My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #480-471

As I continue unraveling this list of my personal all-time favorite songs, I need to reiterate that even at this "low" stage of the list, the songs appearing here carry a lot of meaning to me. This should be apparent when you consider the thousands of songs I've heard over the past several decades...I first became a serious pop music listener in early 1964 at the age of seven as I would assiduously switch back and forth between Miami's WQAM and WFUN to hear the next song.  Also, a lot of songs get a higher ranking not because of their innate artistry or greatness, but rather because I associate them with certain events or a period in my past...isn't that how it works with you, too?  Here are the next ten songs, all of which you can search and hear online...

480 VICARIOUS...Tool
When you consider all the gratuitous violence and killing that has gone on for decades on TV and the big screen and how the depiction of wholesale slaughter of others...especially with the component of terror involved...seems to attract a bigger audience response, then you're all set for this brutal verbal indictment of people's sick vicariousness. It's musically arranged in such an unsettling, beautiful way that, with my acknowledged lack of training in music theory, seems to border on the complexity of classical music...a pretty complex piece of heavy metal music.  Whether it's for the message or the music, this one's a "can't miss"...back in 2006 I picked Vicarious as my favorite song of the year...

479 I'M COMING HOME...Johnny Mathis
I'm Coming Home was a big Adult Contemporary hit for Johnny Mathis, who had a long, illustrious career before this 1973 song that I used to listen to on 97/"A1A Radio" back in South Florida.  The lyrics are about the singer moving away to make his name and fortune and, after finding that achieving success involved too many compromises on his own character, wearily and beaten he decides to go back home.  It's sad and sweet, and Johnny made the listener feel that these were his own experiences...and I never forgot it...

478 HOCUS POCUS...Focus
Also in 1973, during the springtime, an previously unknown band named Focus came out with one of the weirdest hard rock songs ever: Hocus Pocus features, among all the severe electric guitar riffs, yodeling and whistling.  At the time listeners either loved it or hated it: I picked the former.  There's a long album version and a shorter, singles version...I own the single, which pretty much says what has to be said...which as far as I can tell, is nothing but a lot of nonsense.  But Hocus Pocus is an exquisitely unique, strange kind of nonsense...

477 SIT DOWN, I THINK I LOVE YOU...the Mojo Men
I had always liked this short, feel-good love song from 1967, but as is the case with many other songs on this list, I came to better appreciate it years later on for the pretty background keyboards and mandolin.  Also, I never knew that Stephen Stills wrote it and that his band Buffalo Springfield first recorded it...albeit without the lush instrumentation that the Mojo Men provided...

476 IDIOTEQUE...Radiohead
Back in late 2010 I was much more fanatical with my distant running, often going out on 15+ mile jaunts through personally-designed courses up and down streets in far-northern Gainesville.  What does this have to do with this song?  I had Radiohead's albums all on my MP3 player and I would randomly listen through their catalog of tracks while running...so I automatically associate Idioteque with being on a long run.  On its own merits, this is another successful musical experiment from their 2000 Kid A album, .  No, I don't know what the lyrics mean, but the whole flavor of the song hints of a dystopian, impersonal future...not that I'm in any hurry to go live there...

475 WALK DON'T RUN...the Ventures
Walk Don't Run was a big radio hit in 1964 and I heard it a lot on Miami's 560/WQAM.  I always looked forward to them playing it and wonder whether it might not have been more popular had there been some singing on it.  It's basically a guitar rock n' roll band displaying their guitar virtuosity while staying true to the song's compelling melody.  According to Wiki, jazz guitarist Johnny Smith wrote it years before and yes, there are lyrics to it...although singing wasn't the Ventures' "bag"...

474 LONG LONG TIME...Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt's big career breakthrough was the 1967 hit Distant Drum, which she sang as a member of the group Stone Poneys.  As a solo singer she would record a number of hits during the seventies...Long Long Time was the first of these and came out in 1970.  But I didn't fully appreciate this song until years later...she put everything she had into this agonizing ode to love and heartbreak and although I liked some of her later works, I was always looking for a "Long Long Time Part 2" that never happened.  What a talent...

473 SILENT LUCIDITY...Queensryche
Through the late 1980s and early 1990s I'd be listening to my local "hard" rock station here in Gainesville, Rock/104, and one hard rock band after another...after registering moderate hits with their hard rock songs...would inevitably come out with a slower, ballad-form song.  This would usually become their most popular piece, although I usually despised these ballads which I regarded as the bands selling out for the sake of popularity.  The one major exception was Queensryche: Silent Lucidity is by far the best song I've heard from this Seattle forerunner of grunge.  When Rock 104 would play it, I'd have to stop what I was doing so I could listen to it with all my attention...well, I'm not quite as nuts about it now, but I still like it a lot...

472 SHE'S LEAVING HOME...the Beatles
I usually preferred the Beatles songs in which it's clear that both Paul McCartney and John Lennon were full, participating partners.  She's Leaving Home, a deep track on their acclaimed 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, is one such example with the former writing and singing the song's verse and the latter doing likewise with its chorus.  The "third" Beatle responsible for recording this song...George and Ringo weren't involved...was producer George Martin, who arranged the instrumentation and, after their retirement from touring after 1966, was a Beatle in everything but name. When I was a kid during this era I had retreated a bit from the Beatles and, although I dug their singles hits All You Need is Love and Hello/Goodbye,  I wouldn't return as an "album" fan until the early 1970s when my sister and I began to collect their later LPs.  Later on, though, I came to like this song, schmaltzy lyrics and all...

471 HOW CAN I BE SURE...the Young Rascals
Yet another 1967 song I didn't fully appreciate until years later...I never understood the substantial contribution that the Young Rascals, who later shortened their name to just the Rascals, made to the American popular music scene.  They'd keep unobtrusively coming out year after year with blockbuster hits while seeming to avoid the celebrity status and scrutiny that other, bigger names were receiving.  Yet they produced some fantastic songs..."How can I be sure in a world that's constantly changing" totally captured the angst some of us were beginning to feel in an ever-quickening world with its wars and impending disasters...

Next week: #470-461...