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

#376 -  "Arrow Through Me" by Paul McCartney and Wings - Seems every time Sir Paul winds up on this 1/48/50 list, I have the same glowing things to say, primarily about his range as an artist. There's a lot of good music out there, fine songwriters, musicians and performers, but a very short list of artists who have been able to swing so effortlessly between styles, with no awkward (read: unconvincing) overlap, and all music that they wrote themselves. 

Just within the short six years The Beatles were in America, he gave us, "Helter Skelter', and "Yesterday", "Oh Darling!" and "Let It Be", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and "Mother Nature's Son".  "Penny Lane", and "And I Love Her". Yes, I know they're all credited as "Lennon-McCartney", but any Beatles fan worth his/her salt knows that they mostly wrote their own music. To that end, Lennon certainly contributed mightily to that which made the Beatles The Beatles, but was he as far-ranging as McCartney, musically speaking? As seamlessly adept at the execution? Nah, I don't think so.

And McCartney kept up this unique musical range throughout the 1970s, with Wings: "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Let Em In".  "Silly Love Songs" and "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey".  "Jet" and "Listen to What the Man Said".  "Live and Let Die" and "My Love". 

And then there's "Arrow Through Me" (like Maude!), from 1979.  Just when you think there isn't anywhere else for the man to go musically, or perhaps more accurately, nowhere else you think he will go, along comes something almost experimental-sounding, with an undulating melody and crisp, funk-inspired rhythmic and bass hooks, a kind of a musical mélange, to which McCartney adds some sassy brass and clavinet chords being turned inside out repeatedly, like someone working a stress ball, as he alternately (and handily) shrieks and croons in his inimitable Macca style.  

It's completely different, and yet unmistakably McCartney. A perennial joy to listen to. Far and away my favorite from the Wings era, and I'd venture one of his best of all time, although when it comes to McCartney, perhaps that notion is more open to debate than your average artist.

"You wouldn't have found a more down hero ... "

#377 - "Sunday Will Never be the Same" by Spanky and Our Gang - I was lucky, I think. This and so many other songs like it from the 60s and 70s formed nothing less than the architecture of my emotional state when I was kid. My parents owned a bookstore and there was a little AM radio on the window sill behind the cash register, and whatever station they were tuned into always played "sunshine pop" and "AM gold", all of the music that to this day people are quick to scorn and/or mock, yet secretly love at the same time. I wouldn't want to be my age and only ever listening to The Carpenters, but it's not a bad serenade to being anywhere from four to ten years old. 

Some insist on dismissing this kind of music as bubblegum schlock, and maybe that's what it was at the time. Maybe it could be argued that in 1967, songs like "Sunday Will Never be the Same" paled in comparison to what innovative and ground-breaking stuff the Beatles or the Stones or the Who were putting out, and might also be argued that even today the two camps don't compare.

But perhaps they don't compare because it's apples to oranges. If you want to go apples to apples, a fair, direct comparison, you have to compare the "schlock" (the one hit wonders, fast buck feel good ditties and cheesy love songs) of the 60s and 70s to the "schlock" of 80s, 90s and beyond, and by that yardstick, I maintain that post-1980 schlock does not age as well as pre-1980. 

I think much of this has to do with the fact that songs of this type were once built upon melody, rather than rhythm, and more so the fact that the whole process of writing popular music and either performing it yourself or finding someone else to perform it, did not take a pre-fab concept of "celebrity" into consideration so readily.  Nowadays, some form of a slick, glittery celebrity aesthetic is never too far removed from popular music of any kind or quality.  Artists need to look a certain way, comport themselves just so, say the right things at the right time (and lately, take caution never to say the wrong thing, while praying nobody discovers the "wrong" things they may have said 15 years ago). It's all slick and polished, carefully prescribed, produced, and more importantly, presented to a painstakingly scrutinizing audience who know nothing else other than the brightly but artificially colored, hi def world they grew up in, in which image isn't everything, it's the only thing. And that's not even to say that the music is better or worse, necessarily, just different. There are talented artists now, and good music being made, but it is roundly less organic, less accessible, less viscerally felt, I'd say, because the emphasis, the driving force, is always on the artist before the listener. 

"Sunday Will Never be the Same" wasn't about Spanky and our Gang as a group, as entertainers, so much as simply about the Sunday it speaks of, the park, the dying embers of love as clouds roll in. The listener could relate without any need to see Spanky and Our Gang, or care whether they were cool enough to be celebrities. This is a tricky and subtle point I'm making, open to debate surely, but definitely worthy of debate. 

Er, right? 😉

"Nobody waiting for me / Sunday's just another day..."

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...?"

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

#213) "Tug of War" by Paul McCartney - I know I've said this a couple of times now, but once more, Macca (uhh, yeah...about that) demonstrates that when he wants to drive an emotionally charged point home, take a break from the silly loves songs everyone has come to expect from the "cute Beatle", he's damn good at it. "Tug of War" is the title track off Sir Paul's (definitely a more appropriate nickname) most emotional album (from 1981), and not surprisingly, it contains one of the most potent lines in music for my money, reflecting, I'd be willing to bet, his state of mind in the immediate aftermath of John Lennon's murder.

And (the point being) also accurately reflecting anyone's state of mind in any kind of "aftermath"...

"In years to come, they may discover what the air we breathe and the live we lead are all about / But it won't be soon enough, soon enough for me..."

#214) "The Entertainer" by Billy Joel - I've always thought Billy Joel gets a bad rap, unfairly maligned (at least by music snobs) as a pop music sell-out to a street cred early in his career that was itself not entirely legitimate, mostly just "gangs that dance"...

But even if that's true (and I don't know that it is), he's still one of the greatest songwriters of the twentieth century.  Like McCartney (maybe even a little more so), Joel is a true crafter of music. Over the years he has written and recorded countless durable ditties that never become too dated, and also reveal a far-reaching range of musicianship and vocal ability. He tries different things, different styles, and - more often than not - succeeds in getting them to sound really good.

Among the standouts on his long hit list is 1974's "The Entertainer", a sharply satirical indictment of the music industry that is just as relevant now as it was 40 years ago. If anything, things have only gotten worse, much worse, as symbolism has replaced substance, image has replaced artistry, and an undeniably lazy approach to pop music has eroded the original heart of the art form down to a barely discernible nub that is no longer freeing or enlightening or emboldening, but too often a prescription for conformity.

This song alone would seem a prime example of how drastically things have changed. It hit #34 on the U.S. Charts in 1974, but with its minstrel guitar and plunking banjo, would be unlikely to even chart today.

Top 40 music seems to be populated mostly by "entertainers" these days, rather than artists.

"I am the entertainer, and I know just where I stand, another serenader, and another long-haired band / Today I am your champion, I may have won your hearts / But I know the game and you'll forget my name, and I won't be here in another year if I don't stay on the charts..."

The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#164) "The End of the End" by Paul McCartney - Once again, the self-proclaimed purveyor of "silly love songs" proves that when he does latch onto a theme, wants to get a message across, he has the ability to sock the listener square in the nose.

In "The End of the End", from 2007's Memory Almost Full, McCartney addresses his own mortality, and does so in classic McCartney style. It's perhaps not surprising that such a song would show up on an album at that particular time in his life. He was in the midst of a bitter divorce from Heather Mills at the time, and what's more, the world had lurched through a paradigm shift since the turn of the century, the coming-of-age Millennials barely knowing who he was, or not caring nearly as much, far less likely to venerate him the way Boomers and Gen X'ers had. It would seem he was feeling all of this, it would seem that for the first time, it may have hit him that it really isn't 1976 anymore, or 1986, or even 1996, and that in spite of being "Paul McCartney", everything is still going to wind down, like it does for everyone eventually.

That's complete speculation on my part, to be sure...and yet "The End of the End" (and the name of the album on which it appears for that matter), definitely suggests something was going on.

This song would be moving performed by anyone. The older I get, the more I think about stuff like this, especially the last few years, as major transition has begun to beset the dynamic of my family. But the fact that it's Paul McCartney, I think, makes it especially powerful. The dramatic piano chords pound out a rich melody that captures all fifty years of his impressive career, as though all his other melodies, coloring the lives of so many through decades, can be found inside it (the pure white light of his discography). The whistling that serves as the Middle 8 is strangely reassuring (although maybe it shouldn't be...), and the lyrics are sooo McCartney. When I was younger, I idolized John Lennon, viewed him as the more talented - certainly the cooler - of the two giant Beatles. And perhaps all of that is still debatable. But now, at this point in my life, I much prefer McCartney's twinkly eyed optimism to Lennon's rage, and when that optimism is used to garnish something as grimly unavoidable as memento mori, I'm not going to lie: it's really quite moving.

Seriously, man, forget, "And I Love Her", "Yesterday", "Let it Be", "Hey Jude", "Oh Darling!", "Blackbird", "Penny Lane", "Hello Goodbye", "Helter Skelter" and "The Fool on the Hill". Don't give, "Maybe I'm Amazed", "My Love", "Jet", "Silly Love Songs", "With a Little Luck", "Let 'Em In", "Wanderlust", "Ebony and Ivory", "Tug of War", "Pipes of Peace" or even "Spies Like Us" a second listen.

"The End of the End" is Sir Paul's gift to the world. His message. His legacy. Epic.

"On the day that I die, I'd like bells to be rung, and songs that were sung to be hung out like blankets / that lovers have played on, and laid on while listening to songs that were sung."

#165) "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)" by Mika - I just love this jam...sewn up nice and tight. Some things don't have to be explained (and some things I simply don't have an explanation for). "Big Girl..." is a great song to drive to, and if I'm going to subject myself to "The End of the End" on 1/48/50, I'm definitely going to need something to bring me back. ;-)

"Get yourself to the Butterfly Lounge, find yourself a big lady..."

AS SUMMER WINDS DOWN: Whole Albums to Travel By

Those rare musical treasures that require no song-to-song cherry picking, no fast forwarding, no selective exclusion from playlists. They are their OWN playlists...each a greatest hits package of brand new material. You know...desert island albums. In the case of 1/48/50, whole urban areas, entire counties, fully one half of any state even, may be traversed on the power of a single inspired album playing all the way through.

So good, in fact, they require no two cents thrown in by the likes of me.  Just listen.  ;-)

"TUG OF WAR" by Paul McCartney

"VERY NECESSARY" by Salt n Pepa

The Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#10) 'Middle of the Road' by The Pretenders - All things musical considered, Middle of the Road might just be an incarnation of the perfect 'rock and roll' song. It's tight and energetic without becoming hysterical, angry without resorting to savagery, emotional, but never at the expense of a base logic. Lyrically it is a unique assessment of facing middle age and the attendant concessions, which for better or worse, resonates with me in a way I never imagined it would. And Chrissie Hynde is - and always will be - pretty damn hot.

'The middle of the road is trying to find me/I'm standing in the middle of life with my plans behind me..."

#11) 'Luka' by Suzanne Vega - I figure this one might raise some eyebrows. There's nothing about this song that speaks of - or to - anything even remotely associated with freedom or the open road; no sir, not much here to lift your spirits. But those elements are just part of the equation, in my eyes, to a good road song. Luka has a way of getting my mind wandering to places. It reminds me of high school, of my first love (playing on the radio, and on MTV, at the time), and like any good folk (ish) song, is designed to get the listener thinking. And what does an elongated road trip offer more than lots and lots of time to think?

Not to mention, the guitar work in this song is gorgeous, and does, in fact, always lift my spirits, in spite of the bleak subject matter. I suspect this too might be by design.

'You just don't argue anymore...'

#12) 'American Idiot' by Green Day - As For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield is inextricably linked to the 60s, to love-ins and hippies and civil unrest and Vietnam, American Idiot will forever be associated with the 2000s - the Bush White House, the rise of uber-patriotism in the wake of 9/11, the Iraq War, political polarization in a media-soaked society.  With an appropriate lack of subtly and providing more energy than four cans of Monster, this is Generation Y's foremost protest song. And no thinking person should ever dismiss any protest song outright.

Another good song with which to punish your steering wheel.

'Welcome to a new kind of tension/all across the alien nation...'

#13) 'Wanderlust' by Paul McCartney - Placing Paul McCartney on any list is never going to be a simple matter. For my money, McCartney is the greatest rock/pop performer ever...period...for his ability to shriek out (convincingly) songs like Helter Skelter, Oh Darling, Why Don't We Do it in the Road or Maybe I'm Amazed, while at the same time giving us Yesterday, Let It Be, Penny Lane, or something so oddly compelling as Let 'Em In, and doing it all fairly consistently for 50 years now. There's never appeared to be any limit to this man's ability and range in the musical realm.

'Sir Paul' indeed....

And for a man who claims he's okay with silly love longs, when he does get personal, it's a surprisingly intense affair. Much evidence of this can be found on his 1982 album Tug of War, perhaps his best post-Beatles work. It's an anguished collection of music evincing in no uncertain terms his fragile state of mind in the aftermath of the death of John Lennon and his turning 40 in a world far more uncertain than his generation once hoped.

Amidst this string of pearls, Wanderlust emerges. Dignified in its sadness, the opening piano riff is - quite literally, I think - what a goodbye sounds like in our minds as it's happening.

Or should.

'Oh where did I go wrong my love/what petty crime was I found guilty of/what better time to find a brand new day...''