The best Doors tracks

“Pretentious” comes up often in dismissals of art, palsied from misuse. The distinctions between “art that fails to satisfy its ambition” and “art that dares to have ambition” matter less to audiences who often punish the artist for offering the challenge. With The Doors, “pretentious” gets bandied around. “Responsible for an immeasurable routine of mirror moves in the ensuing decades, though, their influence, aesthetically at any rate, was benign so long as poseurs didn’t self-publish books of poetry,” I wrote in a dismissal of “Touch Me” last year. Jim Morrison’s baritone and the thinness of the music resulted in singles whose Dionysian undertones transmitted as singles bar patter, but fans will insist I Had to Be There.

Nevertheless, I own a few records and was able to create this list.

1. People Are Strange
2. You’re Lost Little Girl
3. The End
4. We Could Be So Good Together
5. Wild Child
6. Light My Fire
7. Love Street
8. The Unknown Soldier
9. Break On Through
10. Wishful Sinful
11. Universal Mind
12. You Make Me Real