30 songs in 30 days: day 01 – your favorite song

OK, if I’m going to do this… thing… I might as well start now, with Laphroaig-induced boldness and time on my hands.

So. Maximo Park became one of my go-to bands a couple of years ago, and this song is one that I go back to again and again. (Don’t be surprised if more Maximo Park songs pop up in this meme. Not sure it will happen, but it might.) I’ve played this one so much over the past two or three years that I think it gets the title of “current favorite” by default.

Why this one? Hard to say. The jangly guitars and harmonizing vocals (in a British accent) are right in my wheelhouse these days when it comes to loving music. There’s a frenetic energy that revs me up every time the track comes on. Like a lot of Maximo Park songs, it becomes a couple of different songs as it progresses from beginning to end, structurally and thematically, and that appeals to me more than the standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus that characterizes most songs. “What happens when you lose everything? You just start again; you start all over again.” That doesn’t directly apply to me (thankfully), but with the world as precarious as it sometimes seems to be these days, it resonates. It seems like the right attitude to have just in case.

But I guess the strongest argument in favor of this one being my favorite song (at least for the moment) is that I have listened to it at least a dozen times in a row while I’ve been struggling to write this entry. And I could listen to it a dozen more times without a second’s hesitation. Hard to top that.