My top 25 favorite songs. Part 2: 10-1

Here's the second part of my list. I did this list in two parts due to time constrains. Here's the first part if you haven't read it yet. Without further ado, lets start the home stretch.

10. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
What can I say about this song that hasn't been said before? I first started listening to this song one summer when I took up walking as my main form of exercise. As such, I listened to it mostly while walking, and thus found the lyrics about finding one's path through life to be quite appropriate. I also enjoy the slow buildup from the relaxed intro to one of the best rock and roll outros of all time. Ah, hell, it's Stairway! Do I need to explain it?

9. Nemo – Nightwish
Unlike many of the previous songs on the list, this one doesn't have a special meaning for me because of its lyrics. I actually first heard it when I watched a video of an all druid raid taking down Onyxia back in the days of vanilla WoW, and then raiding the horde capital cities afterward. That said, I don't actually associate this song with the awesomeness of the druid class; I just like it because it is a great song. It's a symphonic metal song that slowly builds up from a mellow beginning to a more energetic conclusion without ever loosing its mystic mood. That, and Tarja's voice is just beautiful.

8. Cherub Rock - Smashing Pumpkins
I don't know why, but I really love this song. The lyrics don't mean much to me, but perhaps its the fact that, like ...And Justice for All, the various instruments on this track all have a similar rhythmic structure. Meh, it's a mystery to me. I just know that I like it now as much as I did when I first heard it, and a song that I can describe that way gets major points in my book.

7. 18 and Life - Skid Row
Sure, the lyrics to this song a pretty good, but I think the reason I like this song is the mood it creates. It starts out sad to match the protagonist's sad life, then gets angry as his anger at the world grows, but loses its angry edge when our protagonist kills someone. It's a sad song, without a doubt, but its deeper message about how there are no victims in the world of drunken townies and that everything that happens to them is pretty much their fault means that the flip side is that, if you make smart decisions, bad things won't happen to you. To be honest, I never liked this song because of the lyrics; it's just a good, slow rock-out song.

6. Going Under - Evanescence
Remember how I said that I interpreted My Immortal to be about two parts of yourself, one of which you were trying to let go of? I interpreted this song as the other side of that story. I saw it as the story of someone recalling their descent into this "other" part of themselves. This was actually a repeating theme I saw in their songs, whether it is there or not, and that's probably why they meant so much to me. I also really like how the songs melody complements the mood of the lyrics: sad, but not the saddest it could be, meaning the worst is yet to come.

5. Turn The Page (Live) - Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
Now this is a perfect rock song. The lyrics, though specific to the theme of being a rock star, are truly about needing to put up a front when people expect you to be more than you can be, and how torturous it can be to keep that front up. Thus this song can have meaning to anyone who has ever pretended to be something they aren't. It also has, in my opinion, some of the best build-up of any song I have ever heard. It starts out mellow but intensely sad, and though the song gains more of a hard rock feel as it continues, it never loses that sad melody. It's just a really great song. 'Nuff said.

4. Through the Fire and Flames - Dragonforce
I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for putting this so high on the list, but I really do love this song. No matter what mood I am in, this song gets me pumped up, and few songs can do that. In fact, I'd say this is the best song for that purpose that I know. It also has a lot of meaning to me because I have tried dozens of times to beat this on Guitar Hero 3 and failed. (My best time is 83%.) But regardless of that, this song is the epitome of power metal, and Dragonforce deserves all of the fame that this song brought them.

3. Disarm - Smashing Pumpkins
And back to the sad songs. Though some people have interpreted this song to be about abortion, I see as being about the depression that comes with the loss of childhood innocence and the fact that even with all the pain we may be feeling, we still try to put on a happy face for others. Both of these themes resonate with me strongly, and the minimalist structure of the song helps to facilitate the somber mood the lyrics create. Corgan's pleasing vocals are the one happy thing about this song, but they are enough to make me able to listen to it and not cry every time. Really, it's that sad. If his voice was depressing as well, the song would be too sad to listen to.

2. Zombie - The Cranberries
Oh boy, where do I begin with this song? I first heard this song when I heard a snippet of it in some commercial for some album collection. It stuck with me after I heard it, and when I finally figured out what song it was and downloaded it, I was really glad to have finally found it. Its bass riff is right up there with the one in Rhinoceros as one of my favorites of all time, and every instrument on the track can be heard distinctly, something I love. The lyrics never played an important role in this song for me, but they are still great; though they are technically about the Troubles in Ireland, the lyrics could be applied to any situation where a group is fighting for control of your thoughts, something our culture seems to do all the time... but that's neither here nor there. In the end, I love this song. Dolores O'Riordan's vocal work is fantastic, the instruments all work really well together; I just can't say enough good things about this song.

1. Lithium - Evanescence
Ah yes, the song that defined my childhood. Before I transferred all of my songs to my new computer, this one had more play counts on my old one than any other song; at least fifty more than the next one on the list, and quite possibly a hundred. (That's no hyperbole; I loved this song that much.) So, what is so great about Lithium? Like many of my favorite songs when I was young, it was a sad song, but Lithium went beyond sad. The lyrics, the mood, the tone of Amy Lee's voice, the melody, everything about this song was meant to convey a feeling of deep depression, and I loved every second of it. However, even more importantly, the lyrics really spoke to me back then, and looking back on my youth, they speak to me even more now. In Lithium, Amy sings about how she is very sad, but finds a sort of ironic comfort in that sadness, and as such, the sadness is too familiar to let go off. If literally interpreted, the song is about a failed relationship that Amy refuses to leave, but as you can tell by now, I wasn't big on literal interpretations of Evanescence songs. Anyways, every line of the song speaks somehow to the theme of finding more comfort in the familiar emotion of sorrow than the unfamiliar one of joy. As sad as it is to say, that sentiment defined my childhood. I was not a happy child, and even when I was finally able to be happy, sorrow was too constant of a companion for me to let go of. It took me a long time to finally let go of my constant sorrow, and until I did, this song was the song that epitomized what I was feeling. To this day, this song still brings back memories of that dark place. It's haunting, really.

Honorable Mention: In Bloom - Nirvana
Nirvana is a great band, but I didn't put this on the main part of the list just because I don't like this song as much as I used to. I still enjoy the layering of the various instruments and pleasant melody the song provides, and Cobain's mysterious lyrics still boggle my mind to no end, but the fact that the song slowly speeds up over its duration always ticked me off a bit. The song has, in my opinion, a perfect speed at the beginning. Why they needed to speed it up was beyond me. Still, I won't deny that this is a fantastic song, because it is.

Well, there you go. I certainly enjoyed making this list, because I had to listen to all of these songs over and over again to put them in the order of how much I like them, and I hope you enjoyed reading it, at least a little.