#258) "The Stroke" by Billy Squier - I remember being eight or nine years old, hanging out with my grubby-fingered friends somewhere, hearing this song on the radio and thinking it was so raunchy, so dirty, sooo something we, as kids, were not supposed to be listening to. Not that I didn't want to listen. I definitely wanted to, and I definitely did. There seemed something compellingly sexual about "The Stroke." It might have been what I saw as the gender-busting slide of Squier's vocals, maybe a little bit the hip-swinging rhythm, and partially the lyrics...although we weren't really listening to the lyrics then, other than the words, "...stroke me...", which we would chant over and over, kicking up playground dust.
If we had been listening to the lyrics, we probably still would not have realized that they're actually about politics, about the government giving us all the stroke. And not in a good way.
At least that's what I've chosen to believe throughout my adult life. Billy Squier has been quoted as saying the song is actually about the music business, which is sort of a bubble popper for me because the lyrics work so well applied to the political realm, really word for word. They could be about any industry I guess, any industry marinating in duplicity and insincerity....but they describe blandness as well, a certain ineffectual lameness that in my eyes is no better represented than by American politics....on both sides of the aisle.
In any case, there are songs that you just enjoy listening to, no matter what they're about, and no matter how much time passes. For me, "The Stroke" is one of them.
"Spread your ear pollution both far and wide / Keep your contributions by your side..."
#259) "Radar Love" by Golden Earring - "Radar Love" is so much a road song - the road song - it's more or less a stereotype at this point (guaranteed to start playing in any movie or video game where someone plants their ass behind a steering wheel), but like "The Stroke", it's also a pretty durable jam, sounding just as fresh, just as urgent, just as "of the moment", as it did in 1973, without sounding all that much like it's from 1973. Golden Earring are a Dutch band with a long history going back to the early 1960s, and until...like...five minutes ago, I had no idea that they also sing "Twilight Zone" (1982). Now that I know it, it makes perfect sense.
I like "Twilight Zone" too, but it doesn't sound as fresh all these years later. Not like "Radar Love", anyway. I know I've named more than a few "ultimate road songs" on this list, but "Radar Love" might just be the Mother of them all. Its infectious rhythm turns airborne coming in contact with the confident, sometimes blistering vocals, creating a strange combination of Kiss-style sexual tension and earnest highway restlessness that would make Bruce Springsteen proud.
And the lyrics...well, they're not especially poetic, or daring, or political in any way...they're just pretty cool. They themselves might be the Mother of all road lyrics.
"The radio's playing some forgotten song / Brenda Lee's "Coming on Strong"....
