Playlist · cathartic

Deep Cuts That Make You Stare At The Ceiling

70 album deep cuts, built to be played in full.

70 songs · 10h 51m

Curator's note

Every album has one. Maybe two if you’re lucky.

It’s never the single. It’s never the song they play on the radio or put in the trailer. It’s track seven. Or the closer. Or the twelve-minute one buried on side two that the band recorded because they had something to say that couldn’t fit in four minutes.

It starts quiet. Maybe just a guitar, or a piano, or a voice barely holding itself together. Then it builds. Slowly. Layer by layer. Until the thing you’re feeling is so large it doesn’t fit inside your chest anymore and you have to pull the car over or close your eyes or just sit there and let it wash through you.

These are those songs. The deep cuts. The ones that make you grab someone’s arm and say, “You have to hear this.”

Seventy of them. Ranging from six to twenty-five minutes. Post-rock, hip-hop, folk, metal, art pop, electronic — no genre restrictions, one rule: the track has to earn every second.

This is the inaugural playlist. The one the site was built around. Start here.

The tracks

01 13th Floor / Growing Old OutKast Aquemini 1998 5:44
02 A Coral Room Kate Bush Aerial 2005 6:08
03 Another Life D'Angelo and The Vanguard Black Messiah 2014 5:58
04 Ashes Are Burning Renaissance Ashes Are Burning 1973 11:22
05 Ashtray Wasp Burial Kindred EP 2012 11:44
06 Basketball Shoes Black Country, New Road Ants From Up There 2022 12:37
07 Beach Life-in-Death Car Seat Headrest Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) 2018 13:18
08 Black Lake Björk Vulnicura 2015 10:08
09 Blue Skied An' Clear Slowdive Souvlaki 1993 6:07
10 Bogatyri We Lost The Sea Departure Songs 2015 11:40
11 Christmas Steps Mogwai Come On Die Young 1999 10:10
12 Cygnus Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas Mariner 2016 14:50
13 Danko/Manuel Jason Isbell The Dirty South 2004 5:30
14 Decades Joy Division Closer 1980 6:15
15 Dogs Pink Floyd Animals 1977 17:05
16 Drover Bill Callahan Apocalypse 2011 6:15
17 Dungeoneering Tim Hecker Harmony in Ultraviolet 2006 8:29
18 Early Sunsets Over Monroeville My Chemical Romance I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love 2002 5:24
19 Earthmover Have a Nice Life Deathconsciousness 2008 11:00
20 Emily Joanna Newsom Ys 2006 12:05
21 Epilogue The Antlers Hospice 2009 5:11
22 Farewell Transmission Songs: Ohia The Magnolia Electric Co. 2003 7:22
23 Foreigner Pallbearer Heartless 2017 12:39
24 Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road 1973 11:08
25 Gone Kanye West Late Registration 2005 5:33
26 Goodbye Sky Harbor Jimmy Eat World Clarity 1999 16:13
27 Green Eyes Erykah Badu Mama's Gun 2000 10:04
28 Greetings to Idris Pharoah Sanders Journey to the One 1980 7:30
29 He Would Have Laughed Deerhunter Halcyon Digest 2010 7:29
30 Hello Earth Kate Bush Hounds of Love 1985 6:12
31 Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand MONO Pilgrimage of the Soul 2021 12:21
32 How to Disappear Completely Radiohead Kid A 2000 5:56
33 I Dream a Highway Gillian Welch Time (The Revelator) 2001 14:39
34 Impossible Soul Sufjan Stevens The Age of Adz 2010 25:34
35 Kate McCannon Colter Wall Colter Wall 2017 5:40
36 Kathleen Townes Van Zandt Our Mother the Mountain 1969 4:30
37 Konstantine Something Corporate Unreleased (live staple) 2002 9:37
38 Lake Charles Lucinda Williams Car Wheels on a Gravel Road 1998 5:17
39 Left Alone Fiona Apple The Idler Wheel… 2012 5:52
40 Limousine (MS Rebridge) Brand New The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me 2006 7:42
41 Madame George Van Morrison Astral Weeks 1968 9:45
42 Maggot Brain Funkadelic Maggot Brain 1971 10:20
43 Meet Me in the City Junior Kimbrough All Night Long 1992 6:50
44 New Grass Talk Talk Laughing Stock 1991 9:40
45 New Paris Strand of Oaks HEAL 2014 6:19
46 Oh Comely Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea 1998 8:18
47 Peace Piece Bill Evans Everybody Digs Bill Evans 1959 6:44
48 Pendulum Man Bark Psychosis Hex 1994 10:07
49 Seigfried Frank Ocean Blonde 2016 5:34
50 Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city 2012 12:03
51 Starless King Crimson Red 1974 12:18
52 Station to Station David Bowie Station to Station 1976 10:11
53 Stone in Focus Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II 1994 8:17
54 Styrofoam Boots/It's All Nice on Ice, Alright Modest Mouse The Lonesome Crowded West 1997 7:14
55 Sur l'Autre Rive Je T'attendrai Alcest Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde 2007 7:23
56 The Angel and the One Weezer Weezer (Red Album) 2008 7:10
57 The Cinema Show Genesis Selling England by the Pound 1973 11:06
58 The End The Doors The Doors 1967 11:43
59 The Hawthorne Passage Agalloch The Mantle 2002 11:17
60 The Last You'll Know Neurosis Times of Grace 1999 9:14
61 The Past Is a Grotesque Animal of Montreal Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? 2007 11:53
62 The Pecan Tree Deafheaven Sunbather 2013 11:38
63 The Same Deep Water as You The Cure Disintegration 1989 9:19
64 The Trapeze Swinger Iron & Wine Around the Well 2009 9:31
65 They Won't Go When I Go Stevie Wonder Fulfillingness' First Finale 1974 5:59
66 Third of May / Ōdaigahara Fleet Foxes Crack-Up 2017 8:42
67 ...Til the Cops Come Knockin' Maxwell Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite 1996 6:55
68 Transatlanticism Death Cab for Cutie Transatlanticism 2003 7:53
69 Washer Slint Spiderland 1991 8:50
70 Weight Isis Oceanic 2002 10:39