The Elusive 6th Star
Posted 10-23-2007 at 12:39 PM by stiney51
I have about 3000 songs in my iTunes right now and about 2000 of them are rated by me on a 5-star scale (mind you I've deleted a lot of 1 star songs too):
1 Star (Going to be deleted 'cause I'll never listen to it)
2 Stars (not horrible, but don't care for it either, ok to shuffle through)
3 Stars (decent song, kind of a catch all good song category)
4 Stars (very good song)
5 Stars (Great song)
Now it's relatively easy for a song to obtain a 4-star rating, currently 384 songs have 4 stars. There are tons of very good songs from a wide range of musical tastes including 28 songs from my extensive Jimmy Buffett collection, 11 songs from my large Iron Maiden catalog and a dozen songs by pink Floyd.
The 5th star is pretty difficult to obtain. Only 50 songs are in this category with Metallica holding 6 slots (this one surprised me actually because thinking back I wouldn't have guessed they'd snag that many).
So recently I was thinking "what if iTunes had a 6th star? who might get that?" So here's my list of 6 songs I own that I'd give a 6-star rating to. I selected only the songs that had the most feeling in them and that were delivered by the artist so well that it just made you lose yourself in the song. Only 1 of these songs has received much acclaim, 1 is a live version and 1 probably hasn't been heard by most (if not all) who read this post.
In no particular order:
6. One (Metallica) - hands-down their best song ever. The feeling of hopelessness that this song catches is unreal.
6. Colorful (The Verve Pipe) - Certainly not their most popular song, but delivered so well.
6. Jack The Lion (Harvey Danger) - This song is pretty unheard of, it was never radio-released in my knowledge, but listening to it nearly brings a tear to my eye every time. If you haven't heard it, then give it a listen.
6. Dirty Glass (The Dropkick Murphys) - I'm particular to the version of the song sung with Kay Hanley (formerly of Letters to Cleo) but the fun and bitter feud between the 2 characters in this song is a great fit to the hard-edged style of the Murphys
6. All Around Me (Flyleaf) - This song is very new to me, but struck a cord right away. The range by the singer both draws you intimately into the song and then shouts to the world her feelings.
6. Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season (Jimmy Buffett) - The live version of this song off "Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays" really puts a good song (the original) over the top. Now Buffett is not a great singer or guitar player, but he's a great storyteller. This song is a great example of that.
I'm sure I'll look back on this and my feelings will change, but there's my 6 songs that get the elusive (and non-existant) 6th star in iTunes.
Honorable mention goes to these 5.5 star songs: Welcome to the Black Parade (My Chemical Romance), Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd), Grey Sky Eyes (Carbon Leaf).