My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #110-101

I imagine you've probably heard most of the ten songs on this list if you've been around as long as me...I'm not so sure about # 105 and 106, though.  The songs span many years and diverse genres...a piece of music done well in any genre can become one of my favorites if it resonates with me.  I think next week, as I begin to go through my top 100 songs, I'll be discussing five songs at a time instead of ten...maybe I'll thus be able to drag out this enjoyable blog project of mine a little longer...

110 CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT?...Elton John
This 1994 theme from the Disney animated movie The Lion King was, to me, the final great Elton John song of his career...may he continue to live long and prosper.  I never did care all that much for the movie, but was quickly swept away by this song, to me maybe his greatest single singing accomplishment.  Elton's got a couple more masterpieces higher up on my list...

109 GOOD NIGHT...the Beatles
After the nightmarish...but strangely compelling...chaos of the 1968 White Album's penultimate track Revolution 9 comes this mellow, very sweet closing piece, sung by Ringo as one of the greatest all-time rock n' roll lullabies. It wasn't until much later, though, when I heard it for the first time...in September 1972 along with the associated personal memories of what was going on in my life at the time...

108 THAT'S MY JOB...Conway Twitty
When I first got on at the Gainesville post office in 1987 as a letter-sorting machine clerk, they allowed us to bring headset radios for listening while we worked...my first one was a cheap brand that only picked up the very powerful local country station GC-101.  Hence for a few months I was strongly into the ongoing country and western scene, and they often played this hit song by Conway Twitty from that year.  It's about growing up and the bond between a father and his son...if this song doesn't make you shed a few tears, then you just ain't got no heart...

107 DAZED AND CONFUSED...Led Zeppelin
I remember hating this song for years whenever my local album rock radio station played it, and then in late 1990 everything changed and I began to listen to this classic British hard rock band through a different filter.  Eventually I would make Dazed and Confused my favorite song of 1992 as I lived through it...even though it's originally from 1968.  The entire song is great, one of Robert Plant's best singing performances, but my favorite section is the middle where it all breaks down into a psychedelic desolation and wild Jimmy Page guitar jam...

106 TO BINGE...Gorillaz
Plastic Beach, from 2010, was in my opinion the alternative act Gorillaz's best album, a great collaborative effort between songwriter and singer Damon Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett, along with many contributing artists.  To Binge is a duet between Albarn and Yukimi Nagano as the two alternately bemoan a romance gone astray...it's sad but at the same time very catchy and danceable.  There was a period during the summer of 2011 when I focused on Gorillaz, listening to a shuffle of their tracks from their first four albums on my MP3 while on training runs around the neighborhood in the heat of day.  Try them out if you haven't yet...although you might find a lot to dislike you'll also get to know a few songs that work well for you...

105 ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?...the Moody Blues
The Moody Blues' 1969 On the Threshold of a Dream album is one of my favorites, especially Side Two on which the songs merge together...Are You Sitting Comfortably? is a wistful, mystical piece, a collaboration of singer John Lodge and flutist Ray Thomas, that harkens back to the mythical time of Camelot and Merlin and leads into the album's climactic finale.  This song stands well on its own but comes off better if you listen to the surrounding tracks together...

104 RUN LIKE HELL...Pink Floyd
Sounding a bit like a dystopian nightmare future, Run Like Hell was my favorite track off their 1979 The Wall double album.  While more of a "run from your pursuers" than a "run for self-fulfillment and exercise" kind of song, I still naturally tie it to my own running...although frankly, its ending sounds more like an indoor basketball game in progress.  Roger Waters wrote the lyrics and sang lead here while David Gilmour wrote the music and did backup vocals.  It's a scary-but-energizing song, always one of my favorites...

103 THE ONE THING...INXS
It was early 1983 when I first heard this debut hit from Australian rockers INXS...a strong recurring guitar riff, keyboards, saxophone, and the soulful singing of Michael Hutchence dominate this song that I regarded for months as my favorite for that year.  INXS was one of many acts felled by the death of one of its members, in this case Hutchence in 1997...such a recurring tragedy, be it by drug overdose, or, in the talented INXS singer/lyricist's case, suicide.  Makes part of me wish they had never achieved their fame and fortune...some people just can't handle it all, including the almost inevitable decline in mass popularity...

102 PLEASANT VALLEY SUNDAY...the Monkees
A big summer hit at the peak of "Monkeemania" here in the USA during the so-called Summer of Love in 1967, back then it was just one of many Monkees tunes I loved, being a big fan of their ongoing comedy television series and even a Monkees card collector (hey, I was just a kid at the time).  In subsequent years I grew to feel that Pleasant Valley Sunday may have been one of the underappreciated instigators of the Counterculture Movement with its rejection of rat race values prevalent in suburban America: "Creature comfort goals, they only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see".  Gerry Coffin and Carole King cowrote this iconic song that Mickey Dolenz nailed with his singing...

101 ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST...Queen
The story I heard is that the members of British rock group Queen in 1980 wanted to know which track from their new album The Game they should release and promote as the next single...Michael Jackson dropped by, listened to it, and picked Another One Bites the Dust.  And the rest is history, a great, funky, fun song that makes you want to get up and start moving when you hear it.  At that year's end I picked it as my "song of the year" over some other considerably high-quality songs.  I still love it...

Next week: #100-96...