Eleven Songs for a Scorched Earth

On days like these, wallowing around my cubicle, I think of the songs that would go incredibly well with a static-y radio, a rocking chair on a porch, a pooch at my side, and a view out onto a nuclear wasteland that debris of civilization blows across the landscape in gusts of wind.

1. Crazy - Willie Nelson:


The song that inspired me to make this post, its presence in GTA: San Andreas basically catapulted my love for this song, which I already loved. Something about absolute chaos set to Willie Nelson's calm and twangy vocals make this a perfect match for letting your eyes glaze over the smoldering remains of all humans built up with such big ambitions.

2. Xzibit - Paparazzi



A straight take from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, this song brings out the anger at everyone ruining the game with their greed and vanity, much as I would think the world would succumb to. Turn this shit up and start whittling away on that porch.

3. Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan



A given when it comes to waiting out huge disasters, whether sitting atop the roof of a house or floating around town on a door, Texas Flood will keep you company.

4. April 26, 1992 - Sublime



I can imagine people would become excellent at looting in the after-world, and why not make it a bit of fun with sweet guitar plucking?

5. Floods - Pantera



For the more volatile of after-worlds, maybe a Terminator-esque one. But God love the raining part of this song at the end, when some raw and terrifying event has passed and you're left in the rain sitting beside some corpse or wreckage.

6. Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset - Modest Mouse



Most all of Modest Mouse's songs have sort of apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, or disorder about them. Isaac Brock's voice and the endlessly repetitive guitar riffs circle round and round as I would imagine going into to a form of happy-go-lucky madness in the after-world.

7. Fade to Black - Metallica



You can't really get more scorched earth than Metallica (the earlier years), and this song epitomizes some deep, dark road you'd be traveling while clutching that flask of black liquor.

8. La Mer. - Charles Trenet



How do you sleep at night in the post-apocalypse when all hell is breaking loose? This song. Over and over. On this note, basically the whole soundtrack to The Butterfly and the Diving Bell would work for life after earth.

9. Life Goes On - 2pac



Look at that title. Listen to those lyrics. Play this when you're trudging out to find food for the day among the rubble. "Pour out some liquor, have a toast for the homies, see we both gotta die, but you chose to go before me"

10. Pay No Mind (Snoozer) - Beck



Beck needed to make this list. He would be an amazing companion in the after-world, probably the most sane out of all of us, just listen to this shit.

11. Passenger - Iggy Pop



The after-world is a world for the restless, forced to be on the move every waking day. This song defines the endless acid-trip trips through some ungodly landscape and spectacles that you'd never be able to talk about from that day on, but that will haunt you from that day on. Singing la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la...