The following three songs on my list of 500 all-time favorites are all oldies, the most recent coming out 48 years ago. They're so good you could put them on a loop and play them over and over again, but #15 is very short and #14 is very long, while #16 is just right...sounds like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, doesn't it? They are all recording production masterpieces and display the three bands at their peaks when all the members collaborated in significant ways to the outcome...
16 IT'S ALL OVER NOW...the Rolling Stones
This is a Bobby Womack song from the summer of 1964 that the Stones promptly recorded after they heard it thanks to a DJ during their American tour. As a seven-year old kid enthralled with all the British Invasion acts of the time, I loved this song back then and still do to this day...Jagger, Richards, and company put together a riveting performance that has only grown stronger through the lens of several decades. It has a country flavor to it...especially in the chorus section...but also dips into the blues and has a great rock guitar jam. And the somber instrumental closing is unforgettable. Incidentally, Womack, who sadly died six years ago at age 70, delivered an impressive impromptu vocal performance on Gorillaz's 2010 song Stylo, which I have as #283 on my all-time favorite songs list...
15 ELEANOR RIGBY...the Beatles
With the orchestrated strings background and Paul McCartney's singing, this somber song about aging, isolation and death was an instant classic in 1966, appearing first on the Beatles' Revolver album and later in their animated film Yellow Submarine. The characters Eleanor Rigby..."wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door" and Father McKenzie, "writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear", live their forgotten, ignored lives to the bitter end as just two of "all the lonely people". Although Paul sang lead and wrote the music and the lyrical theme, the other bandmembers substantially contributed to the lyrics and harmony and producer George Martin made it all work with his remarkable instrumental arrangement. It's a sad, forlorn song about sad, forlorn people in a sad, forlorn world. It's also a song that makes you want to stop what you're doing and just listen...
14 CLOSE TO THE EDGE...Yes
This monstrously long song, more than 18 minutes in duration, takes up the entire first side of the band's 1972 album, also titled Close to the Edge. I didn't particularly like it when it first came out, especially the dissonant introductory instrumental guitar section, but starting in the early 1990s everything changed and it dawned on me what a masterpiece it was. It's a wild ride with alternating singing and instrumental sections, keyboards, guitar, bass, fast and slow sections...my favorite parts are in the song's second half as singer Jon Anderson's slow "I get up, I get down" movement transitions into a torrid Rick Wakeman keyboard jam that boggles my mind every time I hear it. Although it was originally popularized in 1973, I made it my "song of the year" for 1993. Like Kraftwerk's great song Autobahn, you need to set aside some time to listen to it. And like the Beatles' Blackbird, it belongs to the class of songs recorded with animal sounds...
Next week: #13-11...
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