My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #150-141

The 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s...each decade is represented on this temporally-spaced ten-song segment of my 500 all-time favorites list.  Each one is very distinctive and beautiful in its own way.  Here they are...

150 SONG FOR AMERICA...Kansas
To get the full impact of this wonderful bicennential ode to our country you need to hear the complete ten-minute version.  I heard it a lot on album-rock radio in 1977 and picked it back then as my song of the year.  The lyrics are a bit problematic to me as they imply that no one was in the New World when the Europeans first landed...what about all those Native Americans, Kansas? The best parts are the instrumental segments, which to me stand up well compared to classical works...

149 ACROSS THE UNIVERSE...the Beatles
This John Lennon track from the 1970 Let It Be album was greatly enhanced (and improved) by stand-in producer Phil Spektor's insertion of his lush trademark "wall of sound", including an orchestral and choral background.  It's lyrically a song of contentment with the repeating mantra "Nothing's gonna change my world"...a very sweet, relaxing piece...

148 BALLAD OF SIR FRANKIE CRISP (LET IT ROLL)...George Harrison
I didn't know of this deep track from Harrison's late-1970 double album All Things Must Pass when it first came out...it wasn't until just recently that I heard it and took notice.  I didn't know anything about the title or lyrics until I looked it up: it's about the estate in Oxfordshire that Harrison purchased in 1970, originally built by Frank Crisp, a lawyer. This is more than anything a mood piece, and producer Phil Spektor's arrangement combined with contributions from other musicians and Harrison's sweet melody and singing made it special to me...

147 CANTALOOP (FLIP FANTASIA)...Us3
This is another example of how rap/hip-hop music works best for me in conjunction with standard pieces containing melody...here Us3 uses a classic Herbie Hancock jazz-based tune to overlay their rap, and it works very well: "Feel the beat drop, jazz and hip-hop, drippin' in your dome makes you zone and bop".  My favorite part is at the end when the trumpet player goes off on a lengthy, jazzy solo.  Cantaloop was a top forty singles hit in 1992...I've always thought it was brilliant...

146 BLACKOUT...Linkin Park
From Linkin Park's remarkable 2010 album A Thousand Suns, Blackout is a two-part track, the first of which features their late vocalist Chester Bennington screaming out the lyrics as only he could...halfway through, the song tones down and Bennington showcases his wonderful singing talent: I don't know of anyone so emotionally expressive as he was in his singing...so sad to have lost him.  I always found Blackout to be a great running song on my MP3...especially when I'm near the end of a long run and am ready to give it a final kick at the end.  Careful, while listening to this song you might find yourself unwittingly screaming along with Bennington...

145 FAREWELL ANDROMEDA...John Denver
This 1973 song by Denver apparently was released back then as a single but mysteriously fizzled...never mind, it's on his Greatest Hits album, which my parents bought and played many, many times at home.  Alternately titled Welcome to My Morning (more apropos to me since these words actually appear in it), it is basically a warm love song with positive and uplifting verses...but ultimately it's the "La la la...." chorus part that is memorable, especially in the closing section...

144 RIDE MY SEE-SAW...the Moody Blues
Combined with the introductory spoken track on the Moody Blues' 1968 studio album In Search of the Lost Chord, Ride My See-Saw got some resurgent popularity a few years ago from its use as bumper music on Art Bell's late night talk radio show.  The entire album blew me away, and although it's not my favorite track on it this song serves as a perfect introduction for what's to come, much in the same way that the title track to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album leads in to the rest of that great work.  Although I'd heard Ride My See-Saw previously, it was during my mid-1990s investigation into the Moody Blues' catalog of albums that I really came to like it...

143 LAKE MICHIGAN...Rogue Wave
Back in 2008, just when my local indie/alternative rock station WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz" was about to drastically change their format more to hard rock, this intriguing song by the California band Rogue Wave was in their rotation, maybe the last truly indie song they played on that station for years that I liked.  I don't know what Lake Michigan has to do with anything...or what the rest of the lyrics mean for that matter, but the appeal with this song was the instrumental arrangement with an interesting beat and vaguely defiant lyrics.  Last year Melissa, Will and I managed to make it to Lake Michigan on our Chicago trip, both at a little beach on the city's downtown south end and overlooking the end of the Navy Pier...

142 SYNCHRONICITY II...the Police
This track from the Police's final album Synchronicity made a big impact at the height of the music video explosion in late 1983 with a tremendous video highlighting the band members in a tattered, stormy apocalyptic setting...I've seen nothing like it since.  The lyrics greatly impressed me, like "Another working day has ended, only the rush hour hell to face, packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes...contestants in a suicidal race"...I wish they hadn't broken up after only five albums, all of them excellent...

141 E-BOW THE LETTER...R.E.M.
I was generally disappointed in R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi album when it came out in 1996...one of the few tracks I really took to was E-Bow the Letter, another cryptically-titled mood piece (see Song #148 above), this one with frontman and lyricist Michael Stipe slipping between speaking and singing a bitterly-tinged stream-of-consciousness rant about whatever the heck he's trying to discuss...if you know what it is, let me know.  Patti Smith sings a deep-voiced, very moving accompaniment to Stipe...with their harmony and the instrumental arrangement the overall effect is haunting and mesmerizing, especially toward the end...

Next week: #140-131...