“Nature Boy” (Nat King Cole)

Written in the 1940s by legendary proto-hippy Eden Ahbez (“ahbe,” to friends), who, according to Joe Romersa, much later disputed his own final, key lines (“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn/Is Just to love/And be loved in return”), arguing, “To be loved in return is too much of a deal, and that has nothing to do with love.” Doubled/echoing structure of this track, as well as other versions (Jon Hassell’s comes to mind), is therefore too safe and cozy. That is: love, to be love, should not be subjected to economic calculus, exchange, “return,” and must instead approach the (impossible/singular) limit that is the gift. (Again, that is: to be done with “fools and kings,” one needs first to interrogate the final law of Beatledom: “The love you take is equal to the love you make.”)

“Society’s Child” (Janis Ian)

Thirteen-year-old songwriter Ian notes that the conclusion, in which a white girl from New Jersey tells her African American crush object that “I can’t see you anymore, baby,” was motivated by a sense of logic and realism: “I don’t think I made a conscious decision to have the girl cop out in the end, it just seemed like that would be the logical thing at my age, because how can you buck school and society and your parents, and make yourself an outcast forever?” Intriguingly, the trax suggests that “one of these days” the singer will overcome society’s pressures to conform, and will buck the system. But let’s also remember that even those who refuse their parents and peers are also part of the “system,” too, and that the concept of “society” (in Pierre Bourdieu’s hands, for example) accounts for both conformists and refuseniks. Indeed, as renegade African American historian J.A. Rogers documented in a mountain of publications, the social world has sexually crossed color lines in all times and places. So this trax documents not “realism” per se, but merely Ian’s particular probability. Another logical realist, down the street, didn’t manage to write a song, but already is packing her bags.

“Amen, Brother” (The Winstons)

Urgent, celebratory, and kinetic, this trax—the second most sampled in history—is trans-temporal, extending backwards and forwards. Most known as the vessel or container for the “Amen Break,” it’s also a participant in citation as well, incorporating musical figures from previous songs. This “groove robbing,” as Kodwo Eshun deems it, runs in a deeper, more sustained way than we’re led to expect, too. It goes back to “Amen!,” the gospel tune, which can possibly be traced back to The Presbyterian Hymnal. After that, things get murky. The key is whether we dutifully follow the tendency to work against the secularization of the song. After all, it is testimony. The Winstons’ addition, however, of “brother” in the title issues a challenge: must a profession of faith be directed infinitely outward or can it be shared, agreed upon, enjoyed while avoiding a consolidation into an aspirational grouping? Yes, but only if such an agreement eschews the power to confirm or elect.

“No Love Without Hate” (Sunz of Man)

Purportedly part of the soundtrack for the alleged Malvo sniper shootings, professing the 5% knowledge of holy black masculinity. With only the mind “free,” dualism of war/peace favors the former in the mode of Black complacency/suicide; put another way, survival becomes a “revolutionary war” unto itself. Seeking the “black nation” that can be “absorb[ed]”; submerging the necessity of taking arms in order to purify, but never exceed, the white supremacist state. To mind, much more has been taken in the name of purity. The ballot in this formulation, though, is the bullet.

“Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (For 52 Strings)” (Rome Symphony Orchestra)

The gift of the lament need not be representational in order to give (itself) over: bodies, decisions, and stockpiles); surely, the air-raid sirens, buildings imploding, and two tone-cluster passages mark time, but the destruction never creates a silence. At the zenith of this Penderecki piece’s zenith (twenty-five total seconds), a single violin sounds, sustained without adornment/ornamentation. Barren, all fifty two strings sounds approximate pitches and durations, holding at bay that memorialization which aggrandizes certitude. Like the 2003 Hiroshima commemoration, the generation (of shared listening) should compress distance while remaining proximate: close enough to the event for commitment.

“Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved” (James Brown)

Overall strategy to document (and eventually attack) the hitch/delay: the “one” is muted (surrounded by two bass notes), main bass line hobbles before the “four,” and community is waiting for the “comer[s].” “Don’t wave your hand” if you’ve “been plugged in” to the white hierarchy; revolution through active unplugging—“Don’t let ’em do it”—to avoid distractions. Free-form guitar solo and main, picked riff (no hammer-ons) lay down the formula: attack the smooth, middle-class aspirations with stiff uppercuts. The fifteen-rounder doesn’t have to last a lifetime, but you better commit to going the distance.

“The Hungry Intruder” (The Small Faces)

Stan, who’s on a quest to discover the meaning of life (or, at least, the missing part of an evening’s half-moon), explores the outermost limits of hospitality. During his travels, a fly alights on his shepherd’s pie, and asks for a bite: without it, “I could die.” The fly is an “intruder,” and in his hungry haste has overstepped the boundary marking the limit of the stranger. And, of course, flies are often considered pests, as well as carriers of parasites, bacterial disease, and viruses. Stan might be tempted to swat it quick, since the meal may be tainted. But his rejoinder is surprisingly open to the other: “Take your fill, take nothing less.” (Mind you: the fly can’t have it all, because Stan needs to eat, too.) Stan’s reward is a flight on its back to visit Mad John, who may know the world’s secrets. But one already has been revealed: “living” alongside others involves taking your chances. A plague of flies is no fun, but worse would be an ecology without them.

“To Beat or Not to Beat” (The Horace Silver Quintet)

It’s difficult to see the relation between the Arthur episode (season 4, episode 7b) of the same name and the trax, what with the cartoon’s focus on the dangers of performative versatility and the general busybody-ness of friends. Same with Hamlet, in which the division or break between states is considered, contextually, inevitable. In both texts, an awareness of the law–of gravity in the former or of law’s tardiness in the latter–leads one down these analogous paths. Silver’s treatment isn’t enamored of subjection, and we’re asked to focus on the force of the beat. Spatially located and loosely arranged, this is a formal hard bop tune. (Unlike his “Song for My Father“–whose bassline was wisely lifted by Steely Dan for “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number“–this trax eschews boogie and avoids romantic notions of place.) Unfaithful to the citation, too, is the piano solo; ascending and falling twice, it meanders at high and low registers, ending further down the scale than where it began. Be(at): one is never and always emplaced, (actively) occupying and occupied.

“Take the Time” (Dream Theater)

Dismissal of physical world for revolution “within.” Disembodied monadism as way to find “new voice” and “new law”: prog inversion of “Amazing Grace,” but god doesn’t care. The decision to “take the time” equates subjectivity with self-sufficiency; closed system logic denies social to craft solipsistic refuge. Fetishization of “invention” with denial of (inevitable) lineage.

“River Deep-Mountain High” (Ike & Tina Turner)

Moving past the stock, insipid metaphors (I’m a puppy, you’re my rag doll, etc.), the attraction of the track long premised on inability to hear its coherent architectural foundation (its abyssal bottom, provided by Spector). Recently, and within “pop,” perhaps only W.C. Hart’s Circulatory System tracks function this way, with the 4 or 8 tracks compressed and recompressed to the point of invalidating depth perception (telescoping out and out again, a la House of Leaves). Relation to the other as endless, and without ground.