My Top Ten Hope Sandoval Songs :: Top Ten Tuesday

Looking for the best Music from Hope Sandoval? Whether it be Songs from Mazzy Star, her solo work with The Warm Inventions, or her Musical Pairings, there is a lot of beautiful Music to wade through. Years of listening to Hope in all her incarnations has led me to this quintessential list of My Top Ten Hope Sandoval Songs for this Top Ten Tuesday. So, take a look, and a listen, to the Top Ten Best Music from Hope Sandoval.

1. “Fade Into You” :: Mazzy Star 

“I wanna hold the hand inside you.
I wanna take the breath that’s true.
I look to you and I see nothing.
I look to you to see the truth.”

One of those songs I never, ever get tired of hearing. The opening track from the 1993 album, So Tonight That I Might See, this song is a thing of timeless melancholic beauty.

2. “Halah” :: Mazzy Star

“I guess that you believe you are a woman,
and that I am someone else’s man.”

So quintessentially 1991 to me. I close my eyes and I can see everything so clearly, where I was, the feel of a black crushed velvet baby doll dress, short hair, that upstairs apartment with the claw-footed tub and the painted flowers on the window panes.

3. “Into Dust” :: Mazzy Star

“I could possibly be fading,
or have something more to gain.”

In the mid-to-late 90’s this was my favorite Hope/Mazzy Star song. It all started with hearing it in the film Foxfire, and grew through pen pals and mix tapes, Music fueled crushes, and dreams of being lost, or at least just someplace else.

3. “California” :: Mazzy Star

“I think I hear the whisper of my own best friend.
I think I hear the bells ringing in the square,
California,
California.”

Songs about California are a thing to me, one of my Music Obsessions. I collect them and could list them, but it would take a list far more vast than any “Top Ten Tuesday” could hold. This song about California reminds me of leaving, and coming back again. How this state is in my blood, and always will be. How this is the place I always come back to.

4. “Five String Serenade” :: Mazzy Star

“And on my easel I drew,
while I was thinking of you.”

There is something cinematic about this song. I close my eyes and I picture episodes of Twin Peaks, or films in the desert like Kalifornia, and Natural Born Killers. I see pages of the desert story I’ve been writing, too, about cults and coming of age in a dusty, nowhere desert town existence.

5. She’s My Baby” : Mazzy Star

“She’s my baby,
she belongs to me,
but yesterday she walked home all alone.”

The fuzzy guitar is everything here. I love the way it compliments, and contradicts, Hope’s vocals.

6. “On the Low” :: Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions

“All this time,
I always,
have the light,
on for you.
But, I know,
I’m a fool.
Yes,
I know.”

I listen to this song and I think that I want to hear Ryan Adams and Hope do a duet together.

7. “Sometimes Always” :: The Jesus & Mary Chain, featuring Hope Sandoval

“I gave you all I had.
I gave you good and bad.
I gave,
but you just threw it back.”

The perfect break up/get back together song. It also is a stellar road trip song, too.

9. “Butterfly Mornings” :: Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions

“I found you in the corner,
down there sitting on the sea.”

Lush and lullaby like. This song makes me long to be by the ocean, sleeping a dreamless sleep, floating.

10. “Let Me Get There” :: Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions, featuring Kurt Vile

“It was always our story,
if you forgot.”

A late 70’s, light rock, AM radio kind of feel. In the best way.