My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #250-241

Well, it's time once again to go a little further up the list of my 500 personal all-time favorite songs.  The tendency here is for me to write too much about each one...sometimes I just have to cut off my comments on one song and move on, a skill I need to develop more and one that I wished more writers (and speakers) had.  Here's the next ten on my list...

250 WE'LL SING IN THE SUNSHINE...Gale Garnett
This was a big hit in the fall of 1964, around the time I was turning eight.  I associate it with being in our West Hollywood, Florida backyard with my sister Anita and sitting on the porch musing with her then about different things...real sweet, wonderful memories.  Funny thing was that at the time I didn't particularly care for this wistful, slow country-like ballad by the Canadian singer about a free spirit who is moving on from her love, but it grew on me and I eventually bought the single.  In my admittedly skewed memory, 1964 was one heck of a cool year...

249 BLACK WATER...the Doobie Brothers
Founding Doobie Brothers member Patrick Simmons wrote and sang lead on this early 1975 hit that pretty much resurrected the great old Bayou spirit so successfully imparted by John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival a few years earlier.  The big surprise in this song for first-time listeners comes near the end, just when you think it's over...the rousing "I'd like to hear some funky Dixieland pretty mama come and take me by the hand".  Interplay between fiddle and guitar figures heavily in this treasure...

248 WINDOWSILL...Arcade Fire
Windowsill is what I would term a "vent" song...here the singer vents about his father's legacy and against the world in general as he remembers experiences and makes observations on things he is averse to and clearly expresses how he doesn't want any of it on his "windowsill".  Win Butler delivers a passionate, emotional performance...the song appeared as a deep track on the band's wonderful 2007 album Neon Bible, one of the greatest works of popular music from this century, in my humble opinion...

247 ANGRY YOUNG MAN...Billy Joel
In this 1976 staple of album rock radio back then, from his Turnstiles album, Joel displays his prowess at the piano keyboard during the prelude and instrumental breaks...when he's singing the verses, the background is acoustic guitar as he lays out his take on young radicals, who he sees are out of touch with many of the realities that people in general face in order to just get by in life...but the "angry young man" immerses himself in a personal fantasy world of imagined utopia and revolution.  The lyrics are cutting and no-nonsense: "But his honor is true and his courage is well, and he's fair and he's true and he's boring as hell...and he'll go to the grave as an angry old man"...

246 YOU'VE GOT TO HIDE YOUR LOVE AWAY...the Beatles
John Lennon's written and performed introspective, moody pieces like this one before...I'll Cry Instead and I'm a Loser quickly come to mind.  This song from their 1965 Help! album hints of Bob Dylan's influence as well as foresees their more folk-oriented work on the following Rubber Soul album.  The only problem I have with this melancholy two-minute song is that it's too short: it deserves at least one or two more minutes...of course, I could play it repeatedly in a loop...

245 AQUARIUS/LET THE SUNSHINE IN...the Fifth Dimension
Back in 1969 when I was ignoring a lot of great music going on at the time, I still could clearly tell that this song was extraordinary...it became my "song of the year" as I lived through it and I still treasure Aquarius today.  Not that I'm into New Age mysticism or astrology, mind you, but this is an upbeat song about the future that came out at a time when both nationally and personally it didn't look like there was very much to look forward to...and an awful lot to dread.  I say chuck the horoscopes and just "let the sunshine in"...

244 EVERLONG...Foo Fighters
The quick transformation that David Grohl made from drummer in a band destroyed by the death of its charismatic leader/singer to heading his own instantly wildly successful group is unprecedented in music history...cite me a similar example if you can.  His Foo Fighters' second album The Colour and the Shape came out in 1997 and this was my favorite track on it...fortunately they released it as a single and it became a hit, one of the most romantic hard-driving rock songs ever produced...

243 HOLIDAY...the Bee Gees
My parents bought the album Bee Gees 1st (which incidentally wasn't actually their first) when it came out in 1967, hearing at least in their own minds a continuation of what they had liked in the early Beatles, and Holiday was one of its tracks that I took to during the many, many times they played it in my house when I was ten-eleven years old.  Ironically, its rich orchestral background and atmosphere of mystery with nearly indecipherable lyrics to me would place it more appropriately among the tracks on Sgt. Pepper, which was the ongoing Fab Four album back then that my mom and dad had rejected...

242 RUNNIN' AWAY...Sly and the Family Stone
This early-1972 follow-up to Sly and the Family Stone's larger singles hit Family Affair (which I also liked) just didn't get the charts action or radio play that it deserved...maybe because the lead singer on it isn't Sly Stone...I think it was Sister Rose instead.  I loved the horns on it as well as the beat.  Both Runnin' Away and Family Affair are from their There's a Riot Going On album, one of the most acclaimed in rock history...

241 VITAL SIGNS...Rush
Although the hard rock/reggae-fused music on Vital Signs is entrancing in itself, it's the lyrics that quickly won me over to this concluding track on Rush's 1981 Moving Pictures, another album that would easily make my personal list of all-time favorite albums...although I didn't actually first hear it until 1992.  The late Neil Peart, their outstanding drummer as well as lyricist for their songs, wrote the ultimate, reasonable rationale for nonconformity with this piece, loaded with wisdom such as "Everybody got mixed feelings about the function and the form, everybody got to deviate from the norm"...

Next week: #240-231...