New York, New York (New York, New York)

There is an architecture to this recording that has nothing to do with modesty. The orchestration is enormous, the tempo propulsive, the brass section announcing itself like a city announcing itself to anyone arriving for the first time. Frank Sinatra understood that some songs are not just songs but declarations — civic, almost political — and he performed this one with the authority of a man who had actually conquered New York and was reporting back on what the conquest cost and what it was worth. His phrasing is masterful in the way that all great Sinatra phrasing is masterful: he treats the lyric like a story he is telling you in person, not a text he is reading aloud. The emotional experience is one of ambition made beautiful — the longing for recognition, for a place in a hierarchy that only matters because you've decided it does, rendered as something universal and even moving. The song was written by Kander and Ebb for the 1977 Scorsese film, but Sinatra's cover eclipsed the original and became the song itself. It belongs to New Year's Eve, to the end of things and the beginning of things, to the moment before a new attempt. You listen to this when you are about to try something enormous and you need the company of someone who tried it too, and who understood that wanting to matter is not a character flaw but a very human thing.