My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #90-86

As I continue gradually getting closer and closer to the top of my 500 all-time favorite songs list, the songs I review provide for me old memories I've associated with each of them.  Does old music do that for you as well?  Anyway, here are the next five songs...

90 ELI'S COMING...Three Dog Night
From 1969, this was one of Three Dog Night's earliest hits, initially popular during a year when I didn't follow popular music very much, for some reason.  Later on I grew to love the passionate, urgent singing and flow of the song...and the introduction is brilliant.  Three Dog Night, like some other bands, suffered under the eyes of many critics because they used others' compositions instead of writing their own songs: Eli's Coming was by Laura Nyro...

89 LIVIN' THING...Electric Light Orchestra
Back at the close of 1976 I would deem this hit by ELO to be my song of the year...it came off their greatest album, A New World Record, and was played a lot on the radio during the fall of 1976...the last fall I ever spent in my childhood town of (West) Hollywood, Florida.  Listening to Livin' Thing also brings back memories of the then-ongoing presidential campaign between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter...and how my mother got so excited about finally going to vote (as did I, both of us for the smiling peanut farmer/nuclear engineer)...

88 SOFT ROCK STAR...Metric
I often like to compare Metric with Blondie from the '80s New Wave movement...with Emily Haines' more current band usually winning out.  Soft Rock Star comes off their 2007 release Grow Up and Blow Away album...originally recorded in 2001...that features two versions of this song.  There's the main track, which I prefer, and then the acoustic "Jimmy vs. Joe Mix" version...listen to both and see which one you like, they're both good.  I remember seeing the late Phil Hartman on Saturday Night Live doing a skit on "sassy"...this song takes sassiness to a high art form...

87 SHOCK THE MONKEY...Peter Gabriel
I heard 1982's Shock the Monkey by the former Genesis front man for about a year on the radio before I first viewed the shocking and haunting video...the song seems to describe a man in desperation, fleeing from something pursuing him or maybe something he has hidden within himself.  So much cryptic symbolism...yeah, I like my music full of that kind of stuff.  The video is fantastic, but you probably want to hear the full, uncut version, too...

86 SHAPES OF THINGS...the Yardbirds
Two seminal psychedelic rock songs came out in early 1966, just weeks apart: Eight Miles High by the Byrds and Shapes of Things by the Yardbirds.  Where I lived in south Florida (I was nine at the time) the former got more radio play and dang it, although I loved this Yardbirds song back then I never could find out its name or who did it until years later...I always called it "Come Tomorrow" for that recurring line.  Shapes of Things is not only worthy due to the guitar and drum work, but is also a great piece of introspection, with lyrics like "Fallin' into your passing hands, please don't destroy these lands, don't make them desert sands"...

Next week: #85-81...