I'm white, I'm in my forties, and I grew up listening to a lot of Motown as a kid, and none of that has made me have similar opinions to other white people in their forties. I've heard people I have similar music tastes to absolutely rail against Beyonce. Many of them told me how they "didn't get" her album, Lemonade, as though it were it a college essay assignment and not an intricately woven pop and r&b album deconstructing a troubling time in her relationship and how she recovered from it. I mean, they were right, they didn't get it but I feel that's on par with singing along to pop songs without taking the time to listen and understand the lyrics, something that I still sometimes do to this day.

But we're not at the complex art phase of Beyonce's career yet.

This first album is pretty much The Pre-Lemonade Greatest Hits. Songs that caught my attention at times I wasn't even counsciously listening to pop. Beyonce was simply unescapable almost from the moment Destiny's Child hit the pop scene.

Beyonce's Motown-inspired girl group project, Destiny's Child, was the evolution of En Vogue, TLC, SWV, and the Spice Girls, all of whose roots go back at least as far as Motown. Their work was often inspirational, catchy as Herpes, and deliberately crafted, even if it was basic language repeated ad nauseum, its form never seemed accidental.

Her early solo work was also inspirational, catchy R&B pop but you could hear her maturing as a vocalist and a writer (she began c0-writing most of Destiny's child starting with their second album, The Writing's On The Wall). This is not necessarily my take on her journey there. It's not at all chronological. It's just pre-Lemonade. The songs that found their way to my ears and buried themselves in my brain. If i've missed out on some of her Greatest Hits or your favorite track, I'm sorry. For me, this album is less about Her Important Work and more about what brought me joy when I first saw it on TV, heard it at work, or, in the case of "Irreplacable", when I spent an entire day hearing it on repeat because a terrible roommate put it on repeat before going to work and locked her bedroom door so I couldn't go in and turn it off.

1. The late 1990s/early 2000s pop, house, and reggae scenes loved airhorns and civil defense sirens as instruments in ways that no decades before or, fingers crossed, after, ever will. Ring The Alarm is my favorite use of siren as hook. I even prefer it to Pink Floyd's use of mid-twentieth century European ringtones as percussion. Beyonce's intro lyrics as delivered through a megaphone also draw me right into the song before the girl group harmonies kick in. 

The beat to this song is a military drumline that demands movement from the listener. I'm sure somewhere there are people who hear this song and don't want to dance. If you're one of those people, don't tell me. I don't want to know. I'm not much of a dancer but this song offers its hand to every Poindexter leaning against the walls of a high school dance and refusing to bust a move. 

This song is also a great warning track to the unfaithful fuckbois and sleazy Jolenes who Beyonce will target for her entire career. She's not going to let you get away with it. She tells you several different ways. 

2. 2. In the mid-00s, I spent a ton of time in a particular Internet cafe in Allston, Massachusetts. I can't imagine it's still there. They sold boba tea and Asian-influenced ice cream. I would also swear on the lives of everyone I loved that for five years they played the same hour-long playlist on repeat, and Soldier was one of the songs. You'd think I would have the lyrics completely memorized but, apart from the chorus, the lyrics never penetrated my subcouscious. But the beat? And that chorus. It invaded almost every silence I experienced until 2010.

WHERE THEY AT? WHERE THEY AT? 

"Where is who at?" I would ask my own brain. "I wasn't paying attention to the rest of the lyrics!"

This was the first Destiny's Child song where I really noticed the other Destiny's Child vocalists besides Beyonce. 

3. There's a project I've imagined for about twenty years but I haven't tried to actually write since one of my computers broke around 2007. It's the biography of a musician whose roughly my age. He lives in a similar world to ours but he wrote a ton of incredibly famous songs that, in our universe, came from dozens of different writers from various racial, gender, and class backgrounds. 

In addition to the albums, there are moments in his career that I can see during particular songs.

One of them is an MTV awards show in 1998, where at age twenty, the recently outed-as-queer musician appears in a spotlight and performs Beyonce's If I Were A Boy (which, in this universe he wrote a decade before it was written in the real world). He starts off in sweats and a baseball cap staring straight ahead and slowly removing clothing until, at the end of the song, he's in full glorious drag. During the If you thought I'd back down from you/you thought wrong until the end, he makes dagger-eyes at P Diddy, who had, weeks before the event, released a diss track talking about he wouldn't listen to the singer until he started "singing like a man."

Obviously, the song is much different in a queer, white, cis-male mouth than it is in Beyonce's. But that's how I hear it every time.

4. After the synth opening, Survivor feels like a thousand other inspirational songs. It's not especially tight writing. It doesn't have a memorable beat. It happens to be ust the right level of catchy to build a bomb shelter in the ears of everyone who hears it.

It really should be from a musical movie. But, like Clue, there should be several different versions of the movie released in different theaters so that some people hear Destiny's Child's "Survivor", some people hear Christina Aguilera's "Fighter", some people hear Katy Perry's "Firework", some hear Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", some hear Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down", some hear Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping". They all have roughly the same experiencce.

Yea, it doesn't tread any new territory but it is to inspirational music what The Police's "Every Breath You Take", George Michael's "Father Figure", James Blunt's"You're Beautiful", and Adele's "Hello" are to creepy stalker songs.

5. The "Edge Of Seventeen" riff in Bootylicious is an oppressive prison housing an otherwise great song. I love the song in spite of it but Dear God that riff overstays its welcome. I don't think I can handle it.

It doesn't help that when I first heard the song via MTV, I thought I was being told that I wasn't ready for Beyonce's spaghetti. Once I realized they were saying jelly I understood how the lyric related to the title of the song.

6 & 7. I definitely heard Wyclef announcing This is the remix on No No No Part 2 before I ever heard No No No Part 1. Neither have ever been my favorite Destiny's Child songs. Not even close.

I do prefer part 1, a breezy 90s ballad that is the Beyonce track most bereft of her personality. This could totally be SWV or latter-day TLC. The b-side to "Red Light Special", probably. It's perfectly acceptable background music but I can't imagine intensely singing this in my car when I'm sad or getting some cleaning done and lip syncing with a feather duster for a 90s rom-com scene. It's the most-fillery song I think I've put on a reimagined album. It fits perfectly on this album but I would never skip another track to get to either version of this one.

At least the remix is peppier? It's still as spicy as vanilla ice cream dusted with flour.

8. If you're going to hit me with a song whose title is the same three syllable word repeated three times, the obvious choice is Bills, Bills, Bills. This is a primer for early angry Beyonce. She ended up with a scrub like you who has left her holding the financial debt in the relationship.

I hope for her sake that this guy is either fictional, or else the same guy from "Irreplaceable" because I have an amazing amount of ampathy for anyone who gets stuck with multiple versions of this song's antagonist.

As much as the lyrics are the big pull for me, the weird latin-esque/popping bubble percussion is a fascinating capsule of turn-of-the-millenium r&b pop. Rarely do I like a pop song that's almost completely trapped in a particular year or so, but this barely pre-Y2K bop lives forever rent free in my head whenever it's time for me to pay my utilities.

9. I know you've been waiting for Jay-Z to show up. How have there been eight Beyonce-forward songs with no Hova? I don't have a solid answer but he's here and hype for Crazy In Love.  

Honestly, the Jay-Z hype and Beyonce's Uh-oh/uh-oh are my favorite part of this somewhat generic r&b groove with easily the most g-rated, radio friendly Jay-Z verse of all time. 

As a love song, it's so bland that you'd have to imagine it was either written by teenagers or written about someone the lyricist didn't have any actual feelings for but was compelled to write about.

10. I am completely unsure why I decided to put Signs on this album when I made it. If I made this in the 2010s, it's entirely possible this was my sarcastic response to a trend in poetry where every poet who had something interesting they should have been writing about were instead telling everyone their Zodiac sign and explaining how it represented their personality.

This is a perfectly good song to listen to. It's arguably better, if not as famous as 
Crazy In Love" or either of the "No, No,No" parts.

It doesn't feel quite like a Beyonce/Destiny's Child song to me, so I did just enough research to discover Missy Elliot wrote this. (She also appears briefly on the track.) It doesn't fully feel like a Missy song. It's unique moment in both their discographies, and I appreciate that. The backwards masking is a nice touch.

11. Starting in late 2009, I spent a few years listening to somewhere between hundreds to thousands of mashups. I was disenchanted with pop. Not because of lyrics or artist perceptions or the inevitable Getting Older. During the rise of autotune, I started hating the sound of the production of most pop. I was working in restaurants and coffeehouses and all the pop stations started to blend together despite the variety of artists making music.

Eventually, of course, pop would evolve into another era of sound that I enjoyed. But during the period that didn't connect with me, I started listening to artists like DJ Earworm, who was mainly highlighting the similarities by making megamixes of similar sounding songs into new pop masterpieces, and Party Ben and members of the Mashstix community who were using a variety of styles to mix vocals from modern songs with music from classic pop, rock, and rap songs, or mixing modern music with classic vocals. This turned me into a ton of pop artists at the time that I might not have otherwise bothered to explore: Lady Gaga, Sia, Adele being just a very few.

"Telephone"  was one of the songs I probably would have missed out on. Not because of Beyonce, who I already liked but because Lady Gaga was on my radar but not in a positive way. It didn't make my Beyonce discography because it pops up on a Lady Gaga Reimagined album. But...but...hearing this track made me seek out I Am Sasha Fierce, which I obviously knew songs from but hadn't examined as an album. It's a banger and not just because of the superhits: "If I Were A Boy" and "Single Ladies". Amongst the other great songs on the album is Radio.

This is a timeless pop anthem. I much prefer it to "Halo", which made single status when this song didn't. I understand why. This is just catchy fluff you can blast out of your car for fun while "Halo" is a song that has widows rushing to Youtube to post about how the song reminds them of their husbands who died of cancer and are now angels. It's an important emotional song for people. Sometimes, that emotional hook will get me. In this particular instance, I much prefer listening to Beyonce sing about having a good time listening to music. 

12. Beyonce put out 43 solo singles before Lemonade, which is the next album in my discography. I feel like you can make cases for about twenty of them being essential Beyonce songs, even though I only picked about ten of them. The one you absolutely Must Include if you're talking about the decade plus where Beyonce was merely a pop force and not A Revered Artist: All The Single Ladies. This song was absolutely everywhere. And with great reasons.

This song has a great, if not particularly memorable beat. It has the glitchy 8-bit pop noise in the background. It has Beyonce going from smooth verse to diva pop chorus. It's masterfully put together. It had a simple but artistically resonant video.

​It's a perfect pop song.

13. Flipping back to the Destiny's Child era. Say My Name is a total 90s En Vogue bop. In an era where there was a major uptick in songs about how You'd Better Start Respecting Your Girlfriend, this was a clear winner. 

If you're so trash that you can't even remember your partner's name, yea, you'd Best get to the proverbial stepping.

There's a version of this song where a music producer thought that the narrative was Too Feminist, so it includes a verse by basketball legend and nobody's favorite rapper, Kobe Bryant, clapping back with a verse about how maybe if Beyonce wasn't always hanging out with her friends, she'd know that he was a standup guy who only called her pet names so he didn't accidentally call her his ex-wife, who he goes lingerie shopping with,'s name. (This song was released about a year and half after Kobe faced sexual assault allegations.)

I don't recommend seeking that version out. As a musician and a boyfriend, he was a very talented basketball player.

14. Confessions has a weird bang/drip intro where it's almost hard but...isn't. Another song with Missy Elliot, this song is a weird precursor to Usher's Confessions album. It's not just the title of the song that's the same, it's a very similar structure and they're both about how the vocalist cheated on their partner.

Usher doesn't explain why he hooked up with another woman and got her pregnant. Beyonce starts the song by saying 

The day you pissed me off, I told Mike to pick me up
I told him you was buggin', and I don't like to fuss
He said he would look out for me if I needed a friend
He took me to his house and then he invited me in (Say what?)
Then we sat on the couch, he put his arms around my waist
Knowin' I need lovin', then he gently grabbed my face
He kissed me like a guy could never kiss a girl before
So you know what happened, baby, I need to say no more

She could have stopped there. She really didn't need to say no more. But she does say that there was at leaset one other time she cheated on him, and, oh yea, she stole a bunch of his money, too.

This is the only song I can think of where Beyonce is the perpetrator of unacceptable behavior and not the victim of it. It's a fascinating blip in her discography.

15. In 2005, I lived with an absolute garbage fire. This person put a false name on our lease, staged a break-in where our front door was removed but the thief bypassed our computers, televisions, furniture, her jewelry, our stereo systems and portable music players and only stole the cash I had given her for that month's rent. When I called her to let her know that the house had been broken into, she immediately asked about the shopping bag she had supposedly thrown the money into. You know, rather than putting it in her wallet or purse. Garbage fire.

One weekend, Garbage Fire packed a bunch of her belongings and supposedly went to Disney World for the week. Unfortunately, she claimed when I texted her about the problem, she got distracted as she was leaving and accidentally left her CD player on, where it looped a horrendous remix of Irreplaceable.

I have been unable to find this remix since. Essentially, it takes the very narrative, very well constructed lyrics, strips them from the song and just adds a reggaeton beat behind Beyonce singing to the lef to the left over and over and over and over and over and over until the listener must decide between fleeing the building where it's playing or else commiting self-harm.

She had, of course, locked her bedroom door, and there was nothing that could be done about it. Well, except unscrewing the door, going into the room, and turning off the CD player, which is what I did. And when she complained about how me removing her door to turn off the music was an invasion of privacy, I reminded her that I replaced the door as soon as it was off, and that I'd barely noticed the dozens of disturbingly sized, unwashed vibrators strewn around the floor.

My personal vendetta against the song ended the first time I heard the actual radio version, which has since become one of my favorite pop songs from that era. Sometimes, though, there is a glitch in the matrix, and I just start jerking my head to the side and saying to the left to the left, to the left to the left, to the left to the left, to the left to the left....

There have been a few intra-family feuds in wrestling history that deserve attention: Bret Hart vs Owen Hart, Bret Hart vs Davey Boy Smith (his brother-in-law), Vince McMahon vs Shane McMahon, Vince McMahon vs Stephanie McMahon, and The Bloodline drama (but not any particular combination within the Bloodline). Most of the rest of the family storylines in wrestling history were boring. I'd much rather watch The Steiners wrestle as a tag team than see them battle each other. Ditto, The Hardys (Ultimate Deletion Match not withstanding). And while there is one excellent Dustin Rhodes vs Cody Rhodes match, I would rather go back and watch them team up and battle The Shield.

The best intra-family feud, though, was the Very Slow Burn destruction of The Mysterio family. Rey Mysterio is an all-time babyface. He just exudes goodness. Even when he was supposed to be a rapscallion in the WCW, his adorable unmasked face just didn't mesh with his cheat-to-win tactics. He was never going to as believable a villain, even when they glued horns on his head. He just seems relentlessly positive and desperate to be liked.

After Dominik and Rhea Ripley beat up his father, in their home, on Thanksgiving, the two returned for Christmas and Evil Dom got arrested and "sent to jail". He returned buffer and badder and became an actual threat who was incredibly fun to watch.

The feud has been fairly quiet over the past year, as, ever the betrayer, Dominik broke up with Rhea Ripley after she returned from a serious injury, only to begin dating the woman who injured her. Meanwhile Rey has been in some underwhelming feuds involving the Latino World Order.

It's only a matter of time, though, before the intra-Mysterio feud kicks off again. It's been widely speculated that when Rey Mysterio is ready to retire, it's going to be Dominik who takes him out. I hope the buildup is so good that this feud goes up another place or four on my list.

​After a few years, Cactus Jack moved to Extreme Championship Wrestling while also fighting in Japan. His matches were wild. In Japan he, Terry Funk, and Mike Awesome were a trio of unassociated Americans fighting in Exploding Barbed Wire Matches where they'd end up bloody and...well...covered in smoke from all the explosions. It was amazing, and each of them brought a bit of that hardcore violence back with them to ECW. Cactus's promos evolved into squealing, passionate declarations about how disappointed he was in the fans. Not because they were fat, gross, or stupid, which was the usual heel promo against fans, but because the fans encouraged such dangerous violence. After ECW fans heckled a wrestler who'd fell nearly to his death and hit his head on the concrete, Cactus Jack lost all faith in the fandom. It was weird, and incredible to watch. But he still wasn't on TV enough for me to consider him a star.

Apart from the occasional casket match, The Undertaker was boringly slogging through matches in the WWF. This wasn't his fault. There was a dearth of talent at the time, and the writing was awful. Eventually, WWF talent relations director and legendary announcer, Jim Ross, convinced Vince McMahon (the world's creepiest sex offender, and owner of the WWF) to hire Mick Foley. But Vince didn't like the Cactus Jack character so they slapped a white button-up shirt or black t-shirt with a red flannel vest, and a leather mask on Foley's face and rechristened him Mankind.  This was an inspired decision.

​Watching The Undertaker dismantle a normal person was pretty boring. Of course, Joe Skimpytrunks couldn't defeat a zombie giant. A four hundred pound sumo wrestler couldn't defeat The Undertaker unless every other wrestler in the company helped him cheat. The creepy, androgynous guy dressed like an Oscar statue couldn't defeat The Undertaker, either. What chance did normal humans have?

Mankind was not a normal human. The basement dwelling, squealing monster almost immediately began interfering in The Undertaker's matches. They battled on the regular, weekly TV show, Superstars, and it was okay. They wrestled at The King Of The Ring, and it was one of the better matches of the night, even though it wasn't exceptional. Still, there was something there. Chemistry. The Undertaker's looming deliberation, and Mankind's insane energy and willingness to let his body get wrecked was a surprisingly good combination.

​During the summer of 1996, Mankind and The Undertaker battled in the first ever Boiler Room Brawl. Basically, they started in an arena basement, which was filled with ladders and lead pipes and chairs and other weapons that weren't common to see in WWF/E matches at the time. The object was just to get the hell out of the basement and into the ring and pin your opponent. It wasn't wrestling, it was a horror movie. And it was a joy to experience for the first time. The two of them destroyed each other, got in the ring, and then had a fantastic twist ending to their fight that demanded there be some sort of rematch.

The rematch? WWF/E's first ever Buried Alive Match. Mankind and The Undertaker had to battle in the ring until one of them could take the other to a grave that had been dug in the arena, and then one of them had to throw the other in the grave and cover them with dirt until they were buried alive. There was a bit more wrestling in this one but it was still more about the gimmick than the athleticism. And that was ok. It's a zombie mortician vs an insane, mask-wearing weirdo, the story is always going to be more important than the actual wrestling. ​

They had other matches after that. Most of them were good to great but there was no way to top the Hell In A Cell match, so they eventually drifted to other feuds. Mick Foley even changed his gimmicks after that, sometimes wrestling as a Shawn Michaels wannabe called Dude Love, and sometimes resurrecting the Cactus Jack character. 

While The Undertaker will appear one more time on my list of best feuds, this was definitely Mick Foley's best. He also had memorable short feuds with Randy Orton, Ric Flair, The Rock, and The Edge but his gimmick matches with The Undertaker were some of the best ever contended in WWF/E history.

I'm not going to fight with anyone over this list. I had a difficult but enjoyable time selecting my Top Ten Favorite Wrestling Feuds, and it spilled over to include ten other feuds that I loved just not as much as my Top Ten Favorites. 

I've tried to include most of the wrestling promotions and draw from all of the eras that I was alive for. I haven't included anything from the 1970s or before because I wasn't alive then, and I'm less interested in what is, for me, wrestling pre-history, and more interested in the characters I grew up watching, as well as the characters currently making wrestling so much fun to experience. Some of these near-misses are going to people's absolutely favorite feuds, and I totally understand why people might shout at their computers "WHAT ON EARTH WAS BETTER THAN THAT?"

Well...wait a bit, I'll tell you.

15. Jake Roberts vs Randy Savage. Randy Savage had spent months as a WWE commentator after losing a retirement match to The Ultimate Warrior. Randy Savage was in the beginning of a potentially amazing feud with The Ultimate Warrior when Warrior was let go for extortion and general jackassery, so the WWE decided to have Jake Roberts, who people were desperate to see in the ring, as his promos from this era were creepy and incredible, goad Savage back into in-ring competition. Roberts's calling card was his giant Burmese Python, Damian. After matches, Jake would pull out his python, and it would crawl all over his terrified opponents. But, in 1991, Earthquake squashed the snake to death (in kayfabe, the wrestler did not really kill a snake) on TV, so Jake The Snake Roberts no longer had his reptilian buddy to torture his opponents. Enter, Motherfucker (his name was never said in the WWE for obvious reasons, but that was the snake's name), a de-venomized King Cobra that chewed on Savage's arm for an extremely uncomfortable amount of time. This attack, in addition to Jake Roberts slapping Savage's wife, Miss Elizabeth, across the face, fueled Savage's return to the ring. If this feud had gone a bit longer, or if the work Roberts did with Warrior had been transposed to his work with Savage, this would definitely have been a top ten feud.

14. Chris Jericho vs Dean Malenko. The cruiserweights in mid-1990s WCW were way more talented, athletic, and interesting to watch than Terrible Terry Five Moves and the rest of the main eventers with their awful wrestling and toothless storylines. Unfortunately, the cruiserweights rarely got amazing stories to tell. When Chris Jericho went heel in 1997, he became The Most Interesting Wrestler In The Promotion. His unmasking of Juventeud Guerrera was part of an incredible feud but his battle with Malenko was better. Malenko was The Man Of A Thousand Holds, so after Jericho soundly defeated him, he began cutting promos as The Man Of A Thousand And Four Holds, which was brilliant. He had dozens of fantastic promos insulting other wrestlers but they all included digs at Malenko, who took a break from wretling after his loss. Months later, Jericho held a Battle Royal to determnine his next opponent. Again, he insulted every wrestler as they entered the match. And at the end, the unmasked Guerrera found himself face to face with the completely forgettable masked cruiserweight wrestler, Ciclope. Clearly, it was time for Guerrera's revenge. And yet, Guerrera stood nose to nose with Ciclope, laughed, and then eliminated himself from the match. Jericho came down to further insult the winner, only for Ciclope to unmask and reveal himself as Dean Malenko. It is unsurprising that their matches after this incident were also fantastic. At the time, this was in my Top Ten Feuds Ever but I didn't want to repeat many wrestlers in my Top Ten list, and Jericho has had several fantastic feuds in the thirty years since his battles with Malenko, and there may be more in his future, as Jericho is still one of the most famous active wrestlers in the world.

13. Bret Hart vs Owen Hart. Bret Hart is acknowledged as one of the best wrestlers who ever lived. His catchphrase was even "I'm The Best There Is, The Best There Was, And The Best There Ever Will Be." His brother, Owen, also became one of the most decorated wrestlers of his era and, if not for his untimely death under the negligent watch of Vince McMahon and Vince Russo, he might have eventually eclipsed Bret's fame. While Bret was originally shown as the cool, level-headed champion of early to mid-90s wrestling, Owen was a whiny "nugget" who constantly cried about being overlooked in favor of his brother. As a feud of promos, this probably wouldn't have made my top twenty matches. But if we're going by pure wrestling, it would probably be in the very top stop. Every match between these two was gold. Forget the silly run-ins, the involvement of their stepbrother/Bret's former tag team partner, Jim Neidhart, and the involvement of all forty-thousand members of Bret and Owen's immediate family. All of those were fine, is a bit uninspired. The wrestling was Top Tier. Every battle between these two was a banger worth several rewatches

12. Rhea Ripley vs Liv Morgan. This feud is still happening. While I'm ready for it to be over, or at least put on hold for a bit, there's a solid possibility that this feud will get even better and crack the top ten. Rhea Ripley has been an absolute beast since her career began. People always cheered her whether she was the loveable underdog or the dastardly villain. When she became the Mami of The Judgement Day, her stock only rose. Everything she did was captivating. Liv Morgan, on the other hand, seemed pretty bland. Her matches were fine. Her stories were forgettable. She had a title reign where she beat Ronda Rousey twice, and both matches were pretty bad both athletically and narratively. When Rhea Ripley had to vacate her title due to a backstage attack by Live Morgan, I don't think anyone expected that it was the beginning of a fantastic feud. But Morgan took over not only as champion but as Dominik Mysterio's new love interest. When Ripley returned, Mysterio sided with Morgan, and they've been putting on mostly inredible matches. I was considering putting this somewhere in the top ten but their match at Bad Blood was terrible and had me wishing they'd both move on to new stories.

11. Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels. You couldn't really tagline any of their matches with "This time, it's personal" because all of their matches seemed personal. These two had epic storyline after epic storyline, and some of the most iconic matches of all-time. They had the first ever Iron Man match, a sixty minute slog at Wrestlemania. They had the most controversial match of all time when Michaels beat Hart for the title in Hart's last real match in WWE. Dubbed The Montreal Screwjob, the match ending served as inspiration for hundreds of inferior matches ever since. If you're choosing Who Was The Best Technical Wrestler Who Was Also A Great Storyteller In The 90s, your answer has to be one of these two men. I don't think you can argue that one of them was the best and the other was almost the best but you can argue over which of them you prefer. So why isn't this in the Top Ten? I didn't want to repeat many people and Michaels has one feud that definitely tops this, despite how many promos Michaels did about Hart, years after Hart had left for another promotion. Even after Hart had been forced to retire due to injury, Michaels would make promos teasing Hart's return. These two superstars' genuine disrespect for each other made for some of the best wrestling TV of the 20th century. It's also great that they did eventually make up. Their interviews together in the last decade or so are just as entertaining to watch as their antagonistic promos were thirty years ago.

While modern wrestling can be a blast to watch for the athletecism and gymnastic abilities of its biggest stars, for decades the actual grappling took the backseat to soap opera storytelling disguised as a sport. One of America's biggest con-man, carny rapist, sex trafficer, and someone in contention for one of the worst profiteering dirtbags ever born: Vince McMahon didn't even want his WWE (then WWF) referred to as wrestling, he wanted it known as sports entertainment. The 1980s were one of wrestling's biggest boom times behind the personality of Hulk Hogan: a guy who could do four of five moves in the ring and was, without his storylines, boring to watch, as he just put on the same basic match for thirty years.

I loved the stories. I'm in the midst of a weekly watchthrough with friends we're were currently enjoying the 1990s WWE, WCW, and ECW. I'm editing future seasons of our watchthrough, which now involves putting together supercards from 2022 Impact and AEW. I feel absolutely drenched in great storylines, as well as some epic missed opportunities.

For the next few weeks, I"ll be writing about my ten favorite wrestling feuds based on match qualilty, storytelling, and generally how much fun it was to experience. It will be completely North American based wrestling because I'm not as familiar with other products. I've seen my fair share of Americans wrestling in Japan, and I've been privileged enough to see most of the well-known battles between Japanese wrestlers but I've never been knowledgable enough to speak about best feuds in New Japan, All Japan, Noah, Stardom, Dragongate, FMA, or other organizations.

When coming up with this list, I tried not to repeat too many wrestlers. I also didn't include great storytelling feuds where the matches weren't actually very good, so no Flair/Hogan, no Million Dollar Man vs Virgil, no Shawn Michaels vs Marty Janetti, nothing with Jeff Jarrett or his spritual soulmate, The Honkey Tonk Man. There aren't a ton of Impact, Ring Of Honor, WCW, or AEW feuds (though there are at least one from each) because those companies tended to put more emphasis on actual wrestling than storytelling or else they put Vince "Car Crash" Russo in charge and none of the stories made any logical sense or had any compelling characters.

Before I get to my favorite ten feuds, though, here are the first five of my ten Honorable Mentions, and why they didn't make the list:

A coworker in his sixties once lamented to me that his eleven year old son had just "discovered" ACDC. This was around 2015. He was a big funk, R&B, and early hip-hop fan who was also pretty knowledgable about the classic 80s and 90s rock but, despite his love of George Clinton bands, he couldn't get on board with ACDC's amateurish innuendo lyrics.

I understand that. I was probably also around eleven when my family was spending a couple of days with one of my mom's coworkers. The coworker had two kids who were slightly older than me but not so much older that I felt the need to look up to them, nor did they find me annoying.  While our parents drank, we were in the basement, which doubled as their bedroom, watching A Clockwork Orange, which none of our parents would have approved of. 

We must have been eating and drinking solid sugar because the two of them were actually bouncing when the movie was over, and they put on Back In Black. I had probably heard a couple of ACDC songs on MTV or at a friends' house but my parents definitely didn't then, and still don't, listen to Stephen King's favorite rock band. I thought some of the songs were really good and when I, at around age thirteen, scammed Columbia House for cheap albums, I got two or three ACDC albums. I hated them.

I'm definitely a Greatest Hits fan of ACDC, not a true fan. Many of their songs have the same effect on me and I don't think they evolved in any interesting way between when I first encountered Back In Black and when I stopped seeing their more modern songs on MTV in the late 90s/early 2000s. So this is a very mainstream radio friendly One Album Discography of a band that I'm not super into but which was very important to rock history and who have a few unignorable bangers.

1. For Those About To Rock

When I shared this reimagined album description with some friends, I was advised that the beginning of this song is not an amazing synthesizer riff but, in fact, someone finger-picking a guitar. This is an astounding feat of intrumental camouflage but not the only one you'll find on this reimagined album.

This gets opening track credit for its amazing slow build to the heavier portion of the song. This is precisely the type of song I look for when putting together most of these reimagined albums. Neither their best nor their loudest song, I just love the chorus, and how it has a more jangly sound than anything that follows. The weird repeated breakdown/canon fire section about 2/3rds of the way through is late 70s/early 80s metal gold. 

2. It's A Long Way To The Top

There's almost a country rock vibe at the beginning of this track. It was years before I realized this was an ACDC song. I don't know who I thought it was or why I didn't recognize it. I had heard quite a few of the Bon Scott-era songs but I just couldn't place the vocalist, probably because I was so distracted by how a country sounding metal song is suddenly invaded by relentless bagpipes. I do feel like these first two tracks are kind of a cheat, since they're both about rock and roll and contain almost no middle-school innuendo but, and this is rare for me, I prefer their self-referential songs to their dick jokes.

3. You Shook Me All Night Long

Here comes the sex songs! This is an absolutely basic classic rock radio staple. This has been in so many movies, TV shows, commercials, and it's been played so many times while I've shopped in stores that I'm not sure whether I like it or I'm just accustomed to it. 

4. Thunderstruck

I'm certain I enjoy Thunderstruck. The wild guitar lick while a chorus of men do a little sport chant until the lead vocals come in is First Class 70s/80s Arena Rock, so imagine my surprise to find that this is from 1990. The middle of the song is just standard classic rock but that opening minute is worth the price of admission.

5. TNT

Prime 1970s radio metal. The main guitar riff is just a clean riff you might hear in a Joan Jett song. The verses are typical braggadocio about how good at sex the singer is but, honestly, it's top tier sex braggadocio. It's not clever, it's just catchy and not terrible. And the underlying ois are so sing-alongable. The descent into guitar madness at the end works in the song's favor, too.

6. Who Made Who

Stephen King has been singing the praises of ACDC for decades. Rightfully, so. This song, the title track from an album that doubled as the soundtrack for one of King's more memorable, if not necessarily good, movies: Maximum Overdrive. This is another case of a song that I know many of the words to, and bop my head along to but I'm not sure if I like it or if it just happened to play on the radio frequently when I was just getting into harder rock.

7. Highway To Hell

How do you not bop your head to the guitar riffs on this song? The catchy, adolescent rebellion chorus is a classic for a reason.  It also descends into guitar madness near the end before we get one more Highway To Hell.

8. Hard As A Rock

I'd guess this isn't on many peoples' Best Of ACDC list. It's a typical innuendo-based song with a solid but not Earth-shattering riff. It just happened to come out when I was watching a lot of MTV. It's not a legendary track but it's better than just album-filler. I do like the somewhat jangly riff that is mostly under the surface of the main crunch for most of the song.

9. Hell's Bells

The title-necessitated bells. The lead guitar could have made this a hit without any vocals. When the vocals come in, they're great, but this one is driven mostly the Young brothers, and whoever rang those bells.

10. Dirty Deeds Done Cheap

Decades ago, a friend who was the lead singer of a hardcore band told the story about hearing this song when he was really young, and how he used to wail "Dirty deeds and the Dunder Chief!" I can definitely hear that interpretation. This is one of the band's all-time best. John Popper of Blues Traveler used to play the harmonica so blisteringly, you'd swear it was a guitar. The guitar in the middle of this track, conversely, is so blistering, you'd swear it was a harmonica. The chanting on the way to the outro is also magic.

11. Let There Be Rock

I thought I closed out this reimagineed album with a great counterpoint to the opening track. Another rock song about rock. This one is a bit heavier with a couple of epic breakdowns scattered through its six minute length. Along with "Devil Went Down To Georgia", this has to be one of the best ever songs presenting lyrics as a religious fable. As much as I loved it, I realized there was a better closer.

12. Back In Black

​The clicky intro, the strummy, percussive guitar parts, the way Brian Johnson makes the word back have five syllables. I tend to end rock albums with ballads but I can't think of an ACDC ballad that works as well as a closer than this absolute scorcher of a finisher.

I think this album contains all the songs I'd reasonably listen to when I'm in the mood for ACDC. But were I to make a second album, I couldn't really go in-depth about my choices but it would probably be:

1. If You Want Blood (You've Got It)
2. Whole Lotta Rosie
3. Demon Fire
4.Sink The Pink​
5. Touch Too Much
6. Kick You When You're Down
7. Nervous Shakedown
8. Livewire
9. Rock & Roll Train
10. Have A Drink On Me
11. The Jack