My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #140-131

It's Monday again and time for ten more songs from my list of 500 all-time personal favorites.  Like last week's, these span several decades...which only makes sense because, well, I'm several decades old!  You probably know some of the songs, but for the ones you don't why not give them a try...and watch the video of the one I recommended.  Here they are...

140 FACE POLLUTION...Soundgarden
This track from Soundgarden...my all-time favorite grunge band...is from their 1991 album Badmotorfinger, but I didn't hear it until 1995 when I picked up on their sensational Superunknown, one of the all-time greatest albums ever, and decided to look into some of their earlier works.  Face Pollution, featuring the band's talented bluesy, intense singer Chris Cornell, is a hard-driving rock piece, my favorite off the album...I really got into it in the year 1999, deeming it one of my favorites of that year as I lived through it.  Sadly, Cornell is no longer with us, what a loss...

139 WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?...the Supremes
This song was the Supremes' debut singles hit in 1964...later their success and durability on the pop charts would earn them multiple appearances on the Ed Sullivan show.  There were a lot of successful female singing groups back then, but the Supremes reigned "supreme" over them all with the extraordinary lead singing of Diana Ross and the choral accompaniment of Mary Wilson and Flo Ballard. This was my all-time second favorite Supremes song...my favorite, much higher on this list, has an ironic twist to it...but I'll save that until later...

138 LET ME IN...R.E.M.
Drowned in a wall of guitar sound, this 1994 track from R.E.M.'s Monster album was perhaps the saddest song ever produced by this band already well-known for its sad songs.  That's not surprising, since it is an agonized tribute to Nirvana's late front man Kurt Cobain who had killed himself just months before, and whom R.E.M. lyricist and singer Michael Stipe had personally befriended...listen to the words yourself and see if they don't tear you apart: "He gathered up his loved ones around him to say good-bye, nice try"...Let Me In was my favorite song of 1994 as I lived through it, but be warned: it is a severe tearjerker...

137 DON'T STAND SO CLOSE TO ME...the Police
This was the song, from this British/American rock/reggae band's 1981 third album Zenyatta Mondatta, that turned my attention in their direction...I eventually bought the album and have been an ardent fan since.  The lyrics speak of temptation and scandal as singer Sting dons his former professional role as a high school teacher, here susceptible to one of his student's charms...hence the title.  Of course, in these pandemic times it also serves as an anthem for social distancing, doesn't it?  But I came to love it for the brilliant musical arrangement and melody...and that unmistakable blend of reggae into rock that only the Police could pull off as well as they did...

136 YOU...George Harrison
When this single heralding the release of Harrison's 1976 album Extra Texture came out back then, I was happy to see the former Beatle was making a comeback with some really good music...I loved this simple love song with its positive vibes and awesome saxophone.  It turned out, though, that although the album's other material was fine as far as I was concerned, You was actually a rejected outtake from 1971 when George was riding high in popularity following the release of his celebrated All Things Must Pass "triple" album.  Extra Texture wasn't much of a success after the initial hype wore off, but You was from an earlier era of musical creativity in Harrison's life when there seemed to be nothing holding him back...

135 HERE TO STAY...Korn
Warning: this is a brutal, in-your-face, angry song with a lot of dissonance and heavy metal intonations.  The singer bemoans just about everything currently going on around him...a sign of the stressful times back in 2002 when it came out post-9/11 as terror plots were being seen everywhere...remember the Beltway sniper?...and the drums of war were beating increasingly louder.  Somehow, though, within this song's harshness there is an expression of exquisite artistry...Korn brought it all together and I deemed it then as my "song of the year".  My favorite part is toward the end when singer Jonathan Davis chants "Bring it down!" to a heavy metal crescendo...

134 BOTH SIDES NOW...Judy Collins
This Joni Mitchell song was beautifully covered by Judy Collins in 1968, giving her the biggest hit of her career...I was okay with it back then but as the years went by I was able to see it from "both sides" and realized the perfect combination of deep, philosophical lyrics dealing with maturity and insight and a wonderful melody sung with such compelling emotion.  A real masterpiece of the times: "But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say I've changed"...this line literally happened to me personally when a old friend turned on me way back even before this song came out...the saddest part is that he died so prematurely more than two decades ago...

133 HALF A WORLD AWAY...R.E.M.
The second R.E.M. song on today's segment, Half a World Away is a deep track appearing on the Athens, Georgia-based band's breakthrough 1990 Out of Time album.  Like the album's more famous singles release Losing My Religion, it features guitarist Peter Buck switching to the mandolin to accompany Michael Stipe's wistful wailing about...well, being half a world away and having to go it alone.  The story I picked up from the Web is that Buck was actually just learning to play the mandolin for use on this album and that the riff for this song just popped into his head...pretty cool, huh?

132 REPTILIA...the Strokes
I'd already become a Strokes fan in 2004 after hearing their hit 12:51 being played a lot on my local alternative rock radio station, but then Reptilia...from the same album Room on Fire...came out with the band's three guitars dominating this song along with Julian Casablancas' expressive singing.  Although Reptilia stands well on its own, you have to watch their official video of it, one of the greatest performance videos ever made and one that portrays the band...along with their guitar and drum playing...up close as no one has done before or since: I could watch videos like this endlessly...

131 I GOT A NAME...Jim Croce
By the summer of 1973, Jim Croce to me had come across as a folksy working-class kind of pop star with his brawl-themed singles hits You Don't Mess Around with Jim and Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.  But just as I Got a Name was being released in September 1973, Croce tragically perished in a Louisiana plane crash.  This much more serious and thoughtful song immortalized his name in the minds of many...including myself...and in subsequent months the breadth of his creativity, both with his lyrics and his music, would make a lasting impression on me.  Maybe it seems pretty self-evident, but I'll say it anyway: I Got a Name is a positive song about asserting your own sense of identity and taking responsibility for your own life...

Next week: #130-121...