You like music.
You like listening to songs.
But sometimes you just don’t have the time, right?
You’re already 20 minutes late and just putting on your coat and you’d really love to listen to a song before you go, but it takes 4 bloody minutes! So you end up putting on some song you like and only getting to listen to the slow fade-in and the intro. Maybe you find some excuse to linger a bit longer. Maybe your have to tie your shoes a bit tighter make sure for the third time that you have your keys with you. But it’s futile. Before the first word of the first verse is even uttered, you’re already running down the stair while the luscious tune plays on to an empty room.
So, what are you going to do?
Give up listening to songs when you’re in a hurry?
No way. That’s when you need music the most, to spiral your mood off or to put some stuff or other into perspective.
Sit down and listen to the whole long song anyway and be even more late?
Nope. That North Korean nuclear bomb is not going to dismantle itself. Los Angeles will be a crater unless you hurry up.
So, why don’t you listen to *a really short song*?
I mean really short. You may think Blur’s Song 2 doesn’t exactly drag on across several eras of history, but these songs are going to make it seem like it does. And yet, they aren’t intros, interludes or sound snippets. They are real songs with development and with lyrics that make sense.
So, here it is: JACOB’S TOP 5 VERY SHORT SONGS:
5. Batteries Not Included (Sparks)
This miniature operetta dramatizes a traumatic real life experience. Within 45 seconds, it takes us from curiosity to joy to rage to melancholy. A true rollercoaster ride. Enjoy!
4. The Idiot (Gangway)
This 39-second beauty by the Danish masters of new wave is a live favourite. When Gangway played their only re-union show in 2006 in a small suburban café, they ended the show by playing this song and then storming out of the door.
3. Propaganda (Sparks)
After receiving complaints that Batteries Not Included (from their 2nd album) was way too long-winded, Sparks crafted this 23-second bit of history for their 4th album. Like the best of Sparks songs, the lyrics seem to be about history or politics or something completely unrelated, but you always get a strange feeling that it’s actually all about sex.
2. You Suffer (Napalm Death)
If you just don’t have the patience for songs like The Idiot and Propaganda, this is the song for you. It’s not very good, but it’s so sexily short. And I do think something is expressed. Sorry about this one not having lyrics that make sense. Please focus on its amazing brevity.
1. Her Majesty (The Beatles)
Yes, yes, Beatles at number one, bla bla bla. I apologize. But this song is just so good. It spends 22 seconds delivering a condensed version of what every pop love song ever has been spending 4 minutes trying to say. It’s ironic and sincere at the same time, and even though it’s so short, it somehow feels like a real song. It was the last song on the last album The Beatles recorded. This was how they wanted to go out.
Purple 