My top 50 Suede songs

Since I started doing the artist of the week thing I’ve wondered when I should allow myself the self indulgent joy of Suede Week. They are such a special and important band to me; in fact they are my favourite band. They are the band I loved the most when I really started to love music, they were the soundtrack to my last year at school, all the way through University and moving to London. I feel like Suede are my band, I support them like I support my football team Sheffield Wednesday: I was there when they won a trophy at Wembley (Suede), when they were close to winning the title (Dog Man Star) and when they got into Europe (Coming Up); but I was also with them when the decline started and they got relegated (Head Music), and nearly went into administration (A New Morning), and still love them all the same.

The excuse for Suede Week (it’s actually a fortnight...) came with the gig they are doing at the O2 on 7th December. I was there at one of the last gigs they ever did before they split up 7 years ago, my and my best friend were in our cups, arm in arm, crying (in retrospect that is very Suede behaviour). Here was another chance to see Suede, the best live band I have ever seen, back together. It feels like the right time as well, the country needs some glamour and excitement at the moment. Britain needs a slap on the arse and there is no finer arse slapper than Brett Anderson.

A friend recently suggested that i should do my top 50 Suede songs so Suede Week seemed like a good time to do this. I own pretty much everything Suede have released commercially and went about listening to them all on shuffle, rating them all out of 5 using the Ipod rating function. It worked quite well, there were just under 50 songs that were rated either 3 (very good), 4 (amazing) or 5 (could be my favourite). The tricky part was to work out which of the many songs rated 2 (good) should be in the remaining couple of places – I listened to all the 2s and 3s and swapped quite a few around, I felt like I was making very important decisions with huge consequences rather than being a rather sad little man playing with his Ipod.

All this was just putting off the big decision about deciding on my favourite song, but in the end this was quite easy. The top 4, plus My Dark Star were all in contention. My Dark Star and The Living Dead, both B sides on Stay Together, are such beautiful and evocative songs, even if My Dark Star was eventually overtaken by Trash and Metal Mickey when I listened again in order. Numbers two and three were close: The Drowners is such an amazing debut single and statement of intent and Animal Nitrate is the best guitar pop song of the nineties; but it had to be The Wild Ones. It’s the best song on my favourite ever album. It somehow manages to be simultaneously a beautifully gentle ballad and an overblown epic, and has some of the best lyrics Brett has ever written, whilst staying true to the Suede lexicon (y’know, gasoline, dogs and that, all the stuff inspired by Suburbia by the Pet Shop Boys). It’s just an incredible song, I’ve just listened to it again to make sure I’m right and I really am.

It’s been really good fun to do and I’m sure everyone will disagree with my choices and get very upset that Lazy didn’t make the cut. Well it was never going to, it might have done a very good presentation, have all the infrastructure in place and I might have promised it a number of votes, but it slagged me off in the media, I don’t like it very much and it’s my decision - so tough luck Lazy, with your satellite, sky and cable.

I’ve been thinking about all the albums as well, the first three (four if you include Sci Fi Lullabies) are, in different ways, incredible. Head Music is a comparatively poor album with a few really good songs, but I understand a little more what Suede were trying to do, it’s a shame that the experimentation didn’t quite work. I still stand by A New Morning, in a way it’s the opposite of Head Music, they were trying to strip back the experimentation and do something soulful and ended up with a pretty good album without many standout tracks. I list them: 1. Dog Man Star; 2. Suede; 3. Coming Up; 4. A New Morning; 5 Head Music.

Now, to the O2 to jump up and down, sing at the top of my voice,cry, and completely change the top 50 as a result.

1 The Wild Ones

2 Animal Nitrate
3 The Drowners
4 The Living Dead
5 Metal Mickey
6 Trash
7 My Dark Star
8 New Generation
9 Stay Together
10 By The Sea
11 Killing of a Flash Boy
12 We Are The Pigs
13 Still Life
14 Saturday Night
15 The 2 of Us
16 The Asphalt World
17 So Young
18 Breakdown
19 The Next Life
20 Beautiful Ones
21 Everything Will flow
22 My Insatiable One
23 Pantomime Horse
24 Sleeping Pills
25 Picnic By The Motorway
26 Obsessions
27 Electricity
28 Heroine
29 This Hollywood Life
30 She
31 Together
32 Daddy's Speeding
33 The Chemistry Between Us
34 Introducing The Band
35 The Power
36 Filmstar
37 She's in Fashion
38 Simon
39 Moving
40 Starcrazy
41 Black Or Blue
42 To The Birds
43 High Rising
44 Beautiful Loser
45 Lost in TV
46 Whipsnade
47 Asbestos
48 She's Not Dead
49 Europe is our Playground
50 Where the Pigs Don't Fly