My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #300-291

As I unravel this list of my 500 all-time favorite songs week by week, some weeks tend to lean one way or another...today six of the ten songs featured are from the 1980s, a bountiful decade for good music.  There's also a golden oldie from the sixties, a generally ignored album track from the nineties, and two good songs of more recent vintage...

300 EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD...Tears for Fears
This British duo was big in the mid-to-late Eighties with a string of singles hits and a more cerebral take on life.  This song was to me the best one of 1985, with a great mid-song synthesizer break and anthemic lyrics: " I can't stand this indecision, married with a lack of vision, everybody wants to rule the world" pretty much lays out the state of politics in our world today...

299 JAMMIN' ME...Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
There's no way anyone could hear this 1987 single without recognizing it as a rant against a string of celebrities, political figures, and social trends...by name.  Cowriters Bob Dylan and Tom Petty claimed this wasn't so, that it was only a protest against being crowded out, or "jammed", by today's world...but Eddie Murphy, one of the celebrities mentioned, didn't see it that way and was miffed, to say the least.  I didn't get all the lyrics but I loved the sharp, rocking sound...

298 CLOSE TO ME...the Cure
When I listed my 25 all-time favorite songs back in 2007, Close to Me was on it...it's the song from that bygone list that has fallen the most over the years.  I still like it a lot, with Robert Smith sounding half-strangled singing through the dreamy lyrics, accompanied by generally upbeat, Caribbean-like music including a horn section.  The video, mostly set underwater, is a riot, one of my favorites...

297 GOODNIGHT LAURA...Spoon
Goodnight Laura is a deep track off this Austin, Texas-based alternative/indie band's 2010 Transference album.  It is a short and sweet lullaby...I can see singer/songwriter Britt Daniel cooing out this tune to a little girl...possibly his own daughter...as she goes to sleep.  On the other hand, he encourages Laura to set her worries aside...hinting that she may be older. It reminded me a lot of the Beatles' White Album closer Goodnight, sung by Ringo Starr, another great rock n' roll lullaby...

296 WATCHING THE WHEELS...John Lennon
After a late-evening dinner on Monday, December 8th, 1980, I arrived back at my apartment to watch the ending to the Miami Dolphins/New England Patriots game.  Although I was happy to see my team pull it out at the end with a field goal, I was quickly devastated by the breaking news that John Lennon had been murdered outside his New York City apartment.  The rest of the night one of the local radio stations played his songs, including this one I hadn't heard before.  The lyrics are poignant and unforgettable, like "People say I'm lazy, dreaming my life away...well, they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me"...

295 EVERYTHING COUNTS...Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode is a British New Wave synthesizer band that was very popular in Europe and their home country throughout the 1980s and beyond but had fleeting success here in the USA.  In January 1984 MTV promoted their video to Everything Counts, my first exposure to their music.  I quickly grew to like it...including the melody, instrumentation and David Gahan's brooding singing. The lyrics speak of pervasive greed: "The grabbing hands grab all they can, all for themselves, after all."  The band's still together, although I doubt they'll be performing anywhere near me...

294 SOMETHING FROM NOTHING...Foo Fighters
This 2014 song that I chose as my favorite for that year develops in a similar way to Led Zeppelin's great classic Stairway to Heaven, starting out in a subdued and reflective way and then progressively going through stages that increase its tempo and intensity up to the closing crescendo.  David Grohl is the consummate rock artist who loves his craft and seems comfortable with his stardom...the mid-1990s turnaround from being the drummer in a band destroyed by suicide to that incredible Foo Fighters opening album that he basically wrote and recorded on his own is remarkable.  And he's kept them together over the years and is still tremendously popular...

293 IS THAT ALL THERE IS...Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee's first hit single came out way back in 1941... 1969's Is That All There Is, a cynical take on disillusionment arising from various life experiences, was her last major hit.  Whenever I heard it back then on the radio I had to listen to the whole song...it was that mesmerizing, a truly singular performance, both beautifully sung and spoken..."If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze and have a ball...if that's all there is".  Classy and elegant, Peggy Lee was one of the last old-time singing stars to hit it big on the singles charts...she passed away in 2002...

292 LOOKING FOR SATELLITES...David Bowie
You might think you know this late legendary British rock icon from his big hit albums and singles in the seventies and eighties as well as his evolving stage act...but if you've never heard Looking for Satellites, then you don't know Bowie.  From his relatively unknown 1997 Earthlings album, this piece greatly expands the already extraordinary musical creativity of this master of innovation...I can't think of a single song anywhere that even remotely resembles it: give it a listen and see what I mean.  I came across it in 2016 while exploring his 27 studio albums following his death in January that year...the best I can describe it is as a "self-harmonizing hard rock waltz"...

291 BETTE DAVIS EYES...Kim Carnes
Raspy-voiced Kim Carnes had this humungous hit in the middle of 1981, topping the charts for several weeks...it came out at a positive, optimistic time in my young adult life when I was beginning to get things together and looking ahead to the future, so there's a pleasant association for me whenever I hear it.  Funny, oftentimes listening a lot to the same song will tire me of it...but Bette Davis Eyes was my favorite song as I lived through that year, never grew old...

Next week: songs #290-281...