My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #100-96

Today I begin my "top 100" countdown within my greater list of 500 all-time favorite songs.  For the next few weeks I'll be taking on five at a time...toward the end I'll probably reduce that number further.  Here are this week's five...

100 MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES...Regina Spektor
From her Far album in 2009, this is a song about a person who takes his own path to personal enlightenment.  It's a sweet, mystical, melodic song that I quickly grew to like and regard as one of my favorites.  Silent screen actor Lon Chaney was dubbed the "man of a thousand faces" after the  same-titled 1957 biographical movie about him starring James Cagney, but Regina's song is on a different theme. I don't think anyone in the music business today is better than Regina Spektor for combining lyrical and melodic creativity, piano virtuosity and a wide-ranging vocal style in her music...

99 CANARY IN A COAL MINE...the Police
This to me was the Police's standout track on their 1981 Zenyatta Mondata album.  It's a very fast-paced, brief reggae-rock piece. You're bound to start hopping around upon listening to it...better tie yourself down first.  Once again, I lament the way-too early breaking up of this band in 1984 after only five studio albums...I'm not at all finished with them on this list of mine.  If they had only made Canary in a Coal Mine a couple of minutes longer...

98 OCEANS...Pearl Jam
I didn't hear this deep track from the Seattle band's 1992 debut Ten album until I picked it up some three years later...in my humble opinion it should have easily been one of the featured releases, a lot better to me than Black or Alive.  Just sit back and close your eyes to the beautiful instrumental arrangement with singer Eddie Vedder evoking images of a sea in the middle of a raging storm with the rising waves and darkening skies...along with the aftermath: Debussy wishes he'd written something like this...

97 BLUE SKY MINE...Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil was an Australian rock band that focused on their country's social problems...Blue Sky Mine apparently was one of these kinds of songs, criticizing the excesses of a large sugar company.  The passionate and unique voice of Peter Garrett, along with his unmatched virtuoso harmonica playing, elevated this song in my estimation to the point where I made it my favorite of the year 1990.  The group is better known for its single Beds are Burning, but to me Blue Sky Mine was their masterpiece.  And here I am speaking of them in the past: they're still together...

96 I CAN'T EXPLAIN...the Who
When I was eight in early 1965 and my local singles rock station in Miami, WQAM/560/"Tiger Radio" began playing this song, I immediately thought it was another Beatles hit and quite possibly their greatest song to date.  Eventually I found out that a different group, The Who, did it: no matter, I Can't Explain would be my favorite song of that year as I lived through it.  They made quite a few good albums during the sixties that didn't get the deserved airplay and respect in America that they received overseas...most of us know hits like My Generation, I Can See for Miles, and Magic Bus...but the deep tracks on the albums these songs came from were also consistently high-quality. I Can't Explain predated their first studio album by a couple of years...

Next week: #95-91...