bosk1's BOTTOM 50 DT songs v. well this is different

[bosk1]

Just for a bit of fun, I figured I would do something different than a "top 50" thread.  For the record, I don't dislike very many DT songs.  But out of 94 songs on official studio releases (including ACOS), of course there are plenty that I like less than my top 50. 

So, the only question is, should I start from the bottom and work my way up, or should I start with the best song and work backwords to my "ultimate least favorite DT song?"

*disclaimer:  This is a bit of fun only, and isn't meant to dis' any DT songs.



EDIT:  Here's the running tally (because it's annoying to come into these threads late and have to read the whole thing to piece the list together), from the best of the bottom 50 on down (I also added in parentheses each song's ranking in the entire discography):

1.  Breaking All Illusions (45)
2.  6:00 (46)
3.  Never Enough (47)
4.  Far From Heaven (48)
5.  Beyond This Life (49)
6.  Take Away My Pain (50)
7.  The Dark Eternal Night (51)
8.  A Rite Of Passage (52)
9.  As I Am (53)
10.  Finally Free (54)
11.  Fatal Tragedy (55)
12.  Light Fuse And Get Away (56)
13.  Only A Matter Of Time (57)
14.  A Fortune In Lies (58)
15.  Erotomania (59)
16.  This Dying Soul (60)
17.  I Walk Beside You (61)
18.  Through My Words (62)
19.  Endless Sacrifice (63)
20.  Anna Lee (64)
21.  Just Let Me Breathe (65)
22.  Overture 1928 (66)
23.  Caught In A Web (67)
24.  Status Seeker (68)
25.  Wither (69)
26.  Honor Thy Father (70)
27.  The Ytse Jam (71)
28.  Blind Faith (72)
29.  The Dance of Eternity (73)
30.  One Last Time (74)
31.  Afterlife (75)
32.  Take The Time (76)
33.  Lifting Shadows Off A Dream (77)
34.  Surrounded (78)
35.  Through Her Eyes (79)
36.  Regression (80)
37.  The Silent Man (81)
38.  Innocence Faded (82)
39.  Burning My Soul (83)
40.  Hell's Kitchen (84)
41.  Repentance (85)
42.  Another Day (86)
43.  The Best Of Times (87)
44.  Hollow Years (88)
45.  The Ministry of Lost Souls (89)
46.  The Ones Who Help To Set The Sun (90)
47.  The Answer Lies Within (91)
48.  Space-Dye Vest (92)
49.  You Not Me (93)
50.  Prophets Of War (94) 

[wolfking]

Start with the best song and move to the worst DT song being number 1.

Let's do this boss.

[King Postwhore]

Start from 50 to your least favorite song.

[Elite]

I'd say work towards your least favourite song. In the top 50 tracker thread I recently applied for a v2 and my idea was to do a bottom 50 as well and I planned to work towards my 'least favourite', just for the hell of it.

[wasteland]

What everybody has said. If you started from the bottom and worked your way up there would be no reason to read this thread 

[bosk1]

Mmm'kay.  Since the votes seem to be unanimous (and since that was the way I was leaning anyway), here goes.  I am ranking individual songs from official studio releases only, which gives 94 total songs.  From best of the bottom to the least:

1.  (which would be my #45 in the entire DT discography, so we're staring near the bottom of what would be my top 50)  Breaking All Illusions - Not a bad song at all, although I really did not like it when ADTOE first came out.  Instrumentally, there is really a lot of greatness going on throughout.  But the song feels very disjointed to me, and there are a lot of parts that do not feel as strong.  And I don't care for the lyrics either.

2.  6:00 - Really cool song, kicked off by some fun drum work.  In terms of structure, this is a VERY straightforward song by DT standards.  But it works nonetheless.  And this is one of the songs where I find Kevin Moore's lyrical contribuation to be pretty good (Kevin's lyrics are extremely hit and miss for me; I am definitely NOT in the Kevin fanboy club who things every lyric he wrote was gold). 

3.  Never Enough - I love the driving beat of this song, and the Muse-ish style really works.  They lyrics and melodramatic vocal delivery style fit together well.  And speaking of the lyrics, I have no problem with them whatsoever.  But despite that they were aimed at a very small, specific group of people that fit the bill, they sound general enough and could be subjectively interpreted to broadly apply to fans in general that I would find it an awkward song to include in a live set. 

More to come.  Stay tuned...

[Elite]

I am ranking individual songs from official studio releases only, which gives 94 total songs.

103 if you include ADTOE

[bosk1]

Incorrect.  I did include ADTOE.  There are 94.  Deal with it.

[Perpetual Change]

Blabbermouth Headline:

DTF OWNER/ADMIN THREATENS TO TRASH DT CATALOG UNTIL DVD RELEASE DATE IS ANNOUNCED

[Elite]

Incorrect.  I did include ADTOE.  There are 94.  Deal with it.

Did you count SDOIT as one track, ITPOE as one and disregarded ACOS or something?
I'm just wondering how you came up with 94, when I get to 103 I mean 102.

EDIT: Yeah, well, if you count SDOIT as one song and don't count ACOS, since it's no full album, I get to 94 as well.

[bosk1]

Incorrect.  I did include ADTOE.  There are 94.  Deal with it.

Did you count SDOIT as one track, ITPOE as one and disregarded ACOS or something?

No, but tracks are irrelevant.  But I counted SDOIT and ITPOE each as one song, because they are.  If people want to count songs with multiple movements as separate entities for their lists, that's all well and good.  But I'm going with actual songs, so, yeah, there are 94:
WDADU:  8
I&W:  8
Awake:  11
ACOS:  1
FII:  11
SFAM:  12
SDOIT:  6
TOT:  7
8VM:  8
SC:  7
BCSL:  6
ADTOE:  9
=94

[Cedar redaC]

Okay, I'll follow this one. This should be awesome.

[Elite]

Incorrect.  I did include ADTOE.  There are 94.  Deal with it.

Did you count SDOIT as one track, ITPOE as one and disregarded ACOS or something?

No, but tracks are irrelevant.  But I counted SDOIT and ITPOE each as one song, because they are.  If people want to count songs with multiple movements as separate entities for their lists, that's all well and good.  But I'm going with actual songs, so, yeah, there are 94:
WDADU:  8
I&W:  8
Awake:  11
ACOS:  1
FII:  11
SFAM:  12
SDOIT:  6
TOT:  7
8VM:  8
SC:  7
BCSL:  6
ADTOE:  9
=94

I get it.

[Nekov]

If you consider 6DOIT as one song then you should also consider A mind beside itself as only one song. Just saying

[BlobVanDam]

If you consider 6DOIT as one song then you should also consider A mind beside itself as only one song. Just saying

No, because SDOIT is a song, whereas AMBI is considered a suite. Anyone's opinion on the matter of whether SDOIT should be considered a song are irrelevant.

[bosk1]

What Blob said.  Dream Theater does not have a song titled A Mind Beside Itself.  However, the A Mind Beside Itself suite will be represented in this thread, I can assure you.  Be patient.  We'll get there.     In the meantime, let's not go off topic by debating the meanings of words.

[Fiery Winds]

What about Raw Dog? 

[darkshade]

You should have started at 34 and went all the way to 94.

[GasparXR]

You should have started at 34 and went all the way to 94.

Am I missing something? That's 60

[TheGreatPretender]

Why not include the songs that weren't studio releases? Like Raise The Knife, etc?

[Elite]

Why not include the songs that weren't studio releases? Like Raise The Knife, etc?

Beacuse; where would you stop? Majesty Demos? Extra songs? Other releases? Different versions of the same song? The School Song? etc. etc.

[?]

Interesting idea for a thread! My list would include some B-sides but, as Elite said, there's also stuff like the Majesty demos, jams on live albums, etc. so it'd be hard to narrow it down.

[TheGreatPretender]

Beacuse; where would you stop? Majesty Demos? Extra songs? Other releases? Different versions of the same song? The School Song? etc. etc.

I'd stop at songs that were at least polished. I mean, all those songs were released on Cleaning Out The Closet CD, where they seemed like they were nicely mixed and mastered, so they were very much on par with studio quality.

[hefdaddy42]

If you consider 6DOIT as one song then you should also consider A mind beside itself as only one song. Just saying

Why would you say that?

[Nekov]

It's just an opinion. Different people see things different ways. Bosk asked not to derail the thread with conversation about this so let's just leave it as it is.

[Ruba]

So Never Enough is on your top 50 DT songs! 

[hefdaddy42]

It's just an opinion. Different people see things different ways. Bosk asked not to derail the thread with conversation about this so let's just leave it as it is.

Fair enough.

[Another_Won]

Good idea.  Within the DT community I have found that generally people fall into two different camps.  One that tends to like the more prog and a bit more mellow and the other that tends toward the metal, hard-edged side.  These are vary general descriptions, obviously there are degrees within each camp. 

I say all this because I think that Bosk falls into the same camp as me.  I think this thread will tell me if I'm wrong.

Let's do this!

[darkshade]

You should have started at 34 and went all the way to 94.

Am I missing something? That's 60

Woops. I meant 44.

[Onno]

This is great. Following.

[bosk1]

Okay, here comes the next batch.

4.  Far From Heaven - We are still definitely well within the group of songs that I like a lot.  This is near the bottom of my list for ADTOE songs, but I still like it a lot.  It took a bit of growing, as I did not like it at all when the album first came out.  But that haunting piano melody is just fantastic.  I feel like this song should be ranked higher.  But it's not an issue of there being a problem with this song.  It's just that DT have so many great songs that I like even better.  I know it's hard for the band to work a lot of ballads into the live set lists, so I'm really glad they were able to work this one in on the last tour so that it didn't end up becoming the next Anna Lee and just sitting on the shelves forever, never to be played.

5.  Beyond This Life - Even though SFAM is my second favorite DT album of all time, to this day, some of the tracks still blur together.  And SFAM to me is definitely a case where the album as a whole is better than the sum of its parts.  BTL was a song I definitely overlooked for a lot time.  It was just there as an essential part of the story, but nothing really stood out to me about the song individually.  The Budokan version with its amazing extended jam/solo section really made me appreciate this song.

6.  Take Away My Pain - Very touching song.  The music is good.  But it's really the lyrics that take it over the top.  John did a great job of creating a sad, somber piece that somehow still manages to constantly have an undertone of "but somehow, it'll eventually be alright."  I'm in the camp that prefers the demo to the version that eventually got released.  But the album version is still really good.  I'm really hoping this song makes an appearance in a live setting someday, preferably the demo version.

Since I don't really post much over the weekend, I'll try to do a second batch later this afternoon...

[Perpetual Change]

Interesting choices so far. I have to keep reminding myself that most of these early choices still fall within the better half of DT's catalogue. I agree with most, including BAI, which I think is good, but not great.

Never enough would be way further down for me, though.

[bosk1]

Never enough would be way further down for me, though.

EVERYTHING IS NEVER ENOUGH WITH YOU! 



















Yeah, these lists are so subjective.  And as I'm sure is the case with most people, on different days, I might rank the same song somewhere very different depending on my mood.  Never Enough is an interesting song to rank for me.  I generally do like it.  But when I think of it in isoluation, I tend not to think of it as being "better" than a lot of the songs I rank it above.  But the thing is, when listing all the songs and trying to plug it into a ranking, I kept finding myself saying, "well, I would rather listen to Never Enough than [song X]."  And that's pretty much how it fell where it did.

[Nekov]

Not a fan of Far From Heaven but I really like the other two

[Perpetual Change]

Yeah, these lists are so subjective.  And as I'm sure is the case with most people, on different days, I might rank the same song somewhere very different depending on my mood.  Never Enough is an interesting song to rank for me.  I generally do like it.  But when I think of it in isoluation, I tend not to think of it as being "better" than a lot of the songs I rank it above.  But the thing is, when listing all the songs and trying to plug it into a ranking, I kept finding myself saying, "well, I would rather listen to Never Enough than [song X]."  And that's pretty much how it fell where it did.

That's kinda why I never take on these huge lists. My opinions change do dramatically from one day to the next.