My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #360-351

As I continue unraveling my list of my 500 all-time favorite songs...from bottom to top in groups of ten...I think it's important to say that before writing my reviews I listen once again to each and every one of them.  One of the great blessings of having grown up during the years that I did was to be exposed to some incredibly wonderful music...and it's still being produced, if you know where to look...

360 THE WAYWARD WIND....Gogi Grant
Nostalgia radio is something that began in the 1970s, and it was on one of those stations that I first heard...and instantly fell in love with...Gogi Grant's epic, mournful ballad The Wayward Wind.  It was a huge hit in 1956 and reportedly knocked Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel off the top of the charts...yet my local rock stations in the 1960s, WQAM and WFUN, apparently didn't think it qualified to be on their playlist of "golden oldies" alongside Presley's classic hits.  Now, well over forty years after I first heard it, I still think very highly of this song...Gogi Grant passed away three years ago at age 91...

359 ROAD TO NOWHERE...Talking Heads
The rat-a-tat-tat percussion beat defines this song of cynicism, as usual...like other Talking Heads songs...delivered with a strongly humorous bent by their lead vocalist and creative force David Byrne.  The video is also something you don't want to miss...very, very imaginative and funny.  The opening chorus-sung lyrics express people's ideals and rationales, which Byrne then proceeds to utterly deflate.  It came out in 1985 and is yet another song that makes me wonder why it didn't become a major top ten hit: maybe it was just a little too cerebral...

358 MERCHANTS OF SOUL...Spoon
Speaking of songs with a rat-a-tat-tat beat, here's another, and this one actually makes a non-dancer like myself want to get up and move around on the floor...it's that catchy.  Merchants of Soul is from the Austin, Texas alternative rock band's remarkable 2005 Gimme Fiction album, maybe their best.  Spoon is one of the more creative and listenable musical acts today, headlined by singer/songwriter Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno...I'm not usually interested in attending concerts but I'd like to see Spoon perform live: now that's an endorsement!

357 BICYCLE RACE...Queen
The line "Jaws was never my thing and I don't like Star Wars!" deeply endeared me to this counter-mass-culture anthem by Queen...I never was a big fan of either movie and couldn't see what the big fuss was about them.  Also, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s I was pretty heavily into (cheap) bicycle riding (not racing) as an alternative to motoring, something that I think provided me with a healthy perspective on mass conformity and the rat race...Bicycle Race celebrates more than anything the notion of individuality and that it's totally cool to find oneself out of step with the "times"...

356 ALLENTOWN...Billy Joel
Allentown, from what I deem to be Billy Joel's final masterpiece album, 1982's Nylon Curtain, is a searing, gut-wrenching song of the times, back during the time of its release when a deep recession, coupled with competition from abroad, saw many great factories of America's midwestern and eastern manufacturing base closing down one after another, devastating local economies and putting untold numbers of career workers on unemployment while painting a bleak future for the aspiring young in those areas.  Although the economy was once again "booming" by 1984, I don't think the U.S. ever got completely over those traumatic years of the early 80s...the "Big Company" used to be seen as one of our nation's features of stability: now you never know what they'll do from one year to the next...

355 MAGIC...Olivia Newton-John
Although technically a "disco" song from the soundtrack of a roller-skate-disco movie (Xanadu), 1980's Magic to me was simply a great ballad beautifully sung by Olivia Newton-John, one of my favorite singers of the 1970s and early 80s...it has a kind of mesmerizing effect.  It also has an empowering nature to it: "You have to believe we are magic, nothing can stand in our way"...

354 I AM THE WALRUS...the Beatles
Back in July I read John Lennon's 1964 book In His Own Write, in which he did a lot of play on words, often to comedic effect.  The Beatles' great continued his verbal antics on this song with lines like "Semolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower, elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna, man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe".  The closing track on their wonderful Magical Mystery Tour album, it's also a piece that figured in the fabricated "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory that erupted in late 1969 and is still believed in some quarters to this day.  Naturally, I had to listen to it repeatedly back then for the "clue" near its end...

353 SAILING...Christopher Cross
Hitting the airwaves during the summer of 1980, about the same time as song #355, I loved the overall peacefulness of Sailing...a real tension dissipater.  Cross had such a promising beginning to his career...I wonder why it dropped off after his Theme from Arthur.  I don't know if the actual process of sailing a boat is all that peaceful, though...looks like a lot of stress and hard work if you ask me...

352 INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY...the Beastie Boys
I'll say it up front: I'm not a fan of hip-hip/rap music, but this summer-of-1998 hit by the rap trio Beastie Boys...originally a standard rock act with a female member...stands out because it's so humorously campy about its science fiction message and uses some unusual instrumental accompaniment as well as a strange key change about two thirds of the way through it.  I associate it with where I was at the time on my job and what I was doing then...

351 WONDERWALL...Oasis
Another song I associate with where I was at work when it was popular in 1996, this is a somber, reflective song that combines lead singer Liam Gallagher's plaintive delivery (his brother Noel wrote it) with brilliant acoustic guitar, piano, and strings accompaniment.  From it the recurring line "I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now" resounds.  Oasis was a promising 1990s British band that unfortunately seemed to spend more time and effort fighting among themselves and insulting others than focusing on putting out the music that I believe they were capable of...

Next week: songs #350-341...