My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #280-271

The songs on this week's segment of my all-time 500 personal favorites are pretty evenly distributed through time, with each of the last six decades being represented...all the way back to 1965 and ending at 2010.  With a lot of these I can't precisely break down why I like them so much...sometimes the whole effect is much greater than the sum of the parts...

280 A LITTLE MORE LOVE...Olivia Newton-John
This was a late-1970s hit by the Australian pop sensation, who at the time cultivated in her music the image of a pretty young woman with a nurturing, caring nature.  Songs like this, although ultimately impersonal and mass-marketed, still are soul-soothing to listen to, providing a sort of inner defense against becoming too negative of oneself...a little self-criticism can go a long way, but no point in going overboard with it, right?

279 WEST END GIRLS...Pet Shop Boys
I immediately took to this 1986 debut hit from this English duo...the lyrics refer to sections of London and the different social classes that are imbued within that society.  Sometimes it strangely helps that the lyrical references of a song are unfamiliar...I just flow with them and groove to the music itself, which here is a mixture of speech in the verse part and singing in the chorus, along with a dreamy synthesizer background...

278 FERRY 'CROSS THE MERSEY...Gerry and the Pacemakers
Another hit with an English reference...the River Mersey runs through Liverpool, where this band, along with the more renowned Beatles, originated, and empties into the Irish Sea.  I'm sure the song's wistful mood resonates more with the home crowd, but singer Gerry Marsden did a stupendous job of imparting it to me...just a kid of eight when I first heard it in early 1965...and I lived in suburb of South Florida then.  I wonder if somebody could concoct an equally compelling song about "Causeway 'Cross Biscayne Bay", which I repeatedly experienced back then on trips to Seaquarium and Crandon Park Zoo...probably not...

277 DESIRE...U2
One of my favorite songs with the Bo Diddley beat and of this talented, inspired Irish band, featuring the guitar skills of the Edge (David Howell Evans) and the colorful singing of Bono.  It's from their 1988 Rattle and Hum album...this and their '87 LP The Joshua Tree to me represent U2's peak in creativity and quality.  Not that they didn't produce some good music in the years to follow, but I'm of the impression that they've been more or less coasting their way through their celebrity status and still are. Could be wrong about this, though...maybe I should investigate their complete catalogue of works, including all of their 14 studio albums and the deep tracks on them...

276 MR. BLUE SKY...Electric Light Orchestra
From one of the best double albums ever made, ELO's 1977 Out of the Blue, Mr. Blue Sky became a commonly-played staple then on album rock radio, a showcase for the band's experimentation with fusing rock n' roll and orchestral music.  It's very upbeat, as the lyrics plainly suggest: "Hey there Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you, look around see what you do...everybody smiles at you".  An ode for good times following a period of storms, be they personal, social, political, or literal in nature...

275 THERE THERE...Radiohead
It was Radiohead's There There release back in 2003 from their Hail to the Thief album that marks my full transition to alternative/indie rock music. It was played a lot on the local alternative radio stations and I grew to greatly like it, even picking it as my "song of the year" back then.  It also got me more interested in this remarkable British band's collective output...I was already enamored with their 1997 song Karma Police...eventually making them one of my all-time favorite bands, with numerous entries on this "all-time top 500" list of mine. There There has a subtly menacing, brooding feel to it that I found magnetic...

274 SAVED BY ZERO...the Fixx
The Fixx in 1983 were part of the second "British Invasion" of rock music that came about with the aid of the burgeoning music video phenomenon, promoted on MTV.  Their earlier videos were played as well, presenting this band's sometimes apocalyptic, sometimes philosophically-obtuse vision with compelling music to back up the sometimes indecipherable lyrics.  At the time I thought they'd make it big (as U2 eventually did) but they fizzled out a couple of years later.  I'm not sure what the words to Saved by Zero mean, but the song did come out during the Nuclear Freeze movement back then. No problem, I just loved the mysterious-sounding, moody music, anyway.  I saw the Fixx perform live (for free) at the University of Florida's Halloween Festival in 1983...they were pretty good, maybe if they had written and recorded some schmaltzy love ballads with the other stuff they would have lasted longer...

273 IN THE EVENING...Led Zeppelin
I first became aware of this lead-in track to Led Zeppelin's 1979 final studio album In Through the Out Door eleven years later when the band's box set was released and instantly liked it.  Unfortunately, I didn't care all that much for the rest of that album...sometimes the initial song gives the impression, intentionally or not, of what will follow: didn't happen here.  In the Evening has it all: Robert Plant's now-scratchy vocals, John Bonham's intense drumming, John Paul Jones' virtuoso keyboard playing, and of course Jimmy Page's magical guitar riffs...good, old fashioned hard-driving rock...

272 MAN ON THE MOON...R.E.M.
The Georgia-based alternative band R.E.M. had been churning out increasingly critically recognized albums since 1982...in 1992 their Automatic For the People to me represented the apex of their career.  One of its singles releases was this sad tribute to the late comedian Andy Kaufman, later memorialized in the movie with the song's same title.  The lyrics speak of various things, including the conflict between science and religion in today's world...the video is one of the band's best as well:"Mister Andy Kaufman's gone wrestling"...So long, Latka...

271 ROCOCO...Arcade Fire
From the indie rock band's 2010 album The Suburbs, the stately and slow, almost classical-sounding instrumental background clashes with the critique singer Win Butler lays out about the up-and-coming younger generation: "Let's go downtown and watch the modern kids, let's go downtown and talk to the modern kids, they will eat right out of your hand, using great big words that they don't understand".  It's one of my favorites from this, the last of their three great albums...

Next week: songs #270-261...