I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Whitney Houston
Horns punch the air, a drum machine grins, and Whitney Houston's voice arrives already at full size, asking for a partner as if the whole room had been invited to answer.
Criminal – Fiona Apple
The piano arrives already guilty, a low figure that does not so much announce itself as confess.
Born Slippy .NUXX – Underworld
The kick is a fact before the words are.
Don’t Go – Yazoo
A synth bass hops like a nervous heartbeat, too fast for a ballad and too human for a machine, and Alison Moyet's voice comes in already bargaining, don't go, as if the chorus were a hand on a sleeve.
Try a Little Tenderness – Otis Redding
It begins as advice, almost courtly, a man telling other men to be gentle, the horns holding still like ushers.
Mr. Tambourine Man – The Byrds
A twelve-string guitar states four bars that glitter and then hold, compressed until the note seems to ring in the air of the radio itself, and only then do the voices come in.
You Oughta Know – Alanis Morissette
A bass guitar enters already angry, sliding, and Alanis Morissette's voice follows it without warming up, mid-sentence, as if the listener had walked into a phone call that should have stayed private.
One Nation Under a Groove – Funkadelic
The groove arrives already smiling, a bass that rolls rather than stabs, a guitar that comments from the side, a chorus that sounds like a pledge written by people who have just got off a bus.
Interview of Tom Waits (1979)
Tom Waits on Australia's Don Lane Show in 1979, in the wake of Blue Valentine, is charm disguised as wreckage.
Smoke on the Water – Deep Purple
Four notes, then a rest, then the same four with a tail, and the whole of rock's most borrowed sentence is already finished.