My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #45-41

And here we've arrived once again at Monday, meaning it's time for me to list the next five higher-ranked songs on my list of 500 all-time favorites.  One's relatively new...if you count seventeen year-old songs...and the others are buried deeply in the past.  Let me excavate them and bring them to your attention...

45 FATHER AND SON...Cat Stevens
From 1970, I didn't hear this poignant song by Stevens until '72 when it was played, of all places, during my eleventh grade English class...I've loved it ever since.  In it, the singer alternates the verses between a father and his son, deep-voiced for the former and higher for the latter.  Dad is full of time-tested, wise advice emphasizing patience while his restless son cries out for his individuality and freedom to determine his own destiny...an eternal generational struggle that as a teenager and young man I only understood too well for myself.  It's definitely a major tearjerker of a song...

44 CALCULATION (THEME)...Metric
There is a clear, literal interpretation to the cryptic lyrics in this unique, singular song by the Canadian band that I like to refer to as the "Blondie of our century"...I'll leave you to figure it out for yourself should you decide to give it a listen: I'll just say that this may be the ultimate science fiction pop song.  Instead what appealed to me so much in this 2003 track from the band's Old World Underground album that I first heard off the Internet six years later is the sweet singing of Emily Haines and the generally mystical mood of the song.  And the ending lines are pretty awesome, some of the best parting shots in a piece I've ever heard...

43 WHAT'S GOING ON...Marvin Gaye
From Marvin Gaye's groundbreaking 1971 What's Going On album with its themes of social consciousness, racial justice, the environment and opposition to the Vietnam War is the title track, released as a single into a monster hit during the springtime that year...I was fourteen at the time, finishing up a dismal ninth grade school year.  It's not just Marvin's message but also the brilliant backing vocals and instrumentation that make this one of my favorites...I also loved his Mercy Mercy Me and Inner City Blues from the same album, a masterpiece for the ages: "Right on, brother, right on"...

42 SCARBOROUGH FAIR...Simon and Garfunkel
One of the most incredibly beautiful harmonic pieces ever released, Scarborough Fair...referring to a locality in England...is a dreamy collage of lyrical images with a renaissance fair sensibility to it. It was originally an English folk song with Simon and Garfunkel recording it for their 1966 Parsely, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album (the title a part of the lyrics) but became more known as a singles release in '68 to accompany the soundtrack for the move The Graduate (which we saw as a family that year at a local drive-in).  There's an extended version of this song: normally I'd recommend it but I think the single does quite well...

41 HUMMINGBIRD...Seals and Crofts
From the duo's debut Summer Breeze album, Hummingbird was a minor early 1973 hit, but to me it was by far my favorite song of the year...I thought of it for quite some time as my all-time favorite song.  I don't exactly know what Seals and Crofts meant by the lyrics, but I always viewed it as an inspiring exhortation to never give up on your dreams (the "hummingbird") in the face of adversity...I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for these two rather quirky, offbeat musicians and this sweet, encouraging song that has an epic feel to it...still think it's fantastic...

Next week: #40-36...