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ROCK AND ROLL! => All Them Other Guys => Topic started by: Zzzptm on May 31, 2026, 11:18:46 AM
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Not necessarily a top ten list of ranked tunes, but ten songs that you turn to when you need something to lift your spirits. The songs that get you to do one more rep, one more push, one more day...
Todd Rundgren, for me, is a source of much music that uplifts and encourages me. His 1981 album, "Healing", is one I keep going back to, in my mind or in re-experiencing, to remind me that there's reason to hope, reason to live.
That's a live version, and it's beautiful. The whole song is wonderful, including the deliberate silence between the opening lament and the revelatory remainder of the song. The line, "The healer was not alone", I've quoted to myself repeatedly to remind me that if I'm struggling to do good in the world, I'm not alone.
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Todd is great at writing music that noodles the noggin!
Here's one straight from the heart: Sea of Joy by Blind Faith. I don't listen to it very often at all, but have found that when there is an overabundance of change in my life, that I have not directed, it works magic to ground me. So, maybe not so much, "inspirational," to me as it is "perspecitve adjusting".
Here's the official version, with hip violin solo from Rick Grech:
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Okay... Inspirational tunes.
This is gonna need a bit of thinking and pondering on my part.
But I will take part for sure.
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Life is a Long Song by Jethro Tull always grounds me and makes me contemplate life and my own mortality
It takes me out of bad thinking and forces me out of my own mind and lightens my feelings
Just a great tune
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Alright I'm gonna kick things off with this one.
SLAYER is a band that can most certainly give you a nice boost of energy when you need it the most. Especially if you're feeling down...and if you feel like someone's done you wrong this song works extremely well because ofcourse we all know that PAYBACK's a bitch motherfucker!
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I'll catch up later!!
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With echoes of You've Got Another Thing Coming and many other songs of self-effectiveness in their catalog, here's a newer tune off of their Firepower release, called No Surrender:
It leaves no room for equivocation about its meaning, it could only be written in more of a concrete manner if it only had one lyric:
Fuck it, I'm doin' it!
For those times when I want to hear something upbeat, positive, and no bullshit. Good workout tune.
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I guess I find this song quite inspirational. A song by a Heavy Metal band dealing with domestic abuse...
Metallica - The Day That Never Comes
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For my second pick I'm also gonna have a JUDAS PRIEST tune.
This one from the criminally underrated DEMOLITION album.
This is a fight song, but it's also a nice booster song when feeling down and beaten.
ONE ON ONE!!
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Good stuff so far, and the Blind Faith tune is one I hadn't heard before, nice addition to my experience.
My next two go together:
Black Sabbath - "Looking for Today" and "Spiral Architect"
They go together so well, emphasizing hope in a difficult, harsh world.
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Sabbath is just awesomely chock full of inspirational tunes, those two are fantastic.
From 1995, I find this to be a great song to listen to when facing instability and uncertainty:
Rancid - Ruby Soho
Bonus tune. A bit older than Rancid's tune, a nifty little post-punk banger that I enjoy when the wind is blowing with change:
New Order - Temptation
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2nd pick and a song from someone who made a habit of including inspirational songs on his albums:
DIO - We Rock
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^^^^
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Crosses that one of me own list.
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The Grateful Dead - Touch of Grey
Got me through a sheer hell of a summer in 1987 that saw me have a major bout of depression (even though I didn't know what it was at the time) and some spiralling that saw me move out of the house, drop my major to Undecided, and get married. I'll be 39 years of that marriage this coming August and I still get by with this reassuring composition from The Grateful Dead.
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I know a few people who really find a lot in that tune, I have never liked it, from the first day it aired and I think, if possible, even less today, Not sure why - there isn't anything "wrong" with it, it's thoughtful, it's the GD (although never been much of a fan, they can jam), but it just always clicked with me, the wrong way.
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For my third one I'm gonna go with a BLACK SABBATH tune.
This also pretty much carries the same theme for me as my previous two.
This is about the individual.
I, this one!
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Hawkwind - Master of the Universe
This one can drive me forward when I need to get something done, especially technical work where there's a lot of command-line coding to do. I had this on constant repeat as I did my Cisco CCNP-Security credential back in 2013, when I was changing back to a career in IT. I got the certs, thanks in part to this song, and now I'm here in my current role. :)
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3rd pick... and the penultimate section from a side long epic called The Ninth Wave
Kate Bush - Hello Earth
The drowning girl has an out of body experience and looks down on the world...
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I've never even listened to The Kick Inside, much less anything else Kate has done. No reason other than just never happened. But I always saw that one album, everywhere for a while. Maybe I'll check her out!
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Could You Be Loved by Bob Marley always lifts me up and thinking of better ways
I have been a fan of Bob for over 30 years and quite frankly he's truly unique and has many positive songs
Very inspiring
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Not fan of Marley or the genre but the ones I've heard from him have been rather positive indeed.
And even as a non fan I can say the guy had talent.
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@Vyn
The Hounds of Love is an album I've always adored.
@Thel
No problem with a bit of Marley, often very listenable. But like Charger it isn't otherwise a genre I'm a fan of.
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Pick no. 4 - A bit of early 80s NWOBHM!
Saxon - Wheels of Steel
I used to annoy my fellow students by putting this on the Jukebox every chance I got in the Student Common Room at college (ca 1982-84)
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That's a great Marley tune!
The first time I heard about Saxon was in a record store, running across one of their albums. Don't remember which one it was, but this was ~1980, so who knows. In any event, I saw that the singer was named Biff. Thought to myself, what kind of knob goes by "Biff"? This must be some kind of limp-wristed nonsense.
A few weeks later, heard them at a friends house. I changed my mind :) Excellent, hard driving, all metal band that's still cranking them out.
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The Cure - Just Like Heaven
Because, timing. And it inspires joy in me, recalling the transcendence of love.
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For my 4th pick I'll go with a similar theme as KDC.
This is a song that always brings a smile to my face...and it's a great song when you're driving along...you don't even have to be on a Highway for it to rock big time.
HIGHWAY STAR!!!
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@Thel, that's a great Bob Marley tune. I enjoy that from time to time, for certain. "Is This Love" is another that I like to pair with that when I'm in a Marley mood.
@Vyn, that was a sweet tune, thanks.
@KDC and Charger, VRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! :smug:
The Isley Brothers - "Harvest for the World"
A song about knowing that you cannot complete the work, but that you still devote your life to it.
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For my 5th pick I'm gonna go with another BLACK SABBATH tune.
This might not be so much of an inspirational song (lyric wise) but it's a song that ALWAYS puts a smile on my face. You just can not listen to this song and not start to smile. It is an uplifting tune.
FAIRIES WEAR BOOTS!!
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Pick Number 5 and a rousing upbeat story from history...
Chris de Burgh - Patricia the Stripper
This was when de Burgh still had a modicum of respectability!
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I haven't heard or thought about that de Burgh song in decades! Heck, forgot he was ever capable of it.
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One of my uncles had Cosmo's Factory, and I loved this song from the first time I heard it. Ever since, whenever I'm bumming, this tune can inspire happiness in me for a few minutes at least :)
From 1970, Creedence Clearwater Revival with Lookin' Out My Back Door:
"Bother me tomorrow, today I'll buy no sorrow." - Simple, basic poetry that just works.
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My mom would play 45s all day while me and my brother ran in circles around the tables in our house. Something about running around in circles while rock and roll is playing just *gets* the 2-6 year old crowd, I guess. "Looking Out My Back Door" was one of those songs in heavy rotation. I love that song because it sounds like childhood.
So do these three songs, each of which gets me to at least do a chair dance and mouth along the words if not out-and-out moving around and singing along...
The Contours - "Do You Love Me"
This one taught me a love of deep bass. There's a good bass singer in The Contours, but it was also was one of the earliest releases to feature new bass amplification that *really* added some strong bottom to recorded songs. The bass line in this track is a total gas, and the whole song is so easy to sing along with. Just gotta do the Mashed Potatoes and The Twist along with it and you're good to go.
Huey "Piano" Smith & The Clowns - "Don't You Just Know It"
I have NO IDEA what they're singing, and I don't want to know. I just sing along and have a hell of a good time in the process. It's call and response in the chorus, so singing along is possible from the get-go and the gibberish sounds are fun and easy to master. GOOBA GOOBA GOOBA! :D
The Del-Vikings - "Whispering Bells"
My mom says that, for her, this is the best rock and roll song ever done. It's the theme song that starts off The Magic Time Warp Show every week, has started the show going back to when it started 30+ years ago. Good gosh, it's been that long... It stays fresh every dang week and I'm always singing along in the backup vocals group. It's pure fun.
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Everyday by Buddy Holly is a song that is part of some of my first memories and really grounds my emotions
It is an amazing song IMHO
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Great to see some love for Bob Marley 😀
And I can understand why some you are not fans
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Everyday by Buddy Holly is a song that is part of some of my first memories and really grounds my emotions
It is an amazing song IMHO
That's another bit of pure hope and joy. Buddy Holly truly was a genius with music.
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Not to pick fates, but I'd rather Holly had skipped that plane ride and Waylon would have took it.
A long time ago, I dated a woman for about a year whose mom was Waylon Jennings' very first wife. I was kind of stunned when she told me and showed me some stuff. Then at some point I met her mom. It all made sense, both her and her mom were nucking futz. The woman I was dating was not Waylons kid, they didn't have any, just for the record. From what she told me, the famous singer and her mom had zero contact once they divorced. This was before he was a name, just trying to make it, and even then I guess he was all about the alcohol and substances.
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For my 6th I'll go with BLAZE BAYLEY who has a ton of inspiring lyrics. The man's great at writing stuff like that.
Here's probably my favourite one, it's from the 10th Dimension album and it's called NOTHING WILL STOP ME!
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Deep Purple - "No One Came"
A song for trying and realizing success is not just in working hard, there's a good deal of luck involved, as well. And if you don't get that luck, or it turns the other way, well... you're still there and you've got some stories to tell.
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For my 7th pick I'll go with ROB ZOMBIE
This one from the Hellbilly Deluxe II and it's a great mood lifter song.
SICK BUBBLE GUM:
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Forgot to post yesterday...
Pick 6 - and a gothic homage to the golden age of horror actors.
The Damned - The Beauty of the Beast
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Gabriel's - "Great Wind"
This one came out just a few years ago, and became an instant favorite of mine. It is such an emotionally-packed lyric and I broke down crying listening to it again just now. It was a good cry, the kind Ozzy asks about in "Looking for Today". And although I've been doing my best to avoid crises and tough times since it came out in 2023, this song has been there for me. Even when I'm not having a tough time, it reminds me of what I've been through and what I've yet to endure, and how love is gonna be the duct tape of life that binds us all together, but not in a hippy-drippy way, it's a real confrontation of losses, conclusions, and departures and why you tell someone you love them every day.
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Looking For Today is my absolute favorite Black Sabbath song
:rockon:
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8th pick I'm going with DIO.
KDC stole my original pick so gotta change up.
This can be thought of being about how to make the best of things when being down on your luck...there is a deeper metaphor here but that's kind of always the way I've seen the lyrics.
BETTER IN THE DARK this one!
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Pick 7
New Model Army - Eleven Years
A feel good song from the guys who are usually complaining about something!
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For my 9th pick I'm gonna go with some YEAH YEAH YEAHS!!
This from my favourite album Show Your Bones and it's an inspiring tune called WARRIOR!!
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Pick Number 8
Iced Earth - Ten Thousand Strong
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I love my mom and my mom loves me. When I left for college in 1986, she started to volunteer down at the local community radio station, KNON. It wasn't long and she had a radio show, The Texas Folk Music Review. This is a photo of her back around 1988-1990 or thereabouts:
(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy5CxVBj8Ck8RR8gP5RPAZtxbT8PVL9PHvKPFAHjNHFGLOliFKVtYX0KXuyx_j-aTuP9hat1d4Tt_NEeR5ub4ZGulFCZMhqNwHZkRbybbQR85x0in4mIcmACoUnXiyJhtp2btm1jonGktO/s1600/rt3.jpg)
When I came back from college, she asked if I'd want to help answer phones on her show and be on the air a bit as a co-host. I was totally down with that. Now, she was Ranger Rita on the air and she told me I needed a radio name. Well, I was way more metal than country then, so I decided to be a dude always trying to get Rita to play stuff that rocked a good deal harder than the folk music she was spinning. A cockroach would do something like that. She agreed. "What's the name of this cockroach?"
"Steve." I said, "Steve the Cockroach." We laughed and it stuck. It later became Steve T. Cockroach and, when pressed, the schtick was to say the T was for "the". Good times. This is me proving my cockroach bona fides, around 1989:
(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdKIRcNELxXfaoXZJ3ZY-kOsVjbp9CdToY2SOfoXjiXBdanXh_7AUZOm528XWuo7IRIw_YGxVDl54F-YJPEyIMGXaYtBnSaUVK_wvYILHsU74tV-4srLRxNNnIuCuHdnpHmp-cpBOpRNxM/s1600/rt7.jpg)
Thing was, though, I really liked the Texas Outlaw stuff we were spinning on that show. I had no problem demanding that she play some heavy metal and then she would put on "Heavy Metal" by Guy Clark, a song about running a Caterpillar D10. A roach can respect gear like that. We had a great time, but I eventually had to get a job and couldn't be on a Monday morning radio show on the regular, so I left that world a while. I came back a few years later when she started The Magic Time Warp Show and that had a Wednesday evening slot. That's the 50s rock and roll show that I do today. Yep, I inherited it when she couldn't make it into the studio like she could. That was around 2019, and she was 75 that year.
I was thinking about those memories and that got me to remember a pair of songs my mom turned me on to when I was in my late teens and I love 'em. First one is the folksy one, Guy Clark singing "LA Freeway", a song about getting a new start by leaving behind the old start.
Then there's Rusty Wier and his "Don't It Make You Wanna Dance", all about dancin' and havin' a good time and what-not, I tell you what!
When I was in college, I got to interview these guys and see 'em performing live around Austin. I worked at The Daily Texan as an entertainment writer. Everyone else wanted to do the rock beats and Country was wide open. I was kinda glad for that, since I actually *liked* these guys. I'd see the show and come up at the end and tell 'em I was Ranger Rita's kid and they'd light up and thank me for having a mom that played their records and got the word out. I felt honored to have a mom like that, I truly did. Even today, people from those days will turn up and ask if I'm Rita's boy and then say something nice about her after I let them know she's still kickin' around and doing all right, considering she's 82 and all.
Back in those days in the 80s, there was another young kid trying to find his way and we all thought his music was great and if he kept his nose clean and his manager honest, he'd make it all right. That young kid was Robert Earl Keen, and he was damn glad that Ranger Rita played his records before anybody else would. He was fun to hang out with after a show down at the UT Austin Student Union bar. I got this album from him as a gift and then I had him sign in "Promo copy ONLY" because them promo copies is worth more! We had a good laugh at that, like I would ever trade away such a thing as the gift of music.
Rober Earl Keen - "The Front Porch Song"
KNON still does its DJ meetings at the Sons of Herman Hall and lots of benefits there. Every time I go there, I remember ol' Robert Earl Keen and him givin the Presbyterians something to talk about on their way to Luby's. :D
Yes, thesse songs lift me up. They sure do. They did when I first heard them, and they still do, decades later. Evergreens, these songs, resilient as a windswept live oak.
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That right there is a slice of pure Texas, Z. I can - smell - it.
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You ain't lyin. Now I wanna eat either brisket or enchiladas.
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Pick No. 9
Rush - Spirit of Radio
An uplifting song about the radio!
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^That is an *excellent* tune! RUSH! YEAH! From their golden era, no less!
Speaking of golden era sounds that will get you up and moving...
First Motorhead album I got and they had me hooked in about 4 seconds!
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My last one is gonna be from SAXON!
This is about racing but it inspires me because of the title.
Super CHARGER this one!
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That's a song that is very inspirational to me to get my car to go faster! :smug:
I've got one from Fela Kuti, "Water No Get Enemy"
No matter what water does, we do not hate it because we need it for life. This song can be about anything and everything, different each time I immerse myself in it. I like using it as a closer on my Monday Funk/Soul show from time to time. It's good for mellowing out and thinking, and from that I can get an inspiration.