My friend Dan and I were getting ready to exchange our list of best songs from the year when I noticed a problem.
"Most of my list is made up of the first track of albums," I said. "I should probably get tracks that aren't sequenced first, but I really like the first songs of albums the most. It usually is the best song on the album and tends to be the one that draws me in. I've always admired first tracks on albums for that power."
"You should make a playlist of just first songs," he said.
"On one hand, that makes a lot of sense," I said. "Because it's a collection of the best songs of several albums, all in one place. On the other hand, only one of those first songs can be first on the playlist, which sort of blemishes the appeal of the second, third, fourth etc songs in the playlist."
Ultimately, I gave him a playlist of mostly first songs from albums.
Dusting Off Sound-Dust
Most Stereolab albums, especially from Emperor Tomato Ketchup through Sound-Dust, are exceptions to that 'first track is best' rule. The first three songs on Stereolab's Sound-Dust work together really well, highlighted by the wobbly steel guitar in the third track, Captain Easychord.
A friend gave me this album soon after it came out in 2001. I immediately liked the first three songs but, for some reason, it never pulled me through the full album. I set aside Sound-Dust for years, and eventually left it in a box at my parents' house after a move. A day or so after my father died in 2014, during that awful, numb few days before his funeral, I rummaged through some of my old things and found Sound-Dust.
Maybe I was wanting a gentle throwback to a time when my dad was still around, but in any case as I travelled between the funeral home and my mother's house several times I re-realised how wonderful the first three songs were.
I've little idea what the first few songs are actually about but for me they were comforting and sharp enough to be a welcome distraction from Dad's death.
When I was young and my father would look at my CD collection, he told me more than once, "I bought an album and it was usually a letdown. There'd be a couple of good songs and a whole lot that I didn't care about."
As a result, he loved 45 records.
I always tended to push back on that idea that albums were inherently disappointing. Most aren't. But it's also true that I generally favour just a single track, usually the lead track, which is really just a variant of what Dad said.
