My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #120-111

When I first started out with this list of my personal top 500 favorite songs, it seemed like it would take forever to present it, ten songs per week.  Yet here we are nearing the point where I'll be discussing the top 100.  Here are the next ten on my list...

120 SKY PILOT...Eric Burdon and the Animals
In my listening experience the ultimate antiwar song, this was a very long, epic piece that unfortunately was severely cut to size as a singles release in 1968...but it's the lengthy middle part that stands out: it vividly depicts the intensity of a terrible battle, with the bagpipe at the end creating a chilling effect.  Burdon's heartfelt singing is heartbreaking throughout...but especially at the song's close...as he describes a day during the war of a "sky pilot", who is the chaplain to the troops that are about to go out and kill and die.  This was from the "Animals" group that Burdon reformulated around himself after the original band broke up...

119 SOUL MEETS BODY...Death Cab for Cutie
Back in 2005 I was at the peak of a rediscovered affection for alternative rock, and listened avidly to my local station that provided that format: 100.5/WHHZ "The Buzz".  Soul Meets Body was a big hit in the indie genre back then...its lyrics speak of commitment throughout life, which is a kind of voyage : "And I do believe it's true that there are roads left in both of our shoes, but if the silence takes you I hope it takes me too".  Death Cab for Cutie was the brain child of composer/singer Ben Gibbard...its name derives from the title of an old sixties song.  Back in 2005 I made Soul Meets Body my "song of the year"...

118 COME AS YOU ARE..Nirvana
When Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit first came out in 1991 I didn't like it and wondered what all the hullabaloo was about this grunge subgenre of rock originating from western Washington state.  But after subsequent songs from their album Nevermind like this one and Lithium began to get airplay, I realized there was much more depth to this band than I had realized.  Come As You Are has a sinister, foreboding aspect to it as Cobain sings his lyrics to a friend...or is it his enemy?

117 TEST  TRANSMISSION...Kasabian
Off this British alternative group's first, self-titled album from 2004, I didn't get around to hearing Test Transmission until I obtained their first four albums six years later and went on training runs with their tracks shuffled on my MP3.  I'm not sure exactly what the cryptic lyrics mean, but the overall mood of the song is positive, I loved the melody...especially that of the chorus section...and thought the ending was especially good, reminding me a little of the old-time Beatles songs...

116 TELL ME BABY...the Red Hot Chili Peppers
The LA-based rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers were/are masters at fusing different types of popular music all into one song...here they combine funk, hard rock, rap and melodic ballad without missing a beat: who else could pull this off?  Tell Me Baby was a singles release from their 2006 double album Stadium Arcadium...as far as I can tell they're still together and producing music that matters.  Who would have guessed it...I sure didn't after seeing their initial video True Men Don't Kill Coyotes way back in 1986...

115 LEAVE IT...Yes
When Yes supposedly reunited to record their successful comeback album 90125 in 1983, it was South African rock composer/singer/guitarist Trevor Rabin's band he was going to call Cinema, as well as this album.  They invited former Yes front man Jon Anderson to their studio and he contributed his vocals to the already-recorded tracks...eventually he became part of the band and they decided to run with the Yes label since other former Yes members were part of Rabin's group. Leave It is one of the tracks and is one of the best examples of perfect harmony in a song.. in 1984 it was my "song of the year"...

114 CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD...Electric Light Orchestra
I first heard this breakthrough American hit from the British symphonic rock band ELO late in December, 1974 while working late at night as a clerk in a Miami Shores traffic management firm...WSHE/103.5 played it, I recorded it and listened many times.  That it has a Beatles Sgt. Pepper kind of sound to it was no accident...the band's front man Jeffrey Lynne was an open admirer of the Fab Four and years later would collaborate extensively with George Harrison...

113 NAKED EYE...Luscious Jackson
Naked Eye, from 1997, is another example of a song typified by extraordinary harmony (see Song #115)...as well as of a successful fusing of two genres within one song (see Song #114), this case being rap and alternative rock.  In Gainesville during that time we had an alternative rock station on 97.7...regrettably (for me, not others) the following spring it would shut down, change its frequency to 97.3, and become the standard conservative talk radio station for the area.  It wouldn't be another four years before I noticed a new station in Gainesville playing my kind of music.  Luscious Jackson, a female band of the nineties, had their one big hit in Naked Eye, which in '97 I picked as my "song of the year"...

112 ONCE IN A LIFETIME...Talking Heads
Back in the early eighties in Gainesville, our cable TV company was University City Cable, and on their "home" channel they would inexplicably keep playing this queer song...it took me years to discover the title and artist.  Later, Once in a Lifetime's strangeness would only be enhanced when I got around to seeing the video.  Yet it all clicked with me and I took the song as a commentary about how weird life really is...and how circumstances can sometimes snowball to the point where you openly wonder to yourself exactly how did you get to where you are today...

111 MOTORCADE...Beck
When I first obtained a copy of alternative artist Beck's 2006 The Information album I largely ignored this deep track on it...but it grew on me both musically and lyrically.  Now I think that if I ever came out with an album of my own, this is the kind of song I would like to lead it off with.  And those lyrics are beyond bizarre but possess a kind of poetic beauty: "Skyscraper standing in the desert alone, a helicopter searchlight is searching for no one".  I can tell Beck must have had a lot of fun in the studio putting this track together...

Next week: #110-101...