3 of the Most Influential Songs of the 20th Century

The Doors: Light My Fire

As a very young child I listened to The Doors music a lot. Despite being familiar with the music, I had no knowledge about the background of, or inspiration for The Doors’ songs. Of all their recordings my favorite was Light My Fire. I can still vividly remember sitting in my bedroom listening to this song, being both fascinated and frightened by it. I was fascinated my the uniqueness of the song, but frightened because of the haunting nature of the organ. As a 7 year old boy I never thought that 20 years later I would finally learn the history of my first favorite song. 

Listening to the NPR clip gave me insights into Light My Fire that shocked me. Going into this assignment I was as ignorant as the fascinated and frightened boy that I was 20 years prior, so when I learned that Favorite Things, as performed by Coltrane, was the inspiration behind Light My Fire I nearly fell of my chair. Previous to this, I had always assumed that the driving force behind the song was psychedelic drugs not freeform jazz played on a saxophone. Though this revelation shocked me, it also added a deeper respect and understanding for the song. 

Learning that Light My Fire was inspired by, and a tribute to a jazz saxophone song helped me view the song with new eyes. I have listened to the song many songs since learning of it’s background. The new appreciation stemming from the fact that the song is jazz inspired, is most obviously illustrated through the epic keyboard and guitar solos positioned in the middle of the piece. In my opinion the solos weren’t just randomly placed to demonstrate the prowess of the artists, but rather deliberately freeform jazz in nature so that an appropriate homage could be paid to the artist and song that inspired Light My Fire.

Elvis Presley: Hound Dog & Don’t Be Cruel

The reason for selecting the Elvis Presley songs for this assignment, is that I have never liked Elvis music. I chose the songs to try and gain an appreciation for the man revered as “The King of Rock ‘n Roll.” However, when I first listened to the NPR clip my lack of appreciation was reinforced, however as I listened to it again and again, it was the king himself that changed my mind. 

My distaste for Elvis deepened when I learned that his biggest hits, Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel, were all written by people other than him. The artists that I have always appreciated the most have written and performed their own songs. I believed that it was shallow and insincere, that somebody would perform a song that wasn’t their own. As I learned this fact I felt vindicated for being one of the few people on the planet that didn’t at least appreciate what Elvis Presley did for music. My opinion changed though when I started to contemplate his place in musical history on a deeper level.

A very interesting fact that was brought out in the NPR recording was that Elvis was criticized for not giving credit to the styles from which he was drawing from, in particular the African American style of blues. I found this intriguing because white performers have taken black American art and marketed it as their own, multiple times in history, and so I thought that perhaps my initial disliking of Elvis now had grounds. However Elvis himself set me straight when he stated, “When I sing, I just sing from my heart. some people say it’s because I am offering folks a new kind of rhythm. I really don’t know about that though, my own kind of rhythm is really about as old as music itself.” I believe that this shows that Elvis was humble, and was aware of his place in music history. He was to be a voice of the music, a performer of songs, indeed a conduit through which the art of others could pass to the masses.

 

Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit

In the early 1990s Nirvana emerged and seemingly vanquished the pop/rock of the 1980s. My taste in music exactly mirrored the American musical landscape of the late 80s and early 90s. My opinions were greatly molded by my older cousins who where 8-10 years older than me. They instilled in me a love of hair bands like Poison, Cinderella, Bon Jovi, and Def Leppard. I didn’t listen to the radio much, just tapes and C.D., so I was behind the times. Finally in 1998 or so I was introduced to Nirvana. The opening riff of Smells Like Teen Spirit had the same effect on me as it did on musical America. The bands from the 80s that I had loved, and whose songs I had memorized, suddenly seemed silly and contrived. Nirvana intensity, sincerity, and originality changed my taste in music forever. 

Smells Like Teen Spirit came into my life when I was about 16 years old and it reflected the inner desire that I felt to rebel against the establishment. As the NPR recording points out, the progression of the song is a series of crescendos into eventual eruptions accompanied by lyrics that my parents couldn’t understand. It became my personal years high school anthem. What I didn’t realize when Smells Like Teen Spirit was blasting through my car speakers on the way to school was that, as NPR points out, the song was criticizing me and my generation. In an ironic way the band illustrated and sharply criticized, through it’s music, the “over-bored” and “self-assured” attitude that I possessed. When I first learned this while listening to the NPR clip I felt a little betrayed, however when the brilliance of the song began to set it, I appreciated it even more. I mean the band wrote a song that I thought defined me, but as it turns out it was insulting me. Genius.