Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#274) "Tin Man" by America - When I was younger, I didn't like "Tin Man", primarily because I didn't get it. I should have, maybe. Being the writer dude/self styled intellectual I worked oh so hard to convince the world (and myself) I was, I should have totally been down with the stream-of-consciousness headiness of the vibe, and up to the challenge of its poetically inscrutable lyrics.

But alas, it was all too much for me to wrap my head around...because - I think - it was just so fucking awesome...actual poetry, as opposed to merely overwrought and heavily cliched imagery. Or maybe it's just complete nonsense. Honestly, that would be okay too.

And I definitely wasn't mature then enough to appreciate the artistry of America's collective musicianship. Dewey Bunnell wrote "Tin Man", but like many of America's songs, it's the other two members, Dan Peek and Gerry Beckley, joining in that helps create the unforgettable sound that, as I've said in the past, is on one hand helplessly dated to the 1970s, yet beautifully timeless at the same time.

Now as a full-fledged adult, I still don't know what the hell the song is saying, I just love it. Love me some America, man. I feel like there's important stuff - heady and just a little horrifying - going on in their music, both lyrically and melodically, and yet, nothing at all at the same time. Maybe more than any other band or artist, America should be brought along on a cross-country road trip. 

"But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't, didn't already have..."

#275) "A Horse With No Name" by America - See above.

"The ocean is a desert with its life underground and a perfect disguise above..."

#276) "Lonely People" by America  - And again. Although the lyrics are more straightforward in this one, it's still just pleasant to listen to.

"Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup / you never know until you try..."

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#271) "If I Can Dream" by Elvis Presley - Sometime in the 1990s, we thought fit to put Elvis Presley on a postage stamp, and got into a national debate about which Elvis it should be - young, sexy, boundary-pushing "Elvis the Pelvis" of the 1950s, or fat, bloated, drug-addled Elvis, who through most of the 70s lumbered onto stage in a purple cape suit, breathing heavily and sweating up a storm, but whose magnificent voice never failed him even when it was clear his body had. The U.S. Postal Service actually let people vote for their favorite stamp, and in the end, young Elvis won out. Not too surprising, I guess.

Young Elvis may very well have been the best looking dude of the 20th century (his aesthetic surely remains a gold standard for many women today), but the King's best music came during the fat years, when he simply stopped giving a shit, started singing the music he wanted to sing, which for Elvis was a lot of different types of songs, most of them arranged in a specific gospel-based style that gave him a platform to showcase his voice and stage presence.

This musical trend began in 1968, with the televised live concert known as the "Comeback Special", which aired on NBC on December 3. Elvis wasn't out of shape yet, still looked the part, still looked pretty good, actually, maybe the best he ever had (certainly the best he ever would).  He performed some of his classics and some new music, and he closed the show with "If I Can Dream",  a powerful song worthy of his voice and delivery that also echoed the hopeful and idealized sentiment of the era, signaling to the American public (a public quite different from that which was only allowed to watch him from the waist up thirteen years earlier) that the King of Rock and Roll hadn't gone anywhere, just grown up a bit, and was now paying attention to things going on, along with everyone else.

Great song. Great performance. Pity that "hopeful and idealized sentiment" went largely ignored.

"There must be peace and understanding sometime, strong winds of promise that will blow away the doubt and fear..." 




#272) "Memories" by Elvis Presley - Another song that debuted on the '68 Comeback Special and was eventually released as a single, as love ballads go - by the King, or anyone else - this is about as good as it gets.

"Sweet memories, of holding hands and red bouquets, and twilight trimmed in purple haze / And laughing eyes and simple ways, and quiet nights and gentle days with you..."



#273) "Unchained Melody (Live)" by Elvis Presley - Performed weeks before his death in 1977, this is, for a variety of reasons, one of the worst live performances of any song, by anyone, ever.

It's also one of the very greatest, for all the same reasons, and maybe a few others.

"Are you still mine...?"

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#269) "Mama Luba" by Serebro - With the potent sex appeal of the three members of Serebro to contend with (seeming to confirm everything I've ever heard about the exceptional beauty of Russian women), it would be easy to dismiss "Mama Luba" as mere pop tripe performed by women who better be good-looking, because they're certainly not Joni Mitchell.

But "Mama Luba" is beyond catchy. The combination of driving rhythm, urgent melody (and vocals) and a synthesized horn jam end run that itself could teach a course in sexiness scratches deep enough to become a legitimate groove, the kind that gets into your blood as well as your ear. And honestly, that it's sung in Russian doesn't hurt...(although I don't know why I just typed that).

Sadly, the rest of Serebro's music is what you might expect from any manufactured girl group, Russian, American or otherwise: cloying, overtly sexual (that is, to the point of being annoyingly so...), sassy and salty for the sake of being "sassy and salty"...but "Mama Luba" more than makes up for the other fails simply by not trying too hard. Yes, the women of Serebro are purrrrdy (okay, astonishingly hot), but truly, it wouldn't matter if they weren't (and agreed, it shouldn't). I'd still be jamming out...;-)


Sorry, the lyrics are in a Russian...;-)

#270) "Silence on the Line" by Chris LeDoux - On the surface, just another country ballad about cowboys and rodeos, hard falls and painted canyon walls...and whatnot and shit...but not really.  If you sit and listen to this song, a richly textured (and kind of devastating) story is revealed, a story that touches on some universally known themes: the death of dreams, what we wish mattered in life compared to what ends up mattering, how we see ourselves as opposed to how others see us, the relationship between men and women, what's expected of men as time passes...

A former rodeo rider, LeDoux passed away in 2005 at the age of 56. Taken way too early, he left behind a musical legacy worthy of remembrance, with "Silence on the Line" worthy of analysis.

Truthfully, no other song has ever moved me quite the same way.

"Well there's silence on the line, and now I hear her saying / 'Babe, I only need a man for the things a man is good for...'"

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#267) "When the Stars Go Blue" by Tim McGraw - Tim McGraw made this Ryan Adams song a hit in 2006, and he's to be applauded for it, as it's neither a typical country ballad, nor typical of McGraw (although he did do a stupendous job with "Please Remember Me" a few years earlier, kind of an off-beat ballad itself, so perhaps this was not totally out of left field). If the word "gorgeous" can ever be used to describe a song without sounding like overkill (or in the case of country music, overcompensation), this is it. "Please Remember Me" is lush and lovely, but it might be said, by those with no taste for ballads of any kind, that it's a bit fruity.

Whereas there's nothing fruity about "When the Stars Go Blue". To me, it seems naturally placed wherever it's heard. It drips like rain off the roof on a gunmetal gray afternoon...or maybe it's the sound of the light that cascades down through the clouds when they break up later in the evening. Maybe it's the overnight.

Or the sound of a new day. Maybe the new day's rain.

"Where do you go when you're lonely? Where do you go when you're blue...?"

#268) "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" by Gerry and the Pacemakers - There are some songs that just seem to come from a faraway place, a place you know is remote, a place people neither travel to or from very often.  For me, "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" is one of those. Out of its very arrangement (full of wispy strings, totally uncertain-sounding horns, overly cautious percussion, and an oboe that sounds as though it's contemplating whether there's any reason to go on living) broadcasts an unavoidable (and undeniable) sense of remoteness that, for my money, can only get anywhere by riding the light through the vast sky. In other words, like "When the Stars Go Blue", "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" is uniquely gorgeous.

But it's also odd as hell for how Gerry Marsden sounds as he's singing it. Maybe it's my imagination, but for a song of hope, Marsden sounds intractably cold, and wholly unsympathetic to whoever he has caught crying.

Maybe it's merely the best a hard-bitten Liverpudlian can muster in the emotions department. It could also be intentional, I guess, a vocal stylization if you will, to match the haunting melody. If so, here's a song that truly captures the nuanced subtleties of the human condition: "There there...it's okay to cry, just....okay, come on, all right then, you're good...let's get up now, pull yourself together...hey, stop it... stop it..."

"We know crying's not a bad thing, but stop your crying when the birds sing..."