Teardrops – Womack & Womack
The bass arrives already dancing, a line so springy it could carry a lighter lyric, and then Linda Womack sings as if the tears were a fact and the rhythm a decision not to drown in them.
A Forest – The Cure
The bass finds the path before anyone asks for one.
Top 10 Most Audacious Samples
A sample is audacious when it steals in daylight and still makes a new song.
Midnight in a Perfect World – DJ Shadow
The piano is melancholy and already old, a figure from David Axelrod's 1969 The Human Abstract, set down in a room that does not belong to 1969.
Lucifer Over Lancashire – The Fall
The riff does not apologise for being a riff.
What if Madonna never reinvented herself?
What if Madonna froze the chameleon in 1984 and never changed color again? Same lace, same smirk, same dance vocabulary, decade after decade, while the culture turned around her like weather around a statue.
Rhodes Electric Piano – The electric warmth of keys
Harold Rhodes built the first of these pianos for wounded airmen in the Second World War, a small teaching instrument made from scrap, meant for hospital beds rather than ballrooms.
Piano Man – Billy Joel
The harmonica comes in sideways, a little sharp with barroom air, and the piano answers in a slow waltz, as if the room had asked for one more song before last orders.
London Calling – The Clash
By the late summer of 1979, punk's first uniform had started to pinch, and The Clash answered by recording a double album that refused to stand in one place.
Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones
The guitar starts like weather changing its mind, a shiver rather than a riff, and the band falls in behind it as if they had been waiting for the first drop.