I think, because Sinéad O'Connor is on the whole a more passionate artist.) I also love the darker, more mystical version recorded by Dead Can Dance.

Link to Amazon preview:
I Am Stretched Out on Your Grave (Studio)

YouTube link:
Charlotte Martin performing the song live in 2007:

#17 PJ Harvey - White Chalk

(Halloween playlist, #2)

Album: White Chalk (2007)

Lyrics excerpt:
Dorset's cliffs meet at the sea
Where I walked
(Our unborn child in me)
White chalk
(Poor scattered land)


Scratch my palms
There's blood on my hands


Reasons to love this song:
For some reason I don't quite understand now, it took me very long to learn to like PJ Harvey. White Chalk came up randomly on an online radio station I was listening to, and it captivated me. It sounded ethereal, but at the same time ominous -- an impression that grew even stronger when I read the lyrics. I realised soon that the song that made me interested in PJ Harvey came from an album untypical for her -- she plays the piano instead of the guitar, and sings in a high-pitched voice unusual for her.
Pj Harvey has many great songs with dark subjects that would be perfect for a Halloween playlist. I chose this one because I prefer to be scared this way, in songs as well as in films and literature: with just a hint of something terrible having happened.

Link to Amazon preview:
White Chalk

YouTube link:
PJ Harvey performing White Chalk on on Later With Jools Holland in 2007, looking like a ghost from the Victorian era

#16 Rasputina - Gingerbread Coffin

(Halloween playlist, #1)

Album: Cabin Fever (2002)

Lyrics excerpt:
We found an old doll that was out in the grass,
She had special powers, we said a Black Mass.
We sat in a circle all holding hands,
The doll-bed held together with old rubberbands.

She'll rise, she'll rise, she'll rise...

Reasons to love this song:
Or, rather, reasons to fear this song! Dark and/or bizarre subject matters are usual for Rasputina songs, but to me personally there is nothing more scary than children and children's toys -- especially old toys. I blame horror movies for this: whenever you see an old rocking horse, or the glassy stare of an antique doll, you know that something terrible is going to happen. So this song about girls saying a Black Mass over a dead doll is, to me, darker than their songs about cannibalism or the Inquisition. Melora Creager sings it in a childlike, merry voice, which just makes it more creepy. I don't want to know what happens when they sing: "Surprise! Surprise!"

Link to Amazon preview:
Gingerbread Coffin

YouTube link:
The studio version

#15 Tori Amos - Honey

Album: Honey is a B-side, included on the Cornflake Girl single (1994) and on the compilation A Piano (2006). A live version is included on some versions of the Hey Jupiter single (1996).

Lyrics excerpt:
A little dust never stopped me none

He liked my shoes, I kept them on
Sometimes I can hold my tongue, sometimes not
When you just skip-to-loo, my darlin'
And you know what you're doin' so don't even


You're just too used to my honey, now
You're just too used to my honey

Reasons to love this song:
Honey is a sensual, atmospheric account of a relationship that has "died". When I listen to it I see a video in my head, a passionate love story taking place in a desert town (Amos said that the song reminded her of New Mexico), with the heroine riding alone into the sunset as Amos sings don't bother coming down, I made a friend of the western sky.
Honey was recorded for Under The Pink but wasn't included on the album; in the live version released on the Hey Jupiter single, Tori Amos introduces this song with the words: This is my favorite song from Under The Pink. But the thing is, it's not on Under The Pink because it got kicked off at the last minute in mastering 'cause I'm such a dang-a-lang!


Link to Amazon preview:
Honey (2006 Remastered B-side Version)
Honey (Live)

YouTube link:
Tori Amos performing Honey in New Haven in 1996:

#14 Marissa Nadler - Leather Made Shoes

Album: Songs III :Birds On The Water (2007)

Lyrics excerpt:
Mayflower was a girl

Who came from my room
With a box of faded feathers
And her leather made shoes


But you know when she goes
She'll be crying
Cause she died all alone
With her feathers and bows

Reasons to love this song:
Leather Made Shoes is the eleventh, final track on Songs III: Birds On the Water. For me it was the first song on the album I fell in love with (I was surprised to see, on the last.fm page for the album, that it was its least-listened-to track.) I assume -- although I might be completely wrong about this -- that the Mayflower from this song is the same person she sings about in Mayflower May (The Saga of Mayflower May, 2005): without a friend, without a lover, without a care, Mayflower walked away, away towards the air; and that Mayflower is, along with other characters Nadler sings about, inspired by toys she played with as a child.

Link to Amazon preview:
Leather Made Shoes

YouTube Link:
The album version:

#13 Edie Brickell & New Bohemians - What I Am

Album: Shooting Rubberbands At The Stars (1988)

Lyrics excerpt:
And being alone is the best way to be
When I'm by myself it's the best way to be
When I'm all alone it's the best way to be
When I'm by myself, nobody else can say goodbye


Everything is temporary anyway
When the streets are wet, the colors slip into the sky
But I don't know why that means you and I are, that means you and I


I quit, I give up, nothing's good enough for anybody else, it seems...

Reasons to love this song:
I love everything about the album Shooting Rubberbands At The Stars - the hit single What I Am, Little Miss S with its sad lyrics and happy tune, Edie Brickell's cover art -- an orange cat and an orange sun drawn in a childlike way... Circle is the song I could most easily identify with. That's hardly surprising -- I'm sure everyone in the world has had this feeling of sadness and defeat some time or other.

Link to Amazon preview:
Circle

YouTube link:
The official video (I remember that one of the first things I noticed about Edie Brickell was her beautiful hair):

#12 Beth Orton - Blood Red River

Album: Central Reservation (1999)

Lyrics excerpt:
Why must people always want what they never have?
Why is it a crime to miss a part of you that's bled?

How did we get so far?
How do we move so fast away
From the lilac-lilied lake
I'm sure we used to play
Is it only a dream away?

Reasons to love this song:
Beth Orton is famous for her blend of folk and electronica, but my favourite song of hers is pure folk, a melancholy ballad. Orton's voice, which I have seen described as "autumnal" -- in my opinion, a very fitting description -- is perfectly suited for the strong sense of regret expressed in this song, regret for crossing the line and getting to a point from which there is no turning back. Blood Red River makes me imagine a bleak landscape in black and red.

Link to Amazon preview:
Blood Red River

YouTube link:
Beth Orton and guitarist Ted Barnes performing the song in 1998

#11 Loreena McKennitt - All Souls Night

Album: The Visit (1991)

Lyrics excerpt:
Bonfires dot the rolling hillsides
Figures dance around and around
To drums that pulse out echoes of darkness
And moving to the pagan sound.

Standing on the bridge that crosses
The river that goes out to the sea
The wind is full of a thousand voices
They pass by the bridge and me

Reasons to love this song:
The first song by Loreena McKennitt I ever heard was her version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and I immediately became obsesssed by her. Her versions of traditional songs were captivating enough, but her own songs impressed me even more, with their exploration of history, literature and folklore, and of the ancient beliefs hidden in them. All Souls Night is a song I would like to, one day (or night), listen to while actually dancing around a bonfire.
According to the liner notes for the album (they can be read at Loreena McKennitt's official site), the imagery in the lyrics is inspired both by the Japanese tradition of placing floating lanterns on waterways leading to the sea to comemmorate the dead, and by the bonfires lit in traditional Celtic celebrations of All Souls Night.

YouTube link:
Loreena McKennitt performing the song live in Alhambra in September 2006

#10 Tanita Tikaram - Twist In My Sobriety

Album: Ancient Heart (1988)

Lyrics excerpt:
I don't care about their different thoughts,
Different thoughts are good for me
Up in arms and chaste and whole
All God's children took their toll


Look, my eyes are just holograms
Look, your love has drawn red from my hands
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety

Reasons to love this song:
This was the first song by Tanita Tikaram I have ever heard, and it will always remain one of my favourite songs by any artist. Tanita Tikaram's deep voice and calm way of singing seemed to appeal more to my brain than to my emotions, and to fit better with autumn and winter than with spring and summer, so I listened to her albums Ancient Heart and The Sweet Keeper a lot while studying for university. Despite this cerebral quality of her music, I have no clue what this song -- one of my favourite songs -- is about. But somehow it doesn't seem to matter.

Link to Amazon preview:
Twist In My Sobriety

YouTube link:
The official video

#9 Vienna Teng - Passage

Album: Warm Strangers (2004)

Lyrics excerpt:
I died in a car crash four years ago.

My tree drinks melted snow,
Just eight feet tall, a pale and fragile thing.
Bee stings, beaches, bright vacations,
Sunburnt high-school graduations,
A sparrow healing from a broken wing.
This year a glimpse of second chances:
Tiny apples on my tree's branches

Reasons to love this song:
This is one of those songs I can't listen to without feeling close to tears. It is an a capella song like, for example, Suzanne Vega's Tom's Diner or Tori Amos's Me And a Gun, but in these two songs the a capella singing conveys a feeling of intimacy. In Passage it, appropriately, sounds haunting and otherworldly.
The song is sung from the point of view of a young woman who has died in a car crash, and is now watching her family, her co-workers and her lover as they react to her death and as their memories of her slowly fade through time. The fading away of their memories feels even more heartbreaking than their grief.

Link to Amazon preview:
Passage

Youtube link:
Vienna Teng performing Passage live in 2006

#8 Suzanne Vega - Gypsy

Album: Solitude Standing (1987)

Lyrics excerpt:
You come from far away

With pictures in your eyes
Of coffeeshops and morning streets
In the blue and silent sunrise
But night is the cathedral
Where we recognized the sign
We strangers know each other now
As part of the whole design

Reasons to love this song:
Gypsy was recorded for Suzanne Vega's 1987 album Solitude Standing, but like Calypso from the same album, it was written much earlier in 1978. It is an account of a romance with a stranger from a distant land; it ends with the two lovers parting, but the narrator promises her lover that he would "hear himself in song blowing by one day". According to Suzanne Vega, the song is based on her first romance, with a Dadaist artist from Liverpool (whom she also refers to in another song: In Liverpool from 99.9° F (1992). The song is evocative, romantic, nostalgic but not at all sad -- a story about a romance that meant a lot to the author but was never meant to last.
Link to Amazon preview:
Gypsy


YouTube link:
Suzanne Vega talking about the romance that inspired the song

Another account of the story can be found here.

#7 Neko Case - Margaret vs. Pauline

Album: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (2006)

Lyrics excerpt:
Everything's so easy for Pauline
Ancient strings set feet a light to speed to her such mild grace
No monument of tacky gold
They smoothed her hair with cinnamon waves
And they placed an ingot in her breast to burn cool and collected
Fate holds her firm in its cradle and then rolls her for a tender pause to savor

Everything's so easy for Pauline

Reasons to love this song:
Besides having a powerful voice, Neko Case is a great lyricist. Margaret vs. Pauline is a good example both of her poetic imagery and her dark sense of humour (in this interview she says that one of the reasons she likes Russian folk tales is the fact that, for the Russians, "death is funny").
The lyrics describe two girls, one of whom feels only mild emotions and leads a calm, graceful life, the other unfortunate enough to feel everything too strongly. Pauline is the luckier one, but there is no doubt that Case's sympathies are on Margaret's side.

Link to Amazon preview:
Margaret Vs. Pauline (Album Version)

YouTube link:

Neko Case performing Margaret vs. Pauline live in 2007.

#6 Sinéad O'Connor - Troy

Album: The Lion and the Cobra (1987)

Lyrics excerpt:
But I will rise 
And I will return
The Phoenix from the flame
 
I have learned
I will rise and you'll see me return 
Being what I am
There is no other Troy for me to burn 

Reasons to love this song: 
Sinéad O'Connor's voice is heartbreakingly emotional, capable of switching from soft and gentle to furious in a moment, and this song shows it perfectly. She starts softly: I'll remember it and Dublin in a rainstorm..., but I'll slay a dragon for you, I'll die is already sung in a different voice, and the accompanying strings create tension, bringing to mind tiny flickering flames. After the first there is no other Troy for you to burn, both her voice and the strings turn wild with emotion.
This is one of those songs I can't listen to without getting at least a little teary-eyed. The music might be a little bit too emotional -- nothing too dramatic actually happens in the song, after all: the lyrics are about being in love with someone and then discovering he was a liar, something that probably happened to everyone in the world at some point. But that's understandable, because O'Connor was only 20 when she was recording The Lion and the Cobra, and the passion in her singing is the reason this song is so irresistible.
In the lyrics O'Connor paraphrases the poem No Second Troy by William Butler Yeats:
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

YouTube link: 
The official video

#5 Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi

Album: Ladies of the Canyon, 1970

Lyrics excerpt:
They took all the trees,
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone?
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Reasons to love this song:
The extremely catchy tune and humorous last verse of this song ("a big yellow taxi took away my old man", with laughter audible in her voice) are in contrast with the serious warning contained in the lyrics. Joni Mitchell was inspired to write this song while visiting Hawaii; according to JoniMitchell.com (see the footnotes to the lyrics here), the "pink hotel" she is singing about is likely to be the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach, and the "tree museum" is the Foster Botanical Garden.
Big Yellow Taxi is one of Joni Mitchell's most covered songs. Artists who have covered it include Bob Dylan, Melanie Safka, Maire Brennan and Counting Crows featuring Vanessa Carlton.

Link to Amazon Preview:
Big Yellow Taxi (Remastered LP Version)

YouTube links:

Joni Mitchell performing Big Yellow Taxi live in 1970. After the "a big yellow taxi took away my old man" verse, she sings an additional one:
Late last night I heard that screen door slam
And a big yellow tractor come and took away my house, it took away my land


One of many artists who have covered this song: Tracy Chapman live in Rome on July 27th, 2009.

#4 Natalie Merchant - Ophelia

Album: Ophelia, 1998.

Lyrics excerpt:
Ophelia was the circus queen,
The female cannonball
Projected through five flaming hoops
To wild and shocked applause

Ophelia was a tempest cyclone,
A goddamn hurricane
Your common sense, your best defense
They wasted, and in vain

Reasons to love this song:
Ophelia seems to be a character who has inspired many songs. This is my personal favourite. The song may or may not be about Shakespeare's Ophelia, but it is about a woman who certainly shared Ophelia's fate. Natalie Merchant tells us Ophelia has been various women throughout history -- a Carmelite nun, a sufragette, a "sweetheart to the nation", a "demigoddess", a mafia courtesan and a circus artist. Natalie Merchant plays all this women in the official video and, in the end, when she sings "Ophelia's mind went wandering, you'd wonder where she'd gone", we see her in a white nightgown, crying in a place that could be a sanatorium but looks more like a dungeon. We see images of the six women again, and this time the girl in white blends in with all of them. At the end of the song hear the voices of the women speaking in different languages, and we are not sure if all the women mentioned were a product of a madwoman's imagination, or if she had really lived all those lives and the intensity proved too much for her.

Link to the official video on Natalie Merchant's website:
http://www.nataliemerchant.com/w/ophelia/ophelia-music-video

Excerpts from the short film Ophelia, in which all the characters speak about themselves, can also be seen on the website. The women are all played by Natalie Merchant, and voiced by Natalie Merchant, Rocio Paez (Spanish), Camille Labro (French), Carmen Consoli (Italian), Suzanna Schmitz (German).

YouTube Link:
Live performance in New York City, 1999

#3 Kate Bush - Jig Of Life

Album:
Hounds of Love (1985)

Lyrics excerpt:
This moment in time,
It doesn't belong to you, 
It belongs to me,
And to your little boy and to your little girl,
And the one hand clapping:
Where on your palm is my little line,
When you're written in mine
As an old memory?

Reasons to love this song: 
The second side of Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love, entitled The Ninth Wave, tells the story of a woman drowning in the sea, struggling to keep awake and alive. In Jig of Life, she is in danger of giving in to sleep (and death), but her future self appears to her and angrily demands that she stays alive -- she is to live a long life, give birth two two children and grow old. The music is lively and fast-paced, in strong contrast to the melancholic Watching You Without Me which precedes it. It is as if the old woman was using the energy of the folk dance to shake her younger self awake.
The song features a spoken poem, written and performed by Kate's brother John Carder Bush. This is my favourite use of spoken word in a song.

YouTube Link:
The album version

#2 Joanna Newsom - Emily

Album: Ys (2006)

Lyrics excerpt:
And, Emily - I saw you last night by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror

Anyhow - I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember

That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

Link to Amazon preview:
Emily

Reasons to love this song:
As it was for many other fans, Joanna Newsom's voice was an acquired taste for me. When I first heard her -- especially the songs from her first album, The Milk-Eyed Mender -- I thought she sounded like a cartoon character. But I heard people praise her second album, Ys, and mention that she was a great lyricist. I decided to give her a try and I read the lyrics for the five songs on Ys.
It didn't take long. Emily, the first song, was the turning point. The lyrics were touching and fascinating, and with all the references to nature and stars they seemed as if they had been written... not exactly in the past, but in a place beyond space and time. I listened to the song again, and this time her voice sounded lovely: still unusual, but lovely, the only voice I could imagine singing those lyrics. With her harp and with word combinations like hydrocephalitic listlessness, she seemed like a bard from another dimension.

YouTube link:
Joanna Newsom performing Emily in the First Unitarian Church Sanctuary in Philadelphia on November 16th, 2006
Part One

Part Two

#1 Tori Amos - Liquid Diamonds

Album: From The Choirgirl Hotel (1998)

Lyrics excerpt:
I guess I'm an underwater thing
I'm liquid running
There's a sea secret in me
It's plain to see it is rising
But I must be flowing
Liquid diamonds

Calling for my soul
At the corners of the world
I know she's playing poker
With the rest of the stragglers

Link to Amazon preview: 
Liquid Diamonds (LP Version)

Reasons to love this song:
Although the order of these songs is random, I wanted the first song on the list to be one with a special meaning for me. Liquid Diamonds is one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite artists, Tori Amos (who will be mentioned a lot in this blog).
The imagery this song evokes is so powerful -- a snowy landscape with dog sleds, a dark ocean, a lost soul playing poker somewhere beyond the four corners of the world. The melody flows in a way that evokes the waves of the ocean. The line I guess I'm an underwater thing reminds me strongly of the image on the cover of From The Choirgirl Hotel, one of a series of color photocopies of Tori Amos made by photographer Katerina Jebb for the album art. The resulting images are eerie -- Tori seems to be trapped under the surface of a dark sea, a perfect illustration for the lyrics of Liquid Diamonds (and perhaps also Pandora's Aquarium.)

YouTube link: 
A live performance at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles

About this blog

In this blog I will attempt to list and review a thousand great songs by female artists.
I'm not using any objective criteria to measure the greatness of these songs. I doubt that such criteria exist. This is a purely personal choice by the author of the blog.
Most of the artists featured here will be female singer-songwriters, but there will be occasional exceptions -- female vocalists performing songs written by someone else or traditional songs; bands; duets with male artists.
The order of the songs has no particular meaning. I'm not saying #1 is the best and #1000 is the worst, or vice versa. I love them all.

(Can I just note how amusing it is that the spell-checking software used by Blogger marks "blog" as a mistake?)