Susan thinks I exclaim “This is my favorite song!” way too often. She’s probably right. In my defense, I do have a lot of favorite songs. Typically I shout this out in the car after my iPhone, set on shuffle, randomly delivers one of these songs through the car’s stereo.

What follows is a pretty random list containing ten of my favorite songs. I have lots of other favorite songs to be sure, and for this post I removed obvious songs from the Beatles and Metallica and other big name acts in order to share a few songs that you may not have heard in a while, or, in some cases, songs you may have never heard before. I hope you listen to at least one song you don’t recognize. Enjoy!

And now, in no particular order…

JOE JACKSON – STEPPIN’ OUT

Joe Jackson’s debut album Look Sharp! was released in 1979, and his latest album, Fast Forward, was released in 2015. Jackson has released hundreds of songs and sadly I can only name three of them: “Is She Really Going Out With Him?,” “Breaking Us in Two,” and this one, “Steppin’ Out.”

Musically, “Steppin’ Out” is a combination of old and new. While the drums and bass line are obviously electronically programmed, they sit just below a traditional piano and Joe Jackson’s voice. To me, the bass line represents the excitement from the city while the piano represents a romantic evening out on the town.

In second grade I fell head over heels in love with a cute little Irish girl, so much so that I used to ride my bike around the neighborhood real fast until I got to her house, where I would pedal by real slow. The name written on her mailbox was “Joe Jackson” (no, not the same guy), but I’ll never forget it. Around that same time, “Steppin’ Out” hit the radio and, more importantly, the video hit MTV. In 1983, K-Tel released Hit Explosion a compilation record containing popular radio hits of the time. I owned the record, and Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” was the third song on the first side. Some combination of that mailbox, that video, this record, and a song about a night out on the town with a beautiful woman clicked in my mind. Every time I hear this song I think of romantic nights out on the town and pretty girls.

And I lied about the list not being in any order. This is probably my favorite song of all time.

MEN AT WORK – OVERKILL

Australia’s Men at Work first hit the charts with their debut album, Business as Usual. Songs like “Who Can It Be Now?,” “Be Good Johnny,” and the mega-hit “Down Under” made the band a household name in the early 1980s. The band’s second album, Cargo, contained even more classics from the band, including “It’s a Mistake,” “Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Jive,” and this song, “Overkill.”

I’ve always found it odd that “Overkill” was the second song on Cargo, as the song sounds like the end of something to me — perhaps it’s the song’s repeated talk about sleep (or lack thereof). Lead singer Colin Hay has said that the song was about the fame and excess the band was experiencing at the time. He has also said that song could “relate to a relationship with a person or a relationship with a place.”

There’s something haunting about this song to me. It takes place at night, when you can’t sleep because your mind is racing, remembering things from the past that can’t be changed and worrying about what may come.

Colin Hay continues to perform the song acoustically (which many people discovered on the television show Scrubs). This version is even more emotional. Not many pop songs get better when their production is scrubbed from them, but this is one of them.

T’PAU – HEART AND SOUL

Named after a Vulcan (rumored to be Spock’s grandmother) from the original Star Trek series, T’Pau released their debut single “Heart and Soul” in 1987. The song initially failed to make the charts, but after being featured in a television commercial, “Heart and Soul” caught its second wind and climbed to number four on the US charts. Throughout their career, T’Pau released five albums and eighteen singles. While twelve of the band’s singles charted in the UK, this was the band’s only US hit.

From a technical standpoint, there’s not much to this song: a drum track (probably programmed), a few layers of keyboards, and a guitar that comes in for the chorus. The song’s most interesting aspect to be is its layered vocals, featuring multiple tracks from lead singer Carol Decker. The verses contain two layered tracks, one of Decker “rapping” and a second one of her singing. The overall effect is of two songs directly layered on top of one another. The effect works, but it makes it difficult in the car to decide which one to sing.

In ninth grade I developed multiple crushes and spent a lot of time that year alone in my room wishing I had the courage to express my feelings to these young ladies. For some reason, this song got a lot of late night airplay that year. If you’ve ever laid in bed at night thinking about someone that either doesn’t know you exist or, perhaps worse, “doesn’t think of you that way,” this song reminds me of those days. I get a pit in my stomach every time it comes on.

URBAN DANCE SQUAD – DEEPER SHADE OF SOUL

“Deeper Shade of Soul” was the first single from Urban Dance Squad’s debut album, Mental Floss for the Globe. The song features multiple samples from Ray Baretto’s similarly named “A Deeper Shade of Soul” during the opening, chorus, and multiple breaks. Urban Dance Squad formed during a jam session in 1986 that combined an existing rock band with a DJ (DJ DNA), a somewhat unique approach at the time. While the band was originally simply an experiment, the chemistry worked and Urban Dance Squad released six albums between 1989 and 1999. A collection of the band’s singles was released in 2006.

Urban Dance Squad consisted of a white DJ, a black vocalist, a white guitarist, a black bass player, and a white drummer. The video also features both black and white skateboarders. The band’s message is clear in the lyrics: “Under the skin, we’re in like Flynn.” The video also features both black and white skateboards zooming around the band in an empty swimming pool.

While I’ve always loved this song’s groove, I equally love what this band was, and stood for. It’s a conglomerate of musicians and styles and musical backgrounds that melts into one single track that can be enjoyed by anyone.

For the record, this song appears on two separate Urban Dance Squad albums (Mental Floss for the Globe and The Singles Collection) and neither one is the version of the song that appears in the video. The video version is far superior in my opinion, and the version that resides on my phone’s playlist.

LIVE – I ALONE

While Live’s 1991 debut album Mental Jewelry featured “Pain Lies on the Riverside” and “Operation Spirit,” it was 1994’s Throwing Copper that really put the band on the map. “Selling the Drama” and “Lightning Crashes” both hit number one in the US; “White, Discussion,” “All Over You,” and “I Alone” all charted as well.

Public reaction to “I Alone” was divided. Some people thought the song’s lyrics were religious in nature, while others (pointing to lines like “The greatest of teachers won’t hesitate to leave you there by yourself chained to fate”) thought the opposite. Ultimately, it was both, and neither. According to lyricist Ed Kowalczyk, the lyrics were “a profound lesson he derived from studying spiritual teachings, which was that religion and truth must be found for oneself and practiced, rather than just accepting the word of others.” With alternating claims of “I alone love you” and “I alone tempt you,” you can decide for yourself what the song represents.

I’m a sucker for a good soft/loud/soft song, which “I Alone” is. Musically, the song is not complicated, and the video has a dreamlike quality having been shot at a higher speed and slowed down. In 2009 after a squabble over publishing rights, Kowalczyk parted ways with the band. Kowalczyk has since recorded solo material, while the band recently released a new album with a new lead singer. As is often the case, neither group’s new material is as powerful as their older works.

“I Alone” reminds me that while we’re not alone, in reality, we’re all alone.

THE CURE – JUST LIKE HEAVEN

The Cure is one of the more well-known bands to appear on this list. The English band was originally formed in 1976 and is about to embark on a 26 city North American tour before returning to Europe to continue to the tour and play three nights at Wembley Arena. In between those two things, the “underground” band has sold 27 million albums.

My friend Justin exposed me to the Cure’s 1987 album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me when it was brand new, and while the band’s musical style ran the gamut between frantic and playful, all of it fell somewhere between slightly and immensely depressing. (That’s kind of their specialty.) One song that stuck with me (and in years to come, millions of others) was “Just Like Heaven,” often considered to be the band’s breakout song in the United States.

While mostly happy, it’s the song’s final verse that puts everything in perspective. After spending a wonderful time with his girlfriend by the seashore, the lead singer wakes to find himself “alone, alone, alone, above a raging sea, that stole the only girl I loved, and drowned her deep inside of me.” Whether or not she drowned in the sea or simply left, we don’t know. What we do know is, she’s gone, man. She’s gone.

My senior year of high school, I spent a couple of wonderful months dating a wonderful girl. Things didn’t work out, and I woke up one morning to find her gone. Whether it was for another guy or she simply left, I didn’t know. What I did know was that, she was gone, man. She was gone.

I listened to this song over and over for months until I physically wore my cassette tape out.

BJORK – ARMY OF ME

The same friend that introduced me to The Cure also introduced me to The Sugarcubes, a literally unknown Icelandic band formed in 1986 that released three albums over seven years. It’s doubtful the band would have been a footnote in music history had its lead singer, the waifish, innovative, and occasionally downright weird Bjork, hadn’t set out on a solo career.

Few of Bjork’s songs resonate with me as much as the Sugarcubes’ debut Life’s Too Good did, but one that did was “Army of Me.” A departure from Bjork’s more playful sound, the somewhat dark and industrial sounding “Army of Me” was actually a message from the singer to her brother, who had fallen on hard times. Along with the music, I like the song’s message. I like the idea of someone meeting an “army of me.”

The video is all Bjork, featuring a monster truck with a mouth for an engine that eats diamonds, a visit to a gorilla dentist (who extracts a diamond from Bjork’s mouth), and a terrorist act at an art museum that wakes up a sleeping man (presumably, Bjork’s brother.)

ALICE IN CHAINS – GOT ME WRONG

There are a dozen different Alice in Chains songs that theoretically could have made this list. All of the band’s studio albums are on my phone. Dirt, the band’s second full-length album (and third official release) is mandatory listening on every road trip I take, and has been for twenty years. Every single one. Alice in Chains is best known for being one of the original “Seattle grunge bands” who, along with Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam, ushered in a new style of music and clothes and made a permanent impression on millions of disenchanted youths everywhere.

Two years after the release of the band’s debut Facelift, Alice in Chains went into the studio to record their second album when, according to legend, drummer Sean Kinney had a dream about recording an acoustic album named “Sap” and releasing that instead. And so that’s what they did. “Got Me Wrong” is (by far) the best song of the EP, and in my opinion, the only keeper. None of the songs got any airplay until “Got Me Wrong” was featured on the soundtrack for Kevin Smith’s debut film Clerks. The rest is history.

I picked “Got Me Wrong” for a couple of reasons. First, the song is a perfect display of the interwoven harmonies of lead singer Layne Staley and guitarist/co-vocalist Jerry Cantrell. I love both the album version and the live unplugged version, so I added them both. Sonically it’s tough to beat the studio version, but watching the two of them intertwine their voices while Cantrell bends his strings to the breaking point is something to see.

Most of the band’s songs are about tragedy, be it failed relationships as in this song or, more commonly, the effects of drug abuse. Lead singer Layne Staley died from a drug overdose in 2002. Mike Starr, the band’s bassist, died from an overdose in 2011. Now go listen to any song from Dirt or Black Gives Way to Blue and try not to cry.

LIFE OF AGONY – LET’S PRETEND

I’ve been a fan of Life of Agony since their debut album River Runs Red was released in 1995. Once, I even had the opportunity to go on the band’s tour bus and interview them for a website.

According to the YouTube video, “Let’s Pretend” was a ballad written about lead singer Keith Caputo’s mother, “who died a short time after his birth due to a heroin overdose.” Caputo’s father also died from a heroin overdose when Keith was in his early 30s.

If the line “Mommy, it’s me, it’s Keith, you had me back when,” doesn’t get you, try the song’s chorus: “Sometimes I like to pretend, that she knows me, that she holds me. I guess I can’t, ’cause she doesn’t know who I am.”

I don’t know why I enjoy songs that choke me up, but I do, and this one does, every time.

TOOL – AENIMA

Note: the last song on the list is the only one that includes adult language, so consider this your warning.

I discovered Tool shortly after the release of their 1993 debut album Undertow through their original and dark videos on MTV for songs like “Sober” and the unfortunately named “Prison Sex.” Very early in the band’s career, I fell in love with their unique time signatures and creative song construction. The band’s sophomore album Aenima (technically Ænima) featured more hard rock radio hits including “Stinkfist,” “H,” and “Forty Six and 2.” Amazingly, the song “Ænema” was even released as a single and charted, although I can’t imagine how much editing must have went into that version.

Our first clue that something’s not quite right with the song occurs in the first verse, when the line “Some say we’ll see Armageddon soon” is quickly followed with “I certainly hope we will.” By the time the chorus hits, Tool’s stance on Los Angeles is pretty clear: “The only way to fix it is to flush it all away,” soon followed by “Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona Bay.” Later, when describing the potential crashing of meteors, comets and title waves into the Earth, Tool comments with, “I certainly hope they will, I could sure use a vacation.”

Early in the song we’re given a list of things to fret about (lattes, lawsuits, Prozac and cars) and later another list of things (L. Ron Hubbard, tattoos, junkies, insecure actresses, and hip-gangster wannabees) is preceded by a different F-word.

“One great big festering neon distraction, I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied: Learn to swim.”

I was having a rough time many years ago at work. I felt like I wasn’t getting respect from my co-workers, nor was I getting the acclaim I thought I deserved. Some of this was real and a lot of it was in my head. I felt like a pawn, being used and abused. It was around this time that I first heard Aenema, and while I certainly didn’t hope to get hit by a meteor, I connected with the song’s suggestion: learn to swim. In any situation, whether it’s a bad situation at work or California falling into the ocean (thus creating “Arizona Bay”), there’s only one thing you can do: learn to swim. I found so much solace in this that I actually added it to my email signature for a while and wrote the phrase directly on my cubical with a black Sharpie marker. I’m sure my boss thought I was insane, but every time I looked at it, it made me smile. Eventually I moved to another area. I don’t know if the guy who filled in behind me was able to clean the phrase off the my old cube.

If not, I hope he learned to swim, too.