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

 #351) "Wide Open Spaces" by The Dixie Chicks - How fresh this song. 

Even two decades after being abandoned (as everything is) by a society that moves forward ceaselessly with precious little time or inclination for looking back, and a musical industry and fanbase that within a few years of this song's release, decided it'd had enough of singer Natalie Maines' right to free speech, "Wide Open Spaces" still spritzes finely, freshly, a sun-dappled rumination, two parts hope, one half part melancholy. It was popular when I worked in "hot country" radio - as were The Dixie Chicks - and will always have a place - in my eyes - among the gold standards of 90s country music - a softer, more reasonable, less blustery (and less manic) approach to all things "country".

Some might say too soft, too "pop"...and come to think of it, I might have been one of those during the many weeks in late 1998 when this song dominated all-request Friday nights. But 20 years is a long time, plenty of time to realize your big mistakes. The message of the song has outlasted the generations. There are lots of country songs about the redneck lifestyle and patriotism and trucks and bars and zippity doo da, but precious few in the genre, from any decade, that touch on such a specific, but intimately important, and grandly timeless, theme, whether you're a city mouse or a county mouse: setting out on your own for the first time, and all the anticipation and anxiety, all the joy, surprise and sometimes sorrow found there.

"But now she won't be coming back with the rest..."

#352) "Hello It's Me" by Todd Rundgren - Todd Rundgren is on my short list of musical geniuses, those individuals who make innovation and real step-outside-the-box creativity part of their brand, who are successful at creating a musical signature that simply could not be anyone else.  Rundgren has had a hand producing some monumental albums for other artists over the years, among them Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell" and XTC's "Skylarking", but his own music is just....I don't know...perhaps it's most accurate to say it's difficult to describe, but impossible to ignore. 

Nowhere is this more true than with "Hello It's Me", one of his radio hits from 1972's Something/Anything?   All of the bizarrely charming elements that make a Todd Rundgren song are at play here - odd chord progressions, a masterful command of harmony and self-effacing humor, a flat vocal style that - again - you can't really stop listening to. 

Difficult to describe. Impossible to ignore.

"'Cause I never want to make you change for me..." 

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

#249) "Lady" by Kenny Rogers - One of Lionel Richie's best songs, "Lady" has a true ethereal quality to it, due in part to Kenny Rogers' unique vocals, but also the sparse accompaniment, most notably the piano, which to me has always sounded like old drapes hanging in an abandoned house.

That may or may not be enough to warrant placing it on this list, but I have a strange (though not entirely unpleasant) memory associated with this song: I once moonbathed to it.

Seriously, I was seventeen, and like most teenagers, had a tendency to do weird things just because they weren't the same old-same old, and on a night that was just warm enough to be outside, I lay reclined on a lawn chair in front of the garage in our driveway, staring up at a bright full moon. There was a radio with me, I can't remember if it was the radio in my car (my big, rusty 1977 Chrysler Newport with a hood the size of Wyoming...how I miss her), or an actual radio, but music was coming from somewhere, and when "Lady" by Kenny Rogers started playing, I thought (and still do) it was a fitting accompaniment to lying in the dim, hazy light that was both silver and lime-green, and, for better or worse, a fitting accompaniment to the circumstances I found myself in. I was a junior in high school, facing the last summer of my childhood. And when summer was over, when I came back to school in the fall, I would be a father.

It was a heady time. Quite a thing...

"You have gone and made me such a fool..."

#250) "Strawberry Wine" by Deanna Carter - Perhaps no other song from 1990s country reminds me of being a deejay for a 100,000-watt powerhouse than "Strawberry Wine." Nothing overly dramatic going on here, and nothing that I personally can sink my teeth into in terms of what it's about...it's just a simple country ballad from a mostly one or two hit (though talented) wonder. But it was very popular in 1996, both nationally and in our market, making its way onto many "most requested" lists at our station for many weeks. And despite initially being dismissed by Nashville as - among other things - not memorable enough, it has since taken its place as a true country classic. 

It's really quite a durable song, and totally memorable, actually, for its intimate (and suitably sullen) portrayal of a young woman's first romance with an older boy, and all the good and bad found there as she thinks back.  Moving, I think, because she's not totally sure, so many years later, whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.

But it was definitely a thing. Quite a thing...

"I still remember when thirty was old..."

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

#247) "If Heaven" by Andy Griggs - Penned by one of the best songwriters in country music - Gretchen Peters - "If Heaven" is a ballad that keeps digging until it reaches that aquifer of sorrow used for fueling something that is more than merely a "hurtin' song". There's a cinematic flair in much of Peters' music, but here the arrangement, coupled with Griggs' vocals (a perfect blend of pitch and drawl) energizes (anxious energy, that is...) the bittersweet melody and evocative lyrics, until the "cinematic flair" transforms into something unbearably heart-breaking and unbearably lovely, ultimately transcending, like all great ballads, the mere moment at hand.

"If heaven were an hour, it'd be twilight ..."

#248) "For the Good Times" by Ray Price - Penned by ANOTHER of the best songwriters in country music - Kris Kristofferson - country crooner Ray Price's version of "For the Good Times" lays bare one of nature's uniquely human skills - the manufacture, distribution and preservation of "good times". 

That we experience our lives within the framework of fraternity not only with each other, but with the passage of time, dividing it up into themes and eras as it grinds forward and down ceaselessly, is perhaps more than anything (other than laughter) what distinguishes us from the animals. 

Whether they're romantic in nature, as in this song, or involve just friends or family, the good times are all too fleeting, and start to lessen, lose potency, as life passes, which I think is reflected in "For the Good Times". There is an urgency here, as two people find themselves at the end of their relationship (it is, after all, a hurtin' song first and foremost...), but there's also a certain resignation to those things that are completely beyond our control.

(As it grinds forward and down ceaselessly...)

"Don't look so sad, I know it's over..."

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

#238) "Remember When" by Alan Jackson - It's certainly true that you can get too sentimental in life, too sappy, too morbid, moribund, and morose. It's all too easy to fall into a pattern (often without realizing) in which you're not merely looking back, but dwelling on something long gone that no amount of emotional black magic will ever bring back. Life offers only forward progress, so keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.

It's no secret certain songs aid greatly in the application of sappy, sentimental sorrow, and as a rule I do everything I can to avoid them. But like with nearly everything else in life, there are a few notable exceptions, songs that lean toward sentimental rather than sappy (sentimentality being a less blinding shade of the same emotional impulse), and one of them is Alan Jackson's "Remember When". I must confess, it's on a short list of songs almost guaranteed to get me tearing up if the light is just right.

Sure, it's easy to dismiss as cheesy, a Hallmark card set to music, but that's mostly if you don't like country music and are disposed to dismissing the entire genre out of hand.  I haven't been that way since I worked in country radio and - stuck listening to it as part of my job (rather than just hearing it drone from a radio in the background) - realized, hmm, some of this isn't so bad.  It was a revelation; I'd spent my entire childhood believing otherwise.

I think for me it's not so much what "Remember When" says, but how it says it. The mewling mandolin, the sturdily constructed orchestration, Jackson's tenderly father-like vocal, all seem to conspire to preserve something, or fix something, put something right...like a musical bed sheet snapped in the air, falling gently and protectively, in a room where time stands still, nobody has to say goodbye, and everyone stays the same forever.

Of course, that's not even close to how life plays out, but through the ordeal of this sometimes heartbreaking mortal coil, in which time flies by, every has to say goodbye at some time or another, and nobody gets (or wants) to stay the same, most of us carry a reasonable expectation: that amidst a certain amount of ceremony, we will grow, live, grow again through our children, grow old and die, hopefully with memories intact and most of those not too painful. "Remember When" taps deeply and powerfully into this universally anticipated (and sought) story arc, giving it the architecture we crave.

Yes, you can dwell too much on the past, but at the end of the day sentimentality, like humor, is among the traits that distinguish us from animals and, at least every once in a while, our ability to allow waypoints in life to blossom into exquisitely sentimental moments is what makes it worth living.

Without some "architecture" applied to the process of living, nothing really matters. We simply live, and die. And that can be a devastating thought...especially if the light is just right.

"Remember when old ones died and new were born / And life was changed, disassembled, rearranged..."

#239 "Choices" by George Jones - Three words: drinking fucking sucks. 

Make no mistake, I had my moments in younger days - nights I don't remember, or nights I wish I could forget, hellacious hangovers, the whole bit. Alcohol has led me to plenty of bad choices - passing out in places I shouldn't have, with women I shouldn't have, saying things I normally wouldn't, hearing about them the next day and cringing between dry heaves.

But I was always merely a weekend warrior type...I could go out, hang out, get plastered, have the greatest (or worst) night of my life, and then be good for a week or two, sometimes more, before I felt any urge to drink again.

It never became a lifestyle. I rarely drank alcohol with dinner. I never drank alcohol just to relax. Never drank to escape. In fact, the opposite. Moments of turmoil in my life (financial, romantic, whatever...) have always been met with an urge to get more sober, not less, as sober as I could be.  I don't like not to be in control of myself, especially when things are shitty.

And honestly, I never saw much point to drinking at all unless there were women present...meaning, if the night was going to be just four hairy asses sitting around a high top table in a grungy tavern, insipid banter broken only by an occasional glance up at the TV above the bar for the score, I'd have just as soon drank water all night, or Dr. Pepper.

Sometimes I would drink water, or Dr. Pepper, even if there were women around. Talk about exquisite: at bar close, when everyone else was slinking, stumbling, puking and pissing out the back door, watching for cops, praying to get home safely, I would jump into my car, clear eyed and big as you please, light a cigarette, crank the radio, and take a late night drive along a country road. I was kind of a weirdo I guess, to be 21, 22, 23, and get so excited by doing that...and yet, not really. Country roads at three in the morning are gorgeous, and whatever the reason, staying sober guaranteed I would never get an OWI, or kill someone, or kill myself.

I know it's not totally a matter of choice. Alcohol is a drug like any other. Some people can handle it, some people can't. But from what I've seen of some of those "some people" over the years, I'm thankful (sincerely...) that I've always preferred to be sober...or at least been okay being sober.

Released in 1999, "Choices" was George Jones' twilight catharsis. The singer of "White Lightning" was in his late sixties by then, and "Choices" was a somber acknowledgment of what too much white lightning, over time, can lead to. (Fucking sucks...)  Around the time of its release, Jones was involved in a serious drunk driving accident, which underscored the song's relevance and message. I think it says everything that needs to be said about alcohol as a lifestyle, without (and this is important) overstatement or preaching.

"I was tempted, by an early age I found I liked drinking, and I never turned it down / There were loved ones, but I turned them all away / Now I'm living and dying with the choices I've made..."