One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

 #374) "My City Was Gone" by The Pretenders - It's probably not possible there exists any American who has ever ridden in a car in the middle of the day with the AM radio playing for so much as ten minutes - any time in the last 30 years - who wouldn't associate this lush, satisfying, bass-driven jam with The Rush Limbaugh radio show, for which it has served as the opening theme for three decades.

I do not like that fact at all ... but not because it's Rush Limbaugh. I don't like the thought of it being turned into a theme song, a jingle, for anyone, or anything. In fact, if it were my song - if any of the songs on this list were mine - I would guard jealousy (that is, Prince-like...) the context in which I'd created it. I would not want Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow appropriating it for their own purposes, turning it into something it's not. Likewise, I'd do everything I could to keep Pepsi, Budweiser, McDonalds and Depends undergarments from turning it into something it's not. Sure, I like soda, beer Big Macs, and yeah, someday I just might need those padded undies, but I would not want my music to have anything to do with any of that. (Even in jest, even if one day I'm "also a client.") This might sound funny, would surely provoke eye rolls if I said it out loud at a dinner party, but whatever it consists of, whatever it sounds, smells or tastes like, and however many people enjoy it or think I'm a talentless hack, my art is my art, and it's not - not - to be used by pundits for political purposes or Pepsi to push product.

As an aside, I'm actually really glad I'm not a musical artist. I wouldn't want to have to be forced to accept the rampant misuse / misappropriation of my work on YouTube and social media by people who think copying and pasting is part of the creative process.  

The story of how Limbaugh came to use the song is tainted by politics. The conservative Limbaugh's attempt to identify/brand himself with a song written by Pretenders frontlady Chrissie Hynde, a liberal environmentalist, did cause a stir at one point. But the two sides reportedly reached some kind of détente over the issue in the mid-1990s, and Limbaugh was given official permission to continue using it. 

That's all six degrees of what-the-fuck-ever in my mind. "My City Was Gone" has nothing to do with politics, or shouldn't, and is instead (should be) of universal relatability: libs, conservatives, Dems, Republicans, white, black ... who among us hasn't returned to their hometown after many years to find things lamentably changed?  Whatever your political stripes, nobody should be just okay with any world they once knew being "reduced to parking spaces." 

I love that the song never gets too overwrought in delivering its message. It skillfully makes a larger point, an important one, without having to force it home. This is perhaps due in part to the fact that, musically speaking, "My City was Gone" doesn't really go anywhere, simply trades on the sturdy bass line to carry it through to the end. But that bass line it's so appealing, so pleasant to nod your head to, and the lyrics so simple yet potent, I find myself not expecting or needing anything to happen. It's all good just the way it is, just the way it plays out ... this time, and when I play it again right after. Which I almost always do.

And then usually once more, because the song is just fun to listen to. It's not a song so much as a groove ... which doubtless is why (for better or worse) it works so well as radio bumper music.

"I  was stunned and amazed / My childhood memories, slowly swirled past / Like the wind through the trees..."

#375) "Let Her Cry" by Hootie and the Blowfish - This is one of the songs that has stuck to my heart like paste as the years have passed, evoking an emotional chill nowadays just like it did back in what have lamentably become the proverbial old days.  The song breezed quietly and unassumingly through the year 1995, as I dated and wasted time and tried to be the best 22-year-old father I could be. It was the crest of Hootie's popularity, and this anguished melody and arrangement were well suited to Darius Rucker's low, gritty vocals.  

I have two specific memories associated with this song. The first involves hearing the 40-something mother of a girl I was dating at the time cry out "Hootie!" with an exuberant pump of her fist when it started playing, and me and the girl shrinking down and rolling our eyes like the snarky shits we were (not realizing, of course, that before we knew it, we would be older than her mother was at the time).

The second memory is inextricably linked to the attendant (and inevitable) drama that arises when you're young, early 20s, and trying to hack out a serious relationship with someone who is just as young and unreliable as you. In the days of our lives when for most of us it's largely about going out and meeting people and partying and all of that, when restlessness saturates the air of any given day, and everything that happens - good, bad, or indifferent - is something to be stored away for some later use (as a memory, a lesson learned, whatever....), there arises two types: people who can handle their shit, handle "partying", and people who can't. 

"Let Her Cry" tells the story of a couple being torn apart because one of them can't. I've been in those kinds of relationships, seen substance abuse first hand, and it sucks. But what's interesting about "Let Her Cry" is that it digs a deeper emotional trench than other songs of similar subject matter.  For me, the heartbreak intrinsic to the song (and still causing that chill) isn't the substance abuse per se, but the futility that follows it wherever it goes, seeping into everyone's lives, leading to alienation, then eventually distance. In other words, it's not that someone in this relationship has a substance problem, it's more the note standing by the phone (as the lyrics go) saying, "Maybe I'll be back someday...".

Words as futile as they are sad.

"I wanted to look for you, you walked in, I didn't know just what I should do / So I sat back down and had a beer and felt sorry for myself ... "

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#372) "Here Comes the Rain Again" by The Eurythmics - I didn't truly appreciate the Eurythmics when I was young (navigating my 5th grade playground dressed in camouflage pants and matching hat), primarily because Annie Lennox didn't appeal to me on the brink of puberty. I never liked the short orange hair, or (at the time) the whole androgenous look (give me a break, I was a kid...). Couple that with the fact that the music was (perhaps) a bit too sophisticated for me at age eleven. Although, maybe "sophisticated" isn't the right word. It just seemed unrelatable, in a way that other music of the time, from the likes of Madonna, Huey Lewis and Culture Club didn't.

Of course, I'm long past all of that. It's all about the music now - good, bad or indifferent - as opposed to anything even remotely visual or style-based, and insomuch as it matters (which it really doesn't), Annie Lennox was actually quite beautiful, and the Eurythmics'  heavily-laden synth-pop sound has stood the test of time, proven itself to be durable by only getting better with age.

Whereas there is a certain hostility prevalent in their other notable hit, "Sweet Dreams", "Here Comes the Rain Again" is more winsome; indeed, rainier. It was, and is, one of those songs that sent my mind off shore. Still does ... just a few hundred yards, not so far as I can no longer see land, just far enough to dose me with anxiety that the land could disappear ... but probably won't. 

"Here comes the rain again / Raining in my head like a tragedy..."

#373) "Ebony and Ivory" by Paul McCartney - Oh yes, I've said it numerous times in this space: Paul McCartney is, for my money and roundly speaking, the greatest performer of the last hundred years. No, he's not the only great songwriter out there, nor the greatest vocalist (although he's crazy stellar in both those departments), but with Macca, it's more a matter of sheer artistic range - his ability to shriek convincingly in songs like "Helter Skelter", then equally as convincingly croon out "Yesterday". It's about that way he had of whipping his voice into a creamy froth for "Oh Darling!", then engage a seamless transition into, say, "Mother Nature's Son" with completely convincing tenderness. He has been churning out sets of songs sporting these wildly disparate styles for almost 60 years, first with The Beatles, then Wings, then as a solo artist from the 80s on ... whatever he was singing, it never seemed like something he shouldn't be trying to sing, and what I've actually said numerous times in this space is that for a self-proclaimed singer of silly love songs, when he does want to make a point, he makes it well. 

Nowhere is this more true than with "Ebony and Ivory", a kind of last word on race relations, which McCartney thought to share, appropriately enough, with Stevie Wonder. The lyrics are simple in what they are saying, the business about the black and white keys on the piano working in harmony ("why don't we...?" indeed), and vocally, Wonder and McCartney each brings something pretty amazing to the party, their voices ideally suited to their parts. The music is, well, light and refreshing, like any good McCartney song, but also an oddly potent joy to listen to.  

No it's not rock and roll, not music to fall in or out of love to, or music to cobble together a mood or vibe with ... it is merely light and refreshing, and the charge that it was some sad attempt by McCartney to stay relevant when the the luster of his career had started to fade by the dawn of the 1980s might have had some truth to it.

But on the other hand, it's not true at all. Come on, he's fuckin' Paul McCartney. If he's going to write a song about racial harmony, "Ebony and Ivory" is kind of exactly the way he's going to go about it.  And I sort of wish we still lived in a world where a song like this could possibly chart the way it did in 1982.

"Why don't we...?"

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#364) "You Are Everything" by The Stylistics - Philadelphia soul in the 1970s was primarily about production. The composite sound I have simply adored since first hearing it dribble out of an AM radio somewhere in the sunny spaces of my parents' bookstore in the days when my favorite TV show was CHIPs, was created by writers/producers like Thom Bell skillfully joining just the right vocals to an even righter musical arrangement, which was usually spartan, but completely satisfying to listen to.

Like its musical cousin Motown, I think there is a purity to this kind of music, an emotional timbre that is raw and vulnerable, strangely haunting and hopeful all at once. Philly soul is a bit more polished for its heightened production value, but that's not a bad thing. Yes, Russell Thompkins Jr's vocals are impressive, low and sturdy one moment, then crisp, clear and sky-bound the next, but it's really the accompaniment that holds the Philly sound together. It's a delicate discipline lacing together drums and strings and other assorted instrumentation (a kind of musical flea market...in a good way) and having it complement rather than overwhelm, share space rather than conquer land.

Also like Motown, I think Philadelphia soul is timeless, comprised of songs that exist forever in the secluded corners of our minds, where - forever - they administer measured doses of their austere but monumental beauty to the memories collected there.

"I just can't go on living life as I do, comparing each girl to you, knowing they just won't do / They're not you..."

✅ And there are other gems courtesy of the Stylistics that not only deserve to be remembered, but recognized. I think The Stylistics were in a class by themselves.  

#365) "You Make Me Feel Brand New" by The Stylistics - See above.

#366) "Betcha By Golly, Wow" by The Stylistics - See above.

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 #367) "How Deep is Your Love" by The Bee Gees - You know, the real tragedy is that when all the dust has settled, and these times of ours are just another footnote in the annals of history, the Bee Gees are most likely going to be remembered for "Stayin' Alive". That's all anybody I knew (and myself) ever gave them credit for back in the day, and usually in a mocking way. I remember being in high school, and everyone, everyone, making fun of the tight pants, big hair, silly-sounding falsetto and contrived swagger; it was SOP when "Stayin' Alive" played or the Bee Gees were so much as brought up in conversation, to start doing the John Travolta apple-picking dance and squealing "aah aah aah aah stayin' alive...!!!!!!!!!" , safe in the knowledge that you'd get a laugh from someone, and it was a good bet they'd join in. "Stayin' Alive" was barely ten years old at the time, but it seemed much older, and so lame, so of the 1970s, that decade with all the ugly clothing, cars and décor. 

But seriously, what the fuck did I know? 

First off, for the record, I don't think there is anything wrong with "Stayin' Alive". It's a disco song, yes, but so what? It's not a bad disco song. Great bass line, and the "swagger" actually reads more legitimate when it's confined to the song itself...same goes for the lyrics. At the end of the day, it was just a sell-out move for the otherwise uber-talented Brothers Gibb, who'd been around since the mid-1960s, and whose command of melody, harmony and message when it comes to songwriting rivaled, in my opinion, many universally recognized greats of the 20th century.  

I'm willing to back that up, too. As a pop ballad, I'd put "How Deep is Your Love" up against just about any other song for comparison, any song enjoying a fully secure spot in those annals of history - "Something" by the Beatles, anything by The Beatles, or Fleetwood Mac or the Stones or Billy Joel or Elton John or a Motown luminary like Smokey Robinson. A lot of great music, ballads and otherwise, came out of the 60s and 70s, but so many people are quick to laud the genius of The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac or Smokey Robinson (as well they should), while just continuing to the do the apple picking dance whenever someone mentions the Bee Gees. 

"How Deep is Your Love" takes the Bee Gees' distinctive harmonies and turns them breathy and hypnotic. This song comes to me on a summer breeze, man, no joke. It was among the first songs I ever heard on the radio, when I was very, very young, the first to make me feel things, that is, my first exposure to music that moved me emotionally, but in an ill-defined kind of way. I was seven once, I know I was, riding in the back seat of my parents station wagon, hearing this song and feeling an emotional mélange - one part sorrow, one part intoxicated love, one part loneliness, and one and a quarter parts anxiety.  

Forty years later, it still has the exact same effect.

"'Cause we're living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let us be / We belong to you and me..."

✅ And there are other gems courtesy of The Bee Gees that not only deserve to be remembered, but recognized. Turns out, The Bee Gees were in a class by themselves.  

#368) "Too Much Heaven" by The Bee Gees - See above.

#369) "To Love Somebody" by The Bee Gees - See above.

#370) "I Started a Joke" by The Bee Gees - See above.

#371) "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" by The Bee Gees - See above.

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

 #361) "Rich Girl" by Hall and Oates - Ahh, blue-eyed soul with a little bit of that sublime Philadelphia sound thrown in...or is it that sublime Philadelphia sound with a little blue-eyed soul thrown in? 

Either way, it's sublime. Maybe this is one of those situations where labels have no meaning (and really, should they ever...?), but they're kind of hard to avoid. In true "Philadelphia sound" style, "Rich Girl" is a richly-textured blend of production and vocal prowess, so what's not to love, no matter what you call it?  When the strings and horns spiral upwards and climax in the spaces above the clouds and all the voices sing as one, nothing less than a sense of utter daylight is produced, a headspace where it's always either Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon and everything is just fine, even if it isn't. 

"Rich Girl" may be from the "blue-eyed soul" camp, but is no less worthy for this. No less exhilarating. Solid is solid, no matter the color or creed.

"You can rely on the old man's money, you can rely on the old man's money..."

#362) "Times of Your Life" by Paul Anka - This is one of those songs that - by now - only shows up on the "old time" radio station nobody listens to anymore, the one with the "beautiful music" format, wholesome beacon to the most recent geriatric crowd, a station whose hey day was when Bush 41 was president (and maybe even earlier), broadcasting at 25,000 watts from a lonely corner of the FM (or worse, AM) dial, right on the edge of town there, at that intersection where, say, Sycamore Road meets up with County Trunk H. 

There it sits, in a world that no longer really needs it, a world where everyone can be his own dee jay and listen to whatever he wants whenever he wants to, just running out the clock until its license expires with minimal staff: a nice lady named Kay, let's say, working the front desk, who knits the majority of her work day away, and ol' Bucky, the engineer, never around but always on call, and maybe one other person, a Skip or a Don perhaps, who was there in the old days, when the station was more relevant than it is today, and now finds himself finishing out his career doing sales, traffic, and production for the few commercials that need to be done. The station has no live on-air talent whatsoever, just a musical cavalcade of moldy oldies beamed in via satellite, broken up four times an hour by a computer-generated voice burbling, "It's 62 degrees at ... 8:45." 

Following that auditory sedative, also known as the station ident, you're likely to hear "Times of Your Life" by Paul Anka, a song perfectly suited to the Kodak commercial it appeared in back in the 1970s. This might be called, "blue-eyed marshmallow fluff", but I've always enjoyed it. In a different way, or for different reasons perhaps, it also generates its own daylight as it plays. Maybe it's later in the day, maybe the sun's beginning to set, shadows growing long, and it's possible everything might not be okay, so you better start taking a look at the things around you and deciding what really matters. 

Man, it's really true, the older I get, the more so many of these songs start making sense in a way they never did (could) before. 

"Good morning, yesterday / You wake up and time has slipped away..."