The most powerful songs of all time

What music has shaped you? (An experiment in crowdsourcing)

Orphée, by Marc Chagall

Has a piece of music shaped you? Tell us about it — we’d like to help kids fall in love with it, too.

Longtime readers will know that we’re in the process of creating a new approach to K–12 schooling (and homeschooling). At the core of it is the creation of a radically new curriculum. This is a big undertaking — on par with what Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner were doing in the early 20th century.

And at the center of this core is a canon of fascinating works (paintings, sculptures, math puzzles, history stories, law cases, philosophical thought-experiments, and so on) that kids will plunge into, and then revisit every four years.

As part of that, we’re constructing a canon of songs¹ to build a curriculum around. I’ve recently sketched out a bit of what that might look like around the song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” by Bob Dylan. In a few months, I’ll start doing live workshops to try this out for paid subscribers.

What we need now is a first stab at what that canon of songs will include. Would you be up to spend five minutes to help us? In the comments below, we’d benefit greatly if you’d be willing to share even a single piece of music that’s powerfully affected you, and to tell us what you find powerful about it.

Imaginary Interlocutor: Wait, you’ll put in whatever we suggest?!

Obviously, we won’t be able to include each piece of music suggested here. But we’ll listen to it, and consider it seriously.

I.I.: What format should my recommendation be in?

Just share a piece of music, a link to it (on YouTube or Spotify), and tell us something about why you love it.

I.I: Can I recommend more than one piece?

In the comments, please limit it to three. (If you’d like to suggest more, reach out to me.)

I.I.: How many songs will be in this canon?

Probably around a hundred? That’ll allow people to do one per week for four academic years.

I.I.: How will you choose the final set of songs?

With fear and trembling! We’ll be weighing a few different criteria. The most important is that the songs have power when engaged somatically, mythically, romantically, and philosophically. Which is to say:

These songs should have SOMATIC (🤸‍♀️) power. Even if we strip away the lyrics, they should grab us, using RHYTHM, HARMONY, and MELODY to evoke strong EMOTIONS. They should make us feel something in our bodies — making us want to (say) bob our heads, move our legs, or cower in a dark corner. (They needn’t all be happy!)

If the song has lyrics, those should also have MYTHIC (🧙‍♂️) power. The words themselves should be interesting and memorable, perhaps using RHYMES or METAPHORS or asking profound QUESTIONS. (And while it’s not necessary, it’s nice if they tell a STORY that we can dig into.)

When looked at in its historical context, the song will ideally have some ROMANTIC (🦹‍♂️) power. Perhaps it pushed LIMITS, or HEROICALLY inaugurated a whole new sub-genre. Extra points if the creators of the music itself had complex and interesting lives — we’ll be getting into those, too.

Finally, the song should be fertile ground for PHILOSOPHIC (👩‍🔬) investigation. What IDEAS or WORLDVIEWS is it advancing, either explicitly or implicitly? If we approach it with MUSIC THEORY, are there interesting things we can find that it’s doing with (say) its key, mode, or meter?

Saul and David, by Rembrandt

I.I.: Is it okay if all the songs are of the same genre?

It’s fine if all of your recommendations are; the final canon won’t be. Diversity of musical styles is crucial. We’ll be looking for (just to pick some at random) bluegrass, hiphop, Baroque, punk, bossa nova, Gospel, emo, and big band. Going even broader, we’ll probably want at least some Tuvan throat singing, some Balinese gamelan, some Moroccan Gnaoua, and so on.

Which is all to say that if you want to recommend especially powerful pieces from genres even your hip friends haven’t heard know about, they’ll probably have a higher chance of eventually being included.

I.I.: Any limitations?

As we’re providing this to families from all backgrounds, the canon probably won’t include any songs with particularly offensive lyrics. (Particularly offensive ideas, on the other hand…) And while some of the world’s most powerful music is expressly religious, self-consciously devotional music can be quite off-putting to people of different traditions.

I.I.: Any practical considerations?

Yes: YouTube and Spotify.

Historically, it’s actually kinda odd that we only listen to music — for thousands of years, music was something that you also watched. (And, for especially intense performances, smelled.) Watching a performance is a wonderful way to get newbies into the music — so if you can include a link to a YouTube video of its being performed (or of its music video), that’s great. (This is perhaps less relevant for some types of music than others, though.)

Also, though

1. everyone loves hipsters, and

2. there’s undeniable charm in amassing a huge collection of LP’s, and

3. we’re building a rather analog-minded elementary experience,

we anticipate that it’ll be too time- and money-intense for many families to hunt down ~100 individual albums. So songs that are available on Spotify (or another streaming music platform) will be easier for us to include.

I.I.: But back up a second: you’re crowdsourcing a canon? Seems like something this important should be decided from on high.

Canons always come from both directions. Look back, for example, to the coalescing of the canon of the Christian Bible, and you’ll see a back-and-forth between the robe-bedecked bishops and the unwashed masses. (The only people who think it was otherwise are in bad Dan Brown novels and the College of Cardinals.)

I.I.: Wait, I meant the opposite — something this important should be decided for each family or school! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some watery tart throwing swords!

Yes, yes, and I’m sure your anarcho-syndicalist commune is very nice this time of year.² Rest assured that we won’t be forcing this on anyone. But in order to turn these theories into real practices, we need to choose specific pieces of music to build a curriculum around. This won’t be the One True and Holy Final Canon — how could such a thing ever be made? We anticipate that different families and school systems will use their own bespoke canon, each of which (fingers crossed) evolve into a semi-solid form. We want to be transparent about how we’re putting this together, so others can improve on it.

But also, beginnings are important, and we want this one to not suck. So please, help us!

I.I.: Should the songs be famous, or unknown?

We’re open to both.

Ulysses and the Sirens, by John William Waterhouse

I.I.: I’m not a professional, and really have no place recommending anything.

If you have a single song that’s moved you, we’d love to hear it. Eventually, we plan to bring professional musicians into helping us create this curriculum. Obviously, professionalism brings its advantages! But it can have disadvantages, too, and amateurism has an advantage all its own — never forget that the root of “amateur” is “love”.

I.I.: I have this one music-crazy friend…

It suddenly occurs to me that this could be a good opportunity for us to spread word of what we’re doing, so yes, please invite them to this! We’d love to get their recommendation.

Previous posts on music:

Why learn music?

Mysterious Music (and Drawing Sound)

A Song a Week

Geeky Songs

1. Against the irritated insistence of my friend Matt who played the baritone next to me in middle school band, I’m going to use the word “song” here to include any piece of music, and not just pieces meant to be sung, mostly because it gets irritating writing “piece of music” a hundred times.

2. Which reminds me: Jonathan, I’m sorry I missed the Monty Python and the Holy Grail showing last week…