\t\u2018Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t![\"LOS](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Jim Steinfeldt\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tA minor hit in 1994, this talking blues is an early example of Snider\u2019s humor, which was by turns stoner-friendly and biting. Snider satirizes the commercialization of alternative rock with a rollicking song about a struggling band that relocates to the Northwest and discovers a novel trick: refusing to play at all. (Or, as Snider puts it, \u201csilence: music\u2019s original alternative.\u201d) In the song, the band blows up, gets rich and even lands a spot on MTV Unplugged: \u201cWe went right out there and refused to do acoustical versions\/Of the electrical songs we had refused to record in the first place\/Then we smashed our shit.\u201d\u00a0 \u2014Christian Hoard<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Alright Guy\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Ebet Roberts\/Getty Images\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tOne of Snider\u2019s catchiest, most radio-friendly songs, \u201cAlright Guy\u201d found the innate troublemaker owning up to his proclivities. He liked to look at nude pics of Madonna, enjoyed his weed, and wasn\u2019t averse to mouthing off at the police. But, hey, that was nothing, Snider countered. \u201cI know I get wild and I know I get drunk\/but it ain\u2019t like I got a bunch of bodies in my trunk,\u201d he sang. \u201cI think I\u2019m an alright guy.\u201d The country singer Gary Allan recorded his own version of the song in 2001 and even titled his album after it, but not before tweaking one of Snider\u2019s punchiest lyrics about \u201ctearing up pictures of the Pope.\u201d \u2014Joseph Hudak<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Can\u2019t Complain\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Paul Natkin\/Getty Images\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tSnider turned an awful early gig in Phoenix (\u201cA little out of place\/A little out of tune,\u201d the song begins) into one of his most beautiful meditations. The song, as much as any other, exemplifies the Tao of Todd, a mix of stoner mishap, zen acceptance, radical gratitude, and dry humor: \u201cWe\u2019re all waiting in the dugout wishin\u2019 we could pitch,\u201d Snider sings, \u201cHow you gonna throw a shutout, if all you do is bitch?\u201d \u2014 Jon Bernstein<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Long Year\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Jim Steinfeldt\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tRarely did Snider get more vulnerable, and more honest, than he did on this haunting portrait of addiction from 2000\u2019s Happy to Be Here. The best versions are live, just Todd by himself on guitar, with Todd telling the story that begins with a man trying \u2014 and struggling \u2014 to engage with twelve-step recovery and ends with him taking a shot of liquor. It\u2019s always been a devastating portrait of isolation and the pain of recovery; Snider conjures worlds of emotion in his plainspoken tale of feeling alienated from the others in recovery: \u201cEveryone was telling everyone how they felt,\u201d Snider sings. \u201cIt felt like so long since I\u2019d been young.\u201d \u2014J.B.<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Beer Run\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Paul Natkin\/Getty Images\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThis well-turned story-song focuses on two kids with fake IDs who run afoul of a store clerk in the pursuit of cold ones, but find redemption (and brews) in time to see a Robert Earl Keen show in Santa Cruz. The song is catchy-as-hell and all good vibes, right down to the \u201cB-double-E-double-R-U-N\u201d chorus. A prime example of the hippie bonhomie that Snider gravitated toward in his lighter moments, not to mention one of the great beer songs ever. \u2014C.H.<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Play a Train Song\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: J. Vespa\/WireImage\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tSnider\u2019s tribute to East Nashville\u2019s fast living unofficial mayor Skip Litz soon became his signature song. It\u2019s trademark Todd, full of pathos, hillbilly humor, and raise-your-beer melodicism. Rarely did Snider play a show without performing this one, which, of course, was as much about himself as it was Litz (to hammer that home, Snider switches from first-person to third-person at times). \u201cI was depressed because my friend had died,\u201d Snider writes of the song in his memoir. \u201cAnd my depression started to rhyme.\u201d \u2014J.B.<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Conservative Christian, Right-Wing Republican, Straight, White, American Males\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Rick Diamond\/WireImage\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tTodd Snider didn\u2019t mince words, and he left nothing to the imagination in this wild ride off 2004\u2019s East Nashville Skyline that compared and contrasted two political ideologies. While the song is an indictment of the type of person spelled out in its lengthy title \u2014 dudes who are likely \u201cgay bashin\u2019, Black-fearin\u2019, poor-fightin\u2019, tree-killin\u2019 regional leaders of sales\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s also a celebration of the community in which Snider counted himself. The hippies, Todd suggested, had it right all along, with their \u201ctree-huggin\u2019, love-makin\u2019, pro-choicin\u2019, gay weddin\u2019\u201d beliefs. Twenty-one years since Snider released the tune, it still resonates today across America\u2019s great divide. \u2014J.H.<\/p>\n
\t\u2018You Got Away With It (A Tale of Two Fraternity Brothers)\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Mark Mainz\/Getty Images\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThere were few more pointed critiques of George W. Bush than this account, inspired in part by Snider\u2019s attempt to crash rugby parties he wasn\u2019t invited to in his youth in San Marcos, Texas<\/a>, of a rich unaccountable young college student wreaking havoc on campus who\u2019d later become the President of the Free World. The song was released in 2006, at the height of the Iraq War, and though the song never mentioned the current president by name, it ends with a sharp jab: \u201cYou\u2019ll get away with this new thing, too.\u201d\u00a0 \u2014J.B.<\/p>\n \t\u2018The Devil You Know\u2019<\/p>\n \t\t\t \n\tSnider tells a harrowing story-song of an armed bank-robber on the run and making a detour at the narrator\u2019s house in Nashville. The music is intense \u2014 more rocking and harder-edged than almost anything else in Snider\u2019s catalog \u2014 and the narrative keeps you on the edge of your seat, as the singer tosses the crook his car keys and helps him get away. But it\u2019s not just a story; it\u2019s a musing on systemic poverty, culminating in one of the more definitive political statements of Snider\u2019s career: \u201cThere\u2019s a war going on that the poor can\u2019t win.\u201d \u2014C.H.<\/p>\n \t\u2018Just Like Old Times\u2019<\/p>\n \t\t\t \n\tThe story starts dodgy and gets dodgier: \u201cThere\u2019s a Coke machine glowing through the parking lot\/Call it a room with a view.\u201d From there, Snider\u2019s protagonist reunites with a sex worker he knew from growing up before they both get hassled by the police. So much happens in Snider\u2019s perfect, three-verse country song that it ended up becoming the basis for a 2020 feature film starring RZA<\/a>. \u201cI say the guy\u2019s a pool hustler, but it\u2019s just me,\u201d Snider said in 2019<\/a>. \u201cI was just sick of singing about guys with guitars, so I gave him a pool cue.\u201d \u2014J.B.<\/p>\n \t\u2018Greencastle Blues\u2019<\/p>\n \t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Rebecca Sapp\/WireImage\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Michael Macor\/San Francisco Chronicle\/Getty Images\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Anthony Pidgeon\/Redferns\/Getty Images\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n