In this feature, I'm going to examine the Top 25 most played songs on my iTunes as of February, 3, 2011, starting with number 25 and working my way up to 1, and talk about what I love about the song and why I keep coming back to it. If this feature goes on for a long time, which I'm sure it will, I'll make note of new additions and subtractions from my most played list.
"I Will Dare," is the first track off the Replacements' landmark Let It Be record, one of my favorite albums of all time. Though The Replacements specialized in a ragged blend of Punk and late-70s Hard Rock and were infamous for their drunken, unhinged live performances, "I Will Dare" smoothes out the tears and frays for a jangly Rickenbacher guitar riff, courtesy of R.E.M.'s Peter Buck (a man whose guitar helped define the College Rock scene of the early 80s). Though I love the bouncy, New Wave backbeat and bluegrass-y guitar solo, the most memorable contribution to "I Will Dare" is courtesy of frontman/songwriter Paul Westerberg, who belts the simple lyrics with a convincing passion and provides the jaunty number with a desperate overtone, and plays some mandolin for good measure.
Why do I keep coming back? Two main reasons: 1) "I Will Dare" can sometimes feel like Westerberg and Buck ran an experiment to see how many melodic and catchy guitar lines they could fit into the song's 3 minute runtime. By the end of the song, Buck, Westerberg and guitarist Bob Stinson perfect a complex three man weave, climaxing in Buck's bubbly, chromatic final stroke. 2) The subtle shift from the major key verse to the minor chorus, imbuing a sweetness to Westerberg's coarse desperation.
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