from Yes I Am (1993)
Fuck off for just a second: Melissa Etheridge doesn’t need me to defend her. I’ll explain this song’s selection but it won’t be because I have to defend myself, either. Remember that this far into the list, we’re getting back to a time when I didn’t know a whole lot about music, which sounds like a terrible justification for these choices. Know that, knowing what I know now, these are the ones that became classics. The tips of so many icebergs.
And just so you know, this wouldn’t be the last time, before or while knowing any better, that I’d have a huge crush on a lesbian.
This song was popular when I’d probably only heard of Led Zeppelin, let alone any of their music, let alone the music of any first-order blues musicians. The songs that filled my house were of the Beatles, mostly, and songs from the 1950s. Not that Lawrence Welk shit, per Lester Burnham, but stretching only from doo-wop to early rock and roll. I hadn’t yet gotten CDs, and without the technical savvy to listen to that Hall and Oates record, I made do with secondhand tapes and the occasional store-bought one.
My black TDK case is a time capsule: R.E.M.’s Out of Time (bought not of course for “Losing My Religion” but for “Shiny Happy People,” an optimist since the world had not yet broken me); the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ opus Coming Out of Their Shells; a BASF tape with “Invisible Touch” in close proximity to Mary MacGregor’s firecracker “Torn Between Two Lovers”; assorted Lego pieces; some chewing gum from when baseball cards weren’t so precious. This was my life as a kid. Then, at least, I had excuses for being lame.
My musical tastes were still pretty raw when the winter of 1994-95 came around. Somehow newly becoming aware of what was going on in popular culture, I thought I had cast a wide net back then, giving almost everything on Z100 a chance. I wouldn’t evolve to include K-Rock until much later. But even for Z100, as for this list, the song kind of came out of left field. “I’m The Only One” is the only song on my definitive top ten that’s sung by a woman. Ironically, for its having struck me relatively early in life, it’s the only one to be an adult contemporary #1. So there.
I remember listening to this song at night through the old tape recorder/radio I had. It’s the shuffling beat that draws me in, then the guitars (that I was just learning to play) and eventually the raspy vocals that would foreshadow, but actually recall, great classic rock voices of all kinds. Nerdily, the full step drop in the chorus has always been one of those changes that gets me. It shows up in “Wild Horses,” too, a G to an F. It’s like the V-v-I progression – if that’s right – that you hear at the end of the pre-chorus in “Buddy Holly,” D-Dm-A in that case, and all across the Beatles (the eponymous chorus of “In My Life,” the little bridge of “I’ll Follow The Sun,” etc). While that particular descent always seems wistful, the one in “I’m The Only One” seems, well, what, earnest? Insistent? I’m spitballing here but I think its lowering lends an undeniable weight to what she’s singing about. I’m a fool for trying to put it into words, so I’ll just leave it all at that.
But I can’t leave before adding this note: Cementing the song’s place on the list happens to be a memory of mine, a shard of a memory, of my mother and me. We were running some errand or other, maybe looking into railings for the new staircase my parents were planning to have installed. I think we were in some slightly industrial neck of the woods on Long Island but there were also trees around and it was raining and the car was stopped but the radio was on. “I’m The Only One” started playing. I said “I like this song” and my mom said something like “You know, I like this song, too.” That was it, but that was enough. My father and I have had many, many overlapping interests along the way but that she and I had one right there, that just about does it for me, and for this list.
1. Green Day, “Basket Case”
2. Melissa Etheridge, “I’m The Only One”
3. Weezer, “Buddy Holly”
4. The Offspring, “Come Out and Play”
5. Bush, “Machinehead”
6. Foo Fighters, “Monkey Wrench”
7. Muse, “Unintended”
8. Radiohead, “Everything In Its Right Place”
9. Stage, “Live Happy, Live With Anorexia”
10. Ludo, “Save Our City”
Dan’s Definitive Top Ten 2010: Introduction