My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #95-91

Two of the five songs I'm discussing below are by the Beatles and two more reminded me of songs of theirs...the other one stands in a category of its own.  They're all fantastic, though, and mean a lot to me...of course, that's obvious since they are high on my list of 500 all-time favorite songs.  Here they are...

95 ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE...the Beatles
I first heard this song...which I would deem as my "song of 1967"...in June of that year when the Beatles performed and recorded it live on the BBC-produced television special Our World that educational TV showed in America (in Miami on Channel 2).  Mick Jagger, who was one of the invited guests there, recently remarked that his Rolling Stones were more of a performing band than the Beatles...but the spot-on poise and musical discipline they showed with this presentation indicates otherwise.  It would become a Number One hit single, later appearing on their remarkable Magical Mystery Tour album: my favorite part was at the end with Paul adlibbing "She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah".  When I saw them perform it on Our World back then I also remember being gratified that John and Paul had shaved off those annoying moustaches they had been sporting...

94 FAUST ARP...Radiohead
This short track from the English alternative band's 2007 In Rainbows album would become one of my favorites of theirs three years later when I obtained the backlog of their works and put them on my MP3 player in shuffle mode to listen to on long distance training runs.  There is an uncanny resemblance between Faust Arp and the Beatles' White Album song Dear Prudence, at least regarding the background music.  Singer/lyricist Thom Yorke has a curiously appealing cynical edge to his singing, and this song is no exception...

93 LITTLE GREEN BAG...George Baker Selection
In the early spring of 1970 I was thirteen and in a pretty negative period in my life...at the time the radio was playing this song by George Baker Selection, one of three musical acts from the Netherlands (the Tee Set with Ma Belle Amie and Shocking Blue with Venus were the others) with ongoing singles hits.  Its beat, similar to the Beatles' 1964 She's a Woman, was mesmerizing and the lyrics, although generally cryptic about "looking back on the track for a little green bag" (or was it "little greenback"?), did clearly express themselves with the chorus line "looking for some happiness when there was only loneliness to find". Little Green Bag ended up as my "song of the year" for 1970...George Baker Selection would come out six years later with another good song but with a different mood to it: Paloma Blanca...

92 HAPPY JUST TO DANCE WITH YOU...the Beatles
This song was my favorite track from the Beatles 1964 movie A Hard Days Night.  George Harrison sings the lead with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who co-wrote it, in the backup chorus.  It reminded me in tone and spirit of their breakthrough American hit just a few months earlier, I Want to Hold Your Hand.  I remember going with my mom, dad and sister to the drive-in theater that summer to see the movie and of course, we got the album as soon as it came out...

91 MY WAVE...Soundgarden
This is a stay-in-your-lane, mind-your-own-business kind of angry song with singer/lyricist Chris Cornell laying it on the line about how he feels about busybodies imposing their values on him unsolicited...I couldn't agree more.  It resonated with me in 1995, a year following its release on the Seattle grunge band's Superunknown, easily my all-time favorite grunge album and high on my list of all-time favorites from any genre.  My Wave was also my favorite song of '95 as I lived through it...

Next week: #90-86...