Marc Maron’s five favourite songs
One of the biggest comedians and liberal voices working in stand-up today, New Jersey’s Marc Maron has earned a fierce reputation in the crowded comedy world. With an unflinchingly forensic view on America’s skewed social make-up and offering left-leaning satirical ripostes to the conservative mediascape, the man’s a name to be reckoned with.
For many, his defining project will always be the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, launched in 2009. Boasting guests including Robin Williams, Barack Obama, and Paul McCartney, Maron’s podcasting venture stands as a gateway to his work, however.
He’s also a massive muso. Spending a whole bit on 2013’s Thinky Pain exploring his “confused” record collection and mustering up the energy to finally tackle Captain Beefheart, popular music is a prominent feature of his psyche as much as his material. From hosting the short-lived American version of Never Mind the Buzzcocks on VH1, writing the score to 2019’s Sword of Trust, and playing a ripping solo on Yaucht’s ‘Party at the NSA’ charity single, Maron’s love for music clearly runs deep.
Such a credentialed music CV makes Maron the perfect guest for a curated radio hour. Invited to Santa Monica’s KCRW in 2011, Maron took over the station’s Guest DJ Project to offer an insight into his lifelong pop loves. His first pick reached into the depths of David Bowie’s smoggy Berlin Trilogy, dusting off Heroes‘ beguiling title track for its visceral straddle between romance and pain.
“There is just something about the build of this song,” Maron elaborated, “They kind of swell my heart. Usually people feel that as a feeling of joy, but when my heart swells there is a heaviness to it—some sort of dark longing to it in the sense that any relationship, any romance…so much of it is something we are manufacturing in our brain”.
Up next was a number from Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom. Dropped five years after Bowie’s leftfield pop marvel, Maron saw a shared transporative energy between two seemingly very different cuts: “They sort of identify how I see myself, or how I see my sadness or my feelings, and then put it into context or that romantic idea. I don’t know that ‘Beyond Belief’ is really a romantic song, but there is something about the frustration of being a prisoner of your own feelings that I can identify with.”
From then on, Maron keep his selection strictly within the realm of 1970s rock, reeling off Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ ‘American Girl’, The Rolling Stones’ ‘It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (but I Like It)’, and closing with Australian clod-stompers, AC/DC‘s ‘Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be’. Why not? For many, rock and roll’s wild abandon is a muse, inspiration, and path towards much-needed dissidence.
“That release, to me, is the spirit of rebellion, and the spirit of rebellion is definitely apparent in my comedy to some degree,” Maron revealed. “Although my comedy has gotten a little more personal. I don’t know if I would say sharing my neurosis in an honest way is rock and roll, but maybe, to me it is.”
Marc Maron’s five favourite songs:
- David Bowie – ‘Heroes’
- Elvis Costello – ‘Beyond Belief’
- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – ‘American Girl’
- The Rolling Stones – ‘It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (but I Like It)’
- AC/DC – ‘Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be’
