It is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When we think of the concept of beauty, we automatically think of visual beauty. But there can be beautiful smells, tastes, sensations, and of course sounds. But what makes a song beautiful? An angelic female voice? Perhaps an instrument like a piano, a violin or a harp? But could something like a song by Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth with screaming, demonic vocals be beautiful? Perhaps, in a way. Perhaps it’s in the ear of the beholder. All I can talk about is what music I find beautiful. It isn’t going to be what other people find beautiful, although there might be some overlap at best.
I decided to put together a mixtape of the songs I consider the most beautiful ones I have ever heard, as of this year at age 35. These are the top 25. They’re certainly not the only songs I consider beautiful, of course. I don’t even consider every song that I like beautiful, per se. A catchy song isn’t the same as a beautiful song, but I can still like it. So this isn’t necessarily a list of my favorite songs, just the ones I find the most beautiful. What do I consider beautiful in a song? Well, they all do have a few things in common. They often but not always have female vocals; Liv Kristine of Theatre of Tragedy, for instance, has what I would consider the most beautiful female singing voice I have heard. For this list I have narrowed down the two most beautiful Theatre of Tragedy songs, in my opinion. There are certainly more though. If I consider a song beautiful and it has a male singer, it is generally due to the instruments and not so much the singing, although there are a few male singers with very beautiful voices, such as Peter Steele of Type O Negative. Most of these songs are slow, not very heavy, not really something you would dance to. And I even put a few guilty pleasures on there, like some love ballads and award-bait songs I’m a sucker for, if I’m in the right mood anyway. But most of all, a song that I really find beautiful usually puts a beautiful image in my head when I hear it. It lets me escape somewhere. It might be a memory of somewhere I have been before, or someplace in my imagination.
I have put together a YouTube playlist so you can follow along. I tried to make them all flow together. Again, as I mentioned in my last mixtape blog, Spotify wouldn’t have all these songs so I am doing the playlists on YouTube from now on. The mix clocks in at an estimated 132 minutes, so to even put it on a two hour blank cassette, the longest they made, will necessitate some cuts, sadly. I haven’t recorded it yet, but I plan to. At least with playlists time isn’t an issue.
YouTube Playlist
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUzP1Twau7QIP804FAVINriyfpQW0hPmr
I mentioned this song on my most recent Top Songs of the Month blog when speaking about Glaare’s newest album, and said that this was one of the most beautiful songs I had ever heard. And I wasn’t kidding. The beautiful vocals and dreamlike music take me on a journey. I feel like I am standing on a cliff along the cold Pacific coast, fog in the fresh salty air, overcast skies, the waves breaking against the rocky coast. The nearby redwood forest is covered in a blanket of mist. There might be darkness, but there is still love.
This picture I took in Northern California illustrates it perfectly.
Aurelio Voltaire - Underground (demo version)
This track is off Voltaire’s previously unreleased Cave Candem album, which featured early demo versions of songs that would later appear on his albums. This song would resurface on his Almost Human album, but it lost something in the process. That version has a bit of melancholy, but sounds downright cheerful compared to the original version. The lyrics, paired with the instrumentation, hold more weight. It feels more genuine, more from the heart. That is true of other songs on Cave Candem, for instance, the more widely-known version of “Ex-Lover’s Lover” is a funny, tongue-in-cheek if slightly morbid song about fantasizing killing your ex-girlfriend’s new lover out of jealousy, but the original, darker version, despite having the same lyrics, sounds like it is being sung by someone who would actually do it. This version of “Underground” similarly feels more genuine. I remember listening to it on my MP3 player when I was hiking in the forested hills around Vanadzor, Armenia, so it always takes me back to that, putting in my mind the vision of tree-covered hills, the tops shrouded in low clouds.
Type O Negative- Haunted
This song continues the energy of the last two songs. Someone put together a fan video of it on YouTube (which you’ll see on the playlist I shared), images of misty forests and a full moon rising in the night, and that’s what goes through my mind when I hear this song. This song is an experience. You don’t just listen to it, you experience it. Only Peter Steele could make the line “I hate the morning” sound utterly beautiful. I don’t even listen to the words really, I just listen to his voice and the music, and it takes me on an adventure.
The Smashing Pumpkins - Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
This is a song from my childhood. I wrote about the album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness way back in December 2019 when I was talking about the top ten albums that changed my life, and I think if you read that it will give you a sense of why I find this song beautiful. It reminds me of a fantasy world, like Neverland.
Katil - Kuzim
Again, you need only refer to a blog post I wrote about this very song to understand why it made this list.
Tigran Hamasyan - The Apple Orchard in Saghmosavank
This song is an instrumental. I got to see pianist Tigran Hamasyan in concert once, and he is very skilled. This song in particular I find to be very emotional. It paints a picture of a beautiful place. An isolated apple orchard somewhere up in the mountains. I have been to Saghmosavank, it’s a medieval church built at the edge of a canyon. It was quite a hike getting there, but the view was worth it, as you can see above. They always built churches in the most beautiful and scenic areas back then. This song brings me back there.
Serj Tankian - Garuna
Originally an old Armenian folk song that was preserved by Komitas Vartapet, this song has many beautiful renditions. I chose this one in particular because, like many of the songs on this list, I associate it with a memory. It was my last day in Armenia, and I chose to spend it by visiting the ancient ruins of Erebuni one last time. Erebuni is a fortress built by the Kingdom of Urartu in the 780s BC. I wish I had a picture of the view of Yerevan from Erebuni to share but I don’t. But I remember standing there, looking at that view, and tearing up because I knew I was leaving, and I didn’t know when I was ever coming back.
Theatre of Tragedy - ... a distance there is...
This is a song carried purely by Liv Kristine’s voice. The only other sounds are a piano and thunder in the distance. Thunder is always beautiful in my opinion. I picture a foggy field like the one above (taken in Shushi, Artsakh...sigh let’s not get on that subject), the song being sung by a beautiful Goddess dressed in a white shroud. This song is probably the most beautiful Theatre of Tragedy song. It is so pure.
Kamelot - On the Coldest Winter Night
Another subdued song by a metal band, this one is only vocals and orchestration, no drums or guitars, of which the piano is most dominant. It’s a song that makes me think about cuddling warmly in front of a fire under a blanket with your loved one on the coldest winter night, ice and snow outside. What’s funny is that since I’ve only ever lived in California and Florida I’ve never actually been in that situation. But I imagine it’s nice.
Journey - Open Arms
Guilty pleasure section! Well alright, I don’t really mind saying I like Journey, in general. But this is their slowest love ballad. Not my usual type of music. Still, you can’t help but get goosebumps listening to it. It sounds like love, that’s the best way I can describe it. There are a lot of beautiful Journey songs, this is just one of them.
Phillip Glasser - Somewhere Out There
The film An American Tail has held special significance to me since childhood. And this is a beautiful song. The version on this mix is the best version in my opinion, from an obscure promotional album. I never really liked the Linda Ronstadt version that became popular on the radio, only due to the vocals. The instrumentation is fine though. This takes the instrumentation from the Linda Ronstadt version and includes the vocals of Phillip Glasser, who voiced Fievel in the film. The only flaw is that it’s just him, while the song is designed to be a duet. Still the best version in my opinion.
Florence Warner Jones - Once Upon a Time With Me
This is a song from the little-known animated film Once Upon a Forest. Another childhood favorite of mine. I would have never admitted as a kid that this song gave me the feels, but it did, and still does. It’s a song about looking back on your life and remembering cherished memories of childhood, which strangely I understood as a child. And yes, it’s an award-bait song. Except it never won any awards because it’s obscure. How sad.
Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
Yes I like this band. It’s because of 90s nostalgia. This song was also on my first mixtape ever, so that also makes it special. This song was popular when I was in Middle School, a very horrible time in my life, and this song got me through some very hard times back then. It’s the stirring string section that gets me. If you listen to it being played acoustically it just doesn’t pack that same punch. It’s that string section that makes the song, making it sound epic and emotional. There was a trend in 90s alternative rock of orchestral string sections being incorporated into the usual guitars and drums (“Tonight, Tonight” by The Smashing Pumpkins, “The World I Know” by Collective Soul, “Numb” by The Cure, plenty of others), that’s another mix for another time.
Robbie Robb - In Time
This song is from the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. It plays during the scene where Bill and Ted visit the utopian future that their music would eventually create. And this song definitely suits a future utopia. I purposely chose a version with a guitar solo at the beginning because it makes the song sound even better. It isn’t the version that appears on the soundtrack. I was really hoping they would bring this song back for the third movie that came out recently but sadly they did not.
I wish I were blissfully ignorant enough to believe that in time everything would be alright with the world when it seems like everything’s spiraling toward disaster, but I’m a cynic and borderline nihilist. When I listen to this song though, I do feel like an optimist, if only momentarily. Well, maybe “in time” means centuries from now. That’s reasonable enough.
Ministry - Game Over
Yes, Ministry made this list. Early synthpop Ministry, of course. Though I’m sure “NWO” and “Jesus Built My Hotrod” have their own sort of beauty. This song was never properly released and only appeared on much later compilations of early 1980s Ministry, but there must be an alternate universe where this song topped the Billboard charts. For me it’s not so much about the lyrics themselves, but the sound of the song and the vocals, not unlike Type O Negative’s “Haunted”. It sounds like the soundtrack to an adventure. It kind of makes me feel like I’m flying. That probably sounds strange but I like to close my eyes and let my imagination go when I listen to music sometimes.
Affordable Floors - The Sounding
This is some little-known New Wave from 1986. It has the same sort of energy as “Game Over”. It’s another song that takes me places in my imagination. I imagine flying above the clouds, looking down at the world below, like what you see out the window in an airplane.
Fuel - Shimmer
We move back to the 1990s with this song. Another track that appears on my earliest mixtapes, this is a song that I remember hearing in Middle School, and as such, like “Iris”, it’s another song that got me through some of the roughest times in my life. It’s been with me for a long time, and I never get tired of it. I think of the good times of my youth. “Will we ever be again”? And it may be true, that all that shimmers in this world is sure to fade away again. There’s a sense of longing in this song, a sense of nostalgia, a sense of not being able to ever recapture the past. And yet all those sad feelings have been made into something beautiful.
William Control - Cemetery (acoustic version)
The studio version of this song is a nice song, but I rather prefer the acoustic version. It reminds me of comparing Voltaire’s demo songs with how they ended up on his albums. There’s more raw emotion in this version of the song. It’s hard to describe why I find this song beautiful. I think, like the last few songs, it’s more emotionally beautiful, not so much about the lyrics themselves at face value. I used to live across the street from a cemetery when I was a teenager, in fact (I know, how goth), and I would stare out my bedroom window at it on those long summer days where I wasn’t in school, and just contemplate it. This song brings me back to those days, even though it’s only a few years old. It reminds me of just letting your walls come down and allowing yourself to feel emotions again, which is something I had to learn to do again when I got out of High School.
The Smashing Pumpkins- Galapagos
“Ain’t it funny how we pretend we’re still a child?” As opposed to “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans” which I mostly like for the music, I like this song also for the lyrics. It’s another childhood song. The whole album was like my favorite music ever when I was ten years old, that’s how two songs from it made this list. I’ve always liked this track, it’s a sentimental one.
Type O Negative- Green Man
I gave Type O Negative one more track as well. There are a lot of beautiful songs from them, but to me this one is second only to “Haunted”. I like that it evokes nature imagery. It starts slow, opening with the chirping of birds, but by the end of it, it transcends itself and becomes a harmonious, spiritual experience. But just as you feel like your soul is about to leave your body and go astral traveling, it cuts off abruptly. I think this was just part of the band’s sense of humor. Still, a really beautiful song. There’s a demo version out there with a complete ending, but it’s from a long-lost cassette that had been dubbed from a master tape apparently, so not the greatest sound quality. And they ended it like the theme at the end of an episode of The Three Stooges. Ah you were so funny, Peter Steele.
Ace Morino - Summer
All right, time for the synthwave section. I really like this song, and it’s one of the newer songs on the list, the newest in fact, having come out in 2019. A wistful melody and lyrics about the changing seasons and longing for the past. It is thematically similar to “Shimmer”. It manages to capture the energy of the waning days of Summer, with the cold months just ahead. Summer is my least favorite season but this song still makes me feel sad that summer is ending, and with it, the good times. I remember feeling that way in grade school, but it was the vacation I was really mourning, not the season itself.
The Midnight- Crystalline
This song includes one of the best saxophone solos I have ever heard. It manages to bring to my mind a crystal landscape; in fact it makes me think of the Emerald City in Oz, said to be a most beautiful city inlaid with emeralds and gemstones everywhere you look. The Midnight has a lot of beautiful songs, I simply chose what I feel is their prettiest song.
Kalax - Let Go
This song will always bring me back to a particular moment in my life, because of when I first heard it. I talked about it on another Mixtape Reflection but I don’t mind summarizing it again. It was back in 2019, the day I got fired from the worst job I ever had, at the Macy’s call center, for using up my attendance credits. When I got home it hadn’t really sunk in yet. I was in a state of shock I guess. I laid back in bed, put YouTube on the TV, and this song appeared in my subscriptions. I put it on, and it had kind of a healing effect. I felt an outpouring of emotion. I could finally let go of the negativity and the demons that had been haunting me since I started working at that place. The trauma was finally over. I feel like this song has a healing power to it.
Opale - Sparkles and Wine
I put the extended version on the playlist but you should watch the music video for it, though it uses the shortened version. It’s flashing lights against a woman’s face, but it just has kind of an otherworldly effect. People in the comments have said that’s what the world looks like to them when they drop acid. I never have, but I will take their word for it. This song is hypnotic. In fact, if I’m being honest, I imagine this being the last song that goes through my mind before I die. I don’t know if anyone else ever contemplates that. It is an uncomfortable thing to think about. It’s something that will happen to everyone eventually, there’s no use denying it. I feel like this is the song I will hear when I finally leave my body, and go back to the stars. Hopefully that won’t be for a long time.
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