Spoon’s 10 Best Songs

Consequence Staff
·8 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The post Spoon’s 10 Best Songs appeared first on Consequence.

This article was originally published in 2014 and has been updated for Britt Daniel’s birthday today (April 14th, 2022).

The first thing any Spoon fan recognizes about the band is its remarkable and almost polite sense of consistency. The Austin, Texas band might just be the closest thing indie rock has to a sure thing.

That’s also what made it so hard to whittle down the group’s back catalog to 10 essential tracks. Trust us: We spent plenty of time bickering over where we got it right and wrong. The result is a list that saw some personal favorites fall away and some other songs climb aboard.

This is a band that knows how to write a sharply crafted pop song. This list is the proof. Rock on, and scroll to the end for a playlist of all 10 tracks.

— Zach Schonfeld
Contributing Writer

10. “Do I Have to Talk You Into It”

Hot Thoughts (2017)

The third single from Hot Thoughts, “Do I Have to Talk You Into It” brings toe-tapping harmonic progressions and a bassline that just won’t quit. Lead singer Britt Daniel’s lyrics are daring and cut to the chase: “Do I have to talk you into it?/ Do we have to make sense of it?/ When I’ve known you such a long time/ And we’ve never had to act polite.” — Rachael Crouch

09. “Written in Reverse”

Transference (2010)

Britt Daniel has this tendency to treat words the same way kids treat stones. He kicks ’em, he throws ’em, and he often skips ’em. “Written in Reverse” is a brilliant example of this, a four-minute exercise in deconstructed pop that finds the Austin rockers proving that a pile of scrap metal can warrant a shiny sports car. In this case, said scrap metal is a discombobulated rhythm section that sounds like it belongs somewhere in the background of a Sanford and Son episode — all jangly, chaotic, and wired.

For over four minutes, Daniel spits out every word as if he’s stumbling out of a saloon with a gallon of moonshine swishing around in his head. None of it sounds like it should work together, but it does, because the band, even at their most anarchic, can’t shake off the fact that they’re a bona fide hook factory. That’s one light bulb that never goes out. — Michael Roffman

08. “Anything You Want”

Girls Can Tell (2001)

There would be plenty of times to complicate things later. But in 2001, on their first great album, Britt Daniel and his band were almost satisfied in crafting just a couple minutes of pop perfection. “Anything You Want” is still classic Spoon in that you can hear where everything is coming from. Daniel’s simple guitar riff rises and falls with ease. The keyboard line drives the song with steady forward locomotion. And the vocals, sung by Daniel with calm clarity and purpose, are as focused as anything in Spoon’s oeuvre.

That is, until the song unravels in its final moments, going from, in the words of Daniel, “big picture” to “a very specific moment.” The way Daniel shoves too many words in the closing bit puts a strange emphasis on the moment, as if the detail about the song’s subject, Eleanor Friedberger, was too important to be compromised. It’s beautiful in how it’s allowed to sound flawed, betraying what would become a Spoon trademark, choosing honest-sounding moments in favor of radio-ready polish. — Philip Cosores

07. “Sister Jack”

Gimme Fiction (2005)

Most bands would be satisfied with the golden power-pop melody and the Byrds-y performance, though there’s some lingering subversive element in “Sister Jack” that makes it stick, and it’s not the gender-bending title. It’s at the end, when the chords ring out the same as throughout the song, but the tempo suddenly starts skipping a beat or lingering for another measure, playing with the logic and structure of a pop song that’s so good to begin with, but even better with Spoon’s tinkering logic behind the boards. — Z.S.

06. “Wild”

Lucifer on the Sofa (2022)

A highlight from Spoon’s newest LP, Lucifer on the Sofa, “Wild” features lyrical wordplay that effortlessly weaves and shimmies through slow-burning guitars and hard-hitting piano keys. Co-written by Jack Antonoff and accompanied by a stylized Western-inspired music video, the track gives maximum impact and shows that Spoon is still capable of making addictive bangers. — R.C.

05. “I Turn My Camera On”

Gimme Fiction (2005)

“I Turn My Camera On” merges an impossibly precise and classically Spoon-ish arrangement with, well, falsetto-laced funk, a vocal turn we’d not yet seen from Mr. Daniel. As ever, the beauty is in the details: the percussive taps and shakes, those subtle xylophone twinkles, the grunts and shouts in the background. The result is Gimme Fiction’s finest achievement — and the Spoon top 40 hit that never was. At least Bones, The Simpsons, Stranger Than Fiction, and Friday Night Lights all caught the feeling. — Z.S.

04. “Everything Hits at Once”

Girls Can Tell (2001)

Melancholy Spoon is delightful. While I know this may sound slightly off-kilter, you really feel the full weight and brevity of Britt Daniel’s intent as an artist when he slices open his heart (gently no less) and lets all his despair dangle out like an unraveled ball of yarn, fraying and unfurling from every impact. The romantic angst when he sings, “Don’t say a word, the last one’s still stinging,” combined with the gut-aching “I go to sleep thinking that you’re next to me” is his battle cry declaring that everything hits at once — and damn well it hurts.

It’s just one of many instances on this record that rewards the sort of respect usually reserved for longstanding progressive rock groups. The settling of drumbeats murmur distant click-tracks, and the most endearing quality of this track is its intimacy. — Lior Phillips

03. “Don’t You Evah”

From Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007)

Yes, one of their best songs is a cover of The Natural History, but for good reason. Burrowed firmly between the mutters of studio banter, rattling maracas, and drum claps is the underlying message affirming Spoon’s devoted narrative: the slippery ties that emotionally bind us to the opposite sex. It’s always there, exposed or concealed.

The song recalls Kill the Moonlight’s “Don’t Let It Get You Down,” and if you blink past the silly spelling of “Evah,” the lyrical arrangement feels inspired. Over and above the thudding bass riff and superb vocal melody, it’s a song about commitment and the inescapable cold feet that tow close behind the concept of monogamy. We’ve all felt it and might still – and that’s why this sentiment will always ring true.

“Don’t you never think it’s right, bet you think you had to but it doesn’t feel right,” sings Daniel, taking on a more open-ended stance, but we’re never really sure in the end if the character breaks free from the shackles of impending doom (marriage) or stays miserable forever (“famous-sounding words make your head feel light”). It’s certainly one of Spoon’s most relatable songs, even if it technically doesn’t belong to them. Hey, it worked for Hendrix. — L.P.

02. “The Way We Get By”

Kill the Moonlight (2002)

With their newfound lyrical bravery, the follow-up to 2001’s critically acclaimed Girls Can Tell found Britt Daniel and Jim Eno with a new musical directness. “The Way We Get By” didn’t just embrace that; it celebrated it. It’s a song with a stylistic range and emotional depth that manages to blend head-nodding rock with a melodic structure that surprises right until the end.

The punchy, Spoonified piano abruptly cuts to the spaces of bright light and musical effervescence. Those shoulders never saw it coming when that tambourine enters and makes your entire body tingle. It’s these moments that only make it more satisfying, from working their way through the protagonist’s proclamation, “Go to sleep to shake appeal” to supposedly channeling Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life LP during the line “Make love to some weird sin” before driving back to “Fall in love to Down on the Street.” They show self-conscious devotion to punk rock and merge it into a new decade of palpable intensity. — L.P.

01. “The Underdog”

From Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007)

More handclaps? Don’t mind if Spoon do. We find the bounce from “Sister Jack” evoking one of their purest and brightest confessionals to date, through modifying a formula that has grown to feel familiar from the band. Even if the story wanders along refusing to offer a resolution in the end, the song itself is endlessly appealing.

If any song channeled the essence of Spoon, this Jon Brion-produced classic pop track radiates their ability to capture sincere compassion for the underdog, earnest care for the previously smitten. The lyrics “Get free from the middle man” negate as much propensity toward standing up to the more advantaged as they describe Spoon’s agenda and confidence in sound. — L.P.

Spoon’s 10 Best Songs Playlist:

Spoon’s 10 Best Songs
Consequence Staff

Popular Posts

Subscribe to Consequence of Sound’s email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.