Top 100 Dream Theater songs countdown (Top 2 revealed!!)

[KevShmev]

The new album should be included.

-This one is important: NO SONGS FROM A VIEW FROM THE TOP OF THE WORLD MAY BE INCLUDED.  I personally think the new car smell is still too powerful to include them.  My game, my rules.
 

Are you saying we can't be objective? There's plenty of people that think the new car ..smells.

 

[TAC]

I just think the people that have fresh love for it will cancel out the people that cast it aside right away.

I have excellent judgement and know right where the songs belong on a Top 100 list.

They should be included.

[wolfking]

The new album should be included.

Nah.

[Lonk]

Do I compiled my top 100. Have a spread sheet going, color coded and everything.

Now just need to rank them in order

[Cool Chris]

You cannot list both You Not Me (studio version) and You Not Me (demo version). 

I pray that this does not present a problem for anyone....

[TAC]

You cannot list both You Not Me (studio version) and You Not Me (demo version). 

I pray that this does not present a problem for anyone....

 

[Destiny Of Chaos]

I think the solution here is to push this out a few months and including the new album. Waiting till April for example would be around 6 months since release day. Would hate to see an undertaking like this without it.

[KevShmev]

Nope, it is going forward as planned.  If you do not like the rules, no one is forcing you to participate, and I would respectfully ask that anyone who disagrees not be a killjoy and piss all over this thread, as this is meant to be a fun exercise. 

[NoFred]

Will try my hand at my top 106 then send over the 100 that qualify. It *is*a little mental gymnastics to ignore the new ones since they’re getting the most listening time.

[425]

Glad I checked the DT side and saw this. This could be fun. I've been thinking about coming up with a new list, but don't have the time at all to the whole countdown list with writeups thing. I'll work on this over the weekend and try to get you a list.

And for what it's worth, I agree with excluding the new album. I'd put the timeline at something like six months before including a new release.

[wolfking]

Nope, it is going forward as planned.  If you do not like the rules, no one is forcing you to participate, and I would respectfully ask that anyone who disagrees not be a killjoy and piss all over this thread, as this is meant to be a fun exercise. 

Along with not allowing the new album, can you disqualify the Astonishing also?

[DTwwbwMP]

Nope, it is going forward as planned.  If you do not like the rules, no one is forcing you to participate, and I would respectfully ask that anyone who disagrees not be a killjoy and piss all over this thread, as this is meant to be a fun exercise. 

Along with not allowing the new album, can you disqualify the Astonishing also?

NO NEED! It's "self disqualifying"

[Ben_Jamin]

Okay I got my songs listed out, now to arrange them in order. This is where I listen to the songs and will place them based on the listens. Let's see what gets placed where...I am amazed at how many songs Dream Theater has that were left off. I still enjoy the songs that were left off too so that's saying something on what I think about their output.

[Wim Kruithof]

I still got a hard time ranking the studioalbums in order, my favorite 100 songs would be a huge undertaking. I would have give it a fair shot though, if only a View was included. The rules forced me out but he, I would be stick around to see the outcome of this list.

[KevShmev]

Nope, it is going forward as planned.  If you do not like the rules, no one is forcing you to participate, and I would respectfully ask that anyone who disagrees not be a killjoy and piss all over this thread, as this is meant to be a fun exercise. 

Along with not allowing the new album, can you disqualify the Astonishing also?

Any submitted list that does not include at least 5 songs from The Astonishing will be automatically disqualified.

I kid, I kid!!

[Lonk]

I think my list has 7 from TA, where they will land is the question.

[KevShmev]

I think have 13-14 in there from The Astonishing, but I think the highest one right now is at 40. 

[Ben_Jamin]

Oh...I'll have plenty from The Astonishing...As of now, it's my second favorite Dream Theater album.

[DragonAttack]

So, 'Burning My Soul' from the FII demos should be listed as coming from that offering?

And, what about 'Instrumedley' from 'Live at Budokan'?

What format do you desire?

I am going to try and participate, though life is what happens when you are busy making plans.....

[Ben_Jamin]

So, 'Burning My Soul' from the FII demos should be listed as coming from that offering?

And, what about 'Instrumedley' from 'Live at Budokan'?

What format do you desire?

I am going to try and participate, though life is what happens when you are busy making plans.....

If you're going to rank Burning My Soul, you can't list both the studio and the demo. So you're ranking either the demo or the studio. For me, I'm listing the version I prefer if it differs from the studio version, because That specific version is why I rank the song in the spot it's in.

[DTA]

Ranking 1-10 is easy but after that it's pretty hard to objectively rank stuff. My master list has quite a bit more TA/WDADU than I expected

[KevShmev]

So, 'Burning My Soul' from the FII demos should be listed as coming from that offering?

 

No, just listing Burning My Soul.

And, what about 'Instrumedley' from 'Live at Budokan'?

 

No. That is a medley of bits from existing DT (and LTE) songs, so that does not count.

What format do you desire?

Just list the songs 100-1.  All you have to do is list the song.  What version you prefer does not matter.  If you list a song, it can come from any of the versions (demo, studio or live).  It all counts as the being the same.

[DragonAttack]

I'm sorry....  I meant format as to simply typed, or Excel or Word doc (if we can do that via PM)

[KevShmev]

Simply typed is fine.  No need for any attachments or anything.

[bosk1]

Really cool thread idea.  I tried something like this several years ago.  I thought it was a fun exercise.  But what I quickly found is that there are too many songs, and when you deal with lists this big, few people will actually participate.  So my only criticism is that a top 100 is too much.  Be that as it may, your thread; your rules, so I have started compiling mine.  It will take me a little while.  But here is a methodology that I think saves time and helps out quite a bit:  I took the list by album and copied it into a Word doc.  First thing is, I chopped out some that will never make a list, like most of the non-album tracks and the Nomac tracks.  Then, within each album, I ranked them.  For instance, just within Images and Words, I rearranged them to rank them 1-8.  Did that for each album.  Once I did that, I autonumbered the entire list.  I am currently at 144 songs.  The process from here is not too hard.  I just quickly scroll through and look at the top ranked song on each album and then ask myself which one I like best.  That one gets moved up to the top of the list.  First time through, that song is #1.  Then I go through and look at which remaining songs are top of each album, and ask which of those I like best.  That is #2.  And so on.  That seems to be the most efficient for how my mind works.  Hope that helps for anyone who is thinking about doing this.

[Lonk]

The process from here is not too hard.  I just quickly scroll through and look at the top ranked song on each album and then ask myself which one I like best.  That one gets moved up to the top of the list.  First time through, that song is #1.  Then I go through and look at which remaining songs are top of each album, and ask which of those I like best.  That is #2.  And so on.  That seems to be the most efficient for how my mind works.  Hope that helps for anyone who is thinking about doing this.

That's actually a really good process for this. I started mine list similar to yours, I cut out anything I knew was not making the list. Then I pick the songs that I knew for sure were making the list. I was left with 30 songs to pick for the last 15 spots, which was easy to do.

Ranking them now is what's taking longer, so I might apply your method to the remaining songs.

[TAC]

Then, within each album, I ranked them.  For instance, just within Images and Words, I rearranged them to rank them 1-8.  Did that for each album.  Once I did that, I autonumbered the entire list.  I am currently at 144 songs.  The process from here is not too hard.  I just quickly scroll through and look at the top ranked song on each album and then ask myself which one I like best.  That one gets moved up to the top of the list.

That's a great idea. If I were going to do this, I would take this advice.

[KevShmev]

Yep, that is basically how I do it. I rank the songs from each album that I think have a chance of making it, while leaving off the ones I know have zero chance.  And then I add ACOS, the FII demos and other assorted tracks into their "fake" album and rank them in order.  And then I just scan it and make the list.  Literally took like 15 minutes.

[bosk1]

OK, finished my top 100 as of right now.  Some could change if you asked me again an hour from now.  Sometimes, it was a tossup for 2-3 songs in a given spot.  Sometimes, there were clusters of up to maybe 10 or so songs where they could be interchangeable.  Anyhow, I misunderstood and posted mine in the thread rather than PM it to Kev, so I am deleting it.  But here are some observations:

Other than Nomac tracks that I cut out of The Astonishing, here is the breakdown of how many did NOT make the cut from each album:
-WDADU:  3
-I&W:  1
-Awake:  4
FII:  4
-SFAM:  4
-6 Degrees:  1
-TOT:  2
-8VM:  2
-SC:  3
-BCSL:  2
-ADTOE:  2
-DT12:  1
-TA:  13
-D/T:  1
-non-album tracks:  1

Pretty balanced.  But the balance is also kind of deceptive, because the top 30 or so leaned much more heavily on albums I liked more.  Once I got farther down the list, other less-favored albums had clusters of more songs. 

Anyhow, that was fun.

[Revenge319]

This is a pretty cool idea, and as such I have finally compiled my rankings into reverse order and have sent to your PMs!


Also, Bosk's post of what songs didn't make the cut from each album sounds fun, so here's my personal list of those that didn't make the cut:

WDADU: 6
I&W: 2
Awake: 4
FII: 5
SFAM: 3
SDOIT: 0
TOT: 1
Octavarium: 3
SC: 2
BC&SL: 0
ADTOE: 2
DT12: 4
TA: 9 (14 if you count the NOMAC tracks)
DOT: 1

[Cool Chris]

So I was going through DT's catalog and feeling good about my progress. Then I got to TA, and as usual with me, that album completely messes things up I haven't listened to that album in ages - not because I dislike it, I enjoy it a lot - I just never have the time to listen to it in full. And thus I don't have any confidence ranking any of those songs.

bosk, isn't it hard to rank songs across albums? Unless I am misunderstanding your methodology, which is possible. But how to do you treat a situation like how the worst song on Awake (an 11) is better than the best song on FII (a 1)?

[Lonk]

The way I understood Bosk's method is that once you rank the songs within each album, you are only comparing the top ranked song from each album. Once you select one, the next one becomes the top ranked song for that album (since you already picked the top one) and you compare that one with the rest, this way you are only comparing 14 songs at a time.

Continue this process until you reach 100. It is very possible that you might pick all songs from an album before getting to another album. I'll try to finish my list today, and I am sure I'll rank all my choices from I&W higher than my choices from BC&SL.

[bosk1]

^Exactly.  So let's take the top 3 songs from I&W, Awake, and FII as an example.  I rank them thus:

I&W:
-1. Metropolis
-2. Learning To Live
-3. Wait for Sleep

Awake:
-1. Scarred
-2. The Mirror
-3. Voices

FII:
-1. Lines in the Sand
-2. Trial of Tears
-3. Take Away My Pain

So at first, I am just comparing Metropolis, Scarred, and Lines, since those are each in the top spot in their respective albums.  I choose Metropolis.  Now that song is gone from the album lists.  So next, I compare Learning To Live, Scarred, and Lines.  Let's say I pick LTL in this example.  Now that one is gone.  Next, I compare Wait for Sleep, Scarred, and Lines.  Now I pick Scarred, so Scarred is gone.  (My overall list so far looks like this:  1.  Metropolis, 2. LTL, 3. Scarred)  Next, I am comparing Wait for Sleep, The Mirror, and Lines.  On, and on, and on until done...

[Cool Chris]

Oh yes that makes more sense!

[bosk1]

And there's no reason why anyone has to do it that way.  I just found it faster and easier because I am only comparing 15 songs at a time instead of having to look at the entire list.