#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 ... "
