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two minutes or less

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The Independent today has a request for pop songs that are shorter than two minutes. I know they can be googled but I throw it open. If you want to send them in it’s to top10@independent.co.uk.
Career Opportunities: The Clash 1:52

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  8. Looking through my iTunes library from the comfort of my deckchair I notice these favourites:

    Elizabeth My dear – The Stone Roses
    Bookends – Simon & Garfunkel
    The Wizard – Marc Bolan
    Little Deuce Coup – The Beach Boys
    Drop – The jesus & Mary Chain
    Dobro #1 – David Sylvian
    Horn – Nick Drake

    But I’m going to choose this delightful little ditty by Patrik Fitzgerald. Because I like it when he sings:
    Me got no brain.
    Me subject myself to you and all your philosophizing.
    Me got no brain.

    • This is it, for me. The distilled essence of the greatness of the Beach Boys, and possibly of music itself. I’m serious!

      It don’t rock, it don’t roll, it just kisses you all over your wide-eyed, sloppy-grinning face.

      • The Beach Boys have got this short song thing cracked haven’t they? The difference between this and the one that I posted above is that I’ve never considered that one to be a short song before. Even with the clock running, it seems like a longer song! How do they do that?

    • It is absolutely the finest musical achievement of mankind. And it’s actually *two* songs edited together. And that immortal “aum-bop-didit” – cosmic doo-wop. As john notes, something very peculiar happens to time as you’re listening to this – there is simply no way anything as sublimely symphonic as this can last for under two minutes.

      • Know what? I would have said exactly the same thing about Adam Faith’s What Do You Want – a mere 1:36…I had no idea. You got yer money’s worth with a minute in them days.

  16. A tad over, clocking in around 2:25 but forgive the extra ten percent, as it perhaps the finest two minutes twenty five in Rock.

    Little Wing
    Jimi Hendrix

  17. Pixies – There Goes My Gun (1:52)

    The antithesis of being kissed all over. It feels like being tied to a chair and whipped with barbed wire. An invigorating experience fully realised in under two minutes. Thank God.

  18. The White Stripes – Fell In Love With A Girl

    You could make the case that this less-than-two-minute track is so quintessential Stripes that you don’t need anything else.

  19. Tom Waits – Frank’s Wild Years. In less than two minutes it captures the mundanity and frustrations of a lifetime. Somewhat foolishly, Tom thought there was more to say and made an entire album based on the song. He should have left it alone.

  22. I can remember, young fellow me lad, a time when a four minute single was seen as the height of self-indulgence. In the late 50s and early 60s, very few singles were longer than two minutes.

    This gem was posted here last week.

    At 2.14 minutes long, John was clearly a chap who liked to take his time.

  23. Low opens with a startling instrumental. Barely before we have time to get used to the compressed sound, we are treated to the first song, Breaking Glass, a bleak treatise on the vagaries of depression. Well, it would be a treatise if it didn’t clock in at under two minutes.

  24. Listening to an Eddie Cochran two-for-one CD at the moment and pretty much every Eddie song is two minutes, not one is over three.

    On a similar note, if an LP is over 35 minutes long it wants to be bloody good to get on my shelf.
    Those much maligned Tamla LPs of the mid-60s, 12 tracks, famous hit 45s in abundance, bright cover, mono, are my template.

  25. In the late 50s/early 60s, everything was shorter.
    Films, Pub opening hours, life expectancy, hair, skirts, and indeed songs.

    I like to believe that time was also shorter as it occurred before decimalization.
    Is there a difference between an imperial minute and a decimal minute? If the French had anything to do with it then yes – they would get longer lunch breaks under a decimal time unit)

      • Assumingly that would mean losing two months off the current Calendar – if we are to maintain that Latin-y number thing in the names in line with the Roman Calendar, that would mean losing January and February,
        What? Losing the two months when I don’t have to pay the Council Tax. I know the French can be a bit sneaky, but in this instance I say they can do one …

        (This is beginning to sound a bit xenophobic. But then again, its only the French we’re talking about here)

    • Incredibly? I don’t think so. It was the “lead track” on a 5-track live EP. And a completely logical number one – as the standard bearers of both the ska and (less obviously) mod revivals, The Specials were very zeitgeisty indeed at the turn of the decade. They had spent the winter of 1979-80 bringing provincial Britain to its knees with the sweatiest, most joyous gigs it had seen since the Stax tours of the 60s. (Or rather, to its feet – and very frequently onto the stage). Never mind Kevin Rowland, if Neville Staple had commanded us to march on Parliament, Black Rod might have had his work cut out.

  42. Listening to the words of this I’m reminded of how much this album lifted me during the lowest period of my life (so far!). How potent is cheap music, eh?

    (Kenickie – Come Out 2 Nite)

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