My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #400-391

Today I start on the next hundred in my weekly countdown of my own 500 all-time favorite songs...so without any more intervening jabbering, here are the next ten and my comments...

400 TWILIGHT OMENS...Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand is a Scottish alternative/indie rock band that came out with a couple of hit singles in 2004: Take Me Out and This Fire.  On the their 2009 Tonight album is the deep track Twilight Omens, pretty short at 2:29 but it has a very riveting introductory (and recurring) musical theme...I listened to it a few times and the song continued playing itself in my mind, almost spellbinding...

399 SCOFF...Nirvana
Off Nirvana's 1989 Bleach album is Scoff, another of composer/singer/lead guitarist Kurt Cobain's tributes to teenage angst as he takes on the role of someone facing adult authority and judgment, rejecting that authority and judgment...well, that's what I got out of it.  Oh, and he wants them to give him back his alcohol...repeatedly.  The lyrics are deranged and defiant and the music is loud, stomping, and in your face...another one of those cathartic tracks telling listeners that they're not alone: they have fellow travelers in their anguish...

398 JUST LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET...the Reflections
When I hear such a spot-on, well-produced song like this one from the Reflections in 1964, I wonder to myself why this group didn't come out with a string of great hits...there are lots of artists over the years I feel this way about.  Still, I'm grateful for this exuberant song with a very catchy beat and wonderful harmonizing and vocal range, another tune I liked hearing off the radio even back when I was but seven years old...

397 CASTLES IN THE AIR...Don McLean
Don McLean, best known for his cryptic anthem American Pie in 1971, ten years later released the single Castles in the Air...demonstrating that he still had the "magic".  Only one problem with that conclusion: McLean had written this song back in 1970 and released it as a single before American Pie...the 1981 version he modified and rerecorded.  It's a bittersweet song Glen Campbell could have successfully recorded back in his Galveston and Wichita Lineman years as it expresses the singer's longing for the country life (and a country wife)...

396 TOO MANY PEOPLE...Paul McCartney
In 1971 I enthusiastically bought Paul McCartney's second solo album, Ram, and played it over and over.  Ever since that time I thought the opening track Too Many People was one of the few standouts on it...I've often thought there were "too many people" and that they seemed determined to make a misery out of my unassuming little life. But McCartney, I think, who at the time was in the midst of a nasty lawsuit against his former bandmates from the Beatles and their manager Allen Klein, was directing his invective...in a backhanded manner...at them, not people in general. What I grew to like most about this song was McCartney's lengthy instrumental jam session at the end...

395 I TURN MY CAMERA ON...Spoon
Speaking of songs with catchy beats, this alternative hit from 2005 pretty much introduced this Austin, Texas-based act to the rest of the world.  Gritty-voiced singer Britt Daniel is also one of the main creative forces with Spoon and pretty much produced I Turn My Camera On himself...his take on the lyrics is that it described someone who hid behind his camera from the reality he was shooting...interesting, and a song that definitely makes you want to snap your fingers as Daniel goes into falsetto mode...

394 SUKIYAKI...Kyu Sakamoto
Sukiyaki is a nonsense title given to Japanese artist Kyu Sakamoto's 1961 hit, originally titled Ue o Muite Arukou…I can see why they changed it to something more memorable: after all, the song is completely in Japanese.  By the way, that earlier title, which is also the opening line, means "I look up as I walk".  Why after this monster hit we didn't hear anything else by Sakamoto, a very expressive singer, is beyond me...I'm sure he produced a lot of good music for his Japanese fans...

393 SUMMER, HIGHLAND FALLS...Billy Joel
This track from Billy Joel's 1976 Turnstiles album should have been titled "Sadness or Euphoria" for those recurring words as he combines philosophical introspection with poetic lyrics and piano virtuosity. There's not an unquotable line in the song...maybe I should examine some of these lyrics sometime in my Friday "Quote of the Week" focus on this blog. The essence of this song as I see it is that people tend to complicate things in life when they're really making simple choices as they go along.  And no, I have no idea what "Summer, Highland Falls" has to do with any of this...

392 THE WAY...Fastball
The subject matter for this 1998 song, which sounds like the group was emulating the style of the Beatles back in '64-66, is pretty dark as it describes a couple who one day decide to suddenly abandon all their responsibilities...including their own children...and run away to a new life abroad.  I think this might be based on a real news story of such a couple being discovered and arrested for child neglect.  I say hey, if your life isn't going the way you wanted, go ahead and change it to something better but please don't victimize or betray others in the process.  Having said that, I loved this song 21 years ago and once again can't understand why this group didn't produce any more hit records afterwards...

391 THAT GIRL COULD SING...Jackson Browne
It was in the fall-winter of 1980 when this song was popular on the radio...I associate it with cold weather, apparently that was a cold winter in Gainesville.  I taped it off the radio and played it over and over again back then...it's my second favorite song by Browne. This very talented artist, however, tended to go overboard with promoting whatever left-wing political causes were in vogue at the time...and this bugged me, not that some of those causes weren't just, but rather that he seemed so patronizing about how "right" he was about it all.  That Girl Could Sing is a love song of sorts...but the singer has to come to grips with the fact that his love, as he sang it, "could have turned out to be almost anyone...almost anyone...with the possible exception of who I wanted her to be"...

Next Monday: #390-381...