My favorite music writer, Steven Hyden, has gotten into ranking various artists' best songs over the last few years. He's gotten to some artists whose work I really love. However, he has not yet gotten to my favorite artist of all-time: Rush. Inspired, I decided that I was going to put out my own list before he could.
Hyden really should have beaten me by this point. I first started putting together this blog post in the fullness of the pandemic and have only gradually pieced it together since 2020. I'd pick it up for a short while once I finally knew what to say about a song or three, and then I'd put it back on the shelf for weeks or months at a time. Then I'd decide to scrap what I'd written about one song and start over, and that would take at least 20 minutes. In other words, this process has been drawn out for a while.
This isn't the first time I've written about Rush on the internet, though. I did so plenty when I was younger, usually in Facebook notes, or even once for my high school newspaper. A big project like this, something approaching my final word, was going to happen at one point or another. Because while several other bands I listened to in my youth are not as important to me as they were then, Rush is a band I continue to hold dear. Even as other artists have become the subject of my fervor, and I look forward to hopefully decades of attending those artists' shows and seeing them evolve, this one still offers me regular comfort. There is not any musical act that I have thought more about in my life, even though their final performance was nearly a decade ago.
In the interest of time, I won't say much more before starting. Just note that this is about favoritism at least as much as quality, if not moreso. I've been ranking Rush's songs for years, because I am that kind of person, but that exercise has evolved. Only in the last few, though, have I ranked so many songs and used a spreadsheet for that purpose, and the exact spots are always changing. Give it a few months, and they'll be different again. Constant change is here to stay, et cetera.
We begin.
75. "Making Memories"
Though by the time Fly By Night was made, Neil Peart had joined the band and started writing songs about the philosophical and fantastic, Rush still had enough 70s bar-rock in them to record songs about 70s bar-rock subjects. "Best I Can," which had been performed with John Rutsey on drums, is about being in a rock band. "In the End" is a somewhat empty power ballad about a relationship. "Making Memories" is about the youthful optimism of being in a touring band without any money. Of the three, I like "Making Memories" the best, just because I always appreciate a bouncy acoustic number.
74. "Finding My Way"
The first Rush recording was an unremarkable, repetitive cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," but "Finding My Way" was the first song on their first album. As far as Album 1, Side 1, Track 1s go, it does its job as a mission statement for what Rush was: a hard rock band with heavy Led Zeppelin influence. Beyond that symbolic importance, it's a fun use of 5 minutes and nothing more.
73. "The Twilight Zone"
The first side of 2112 is as essential as any piece in the prog and metal canons. The second side is... fine. Just fine. I have long resisted calling it "filler," as I have enjoyed (and still can) every one of these five songs, but there is a shortage of material you would highly recommend to a newcomer to the band's work. While nothing drags the album down from its status as a classic, it's clear that after they wrote one of the best rock compositions ever, the band didn't put as much effort into fleshing out the rest. The lyrics aren't as strong, and most of the tracks go back to the hard rock formula of their roots. I put "The Twilight Zone" at the top of this pile for its spacious, psychedelic quality.
72. "Carnies"
We'll spend plenty of time later on Clockwork Angels, Rush's final album, so I won't put "Carnies" into a larger context like I will other parts of the record. Alex Lifeson's riff lumbers and stomps like something from the fingers of Tony Iommi, making it one of the heaviest songs in the band's late catalog, as well as the song on Clockwork Angels that most matches the album's steampunk theme.
71. "Red Tide"
Before I decided to get into Rush, I heard a lot of Rush in my dad's pickup. If we were driving to my grandparents' house, there was a good bet the CD playing was Presto, an album with a couple of true gems (more on them later), one of Rush's worst songs ("Superconductor"), and several songs that justify their runtime but don't amaze, and could win soft spots in some listener's hearts. Which one you pick is kind of up to you, and there's not a wrong answer. If this list ran to 90 or 100, all of them might make it. For now, I choose "Red Tide" as the representative of the Presto deep cuts.
70. "The Trees"
If someone has made fun of or criticized Rush for Neil's early fascination with Ayn Rand, it's probably been for "The Trees." This jeering is fair; I can think of no other song whose lyrics argue through allegory that forming unions and seeking equality will be the death of us all.
But what gets lost in the conversation is that "The Trees" tells a classically ridiculous but entertaining prog story in the same spirit of Grimble Gromble the gnome or a man-versus-hogweed war. And the middle instrumental section is a great example of Rush's ability to combine complexity with Alex's hooky power chords, which is of course preceded by cowbell and guitar solos. This song is Rush and progressive rock at their haughty worst and magnetic best.
69. "The Big Wheel"
Another pet favorite from Rush's transition out of the 80s. It's far from a touchstone track, but it exemplifies the way the band could create a big, resonant arena-rock sound. The second side of Roll the Bones is full of songs that pull the same trick, but "The Big Wheel" is less weighty than "Heresy" and spends less time listing words that happen to partially rhyme than "Neurotica" or "You Bet Your Life."
68. "BU2B"
If anything came across in Neil's ruminations on religion, it was ambivalence. Many of his songs criticize zealotry and question the existence of a god in a cruel world, but Snakes & Arrows spends time acknowledging how religion can serve as a person's balancing force. Peart spoke and wrote often about studying philosophy and theology, at one point describing himself as a "linear thinking agnostic" rather than an atheist.
"BU2B" contains no such ambivalence. Though Clockwork Angels runs parallel to Voltaire's Candide, a satire specifically critical of 18th-century institutions and theologians, lyrics like "believe in what we're told until our final breath while our loving Watchmaker [i.e., God] loves us all to death" are no less scathing in a modern context.
67. "Ghost Rider"
If there's one Rush album that deserves more due than it will get here, it's Vapor Trails. Though it was in ways a product of turn-of-the-century alt-rock with its absent guitar solos, excessive length, and compressed sound, most of the songs on the album are solid despite few cresting high. (It is also significantly improved by the 2013 remix.)
While Geddy Lee's intricate and driving bass is the best musical part of Vapor Trails, Neil is spiritually the record's most valuable player. After the deaths of his daughter and wife, Neil retired and went on a prolonged and lonely motorcycle ride up and down North America to guide himself through his grief. "Ghost Rider" is a directly personal song chronicling that time on the road, when the continent showed him beauty, "but there is no peace for the ghost rider." This is in stark contrast to the typically universal aims of Peart's lyrics, yet it in the end maintains applicable to one's own life: though darkness is in front of you, as the sun rises at your back, "nothing can stop you now."
66. "Far Cry"
There are few Rush songs I can think of that have no discernible meaning aside from rocking, and "Far Cry" is one of them. The pre-chorus and chorus echo a theme from other Rush songs, that though "it's a far cry from the world we thought we'd inherit," and some days the crack in the sky is falling in on us, we can get back on, we can get back on. But the verses border on nonsense. Nevertheless, as far as semi-dumb rockers go, this is a proficient one.
65. "Between Sun and Moon"
Much of what was just said about "Far Cry" can apply to "Between Sun and Moon" as well. It's fun. It's the song on Counterparts whose confusing or bad lyrics you can forgive because they're not really the point.
64. "Clockwork Angels"
At 7-and-a-half minutes, "Clockwork Angels" is the longest song on a Rush album since "The Camera Eye." It more or less follows a typical song structure, though, just stretched out a bit rather than broken into sections like the songs from the band's true prog era. It alternates between the airy wonder of the verses and a pounding heaviness in the pre-chorus and chorus, which reflects the lyrics' contrast of religious fervor and sharp criticism of that devotion. ("Ignorance is well and truly blessed," says a distorted Geddy during the bridge.) The song doesn't count as "epic" but is a strong set piece.
63. "Resist" (acoustic version)
Geddy once said that for Rush's live performances, their studio recordings were the standard to which they held themselves. So while one of the great things about Rush concerts was their varied setlists from tour to tour, seldom did the songs they played deviate from what the audience had come to expect. On the rare occasion that they did try something different, then, it was a treat. Take this stripped down rendition of "Resist," which improved one of the better tracks from the band's worst album, Test for Echo.
62. "Red Sector A"
Rush pass Steven Hyden's five-albums test: From 2112 through Signals, they were historically excellent. That's six great albums in a row, which many of the most popular and acclaimed artists of all-time have not been able to achieve.
That run could have been eight, though, if not for a dip in quality on Grace Under Pressure. Unlike every other album from this period, there's not a song I would rank among the band's very best. If we were ranking the 10 worst Rush songs, on the other hand, "Red Lenses" would make the list, largely because it consists of naming things that are red. It's a fine record but falls short of greatness.
There are highlights, though, if we can use that word for such a solemn album. The dark parts include "Red Sector A," a song borrowing from the experiences of Geddy Lee's parents as prisoners in Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. While I question the decision to set off a firework at the "Shouting guards and smoking guns" line in live performances, the studio version of "Red Sector A" handles the subject as directly as you'd expect from a band fronted by the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors. The keyboards are cold, reflecting either the despair of the persecuted or the impassiveness of those who carried out their persecution and murder.
Geddy has relayed in interviews the lasting weight of the Holocaust for survivors and their families. Freedom, the end of the war, and the deaths and imprisonment of Nazi leaders did not equal commensuration or a "happy" ending. Genocide leaves scars, and in the immediate aftermath, those scars were fresh. While an unwritten companion piece could have captured Mary Rubinstein's triumphant feeling upon returning to Bergen-Belsen with Geddy and her other children decades later — "I’m here and you’re not!" — "Red Sector A" appropriately makes no acknowledgment of hope after liberation. Hope is hard to imagine when your family is dead, and when your suffering is so great you can hardly comprehend anyone else in the world being left alive.
61. "Bastille Day"
On the other side of things, "Bastille Day" is purely red meat. Other bands wrote rockers about sex or drinking; Rush wrote a rocker about la guillotine.
60. "Anthem"
"Anthem" is here because it's probably Rush's most blunt, hit-you-square-in-the-face rocker. On this level, like much of Fly By Night, it absolutely rules.
But since I dodged the whole Ayn Rand thing with "The Trees," I have to be honest about "Anthem." It's a song named after a Rand novella, plainly endorsing the tenets of her belief system: not caring about other people and believing you're smarter than everyone else. (She called that belief system "Objectivism," the kind of name that was destined to lure in pseudo-intellectual teen boys.)
My general view is that if you are inclined to not care about other people, you don't need a rock band to give you permission. I cannot be alone in reading about Randian ideas and rejecting them despite my favorite lyricist espousing them on his band's albums. I'm sure others moved on from those principles once they realized their flaws, as Neil Peart himself did. But the truth is that songs like "Anthem" validated the views of many vile people who believe the only reason a person could suffer under capitalism is because they didn't try hard enough or aren't smart enough.
The Rush-as-libertarians narrative can be unfairly overblown, ignoring the messages in the band's later work. Still, for lyrics like this...
Before yourself, there's no one else more
Worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts
Will only cry out for more
...on some level, they deserve to wear it.
59. "Headlong Flight"
A working theory I've had is that a lot of Rush records can be considered in pairs, whether as companion pieces of an individual era or as points of contrast. Fly by Night and Caress of Steel were Rush's first steps as a prog band; the effort spent making Hemispheres necessitated the scaled-back Permanent Waves; Counterparts and Test for Echo represent Rush's exploration into mid-90s alt-rock; and so on. The theory is a little flimsy and imperfect, but it's a simple way of contextualizing the band's history.
Snakes & Arrows and Clockwork Angels, their last two albums, make up what could be best described as Rush's "legacy" period, following their comeback and 30th anniversary tour, and marked by the release of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a loving portrayal in I Love You, Man, the Time Machine Tour, and eventually induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.
There is no shortage of people who hate Rush still, but the 21st century has been kind to the band's reputation. Unlike before, people who grew up Rush fans have gotten to help set the narrative. The band even got a cover story in Rolling Stone for the first time. It's much closer to "cool" to love this nerdy prog band than it used to be.
Which brings us to the role of Nick Raskulinecz, producer of Snakes & Arrows and Clockwork Angels. Raskulinecz, a Rush fan with two Foo Fighters producing credits, served as the band's guide back to rawk. Vapor Trails was an album with intensity but didn't have the space, complexity, or punch of early Rush albums. Its successors were deliberate attempts at refinding their heavier, proggier side.
Though Alex and Geddy have spoken as if they could have made more music instead of retiring, Clockwork Angels wound up an exquisite farewell album. Among its keys to success is containing all the elements of classic Rush without sounding like an attempt at making Hemispheres, Part II. It sounds like a natural evolution rather than an attempt to imitate what worked before, a rare trick for aging bands.
At times, though, the record is explicitly nostalgic. The 7-minute "Headlong Flight" is a reflection on "all the journeys of this great adventure," with the story's narrator wistfully wishing to "live it all again." If the lyrics weren't enough, Alex intentionally borrows the riff from "Bastille Day." While short on prog gravitas and texturing compared to other songs on the album, or to the band's proper epics, "Headlong Flight" is exhilarating, propulsive rock.
58. "How It Is"
Neil wrote a lot about the jadedness and nihilism that everyday life breeds, such as on "Middletown Dreams" and "We Hold On." Much of the time, his focus is on finding ways to persist through mundanity and to find encouragement.
"How It Is" aims higher: While "faith in bright tomorrows [gives] way to resignation," we have to imagine and push for a better world, to close the gap "between how it is and how it ought to be." A soaring Alex comes in during the final chorus to makes for Vapor Trails' best, most uplifting moment.
57. "What You're Doing"
Attending a Rush show felt like being at a big party for nerds, and the encore was when that atmosphere culminated on the R40 Tour. The stage became less ornate as the band went "back in time," with the backdrop resembling a high school auditorium, amplifiers resting on wooden chairs, and a disco ball coming down from the ceiling. Rush presented as the band they were in 1974, settling into the danceable groove of Alex's riff on "What You're Doing." It was a joy.
56. "Circumstances"
Before joining Rush, Neil worked for a time as a drummer in London. During that time, as he says in "Circumstances," he was homesick and doubtful at his prospects, looking out the window at "endless rooftops" and equally endless English rain. This excursion didn't work out for him, and he went back to Canada to work in his dad's tractor parts shop. He kept playing, though, he landed an audition to join a local act who'd made it onto U.S. rock radio, and we know what happened from there.
"Circumstances" is a reflection on what happened between London and Hemispheres: how Neil made it through his loneliness and disillusionment because he didn't have any choice but to keep trying in naïvety, and how he felt the same after breaking through. The man playing arenas sought happiness and worth the same as the kid struggling to get by thousands of miles from home.
"Circumstances," like the rest of the album, is made for heshers and progheads. It is also Neil's first lyrical foray into direct introspection. The band didn't deliver this sentiment in such a bruising package over the next three-plus decades, but it became far more central to their songwriting than science fiction and contrived libertarian fables. Rush in the 1970s was rock's foremost nerd band, but when the gongs and fantasy stories went away, they became a band for anyone looking to belong.
55. "Emotion Detector"
By 1985, Rush had gone from a bluesy rock to prog metal to sleek, accessible mainstream rock to synth-heavy arena rock touched with reggae. If you made it this far, and through a slight dip in quality with Grace Under Pressure, you're one of the diehards.
Power Windows is your reward. It's not a perfect record — I run hot and cold on "The Big Money" and "The Manhattan Project" — but is a popular second- or third-favorite album for Rush fans for a reason. It's where Geddy's experiments with keyboards peaked, and it contains some of Neil's most grounded and relatable lyrics. Other songs on the album are better, but "Emotion Detector" is good enough to make my list on the basis of its anthemic, shout-your-lungs-out ending.
54. "New World Man"
Rush only breaking into the U.S. Top 40 with this afterthought from Signals is one of the odd bits of trivia from the band's history. While "New World Man" is far from one of their finest songs, its slow buildup and upbeat, shoutable (even danceable?) chorus is difficult to resist. Alex does his finest Andy Summers impression in an era where he dabbled in that impression often.
53. "Roll the Bones"
Is the "Roll the Bones" rap as cheeky as it thinks? No. Is it good, strictly speaking? Also no. However, having come across it years after it came out, I don't view it with the baggage some older Rush fans give it. I love it for its camp, heightened by the gleefully silly skeleton in the music video.
52. "Spindrift"
Like the Season 4 finale of The Sopranos, entitled "Whitecaps," "Spindrift" uses the foamy violence of stormy seas as a metaphor for marital strife. It's a lumbering song, one where Neil's drums are relatively simple but hammered and Alex's guitar wails over Geddy's heavy groove, reflecting the crashing waves and flying spray. But in the post-chorus, the waters calm, drawing our attention away from the couple's fight to reconciliation: "Where is the wave that will carry me a little closer to you?"
The ending of the song, with the return of the main riff before collapsing out, could be interpreted as pessimistic, like Tony Soprano moving out of the house. But that seems a little dour for Neil's usual ruminations on love. And if the resolution is the narrator and their partner splitting, then it would be uncharacteristic for Neil to leave that unsaid. A more likely the message is the importance of communication in relationship, and of trying to find common ground rather than lashing out. A secondary — but still vital — point is that Alex wrote a banger of a riff.
51. "The Wreckers"
As a senior in college, I took a history course concerning the ancient history of piracy in the Mediterranean Sea. Like all history courses, it had slow moments and duller reading assignments and things I've forgotten because I didn't need that information in day-to-day life. But I was a history minor essentially just for fun, rather than for any potential professional purpose, so I was always going to find interesting facts.
For example: "The Wreckers" describes a real-life practice, in which pirates would lure in unsuspecting ships into their snare and then attack the crew and steal their cargo. They did this by appearing to be in need of aid, or by tricking them into running aground in bad weather. Neil did not reference history as much as philosophy and fiction in his lyrics, but that's not to say it didn't ever show up.
INTERMISSION I: DRUM SOLO
50. "Lakeside Park"
On the aforementioned R40 Tour, when it came time to play something from Caress of Steel, there was really only one song the band could pull from their bag. "Bastille Day" would be too demanding on Geddy Lee's vocal chords, "The Necromancer" and "The Fountain of Lamneth" are too long and unpolished, and "I Think I'm Going Bald" is too atrocious. So they began their encore with "Lakeside Park," this kind and sentimental tribute to one of Neil Peart's favorite places in his native St. Catherines. Geddy apparently doesn't like it, and it's far from Rush's greatest work, but it's a pleasant, concise listen.
49. "Afterimage"
It would be a lie if I claimed that "Afterimage" resonates deeply with the events of my own life. I have been incredibly fortunate in that I have been relatively untouched by death. I was not close with my two late grandfathers. While I have a positive association with my paternal grandmother, she died when I was just 4 years old, and I have not kept any memories of her. Friends and relatives, friends of relatives, and relatives of friends have died, some of whom I've met. Old coaches and teachers have died. But so far, I have not suffered a real human loss. Only a couple of dearly loved pets have left my life.
To listen to "Afterimage" is like feeling a proxy of emotions that I will know later in life. I know aspiration, I know hopelessness, I know regret, but I do not know what Neil felt when he wrote about the permanence and anguish of death. But I know that I will one day, and that that day comes closer all the time. When you become an adult, you become more aware of how temporary everything is, and how you could lose someone you love — or how the people you love could lose you.
I have a running, sort of macabre bit with my college roommates, in particular one who would say stupid things from time to time, just for his own amusement. When he dies, I say, whatever way he has most recently annoyed me will go in his eulogy along with all his other offenses. It's in jest, of course. When my closest friends die, hopefully decades from now, if I am there for it, I won't be listing off the things about them that bothered me or lambasting them in front of their other loved ones. I'll be suffering and in disbelief, seeing their footprints and hearing the echoes of their voice. I do not look forward to that moment. But maybe listening to "Afterimage," finally knowing what it means, will help me get through it.
48. "Countdown"
"Countdown," written after the band witnessed in person the first launch of Space Shuttle Columbia, is a song about how marvelously impossible and endlessly cool space exploration is. It is not the deepest thesis, but that does not negate its truth. Geddy's keyboards play a starring role in building tension and lifting off with a solo, one of the few moments in Rush's discography where he tries to be Rick Wakeman instead of Chris Squire.
47. "Animate"
Counterparts is the rare Rush album where Neil tries to write about romance. The results are mostly clumsy. Songs like "Alien Shore" or "Cold Fire" are love songs that only the Professor could write, but unlike something like Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place" — a song that is distinctly of David Byrne — they don't quite work for anybody else. While sincere, they are too full of metaphor and weird syntax, which just feels off for this subject. It probably doesn't help that this is a band whose sound is known for attracting sexless male geeks.
Perhaps I'm willing to give "Animate" a pass on the lyrics because Geddy's bass line whips so hard, but I do think the words work. It's a song about how a relationship can be challenging, but in a balancing and constructive way. To borrow Eddie Vedder's way of putting it, Neil works through being woman enough to be someone's man, swallowing his machismo to be a better, more sensitive partner.
46. "Workin' Them Angels"
The greatest charm of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, Sam Dunn and Scot McFayden's 2010 documentary about the band's career, is how it shows the story of Rush is the story of three guys who stayed best friends for decades despite the tensions inherent to being in a high-profile rock band. So many of bands they aspired to be — the Beatles, Yes, Led Zeppelin — splintered or languished through ever-changing lineups due to conflicting personalities and self-destruction, and that just never happened to Rush. They come off in the film as incredibly well-adjusted, proud of working well into their 50s, and well aware of how lucky they were.
That is the spirit of the sunny "Workin' Them Angels": gratitude for the band's experiences seeing the world, afforded to them by their tremendous accomplishments.
45. "Territories"
In the 80s, Neil's lyrics took a noticeable turn away from the literary and libertarian. If the likes of Rand Paul — whom Neil would correctly identify as a man who "hates women and brown people" — were still paying attention, they wouldn't recognize the conservative rock band they saw a decade prior. Starting with the environmentally conscious "Distant Early Warning" on Grace Under Pressure and lasting until the end of his career, Neil sounded like a veritable bleeding heart.
Not that all of his attempts at tackling "the issues" landed. The albums of the late 80s were rife with nobly conceived but ultimately overwrought lyrics advocating for peace and equality. I'm not sure that the anti-war "Territories," one of the better examples, isn't too on-the-nose at times. I am comfortable calling it an enjoyable listen, however, highlighting how Rush managed to sound big but not overstuffed in their keyboards-and-electronic-drums era.
44. "Caravan"
There are two key themes to Clockwork Angels. The first is that organized religion inhibits individual thought and borders on an outright sham. The other concerns what the hero's journey means when you're closer to the end of your own journey than to the beginning. This is because the final four songs on Clockwork Angels are about Neil — specifically the Neil of 2012, a man nearing the end of his journey as a musician and old enough to evaluate what his life has been and what he might have learned.
By the telling of the notes accompanying each song in the lyric book, the first eight tracks amount to a flashback: If the narrator in "Headlong Flight" — the album's bridge between past and present — wants to live his life over again, then "Caravan" is the start of trying to live it over again: coming of age, longing for adventure and a sense of purpose, and facing the challenges of the world.
Neil turned 60 while touring the album. He wasn't the kid who couldn't stop thinking big. He nevertheless remembered what it was like to be that kid, the one who didn't know what he was doing but knew the glorious feeling of getting somewhere for the first time: "On my way at last, on my way at last."
43. "Everyday Glory"
In the narrative of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, Presto is where Rush eschewed keyboards and re-embraced heaviness, as evidenced the the thud of the opening track, "Show Don't Tell." That's somewhat inaccurate, however, considering how sleek and polished both Presto and Roll the Bones are overall. Counterparts, on the other hand, sounds like Rush trying to fit into the brawn of mid-90s alt-rock. The opening to "Alien Shore" resembles something from David Bowie's grungy side project Tin Machine. Alex Lifeson's tone on "Cut to the Chase" recalls Stone Gossard on Ten, particularly "Garden." (Matt Cameron, who at the time of Counterparts' release was still with Soundgarden, would later play drums on Geddy's solo album, My Favourite Headache.)
Rush retained plenty of their New Wave influence, though. See the reverb-heavy "The Speed of Love" and the album's closer, "Everyday Glory." On both, Alex channels the Edge, bouncing between anthemic arena rock and jangly but understated riffs, all in a bright, highly processed tone.
The point of the song, meanwhile, is along the lines of "How It Is" from Vapor Trails — essentially, that the mundane trials of "everyday people" are legitimate, if overlooked, and there's nevertheless honor in persisting and striving for a better life. Sure, it's a little schlocky, but in a moment of despair, the climactic bridge ("If the future's looking dark, we're the ones who have to shine...") and final chorus can have a real power over me.
42. "Mission"
The story of Rush is of three best friends who were just the right kind of dorky and perfectionist for each other. Except they weren't just three best friends, but one of the most popular bands on earth. And their drummer hated that fact.
Neil did seemingly enjoy the act of performance itself: He twirled his sticks, threw them in the air, did a solo every night, and even fired a T-shirt cannon before the encore on the Clockwork Angels Tour. He wanted to be the best drummer he could be and wasn't afraid to add touches of showmanship. But he famously shunned attention when not on stage and was sick of life on the road, almost giving up touring altogether after Hold Your Fire.
Neil's bandmates did not share his disdain for fame, and they are not known as partiers, but they did seem to relish being rock stars just a bit more. Geddy in particular was a fit frontman: yelling for the audience to clap along to "In the Mood" or "The Spirit of Radio," occasionally cracking jokes, even bouncing across the stage with his bass during instrumental sections. He's the one who wrote "Best I Can," after all — the song that declares, "Rock and roll is a scream, making millions my dream."
Even if Geddy was a young man at the time of "Best I Can," it feels like an appropriate foil to "Mission," which came out 13 years later and which Neil wrote. He rejects the idea that celebrity status is anything special at all: "If their lives were exotic and strange, they would likely have gladly exchanged them for something a little more plain — maybe something a little more sane." For Neil, the life of a renowned musician meant paying "a fabulous price." All he wanted was to pursue his obsession.
41. "Between the Wheels"
The bookends of Grace Under Pressure both lean on simple, scared keyboard refrains. "Distant Early Warning" is loudly urgent, like a fire alarm. This fits thematically, considering it addresses the destruction of the earth that people should've been paying closer attention to by 1984. For regular listening, though, I sometimes find it a little inelegant.
I prefer the closer, "Between the Wheels," where Geddy creates something deeply foreboding with just two chords, buffeted by the ominous ambience of his synth pedals. It sounds like something from a John Carpenter film until Alex's guitar comes howling in. For all of Alex's protesting over synthesizers in this period, they were experts at integrating the two to create a cohesive tone.
40. "Dreamline"
"Dreamline" has the appropriate kinetic energy for a song about running away from what you know to find what you don't while your heart is still moving. From Alex's opening riff — reflecting again some U2 influence — to Geddy's car-engine-purr bassline to the crashing arrival of the chorus, it's an exciting song that reflects its intended spirit.
39. "Freewill"
When you're a kid, you decide that you just don't like things. You don't have a thought-out reason why. You've just made your decision, such as it can be called that, and gone with it.
One of the things I decided I didn't like was Rush. As I mentioned before, I heard Rush songs in my dad's truck, mainly from Presto, and I liked them. But crucially, I didn't know they were Rush songs. I just knew that Rush existed as a concept of a band, and I never gave them my approval. So the same way I just didn't like a sports team because "they're too good" (something I said of the Texas Rangers at one point, who have almost never been remotely good), or some food because it was new and weird to me, or a color of crayon for whatever possible reason, I decided I just didn't like Rush.
By the end of elementary school, I was coming out of this mode of thinking. (I was, and in ways remain, stubborn.) I still thought I just didn't like Rush.
But do you know to what song I granted an exception? "Freewill." I just didn't like Rush, but I knew "Freewill" ruled.
38. "The Enemy Within"
Much of the similarity between 80s Rush and Talking Heads concerns Neil: Not long after the emergence of Talking Heads, Neil started incorporating reggae- and African-inspired beats, such as on "The Spirit of Radio," "Digital Man," and "Scars." But you can also hear some of David Byrne's frenetic, aggressive guitarwork in Alex's evolution. The riffs on "The Enemy Within" wouldn't sound out of place on More Songs About Buildings and Food.
37. "By-Tor and the Snow Dog"
From premise to execution, this is a preposterous song. An epic, 8-and-a-half-minute battle between manager Ray Danniels' two dogs, with one as the designated hero of "the Overworld" and the other as the "centurion of evil." Alex delivers a chaotic solo, culminating in a section where the three members of the band repeat the same complicated phrase a few times, but removing the final note each time until they run out of notes. It's absurd showiness, a stoned-out joke that ended up taking up half a side, ushering in their prog era in silly fashion. And every second positively rocks.
36. "Fly By Night"
Maybe the most agreeable song Rush ever recorded. It doesn't have the brash testosterone of their first singles or the sci-fi weirdness of the next few albums, and it isn't as Rush-y as their 80s hits. It's a down-to-earth, warm classic rock song the same way as "Lakeside Park," but Alex's riff has just a little bit more magnetism. It's optimistic and comfortable. You can play "Fly By Night" around your Rush-agnostic friends and not get questioning looks for it.
35. "Force Ten"
Hold Your Fire is one of Rush's weakest albums, and that goes beyond the "mistake" that Alex and Geddy see in "Tai Shan." (If "Tai Shan" was a mistake, what were "Open Secrets" and "Lock and Key?") The majority of the album is just cold and a little too synthetic, and Neil's lyrics are too often clunky.
But the best parts of Hold Your Fire are some of the best pieces of music Rush ever wrote. Take the song they spent the least amount of time thinking about but ultimately made the opener, "Force Ten." The introductory refrain, verses, and chorus all read a bit like they're from different songs — the unused line that still shows up in the lyric book doesn't tie them together as well as it tries — but every individual piece works on its own, with Geddy's meaty bassline and layers of synthesizers leading the way.
34. "Working Man"
Canonically, "Working Man" is the song that launched Rush's career in America when DJ Donna Halper played it on Cleveland's WMMS, prompting immediate and immense response from the station's listeners. Though many hearing the band for the first time evidently mistook them for Led Zeppelin (a comparison that seems somewhat insulting to both Rush and Led Zeppelin — the latter group was well into their "acoustic guitars and writing about Tolkien" phase, and Rush wouldn't get there until Fly By Night), "Working Man" caught on among the city's working men. This was likely not the first moment that Rush, something of a proto-metal act already, wrote a song for men who thought they could be living their lives a little better than they thought they were. It was, though, the first time they reached such a large audience of those men.
Of course, "Working Man" was also the last song Rush ever played as a trio. (Alex and Geddy's last song at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts, with veteran session player Omar Hakim and Tool's Danny Carey on drums, was "YYZ.") I will not highlight that final performance at the Forum, however, but instead the one from Cleveland in 2011. It incorporates the mock-reggae introduction that came and went in concert (see Exit...Stage Left) and also features the best version of Alex's "Working Man" solo on an album, where he heightens his trademark work of pure shredding with touches of aggressive, deranged improvisation. Geddy's fingers, meanwhile, are going lightspeed, and somehow Neil keeps the whole thing together while hammering his drums to the brink of collapse. It is an extraordinary exhibition of musicianship, made even more incredible by the fact these guys were approaching 60 years old at the time.
33. "Mystic Rhythms"
Neil is sometimes spoken of just as the guy with all the elaborate fills and who delivered a drum solo at every gig. There's no one in the history of rock music who has combined dexterity with fury the way he did. That is central to both his appeal and that of the band as a whole: Every Rush fan has a closet of air instruments, and the one that sees the most mimed practice is always the drum kit. But Neil could also carry a song, as a drummer absolutely has to do on a song called "Mystic Rhythms." This is one of the band's greatest tracks to crank in the car, particularly on a long nighttime drive with nothing but stars and distant headlights in your vision.
32. "Presto"
As Rush emerged from the 80s, acoustic guitar started to reappear on their albums. It didn't take the same quasi-mystical, classically-inspired quality as in the intro to "A Farewell to Kings." Instead, Alex flowed between strummed series of glowing chords and deriving off of that every now and then for flavor. According to the 2015 Rolling Stone embed, on tours, Alex would sit in his hotel room with a joint and an acoustic guitar, endlessly playing without direction, just for fun. Harnessing that is presumably how we got "Hope," a gorgeous if brief number on the acoustic-heavy Snakes & Arrows that typifies Alex's style.
Every so often before that record, we'd get dashes of his acoustic tinkering. See "Presto," one of the tracks on its album that truly breaks through a somewhat flat production. The sweeping, acoustic verses and loud, electric choruses and bridge work well together rather than contradicting, delivering a sweet song about naïvely loving in spite of one's powerlessness.
31. "Natural Science"
A warning: I get pretty sentimental and write a lot about What Rush Means to Me over the last 30 songs on this list. But before we get there, I do want to acknowledge again that it's just cool to hear three musical geniuses bang out a 9-and-a-half minute song that would count as a masterpiece for most bands who aspire to these heights. "Natural Science" admittedly goes farther toward "pretentious" on the "fun" to "pretentious" scale than other works of theirs, but that is not at all to say that it's a chore to sit through. Each segment flows naturally into each other and is both impressive and enjoyable. This band knew how to write listenable songs. Sometimes they just fit three or four of them into one.
30. "Where's My Thing?"
I am interested in what version of Rush might have developed had they more frequently written instrumentals. The ones they gave us often included touches of jazz fusion and funk, which shouldn't be a surprise when considering Neil's admiration for Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, as well as the bite of Geddy's bass. The way they opened "Where's My Thing?" while touring Clockwork Angels, by giving Geddy the space to solo before leading into Alex's hooky riff, suggests that they could have moonlit as a funk trio if they wanted.
(Geddy, if you're reading this, please consider collaborating with Vulfpeck. You'd take "It Gets Funkier V" to another level.)
29. "Vital Signs"
Such was the height of Rush's powers in the fall of 1980 that, as Geddy tells it, they threw together this Police-inspired reggae-rocker "in about 5 minutes."
28. "The Anarchist"
Something that Nick Raskulinecz clearly wanted to do with Clockwork Angels was take advantage of and elevate rock's greatest bassist. This may sound ridiculous to say, but not every Rush album puts such an emphasis on bass in its mix. In order to fill space, sometimes the band added a rhythm guitar track. Take "2112," for example: In "Soliloquy," as Alex starts soloing, you can hear Geddy's bass, but it shares the space with another layer of guitar. There's nothing wrong with that choice — I prefer that section to have something occupying the middle, which live performances inherently lacked. It's just that even with this band, the low end can be drowned out on studio recordings.
Meanwhile, on "The Anarchist," the bass is pushed right to the front of the mix, and at points is even the instrument carrying the melody rather than the rhythm. Not that that's the only time Geddy took over the melody, but it's always a highlight. The extra fuzz, combined with some particularly aggressive playing, gives the album some heft and shows off Geddy's skill a bit more than usual.
27. "Closer to the Heart"
Contrary to the perception that Rush was an overly self-serious band, the videos played between songs at their concerts tended towards humor and self-deprecation. They weren't always funny per se, but they were goofy. Jerry Stiller as an old Rush fan grouchy about the fact "they never play 'Bangkok'" is funny. Employing Count Floyd, a character from Canadian sketch television, to introduce "The Weapon" seems more of a dated relic today, even if having the audience put on 3-D glasses is an amusing gag. Whatever this Jay Baruchel bit was is weird more than anything.
And while I do not find Alex farting around in a fatsuit funny at all, the polka version of "Closer to the Heart" from the Time Machine Tour brings me joy.
26. "Tom Sawyer"
With all that said about how hit-and-miss the band's humor was, and with full acknowledgement to the problem of having lyrics explicitly inspired by Ayn Rand, and to the fact that any cultural phenomenon predominantly cultivating white men is bound to have its ugly bits: In my experience, a Rush concert was a purely positive environment.
Earlier, I called it a big party for nerds; in the parlance of today, we'd call it a scene where dudes rocked. Thousands of people who have largely experienced some form of loneliness or need to feel bigger than themselves, gathered in one space to be earnestly, publicly nerdy about something that everyone there loves just as much as the person next to them. And the vast majority of those people were men, who are rarely (if ever) so encouraged to let out their emotions in front of others, let alone strangers.
You would get weird glances for air-drumming at just about every concert. Doing so at a Rush show made you just part of the crowd.
The best thing I saw yesterday?
— Prescott Rossi (@PrescottRossi) September 10, 2018
This guy from the Baltimore Ravens Marching Band playing PERFECT air drums to Rush's "Tom Sawyer": pic.twitter.com/uKxtXue0PM
"Tom Sawyer" is certainly better than the 26th-best Rush song. It ranks lower on my list just because, like any band's biggest hit, it belongs to everyone more than it does any individual. There's not much of a personal journey to go on with a song you can hear on classic rock radio every day. But for many of us, "Tom Sawyer" is what ignited our Rush fandom. When those fills come up, every one of us drops any pretense of coolness and pretends we're behind that drum kit.
INTERMISSION II: DINNER BREAK
25. "Bravado"
Geddy Lee is often derisively reduced to the vocalist he was in the band's early days, when no one in rock music could wail as high as he could. Rock criticism at the time was overwhelmingly hostile to supposedly unserious heavy bands such as Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and Rush fit right into that narrative. To the self-anointed "dean of American rock critics," Rush was "Uriah Heep, with vocals revved up an octave. Or two." Even into the 90s, Geddy's singing was called a "Donald-Duck-on-helium yelp."
Certainly on the band's first three albums, Geddy was — in baseball terms — more of a thrower than a pitcher. He could change speeds, but he tended toward maximalism: Just as a spry, 100-mile-per-hour flamethrower may not see the use of the off-speed pitch, young Rush wanted to rock hard, and that meant taking full advantage of a voice that was higher and harsher than everyone else's. Live recordings show even more than the studio releases just how much Geddy exerted himself. That was not sustainable. Geddy had to sing more than scream.
Fortunately, he could do that. If not, a delicate song like "Bravado" could never have worked. Geddy's forlorn but resolute delivery, complemented by strong but understated work from his bandmates, restrains the song just before it can become an overcooked power ballad.
24. "Grand Designs"
The band liked the popish sheen of "Grand Designs" and its sparkling, dancing synthesizers so much that they more or less repeated it with "Prime Mover" on Hold Your Fire. I prefer the original incarnation, as it's far more infectious and retains more of Rush's rocking drive, culminating in an uncharacteristic invitation to a singalong after the final chorus.
23. "Digital Man"
Rush had had dalliances with reggae before Signals, but it was on "Digital Man" that they embraced it most fully, interspersing spacey chord patterns and laid back, cowbell-dosed beats with a sleek 80s sheen and their usual technical brilliance. Despite being the second-longest song on the album, it feels brisk.
22. "The Pass"
Rush's "Everybody Hurts," but before there was "Everybody Hurts." "The Pass" is one of the songs where the band seemed fully aware that their music reached lonely outcasts above all others, and it serves as a direct plea to those listeners to push through their sorrow and imagine something better for themselves. "All of us get lost in the darkness," but "dreamers learn to steer by the stars." There's never been a person who didn't need to hear a version of that.
21. "YYZ"
A good instrumental gets a person singing the song in their own head. An extraordinary instrumental gets 40,000 people singing and hopping along to it at once.
20. "Faithless"
The first time I realized I might never have believed in God that was in my confirmation class. As 8th graders, we were supposed to write statements affirming our belief and describing what faith meant to us. On our first day of working on these statements in class, I had some trouble getting started. My mentor, an adult in the church, tried to help me out — ironically, by asking me first why I was a fan of Rush. That was easy enough: I liked their music. Then came the follow-up: "Why do you believe in God?"
I couldn't answer. The best I could manage was something about how it was how I was raised. That didn't feel right. It was believing because I thought I was supposed to believe. I was rattled. I went to the bathroom to clear my head.
I eventually threw together some kind of statement and became a confirmed Presbyterian. I wore a cross around my neck every day and found real community in my youth group. I went on some mission trips and felt that Jesus-induced high. For a while, it was real to me.
However, that faded by the time I was a senior in high school. I was back where I was, questioning whether I believed in the first place, and wondering if that meant I was somehow a bad person.
Once again, enter Neil Peart.
I don't have faith in faith.
I don't believe in beliefs.
You can call me faithless.
You can call me faithless.
But I still cling to hope,
And I believe in love,
And that's faith enough for me.
And that's faith enough for me.
19. "The Garden"
When I learned that Neil Peart had died, I didn't have a strong reaction to the news initially. My brother had called me as soon as I'd gotten out of work, and I didn't know what to say or even how to feel.
As the evening went on, I started thinking more about the place that Rush occupied in my life. I didn't want to listen to every Rush song I could. Being a stranger to Neil instead of a long-awaited friend — setting aside how freely I use his first name — I felt it would have been disingenuous to put on "Afterimage." I instead played "The Garden."
Neil lived eight more years after "The Garden" was recorded, but it is as marvelous a farewell as any artist has given. Layered in strings, it could have been too overwrought; closing Clockwork Angels' steampunk odyssey, it could have been too weird; owing its metaphor to Candide, it could have lacked originality.
Instead, it is beautifully restrained, broadly applicable, and distinctly Neil's way of telling you what in life mattered most to him: "The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect... the way you live, the gifts that you give." All we should ever expect as a reward is "the fullness of time." We only have so many hours to make our mark on this world, and we must make that mark through compassion.
It was poetic that this was the message of Rush's last studio recording. The first time listeners heard what Neil Peart had to say, he encouraged ourselves to put ourselves before others. The last time, nearly four decades later, his final word was to put others before ourselves, and that the value of our lives is defined by how we treat our fellow human.
In the aftermath of his death, the song hit me in a way it never had before. Standing in my dingy basement kitchen, I cracked.
18. "Middletown Dreams"
"Subdivisions" is the more famous Rush song about surviving suburban life, but its scope is limited to adolescence. "Middletown Dreams" zooms out to comment on how a life that's "not unpleasant" still wears us down even as we aren't as trapped by the limits of our teenage years. There's no school, we typically have more money than we did as kids, we're not as concerned with trying to stand out, and our brains are more developed and even-keeled. Even so, "another day as drab as today is more than a man can endure."
In such conditions, we must find our distractions. We paint, play an instrument, or find some other hobby to give ourselves some purpose and "get out of town." This is one of Neil's greatest successes of his pivot to writing about more universal themes, and it's one of the songs that makes Power Windows Rush's last great album until Clockwork Angels. The synthesizers and Alex's guitar work — which is marvelous, by the way — aid each other perfectly, creating a big, processed sound that fills the space of an arena but doesn't lose its emotional core.
17. "Xanadu"
I have no idea how "Xanadu" got a music video. It's an 11-minute song. It's not supposed to have one. But it did, somehow, which documented forever the band's kimonos-and-double-necks phase.
While you listen to those windchimes and Moog pedals and foggy harmonics, this is probably a good time to mention that I don't do drugs. I don't feel any need to add sweet Jamaican pipe dreams to my music listening, and I generally am just not interested in mind-altering substances. (If you are into them, no judgment: Do whatever you need to get through life.) I am a boring square. A boring square who nevertheless agrees with those who do get stoned to this band that "Xanadu" is way cool, man.
16. "Jacob's Ladder"
"Jacob's Ladder" was one of the highlights of the R40 Tour, both because the song itself is incredible — from Neil's steady but imposing opening march, to the unleashing of the band's trudging thunder, to Geddy's alien-sounding keys — and because of the fuller production. In what was already an elaborate show, the song itself became a great spectacle, with the different lighting elements elevating each moment of wild fury and of peace. Seeing the lasers cast over the crowd during the middle verse will forever be one of my lasting images of seeing this band, a moment that is documented in the concert film (in a different city from mine) but does not come across the same way on a two-dimensional screen.
15. "The Analog Kid"
If the opener to Signals, "Subdivisions," is about the despair of adolescence, Track 2, "The Analog Kid" captures the young dreams that persist in spite of the constraints of suburbia. The song bounces between Alex's scintillating guitar, evoking the overwhelming stress of "too many hands on my time, too many feelings — too many things on my mind," and the airy chorus, calling the listener to the glimmer of the city and the unknown.
The song does not promise that when you reach adulthood, you'll have a clue or that it will all turn out how you want. It even acknowledges that when you do escape the anxieties of youth, you still lose something, something you're too single-minded and restless to even realize will be gone. But pointing that out is not an admonishment or a warning to those staring into the sky, looking for something more. It's sympathetic and comforting: Sometimes, every one of us needs to get away. To where does not matter; the most important thing is that we get away and find out for ourselves what is on the other side.
14. "Entre Nous"
I cannot stand Billy Corgan. He is self-centered, spiteful, and whiny, and in recent years he has taken a right-wing turn and appeared on Alex Jones' InfoWars. Heartbreakingly, however, Corgan can sometimes correctly identify why Rush mattered.
At one point in Beyond the Lighted Stage, Corgan tells the story of how as an emotionally distant, reserved teenager, he played "Entre Nous" to his mother to convey what he was feeling.
"Entre Nous" serves as a confession — by Neil, by a teenaged Corgan, by lonely introverts everywhere — that though we might not express ourselves as often as other people, and may not be so easily stirred to emotion, we can feel just as deeply. And sometimes, we just need room — "for you and I to grow."
13. "Witch Hunt"
One of the ironies of Republicans liking Rush is the fact that the band's best and most popular album contains this biting criticism of the views and mob mentality at the core of Republican messaging and policy for decades. Suppression of ethnic, religious, and social minorities and censorship of contrarian perspectives have been the tools of conservatives from Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich to Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis.
Whether any prominent conservatives who like Rush are aware of that irony is unclear — to use another famous example, Paul Ryan is one of many Rage Against the Machine listeners who, willfully or otherwise, don't get the point. But it doesn't really matter. Nor does it matter whether they genuinely believe the stances they publicly take. Either way, they play on the worst impulses of millions of white Americans who are ready to blame their problems on people who aren't like them. For "ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand."
12. "Time Stand Still"
At the end of high school, I didn't have the "first day of the rest of our lives" feeling that drives coming-of-age movies like Diner or Breaking Away. A lot of the friends I was sad to say goodbye to were already off to college or still had another year to go. I was also ready to leave my hometown, with which I'd become too familiar since my family moved there when I was 3 or 4 years old. I didn't want to drive the same streets every day, and I was ready to see something different.
The end of college was different. I was sharing a house with four of my best friends, three of whom I had lived with for a year before that. It wasn't a perfect arrangement, since no college house is. But living so far from my family, I took great comfort from seeing people every day I cared about and who cared about me. Late nights talking in the living room were some of the happiest times of my life.
Once our lease was up, that was done. We had to be actual adults who had to figure things out on our own and move to the next chapters of our lives. For three of my roommates, that meant leaving the state for jobs or grad school. The summer before we moved out was the last of my life where I would have no responsibility, and I was old enough to know it.
That summer, I listened a lot to "Time Stand Still." The song is as much about how valuable the present was, and how we must cherish it as much as we can, as it is the future. I couldn't freeze that moment. But I knew that I'll keep my roommates close, in some form, for the rest of my life. "Children growing up, old friends growing older" — those are natural parts of life that I hope to experience with them.
It's hard to let go of the times that matter to us. I was a sobbing wreck when I left that house for the last time. There's still so much more ahead that we will get to cherish. To look back too much, in nostalgia or even in regret, lessens what was and makes us miss out on what's next.
11. "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres"
Rush is very much a family matter for me. It's my dad's favorite band. It's one of my mom's favorite bands. It's a favorite band to both of my siblings. The both times I saw Rush, it was as a family. When I watched Beyond the Lighted Stage and Rush's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, it was in the living room with my parents. Whenever I pick up my guitar for the first time in weeks and try out some Alex Lifeson lick instead of actually learning the instrument, I send a recording to my older brother when I think I've got it. Our lives have changed in many ways since I was a teenager, but I can have this band in common with my family.
The sprawling epic that opens the first side of Hemispheres has nothing to do with family, really. It's about a guy who flies a spaceship into a black hole, becoming a deity and bringing balance to a world torn in half by the two warring factions of gods: those of love and humanly pursuits, and those of reason and progress. The moral is that our species cannot be without "the heart and mind united in a single, perfect sphere." It is not the song whose message has spoken the most to me.
But the song's meaning to me is inseparable from the context of family, specifically the mornings my older brother would drive us both to high school. That was a turbulent period in each of our lives, and we didn't always get along. He picked which CD to play most of the time. I didn't like a lot of it, and I didn't like how loud he'd play the music I didn't like. (We are now in agreement on some of those choices, like Slayer's Reign in Blood.)
But there were common grounds: Powerslave, ...And Justice For All, Who's Next, and Hemispheres. Our drive to the school — in our dad's handed down pickup truck, the same one where we'd first heard "Chain Lightning" and "Anagram (For Mongo)" — was just long enough for us to get to the end of "Cygnus X-1 Book II." And I had no issues listening to it at a high volume. It was something for my brother and I to share, getting through adolescence with a band we were becoming increasingly fond of and whose discography we continued to explore.
10. "Losing It"
Signals came out only 7 years after Neil Peart joined the band, yet he evidently was already wondering just how long he could keep this up. Not how long he could tolerate touring — how long his body and his mind would let him function as an artist. He wasn't a kid in bell bottoms wanting to be Keith Moon anymore, but a drummer of great renown and expectations, as well as a father who turned 30 years old just three days after the album's release. If Signals is the Rush album about growing up, "Losing It" is the track where the listener reckons with mortality, and the slow decline we are cursedly bound to face on our way to the end.
In 2015, Rush played "Losing It" live for the first time in Toronto. The song's inclusion on what was effectively Neil's retirement tour was akin to an admission: If he and his bandmates kept going, kept trying to hold on, they would one day be something less than Rush.
It also bears noting that "Losing It" contains one of Neil's best drum tracks. He does a fine job letting the other members of the band do the talking before hitting Ben Mink's electric violin solo, at which point he gains momentum to match Mink's intensity before crashing into the final chorus and fadeout. It's masterful stuff, demonstrating a level of delicate feel that has never been part of Neil's reputation. Neil gave up his gift before he could watch it die, but it was a special gift to show the world.
9. "Marathon"
The metaphor of life as a long-distance run is not that novel, admittedly. (Neil even reused it on "Time Stand Still!") But Rush knew the way to a heart of a troubled, disheartened person. Like the ends of other Rush songs, the crescendo to "Marathon" is gloriously uplifting and profoundly moving. Geddy is extraordinary at selling moments like the final line, which his orchestral keyboards and Alex's backing vocals give a boost: "One moment's high, and glory rolls on by — like a streak of lightning that flashes and fades in the summer sky."
The effect is only possible because of what they do in the preceding 5 minutes, though: Geddy's bassline is one of the finest of his career, Neil provides a driving intensity that slows and accelerates as the moment demands it, and Alex punches out Townshend-esque ringing chords that give the song the air that it needs. Radiohead can achieve the same level of setup and payoff, but rarely has Radiohead deployed that skill in service of anthemic, take-on-the-world majesty like Rush did on "Marathon." On some listens, I love this song as much — I feel it as fully — as any song anyone has ever made.
8. "Subdivisions"
The first song of my first-ever concert was "Subdivisions." Thankfully for purposes of demonstration, it was preserved on the band's film from the Clockwork Angels Tour. As a sophomore in high school, experiencing to that point the most strenuous, confusing year of my life, there was nothing like seeing Geddy Lee's lit-up hands appear on the video board as my heroes launched into the song about how much it completely and universally sucks to be a teenager.
On the other side of the concert, I wrote a review of the show for my high school paper's entertainment section. I could find it online but choose not to, since it was probably terrible. I remember closing with some bit about how us Rush nerds will keep going on loving Rush. I felt proud of it at the time, since I was feeling for the first time the post-concert high that I've felt a few times since. It sticks with you for days, where the only artist you can listen to is the one you just saw, and you just can't wait for the next time you're at a show. Your problems don't matter as much, because you got to do something you'll remember the rest of your life. At 16 years old, well-acquainted with the restless dreams of youth, it is a badly needed thrill and relief.
7. "2112"
The mythology of 2112 is well-trodden ground: Caress of Steel fell flat, and Rush found themselves playing smaller venues and facing the likely ends of their careers as musicians. Mercury Records, wondering why Rush couldn't be another Bad Company, reluctantly agreed to release one more album. Rather than listening to the label's demands, Rush made the album they wanted to make. If it didn't work, they were content to go back to Toronto and work regular jobs. 2112 instead became a surprise hit, earning the band a cult following and creative independence for the rest of their career.
What I want to discuss is why the first side of 2112 landed when Caress of Steel — more specifically, the 20-minute epic "The Fountain of Lamneth" — didn't. Caress of Steel's confused reception and disappointing sales weren't some accident of Rush being ahead of their time or underground darlings that were difficult to market. The band genuinely made dramatic and necessary improvements to their execution of the epic as a concept.
Above all else, "2112" is far more focused than "The Fountain of Lamneth." Narratively, there's a clear setting: A dystopian sci-fi future, specifically the year 2112. There are clear antagonists: The Solar Federation and the Priests. There's a clear conflict: The Solar Federation, in its authoritarianism, has conquered the galaxy and decided what expression and entertainment is acceptable. There's a clear inciting event: The everyman narrator discovers a guitar and learns it. And there's a clear resolution: After the Priests destroy the guitar, the narrator sees what happened to ostensibly the version of humanity we know today — exiled but not destroyed, they flourish in a creative world of their own and prepare to retake Earth from the Solar Federation. The narrator, distraught at the beauty in his dream and what his life could have been, commits suicide. The Elder Race returns and defeats the Priests, announcing to all the citizens of the Federation: "We have assumed control."
Every section of the suite has clear purpose in advancing that narrative, as well as the themes. It's like musical theatre. "The Temples of Syrinx" introduces the antagonists and the conflict. "Discovery", is the inciting incident. "Presentation" and "Oracle: The Dream" are the rising action, and "Soliloquy" serves as the tragic climax to the narrator's story. "Grand Finale" is the denouement, wherein ultimately the force of good returns to defeat the antagonists.
The rough story of "The Fountain of Lamneth" is this: Our protagonist sees a mountain in the distance and longs to climb it, and to see the titular Fountain of Lamneth ("In the Valley"). The journey proves difficult ("No One at the Bridge"). He is saved by a woman, who nurses him back to health and with whom he becomes infatuated. However, he knows he must return to the road ("Panacea"). The narrator pushes on but cannot traverse the dense fog of the trail, so he sits and drinks wine ("Bacchus Plateau"). When the mountain begins poking through the mist, he continues on and finally discovers the Fountain. He only feels exhausted, though, as the Fountain does not give him the satisfaction he'd hoped. He realizes this journey was not his entire purpose in life, and takes consolation in the fact that, despite his hardships, "still... I am" ("The Fountain").
There are the bones to a good story in "The Fountain of Lamneth," but as constructed it doesn't feel as cohesive or as compelling in song as it might in prose. The diversions from the main plot don't further the plot very much and don't contribute to the theme. (I haven't even mentioned "Didacts and Narpets.") We don't need an antagonist when the protagonist's conflict is supposed to be internal, but that conflict needs to be stronger and clearer than the lyrics achieve.
The instrumentation in "2112" also suits the tone of each section better than "The Fountain of Lamneth" does. Geddy's shrieking voice gives the Priests menace. Alex's gorgeous playing on "Discovery" creates wonder and the mirth of finding something new, and the guitar's swelling anguish on "Soliloquy" reflects our narrator's brokenness.
"Baccus Plateau," meanwhile, is fashioned as a glowing power ballad, restoring momentum to the suite after the pause of "Panacea" — despite the momentum of the narrative itself stopping again just after it started. And while it adds symmetry for the closing section to return to the frantic motif with which we started ("My eyes have just been opened..."/"The key, the end, the answer..."), I'm not sure the music matches the bittersweet, empty, unsatisfying resolution of the text.
This isn't to say "The Fountain of Lamneth" is worthless. I enjoy it enough, even if it drags a bit. But in Rush's arc as a band, it's more informative as a precursor to what followed. Their first stab at an ambitious, full-fledged epic was muddled and incongruent. Their next go, fueled by rebellion and honed by experience, became one of the most brilliant rock compositions of all-time. "2112" is propulsive enough to inspire crowd chants and it is stunning in breadth. All conceptual metal stands in its shadow.
6. "Limelight"
Alex Lifeson's two greatest strengths as a guitarist are his evocative writing and his masterful rhythm playing. "Limelight" puts both of those qualities on display as well as any Rush song. Alex said several times over the years that the lonesome climb of his solo here was his favorite to play because of how well it tied to the song's theme of isolation. The opening riff is also his most iconic, the thing that puts "Limelight" squarely in the classic rock radio rotation. He just has a knack for putting chords in such a catchy way that they feel obvious and familiar, even if they're new to you. Though I do not consider "Limelight" Alex's best song — we'll get to that shortly — it shows off every reason he deserves greater acclaim among history's best guitarists.
5. "Cygnus X-1"
I know I got rather superlative about "2112" a moment ago, but listen to the final 3 minutes of "Cygnus X-1" and tell me that isn't the hardest thing you've ever heard in your life. It is all-consuming pandemonium befitting a song about being disintegrated by the inside of a black hole, with Neil trying to murder his drum kit and Geddy screaming the highest, most agonized notes he ever hit. I could frame "Cygnus X-1" in the context of King Crimson or Love or Black Sabbath, but I just want to bang my head.
4. "The Spirit of Radio"
The magic of "The Spirit of Radio" can be heard through the speakers of a car stereo but was most purely felt at a Rush concert. It is a song that demands to be played in front of thousands of people, the Rush song whose place is an arena, with waves of hands clapping along to the chorus and a congregation of nerds erupting in response to the cry, "Concert hall!" That feeling of communal joy is the high we chase at any concert or big event.
3. "The Camera Eye"
When you're a young person who likes old music, one of the tradeoffs is that you don't just won't get to ever see some of your favorite artists perform: George Harrison died before I even could know "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Stevie Ray Vaughan died 6 years before I was born. Buddy Holly's plane crash happened before either of my parents were born. As unfortunate as that all is, you live with it. You learn to treat concerts for older musicians with more urgency, and to not take for granted even the musicians who make records for the people your age.
The near-misses hurt more. I started listening to Radiohead before they entered their current, potentially terminal hiatus, but I didn't bother going to see them while I could. I likely had a chance to see Tom Petty, but he died before I could. I don't know why I decided not to see Black Sabbath's farewell tour as a college freshman, but I didn't.
However, I do not regret any missed concert more than the Time Machine Tour. I was in middle school, and I already cared deeply about Rush. I had the T-shirts and was pestering friends about them and was reading a fan blog for news about the band. I could have bugged my parents to go, and they very well might have agreed before I had to beg. I just didn't think of it. They came through Dallas, and nine months later, they played some more shows in the Southwest. I didn't even consider making an effort to go either time.
As a result of that, no song remaining on this list is one that I got to see Rush play. That bothers me. Not just because the three that are left are my three favorites, but because that missed opportunity is so galling, and because that disappointment extends to several other songs that rank high in my list. Consider this graph:
As you can see, if I had gone to a show on the Time Machine Tour, just three songs out of my top 21 would be ones I hadn't gotten to hear in person. Currently, that number is 11, which is just over half of that chunk of the list. That is a significant difference!
By not going, I missed, among several other gems, "The Camera Eye." The band's last foray into full-fledged suites, it is magisterial, the perfect blend of their hard-rocking prog era and their sleek and synthy arena period. It is a dazzling, chill-inducing experience to play this song, particularly Alex's solo and the closing chorus, at the proper volume. Yet, to my pain, the closest I'll ever get to knowing the real thing is watching the concert film.
2. "Red Barchetta"
If nostalgia has ever been captured by the sound of an electric guitar, it was on Alex Lifeson's Stratocaster when he plucked the soft, comforting harmonics at the start of "Red Barchetta." For a guitarist capable of producing true beauty, there may not be a more emotionally resonant thing he put to record, a sequence of notes that transports the listener to a more innocent time in their life.
The song ramps up with another softly delivered riff, carried along by one of Geddy's finest, warmest bass tracks, before Neil's lyrics come in. Neil told many stories about starships and anthropomorphic trees and human existence, but his words were never more evocative than on this song. There's a hint in there of hokey libertarianism for the Rush haters to pick on, but the foundation of "Red Barchetta" is youthful adventure and personal freedom.
I mean the latter in a less ideological sense than is present on earlier, more overtly Rand-inspired Rush songs. It's the kind of freedom I imagine Neil got on his motorcycle going down lonely back roads between tour stops, where it must have felt like the breadth of the world was his.
The song's nostalgia is inherently tied to that, similar to "Dreamline": it's about being young enough to be reckless but old enough to act upon it, to naïvely feel the fullness of sensory experience — "sunlight on chrome, the blur of the landscape, every nerve aware" — without the temperament of adulthood. Though Neil wrote "Red Barchetta" from a teenager's perspective, he was 29 years old when Rush recorded Moving Pictures. In the context of the song, "a better, vanished time" is a time resembling today, before the narrator's slightly dystopian present. But thematically, it is the simplicity of adolescence. While it is usually a lie to ourselves that the time we grew up in was "better," we had the freedom to not think of what lay on the other side of our youth. The feelings we once had were real, and they remain real in the way that we hold onto them.
Throughout the song, the band matches the energy and tone of the lyrics, ramping up to a solo and the climax: racing away from a pair of oversized, "gleaming alloy air-cars" to the safety of the farm.
As the chaos of the road fades in a triumphant cascade of crash cymbals and aggressive chords, Alex's opening harmonics return. They feel different. They are almost mournful, seeming to acknowledge that the time where we could be young and reckless and free has passed. When Geddy's thick bass and Neil's drums return, it's not to bring us into the scene but to take us out of it, to usher us back into the present as the song and the memory fade away.
1. "La Villa Strangiato"
The elevator pitch for Rush is this: Three of the best rock musicians ever get together and make cool sounds. It will be awe-inspiring, it will be exhilarating, it will be aggressive, it will be virtuosic, it will be elegant, it will be atmospheric and jazzy and heavy yet coherent all at once. It will be as if these three musicians were made to play together, competing for space in your ears yet never sounding like they are trodding on one another so much as helping the entirety of the trio achieve its perfection.
"La Villa Strangiato" is that perfection. Rush never recorded a more stunning exhibition of their combined talent on their instruments. It is Neil Peart's best song as a drummer, and it is Alex Lifeson's best song as a guitarist. Geddy Lee, for his part, shines as ever.
Is it indeed "An Exercise in Self-Indulgence?" Surely. At 9-and-a-half minutes long, divided into 12 sections, that accusation is more than fair. The song was notoriously difficult to record on an album whose production was defined by a lack of restraint. That fact makes it seem miraculous the band could play it live more than 800 times.
However, unlike prog bands that are more ludicrous or unlistenably complicated, Rush knew how to make everything seem like it fit together. The 12 parts in "La Villa Strangiato" contain motifs that are given room to grow before moving to the next one, and they repeat themselves to the point where something like "Monsters!" is an identifiable aspect of a cohesive, purposeful composition. This is despite several time signature changes, drum and bass fills, and the excursion of Alex's magnificent, steadily intensifying solo. (It should be impossible for anyone this good to be widely considered the least impressive member of any group.)
Rush means something to me, and to the rest of the devout, for more than just the musical genius of these three men. I've explained in great detail above the impact Neil's lyrics have made on my life, and those lyrics could not land with the appropriate weight without the work of his surviving bandmates. For that reason, it seems a little superficial to say my favorite Rush song is one without any words, the one where the band's sole point was to challenge themselves and demonstrate their technical proficiency.
The power of Rush is their ability to take the listener to another place. Many of their songs do that through narrative. But finding that other place does not have to mean picturing an Italian sports car in the country, a caravan of floating steamships, or visions of faraway galaxies. It can be by feeling reassured that it's okay to not be okay, or motivated to live life fully, or removed from the pressures of real life just by singing or miming along to something fun.
When "La Villa Strangiato" comes on, I turn up the sound and find a place outside myself. For a while, what comes through those speakers is all that matters.
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