10: As I Am, from the album Train of Thought
This song has all the makings of an excellent metal song. The intro is soft, yet still harsh, and actually opens with the final orchestral chord that ended the preceding album, Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. The lyrics are most likely directed at all those who would be dissatisfied with the more straightforward metal sound of Train of Thought as opposed to the progressive musical development they are so famous for. That being said, it is in every respect an excellent song, and widely expanded Dream Theater’s fan base into less underground, more metal-oriented audiences, myself included.
9: The Ytse Jam from the album When Dream and Day Unite
Dream Theater’s first album featured this song as its sole instrumental track. The name is an homage to Dream Theater’s original name, Majesty (spelled backwards) and is pronounced “yit-see.” It exemplifies the sound that earned Dream Theater the title ‘Kings of Prog.’ It revolves around the old jazz form A-B-A, with an opening theme and one giant solo section showcasing the technical prowess of each instrumentalist in turn, before closing with the initial theme.
8. The Dance of Eternity from the album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory
Also an instrumental track, this song is different from The Ytse Jam in that it is written to reflect an entire concept album’s worth of development as opposed to being its own work. It references themes from each song on the album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory on which it appears. While many interpretations have been suggested, I personally feel that it represents the confusion and general insanity prevalent in the story told by the album.
7. Space-Dye Vest from the album Awake
My first reaction to this song was that it was weird. Weird in a good way, of course, or it wouldn’t be in the top 10, but weird nonetheless. It was written by Kevin Moore, former keyboardist of Dream Theater. When asked by a Japanese interviewer of his inspiration for the song, he had the following to say, which really spoke to the hopeless romantic in me:
“It was inspired by…I was looking through a clothing catalog and saw a picture of a girl modeling this piece of clothing called a space-dye vest. And, so, I fell in love with her [laughs] for some strange reason, and so the minute I did that, the minute I was just like obsessed with this person, I was like, ‘Why am I doing that?’ and I noticed that I was doing it a lot lately. And I think the prime reason that I was doing that, and this is what I figured out at the time, was that I had just come out of a relationship where I’d gotten dumped, basically, and so I think the situation was that I wasn’t finished giving all that I was ready to give, so I was just, like, throwing it around, you know? Just aiming it in different directions. It was a total case of projection. And this song is just trying to sort it out and just kind of admitting that I’m just kind of lost. So it’s kind of a dark song. It was very cathartic though.”
6. Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence from the albumSix Degrees of Inner Turbulence: Disc 2
At 46 minutes long, this is the single longest song ever written by Dream Theater and takes up the entire second disc of the album of the same name. Et showcases six different mental illnesses and is divided into eight single-track movements, one for each illness plus an overture and a reprise. Even though it is separated into multiple tracks, it is still considered a single song and is generally played straight through as such. Having myself suffered from severe depression, this song spoke to me on a deeply personal level.
5. A Change of Seasons from the album A Change of Seasons
What first struck me about this song was the way it drew me in from the start with its haunting melody. At 23 minutes long, this song is probably best classified as a rhapsody, moving seamlessly from theme to theme such that individual movements are indecipherable. It existed for many years only as something the band would play live. Finally, after numerous requests, they released it as an EP also including four cover songs. It remains a fan favorite and, to me at least, represents “old school” Dream Theater.
4. Octavarium from the album Octavarium
The title track to Dream Theaters eighth studio album is one of those songs that has something for everyone. Of course, it’s easier to cram all that into a single song when it’s a 24-minute epic. It opens with an abstract, Pink Floyd-esque introduction played on a Continuum fingerboard and lap steel guitar before breaking into a funky bass groove for the second movement. The third movement starts picking up the pace and includes a hat-tipping vocal medley of several different songs by various artists. The forth movement starts building tension and climaxes before settling into a majestic reprise of the opening theme in the final movement, the lyrics of which tie into the “full circle” theme of the other four movements. The song ends with the same doleful ringing piano note that opens the first track of the album, further emphasizing the “full circle” theme. In short, this song is a masterpiece of creativity and musical innovation.
3. Pull Me Under from the album Images and Words
When the album Images and Words was released, the band heavily promoted the single Another Day which was only met with limited success. However, Pull Me Under managed to get extensive radio play without any promotion whatsoever, and even enjoyed some time on MTV. It remains the only Dream Theater song to ever get wide mainstream attention, and unsurprisingly has a more mainstream feel to it, although it is certainly still in the realm of progressive metal and is played at almost every show to the enjoyment of both mainstream and underground fans.
2. Metropolis Pt. 1: The MIracle and the Sleeper from the album Images and Words
More commonly referred to as simply Metropolis, this masterpiece is a constant fan-favorite, rivaled in general popularity only by Pull Me Under and often played as an encore performance. In its nearly 10-minute duration, the song showcases extensive musical experimentation, with lengthy instrumental sections that practically define progressive metal, culminating in a powerful finale feature vocalist James Labrie. The musical ideas present in this song spawned an entire concept album, though this was not the intention originally.*
1. The Glass Prison from the album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence: Disc 1
I vividly remember the first time I saw Dream Theater live. They opened with this song, and the energy it evoked swept me away like a drug. While decidedly darker in nature than Metropolis, The Glass Prison carries the same raw sonic power that makes it unforgettable. It is also the first piece of the Alcoholics Anonymous Suite detailing drummer Mike Portnoy’s struggles with alcoholism and constitutes a first-class example of Dream Theater’s ability to blend scorching technical prowess with musical development.
*Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory
While this album is not technically a single song and thus has no place in a list of the top 10 ‘songs,’ its classification as a concept album merits honorable mention. Curiously, Metropolis pt. 1 was thus named purely as an inside joke, and no follow-up was intended at the time. However, after significant fan requests, the band decided to write one, intending for it to be featured as a single track on their album Falling to Infinity. Unfortunately, the 20-minute demo version was deemed by producers to be too long, and never made it on to the album. When it came time for the band to begin the next album, the band successfully fought the record label for creative control, and they took the demo off the shelf for reworking. The result was quite possibly Dream Theater’s crowning achievement. The album chronicles the story of a man experiencing flashbacks from a past life in which he was murdered. Tt the album’s start, he is undergoing hypnotic regression therapy in order to discover the identity of his murderer…
