Ten Bass Lines I Never Escaped

Feb 1

If you’ve listened to my music for a while, you’ve probably picked up on one thing pretty fast. The bass is never just sitting in the background.

Honestly, from the very start of this project, almost every song has come together the same way. It’s just me with a bass, messing around until a line or a riff feels right. That always comes first. Way before a melody. Way before lyrics. Sometimes, even before I really know what the song is supposed to be.

And even when those parts end up turning into synths or vocal melodies later on, the heart of the song is still the same. It all starts with the bass.

That’s not random.

For me, that’s where the emotion actually lives. The bass is the part that hits your body before your brain even has time to react.

So when people ask me where my songs come from, the honest answer is pretty simple. Most of them start in the low end.

That’s probably why I’ve always been obsessed with great bass lines. The ones that don’t just sit under a song, but actually define it. The ones you recognize almost instantly.

These aren’t just my favorite bass parts. These are the lines that taught me how to hear a song from the bottom up. They showed me that bass can be the melody, the rhythm, and the atmosphere all at once.

And in one way or another, every song I’ve written carries a little bit of that with it.

So here are the ten bass lines that shaped how I write songs:

1. Pixies “Gigantic”

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2. Fugazi “Waiting Room”
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3. Nirvana “Lounge Act”
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4. Sonic Youth “Into the Groovey”
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5. The Stone Roses “I Wanna Be Adored”
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6. Judge “Where It Went”
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7. Alice In Chains “Would?”
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8. The Cure “The Holy Hour”
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9. Joy Division “Transmission”
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