I've been very busy this last week with a cross-country move, and I've fallen well behind, so please excuse the long catch-up post...
44. Another DayMy ranking: #24
This is such a beautiful song. It's very emotionally powerful, and it has a great vocal performance by JLB. The whole "They took pictures of our dreams" section is unreal.
43. Fall into the LightMy ranking: #52
The best song on
Distance over Time in my book—it's the one that makes me pause and take notice.. The first section is pretty good, and then the instrumental section takes it to a higher level. Kind of has a Hell's Kitchen vibe in that they find a theme that really works, and then build up that theme over the course of a couple of minutes.
42. Hell's KitchenMy ranking: #80
Hey, speaking of it! Would you believe I wrote the Hell's Kitchen reference into the previous writeup before I knew it was up next?
I think I might have under-ranked this one by just a bit. I've always had a bit of trouble knowing what to do with it, because it feels like it's somewhere in between a standalone song and a transition piece. But whatever it is, it's good at it. I like buildup, and this is a pretty good one. It also leads in really well to Lines in the Sand.
41. These WallsMy ranking: #43
This song connected with me a lot when I first got into the band, both musically and lyrically. It's not one I think about much anymore, so there's a sense in which this is a bit of a legacy ranking, but I think the song merits it. I really enjoy the mix of heavy riffs and melodic keyboards at the beginning, and I think this is an under-appreciated JLB performance.
In my head, I always heard a MP backing vocal under the chorus (in the style of the "Never could have just a part of it" verse of TROAE), and it always surprised me that he didn't record a part there.
40. Endless SacrificeMy ranking: #59
A few years ago, this probably would have made my top 50—and really, it did come close, since a nine-space gap on my list is pretty minute. In fact, listening to it now, I probably should have gone higher on this one and kept it in there.
Like most of
Train of Thought, it really manages to go all-out with heaviness and technicality while also maintaining a really strong melodic sensibility. I really like Petrucci's riffing all over this song. The riffs under the verses that whet the appetite for the heavy chorus, the instrumental section, all of it is awesome. I get why the instrumental section loses some people (like TDS and ITNOG), but I love the side of DT where they just go off and do something like this. (It's honestly something I missed for most of the 2010s, and I'm hoping it's back at least to some extent for the 2020s.)
39. Barstool WarriorMy ranking: Unranked (approximately #112)
Like most of DoT, this one just doesn't quite hit the mark for me. It falls into my "good, but doesn't stand out" range. I'm not surprised to see it this high, though, knowing how much praise it got when the album came out.
For me, it's kind of a weird song in that there are parts I really like, and parts that just completely fall flat for me. The guitar solos sprinkled across this one are really good, as is the piano break. Like Kev, though, I just don't feel most of the vocal melodies. The chorus just feels too generic to give it the impact that it's going for (incidentally, I also feel this way about S2N). The final section starts off really well with "Promises made..." but then falls flat with "No one can save you" through the end. The result is such an inconsistent experience that listening to it just now, I changed my mind multiple times over the duration of the song about whether I had been unfair in ranking it this low.
38. Overture 1928My ranking: #31
Now we're talking! I think this is an incredible overture that transcends the form to become a compelling instrumental piece in its own right. I think even if I'd never heard any other Metropolis anything, I'd find this song thrilling. Of course, in context it's even greater, particularly with the reprise of the Watches and Thoughtfully Smiles melody, and just the energy that it carries throughout and really drives home at the end, leading into Strange Deja Vu (when a lot of overtures kind of peter out and rely on the next song that get the energy back up).
37. OutcryMy ranking: #51
This just missed my own top 50, but I definitely approve of this selection. It's one that really didn't connect with me when I first heard ADTOE, but grew a lot over the subsequent years. I really like Elite's post analyzing why he likes it, and that speaks to a lot of what I like, too. The integration of the music with the lyrics definitely caught my ear over the years. And I agree that it's just really good songwriting.
Interesting that Outcry has such consensus appeal as to be on all lists but one. It's deserved, but I'm not sure I'd have expected it.
35. The Bigger PictureMy ranking: #10
This is another one for which I thought I might have the highest ranking, but it's cool to see that I did not! Nice choice, Ben_Jamin! This song just really resonates with me on a really deep level, and has amazing songwriting. I really like the piano on this one, the verses, the chorus, everything. But what really makes it a great song is the final section. The song almost completely dies down, and then comes back, not just for another riff or chorus, but to deliver this powerful, uplifting finale that keeps building and building.
It's also helped by the fact that DT12 came out when I was 17, which I think is kind of an important music age for most people, myself included. This song was heavily in my rotation during one of the more memorable years of my life. And while the rest of the album faded for me, this one stayed.
This is also the first song from my top 10 to show up! Pretty cool that it took so long, and I'm fairly optimistic about the other nine (the one I'd be most worried about dropped a few spaces after this one).
35. Lifting Shadows off a DreamMy ranking: #99
I figured this one would be up here, after how much difficulty I had getting it out during the recent survivor. I'm still a bit surprised that the consensus rates it higher than all of the first three songs on
Awake, which, as I've said, are a huge part of what makes that album special to me.
I think Lifting Shadows is a good song, musically, but the vocal melodies are a little unsatisfying for me. In particular, the "and she listens openly" line just misses the mark for me. It feels like it's leading into something else, but that something else never comes. And it's a really key line in the structure of the song!
34. The Root of All EvilMy ranking: #47
This is a very good song. It has this nice sense of forward motion through all the different sections. Even though the melodies and tempos change, it always feels like this song is going somewhere and knows exactly where that is. I think my favorite part is "Driven blindly by our sins, misled so easily..."
33. MisunderstoodMy ranking: #92
I love this song, obviously. I'm not a huge fan of the "noise solo", but the rest of the song is sheer perfection.
I find it rather odd that despite not 'being a huge fan' of a quarter of the song's total duration, you still put it at #4.
I've never seen someone actually put a fraction to it, and that's probably higher than I would have guessed, but it makes a lot of sense.
That's why it's #92 for me. This is a really good song for 3/4 of its runtime, and then becomes utterly intolerable to me. I hate whatever you want to call the last 25% of this song. I like those soft, haunting verses, the build into the huge chorus, and the instrumental bit after it before the outro riff kicks on. I enjoy those parts a lot, and with a proper intro this would probably be a top 50 song.
But I never listen to it except on the rare occasions that I listen to SDOIT, because I dread the outro, and there is no clear off-ramp in the song before that comes in. Honestly, the guitar noise is not even the worst part to me: it's the atonal tinkly keys.
(In fact, the last three minutes of this song alone probably drag SDOIT several spots down my album ranking to the 14th place it inhabits.)
32. Wait for SleepMy ranking: #5 (highest placement of this song)
I love this song. It's just a perfect two minutes and 32 seconds that does everything it needs to do. The lyrics are gorgeous, James delivers them brilliantly, and the piano parts complement them perfectly. I've probably heard this song hundreds of times and I still sometimes have to catch my breath on "In with the ashes..."
This, to me, is what music with words is all about. There's a meaningful emotion conveyed through a beautiful description of a scene which is paired perfectly with music.
You can think of this as an intro to Learning to Live, and the two absolutely pair beautifully ("hey, I wonder what might be one of the four songs that 425 placed above this one?"). But I think Wait for Sleep stands perfectly well on its own.
I used to have this a little lower, around 8-12, and I think I was held back a little bit by the idea of having this little piano piece ahead of all these huge prog compositions. But that little piano piece does such a beautiful, wonderful thing and holds such a special place in my heart that it deserves a spot in my top five.
31. DisappearMy ranking: #57
This is a hard one for me. I have my issues with some of how this song is written, and especially how it's produced. I don't really care for the intro and outro, especially, and the guitar and keyboard sounds on "Days disappear" part. Those parts kind of give me a headache sometimes. So that used to hold this song pretty low for me, although I always liked the rest pretty well—James really has an excellent performance here.
But, and I'll try not to get too personally detailed about this, but about a year ago, the type of event that this song is about happened in my life. And in the weeks after, I needed this song, and it had real meaning and power for me, and I didn't care about all the stuff that annoyed me. For a little while, it was the only music I could listen to at all. So I'm very grateful that it was there. But now it also carries a very painful association for me.
So #57 is an attempt to find some placement that's compatible with all my complicated and confusing feelings about this song. I'm very glad it exists, but it's not one I seek out, except under extraordinary circumstances.
30. Beyond This LifeMy ranking: #28
This is one that I forget about sometimes, but whenever I remember it, I remember how absolutely fantastic it is. This is a quintessential Dream Theater song, with everything thrown in including the kitchen sink, while the whole thing still comes together as a coherent piece. Everyone is firing on all cylinders here.
I'm a big fan of the "oh yeah-yeah" from JLB, and I've always thought he should have done another one at 7:10.
29. Under a Glass MoonMy ranking: #20
I absolutely love the mood that's present on
Images and Words and on no other album I've ever heard. Under a Glass Moon definitely carries that mood, and is just a fantastic song. I love the combined guitar/keyboard intro, James's performance is just out of this world (especially "praying for TIME to disappear"), and, of course, there's one of Petrucci's best solos. This is just an excellent song that I still enjoy even after hearing it dozens of times.
So, for those keeping track at home, my rankings of the IAW songs that have dropped so far are #24, #5 and #20. Either I hate the other five (all of which I expect to see upcoming), or this is my favorite DT album by miles and miles—you decide.
Topic: Top 100 Dream Theater songs countdown (Top 2 revealed!!) (Read 53416 times)
