My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #320-311

Here are the next ten songs from my list of 500 personal all-time favorites.  It's pretty clear that I tend to associate the songs with my own life memories...I'm sure that with the songs from the list that you recognize, you probably connect them in some fashion with your own personal memories.  It's one of the curious things about popular music through the years, how they serve as memory markers...

320 YOUR WILDEST DREAMS...the Moody Blues
Your Wildest Dreams, from 1986, was one of this durable British rock band's final singles hits although they would record three more albums and successfully tour for decades...last year they were belatedly inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame.  It's a dreamy, wistful song about a relationship separated by many years and an implied question: "What's going on with you these days?", something that 33 years later with our social media era is generally a lot easier to answer...

319 I'LL HAVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU IN A SONG...Jim Croce
I remember this beautiful love song by Jim Croce being a radio hit a couple of months before I graduated from high school in the spring of 1974...Croce tragically had died the summer before in an airplane crash just as his musical career was taking off.  Later in '74 I bought his "best hits" album titled Photographs and Memories...lots of great tracks on it.  Croce's music was divided between funny, folksy pieces like You Don't Mess Around with Jim and Bad Bad Leroy Brown and the more sensitive songs that I preferred, such as this one.  More from Jim to come down the line on this favorites list...

318 ONLY TIME...Enya
The 9/11 terrorist attack on our country was very traumatic to the national psyche: this calming, sweet song by Enya...at the time a radio hit...presented an alternative reaction to the fear, paranoia and war-chanting going on at that time.  There are two versions: very slow and normal speed, the latter of which was played more on the radio back in '01, although the former has endured as the generally more preferred one (and with me as well).  Only Time was my favorite song of 2001 as I lived through it...

317 BORN ON THE BAYOU...Creedence Clearwater Revival
There are songs that have a relentless, driving nature...this is one of the best examples of one that worked well.  It originally came out in 1969 although it wasn't really for another couple of decades before I heard it one night on classic rock radio and had an epiphany: it's a masterpiece of Southern rock, although CCR was a San Francisco-based band.  It's singer John Fogerty at his Cajun-drawling best: "And I can still hear my old hound dog barkin', chasing down a hoodoo there"...

316 HAVE YOU NEVER BEEN MELLOW...Olivia Newton-John
This singles hit in the spring of 1975 came out at a time when I felt the world around me was pressuring me to be anything but mellow...and my spirit rebelled.  At least Olivia seemed to think that chilling out and taking things at a more relaxed pace was a viable option...this was the first of several songs of hers that I truly liked.  The personal pressure continued, though, for pretty much the whole year and never completely abated...I guess part of it has to do with growing up. This song is one of those timeless treasures...

315 MAILMAN...Soundgarden
In early 1995 an obscure Gainesville AM radio station (on 1390 kHz) was playing complete Doors albums.  I enthusiastically listened, but suddenly they started playing Soundgarden's 1994 Superunknown CD...that's when I first heard this deep track on it.  It's a grindingly slow, angry and menacing piece with the late Chris Cornell delivering one of his more compelling performances.  Soundgarden, in my mind, was Seattle's greatest grunge band and Superunknown is definitely high on my list of all-time favorite albums, not a weak song anywhere.  But I warn you, there's a lot of rage on it: definitely no Enya or Olivia Newton-John here...

314 YOU'RE SO VAIN...Carly Simon
This was a monster hit in December 1972/January 1973...I was crazy about it when it first came out and listened to it so much that I finally got a little tired of hearing it. The line "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee" has universal appeal and stuck with me, back then and through the years.  Mick Jagger provided backup vocals after he happened to drop by the studio during the song's recording.  December '72 was a pretty cool and upbeat time in my life and I was just beginning to take up running as a more distance-oriented sport (I used to just sprint short distances very fast)...I think it drastically improved my disposition and outlook...

313 CRAISE FINTON KIRK ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS...the Bee Gees
For brevity's sake I simply call this track from the band's 1967 Bee Gees' 1st album "Craise Finton Kirk". My parents initially loved the Bee Gees at the time, bought this album and played it over and over again.  This was the one song on it neither of them cared for and they couldn't understand why I liked it so much.  Robin Gibb sings it solo with just a piano backing him...beauty in simplicity.  The Bee Gees were so talented...I wished they had steered clear of the disco mess in the late '70s...

312 I CAN'T GET NEXT TO YOU...the Temptations
1969 was a peculiar year with my popular music listening.  I wasn't keeping up with the current radio hits then, and many songs I would later embrace as favorites I disliked at the time.  This one by the Temptations is a good example...I began to better appreciate this talented singing group's backlog of hits a few years later.  There's the real high-pitched guy (Eddie Kendricks) and the real low-pitched guy (Melvin Franklin) ...and then the lead singer (in '69 it was Dennis Edwards) and the rest.  I Can't Get Next to You is short, fast-paced, abrupt, and passionate...

311 MICHELLE...the Beatles
Michelle was one of my family's favorite Beatles songs from 1965...when my dad brought home a rescue cockapoo puppy in February 1966 we had a ready-made name for her: Michelle had a long, happy life with us until her passing in 1981.  This Paul McCartney ode to an English-challenged French girl also served as my personal introduction to the French language: "Michelle ma belle, sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble"...

Next week: personal favorite songs #310-301...